Split (1)

train · 6.46M rows

Subsets and Splits

No community queries yet

The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.

sentence1 stringlengths 1 133k	sentence2 stringlengths 1 131k
been surpassed by Supercenters. In 1990, Walmart opened its first Bud's Discount City location in Bentonville. Bud's operated as a closeout store, much like Big Lots. Many locations were opened to fulfill leases in shopping centers as Walmart stores left and moved into newly built Supercenters. All of the Bud's Discount City stores had closed or converted into Walmart Discount Stores by 1997. At its peak in 1996, there were 1,995 Walmart Discount Stores, but as of January 31, 2022, that number was dropped to 370. Walmart Neighborhood Market Walmart Neighborhood Market, sometimes branded as "Neighborhood Market by Walmart" or informally known as "Neighborhood Walmart", is Walmart's chain of smaller grocery stores ranging from and averaging about , about a fifth of the size of a Walmart Supercenter. The first Walmart Neighborhood Market opened ten years after the first Supercenter opened, yet Walmart renewed its focus on the smaller grocery store format in the 2010s. The stores focus on three of Walmart's major sales categories: groceries, which account for about 55 percent of the company's revenue, pharmacy, and, at some stores, fuel. For groceries and consumables, the stores sell fresh produce, deli and bakery items, prepared foods, meat, dairy, organic, general grocery and frozen foods, in addition to cleaning products and pet supplies. Some stores offer wine and beer sales and drive-through pharmacies. Some stores, such as one at Midtown Center in Bentonville, Arkansas, offer made-to-order pizza with a seating area for eating. Customers can also use Walmart's site-to-store operation and pick up online orders at Walmart Neighborhood Market stores just like the Supercenters Products at Walmart Neighborhood Market stores carry the same prices as those at Walmart's larger supercenters. A Moody's analyst said the wider company's pricing structure gives the chain of grocery stores a "competitive advantage" over competitors Whole Foods, Kroger and Trader Joe's. Neighborhood Market stores expanded slowly at first as a way to fill gaps between Walmart Supercenters and Discount Stores in existing markets. In its first 12 years, the company opened about 180 Walmart Neighborhood Markets. By 2010, Walmart said it was ready to accelerate its expansion plans for the grocery stores. there were 683 Walmart Neighborhood Markets, each employing between 90 and 95 full-time and part-time workers. There are also currently 12 Amigo supermarkets in Puerto Rico. The total number of Neighborhood Markets and Amigo combined is 695, while the total number of the former two and other small formats combined is 799. Neighborhood Market, depending on the area, has some competition with Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh, launched in 2019 that is similar to Neighborhood Market. Former stores and concepts Walmart opened Supermercado de Walmart locations to appeal to Hispanic communities in the United States. The first one, a store in the Spring Branch area of Houston, opened on April 29, 2009. The store was a conversion of an existing Walmart Neighborhood Market. In 2009, another Supermercado de Walmart opened in Phoenix, Arizona. Both locations closed in 2014. In 2009, Walmart opened "Mas Club", a warehouse retail operation patterned after Sam's Club. Its lone store also closed in 2014. Walmart Express was a chain of smaller discount stores with a range of services from groceries to check cashing and gasoline service. The concept was focused on small towns deemed unable to support a larger store and large cities where space was at a premium. Walmart planned to build 15 to 20 Walmart Express stores, focusing on Arkansas, North Carolina, and Chicago, by the end of its fiscal year in January 2012. Walmart re-branded all 22 of its Express format stores to Neighborhood Markets in an effort to streamline its retail offer. It continued to open new Express stores under the Neighborhood Market name. there were 104 small-format stores in the United States. These include 93 other small formats, 8 convenience stores and 3 pickup locations. On January 15, 2016, Walmart announced that it would be closing 269 stores globally, including the 102 Neighborhood Markets that were formerly or originally planned to be Express stores. Initiatives In September 2006, Walmart announced a pilot program to sell generic drugs at $4 per prescription. The program was launched at stores in the Tampa, Florida, area, and by January 2007 had been expanded to all stores in Florida. While the average price of generics is $29 per prescription, compared to $102 for name-brand drugs, Walmart maintains that it is not selling at a loss, or providing them as an act of charity—instead, they are using the same mechanisms of mass distribution that it uses to bring lower prices to other products. Many of Walmart's low cost generics are imported from India, where they are made by drug makers that include Ranbaxy and Cipla. On February 6, 2007, the company launched a "beta" version of a movie download service, which sold about 3,000 films and television episodes from all major studios and television networks. The service was discontinued on December 21, 2007, due to low sales. In 2008, Walmart started a pilot program in the small grocery store concept called Marketside in the metropolitan Phoenix, Arizona, area. The four stores closed in 2011. In 2015, Walmart began testing a free grocery pickup service, allowing customers to select products online and choose their pickup time. At the store, a Walmart employee loads the groceries into the customer's car. the service is available in 39 U.S. states. In May 2016, Walmart announced a change to ShippingPass, its three-day shipping service, and that it will move from a three-day delivery to two-day delivery to remain competitive with Amazon. Walmart priced it at 49 dollars per year, compared to Amazon Prime's 99-dollar-per-year price. In June 2016, Walmart and Sam's Club announced that they would begin testing a last-mile grocery delivery that used services including Uber, Lyft, and Deliv, to bring customers' orders to their homes. Walmart customers would be able to shop using the company's online grocery service at grocery.walmart.com, then request delivery at checkout for a small fee. The first tests were planned to go live in Denver and Phoenix. Walmart announced on March 14, 2018, that it would expand online delivery to 100 metropolitan regions in the United States, the equivalent of 40 percent of households, by the end of the year of 2018. Walmart's Winemakers Selection private label wine was introduced in June 2018 in about 1,100 stores. The wine, from domestic and international sources, was described by Washington Post food and wine columnist Dave McIntyre as notably good for the inexpensive ($11 to $16 per bottle) price level. In October 2019, Walmart announced that customers in 2,000 locations in 29 states can use the grocery pickup service for their adult beverage purchases. Walmart will also deliver adult beverages from nearly 200 stores across California and Florida. In February 2020, Walmart announced a new membership program called, "Walmart +". The news came shortly after Walmart announced the discontinuation of its personal shopping service, Jetblack. Numbers of stores by state Locations as of October 31, 2021 Walmart International Walmart's international operations comprised 5,251 stores and 800,000 workers in 23 countries outside the United States. There are wholly owned operations in Argentina, Brazil, Canada, and the UK. With 2.2 million employees worldwide, the company is the largest private employer in the U.S. and Mexico, and one of the largest in Canada. In fiscal 2019 Walmart's international division sales were , or 23.7 percent of total sales. International retail units range from , while wholesale units range from . Judith McKenna is the president and CEO. Central America Walmart also owns 51 percent of the Central American Retail Holding Company (CARHCO), which, consists of 864 stores, including 263 stores in Guatemala (under the Paiz [27 locations], Walmart Supercenter [10 locations], Despensa Familiar [181 locations], and Maxi Dispensa [45 locations] banners), 102 stores in El Salvador (under the Despensa Familiar [63 locations], La Despensa de Don Juan [17 locations], Walmart Supercenter [6 locations], and Maxi Despensa [16 locations] banners), 111 stores in Honduras (including the Paiz [8 locations], Walmart Supercenter [4 locations], Dispensa Familiar [71 locations], and Maxi Despensa [28 locations] banners), 102 stores in Nicaragua (including the Pali [71 locations], La Unión [9 locations], Maxi Pali [20 locations], and Walmart Supercenter [2 locations] banners), and 286 stores in Costa Rica (including the Maxi Pali [48 locations], Mas X Menos [38 locations], Walmart Supercenter [14 locations], and Pali [186 locations] banners). Chile In January 2009, the company acquired a controlling interest in the largest grocer in Chile, Distribución y Servicio D&S SA. In 2010, the company was renamed Walmart Chile. Walmart Chile operates 384 stores under the banners Lider Hiper (97 locations), Lider Express (153 locations), Superbodega Acuenta (121 locations), Ekono (2 locations), and Central Mayorista (11 locations). Mexico Walmart's Mexico division, the largest outside the U.S., consisted of 2,755 stores. Walmart in Mexico operates Walmart Supercenter (294 locations), Sam's Club (166 locations), Bodega Aurrera (564 locations), Mi Bodega Aurrera (430 locations), Bodega Aurrera Express (1,202 locations), and Superama (99 locations). Canada Walmart has operated in Canada since it acquired 122 stores comprising the Woolco division of Woolworth Canada, Inc on January 14, 1994. it operates 408 locations (including 343 supercentres and 65 discount stores) and, it employs 89,358 people, with a local home office in Mississauga, Ontario. Walmart Canada's first three Supercentres (spelled in Canadian English) opened in November 2006 in Ancaster, London, and Stouffville, Ontario. The 100th Canadian Supercentre opened in July 2010, in Victoria, British Columbia. In 2010, approximately one year after its incorporation of Schedule 2 (foreign-owned, deposit-taking) of Canada's Bank Act, Walmart Canada Bank was introduced with the launch of the Walmart (Canada) Rewards MasterCard. Less than ten years later, however, on May 17, 2018, Wal-Mart Canada announced it had reached a definitive agreement to sell Wal-Mart Canada Bank to First National co-founder Stephen Smith and private equity firm Centerbridge Partners, L.P., on undisclosed financial terms, though it added that it would still be issuer of the Walmart (Canada) Rewards MasterCard. On April 1, 2019, Centerbridge Partners, L.P. and Stephen Smith jointly announced the closing of the previously announced acquisition of Wal-Mart Canada Bank and that it was to be renamed Duo Bank of Canada, to be styled simply as Duo Bank. Though exact ownership percentages were never revealed in either company announcement, it has also since been revealed that Duo Bank was reclassified as a Schedule 1 (domestic, deposit-taking) federally chartered bank of the Bank Act in Canada from the Schedule 2 (foreign-owned or -controlled, deposit-taking) that it had been, which indicates that Stephen Smith, as a noted Canadian businessman, is in a controlling position. Africa On September 28, 2010, Walmart announced it would buy Massmart Holdings Ltd. of Johannesburg, South Africa in a deal worth over giving the company its first footprint in Africa. it has 414 stores, including 364 stores in South Africa (under the banners Game Foodco [79 locations], CBW [41 locations], Game [39 locations], Builders Express [50 locations], Builders Warehouse [35 locations], Cambridge [42 locations], Rhino [15 locations], Makro [23 locations], Builders Trade Depot [9 locations], Jumbo [13 locations], and Builders Superstore [18 locations]), 11 stores in Botswana (under the banners CBW [7 locations], Game Foodco [2 locations], and Builders Warehouse [2 locations]), 4 stores in Ghana (under the Game Foodco banner), 4 stores in Kenya (under the banners Game Foodco [3 locations] and Builders Warehouse [1 location]), 3 stores in Lesotho (under the banners CBW [2 locations] and Game Foodco [1 location]), 2 stores in Malawi (under the Game banner), 6 stores in Mozambique (under the banners Builders Warehouse [2 locations], Game Foodco [2 locations], CBW [1 location], and Builders Express [1 location]), 5 stores in Namibia (under the banners Game Foodco [4 locations] and Game [1 location]), 5 stores in Nigeria (under the banners Game [3 locations] and Game Foodco [2 location]), 1 store in Swaziland (under the CBW banner), 1 store in Tanzania (under the Game Foodco banner), 1 store in Uganda (under the Game banner), and 7 stores in Zambia (under the banners CBW [1 location], Game Foodco [3 locations], Builders Warehouse [2 locations], and Builders Express [1 location]). China Walmart has joint ventures in China and several majority-owned subsidiaries. Walmart China (沃尔玛 Wò'ērmǎ) operates 397 stores under the Walmart Supercenter (361 locations) and Sam's Club (36 locations) banners. In February 2012, Walmart announced that the company raised its stake to 51 percent in Chinese online supermarket Yihaodian to tap rising consumer wealth and help the company offer more products. Walmart took full ownership in July 2015. In December 2021, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection warned Walmart about not stocking products made from inputs from Xinjiang in response to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. India In November 2006, the company announced a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises to operate in India. As foreign corporations were not allowed to enter the retail sector directly, Walmart operated through franchises and handled the wholesale end of the business. The partnership involved two joint ventures—Bharti manages the front end, involving opening of retail outlets while Walmart takes care of the back end, such as cold chains and logistics. Walmart operates stores in India under the name Best Price Modern Wholesale. The first store opened in Amritsar on May 30, 2009. On September 14, 2012, the Government of India approved 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retails, subject to approval by individual states, effective September 20, 2012. Scott Price, Walmart's president and CEO for Asia, told The Wall Street Journal that the company would be able to start opening Walmart stores in India within two years. Expansion into India faced some significant problems. In November 2012, Walmart admitted to spending lobbying the Indian National Congress; lobbying is conventionally considered bribery in India. Walmart is conducting an internal investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bharti Walmart suspended a number of employees, rumored to include its CFO and legal team, to ensure "a complete and thorough investigation". In October 2013, Bharti and Walmart separated to pursue business independently. On May 9, 2018, Walmart announced its intent to acquire a 77% majority stake in the Indian e-commerce company Flipkart for $16 billion, in a deal that was completed on August 18, 2018. The Best Price stores were renamed Flipkart Wholesale. there are 29 Flipkart Wholesale locations. Setbacks In the 1990s, Walmart tried with a large financial investment to get a foothold in both German and Indonesian retail markets. Walmart entered Indonesia with the opening of stores in Lippo Supermall (now known as Supermal Karawaci) and Megamall Pluit (now known as Pluit Village) respectively, under a joint-venture agreement with local conglomerate Lippo Group. Both stores closed down due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 1997, Walmart took over the supermarket chain Wertkauf with its 21 stores for DM 750 million and the following year Walmart acquired 74 Interspar stores for DM 1.3 billion. The German market at this point was an oligopoly with high competition among companies which used a similar low price strategy as Walmart. As a result, Walmart's low price strategy yielded no competitive advantage. Walmart's corporate culture was not viewed positively among employees and customers, particularly Walmart's "statement of ethics", which attempted to restrict relationships between employees, a possible violation of German labor law, and led to a public discussion in the media, resulting in a bad reputation among customers. In July 2006, Walmart announced its withdrawal from Germany due to sustained losses. The stores were sold to the German company Metro during Walmart's fiscal third quarter. Walmart did not disclose its losses from its German investment, but they were estimated to be around 3 billion. In 2004, Walmart bought the 118 stores in the Bompreço supermarket chain in northeastern Brazil. In late 2005, it took control of the Brazilian operations of Sonae Distribution Group through its new subsidiary, WMS Supermercados do Brasil, thus acquiring control of the Nacional and Mercadorama supermarket chains, the leaders in the Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná states, respectively. None of these stores were rebranded. Walmart operated 61 Bompreço supermarkets, 39 Hiper Bompreço stores. It also ran 57 Walmart Supercenters, 27 Sam's Clubs, and 174 Todo Dia stores. With the acquisition of Bompreço and Sonae, by 2010, Walmart was the third-largest supermarket chain in Brazil, behind Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar. Walmart Brasil, the operating company, has its head office in Barueri, São Paulo State, and regional offices in Curitiba, Paraná; Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; Recife, Pernambuco; and Salvador, Bahia. Walmart Brasil operates under the banners Todo Dia, Nacional, Bompreço, Walmart Supercenter, Maxxi Atacado, Hipermercado Big, Hiper Bompreço, Sam's Club, Mercadorama, Walmart Posto (Gas Station), Supermercado Todo Dia, and Hiper Todo Dia. Recently, the company started the conversion process of all Hiper Bompreço and Big stores into Walmart Supercenters and Bompreço, Nacional and Mercadorama stores into the Walmart Supermercado brand. Since August 2018, Walmart Inc. only holds a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big on August 12, 2019, with 20% of the company's shares, and private equity firm Advent International holding 80% ownership of the company. On March 24, 2021, it was announced that Carrefour would be acquiring Grupo Big. Walmart Argentina was founded in 1995 and operates stores under the banners Walmart Supercenter, Changomas, Mi Changomas, and Punto Mayorista. On November 6, 2020, it was announced that Walmart has sold its Argentine operations to Grupo de Narváez. Walmart's UK subsidiary Asda (which retained its name after being acquired by Walmart) is based in Leeds and accounted for 42.7 percent of 2006 sales of Walmart's international division. In contrast to the U.S. operations, Asda was originally and still remains primarily a grocery chain, but with a stronger focus on non-food items than most UK supermarket chains other than Tesco. In 2010 Asda acquired stores from Netto UK. In addition to small suburban Asda Supermarkets, larger stores are branded Supercentres. Other banners include Asda Superstores, Asda Living, and Asda Petrol Fueling Station. In July 2015, Asda updated its logo featuring the Walmart Asterisks behind the first 'A' in the Logo. In May 2018, Walmart announced plans to sell Asda to rival Sainsbury's for $10.1 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Walmart would have received a 42% stake in the combined company and about £3 billion in cash. However, in April 2019, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority blocked the proposed sale of Asda to Sainsburys. On October 2, 2020, it was announced that Walmart will sell a majority stake of Asda to a consortium of Zuber and Mohsin Issa (the owners of EG Group) and private equity firm TDR Capital for £6.8bn, pending approval from the Competition and Markets Authority. In Japan, Walmart owned 100 percent of Seiyu (西友 Seiyū) It operates under the Seiyu (Hypermarket), Seiyu (Supermarket), Seiyu (General Merchandise), Livin, and Sunny banners. On November 16, 2020, Walmart announced they would be selling 65% of their shares in the company to the private-equity firm KKR in a deal valuing 329 stores and 34,600 employees at $1.6 billion. Walmart is supposed to retain 15% and a seat on the board, while a joint-venture between KKR and Japanese company Rakuten Inc. will receive 20%. Corruption charges An April 2012 investigation by The New York Times reported the allegations of a former executive of Walmart de Mexico that, in September 2005, the company had paid bribes via local fixers to officials throughout Mexico in exchange for construction permits, information, and other favors, which gave Walmart a substantial advantage over competitors. Walmart investigators found credible evidence that Mexican and American laws had been broken. Concerns were also raised that Walmart executives in the United States had "hushed up" the allegations. A follow-up investigation by The New York Times, published December 17, 2012, revealed evidence that regulatory permission for siting, construction, and operation of nineteen stores had been obtained through bribery. There was evidence that a bribe of was paid to change a zoning map, which enabled the opening of a Walmart store a mile from a historical site in San Juan Teotihuacán in 2004. After the initial article was released, Walmart released a statement denying the allegations and describing its anti-corruption policy. While an official Walmart report states that it had found no evidence of corruption, the article alleges that previous internal reports had indeed turned up such evidence before the story became public. Forbes magazine contributor Adam Hartung also commented that the bribery scandal was a reflection of Walmart's "serious management and strategy troubles", stating, "[s]candals are now commonplace ... [e]ach scandal points out that Walmart's strategy is harder to navigate and is running into big problems". In 2012, there was an incident with CJ's Seafood, a crawfish processing firm in Louisiana that was partnered with Walmart, that eventually gained media attention for the mistreatment of its 40 H-2B visa workers from Mexico. These workers experienced harsh living conditions in tightly packed trailers outside of the work facility, physical threats, verbal abuse, and were forced to work day-long shifts. Many of the workers were afraid to take action about the abuse due to the fact that the manager threatened the lives of their family members in the U.S. and Mexico if the abuse were to be reported. Eight of the workers confronted management at CJ's Seafood about the mistreatment; however, the management denied the abuse allegations and the workers went on strike. The workers then took their stories to Walmart due to their partnership with CJ's. While Walmart was investigating the situation, the workers collected 150,000 signatures of supporters who agreed that Walmart should stand by the workers and take action. In June 2012, the visa workers held a protest and day-long hunger strike outside of the apartment building where a Walmart board member resided. Following this protest, Walmart announced its final decision to no longer work with CJ's Seafood. Less than a month later, the Department of Labor fined CJ's Seafood "approximately $460,000 in back-pay, safety violations, wage and hour violations, civil damages, and fines for abuses to the H-2B program. The company has since shut down." internal investigations were ongoing into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Walmart has invested on internal investigations, which expanded beyond Mexico to implicate operations in China, Brazil, and India. The case has added fuel to the debate as to whether foreign investment will result in increased prosperity, or if it merely allows local retail trade and economic policy to be taken over by "foreign financial and corporate interests". Sam's Club Sam's Club is a chain of warehouse clubs that sell groceries and general merchandise, often in bulk. Locations generally range in size from , with an average club size of approximately . The first Sam's Club was opened by Walmart, Inc. in 1983 in Midwest City, Oklahoma under the name "Sam's Wholesale Club". The chain was named after its founder Sam Walton. As of January 31, 2022, Sam's Club operated 600 membership warehouse clubs and accounted for 11.3% of Walmart's revenue at $57.839 billion in fiscal year 2019. Kathryn McLay is the president and CEO. Global eCommerce Based in San Bruno, California, Walmart's Global eCommerce division provides online retailing for Walmart, Sam's Club, Asda, and all other international brands. There are several locations in the United States in California and Oregon: San Bruno, Sunnyvale, Brisbane, and Portland. Locations outside of the United States include Shanghai (China), Leeds (United Kingdom), and Bangalore (India). Subsidiaries Private label brands About 40 percent of products sold in Walmart are private labels, which are produced for the company through contracts with manufacturers. Walmart began offering private label brands in 1991, with the launch of Sam's Choice, a line of drinks produced by Cott Beverages for Walmart. Sam's Choice quickly became popular and by 1993, was the third-most-popular beverage brand in the United States. Other Walmart brands include Great Value and Equate in the U.S. and Canada and Smart Price in Britain. A 2006 study talked of "the magnitude of mind-share Walmart appears to hold in the shoppers' minds when it comes to the awareness of private label brands and retailers." Entertainment In 2010, the company teamed with Procter & Gamble to produce Secrets of the Mountain and The Jensen Project, two-hour family movies which featured the characters using Walmart and Procter & Gamble-branded products. The Jensen Project also featured a preview of a product to be released in several months in Walmart stores. A third movie, A Walk in My Shoes, also aired in 2010 and a fourth is in production. Walmart's director of brand marketing also serves as co-chair of the Association of National Advertisers's Alliance for Family Entertainment. Online commerce acquisitions and plans In September 2016, Walmart purchased e-commerce company Jet.com, founded in 2014 by Marc Lore, to start competing with Amazon.com. Jet.com has acquired its own share of online retailers such as Hayneedle in March 2016, Shoebuy.com in December 2016, and ModCloth in March 2017. Walmart also acquired Parcel, a delivery service in New York, on September 29, 2017. On February 15, 2017, Walmart acquired Moosejaw, an online active outdoor retailer, for approximately $51 million. Moosejaw brought with it partnerships with more than 400 brands, including Patagonia, The North Face, Marmot, and Arc'teryx. Marc Lore, Walmart's U.S. e-commerce CEO, said that Walmart's existing physical infrastructure of almost 5,000 stores around the U.S. will enhance their digital expansion by doubling as warehouses for e-commerce without increasing overhead. Walmart offers in-store pickup for online orders at 1,000 stores with plans to eventually expand the service to all of its stores. On May 9, 2018, Walmart announced its intent to acquire a 77% controlling stake in the Indian e-commerce website Flipkart for $16 billion (beating bids by Amazon.com), subject to regulatory approval. Following its completion, the website's management will report to Marc Lore. Completion of the deal was announced on August 18, 2018. The company's partnership with subscription service Kidbox was announced on April 16, 2019. Corporate affairs Walmart is headquartered in the Walmart Home Office complex in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company's business model is based on selling a wide variety of general merchandise at low prices. Doug McMillon became Walmart's CEO on February 1, 2014. He has also worked as the head of Sam's Club and Walmart International. The company refers to its employees as "associates". All Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada also have designated "greeters" at the entrance, a practice pioneered by Sam Walton and later imitated by other retailers. Greeters are trained to help shoppers find what they want and answer their questions. For many years, associates were identified in the store by their signature blue vest, but this practice was discontinued in June 2007 and replaced with khaki pants and polo shirts. The wardrobe change was part of a larger corporate overhaul to increase sales and rejuvenate the company's stock price. In September 2014, the uniform was again updated to bring back a vest (paid for by the company) for store employees over the same polos and khaki or black pants paid for by the employee. The vest is navy blue for Walmart employees at Supercenters and discounts stores, lime green for Walmart Neighborhood Market employees, and yellow for self-check-out associates; door greeters, and customer service managers. All three state "Proud Walmart Associate" on the left breast and the "Spark" logo covering the back. Reportedly one of the main reasons the vest was reintroduced was that some customers had trouble identifying employees. In 2016, self-checkout associates, door greeters and customer service managers began wearing a yellow vest to be better seen by customers. By requiring employees to wear uniforms that are made up of standard "streetwear", Walmart is not required to purchase the uniforms or reimburse employees which are required in some states, as long as that clothing can be worn elsewhere. Businesses are only legally required to pay for branded shirts and pants or clothes that would be difficult to wear outside of work. Unlike many other retailers, Walmart does not charge slotting fees to suppliers for their products to appear in the store. Instead, it focuses on selling more-popular products and provides incentives for store managers to drop unpopular products. From 2006 to 2010, the company eliminated its layaway program. In 2011, the company revived its layaway program. Walmart introduced its Site-To-Store program in 2007, after testing the program since 2004 on a limited basis. The program allows walmart.com customers to buy goods online with a free shipping option, and have goods shipped to the nearest store for pickup. On September 15, 2017, Walmart announced that it would build a new headquarters in Bentonville to replace its current 1971 building and consolidate operations that have spread out to 20 different buildings throughout Bentonville. According to watchdog group Documented, in 2020 Walmart contributed $140,000 to the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fund-raising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Finance and governance For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, Walmart reported net income of on $514.405 billion of revenue. The company's international operations accounted for $120.824 billion, or 23.7 percent, of its $510.329 billion of sales. Walmart is the world's 29th-largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list, and the largest public corporation when ranked by revenue. Walmart is governed by a twelve-member board of directors elected annually by shareholders. Gregory B. Penner, son-in-law of S. Robson Walton and the grandson-in-law of Sam Walton, serves as chairman of the board. Doug McMillon serves as president and chief executive officer. Current members of the board are: Gregory B. Penner, chairman of the board of directors of Walmart Inc. and general partner of Madrone Capital Partners Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal International Group and NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises Timothy P. Flynn, retired CEO of KPMG International Sarah Friar, CEO of Nextdoor Carla A. Harris, Vice-chairman of Wealth Management, head of multicultural client strategy, managing director, and senior client advisor at Morgan Stanley Tom Horton, senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, LLC, and retired chairman and CEO of American Airlines Marissa A. Mayer, co-founder of Lumi Labs, Inc., and former president and CEO of Yahoo!, Inc. Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Steven S. Reinemund, retired dean of business at Wake Forest University and retired chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Inc. Randall Stephenson, retired chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc. S. Robson "Rob" Walton, retired chairman of the board of directors of Walmart Inc. Steuart Walton, founder of RZC Investments, LLC. Notable former members of the board include Hillary Clinton (1985–1992) and Tom Coughlin (2003–2004), the latter having served as vice chairman. Clinton left the board before the 1992 U.S. presidential election, and Coughlin left in December 2005 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Walmart. After Sam Walton's death in 1992, Don Soderquist, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice Chairman, became known as the "Keeper of the Culture". Ownership Walmart Inc. is a Delaware-domiciled joint-stock company registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with its registered office located in Wolters Kluwer's Corporation Trust Center in Wilmington. it has 3,292,377,090 outstanding shares. These are held mainly by the Walton family, a number of institutions and funds. 43.00% (1,415,891,131): Walton Enterprises LLC 5.30% (174,563,205): Walton family Holdings Trust 3.32% (102,036,399): The Vanguard Group, Inc 2.37% (72,714,226): State Street Corporation 1.37% (42,171,892): BlackRock Institutional Trust Company 0.94% (28,831,721): Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 0.77% (23,614,578): BlackRock Fund Advisors 0.71% (21,769,126): Dodge & Cox Inc 0.68% (20,978,727): Vanguard 500 Index Fund 0.65% (20,125,838): Bank of America Corporation 0.57% (17,571,058): Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 0.57% (17,556,128): Northern Trust Corporation 0.55% (16,818,165): Vanguard	and help the company offer more products. Walmart took full ownership in July 2015. In December 2021, the Chinese Communist Party's Central Commission for Discipline Inspection warned Walmart about not stocking products made from inputs from Xinjiang in response to the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act. India In November 2006, the company announced a joint venture with Bharti Enterprises to operate in India. As foreign corporations were not allowed to enter the retail sector directly, Walmart operated through franchises and handled the wholesale end of the business. The partnership involved two joint ventures—Bharti manages the front end, involving opening of retail outlets while Walmart takes care of the back end, such as cold chains and logistics. Walmart operates stores in India under the name Best Price Modern Wholesale. The first store opened in Amritsar on May 30, 2009. On September 14, 2012, the Government of India approved 51 percent FDI in multi-brand retails, subject to approval by individual states, effective September 20, 2012. Scott Price, Walmart's president and CEO for Asia, told The Wall Street Journal that the company would be able to start opening Walmart stores in India within two years. Expansion into India faced some significant problems. In November 2012, Walmart admitted to spending lobbying the Indian National Congress; lobbying is conventionally considered bribery in India. Walmart is conducting an internal investigation into potential violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Bharti Walmart suspended a number of employees, rumored to include its CFO and legal team, to ensure "a complete and thorough investigation". In October 2013, Bharti and Walmart separated to pursue business independently. On May 9, 2018, Walmart announced its intent to acquire a 77% majority stake in the Indian e-commerce company Flipkart for $16 billion, in a deal that was completed on August 18, 2018. The Best Price stores were renamed Flipkart Wholesale. there are 29 Flipkart Wholesale locations. Setbacks In the 1990s, Walmart tried with a large financial investment to get a foothold in both German and Indonesian retail markets. Walmart entered Indonesia with the opening of stores in Lippo Supermall (now known as Supermal Karawaci) and Megamall Pluit (now known as Pluit Village) respectively, under a joint-venture agreement with local conglomerate Lippo Group. Both stores closed down due to the 1997 Asian financial crisis. In 1997, Walmart took over the supermarket chain Wertkauf with its 21 stores for DM 750 million and the following year Walmart acquired 74 Interspar stores for DM 1.3 billion. The German market at this point was an oligopoly with high competition among companies which used a similar low price strategy as Walmart. As a result, Walmart's low price strategy yielded no competitive advantage. Walmart's corporate culture was not viewed positively among employees and customers, particularly Walmart's "statement of ethics", which attempted to restrict relationships between employees, a possible violation of German labor law, and led to a public discussion in the media, resulting in a bad reputation among customers. In July 2006, Walmart announced its withdrawal from Germany due to sustained losses. The stores were sold to the German company Metro during Walmart's fiscal third quarter. Walmart did not disclose its losses from its German investment, but they were estimated to be around 3 billion. In 2004, Walmart bought the 118 stores in the Bompreço supermarket chain in northeastern Brazil. In late 2005, it took control of the Brazilian operations of Sonae Distribution Group through its new subsidiary, WMS Supermercados do Brasil, thus acquiring control of the Nacional and Mercadorama supermarket chains, the leaders in the Rio Grande do Sul and Paraná states, respectively. None of these stores were rebranded. Walmart operated 61 Bompreço supermarkets, 39 Hiper Bompreço stores. It also ran 57 Walmart Supercenters, 27 Sam's Clubs, and 174 Todo Dia stores. With the acquisition of Bompreço and Sonae, by 2010, Walmart was the third-largest supermarket chain in Brazil, behind Carrefour and Pão de Açúcar. Walmart Brasil, the operating company, has its head office in Barueri, São Paulo State, and regional offices in Curitiba, Paraná; Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul; Recife, Pernambuco; and Salvador, Bahia. Walmart Brasil operates under the banners Todo Dia, Nacional, Bompreço, Walmart Supercenter, Maxxi Atacado, Hipermercado Big, Hiper Bompreço, Sam's Club, Mercadorama, Walmart Posto (Gas Station), Supermercado Todo Dia, and Hiper Todo Dia. Recently, the company started the conversion process of all Hiper Bompreço and Big stores into Walmart Supercenters and Bompreço, Nacional and Mercadorama stores into the Walmart Supermercado brand. Since August 2018, Walmart Inc. only holds a minority stake in Walmart Brasil, which was renamed Grupo Big on August 12, 2019, with 20% of the company's shares, and private equity firm Advent International holding 80% ownership of the company. On March 24, 2021, it was announced that Carrefour would be acquiring Grupo Big. Walmart Argentina was founded in 1995 and operates stores under the banners Walmart Supercenter, Changomas, Mi Changomas, and Punto Mayorista. On November 6, 2020, it was announced that Walmart has sold its Argentine operations to Grupo de Narváez. Walmart's UK subsidiary Asda (which retained its name after being acquired by Walmart) is based in Leeds and accounted for 42.7 percent of 2006 sales of Walmart's international division. In contrast to the U.S. operations, Asda was originally and still remains primarily a grocery chain, but with a stronger focus on non-food items than most UK supermarket chains other than Tesco. In 2010 Asda acquired stores from Netto UK. In addition to small suburban Asda Supermarkets, larger stores are branded Supercentres. Other banners include Asda Superstores, Asda Living, and Asda Petrol Fueling Station. In July 2015, Asda updated its logo featuring the Walmart Asterisks behind the first 'A' in the Logo. In May 2018, Walmart announced plans to sell Asda to rival Sainsbury's for $10.1 billion. Under the terms of the deal, Walmart would have received a 42% stake in the combined company and about £3 billion in cash. However, in April 2019, the United Kingdom's Competition and Markets Authority blocked the proposed sale of Asda to Sainsburys. On October 2, 2020, it was announced that Walmart will sell a majority stake of Asda to a consortium of Zuber and Mohsin Issa (the owners of EG Group) and private equity firm TDR Capital for £6.8bn, pending approval from the Competition and Markets Authority. In Japan, Walmart owned 100 percent of Seiyu (西友 Seiyū) It operates under the Seiyu (Hypermarket), Seiyu (Supermarket), Seiyu (General Merchandise), Livin, and Sunny banners. On November 16, 2020, Walmart announced they would be selling 65% of their shares in the company to the private-equity firm KKR in a deal valuing 329 stores and 34,600 employees at $1.6 billion. Walmart is supposed to retain 15% and a seat on the board, while a joint-venture between KKR and Japanese company Rakuten Inc. will receive 20%. Corruption charges An April 2012 investigation by The New York Times reported the allegations of a former executive of Walmart de Mexico that, in September 2005, the company had paid bribes via local fixers to officials throughout Mexico in exchange for construction permits, information, and other favors, which gave Walmart a substantial advantage over competitors. Walmart investigators found credible evidence that Mexican and American laws had been broken. Concerns were also raised that Walmart executives in the United States had "hushed up" the allegations. A follow-up investigation by The New York Times, published December 17, 2012, revealed evidence that regulatory permission for siting, construction, and operation of nineteen stores had been obtained through bribery. There was evidence that a bribe of was paid to change a zoning map, which enabled the opening of a Walmart store a mile from a historical site in San Juan Teotihuacán in 2004. After the initial article was released, Walmart released a statement denying the allegations and describing its anti-corruption policy. While an official Walmart report states that it had found no evidence of corruption, the article alleges that previous internal reports had indeed turned up such evidence before the story became public. Forbes magazine contributor Adam Hartung also commented that the bribery scandal was a reflection of Walmart's "serious management and strategy troubles", stating, "[s]candals are now commonplace ... [e]ach scandal points out that Walmart's strategy is harder to navigate and is running into big problems". In 2012, there was an incident with CJ's Seafood, a crawfish processing firm in Louisiana that was partnered with Walmart, that eventually gained media attention for the mistreatment of its 40 H-2B visa workers from Mexico. These workers experienced harsh living conditions in tightly packed trailers outside of the work facility, physical threats, verbal abuse, and were forced to work day-long shifts. Many of the workers were afraid to take action about the abuse due to the fact that the manager threatened the lives of their family members in the U.S. and Mexico if the abuse were to be reported. Eight of the workers confronted management at CJ's Seafood about the mistreatment; however, the management denied the abuse allegations and the workers went on strike. The workers then took their stories to Walmart due to their partnership with CJ's. While Walmart was investigating the situation, the workers collected 150,000 signatures of supporters who agreed that Walmart should stand by the workers and take action. In June 2012, the visa workers held a protest and day-long hunger strike outside of the apartment building where a Walmart board member resided. Following this protest, Walmart announced its final decision to no longer work with CJ's Seafood. Less than a month later, the Department of Labor fined CJ's Seafood "approximately $460,000 in back-pay, safety violations, wage and hour violations, civil damages, and fines for abuses to the H-2B program. The company has since shut down." internal investigations were ongoing into possible violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Walmart has invested on internal investigations, which expanded beyond Mexico to implicate operations in China, Brazil, and India. The case has added fuel to the debate as to whether foreign investment will result in increased prosperity, or if it merely allows local retail trade and economic policy to be taken over by "foreign financial and corporate interests". Sam's Club Sam's Club is a chain of warehouse clubs that sell groceries and general merchandise, often in bulk. Locations generally range in size from , with an average club size of approximately . The first Sam's Club was opened by Walmart, Inc. in 1983 in Midwest City, Oklahoma under the name "Sam's Wholesale Club". The chain was named after its founder Sam Walton. As of January 31, 2022, Sam's Club operated 600 membership warehouse clubs and accounted for 11.3% of Walmart's revenue at $57.839 billion in fiscal year 2019. Kathryn McLay is the president and CEO. Global eCommerce Based in San Bruno, California, Walmart's Global eCommerce division provides online retailing for Walmart, Sam's Club, Asda, and all other international brands. There are several locations in the United States in California and Oregon: San Bruno, Sunnyvale, Brisbane, and Portland. Locations outside of the United States include Shanghai (China), Leeds (United Kingdom), and Bangalore (India). Subsidiaries Private label brands About 40 percent of products sold in Walmart are private labels, which are produced for the company through contracts with manufacturers. Walmart began offering private label brands in 1991, with the launch of Sam's Choice, a line of drinks produced by Cott Beverages for Walmart. Sam's Choice quickly became popular and by 1993, was the third-most-popular beverage brand in the United States. Other Walmart brands include Great Value and Equate in the U.S. and Canada and Smart Price in Britain. A 2006 study talked of "the magnitude of mind-share Walmart appears to hold in the shoppers' minds when it comes to the awareness of private label brands and retailers." Entertainment In 2010, the company teamed with Procter & Gamble to produce Secrets of the Mountain and The Jensen Project, two-hour family movies which featured the characters using Walmart and Procter & Gamble-branded products. The Jensen Project also featured a preview of a product to be released in several months in Walmart stores. A third movie, A Walk in My Shoes, also aired in 2010 and a fourth is in production. Walmart's director of brand marketing also serves as co-chair of the Association of National Advertisers's Alliance for Family Entertainment. Online commerce acquisitions and plans In September 2016, Walmart purchased e-commerce company Jet.com, founded in 2014 by Marc Lore, to start competing with Amazon.com. Jet.com has acquired its own share of online retailers such as Hayneedle in March 2016, Shoebuy.com in December 2016, and ModCloth in March 2017. Walmart also acquired Parcel, a delivery service in New York, on September 29, 2017. On February 15, 2017, Walmart acquired Moosejaw, an online active outdoor retailer, for approximately $51 million. Moosejaw brought with it partnerships with more than 400 brands, including Patagonia, The North Face, Marmot, and Arc'teryx. Marc Lore, Walmart's U.S. e-commerce CEO, said that Walmart's existing physical infrastructure of almost 5,000 stores around the U.S. will enhance their digital expansion by doubling as warehouses for e-commerce without increasing overhead. Walmart offers in-store pickup for online orders at 1,000 stores with plans to eventually expand the service to all of its stores. On May 9, 2018, Walmart announced its intent to acquire a 77% controlling stake in the Indian e-commerce website Flipkart for $16 billion (beating bids by Amazon.com), subject to regulatory approval. Following its completion, the website's management will report to Marc Lore. Completion of the deal was announced on August 18, 2018. The company's partnership with subscription service Kidbox was announced on April 16, 2019. Corporate affairs Walmart is headquartered in the Walmart Home Office complex in Bentonville, Arkansas. The company's business model is based on selling a wide variety of general merchandise at low prices. Doug McMillon became Walmart's CEO on February 1, 2014. He has also worked as the head of Sam's Club and Walmart International. The company refers to its employees as "associates". All Walmart stores in the U.S. and Canada also have designated "greeters" at the entrance, a practice pioneered by Sam Walton and later imitated by other retailers. Greeters are trained to help shoppers find what they want and answer their questions. For many years, associates were identified in the store by their signature blue vest, but this practice was discontinued in June 2007 and replaced with khaki pants and polo shirts. The wardrobe change was part of a larger corporate overhaul to increase sales and rejuvenate the company's stock price. In September 2014, the uniform was again updated to bring back a vest (paid for by the company) for store employees over the same polos and khaki or black pants paid for by the employee. The vest is navy blue for Walmart employees at Supercenters and discounts stores, lime green for Walmart Neighborhood Market employees, and yellow for self-check-out associates; door greeters, and customer service managers. All three state "Proud Walmart Associate" on the left breast and the "Spark" logo covering the back. Reportedly one of the main reasons the vest was reintroduced was that some customers had trouble identifying employees. In 2016, self-checkout associates, door greeters and customer service managers began wearing a yellow vest to be better seen by customers. By requiring employees to wear uniforms that are made up of standard "streetwear", Walmart is not required to purchase the uniforms or reimburse employees which are required in some states, as long as that clothing can be worn elsewhere. Businesses are only legally required to pay for branded shirts and pants or clothes that would be difficult to wear outside of work. Unlike many other retailers, Walmart does not charge slotting fees to suppliers for their products to appear in the store. Instead, it focuses on selling more-popular products and provides incentives for store managers to drop unpopular products. From 2006 to 2010, the company eliminated its layaway program. In 2011, the company revived its layaway program. Walmart introduced its Site-To-Store program in 2007, after testing the program since 2004 on a limited basis. The program allows walmart.com customers to buy goods online with a free shipping option, and have goods shipped to the nearest store for pickup. On September 15, 2017, Walmart announced that it would build a new headquarters in Bentonville to replace its current 1971 building and consolidate operations that have spread out to 20 different buildings throughout Bentonville. According to watchdog group Documented, in 2020 Walmart contributed $140,000 to the Rule of Law Defense Fund, a fund-raising arm of the Republican Attorneys General Association. Finance and governance For the fiscal year ending January 31, 2019, Walmart reported net income of on $514.405 billion of revenue. The company's international operations accounted for $120.824 billion, or 23.7 percent, of its $510.329 billion of sales. Walmart is the world's 29th-largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000 list, and the largest public corporation when ranked by revenue. Walmart is governed by a twelve-member board of directors elected annually by shareholders. Gregory B. Penner, son-in-law of S. Robson Walton and the grandson-in-law of Sam Walton, serves as chairman of the board. Doug McMillon serves as president and chief executive officer. Current members of the board are: Gregory B. Penner, chairman of the board of directors of Walmart Inc. and general partner of Madrone Capital Partners Cesar Conde, chairman of NBCUniversal International Group and NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises Timothy P. Flynn, retired CEO of KPMG International Sarah Friar, CEO of Nextdoor Carla A. Harris, Vice-chairman of Wealth Management, head of multicultural client strategy, managing director, and senior client advisor at Morgan Stanley Tom Horton, senior advisor at Warburg Pincus, LLC, and retired chairman and CEO of American Airlines Marissa A. Mayer, co-founder of Lumi Labs, Inc., and former president and CEO of Yahoo!, Inc. Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Steven S. Reinemund, retired dean of business at Wake Forest University and retired chairman and CEO of PepsiCo, Inc. Randall Stephenson, retired chairman and CEO of AT&T Inc. S. Robson "Rob" Walton, retired chairman of the board of directors of Walmart Inc. Steuart Walton, founder of RZC Investments, LLC. Notable former members of the board include Hillary Clinton (1985–1992) and Tom Coughlin (2003–2004), the latter having served as vice chairman. Clinton left the board before the 1992 U.S. presidential election, and Coughlin left in December 2005 after pleading guilty to wire fraud and tax evasion for stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from Walmart. After Sam Walton's death in 1992, Don Soderquist, Chief Operating Officer and Senior Vice Chairman, became known as the "Keeper of the Culture". Ownership Walmart Inc. is a Delaware-domiciled joint-stock company registered with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, with its registered office located in Wolters Kluwer's Corporation Trust Center in Wilmington. it has 3,292,377,090 outstanding shares. These are held mainly by the Walton family, a number of institutions and funds. 43.00% (1,415,891,131): Walton Enterprises LLC 5.30% (174,563,205): Walton family Holdings Trust 3.32% (102,036,399): The Vanguard Group, Inc 2.37% (72,714,226): State Street Corporation 1.37% (42,171,892): BlackRock Institutional Trust Company 0.94% (28,831,721): Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund 0.77% (23,614,578): BlackRock Fund Advisors 0.71% (21,769,126): Dodge & Cox Inc 0.68% (20,978,727): Vanguard 500 Index Fund 0.65% (20,125,838): Bank of America Corporation 0.57% (17,571,058): Bank of New York Mellon Corporation 0.57% (17,556,128): Northern Trust Corporation 0.55% (16,818,165): Vanguard Institutional Index Fund-Institutional Index Fund 0.55% (16,800,850): State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Co 0.52% (15,989,827): SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust Competition In North America, Walmart's primary competitors include grocery stores and department stores like Aldi, Lidl, Kmart, Kroger, Ingles, Publix, Target, Harris Teeter, Meijer, and Winn Dixie in the United States; Hudson's Bay, Loblaw retail stores, Sobeys, Metro, and Giant Tiger in Canada; and Comercial Mexicana and Soriana in Mexico. Competitors of Walmart's Sam's Club division are Costco and the smaller BJ's Wholesale Club chain. Walmart's move into the grocery business in the late 1990s set it against major supermarket chains in both the United States and Canada. Several smaller retailers, primarily dollar stores, such as Family Dollar and Dollar General, have been able to find a small niche market and compete successfully against Walmart. In 2004, Walmart responded by testing its own dollar store concept, a subsection of some stores called "Pennies-n-Cents." Walmart also had to face fierce competition in some foreign markets. For example, in Germany it had captured just 2 percent of the German food market following its entry into the market in 1997 and remained "a secondary player" behind Aldi with 19 percent. Walmart continues to do well in the UK, where its Asda subsidiary is the second-largest retailer. In May 2006, after entering the South Korean market in 1998, Walmart sold all 16 of its South Korean outlets to Shinsegae, a local retailer, for . Shinsegae re-branded the Walmarts as E-mart stores. Walmart struggled to export its brand elsewhere as it rigidly tried to reproduce its model overseas. In China, Walmart hopes to succeed by adapting and doing things preferable to Chinese citizens. For example, it found that Chinese consumers preferred to select their own live fish and seafood; stores began displaying the meat uncovered and installed fish tanks, leading to higher sales. Customer base Walmart customers cite low prices as the most important reason for shopping there. The average U.S. Walmart customer's income is below the national average. A 2006 Walmart report also indicated that Walmart customers are sensitive to higher utility costs and gas prices. A poll indicated that after the 2004 US presidential election, 76 percent of voters who shopped at Walmart once a week voted for George W. Bush while only 23 percent supported senator John Kerry. When measured against similar retailers in the U.S., frequent Walmart shoppers were rated the most politically conservative. Thus, the "majority (54 percent) [of] Americans who prefer shopping at Walmart report that they oppose same-sex marriage, while 40 percent are in favor of it." Due to its prominence in the Bible Belt, Walmart is known for its "tradition of tailoring its service to churchgoing customers". Walmart only carries clean versions of hip-hop audio CDs and in cooperation with The Timothy Plan, places "plastic sheathes over suggestive women's periodicals and banned 'lad mags' such as Maxim" magazine. In addition, Walmart also caters to its Christian customer base by selling Christian books and media, "such as VeggieTales videos and The Purpose-Driven Life", which earns the company over annually. In 2006, Walmart took steps to expand its U.S. customer base, announcing a modification in its U.S. stores from a "one-size-fits-all" merchandising strategy to one designed to "reflect each of six demographic groups—African-Americans, the affluent, empty-nesters, Hispanics, suburbanites, and rural residents." Around six months later, it unveiled a new slogan: "Saving people money so they can live better lives". This reflects the three main groups into which Walmart categorizes its 200 million customers: "brand aspirationals" (people with low incomes who are obsessed with big name brands), "price-sensitive affluents" (wealthier shoppers who love deals), and "value-price shoppers" (people who like low prices and cannot afford much more). Walmart has also made steps to appeal to more liberal customers, for example, by rejecting the American Family Association's recommendations and carrying the DVD Brokeback Mountain, a love story between two gay cowboys in Wyoming. Sales of guns and ammunition Walmart stopped selling handguns in all U.S. states, except for Alaska, in 1993. In 2018, Walmart stopped selling guns and ammunition to persons younger than 21, following a similar move by Dick's Sporting Goods on the same day. In the same year, Walmart stopped selling military-style rifles that were commonly used in mass shootings. As of 2019, Walmart was a major retailer of firearms and ammunition. In 2019, after 23 people were killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart store in El Paso, Texas, Walmart announced that it would stop selling all handgun ammunition and certain short-barreled rifle ammunition. The company also announced that it would stop selling handguns in Alaska, the only state where the company still sold handguns. The move was expected to reduce Walmart's U.S. market share in ammunition from around 20% to around 6–9%. Walmart also stated that it was "respectfully requesting" that customers not openly carry weapons in Walmart stores, except for authorized law enforcement officers. Following the fatal police shooting of Walter Wallace Jr. in October 2020, Walmart temporarily removed gun and ammunition displays in thousands of stores across the U.S. from sales floors, grounding their reason in concerns of civil unrest. Company spokesman Kory Lundberg said in a statement that "We have seen some isolated civil unrest and as we have done on several occasions over the last few years, we have moved our firearms and ammunition off the sales floor as a precaution for the safety of our associates and customers." Firearms and ammunition will still be available for purchase on request, but the duration of the removal of both from the sales floor remains undetermined. Technology Open source software Many Walmart technology projects are coded in the open and available through the Walmart Labs GitHub repository as open-source software under the OSI approved Apache V2.0 license. 141 public GitHub projects are listed. During a migration of the walmart.com retail platform to Facebook React and Node.js, the Electrode project was created to power the e-commerce platform which serves 80 million visitors per month and 15 million items. The electrode provides various developer enhancements and tools for the developer including Node.js configuration and feature management. Alex Grigoryan of Walmart Labs released a statement on Medium.com on October 3, 2016, explaining the details of the applications and the scale that they operate at Walmart. Big data analytics As the largest retailer in the U.S., Walmart collects and analyzes a large amount of consumer data. The big data sets are mined for use in predictive analytics, which allow the company to optimize operations by predicting customer's habits. Walmart's datacenter is unofficially referred to as Area 71. In April 2011, Walmart acquired Kosmix to develop software for analyzing real-time data streams. In August 2012, Walmart announced its Polaris search engine. The amount of data gathered by Walmart has raised privacy concerns. Cash handling in 2016, Walmart began a drive to automate much of the cash handling process. Walmart began replacing employees who count currency by hand with machines that count 8 bills per second and 3,000 coins a minute. The processing machines, located in the back of stores, allow cashiers to process the money for electronic depositing. Charity Sam Walton believed that the company's contribution to society was the fact that it operated efficiently, thereby lowering the cost of living for customers, and, therefore, in that sense was a "powerful force for good", despite his refusal to contribute cash to philanthropic causes. Having begun to feel that his wealth attracted people who wanted nothing more than a "handout", he explained that while he believed his family had been fortunate and wished to use his wealth to aid worthy causes like education, they could not be expected to "solve every personal problem that comes to [their] attention". He explained later in his autobiography, "We feel very strongly that Wal-Mart really is not, and should not be, in the charity business," stating "any debit has to be passed along to somebody—either shareholders or our customers." Since Sam Walton's death in 1992, however, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation dramatically increased charitable giving. For example, in 2005, Walmart donated in cash and merchandise for Hurricane Katrina relief and in 2020 they committed $25 million to organizations on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Today, Walmart's charitable donations approach each year. COVID-19 (coronavirus) As of January 2021, healthcare workers could get vaccines through Walmart in New Mexico and Arkansas. Walmart planned to offer vaccines in Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Maryland, New Jersey, South Carolina, Texas, Chicago and Puerto Rico with the target of delivering between 10 million and 13 million doses per month at full capacity. In May 2021, Walmart said that starting from May 18 all its fully vaccinated employees can stop wearing masks at work following the guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Economic impact Kenneth Stone, Professor of Economics at Iowa State University, in a paper published in Farm Foundation in 1997, found that some small towns can lose almost half of their retail trade within ten years of a Walmart store opening. He compared the changes to previous competitors small town shops have faced in the past—from the development of the railroads and the Sears Roebuck catalog to shopping malls. He concludes that small towns are more affected by "discount mass merchandiser stores" than larger towns and that shop owners who adapt to the ever-changing retail market can "co-exist and even thrive in this type of environment." One study found Walmart's entry into a new market has a profound impact on its competition. When a Walmart opens in a new market, median sales drop 40 percent at similar high-volume stores, 17 percent at supermarkets and 6 percent at drugstores, according to a June 2009 study by researchers at several universities and led by the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College. A Loyola University Chicago study suggested that the impact a Walmart store has on a local business is correlated to its distance from that store. The leader of that study admits that this factor is stronger in smaller towns and doesn't apply to more urban areas saying "It'd be so tough to nail down what's up with Wal-Mart". These findings are underscored by another study conducted in 2009 by the National Bureau of Economics that showed "large, negative effects" for competing businesses within of the newly opening big-box retailer. This same study also found that the local retailers experience virtually no benefit. Walmart's negative effects on local retailers may be partially explained by studies that find that local firms re-invest nearly 63 percent more of profits in other local businesses compared to chain retailers, as found by the Maine Center of Economic Policy in 2011. David Merriman, Joseph Persky, Julie Davis and Ron Baiman did a study in Economic Development Quarterly outlining the impacts of Walmart in Chicago. The study draws from three annual surveys of enterprises within a four-mile radius of a new Chicago Walmart and it "shows that the probability of going out of business was significantly higher for establishments close to that store". The study illustrated how approximately 300 jobs were lost due to the opening of the store, which is about equivalent to Walmart's employment in the area. The overall findings of this study reinforce the "contention that large-city Walmarts, like those in small towns, absorb retail sales from nearby stores without significantly expanding the market" as this is one of the first studies of Walmarts economic impacts on local economies. A 2001 McKinsey Global Institute study of U.S. labor productivity growth between 1995 and 2000 concluded that "Wal-Mart directly and indirectly caused the bulk of the productivity acceleration" in the retail sector. Robert Solow, a Nobel laureate in economics and an adviser to the study, stated that "[b]y far the most important factor in that [growth] is Wal-Mart." The Economic Policy Institute estimates that between 2001 and 2006, Wal-Mart's trade deficit with China alone eliminated nearly 200,000 U.S. jobs. Another study at the University of Missouri found that a new store increases net retail employment in the county by 100 jobs in the short term, half of which disappear over five years as other retail establishments close. A 2004 paper by two professors at Pennsylvania State University found that U.S. counties with Walmart stores suffered increased poverty compared with counties without Wal-Marts. They hypothesized that this could be due to the displacement of workers from higher-paid jobs in the retailers customers no longer choose to patronize, Wal-Mart providing less local charity than the replaced businesses, or a shrinking pool of local leadership and reduced social capital due to a reduced number of local independent businesses. Dr Raj Patel, author of "Stuffed and Starved: Markets, Power and the Hidden Battle for the World Food System", said in a lecture at the University of Melbourne on September 18, 2007, that a study in Nebraska looked at two different Wal-Marts, the first of which had just arrived and "was in the process of driving everyone else out of business but, to do that, they cut their prices to the bone, very, very low prices". In the other Wal-Mart, "they had successfully destroyed the local economy, there was a sort of economic crater with Wal-Mart in the middle; and, in that community, the prices were 17 percent higher". A 2005 story in The Washington Post reported that "Wal-Mart's discounting on food alone boosts the welfare of American shoppers by at least per year." A study in 2005 at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) measured the effect on consumer welfare and found that the poorest segment of the population benefits the most from the existence of discount retailers. A 2008 economic analysis published in the journal Economic Inquiry suggested that "the process of creative destruction unleashed by Wal‐Mart has had no statistically significant long‐run impact on the overall size and profitability of the small business sector in the United States." In 2006, American newspaper columnist George Will named Wal-Mart "the most prodigious job-creator in the history of the private sector in this galaxy" and that "[b]y lowering consumer prices, Wal-Mart costs about 50 retail jobs among competitors for every 100 jobs Wal-Mart creates". In terms of economic effects, Will states that "Wal-Mart and its effects save shoppers more than a year, dwarfing such government programs as food stamps () and the earned income tax credit ()". A 2014 story in The Guardian reported that the Wal-Mart Foundation was boosting its efforts to work with U.S. manufacturers. In February 2014, the Walmart Foundation pledged to support domestic manufacturers and announced plans to buy worth of American-made products in the next decade. Labor relations With over 2.3 million employees worldwide, Walmart has faced a torrent of lawsuits and issues with regards to its workforce. These issues involve low wages, poor working conditions, inadequate health care, and issues involving the company's strong anti-union policies. In November 2013, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) announced that it had found that in 13 U.S. states, Wal-Mart had pressured employees not to engage in strikes on Black Friday, and had illegally disciplined workers who had engaged in strikes. Critics point to Walmart's high turnover rate as evidence of an unhappy workforce, although other factors may be involved. Approximately 70 percent of its employees leave within the first year. Despite this turnover rate, the company is still able to affect unemployment rates. This was found in a study by Oklahoma State University which states, "Walmart is found to have substantially lowered the relative unemployment rates of blacks in those counties where it is present, but to have had only a limited impact on relative incomes after the influences of other socio-economic variables were taken into account." Walmart is the largest private employer in the United States, employing almost five times as many people as IBM, the second-largest employer. Walmart employs more African Americans than any other private employer in the United States. Walmart rebranded their Associate Education Benefits to Live Better U in March 2019. Live Better U supports associate education at every level and includes $1 a day college program, cost-free high school education, and discounts on higher education programs through partnership with Guild Education. In April 2019, Walmart Inc. announced plans to extend the use of robots in stores in order to improve and monitor inventory, clean floors and unload trucks, part of the company's effort to lower its labor costs. In June 2019, Walmart Inc. announced the expansion of education benefits to recruit high school students. The incentives include flexible work schedules, free SAT and ACT preparation courses, up to seven hours of free college credit, and a debt-free college degree in three fields from six nonprofit universities. Gender In 2007, a gender discrimination
the short term, United Airlines is currently constructing a buildout on Concourse C between gate C18 and the AeroTrain entrance to provide space for a new Polaris Lounge for international passengers. Further expansion plans include a new three-storey south concourse building above the AeroTrain station for Concourse C, to replace Concourse A regional gates built in 1999. Decades-old rules set by Congress that limit the number of takeoffs and landings, as well as distance of routes, at Reagan Airport were intended in part to keep more flights at Dulles. However, those rules have been weakened by Congress over the years, causing Dulles to lose 200,000 passengers to Reagan between 2011 and 2013. Meaning of IAD Dulles originally used airport code DIA, the initials of Dulles International Airport. When handwritten, it was often misread as DCA, the code for Washington National Airport, so in 1968 Dulles' code was changed to IAD. Terminals The airport's terminal complex consists of a main terminal (which includes four of the original gates, "Z" gates), and two parallel midfield terminal buildings: Concourses A/B and C/D. The entire terminal complex has 139 total gates: 123 gates with jetways and 16 hardstand locations from which passengers can board or disembark using the airport's plane mate vehicles. Inter-terminal transportation Conceived in early planning sessions in 1959, Dulles is one of the few remaining airports to use the mobile lounge (also known as "plane mates" or "people movers") now only used for transport to the International Arrivals Building as well as transport for Concourse D. They have all been given names based on the postal abbreviations of 50 states, e.g., VA, MD, AK. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has gradually phased out the mobile lounge system for inter-terminal passenger movements in favor of the AeroTrain, an underground people mover which currently operates to all of the concourses except concourse D, with passenger tunnels remaining to concourses A and B. Plane mates remain in use to disembark international passengers and carry them to the International Arrivals Building, as well as to transport passengers to and from aircraft on the hard stands (i.e., those parked remotely on the apron without access to jet bridges). Main terminal Dulles's iconic main terminal houses ticketing on the upper level, baggage claim and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the lower level, and annexes for the International Arrivals Building for international passenger processing, as well as the four Z gates (used by Air Canada and United Express), various information kiosks and other support facilities. The main terminal was recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1966 for its design concept; its roof is a suspended catenary providing a wide enclosed area unimpeded by any columns. The main terminal was extended in 1996 to —Saarinen's original design length—which was slightly more than double its originally constructed length of . On September 22, 2009, an expansion to include the International Arrivals Building opened for customs and immigration processing with a capacity to process 2,400 passengers per hour. Also in September 2009, a central security checkpoint was added on a new security mezzanine level of the main terminal. This checkpoint replaced previous checkpoints which were located behind the ticketing areas, however, travelers enrolled in TSA PreCheck and CLEAR still use this area to clear security. A separate security checkpoint is available on the baggage claim level. Both security checkpoints connect to the AeroTrain, which links the main terminal with the A, B, and C concourses. Midfield terminals All airlines aside from Air Canada Express and United Express operate out of two linear satellite terminals which are Concourses A and B, and Concourses C and D. Concourses A and B All non-United flights operate out of these two concourses as well as some United Express flights. Concourse A (which has 47 gates) composes the eastern part of the closest midfield terminal building. It consists of a permanent ground-level set of gates designed for small planes and regional jets used by United Express, and several former Concourse B gates. The concourse is primarily used for international flights. Air France operates an airline lounge opposite gate A22, Etihad Airways operates a First and Business Class lounge across from gate A15, and Virgin Atlantic has a Clubhouse lounge across from gate A32. Concourse A's AeroTrain station is located about halfway through the concourse, between gates A6 and A14. Concourse B (which has 28 gates) composes the western half of the building. It is the first of the permanent elevated midfield concourses. Originally constructed in 1998 and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, the B concourse contained 20 gates. In 2003, 4 additional gates were added to concourse B, followed by a 15-gate expansion in 2008. In addition to the AeroTrain station located between gates B51 and B62, Concourse B also has an underground walkway to connect it to the main terminal. Concourse B is used by some international carriers, and is also utilized by all non-United domestic and Canada flights. The facility also includes a British Airways Galleries lounge, a Lufthansa lounge divided into Senator and Business class sections located between gates B49 and B51, and a Turkish Airlines Lounge near gate B43. Concourses C and D Concourses C/D are solely used for United Airlines flights, as it functions as their hub at IAD. All mainline United flights and most United Express regional jet operations operate out of these concourses (some United Express flights use Concourse A). These concourses were constructed in 1983 and designed by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum. The two concourses have 22 gates each, numbered C1–C28 and D1–D32, with odd-numbered gates on the north side of the building and even numbered gates on the south side. Concourse C composes the eastern half of the terminal and Concourse D composes the gates on the west half of the terminal. The C/D concourses were given a face lift in 2006 which included light fixture upgrades, new paint finishes, new ceiling grids and tiles, heating and air conditioning replacement, and complete restroom renovations. Concourse C also has a dedicated Federal Inspection Station located at ground level. International United flights not originating at an airport with US customs pre-clearance can directly deplane passengers via the jet bridge at Concourse C (as opposed to using plane mates to offload passengers). Once deplaned, arriving passengers are separated. Passengers terminating at Dulles take a mobile lounge that transports them to the International Arrivals Building, while connecting passengers continuing on another United flight go through U.S. Customs and Immigration at the FIS station on the ground level. Since this immigration facility is only for connecting passengers on United and other Star Alliance carriers, it has shorter lines and passengers do not have to re-clear security at the massive security checkpoints in the main terminal. A new and permanent C/D concourse (also called "Tier 2") is planned as part of the D2 Dulles Development Project. The new building is to include a three-level structure with 44 airline gates and similar amenities to Concourse B. The concourse plan includes a dedicated mezzanine corridor with moving sidewalks to serve international passengers. The design and construction of the new C/D concourse has not been scheduled. When built, it is planned that both terminals will be connected to the main terminal and other concourses via the AeroTrain. To that extent, the AeroTrain station at Concourse C was built at the location where the future Concourse C/D structure is proposed to be built, and is connected to the existing Concourse C via an underground walkway. Airline lounges Since many major domestic and international airlines have a large presence at Washington Dulles, there are numerous airline lounges within the airport: Air France: Air France/KLM Lounge, A Concourse across from gate A22. British Airways: BA Lounge with Concorde Dining for first class and Business class passengers, located opposite the Concourse B Transit station. Capital One is constructing its second airport lounge at Dulles. It will be operated by a third-party hospitality company and is scheduled to open in 2022. Etihad Airways: First and Business class lounge located opposite gate A15. Lufthansa: Senator Lounge and Business Lounge, B Concourse at gate B51. Turkish Airlines: Concourse B, near gate B41. United Airlines: United Clubs in C Concourse (at gates C4 [the former Global First Class Lounge], C7 and C17), and one in D Concourse at gate D8. United Polaris Lounge located directly across from gate C17. Virgin Atlantic: Clubhouse, A Concourse across from gate A32. Airlines and destinations Passenger Cargo Statistics Top destinations Airline market share Annual traffic Ground transportation Roads Washington Dulles is accessible via the Dulles Access Road/Dulles Greenway (State Route 267) and State Route 28. The Dulles Airport Access Highway is a toll-free, limited access highway owned by the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority (MWAA) to facilitate car access to Washington Dulles from the Capital Beltway and Interstate 66. After it opened, non-airport traffic between Washington and Reston became so heavy that a parallel set of toll lanes were added on the same right-of-way to accommodate non-airport traffic (Dulles Toll Road). However, the airport-only lanes are both less congested as well as toll-free. As of November 1, 2008, MWAA assumed responsibility from the Virginia Department of Transportation both for operating the Dulles Toll Road and for the construction of a rapid transit rail line down its median. Route 28, which runs north–south along the eastern edge of the airport, has been upgraded to a limited access highway, with the interchanges financed through a property tax surcharge on nearby business properties. The Dulles Toll Road has been extended to the west to Leesburg as the Dulles Greenway. Public transportation Fairfax Connector bus routes 981 and 983 serve Washington Dulles, connecting to the Herndon–Monroe park & ride lot in Herndon, the Reston Town Center transit in Reston, the Wiehle–Reston East Metro station, and the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center Air and Space Museum. The Metrobus 5A route also operates service to the airport. The bus stops at the Herndon–Monroe park & ride lot in Herndon and the Rosslyn Metro station in Arlington and terminates at the L'Enfant Plaza Metro station in Southwest DC. Rosslyn can be accessed by the Orange, Blue, and Silver lines, while L'Enfant Plaza is also served by the Yellow and Green lines. Megabus provides service from Dulles to Charlottesville and Blacksburg. Washington Flyer has a monopoly to operate cabs from Washington Dulles Airport. Uber and Lyft are popular modes of transport to and from the airport and MWAA receives a $4 fee per trip, which is included in the quoted fare. Construction is underway to connect the airport to Washington, D.C., via the Silver Line of the Washington Metro. While initial plans called for completion of the station in 2016, officials now expect the service to begin operation in early 2022. Accidents and incidents On January 21, 1970, the first commercial flight of the Boeing 747 was delayed, when an engine malfunction caused the aircraft in question to be temporarily grounded. Another 747, the Clipper Victor, was on standby, and flew the inaugural flight for Pan American Airways. The Clipper Victor would later be destroyed in the Tenerife airport disaster.The first 747 Pan Am flight was from New York to London There were three deaths during a nine-day air show held at Washington Dulles in conjunction with Transpo '72 (officially called the U.S. International Transportation Exposition, a $10 million event sponsored by the U.S. Department of Transportation, and attended by over one million visitors from around the world). On May 29, 1972, the third day of the show, the pilot of a Kite Rider (a variety of hang glider) was killed in a crash. This was to be the first of the three air deaths during the Air Show. On June 3, 1972, a second death occurred at the Transpo '72 Air Show, during a sport plane pylon race. At 2:40 pm, during the second lap and near a turn about pylon 3, a trailing aircraft's (LOWERS R-1 N66AN) wing and propeller hit the right wing tip of a leading aircraft (CASSUTT BARTH N7017). The right wing immediately sheared off the fuselage, and the damaged aircraft crashed almost instantly, killing the 29-year-old pilot, Hugh C. Alexander. He was a professional Air Racer with over 10,200 hours. On June 4, 1972, during the last day of the 9-day Transpo '72 Air Show, the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds experienced their first fatal crash at an air show. Major Joe Howard flying Thunderbird 3 was killed when his F-4E-32-MC Phantom II, 66-0321, lost power during a vertical maneuver. The pilot broke out of formation just after he completed a wedge roll and was ascending at around AGL. The aircraft staggered and descended in a flat attitude with little forward speed. Although Major Howard ejected as the aircraft fell back to earth from about 1,500 feet (460 m) tail first, and descended under a good canopy, winds blew him into the fireball ascending from the blazing crash site. The parachute melted and the pilot plummeted , sustaining fatal injuries. On December 1, 1974, while diverting to Washington Dulles, TWA Flight 514 crashed onto the western slope of Mount Weather. All 85 passengers and 7 crew members were killed on impact. Air France Concorde incidents of 1979: On June 14, 1979, the number 5 and 6 tires on an Air France Concorde blew out during takeoff. Shrapnel thrown from the tires and rims damaged number 2 engine, punctured three fuel tanks, severed several hydraulic lines and electrical wires, in addition to tearing a large hole on the top of the wing, over the wheel well area. On July 21, 1979, one month after the above tire incident, another Air France Concorde blew several of its landing gear tires during takeoff. After that second incident the "French director general of civil aviation issued an air worthiness directive and Air France issued a Technical Information Update, each calling for revised procedures. These included required inspection of each wheel/tire for condition, pressure and temperature prior to each take-off. In addition, crews were advised that landing gear should not be raised when a wheel/tire problem is suspected." On November 15, 1979 American Airlines Flight 444 diverted to Dulles Airport instead of its scheduled destination of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport due to the detonation of a small bomb. The bomb detonated incompletely in the cargo hold of the aircraft and resulted in 12 passengers being treated for smoke inhalation. It was later determined this was the third bombing perpetrated by Theodore John Kaczynski aka "The Unabomber." Ultimately it was the involvement of the aircraft	the concourses and the main terminal. The system, which uses rubber tires and travels along a fixed underground guideway, is similar to the people mover systems at Singapore Changi Airport, Hartsfield–Jackson Atlanta International Airport, and Denver International Airport. The train is intended to replace the mobile lounges, which many passengers found crowded and inconvenient. The initial phase includes the main terminal station, a permanent Concourse A station, a permanent Concourse B station, a permanent midfield concourse station (with access to the current temporary C concourse via a tunnel with moving walkways), and a maintenance facility. Mobile lounges continue to service the D Concourse from both the main terminal and Concourse A. Even after AeroTrain is built out and the replacement Concourses C and D are built, the mobile lounges and plane mates will still continue to be used, to transport international arriving passengers to the International Arrivals Building, as well as transport passengers to aircraft parked on hardstands without direct access to jet bridges. Dulles has stated that the wait time for a train does not exceed four minutes, compared to the average 15-minute wait and travel time for mobile lounges. Under the development plan, future phases would see the addition of several new midfield concourses and a new south terminal. A fourth runway (parallel to the existing runways 1 and 19 L&R) opened in 2008, and development plans include a fifth runway to parallel the existing runway 12–30. If this runway is built, the current runway will be re-designated as 12L-30R while the new runway will be designated 12R-30L. An expansion of the B concourse, used by many low-cost airlines as well as international arrivals, has been completed, and the building housing Concourses C and D will eventually be knocked down to make room for a more ergonomic building. Because Concourses C and D are temporary concourses, the only way to get to those concourses is via moving walkway from the Concourse C station which is built in the location of the future gates and Concourse D by mobile lounge from the main terminal. In the short term, United Airlines is currently constructing a buildout on Concourse C between gate C18 and the AeroTrain entrance to provide space for a new Polaris Lounge for international passengers. Further expansion plans include a new three-storey south concourse building above the AeroTrain station for Concourse C, to replace Concourse A regional gates built in 1999. Decades-old rules set by Congress that limit the number of takeoffs and landings, as well as distance of routes, at Reagan Airport were intended in part to keep more flights at Dulles. However, those rules have been weakened by Congress over the years, causing Dulles to lose 200,000 passengers to Reagan between 2011 and 2013. Meaning of IAD Dulles originally used airport code DIA, the initials of Dulles International Airport. When handwritten, it was often misread as DCA, the code for Washington National Airport, so in 1968 Dulles' code was changed to IAD. Terminals The airport's terminal complex consists of a main terminal (which includes four of the original gates, "Z" gates), and two parallel midfield terminal buildings: Concourses A/B and C/D. The entire terminal complex has 139 total gates: 123 gates with jetways and 16 hardstand locations from which passengers can board or disembark using the airport's plane mate vehicles. Inter-terminal transportation Conceived in early planning sessions in 1959, Dulles is one of the few remaining airports to use the mobile lounge (also known as "plane mates" or "people movers") now only used for transport to the International Arrivals Building as well as transport for Concourse D. They have all been given names based on the postal abbreviations of 50 states, e.g., VA, MD, AK. The Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has gradually phased out the mobile lounge system for inter-terminal passenger movements in favor of the AeroTrain, an underground people mover which currently operates to all of the concourses except concourse D, with passenger tunnels remaining to concourses A and B. Plane mates remain in use to disembark international passengers and carry them to the International Arrivals Building, as well as to transport passengers to and from aircraft on the hard stands (i.e., those parked remotely on the apron without access to jet bridges). Main terminal Dulles's iconic main terminal houses ticketing on the upper level, baggage claim and U.S. Customs and Border Protection on the lower level, and annexes for the International Arrivals Building for international passenger processing, as well as the four Z gates (used by Air Canada and United Express), various information kiosks and other support facilities. The main terminal was recognized by the American Institute of Architects in 1966 for its design concept; its roof is a suspended catenary providing a wide enclosed area unimpeded by any columns. The main terminal was extended in 1996 to —Saarinen's original design length—which was slightly more than double its originally constructed length of . On September 22, 2009, an expansion to include the International Arrivals Building opened for customs and immigration processing with a capacity to process 2,400 passengers per hour. Also in September 2009, a central security checkpoint was added on a new security mezzanine level of the main terminal. This checkpoint replaced previous checkpoints which were located behind the ticketing areas, however, travelers enrolled in TSA PreCheck and CLEAR still use this area to clear security. A separate security checkpoint is available on the baggage claim level. Both security checkpoints connect to the AeroTrain, which links the main terminal with the A, B, and C concourses. Midfield terminals All airlines aside from Air Canada Express and United Express operate out of two linear satellite terminals which are Concourses A and B, and Concourses C and D. Concourses A and B All non-United flights operate out of these two concourses as well as some United Express flights. Concourse A (which has 47 gates) composes the eastern part of the closest midfield terminal building. It consists of a permanent ground-level set of gates designed for small planes and regional jets used by United Express, and several former Concourse B gates. The concourse is primarily used for international flights. Air France operates an airline lounge opposite gate A22, Etihad Airways operates a First and Business Class lounge across from gate A15, and Virgin Atlantic has a Clubhouse lounge across from gate A32. Concourse A's AeroTrain station is located about halfway through the concourse, between gates A6 and A14. Concourse B (which has 28 gates) composes the western half of the building. It is the first of the permanent elevated midfield concourses. Originally constructed in 1998 and designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill and Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum, the B concourse contained 20 gates. In 2003, 4 additional gates were added to concourse B, followed by a 15-gate expansion in 2008. In addition to the AeroTrain station located between gates B51 and B62, Concourse B also has an underground walkway to connect it to the main terminal. Concourse B is used by some international carriers, and is also utilized by all non-United domestic and Canada flights. The facility also includes a British Airways Galleries lounge, a Lufthansa lounge divided into Senator and Business class sections located between gates B49 and B51, and a Turkish Airlines Lounge near gate B43. Concourses C and D Concourses C/D are solely used for United Airlines flights, as it functions as their hub at IAD. All mainline United flights and most United Express regional jet operations operate out of these concourses (some United Express flights use Concourse A). These concourses were constructed in 1983 and designed by Hellmuth, Obata and Kassabaum. The two concourses have 22 gates each, numbered C1–C28 and D1–D32, with odd-numbered gates on the north side of the building and even numbered gates on the south side. Concourse C composes the eastern half of the terminal and Concourse D composes the gates on the west half of the terminal. The C/D concourses were given a face lift in 2006 which included light fixture upgrades, new paint finishes, new ceiling grids and tiles, heating and air conditioning replacement, and complete restroom renovations. Concourse C also has a dedicated Federal Inspection Station located at ground level. International United flights not originating at an airport with US customs pre-clearance can directly deplane passengers via the jet bridge at Concourse C (as opposed to using plane mates to offload passengers). Once deplaned, arriving passengers are separated. Passengers terminating at Dulles take a mobile lounge that transports them to the International Arrivals Building, while connecting passengers continuing on another United flight go through U.S. Customs and Immigration at the FIS station on the ground level. Since this immigration facility is only for connecting passengers on United and other Star Alliance carriers, it has shorter lines and passengers do not have to re-clear security at the massive security checkpoints in the main terminal. A new and permanent C/D concourse (also called "Tier 2") is planned as part of the D2 Dulles Development Project. The new building is to include a three-level structure with 44 airline gates and similar amenities to Concourse B. The concourse plan includes a dedicated mezzanine corridor with moving sidewalks to serve international passengers. The design and construction of the new C/D concourse has not been scheduled. When built, it is planned that both terminals will be connected to the main terminal and other concourses via the AeroTrain. To that extent, the AeroTrain station at Concourse C was built at the location where the future Concourse C/D structure is proposed to be built, and is connected to the existing Concourse C via an underground walkway. Airline lounges Since many major domestic and international airlines have a large presence at Washington Dulles, there are numerous airline lounges within the airport: Air France: Air France/KLM Lounge, A Concourse across from gate A22. British Airways: BA Lounge with Concorde Dining for first class and Business class passengers, located opposite the Concourse B Transit station. Capital One is constructing its second airport lounge at Dulles. It will be operated by a third-party hospitality company and is scheduled to open in 2022. Etihad Airways: First and Business class lounge located opposite gate A15. Lufthansa: Senator Lounge and Business Lounge, B Concourse at gate B51. Turkish Airlines: Concourse B, near gate B41. United Airlines: United Clubs in C Concourse (at gates C4 [the former
In 1987 he became a rear admiral, and was posted at The Pentagon, where he was one of the top officers for the Naval Reserve. In 1993, two years after the 1991 Tailhook Association scandal, he was one of three top officials who received letters of censure for failing to stop extensive incidents of sexual harassment at the association's Las Vegas convention. Flagg retired from the Navy in 1995 as a rear admiral and from American Airlines in 1998, although at the time of his death, he still had an office at the Pentagon, for instances in which the Pentagon contacted him for technical advice. Personal life and death The Flaggs lived in Mississippi, California and Connecticut before settling in the early 1990s to Daybreak Farm, a Black Angus beef cattle farm in Millwood, Virginia. They also owned a home in Las	the Navy Commendation Medal with Combat V. In 1987 he became a rear admiral, and was posted at The Pentagon, where he was one of the top officers for the Naval Reserve. In 1993, two years after the 1991 Tailhook Association scandal, he was one of three top officials who received letters of censure for failing to stop extensive incidents of sexual harassment at the association's Las Vegas convention. Flagg retired from the Navy in 1995 as a rear admiral and from American Airlines in 1998, although at the time of his death, he still had an office at the Pentagon, for instances in which the Pentagon contacted him for technical advice. Personal life and death The Flaggs lived in Mississippi, California and Connecticut before settling in the early 1990s to Daybreak Farm, a Black Angus beef cattle farm in Millwood, Virginia. They also owned a home in Las Vegas, and Dee Flagg was active in Grace Evangelical Lutheran Church in Winchester, Virginia, and the Greenway Garden Club in Clarke County. Both were members of the Blue Ridge Hunt. During the September 11 attacks in 2001, the Flaggs and their friend, Barbara G. Edwards, were on board American Airlines Flight 77, heading to a family gathering in California. They were killed when it crashed into the Pentagon. The Flaggs were both 62, and were survived by
become involved, became dangerous to Burroughs. He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Press. He left behind a criminal charge which eventually caught up with him in Paris. Paul Lund, a British former career criminal and cigarette smuggler whom Burroughs met in Tangier, was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Burroughs, and evidence implicated Burroughs in the importation of narcotics into France. When the Moroccan authorities forwarded their investigation to French officials, Burroughs faced criminal charges in Paris for conspiracy to import opiates. It was during this impending case that Maurice Girodias published Naked Lunch; its appearance helped to get Burroughs a suspended sentence, since a literary career, according to Ted Morgan, is a respected profession in France. The "Beat Hotel" was a typical European-style boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who lived in the attic room. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by Gregory Corso, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky for several months after Naked Lunch first appeared. Burroughs' time at the Beat Hotel was dominated by occult experiments – "mirror-gazing, scrying, trance and telepathy, all fuelled by a wide variety of mind-altering drugs". Later, Burroughs would describe "visions" obtained by staring into the mirror for hours at a time – his hands transformed into tentacles, or his whole image transforming into some strange entity, or visions of far-off places, or of other people rapidly undergoing metamorphosis. It was from this febrile atmosphere that the famous cut-up technique emerged. The actual process by which Naked Lunch was published was partly a function of its "cut-up" presentation to the printer. Girodias had given Burroughs only ten days to prepare the manuscript for print galleys, and Burroughs sent over the manuscript in pieces, preparing the parts in no particular order. When it was published in this authentically random manner, Burroughs liked it better than the initial plan. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs used the $3,000 advance from Grove Press to buy drugs (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds). Naked Lunch was featured in a 1959 Life magazine cover story, partly as an article that highlighted the growing Beat literary movement. During this time Burroughs found an outlet for material otherwise rendered unpublishable in Jeff Nuttall's My Own Mag. Also, poetry by Burroughs' appeared in the avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s. The London years Burroughs left Paris for London in 1960 to visit Dr. Dent, a well-known English medical doctor who spearheaded a reputedly painless heroin withdrawal treatment using the drug apomorphine. Dent's apomorphine cure was also used to treat alcoholism, although it was held by several people who undertook it to be no more than straightforward aversion therapy. Burroughs however was convinced. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine and other cures, which he submitted to The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. 53, 1956) under the title "Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs"; this letter is appended to many editions of Naked Lunch. Though he ultimately relapsed, Burroughs ended up working out of London for six years, traveling back to the United States on several occasions, including one time escorting his son to the Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison after the younger Burroughs had been convicted of prescription fraud in Florida. In the "Afterword" to the compilation of his son's two previously published novels Speed and Kentucky Ham, Burroughs writes that he thought he had a "small habit" and left London quickly without any narcotics because he suspected the U.S. customs would search him very thoroughly on arrival. He claims he went through the most excruciating two months of opiate withdrawal while seeing his son through his trial and sentencing, traveling with Billy to Lexington, Kentucky from Miami to ensure that his son entered the hospital that he had once spent time in as a volunteer admission. Earlier, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking a large advance from Playboy to write an article about his trip back to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in The Paris Review, after Burroughs refused to alter the style for Playboy’s publishers. In 1968 Burroughs joined Jean Genet, John Sack, and Terry Southern in covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine. Southern and Burroughs, who had first become acquainted in London, would remain lifelong friends and collaborators. In 1972, Burroughs and Southern unsuccessfully attempted to adapt Naked Lunch for the screen in conjunction with American game-show producer Chuck Barris. Burroughs supported himself and his addiction by publishing pieces in small literary presses. His avant-garde reputation grew internationally as hippies and college students discovered his earlier works. He developed a close friendship with Antony Balch and lived with a young hustler named John Brady who continuously brought home young women despite Burroughs' protestations. In the midst of this personal turmoil, Burroughs managed to complete two works: a novel written in screenplay format, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969); and the traditional prose-format novel The Wild Boys (1971). It was during his time in London that Burroughs began using his "playback" technique in an attempt to place curses on various people and places who had drawn his ire, including the Moka coffee bar and the London HQ of Scientology. Burroughs himself related the Moka coffee bar incident: Here is a sample operation carried out against the Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street, London, W1, beginning on August 3, 1972. Reverse Thursday. Reason for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. Now to close in on the Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there ... Playback would come later with more pictures ... Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972, the Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by the Queen's Snack Bar. In the 1960s, Burroughs joined and then left the Church of Scientology. In talking about the experience, he claimed that the techniques and philosophy of Scientology helped him and that he felt that further study of Scientology would produce great results. He was skeptical of the organization itself, and felt that it fostered an environment that did not accept critical discussion. His subsequent critical writings about the church and his review of Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman led to a battle of letters between Burroughs and Scientology supporters in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Return to United States In 1974, concerned about his friend's well-being, Allen Ginsberg gained for Burroughs a contract to teach creative writing at the City College of New York. Burroughs successfully withdrew from heroin use and moved to New York. He eventually found an apartment, affectionately dubbed "The Bunker", on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 222 Bowery. The dwelling was a partially converted YMCA gym, complete with lockers and communal showers. The building fell within New York City rent control policies that made it extremely cheap; it was only about four hundred dollars a month until 1981 when the rent control rules changed, doubling the rent overnight. Burroughs added "teacher" to the list of jobs he did not like, as he lasted only a semester as a professor; he found the students uninteresting and without much creative talent. Although he needed income desperately, he turned down a teaching position at the University at Buffalo for $15,000 a semester. "The teaching gig was a lesson in never again. You were giving out all this energy and nothing was coming back." His savior was the newly arrived twenty-one-year-old bookseller and Beat Generation devotee James Grauerholz, who worked for Burroughs part-time as a secretary as well as in a bookstore. Grauerholz suggested the idea of reading tours. Grauerholz had managed several rock bands in Kansas and took the lead in booking for Burroughs reading tours that would help support him throughout the next two decades. It raised his public profile, eventually aiding in his obtaining new publishing contracts. Through Grauerholz, Burroughs became a monthly columnist for the noted popular culture magazine Crawdaddy, for which he interviewed Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page in 1975. Burroughs decided to relocate back to the United States permanently in 1976. He then began to associate with New York cultural players such as Andy Warhol, John Giorno, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Susan Sontag, frequently entertaining them at the Bunker; he also visited venues like CBGB to watch the likes of Patti Smith perform. Throughout early 1977, Burroughs collaborated with Southern and Dennis Hopper on a screen adaptation of Junky. It was reported in The New York Times that Burroughs himself would appear in the film. Financed by a reclusive acquaintance of Burroughs, the project lost traction after financial problems and creative disagreements between Hopper and Burroughs. In 1976 he appeared in Rosa von Praunheims New York documentary Underground & Emigrants. Organized by Columbia professor Sylvère Lotringer, Giorno, and Grauerholz, the Nova Convention was a multimedia retrospective of Burroughs' work held from November 30 to December 2, 1978, at various locations throughout New York. The event included readings from Southern, Ginsberg, Smith, and Frank Zappa (who filled in at the last minute for Keith Richards, then entangled in a legal problem), in addition to panel discussions with Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and concerts featuring The B-52's, Suicide, Philip Glass, and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. In 1976, Burroughs was having dinner with his son, William S. "Billy" Burroughs Jr., and Allen Ginsberg in Boulder, Colorado, at Ginsberg's Buddhist poetry school (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) at Chogyam Trungpa's Naropa University when Billy began to vomit blood. Burroughs Sr. had not seen his son for over a year and was alarmed at his appearance when Billy arrived at Ginsberg's apartment. Although Billy had successfully published two short novels in the 1970s and was deemed by literary critics like Ann Charters as a bona fide "second generation beat writer", his brief marriage to a teenage waitress had disintegrated. Billy was a constant drinker, and there were long periods when he was out of contact with any of his family or friends. The diagnosis was liver cirrhosis so complete that the only treatment was a rarely performed liver transplant operation. Fortunately, the University of Colorado Medical Center was one of two places in the nation that performed transplants under the pioneering work of Dr. Thomas Starzl. Billy underwent the procedure and beat the thirty-percent survival odds. His father spent time in 1976 and 1977 in Colorado, helping Billy through additional surgeries and complications. Ted Morgan's biography asserts that their relationship was not spontaneous and lacked real warmth or intimacy. Allen Ginsberg was supportive to both Burroughs and his son throughout the long period of recovery. In London, Burroughs had begun to write what would become the first novel of a trilogy, published as Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1983), and The Western Lands (1987). Grauerholz helped edit Cities when it was first rejected by Burroughs' long-time editor Dick Seaver at Holt Rinehart, after it was deemed too disjointed. The novel was written as a straight narrative and then chopped up into a more random pattern, leaving the reader to sort through the characters and events. This technique differed from the author's earlier cut-up methods, which were accidental from the start. Nevertheless, the novel was reassembled and published, still without a straight linear form, but with fewer breaks in the story. The trilogy featured time-travel adventures in which Burroughs' narrators rewrote episodes from history to reform mankind. Reviews were mixed for Cities. Novelist and critic Anthony Burgess panned the work in Saturday Review, saying Burroughs was boring readers with repetitive episodes of pederast fantasy and sexual strangulation that lacked any comprehensible world view or theology; other reviewers, like J. G. Ballard, argued that Burroughs was shaping a new literary "mythography". In 1981, Billy Burroughs died in Florida. He had cut off contact with his father several years before, even publishing an article in Esquire magazine claiming his father had poisoned his life and revealing that he had been molested as a fourteen-year-old by one of his father's friends while visiting Tangier. The liver transplant had not cured his urge to drink, and Billy suffered from serious health complications years after the operation. After he had stopped taking his transplant rejection drugs, he was found near the side of a Florida highway by a stranger. He died shortly afterward. Burroughs was in New York when he heard from Allen Ginsberg of Billy's death. Burroughs, by 1979, was once again addicted to heroin. The cheap heroin that was easily purchased outside his door on the Lower East Side "made its way" into his veins, coupled with "gifts" from the overzealous if well-intentioned admirers who frequently visited the Bunker. Although Burroughs would have episodes of being free from heroin, from this point until his death he was regularly addicted to the drug. In an introduction to Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz (who managed Burroughs' reading tours in the 1980s and 1990s) mentions that part of his job was to deal with the "underworld" in each city to secure the author's drugs. Later years in Kansas Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1981, taking up residence at 1927 Learnard Avenue where he would spend the rest of his life. He once told a Wichita Eagle reporter that he was content to live in Kansas, saying, "The thing I like about Kansas is that it's not nearly as violent, and it's a helluva lot cheaper. And I can get out in the country and fish and shoot and whatnot." In 1984, he signed a seven-book deal with Viking Press after he signed with literary agent Andrew Wylie. This deal included the publication rights to the unpublished 1952 novel Queer. With this money he purchased a small bungalow for $29,000. He was finally inducted into the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters in 1983 after several attempts by Allen Ginsberg to get him accepted. He attended the induction ceremony in May 1983. Lawrence Ferlinghetti remarked the induction of Burroughs into the Academy proved Herbert Marcuse's point that capitalistic society had a great ability to incorporate its one-time outsiders. By this point, Burroughs was a counterculture icon. In his final years, he cultivated an entourage of young friends who replaced his aging contemporaries. He inspired 1970s proto-punk rock band Doctors of Madness. In the 1980s he collaborated with performers ranging from Bill Laswell's Material and Laurie Anderson to Throbbing Gristle, The Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy and Ministry, and in Gus Van Sant's 1989 film Drugstore Cowboy, playing a character based on a short story he published in Exterminator!, "The "Priest" They Called Him", featuring a guitar track supplied by Kurt Cobain of Nirvana. Burroughs and R.E.M. collaborated on the song "Star Me Kitten" on the Songs in the Key of X: Music From and Inspired By The X-Files album. A collaboration with musicians Nick Cave and Tom Waits resulted in a collection of short prose, Smack My Crack, later released as a spoken-word album in 1987. In 1990, he released the spoken word album Dead City Radio, with musical backup from producers Hal Willner and Nelson Lyon, and alternative rock band Sonic Youth. He collaborated with Tom Waits and director Robert Wilson on The Black Rider, a play that opened at the Thalia Theatre in Hamburg in 1990 to critical acclaim, and that was later performed all over Europe and the U.S. In 1991, with Burroughs' approval, director David Cronenberg adapted Naked Lunch into a feature film, which opened to critical acclaim. During 1982, Burroughs developed a painting technique whereby he created abstract compositions by placing spray paint cans in front of blank surfaces, and then shooting at the paint cans with a shotgun. These splattered and shot panels and canvasses were first exhibited in the Tony Shafrazi Gallery in New York City in 1987. By this time he had developed a comprehensive visual art practice, using ink, spray paint, collage and unusual things such as mushrooms and plungers to apply the paint. He created file-folder paintings featuring these mediums as well as "automatic calligraphy" inspired by Brion Gysin. He originally used the folders to mix pigments before observing that they could be viewed as art in themselves. He also used many of these painted folders to store manuscripts and correspondence in his personal archive Until his last years, he prolifically created visual art. Burroughs' work has since been featured in more than fifty international galleries and museums including Royal Academy of the Arts, Centre Pompidou, Guggenheim Museum, ZKM Karlsruhe, Sammlung Falckenberg, New Museum, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles County Museum, and Whitney Museum of American Art. According to Ministry frontman Al Jourgensen, "We hung out at Burroughs's house one time in '93. So he decides to shoot up heroin and he takes out this utility belt full of syringes. Huge, old-fashioned ones from the '50s or something. Now, I have no idea how an 80 year old guy finds a vein, but he knew what he was doing. So we're all laying around high and stuff and then I notice in the pile of mail on the coffee table that there's a letter from the White House. I said 'Hey, this looks important.' and he replies 'Nah, it's probably just junk mail.' Well, I open the letter and it's from President Clinton inviting Burroughs to the White House for a poetry reading. I said 'Wow, do you have any idea how big this is!?' So he says 'What? Who's president nowadays?' and it floored me. He didn't even know who our current president was." In 1990, Burroughs was honored with a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. In June 1991, Burroughs underwent triple bypass surgery. He became a member of a chaos magic organization, the Illuminates of Thanateros, in 1993. Burroughs' last filmed performance was in the music video for "Last Night on Earth" by Irish rock band U2, filmed in Kansas City, Missouri, directed by Richie Smyth and also featuring Sophie Dahl. Political beliefs The only newspaper columnist Burroughs admired was Westbrook Pegler, a right-wing opinion shaper for the William Randolph Hearst newspaper chain. Burroughs believed in frontier individualism, which he championed as "our glorious frontier heritage on minding your own business." Burroughs came to equate liberalism with bureaucratic tyranny, viewing government authority as a collective of meddlesome forces legislating the curtailment of personal freedom. According to his biographer Ted Morgan, his philosophy for living one's life was to adhere to a laissez-faire path, one without encumbrances – in essence a credo shared with the capitalist business world. His abhorrence of the government did not prevent Burroughs from using its programs to his own advantage. In 1949 he enrolled in Mexico City College under the GI Bill, which paid for part of his tuition and books and provided him with a seventy-five-dollar-per-month stipend. He maintained, "I always say, keep your snout in the public trough." Burroughs was a gun enthusiast and owned several shotguns, a Colt .45 and a .38 Special. Sonic Youth vocalist Thurston Moore recounted meeting Burroughs: "he had a number of Guns and Ammo magazines laying about, and he was only very interested in talking about shooting and knifing ... I asked him if he had a Beretta and he said: 'Ah, that's a ladies' pocket-purse gun. I like guns that shoot and knives that cut." Hunter S. Thompson gave him a one-of-a-kind .454 caliber pistol. He was also a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment. Despite being a fan of a right-wing columnist, many in his entourage such as Genesis P-Orridge and Al Jourgensen are notable for far-left, anti-capitalist, and anti-fascist politics. He was also a fan of the left-wing Dadaist movement. His overall views can generally be seen as contrarian and syncretic combining left-wing and right-wing ideologies. Magical beliefs Burroughs had a longstanding preoccupation with magic and the occult, dating from his earliest childhood, and was insistent throughout his life that we live in a "magical universe". As he himself explained: In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that's just ridiculous. It's as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it's for a reason. Among primitive people they say that if someone was bitten by a snake he was murdered. I believe that. Or, speaking in the 1970s: Since the word "magic" tends to cause confused thinking, I would like to say exactly what I mean by "magic" and the magical interpretation of so-called reality. The underlying assumption of magic is the assertion of "will" as the primary moving force in this universe – the deep conviction that nothing happens unless somebody or some being wills it to happen. To me this has always seemed self evident ... From the viewpoint of magic, no death, no illness, no misfortune, accident, war or riot is accidental. There are no accidents in the world of magic. This was no idle passing interest – Burroughs also actively practiced magic in his everyday life: seeking out mystical visions through practices like scrying, taking measures to protect himself from possession, and attempting to lay curses on those who had crossed him. Burroughs spoke openly about his magical practices, and his engagement with the occult is attested from a multitude of interviews, as well as personal accounts from those who knew him. Biographer Ted Morgan has argued that: "As the single most important thing about Graham Greene was his viewpoint as a lapsed Catholic, the single most important thing about Burroughs was his belief in the magical universe. The same impulse that led him to put out curses was, as he saw it, the source of his writing ... To Burroughs behind everyday reality there was the reality of the spirit world, of psychic visitations, of curses, of possession and phantom beings." Burroughs was unwavering in his insistence that his writing itself had a magical purpose. This was particularly true when it came to his use of the cut-up technique. Burroughs was adamant that the technique had a magical function, stating "the cut ups are not for artistic purposes". Burroughs used his cut-ups for "political warfare, scientific research, personal therapy, magical divination, and conjuration" – the essential idea being that the cut-ups allowed the user to "break down the barriers that surround consciousness". As Burroughs himself stated: I would say that my most interesting experience with the earlier techniques was the realization that when you make cut-ups you do not get simply random	counterculture of the 1960s, but also literary critics such as Mary McCarthy. Once published in the United States, Naked Lunch was prosecuted as obscene by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, followed by other states. In 1966, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court declared the work "not obscene" on the basis of criteria developed largely to defend the book. The case against Burroughs' novel still stands as the last obscenity trial against a work of literature – that is, a work consisting of words only, and not including illustrations or photographs – prosecuted in the United States. The Word Hoard, the collection of manuscripts that produced Naked Lunch, also produced parts of the later works The Soft Machine (1961), The Ticket That Exploded (1962), and Nova Express (1964). These novels feature extensive use of the cut-up technique that influenced all of Burroughs' subsequent fiction to a degree. During Burroughs' friendship and artistic collaborations with Gysin and Ian Sommerville, the technique was combined with images, Gysin's paintings, and sound, via Somerville's tape recorders. Burroughs was so dedicated to the cut-up method that he often defended his use of the technique before editors and publishers, most notably Dick Seaver at Grove Press in the 1960s and Holt, Rinehart & Winston in the 1980s. The cut-up method, because of its random or mechanical basis for text generation, combined with the possibilities of mixing in text written by other writers, deemphasizes the traditional role of the writer as creator or originator of a string of words, while simultaneously exalting the importance of the writer's sensibility as an editor. In this sense, the cut-up method may be considered as analogous to the collage method in the visual arts. New restored editions of The Nova Trilogy (or Cut-Up Trilogy), edited by Oliver Harris (President of the European Beat Studies Network) and published in 2014, included notes and materials to reveal the care with which Burroughs used his methods and the complex histories of his manuscripts. Paris and the "Beat Hotel" Burroughs moved into a rundown hotel in the Latin Quarter of Paris in 1959 when Naked Lunch was still looking for a publisher. Tangier, with its political unrest, and criminals with whom he had become involved, became dangerous to Burroughs. He went to Paris to meet Ginsberg and talk with Olympia Press. He left behind a criminal charge which eventually caught up with him in Paris. Paul Lund, a British former career criminal and cigarette smuggler whom Burroughs met in Tangier, was arrested on suspicion of importing narcotics into France. Lund gave up Burroughs, and evidence implicated Burroughs in the importation of narcotics into France. When the Moroccan authorities forwarded their investigation to French officials, Burroughs faced criminal charges in Paris for conspiracy to import opiates. It was during this impending case that Maurice Girodias published Naked Lunch; its appearance helped to get Burroughs a suspended sentence, since a literary career, according to Ted Morgan, is a respected profession in France. The "Beat Hotel" was a typical European-style boarding house hotel, with common toilets on every floor, and a small place for personal cooking in the room. Life there was documented by the photographer Harold Chapman, who lived in the attic room. This shabby, inexpensive hotel was populated by Gregory Corso, Ginsberg and Peter Orlovsky for several months after Naked Lunch first appeared. Burroughs' time at the Beat Hotel was dominated by occult experiments – "mirror-gazing, scrying, trance and telepathy, all fuelled by a wide variety of mind-altering drugs". Later, Burroughs would describe "visions" obtained by staring into the mirror for hours at a time – his hands transformed into tentacles, or his whole image transforming into some strange entity, or visions of far-off places, or of other people rapidly undergoing metamorphosis. It was from this febrile atmosphere that the famous cut-up technique emerged. The actual process by which Naked Lunch was published was partly a function of its "cut-up" presentation to the printer. Girodias had given Burroughs only ten days to prepare the manuscript for print galleys, and Burroughs sent over the manuscript in pieces, preparing the parts in no particular order. When it was published in this authentically random manner, Burroughs liked it better than the initial plan. International rights to the work were sold soon after, and Burroughs used the $3,000 advance from Grove Press to buy drugs (equivalent to approximately $ in today's funds). Naked Lunch was featured in a 1959 Life magazine cover story, partly as an article that highlighted the growing Beat literary movement. During this time Burroughs found an outlet for material otherwise rendered unpublishable in Jeff Nuttall's My Own Mag. Also, poetry by Burroughs' appeared in the avant garde little magazine Nomad at the beginning of the 1960s. The London years Burroughs left Paris for London in 1960 to visit Dr. Dent, a well-known English medical doctor who spearheaded a reputedly painless heroin withdrawal treatment using the drug apomorphine. Dent's apomorphine cure was also used to treat alcoholism, although it was held by several people who undertook it to be no more than straightforward aversion therapy. Burroughs however was convinced. Following his first cure, he wrote a detailed appreciation of apomorphine and other cures, which he submitted to The British Journal of Addiction (Vol. 53, 1956) under the title "Letter From A Master Addict To Dangerous Drugs"; this letter is appended to many editions of Naked Lunch. Though he ultimately relapsed, Burroughs ended up working out of London for six years, traveling back to the United States on several occasions, including one time escorting his son to the Lexington Narcotics Farm and Prison after the younger Burroughs had been convicted of prescription fraud in Florida. In the "Afterword" to the compilation of his son's two previously published novels Speed and Kentucky Ham, Burroughs writes that he thought he had a "small habit" and left London quickly without any narcotics because he suspected the U.S. customs would search him very thoroughly on arrival. He claims he went through the most excruciating two months of opiate withdrawal while seeing his son through his trial and sentencing, traveling with Billy to Lexington, Kentucky from Miami to ensure that his son entered the hospital that he had once spent time in as a volunteer admission. Earlier, Burroughs revisited St. Louis, Missouri, taking a large advance from Playboy to write an article about his trip back to St. Louis, one that was eventually published in The Paris Review, after Burroughs refused to alter the style for Playboy’s publishers. In 1968 Burroughs joined Jean Genet, John Sack, and Terry Southern in covering the 1968 Democratic National Convention for Esquire magazine. Southern and Burroughs, who had first become acquainted in London, would remain lifelong friends and collaborators. In 1972, Burroughs and Southern unsuccessfully attempted to adapt Naked Lunch for the screen in conjunction with American game-show producer Chuck Barris. Burroughs supported himself and his addiction by publishing pieces in small literary presses. His avant-garde reputation grew internationally as hippies and college students discovered his earlier works. He developed a close friendship with Antony Balch and lived with a young hustler named John Brady who continuously brought home young women despite Burroughs' protestations. In the midst of this personal turmoil, Burroughs managed to complete two works: a novel written in screenplay format, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz (1969); and the traditional prose-format novel The Wild Boys (1971). It was during his time in London that Burroughs began using his "playback" technique in an attempt to place curses on various people and places who had drawn his ire, including the Moka coffee bar and the London HQ of Scientology. Burroughs himself related the Moka coffee bar incident: Here is a sample operation carried out against the Moka Bar at 29 Frith Street, London, W1, beginning on August 3, 1972. Reverse Thursday. Reason for operation was outrageous and unprovoked discourtesy and poisonous cheesecake. Now to close in on the Moka Bar. Record. Take pictures. Stand around outside. Let them see me. They are seething around in there ... Playback would come later with more pictures ... Playback was carried out a number of times with more pictures. Their business fell off. They kept shorter and shorter hours. October 30, 1972, the Moka Bar closed. The location was taken over by the Queen's Snack Bar. In the 1960s, Burroughs joined and then left the Church of Scientology. In talking about the experience, he claimed that the techniques and philosophy of Scientology helped him and that he felt that further study of Scientology would produce great results. He was skeptical of the organization itself, and felt that it fostered an environment that did not accept critical discussion. His subsequent critical writings about the church and his review of Inside Scientology by Robert Kaufman led to a battle of letters between Burroughs and Scientology supporters in the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Return to United States In 1974, concerned about his friend's well-being, Allen Ginsberg gained for Burroughs a contract to teach creative writing at the City College of New York. Burroughs successfully withdrew from heroin use and moved to New York. He eventually found an apartment, affectionately dubbed "The Bunker", on the Lower East Side of Manhattan at 222 Bowery. The dwelling was a partially converted YMCA gym, complete with lockers and communal showers. The building fell within New York City rent control policies that made it extremely cheap; it was only about four hundred dollars a month until 1981 when the rent control rules changed, doubling the rent overnight. Burroughs added "teacher" to the list of jobs he did not like, as he lasted only a semester as a professor; he found the students uninteresting and without much creative talent. Although he needed income desperately, he turned down a teaching position at the University at Buffalo for $15,000 a semester. "The teaching gig was a lesson in never again. You were giving out all this energy and nothing was coming back." His savior was the newly arrived twenty-one-year-old bookseller and Beat Generation devotee James Grauerholz, who worked for Burroughs part-time as a secretary as well as in a bookstore. Grauerholz suggested the idea of reading tours. Grauerholz had managed several rock bands in Kansas and took the lead in booking for Burroughs reading tours that would help support him throughout the next two decades. It raised his public profile, eventually aiding in his obtaining new publishing contracts. Through Grauerholz, Burroughs became a monthly columnist for the noted popular culture magazine Crawdaddy, for which he interviewed Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page in 1975. Burroughs decided to relocate back to the United States permanently in 1976. He then began to associate with New York cultural players such as Andy Warhol, John Giorno, Lou Reed, Patti Smith, and Susan Sontag, frequently entertaining them at the Bunker; he also visited venues like CBGB to watch the likes of Patti Smith perform. Throughout early 1977, Burroughs collaborated with Southern and Dennis Hopper on a screen adaptation of Junky. It was reported in The New York Times that Burroughs himself would appear in the film. Financed by a reclusive acquaintance of Burroughs, the project lost traction after financial problems and creative disagreements between Hopper and Burroughs. In 1976 he appeared in Rosa von Praunheims New York documentary Underground & Emigrants. Organized by Columbia professor Sylvère Lotringer, Giorno, and Grauerholz, the Nova Convention was a multimedia retrospective of Burroughs' work held from November 30 to December 2, 1978, at various locations throughout New York. The event included readings from Southern, Ginsberg, Smith, and Frank Zappa (who filled in at the last minute for Keith Richards, then entangled in a legal problem), in addition to panel discussions with Timothy Leary and Robert Anton Wilson and concerts featuring The B-52's, Suicide, Philip Glass, and Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. In 1976, Burroughs was having dinner with his son, William S. "Billy" Burroughs Jr., and Allen Ginsberg in Boulder, Colorado, at Ginsberg's Buddhist poetry school (Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics) at Chogyam Trungpa's Naropa University when Billy began to vomit blood. Burroughs Sr. had not seen his son for over a year and was alarmed at his appearance when Billy arrived at Ginsberg's apartment. Although Billy had successfully published two short novels in the 1970s and was deemed by literary critics like Ann Charters as a bona fide "second generation beat writer", his brief marriage to a teenage waitress had disintegrated. Billy was a constant drinker, and there were long periods when he was out of contact with any of his family or friends. The diagnosis was liver cirrhosis so complete that the only treatment was a rarely performed liver transplant operation. Fortunately, the University of Colorado Medical Center was one of two places in the nation that performed transplants under the pioneering work of Dr. Thomas Starzl. Billy underwent the procedure and beat the thirty-percent survival odds. His father spent time in 1976 and 1977 in Colorado, helping Billy through additional surgeries and complications. Ted Morgan's biography asserts that their relationship was not spontaneous and lacked real warmth or intimacy. Allen Ginsberg was supportive to both Burroughs and his son throughout the long period of recovery. In London, Burroughs had begun to write what would become the first novel of a trilogy, published as Cities of the Red Night (1981), The Place of Dead Roads (1983), and The Western Lands (1987). Grauerholz helped edit Cities when it was first rejected by Burroughs' long-time editor Dick Seaver at Holt Rinehart, after it was deemed too disjointed. The novel was written as a straight narrative and then chopped up into a more random pattern, leaving the reader to sort through the characters and events. This technique differed from the author's earlier cut-up methods, which were accidental from the start. Nevertheless, the novel was reassembled and published, still without a straight linear form, but with fewer breaks in the story. The trilogy featured time-travel adventures in which Burroughs' narrators rewrote episodes from history to reform mankind. Reviews were mixed for Cities. Novelist and critic Anthony Burgess panned the work in Saturday Review, saying Burroughs was boring readers with repetitive episodes of pederast fantasy and sexual strangulation that lacked any comprehensible world view or theology; other reviewers, like J. G. Ballard, argued that Burroughs was shaping a new literary "mythography". In 1981, Billy Burroughs died in Florida. He had cut off contact with his father several years before, even publishing an article in Esquire magazine claiming his father had poisoned his life and revealing that he had been molested as a fourteen-year-old by one of his father's friends while visiting Tangier. The liver transplant had not cured his urge to drink, and Billy suffered from serious health complications years after the operation. After he had stopped taking his transplant rejection drugs, he was found near the side of a Florida highway by a stranger. He died shortly afterward. Burroughs was in New York when he heard from Allen Ginsberg of Billy's death. Burroughs, by 1979, was once again addicted to heroin. The cheap heroin that was easily purchased outside his door on the Lower East Side "made its way" into his veins, coupled with "gifts" from the overzealous if well-intentioned admirers who frequently visited the Bunker. Although Burroughs would have episodes of being free from heroin, from this point until his death he was regularly addicted to the drug. In an introduction to Last Words: The Final Journals of William S. Burroughs, James Grauerholz (who managed Burroughs' reading tours in the 1980s and 1990s) mentions that part of his job was to deal with the "underworld" in each city to secure the author's drugs. Later years in Kansas Burroughs moved to Lawrence, Kansas in 1981, taking up residence at 1927 Learnard Avenue where he would spend the rest of his life. He once told
and the federal building on Ouellette Avenue is named after him. Eugene Whelan was a Liberal cabinet minister and one-time Liberal party leadership candidate elected from Essex County from the 1960s to the early 1980s, as well as Mark MacGuigan of Windsor-Walkerville riding, who also served as External Affairs, and later Justice minister in the early 1980s. Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray represented Windsor as an MP from 1962 through 2003, winning thirteen consecutive elections making him the longest serving MP in Canadian history. A bust of Herb Gray is at the foot of Ouellette Avenue near Dieppe Park in downtown Windsor. The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway is named after him. Current representation The current mayor of Windsor is Drew Dilkens. Windsor is governed under the Council-Manager form of local government and includes the elected City Council, mayor, and an appointed Chief Administrative Officer. The city is divided into ten wards, with one councillor representing each ward. The mayor serves as the chief executive officer of the city and functions as its ceremonial head. Day-to-day operations of the government are carried out by the Chief Administrative Officer. In August 2009, Windsor City Council approved a 10-ward electoral system for the 2010 civic election, with one councillor elected in each ward. The plan doubled the number of wards, which had been unchanged for 30 years. At the provincial and federal levels, Windsor is divided into two ridings: Windsor West and Windsor—Tecumseh. The city is currently represented in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by NDP MPPs: Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West), and Percy Hatfield (Windsor—Tecumseh). In federal Parliament, Windsor is currently represented by NDP MP Brian Masse (Windsor West) and Liberal Party of Canada MP Irek Kusmierczyk (Windsor—Tecumseh). Culture and tourism Windsor tourist attractions include the Windsor International Film Festival, Caesars Windsor, a lively downtown club scene, Little Italy, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Odette Sculpture Park, Windsor Light Music Theatre, Adventure Bay Water Park, and Ojibway Park. As a border settlement, Windsor was a site of conflict during the War of 1812, a major entry point into Canada for refugees from slavery via the Underground Railroad and a major source of liquor during American Prohibition. Two sites in Windsor have been designated as National Historic Sites of Canada: the Sandwich First Baptist Church, a church established by Underground Railroad refugees, and François Bâby House, an important War of 1812 site now serving as Windsor's Community Museum. The Capitol Theatre in downtown Windsor had been a venue for feature films, plays and other attractions since 1929, until it declared bankruptcy in 2007. The theatre is now a venue used for live orchestral concerts, lectures and dance performances. The Tea Party is a progressive rock band which has been based in Windsor since its foundation in 1990. Windsor's nickname is the "Rose City" or the "City of Roses". The Liebeszauber (Love's Magic) rose has been designated as the City of Windsor Rose. Windsor is noted for the several large parks and gardens found on its waterfront. The Queen Elizabeth II Sunken Garden is at Jackson Park in the central part of the city. A World War II era Avro Lancaster was displayed on a stand in the middle of Jackson Park for over four decades but has since been removed for restoration. This park is now home to a mounted Spitfire replica and a Hurricane replica. Of the parks lining Windsor's waterfront, the largest is the stretch overlooking the Detroit skyline. It extends from the Ambassador Bridge to the Hiram Walker Distillery. The western portion of the park contains the Windsor Sculpture Park which features over 30 large-scale contemporary sculptures for public viewing, along with the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The central portion contains Dieppe Gardens, Civic Terrace and Festival Plaza, and the eastern portion is home to the Bert Weeks Memorial Gardens. Further east along the waterfront is Coventry Gardens, across from Detroit's Belle Isle. The focal point of this park is the Charles Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain which floats in the Detroit River and has a coloured light display at night. The fountain is the largest of its kind in North America and symbolizes the peaceful relationship between Canada and the United States. Each summer, Windsor co-hosts the two-week-long Windsor-Detroit International Freedom Festival, which culminates in a gigantic fireworks display that celebrates Canada Day and the Fourth of July. The fireworks display is among the world's largest and takes place on the final Monday in June over the Detroit River between the two downtowns. Each year, the event attracts over a million spectators to both sides of the riverfront. Windsor and Detroit also jointly cohost the annual Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, while festivals exclusive to Windsor include Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County Carrousel by the River and Carrousel Around the City, Bluesfest International Windsor and Windsor Pride. Following the 2008 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Detroit, Michigan, Windsor successfully put in a bid to become the first Canadian city to host the event. Red Bull touted the 2009 race in Windsor as one of the most exciting in the seven-year history of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, and on January 22, 2010, it was announced Windsor would be a host city for the 2010 and 2011 circuits, along with a select group of major international cities that includes Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Perth, Australia and New York City. The event attracted 200,000 fans to the Detroit River waterfront in 2009. The Red Bull air races were cancelled worldwide for 2011. Dubbed the Great Canadian Flag Project, Windsor erected a 150-foot (45.7 metre) flagpole to fly a 60 feet by 30 feet (18 metres by nine metres) Canadian flag in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canada. Spotlights illuminate the flag at night, with a smaller 24 feet by 12 feet (7.3 metres by 3.7 metres) flag to fly during periods of strong winds. As of January 14, 2017, $300,000 had been raised for the project, including $150,000 from the federal government. Windsor has often been the place where many metro Detroiters find what is forbidden in the United States. With a minimum legal drinking age of 21 in Michigan and 19 in Ontario, a number of 19 and 20-year-old Americans frequent Windsor's bars. The city also became a gambling attraction with Caesars Windsor's opening in 1994, five years before casinos opened in Detroit. One can also purchase Cuban cigars, Cuban rum, less-costly prescription drugs, absinthe, certain imported foods, and other items not available in the United States. In addition, some same-sex couples from the United States chose to marry in Windsor prior to 2015, when same-sex marriage was legalized in all 50 U.S. states. Media Windsor and its surrounding area has been served by the Windsor Star since 1888. The regional newspaper is the only daily in Windsor and Essex County and has attracted the highest readership per capita in its circulation range of any Canadian metropolitan newspaper. The Windsor Independent is an alternative newspaper published once per month, featuring reviews, news, politics, arts, culture and entertainment. Windsor is considered part of the Detroit television and radio market for purposes of territorial rights. Due to this fact, and its proximity to Toledo and Cleveland, radio and television broadcasters in Windsor are accorded a special status by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, exempting them from many of the Canadian content ("CanCon") requirements most broadcasters in Canada are required to follow. The CanCon requirements are sometimes blamed in part for the decline in popularity of Windsor radio station CKLW, a 50,000-watt AM radio station that in the late 1960s (prior to the advent of CanCon) had been the top-rated radio station not only in Detroit and Windsor, but also in Toledo and Cleveland. Windsor has also been exempt from concentration of media ownership rules. Except for Blackburn Radio-owned stations CJWF-FM and a rebroadcaster of Chatham's CKUE-FM in Windsor, all other current commercial media outlets are owned by a single company, Bell Media. The city is home to one campus radio station, CJAM-FM, situated on the University of Windsor campus. Windsor is also served by a few informational news websites including windsoriteDOTca News, a local news site; Radio Betna, a Middle Eastern community based web radio station; and YQG Rocks, which is one of the only media to reviews entertainment shows since the retirement of Windsor Star critic Ted Shaw. The Windsor Local is a local site and mobile app. Education Windsor youth attend schools in the Greater Essex County District School Board (prior to 1998, the Windsor Board of Education), the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, Conseil scolaire catholique Providence and Conseil scolaire Viamonde. Independent faith-based schools include Maranatha Christian Academy (JK-12), Canadian Christian Academy (JK-12), Académie Ste. Cécile International School (JK-12, including International Baccalaureate), First Lutheran Christian Academy (JK-8), and Windsor Adventist Elementary School. The non-denominational Lakeview Montessori School is a private school as well. The Canada South Science City serves the Elementary School Curriculum's Science and Technology component. Windsor is home to four International Baccalaureate recognized schools: Assumption College School (a Catholic high school), Académie Ste. Cécile International School (a private school), École secondaire E.J. Lajeunesse (a francophone Catholic high school), and Riverside Secondary School (a public high school). Kennedy Collegiate Institute and Vincent Massey Secondary School are renowned in Southern Ontario for their notable accomplishments nationally in mathematics and computer science. Kennedy was built in 1929 in the central part of the city next to Jackson park and is sometimes called the castle because of the unique architecture of its gymnasium at the rear of the school. Post-secondary institutions The University of Windsor is Canada's southernmost university. It is a research oriented, comprehensive university with a student population of 16,000 full-time graduate and undergraduate students. Now entering its most ambitious capital expansion since its founding in 1963, the University of Windsor recently opened the Anthony P. Toldo Health Education & Learning Centre, which houses the Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry. With the help of $40 million in Ontario government funding, the University also has recently finished construction of a , $112-million Centre for Engineering Innovation; a structure that establishes revolutionary design standards across Canada and beyond. The university is just east of the Ambassador Bridge, south of the Detroit River. In Spring 2011, it was announced the University of Windsor would move its music and visual art programs downtown to be housed in the historic Armouries building and former Greyhound Bus Depot at Freedom Way and University Ave E. The move intended to bring an additional 500 students into the downtown core daily. The University also brought its School of Social Work to the old Windsor Star buildings on Ferry and Pitt Streets, bringing an additional 1,000 students into the downtown. Windsor is also home to St. Clair College with a student population of 6,500 full-time students. Its main campus is in Windsor, and it also has campuses in Chatham and Wallaceburg. In 2007, St. Clair College opened a satellite campus in downtown Windsor in the former Cleary International Centre. In April 2010, St. Clair College added to its downtown Windsor presence with the addition of its MediaPlex school. Together, they bring over one thousand students into the downtown core every day. The college also opened the TD Student Centre on the corner of Victoria Avenue and University Avenue in 2012. More recently Collège Boréal opened an access centre and small campus to their Ouellette avenue location. This small campus offers access to many Collège Boréal programmes as well as immigration and integration assistance for francophones in the area. Collège Boréal is Windsor's only francophone post-secondary institution, providing service for a small, but notable, population of Franco-Ontarians within the Windsor-Tecumseh-Belle River area. From 1995 to 2001, the city was home to a satellite campus of the defunct francophone Collège des Grands-Lacs. Public libraries The Windsor Public Library offers education, entertainment, along with community history materials, programs, and services. The main branch coordinates a literacy program for adults needing functional literacy upgrading. The local historical archives are here. Health systems There are two hospitals in Windsor: Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, formally Hôtel-Dieu Grace Hospital, and Windsor Regional Hospital. Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare is the result of an amalgamation of Grace Hospital and Hôtel-Dieu in 1994. The merger occurred due to the Government of Ontario's province-wide policy to consolidate resources into Local Health Integrated Networks, or LHINs. This was to eliminate duplicate services and allocate resources more efficiently across the region. The policy resulted in the closure of many community-based and historically important hospitals across the province. At this time, Hotel-Dieu Hospital does not do surgeries, nor does it have emergency room services. Its focus has moved away from traditional hospital services and provides more supportive healthcare. Windsor Regional Hospital has formal and informal agreements with Detroit-area hospitals. For instance, pediatric neurosurgery is no longer performed in Windsor. Leamington District Memorial Hospital in Leamington, Ontario, serves much of Essex County and, along with the Windsor institutions, share resources with the Chatham-Kent Health Alliance. Over eighteen thousand Windsor residents are employed in the health care profession. Transportation Windsor is the western terminus of both Highway 401, Canada's busiest highway, and Via Rail's Quebec City–Windsor Corridor. Windsor's Via station is the nation's sixth-busiest in terms of passenger volumes. Windsor has a municipal highway, E.C. Row Expressway, running east–west through the city. Consisting of of highway and nine interchanges, the expressway is the fastest way for commuters to travel across the city. E.C. Row Expressway is mentioned in the Guinness Book of Records as the shortest freeway that took the longest time to build as it took more than 15 years to complete. The expressway stretches from Windsor's far west end at Ojibway Parkway east to Banwell Road on the city's border with Tecumseh. The majority of development in the city of Windsor and neighbouring town of Tecumseh stretches along the water instead of in-land. As a result, there is a lack of major east–west arteries compared to north–south arteries. Only Riverside Drive, Wyandotte Street, Tecumseh Road, County Road 42/Cabana Road and the E.C. Row Expressway serve the almost from the west end of Windsor eastward. All of these roads, especially the E.C. Row Expressway are burdened with east–west commuter traffic from the development in the city's east end and suburbs further east. There are eight north–south roads interchanging with the expressway: Huron Church Road, Dominion Boulevard, Dougall Avenue, Howard Avenue, Walker Road, Central Avenue, Jefferson Boulevard, and Lauzon Parkway. Traffic backups on some of these north–south roads at the E.C. Row Expressway are common, mainly at Dominion, Dougall, Howard, and Walker as the land south of the expressway and east of Walker is occupied by Windsor airport and there has been little development. Windsor's many rail crossings intersect with these north–south thoroughfares. In October 2008, the Province of Ontario completed a grade separation at Walker Road and the CP Rail line. Another grade separation was completed in November 2010 at Howard Avenue and the CP Rail line. In both cases, the road travels under the rail line and both have below grade intersections with an east–west street. These were planned as parts of the "Let's Get Windsor-Essex Moving" project funded by the Province of Ontario to improve local transportation infrastructure. Windsor is connected to Essex and Leamington via Highway 3, and is well connected to the other municipalities and communities throughout Essex County via the county road network. Nearly 20,000 vehicles travel on Highway 3 in Essex County on a daily basis. It is the main route to work for many residents of Leamington, Kingsville and Essex. Windsor is linked to the United States by the Ambassador Bridge, the Detroit–Windsor Tunnel, a Canadian Pacific Railway tunnel, and the Detroit–Windsor Truck Ferry. The Ambassador Bridge is North America's No. 1 international border crossing in terms of goods volume: 27% of all trade between Canada and the United States crosses at the Ambassador Bridge. Windsor has a bike trail network including the (Riverfront Bike Trail, Ganatchio Bike Trail, and Little River Extension). They have become a blend of parkland and transportation, as people use the trails to commute to work or across downtown on their bicycles. Airports The city is served by Windsor International Airport, a regional airport with scheduled commuter air service by Air Canada Express, Porter Airlines, Westjet, and Sunwing, along with heavy general aviation traffic. The majority of destinations are within Ontario with the exception of seasonal routes to Calgary, Alberta and a variety of Caribbean destinations. The Detroit Metropolitan Wayne County Airport is approximately across the border in Romulus, Michigan and is the airport of choice for many Windsor residents as it has regular flights to a larger variety of destinations than Windsor Airport. Shuttle buses and cars are within driving distance to larger airports like London International Airport, John C. Munro Hamilton International Airport and to Canada's busiest airport and international hub Toronto Pearson International Airport. Waterways The Port of Windsor, which covers of shoreline along the Detroit River is part of the Great Lakes/Saint Lawrence Seaway System. Accessible to both Lake freighters and ocean-going vessels, the port is the third largest Canadian Great Lakes port in terms of shipments behind only Hamilton and Thunder Bay. Cargos include a wide range of products such as aggregates, salt, grain, fluorspar, lumber, steel, petroleum, vehicles and heavy lift equipment. Mass transit Road A public transport bus service is provided by Transit Windsor, the city-owned bus company, operating 15 fixed bus routes with a fleet of 114 vehicles through the city as well as providing transportation for many of the city's secondary school students and a service to downtown Detroit. Transit Windsor shares its newly constructed $8 million downtown Transit Terminal with Greyhound Lines. The new depot opened in 2007. Current bus fare is $3.00 for all riders except children under 5 on regular service routes. Fares for attending students are $2.00. Tunnel bus fares are $5.00 and both American and Canadian currencies are accepted on the tunnel bus. Rail Windsor has a long history with rail travel in both passenger service and freight due to the Michigan Central Railway Tunnel. Intercity passenger railway service is provided by Via Rail throughout the region via the Windsor Railway Station. The region also used to have a second station, the Windsor Michigan Central Railroad Depot before it was destroyed in a fire which historically served the Canada Southern Railway, New York Central Railroad and Amtrak. Bridges to Detroit A major and controversial issue is the amount of traffic to and from the Ambassador Bridge. The number of vehicles crossing the bridge has doubled since 1990. However, the total volume of traffic has been declining since the September 11 attacks. Access to the Ambassador Bridge is via two municipal roads: Huron Church Road and Wyandotte Street. A large portion of the traffic consists of tractor-trailers. There have been at times a wall of trucks up to long on Huron Church Road. This road cuts through the west end of the city and the trucks are the source of many complaints about noise, pollution and pedestrian hazards. In 2003, a single mother of three, Jacqueline Bouchard, was struck and killed by a truck at the corner of Huron Church and Girardot Avenue in front of Assumption College Catholic High School, a tragedy argued to be due to a lack of practical safety precautions. Windsor City Council hired traffic consultant Sam Schwartz to produce a proposal for a solution to this traffic problem. City councillors overwhelmingly endorsed the proposal and it was presented to the federal government as a "Made in Windsor" solution. Not all of the surrounding residents supported the plan. One problem with the plan is the proposed road would cut through protected green spaces such as the Ojibway Prairie Reserve. In 2005, the Detroit River International Crossing (DRIC — a joint Canadian-American committee studying the options for expanding the border crossing) announced its preferred option was to extend Highway 401 directly westward to a	Bridge. Part of this trail winds through Windsor Sculpture Park displaying various modern and post-modern sculptures. Families of elephants (see picture), penguins, horses, and many other themed sculptures are found in the park. Economy Windsor's economy is primarily based on manufacturing, tourism, education, and government services. The city is one of Canada's major automobile manufacturing centres and is home to the headquarters of FCA Canada. Automotive facilities include the FCA Canada minivan assembly plant, two Ford Motor Company engine plants, and several tool and die and automotive parts manufacturers. Windsor has a well-established tourism industry. Caesars Windsor, one of the largest casinos in Canada, ranks as one of the largest local employers. It has been a major draw for U.S. visitors since opening in 1994 (as Casino Windsor). Further, the Quebec City – Windsor Corridor contains 18 million people, with 51% of the Canadian population and three out of the five largest metropolitan areas, according to the 2011 Census. The city has an extensive riverfront parks system and fine restaurants, such as those on Erie Street in Windsor's Little Italy called "Via Italia", another popular tourist destination. The Lake Erie North Shore Wine Region in Essex County has enhanced tourism in the region. Both the University of Windsor and St. Clair College are significant local employers and have enjoyed substantial growth and expansion in recent years. The recent addition of a full-program satellite medical school of the University of Western Ontario, which opened in 2008 at the University of Windsor is further enhancing the region's economy and the university's status. In 2013, the university completed construction of a $112 million facility for its Faculty of Engineering. Windsor is the headquarters of Hiram Walker & Sons Limited, now owned by Pernod Ricard. Hiram Walker founded its historic distillery in 1858 in what was then Walkerville, Ontario. The diversifying economy is also represented by companies involved in pharmaceuticals, alternative energy, insurance, internet and software. Windsor is also home to the Windsor Salt Mine and the Great Lakes Regional office of the International Joint Commission. Technology There are a few established tech companies that have been in the region for years. Among them are Cypher Systems Group, a computer-based hardware wholesaler and software developer; AlphaKor Group, a technology company that provides IT services, custom software and mobile apps; and Red Piston, a media solutions company. There are also a few successful startups in area, including Sirved, a tech company that is building a restaurant discovery app; and Hackforge, a tech company that has built an app to compare hospital drive times, and has hosted a variety of tech-focused community events, such as a Wikipedia Hackathon. The non-profit WEtech Alliance provides startups and local entrepreneurs with resources to get new technology companies started in the city. In 2019, Dan Gilbert and Quicken Loans bought a building in Windsor with a plan to restore it. Once completed Quicken Loans will employ 50–100 people, mostly in the technology sector. Many are hoping that this is a catalyst for more companies to establish tech business in Windsor. Largest private-sector employers Source: FCA Canada (approx. 6,000 employees) Caesars Windsor (approx. 3,000 employees) Ford Motor Company (approx. 1,850 employees) Sutherland Group Canada (approx. 1,350 employees) AP Plasman Corp. (Build a Mold) (approx. 950 employees) Demographics In 2016, Windsor's population was 217,188. In 2017, the total population of the Windsor metropolitan area (consisting of Windsor, Tecumseh, Amherstburg, LaSalle and Lakeshore) was 344,747. This represents an increase of 3.0% in the city population since 2011 and an increase of 3.1% in the metropolitan area population since 2011. During the same period, Ontario grew by 4.6% and Canada by 5.0%. Windsor attracts many immigrants from around the world. In 2016, in the city 27.7% of the population was foreign-born while in the metropolitan area, 22.9% of the population was foreign-born; this is the fourth-highest proportion for a Canadian metropolitan area. Visible minorities make up 25.7% of the population, making it the most diverse city in Ontario outside of the Greater Toronto Area. In 2016, Windsor's population was 48.8% male and 51.2% female. Children under 15 years of age accounted for 16.3% of the city population compared to 16.6% for Canada. Persons of age 65 years and over accounted for 17.6% of the population in Windsor compared to 16.9% for Canada. The median age in Windsor is 41.4 years compared to 41.2 years for Canada. The population of Windsor is primarily English-speaking, with 88.5% of residents having knowledge only of English and 8.8% of residents having knowledge of both English and French. Crime Windsor has a low violent crime rate and one of the lowest murder rates in Canada. In 2017, the Crime Severity Index for the Windsor Metropolitan Area was 71.7, compared to the Canadian national rate of 72.9. Of the five safest communities in Canada, four of them are in the Windsor Metropolitan Area (Amherstburg, LaSalle, Tecumseh, and Lakeshore). Windsor has made national headlines for its lack of homicides. There were no homicides in the city for a 27-month period ending in November 2011. Since 2016, reports of sexual assaults, within Windsor, have increased by 20%, reports of robbery by 23%, reports of breaking and entering by 3% and reports of motor vehicle theft by 13%. Government Windsor's history as an industrial centre has given the New Democratic Party (NDP) a dedicated voting base. During federal and provincial elections, Windsorites have maintained its local representation in the respective legislatures. The Liberal Party of Canada also has a strong electoral history in the city. Canada's 21st Prime Minister, Paul Martin, was born in Windsor. His father, Paul Martin Sr., a federal cabinet minister in several portfolios through the Liberal governments of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s, was first elected to the House of Commons from a Windsor riding in the 1930s. Martin Sr. practised law in the city and the federal building on Ouellette Avenue is named after him. Eugene Whelan was a Liberal cabinet minister and one-time Liberal party leadership candidate elected from Essex County from the 1960s to the early 1980s, as well as Mark MacGuigan of Windsor-Walkerville riding, who also served as External Affairs, and later Justice minister in the early 1980s. Deputy Prime Minister Herb Gray represented Windsor as an MP from 1962 through 2003, winning thirteen consecutive elections making him the longest serving MP in Canadian history. A bust of Herb Gray is at the foot of Ouellette Avenue near Dieppe Park in downtown Windsor. The Rt. Hon. Herb Gray Parkway is named after him. Current representation The current mayor of Windsor is Drew Dilkens. Windsor is governed under the Council-Manager form of local government and includes the elected City Council, mayor, and an appointed Chief Administrative Officer. The city is divided into ten wards, with one councillor representing each ward. The mayor serves as the chief executive officer of the city and functions as its ceremonial head. Day-to-day operations of the government are carried out by the Chief Administrative Officer. In August 2009, Windsor City Council approved a 10-ward electoral system for the 2010 civic election, with one councillor elected in each ward. The plan doubled the number of wards, which had been unchanged for 30 years. At the provincial and federal levels, Windsor is divided into two ridings: Windsor West and Windsor—Tecumseh. The city is currently represented in the Legislative Assembly of Ontario by NDP MPPs: Lisa Gretzky (Windsor West), and Percy Hatfield (Windsor—Tecumseh). In federal Parliament, Windsor is currently represented by NDP MP Brian Masse (Windsor West) and Liberal Party of Canada MP Irek Kusmierczyk (Windsor—Tecumseh). Culture and tourism Windsor tourist attractions include the Windsor International Film Festival, Caesars Windsor, a lively downtown club scene, Little Italy, the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, the Art Gallery of Windsor, the Odette Sculpture Park, Windsor Light Music Theatre, Adventure Bay Water Park, and Ojibway Park. As a border settlement, Windsor was a site of conflict during the War of 1812, a major entry point into Canada for refugees from slavery via the Underground Railroad and a major source of liquor during American Prohibition. Two sites in Windsor have been designated as National Historic Sites of Canada: the Sandwich First Baptist Church, a church established by Underground Railroad refugees, and François Bâby House, an important War of 1812 site now serving as Windsor's Community Museum. The Capitol Theatre in downtown Windsor had been a venue for feature films, plays and other attractions since 1929, until it declared bankruptcy in 2007. The theatre is now a venue used for live orchestral concerts, lectures and dance performances. The Tea Party is a progressive rock band which has been based in Windsor since its foundation in 1990. Windsor's nickname is the "Rose City" or the "City of Roses". The Liebeszauber (Love's Magic) rose has been designated as the City of Windsor Rose. Windsor is noted for the several large parks and gardens found on its waterfront. The Queen Elizabeth II Sunken Garden is at Jackson Park in the central part of the city. A World War II era Avro Lancaster was displayed on a stand in the middle of Jackson Park for over four decades but has since been removed for restoration. This park is now home to a mounted Spitfire replica and a Hurricane replica. Of the parks lining Windsor's waterfront, the largest is the stretch overlooking the Detroit skyline. It extends from the Ambassador Bridge to the Hiram Walker Distillery. The western portion of the park contains the Windsor Sculpture Park which features over 30 large-scale contemporary sculptures for public viewing, along with the Canadian Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The central portion contains Dieppe Gardens, Civic Terrace and Festival Plaza, and the eastern portion is home to the Bert Weeks Memorial Gardens. Further east along the waterfront is Coventry Gardens, across from Detroit's Belle Isle. The focal point of this park is the Charles Brooks Memorial Peace Fountain which floats in the Detroit River and has a coloured light display at night. The fountain is the largest of its kind in North America and symbolizes the peaceful relationship between Canada and the United States. Each summer, Windsor co-hosts the two-week-long Windsor-Detroit International Freedom Festival, which culminates in a gigantic fireworks display that celebrates Canada Day and the Fourth of July. The fireworks display is among the world's largest and takes place on the final Monday in June over the Detroit River between the two downtowns. Each year, the event attracts over a million spectators to both sides of the riverfront. Windsor and Detroit also jointly cohost the annual Detroit Windsor International Film Festival, while festivals exclusive to Windsor include Multicultural Council of Windsor and Essex County Carrousel by the River and Carrousel Around the City, Bluesfest International Windsor and Windsor Pride. Following the 2008 Red Bull Air Race World Championship in Detroit, Michigan, Windsor successfully put in a bid to become the first Canadian city to host the event. Red Bull touted the 2009 race in Windsor as one of the most exciting in the seven-year history of the Red Bull Air Race World Championship, and on January 22, 2010, it was announced Windsor would be a host city for the 2010 and 2011 circuits, along with a select group of major international cities that includes Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Perth, Australia and New York City. The event attracted 200,000 fans to the Detroit River waterfront in 2009. The Red Bull air races were cancelled worldwide for 2011. Dubbed the Great Canadian Flag Project, Windsor erected a 150-foot (45.7 metre) flagpole to fly a 60 feet by 30 feet (18 metres by nine metres) Canadian flag in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Canada. Spotlights illuminate the flag at night, with a smaller 24 feet by 12 feet (7.3 metres by 3.7 metres) flag to fly during periods of strong winds. As of January 14, 2017, $300,000 had been raised for the project, including $150,000 from the federal government. Windsor has often been the place where many metro Detroiters find what is forbidden in the United States. With a minimum legal drinking age of 21 in Michigan and 19 in Ontario, a number of 19 and 20-year-old Americans frequent Windsor's bars. The city also became a gambling attraction with Caesars Windsor's opening in 1994, five years before casinos opened in Detroit. One can also purchase Cuban cigars, Cuban rum, less-costly prescription drugs, absinthe, certain imported foods, and other items not available in the United States. In addition, some same-sex couples from the United States chose to marry in Windsor prior to 2015, when same-sex marriage was legalized in all 50 U.S. states. Media Windsor and its surrounding area has been served by the Windsor Star since 1888. The regional newspaper is the only daily in Windsor and Essex County and has attracted the highest readership per capita in its circulation range of any Canadian metropolitan newspaper. The Windsor Independent is an alternative newspaper published once per month, featuring reviews, news, politics, arts, culture and entertainment. Windsor is considered part of the Detroit television and radio market for purposes of territorial rights. Due to this fact, and its proximity to Toledo and Cleveland, radio and television broadcasters in Windsor are accorded a special status by the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission, exempting them from many of the Canadian content ("CanCon") requirements most broadcasters in Canada are required to follow. The CanCon requirements are sometimes blamed in part for the decline in popularity of Windsor radio station CKLW, a 50,000-watt AM radio station that in the late 1960s (prior to the advent of CanCon) had been the top-rated radio station not only in Detroit and Windsor, but also in Toledo and Cleveland. Windsor has also been exempt from concentration of media ownership rules. Except for Blackburn Radio-owned stations CJWF-FM and a rebroadcaster of Chatham's CKUE-FM in Windsor, all other current commercial media outlets are owned by a single company, Bell Media. The city is home to one campus radio station, CJAM-FM, situated on the University of Windsor campus. Windsor is also served by a few informational news websites including windsoriteDOTca News, a local news site; Radio Betna, a Middle Eastern community based web radio station; and YQG Rocks, which is one of the only media to reviews entertainment shows since the retirement of Windsor Star critic Ted Shaw. The Windsor Local is a local site and mobile app. Education Windsor youth attend schools in the Greater Essex County District School Board (prior to 1998, the Windsor Board of Education), the Windsor-Essex Catholic District School Board, Conseil scolaire catholique Providence and Conseil scolaire Viamonde. Independent faith-based schools include Maranatha Christian Academy (JK-12), Canadian Christian Academy (JK-12), Académie Ste. Cécile International School (JK-12, including International Baccalaureate), First Lutheran Christian Academy (JK-8), and Windsor Adventist Elementary School. The non-denominational Lakeview Montessori School is a private school as well. The Canada South Science City serves the Elementary School Curriculum's Science and Technology component. Windsor is home to four International Baccalaureate recognized schools: Assumption College School (a Catholic high school), Académie Ste. Cécile International School (a private school), École secondaire E.J. Lajeunesse (a francophone Catholic high school), and Riverside Secondary School (a public high school). Kennedy Collegiate Institute and Vincent Massey Secondary School are renowned in Southern Ontario for their notable accomplishments nationally in mathematics and computer science. Kennedy was built in 1929 in the central part of the city next to Jackson park and is sometimes called the castle because of the unique architecture of its gymnasium at the
one and only one terminal element of the WBS. In addition to its function in cost accounting, the WBS also helps map requirements from one level of system specification to another, for example, a cross-reference matrix mapping functional requirements to high level or low-level design documents. The WBS may be displayed horizontally in outline form or vertically as a tree structure (like an organization chart). The development of the WBS normally occurs at the start of a project and precedes detailed project and task planning. History The concept of work breakdown structure developed with the Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT) by the United States Department of Defense (DoD). PERT was introduced by the U.S. Navy in 1957 to support the development of its Polaris missile program. While the term "work breakdown structure" was not used, this first implementation of PERT did organize the tasks into product-oriented categories. By June 1962, DoD, NASA, and the aerospace industry published a document for the PERT/COST system, which described the WBS approach. This guide was endorsed by the Secretary of Defense for adoption by all services. In 1968, the DoD issued "Work Breakdown Structures for Defense Materiel Items" (MIL-STD-881), a military standard requiring the use of work breakdown structures across the DoD. The document has been revised several times, most recently in 2018. The current version of this document can be found in "Work Breakdown Structures for Defense Material Items" (MIL-STD-881E). It includes WBS definitions for specific defense materiel commodity systems and addresses WBS elements that are common to all systems. Defense Materiel Item categories from MIL-STD-881E are: Aircraft Systems Electronic/Generic Systems Missile/Ordnance Systems Strategic Missile Systems Sea Systems Space Systems Ground Vehicle Systems Unmanned Maritime Systems Launch Vehicle Systems Information Systems/Defense Business Systems The common elements identified in MIL-STD-881E, Appendix K are: Integration, assembly, test, and checkout; Systems engineering; Program management; System test and evaluation; Data; Peculiar support equipment; Common support equipment; Operational/Site activation; Contractor Logistics Support; Industrial facilities; Initial spares and repair parts. The standard also includes additional common elements unique to Space Systems, Launch Vehicle Systems, and Strategic Missile Systems. In 1987, the Project Management Institute (PMI) documented expanding these techniques across non-defense organizations. The Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) Guide provides an overview of the WBS concept, while the "Practice Standard for Work Breakdown Structures" is comparable to the DoD standard but is intended for more general application. Design principles 100% rule An important design principle for work breakdown structures is called the 100% rule. It has been defined as follows: The 100% rule states that the WBS includes 100% of the work defined by the project scope and captures all deliverables – internal, external, interim – in terms of the work to be completed, including project management. The 100% rule is one of the most important principles guiding the development, decomposition, and evaluation of the WBS. The rule applies at all levels within the hierarchy: the sum of the work at the "child" level must equal 100% of the work represented by the "parent", and the WBS should not include any work that falls outside the actual scope of the project, that is, it cannot include more than 100% of the work... It is important to remember that the 100% rule also applies to the activity level. The work represented by the activities in each work package must add up to 100% of the work necessary to complete the work package. Mutually exclusive elements Mutually exclusive: In addition to the 100% rule, there must be no overlap in scope definition between different elements of a work breakdown structure. This ambiguity could result in duplicated work or miscommunications about responsibility and authority. Such overlap could also confuse project cost accounting. If the WBS element names are ambiguous, a WBS dictionary can help clarify the distinctions between WBS elements. The WBS Dictionary describes each component of the WBS with milestones, deliverables, activities, scope, and sometimes dates, resources, costs, quality. Plan outcomes, not actions If the work breakdown structure designer attempts to capture any action-oriented details in the WBS, the designer will likely include either too many actions or too few actions. Too many actions will exceed 100% of the parent's scope, and too few will fall short of 100% of the parent's scope. The best way to adhere to the 100% rule is to define WBS elements in terms of outcomes or results, not actions. This also ensures that the WBS is not overly prescriptive of methods, allowing for greater ingenuity and creative thinking on the part of the project participants. For new product development projects, the most common technique to ensure an outcome-oriented WBS is to use a product breakdown structure. Feature-driven software projects may use a similar technique which is to employ a feature breakdown structure. When a project provides professional services, a common technique is to capture all planned deliverables to create a deliverable-oriented WBS. Work breakdown structures that subdivide work by project phases (e.g. preliminary design phase, critical design phase) must ensure that phases are clearly separated by a deliverable also used in defining entry and exit criteria (e.g., an approved preliminary or critical design review). Level of detail One must decide when to stop dividing work into smaller elements. For most projects a hierarchy of two to four levels will suffice. This will assist in determining the duration of activities necessary to produce a deliverable defined by the	in each work package must add up to 100% of the work necessary to complete the work package. Mutually exclusive elements Mutually exclusive: In addition to the 100% rule, there must be no overlap in scope definition between different elements of a work breakdown structure. This ambiguity could result in duplicated work or miscommunications about responsibility and authority. Such overlap could also confuse project cost accounting. If the WBS element names are ambiguous, a WBS dictionary can help clarify the distinctions between WBS elements. The WBS Dictionary describes each component of the WBS with milestones, deliverables, activities, scope, and sometimes dates, resources, costs, quality. Plan outcomes, not actions If the work breakdown structure designer attempts to capture any action-oriented details in the WBS, the designer will likely include either too many actions or too few actions. Too many actions will exceed 100% of the parent's scope, and too few will fall short of 100% of the parent's scope. The best way to adhere to the 100% rule is to define WBS elements in terms of outcomes or results, not actions. This also ensures that the WBS is not overly prescriptive of methods, allowing for greater ingenuity and creative thinking on the part of the project participants. For new product development projects, the most common technique to ensure an outcome-oriented WBS is to use a product breakdown structure. Feature-driven software projects may use a similar technique which is to employ a feature breakdown structure. When a project provides professional services, a common technique is to capture all planned deliverables to create a deliverable-oriented WBS. Work breakdown structures that subdivide work by project phases (e.g. preliminary design phase, critical design phase) must ensure that phases are clearly separated by a deliverable also used in defining entry and exit criteria (e.g., an approved preliminary or critical design review). Level of detail One must decide when to stop dividing work into smaller elements. For most projects a hierarchy of two to four levels will suffice. This will assist in determining the duration of activities necessary to produce a deliverable defined by the WBS. There are several heuristics or "rules of thumb" used when determining the appropriate duration of an activity or group of activities necessary to produce a specific deliverable defined by the WBS. The first is the "80-hour rule" which means that no single activity or group of activities at the lowest level of detail of the WBS to produce a single deliverable should be more than 80 hours of effort. The second rule of thumb is that no activity or group of activities at the lowest level of detail of the WBS should be longer than a single reporting period. Thus if the project team is reporting progress monthly, then no single activity or series of activities should be longer than one month long. The last heuristic is the "if it makes sense" rule. Applying this rule of thumb, one can apply "common sense" when creating the duration of a single activity or group of activities necessary to produce a deliverable defined by the WBS. A work package at the activity level is a task that: can be realistically and confidently estimated; makes no sense practically to break down any further; can be completed in accordance with one of the heuristics defined above; produces a deliverable which is measurable; and forms a unique package of work that can be outsourced or contracted out. Coding scheme It is common for work breakdown structure elements to be numbered sequentially to reveal the hierarchical structure. The purpose of the numbering is to provide a consistent approach to identifying and managing the WBS across like systems regardless of vendor or service. For example, 1.1.2 Propulsion (in the example below) identifies this item as a Level 3 WBS element, since there are three numbers separated by two decimal points. A coding scheme also helps WBS elements to be recognized in any written context and allows for mapping to the WBS Dictionary. A practical example of the WBS coding scheme is 1.0 Aircraft System 1.1 Air Vehicle 1.1.1 Airframe 1.1.1.1 Airframe Integration, Assembly, Test, and Checkout 1.1.1.2 Fuselage 1.1.1.3 Wing 1.1.1.4 Empennage 1.1.1.5 Nacelle 1.1.1.6 Other Airframe Components 1..n (Specify) 1.1.2 Propulsion 1.1.3 Vehicle Subsystems 1.1.4 Avionics 1.2 System Engineering 1.3 Program Management 1.4 System Test and Evaluation 1.5 Training 1.6 Data 1.7 Peculiar Support Equipment 1.8 Common Support Equipment 1.9 Operational/Site Activation 1.10 Industrial Facilities 1.11 Initial Spares and Repair Parts Terminal element The lowest element in a tree structure, a terminal element, is one that is not further subdivided. In a Work Breakdown Structure such elements (activity or deliverable), also known as work packages, are the items that are estimated in terms of resource requirements, budget and duration; linked by dependencies; and schedule. At the juncture of the WBS element and organization unit, control accounts and work packages are established, and performance is planned, measured, recorded, and controlled. A WBS can be expressed down to any level of interest. Three levels are the minimum recommended, with additional levels for and only for items of high cost or high risk, and two levels of detail at cases such as systems engineering or program management, with the standard showing examples of WBS with varying depth such as software development at points going to 5 levels or fire-control system to 7 levels. Consistent to norms The higher WBS structure should be consistent with whatever norms or template mandates exist within the organization or domain. For example, shipbuilding for the U.S. Navy must respect that the nautical terms and their hierarchy structure put into MIL-STD are embedded in Naval Architecture and that matching Navy offices and procedures have been built to match this naval architecture structure, so any significant change of WBS element numbering or naming in the hierarchy would be unacceptable. Example The adjacent figure shows a work breakdown structure construction technique that demonstrates the 100% rule and the "progressive elaboration" technique. At WBS Level 1 it shows 100 units of work as the total scope of a project to design and build a custom bicycle. At WBS Level 2, the 100 units are divided into seven elements. The number of units allocated to each element of work can be based on effort or cost; it is not an estimate of task duration. The three largest elements of WBS Level 2 are further subdivided at Level 3. The two largest elements at Level 3 each represent only 17% of
for what would later become William M. Rice and Company. Later life Rice made his fortune by investing in land, real estate, lumber, railroads, cotton, and other prospects in Texas and Louisiana. In 1860, his total property, which included fifteen slaves, was worth $750,000. He invested in business firms in Houston; in 1895 he was listed in the city directories as "Capitalist. Owner of Capitol Hotel and Capitol Hotel Annex Building, President of Houston Brick Works Company." Rice was a member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows. Rice married Margaret Bremond, daughter of Paul Bremond (Houston and Texas Central Railway) and Harriet Martha Sprouls, in 1850 in Houston, Texas. The 1860 census places William and Margaret Rice in Houston's 2nd Ward. Clerks are also identified in the same census report; thus the location is most likely Rice's merchant business. Margaret was 16 years Rice's junior. She died, at age 31, in 1863 in Houston, Texas. Rice is also reported to have lived in Matamoros, Mexico, in 1863. Whether there is a connection to the timing of Margaret's death to his living in Matamoros is not clear. By 1865, he was reported as living back in Houston. While living in Houston, Rice served on the Harris County Slave Patrol. He lived in Houston until around 1865, when he moved to New York (but did not own a home there). He built a house on a estate in Dunellen, New Jersey, and moved there in 1872. He became a resident of New York again in 1882. Rice married Julia E. Brown (nee Elizabeth Baldwin) on June 26, 1867. Baldwin was the sister of Charlotte Rice, the wife of William Rice's brother Frederick. The marriage was "stormy", and during the 1890s, she consulted an attorney regarding the possibility of a divorce. She died "hopelessly insane" in Waukesha, Wisconsin, on July 24, 1896. Rice was an eccentric. In his later years, he ate no meat and rarely any vegetables. His diet consisted of bouillon and eggs. On January 28, 1882, William Rice drafted a will, instructing the executors to pay over to the trustees, the Governor and the Judge, funds from his estate for the establishment of "The William M. Rice Orphans Institute." The next year, he began spending more time in Houston, reuniting with old acquaintances. After an 1886 or 1887 meeting with a C. Lombardi, Rice decided that the benefits of his wealth should be enjoyed by the children of the city where he made his fortune. In 1891, Rice decided that he would not establish an Orphans Institute at the Dunellen estate, but would instead found the William M. Rice Institute for the Advancement of Literature, Science and Art in Houston, Texas. The Institute's charter was signed by all the original trustees, except for Rice, on May 18, 1891, and certified by the State of Texas the following day. Death and scandal Rice was the victim of one of the earliest sensational crimes of the 1900s. In 1893, Rice made a new will, naming as executors James A. Baker Sr., a lawyer who often worked for him, William M. Rice Jr., his nephew, and John D. Bartine. The value of Rice's estate at the time was estimated at about $4 million. The new will instructed the executors to divide his property into two equal parts, one to be bequeathed to the Rice Institute, the other to be divided into shares and distributed to his wife Elizabeth Baldwin Rice and other legatees. After her death in 1896, a new will was drafted on September 26, providing bequests for several of Rice's relatives and leaving the remainder of the estate to the Rice Institute. The next four years saw a great deal of litigation by the will of Elizabeth Rice. Its executor was O. T. Holt, assisted by Albert T. Patrick, formerly an attorney in Houston, but working in New York at the time. Under a false identity, Patrick interviewed Rice, who would not otherwise have seen him due to his professional relationship with Elizabeth Rice. Patrick was attempting to establish Rice's domicile in Texas, and not in New York, which would have provided a	Holt, assisted by Albert T. Patrick, formerly an attorney in Houston, but working in New York at the time. Under a false identity, Patrick interviewed Rice, who would not otherwise have seen him due to his professional relationship with Elizabeth Rice. Patrick was attempting to establish Rice's domicile in Texas, and not in New York, which would have provided a more favorable bequest for Mrs. Rice. Despite revealing his identity in 1900, to Rice's anger, the two men continued to have dealings. Plotting to take control of Rice's estate and become the beneficiary of his fortune, Patrick prepared a fake will, forging Rice's signature on it. The fraudulent document named William Rice Jr. and James Baker Jr. as executors, but replaced John Bartine's name with Patrick's. He made bequests to a number of relatives and friends of Rice and of his own, hoping to involve as many interested parties as possible. In the words of James A. Baker Sr.: William Rice was living alone in his apartment at 500 Madison Avenue, New York. His valet, Charles F. Jones, had worked for him for a number of years. On September 24, 1900, James Baker received a telegram from the valet, Charles Jones, stating: Despite the contents of this telegram, a second communique, from Rice's bankers warned that the multi millionaire had died under peculiar circumstances, and that his body was to be cremated. On September 23, 1900, Rice was found dead by his valet, Charles F. Jones. He was presumed to have died in his sleep. Shortly thereafter, a bank teller noticed a suspiciously large check bearing the late Rice's signature and made out to Rice's New York City lawyer, Albert T. Patrick, but with Albert's name misspelled as "Abert". Soon, Patrick made an announcement that Rice had changed his will right before his death, leaving the bulk of his fortune to Patrick rather than to his Institute. A subsequent investigation led by the District Attorney of New York resulted in the arrests of Patrick and of Rice's butler and valet Charles F. Jones, who had been persuaded to administer chloroform to Rice while he slept. Court action would later prove that Jones and Patrick had conspired to murder Rice on September 23. The will was proved a forgery. Patrick was sentenced to death, spending four years on death row at Sing Sing Prison before having his sentence commuted by Governor Frank Higgins in 1906. He received a full pardon from Governor John A. Dix six years later. Patrick died in Tulsa, Oklahoma on February 11, 1940, aged 74. Charles Jones was given freedom, and remained in seclusion until November 16, 1954. On that date, at age 79, he committed suicide in Baytown, Texas, where he lived. Rice's body was eventually cremated, and the urn of his ashes was kept in the vault of the business office of the Trustees of the Institute until it was deposited beneath the monument erected in his memory on the campus of the Institute. In 1930 John Angel completed the Founder's Memorial at Rice University depicting a seated William Marsh Rice in line with specifications by architect Ralph Adams Cram. Legacy Rice left the bulk of his estate to the founding of a free institute of higher education in Houston, Texas. Opening in 1912 as William Marsh Rice Institute for the Advancement of Letters, Science, and Art, it is known today as Rice University. In his will, Rice mandated that the university to bear his name would be for "whites only." This request was eventually overruled, and Raymond L. Johnson Rice University's first black student was admitted in 1964. The Rice School in Houston is also named after William Marsh Rice. A film, The Trust, depicts the story of William Marsh Rice's murder and the role of his attorney, James A. Baker Sr., in uncovering the truth. References External links William Marsh Rice Collection, Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library Guide to the William Marsh Rice business and estate ledgers, 1855–1965 (Woodson Research Center, Fondren Library, Rice University, Houston, TX, USA)
and export partner with these countries. Wrocław's industry manufactures buses, railroad cars, home appliances, chemicals, and electronics. The city houses factories and development centers of many foreign and domestic corporations, such as WAGO Kontakttechnik, Siemens, Bosch, Whirlpool Corporation, Nokia Networks, Volvo, HP, IBM, Google, Opera Software, Bombardier Transportation, WABCO and others. Wrocław is also the location of offices for large Polish companies including Getin Holding, AmRest, Polmos, and MCI Management SA. Additionally, Kaufland Poland has its main headquarters in the city. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the city has had a developing high-tech sector. Many high-tech companies are located in the Wrocław Technology Park, such as Baluff, CIT Engineering, Caisson Elektronik, ContiTech, Ericsson, Innovative Software Technologies, IBM, IT-MED, IT Sector, LiveChat Software, Mitsubishi Electric, Maas, PGS Software, Technology Transfer Agency Techtra and Vratis. In Biskupice Podgórne (Community Kobierzyce) there are factories of LG (LG Display, LG Electronics, LG Chem, LG Innotek), Dong Seo Display, Dong Yang Electronics, Toshiba, and many other companies, mainly from the electronics and home appliances sectors, while the Nowa Wieś Wrocławska factory and distribution center of Nestlé Purina and factories a few other enterprises. The city is the seat of Wrocław Research Centre EIT+, which contains, inter alia, geological research laboratories to the unconventional and Lower Silesian Cluster of Nanotechnology. The logistics centers DHL, FedEx and UPS are based in Wrocław. Furthermore, it is a major center for the pharmaceutical industry (U.S. Pharmacia, Hasco-Lek, Galena, Avec Pharma, 3M, Labor, S-Lab, Herbapol, and Cezal). Wrocław is home to Poland's largest shopping mall – Bielany Avenue (pl. Aleja Bielany) and Bielany Trade Center, located in Bielany Wrocławskie where stores such as Auchan, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin, Makro, Tesco, IKEA, Jula, OBI, Castorama, Black Red White, Poco, E. Wedel, Cargill, Prologis and Panattoni can be found. In February 2013, Qatar Airways launched its Wrocław European Customer Service. Major corporations 3M Akwawit–Polmos S.A. – Wratislavia vodka plant The Bank of New York Mellon Bombardier Transportation Polska BSH – Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte CD Projekt CH Robinson Worldwide Crédit Agricole Poland Credit Suisse Deichmann DeLaval Operations Poland DHL Dolby Labs Ernst & Young Fantasy Expo – owner CD-Action Gigaset Communications Google Hewlett-Packard IBM Kaufland Poland KGHM Polska Miedź LiveChat Software LG Electronics McKinsey & Company Microsoft National Bank of Poland Nokia Networks Olympus Business Services Europe Opera Software Parker Hannifin PZ Cussons Polska S.A. PZU QAD Qatar Airways Qiagen Robert Bosch GmbH SAP Polska Santander Consumer Bank Siemens Südzucker Techland Tieto UBS UPS United Technologies Corporation Viessmann Volvo Polska sp. z o.o. WABCO Polska Whirlpool Polska S.A. Shopping malls Wroclavia Galeria Dominikańska Arkady Wrocławskie Galeria Handlowa Sky Tower Pasaż Grunwaldzki Centrum Handlowe Borek Tarasy Grabiszyńskie Magnolia Park Wrocław Fashion Outlet Factoria Park Centrum Handlowe Korona Renoma, a 1930s department store of architectural interest over and above its shopping value Feniks Wrocław Market Hall Marino Park Handlowy Młyn Family Point Ferio Gaj Aleja Bielany in Bielany Wrocławskie (suburb of Wrocław) – the largest shopping mall in Poland Transport Wrocław is a major transport hub, situated at the crossroad of many routes linking Western and Central Europe with the rest of Poland. The city is skirted on the south by the A4 highway, which is part of the European route E40, extending from the Polish-German to the Polish-Ukrainian border across southern Poland. The 672-kilometre highway beginning at Jędrzychowice connects Lower Silesia with Opole and the industrial Upper Silesian metropolis, Kraków, Tarnów and Rzeszów. It also provides easy access to German cities such as Dresden, Leipzig, Magdeburg and with the A18 highway Berlin, Hamburg. The toll-free A8 bypass (Wrocław ring road) around the west and north of the city connects the A4 highway with three major routes – S5 expressway leading to Poznań, Bydgoszcz; the S8 express road towards Oleśnica, Łódź, Warsaw, Białystok; and the National Road 8 to Prague, Brno and other townships in the Czech Republic. Traffic congestion is a significant issue in Wrocław as in most Polish cities; in early 2020 it was ranked as the fifth-most congested city in Poland, and 41st in the world. On average, a car driver in Wrocław annually spends seven days and two hours in a traffic jam. Roadblocks, gridlocks and narrow cobblestone streets around the Old Town are considerable obstacles for drivers. The lack of parking space is also a major setback; private lots or on-street pay bays are the most common means of parking. A study in 2019 has revealed that there are approximately 130 vehicles per each parking spot, and the search for an unoccupied bay takes on average eight minutes. Aviation The city is served by Copernicus Airport Wrocław (coded WRO), situated around 10 kilometres southwest from the central precinct. The airport handles passenger flights with LOT Polish Airlines, Buzz, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Lufthansa, Eurowings, Air France, KLM, Scandinavian Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and air cargo connections. In 2019 over a 3.5 million passengers passed through the airport, placing it fifth on the list of busiest airports in Poland. Among the permanent and traditional destinations are Warsaw, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Zürich and Budapest. Low-cost flights are common among British, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian travellers, based on the number of destinations. Seasonal charter flights are primarily targeted at Polish holidaymakers travelling to Southern Europe and North Africa. Rail and bus The main rail station is Wrocław Główny, which is the largest railway station in Poland by the number of passengers served (21,2 million passengers a year), and perhaps the most important railroad junction alongside Warsaw Central station. The station is supported by PKP Intercity, Polregio, Koleje Dolnośląskie and Leo Express. There are direct connections to Szczecin, Poznań, and to Warsaw Central through Łódź Fabryczna station. There is also a regular connection to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna), as well as indirect to Praha hlavní nádraží (Prague) and Budapest-Nyugati with one transfer depending on the carrier. Adjacent to the railway station, is a central bus station located in the basement of the shopping mall Wroclavia, with services offered by PKS, Neobus, Flixbus, Sindbad, and others. Public transport As of 2020, the public transport in Wrocław comprises 99 bus lines and a well-developed network of 23 tram lines (with a length over 200 kilometres) operated by the Municipal Transport Company MPK (). Rides are paid for, tickets can be purchased in kiosks and vending machines, which are located at bus stops, as well as in the vending machines located in the vehicle (payment contactless payment card, the ticket is saved on the card). The tickets are available for purchase in the electronic form via mobile app: mPay, Apple Pay, SkyCash, Mobill, Google Pay. Tickets are one-ride or temporary (0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 24, 48, 72, or 168 hours). Over a dozen traditional taxicab firms operate in the city as well as Uber, , Bolt and Free Now. Other There are 1200 km of cycling paths including about 100 km paths on flood embankments. Wrocław has a bike rental network called the City Bike (Wrocławski Rower Miejski). It has 2000 bicycles and 200 self-service stations. In addition to regular bicycles, tandem, cargo, electric, folding, tricycles, children's, and handbikes are available, operating every year from 1 March to 30 November. During winter (December – February) 200 bikes are available in the system. Wrocław possesses a scooter-sharing system of Lime, Bird, Bolt and Hive Free Now – motorized scooter rental is available using a mobile application. Electronic car rental systems include Traficar, Panek CarSharing (hybrid cars), GoScooter and electric scooters using the mobile application. A gondola lift over the Oder called Polinka began operation in 2013. Wrocław also has a river port on the Oder and several marinas. Demographics In December 2020, the population of Wrocław was estimated at 641,928 individuals, of which 342,215 were women and 299,713 were men. Since 2011, the population has been steadily rising, with a 0.142% increase between 2019 and 2020, and a 2.167% increase in the years 2011–2020. In 2018, the crude birth rate stood at 11.8 and the mortality rate at 11.1 per 1,000 residents. The median age in 2018 was 43 years. The city's population is aging significantly; between 2013 and 2018, the number of seniors (per Statistics Poland – men aged 65 or above and women aged 60 or above) surged from 21.5% to 24.2%. Historically, the city's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in the year 1900 approximately 422,709 people were registered as residents and by 1933 the population was already 625,000. The strongest growth was recorded from 1900 to 1910, with almost 100,000 new residents within the city limits. Although the city was overwhelmingly German-speaking, the ethnic composition based on heritage or place of birth was mixed. According to a statistical report from 2000, around 43% of all inhabitants in 1910 were born outside Silesia and migrated into the city, mostly from the contemporary regions of Greater Poland (then the Prussian Partition of Poland) or Pomerania. Poles and Jews were among the most prominent active minorities. Simultaneously, the city's territorial expansion and incorporation of surrounding townships further strengthened population growth. Following the end of the Second World War and post-1945 expulsions of the pre-war population, Wrocław became predominantly Polish-speaking. New incomers were primarily resettled from areas in the east which Poland lost (Vilnius and Lviv), or from other provinces, notably the regions of Greater Poland, Lublin, Białystok and Rzeszów. At the end of 1947, the city's population was estimated at 225,000 individuals, most of whom were migrants. German nationals who stayed were either resettled in the late 1940s and 1950s, or assimilated. Contemporary Wrocław has one of the highest concentration of foreigners in Poland alongside Warsaw and Poznań; a significant majority are migrant workers from Ukraine; others came from Italy, Spain, South Korea, India, Russia and Turkey. No exact statistic exists on the number of temporary residents from abroad. Many are students studying at Wrocław's schools and institutions of higher learning. Religion Wrocław's population is predominantly Roman Catholic, like the rest of Poland. The diocese was founded in the city as early as 1000, it was one of the first dioceses in the country at that time. Now the city is the seat of a Catholic Archdiocese. Prior to World War II, Breslau was mostly inhabited by Protestants, followed by a large Roman Catholic and a significant Jewish minority. In 1939, of 620,976 inhabitants 368,464 were Protestants (United Protestants; mostly Lutherans and minority Reformed; in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), 193,805 Catholics, 2,135 other Christians and 10,659 Jews. Wrocław had the third largest Jewish population of all cities in Germany before the war. Its White Stork Synagogue was completed in 1840, and rededicated in 2010. Four years later, in 2014, it celebrated its first ordination of four rabbis and three cantors since the Holocaust. The Polish authorities together with the German Foreign Minister attended the official ceremony. Post-war resettlements from Poland's ethnically and religiously more diverse former eastern territories (known in Polish as Kresy) and the eastern parts of post-1945 Poland (see Operation Vistula) account for a comparatively large portion of Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians of mostly Ukrainian and Lemko descent. Wrocław is also unique for its "Dzielnica Czterech Świątyń" (Borough of Four Temples) — a part of Stare Miasto (Old Town) where a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Roman Catholic church and an Eastern Orthodox church stand near each other. Other Christian denominations present in Wrocław include Adventists, Baptists, Free Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Methodists and Pentecostals. There are also minor associations practicing and promoting Rodnovery neopaganism. In 2007, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wrocław established the Pastoral Centre for English Speakers, which offers Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, as well as other sacraments, fellowship, retreats, catechesis and pastoral care for all English-speaking Catholics and non-Catholics interested in the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Centre is under the care of Order of Friars Minor, Conventual (Franciscans) of the Kraków Province in the parish of St Charles Borromeo (Św Karol Boromeusz). Education Wrocław is the third largest educational centre of Poland, with 135,000 students in 30 colleges which employ some 7,400 staff. List of ten public colleges and universities: Wrocław University (Uniwersytet Wrocławski): over 47,000 students, ranked fourth among public universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław University of Technology (Politechnika Wrocławska): over 40,000 students, the best university of technology in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław Medical University (Uniwersytet Medyczny we Wrocławiu) University School of Physical Education in Wrocław Wrocław University of Economics (Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu) over 18,000 students, ranked fifth best among public economic universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu): over 13,000 students, ranked third best among public agricultural universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych we Wrocławiu), Karol Lipiński University of Music (Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego we Wrocławiu) Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts, Wrocław Campus (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna w Krakowie filia we Wrocławiu) The Tadeusz Kościuszko Land Forces Military Academy (Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska Wojsk Lądowych) Private universities: Wyższa Szkoła Bankowa (University of Business in Wrocław) University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospołeczny) University of Law (Wyższa Szkoła Prawa) Coventry University Wrocław (Branch campus of the Coventry University, UK) Other cultural institutions: Alliance Française in Wrocław Austrian Institute in Wrocław British Council in Wrocław Dante Alighieri Society in Wrocław Grotowski Institute in Wrocław Culture and landmarks Old Town The Old Town of Wrocław is listed in the Registry of Objects of Cultural Heritage and is, since 1994, on Poland's prestigious list of National Monuments. Several architectural landmarks and edifices are one of the best examples of Brick Gothic and Baroque architecture in the country. Fine examples of Neoclassicism, Gründerzeit and Historicism are also scattered across the city's central precinct. The Wrocław Opera House, Monopol Hotel, University Library, Ossolineum, the National Museum and the castle-like District Court are among some of the grandest and most recognizable historic structures. There are several examples of Art Nouveau and Modernism in pre-war retail establishments such as the Barasch-Feniks, Petersdorff-Kameleon and Renoma department stores. The Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island) is the oldest section of the city; it was once an isolated islet between the branches of the Oder River. The Wrocław Cathedral, one of the tallest churches in Poland, was erected in the mid 10th century and later expanded over the next hundreds of years. The island is also home to five other Christian temples and churches, the Archbishop's Palace, the Archdiocese Museum, a 9.5-metre 18th-century monument dedicated to Saint John of Nepomuk, historic tenements and the steel Tumski Bridge from 1889. A notable attraction are 102 original gas lanterns which are manually lit each evening by a cloaked lamplighter. The early 13th-century Main Market Square (Rynek) is the oldest medieval public square in Poland, and also one of the largest. It features the ornate Gothic Old Town Hall, the oldest of its kind in the country. In the north-west corner of the square is St. Elisabeth's Church (Bazylika Św. Elżbiety) with its 91.5-metre-high tower and an observation deck at an altitude of 75 metres. Beneath the basilica are two small medieval houses connected by an arched gate that once led into a churchyard; these were reshaped into their current form in the 1700s. Today, the two connected buildings are known to the city's residents as "Jaś i Małgosia", named after the children's fairy tale characters from Hansel and Gretel. North of the church are so-called "shambles" (Polish: jatki), a former meat market with a Monument of Remembrance for Slaughtered Animals. The Salt Square (now a flower market) opened in 1242 is located at the south-western corner of the Market Square – close to the square, between Szewska and Łaciarska streets, is the domeless 13th-century St. Mary Magdalene Church, which during the Reformation (1523) was converted into Wrocław's first Protestant temple. The Cathedral of St. Vincent and St. James and the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew's Collegiate Church are burial sites of Polish monarchs, Henry II the Pious and Henry IV Probus, respectively. The Pan Tadeusz Museum, open since May 2016, is located in the "House under the Golden Sun" at 6 Market Square. The manuscript of the national epos, Pan Tadeusz, is housed there as part of the Ossolineum National Institute, with multimedia and interactive educational opportunities. Tourism and places of interest The Tourist Information Centre () is situated on the Main Market Square (Rynek) in building no 14. In 2011, Wrocław was visited by about 3 million tourists, and in 2016 about 5 million. Free wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) is available at a number of places around town. Wrocław is a major attraction for both domestic and international tourists. Noteworthy landmarks include the Multimedia Fountain, Szczytnicki Park with its Japanese Garden, miniature park and dinosaur park, the Botanical Garden founded in 1811, Poland's largest railway model Kolejkowo, Hydropolis Centre for Ecological Education, University of Wrocław with Mathematical Tower, Church of the Name of Jesus, Wrocław water tower, the Royal Palace, ropes course on the Opatowicka Island, White Stork Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Cemetery of Italian Soldiers. An interesting way to explore the city is seeking out Wrocław's dwarfs – over 600 small bronze figurines can be found across the city, on pavements, walls and lampposts. They first appeared in 2005. Wrocław Zoo is home to the Africarium – the only space devoted solely to exhibiting the fauna of Africa with an oceanarium. It is the oldest zoological garden in Poland established in 1865. It is also the third-largest zoo in the world in terms of the number of animal species on display. Small passenger vessels on the Oder offer river tours, as do historic trams or the converted open-topped historic buses Jelcz 043. The Centennial Hall (Hala Stulecia, ), designed by Max Berg in 1911–1913, is a World Heritage Site listed by UNESCO in 2006. Entertainment The city is well known for its large number of nightclubs and pubs. Many are in or near the Market Square, and in the Niepolda passage, the railway wharf on the Bogusławskiego street. The basement of the old City Hall houses one of the oldest restaurants in Europe—Piwnica Świdnicka (operating since around 1273), while the basement of the new City Hall contains the brewpub Spiż. There are many other craft breweries in Wrocław: three brewpubs – Browar Stu Mostów, Browar Staromiejski Złoty Pies, Browar Rodzinny Prost; two microbrewery – Profesja and Warsztat Piwowarski; and seven contract breweries – Doctor Brew, Genius Loci, Solipiwko, Pol A Czech, Baba Jaga, wBrew and Wielka Wyspa. Every year on the second weekend of June the Festival of Good Beer takes place. It is the biggest beer festival in Poland. Each year in November and December the Christmas market is held at the Main Market Square. Museums The National Museum at Powstańców Warszawy Square, one of Poland's main branches of the National Museum system, holds one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the country. Ossolineum is a National Institute and Library incorporating the Lubomirski Museum (pl), partially salvaged from the formerly Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine), containing items of international and national significance. It has a history of major World War II theft of collections after the invasion and takeover of Lwów by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Major museums also include the City Museum of Wrocław (pl), Museum of Bourgeois Art in the Old Town Hall, Museum of Architecture, Archaeological Museum (pl), Museum of Natural History at University	Poznań, Bydgoszcz; the S8 express road towards Oleśnica, Łódź, Warsaw, Białystok; and the National Road 8 to Prague, Brno and other townships in the Czech Republic. Traffic congestion is a significant issue in Wrocław as in most Polish cities; in early 2020 it was ranked as the fifth-most congested city in Poland, and 41st in the world. On average, a car driver in Wrocław annually spends seven days and two hours in a traffic jam. Roadblocks, gridlocks and narrow cobblestone streets around the Old Town are considerable obstacles for drivers. The lack of parking space is also a major setback; private lots or on-street pay bays are the most common means of parking. A study in 2019 has revealed that there are approximately 130 vehicles per each parking spot, and the search for an unoccupied bay takes on average eight minutes. Aviation The city is served by Copernicus Airport Wrocław (coded WRO), situated around 10 kilometres southwest from the central precinct. The airport handles passenger flights with LOT Polish Airlines, Buzz, Ryanair, Wizz Air, Lufthansa, Eurowings, Air France, KLM, Scandinavian Airlines, Swiss International Air Lines and air cargo connections. In 2019 over a 3.5 million passengers passed through the airport, placing it fifth on the list of busiest airports in Poland. Among the permanent and traditional destinations are Warsaw, Amsterdam, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt am Main, Zürich and Budapest. Low-cost flights are common among British, Italian, Spanish and Ukrainian travellers, based on the number of destinations. Seasonal charter flights are primarily targeted at Polish holidaymakers travelling to Southern Europe and North Africa. Rail and bus The main rail station is Wrocław Główny, which is the largest railway station in Poland by the number of passengers served (21,2 million passengers a year), and perhaps the most important railroad junction alongside Warsaw Central station. The station is supported by PKP Intercity, Polregio, Koleje Dolnośląskie and Leo Express. There are direct connections to Szczecin, Poznań, and to Warsaw Central through Łódź Fabryczna station. There is also a regular connection to Berlin Hauptbahnhof and Wien Hauptbahnhof (Vienna), as well as indirect to Praha hlavní nádraží (Prague) and Budapest-Nyugati with one transfer depending on the carrier. Adjacent to the railway station, is a central bus station located in the basement of the shopping mall Wroclavia, with services offered by PKS, Neobus, Flixbus, Sindbad, and others. Public transport As of 2020, the public transport in Wrocław comprises 99 bus lines and a well-developed network of 23 tram lines (with a length over 200 kilometres) operated by the Municipal Transport Company MPK (). Rides are paid for, tickets can be purchased in kiosks and vending machines, which are located at bus stops, as well as in the vending machines located in the vehicle (payment contactless payment card, the ticket is saved on the card). The tickets are available for purchase in the electronic form via mobile app: mPay, Apple Pay, SkyCash, Mobill, Google Pay. Tickets are one-ride or temporary (0.25, 0.5, 1, 1.5, 24, 48, 72, or 168 hours). Over a dozen traditional taxicab firms operate in the city as well as Uber, , Bolt and Free Now. Other There are 1200 km of cycling paths including about 100 km paths on flood embankments. Wrocław has a bike rental network called the City Bike (Wrocławski Rower Miejski). It has 2000 bicycles and 200 self-service stations. In addition to regular bicycles, tandem, cargo, electric, folding, tricycles, children's, and handbikes are available, operating every year from 1 March to 30 November. During winter (December – February) 200 bikes are available in the system. Wrocław possesses a scooter-sharing system of Lime, Bird, Bolt and Hive Free Now – motorized scooter rental is available using a mobile application. Electronic car rental systems include Traficar, Panek CarSharing (hybrid cars), GoScooter and electric scooters using the mobile application. A gondola lift over the Oder called Polinka began operation in 2013. Wrocław also has a river port on the Oder and several marinas. Demographics In December 2020, the population of Wrocław was estimated at 641,928 individuals, of which 342,215 were women and 299,713 were men. Since 2011, the population has been steadily rising, with a 0.142% increase between 2019 and 2020, and a 2.167% increase in the years 2011–2020. In 2018, the crude birth rate stood at 11.8 and the mortality rate at 11.1 per 1,000 residents. The median age in 2018 was 43 years. The city's population is aging significantly; between 2013 and 2018, the number of seniors (per Statistics Poland – men aged 65 or above and women aged 60 or above) surged from 21.5% to 24.2%. Historically, the city's population grew rapidly throughout the 19th and 20th centuries; in the year 1900 approximately 422,709 people were registered as residents and by 1933 the population was already 625,000. The strongest growth was recorded from 1900 to 1910, with almost 100,000 new residents within the city limits. Although the city was overwhelmingly German-speaking, the ethnic composition based on heritage or place of birth was mixed. According to a statistical report from 2000, around 43% of all inhabitants in 1910 were born outside Silesia and migrated into the city, mostly from the contemporary regions of Greater Poland (then the Prussian Partition of Poland) or Pomerania. Poles and Jews were among the most prominent active minorities. Simultaneously, the city's territorial expansion and incorporation of surrounding townships further strengthened population growth. Following the end of the Second World War and post-1945 expulsions of the pre-war population, Wrocław became predominantly Polish-speaking. New incomers were primarily resettled from areas in the east which Poland lost (Vilnius and Lviv), or from other provinces, notably the regions of Greater Poland, Lublin, Białystok and Rzeszów. At the end of 1947, the city's population was estimated at 225,000 individuals, most of whom were migrants. German nationals who stayed were either resettled in the late 1940s and 1950s, or assimilated. Contemporary Wrocław has one of the highest concentration of foreigners in Poland alongside Warsaw and Poznań; a significant majority are migrant workers from Ukraine; others came from Italy, Spain, South Korea, India, Russia and Turkey. No exact statistic exists on the number of temporary residents from abroad. Many are students studying at Wrocław's schools and institutions of higher learning. Religion Wrocław's population is predominantly Roman Catholic, like the rest of Poland. The diocese was founded in the city as early as 1000, it was one of the first dioceses in the country at that time. Now the city is the seat of a Catholic Archdiocese. Prior to World War II, Breslau was mostly inhabited by Protestants, followed by a large Roman Catholic and a significant Jewish minority. In 1939, of 620,976 inhabitants 368,464 were Protestants (United Protestants; mostly Lutherans and minority Reformed; in the Evangelical Church of the old-Prussian Union), 193,805 Catholics, 2,135 other Christians and 10,659 Jews. Wrocław had the third largest Jewish population of all cities in Germany before the war. Its White Stork Synagogue was completed in 1840, and rededicated in 2010. Four years later, in 2014, it celebrated its first ordination of four rabbis and three cantors since the Holocaust. The Polish authorities together with the German Foreign Minister attended the official ceremony. Post-war resettlements from Poland's ethnically and religiously more diverse former eastern territories (known in Polish as Kresy) and the eastern parts of post-1945 Poland (see Operation Vistula) account for a comparatively large portion of Greek Catholics and Orthodox Christians of mostly Ukrainian and Lemko descent. Wrocław is also unique for its "Dzielnica Czterech Świątyń" (Borough of Four Temples) — a part of Stare Miasto (Old Town) where a synagogue, a Lutheran church, a Roman Catholic church and an Eastern Orthodox church stand near each other. Other Christian denominations present in Wrocław include Adventists, Baptists, Free Christians, Jehovah's Witnesses, Latter-day Saints, Methodists and Pentecostals. There are also minor associations practicing and promoting Rodnovery neopaganism. In 2007, the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Wrocław established the Pastoral Centre for English Speakers, which offers Mass on Sundays and Holy Days of Obligation, as well as other sacraments, fellowship, retreats, catechesis and pastoral care for all English-speaking Catholics and non-Catholics interested in the Catholic Church. The Pastoral Centre is under the care of Order of Friars Minor, Conventual (Franciscans) of the Kraków Province in the parish of St Charles Borromeo (Św Karol Boromeusz). Education Wrocław is the third largest educational centre of Poland, with 135,000 students in 30 colleges which employ some 7,400 staff. List of ten public colleges and universities: Wrocław University (Uniwersytet Wrocławski): over 47,000 students, ranked fourth among public universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław University of Technology (Politechnika Wrocławska): over 40,000 students, the best university of technology in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław Medical University (Uniwersytet Medyczny we Wrocławiu) University School of Physical Education in Wrocław Wrocław University of Economics (Uniwersytet Ekonomiczny we Wrocławiu) over 18,000 students, ranked fifth best among public economic universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Wrocław University of Environmental and Life Sciences (Uniwersytet Przyrodniczy we Wrocławiu): over 13,000 students, ranked third best among public agricultural universities in Poland by the Wprost weekly ranking in 2007 Academy of Fine Arts in Wrocław (Akademia Sztuk Pięknych we Wrocławiu), Karol Lipiński University of Music (Akademia Muzyczna im. Karola Lipińskiego we Wrocławiu) Ludwik Solski Academy for the Dramatic Arts, Wrocław Campus (Państwowa Wyższa Szkoła Teatralna w Krakowie filia we Wrocławiu) The Tadeusz Kościuszko Land Forces Military Academy (Wyższa Szkoła Oficerska Wojsk Lądowych) Private universities: Wyższa Szkoła Bankowa (University of Business in Wrocław) University of Social Sciences and Humanities (SWPS Uniwersytet Humanistycznospołeczny) University of Law (Wyższa Szkoła Prawa) Coventry University Wrocław (Branch campus of the Coventry University, UK) Other cultural institutions: Alliance Française in Wrocław Austrian Institute in Wrocław British Council in Wrocław Dante Alighieri Society in Wrocław Grotowski Institute in Wrocław Culture and landmarks Old Town The Old Town of Wrocław is listed in the Registry of Objects of Cultural Heritage and is, since 1994, on Poland's prestigious list of National Monuments. Several architectural landmarks and edifices are one of the best examples of Brick Gothic and Baroque architecture in the country. Fine examples of Neoclassicism, Gründerzeit and Historicism are also scattered across the city's central precinct. The Wrocław Opera House, Monopol Hotel, University Library, Ossolineum, the National Museum and the castle-like District Court are among some of the grandest and most recognizable historic structures. There are several examples of Art Nouveau and Modernism in pre-war retail establishments such as the Barasch-Feniks, Petersdorff-Kameleon and Renoma department stores. The Ostrów Tumski (Cathedral Island) is the oldest section of the city; it was once an isolated islet between the branches of the Oder River. The Wrocław Cathedral, one of the tallest churches in Poland, was erected in the mid 10th century and later expanded over the next hundreds of years. The island is also home to five other Christian temples and churches, the Archbishop's Palace, the Archdiocese Museum, a 9.5-metre 18th-century monument dedicated to Saint John of Nepomuk, historic tenements and the steel Tumski Bridge from 1889. A notable attraction are 102 original gas lanterns which are manually lit each evening by a cloaked lamplighter. The early 13th-century Main Market Square (Rynek) is the oldest medieval public square in Poland, and also one of the largest. It features the ornate Gothic Old Town Hall, the oldest of its kind in the country. In the north-west corner of the square is St. Elisabeth's Church (Bazylika Św. Elżbiety) with its 91.5-metre-high tower and an observation deck at an altitude of 75 metres. Beneath the basilica are two small medieval houses connected by an arched gate that once led into a churchyard; these were reshaped into their current form in the 1700s. Today, the two connected buildings are known to the city's residents as "Jaś i Małgosia", named after the children's fairy tale characters from Hansel and Gretel. North of the church are so-called "shambles" (Polish: jatki), a former meat market with a Monument of Remembrance for Slaughtered Animals. The Salt Square (now a flower market) opened in 1242 is located at the south-western corner of the Market Square – close to the square, between Szewska and Łaciarska streets, is the domeless 13th-century St. Mary Magdalene Church, which during the Reformation (1523) was converted into Wrocław's first Protestant temple. The Cathedral of St. Vincent and St. James and the Holy Cross and St. Bartholomew's Collegiate Church are burial sites of Polish monarchs, Henry II the Pious and Henry IV Probus, respectively. The Pan Tadeusz Museum, open since May 2016, is located in the "House under the Golden Sun" at 6 Market Square. The manuscript of the national epos, Pan Tadeusz, is housed there as part of the Ossolineum National Institute, with multimedia and interactive educational opportunities. Tourism and places of interest The Tourist Information Centre () is situated on the Main Market Square (Rynek) in building no 14. In 2011, Wrocław was visited by about 3 million tourists, and in 2016 about 5 million. Free wireless Internet (Wi-Fi) is available at a number of places around town. Wrocław is a major attraction for both domestic and international tourists. Noteworthy landmarks include the Multimedia Fountain, Szczytnicki Park with its Japanese Garden, miniature park and dinosaur park, the Botanical Garden founded in 1811, Poland's largest railway model Kolejkowo, Hydropolis Centre for Ecological Education, University of Wrocław with Mathematical Tower, Church of the Name of Jesus, Wrocław water tower, the Royal Palace, ropes course on the Opatowicka Island, White Stork Synagogue, the Old Jewish Cemetery and the Cemetery of Italian Soldiers. An interesting way to explore the city is seeking out Wrocław's dwarfs – over 600 small bronze figurines can be found across the city, on pavements, walls and lampposts. They first appeared in 2005. Wrocław Zoo is home to the Africarium – the only space devoted solely to exhibiting the fauna of Africa with an oceanarium. It is the oldest zoological garden in Poland established in 1865. It is also the third-largest zoo in the world in terms of the number of animal species on display. Small passenger vessels on the Oder offer river tours, as do historic trams or the converted open-topped historic buses Jelcz 043. The Centennial Hall (Hala Stulecia, ), designed by Max Berg in 1911–1913, is a World Heritage Site listed by UNESCO in 2006. Entertainment The city is well known for its large number of nightclubs and pubs. Many are in or near the Market Square, and in the Niepolda passage, the railway wharf on the Bogusławskiego street. The basement of the old City Hall houses one of the oldest restaurants in Europe—Piwnica Świdnicka (operating since around 1273), while the basement of the new City Hall contains the brewpub Spiż. There are many other craft breweries in Wrocław: three brewpubs – Browar Stu Mostów, Browar Staromiejski Złoty Pies, Browar Rodzinny Prost; two microbrewery – Profesja and Warsztat Piwowarski; and seven contract breweries – Doctor Brew, Genius Loci, Solipiwko, Pol A Czech, Baba Jaga, wBrew and Wielka Wyspa. Every year on the second weekend of June the Festival of Good Beer takes place. It is the biggest beer festival in Poland. Each year in November and December the Christmas market is held at the Main Market Square. Museums The National Museum at Powstańców Warszawy Square, one of Poland's main branches of the National Museum system, holds one of the largest collections of contemporary art in the country. Ossolineum is a National Institute and Library incorporating the Lubomirski Museum (pl), partially salvaged from the formerly Polish city of Lwów (now Lviv in Ukraine), containing items of international and national significance. It has a history of major World War II theft of collections after the invasion and takeover of Lwów by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. Major museums also include the City Museum of Wrocław (pl), Museum of Bourgeois Art in the Old Town Hall, Museum of Architecture, Archaeological Museum (pl), Museum of Natural History at University of Wrocław, Museum of Contemporary Art in Wrocław, Archdiocese Museum (pl), Galeria Awangarda, the Arsenal, Museum of Pharmacy (pl), Post and Telecommunications Museum (pl), Geological Museum (pl), the Mineralogical Museum (pl), Ethnographic Museum (pl). Wrocław in literature The history of Wrocław is described in minute detail in the monograph Microcosm: Portrait of a Central European City by Norman Davies and Roger Moorhouse. A number of books have been written about Wrocław following World War II. Wrocław philologist and writer Marek Krajewski wrote a series of crime novels about detective Eberhard Mock, a fictional character from the city of Breslau. Accordingly, Michał Kaczmarek published Wrocław according to Eberhard Mock – Guide based on the books by Marek Krajewski. In 2011 appeared the 1104-page Lexicon of the architecture of Wrocław and in 2013 a 960-page Lexicon about the greenery of Wrocław. In March 2015 Wrocław filed an application to become a UNESCO City of Literature and received it in 2019. Films, music and theatre Wrocław is home to the Audiovisual Technology Center (formerly Wytwórnia Filmów Fabularnych), the Film Stuntman School, ATM Grupa, Grupa 13, and Tako Media. Film directors Andrzej Wajda, Krzysztof Kieślowski, Sylwester Chęciński, among others, made their film debuts in Wrocław. Numerous movies shot around the city include Ashes and Diamonds, The Saragossa Manuscript, Sami swoi, Lalka, A Lonely Woman, Character, Aimée & Jaguar, Avalon, A Woman in Berlin, Suicide Room, The Winner, 80 Million, Run Boy Run, Bridge of Spies and Breaking the Limits. Numerous Polish TV-series were also shot in Wrocław, notably Świat według Kiepskich, Pierwsza miłość, Belfer, and Four Tank-Men and a Dog. There are several theatres and theatre groups, including Polish Theatre (Teatr Polski) with three stages, and Contemporary Theatre (Wrocławski Teatr Współczesny). The International Theatre Festival Dialog-Wrocław is held every two years. Wrocław's opera traditions are dating back to the first half of the seventeenth century and sustained by the Wrocław Opera, built between 1839 and 1841. Wrocław Philharmonic, established in 1954 by Wojciech Dzieduszycki is also important for music lovers. The National Forum of Music was opened in 2015 and is a famous landmark, designed by the Polish architectural firm, Kurylowicz & Associates. Sports The area of Wrocław is home to many popular professional sports teams; the most popular sport is football (Śląsk Wrocław club – Polish Champion in 1977 and 2012), followed by basketball (Śląsk Wrocław Basketball Club – award-winning men's basketball team and 17-time Polish Champion). Matches of Group A UEFA Euro 2012's were held at Wrocław at the Municipal Stadium. Matches of EuroBasket 1963 and EuroBasket 2009, as well as 2009 Women's European Volleyball Championship, 2014 FIVB Volleyball Men's World Championship and 2016 European Men's Handball Championship were also held in Wrocław. Wrocław was the host of the 2013 World Weightlifting Championships and will the host World Championship 2016 of Duplicate bridge and World Games 2017, a competition in 37 non-Olympic sport disciplines. The Olympic Stadium in Wrocław hosts the Speedway Grand Prix of Poland. It is also the home arena of the popular motorcycle speedway club WTS Sparta Wrocław, four-time Polish Champion. A marathon takes place in Wrocław every year in September. Wrocław also hosts the Wrocław Open, a professional tennis tournament that is part of the ATP Challenger Tour. Men's sports Śląsk Wrocław: men's football team, Polish Championship in Football 1977, 2012; Polish Cup winner 1976, 1987; Polish SuperCup winner 1987, 2012; Polish League Cup winner 2009. Now in Ekstraklasa (Polish Premier League). Śląsk Wrocław (previous names: BASCO Śląsk Wrocław, ASCO Śląsk Wrocław, Bergson Śląsk Wrocław, Era Śląsk Wrocław, Deichmann Śląsk Wrocław, Idea Śląsk Wrocław, Zepter Idea Śląsk Wrocław, Zepter Śląsk Wrocław, Śląsk ESKA Wrocław, PCS Śląsk Wrocław, WKS Śląsk Wrocław)—men's basketball team, 17 times Polish Champion, six times runner-up, 14 times third place; 12 times Polish Cup winner. Śląsk Wrocław: men's handball team, 15-time Polish Champion. WTS Sparta Wrocław: motorcycle speedway team, four-time Polish Champion. Gwardia Wrocław: volleyball team, three-time Polish Champion. KS Rugby Wrocław: rugby union team. Panthers Wrocław: American football team. Panthers joined European League of Football (ELF) which is an eight-team professional league, the first league in Europe since the demise of NFL Europe. The Panthers will start playing games against teams from Germany and Spain in June 2021. Women's sports WKS Śląsk Wrocław (formerly KŚ AZS Wrocław): women's football team. AZS AWF Wrocław: women's handball team. AZS AE Wrocław: women's table tennis team. Ślęza Wrocław: women's basketball team. Notable people Alois Alzheimer, psychiatrist and neuropathologist Adolf Anderssen, chess master Đorđe Andrejević-Kun, painter Natalia Avelon, actress Max Berg, architect Max Bielschowsky, neuropathologist Dietrich Bonhoeffer, theologian, anti-Nazi dissident Edmund Bojanowski, blessed of the Catholic Church Max Born, theoretical physicist and mathematician, Nobel laureate Leszek Czarnecki, businessman Hermann von Eichhorn, Prussian field marshal Artur Ekert, physicist Hermann Fernau, lawyer Władysław Frasyniuk, politician Jolanta Fraszyńska, actress Hans Freeman, biochemist Henryk Gulbinowicz, archbishop Jerzy Grotowski, theater director Klaudia Jachira, politician and comedian Fritz Haber, chemist and Nobel
hostilities appeared inevitable. Partition treaties Unlike the crowns of France or Austria, that of Spain could be inherited through the female line. This allowed Charles' sisters Maria Theresa (1638–1683) and Margaret Theresa (1651–1673) to pass their rights onto the children of their respective marriages with Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold. Louis sought to avoid conflict over the issue through direct negotiation with his main opponent William III of England, while excluding the Spanish. Maria Antonia (1669–1692), daughter of Leopold and Margaret, married Maximillian Emanuel of Bavaria in 1685, and on 28 October 1692, they had a son, Joseph Ferdinand. Under the October 1698 Treaty of the Hague between France, Britain and the Dutch Republic, five-year old Joseph was designated heir to Charles II; in return, France and Austria would receive parts of Spain's European territories. Charles refused to accept this; on 14 November 1698, he published a will leaving an undivided Spanish monarchy to Joseph Ferdinand. However, the latter's death from smallpox in February 1699 undid these arrangements. In 1685, Maria Antonia passed her claim to the Spanish throne onto Leopold's sons, Joseph and Archduke Charles. Her right to do so was doubtful, but Louis and William used this to devise the 1700 Treaty of London. Archduke Charles became the new heir, while France, Savoy and Austria received territorial compensation; however, since neither Leopold or Charles agreed, the treaty was largely pointless. By early October 1700, Charles was clearly dying; his final will left the throne to Louis XIV's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou; if he refused, the offer would pass to his younger brother the Duke of Berry, followed by Archduke Charles. Charles died on 1 November 1700, and on the 9th, Spanish ambassadors formally offered the throne to Philip. Louis briefly considered refusing; although it meant the succession of Archduke Charles, insisting William help him enforce the Treaty of London meant he might achieve his territorial aims without fighting. However, his son the Dauphin rejected the idea; French diplomats also advised Austria would fight regardless, while neither the British or Dutch would go to war for a settlement intended to avoid war. Louis therefore accepted on behalf of his grandson, who was proclaimed Philip V of Spain on 16 November 1700. Prelude to war With most of his objectives achieved by diplomacy, Louis now made a series of moves that combined to make war inevitable. The Tory majority in the English Parliament objected to the Partition Treaties, chiefly the French acquisition of Sicily, an important link in the lucrative Levant trade. However, a foreign diplomat observed their refusal to become involved in a European war was true 'only so long as English commerce does not suffer.' Louis either failed to appreciate this or decided to ignore it and his actions gradually eroded Tory opposition. In early 1701, Louis registered Philip's claim to the French throne with the Paris Parlement, raising the possibility of union with Spain, contrary to Charles' will. In February, the Spanish-controlled Duchies of Milan and Mantua in Northern Italy announced their support for Philip and accepted French troops. Combined with efforts to build an alliance between France and Imperial German states in Swabia and Franconia, these were challenges Leopold could not ignore. Helped by the Viceroy, Max Emanuel of Bavaria, French troops replaced Dutch garrisons in the 'Barrier' fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, granted at Ryswick. It also threatened the monopoly over the Scheldt granted by the 1648 Peace of Münster, while French control of Antwerp and Ostend would allow them to blockade the English Channel at will. Combined with other French actions that threatened English trade, this produced a clear majority for war and in May 1701, Parliament urged William to negotiate an anti-French alliance. On 7 September, Leopold, the Dutch Republic and Britain signed the Treaty of The Hague renewing the 1689 Grand Alliance. Its provisions included securing the Dutch Barrier in the Spanish Netherlands, the Protestant succession in England and Scotland and an independent Spain but did not refer to placing Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne. When the exiled James II of England died on 16 September 1701, Louis reneged on his recognition of the Protestant William III as king of England and Scotland and supported the claim of James' son, James Francis Edward Stuart. War became inevitable and when William himself died in March 1702, his successor Queen Anne confirmed her support for the Treaty of the Hague. The Dutch did the same and on 15 May the Grand Alliance declared war on France, followed by the Imperial Diet on 30 September. General strategic drivers The importance of trade and economic interests to the participants is often underestimated; contemporaries viewed Dutch and English support for the Habsburg cause as primarily driven by a desire for access to the American markets. Modern economists generally assume a constantly growing market, but the then-dominant theory of Mercantilism viewed it as relatively static. Increasing one's share implied taking it from someone else, and the government's role was to restrict foreign competition by attacking merchant ships and colonies. This expanded the war to North America, India, and other parts of Asia, with tariffs used as a policy weapon. From 1690 to 1704, English import duties on foreign goods increased by 400%, and the 1651–1663 Navigation Acts were a major factor in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. On 6 September 1700, France banned the import of English manufactured goods such as cloth, and imposed prohibitive duties on a wide range of others. Armies of the Nine Years' War often exceeded 100,000 men, levels unsustainable for pre-industrial economies; those of 1701–1714 averaged around 35,000 to 50,000. Dependence on water-borne transport for supplying these numbers meant campaigns were focused on rivers like the Rhine and Adda, which limited operations in poor areas like Northern Spain. Better logistics, unified command, and simpler internal lines of communication gave Bourbon armies an advantage over their opponents. Strategic objectives by participant Britain (England and Scotland pre-1707) British foreign policy was based on three general principles, which remained consistent from the 16th through the 20th centuries. First and overriding all others, preserve a balance of power in Europe, which was threatened by French expansion under Louis XIV. Second, prevent the Low Countries being controlled by a hostile power or one stronger than Britain; this included both the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, whose deep harbours and prevailing winds made her a natural embarkation point for an attack on England, as demonstrated in 1688. Third, maintain a navy strong enough to protect British trade, control her waters and launch attacks on her enemies' commercial routes and coastal areas. Alignment on reducing the power of France and securing the Protestant succession for the British throne masked differences on how to achieve them. In general, the Tories favoured a mercantilist strategy of using the Royal Navy to attack French and Spanish trade while protecting and expanding their own; land commitments were viewed as expensive and primarily of benefit to others. The Whigs argued France could not be defeated by seapower alone, making a Continental strategy essential, while Britain's financial strength made it the only member of the Alliance able to operate on all fronts against France. Dutch Republic Although the English Duke of Marlborough was Allied commander in the Low Countries, the Dutch provided much of the manpower, and strategy in this theatre was subject to their approval. The 1672 to 1678 Franco-Dutch War showed the Spanish could not defend the Southern Netherlands, and so the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick allowed the Dutch to place garrisons in eight key cities. They hoped this barrier would provide the strategic depth needed to protect their commercial and demographic heartlands around Amsterdam against attack from the south. In the event, they were quickly over-run in 1701, then later in 1748, and modern historians consider the idea fundamentally flawed. However, Dutch priorities were to re-establish and strengthen the Barrier fortresses, retain control of the economically vital Scheldt estuary, and gain access to trade in the Spanish Empire. Austria / Holy Roman Empire Despite being the dominant power within the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian and Imperial interests did not always coincide. The Habsburgs wanted to put Archduke Charles on the throne of an undivided Spanish Monarchy, while their Allies were fighting to prevent either the Bourbons or the Habsburgs from doing so. This divergence and Austria's financial collapse in 1703 meant the campaign in Spain was reliant on Anglo-Dutch naval support and after 1706, British funding. Particularly during the reign of Joseph I, the priority for the Habsburgs was to secure their southern borders from French intervention in northern Italy and suppress Rákóczi's War of Independence in Hungary. Much of the Spanish nobility resented what they considered to be the arrogance of the Austrians, a key factor in the selection of Philip as their preferred candidate in 1700. In return for British support, Charles agreed to major commercial concessions within the Empire, as well as accepting British control of Gibraltar and Menorca. These made him widely unpopular at all levels of Spanish society, and he was never able to sustain himself outside the coastal regions, which could be supplied by the Royal Navy. The Wittelsbach-controlled states of Bavaria, Liège, Cologne allied with France, but the vast majority of the Empire remained neutral, or limited their involvement to the supply of mercenaries. Like Bavaria, the larger entities pursued their own policies; his claim to the Polish crown meant Augustus of Saxony focused on the Great Northern War, while Frederick I made his support dependent on Leopold recognising Prussia as a kingdom and making it an equal member of the Grand Alliance. Since George, Elector Hanover was also heir to the British throne, his support was more reliable, but the suspicion remained the interests of Hanover came first. France Under Louis XIV, France was the most powerful state in Europe with revenue-generating capacities that far exceeded its rivals. Its geographical position provided enormous tactical flexibility; unlike Austria, it had its navy, and as the campaigns of 1708–1710 proved, even under severe pressure it could defend its borders. The Nine Years' War had shown France could not impose its objectives without support but the alliance with Spain and Bavaria made a successful outcome far more likely. Apart from denying an undivided Spanish Monarchy to others, Louis's objectives were to secure his borders with the Holy Roman Empire, weaken Austria and increase French commercial strength through access to the trade of the Americas. Spain In 1700, Spain remained a great power in terms of territory controlled, while recent research shows imports of bullion from the Americas actually reached their highest level between 1670 and 1700. However, this concealed major structural weaknesses; the vast majority of these imports were used to fund debt or pay foreign merchants. When the new Bourbon administration took over in 1701, they found the Empire bankrupt and effectively defenceless, with fewer than 15,000 troops in Spain itself and a navy consisting of 20 ships in total. Almost constant warfare during the 17th century made the economy subject to long periods of low productivity and depression, and largely reliant upon others for its prosperity. In many ways, the continued existence of the Empire was not due to Spanish strength but to maintain a balance between the powers competing for a share of its markets. Despite fighting a series of wars against Spain from 1667 to 1697, France was also its most significant economic partner, supplying labour and controlling a large proportion of its foreign trade. This consideration was an important factor in the decision to name Philip heir. Its dependence on others was illustrated in 1703; despite the presence of an invading Allied army, the French ambassador urged Louis to allow Dutch and English merchants to purchase wool from Spanish farmers, "otherwise the flocks cannot be maintained". Enacting political or economic reform was extremely complex since Habsburg Spain was a personal union between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, each with very different political cultures. Most of Philip's support came from the Castilian elite. The Spanish Netherlands had been governed by Bavaria since 1690, while links with Italy, traditionally the major source of Spanish recruits and funding, had been weakened by decades of neglect and heavy taxation. It was widely, if reluctantly, accepted in Madrid that preserving an independent Spanish empire required comprehensive reforms, including elimination of the privileges or Fueros held by the Aragonese states. It was no coincidence Archduke Charles had strong support in areas which were part of the Crown of Aragon, including Catalonia and Valencia. Savoy Over the course of the 17th century, the Savoyard state, generally known as Savoy, sought to replace Spain as the dominant power in Northern Italy. Savoy consisted of two main geographic segments; Piedmont, which contained the capital Turin, and the Duchy of Aosta on the Italian side of the Alps, with the Duchy of Savoy and County of Nice in Transalpine France. The latter were almost impossible to defend and combined with the anti-Habsburg policy pursued by Louis XIV and his predecessors, this meant Savoy generally sided with France. However, Piedmont provided foreign powers access to the restive southern French provinces of the Dauphiné and Vaunage, former Huguenot strongholds with a long history of rebellion. This provided Victor Amadeus II with a degree of leverage, allowing him to manoeuvre between opposing parties in order to expand his territories. During the Nine Years' War in 1690, Savoy joined the Grand Alliance before agreeing a separate peace with France in 1696. The accession of Philip V in 1701 led to a reversal of long-standing strategic policy, with France now supporting the Spanish position in Lombardy, rather than seeking to weaken it, and Austria doing the opposite. While Victor Amadeus initially allied Savoy with France, his long-term goal was the acquisition of Duchy of Milan, which neither the Bourbons or Habsburgs would relinquish voluntarily. In fact, as discussed elsewhere in this article, securing his borders in Italy was of greater concern to Emperor Leopold than Spain itself. This meant Britain was the only power inclined to help Victor Amadeus achieve this objective and he changed sides in 1703 after the Royal Navy won control of the Western Mediterranean. Military campaigns 1701–1708 Italy The war in Italy primarily involved the Spanish-ruled Duchies of Milan and Mantua, considered essential to the security of Austria's southern borders. In 1701, French troops occupied both cities and Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, allied with France, his daughter Maria Luisa marrying Philip V. In May 1701, an Imperial army under Prince Eugene of Savoy moved into Northern Italy; by February 1702, victories at Carpi, Chiari and Cremona forced the French behind the Adda river. Vendôme, one of the best French generals, took command and was substantially reinforced; Prince Eugene managed a draw at the Battle of Luzzara but the French recovered most of the territory lost the year before. In October 1703, Victor Amadeus declared war on France; by May 1706, the French held most of Savoy except Turin while victories at Cassano and Calcinato forced the Imperialists into the Trentino valley. However, in July 1706 Vendôme and any available forces were sent to reinforce France's northern frontier after the defeat at Ramillies. Reinforced by German auxiliaries led by Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, Prince Eugene broke the Siege of Turin in September; despite a minor French victory at Castiglione, the war in Italy was over. To the fury of his allies, in the March 1707 Convention of Milan Emperor Joseph gave French troops in Lombardy free passage to Southern France. A combined Savoyard-Imperial attack on the French base of Toulon planned for April was postponed when Imperial troops were diverted to seize the Spanish Bourbon Kingdom of Naples. By the time they besieged Toulon in August, the French were too strong, and they were forced to withdraw. By the end of 1707, fighting in Italy ceased, apart from small-scale attempts by Victor Amadeus to recover Nice and Savoy. Low Countries, Rhine and Danube The first objective for the Grand Alliance in this theatre was to secure the Dutch frontiers, threatened by the alliance between France, Bavaria, and Joseph Clemens of Bavaria, ruler of Liège and Cologne. During 1702, the Barrier fortresses were retaken along with Kaiserswerth, Venlo, Roermond and Liège. The 1703 campaign was marred by Allied conflicts over strategy; they failed to take Antwerp, and the Dutch narrowly escaped defeat at Ekeren in June, which led to bitter recriminations. On the Upper Rhine, Imperial forces under Louis of Baden remained on the defensive, although they took Landau in 1702. Throughout 1703, French victories at Friedlingen, Höchstädt and Speyerbach with the capture of Kehl, Breisach and Landau directly threatened Vienna. In 1704, Franco-Bavarian forces continued their advance with the Austrians struggling to suppress Rákóczi's revolt in Hungary. To relieve the pressure, Marlborough marched up the Rhine, joined forces with Louis of Baden and Prince Eugene, and crossed the Danube on 2 July. Allied victory at Blenheim on 13 August forced Bavaria out of the war and the Treaty of Ilbersheim placed it under Austrian rule. Allied efforts to exploit their victory in 1705 foundered on poor co-ordination, tactical disputes and command rivalries, while the ruthless rule of Leopold's successor Joseph in Bavaria caused a brief but vicious peasant revolt. In May 1706, an Allied force under Marlborough shattered a French army at the Battle of Ramillies and the Spanish Netherlands fell to the Allies in under two weeks. France assumed a defensive posture for the rest of the war; despite the loss of strongpoints like Lille, they prevented the Allies from making a decisive breach in their frontiers. By 1712, the overall position remained largely unchanged from 1706. Spain and Portugal British involvement was driven by safeguarding their trade routes in the Mediterranean, while by putting Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne, they hoped to gain commercial privileges within the Spanish Empire. The Habsburgs viewed Northern Italy and suppressing the Hungarian revolt as higher priorities, while after 1704 the Dutch focused on Flanders. As a result, this theatre was largely dependent on British naval and military support; high casualties from disease made it a heavy drain on resources, for little apparent benefit. Spain was a union between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, which was divided into the Principality of Catalonia, plus the Kingdoms of Aragon, Valencia, Majorca, Sicily, Naples and Sardinia. In 1701, Majorca, Naples, Sicily, and Sardinia declared for Philip, while a mixture of anti-Castilian and anti-French sentiment meant the others supported Archduke Charles, the most important being Catalonia. Allied victory at Vigo Bay in October 1702 persuaded Peter II of Portugal to switch sides,	Austrian Netherlands; although they remained a major commercial power, the cost of the war permanently damaged their economy. France withdrew backing for the exiled Jacobites and recognised the Hanoverians as heirs to the British throne; ensuring a friendly Spain was a major achievement, but left them financially exhausted. The decentralisation of the Holy Roman Empire continued, with Prussia, Bavaria and Saxony increasingly acting as independent states. Combined with victories over the Ottomans, this meant the Austrian Habsburgs increasingly switched their focus to southern Europe. Background In 1665, Charles II of Spain succeeded his father at the age of four. However, as he suffered from ill-health all his life, Charles II's own death was anticipated almost from birth, and the issue of his successor a matter of diplomatic debate for decades. In 1670, England agreed to support the rights of Louis XIV to the Spanish throne in the Treaty of Dover, while the terms of the 1688 Grand Alliance committed England and the Dutch Republic to back Leopold. In 1700, the Spanish Empire included possessions in Italy, the Spanish Netherlands, the Philippines and the Americas, and though no longer the dominant great power, it remained largely intact. Since acquisition by either the Austrian Habsburgs or French Bourbons would change the balance of power, its inheritance led to a war that involved most of Europe. The 1700–1721 Great Northern War is considered a connected conflict, for it impacted the involvement of states such as Sweden, Saxony, Denmark–Norway and Russia. During the 1688–1697 Nine Years' War, armies grew from an average of 25,000 in 1648 to over 100,000 by 1697, a level unsustainable for pre-industrial economies. The 1690s also marked the lowest point of the Little Ice Age, a period of colder and wetter weather that drastically reduced crop yields across Europe. It is estimated the Great Famine of 1695–1697 killed 15–25% of the population in present-day Scotland, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, and Sweden, plus another two million in France and Northern Italy. The 1697 Treaty of Ryswick was the result of mutual exhaustion and Louis' acceptance France could not achieve its objectives without allies. Since the succession was left unresolved, Leopold signed only with extreme reluctance in October 1697; it was clear Charles would never produce an heir and a resumption of hostilities appeared inevitable. Partition treaties Unlike the crowns of France or Austria, that of Spain could be inherited through the female line. This allowed Charles' sisters Maria Theresa (1638–1683) and Margaret Theresa (1651–1673) to pass their rights onto the children of their respective marriages with Louis XIV and Emperor Leopold. Louis sought to avoid conflict over the issue through direct negotiation with his main opponent William III of England, while excluding the Spanish. Maria Antonia (1669–1692), daughter of Leopold and Margaret, married Maximillian Emanuel of Bavaria in 1685, and on 28 October 1692, they had a son, Joseph Ferdinand. Under the October 1698 Treaty of the Hague between France, Britain and the Dutch Republic, five-year old Joseph was designated heir to Charles II; in return, France and Austria would receive parts of Spain's European territories. Charles refused to accept this; on 14 November 1698, he published a will leaving an undivided Spanish monarchy to Joseph Ferdinand. However, the latter's death from smallpox in February 1699 undid these arrangements. In 1685, Maria Antonia passed her claim to the Spanish throne onto Leopold's sons, Joseph and Archduke Charles. Her right to do so was doubtful, but Louis and William used this to devise the 1700 Treaty of London. Archduke Charles became the new heir, while France, Savoy and Austria received territorial compensation; however, since neither Leopold or Charles agreed, the treaty was largely pointless. By early October 1700, Charles was clearly dying; his final will left the throne to Louis XIV's grandson Philip, Duke of Anjou; if he refused, the offer would pass to his younger brother the Duke of Berry, followed by Archduke Charles. Charles died on 1 November 1700, and on the 9th, Spanish ambassadors formally offered the throne to Philip. Louis briefly considered refusing; although it meant the succession of Archduke Charles, insisting William help him enforce the Treaty of London meant he might achieve his territorial aims without fighting. However, his son the Dauphin rejected the idea; French diplomats also advised Austria would fight regardless, while neither the British or Dutch would go to war for a settlement intended to avoid war. Louis therefore accepted on behalf of his grandson, who was proclaimed Philip V of Spain on 16 November 1700. Prelude to war With most of his objectives achieved by diplomacy, Louis now made a series of moves that combined to make war inevitable. The Tory majority in the English Parliament objected to the Partition Treaties, chiefly the French acquisition of Sicily, an important link in the lucrative Levant trade. However, a foreign diplomat observed their refusal to become involved in a European war was true 'only so long as English commerce does not suffer.' Louis either failed to appreciate this or decided to ignore it and his actions gradually eroded Tory opposition. In early 1701, Louis registered Philip's claim to the French throne with the Paris Parlement, raising the possibility of union with Spain, contrary to Charles' will. In February, the Spanish-controlled Duchies of Milan and Mantua in Northern Italy announced their support for Philip and accepted French troops. Combined with efforts to build an alliance between France and Imperial German states in Swabia and Franconia, these were challenges Leopold could not ignore. Helped by the Viceroy, Max Emanuel of Bavaria, French troops replaced Dutch garrisons in the 'Barrier' fortresses in the Spanish Netherlands, granted at Ryswick. It also threatened the monopoly over the Scheldt granted by the 1648 Peace of Münster, while French control of Antwerp and Ostend would allow them to blockade the English Channel at will. Combined with other French actions that threatened English trade, this produced a clear majority for war and in May 1701, Parliament urged William to negotiate an anti-French alliance. On 7 September, Leopold, the Dutch Republic and Britain signed the Treaty of The Hague renewing the 1689 Grand Alliance. Its provisions included securing the Dutch Barrier in the Spanish Netherlands, the Protestant succession in England and Scotland and an independent Spain but did not refer to placing Archduke Charles on the Spanish throne. When the exiled James II of England died on 16 September 1701, Louis reneged on his recognition of the Protestant William III as king of England and Scotland and supported the claim of James' son, James Francis Edward Stuart. War became inevitable and when William himself died in March 1702, his successor Queen Anne confirmed her support for the Treaty of the Hague. The Dutch did the same and on 15 May the Grand Alliance declared war on France, followed by the Imperial Diet on 30 September. General strategic drivers The importance of trade and economic interests to the participants is often underestimated; contemporaries viewed Dutch and English support for the Habsburg cause as primarily driven by a desire for access to the American markets. Modern economists generally assume a constantly growing market, but the then-dominant theory of Mercantilism viewed it as relatively static. Increasing one's share implied taking it from someone else, and the government's role was to restrict foreign competition by attacking merchant ships and colonies. This expanded the war to North America, India, and other parts of Asia, with tariffs used as a policy weapon. From 1690 to 1704, English import duties on foreign goods increased by 400%, and the 1651–1663 Navigation Acts were a major factor in the Anglo-Dutch Wars. On 6 September 1700, France banned the import of English manufactured goods such as cloth, and imposed prohibitive duties on a wide range of others. Armies of the Nine Years' War often exceeded 100,000 men, levels unsustainable for pre-industrial economies; those of 1701–1714 averaged around 35,000 to 50,000. Dependence on water-borne transport for supplying these numbers meant campaigns were focused on rivers like the Rhine and Adda, which limited operations in poor areas like Northern Spain. Better logistics, unified command, and simpler internal lines of communication gave Bourbon armies an advantage over their opponents. Strategic objectives by participant Britain (England and Scotland pre-1707) British foreign policy was based on three general principles, which remained consistent from the 16th through the 20th centuries. First and overriding all others, preserve a balance of power in Europe, which was threatened by French expansion under Louis XIV. Second, prevent the Low Countries being controlled by a hostile power or one stronger than Britain; this included both the Spanish Netherlands and the Dutch Republic, whose deep harbours and prevailing winds made her a natural embarkation point for an attack on England, as demonstrated in 1688. Third, maintain a navy strong enough to protect British trade, control her waters and launch attacks on her enemies' commercial routes and coastal areas. Alignment on reducing the power of France and securing the Protestant succession for the British throne masked differences on how to achieve them. In general, the Tories favoured a mercantilist strategy of using the Royal Navy to attack French and Spanish trade while protecting and expanding their own; land commitments were viewed as expensive and primarily of benefit to others. The Whigs argued France could not be defeated by seapower alone, making a Continental strategy essential, while Britain's financial strength made it the only member of the Alliance able to operate on all fronts against France. Dutch Republic Although the English Duke of Marlborough was Allied commander in the Low Countries, the Dutch provided much of the manpower, and strategy in this theatre was subject to their approval. The 1672 to 1678 Franco-Dutch War showed the Spanish could not defend the Southern Netherlands, and so the 1697 Treaty of Ryswick allowed the Dutch to place garrisons in eight key cities. They hoped this barrier would provide the strategic depth needed to protect their commercial and demographic heartlands around Amsterdam against attack from the south. In the event, they were quickly over-run in 1701, then later in 1748, and modern historians consider the idea fundamentally flawed. However, Dutch priorities were to re-establish and strengthen the Barrier fortresses, retain control of the economically vital Scheldt estuary, and gain access to trade in the Spanish Empire. Austria / Holy Roman Empire Despite being the dominant power within the Holy Roman Empire, Austrian and Imperial interests did not always coincide. The Habsburgs wanted to put Archduke Charles on the throne of an undivided Spanish Monarchy, while their Allies were fighting to prevent either the Bourbons or the Habsburgs from doing so. This divergence and Austria's financial collapse in 1703 meant the campaign in Spain was reliant on Anglo-Dutch naval support and after 1706, British funding. Particularly during the reign of Joseph I, the priority for the Habsburgs was to secure their southern borders from French intervention in northern Italy and suppress Rákóczi's War of Independence in Hungary. Much of the Spanish nobility resented what they considered to be the arrogance of the Austrians, a key factor in the selection of Philip as their preferred candidate in 1700. In return for British support, Charles agreed to major commercial concessions within the Empire, as well as accepting British control of Gibraltar and Menorca. These made him widely unpopular at all levels of Spanish society, and he was never able to sustain himself outside the coastal regions, which could be supplied by the Royal Navy. The Wittelsbach-controlled states of Bavaria, Liège, Cologne allied with France, but the vast majority of the Empire remained neutral, or limited their involvement to the supply of mercenaries. Like Bavaria, the larger entities pursued their own policies; his claim to the Polish crown meant Augustus of Saxony focused on the Great Northern War, while Frederick I made his support dependent on Leopold recognising Prussia as a kingdom and making it an equal member of the Grand Alliance. Since George, Elector Hanover was also heir to the British throne, his support was more reliable, but the suspicion remained the interests of Hanover came first. France Under Louis XIV, France was the most powerful state in Europe with revenue-generating capacities that far exceeded its rivals. Its geographical position provided enormous tactical flexibility; unlike Austria, it had its navy, and as the campaigns of 1708–1710 proved, even under severe pressure it could defend its borders. The Nine Years' War had shown France could not impose its objectives without support but the alliance with Spain and Bavaria made a successful outcome far more likely. Apart from denying an undivided Spanish Monarchy to others, Louis's objectives were to secure his borders with the Holy Roman Empire, weaken Austria and increase French commercial strength through access to the trade of the Americas. Spain In 1700, Spain remained a great power in terms of territory controlled, while recent research shows imports of bullion from the Americas actually reached their highest level between 1670 and 1700. However, this concealed major structural weaknesses; the vast majority of these imports were used to fund debt or pay foreign merchants. When the new Bourbon administration took over in 1701, they found the Empire bankrupt and effectively defenceless, with fewer than 15,000 troops in Spain itself and a navy consisting of 20 ships in total. Almost constant warfare during the 17th century made the economy subject to long periods of low productivity and depression, and largely reliant upon others for its prosperity. In many ways, the continued existence of the Empire was not due to Spanish strength but to maintain a balance between the powers competing for a share of its markets. Despite fighting a series of wars against Spain from 1667 to 1697, France was also its most significant economic partner, supplying labour and controlling a large proportion of its foreign trade. This consideration was an important factor in the decision to name Philip heir. Its dependence on others was illustrated in 1703; despite the presence of an invading Allied army, the French ambassador urged Louis to allow Dutch and English merchants to purchase wool from Spanish farmers, "otherwise the flocks cannot be maintained". Enacting political or economic reform was extremely complex since Habsburg Spain was a personal union between the Crowns of Castile and Aragon, each with very different political cultures. Most of Philip's support came from the Castilian elite. The Spanish Netherlands had been governed by Bavaria since 1690, while links with Italy, traditionally the major source of Spanish recruits and funding, had been weakened by decades of neglect and heavy taxation. It was widely, if reluctantly, accepted in Madrid that preserving an independent Spanish empire required comprehensive reforms, including elimination of the privileges or Fueros held by the Aragonese states. It was no coincidence Archduke Charles had strong support in areas which were part of the Crown of Aragon, including Catalonia and Valencia. Savoy Over the course of the 17th century, the Savoyard state, generally known as Savoy, sought to replace Spain as the dominant power in Northern Italy. Savoy consisted of two main geographic segments; Piedmont, which contained the capital Turin, and the Duchy of Aosta on the Italian side of the Alps, with the Duchy of Savoy and County of Nice in Transalpine France. The latter were almost impossible to defend and combined with the anti-Habsburg policy pursued by Louis XIV and his predecessors, this meant Savoy generally sided with France. However, Piedmont provided foreign powers access to the restive southern French provinces of the Dauphiné and Vaunage, former Huguenot strongholds with a long history of rebellion. This provided Victor Amadeus II with a degree of leverage, allowing him to manoeuvre between opposing parties in order to expand his territories. During the Nine Years' War in 1690, Savoy joined the Grand Alliance before agreeing a separate peace with France in 1696. The accession of Philip V in 1701 led to a reversal of long-standing strategic policy, with France now supporting the Spanish position in Lombardy, rather than seeking to weaken it, and Austria doing the opposite. While Victor Amadeus initially allied Savoy with France, his long-term goal was the acquisition of Duchy of Milan, which neither the Bourbons or Habsburgs would relinquish voluntarily. In fact, as discussed elsewhere in this article, securing his borders in Italy was of greater concern to Emperor Leopold than Spain itself. This meant Britain was the only power inclined to help Victor Amadeus achieve this objective and he changed sides in 1703 after the Royal Navy won control of the Western Mediterranean. Military campaigns 1701–1708 Italy The war in Italy primarily involved the Spanish-ruled Duchies of Milan and Mantua, considered essential to the security of Austria's southern borders. In 1701, French troops occupied both cities and Victor Amadeus II, Duke of Savoy, allied with France, his daughter Maria Luisa marrying Philip V. In May 1701, an Imperial army under Prince Eugene of Savoy moved into Northern Italy; by February 1702, victories at Carpi, Chiari and Cremona forced the French behind the Adda river. Vendôme, one of the best French generals, took command and was substantially reinforced; Prince Eugene managed a draw at the Battle of Luzzara but the French recovered most of the territory lost the year before. In October 1703, Victor Amadeus declared war on France; by May 1706, the French held most of Savoy except Turin while victories at Cassano and Calcinato forced the Imperialists into the Trentino valley. However, in July 1706 Vendôme and any available forces were sent to reinforce France's northern frontier after the defeat at Ramillies. Reinforced by German auxiliaries led by Leopold of Anhalt-Dessau, Prince Eugene broke the Siege of Turin in September; despite a minor French victory at Castiglione, the war in Italy was over. To the fury of his allies, in the March 1707 Convention of Milan Emperor Joseph gave French troops in Lombardy free passage to Southern France. A combined Savoyard-Imperial attack on the French base of Toulon
already running programmes in these fields. The European Universities Committee (see CM(60)4; C(59)127 and CM(59)130) was transferred to the Council of Europe separately from the rest of WEU cultural activities. 1984–1998: Revival From the late 1970s onwards, efforts were made to add a security dimension to the European Communities' European Political Cooperation (EPC). Opposition to these efforts from Denmark, Greece and Ireland led the remaining EC countries – all WEU members – to reactivate the WEU in 1984 by adopting the Rome Declaration. Prior to this point there had been minimal use of the provisions of the Modified Brussels Treaty. In 1992, the WEU adopted the Petersberg Declaration, defining the so-called Petersberg tasks designed to cope with the possible destabilising of Eastern Europe. The WEU itself had no standing army but depended on cooperation between its members. Its tasks ranged from the most modest to the most robust, and included humanitarian, rescue and peacekeeping tasks as well as tasks for combat forces in crisis management, including peacemaking. At the 1996 NATO ministerial meeting in Berlin, it was agreed that the Western European Union would oversee the creation of a European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI) within NATO structures. The ESDI was intended as a European 'pillar' within NATO, partly to allow European countries to act militarily where NATO wished not to, and partly to alleviate the United States' financial burden of maintaining military bases in Europe, which it had done since the Cold War. The Berlin agreement allowed European countries (through the WEU) to use NATO assets if it so wished. 1998–2009: Transfer of tasks to the EU In 1998 the United Kingdom, which had traditionally opposed the introduction of European autonomous defence capacities, signed the Saint-Malo declaration. This marked a turning point as the declaration endorsed the creation of a European security and defense policy, including a European military force capable of autonomous action. The declaration was a response to the Kosovo War in the late 1990s, in which the EU was perceived to have failed to intervene to stop the conflict. Concerns were voiced that an independent European security pillar could undermine NATO; In response to St. Malo, the former US-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright put forth the three famous D's: no duplication of what was done effectively under NATO, no decoupling from the US and NATO, and no discrimination against non-EU members such as Turkey. The Treaty of Amsterdam, which entered into force in 1999, transferred the WEU's Petersberg tasks to the EU, and stated that the EU's Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), replacing the WEU's ESDI, would be 'progressively framed' on the basis of these tasks. In June 1999, the Cologne European Council decided to incorporate the role of the WEU within the EU, effectively abandoning the WEU. The Cologne Council also appointed Javier Solana as the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy to help progress both the CFSP and the CSDP. On 20 November 1999 Solana was also appointed Secretary-General of the WEU. His being head of both organisations permits him to oversee the ongoing transfer of functions from the WEU to the EU. In 2002 the Berlin agreement from 1996 was amended with the so-called Berlin Plus agreement, which allowed the EU to also draw on some of NATO's assets in its own peacekeeping operations. Originally, under the Amsterdam Treaty, the WEU was given an integral role in giving the EU an independent defence capability, playing a major role in the Petersberg tasks; however that situation is changing. On 13 November 2000, WEU Ministers met in Marseille and agreed to begin transferring the organisation's capabilities and functions to the European Union, under its developing Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). For example, on 1 January 2002, the WEU's Security Studies Institute and the Satellite Centre were transferred to the EU and became the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the European Union Satellite Centre. Notably, the role given to the WEU in the Amsterdam Treaty, was removed by the Nice Treaty. The Treaty of Lisbon has provisions for cooperation between the EU and both NATO (including the Berlin Plus agreement) and the WEU. However the defence commitment, of Article 4 of the Brussels Treaty, has not been subsumed. Article 42(7) of the Treaty of the European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, could be viewed as incorporating that defence commitment into the EU framework. The European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC), both established to function under the EU's CFSP pillar, were both replacements to the Western European Union Institute for Security Studies and the Western Union Satellite Centre which had been established to function in connection to the WEU. With the transfer of responsibilities, the WEU's Parliamentary assembly was urged to dissolve itself, as it had a mandate to supervise WEU politics, not the EU's CSDP politics. But the Assembly saw itself as playing an important role, particularly with greater right of scrutiny, membership, experience and expertise in defence policy. Therefore, it renamed itself the "Interim European Security and Defence Assembly" and urged the European Convention to include it as a second chamber within the EU's institutional framework. Hence it argued it could effectively scrutinise the CSDP, help improve EU-NATO relations and be more suited, being composed of national parliamentarians, to the intergovernmental style of the CSDP. However, with the European Constitution aiming to streamline and simplify the EU's foreign policy, for example combining the two main foreign policy posts, it was not seen as wise to then create a separate double legislature for the CFSP, instead, the European Parliament was granted greater scrutiny over foreign policy. 2009–2011: Dissolution In 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon took over the WEU's mutual defence clause. There was much discussion about what to do with the WEU following the introduction of Lisbon, including plans to scrap it. On 30 March 2010 in a Written Ministerial Statement UK's Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant gave notice that the UK intended to withdraw from the Western European Union within a year. On 31 March 2010 the German Foreign Affairs Ministry announced Germany's intention to withdraw from the Modified Brussels Treaty. That same year, the Spanish Presidency of the WEU, on behalf of the 10 Member States of the Modified Brussels Treaty, announced the collective decision to withdraw from the Treaty and to close the WEU organisation by June 2011. On 30 June 2011 the WEU officially ceased to exist. Timeline Organization The WEU was	EU, effectively abandoning the WEU. The Cologne Council also appointed Javier Solana as the High Representative for Common Foreign and Security Policy to help progress both the CFSP and the CSDP. On 20 November 1999 Solana was also appointed Secretary-General of the WEU. His being head of both organisations permits him to oversee the ongoing transfer of functions from the WEU to the EU. In 2002 the Berlin agreement from 1996 was amended with the so-called Berlin Plus agreement, which allowed the EU to also draw on some of NATO's assets in its own peacekeeping operations. Originally, under the Amsterdam Treaty, the WEU was given an integral role in giving the EU an independent defence capability, playing a major role in the Petersberg tasks; however that situation is changing. On 13 November 2000, WEU Ministers met in Marseille and agreed to begin transferring the organisation's capabilities and functions to the European Union, under its developing Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP). For example, on 1 January 2002, the WEU's Security Studies Institute and the Satellite Centre were transferred to the EU and became the European Union Institute for Security Studies and the European Union Satellite Centre. Notably, the role given to the WEU in the Amsterdam Treaty, was removed by the Nice Treaty. The Treaty of Lisbon has provisions for cooperation between the EU and both NATO (including the Berlin Plus agreement) and the WEU. However the defence commitment, of Article 4 of the Brussels Treaty, has not been subsumed. Article 42(7) of the Treaty of the European Union, as amended by the Treaty of Lisbon, could be viewed as incorporating that defence commitment into the EU framework. The European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and European Union Satellite Centre (EUSC), both established to function under the EU's CFSP pillar, were both replacements to the Western European Union Institute for Security Studies and the Western Union Satellite Centre which had been established to function in connection to the WEU. With the transfer of responsibilities, the WEU's Parliamentary assembly was urged to dissolve itself, as it had a mandate to supervise WEU politics, not the EU's CSDP politics. But the Assembly saw itself as playing an important role, particularly with greater right of scrutiny, membership, experience and expertise in defence policy. Therefore, it renamed itself the "Interim European Security and Defence Assembly" and urged the European Convention to include it as a second chamber within the EU's institutional framework. Hence it argued it could effectively scrutinise the CSDP, help improve EU-NATO relations and be more suited, being composed of national parliamentarians, to the intergovernmental style of the CSDP. However, with the European Constitution aiming to streamline and simplify the EU's foreign policy, for example combining the two main foreign policy posts, it was not seen as wise to then create a separate double legislature for the CFSP, instead, the European Parliament was granted greater scrutiny over foreign policy. 2009–2011: Dissolution In 2009, the Treaty of Lisbon took over the WEU's mutual defence clause. There was much discussion about what to do with the WEU following the introduction of Lisbon, including plans to scrap it. On 30 March 2010 in a Written Ministerial Statement UK's Foreign Office Minister Chris Bryant gave notice that the UK intended to withdraw from the Western European Union within a year. On 31 March 2010 the German Foreign Affairs Ministry announced Germany's intention to withdraw from the Modified Brussels Treaty. That same year, the Spanish Presidency of the WEU, on behalf of the 10 Member States of the Modified Brussels Treaty, announced the collective decision to withdraw from the Treaty and to close the WEU organisation by June 2011. On 30 June 2011 the WEU officially ceased to exist. Timeline Organization The WEU was headquartered in Brussels, with a staff of 65 and an annual budget of €13.4 million. It was composed of the Council of the WEU (the Council) and the Assembly of the WEU (the Assembly). Council of Ministers The WEU was led by a Council of Ministers, assisted by a Permanent Representatives Council on the ambassadorial level. Parliamentary Assembly A Parliamentary Assembly (composed of the delegations of the member states to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) supervised the work of the Council, but it did not have any obligations on the Council. The Assembly of WEU was a consultative institution.
greatly, with some conventions giving specific titles (Fan, Pro, Australia, US, Artist, etc.) and some simply call them all guests of honor. Specific labels have been used where they existed, as have regional variants in spelling. Size – where available, this column records two numbers: how many paying members attended the Worldcon and how many total members there were (in parentheses). The available	has varied greatly, with some conventions giving specific titles (Fan, Pro, Australia, US, Artist, etc.) and some simply call them all guests of honor. Specific labels have been used where they existed, as have regional variants in spelling. Size – where available, this column records two numbers: how many paying members attended the Worldcon and how many total members there were (in parentheses). The available data is very incomplete and imprecise and many of these numbers are probably substantially in error. No Worldcons were held between 1942
the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. The 10th largest state by area, it is also the least populous and least densely populated state in the contiguous United States. Wyoming is bordered by Montana to the north and northwest, South Dakota and Nebraska to the east, Idaho to the west, Utah to the southwest, and Colorado to the south. Its population was 576,851 at the 2020 United States census, making it the least populated U.S. state. The state capital and the most populous city is Cheyenne, which had an estimated population of 63,957 in 2018. Wyoming's western half is covered mostly by the ranges and rangelands of the Rocky Mountains, while the eastern half of the state is high-elevation prairie called the High Plains. It is drier and windier than the rest of the country, being split between semi-arid and continental climates with greater temperature extremes. Almost half of the land in Wyoming is owned by the federal government, generally protected for public uses. The state ranks 6th by area and fifth by proportion of a state's land owned by the federal government. Federal lands include two national parks (Grand Teton and Yellowstone), two national recreation areas, two national monuments, several national forests, historic sites, fish hatcheries, and wildlife refuges. Indigenous peoples inhabited the region for thousands of years. Historic and current federally recognized tribes include the Arapaho, Crow, Lakota, and Shoshone. During European exploration, the Spanish Empire was the first to "claim" Southern Wyoming. With Mexican independence, it became part of that republic. After defeat in the Mexican–American War, Mexico ceded this territory to the U.S. in 1848. The region was named "Wyoming" in a bill introduced to Congress in 1865 to provide a temporary government for the territory of Wyoming. It had been used earlier by colonists for the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania, and is derived from the Lenape language Munsee word , meaning "at the big river flat". Historically, European Americans farmed and ranched here, with shepherds and cattle ranchers in conflict over lands. Today Wyoming's economy is largely based on tourism and the extraction of minerals such as coal, natural gas, oil, and trona. Agricultural commodities include barley, hay, livestock, sugar beets, wheat, and wool. It was the first state to allow women the right to vote and the right to assume elected office, as well as the first state to elect a female governor. Due to this part of its history, its main nickname is "The Equality State" and its official state motto is "Equal Rights". It has been a politically conservative state since the 1950s. The Republican presidential nominee has carried the state in every election since 1968. History Several Native American groups originally inhabited the region now known as Wyoming. The Crow, Arapaho, Lakota, and Shoshone were but a few of the original inhabitants European explorers encountered when they first visited the region. What is now southwestern Wyoming was claimed by the Spanish Empire, which extended through the Southwest and Mexico. With Mexican independence in 1821, it was considered part of Alta California. U.S. expansion brought settlers who fought for control. Mexico ceded these territories after its defeat in 1848 in the Mexican–American War. From the late 18th century, French-Canadian trappers from Québec and Montréal regularly entered the area for trade with the tribes. French toponyms such as Téton and La Ramie are marks of that history. American John Colter first recorded a description in English of the region in 1807. He was a member of the Lewis and Clark Expedition, which was guided by French Canadian Toussaint Charbonneau and his young Shoshone wife, Sacagawea. At the time, Colter's reports of the Yellowstone area were considered fictional. On a return from Astoria, Robert Stuart and a party of five men discovered South Pass in 1812. The Oregon Trail later followed that route as emigrants moved to the west coast. In 1850, mountain man Jim Bridger found what is now known as Bridger Pass. Bridger also explored Yellowstone, and filed reports on the region that, like Colter's, were largely regarded at the time as tall tales. The Union Pacific Railroad constructed track through Bridger Pass in 1868. It was used as the route for construction of Interstate 80 through the mountains 90 years later. The region acquired the name Wyoming by 1865, when Representative James Mitchell Ashley of Ohio introduced a bill to Congress to provide a "temporary government for the territory of Wyoming". The territory was named after the Wyoming Valley in Pennsylvania. Thomas Campbell wrote his 1809 poem "Gertrude of Wyoming", inspired by the Battle of Wyoming in the American Revolutionary War. The name ultimately derives from the Lenape Munsee word ("at the big river flat"). After the Union Pacific Railroad reached Cheyenne in 1867, population growth was stimulated. The federal government established the Wyoming Territory on July 25, 1868. Lacking significant deposits of gold and silver, unlike mineral-rich Colorado, Wyoming did not have such a population boom. But South Pass City had a short-lived boom after the Carissa Mine began producing gold in 1867. Copper was mined in some areas between the Sierra Madre Mountains and the Snowy Range near Grand Encampment. Once government-sponsored expeditions to the Yellowstone country began, Colter's and Bridger's descriptions of the region's landscape were confirmed. In 1872, Yellowstone National Park was created as the world's first, to protect this area. Nearly all of the park lies within the northwestern corner of Wyoming. On December 10, 1869, territorial Governor John Allen Campbell extended the right to vote to women, making Wyoming the first territory to do so. It kept that franchise when it established its state constitution. Women first served on juries in Wyoming (Laramie in 1870). Wyoming was also a pioneer in welcoming women into electoral politics. It had the first female court bailiff (Mary Atkinson, Laramie, in 1870), and the first female justice of the peace in the country (Esther Hobart Morris, South Pass City, in 1870). In 1924, Wyoming was the first state to elect a female governor, Nellie Tayloe Ross, who took office in January 1925. Due to its civil-rights history, one of Wyoming's state nicknames is "The Equality State", and the official state motto is "Equal Rights". Wyoming's constitution included women's suffrage and a pioneering article on water rights. Congress admitted Wyoming into the Union as the 44th state on July 10, 1890. Wyoming was the location of the Johnson County War of 1892, which erupted between competing groups of cattle ranchers. The passage of the Homestead Act led to an influx of small ranchers. A range war broke out when either or both of the groups chose violent conflict over commercial competition in the use of the public land. Geography Climate Wyoming's climate is generally semi-arid and continental (Köppen climate classification BSk), and is drier and windier in comparison to most of the United States with greater temperature extremes. Much of this is due to the topography of the state. Summers in Wyoming are warm with July high temperatures averaging between in most of the state. With increasing elevation, however, this average drops rapidly with locations above averaging around . Summer nights throughout the state are characterized by a rapid cooldown with even the hottest locations averaging in the range at night. In most of the state, most of the precipitation tends to fall in the late spring and early summer. Winters are cold, but are variable with periods of sometimes extreme cold interspersed between generally mild periods, with Chinook winds providing unusually warm temperatures in some locations. Wyoming is a dry state with much of the land receiving less than of rainfall per year. Precipitation depends on elevation with lower areas in the Big Horn Basin averaging , making the area nearly a true desert. The lower areas in the North and on the eastern plains typically average around , making the climate there semi-arid. Some mountain areas do receive a good amount of precipitation, or more, much of it as snow, sometimes or more annually. The state's highest recorded temperature is at Basin on July 12, 1900, and the lowest recorded temperature is at Riverside on February 9, 1933. The number of thunderstorm days vary across the state with the southeastern plains of the state having the most days of thunderstorm activity. Thunderstorm activity in the state is highest during the late spring and early summer. The southeastern corner of the state is the most vulnerable part of the state to tornado activity. Moving away from that point and westwards, the incidence of tornadoes drops dramatically with the west part of the state showing little vulnerability. Tornadoes, where they occur, tend to be small and brief, unlike some of those that occur farther east. Location and size As specified in the designating legislation for the Territory of Wyoming, Wyoming's borders are lines of latitude 41°N and 45°N, and longitude 104°3'W and 111°3'W (27 and 34 west of the Washington Meridian)—a geodesic quadrangle. Wyoming is one of only three states (the others being Colorado and Utah) to have borders defined by only "straight" lines. Due to surveying inaccuracies during the 19th century, Wyoming's legal border deviates from the true latitude and longitude lines by up to half of a mile (0.8 km) in some spots, especially in the mountainous region along the 45th parallel. Wyoming is bordered on the north by Montana, on the east by South Dakota and Nebraska, on the south by Colorado, on the southwest by Utah, and on the west by Idaho. It is the tenth largest state in the United States in total area, containing and is made up of 23 counties. From the north border to the south border it is ; and from the east to the west border is at its south end and at the north end. Natural landforms Mountain ranges The Great Plains meet the Rocky Mountains in Wyoming. The state is a great plateau broken by many mountain ranges. Surface elevations range from the summit of Gannett Peak in the Wind River Mountain Range, at , to the Belle Fourche River valley in the state's northeast corner, at . In the northwest are the Absaroka, Owl Creek, Gros Ventre, Wind River, and the Teton ranges. In the north central are the Big Horn Mountains; in the northeast, the Black Hills; and in the southern region the Laramie, Snowy, and Sierra Madre ranges. The Snowy Range in the south central part of the state is an extension of the Colorado Rockies both in geology and in appearance. The Wind River Range in the west central part of the state is remote and includes more than 40 mountain peaks in excess of tall in addition to Gannett Peak, the highest peak in the state. The Big Horn Mountains in the north central portion are somewhat isolated from the bulk of the Rocky Mountains. The Teton Range in the northwest extends for , part of which is included in Grand Teton National Park. The park includes the Grand Teton, the second highest peak in the state. The Continental Divide spans north–south across the central portion of the state. Rivers east of the divide drain into the Missouri River Basin and eventually the Gulf of Mexico. They are the North Platte, Wind, Big Horn and the Yellowstone rivers. The Snake River in northwest Wyoming eventually drains into the Columbia River and the Pacific Ocean, as does the Green River through the Colorado River Basin. The Continental Divide forks in the south central part of the state in an area known as the Great Divide Basin where water that precipitates onto or flows into it cannot reach an ocean—it all sinks into the soil and eventually evaporates. Several rivers begin in or flow through the state, including the Yellowstone River, Bighorn River, Green River, and the Snake River. Basins Much of Wyoming is covered with large basins containing different eco-regions, from shrublands to smaller patches of desert. Regions of the state classified as basins contain everything from large geologic formations to sand dunes and vast unpopulated spaces. Basin landscapes are typically at lower elevations and include rolling hills, valleys, mesas, terraces and other rugged terrain, but also include natural springs as well as rivers and artificial reservoirs. They have common plant species such as various subspecies of sagebrush, juniper and grasses such as wheatgrass, but basins are known for their diversity of plant and animal species. Islands Wyoming has 32 named islands; the majority are in Jackson Lake and Yellowstone Lake, within Yellowstone National Park in the northwest portion of the state. The Green River in the southwest also contains a number of islands. Regions and administrative divisions Counties The state of Wyoming has 23 counties. Wyoming license plates have a number on the left that indicates the county where the vehicle is registered, ranked by an earlier census. Specifically, the numbers are representative of the property values of the counties in 1930. The county license plate numbers are: Cities and towns The State of Wyoming has 99 incorporated municipalities. In 2005, 50.6% of Wyomingites lived in one of the 13 most populous Wyoming municipalities. Metropolitan areas The United States Census Bureau has defined two Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSA) and seven Micropolitan Statistical Areas (MiSA) for the State of Wyoming. In 2008, 30.4% of Wyomingites lived in either of the Metropolitan Statistical Areas, and 73% lived in either a Metropolitan Statistical Area or a Micropolitan Statistical Area. Economy and infrastructure According to the 2012 United States Bureau of Economic Analysis report, Wyoming's gross state product was $38.4 billion. As of 2014 the population was growing slightly with the	of "public" land and an air force base near Cheyenne. There are also areas managed by the National Park Service and agencies such as the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. National parks Grand Teton National Park Yellowstone National Park—first designated national park in the world Memorial parkway The John D. Rockefeller Jr. Memorial Parkway connects Yellowstone and Grand Teton. National recreation areas Bighorn Canyon National Recreation Area Flaming Gorge National Recreation Area (managed by the Forest Service as part of Ashley National Forest) National monuments Devils Tower National Monument—first national monument in the U.S. Fossil Butte National Monument National historic trails, landmarks and sites California National Historic Trail Fort Laramie National Historic Site Independence Rock National Historic Landmark Medicine Wheel/Medicine Mountain National Historic Landmark Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trail National Register of Historic Places listings in Wyoming Oregon National Historic Trail Pony Express National Historic Trail National fish hatcheries Jackson National Fish Hatchery Saratoga National Fish Hatchery National wildlife refuges National Elk Refuge Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge Demographics Population The United States Census Bureau estimates the population of Wyoming was 578,759 in 2019, The center of population of Wyoming is in Natrona County. In 2014, the United States Census Bureau estimated the population's racial composition was 92.7% white (82.9% non-Hispanic white), 2.7% American Indian and Alaska Native, 1.6% Black or African American, 1.0% Asian American, and 0.1% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander. As of 2011, 24.9% of Wyoming's population younger than age1 were minorities. According to the 2010 census, the racial composition of the population was 90.7% white, 0.8% black or African American, 2.4% American Indian and Alaska Native, 0.8% Asian American, 0.1% Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, 2.2% from two or more races, and 3.0% from some other race. Ethnically, 8.9% of the total population was of Hispanic or Latino origin (they may be of any race) and 91.1% Non-Hispanic, with non-Hispanic whites constituting the largest non-Hispanic group at 85.9%. As of 2015, Wyoming had an estimated population of 586,107, which was an increase of 1,954, or 0.29%, from the prior year and an increase of 22,481, or 3.99%, since the 2010 census. This includes a natural increase since the last census of 12,165 (33,704 births minus 21,539 deaths) and an increase from net migration of 4,035 into the state. Immigration resulted in a net increase of 2,264 and migration within the country produced a net increase of 1,771. In 2004, the foreign-born population was 11,000 (2.2%). In 2005, total births in Wyoming were 7,231 (birth rate of 14.04 per thousand). Sparsely populated, Wyoming is the least populous state of the United States. Wyoming has the second-lowest population density in the country (behind Alaska) and is the sparsest-populated of the 48 contiguous states. It is one of only two states (Vermont) with a population smaller than that of the nation's capital. According to the 2000 census, the largest ancestry groups in Wyoming are: German (26.0%), English (16.0%), Irish (13.3%), Norwegian (4.3%), and Swedish (3.5%). Birth data Note: Births in table don't add up, because Hispanics are counted both by their ethnicity and by their race, giving a higher overall number. Since 2016, data for births of White Hispanic origin are not collected, but included in one Hispanic group; persons of Hispanic origin may be of any race. Government and politics State government Wyoming's Constitution established three branches of government: the executive, legislative, and judicial branches. The state legislature comprises a House of Representatives with 60 members and a Senate with 30 members. The executive branch is headed by the governor and includes a secretary of state, auditor, treasurer and superintendent of public instruction. As Wyoming does not have a lieutenant governor, the secretary of state is first in the line of succession. Wyoming's sparse population warrants it only one at-large seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, and hence only three votes in the Electoral College. The Wyoming State Liquor Association is the state's sole legal wholesale distributor of spirits, making it an alcoholic beverage control state. With the exception of wine, state law prohibits the purchase of alcoholic beverages for resale from any other source. Judicial system Wyoming's highest court is the Supreme Court of Wyoming, with five justices presiding over appeals from the state's lower courts. Wyoming is unusual in that it does not have an intermediate appellate court, like most states. This is largely attributable to the state's population and correspondingly lower caseload. Appeals from the state district courts go directly to the Wyoming Supreme Court. Wyoming also has state circuit courts (formerly county courts), of limited jurisdiction, which handle certain types of cases, such as civil claims with lower dollar amounts, misdemeanor criminal offenses, and felony arraignments. Circuit court judges also commonly hear small claims cases as well. Before 1972, Wyoming judges were selected by popular vote on a nonpartisan ballot. This earlier system was criticized by the state bar who called for the adoption of the Missouri Plan, a system designed to balance judiciary independence with judiciary accountability. In 1972, an amendment to Article5 of the Wyoming Constitution, which incorporated a modified version of the plan, was adopted by the voters. Since the adoption of the amendment, all state court judges in Wyoming are nominated by the Judicial Nominating Commission and appointed by the Governor. They are then subject to a retention vote by the electorate one year after appointment. Political history Wyoming's political history defies easy classification. The state was the first to grant women the right to vote and to elect a woman governor. On December 10, 1869, John Allen Campbell, the first Governor of the Wyoming Territory, approved the first law in United States history explicitly granting women the right to vote. This day was later commemorated as Wyoming Day. On November 5, 1889, voters approved the first constitution in the world granting full voting rights to women. While the state elected notable Democrats to federal office in the 1960s and 1970s, politics have become decidedly more conservative since the 1980s as the Republican Party came to dominate the state's congressional delegation. Today, Wyoming is represented in Washington by its two Senators, John Barrasso and Cynthia Lummis, and its one member of the House of Representatives, Congresswoman Liz Cheney. All three are Republicans; a Democrat has not represented Wyoming in the Senate since 1977 or in the House since 1978. The state has not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964, one of only eight times since statehood. At present, there is only one relatively reliably Democratic county, affluent Teton, and one swing county, college county Albany. In the 2004 presidential election, George W. Bush won his second-largest victory, with 69% of the vote. Former Vice President Dick Cheney is a Wyoming resident and represented the state in Congress from 1979 to 1989. Republicans are no less dominant at the state level. They have held a majority in the state senate continuously since 1936 and in the state house since 1964, though Democrats held the governorship for all but eight years between 1975 and 2011. Uniquely, Wyoming elected Democrat Nellie Tayloe Ross as the first woman in United States history to serve as state governor. She served from 1925 to 1927, winning a special election after her husband, William Bradford Ross, unexpectedly died a little more than a year into his term. In a 2020 study, Wyoming was ranked as the 25th hardest state for citizens to vote in. Culture Languages In 2010, 93.39% (474,343) of Wyomingites over the age of5 spoke English as their primary language. 4.47% (22,722) spoke Spanish, 0.35% (1,771) spoke German, and 0.28% (1,434) spoke French. Other common non-English languages included Algonquian (0.18%), Russian (0.10%), Tagalog, and Greek (both 0.09%). In 2007, the American Community Survey reported 6.2% (30,419) of Wyoming's population over five spoke a language other than English at home. Of those, 68.1% were able to speak English very well, 16.0% spoke English well, 10.9% did not speak English well, and 5.0% did not speak English at all. Religion According to a 2013 Gallup Poll, the religious affiliations of the people of Wyoming were: 49% Protestant, 23% Nonreligious or Other, 18% Catholic, 9% Latter-day Saint (Mormons) and less than 1% Jewish. A 2010 ARDA report recognized as the largest denominations in Wyoming the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons) with 62,804 (11%), the Catholic Church with 61,222 (10.8%) and the Southern Baptist Convention with 15,812 adherents (2.8%). The same report counted 59,247 Evangelical Protestants (10.5%), 36,539 Mainline Protestants (6.5%), 785 Eastern Orthodox Christians; 281 Black Protestants, as well as 65,000 adhering to other traditions and 340,552 not claiming any religious tradition. Sports Due to its sparse population, Wyoming lacks any major professional sports teams; the Wyoming Mustangs, an indoor football team based in Gillette that began play in 2021, is the only professional team in the state. However, the Wyoming Cowboys and Cowgirls—particularly the football and basketball teams—are quite popular; their stadiums in Laramie are about 7,200 feet (2,200 m) above sea level, the highest in NCAA DivisionI. The Wyoming High School Activities Association also sponsors twelve sports and there are three junior ice hockey teams, all of which are members of the NA3HL. Casper has hosted the College National Finals Rodeo since 2001. State symbols List of all Wyoming state symbols: State bird: western meadowlark (Sturnella neglecta) State coin: Sacagawea dollar State dinosaur: Triceratops State emblem: Bucking Horse and Rider State fish: cutthroat trout (Oncorhynchus clarki) State flag: Flag of the State of Wyoming State flower: Wyoming Indian paintbrush (Castilleja linariifolia) State fossil: Knightia State gemstone: Wyoming nephrite jade State grass: western wheatgrass (Pascopyrum smithii) State insect: Sheridan's green hairstreak butterfly (Callophrys sheridanii) State mammal: American bison
refused entry and had to return home. Undeterred, he continued writing poetry, and he reported events to the newspapers, earning some minor recognition. Throughout his life McGonagall campaigned against excessive drinking, appearing in pubs and bars to give edifying poems and speeches, which proved popular. He met with the ire of the publicans, on one occasion being pelted with peas for reciting a poem about the evils of "strong drink". In 1883 he celebrated the official opening of University College, Dundee with the poem "The Inauguration of University College Dundee" which opens with the stanza: McGonagall constantly struggled with money and earned money by selling his poems in the streets, or reciting them in halls, theatres and public houses. When he was in periods of financial insecurity, his friends supported him with donations. In 1880, he sailed to London to seek his fortune, and in 1887 to New York. In both instances, he returned unsuccessful. He found lucrative work performing his poetry at a local circus. He read his poems while the crowd was permitted to pelt him with eggs, flour, herrings, potatoes and stale bread. For this, he received fifteen shillings a night. McGonagall seemed happy with this arrangement, but the events became so raucous that the city magistrates were forced to put a ban on them. McGonagall was outraged and wrote a poem in response entitled "Lines in Protest to the Dundee Magistrates": Throughout his life McGonagall seemed oblivious to the general opinion of his poems, even when his audience were pelting him with eggs and vegetables. Author Norman Watson speculates in his biography of McGonagall that he may have been on the "autism-Asperger's spectrum". Christopher Hart, writing in The Sunday Times, says that this seems "likely". In 1890, McGonagall was in dire straits financially. To help him, his friends funded the publication of a collection of his work, Poetic Gems. The proceeds provided McGonagall with enough money to live on for a time. By 1893, he was annoyed by his mistreatment in the streets and wrote an angry poem threatening to leave Dundee. One newspaper quipped that he would probably stay for another year once he realised "that Dundee rhymes with 1893". Though trying his hand at writing prose and endorsements for local businesses for a short time, in 1894, he and his wife were forced to move to Perth. Soon after, he received a letter purporting to be from representatives of King Thibaw Min of Burma. In it, he was informed that the King had knighted him as Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah. Despite the fact that this was a fairly transparent hoax, McGonagall would refer to himself as "Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah" in his advertising for the rest of his life. In 1895, McGonagall and his wife moved to Edinburgh. Here, McGonagall met with some success, becoming a "cult figure" and was in great demand. It did not last long, and by 1900 he was once again destitute and now old and sickly. Though he was now too frail to walk the streets selling his poems, donations from friends, as ever, kept him afloat. He died penniless in 1902, above what is now The Captain's Bar in Edinburgh's South College Street and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. A grave-slab installed to his memory in 1999 is inscribed: Additionally, a plaque above 5 South College Street in Edinburgh shows an image of McGonagall, and bears the inscription: Tay Bridge Disaster "The Tay Bridge Disaster" has been widely reproduced, and recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge near Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it. It begins: (Modern sources give the death toll as 75.) And finishes: More than a year before the disaster, McGonagall had written a poem in praise of the Tay Bridge: "The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay", in which he specifically expressed a desire Once the replacement bridge had been built, he composed an ode to the new construction: "An Address to the New Tay Bridge" "Strong enough all windy storms to defy". In popular culture In comedy and theatre The memory of McGonagall was resurrected by comedian Spike Milligan. A character called McGoonagall frequently appears in The Goon Show, alternately played by Milligan	for local businesses for a short time, in 1894, he and his wife were forced to move to Perth. Soon after, he received a letter purporting to be from representatives of King Thibaw Min of Burma. In it, he was informed that the King had knighted him as Topaz McGonagall, Grand Knight of the Holy Order of the White Elephant Burmah. Despite the fact that this was a fairly transparent hoax, McGonagall would refer to himself as "Sir William Topaz McGonagall, Knight of the White Elephant, Burmah" in his advertising for the rest of his life. In 1895, McGonagall and his wife moved to Edinburgh. Here, McGonagall met with some success, becoming a "cult figure" and was in great demand. It did not last long, and by 1900 he was once again destitute and now old and sickly. Though he was now too frail to walk the streets selling his poems, donations from friends, as ever, kept him afloat. He died penniless in 1902, above what is now The Captain's Bar in Edinburgh's South College Street and was buried in an unmarked grave in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh. A grave-slab installed to his memory in 1999 is inscribed: Additionally, a plaque above 5 South College Street in Edinburgh shows an image of McGonagall, and bears the inscription: Tay Bridge Disaster "The Tay Bridge Disaster" has been widely reproduced, and recounts the events of the evening of 28 December 1879, when, during a severe gale, the Tay Rail Bridge near Dundee collapsed as a train was passing over it. It begins: (Modern sources give the death toll as 75.) And finishes: More than a year before the disaster, McGonagall had written a poem in praise of the Tay Bridge: "The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay", in which he specifically expressed a desire Once the replacement bridge had been built, he composed an ode to the new construction: "An Address to the New Tay Bridge" "Strong enough all windy storms to defy". In popular culture In comedy and theatre The memory of McGonagall was resurrected by comedian Spike Milligan. A character called McGoonagall frequently appears in The Goon Show, alternately played by Milligan and Peter Sellers. Milligan also occasionally gave readings of McGonagall's verse. McGoonagall often introduces himself as "William McGoonagall, Poet, Tragedian and Twit". An episode of Monty Python's Flying Circus featured a McGonagall-esque poet called Ewan McTeagle, whose poems were actually prose requests for money. In 2018 and early 2019, a musical comedy play titled McGonagall's Chronicles (Which Will Be Remembered for a Very Long Time) was toured in Scotland, retelling the story of the poet in "almost rhyme". It was directed by Joe Douglas and written by Gary McNair; McNair appeared in the lead role, with live musical support from Brian James O'Sullivan and from Simon Liddell, who composed the show's songs. In literature and publications A collection of 35 broadsheet poems of McGonagall, the majority signed by him, was bought for £6,600 (including commission) from Lyon & Turnbull, Edinburgh auctioneers, on 16 May 2008. Satirical magazine Private Eye has printed a number of McGonagallesque poems concerning great events of the day, usually under the byline William Rees-McGonagall, a portmanteau of McGonagall's name and that of William Rees-Mogg. For example, in 2007, they covered the success of the Scottish National Party in the Scottish Parliament election. McGonagall was the subject of the newspaper column Ripley's Believe It or Not! on 11 October 2007, saying he "was often considered the world's worst poet, even by his own publisher, yet his writings are still in print a century after his death!". Milligan further recounted McGonagall's life story in the pastiche novel William McGonagall – the Truth at Last, co-written with Jack Hobbs. In The Wee Free Men by Terry Pratchett, the Nac Mac Feegle have a battle poet, or Gonnagle, who repels the enemy through the awfulness of his poetry. Training up a successor, 'the old bard congratulates the young one: "That, lad," he said proudly, "was some of the worst poetry I have heard for a long time. It was offensive to the ear and a torrrture to the soul...a verrry commendable effort! We'll make a gonnagle out o' ye yet!"... 'The Folklore of Discworld' notes that this is 'a touching tribute to the memory of William McGonagall...famously excruciating Scottish poet'. In the Harry Potter books, author J. K. Rowling chose the surname of the Professor of Transfiguration, Minerva McGonagall, because she had heard of McGonagall and loved the surname. The life of the bard, and Corstorphine Round Table's particular affection for the poet, is celebrated in a comic graphic novel by one of its former members, Charles Nasmyth. The Scots Language translation of Asterix names the village bard "Magonaglix" in reference to McGonagall. In live performances Billy Connolly visited Dundee and the Tay Bridge during his 1994 World Tour of Scotland, where he talked about McGonagall and recited a passage from his book Poetic Gems. In motion pictures A 1974 movie called The Great McGonagall starred Spike Milligan as a fictionalised William McGonagall. Peter Sellers played Queen Victoria. In episode 13 of season 2 of the Canadian TV series Murdoch Mysteries, a murder victim is holding a copy of a book entitled "The Collected Works of William Topaz McGonagall". While the death appears accidental, the detective suspects foul play because "it is highly unlikely that anyone would voluntarily reach for a volume of McGonagall." In 2016, The Atlantic premiered a short documentary about the life of McGonagall entitled "worst.poet.ever." In music McGonagall's poem "The
level of overseas demand for live animals from WA, driven mainly by southeast Asia's feedlots and Middle Eastern countries, where Islamic dietary laws and a lack of storage and refrigeration facilities favour live animals over imports of processed meat. About half of Australia's live cattle exports come from Western Australia. Resource sector growth in recent years has resulted in significant labour and skills shortages, leading to recent efforts by the state government to encourage interstate and overseas immigration. According to the 2006 census, the median individual income was A$500 per week in Western Australia (compared to A$466 in Australia as a whole). The median family income was A$1246 per week (compared to A$1171 for Australia). Recent growth has also contributed to significant rises in average property values in 2006, although values plateaued in 2007. Located south of Perth, the heavy industrial area of Kwinana had the nation's largest oil refinery with a capacity of 146,000 barrels of oil per day, producing most of the state's petrol and diesel. Kwinana also hosts alumina and nickel processing plants, port facilities for grain and other bulk exports, and support industries for mining and petroleum such as heavy and light engineering, and metal fabrication. Shipbuilding (e.g. Austal) and associated support industries are found at nearby Henderson, just north of Kwinana. Significant secondary industries include cement and building product manufacturing, flour milling, food processing, animal feed production, automotive body building and printing. Western Australia has a significant fishing industry. Products for local consumption and export include western rock lobsters, prawns, crabs, shark and tuna, as well as pearl fishing in the Kimberley region of the state. Processing is conducted along the west coast. Whaling was a key marine industry but ceased at Albany in 1978. Western Australia has the world's biggest plantations of both Indian sandalwood (northern WA) and Australian sandalwood (semi-arid regions), which are used to produce sandalwood oil and incense. The WA sandalwood industry provides about 40 per cent of the international sandalwood oil market. Tourism In recent years, tourism has grown in importance, with significant numbers of visitors to the state coming from the UK and Ireland (28%), other European countries (14%) Singapore (16%), Japan (10%) and Malaysia (8%). Revenue from tourism is a strong economic driver in many of the smaller population centres outside of Perth, especially in coastal locations. Tourism forms a major part of the Western Australian economy with 833,100 international visitors making up 12.8% of the total international tourism to Australia in the year ending March 2015. The top three source markets include the United Kingdom (17%), Singapore (10%) and New Zealand (10%) with the majority of purpose for visitation being holiday/vacation reasons. The tourism industry contributes $9.3 billion to the Western Australian economy and supports 94,000 jobs within the state. Both directly and indirectly, the industry makes up 3.2% of the state's economy whilst comparatively, WA's largest revenue source, the mining sector, brings in 31%. Tourism WA is the government agency responsible for promoting Western Australia as a holiday destination. Government Western Australia was granted self-government in 1890 with a bicameral Parliament located in Perth, consisting of the Legislative Assembly (or lower house), which has 59 members; and the Legislative Council (or upper house), which has 36 members. Suffrage is universal and compulsory for citizens over 18 years of age. With the federation of the Australian colonies in 1901, Western Australia became a state within Australia's federal structure; this involved ceding certain powers to the Commonwealth (or Federal) government in accordance with the Constitution; all powers not specifically granted to the Commonwealth remained solely with the State. However over time the Commonwealth has effectively expanded its powers through broad interpretation of its enumerated powers and increasing control of taxation and financial distribution (see Federalism in Australia). Whilst the sovereign of Western Australia is the Queen of Australia (Elizabeth II) and executive power is nominally vested in her state representative, the Governor (currently Kim Beazley), executive power rests with the premier and ministers drawn from the party or coalition of parties holding a majority of seats in the Legislative Assembly. Mark McGowan is the premier, having defeated Colin Barnett at the state election on 11 March 2017 and retained power at the 2021 election. Secession Secessionism has been a recurring feature of Western Australia's political landscape since shortly after European settlement in 1826. Western Australia was the most reluctant participant in the Commonwealth of Australia. Western Australia did not participate in the earliest federation conference. Longer-term residents of Western Australia were generally opposed to federation; however, the discovery of gold brought many immigrants from other parts of Australia. It was these residents, primarily in Kalgoorlie but also in Albany who voted to join the Commonwealth, and the proposal of these areas being admitted separately under the name Auralia was considered. In a referendum in April 1933, 68% of voters voted for the state to leave the Commonwealth of Australia with the aim of returning to the British Empire as an autonomous territory. The State Government sent a delegation to Westminster, but the British Government ruled the referendum invalid and therefore no action was taken. Local government Western Australia is divided into 139 Local Government Areas, including Christmas Island and the Cocos (Keeling) Islands. Their mandate and operations are governed by the Local Government Act 1995. Education Education in Western Australia consists of one year of pre-school at age 4 or 5, followed by six years of primary education for all students as of 2015. At age 12 or 13, students begin six years of secondary education. Students are required to attend school up until they are 16 years old. Sixteen and 17 year olds are required to be enrolled in school or a training organisation, be employed or be in a combination of school/training/employment. Students have the option to study at a TAFE college after Year 10, or continue through to Year 12 with vocational courses or a university entrance courses. There are five universities in Western Australia. They consist of four Perth-based public universities, being the University of Western Australia, Curtin University, Edith Cowan University and Murdoch University; and one Fremantle-based private Roman Catholic university, the University of Notre Dame Australia. The University of Notre Dame is also one of only two private universities in Australia, along with Bond University, a not-for-profit private education provider based in Gold Coast, Queensland. Media Print Western Australia has two daily newspapers: the Seven West Media-owned tabloid The West Australian and The Kalgoorlie Miner. Also published is one weekend paper, The Weekend West, and one Sunday tabloid newspaper, which is also owned by Seven West Media after purchase from News Corporation's The Sunday Times. There are also 17 weekly Community Newspapers with distribution from Yanchep in the north to Mandurah in the south. There are two major weekly rural papers in the state, Countryman and the Rural Press-owned Farm Weekly. The interstate broadsheet publication The Australian is also available, although with sales per capita lagging far behind those in other states. WAtoday is an online newspaper owned by Fairfax Digital, focusing its coverage on Perth and Western Australia. Television Metropolitan Perth has six broadcast television stations; ABC TV WA. (Callsign: ABW – Channel 12 Digital) SBS WA (Callsign: SBS – Channel 29 Digital) Seven Network Perth. (Callsign: TVW – Channel 6 Digital) Nine Network Perth. (Callsign: STW – Channel 8 Digital) Network Ten Perth. (Callsign: NEW – Channel 11 Digital) West TV. A free-to-air community television channel that began broadcasting in April 2010. It replaced Access 31, which ceased broadcasting in August 2008. Regional WA has a similar availability of stations, with the exception of West TV. Geographically, it is one of the largest television markets in the world, including almost one-third of the continent. Golden West Network (GWN7). Affiliated with Seven. (Callsigns: SSW South West, VEW Goldfields/Esperance, GTW Central West, WAW remote areas) WIN Television WA. Affiliated with Ten (Callsign: WOW) West Digital Television. Affiliated with Nine. (Callsigns: SDW South West, VDW Goldfields/Esperance, GDW Central West, WDW remote areas) Westlink. An open-narrowcast community-based television channel. (Satellite only) In addition, broadcasters operate digital multichannels: ABC HD (Carried by ABW) ABC2 (Carried by ABW) ABC Me (Carried by ABW) ABC News (Carried by ABW) SBS HD (Carried by SBS) SBS Viceland (Carried by SBS) Food Network (Carried by SBS) NITV (Carried by SBS) 7HD (Carried by TVW) 7TWO (Carried by TVW and affiliates) 7mate (Carried by TVW and affiliates) 7flix (Carried by TVW) Racing.com (Carried by TVW and affiliates) 9HD (Carried by STW) 9Gem (Carried by STW and affiliates) 9Go! (Carried by STW and affiliates) 9Life (Carried by STW) Extra (Australian TV channel) (Carried by STW) One (Carried by NEW and affiliate) 10 Peach (Carried by NEW and affiliate) Ten HD (Carried by NEW and affiliate) TVSN (Carried by NEW and affiliate) Spree TV (Carried by NEW) Pay TV services are provided by Foxtel, which acquired many of the assets and all the remaining subscribers of the insolvent Galaxy Television satellite service in 1998. Some metropolitan suburbs are serviced by Pay TV via cable; however, most of the metropolitan and rural areas can only access Pay TV via satellite. Radio Perth has many radio stations on both AM and FM frequencies. ABC stations include ABC NewsRadio (6PB 585 am), 720 ABC Perth (6WF 720 am), ABC Radio National (6RN 810 am), ABC Classic FM (6ABC 97.7FM) and Triple J (6JJJ 99.3FM). The six commercial stations are: FM 92.9 (6PPM), Nova 93.7 (6PER), Mix 94.5 (6MIX), 96fm (6NOW), and AM 882 (6PR), AM 1080 (6IX)	of what Abel Tasman named New Holland in 1644, usually unintentionally as demonstrated by the many shipwrecks along the coast of ships that deviated from the Brouwer Route (because of poor navigation and storms). By the late 18th century, British and French sailors had begun to explore the Western Australian coast. The Baudin expedition of 1800–03 included the coast of Western Australia, and resulted in the Freycinet Map of 1811, the first published map featuring the full outline of Australia. The name New Holland remained in popular and semi-official use until at least the mid-1850s; that is, it was in use for about years in comparison to the name Australia which to date has been in use for about years. The origins of the present state began with the establishment by Lockyer of a convict-supported settlement from New South Wales at King George III Sound. The settlement was formally annexed on 21 January 1827 by Lockyer when he commanded the Union Jack be raised and a feu de joie fired by the troops. The settlement was founded in response to British concerns about the possibility of a French colony being established on the coast of Western Australia. On 7 March 1831 it was transferred to the control of the Swan River Colony, and named Albany in 1832. In 1829 the Swan River Colony was established on the Swan River by Captain James Stirling. By 1832, the British settler population of the colony had reached around 1,500, and the official name of the colony was changed to Western Australia on 6 February that year. The two separate townsites of the colony developed slowly into the port city of Fremantle and the state's capital, Perth. York was the first inland settlement in Western Australia, situated east of Perth and settled on 16 September 1831. York was the staging point for early explorers who discovered the rich gold reserves of Kalgoorlie. Population growth was very slow until significant discoveries of gold were made in the 1890s around Kalgoorlie. In 1887, a new constitution was drafted, providing for the right of self-governance of European Australians and in 1890, the act granting self-government to the colony was passed by the British Parliament. John Forrest became the first Premier of Western Australia. In 1896, after discoveries of gold at Coolgardie and Kalgoorlie, the Western Australian Parliament authorised the raising of a loan to construct a pipeline to transport of water per day to the burgeoning population on the goldfields. The pipeline, known as the Goldfields Water Supply Scheme, was completed in 1903. O'Connor, Western Australia's first engineer-in-chief, designed and oversaw the construction of the pipeline. It carries water from Perth to Kalgoorlie, and is attributed by historians as an important factor driving the state's population and economic growth. Following a campaign led by Forrest, residents of the colony of Western Australia voted in favour of federation, resulting in Western Australia officially becoming a state on 1 January 1901. Geography Western Australia is bounded to the east by longitude 129°E, the meridian 129 degrees east of Greenwich, which defines the border with South Australia and the Northern Territory, and bounded by the Indian Ocean to the west and north. The International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) designates the body of water south of the continent as part of the Indian Ocean; in Australia it is officially gazetted as the Southern Ocean. The total length of the state's eastern border is . There are of coastline, including of island coastline. The total land area occupied by the state is . Geology The bulk of Western Australia consists of the extremely old Yilgarn craton and Pilbara craton which merged with the Deccan Plateau of India, Madagascar and the Kaapvaal and Zimbabwe cratons of Southern Africa, in the Archean Eon to form Ur, one of the oldest supercontinents on Earth (3 – 3.2 billion years ago). In May 2017, evidence of the earliest known life on land may have been found in 3.48-billion-year-old geyserite and other related mineral deposits (often found around hot springs and geysers) uncovered in the Pilbara craton. Because the only mountain-building since then has been of the Stirling Range with the rifting from Antarctica, the land is extremely eroded and ancient, with no part of the state above 1,245 metres (4,085 ft) AHD (at Mount Meharry in the Hamersley Range of the Pilbara region). Most of the state is a low plateau with an average elevation of about 400 metres (1,200 ft), very low relief, and no surface runoff. This descends relatively sharply to the coastal plains, in some cases forming a sharp escarpment (as with the Darling Range/Darling Scarp near Perth). The extreme age of the landscape has meant that the soils are remarkably infertile and frequently laterised. Even soils derived from granitic bedrock contain an order of magnitude less available phosphorus and only half as much nitrogen as soils in comparable climates in other continents. Soils derived from extensive sandplains or ironstone are even less fertile, nearly devoid of soluble phosphate and deficient in zinc, copper, molybdenum and sometimes potassium and calcium. The infertility of most of the soils has required heavy application by farmers of fertilisers. These have resulted in damage to invertebrate and bacterial populations. The grazing and use of hoofed mammals and, later, heavy machinery through the years have resulted in compaction of soils and great damage to the fragile soils. Large-scale land clearing for agriculture has damaged habitats for native flora and fauna. As a result, the South West region of the state has a higher concentration of rare, threatened or endangered flora and fauna than many areas of Australia, making it one of the world's biodiversity "hot spots". Large areas of the state's wheatbelt region have problems with dryland salinity and the loss of fresh water. Climate The southwest coastal area has a Mediterranean climate. It was originally heavily forested, including large stands of karri, one of the tallest trees in the world. This agricultural region is one of the nine most bio-diverse terrestrial habitats, with a higher proportion of endemic species than most other equivalent regions. Thanks to the offshore Leeuwin Current, the area is one of the top six regions for marine biodiversity and contains the most southerly coral reefs in the world. Average annual rainfall varies from 300 millimetres (12 in) at the edge of the Wheatbelt region to 1,400 millimetres (55 in) in the wettest areas near Northcliffe, but from November to March, evaporation exceeds rainfall, and it is generally very dry. Plants are adapted to this as well as the extreme poverty of all soils. The central two-thirds of the state is arid and sparsely inhabited. The only significant economic activity is mining. Annual rainfall averages less than 300 millimetres (8–10 in), most of which occurs in sporadic torrential falls related to cyclone events in summer. An exception to this is the northern tropical regions. The Kimberley has an extremely hot monsoonal climate with average annual rainfall ranging from 500 to 1,500 millimetres (20–60 in), but there is a very long almost rainless season from April to November. Eighty-five percent of the state's runoff occurs in the Kimberley, but because it occurs in violent floods and because of the insurmountable poverty of the generally shallow soils, the only development has taken place along the Ord River. Snow is rare in the state and typically occurs only in the Stirling Range near Albany, as it is the only mountain range far enough south and sufficiently elevated. More rarely, snow can fall on the nearby Porongurup Range. Snow outside these areas is a major event; it usually occurs in hilly areas of southwestern Australia. The most widespread low-level snow occurred on 26 June 1956 when snow was reported in the Perth Hills, as far north as Wongan Hills and as far east as Salmon Gums. However, even in the Stirling Range, snowfalls rarely exceed and rarely settle for more than one day. The highest observed temperature of 50.7 °C (123.3 °F) was recorded in Onslow on 13 January 2022. The lowest temperature recorded was −7.2 °C (19.0 °F) at Eyre Bird Observatory on 17 August 2008. Flora and fauna Western Australia is home to around 630 species of birds (depending on the taxonomy used). Of these around 15 are endemic to the state. The best areas for birds are the southwestern corner of the state and the area around Broome and the Kimberley. The Flora of Western Australia comprises 10,162 published native vascular plant species, along with a further 1,196 species currently recognised but unpublished. They occur within 1,543 genera from 211 families; there are also 1,276 naturalised alien or invasive plant species, more commonly known as weeds. In the southwest region are some of the largest numbers of plant species for its area in the world. Western Australia's ecoregions include the sandstone gorges of The Kimberley on the northern coast, and below that the drier Victoria Plains tropical savanna inland, and the semi-desert Pilbara shrublands, Carnarvon xeric shrublands, and Western Australian mulga shrublands to the southwest. Southwards along the coast are the Southwest Australia savanna and the Swan Coastal Plain around Perth, with the jarrah-karri forest and shrublands on the southwest corner of the coast around the Margaret River wine-growing area. Going east along the Southern Ocean coast is the Goldfields-Esperance region, including the Esperance mallee and the Coolgardie woodlands inland around town of Coolgardie. Deserts occupy the interior, including the Great Sandy-Tanami desert, Gibson Desert, Great Victoria Desert, and Nullarbor Plain. In 1831 Scottish botanist Robert Brown produced a scientific paper, General view of the botany of the vicinity of Swan River. It discusses the vegetation of the Swan River Colony. Demographics Europeans began to settle permanently in 1826 when Albany was claimed by Britain to forestall French claims to the western third of the continent. Perth was founded as the Swan River Colony in 1829 by British and Irish settlers, though the outpost languished. Its officials eventually requested convict labour to augment its population. In the 1890s, interstate immigration, resulting from a mining boom in the Goldfields region, resulted in a sharp population increase. Western Australia did not receive significant flows of immigrants from Britain, Ireland or elsewhere in the British Empire until the early 20th century. At that time, its local projects—such as the Group Settlement Scheme of the 1920s, which encouraged farmers to settle the southwest—increased awareness of Australia's western third as a destination for colonists. Led by immigrants from the British Isles, Western Australia's population developed at a faster rate during the twentieth century than it had previously. After World War II, both the eastern states and Western Australia received large numbers of Italians, Croatians and Macedonians. Despite this, Britain has contributed the greatest number of immigrants to this day. Western Australia—particularly Perth—has the highest proportion of British-born of any state: 10.3% in 2011, compared to a national average of 5.1%. This group is heavily concentrated in certain parts, where they account for a quarter of the population. Perth's metropolitan area (including Mandurah) had an estimated population of 2,043,138 in June 2017 (79% of the state). Other significant population centres include Bunbury (73,989), Geraldton (37,961), Kalgoorlie-Boulder (30,420), Albany (33,998), Karratha (16,446), Broome (14,501) and Port Hedland (14,285). Ancestry and immigration At the 2016 census, the most commonly nominated ancestries were: 3.1% of the population, or 75,978 people, identified as Indigenous Australians (Aboriginal Australians and Torres Strait Islanders) in 2016. Language At the 2016 census, 75.2% of inhabitants spoke only English at home, with the next most common languages being Mandarin (1.9%), Italian (1.2%), Vietnamese (0.8%), Cantonese (0.8%) and Tagalog (0.6%). Religion At the , 55.5% of respondents identified as Christian and 32.5% as having no religion. 10.3% chose not to state a religion. The most commonly nominated responses were Catholicism (21.4%) and Anglicanism (14.3%). Economy Western Australia's economy is largely driven by extraction and processing of a diverse range of mineral and petroleum commodities. The structure of the economy is closely linked to these natural resources, providing a comparative advantage in resource extraction and processing. As a consequence: Western Australia contributes an estimated 58% of Australia's Mineral and Energy Exports, potentially earning up to 4.64% of Australia's total GDP. Gross state product per person ($97,940 in 2017–18) is higher than any other state and well above the national average ($73,267). Diversification (i.e. a greater range of commodities) over the past 15 years has provided a more balanced production base and less reliance on just a few major export markets, insulating the economy from fluctuations in world prices to some extent. Finance, insurance and property services and construction have grown steadily and have increased their share of economic output. Recent growth in global demand for minerals and petroleum, especially in China (iron-ore) and Japan (for LNG), has ensured economic growth above the national average. In 2019 Western Australia's overseas exports accounted for 46% of the nation's total. The state's major export commodities included iron-ore, petroleum, gold, alumina, nickel, wheat, copper, lithium, chemicals and mineral sands. Western Australia is the world's largest iron-ore producer (32% of the world's total), and extracts 67% (6% of world production) of Australia's 324 tonnes of gold. It is a major world producer of bauxite, which is processed into alumina at four refineries providing 11% of total world production. Diamonds are extracted at the world's largest diamond mine in the far north Kimberley region. Coal mined at Collie is the main fuel for baseload electricity generation in the state's south-west. Agricultural production in WA is a major contributor to the state and national economy. Although tending to be highly seasonal, in the period 2010–2019 wheat production in WA has averaged nearly 10 million tonnes ($2.816 billion in 2019), accounting for half the nation's total and providing $2–3 billion in export income. Other significant farm output includes wool, beef, lamb, barley, canola, lupins, oats and pulses. There is a high level of overseas demand for live animals from WA, driven mainly by southeast Asia's feedlots and Middle Eastern countries, where Islamic dietary laws and a lack of storage and refrigeration facilities favour live animals over imports of processed meat. About half of Australia's live cattle exports come from Western Australia. Resource sector growth in recent years has resulted in significant labour and skills shortages, leading to recent efforts by the state government to encourage interstate and overseas immigration. According to the 2006 census, the median individual income was A$500 per week in Western Australia (compared to A$466 in Australia as a whole). The median family income was A$1246 per week (compared to A$1171 for Australia). Recent growth has also contributed to significant rises in average property values in 2006, although values plateaued in 2007. Located south of Perth, the heavy industrial area of Kwinana had the nation's largest oil refinery with
His political ideas are regarded as "natural" or "secular", holding for a secular absolutism. The views on monarchical accountability espoused in his Dialogus (written between 1332 and 1347) greatly influenced the Conciliar movement and assisted in the emergence of liberal democratic ideologies. William argued for complete separation of spiritual rule and earthly rule. He thought that the pope and churchmen have no right or grounds at all for secular rule like having property, citing 2 Tim. 2:4. That belongs solely to earthly rulers, who may also accuse the pope of crimes, if need be. After the Fall God had given men, including non-Christians, two powers: private ownership and the right to set their rulers, who should serve the interest of the people, not some special interests. Thus he preceded Thomas Hobbes in formulating social contract theory along with earlier scholars. William of Ockham said that the Franciscans avoided both private and common ownership by using commodities, including food and clothes, without any rights, with mere usus facti, the ownership still belonging to the donor of the item or to the pope. Their opponents such as Pope John XXII wrote that use without any ownership cannot be justified: "It is impossible that an external deed could be just if the person has no right to do it." Thus the disputes on the heresy of Franciscans led William of Ockham and others to formulate some fundamentals of economic theory and the theory of ownership. Logic In logic, William of Ockham wrote down in words the formulae that would later be called De Morgan's Laws, and he pondered ternary logic, that is, a logical system with three truth values; a concept that would be taken up again in the mathematical logic of the 19th and 20th centuries. His contributions to semantics, especially to the maturing theory of supposition, are still studied by logicians. William of Ockham was probably the first logician to treat empty terms in Aristotelian syllogistic effectively; he devised an empty term semantics that exactly fit the syllogistic. Specifically, an argument is valid according to William's semantics if and only if it is valid according to Prior Analytics. Literary Ockhamism/nominalism William of Ockham and his works have been discussed as a possible influence on several late medieval literary figures and works, especially Geoffrey Chaucer, but also Jean Molinet, the Gawain poet, François Rabelais, John Skelton, Julian of Norwich, the York and Townely Plays, and Renaissance romances. Only in very few of these cases is it possible to demonstrate direct links to William of Ockham or his texts. Correspondences between Ockhamist and Nominalist philosophy/theology and literary texts from medieval to postmodern times have been discussed within the scholarly paradigm of literary nominalism. Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, criticized him together with Duns Scotus as fuelling unnecessary controversies inside the Church. Works The standard edition of the philosophical and theological works is: William of Ockham: Opera philosophica et theologica, Gedeon Gál, et al., eds. 17 vols. St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1967–88. The seventh volume of the Opera Philosophica contains the doubtful and spurious works. The political works, all but the Dialogus, have been edited in H. S. Offler, et al., eds. Guilelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, 4 vols., 1940–97, Manchester: Manchester University Press [vols. 1–3]; Oxford: Oxford University Press [vol. 4]. Abbreviations: OT = Opera Theologica voll. 1–10; OP = Opera Philosophica voll. 1–7. Philosophical writings Summa logicae (Sum of Logic) (c. 1323, OP 1). Expositionis in Libros artis logicae prooemium, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum Porphyrii de Praedicabilibus, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum Praedicamentorum Aristotelis, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, 1321–24, OP 2). Tractatus de praedestinatione et de prescientia dei respectu futurorum contingentium (Treatise on Predestination and God's Foreknowledge with respect to Future Contingents, 1322–24, OP 2). Expositio super libros Elenchorum (Exposition of Aristotle's Sophistic refutations, 1322–24, OP 3). Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Prologus et Libri I–III (Exposition of Aristotle's Physics) (1322–24, OP 4). Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Prologus et Libri IV–VIII (Exposition of Aristotle's Physics) (1322–24, OP 5). Brevis summa libri Physicorum (Brief Summa of the Physics, 1322–23, OP 6). Summula philosophiae naturalis (Little Summa of Natural Philosophy, 1319–21, OP 6). Quaestiones in libros Physicorum Aristotelis (Questions on Aristotle's Books of the Physics, before 1324, OP 6). Theological writings In libros Sententiarum (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard). Book I (Ordinatio) completed shortly after July 1318 (OT 1–4). Books II–IV (Reportatio) 1317–18 (transcription of the lectures; OT 5–7). Quaestiones variae (OT 8). Quodlibeta septem (before 1327), (OT 9). Tractatus de quantitate (1323–24. OT 10). Tractatus de corpore Christi (1323–24, OT 10). Political writings Opus nonaginta dierum (1332–34). Epistola ad fratres minores (1334). Dialogus (before 1335). Tractatus contra Johannem [XXII] (1335). Tractatus contra Benedictum [XII] (1337–38). Octo quaestiones de potestate papae (1340–41). Consultatio de causa matrimoniali (1341–42). Breviloquium (1341–42). De imperatorum et pontifcum potestate [also known as "Defensorium"] (1346–47). Doubtful writings Tractatus minor logicae (Lesser Treatise on logic) (1340–47?, OP 7). Elementarium logicae (Primer of logic) (1340–47?, OP 7). Spurious writings Tractatus de praedicamentis (OP 7). Quaestio de relatione (OP 7). Centiloquium (OP 7). Tractatus de principiis theologiae (OP 7). Translations Philosophical works Philosophical Writings, tr. P Boehner, rev. S Brown, (Indianapolis, IN, 1990) Ockham's Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa logicae, translated by Michael J. Loux, (Notre Dame; London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974) [translation of Summa logicae, part 1] Ockham's Theory of Propositions: Part II of the Summa logicae, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso and Henry Schuurman, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) [translation of Summa logicae, part 2] Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham: a Translation of Summa logicae III-II, De syllogismo demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio, translated by John Lee Longeway, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2007) Ockham on Aristotle's Physics: A Translation of Ockham's Brevis Summa Libri Physicorum, translated by Julian Davies, (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1989) Kluge, Eike-Henner W., "William of Ockham's Commentary on Porphyry: Introduction and English Translation", Franciscan Studies 33, pp. 171–254, , and 34, pp. 306–82, , (1973–74) Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, translated by Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann, (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969) [translation of Tractatus de praedestinatione et de praescientia Dei et de futuris contigentibus] Quodlibetal Questions, translated by Alfred J Freddoso and Francis E Kelley, 2 vols, (New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 1991) (translation of Quodlibeta septem) Paul Spade, Five Texts on the Mediaeval Problem of Universals: Porphyry, Boethius, Abelard, Duns Scotus, Ockham, (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1994) [Five questions on Universals from His Ordinatio d. 2 qq. 4–8] Theological works The De sacramento altaris of William of Ockham, translated by T Bruce Birch, (Burlington, Iowa: Lutheran Literary Board, 1930) [translation of Treatise on Quantity and On the Body of Christ] Political works An princeps pro suo uccursu, scilicet guerrae, possit recipere bona ecclesiarum, etiam invito papa, translated Cary J. Nederman, in Political thought in early fourteenth-century England: treatises by Walter of Milemete, William of Pagula, and William of Ockham, (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2002) A translation of William of Ockham's Work of Ninety Days, translated by John Kilcullen and John Scott, (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 2001) [translation of Opus nonaginta dierum] Tractatus de principiis theologiae, translated in A compendium of Ockham's teachings: a translation of the Tractatus de principiis theologiae, translated by Julian Davies, (St. Bonaventure, NY: Franciscan Institute, St. Bonaventure University, 1998) On the Power of Emperors and Popes, translated by Annabel S. Brett, (Bristol, 1998) Rega Wood, Ockham on the Virtues, (West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press, 1997) [includes translation of On the Connection of the Virtues] A Letter to the Friars Minor, and Other Writings, translated by John Kilcullen, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) [includes translation of Epistola ad Fratres Minores] A Short Discourse on the Tyrannical Government, translated by John Kilcullen, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) [translation of Breviloquium de principatu tyrannico] William of Ockham, [Question One of] Eight Questions on the Power of the Pope, translated by Jonathan Robinson In fiction William of Occam served as an inspiration for the creation of William of Baskerville, the	we do not need to allow entities in all ten of Aristotle's categories; we thus do not need the category of quantity, as the mathematical entities are not "real". Mathematics must be applied to other categories, such as the categories of substance or qualities, thus anticipating modern scientific renaissance while violating Aristotelian prohibition of metabasis. Theory of knowledge In the theory of knowledge, William rejected the scholastic theory of species, as unnecessary and not supported by experience, in favour of a theory of abstraction. This was an important development in late medieval epistemology. He also distinguished between intuitive and abstract cognition; intuitive cognition depends on the existence or non-existence of the object, whereas abstractive cognition "abstracts" the object from the existence predicate. Interpreters are, as yet, undecided about the roles of these two types of cognitive activities. Political theory William of Ockham is also increasingly being recognized as an important contributor to the development of Western constitutional ideas, especially those of government with limited responsibility. He was one of the first medieval authors to advocate a form of church/state separation, and was important for the early development of the notion of property rights. His political ideas are regarded as "natural" or "secular", holding for a secular absolutism. The views on monarchical accountability espoused in his Dialogus (written between 1332 and 1347) greatly influenced the Conciliar movement and assisted in the emergence of liberal democratic ideologies. William argued for complete separation of spiritual rule and earthly rule. He thought that the pope and churchmen have no right or grounds at all for secular rule like having property, citing 2 Tim. 2:4. That belongs solely to earthly rulers, who may also accuse the pope of crimes, if need be. After the Fall God had given men, including non-Christians, two powers: private ownership and the right to set their rulers, who should serve the interest of the people, not some special interests. Thus he preceded Thomas Hobbes in formulating social contract theory along with earlier scholars. William of Ockham said that the Franciscans avoided both private and common ownership by using commodities, including food and clothes, without any rights, with mere usus facti, the ownership still belonging to the donor of the item or to the pope. Their opponents such as Pope John XXII wrote that use without any ownership cannot be justified: "It is impossible that an external deed could be just if the person has no right to do it." Thus the disputes on the heresy of Franciscans led William of Ockham and others to formulate some fundamentals of economic theory and the theory of ownership. Logic In logic, William of Ockham wrote down in words the formulae that would later be called De Morgan's Laws, and he pondered ternary logic, that is, a logical system with three truth values; a concept that would be taken up again in the mathematical logic of the 19th and 20th centuries. His contributions to semantics, especially to the maturing theory of supposition, are still studied by logicians. William of Ockham was probably the first logician to treat empty terms in Aristotelian syllogistic effectively; he devised an empty term semantics that exactly fit the syllogistic. Specifically, an argument is valid according to William's semantics if and only if it is valid according to Prior Analytics. Literary Ockhamism/nominalism William of Ockham and his works have been discussed as a possible influence on several late medieval literary figures and works, especially Geoffrey Chaucer, but also Jean Molinet, the Gawain poet, François Rabelais, John Skelton, Julian of Norwich, the York and Townely Plays, and Renaissance romances. Only in very few of these cases is it possible to demonstrate direct links to William of Ockham or his texts. Correspondences between Ockhamist and Nominalist philosophy/theology and literary texts from medieval to postmodern times have been discussed within the scholarly paradigm of literary nominalism. Erasmus, in his Praise of Folly, criticized him together with Duns Scotus as fuelling unnecessary controversies inside the Church. Works The standard edition of the philosophical and theological works is: William of Ockham: Opera philosophica et theologica, Gedeon Gál, et al., eds. 17 vols. St. Bonaventure, N. Y.: The Franciscan Institute, 1967–88. The seventh volume of the Opera Philosophica contains the doubtful and spurious works. The political works, all but the Dialogus, have been edited in H. S. Offler, et al., eds. Guilelmi de Ockham Opera Politica, 4 vols., 1940–97, Manchester: Manchester University Press [vols. 1–3]; Oxford: Oxford University Press [vol. 4]. Abbreviations: OT = Opera Theologica voll. 1–10; OP = Opera Philosophica voll. 1–7. Philosophical writings Summa logicae (Sum of Logic) (c. 1323, OP 1). Expositionis in Libros artis logicae prooemium, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum Porphyrii de Praedicabilibus, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum Praedicamentorum Aristotelis, 1321–24, OP 2). Expositio in librum in librum Perihermenias Aristotelis, 1321–24, OP 2). Tractatus de praedestinatione et de prescientia dei respectu futurorum contingentium (Treatise on Predestination and God's Foreknowledge with respect to Future Contingents, 1322–24, OP 2). Expositio super libros Elenchorum (Exposition of Aristotle's Sophistic refutations, 1322–24, OP 3). Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Prologus et Libri I–III (Exposition of Aristotle's Physics) (1322–24, OP 4). Expositio in libros Physicorum Aristotelis. Prologus et Libri IV–VIII (Exposition of Aristotle's Physics) (1322–24, OP 5). Brevis summa libri Physicorum (Brief Summa of the Physics, 1322–23, OP 6). Summula philosophiae naturalis (Little Summa of Natural Philosophy, 1319–21, OP 6). Quaestiones in libros Physicorum Aristotelis (Questions on Aristotle's Books of the Physics, before 1324, OP 6). Theological writings In libros Sententiarum (Commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard). Book I (Ordinatio) completed shortly after July 1318 (OT 1–4). Books II–IV (Reportatio) 1317–18 (transcription of the lectures; OT 5–7). Quaestiones variae (OT 8). Quodlibeta septem (before 1327), (OT 9). Tractatus de quantitate (1323–24. OT 10). Tractatus de corpore Christi (1323–24, OT 10). Political writings Opus nonaginta dierum (1332–34). Epistola ad fratres minores (1334). Dialogus (before 1335). Tractatus contra Johannem [XXII] (1335). Tractatus contra Benedictum [XII] (1337–38). Octo quaestiones de potestate papae (1340–41). Consultatio de causa matrimoniali (1341–42). Breviloquium (1341–42). De imperatorum et pontifcum potestate [also known as "Defensorium"] (1346–47). Doubtful writings Tractatus minor logicae (Lesser Treatise on logic) (1340–47?, OP 7). Elementarium logicae (Primer of logic) (1340–47?, OP 7). Spurious writings Tractatus de praedicamentis (OP 7). Quaestio de relatione (OP 7). Centiloquium (OP 7). Tractatus de principiis theologiae (OP 7). Translations Philosophical works Philosophical Writings, tr. P Boehner, rev. S Brown, (Indianapolis, IN, 1990) Ockham's Theory of Terms: Part I of the Summa logicae, translated by Michael J. Loux, (Notre Dame; London: University of Notre Dame Press, 1974) [translation of Summa logicae, part 1] Ockham's Theory of Propositions: Part II of the Summa logicae, translated by Alfred J. Freddoso and Henry Schuurman, (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1980) [translation of Summa logicae, part 2] Demonstration and Scientific Knowledge in William of Ockham: a Translation of Summa logicae III-II, De syllogismo demonstrativo, and Selections from the Prologue to the Ordinatio, translated by John Lee Longeway, (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2007) Ockham on Aristotle's Physics: A Translation of Ockham's Brevis Summa Libri Physicorum, translated by Julian Davies, (St. Bonaventure, NY: The Franciscan Institute, 1989) Kluge, Eike-Henner W., "William of Ockham's Commentary on Porphyry: Introduction and English Translation", Franciscan Studies 33, pp. 171–254, , and 34, pp. 306–82, , (1973–74) Predestination, God's Foreknowledge, and Future Contingents, translated by Marilyn McCord Adams and Norman Kretzmann, (New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1969) [translation of Tractatus de praedestinatione et
Epistles with the Acts of the Apostles, making use of "undesigned coincidences" to argue that these documents mutually supported each other's authenticity. Some have said this book was the most original of Paley's works. It was followed in 1794 by the celebrated View of the Evidences of Christianity, which was also added to the examinations at Cambridge, remaining on the syllabus until the 1920s. For his services in defence of the faith, with the publication of the Evidences, the Bishop of London gave him a stall in St Paul's; the Bishop of Lincoln made him subdean of that cathedral, and the Bishop of Durham conferred upon him the rectory of Bishopwearmouth. During the remainder of Paley's life, his time was divided between Bishopwearmouth and Lincoln, during which time he wrote Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, despite his increasingly debilitating illness. He died on 25 May 1805 and is buried in Carlisle Cathedral with his two wives. Among his grandsons were: the classical scholar Frederick Apthorp Paley (1815-1888) and his brother the architect Edward Graham Paley (1823-1895), sons of the Rev. Edmund Paley (1782-1850). Thought Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy was one of the most influential philosophical texts in late Enlightenment Britain. It was cited in several parliamentary debates over the corn laws in Britain and in debates in the US Congress. The book remained a set textbook at Cambridge well into the Victorian era. Charles Darwin, as a student of theology, was required to read it when he did his undergraduate studies at Christ's College, but it was Paley's Natural Theology that most impressed Darwin even though it was not a set book for undergraduates. Portraits of Paley and Darwin face each other at Christ's College to this day. Paley is also remembered for his contributions to the philosophy of religion, utilitarian ethics and Christian apologetics. In 1802, he published Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, his last book. As he states in the preface, he saw the book as a preamble to his other philosophical and theological books; in fact, he suggests that Natural Theology should be read first, so as to build a systematic understanding of his arguments. The main thrust of his argument was that God's design of the whole creation could be seen in the general happiness, or well-being, that was evident in the physical and social order of things. Such a book fell within the broad tradition of natural theology works written during the Enlightenment; and this explains why Paley based much of his thought on John Ray (1691), William Derham (1711) and Bernard Nieuwentyt (1750). Paley's argument is built mainly around anatomy and natural history. "For my part", he says, "I take my stand in human anatomy"; elsewhere he insists upon "the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear". In making his argument, Paley employed a wide variety of metaphors and analogies. Perhaps the most famous is his analogy between a watch and the world. Historians, philosophers and theologians often call this the Watchmaker analogy. Building on this mechanical analogy, Paley presents examples from planetary astronomy and argues that the regular movements of the solar system resemble the workings of a giant clock. To bolster his views he cites the work of his old friend John Law and the Dublin Astronomer Royal John Brinkley. The germ of the idea is to be found in ancient writers who used sundials and Ptolemaic epicycles to illustrate the divine order of the world. These types of examples can be seen in the work of the ancient philosopher Cicero, especially in his De natura deorum, ii. 87 and 97. The watch analogy was widely used in the Enlightenment, by deists and Christians alike. Thus, Paley's use of the watch (and other mechanical objects like it) continued a long and fruitful tradition of analogical reasoning that was well received by those who read Natural Theology when it was published in 1802. Legacy Since Paley is often read in university courses that address the philosophy of religion, the timing of his design argument has sometimes perplexed modern philosophers. Earlier in the century David Hume had argued against notions of design with counter examples drawn from monstrosity, imperfect forms of testimony and probability (see watchmaker analogy). Hume's arguments, however, were not widely accepted by most of the reading public and they fell 'stillborn' (to use Hume's own assessment) from the press. Despite Hume's unpopularity, Paley's published works and in manuscript letters show that he engaged directly with Hume from his time as an undergraduate to his last works. Paley's works were more influential than Hume's from the 1800s to the 1840s. Hume's arguments were only accepted gradually by the reading public, and his philosophical works sold poorly until agnostics like Thomas Huxley championed Hume's philosophy in the late 19th century. Scientific norms have	Existence and Attributes of the Deity, despite his increasingly debilitating illness. He died on 25 May 1805 and is buried in Carlisle Cathedral with his two wives. Among his grandsons were: the classical scholar Frederick Apthorp Paley (1815-1888) and his brother the architect Edward Graham Paley (1823-1895), sons of the Rev. Edmund Paley (1782-1850). Thought Paley's Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy was one of the most influential philosophical texts in late Enlightenment Britain. It was cited in several parliamentary debates over the corn laws in Britain and in debates in the US Congress. The book remained a set textbook at Cambridge well into the Victorian era. Charles Darwin, as a student of theology, was required to read it when he did his undergraduate studies at Christ's College, but it was Paley's Natural Theology that most impressed Darwin even though it was not a set book for undergraduates. Portraits of Paley and Darwin face each other at Christ's College to this day. Paley is also remembered for his contributions to the philosophy of religion, utilitarian ethics and Christian apologetics. In 1802, he published Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, his last book. As he states in the preface, he saw the book as a preamble to his other philosophical and theological books; in fact, he suggests that Natural Theology should be read first, so as to build a systematic understanding of his arguments. The main thrust of his argument was that God's design of the whole creation could be seen in the general happiness, or well-being, that was evident in the physical and social order of things. Such a book fell within the broad tradition of natural theology works written during the Enlightenment; and this explains why Paley based much of his thought on John Ray (1691), William Derham (1711) and Bernard Nieuwentyt (1750). Paley's argument is built mainly around anatomy and natural history. "For my part", he says, "I take my stand in human anatomy"; elsewhere he insists upon "the necessity, in each particular case, of an intelligent designing mind for the contriving and determining of the forms which organized bodies bear". In making his argument, Paley employed a wide variety of metaphors and analogies. Perhaps the most famous is his analogy between a watch and the world. Historians, philosophers and theologians often call this the Watchmaker analogy. Building on this mechanical analogy, Paley presents examples from planetary astronomy and argues that the regular movements of the solar system resemble the workings of a giant clock. To bolster his views he cites the work of his old friend John Law and the Dublin Astronomer Royal John Brinkley. The germ of the idea is to be found in ancient writers who used sundials and Ptolemaic epicycles to illustrate the divine order of the world. These types of examples can be seen in the work of the ancient philosopher Cicero, especially in his De natura deorum, ii. 87 and 97. The watch analogy was widely used in the Enlightenment, by deists and Christians alike. Thus, Paley's use of the watch (and other mechanical objects like it) continued a long and fruitful tradition of analogical reasoning that was well received by those who read Natural Theology when it was published in 1802. Legacy Since Paley is often read in university courses that address the philosophy of religion, the timing of his design argument has sometimes perplexed modern philosophers. Earlier in the century David Hume had argued against notions of design with counter examples drawn from monstrosity, imperfect forms of testimony and probability (see watchmaker analogy). Hume's arguments, however, were not widely accepted by most of the reading public and they fell 'stillborn' (to use Hume's own assessment) from the press. Despite Hume's unpopularity, Paley's published works and in manuscript letters show that he engaged directly with Hume from his time as an undergraduate to his last works. Paley's works were more influential than Hume's from the 1800s to the 1840s. Hume's arguments were only accepted gradually by the reading public, and his philosophical works sold poorly until agnostics like Thomas Huxley championed Hume's philosophy in the late 19th century. Scientific norms have changed greatly since Paley's day, and are inclined to do less than justice to his arguments and ways of reasoning. But his style is lucid and he was willing to present transparently the evidence against his own case. The design argument has also been applied in other fields of scientific and philosophical inquiry, notably in regards to anthropic cosmological fine-tuning, fine-tuning for discoverability and the origin of life. His subject matter was central to Victorian anxieties, which might be one reason Natural Theology continued to appeal to the reading public, making his book a best seller for most of the 19th century, even after the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. Natural Theology and the Evidences of Christianity appealed to Victorian Evangelicals, although not so much to adherents of the Oxford Movement – and both found his utilitarianism objectionable. Paley's views influenced (both positively and negatively) theologians, philosophers and scientists, then and since. In addition to Moral and Political Philosophy and the Evidences, Charles Darwin read Natural Theology during his student years, and later stated in his autobiography that he was initially convinced by the argument. His views changed with time. By the 1820s and 1830s, well-known liberals like Thomas Wakley and other radical editors of The Lancet were using Paley's ageing examples to attack the establishment's control over medical and scientific education in Durham, London, Oxford and Cambridge. It also inspired the Earl of Bridgewater to commission the Bridgewater Treatises and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge to issue cheap reprints for the rising middle class. But whereas Paley's natural theology was disassembled or rebuilt by intellectuals like Wakley or the Bridgewater authors, the core of argument retained an ongoing popularity with the reading public and served as the basis of many catechisms and textbooks that were used in Britain and its colonies until World War II when, as argued by Matthew Daniel Eddy, the existential morass of World War I undermined the moral teleology that had underpinned natural theology since the Enlightenment. Today, Paley's name evokes both reverence and revulsion and his work is cited accordingly by authors seeking to frame their own views of design. Even Richard Dawkins, an opponent of the design argument, described himself as a neo-Paleyan in The Blind Watchmaker. Today, as in his own time (though for different reasons), Paley is a controversial figure, a lightning rod for both sides in the contemporary argument between creationism and evolutionary biology. His writings reflect the thought of his time, but as Dawkins observed, his was a strong and logical approach to evidence, whether human or natural. Perhaps this explains why the Oxford constitutional theorist A.V. Dicey had his pupils read the Evidences to teach them about legal reasoning. It is for such reasons that Paley's writings, Natural Theology included, stand as a notable body of work in the canon of
distinction was drawn between lifting with 'one hand' only and lifting with 'two hands'. The winner of the 'one hand' competition in 1896 was Launceston Elliot of Scotland, while the winner of the 'two hands' event was Viggo Jensen of Denmark. In 1920, weightlifting returned to the Olympics and, for the first time, as an event in its own right. At these Games, which took place in Antwerp, Belgium, fourteen nations competed. The competition lifts were the 'one hand' snatch, the 'one hand' clean and jerk and the 'two hands' clean and jerk. At the next Olympic Games, in Paris, France, in 1924, the 'two hands' press and the 'two hands' snatch were added to the program, making a total of five lifts. In the Olympic Games after 1920, instead of requiring all competitors to compete against each other regardless of size, weight classes were introduced and, by the 1932 Olympic Games, weightlifting was divided into five weight divisions. In 1928, the sport dropped the 'one hand' exercises altogether leaving, only the three remaining exercises: the clean and press, the snatch and the clean and jerk. Modern Olympic After the 1972 Olympics, the clean and press was removed from the program due to difficulties in judging the event. Athletes had begun utilising their hips and leaning backwards substantially rather than "strictly" pressing the weight overhead with an upright torso. Once the weight had been cleaned to the shoulders, the press was commonly achieved with a "double layback," starting with a rapid hip thrust to generate upward momentum at the shoulders, followed by a second, more extreme form of the same movement to lower the shoulders again as the bar travelled upwards, before finally the lifter recovered to an upright position with the bar overhead. Some athletes were able to initiate the press with a hip thrust so rapid that judges found it difficult to determine whether or not they had utilised any knee bend to generate additional force, something strictly prohibited in the rules. "Excessive layback" was also prohibited, but it was considered too difficult to determine what degree of layback constituted a rule violation. As a result, the clean and press was discontinued, and what remained were the two elements of the modern Olympic weightlifting program—the snatch and the clean and jerk. The snatch consists of lifting the barbell from the floor to an overhead position in one fluid motion. It is a very precise lift that can be nullified by a lack of balance of the athlete. The clean and jerk consists of moving the barbell from the floor to overhead in 2 movements: from the floor to the shoulders, and from the shoulders to overhead. Women's Olympics As early as 1986, there were official world championships awarded to women weightlifters such as Karyn Marshall and Judy Glenney. However, it was not until the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia that an official Olympic competition for women was introduced. In 2011, the International Weightlifting Federation ruled that athletes could wear a full-body "unitard" under the customary weightlifting uniform. Kulsoom Abdullah became the first woman to do so at the U.S. National Championships that year, and athletes are allowed to do so at the Olympics. IWF rules previously stated that an athlete's knees and elbows must be visible so officials can determine if a lift is correctly executed. Equipment Barbell Olympic weightlifting uses a steel bar (also known as a barbell) with larger-diameter rotating sleeves on either end, holding rubber-coated weight plates of different weights. This sleeve rotation is important for the Olympic lifts, particularly the snatch and clean movements, because it drastically reduces the rotational inertia of the bar. Without sleeve rotation, the Olympic lifter faces more challenging lifts and a greater risk of injury. A men's Olympic barbell weighs 20 kg (44 lbs) with a shaft diameter of 28 mm and a length of 2200 mm, whereas a women's Olympic barbell weighs 15 kg (33 lbs) and has a shaft diameter of 25 mm with a length of 2010 mm. The distance between the sleeves, however, is the same for the men's and the women's bars at 1310 mm. The grip texture of the bar is called the knurling, and is distributed differently between the men's and women's bars: the men's has knurling in the centre but the women's does not. The Olympic barbells used in competition are certified by the IWF. Bumper plates The weight plates, typically referred to as "bumper plates" because of their rubber coated design, weigh between 10 kg and 25 kg in 5 kg increments. The bumper plates are coated with rubber to allow the weights to be dropped from various heights—either after a successful lift or during an unsuccessful one. Olympic bumper plates conform to international standards for colouring. That is, 10 kg is green, 15 kg is yellow, 20 kg is blue, and 25 kg is red. Competition iron plates In addition to the rubber bumpers, smaller competition iron plates can be used to add weight in small increments to the bar. The colour designations for these iron plates are as follows: 1 kg is green, 1.5 kg is yellow, 2 kg is blue, 2.5 kg is red, 5 kg and 0.5 kg are white. It is useful to note the colour assignment of these iron plates is consistent with the heavier bumper plates (i.e. 1 kg and 10 kg are green, 1.5 kg and 15 kg are yellow, etc.). Collars Weight plates are secured to the bar using collars on each sleeve that weigh exactly 2.5 kg each. Singlet Lifters typically wear a one-piece, close-fitting leotard often called a singlet. The wearing of a T-shirt underneath the singlet is optional. Belt A weightlifting belt of 120 mm maximum width may also be worn to increase intra-abdominal pressure. Chalk Chalk is regularly used by Olympic lifters, generally prior to each attempt at a lift. Lifters rub their hands with the chalk to promote dryness and prevent the bar moving in their hands. Tape Olympic lifters frequently use tape to cover the areas of their bodies exposed to friction while completing Olympic lifts. Tape is most commonly found on the Olympic lifter's thumb. A taped thumb not only lessens the risk of calluses, it reduces the pain associated with the hook grip. Olympic lifters also tape their wrists, preventing exaggerated and uncomfortable joint movement during lifts. For particularly heavy overhead lifts, a taped wrist enables the lifter to regulate wrist extension and delimit the translation of the radius and ulna distal heads. However, while taped wrists can prevent wrist and forearm injuries in the short-term, excessive use can lead to weakened connective tissue in the area,	is applied to each lifter's overall total and then grouped along with the other competitors' and evaluated, it provides a numeric result which determines the competition's best overall men's and women's lifters. And while, usually, the winner of the heaviest weight class will have lifted the most overall weight during the course of a competition, a lifter in a lighter weight class may still have lifted more weight both relative to their own bodyweight, and to the Sinclair coefficient formula, thereby garnering the "Best Lifter" award. History Pre-Olympic The competition to establish who can lift the heaviest weight has been recorded throughout civilization, with the earliest known recordings including those found in Egypt, China, India and Ancient Greece. Today, the modern sport of weightlifting traces its origins to the European competitions of the 19th century. The first male world champion was crowned in 1891; the weightlifters were not categorized by weight at this time, and a women's championship did not exist until 1987. Early Olympic The first Olympic Games of 1896 included weightlifting in the Field event of the predecessor to today's track and field or athletics event. During the 1900 Olympic Games, there was no weightlifting event. Weightlifting resumed as an event, again in athletics, in 1904 but was omitted from the Games of 1908 and 1912. These were the last Games until after the First World War. In these early Games, a distinction was drawn between lifting with 'one hand' only and lifting with 'two hands'. The winner of the 'one hand' competition in 1896 was Launceston Elliot of Scotland, while the winner of the 'two hands' event was Viggo Jensen of Denmark. In 1920, weightlifting returned to the Olympics and, for the first time, as an event in its own right. At these Games, which took place in Antwerp, Belgium, fourteen nations competed. The competition lifts were the 'one hand' snatch, the 'one hand' clean and jerk and the 'two hands' clean and jerk. At the next Olympic Games, in Paris, France, in 1924, the 'two hands' press and the 'two hands' snatch were added to the program, making a total of five lifts. In the Olympic Games after 1920, instead of requiring all competitors to compete against each other regardless of size, weight classes were introduced and, by the 1932 Olympic Games, weightlifting was divided into five weight divisions. In 1928, the sport dropped the 'one hand' exercises altogether leaving, only the three remaining exercises: the clean and press, the snatch and the clean and jerk. Modern Olympic After the 1972 Olympics, the clean and press was removed from the program due to difficulties in judging the event. Athletes had begun utilising their hips and leaning backwards substantially rather than "strictly" pressing the weight overhead with an upright torso. Once the weight had been cleaned to the shoulders, the press was commonly achieved with a "double layback," starting with a rapid hip thrust to generate upward momentum at the shoulders, followed by a second, more extreme form of the same movement to lower the shoulders again as the bar travelled upwards, before finally the lifter recovered to an upright position with the bar overhead. Some athletes were able to initiate the press with a hip thrust so rapid that judges found it difficult to determine whether or not they had utilised any knee bend to generate additional force, something strictly prohibited in the rules. "Excessive layback" was also prohibited, but it was considered too difficult to determine what degree of layback constituted a rule violation. As a result, the clean and press was discontinued, and what remained were the two elements of the modern Olympic weightlifting program—the snatch and the clean and jerk. The snatch consists of lifting the barbell from the floor to an overhead position in one fluid motion. It is a very precise lift that can be nullified by a lack of balance of the athlete. The clean and jerk consists of moving the barbell from the floor to overhead in 2 movements: from the floor to the shoulders, and from the shoulders to overhead. Women's Olympics As early as 1986, there were official world championships awarded to women weightlifters such as Karyn Marshall and Judy Glenney. However, it was not until the 2000 Olympic Games in Sydney, Australia that an official Olympic competition for women was introduced. In 2011, the International Weightlifting Federation ruled that athletes could wear a full-body "unitard" under the customary weightlifting uniform. Kulsoom Abdullah became the first woman to do so at the U.S. National Championships that year, and athletes are allowed to do so at the Olympics. IWF rules previously stated that an athlete's knees and elbows must be visible so officials can determine if a lift is correctly executed. Equipment Barbell Olympic weightlifting uses a steel bar (also known as a barbell) with larger-diameter rotating sleeves on either end, holding rubber-coated weight plates of different weights. This sleeve rotation is important for the Olympic lifts, particularly the snatch and clean movements, because it drastically reduces the rotational inertia of the bar. Without sleeve rotation, the Olympic lifter faces more challenging lifts and a greater risk of injury. A men's Olympic barbell weighs 20 kg (44 lbs) with a shaft diameter of 28 mm and a length of 2200 mm, whereas a women's Olympic barbell weighs 15 kg (33 lbs) and has a shaft diameter of 25 mm with a length of 2010 mm. The distance between the sleeves, however, is the same for the men's and the women's bars at 1310 mm. The grip texture of the bar is called the knurling, and is distributed differently between the men's and women's bars: the men's has knurling in the centre but the women's does not. The Olympic barbells used in competition are certified by the IWF. Bumper plates The weight plates, typically referred to as "bumper plates" because of their rubber coated design, weigh between 10 kg and 25 kg in 5 kg increments. The bumper plates are coated with rubber to allow the weights to be dropped from various heights—either after a successful lift or during an unsuccessful one. Olympic bumper plates conform to international standards for colouring. That is, 10 kg is green, 15 kg is yellow, 20 kg is blue, and 25 kg is red. Competition iron plates In addition to the rubber bumpers, smaller competition iron plates can be used to add weight in small increments to the bar. The colour designations for these iron plates are as follows: 1 kg is green, 1.5 kg is yellow, 2 kg is blue, 2.5 kg is red, 5 kg and 0.5 kg are white. It is useful to note the colour assignment of these iron plates is consistent with the heavier bumper plates (i.e. 1 kg and 10 kg are green, 1.5 kg and 15 kg are yellow, etc.). Collars Weight plates are secured to the bar using collars on each sleeve that weigh exactly 2.5 kg each. Singlet
and the integration of the latter in the North-Atlantic bloc [...] increase the danger of another war and constitutes a threat to the national security of the peaceable states; [...] in these circumstances the peaceable European states must take the necessary measures to safeguard their security". One of the founding members, East Germany, was allowed to re-arm by the Soviet Union and the National People's Army was established as the armed forces of the country to counter the rearmament of West Germany. Members The founding signatories of the Pact consisted of the following communist governments: Albania (withheld support in 1961 because of the Soviet–Albanian split, but formally withdrew on 13 September 1968) (officially withdrew on 24 September 1990 in preparation for German reunification, with Soviet consent and a "remarkable yet hardly noticed" ceremony, ceasing to exist altogether at midnight on 3 October) (temporarily withdrew from 1–4 November 1956 during the Hungarian Revolution) (the only independent permanent non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact, having freed itself from its Soviet satellite status by the early 1960s) Observers : In July 1963 the Mongolian People's Republic asked to join the Warsaw Pact under Article 9 of the treaty. Due to the emerging Sino-Soviet split, Mongolia remained in an observer status. In what was the first instance of a Soviet initiative being blocked by a non-Soviet member of the Warsaw Pact, Romania blocked Mongolia's accession to the Warsaw Pact. The Soviet government agreed to station troops in Mongolia in 1966. At first, China, North Korea, and Vietnam had observer status, but China withdrew after the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s. During the Cold War For 36 years, NATO and the Warsaw Pact never directly waged war against each other in Europe; the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies implemented strategic policies aimed at the containment of each other in Europe, while working and fighting for influence within the wider Cold War on the international stage. These included the Korean War, Vietnam War, Bay of Pigs invasion, Dirty War, Cambodian–Vietnamese War, and others. In 1956, following the declaration of the Imre Nagy government of the withdrawal of Hungary from the Warsaw Pact, Soviet troops entered the country and removed the government. Soviet forces crushed the nationwide revolt, leading to the death of an estimated 2,500 Hungarian citizens. The multi-national Communist armed forces' sole joint action was the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968. All member countries, with the exception of the Socialist Republic of Romania and the People's Republic of Albania, participated in the invasion. The German Democratic Republic provided only minimal support. End of the Cold War In 1989, popular civil and political public discontent toppled the Communist governments of the Warsaw Treaty countries. The beginning of the end of the Warsaw Pact, regardless of military power, was the Pan-European Picnic in August 1989. The event, which goes back to an idea by Otto von Habsburg, caused the mass exodus of GDR citizens and the media-informed population of Eastern Europe felt the loss of power of their rulers and the Iron Curtain broke down completely. Though Poland's new Solidarity government under Lech Wałęsa initially assured the Soviets that it would remain in the Pact, this broke the brackets of Eastern Europe, which could no longer be held together militarily by the Warsaw Pact. Independent national politics made feasible with the perestroika and glasnost policies induced institutional collapse of the Communist government in the USSR in 1991. From 1989 to 1991, Communist governments were overthrown in Albania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and the Soviet Union. As the last acts of the Cold War were playing out, several Warsaw Pact states (Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary) participated in the US-led coalition effort to liberate Kuwait in the Gulf War. On 25 February 1991, the Warsaw Pact was declared disbanded at a meeting of defence and foreign ministers from remaining Pact countries meeting in Hungary. On 1 July 1991, in Prague, the Czechoslovak President Václav Havel formally ended the 1955 Warsaw Treaty Organization of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance and so disestablished the Warsaw Treaty after 36 years of military alliance with the USSR. The USSR disestablished itself in December 1991. Structure The Warsaw Treaty's organization was two-fold: the Political Consultative Committee handled political matters, and the Combined Command of Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Although an apparently similar collective security alliance, the Warsaw Pact differed substantially from NATO. De jure, the eight-member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. However, de facto, the Pact was a direct reflection of the USSR's authoritarianism and undisputed domination over the Eastern Bloc, in the context of the so called Soviet Empire, which was not comparable to that of the United States over the Western Bloc. All Warsaw Pact commanders had to be, and have been, senior officers of the Soviet Union at the same time and appointed for an unspecified term length: the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, which commanded and controlled all the military forces of the member countries, was also a First Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR, and the Chief of Combined Staff of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. On the contrary, the Secretary General of NATO and Chair of the NATO Military Committee are positions with fixed term of office held on a random rotating basis by officials from all member countries through consensus. Despite the American hegemony (mainly military and economic) over NATO, all decisions of the North Atlantic Alliance required unanimous consensus in the North Atlantic Council and the entry of countries into the alliance was not subject to domination but rather a natural democratic process. In the Warsaw Pact, decisions were ultimately taken by the Soviet Union alone; the countries of the Warsaw Pact were not equally able to negotiate their entry in the Pact nor the decisions taken. Romania and Albania Romania and - until 1968, Albania - were exceptions. Together with Yugoslavia, which broke with the Soviet Union before the Warsaw Pact was created, these three countries completely rejected the Soviet doctrine formulated for the Pact. Albania officially left the organization in 1968, in protest of its invasion of Czechoslovakia. Romania had its own reasons for remaining a formal member of the Warsaw Pact, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu's interest of preserving the threat of a Pact invasion so he could sell himself as a nationalist as well as privileged access to NATO counterparts and a seat at various European forums which otherwise he wouldn't have had (for instance, Romania and the Soviet-led remainder of the Warsaw Pact formed two distinct groups in the elaboration of the Helsinki Final Act.). When Andrei Grechko assumed command of the Warsaw Pact, both Romania and Albania had for all practical purposes defected from the Pact. In the early 1960s, Grechko initiated programs meant to preempt Romanian doctrinal heresies from spreading to other Pact members. Romania's doctrine of territorial defense threatened the Pact's unity and cohesion. No other country succeeded in escaping from the Warsaw Pact like Romania and Albania did. For example, the mainstays of Romania's tank forces were locally-developed models. Soviet troops were deployed to Romania for the last time in 1963, as part of a Warsaw Pact exercise. After 1964, the Red Army was barred from returning to Romania, as the country refused to take part in joint Pact exercises. Even before the advent of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was in fact an independent country, as opposed to the rest of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, it was even more independent than Cuba (a Communist state that was not a member of the Warsaw Pact). The Romanian regime was largely impervious to Soviet political influence, and Ceaușescu was the only declared opponent of glasnost and perestroika. On account of the contentious relationship between Bucharest and Moscow, the West did not hold the Soviet Union responsible for the policies pursued by Bucharest. This was not the case for the other countries in the region, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. At the start of 1990, the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, implicitly confirmed the lack of Soviet influence over Ceaușescu's Romania. When asked whether it made sense for him to visit Romania less than two weeks after its revolution, Shevardnadze insisted that only by going in person to Romania could he figure out how to "restore Soviet influence". Romania requested and obtained the complete withdrawal of the Red Army from its territory in 1958. The Romanian campaign for independence culminated on 22 April 1964 when the Romanian Communist Party issued a declaration proclaiming that: "Every Marxist-Leninist Party has a sovereign right...to elaborate, choose or change the forms and methods of socialist construction." and "There exists no "parent" party and "offspring" party, no "superior" and "subordinated" parties, but only the large family of communist and workers' parties having equal rights." and also "there are not and there can be no unique patterns and recipes". This amounted to a declaration of political and ideological independence from Moscow. Following Albania's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, Romania remained the only Pact member with an independent military doctrine which denied the Soviet Union use of its armed forces and avoided absolute dependence on Soviet sources of military equipment. Romania was the only non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member which was not obliged to militarily defend the Soviet Union in case of an armed attack. Romania was also the only Warsaw Pact member that did not have Soviet troops stationed on its soil. In December 1964, Romania became the only Warsaw Pact member (save Albania, which would leave the Pact altogether within 4 years) from which all Soviet advisors were withdrawn, including those in the intelligence and security services. Not only did Romania not participate in joint operations with the KGB, but it also set up "departments specialized in anti-KGB counterespionage". Romania was neutral in the Sino-Soviet split. Its neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute along with being the small Communist country with the most influence in global affairs enabled Romania to be recognized by the world as the "third force" of the Communist world. Romania's independence - achieved in the early 1960s through its freeing from its Soviet satellite status - was tolerated by Moscow because Romania was not bordering the Iron Curtain - being surrounded by socialist states - and because its ruling party was not going to abandon Communism. Although certain historians such as Robert King and Dennis Deletant argue against the usage of the term "independent" to describe Romania's relations with the Soviet Union, favoring "autonomy" instead on account of the country's continued membership within both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact along with its commitment to Socialism, this approach fails to explain why Romania blocked in July 1963 Mongolia's accession to the Warsaw Pact, why in November 1963 Romania voted in favor of a UN resolution to establish a nuclear-free zone in Latin America when the other Socialist countries abstained, or why in 1964 Romania opposed the Soviet-proposed "strong collective riposte" against China (and these are examples solely from the 1963-1964 period). Soviet disinformation tried to convince the West that Ceaușescu's empowerment was a dissimulation in connivance with Moscow. To an extent this worked, as some historians came to see the hand of Moscow behind every Romanian initiative. For instance, when Romania became the only Eastern European country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, some historians have speculated that this was at Moscow's whim. However, this theory fails upon closer inspection. Even during the Cold War, some thought that Romanian actions were done at the behest of the Soviets, but Soviet anger at said actions was "persuasively genuine". In truth, the Soviets were not beyond publicly aligning themselves with the West against the Romanians at times. Strategy The strategy behind the formation of the Warsaw Pact was driven by the desire of the Soviet Union to prevent Central and Eastern Europe being used as a base for its enemies. Its policy was also driven by ideological and geostrategic reasons. Ideologically, the Soviet Union arrogated the right to define socialism and communism and act as the leader of the global socialist movement. A corollary	Pact Armed Forces controlled the assigned multi-national forces, with headquarters in Warsaw, Poland. Although an apparently similar collective security alliance, the Warsaw Pact differed substantially from NATO. De jure, the eight-member countries of the Warsaw Pact pledged the mutual defense of any member who would be attacked; relations among the treaty signatories were based upon mutual non-intervention in the internal affairs of the member countries, respect for national sovereignty, and political independence. However, de facto, the Pact was a direct reflection of the USSR's authoritarianism and undisputed domination over the Eastern Bloc, in the context of the so called Soviet Empire, which was not comparable to that of the United States over the Western Bloc. All Warsaw Pact commanders had to be, and have been, senior officers of the Soviet Union at the same time and appointed for an unspecified term length: the Supreme Commander of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization, which commanded and controlled all the military forces of the member countries, was also a First Deputy Minister of Defence of the USSR, and the Chief of Combined Staff of the Unified Armed Forces of the Warsaw Treaty Organization was also a First Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Soviet Armed Forces. On the contrary, the Secretary General of NATO and Chair of the NATO Military Committee are positions with fixed term of office held on a random rotating basis by officials from all member countries through consensus. Despite the American hegemony (mainly military and economic) over NATO, all decisions of the North Atlantic Alliance required unanimous consensus in the North Atlantic Council and the entry of countries into the alliance was not subject to domination but rather a natural democratic process. In the Warsaw Pact, decisions were ultimately taken by the Soviet Union alone; the countries of the Warsaw Pact were not equally able to negotiate their entry in the Pact nor the decisions taken. Romania and Albania Romania and - until 1968, Albania - were exceptions. Together with Yugoslavia, which broke with the Soviet Union before the Warsaw Pact was created, these three countries completely rejected the Soviet doctrine formulated for the Pact. Albania officially left the organization in 1968, in protest of its invasion of Czechoslovakia. Romania had its own reasons for remaining a formal member of the Warsaw Pact, such as Nicolae Ceaușescu's interest of preserving the threat of a Pact invasion so he could sell himself as a nationalist as well as privileged access to NATO counterparts and a seat at various European forums which otherwise he wouldn't have had (for instance, Romania and the Soviet-led remainder of the Warsaw Pact formed two distinct groups in the elaboration of the Helsinki Final Act.). When Andrei Grechko assumed command of the Warsaw Pact, both Romania and Albania had for all practical purposes defected from the Pact. In the early 1960s, Grechko initiated programs meant to preempt Romanian doctrinal heresies from spreading to other Pact members. Romania's doctrine of territorial defense threatened the Pact's unity and cohesion. No other country succeeded in escaping from the Warsaw Pact like Romania and Albania did. For example, the mainstays of Romania's tank forces were locally-developed models. Soviet troops were deployed to Romania for the last time in 1963, as part of a Warsaw Pact exercise. After 1964, the Red Army was barred from returning to Romania, as the country refused to take part in joint Pact exercises. Even before the advent of Nicolae Ceaușescu, Romania was in fact an independent country, as opposed to the rest of the Warsaw Pact. To some extent, it was even more independent than Cuba (a Communist state that was not a member of the Warsaw Pact). The Romanian regime was largely impervious to Soviet political influence, and Ceaușescu was the only declared opponent of glasnost and perestroika. On account of the contentious relationship between Bucharest and Moscow, the West did not hold the Soviet Union responsible for the policies pursued by Bucharest. This was not the case for the other countries in the region, such as Czechoslovakia and Poland. At the start of 1990, the Soviet foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, implicitly confirmed the lack of Soviet influence over Ceaușescu's Romania. When asked whether it made sense for him to visit Romania less than two weeks after its revolution, Shevardnadze insisted that only by going in person to Romania could he figure out how to "restore Soviet influence". Romania requested and obtained the complete withdrawal of the Red Army from its territory in 1958. The Romanian campaign for independence culminated on 22 April 1964 when the Romanian Communist Party issued a declaration proclaiming that: "Every Marxist-Leninist Party has a sovereign right...to elaborate, choose or change the forms and methods of socialist construction." and "There exists no "parent" party and "offspring" party, no "superior" and "subordinated" parties, but only the large family of communist and workers' parties having equal rights." and also "there are not and there can be no unique patterns and recipes". This amounted to a declaration of political and ideological independence from Moscow. Following Albania's withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact, Romania remained the only Pact member with an independent military doctrine which denied the Soviet Union use of its armed forces and avoided absolute dependence on Soviet sources of military equipment. Romania was the only non-Soviet Warsaw Pact member which was not obliged to militarily defend the Soviet Union in case of an armed attack. Romania was also the only Warsaw Pact member that did not have Soviet troops stationed on its soil. In December 1964, Romania became the only Warsaw Pact member (save Albania, which would leave the Pact altogether within 4 years) from which all Soviet advisors were withdrawn, including those in the intelligence and security services. Not only did Romania not participate in joint operations with the KGB, but it also set up "departments specialized in anti-KGB counterespionage". Romania was neutral in the Sino-Soviet split. Its neutrality in the Sino-Soviet dispute along with being the small Communist country with the most influence in global affairs enabled Romania to be recognized by the world as the "third force" of the Communist world. Romania's independence - achieved in the early 1960s through its freeing from its Soviet satellite status - was tolerated by Moscow because Romania was not bordering the Iron Curtain - being surrounded by socialist states - and because its ruling party was not going to abandon Communism. Although certain historians such as Robert King and Dennis Deletant argue against the usage of the term "independent" to describe Romania's relations with the Soviet Union, favoring "autonomy" instead on account of the country's continued membership within both the Comecon and the Warsaw Pact along with its commitment to Socialism, this approach fails to explain why Romania blocked in July 1963 Mongolia's accession to the Warsaw Pact, why in November 1963 Romania voted in favor of a UN resolution to establish a nuclear-free zone in Latin America when the other Socialist countries abstained, or why in 1964 Romania opposed the Soviet-proposed "strong collective riposte" against China (and these are examples solely from the 1963-1964 period). Soviet disinformation tried to convince the West that Ceaușescu's empowerment was a dissimulation in connivance with Moscow. To an extent this worked, as some historians came to see the hand of Moscow behind every Romanian initiative. For instance, when Romania became the only Eastern European country to maintain diplomatic relations with Israel, some historians have speculated that this was at Moscow's whim. However, this theory fails upon closer inspection. Even during the Cold War, some thought that Romanian actions were done at the behest of the Soviets, but Soviet anger at said
grew in popularity, and a braided rope made out of polypropylene was eventually introduced. A few years later, a rope that was less stretchy was invented that gave the rider a more consistent pull on the rope, though they were heavier and larger in diameter. Modern ropes are coated with Spectra and Dyneema, which decrease the stretch and drag of the rope. Equipment When wakeboarding, a wide variety of safety equipment is used. These include life vests or other buoyancy aids which prevent water-related injuries and deaths, as they keep the wearer buoyant until they are picked up. These vests especially help in situations where the rider is knocked unconscious or cannot tread water. Furthermore, wakeboarders use water-resistant helmets that are able to ventilate water so that the helmets do not fill up with water. Even the length of a wakeboarder's rope is important in providing safety; if the rope is too long, a wakeboarder will land on the flat part of the wake instead of the downside, and their knees will buckle. Wakeboards themselves are also important to consider when preparing to ride. Four of the most common wakeboard styles include the continuous rocker, the three-stage rocker, the five-stage rocker, and the hybrid rocker. Rocker refers to the curve of the board from head to tail and each type of board has a different placement and amount of curve that works best for different types of rides. The presence or absence of fins on the bottom of a board can also make a drastic difference in how it rides. Beginning riders are usually better off with deeper fins. Another part of the wakeboard itself to consider is the size of the board and the material, which are usually a wood or foam core with a fiber glass coating. At the same time, the length of a wakeboarding rope will vary based on the rider's preferences. A longer rope may allow for more preparation and	most common wakeboard styles include the continuous rocker, the three-stage rocker, the five-stage rocker, and the hybrid rocker. Rocker refers to the curve of the board from head to tail and each type of board has a different placement and amount of curve that works best for different types of rides. The presence or absence of fins on the bottom of a board can also make a drastic difference in how it rides. Beginning riders are usually better off with deeper fins. Another part of the wakeboard itself to consider is the size of the board and the material, which are usually a wood or foam core with a fiber glass coating. At the same time, the length of a wakeboarding rope will vary based on the rider's preferences. A longer rope may allow for more preparation and momentum before performing tricks, whereas a shorter rope may require less speed and height to travel between wakes. In addition to this, the material of the rope being used can make a significant difference in ride experience. The less stretch in the rope, the better it is for the rider to learn how to ride and do various tricks. Some of the best rope materials include Dyneema, Poly E, and Spectra. Each of these is known for its abrasion resistance, affordability and absorption, and durability respectively. Tricks When wakeboarding, a variety of tricks may be attempted. Most of these stem from the wakeboarder adjusting their posture, edge, and distribution of weight so as to fly into the air upon hitting the wake. Various tricks include the toeside edge, the heelside edge, the ride switch, and the 180° spin. More advanced tricks call for what is known as inversion or “inverts”. An invert is considered any action where the board is above the head of the rider. This does not necessarily mean the rider is fully upside down, as evidenced by the Raley, a trick where the rider extends their body parallel to the water bending at the knees to achieve inversion. The heel side backflip, otherwise known as a tantrum, is often regarded as the first and easiest invert to learn as an intermediate level rider. This is because the shape of the wake or the “kicker” (a type of floating ramp, used primarily at cable parks, that mimics the shape of a wake) naturally initiates the sequence of motions that are necessary to complete the trick. Community There are many different ways that people are engaged in this sport. Popular brands like Byerly, Hyperlight, O'Brien and Ronix provide ever evolving technology and equipment as well as quality advice for new and seasoned riders alike. Some of these brands also have active social media presence to reach more people and get them into
interaction, and so lives about seconds, or a hundred million times longer than a neutral pion. A particularly extreme example is the weak-force decay of a free neutron, which takes about 15 minutes. Weak isospin and weak hypercharge All particles have a property called weak isospin (symbol ), which serves as an additive quantum number that restricts how the particle can interact with the of the weak force. Weak isospin plays the same role in the weak interaction with as electric charge does in electromagnetism, and color charge in the strong interaction; a different number with a similar name, weak charge, discussed below, is used for interactions with the . All left-handed fermions have a weak isospin value of either or ; all right-handed fermions have 0 isospin. For example, the up quark has and the down quark has A quark never decays through the weak interaction into a quark of the same : Quarks with a of only decay into quarks with a of and vice versa. In any given interaction, weak isospin is conserved: The sum of the weak isospin numbers of the particles entering the interaction equals the sum of the weak isospin numbers of the particles exiting that interaction. For example, a (left-handed) with a weak isospin of +1 normally decays into a ( with ) and a (as a right-handed antiparticle, ). For the development of the electroweak theory, another property, weak hypercharge, was invented, defined as: where is the weak hypercharge of a particle with electrical charge (in elementary charge units) and weak isospin . Weak hypercharge is the generator of the U(1) component of the electroweak gauge group; whereas some particles have a weak isospin of zero, all known spin particles have a non-zero weak hypercharge. Interaction types There are two types of weak interaction (called vertices). The first type is called the "charged-current interaction" because the weakly interacting fermions form a current with total electric charge that is nonzero. The second type is called the "neutral-current interaction" because the weakly interacting fermions form a current with total electric charge of zero. It is responsible for the (rare) deflection of neutrinos. The two types of interaction follow different selection rules. This naming convention is often misunderstood to label the electric charge of the and bosons, however the naming convention predates the concept of the mediator bosons, and clearly (at least in name) labels the charge of the current (formed from the fermions), not necessarilly the bosons. Charged-current interaction In one type of charged current interaction, a charged lepton (such as an electron or a muon, having a charge of −1) can absorb a boson (a particle with a charge of +1) and be thereby converted into a corresponding neutrino (with a charge of 0), where the type ("flavour") of neutrino (electron, muon or tau) is the same as the type of lepton in the interaction, for example: Similarly, a down-type quark (d with a charge of −) can be converted into an up-type quark (u, with a charge of +), by emitting a boson or by absorbing a boson. More precisely, the down-type quark becomes a quantum superposition of up-type quarks: that is to say, it has a possibility of becoming any one of the three up-type quarks, with the probabilities given in the CKM matrix tables. Conversely, an up-type quark can emit a boson, or absorb a boson, and thereby be converted into a down-type quark, for example: The W boson is unstable so will rapidly decay, with a very short lifetime. For example: Decay of a W boson to other products can happen, with varying probabilities. In the so-called beta decay of a neutron (see picture, above), a down quark within the neutron emits a virtual boson and is thereby converted into an up quark, converting the neutron into a proton. Because of the limited energy involved in the process (i.e., the mass difference between the down quark and the up quark), the virtual boson can only carry sufficient energy to produce an electron and an electron-antineutrino – the two lowest-possible masses among its prospective decay products. At the quark level, the process can be represented as: Neutral-current interaction In neutral current interactions, a quark or a lepton (e.g., an electron or a muon) emits or absorbs a neutral boson. For example: Like the bosons, the boson also decays rapidly, for example: Unlike the charged-current interaction, whose selection rules are strictly limited by chirality, electric charge, weak isospin, the neutral-current interaction can cause any two fermions in the standard model to deflect: Either particles or anti-particles, with any electric charge, and both left- and right-chirality, although the strength of the interaction differs. The quantum number weak charge () serves the same role in the neutral current interaction with the that electric charge (, with no subscript) does in the electromagnetic interaction: It quantifies the vector part of the interaction. Its value is given by: Since the weak mixing angle the parenthetic expression with its value varying slightly with the momentum difference (called “running”) between the particles involved. Hence since by convention and for all fermions involved in the weak interaction The weak charge of charged leptons is then close to zero, so these mostly interact with the boson through the axial coupling. Electroweak theory The Standard Model of particle physics describes the electromagnetic interaction and the weak interaction as two different aspects of a single electroweak interaction. This theory was developed around 1968 by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg, and they were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The Higgs mechanism provides an explanation for the presence of three massive gauge bosons (, , , the three carriers of the weak interaction), and the massless photon (, the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction). According to the electroweak theory, at very high energies, the universe has four components of the Higgs field whose interactions are carried by four massless gauge bosons – each similar to the photon – forming a complex scalar Higgs field doublet. Likewise, there are four massless electroweak bosons. However, at low energies, this gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken down to the symmetry of electromagnetism, since one of the Higgs fields acquires a vacuum expectation value. Naïvely, the symmetry-breaking would be expected to produce three massless bosons, but instead those "extra" three Higgs bosons become incorporated into the three weak bosons, which then acquire mass through the Higgs mechanism. These three composite bosons are the , , and bosons actually observed in the weak interaction. The fourth electroweak gauge boson is the photon () of electromagnetism, which does not couple to any of the Higgs fields and so remains massless. This theory has made a number of predictions, including a prediction of the masses of the and bosons before their discovery and detection in 1983. On 4 July 2012, the CMS and the ATLAS experimental teams at the Large Hadron Collider independently announced that they had confirmed the formal discovery of a previously unknown boson of mass between 125 and 127 GeV/², whose behaviour so far was "consistent with" a Higgs boson, while adding a cautious note that further data and analysis were needed before positively identifying the new boson as being a Higgs boson of some	(a particle with a charge of +1) and be thereby converted into a corresponding neutrino (with a charge of 0), where the type ("flavour") of neutrino (electron, muon or tau) is the same as the type of lepton in the interaction, for example: Similarly, a down-type quark (d with a charge of −) can be converted into an up-type quark (u, with a charge of +), by emitting a boson or by absorbing a boson. More precisely, the down-type quark becomes a quantum superposition of up-type quarks: that is to say, it has a possibility of becoming any one of the three up-type quarks, with the probabilities given in the CKM matrix tables. Conversely, an up-type quark can emit a boson, or absorb a boson, and thereby be converted into a down-type quark, for example: The W boson is unstable so will rapidly decay, with a very short lifetime. For example: Decay of a W boson to other products can happen, with varying probabilities. In the so-called beta decay of a neutron (see picture, above), a down quark within the neutron emits a virtual boson and is thereby converted into an up quark, converting the neutron into a proton. Because of the limited energy involved in the process (i.e., the mass difference between the down quark and the up quark), the virtual boson can only carry sufficient energy to produce an electron and an electron-antineutrino – the two lowest-possible masses among its prospective decay products. At the quark level, the process can be represented as: Neutral-current interaction In neutral current interactions, a quark or a lepton (e.g., an electron or a muon) emits or absorbs a neutral boson. For example: Like the bosons, the boson also decays rapidly, for example: Unlike the charged-current interaction, whose selection rules are strictly limited by chirality, electric charge, weak isospin, the neutral-current interaction can cause any two fermions in the standard model to deflect: Either particles or anti-particles, with any electric charge, and both left- and right-chirality, although the strength of the interaction differs. The quantum number weak charge () serves the same role in the neutral current interaction with the that electric charge (, with no subscript) does in the electromagnetic interaction: It quantifies the vector part of the interaction. Its value is given by: Since the weak mixing angle the parenthetic expression with its value varying slightly with the momentum difference (called “running”) between the particles involved. Hence since by convention and for all fermions involved in the weak interaction The weak charge of charged leptons is then close to zero, so these mostly interact with the boson through the axial coupling. Electroweak theory The Standard Model of particle physics describes the electromagnetic interaction and the weak interaction as two different aspects of a single electroweak interaction. This theory was developed around 1968 by Sheldon Glashow, Abdus Salam, and Steven Weinberg, and they were awarded the 1979 Nobel Prize in Physics for their work. The Higgs mechanism provides an explanation for the presence of three massive gauge bosons (, , , the three carriers of the weak interaction), and the massless photon (, the carrier of the electromagnetic interaction). According to the electroweak theory, at very high energies, the universe has four components of the Higgs field whose interactions are carried by four massless gauge bosons – each similar to the photon – forming a complex scalar Higgs field doublet. Likewise, there are four massless electroweak bosons. However, at low energies, this gauge symmetry is spontaneously broken down to the symmetry of electromagnetism, since one of the Higgs fields acquires a vacuum expectation value. Naïvely, the symmetry-breaking would be expected to produce three massless bosons, but instead those "extra" three Higgs bosons become incorporated into the three weak bosons, which then acquire mass through the Higgs mechanism. These three composite bosons are the , , and bosons actually observed in the weak interaction. The fourth electroweak gauge boson is the photon () of electromagnetism, which does not couple to any of the Higgs fields and so remains massless. This theory has made a number of predictions, including a prediction of the masses of the and bosons before their discovery and detection in 1983. On 4 July 2012, the CMS and the ATLAS experimental teams at the Large Hadron Collider independently announced that they had confirmed the formal discovery of a previously unknown boson of mass between 125 and 127 GeV/², whose behaviour so far was "consistent with" a Higgs boson, while adding a cautious note that further data and analysis were needed before positively identifying the new boson as being a Higgs boson of some type. By 14 March 2013, a Higgs boson was tentatively confirmed to exist. In a speculative case where the electroweak symmetry breaking scale were lowered, the unbroken interaction would eventually become confining. Alternative models where becomes confining above that scale appear quantitatively similar to the Standard
loss of Menorca shattered public faith in Newcastle, and forced him to step down as Prime Minister in November 1756. Southern Secretary In December 1756, Pitt, who now sat for Okehampton, became Secretary of State for the Southern Department, and Leader of the House of Commons under the premiership of the Duke of Devonshire. Upon entering this coalition, Pitt said to Devonshire: "My Lord, I am sure I can save this country, and no one else can". He had made it a condition of his joining any administration that Newcastle should be excluded from it, which proved fatal to the lengthened existence of his government. With the king unfriendly, and Newcastle, whose influence was still dominant in the Commons, estranged, it was impossible to carry on a government by the aid of public opinion alone, however emphatically that might have declared itself on his side. The historian Basil Williams has claimed that this is the first time in British history when a "man was called to supreme power by the voice of the people" rather than by the king's appointment or as the choice of Parliament. Pitt drew up his plans for the campaigning season of 1757 in which he hoped to reverse Britain's string of defeats during the war's opening years. In April 1757 Pitt was dismissed from office on account of his opposition to the continental policy and the circumstances surrounding the court-martial and execution of Admiral John Byng. He was succeeded by the Duke of Devonshire who formed the 1757 Caretaker Ministry. But the power that was insufficient to keep him in office was strong enough to make any arrangement that excluded him impracticable. The public voice spoke in a way that was not to be mistaken. Probably no English minister ever received in so short a time so many proofs of the confidence and admiration of the public, the capital and all the chief towns voting him addresses and the freedom of their corporations (e.g., London presented him with the first ever honorary Freedom of the City awarded in history). Horace Walpole recorded the freedoms of various cities awarded to Pitt: ... for some weeks it rained gold boxes: Chester, Worcester, Norwich, Bedford, Salisbury, Yarmouth, Tewkesbury, Newcastle-on-Tyne, Stirling, and other populous and chief towns following the example. Exeter, with singular affection, sent boxes of oak. After some weeks' negotiation, in the course of which the firmness and moderation of "The Great Commoner", as he had come to be called, contrasted favourably with the characteristic tortuosities of the crafty peer, matters were settled on such a basis that, while Newcastle was the nominal, Pitt was the virtual head of the government. On his acceptance of office, he was chosen member for Bath. Pitt–Newcastle ministry A coalition with Newcastle was formed in June 1757, and held power until October 1761. It brought together several various factions and was built around the partnership between Pitt and Newcastle, which a few months earlier had seemed impossible. The two men used Lord Chesterfield as an intermediary and had managed to agree a division of powers that was acceptable to both. For the past few months Britain had been virtually leaderless, although Devonshire had remained formally Prime Minister, but now Pitt and Newcastle were ready to offer stronger direction to the country's strategy. By summer 1757 the British war effort over the previous three years had broadly been a failure. Britain's attempts to take the offensive in North America had ended in disaster, Menorca had been lost, and the Duke of Cumberland's Army of Observation was retreating across Hanover following the Battle of Hastenback. In October Cumberland was forced to conclude the Convention of Klosterzeven, which would take Hanover out of the war. The French Invasion of Hanover posed a threat to Britain's ally Prussia, who they would now be able to attack from the west as well as facing attack from Austria, Russia, Saxony and Sweden. Although it was late in the campaigning season when he had come to power, Pitt set about trying to initiate a more assertive strategy. He conspired with a number of figures to persuade the Hanoverians to revoke the Klosterzevern Convention and re-enter the war on Britain's side, which they did in late 1757. He also put into practice a scheme of Naval Descents that would make amphibious landings on the French coast. The first of these, the Raid on Rochefort, took place in September but was not a success. The centrepiece of the campaign in North America, an expedition to capture Louisbourg, was aborted due to the presence of a large French fleet and a gale that scattered the British fleet. War 1758 In 1758 Pitt began to put into practice a new strategy to win the Seven Years' War, which would involve tying down large numbers of French troops and resources in Germany, while Britain used its naval supremacy to launch expeditions to capture French forces around the globe. Following the capture of Emden he ordered the dispatch of the first British troops to the European continent under the Duke of Marlborough, who joined Brunswick's army. This was a dramatic reversal of his previous position, as he had recently been strongly opposed to any such commitment. Pitt had been lobbied by an American merchant Thomas Cumming to launch an expedition against the French trading settlements in West Africa. In April 1758 British forces captured the ill-defended fort of Saint-Louis in Senegal. The mission was so lucrative that Pitt sent out further expeditions to capture Gorée and Gambia later in the year. He also drew up plans to attack French islands in the Caribbean the following year at the suggestion of a Jamaican sugar planter William Beckford. In North America, a second British attempt to capture Louisbourg succeeded. However, Pitt's pleasure over this was tempered by the subsequent news of a significant British defeat at the Battle of Carillon. Towards the end of the year the Forbes Expedition seized the site of Fort Duquesne and began constructing a British settlement that would become known as Pittsburgh. This gave the British control of the Ohio Country, which had been the principal cause of the war. In Europe, Brunswick's forces enjoyed a mixed year. Brunswick had crossed the Rhine, but faced with being cut off he had retreated and blocked any potential French move towards Hanover with his victory at the Battle of Krefeld. The year ended with something approaching a stalemate in Germany. Pitt had continued his naval descents during 1758, but the first had enjoyed only limited success and the second ended with near disaster at the Battle of St Cast and no further descents were planned. Instead the troops and ships would be used as part of the coming expedition to the French West Indies. The scheme of amphibious raids was the only one of Pitt's policies during the war that was broadly a failure, although it did help briefly relieve pressure on the German front by tying down French troops on coastal protection service. Annus Mirabilis In France a new leader, the Duc de Choiseul, had recently come to power and 1759 offered a duel between their rival strategies. Pitt intended to continue with his plan of tying down French forces in Germany while continuing the assault on France's colonies. Choiseul hoped to repel the attacks in the colonies while seeking total victory in Europe. Pitt's war around the world was largely successful. While a British invasion of Martinique failed, they captured Guadeloupe shortly afterwards. In India, a French attempt to capture Madras was repulsed. In North America, British troops closed in on France's Canadian heartland. A British force under James Wolfe moved up the Saint Lawrence with the aim of capturing Quebec. After initially failing to penetrate the French defences at the Montmorency Falls, Wolfe later led his men to a victory to the west of the city allowing the British forces to capture Quebec. Choiseul had pinned much of his hopes on a French invasion of Britain, which he hoped would knock Britain out of the war and make it surrender the colonies it had taken from France. Pitt had stripped the home islands of troops to send on his expeditions, leaving Britain guarded by poorly trained militia and giving an opportunity for the French if they could land in enough force. The French did build a large invasion force. However the French naval defeats at Lagos and Quiberon Bay forced Choiseul to abandon the invasion plans. France's other great hope, that their armies could make a breakthrough in Germany and invade Hanover, was thwarted at the Battle of Minden. Britain ended the year victorious in every theatre of operations in which it was engaged, with Pitt receiving the credit for this. 1760–61 Britain completed the conquest of Canada in 1760 by capturing Montreal, which effectively brought the war to an end on mainland North America. Pitt's power had now reached its peak, but was soon under threat. The domestic political situation was altered dramatically when George II died in October 1760. He was succeeded by his grandson, George III, who had once considered Pitt an ally but had become angered by Pitt's alliance with Newcastle and acceptance of the need for British intervention in Germanywhich George was strongly opposed to. The new king successfully lobbied for his favourite Lord Bute to be given the post of Northern Secretary. Bute was inclined to support a withdrawal from Germany, and to fight the war with France largely at sea and in the colonies. Pitt's plan for an expedition to capture Belle Île was put into force in April 1761 and it was captured after a siege. This provided yet a further blow to French prestige, as it was the first part of Metropolitan France to be occupied. Pitt now expected France to offer terms, although he was prepared for a longer war if necessary. Envoys were exchanged, but neither side could reach an agreement. Pitt's refusal to grant the French a share in Newfoundland proved the biggest obstacle to peace, as Pitt declared he would rather lose the use of his right arm than give the French a share there and later said he would rather give up the Tower of London than Newfoundland. Newfoundland was at the time seen as possessing huge economic and strategic value because of the extensive fishing industry there. The war in Germany continued through 1761 with the French again attempting to overcome Brunswick and invade Hanover, but suffering a defeat at the Battle of Villinghausen. Pitt had substantially increased the number of British troops serving with Brunswick, and he also planned further conquests in the West Indies. A strategy he hoped would compel the French to conclude a reasonable peace treaty. Treaty of Paris To the preliminaries of the peace concluded in February 1763 he offered an indignant resistance, considering the terms quite inadequate to the successes that had been gained by the country. When the treaty was discussed in parliament in December of the previous year, though suffering from a severe attack of gout, he was carried down to the House, and in a speech of three hours' duration, interrupted more than once by paroxysms of pain, he strongly protested against its various conditions. These conditions included the return of the sugar islands (but Britain retained Dominica); trading stations in West Africa (won by Boscawen); Pondicherry (France's Indian colony); and fishing rights in Newfoundland. Pitt's opposition arose through two heads: France had been given the means to become once more formidable at sea, whilst Frederick of Prussia had been betrayed. Pitt believed that the task had been left half-finished and called for a final year of war which would crush French power for good. Pitt had long-held plans for further conquests which had been uncompleted. Newcastle, by contrast, sought peace but only if the war in Germany could be brought to an honourable and satisfactory conclusion (rather than Britain suddenly bailing out of it as Bute proposed). However the combined opposition of Newcastle and Pitt was not enough to prevent the Treaty passing comfortably in both Houses of Parliament. However, there were strong reasons for concluding the peace: the National Debt had increased from £74.5m. in 1755 to £133.25m. in 1763, the year of the peace. The requirement to pay down this debt, and the lack of French threat in Canada, were major movers in the subsequent American War of Independence. The physical cause which rendered this effort so painful probably accounts for the infrequency of his appearances in parliament, as well as for much that is otherwise inexplicable in his subsequent conduct. In 1763 he spoke against the unpopular tax on cider, imposed by his brother-in-law, George Grenville, and his opposition, though unsuccessful in the House, helped to keep alive his popularity with the country, which cordially hated the excise and all connected with it. When next year the question of general warrants was raised in connexion with the case of John Wilkes, Pitt vigorously maintained their illegality, thus defending at once the privileges of Parliament and the freedom of the press. During 1765 he seems to have been totally incapacitated for public business. In the following year he supported with great power the proposal of the Rockingham administration for the repeal of the American Stamp Act, arguing that it was unconstitutional to impose taxes upon the colonies. He thus endorsed the contention of the colonists on the ground of principle, while the majority of those who acted with him contented themselves with resisting the disastrous taxation scheme on the ground of expediency. The Repeal (1766) of the Stamp Act, indeed, was only passed pari passu with another censuring the American assemblies, and declaring the authority of the British parliament over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". Thus the House of Commons repudiated in the most formal manner the principle Pitt laid down. His language in approval of the resistance of the colonists was unusually bold, and perhaps no one but himself could have employed it with impunity at a time when the freedom of debate was only imperfectly conceded. Pitt had not been long out of office when he was solicited to return to it, and the solicitations were more than once renewed. Unsuccessful overtures were made to him in 1763, and twice in 1765, in May and June—the negotiator in May being the king's uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who went down in person to Hayes, Pitt's seat in Kent. It is known that he had the opportunity of joining the Marquess of Rockingham's short-lived administration at any time on his own terms, and his conduct in declining an arrangement with that minister has been more generally condemned than any other step in his public life. Leadership The London Magazine of 1767 offered "Pitt, Pompadour, Prussia, Providence" as the reasons for Britain's success in the Seven Years' War. Pitt's relation to all three was such as to entitle him to a large share in the credit of their deeds. He inspired trust in his chosen commanders by his indifference to rules of seniority—several of "Pitt's boys", like Keppel, captor of Gorée, were in their thirties—and by his clear orders. It was his discernment that selected Wolfe to lead the attack on Quebec, and gave him the opportunity of dying a victor on the heights of Abraham. He had personally less to do with the successes in India than with the other great enterprises that shed an undying lustre on his administration; but his generous praise in parliament encouraged Robert Clive, and the forces that acted at the close of the struggle were animated by his indomitable spirit. Pitt's particular genius was to finance an army on the continent to drain French men and resources so that Britain might concentrate on what he held to be the vital spheres: Canada and the West Indies; whilst Clive successfully defeated Siraj ud-Daulah, (the last independent Nawab of Bengal) at Plassey (1757), securing India. The Continental campaign was carried on by Cumberland, defeated at Hastenbeck and forced to surrender at Convention of Klosterzeven (1757) and thereafter by Ferdinand of Brunswick, later victor at Minden; Britain's Continental campaign had two major strands, firstly subsidising allies, particularly Frederick the Great, and second, financing an army to divert French resources from the colonial war and to also defend Hanover (which was the territory of the Kings of England at this time) Pitt, real Imperialist in modern English history, was the directing mind in the expansion of his country, and with him the beginning of empire is rightly associated. The Seven Years' War might well, moreover, have been another Thirty Years' War if Pitt had not furnished Frederick with an annual subsidy of £700,000, and in addition relieved him of the task of defending western Germany against France: this was the policy that allowed Pitt to boast of having "won Canada on the banks of the Rhine". Contemporary opinion was, of course, incompetent to estimate the permanent results gained for the country by the brilliant foreign policy of Pitt. It has long been generally agreed that by several of his most costly expeditions nothing was really won but glory: the policy of diversionary attacks on places like Rochefort was memorably described as 'breaking windows with gold guineas'. It has even been said that the only permanent acquisition that England owed directly to him was her Canadian dominion; and, strictly speaking, this is true, it being admitted that the campaign by which the Indian empire was virtually won was not planned by him, though brought to a successful issue during his ministry. But material aggrandisement, though the only tangible, was not the only real or lasting effect of a war policy. More could be gained by crushing a formidable rival than by conquering a province. The loss of her Canadian possessions was only one of a series of disasters suffered by France, which included the victories at sea of Boscawen at Lagos and Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Such defeats radically affected the future of Europe and the world. Deprived of her most valuable colonies both in the East and in the West, and thoroughly defeated on the continent, France's humiliation was the beginning of a new epoch in history. The victorious policy of Pitt destroyed the military prestige which repeated experience has shown to be in France as in no other country the very life of monarchy, and thus was not the least of the influences that slowly brought about the French Revolution. It effectually deprived France of the lead in the councils of Europe which she had hitherto arrogated to herself, and so affected the whole course of continental politics. It is such far-reaching results as these, and not the mere acquisition of a single colony, however valuable, that constitute Pitt's claim to be considered as the most powerful minister that ever guided the foreign policy of England. Resignation George II died on 25 October 1760, and was succeeded by his grandson, George III. The new king was inclined to view politics in personal terms and taught to believe that "Pitt had the blackest of hearts". The new king had counsellors of his own, led by Lord Bute. Bute soon joined the cabinet as a Northern Secretary and Pitt and he were quickly in dispute over a number of issues. In 1761 Pitt had received information from his agents about a secret Bourbon Family Compact by which the Bourbons of France and Spain bound themselves in an offensive alliance against Britain. Spain was concerned that Britain's victories over France had left them too powerful, and were a threat in the long term to Spain's own empire. Equally they may have believed that the British had become overstretched by fighting a global war and decided to try to seize British possessions such as Jamaica. A secret convention pledged that if Britain and France were still at war by 1 May 1762, Spain would enter the war on the French side. Pitt urged that such a clear threat should be met by a pre-emptive strike against Spain's navy and her colonies—with emphasis on speed to prevent Spain bringing the annual Manila galleon safely to harbour. Bute and Newcastle refused to support such a move, as did the entire cabinet except Temple, believing it would make Britain look the aggressor against Spain potentially provoking other neutral nations to declare war on Britain. Pitt believed he had no choice but to leave a cabinet in which his advice on a vital question had been rejected and presented his resignation. Many of his cabinet colleagues secretly welcomed his departure as they believed his dominance and popularity were a threat to the Constitution. Pitt's brother-in-law George Grenville was given a major role in government, angering Pitt who felt Grenville should have resigned with him. Pitt regarded Grenville's action as a betrayal and there was hostility between them for several years. After Pitt's resignation in October 1761, the King urged Pitt to accept a mark of royal favour. Accordingly, he obtained a pension of £3000 a year and his wife, Lady Hester Grenville was created Baroness Chatham in her own right—although Pitt refused to accept a title himself. Pitt assured the King that he would not go into direct opposition against the government. His conduct after his retirement was distinguished by a moderation and disinterestedness which, as Edmund Burke remarked, "set a seal upon his character". The war with Spain, in which he had urged the cabinet to take the initiative, proved inevitable; but he scorned to use the occasion for "altercation and recrimination", and spoke in support of the government measures for carrying on the war. Twenty years after he had received a similar windfall from the Marlborough legacy, Sir William Pynsent, Bt., a Somerset baronet to whom he was personally quite unknown, left him his entire estate, worth about three thousand a year, in testimony of approval of his political career. The Chatham Ministry In July 1766 Rockingham was dismissed, and Pitt was entrusted by the King with the task of forming a government entirely of his own selection. His principle, "measures not men", appealed to the King whom he proposed to serve by "destroying all party distinctions". Pitt made appointments based not on connections but on merit, such as Charles Townshend to the Exchequer and Shelburne as Secretary of State, to order American affairs. Pitt chose for himself the office of Lord Privy Seal, which required his elevation to the House of Lords, and on 4 August he became Earl of Chatham in the county of Kent and Viscount Pitt of Burton Pynsent in the county of Somerset. Pitt's decision to accept a peerage was likely influenced by his declining health and desire for a less demanding role, but the "great commoner" lost a great deal of public support. For example, in view of his probable accession to power, preparations were made in the City of London for a banquet and a general illumination to celebrate the event, but the celebration was at once countermanded when it was known that he had become Earl of Chatham. Edmund Burke described the administration as "chequered and speckled", and spoke of it as "patriots and courtiers, King's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories ... indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on". The problems facing the government included the observance of the Treaty of Paris by France and Spain, tension between American colonists and the mother country, and the status of the East India Company. One of the new ministry's earliest acts was to lay an embargo upon corn, which was thought necessary in order to prevent a dearth resulting from the unprecedented bad harvest of 1766. The measure was strongly opposed, and Lord Chatham delivered his first speech in the House of Lords in support of it. It proved to be almost the only measure introduced by his government in which he personally interested himself. In 1767, Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, enacted duties in the American colonies on tea, paper, and other goods. The taxes were created without the consultation of Chatham and possibly against his wishes. They proved offensive to the American colonists. Chatham's attention had been directed to the growing importance of the affairs of India, and there is evidence in his correspondence that he was meditating a comprehensive scheme for transferring much of the power of the East India Company to the crown. Yet he was incapacitated physically and mentally during nearly his entire tenure of office. Chatham rarely saw any of his colleagues though they repeatedly and urgently pressed for interviews with him, and even an offer from the King to visit him in person was respectfully declined. While his gout seemed to improve, he was newly afflicted with mental alienation bordering on insanity. Chatham's lack of leadership resulted in an incohesive set of policies. Chatham dismissed his allies Amherst and Shelburne from their posts, and then in October 1768 he tendered his own resignation on the grounds of poor health, leaving the leadership to Grafton, his First Lord of the Treasury. Later life Soon after his resignation a renewed attack of gout freed Chatham from the mental disease under which he had so long suffered. He had been nearly two years and a half in seclusion when, in July 1769, he again appeared in public at a royal levee. It was not, however, until 1770 that he resumed his seat in the House of Lords. Falklands Crisis The same year when Britain and Spain became involved in the Falklands Crisis and came close to war, Pitt was a staunch advocate of taking a tough stance with Madrid and Paris (as he had been during the earlier Corsican Crisis when France had invaded Corsica) and made a number of speeches on the subject rousing public opinion. The government of Lord North was pushed into taking a firmer line because of this, mobilising the navy, and forcing Spain to back down. Some had even believed that the issue was enough to cast North from office and restore Pitt as Prime Minister—although the ultimate result was to strengthen the position of North who took credit for his firm handling of the crisis and was able to fill the cabinet with his own supporters. North would go on to dominate politics for the next decade, leading the country until 1782. War of American Independence Chatham sought to find a compromise on the escalating conflict with the American colonies. As he realised the gravity of the American situation, Chatham re-entered the fray, declaring that he would "be in earnest for the public" and "a scarecrow of violence to the gentler warblers of the grove". His position changed from an obsession in 1774 with the question of the authority of Parliament to a search for a formula for conciliation in 1775. He proposed the "Provisional Act" that would both maintain the ultimate authority of Parliamentary sovereignty, while meeting the colonial demands. The Lords defeated his proposal on 1 February 1775. Chatham's warnings regarding America were ignored. His brave efforts to present his case, passionate, deeply pondered, for the concession of fundamental liberties—no taxation without consent, independent judges, trial by jury, along with the recognition of the American Continental Congress—foundered on the arrogance and complacency of his peers. After war had broken out, he warned that America could not be conquered. Due to his stance, Pitt was very popular amongst the American colonists. This high esteem approached to idolatry according to historian Clinton Rossiter: In the last decade of the colonial period the ideal of the man of public virtue was made real in the person of William Pitt. The cult of this noblest of Whigs, "the Genius of England and the Comet of his Age" was well advanced toward idolatry at least five years before the Stamp Act. The greatest of "the great men of England", the last and noblest of the Romans, was considered the embodiment of virtue, wisdom, patriotism, liberty, and temperance ... Pitt, "glorious and immortal", the "guardian of America", was the idol of the colonies ... A Son of Liberty in Bristol County, Massachusetts, paid him the ultimate tribute of identification with English liberty: "Our toast in general is,—Magna Charta, the British Constitution,—PITT and Liberty forever!" Death Pitt had now almost no personal following, mainly owing to the grave mistake he had made in not forming an alliance with the Rockingham party but his eloquence was as powerful as ever, and all its power was directed against the government policy in the contest with America, which had become the question of all-absorbing interest. His last appearance in the House of Lords was on 7 April 1778, on the occasion of the Duke of Richmond's motion for an address praying the king to conclude peace with America on any terms. In view of the hostile demonstrations of France the various parties had come generally to see the necessity of such a measure but Chatham could not brook the thought of a step which implied submission to the "natural enemy" whom it had been the main object	attempting to overcome Brunswick and invade Hanover, but suffering a defeat at the Battle of Villinghausen. Pitt had substantially increased the number of British troops serving with Brunswick, and he also planned further conquests in the West Indies. A strategy he hoped would compel the French to conclude a reasonable peace treaty. Treaty of Paris To the preliminaries of the peace concluded in February 1763 he offered an indignant resistance, considering the terms quite inadequate to the successes that had been gained by the country. When the treaty was discussed in parliament in December of the previous year, though suffering from a severe attack of gout, he was carried down to the House, and in a speech of three hours' duration, interrupted more than once by paroxysms of pain, he strongly protested against its various conditions. These conditions included the return of the sugar islands (but Britain retained Dominica); trading stations in West Africa (won by Boscawen); Pondicherry (France's Indian colony); and fishing rights in Newfoundland. Pitt's opposition arose through two heads: France had been given the means to become once more formidable at sea, whilst Frederick of Prussia had been betrayed. Pitt believed that the task had been left half-finished and called for a final year of war which would crush French power for good. Pitt had long-held plans for further conquests which had been uncompleted. Newcastle, by contrast, sought peace but only if the war in Germany could be brought to an honourable and satisfactory conclusion (rather than Britain suddenly bailing out of it as Bute proposed). However the combined opposition of Newcastle and Pitt was not enough to prevent the Treaty passing comfortably in both Houses of Parliament. However, there were strong reasons for concluding the peace: the National Debt had increased from £74.5m. in 1755 to £133.25m. in 1763, the year of the peace. The requirement to pay down this debt, and the lack of French threat in Canada, were major movers in the subsequent American War of Independence. The physical cause which rendered this effort so painful probably accounts for the infrequency of his appearances in parliament, as well as for much that is otherwise inexplicable in his subsequent conduct. In 1763 he spoke against the unpopular tax on cider, imposed by his brother-in-law, George Grenville, and his opposition, though unsuccessful in the House, helped to keep alive his popularity with the country, which cordially hated the excise and all connected with it. When next year the question of general warrants was raised in connexion with the case of John Wilkes, Pitt vigorously maintained their illegality, thus defending at once the privileges of Parliament and the freedom of the press. During 1765 he seems to have been totally incapacitated for public business. In the following year he supported with great power the proposal of the Rockingham administration for the repeal of the American Stamp Act, arguing that it was unconstitutional to impose taxes upon the colonies. He thus endorsed the contention of the colonists on the ground of principle, while the majority of those who acted with him contented themselves with resisting the disastrous taxation scheme on the ground of expediency. The Repeal (1766) of the Stamp Act, indeed, was only passed pari passu with another censuring the American assemblies, and declaring the authority of the British parliament over the colonies "in all cases whatsoever". Thus the House of Commons repudiated in the most formal manner the principle Pitt laid down. His language in approval of the resistance of the colonists was unusually bold, and perhaps no one but himself could have employed it with impunity at a time when the freedom of debate was only imperfectly conceded. Pitt had not been long out of office when he was solicited to return to it, and the solicitations were more than once renewed. Unsuccessful overtures were made to him in 1763, and twice in 1765, in May and June—the negotiator in May being the king's uncle, the Duke of Cumberland, who went down in person to Hayes, Pitt's seat in Kent. It is known that he had the opportunity of joining the Marquess of Rockingham's short-lived administration at any time on his own terms, and his conduct in declining an arrangement with that minister has been more generally condemned than any other step in his public life. Leadership The London Magazine of 1767 offered "Pitt, Pompadour, Prussia, Providence" as the reasons for Britain's success in the Seven Years' War. Pitt's relation to all three was such as to entitle him to a large share in the credit of their deeds. He inspired trust in his chosen commanders by his indifference to rules of seniority—several of "Pitt's boys", like Keppel, captor of Gorée, were in their thirties—and by his clear orders. It was his discernment that selected Wolfe to lead the attack on Quebec, and gave him the opportunity of dying a victor on the heights of Abraham. He had personally less to do with the successes in India than with the other great enterprises that shed an undying lustre on his administration; but his generous praise in parliament encouraged Robert Clive, and the forces that acted at the close of the struggle were animated by his indomitable spirit. Pitt's particular genius was to finance an army on the continent to drain French men and resources so that Britain might concentrate on what he held to be the vital spheres: Canada and the West Indies; whilst Clive successfully defeated Siraj ud-Daulah, (the last independent Nawab of Bengal) at Plassey (1757), securing India. The Continental campaign was carried on by Cumberland, defeated at Hastenbeck and forced to surrender at Convention of Klosterzeven (1757) and thereafter by Ferdinand of Brunswick, later victor at Minden; Britain's Continental campaign had two major strands, firstly subsidising allies, particularly Frederick the Great, and second, financing an army to divert French resources from the colonial war and to also defend Hanover (which was the territory of the Kings of England at this time) Pitt, real Imperialist in modern English history, was the directing mind in the expansion of his country, and with him the beginning of empire is rightly associated. The Seven Years' War might well, moreover, have been another Thirty Years' War if Pitt had not furnished Frederick with an annual subsidy of £700,000, and in addition relieved him of the task of defending western Germany against France: this was the policy that allowed Pitt to boast of having "won Canada on the banks of the Rhine". Contemporary opinion was, of course, incompetent to estimate the permanent results gained for the country by the brilliant foreign policy of Pitt. It has long been generally agreed that by several of his most costly expeditions nothing was really won but glory: the policy of diversionary attacks on places like Rochefort was memorably described as 'breaking windows with gold guineas'. It has even been said that the only permanent acquisition that England owed directly to him was her Canadian dominion; and, strictly speaking, this is true, it being admitted that the campaign by which the Indian empire was virtually won was not planned by him, though brought to a successful issue during his ministry. But material aggrandisement, though the only tangible, was not the only real or lasting effect of a war policy. More could be gained by crushing a formidable rival than by conquering a province. The loss of her Canadian possessions was only one of a series of disasters suffered by France, which included the victories at sea of Boscawen at Lagos and Hawke at Quiberon Bay. Such defeats radically affected the future of Europe and the world. Deprived of her most valuable colonies both in the East and in the West, and thoroughly defeated on the continent, France's humiliation was the beginning of a new epoch in history. The victorious policy of Pitt destroyed the military prestige which repeated experience has shown to be in France as in no other country the very life of monarchy, and thus was not the least of the influences that slowly brought about the French Revolution. It effectually deprived France of the lead in the councils of Europe which she had hitherto arrogated to herself, and so affected the whole course of continental politics. It is such far-reaching results as these, and not the mere acquisition of a single colony, however valuable, that constitute Pitt's claim to be considered as the most powerful minister that ever guided the foreign policy of England. Resignation George II died on 25 October 1760, and was succeeded by his grandson, George III. The new king was inclined to view politics in personal terms and taught to believe that "Pitt had the blackest of hearts". The new king had counsellors of his own, led by Lord Bute. Bute soon joined the cabinet as a Northern Secretary and Pitt and he were quickly in dispute over a number of issues. In 1761 Pitt had received information from his agents about a secret Bourbon Family Compact by which the Bourbons of France and Spain bound themselves in an offensive alliance against Britain. Spain was concerned that Britain's victories over France had left them too powerful, and were a threat in the long term to Spain's own empire. Equally they may have believed that the British had become overstretched by fighting a global war and decided to try to seize British possessions such as Jamaica. A secret convention pledged that if Britain and France were still at war by 1 May 1762, Spain would enter the war on the French side. Pitt urged that such a clear threat should be met by a pre-emptive strike against Spain's navy and her colonies—with emphasis on speed to prevent Spain bringing the annual Manila galleon safely to harbour. Bute and Newcastle refused to support such a move, as did the entire cabinet except Temple, believing it would make Britain look the aggressor against Spain potentially provoking other neutral nations to declare war on Britain. Pitt believed he had no choice but to leave a cabinet in which his advice on a vital question had been rejected and presented his resignation. Many of his cabinet colleagues secretly welcomed his departure as they believed his dominance and popularity were a threat to the Constitution. Pitt's brother-in-law George Grenville was given a major role in government, angering Pitt who felt Grenville should have resigned with him. Pitt regarded Grenville's action as a betrayal and there was hostility between them for several years. After Pitt's resignation in October 1761, the King urged Pitt to accept a mark of royal favour. Accordingly, he obtained a pension of £3000 a year and his wife, Lady Hester Grenville was created Baroness Chatham in her own right—although Pitt refused to accept a title himself. Pitt assured the King that he would not go into direct opposition against the government. His conduct after his retirement was distinguished by a moderation and disinterestedness which, as Edmund Burke remarked, "set a seal upon his character". The war with Spain, in which he had urged the cabinet to take the initiative, proved inevitable; but he scorned to use the occasion for "altercation and recrimination", and spoke in support of the government measures for carrying on the war. Twenty years after he had received a similar windfall from the Marlborough legacy, Sir William Pynsent, Bt., a Somerset baronet to whom he was personally quite unknown, left him his entire estate, worth about three thousand a year, in testimony of approval of his political career. The Chatham Ministry In July 1766 Rockingham was dismissed, and Pitt was entrusted by the King with the task of forming a government entirely of his own selection. His principle, "measures not men", appealed to the King whom he proposed to serve by "destroying all party distinctions". Pitt made appointments based not on connections but on merit, such as Charles Townshend to the Exchequer and Shelburne as Secretary of State, to order American affairs. Pitt chose for himself the office of Lord Privy Seal, which required his elevation to the House of Lords, and on 4 August he became Earl of Chatham in the county of Kent and Viscount Pitt of Burton Pynsent in the county of Somerset. Pitt's decision to accept a peerage was likely influenced by his declining health and desire for a less demanding role, but the "great commoner" lost a great deal of public support. For example, in view of his probable accession to power, preparations were made in the City of London for a banquet and a general illumination to celebrate the event, but the celebration was at once countermanded when it was known that he had become Earl of Chatham. Edmund Burke described the administration as "chequered and speckled", and spoke of it as "patriots and courtiers, King's friends and republicans; Whigs and Tories ... indeed a very curious show, but utterly unsafe to touch and unsure to stand on". The problems facing the government included the observance of the Treaty of Paris by France and Spain, tension between American colonists and the mother country, and the status of the East India Company. One of the new ministry's earliest acts was to lay an embargo upon corn, which was thought necessary in order to prevent a dearth resulting from the unprecedented bad harvest of 1766. The measure was strongly opposed, and Lord Chatham delivered his first speech in the House of Lords in support of it. It proved to be almost the only measure introduced by his government in which he personally interested himself. In 1767, Charles Townshend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, enacted duties in the American colonies on tea, paper, and other goods. The taxes were created without the consultation of Chatham and possibly against his wishes. They proved offensive to the American colonists. Chatham's attention had been directed to the growing importance of the affairs of India, and there is evidence in his correspondence that he was meditating a comprehensive scheme for transferring much of the power of the East India Company to the crown. Yet he was incapacitated physically and mentally during nearly his entire tenure of office. Chatham rarely saw any of his colleagues though they repeatedly and urgently pressed for interviews with him, and even an offer from the King to visit him in person was respectfully declined. While his gout seemed to improve, he was newly afflicted with mental alienation bordering on insanity. Chatham's lack of leadership resulted in an incohesive set of policies. Chatham dismissed his allies Amherst and Shelburne from their posts, and then in October 1768 he tendered his own resignation on the grounds of poor health, leaving the leadership to Grafton, his First Lord of the Treasury. Later life Soon after his resignation a renewed attack of gout freed Chatham from the mental disease under which he had so long suffered. He had been nearly two years and a half in seclusion when, in July 1769, he again appeared in public at a royal levee. It was not, however, until 1770 that he resumed his seat in the House of Lords. Falklands Crisis The same year when Britain and Spain became involved in the Falklands Crisis and came close to war, Pitt was a staunch advocate of taking a tough stance with Madrid and Paris (as he had been during the earlier Corsican Crisis when France had invaded Corsica) and made a number of speeches on the subject rousing public opinion. The government of Lord North was pushed into taking a firmer line because of this, mobilising the navy, and forcing Spain to back down. Some had even believed that the issue was enough to cast North from office and restore Pitt as Prime Minister—although the ultimate result was to strengthen the position of North who took credit for his firm handling of the crisis and was able to fill the cabinet with his own supporters. North would go on to dominate politics for the next decade, leading the country until 1782. War of American Independence Chatham sought to find a compromise on the escalating conflict with the American colonies. As he realised the gravity of the American situation, Chatham re-entered the fray, declaring that he would "be in earnest for the public" and "a scarecrow of violence to the gentler warblers of the grove". His position changed from an obsession in 1774 with the question of the authority of Parliament to a search for a formula for conciliation in 1775. He proposed the "Provisional Act" that would both maintain the ultimate authority of Parliamentary sovereignty, while meeting the colonial demands. The Lords defeated his proposal on 1 February 1775. Chatham's warnings regarding America were ignored. His brave efforts to present his case, passionate, deeply pondered, for the concession of fundamental liberties—no taxation without consent, independent judges, trial by jury, along with the recognition of the American Continental Congress—foundered on the arrogance and complacency of his peers. After war had broken out, he warned that America could not be conquered. Due to his stance, Pitt was very popular amongst the American colonists. This high esteem approached to idolatry according to historian Clinton Rossiter: In the last decade of the colonial period the ideal of the man of public virtue was made real in the person of William Pitt. The cult of this noblest of Whigs, "the Genius of England and the Comet of his Age" was well advanced toward idolatry at least five years before the Stamp Act. The greatest of "the great men of England", the last and noblest of the Romans, was considered the embodiment of virtue, wisdom, patriotism, liberty, and temperance ... Pitt, "glorious and immortal", the "guardian of America", was the idol of the colonies ... A Son of Liberty in Bristol County, Massachusetts, paid him the ultimate tribute of identification with English liberty: "Our toast in general is,—Magna Charta, the British Constitution,—PITT and Liberty forever!" Death Pitt had now almost no personal following, mainly owing to the grave mistake he had made in not forming an alliance with the Rockingham party but his eloquence was as powerful as ever, and all its power was directed against the government policy in the contest with America, which had become the question of all-absorbing interest. His last appearance in the House of Lords was on 7 April 1778, on the occasion of the Duke of Richmond's motion for an address praying the king to conclude peace with America on any terms. In view of the hostile demonstrations of France the various parties had come generally to see the necessity of such a measure but Chatham could not brook the thought of a step which implied submission to the "natural enemy" whom it had been the main object of his life to humble, and he declaimed for a considerable time, though with diminished vigour, against the motion. After the Duke of Richmond had replied, he rose again excitedly as if to speak, pressed his hand upon his breast, and fell down in a fit. His last words before he collapsed were: "My Lords, any state is better than despair; if we must fall, let us fall like men." James Harris MP, however, recorded that Lord Nugent had told him that Chatham's last words in the Lords were: "If the Americans defend independence, they shall find me in their way" and that his very last words (spoken to his soldier son John) were: "Leave your dying father, and go to the defence of your country". He was moved to his home at Hayes, where his middle son William read to him Homer's passage about the death of Hector. Chatham died on 11 May 1778, aged 69. Although he was initially buried at Hayes, with graceful unanimity all parties combined to show their sense of the national loss and the Commons presented an address to the king praying that the deceased statesman might be buried with the honours of a public funeral. A sum was voted for a public monument which was erected over a new grave in Westminster Abbey. In the Guildhall Edmund Burke's inscription summed up what he had meant to the city: he was "the minister by whom commerce was united with and made to flourish by war". Soon after the funeral a bill was passed bestowing a pension of £4,000 a year on his successors in the earldom. He had a family of three sons and two daughters, of whom the second son, William, was destined to add fresh lustre to a name that many regarded as one of the greatest in the history of England. Legacy Horace Walpole, not an uncritical admirer, wrote of Pitt: It were ingratitude to him to say that he did not give such a reverberation to our stagnating councils, as exceedingly altered the appearance of our fortune. He warded off the evil hour that seemed approaching, he infused vigour into our arms, he taught the nation to speak again as England used to speak to foreign powers ... Pitt, on entering upon administration, had found the nation at the lowest ebb in point of power and reputation ... France, who meant to be feared, was feared heartily ... They were willing to trust that France would be so good as to ruin us by inches. Pitt had roused us from this ignoble lethargy ... The admirers of Mr Pitt extol the reverberation he gave to our councils, the despondence he banished, the spirit he infused, the conquests he made, the security he affixed to our trade and plantations, the humiliation of France, the glory of Britain carried under his administration to a pitch at which it never had arrived—and all this is exactly true. Samuel Johnson is reported to have said that "Walpole was a minister given by the king to the people, but Pitt was a minister given by the people to the king", and the remark correctly indicated Chatham's distinctive place among English statesmen. He was the first minister whose main strength lay in the support of the nation at large as distinct from its representatives in the Commons, where his personal following was always small. He was the first to discern that public opinion, though generally slow to form and slow to act, is in the end the paramount power in the state; and he was the first to use it not in an emergency merely, but throughout a whole political career. Chatham marked the commencement of that vast change in the movement of English politics by which it came about that the sentiment of the great mass of the people then told effectively on the action of the government from day to day—almost from hour to hour. He was well fitted to secure the sympathy and admiration of his countrymen, for his virtues and his failings were alike English. He was often inconsistent, he was generally intractable and overbearing, and he was always pompous and affected to a degree which, as Macaulay remarked, seemed scarcely compatible with true greatness. Of the last quality evidence was furnished in the stilted style of his letters, and in the fact recorded by Thomas Seward that he never permitted his under-secretaries to sit in his presence. Burke spoke of "some significant, pompous, creeping, explanatory, ambiguous matter, in the true Chathamic style". But these defects were known only to the inner circle of his associates. To the outside public he was endeared as a statesman who could do or suffer "nothing base", and who had the rare power of transfusing his own indomitable energy and courage into all who served under him. "A spirited foreign policy" has always been popular in England, and Pitt was the most popular of English ministers, because he was the most successful exponent of such a policy. In domestic affairs his influence was small and almost entirely indirect. He himself confessed his unfitness for dealing with questions of finance. The commercial prosperity that was produced by his war policy was in a great part delusive, as prosperity so produced must always be, though it had permanent effects of the highest moment in the rise of such centres of industry as Glasgow. This, however, was a remote result which he could have neither intended nor foreseen. It has been suggested that Pitt was in fact a far more orthodox Whig than has been historically portrayed demonstrated by his sitting for rotten borough seats controlled by aristocratic magnates, and his lifelong concern for protecting the balance of power on the European continent, which marked him out from many other Patriots. Historians have described Pitt as "the greatest British statesman of the eighteenth century". He is immortalised in St Stephen's Hall, where he and other notable Parliamentarians look on at visitors to Parliament. The American city of Pittsburgh, originally Fort Duquesne, was renamed for Pitt after it was captured from the French during the Seven Years' War. Family and personal life Pitt married Lady Hester Grenville (1720–1803), daughter of the 1st Countess Temple, on 16 November 1754 at her home in Argyle Street, London. They had five children: Lady Hester Pitt (19 October 175520 July 1780), who married Viscount Mahon, later the 3rd Earl Stanhope, on 19 December 1774; three children, including the traveler and Arabist Lady Hester Stanhope. John Pitt, 2nd Earl of Chatham (1756–1835), who married The Hon. Mary Townshend; no issue. Lady Harriet Pitt (18 April 1758 – 1786), who married The Hon. Edward James Eliot, oldest son of the 1st Baron Eliot, in 1785; one child. Hon. William Pitt the Younger (28 May 1759 – 23 January 1806), who also served as Prime Minister; never married. Hon. James Charles Pitt (24 April 176113 November 1780), Royal Navy officer and died in Antigua; never married Cultural references There have been at least two Royal Navy ships that bore the name HMS Pitt. Places named after William Pitt United States Chatham Strait, Alaska Chatham, Virginia Chatham, New Hampshire Chatham, New Jersey Chatham County, Georgia Chatham Square, Savannah, Georgia Pitt County, North Carolina Chatham County, North Carolina Pittsburg, New Hampshire Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (renamed, previously called Fort Duquesne). After British General John Forbes occupied Fort Duquesne during the French and Indian War, he ordered the site's reconstruction and named it after then-Secretary of State Pitt. He also named the settlement between the rivers "Pittsborough", which would eventually become known as Pittsburgh. Chatham University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Chatham, Massachusetts Pittsfield, Massachusetts Pittsfield, New Hampshire Pittsfield Charter Township, Michigan Pittsgrove Township, New Jersey Pittstown, New Jersey Pittston, Pennsylvania Pittston Township, Pennsylvania Pittsylvania County, Virginia, and its county seat, Chatham Pittsboro, North Carolina Chatham Square, New York City The short-lived, sparsely-colonised, extralegal colony of Vandalia (located in modern West Virginia and named after Queen Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) was originally named Pittsylvania after Pitt. Canada Chatham Township, Quebec. Chatham, Ontario CFB Chatham, near Chatham, New Brunswick Australia Pitt Town, New South Wales, named after Pitt by Governor Macquarie in 1810 Chatham, New South Wales Ecuador Chatham Island, Galápagos New Zealand Chatham Islands an archipelago including Pitt Island and Chatham Island References in popular culture Pitt is referred to in the Simpsons episode "Homer at the Bat", where Barney and guest star Wade Boggs get into a bar fight after a heated debate over the subject of who was England's greatest Prime Minister. Boggs claims Pitt the Elder was the greatest Prime Minister to Barney's Lord Palmerston, causing Barney to punch Boggs in the face, knocking him unconscious. Pitt is briefly derided (but does not appear) in the Blackadder The Third episode "Dish and Dishonesty". Blackadder states that he is "about as effective as a catflap in an elephant house". In The Two Georges by Harry Turtledove, William Pitt was the Prime Minister during a period of political tension between Great Britain and its North American colonies. He played a significant role in easing those tensions and ensuring the colonists remained content British subjects. He was also one of the historical figures in Thomas Gainsborough's painting The Two Georges. In 1770, Laurence Sterne dedicated his masterpiece, The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman to the rt. hon. Mr Pitt. In 1790, Scotland's Bard, the poet Robert Burns, referred to Pitt in his Scots language poem, "Lines To A Gentleman", which Burns composed in response to being sent a newspaper, which the gentlemen sender offered to continue providing free of charge. The poet's satirical summary of events makes clear that he has no interest in the reports contained in the newspaper. The poem's section on events in Parliament, which refers to Pitt as 'Chatham Will', is as follows: See also Grenvillite Notes Further reading Biographical Black, Jeremy. Pitt the Elder. Cambridge University Press, 1992. Brown, Peter Douglas. William Pitt, Earl of Chatham: The Great Commoner. George Allen & Unwin, 1978. Pearce, Edward. Pitt the Elder: Man of War (Random House, 2010). Plumb, J. H. "The Earl of Chatham." History Today (1952) 2#3 pp 175–180 online Ruville, Albert von. William Pitt, earl of Chatham (3 vols. 1907) online older classic recommended by Jeremy Black (1992) Sherrard, O. A. Lord Chatham: A War Minister in the Making; Pitt and the Seven Years War; and America (3 vols, The Bodley
AD. The popularity of wasabi in English-speaking countries has coincided with that of sushi, growing steadily starting in about 1980. Due to issues that limit the Japanese wasabi plant's mass cultivation and thus increase its price and decreased availability outside Japan, the western horseradish plant is generally used in place of the Japanese horseradish. This version is commonly referred to as "western wasabi" () in Japan. Uses Wasabi is generally sold either as a rhizome or stem, which must be very finely grated before use, as dried powder, or as a ready-to-use paste in tubes similar to toothpaste tubes. The part used for wasabi paste is variously characterised as a rhizome, a stem, or the "rhizome plus the base part of the stem". In some high-end restaurants, the paste is prepared when the customer orders, and is made using a grater to grate the stem; once the paste is prepared, it loses flavor in 15 minutes if left uncovered. In sushi preparation, chefs usually put the wasabi between the fish and the rice because covering wasabi until served preserves its flavor. Fresh wasabi leaves can be eaten raw, having the spicy flavor of wasabi stems, but a common side effect is diarrhea. Legumes (peanuts, soybeans, or peas) may be roasted or fried, and then coated with wasabi powder mixed with sugar, salt, or oil and eaten as a crunchy snack. In Japan, it is called . Surrogates Wasabi favours growing conditions that restrict its wide cultivation – among other things, it is quite intolerant of direct sunlight, requires an air temperature between , and prefers high humidity in summer. This makes fully satisfying commercial demand impossible for growers, which makes wasabi quite expensive. Therefore, outside Japan, finding real wasabi plants is rare. A common substitute is a mixture of horseradish, mustard, starch, and green food coloring or spinach powder. Often packages are labeled as wasabi while the ingredients do not actually include any part of the wasabi plant. The primary difference between the two is color, with wasabi being naturally green. Fresh horseradish root is described as having	and food coloring. The plant grows naturally along stream beds in mountain river valleys in Japan. The two main cultivars in the marketplace are E. japonicum 'Daruma' and 'Mazuma', but there are many others. The oldest record of wasabi as a food dates to the 8th century AD. The popularity of wasabi in English-speaking countries has coincided with that of sushi, growing steadily starting in about 1980. Due to issues that limit the Japanese wasabi plant's mass cultivation and thus increase its price and decreased availability outside Japan, the western horseradish plant is generally used in place of the Japanese horseradish. This version is commonly referred to as "western wasabi" () in Japan. Uses Wasabi is generally sold either as a rhizome or stem, which must be very finely grated before use, as dried powder, or as a ready-to-use paste in tubes similar to toothpaste tubes. The part used for wasabi paste is variously characterised as a rhizome, a stem, or the "rhizome plus the base part of the stem". In some high-end restaurants, the paste is prepared when the customer orders, and is made using a grater to grate the stem; once the paste is prepared, it loses flavor in 15 minutes if left uncovered. In sushi preparation, chefs usually put the wasabi between the fish and the rice because covering wasabi until served preserves its flavor. Fresh wasabi leaves can be eaten raw, having the spicy flavor of wasabi stems, but a common side effect is diarrhea. Legumes (peanuts, soybeans, or peas) may be roasted or fried, and then coated with wasabi powder mixed with sugar, salt, or oil and eaten as a crunchy snack. In Japan, it is called . Surrogates Wasabi favours growing conditions that restrict its wide cultivation – among other things, it is quite intolerant of direct sunlight, requires an air temperature between , and prefers high humidity in summer. This makes fully satisfying commercial demand impossible for growers, which makes wasabi quite expensive. Therefore, outside Japan, finding real wasabi plants is rare. A common substitute is a mixture of horseradish, mustard, starch, and green food coloring or spinach powder. Often packages are labeled as wasabi while the ingredients do not actually include any part of the wasabi plant. The primary difference between the two is color, with wasabi being naturally green. Fresh horseradish root is described as having a similar (albeit simpler) flavor and texture to that of fresh wasabi. In Japan, horseradish is referred to as . In the United States, true wasabi is generally found only at specialty grocers and high-end restaurants. Chemistry The chemical in wasabi that provides for its initial pungency is the volatile compound allyl isothiocyanate, which is produced by hydrolysis of natural thioglucosides (conjugates of the sugar glucose, and sulfur-containing organic compounds); the hydrolysis reaction is catalyzed by myrosinase and occurs when the enzyme is released on cell rupture caused by maceration – e.g., grating – of
of payment, an order to an official to pay someone, similar to a check Government Warrant (town meeting), a document used to call and outline a town meeting Governor general's warrant, a non-budgeted payment instrument in Canadian law Warrant card, a proof of identification used by police officers Warrant of Appointment, President of Ireland official document of high office appointment Warrant of Precedence for Pakistan, Pakistan protocol for officials seating at government functions Warrant officer (disambiguation), a rank in various military organizations	Arts, entertainment, and media Music Warrant (American band), a glam metal band from Hollywood, California Warrant (German band), a German speed metal band that formed in 1983 Films Warrant (film), a 1975 Indian Hindi-language film directed by Pramod Chakravorty The Warrant, a 2000 Indian Malayalam film directed by Pappan Payattuvila Business Dock warrant, a document certifying that the holder is entitled to goods at a maritime dock Track warrant, railroad line permission for a train's use of the main line Warrant of Fitness, New Zealand assurance certifying a motor vehicle Warrant sale, a statutory means of collecting debts in Scotland until 2001 Warranty, a business transaction assurance Warranty (disambiguation), various types of warranty Finance Warrant (finance), a right, without obligation, to buy or sell something at an agreed price Covered warrant, a warrant issued without an accompanying bond or equity Turbo warrant, a kind of stock option Warrant of payment, an order to
and Danes had early and continuous contact including settlement, first and mainly through the closest South Danish islands of Møn, Lolland and Falster, all having place-names of Wendish origin. There were also trading and settlement outposts by Danish towns as important as Roskilde, when it was the capital: 'Vindeboder' (Wends' booths) is the name of a city neighbourhood there. Danes and Wends also fought wars due to piracy and crusading. Decline (1000–1200) After their successes in 983 the Wends came under increasing pressure from Germans, Danes and Poles. The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided the Baltic shores (and, in turn, the Wends often raided the raiders). The Holy Roman Empire and its margraves tried to restore their marches. In 1068/69 a German expedition took and destroyed Rethra, one of the major pagan Wend temples. The Wendish religious centre shifted to Arkona thereafter. In 1124 and 1128, the Pomeranians and some Lutici were baptised. In 1147, the Wend crusade took place in what is today north-eastern Germany. This did not, however, affect the Wendish people in today's Saxony, where a relatively stable co-existence of German and Slavic inhabitants as well as close dynastic and diplomatic cooperation of Wendish and German nobility had been achieved. (See: Wiprecht of Groitzsch). In 1168, during the Northern Crusades, Denmark mounted a crusade led by Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar the Great against the Wends of Rugia in order to convert them to Christianity. The crusaders captured and destroyed Arkona, the Wendish temple-fortress, and tore down the statue of the Wendish god Svantevit. With the capitulation of the Rugian Wends, the last independent pagan Wends were defeated by the surrounding Christian feudal powers. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, Germanic settlers moved into the Wendish lands in large numbers, transforming the area's culture from a Slavic to a Germanic one. Local dukes and monasteries invited settlers to repopulate farmlands devastated in the wars, as well as to cultivate new farmlands from the expansive woodlands and heavy soils, with the use of iron-based agricultural tools that had developed in Western Europe. Concurrently, a large number of new towns were created under German town law with the introduction of legally enforced markets, contracts and property rights. These developments over two centuries were collectively known as the (German eastward expansion). A minority of Germanic settlers moved beyond the Wendish territory into Hungary, Bohemia and Poland, where they were generally welcomed for their skills in farming and craftsmanship. The Polabian language was spoken in the central area of Lower Saxony and in Brandenburg until around the 17th or 18th century. The German population assimilated most of the Wends, meaning that they disappeared as an ethnic minority - except for the Sorbs. Yet many place names and some family names in eastern Germany still show Wendish origins today. Also, the Dukes of Mecklenburg, of Rügen and of Pomerania had Wendish ancestors. Between 1540 and 1973, the kings of Sweden were officially called kings of the Swedes, the Goths and the Wends (in Latin translation: kings of Suiones, Goths and Vandals) (). After the Danish monarch Queen Margrethe II chose not to use these titles in 1972 the Swedish monarch, Carl XVI Gustaf also chose only to use the title King of Sweden" (), thereby changing an age-old tradition. From the Middle Ages the kings of Denmark and of Denmark–Norway used the titles King of the Wends (from 1362) and Goths (from the 12th century). The use of both titles was discontinued in 1973. Legacy The Wendish people co-existed with the German settlers for centuries and became gradually assimilated into the German-speaking culture. The Golden Bull of 1356 (one of the constitutional foundations of the German-Roman Empire) explicitly recognised in its Art. 31 that the German-Roman Empire was a multi-national entity with "diverse nations distinct in customs, manner of life, and in language". For that it stipulated "the sons, or heirs and successors of the illustrious prince electors, ... since they are expected in all likelihood to have naturally acquired the German language, ... shall be instructed in the grammar of the Italian and Slavic (i.e. Wendish) tongues, beginning with the seventh Year of their age." Many geographical names in Central Germany and northern Germany can be traced back to a Slavic origin. Typical Slavic endings include -itz, -itzsch and -ow. They can be found in city names such as Delitzsch and Rochlitz. Even names of major cities like Leipzig and Berlin are most likely of Wendish origin. Today, the only remaining minority people of Wendish origin, the Sorbs, maintain their traditional language and culture and enjoy cultural self-determination exercised through the Domowina. The third minister president of Saxony Stanislaw Tillich (2008–2017) is of Sorbian origin, being the first head of a German federal state with an ethnic minority background. The Texas Wends In 1854, the Wends of Texas departed Lusatia on the Ben Nevis seeking greater liberty, in order to settle an area of central Texas, primarily Serbin. The Wends succeeded, expanding into Warda, Giddings, Austin, Houston, Fedor, Swiss Alp, Port Arthur, Mannheim, Copperas Cove, Vernon, Walburg, The Grove, Bishop, and the Rio Grande Valley. A strong emphasis on tradition, principles, and education is evident today in families descendant from the Wendish pioneers. Today, thousands of Texans and other Americans (many unaware of their background), can lay claim to the rich heritage of the Wends. Other uses Historically, the term "Wends" has also occurred in the following contexts: Until the mid-19th-century German-speakers most commonly used the name Wenden to refer to Slovenes. This usage is mirrored in the name of the Windic March, a Medieval territory in present-day Lower Carniola, which merged with the Duchy of Carniola by the mid 15th century. With the diffusion of the term slowenisch for the Slovene language and Slowenen for Slovenes, the words windisch and Winde or Wende became derogatory in connotation. The same development could be seen in the	and probably the Vandals also. In his late sixth century work History of Armenia, Movses Khorenatsi mentions their raids into the lands named Vanand after them. While the Wends were arriving in so-called Germania Slavica as large homogeneous groups, they soon divided into a variety of small tribes, with large strips of woodland separating one tribal settlement area from another. Their tribal names were derived from local place names, sometimes adopting the Germanic tradition (e.g. Heveller from Havel, Rujanes from Rugians). Settlements were secured by round burghs made of wood and clay, where either people could retreat in case of a raid from the neighbouring tribe or used as military strongholds or outposts. Some tribes unified into larger, duchy-like units. For example, the Obotrites evolved from the unification of the Holstein and Western Mecklenburg tribes led by mighty dukes known for their raids into German Saxony. The Lutici were an alliance of tribes living between Obotrites and Pomeranians. They did not unify under a duke, but remained independent. Their leaders met in the temple of Rethra. In 983, many Wend tribes participated in a great uprising against the Holy Roman Empire, which had previously established Christian missions, German colonies and German administrative institutions (Marken such as Nordmark and Billungermark) in pagan Wendish territories. The uprising was successful and the Wends delayed Germanisation for about two centuries. Wends and Danes had early and continuous contact including settlement, first and mainly through the closest South Danish islands of Møn, Lolland and Falster, all having place-names of Wendish origin. There were also trading and settlement outposts by Danish towns as important as Roskilde, when it was the capital: 'Vindeboder' (Wends' booths) is the name of a city neighbourhood there. Danes and Wends also fought wars due to piracy and crusading. Decline (1000–1200) After their successes in 983 the Wends came under increasing pressure from Germans, Danes and Poles. The Poles invaded Pomerania several times. The Danes often raided the Baltic shores (and, in turn, the Wends often raided the raiders). The Holy Roman Empire and its margraves tried to restore their marches. In 1068/69 a German expedition took and destroyed Rethra, one of the major pagan Wend temples. The Wendish religious centre shifted to Arkona thereafter. In 1124 and 1128, the Pomeranians and some Lutici were baptised. In 1147, the Wend crusade took place in what is today north-eastern Germany. This did not, however, affect the Wendish people in today's Saxony, where a relatively stable co-existence of German and Slavic inhabitants as well as close dynastic and diplomatic cooperation of Wendish and German nobility had been achieved. (See: Wiprecht of Groitzsch). In 1168, during the Northern Crusades, Denmark mounted a crusade led by Bishop Absalon and King Valdemar the Great against the Wends of Rugia in order to convert them to Christianity. The crusaders captured and destroyed Arkona, the Wendish temple-fortress, and tore down the statue of the Wendish god Svantevit. With the capitulation of the Rugian Wends, the last independent pagan Wends were defeated by the surrounding Christian feudal powers. From the 12th to the 14th centuries, Germanic settlers moved into the Wendish lands in large numbers,
bringing key information to public light, with mainstream media having to follow their lead. More often, however, news blogs tend to react to material already published by the mainstream media. Meanwhile, an increasing number of experts blogged, making blogs a source of in-depth analysis. In Russia, some political bloggers have started to challenge the dominance of official, overwhelmingly pro-government media. Bloggers such as Rustem Adagamov and Alexei Navalny have many followers and the latter's nickname for the ruling United Russia party as the "party of crooks and thieves" has been adopted by anti-regime protesters. This led to The Wall Street Journal calling Navalny "the man Vladimir Putin fears most" in March 2012. Mainstream popularity By 2004, the role of blogs became increasingly mainstream, as political consultants, news services, and candidates began using them as tools for outreach and opinion forming. Blogging was established by politicians and political candidates to express opinions on war and other issues and cemented blogs' role as a news source. (See Howard Dean and Wesley Clark.) Even politicians not actively campaigning, such as the UK's Labour Party's Member of Parliament (MP) Tom Watson, began to blog to bond with constituents. In January 2005, Fortune magazine listed eight bloggers whom business people "could not ignore": Peter Rojas, Xeni Jardin, Ben Trott, Mena Trott, Jonathan Schwartz, Jason Goldman, Robert Scoble, and Jason Calacanis. Israel was among the first national governments to set up an official blog. Under David Saranga, the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs became active in adopting Web 2.0 initiatives, including an official video blog and a political blog. The Foreign Ministry also held a microblogging press conference via Twitter about its war with Hamas, with Saranga answering questions from the public in common text-messaging abbreviations during a live worldwide press conference. The questions and answers were later posted on IsraelPolitik, the country's official political blog. The impact of blogging upon the mainstream media has also been acknowledged by governments. In 2009, the presence of the American journalism industry had declined to the point that several newspaper corporations were filing for bankruptcy, resulting in less direct competition between newspapers within the same circulation area. Discussion emerged as to whether the newspaper industry would benefit from a stimulus package by the federal government. U.S. President Barack Obama acknowledged the emerging influence of blogging upon society by saying "if the direction of the news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context, then what you will end up getting is people shouting at each other across the void but not a lot of mutual understanding". Between 2009 and 2012, an Orwell Prize for blogging was awarded. Types There are many different types of blogs, differing not only in the type of content, but also in the way that content is delivered or written. Personal blogs The personal blog is an ongoing online diary or commentary written by an individual, rather than a corporation or organization. While the vast majority of personal blogs attract very few readers, other than the blogger's immediate family and friends, a small number of personal blogs have become popular, to the point that they have attracted lucrative advertising sponsorship. A tiny number of personal bloggers have become famous, both in the online community and in the real world. Collaborative blogs or group blogs A type of weblog in which posts are written and published by more than one author. The majority of high-profile collaborative blogs are organised according to a single uniting theme, such as politics, technology or advocacy. In recent years, the blogosphere has seen the emergence and growing popularity of more collaborative efforts, often set up by already established bloggers wishing to pool time and resources, both to reduce the pressure of maintaining a popular website and to attract a larger readership. Microblogging Microblogging is the practice of posting small pieces of digital content—which could be text, pictures, links, short videos, or other media—on the Internet. Microblogging offers a portable communication mode that feels organic and spontaneous to many users. It has captured the public imagination, in part because the short posts are easy to read on the go or when waiting. Friends use it to keep in touch, business associates use it to coordinate meetings or share useful resources, and celebrities and politicians (or their publicists) microblog about concert dates, lectures, book releases, or tour schedules. A wide and growing range of add-on tools enables sophisticated updates and interaction with other applications. The resulting profusion of functionality is helping to define new possibilities for this type of communication. Examples of these include Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and, by far the largest, WeiBo. Corporate and organizational blogs A blog can be private, as in most cases, or it can be for business or not-for-profit organization or government purposes. Blogs used internally, and only available to employees via an Intranet are called corporate blogs. Companies use internal corporate blogs enhance the communication, culture and employee engagement in a corporation. Internal corporate blogs can be used to communicate news about company policies or procedures, build employee esprit de corps and improve morale. Companies and other organizations also use external, publicly accessible blogs for marketing, branding, or public relations purposes. Some organizations have a blog authored by their executive; in practice, many of these executive blog posts are penned by a ghostwriter, who makes posts in the style of the credited author. Similar blogs for clubs and societies are called club blogs, group blogs, or by similar names; typical use is to inform members and other interested parties of club and member activities. Aggregated blogs Individuals or organization may aggregate selected feeds on specific topic, product or service and provide combined view for its readers. This allows readers to concentrate on reading instead of searching for quality on-topic content and managing subscriptions. Many such aggregation called planets from name of Planet (software) that perform such aggregation, hosting sites usually have planet. subdomain in domain name (like http://planet.gnome.org/). By genre Some blogs focus on a particular subject, such as political blogs, journalism blogs, health blogs, travel blogs (also known as travelogs), gardening blogs, house blogs, Book Blogs, fashion blogs, beauty blogs, lifestyle blogs, party blogs, wedding blogs, photography blogs, project blogs, psychology blogs, sociology blogs, education blogs, niche blogs, classical music blogs, quizzing blogs, legal blogs (often referred to as a blawgs), or dreamlogs. How-to/Tutorial blogs are becoming increasing popular. Two common types of genre blogs are art blogs and music blogs. A blog featuring discussions especially about home and family is not uncommonly called a mom blog. While not a legitimate type of blog, one used for the sole purpose of spamming is known as a splog. By media type A blog comprising videos is called a vlog, one comprising links is called a linklog, a site containing a portfolio of sketches is called a sketchblog or one comprising photos is called a photoblog. Blogs with shorter posts and mixed media types are called tumblelogs. Blogs that are written on typewriters and then scanned are called typecast or typecast blogs. A rare type of blog hosted on the Gopher Protocol is known as a phlog. By device A blog can also be defined by which type of device is used to compose it. A blog written by a mobile device like a mobile phone or PDA could be called a moblog. One early blog was Wearable Wireless Webcam, an online shared diary of a person's personal life combining text, video, and pictures transmitted live from a wearable computer and EyeTap device to a web site. This practice of semi-automated blogging with live video together with text was referred to as sousveillance. Such journals have been used as evidence in legal matters. Reverse blog A reverse blog is composed by its users rather than a single blogger. This system has the characteristics of a blog, and the writing of several authors. These can be written by several contributing authors on a topic, or opened up for anyone to write. There is typically some limit to the number of entries to keep it from operating like a web forum. Community and cataloging Blogosphere The collective community of all blogs and blog authors, particularly notable and widely read blogs, is known as the blogosphere. Since all blogs are on the internet by definition, they may be seen as interconnected and socially networked, through blogrolls, comments, linkbacks (refbacks, trackbacks or pingbacks), and backlinks. Discussions "in the blogosphere" were occasionally used by the media as a gauge of public opinion on various issues. Because new, untapped communities of bloggers and their readers can emerge in the space of a few years, Internet marketers pay close attention to "trends in the blogosphere". Blog search engines Several blog search engines have been used to search blog contents, such as Bloglines (defunct), BlogScope (defunct), and Technorati (defunct). Blogging communities and directories Several online communities exist that connect people to blogs and bloggers to other bloggers. Interest-specific blogging platforms are also available. For instance, Blogster has a sizable community of political bloggers among its members. Global Voices aggregates international bloggers, "with emphasis on voices that are not ordinarily heard in international mainstream media." Blogging and advertising It is common for blogs to feature banner advertisements or promotional content, either to financially benefit the blogger, support website hosting costs, or to promote the blogger's favorite causes or products. The popularity of blogs has also given rise to "fake blogs" in which a company will create a fictional blog as a marketing tool to promote a product. As the popularity of blogging continued to rise (as of 2006), the commercialisation of blogging is rapidly increasing. Many corporations and companies collaborate with bloggers to increase advertising and engage online communities towards their products. In the book Fans, Bloggers, and Gamers, Henry Jenkins stated that "Bloggers take knowledge in their own hands, enabling successful navigation within and between these emerging knowledge cultures. One can see such behaviour as co-optation into commodity culture insofar as it sometimes collaborates with corporate interests, but one can also see it as increasing the diversity of media culture, providing opportunities for greater inclusiveness, and making more responsive to consumers." Popularity before 2006: The blogdex project was launched by researchers in the MIT Media Lab to crawl the Web and gather data from thousands of blogs to investigate their social properties. Information was gathered by the tool for over four years, during which it autonomously tracked the most contagious information spreading in the blog community, ranking it by recency and popularity. It can, therefore, be considered the first instantiation of a memetracker. The project was replaced by tailrank.com which in turn has been replaced by spinn3r.com. 2006: Blogs are given rankings by Alexa Internet (web hits of Alexa Toolbar users), and formerly by blog search engine Technorati based on the number of incoming links (Technorati stopped doing this in 2014). In August 2006, Technorati found that the most linked-to blog on the internet was that of Chinese actress Xu Jinglei. Chinese media Xinhua reported that this blog received more than 50 million page views, claiming it to be the most popular blog in the world. Technorati rated Boing Boing to be the most-read group-written blog. 2008: , blogging had become such a mania that a new blog was created every second of every minute of every hour of every day. Researchers have actively analyzed the dynamics of how blogs become popular. There are essentially two measures of this: popularity through citations, as well as popularity through affiliation (i.e., blogroll). The basic conclusion from studies of the structure of blogs is that while it takes time for a blog to become popular through blogrolls, permalinks can boost popularity more quickly, and are perhaps more indicative of popularity and authority than blogrolls, since they denote that people are actually reading the blog's content and deem it valuable or noteworthy in specific cases. Blurring with the mass media Many bloggers, particularly those engaged in participatory journalism, are amateur journalists, and thus they differentiate themselves from the professional reporters and editors who work in mainstream media organizations. Other bloggers are media professionals who are publishing online, rather than via a TV station or newspaper, either as an add-on to	bloggers have moved over to other media. The following bloggers (and others) have appeared on radio and television: Duncan Black (known widely by his pseudonym, Atrios), Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit), Markos Moulitsas Zúniga (Daily Kos), Alex Steffen (Worldchanging), Ana Marie Cox (Wonkette), Nate Silver (FiveThirtyEight.com), and Ezra Klein (Ezra Klein blog in The American Prospect, now in The Washington Post''''). In counterpoint, Hugh Hewitt exemplifies a mass media personality who has moved in the other direction, adding to his reach in "old media" by being an influential blogger. Similarly, it was Emergency Preparedness and Safety Tips On Air and Online blog articles that captured Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona's attention and earned his kudos for the associated broadcasts by talk show host Lisa Tolliver and Westchester Emergency Volunteer Reserves-Medical Reserve Corps Director Marianne Partridge. Blogs have also had an influence on minority languages, bringing together scattered speakers and learners; this is particularly so with blogs in Gaelic languages. Minority language publishing (which may lack economic feasibility) can find its audience through inexpensive blogging. There are examples of bloggers who have published books based on their blogs, e.g., Salam Pax, Ellen Simonetti, Jessica Cutler, ScrappleFace. Blog-based books have been given the name blook. A prize for the best blog-based book was initiated in 2005, the Lulu Blooker Prize. However, success has been elusive offline, with many of these books not selling as well as their blogs. The book based on Julie Powell's blog "The Julie/Julia Project" was made into the film Julie & Julia, apparently the first to do so. Consumer-generated advertising Consumer-generated advertising is a relatively new and controversial development, and it has created a new model of marketing communication from businesses to consumers. Among the various forms of advertising on blog, the most controversial are the sponsored posts. These are blog entries or posts and may be in the form of feedback, reviews, opinion, videos, etc. and usually contain a link back to the desired site using a keyword or several keywords. Blogs have led to some disintermediation and a breakdown of the traditional advertising model, where companies can skip over the advertising agencies (previously the only interface with the customer) and contact the customers directly via social media websites. On the other hand, new companies specialised in blog advertising have been established, to take advantage of this new development as well. However, there are many people who look negatively on this new development. Some believe that any form of commercial activity on blogs will destroy the blogosphere's credibility. Legal and social consequences Blogging can result in a range of legal liabilities and other unforeseen consequences. Defamation or liability Several cases have been brought before the national courts against bloggers concerning issues of defamation or liability. U.S. payouts related to blogging totaled $17.4 million by 2009; in some cases these have been covered by umbrella insurance. The courts have returned with mixed verdicts. Internet Service Providers (ISPs), in general, are immune from liability for information that originates with third parties (U.S. Communications Decency Act and the EU Directive 2000/31/EC). In Doe v. Cahill, the Delaware Supreme Court held that stringent standards had to be met to unmask the anonymous bloggers, and also took the unusual step of dismissing the libel case itself (as unfounded under American libel law) rather than referring it back to the trial court for reconsideration. In a bizarre twist, the Cahills were able to obtain the identity of John Doe, who turned out to be the person they suspected: the town's mayor, Councilman Cahill's political rival. The Cahills amended their original complaint, and the mayor settled the case rather than going to trial. In January 2007, two prominent Malaysian political bloggers, Jeff Ooi and Ahirudin Attan, were sued by a pro-government newspaper, The New Straits Times Press (Malaysia) Berhad, Kalimullah bin Masheerul Hassan, Hishamuddin bin Aun and Brenden John a/l John Pereira over an alleged defamation. The plaintiff was supported by the Malaysian government. Following the suit, the Malaysian government proposed to "register" all bloggers in Malaysia to better control parties against their interest. This is the first such legal case against bloggers in the country. In the United States, blogger Aaron Wall was sued by Traffic Power for defamation and publication of trade secrets in 2005. According to Wired magazine, Traffic Power had been "banned from Google for allegedly rigging search engine results." Wall and other "white hat" search engine optimization consultants had exposed Traffic Power in what they claim was an effort to protect the public. The case was dismissed for lack of personal jurisdiction, and Traffic Power failed to appeal within the allowed time. In 2009, NDTV issued a legal notice to Indian blogger Kunte for a blog post criticizing their coverage of the Mumbai attacks. The blogger unconditionally withdrew his post, which resulted in several Indian bloggers criticizing NDTV for trying to silence critics. Employment Employees who blog about elements of their place of employment can begin to affect the reputation of their employer, either in a positive way, if the employee is praising the employer and its workplaces, or in a negative way, if the blogger is making negative comments about the company or its practices. In general, attempts by employee bloggers to protect themselves by maintaining anonymity have proved ineffective. In 2009, a controversial and landmark decision by The Hon. Mr Justice Eady refused to grant an order to protect the anonymity of Richard Horton. Horton was a police officer in the United Kingdom who blogged about his job under the name "NightJack". Delta Air Lines fired flight attendant Ellen Simonetti because she posted photographs of herself in uniform on an airplane and because of comments posted on her blog "Queen of Sky: Diary of a Flight Attendant" which the employer deemed inappropriate. This case highlighted the issue of personal blogging and freedom of expression versus employer rights and responsibilities, and so it received wide media attention. Simonetti took legal action against the airline for "wrongful termination, defamation of character and lost future wages". The suit was postponed while Delta was in bankruptcy proceedings. In early 2006, Erik Ringmar, a senior lecturer at the London School of Economics, was ordered by the convenor of his department to "take down and destroy" his blog in which he discussed the quality of education at the school. Mark Jen was terminated in 2005 after 10 days of employment as an assistant product manager at Google for discussing corporate secrets on his personal blog, then called 99zeros and hosted on the Google-owned Blogger service. He blogged about unreleased products and company finances a week before the company's earnings announcement. He was fired two days after he complied with his employer's request to remove the sensitive material from his blog. In India, blogger Gaurav Sabnis resigned from IBM after his posts questioned the claims made by a management school. Jessica Cutler, aka "The Washingtonienne", blogged about her sex life while employed as a congressional assistant. After the blog was discovered and she was fired, she wrote a novel based on her experiences and blog: The Washingtonienne: A Novel. , Cutler is being sued by one of her former lovers in a case that could establish the extent to which bloggers are obligated to protect the privacy of their real life associates. Catherine Sanderson, a.k.a. Petite Anglaise, lost her job in Paris at a British accountancy firm because of blogging. Although given in the blog in a fairly anonymous manner, some of the descriptions of the firm and some of its people were less than flattering. Sanderson later won a compensation claim case against the British firm, however. On the other hand, Penelope Trunk wrote an upbeat article in The Boston Globe in 2006, entitled "Blogs 'essential' to a good career". She was one of the first journalists to point out that a large portion of bloggers are professionals and that a well-written blog can help attract employers. Business owners Business owners who blog about their business can also run into legal consequences. Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, was fined during the 2006 NBA playoffs for criticizing NBA officials on the court and in his blog. Political dangers Blogging can sometimes have unforeseen consequences in politically sensitive areas. In some countries, Internet police or secret police may monitor blogs and arrest blog authors of commentators. Blogs can be much harder to control than broadcast or print media, because a person can create a blog whose authorship is hard to trace, by using anonymity technology such as Tor. As a result, totalitarian and authoritarian regimes often seek to suppress blogs and/or to punish those who maintain them. In Singapore, two ethnic Chinese individuals were imprisoned under the country's anti-sedition law for posting anti-Muslim remarks in
has a brother who it seems is sick but there is no clear evidence to suggest that his brother is the boy who came in Act I or the one who came the day before that. Whether the boy from Act I is the same boy from Act II or not, both boys are polite yet timid. In the first act, the boy, despite arriving while Pozzo and Lucky are still about, does not announce himself until after Pozzo and Lucky leave, saying to Vladimir and Estragon that he waited for the other two to leave out of fear of the two men and of Pozzo's whip; the boy does not arrive early enough in Act II to see either Lucky or Pozzo. In both acts, the boy seems hesitant to speak very much, saying mostly "Yes Sir" or "No Sir", and winds up exiting by running away. Godot The identity of Godot has been the subject of much debate. "When Colin Duckworth asked Beckett point-blank whether Pozzo was Godot, the author replied: 'No. It is just implied in the text, but it's not true.' " Deirdre Bair says that though "Beckett will never discuss the implications of the title", she suggests two stories that both may have at least partially inspired it. The first is that because feet are a recurring theme in the play, Beckett has said the title was suggested to him by the slang French term for boot: "godillot, godasse". The second story, according to Bair, is that Beckett once encountered a group of spectators at the French Tour de France bicycle race, who told him "Nous attendons Godot" – they were waiting for a competitor whose name was Godot. "Beckett said to Peter Woodthorpe that he regretted calling the absent character 'Godot', because of all the theories involving God to which this had given rise." "I also told [Ralph] Richardson that if by Godot I had meant God I would [have] said God, and not Godot. This seemed to disappoint him greatly." That said, Beckett did once concede, "It would be fatuous of me to pretend that I am not aware of the meanings attached to the word 'Godot', and the opinion of many that it means 'God'. But you must remember – I wrote the play in French, and if I did have that meaning in my mind, it was somewhere in my unconscious and I was not overtly aware of it." (Note: the French word for 'God' is 'Dieu'.) However, "Beckett has often stressed the strong unconscious impulses that partly control his writing; he has even spoken of being 'in a trance' when he writes." While Beckett stated he originally had no knowledge of Balzac's play Mercadet ou le faiseur, whose character Godeau has an identical-sounding name and is involved in a similar situation, it has been suggested he may have been instead influenced by The Lovable Cheat, a minor adaptation of Mercadet starring Buster Keaton, whose works Beckett had admired, and whom he later sought out for Film. Unlike elsewhere in Beckett's work, no bicycle appears in this play, but Hugh Kenner in his essay "The Cartesian Centaur" reports that Beckett once, when asked about the meaning of Godot, mentioned "a veteran racing cyclist, bald, a 'stayer', recurrent placeman in town-to-town and national championships, Christian name elusive, surname Godeau, pronounced, of course, no differently from Godot." Waiting for Godot is clearly not about track cycling, but it is said that Beckett himself did wait for French cyclist (1920–2000; a professional cyclist from 1943 to 1961), outside the velodrome in Roubaix. Of the two boys who work for Godot only one appears safe from beatings, "Beckett said, only half-jokingly, that one of Estragon's feet was saved". The name "Godot" is pronounced in Britain and Ireland with the emphasis on the first syllable, ; in North America it is usually pronounced with an emphasis on the second syllable, . Beckett himself said the emphasis should be on the first syllable, and that the North American pronunciation is a mistake. Georges Borchardt, Beckett's literary agent, and who represents Beckett's literary estate, has always pronounced "Godot" in the French manner, with equal emphasis on both syllables. Borchardt checked with Beckett's nephew, Edward, who told him his uncle pronounced it that way as well. The 1956 Broadway production split the difference by having Vladimir pronounce "Godot" with equal stress on both syllables (goh-doh) and Estragon pronounce it with the accent on the second syllable (g'doh). Setting There is only one scene throughout both acts. Two men are waiting on a country road by a tree. The men are of unspecified origin, though it is clear that they are not English by nationality since they refer to currency as francs, and tell derisive jokes about the English – and in English-language productions the pair are traditionally played with Irish accents. The script calls for Estragon to sit on a low mound but in practice—as in Beckett's own 1975 German production—this is usually a stone. In the first act the tree is bare. In the second, a few leaves have appeared despite the script specifying that it is the next day. The minimal description calls to mind "the idea of the lieu vague, a location which should not be particularised". Other clues about the location can be found in the dialogue. In Act I, Vladimir turns toward the auditorium and describes it as a bog. In Act II, Vladimir again motions to the auditorium and notes that there is "Not a soul in sight." When Estragon rushes toward the back of the stage in Act II, Vladimir scolds him, saying that "There's no way out there." Also in Act II, Vladimir comments that their surroundings look nothing like the Macon country, and Estragon states that he's lived his whole life "Here! In the Cackon country!" Alan Schneider once suggested putting the play on in the round—Pozzo has been described as a ringmaster—but Beckett dissuaded him: "I don't in my ignorance agree with the round and feel Godot needs a very closed box." He even contemplated at one point having a "faint shadow of bars on stage floor" but, in the end, decided against this level of what he called "explicitation". In Becket's 1975 Schiller Theater production in Berlin, there are times when Didi and Gogo appear to bounce off something "like birds trapped in the strands of [an invisible] net", in James Knowlson's description. Interpretations "Because the play is so stripped down, so elemental, it invites all kinds of social and political and religious interpretation", wrote Normand Berlin in a tribute to the play in Autumn 1999, "with Beckett himself placed in different schools of thought, different movements and "isms". The attempts to pin him down have not been successful, but the desire to do so is natural when we encounter a writer whose minimalist art reaches for bedrock reality. "Less" forces us to look for "more", and the need to talk about Godot and about Beckett has resulted in a steady outpouring of books and articles. Throughout Waiting for Godot, the audience may encounter religious, philosophical, classical, psychoanalytical and biographical – especially wartime – references. There are ritualistic aspects and elements taken directly from vaudeville, and there is a danger in making more of these than what they are: that is, merely structural conveniences, avatars into which the writer places his fictional characters. The play "exploits several archetypal forms and situations, all of which lend themselves to both comedy and pathos." Beckett makes this point emphatically clear in the opening notes to Film: "No truth value attaches to the above, regarded as of merely structural and dramatic convenience." He made another important remark to Lawrence Harvey, saying that his "work does not depend on experience – [it is] not a record of experience. Of course you use it." Beckett tired quickly of "the endless misunderstanding". As far back as 1955, he remarked, "Why people have to complicate a thing so simple I can't make out." He was not forthcoming with anything more than cryptic clues, however: "Peter Woodthorpe [who played Estragon] remembered asking him one day in a taxi what the play was really about: 'It's all symbiosis, Peter; it's symbiosis,' answered Beckett." Beckett directed the play for the Schiller-Theater in Berlin in 1975. Although he had overseen many productions, this was the first time that he had taken complete control. Walter Asmus was his conscientious young assistant director. The production was not naturalistic. Beckett explained, It is a game, everything is a game. When all four of them are lying on the ground, that cannot be handled naturalistically. That has got to be done artificially, balletically. Otherwise everything becomes an imitation, an imitation of reality [...]. It should become clear and transparent, not dry. It is a game in order to survive. Over the years, Beckett clearly realised that the greater part of Godots success came down to the fact that it was open to a variety of readings and that this was not necessarily a bad thing. Beckett himself sanctioned "one of the most famous mixed-race productions of Godot, performed at the Baxter Theatre in the University of Cape Town, directed by Donald Howarth, with [...] two black actors, John Kani and Winston Ntshona, playing Didi and Gogo; Pozzo, dressed in checked shirt and gumboots reminiscent of an Afrikaner landlord, and Lucky ('a shanty town piece of white trash') were played by two white actors, Bill Flynn and Peter Piccolo [...]. The Baxter production has often been portrayed as if it were an explicitly political production, when in fact it received very little emphasis. What such a reaction showed, however, was that, although the play can in no way be taken as a political allegory, there are elements that are relevant to any local situation in which one man is being exploited or oppressed by another." Political "It was seen as an allegory of the Cold War" or of French Resistance to the Germans. Graham Hassell writes, "[T]he intrusion of Pozzo and Lucky [...] seems like nothing more than a metaphor for Ireland's view of mainland Britain, where society has ever been blighted by a greedy ruling élite keeping the working classes passive and ignorant by whatever means." The play was written shortly after World War II, during which, Beckett and his partner were forced to flee occupied Paris to avoid German arrest, owing to their affiliation with the French Resistance. After the War, Beckett volunteered for the Red Cross. These experiences would have likely had a severe impact on both Beckett's personal politics, as well as his views on the prevailing policies that informed the period in which he found himself. These experiences assuredly permeated the political ideologies that pervaded all of his works. Vladimir and Estragon are often played with Irish accents, as in the Beckett on Film project. This, some feel, is an inevitable consequence of Beckett's rhythms and phraseology, but it is not stipulated in the text. At any rate, they are not of English stock: at one point early in the play, Estragon mocks the English pronunciation of "calm" and has fun with "the story of the Englishman in the brothel". Freudian "Bernard Dukore develops a triadic theory in Didi, Gogo and the absent Godot, based on Sigmund Freud's trinitarian description of the psyche in The Ego and the Id (1923) and the usage of onomastic techniques. Dukore defines the characters by what they lack: the rational Go-go embodies the incomplete ego, the missing pleasure principle: (e)go-(e)go. Di-di (id-id) – who is more instinctual and irrational – is seen as the backward id or subversion of the rational principle. Godot fulfills the function of the superego or moral standards. Pozzo and Lucky are just re-iterations of the main protagonists. Dukore finally sees Beckett's play as a metaphor for the futility of man's existence when salvation is expected from an external entity, and the self is denied introspection." Jungian "The four archetypal personalities or the four aspects of the soul are grouped in two pairs: the ego and the shadow, the persona and the soul's image (animus or anima). The shadow is the container of all our despised emotions repressed by the ego. Lucky, the shadow, serves as the polar opposite of the egocentric Pozzo, prototype of prosperous mediocrity, who incessantly controls and persecutes his subordinate, thus symbolising the oppression of the unconscious shadow by the despotic ego. Lucky's monologue in Act I appears as a manifestation of a stream of repressed unconsciousness, as he is allowed to "think" for his master. Estragon's name has another connotation, besides that of the aromatic herb, tarragon: "estragon" is a cognate of estrogen, the female hormone (Carter, 130). This prompts us to identify him with the anima, the feminine image of Vladimir's soul. It explains Estragon's propensity for poetry, his sensitivity and dreams, his irrational moods. Vladimir appears as the complementary masculine principle, or perhaps the rational persona of the contemplative type." Philosophical Existential Broadly speaking, existentialists hold that there are certain fundamental questions that all human beings must come to terms with if they are to take their subjective existences seriously and with intrinsic value. Questions such as life, death, the meaning of human existence and the place of God in that existence are among them. By and large, the theories of existentialism assert that conscious reality is very complex and without an "objective" or universally known value: the individual must create value by affirming it and living it, not by simply talking about it or philosophising it in the mind. The play may be seen to touch on all of these issues. Martin Esslin, in his The Theatre of the Absurd (1960), argued that Waiting for Godot was part of a broader literary movement that he called the Theatre of the Absurd, a form of theatre that stemmed from the absurdist philosophy of Albert Camus. Absurdism itself is a branch of the traditional assertions of existentialism, pioneered by Søren Kierkegaard, and posits that, while inherent meaning might very well exist in the universe, human beings are incapable of finding it due to some form of mental or philosophical limitation. Thus, humanity is doomed to be faced with the Absurd, or the absolute absurdity of the existence in lack of intrinsic purpose. Ethical Just after Didi and Gogo have been particularly selfish and callous, the boy comes to say that Godot is not coming. The boy (or pair of boys) may be seen to represent meekness and hope before compassion is consciously excluded by an evolving personality and character, and in which case may be the youthful Pozzo and Lucky. Thus Godot is compassion and fails to arrive every day, as he says he will. No-one is concerned that a boy is beaten. In this interpretation, there is the irony that only by changing their hearts to be compassionate can the characters fixed to the tree move on and cease to have to wait for Godot. Christian Much of the play is steeped in scriptural allusion. The boy from Act I mentions that he and his brother mind Godot's sheep and goats. Much can be read into Beckett's inclusion of the story of the two thieves from Luke 23:39–43 and the ensuing discussion of repentance. It is easy to see the solitary tree as representative of the Christian cross or the tree of life. Some see God and Godot as one and the same. Vladimir's "Christ have mercy upon us!" could be taken as evidence that that is at least what he believes. Another, perhaps less conspicuous, potentially religious, element in the play, is Pozzo's bout with blindness, during which he comes to resemble the biblical figure of Bartimaeus', or, 'The Blind Beggar'. This reading is given further weight early in the first act when Estragon asks Vladimir what it is that he has requested from Godot: Other explicit Christian elements that are mentioned in the play include, but are not limited to, repentance, the Gospels, a Saviour, human beings made in God's image, the cross, and Cain and Abel. According to biographer Anthony Cronin, "[Beckett] always possessed a Bible, at the end more than one edition, and Bible concordances were always among the reference books on his shelves." Beckett himself was quite open on the issue: "Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly familiar so I naturally use it." As Cronin argues, these biblical references "may be ironic or even sarcastic". "In answer to a defence counsel question in 1937 (during the libel action brought by his uncle against Oliver St. John Gogarty) as to whether he was a Christian, Jew or atheist, Beckett replied, 'None of the three' ". Looking at Beckett's entire œuvre, Mary Bryden observed that "the hypothesised God who emerges from Beckett's texts is one who is both cursed for his perverse absence and cursed for his surveillant presence. He is by turns dismissed, satirised, or ignored, but he, and his tortured son, are never definitively discarded." Autobiographical Waiting for Godot has been described as a "metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks ... during the day and walked by night ... [or] of the relationship of Beckett to Joyce". Beckett told Ruby Cohn that Caspar David Friedrich's painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which he saw on his journey to Germany in 1936, was a source for the play. Sexual Though the sexuality of Vladimir and Estragon is not always considered by critics,Green, Jesse. "Reviews: Pairing Up Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land". Vulture. 23 November 2013. some see the two vagabonds as an ageing homosexual couple, who are worn out, with broken spirits, impotent and not engaging sexually any longer. The two appear to be written as a parody of a married couple. Peter Boxall points out that the play features two characters who seem to have shared life together for years; they quarrel, embrace, and are mutually dependent. Beckett was interviewed at the time the play was premiering in New York, and, speaking of his writings and characters in general, Beckett said "I'm working with impotence, ignorance. I don't think impotence has been exploited in the past." Vladimir and Estragon's consideration of hanging themselves can be seen as a desperate way to achieve at least one final erection. Pozzo and his slave, Lucky, arrive on the scene. Pozzo is a stout man, who wields a whip and holds a rope around Lucky's neck. Some critics have considered that the relationship of these two characters is homosexual and sado-masochistic in nature. Lucky's long speech is a torrent of broken ideas and speculations regarding man, sex, God, and time. It has been said that the play contains little or no sexual hope; which is the play's lament, and the source of the play's humour and comedic tenderness. Norman Mailer wonders if Beckett might be restating the sexual and moral basis of Christianity, that life and strength is found in an adoration of those in the lower depths where God is concealed. Beckett's objection to the casting of female actors Beckett was not open to most interpretative approaches to his work. He famously objected when, in the 1980s, several women's acting companies began to stage the play. "Women don't have prostates", said Beckett, a reference to the fact that Vladimir frequently has to leave the stage to urinate. In 1988 a Dutch theatre company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur, put on a production directed by Matin Van Veldhuizen with all female actors, using a French-to-Dutch translation by Jacoba Van Velde. Beckett brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against the theatre company. "The issue of gender seemed to him to be so vital a distinction for a playwright to make that he reacted angrily, instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands." This ban was short-lived, however: in 1991 (two years after Beckett's death), a French judge ruled that productions with female casts would not cause excessive damage to Beckett's legacy, and allowed the play to be performed by the all-female cast of the Brut de Beton theater company at the Avignon Festival, although an objection of Beckett's representative must be read before each performance. The Italian Pontedera Theatre Foundation won a similar claim in 2006 when it cast two actresses in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, albeit in the characters' traditional roles as men. At the 1995 Acco Festival, director Nola Chilton staged a production with Daniella Michaeli in the role of Lucky. Production history "[O]n 17 February 1952 ... an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d'Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio ... [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up." Part of his introduction reads: The play was first published in September 1952 by Les Éditions de Minuit and released on 17 October 1952 in advance of the first full theatrical performance; only 2500 copies were printed of this first edition. On 4 January 1953, "[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening ... Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind ... Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run" which began on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance "the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky's monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively ... One of the protesters [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2 February 1953 to Le Monde." The cast comprised (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step	on his shelves." Beckett himself was quite open on the issue: "Christianity is a mythology with which I am perfectly familiar so I naturally use it." As Cronin argues, these biblical references "may be ironic or even sarcastic". "In answer to a defence counsel question in 1937 (during the libel action brought by his uncle against Oliver St. John Gogarty) as to whether he was a Christian, Jew or atheist, Beckett replied, 'None of the three' ". Looking at Beckett's entire œuvre, Mary Bryden observed that "the hypothesised God who emerges from Beckett's texts is one who is both cursed for his perverse absence and cursed for his surveillant presence. He is by turns dismissed, satirised, or ignored, but he, and his tortured son, are never definitively discarded." Autobiographical Waiting for Godot has been described as a "metaphor for the long walk into Roussillon, when Beckett and Suzanne slept in haystacks ... during the day and walked by night ... [or] of the relationship of Beckett to Joyce". Beckett told Ruby Cohn that Caspar David Friedrich's painting Two Men Contemplating the Moon, which he saw on his journey to Germany in 1936, was a source for the play. Sexual Though the sexuality of Vladimir and Estragon is not always considered by critics,Green, Jesse. "Reviews: Pairing Up Waiting for Godot and No Man's Land". Vulture. 23 November 2013. some see the two vagabonds as an ageing homosexual couple, who are worn out, with broken spirits, impotent and not engaging sexually any longer. The two appear to be written as a parody of a married couple. Peter Boxall points out that the play features two characters who seem to have shared life together for years; they quarrel, embrace, and are mutually dependent. Beckett was interviewed at the time the play was premiering in New York, and, speaking of his writings and characters in general, Beckett said "I'm working with impotence, ignorance. I don't think impotence has been exploited in the past." Vladimir and Estragon's consideration of hanging themselves can be seen as a desperate way to achieve at least one final erection. Pozzo and his slave, Lucky, arrive on the scene. Pozzo is a stout man, who wields a whip and holds a rope around Lucky's neck. Some critics have considered that the relationship of these two characters is homosexual and sado-masochistic in nature. Lucky's long speech is a torrent of broken ideas and speculations regarding man, sex, God, and time. It has been said that the play contains little or no sexual hope; which is the play's lament, and the source of the play's humour and comedic tenderness. Norman Mailer wonders if Beckett might be restating the sexual and moral basis of Christianity, that life and strength is found in an adoration of those in the lower depths where God is concealed. Beckett's objection to the casting of female actors Beckett was not open to most interpretative approaches to his work. He famously objected when, in the 1980s, several women's acting companies began to stage the play. "Women don't have prostates", said Beckett, a reference to the fact that Vladimir frequently has to leave the stage to urinate. In 1988 a Dutch theatre company, De Haarlemse Toneelschuur, put on a production directed by Matin Van Veldhuizen with all female actors, using a French-to-Dutch translation by Jacoba Van Velde. Beckett brought an unsuccessful lawsuit against the theatre company. "The issue of gender seemed to him to be so vital a distinction for a playwright to make that he reacted angrily, instituting a ban on all productions of his plays in The Netherlands." This ban was short-lived, however: in 1991 (two years after Beckett's death), a French judge ruled that productions with female casts would not cause excessive damage to Beckett's legacy, and allowed the play to be performed by the all-female cast of the Brut de Beton theater company at the Avignon Festival, although an objection of Beckett's representative must be read before each performance. The Italian Pontedera Theatre Foundation won a similar claim in 2006 when it cast two actresses in the roles of Vladimir and Estragon, albeit in the characters' traditional roles as men. At the 1995 Acco Festival, director Nola Chilton staged a production with Daniella Michaeli in the role of Lucky. Production history "[O]n 17 February 1952 ... an abridged version of the play was performed in the studio of the Club d'Essai de la Radio and was broadcast on [French] radio ... [A]lthough he sent a polite note that Roger Blin read out, Beckett himself did not turn up." Part of his introduction reads: The play was first published in September 1952 by Les Éditions de Minuit and released on 17 October 1952 in advance of the first full theatrical performance; only 2500 copies were printed of this first edition. On 4 January 1953, "[t]hirty reviewers came to the générale of En attendant Godot before the public opening ... Contrary to later legend, the reviewers were kind ... Some dozen reviews in daily newspapers range[d] from tolerant to enthusiastic ... Reviews in the weeklies [were] longer and more fervent; moreover, they appeared in time to lure spectators to that first thirty-day run" which began on 5 January 1953 at the Théâtre de Babylone, Paris. Early public performances were not, however, without incident: during one performance "the curtain had to be brought down after Lucky's monologue as twenty, well-dressed, but disgruntled spectators whistled and hooted derisively ... One of the protesters [even] wrote a vituperative letter dated 2 February 1953 to Le Monde." The cast comprised (Estragon), Lucien Raimbourg (Vladimir), Jean Martin (Lucky) and Roger Blin (Pozzo). The actor due to play Pozzo found a more remunerative role and so the director – a shy, lean man in real life – had to step in and play the stout bombaster himself with a pillow amplifying his stomach. Both boys were played by Serge Lecointe. The entire production was done on the thinnest of shoestring budgets; the large battered valise that Martin carried "was found among the city's refuse by the husband of the theatre dresser on his rounds as he worked clearing the dustbins", for example. A particularly significant production – from Beckett's perspective – took place in Lüttringhausen Prison near Remscheid in Germany. An inmate obtained a copy of the French first edition, translated it himself into German and obtained permission to stage the play. The first night had been on 29 November 1953. He wrote to Beckett in October 1954: "You will be surprised to be receiving a letter about your play Waiting for Godot, from a prison where so many thieves, forgers, toughs, homos, crazy men and killers spend this bitch of a life waiting ... and waiting ... and waiting. Waiting for what? Godot? Perhaps." Beckett was intensely moved and intended to visit the prison to see a last performance of the play but it never happened. This marked "the beginning of Beckett's enduring links with prisons and prisoners ... He took a tremendous interest in productions of his plays performed in prisons." In 1957, four years after its world premiere, Waiting for Godot was staged for one night only at the San Quentin State Prison in California. Herbert Blau with the San Francisco Actor's Workshop directed the production. Some 1,400 inmates encountered the performance. Beckett later gave Rick Cluchey, a former prisoner from San Quentin, financial and moral support over a period of many years. Cluchey played Vladimir in two productions in the former Gallows room of the San Quentin California State Prison, which had been converted into a 65-seat theatre and, like the German prisoner before him, went on to work on a variety of Beckett's plays after his release. Cluchey said, "The thing that everyone in San Quentin understood about Beckett, while the rest of the world had trouble catching up, was what it meant to be in the face of it." The 1953 Lüttringhausen and 1957 San Quentin Prison productions of Waiting for Godot were the subject of the 2010 documentary film The Impossible Itself. The English-language premiere was on 3 August 1955 at the Arts Theatre, London, directed by the 24-year-old Peter Hall. During an early rehearsal Hall told the cast "I haven't really the foggiest idea what some of it means ... But if we stop and discuss every line we'll never open." Again, the printed version preceded it (New York: Grove Press, 1954) but Faber's "mutilated" edition did not materialise until 1956. A "corrected" edition was subsequently produced in 1965. "The most accurate text is in Theatrical Notebooks I, (Ed.) Dougald McMillan and James Knowlson (Faber and Grove, 1993). It is based on Beckett's revisions for his Schiller-Theater production (1975) and the London San Quentin Drama Workshop, based on the Schiller production but revised further at the Riverside Studios (March 1984)." Like all of Beckett's translations, Waiting for Godot is not simply a literal translation of . "Small but significant differences separate the French and English text. Some, like Vladimir's inability to remember the farmer's name (Bonnelly), show how the translation became more indefinite, attrition and loss of memory more pronounced." A number of biographical details were removed, all adding to a general "vaguening" of the text which he continued to trim for the rest of his life. In the 1950s, theatre was strictly censored in the UK, to Beckett's amazement since he thought it a bastion of free speech. The Lord Chamberlain insisted that the word "erection" be removed, " 'Fartov' became 'Popov' and Mrs Gozzo had 'warts' instead of 'clap' ". Indeed, there were attempts to ban the play completely. Lady Dorothy Howitt wrote to the Lord Chamberlain, saying: "One of the many themes running through the play is the desire of two old tramps continually to relieve themselves. Such a dramatisation of lavatory necessities is offensive and against all sense of British decency." "The first unexpurgated version of Godot in England ... opened at the Royal Court on 30 December 1964." The London run was not without incident. The actor Peter Bull, who played Pozzo, recalls the reaction of that first night audience: Waves of hostility came whirling over the footlights, and the mass exodus, which was to form such a feature of the run of the piece, started quite soon after the curtain had risen. The audible groans were also fairly disconcerting ... The curtain fell to mild applause, we took a scant three calls (Peter Woodthorpe reports only one curtain call) and a depression and a sense of anti-climax descended on us all. The critics were less than kind but "[e]verything changed on Sunday 7 August 1955 with Kenneth Tynan's and Harold Hobson's reviews in The Observer and The Sunday Times. Beckett was always grateful to the two reviewers for their support ... which more or less transformed the play overnight into the rage of London." "At the end of the year, the Evening Standard Drama Awards were held for the first time ... Feelings ran high and the opposition, led by Sir Malcolm Sargent, threatened to resign if Godot won [The Best New Play category]. An English compromise was worked out by changing the title of the award. Godot became The Most Controversial Play of the Year. It is a prize that has never been given since." Waiting for Godot had its initial American run at a two-week engagement in early January 1956 at the newly-opened Coconut Grove Playhouse in Miami, where most audience members were baffled by the play. The play had its Broadway premiere at the John Golden Theatre on 19 April 1956 in a production directed by Herbert Berghof with Bert Lahr as Estragon, E. G. Marshall as Vladimir, Alvin Epstein as Lucky, and Kurt Kasznar as Pozzo. In the Australian premiere at the Arrow Theatre in Melbourne in 1957, Barry Humphries played Estragon opposite Peter O'Shaughnessy's Vladimir. Although not his favourite amongst his plays, Waiting for Godot was the work which brought Beckett fame and financial stability and as such it always held a special place in his affections. "When the manuscript and rare books dealer, Henry Wenning, asked him if he could sell the original French manuscript for him, Beckett replied: 'Rightly or wrongly have decided not to let Godot go yet. Neither sentimental nor financial, probably peak of market now and never such an offer. Can't explain.' " In 1978, a production was staged by Walter Asmus at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City with Sam Waterston as Vladimir, Austin Pendleton as Estragon, Milo O'Shea as Lucky and Michael Egan as Pozzo. A young Geoffrey Rush played Vladimir opposite his then flatmate Mel Gibson as Estragon in 1979 at the Jane Street Theatre in Sydney. In 1980, Braham Murray directed a production at the Royal Exchange Theatre in Manchester with Max Wall as Vladimir, Trevor Peacock as Estragon and Wolfe Morris as Pozzo. The Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater at Lincoln Center was the site of a 1988 revival directed by Mike Nichols, featuring Robin Williams (Estragon), Steve Martin (Vladimir), Bill Irwin (Lucky), F. Murray Abraham (Pozzo), and Lukas Haas (boy). With a limited run of seven weeks and an all-star cast, it was financially successful, but the critical reception was not particularly favourable, with Frank Rich of The New York Times writing, "Audiences will still be waiting for a transcendent Godot long after the clowns at Lincoln Center, like so many others passing through Beckett's eternal universe before them, have come and gone." The play was revived in London's West End at the Queen's Theatre in a production directed by Les Blair, which opened on 30 September 1991. This was the first West End revival since the play's British première. Rik Mayall played Vladimir and Adrian Edmondson played Estragon, with Philip Jackson as Pozzo and Christopher Ryan as Lucky; the boy was played by Dean Gaffney and Duncan Thornley. Derek Jarman provided the scenic design, in collaboration with Madeleine Morris. In June 1999 the Royal Exchange, Manchester staged a production directed by Matthew Lloyd with Richard Wilson as Vladimir, Brian Pettifer as Estragon and Nicky Henson. Neil Armfield directed a controversial production in 2003 with Max Cullen as Estragon at Sydney's Belvoir St Theatre. On 2 and 3 November 2007, two performances were staged in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans, two years after the neighborhood had been devastated by the failure of the federal levee system caused by Hurricane Katrina. This was followed by two performances in the similarly damaged neighborhood Gentilly on 9 and 10 November. The production was staged by American artist Paul Chan, the NYC-based arts organization Creative Time, and the Classical Theatre of Harlem. It featured New Orleans native Wendell Pierce as Vladimir and J. Kyle Manzay as Estragon. On 30 April 2009, a production with Sir Ian McKellen as Estragon and Sir Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, opened at the Haymarket Theatre in London's West End. Their performances received critical acclaim, and were the subject of an eight-part documentary series called Theatreland, which was produced by Sky Arts. The production was revived at the same theatre in January 2010 for 11 weeks and, in 2010 toured internationally, with Roger Rees replacing Stewart as Vladimir. A 2009 Broadway revival of the play starring Nathan Lane, John Goodman, John Glover and Bill Irwin was nominated for three Tony Awards: Best Revival of a Play, Best Performance by a Featured Actor in a Play (John Glover), and Best Costume Design of a Play (Jane Greenwood). It received rave reviews, and was a huge success for the Roundabout Theatre. Variety called it a "transcendent" production. For Ontario's Stratford Festival's 61st season in 2013, Jennifer Tarver directed a new production at the Tom Patterson Theatre starring Brian Dennehy as Pozzo, Stephen Ouimette as Estragon, Tom Rooney as Vladimir and Randy Hughson as Lucky. A new production directed by Sean Mathias began previews at the Cort Theatre on Broadway in late October 2013, with Ian McKellen as Estragon, Patrick Stewart as Vladimir, Billy Crudup as Lucky and Shuler Hensley as Pozzo. The Sydney Theatre Company staged Godot in November 2013 with Richard Roxburgh as Estragon and Hugo Weaving as Vladimir, Philip Quast as Pozzo, directed by Andrew Upton. In November 2018, the Druid Theater Company staged "Godot" at the Gerald W. Lynch Theater at John Jay College in Manhattan, starring Garrett Lombard, Aaron Monaghan, Marty Rea and Rory Nolan, and directed by Garry Hynes. Adaptations Beckett received numerous requests to adapt Waiting for Godot for film and television. The author, however, resisted these offers, except for occasional approval out of friendship or sympathy for the person making the request. This was the case when he agreed to some televised productions in his lifetime (including a 1961 American telecast with Zero Mostel as Estragon and Burgess Meredith as Vladimir that New York Times theatre critic Alvin Klein describes as having "left critics bewildered and is now a classic"). When Keep Films made Beckett an offer to film an adaptation in which Peter O'Toole would feature, Beckett tersely told his French publisher to advise them: "I do not want a film of Godot." The BBC broadcast a production of Waiting for Godot on 26 June 1961, a version for radio having already been transmitted on 25 April
this time. In Roman traditions additional festivities take place during the six days leading up to Midwinter. Imbolc (Candlemas) The cross-quarter day following Midwinter falls on the first of February and traditionally marks the first stirrings of spring. It aligns with the contemporary observance of Groundhog Day. It is time for purification and spring cleaning in anticipation of the year's new life. In Rome, it was historically a shepherd's holiday, while the Celts associated it with the onset of ewes' lactation, prior to birthing the spring lambs. For Celtic pagans, the festival is dedicated to the goddess Brigid, daughter of The Dagda and one of the Tuatha Dé Danann. Among Reclaiming tradition Witches, this is the traditional time for pledges and rededications for the coming year and for initiation among Dianic Wiccans. Spring Equinox (Ostara) Derived from a reconstruction produced by linguist Jacob Grimm of an Old High German form of the Old English goddess name Ēostre, Ostara marks the vernal equinox in some modern Pagan traditions. Known as Alban Eilir to modern Druid traditions, this holiday is the second of three spring celebrations (the midpoint between Imbolc and Beltane), during which light and darkness are again in balance, with light on the rise. It is a time of new beginnings and of life emerging further from the grips of winter. Beltane (May Eve) Traditionally the first day of summer in Ireland, in Rome the earliest celebrations appeared in pre-Christian times with the festival of Flora, the Roman goddess of flowers, and the Walpurgisnacht celebrations of the Germanic countries. Since the Christianisation of Europe, a more secular version of the festival has continued in Europe and America, commonly referred to as May Day. In this form, it is well known for maypole dancing and the crowning of the Queen of the May. Celebrated by many pagan traditions, among modern Druids this festival recognizes the power of life in its fullness, the greening of the world, youthfulness and flourishing. Summer Solstice (Litha) Midsummer is one of the four solar holidays and is considered the turning point at which summer reaches its height and the sun shines longest. Among the Wiccan sabbats, Midsummer is preceded by Beltane, and followed by Lammas or Lughnasadh. Some Wiccan traditions call the festival Litha, a name occurring in Bede's The Reckoning of Time (, eighth century), which preserves a list of the (then-obsolete) Anglo-Saxon names for the twelve months. (first or preceding ) roughly corresponds to June in the Gregorian calendar, and (following ) to July. Bede writes that "Litha means gentle or navigable, because in both these months the calm breezes are gentle and they were wont to sail upon the smooth sea". Modern Druids celebrate this festival as Alban Hefin. The sun in its greatest strength is greeted and celebrated on this holiday. While it is the time of greatest strength of the solar current, it also marks a turning point, for the sun also begins its time of decline as the wheel of the year turns. Arguably the most important festival of the Druid traditions, due to the great focus on the sun and its light as a symbol of divine inspiration. Druid groups frequently celebrate this event at Stonehenge. Lughnasadh (Lammas) Lammas or Lughnasadh () is the first of the three Wiccan harvest festivals, the other two being the autumnal equinox (or Mabon) and Samhain. Wiccans mark the holiday by baking a figure of the god in bread and eating it, to symbolise the sanctity and importance of the harvest. Celebrations vary, as not all Pagans are Wiccans. The Irish name Lughnasadh is used in some traditions to designate this holiday. Wiccan celebrations of this holiday are neither generally based on Celtic culture nor centered on the Celtic deity Lugh. This name seems to have been a late adoption among Wiccans. In early versions of Wiccan literature the festival is referred to as August Eve. The name Lammas (contraction of loaf mass) implies it is an agrarian-based festival and feast of thanksgiving for grain and bread, which symbolises the first fruits of the harvest. Christian festivals may incorporate elements from the Pagan Ritual. Autumn Equinox (Mabon) The holiday of the autumnal equinox, Harvest Home, Mabon, the Feast of the Ingathering, , , or (in Neo-Druid traditions), is a modern Pagan ritual of thanksgiving for the fruits of the earth and a recognition of the need to share them to secure the blessings of the Goddess and the Gods during the coming winter months. The name Mabon was coined by Aidan Kelly around 1970 as a reference to , a character from Welsh mythology. Among the sabbats, it is the second of the three Pagan harvest festivals, preceded by Lammas / Lughnasadh and followed by Samhain. Samhain Samhain () is one of the four Greater Sabbats among Wiccans. Samhain is typically considered as a time to celebrate the lives of those who have passed on, and it often involves paying respect to ancestors, family members, elders of the faith, friends, pets, and other loved ones who have died. Aligned with the contemporary observance of Halloween and Day of the Dead, in some traditions the spirits of the departed are invited to attend the festivities. It is seen as a festival of darkness, which is balanced at the opposite point of the Wheel by the festival of Beltane, which is celebrated as a festival of light and fertility. Many Neopagans believe that the veil between this world and the afterlife is at its thinnest point of the year at Samhain, making it easier to communicate with those who have departed. Some authorities claim the Christian festival of All Hallows Day (All Saints Day) and the preceding evening are appropriations of Samhain by early Christian missionaries to the British Isles. Minor festivals In addition to the eight major holidays common to most modern Pagans, there are a number of minor holidays during the year to commemorate various events. Germanic Some of the holidays listed in the “Runic Era Calendar” of the Ásatrú Alliance: Vali's Blot (14 February) Celebration dedicated to the god Váli and to love Feast of the Einherjar (11 November) Celebration to honor kin who died in battle Ancestors’ Blot (11 November) Celebration of one’s own ancestry or the common ancestors of a Germanic ethnicity Yggdrasil Day (22 April) Celebration of the world tree Yggdrasil,	between Ostara and Walpurgis Night Practice Celebration commonly takes place outdoors in the form of a communal gathering. Dates of celebration The precise dates on which festivals are celebrated are often flexible. Dates may be on the days of the quarter and cross-quarter days proper, the nearest full moon, the nearest new moon, or the nearest weekend for secular convenience. The festivals were originally celebrated by peoples in the middle latitudes of the Northern Hemisphere. Consequently, the traditional times for seasonal celebrations do not agree with the seasons in the Southern Hemisphere or near the equator. Pagans in the Southern Hemisphere often advance these dates by six months to coincide with their own seasons. Offerings Offerings of food, drink, various objects, etc. have been central in ritual propitiation and veneration for millennia. Modern Pagan practice strongly avoids sacrificing animals in favour of grains, herbs, milk, wines, incense, baked goods, minerals, etc. The exception being with ritual feasts including meat, where the inedible parts of the animal are often burned as offerings while the community eats the rest. Sacrifices are typically offered to gods and ancestors by burning them. Burying and leaving offerings in the open are also common in certain circumstances. The purpose of offering is to benefit the venerated, show gratitude, and give something back, strengthening the bonds between humans and divine and between members of a community. Narratives Celtic It is a misconception in some quarters of the Neopagan community, influenced by the writings of Robert Graves, that historical Celts had an overarching narrative for the entire cycle of the year. While the various Celtic calendars include some cyclical patterns, and a belief in the balance of light and dark, these beliefs vary between the different Celtic cultures. Modern preservationists and revivalists usually observe the four 'fire festivals' of the Gaelic Calendar, and some also observe local festivals that are held on dates of significance in the different Celtic nations. Slavic Slavic mythology tells of a persisting conflict involving Perun, god of thunder and lightning, and Veles, the black god and horned god of the underworld. Enmity between the two is initiated by Veles' annual ascent up the world tree in the form of a huge serpent and his ultimate theft of Perun's divine cattle from the heavenly domain. Perun retaliates to this challenge of the divine order by pursuing Veles, attacking with his lightning bolts from the sky. Veles taunts Perun and flees, transforming himself into various animals and hiding behind trees, houses, even people. (Lightning bolts striking down trees or homes were explained as results of this.) In the end Perun overcomes and defeats Veles, returning him to his place in the realm of the dead. Thus the order of the world is maintained. The idea that storms and thunder are actually divine battle is pivotal to the changing of the seasons. Dry periods are identified as chaotic results of Veles' thievery. This duality and conflict represents an opposition of the natural principles of earth, water, substance, and chaos (Veles) and of heaven, fire, spirit, order (Perun), not a clash of good and evil. The cosmic battle between the two also echoes the ancient Indo-European narrative of a fight between the sky-borne storm god and chthonic dragon. On the great night (New Year), two children of Perun are born, Jarilo, god of fertility and vegetation and son of the Moon, and Morana, goddess of nature and death and daughter of the Sun. On the same night, the infant Jarilo is snatched and taken to the underworld, where Veles raises him as his own. At the time of the spring equinox, Jarilo returns across the sea from the world of the dead, bringing with him fertility and spring from the evergreen underworld into the realm of the living. He meets his sister Morana and courts her. With the beginning of summer, the two are married bringing fertility and abundance to Earth, ensuring a bountiful harvest. The union of Perun's kin and Veles' stepson brings peace between two great gods, staving off storms which could damage the harvest. After the harvest, however, Jarilo is unfaithful to his wife and she vengefully slays him, returning him to the underworld and renewing enmity between Perun and Veles. Without her husband, god of fertility and vegetation, Morana – and all of nature with her – withers and freezes in the ensuing winter. She grows into the old and dangerous goddess of darkness and frost, eventually dying by the year's end only to be reborn again with her brother in the new year. Wicca and Druidry In Wicca, the narrative of the Wheel of the Year traditionally centers on the sacred marriage of the God and the Goddess and the god/goddess duality. In this cycle, the God is perpetually born from the Goddess at Yule, grows in power at the vernal equinox (as does the Goddess, now in her maiden aspect), courts and impregnates the Goddess at Beltane, reaches his peak at the summer solstice, wanes in power at Lammas, passes into the underworld at Samhain (taking with him the fertility of the Goddess/Earth, who is now in her crone aspect) until he is once again born from Her mother/crone aspect at Yule. The Goddess, in turn, ages and rejuvenates endlessly with the seasons, being courted by and giving birth to the Horned God. Many Wiccan, Neo-Druid, and eclectic Neopagans incorporate a narrative of the Holly King and Oak King as rulers of the waning year and the waxing year respectively. These two figures battle endlessly with the turning of the seasons. At the summer solstice, the Holly King defeats the Oak King and commences his reign. After the Autumn equinox the Oak King slowly begins to regain his power as the sun begins to wane. Come the winter solstice the Oak King in turn vanquishes the Holly King.After the spring equinox the sun begins to wax again and the Holly King slowly regains his
a castle overlooking the town of Eisenach, Germany. Wartburg may also refer to: Places Wartburgkreis, a district in Germany Wartburg, Illinois, a suburb of	States Wartburg, Tennessee, a city in Morgan County, Tennessee, United States Wartburg, Ontario, Canada Wartburg, KwaZulu-Natal, a town in KwaZulu-Natal Province, South Africa Organizations Wartburg College, a Lutheran college in Waverly, Iowa, and Denver, Colorado Wartburg Adult Care Community, in Mount Vernon,
Jutland. Driven out by the Goths from their homeland, the Cimbri arrived to Ulmiganea, an area inhabited by rather primitive people who had no agriculture or cities. Widewuto and Bruteno civilized the region and named it Prussia after Bruteno (Pruteno). Gintaras Beresnevičius noted that such arrival has a lot in common with the origin legend of the Lombards. Widewuto ruled wisely and issued laws regulating family life (for example, men could have three wives; burning of gravely sick relatives was allowed; infidelity was punished by death), public life (for example, slavery was prohibited; distinguished warriors with a horse were raised to nobility), and punishments for criminal activity. Bruteno was the high priest (Kriwe-Kriwajto) in charge of religious life. Widewuto had twelve sons, whose names were memorialized in the districts of Prussia. For example, Lithuania was named after eldest son Litvas, Sudovia after Sudo, etc. At the age of 116, Widewuto burned himself together with Bruteno in a religious ceremony at the temple of Romuva. After their deaths the brothers were worshiped as god Wurskaito. Flag Widewuto had a white flag, measuring five by three ells. The flag had portraits of three Prussian gods, which Grunau reproduced in his work. On the	Widewuto ruled wisely and issued laws regulating family life (for example, men could have three wives; burning of gravely sick relatives was allowed; infidelity was punished by death), public life (for example, slavery was prohibited; distinguished warriors with a horse were raised to nobility), and punishments for criminal activity. Bruteno was the high priest (Kriwe-Kriwajto) in charge of religious life. Widewuto had twelve sons, whose names were memorialized in the districts of Prussia. For example, Lithuania was named after eldest son Litvas, Sudovia after Sudo, etc. At the age of 116, Widewuto burned himself together with Bruteno in a religious ceremony at the temple of Romuva. After their deaths the brothers were worshiped as god Wurskaito. Flag Widewuto had a white flag, measuring five by three ells. The flag had portraits of three Prussian gods, which Grunau reproduced in his work. On the left, there was the god of the underworld, Peckols – an old man with white beard and white scarf on his head. Middle-aged and fiery-haired Perkūnas, god of sky, storm, and thunder, was in the middle. The god of sea, earth, and crops, Patrimpas, was portrayed as a young beardless man wearing a wreath of grain ears. The flag also displayed mysterious symbols. Several linguists have unsuccessfully attempted to decipher the writing hoping to discover an ancient Prussian writing system. References Further reading Beresnevičius G. "Die Religionsreform des Brutenis". In: Res Balticae, Nr. 03, 1997. pp. 153-164.
the future Wessex. Following the Roman conquest, from the 1st century AD, numerous country villas with attached farms were established across Wessex, along with the important towns of Dorchester and Winchester (the ending -chester comes from Latin castra, "a military camp"). The Romans, or rather the Romano-British, built another major road that integrated Wessex, running eastwards from Exeter through Dorchester to Winchester and Silchester and on to London. In the mid-4th century there were increasing raids on Roman Britain by peoples such as the Picti, Scotti, Attacotti and Franks, as well as the Saxons. In 367, these tribes simultaneously invaded Britain from the north, west and east. The invaders reportedly defeated or co-opted Roman forces in most parts of northern and western Britain. However, the Roman general Theodosius had recaptured most areas by the end of 368. In 380–1, Magnus Maximus defeated further raids. However, there was increasing internal conflict across the Roman Empire. During 383–4, in the context of the overthrow of Emperor Gratian, Maximus took most of the garrison from Britain to Gaul, where he was made Augustus of the West, ruling Britain, Gaul, Spain and Roman Africa. Following the death of Maximus in 388, Roman authority in Britain again declined. During the late 390s, Stilicho attempted to restore control, with a campaign against the Picti, but this was undermined in 401 when Stilicho transferred troops to the Continent to fight the Goths. Two subsequent Roman rulers of Britain were murdered. In 407, a Roman officer in Britain, Constantine III declared himself Augustus of the West, and left for Gaul, taking with him Roman troops. Finally, in 410, when Romano-British officials requested military assistance from Emperor Honorius, he told them to manage their own defences. Economic decline occurred after these events: circulation of Roman coins ended and the importation of items from the Roman Empire stopped. Saxon settlement Theories about the settlement of Saxons, Jutes and Angles in Britain are divided into two categories by the historian Peter Hunter Blair (1956), namely "Welsh" and "English". The Welsh tradition is exemplified by Gildas, in De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. In brief, it states that after the Romans left, the Celtic Britons managed to continue for a time without any major disruptions. However, when finally faced with northern invaders, a certain unnamed ruler in Britain (called "a proud tyrant" by Gildas) requested assistance from the Saxons in exchange for land. There were no conflicts between the British and the Saxons for a time, but following "a dispute about the supply of provisions" the Saxons warred against the British and severely damaged parts of the country. In time, however, some Saxon troops left Britain; under Ambrosius Aurelianus, the British subsequently defeated those who remained. A lengthy conflict ensued, in which neither side gained any decisive advantage until the Britons routed the Saxons at the Battle of Mons Badonicus. After this, there occurred a peaceful period for the Britons, under which Gildas was living at the time he wrote the De Excidio et Conquestu Britanniae. One of the "English" traditions about the Saxon arrival concerns Hengest and Horsa. When Bede wrote his Ecclesiastical History of the English People, he adapted Gildas' narrative and added details, such as the names of those involved. To the "proud tyrant" he gave the name Vortigern, and the Saxon commanders he named Hengest and Horsa. Further details were added to the story in the Historia Brittonum, which was partially written by Nennius. According to the Historia, Hengest and Horsa fought the invaders of Britain under the condition of gaining the Island of Thanet. The daughter of Hengest, Rowena, later arrived on a ship of reinforcements, and Vortigern married her. However, a war arose in Kent due to a dispute between Hengest and Vortigern's son. After losing several battles, the Saxons finally defeated the British by treacherously attacking them once the two parties had convened for a meeting. Some additional details of the Hengest and Horsa legend are found in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The Chronicle then records subsequent Saxon arrivals, including that of Cerdic, the founder of Wessex, in 495. According to the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, Cerdic and his son Cynric landed in southern Hampshire in 495, but this account is not regarded by historians as reliable due to duplication of Chronicle entries and evidence that the area was first occupied by Jutes. Although the entry mentions Cynric as Cerdic's son, a different source lists him as the son of Cerdic's son, Creoda. The Chronicle continues, stating that "Port, and his two sons Bieda and Mægla", landed at Portsmouth in 501 and killed a high-ranking British nobleman. In 508, Cerdic and Cynric slew British king Natanleod along with five thousand of his men (though the historicity of Natanleod has been disputed), and Cerdic became the first king of Wessex in 519. The Saxons attacked Cerdicesford in 519, intending to cross the River Avon and block a road which connected Old Sarum and Badbury Rings, a British stronghold. The battle appears to have ended as a draw, and the expansion of Wessex ended for about thirty years. This is likely due to losses suffered during the battle and an apparent peace agreement with the Britons. The battle of Mons Badonicus is believed to have been fought around this time. Gildas states that the Saxons were completely defeated in the battle, in which King Arthur participated according to Nennius. This defeat is not recorded in the Chronicle. The thirty-year period of peace was temporarily interrupted when, according to the Chronicle, the Saxons conquered the Isle of Wight in 530 at a battle near Carisbrooke. Cynric became the ruler of Wessex after Cerdic died in 534, and reigned for twenty-six years. It is presumed that Ceawlin, who succeeded Cynric in about 581, was his son. Ceawlin's reign is thought to be more reliably documented than those of his predecessors, though the Chronicle'''s dates of 560 to 592 are different from the revised chronology. Ceawlin overcame pockets of resisting Britons to the northeast, in the Chilterns, Gloucestershire and Somerset. The capture of Cirencester, Gloucester and Bath in 577, after the pause caused by the battle of Mons Badonicus, opened the way to the southwest. Ceawlin is one of the seven kings named in Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People as holding "imperium" over the southern English: the Chronicle later repeated this claim, referring to Ceawlin as a bretwalda, or "Britain-ruler". Ceawlin was deposed, perhaps by his nephew, Ceol, and died a year later. Six years later, in about 594, Ceol was succeeded by a brother, Ceolwulf, who was succeeded in his turn in about 617 by Cynegils. The genealogies do not agree on Cynegils' pedigree: his father is variously given as Ceola, Ceolwulf, Ceol, Cuthwine, Cutha or Cuthwulf. The tradition embodied in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, and in the genealogies of the West Saxon dynasty, is open to considerable doubt. This is largely because the founder of the dynasty and a number of his alleged descendants had Brittonic Celtic, rather than Anglo-Saxon Germanic, names. The name Cerdic is derived from the British name *Caraticos.Koch, J.T., (2006) Celtic Culture: A Historical Encyclopedia, ABC-CLIO, , pp. 394–395. This may indicate that Cerdic was a native Briton, and that his dynasty became anglicised over time.Yorke 1995, pp. 190–191 Other members of the dynasty possessing Celtic names include Ceawlin and Cædwalla. Cædwalla, who died as late as 689, was the last West Saxon king to possess a Celtic name. Christian Wessex and the rise of Mercia It is in Cynegils' reign that the first event in West Saxon history that can be dated with reasonable certainty occurs: the baptism of Cynegils by Birinus, which happened at the end of the 630s, perhaps in 640. Birinus was then established as bishop of the West Saxons, with his seat at Dorchester-on-Thames. This was the first conversion to Christianity by a West Saxon king, but it was not accompanied by the immediate conversion of all the West Saxons: Cynegils' successor (and probably his son), Cenwealh, who came to the throne in about 642, was a pagan at his accession. However, he too was baptised only a few years later and Wessex became firmly established as a Christian kingdom. Cynegils's godfather was King Oswald of Northumbria and his conversion may have been connected with an alliance against King Penda of Mercia, who had previously attacked Wessex. These attacks marked the beginning of sustained pressure from the expanding kingdom of Mercia. In time this would deprive Wessex of its territories north of the Thames and the (Bristol) Avon, encouraging the kingdom's reorientation southwards. Cenwealh married Penda's daughter, and when he repudiated her, Penda again invaded and drove him into exile for some time, perhaps three years. The dates are uncertain but it was probably in the late 640s or early 650s. He spent his exile in East Anglia, and was converted to Christianity there. After his return, Cenwealh faced further attacks from Penda's successor Wulfhere, but was able to expand West Saxon territory in Somerset at the expense of the Britons. He established a second bishopric at Winchester, while the one at Dorchester was soon abandoned as Mercian power pushed southwards. After Cenwealh's death in 673, his widow, Seaxburh, held the throne for a year; she was followed by Æscwine, who was apparently descended from another brother of Ceawlin. This was one of several occasions on which the kingship of Wessex is said to have passed to a remote branch of the royal family with an unbroken male line of descent from Cerdic; these claims may be genuine, or may reflect the spurious assertion of descent from Cerdic to legitimise a new dynasty. Æscwine's reign only lasted two years, and in 676 the throne passed back to the immediate family of Cenwealh with the accession of his brother Centwine. Centwine is known to have fought and won battles against the Britons, but the details have not survived. Centwine was succeeded by another supposed distant relative, Cædwalla, who claimed descent from Ceawlin. Cædwalla reigned for just two years, but achieved a dramatic expansion of the kingdom's power, conquering the kingdoms of Sussex, Kent and the Isle of Wight, although Kent regained its independence almost immediately and Sussex followed some years later. His reign ended in 688 when he abdicated and went on pilgrimage to Rome where he was baptised by Pope Sergius I and died soon afterwards. His successor was Ine, who also claimed to be a descendant of Cerdic through Ceawlin, but again through a long-separated line of descent. Ine was the most durable of the West Saxon kings, reigning for 38 years. He issued the oldest surviving English code of laws apart from those of the kingdom of Kent, and established a second West Saxon bishopric at	the west. Æthelwulf was succeeded by each of his four surviving sons ruling one after another: the rebellious Æthelbald, then Æthelbert, who had previously inherited the eastern territories from his father and who reunited the kingdom on Æthelbald's death, then Æthelred, and finally Alfred the Great. This occurred because the first two brothers died in wars with the Danes without issue, while Æthelred's sons were too young to rule when their father died. Last English kingdom In 865, several of the Danish commanders combined their respective forces into one large army and landed in England. Over the following years, what became known as the Great Heathen Army overwhelmed the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia. Then in 871, the Great Summer Army arrived from Scandinavia, to reinforce the Great Heathen Army. The reinforced army invaded Wessex and, although Æthelred and Alfred won some victories and succeeded in preventing the conquest of their kingdom, a number of defeats and heavy losses of men compelled Alfred to pay the Danes to leave Wessex. The Danes spent the next few years subduing Mercia and some of them settled in Northumbria, but the rest returned to Wessex in 876. Alfred responded effectively and was able with little fighting to bring about their withdrawal in 877. A portion of the Danish army settled in Mercia, but at the beginning of 878 the remaining Danes mounted a winter invasion of Wessex, taking Alfred by surprise and overrunning much of the kingdom. Alfred was reduced to taking refuge with a small band of followers in the marshes of the Somerset Levels, but after a few months he was able to gather an army and defeated the Danes at the Battle of Edington, bringing about their final withdrawal from Wessex to settle in East Anglia. Simultaneous Danish raids on the north coast of France and Brittany occurred in the 870s – prior to the establishment of Normandy in 911 – and recorded Danish alliances with both Bretons and Cornish may have resulted in the suppression of Cornish autonomy with the death by drowning of King Donyarth in 875 as recorded by the Annales Cambriae. No subsequent 'Kings' of Cornwall are recorded after this time, but Asser records Cornwall as a separate kingdom from Wessex in the 890s. In 879 a Viking fleet that had assembled in the Thames estuary sailed across the channel to start a new campaign on the continent. The rampaging Viking army on the continent encouraged Alfred to protect his Kingdom of Wessex. Over the following years Alfred carried out a dramatic reorganisation of the government and defences of Wessex, building warships, organising the army into two shifts which served alternately and establishing a system of fortified burhs across the kingdom. This system is recorded in a 10th-century document known as the Burghal Hidage, which details the location and garrisoning requirements of thirty-three forts, whose positioning ensured that no one in Wessex was more than a long day's ride from a place of safety. In the 890s these reforms helped him to repulse the invasion of another huge Danish army – which was aided by the Danes settled in England – with minimal losses. In 2015, two individuals found a large hoard near Leominster consisting primarily of Saxon jewellery and silver ingots but also coins; the latter date to around 879 CE. According to a news report, "experts believe it [the hoard] was buried by a Viking during a series of raids known to have taken place in the area at that time", while Wessex was ruled by Alfred the Great and Mercia by Ceolwulf II. Two imperial coins recovered from the treasure hunters depict the two kings, "indicating an alliance between the two kingdoms—at least, for a time—that was previously unknown to historians", according to the report. A report by The Guardian adds that"The presence of both kings on the two emperor coins suggests some sort of pact between the pair. But the rarity of the coins also suggests that Alfred quickly dropped his ally, who was just about written out of history". Alfred also reformed the administration of justice, issued a new law code and championed a revival of scholarship and education. He gathered scholars from around England and elsewhere in Europe to his court, and with their help translated a range of Latin texts into English, doing much of the work personally, and orchestrated the composition of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. As a result of these literary efforts and the political dominance of Wessex, the West Saxon dialect of this period became the standard written form of Old English for the rest of the Anglo-Saxon period and beyond. The Danish conquests had destroyed the kingdoms of Northumbria and East Anglia and divided Mercia in half, with the Danes settling in the north-east while the south-west was left to the English king Ceolwulf, allegedly a Danish puppet. When Ceolwulf's rule came to an end he was succeeded as ruler of "English Mercia" not by another king but by a mere ealdorman, Aethelred, who acknowledged Alfred's overlordship and married his daughter Ethelfleda. The process by which this transformation of the status of Mercia took place is unknown, but it left Alfred as the only remaining English king. Unification of England and the Earldom of Wessex After the invasions of the 890s, Wessex and English Mercia continued to be attacked by the Danish settlers in England, and by small Danish raiding forces from overseas, but these incursions were usually defeated, while there were no further major invasions from the continent. The balance of power tipped steadily in favour of the English. In 911 Ealdorman Æthelred died, leaving his widow, Alfred's daughter Æthelflæd, in charge of Mercia. Alfred's son and successor Edward the Elder, then annexed London, Oxford and the surrounding area, probably including Middlesex, Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire, from Mercia to Wessex. Between 913 and 918 a series of English offensives overwhelmed the Danes of Mercia and East Anglia, bringing all of England south of the Humber under Edward's power. In 918 Æthelflæd died and Edward took over direct control of Mercia, extinguishing what remained of its independence and ensuring that henceforth there would be only one Kingdom of the English. In 927 Edward's successor Athelstan conquered Northumbria, bringing the whole of England under one ruler for the first time. The Kingdom of Wessex had thus been transformed into the Kingdom of England. Although Wessex had now effectively been subsumed into the larger kingdom which its expansion had created, like the other former kingdoms, it continued for a time to have a distinct identity which periodically found renewed political expression. After the death of King Eadred in 955, who had no legitimate heirs, the rule of England passed to his nephew, Eadwig. Eadwig's unpopularity with the nobility and the church led the thanes of Mercia and Northumbria to declare their allegiance to his younger brother, Edgar, in October 957, though Eadwig continued to rule in Wessex. In 959, Eadwig died and the whole of England came under Edgar's control. After the conquest of England by the Danish king Cnut in 1016, he established earldoms based on the former kingdoms of Northumbria, Mercia and East Anglia, but initially administered Wessex personally. Within a few years, however, he had created an earldom of Wessex, encompassing all of England south of the Thames, for his English henchman Godwin. For almost fifty years the vastly wealthy holders of this earldom, first Godwin and then his son Harold, were the most powerful men in English politics after the king. Finally, on the death of Edward the Confessor in 1066, Harold became king, reuniting the earldom of Wessex with the crown. No new earl was appointed before the ensuing Norman Conquest of England, and as the Norman kings soon did away with the great earldoms of the late Anglo-Saxon period, 1066 marks the extinction of Wessex as a political unit. Symbols Wyvern or dragon Wessex is often symbolised by a wyvern or dragon. Both Henry of Huntingdon and Matthew of Westminster talk of a golden dragon being raised at the Battle of Burford in 752 by the West Saxons. The Bayeux Tapestry depicts a fallen golden dragon, as well as a red/golden/white dragon at the death of King Harold II, who was previously Earl of Wessex. Dragon standards were in fairly wide use in Europe at the time, being derived from the draco standard employed by the later Roman army and there is no evidence that it explicitly identified Wessex. A panel of 18th century stained glass at Exeter Cathedral indicates that an association with an image of a dragon in south west Britain pre-dated the Victorians. Nevertheless, the association with Wessex was only popularised in the 19th century, most notably through the writings of E. A. Freeman. By the time of the grant of armorial bearings by the College of Arms to Somerset County Council in 1911, a (red) dragon had become the accepted heraldic emblem of the former kingdom. This precedent was followed in 1937 when Wiltshire County Council was granted arms. Two gold Wessex dragons were later granted as supporters to the arms of Dorset County Council in 1950. In the British Army the wyvern has been used to represent Wessex: the 43rd (Wessex) Infantry Division, and postwar regional 43 (Wessex) Brigade adopted a formation sign consisting of a gold wyvern on a black or dark blue background. The regular Wessex Brigade of the 1960s adopted a cap badge featuring the heraldic beast, until the regiments took back up individual regimental badges in the late 1960s. The Territorial Army Wessex Regiment continued to wear the Wessex Brigade badge until the late 1980s when its individual companies too readopted their parent regular regimental cap badges. The now disbanded West Somerset Yeomanry adopted a Wessex Wyvern rampant as the centre piece for its cap badge, and the current Royal Wessex Yeomanry adopted a similar device in 2014 when the Regiment moved from wearing individual squadron county yeomanry cap badges to a unified single Regimental cap badge. When Sophie, Countess of Wessex was granted arms, the sinister supporter assigned was a blue wyvern, described by the College of Arms as "an heraldic beast which has long been associated with Wessex". In the 1970s William Crampton, the founder of the British Flag Institute, designed a flag for the Wessex region which depicts a gold wyvern on a red field. Attributed coat of arms A coat of arms was attributed by medieval heralds to the Kings of Wessex. These arms appear in a manuscript of the 13th century, and are blazoned as Azure, a cross patonce (alternatively a cross fleury or cross moline) between four martlets Or. The attributed arms of Wessex are also known as the "Arms of Edward the Confessor", and the design is based on an emblem historically used by King Edward the Confessor on the reverse side of pennies minted by him. The heraldic design continued to represent both Wessex and Edward in classical heraldry and is found on a number of church windows in derived shields such as the Arms of the Collegiate Church of St Peter at Westminster (Westminster Abbey, which was founded by the king). Cultural and political identity in modern times Thomas Hardy used a fictionalized Wessex as a setting for many of his novels, adopting his friend William Barnes' term Wessex for their home county of Dorset and its neighboring counties in the south and west of England. Hardy's Wessex excluded Gloucestershire and Oxfordshire, but the city of Oxford, which he called "Christminster", was visited as part of Wessex in Jude the Obscure. He gave each of his Wessex counties a fictionalized name, such as with Berkshire, which is known in the novels as "North Wessex". The film Shakespeare in Love included a character called "Lord Wessex" – a title which did not exist in Elizabethan times. The ITV television series Broadchurch takes place in the Wessex area, primarily the county of Dorset. It features government agencies such as Wessex Police and Wessex Crown Court, and several characters are seen attending South Wessex Secondary School. In the book and television series The Last Kingdom, Wessex is the primary setting, focusing on the rule of Alfred the Great and the war against the Vikings.Wessex'' remains a common term for the area. Many organisations that cover the area of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, and Wiltshire use the name Wessex in their company or organisation name; for example Wessex Bus, Wessex Water, and Wessex Institute of Technology. The Wessex Constitutional Convention and Wessex Regionalist Party are minor groups seeking increased political autonomy for the region. A number of British Army units also use the name Wessex, such as the Wessex Regiment, and 32nd Regiment Royal Artillery – known as the 'Wessex Gunners'. See also Heptarchy Earl of Wessex List of monarchs of Wessex Footnotes Bibliography Blair, Peter Hunter (17 July 2003). An Introduction to Anglo-Saxon
(respectively, differentiable, analytic, etc.) with respect to the weak topology. History Starting in the early 1900s, David Hilbert and Marcel Riesz made extensive use of weak convergence. The early pioneers of functional analysis did not elevate norm convergence above weak convergence and oftentimes viewed weak convergence as preferable. In 1929, Banach introduced weak convergence for normed spaces and also introduced the analogous weak-* convergence. The weak topology is also called topologie faible and schwache Topologie. The weak and strong topologies Let be a topological field, namely a field with a topology such that addition, multiplication, and division are continuous. In most applications will be either the field of complex numbers or the field of real numbers with the familiar topologies. Weak topology with respect to a pairing Both the weak topology and the weak* topology are special cases of a more general construction for pairings, which we now describe. The benefit of this more general construction is that any definition or result proved for it applies to both the weak topology and the weak* topology, thereby making redundant the need for many definitions, theorem statements, and proofs. This is also the reason why the weak* topology is also frequently referred to as the "weak topology"; because it is just an instance of the weak topology in the setting of this more general construction. Suppose is a pairing of vector spaces over a topological field (i.e. and are vector spaces over and is a bilinear map). Notation. For all , let denote the linear functional on defined by . Similarly, for all , let be defined by . Definition. The weak topology on induced by (and ) is the weakest topology on , denoted by or simply , making all maps continuous, as ranges over . The weak topology on is now automatically defined as described in the article Dual system. However, for clarity, we now repeat it. Definition. The weak topology on induced by (and ) is the weakest topology on , denoted by or simply , making all maps continuous, as ranges over . If the field has an absolute value , then the weak topology on is induced by the family of seminorms, , defined by for all and . This shows that weak topologies are locally convex. Assumption. We will henceforth assume that is either the real numbers or the complex numbers . Canonical duality We now consider the special case where is a vector subspace of the algebraic dual space of (i.e. a vector space of linear functionals on ). There is a pairing, denoted by or , called the canonical pairing whose bilinear map is the canonical evaluation map, defined by for all and . Note in particular that is just another way of denoting i.e. . Assumption. If is a vector subspace of the algebraic dual space of then we will assume that they are associated with the canonical pairing . In this case, the weak topology on (resp. the weak topology on ), denoted by (resp. by ) is the weak topology on (resp. on ) with respect to the canonical pairing . The topology is the initial topology of with respect to . If is a vector space of linear functionals on , then the continuous dual of with respect to the topology is precisely equal to . The weak and weak* topologies Let be a topological vector space (TVS) over , that is, is a vector space equipped with a topology so that vector addition and scalar multiplication are continuous. We call the topology that starts with the original, starting, or given topology (the reader is cautioned against using the terms "initial topology" and "strong topology" to refer to the original topology since these already have well-known meanings, so using them may cause confusion). We may define a possibly different topology on using the topological or continuous dual space , which consists of all linear functionals from into the base field that are continuous with respect to the given topology. Recall that is the canonical evaluation map defined by for all and , where in particular, . Definition. The weak topology on is the weak topology on with respect to the canonical pairing . That is, it is the weakest topology on making all maps continuous, as ranges over . Definition: The weak topology on is the weak topology on with respect to the canonical pairing . That is, it is the weakest topology on making all maps continuous, as ranges over . This topology is also called the weak* topology. We give alternative definitions below. Weak topology induced by the continuous dual space Alternatively, the weak topology on a TVS is the initial topology with respect to the family . In other words, it is the coarsest topology on X such that each element of remains a continuous function. A subbase for the weak topology is the collection of sets of the form where and is an open subset of the base field . In other words, a subset of is open in the weak topology if and only if it can be written as a union of (possibly infinitely many) sets, each of which is an intersection of finitely many sets of the form . From this point of view, the weak topology is the coarsest polar topology; see weak topology (polar topology) for details. Weak convergence The weak topology is characterized by the following condition: a net in converges in the weak topology to the element of if and only if converges to in or for all . In particular, if is a sequence in , then converges weakly to if as for all . In this case, it is customary to write or, sometimes, Other properties If is equipped with the weak topology, then addition and scalar multiplication remain continuous operations, and is a locally convex topological vector space. If is a normed space, then the dual space is itself a normed vector space by using the norm This norm gives rise to a topology, called the strong topology, on . This is the topology of uniform convergence. The uniform and strong topologies are generally different for other spaces of linear maps; see below. Weak-*	by (resp. by ) is the weak topology on (resp. on ) with respect to the canonical pairing . The topology is the initial topology of with respect to . If is a vector space of linear functionals on , then the continuous dual of with respect to the topology is precisely equal to . The weak and weak* topologies Let be a topological vector space (TVS) over , that is, is a vector space equipped with a topology so that vector addition and scalar multiplication are continuous. We call the topology that starts with the original, starting, or given topology (the reader is cautioned against using the terms "initial topology" and "strong topology" to refer to the original topology since these already have well-known meanings, so using them may cause confusion). We may define a possibly different topology on using the topological or continuous dual space , which consists of all linear functionals from into the base field that are continuous with respect to the given topology. Recall that is the canonical evaluation map defined by for all and , where in particular, . Definition. The weak topology on is the weak topology on with respect to the canonical pairing . That is, it is the weakest topology on making all maps continuous, as ranges over . Definition: The weak topology on is the weak topology on with respect to the canonical pairing . That is, it is the weakest topology on making all maps continuous, as ranges over . This topology is also called the weak* topology. We give alternative definitions below. Weak topology induced by the continuous dual space Alternatively, the weak topology on a TVS is the initial topology with respect to the family . In other words, it is the coarsest topology on X such that each element of remains a continuous function. A subbase for the weak topology is the collection of sets of the form where and is an open subset of the base field . In other words, a subset of is open in the weak topology if and only if it can be written as a union of (possibly infinitely many) sets, each of which is an intersection of finitely many sets of the form . From this point of view, the weak topology is the coarsest polar topology; see weak topology (polar topology) for details. Weak convergence The weak topology is characterized by the following condition: a net in converges in the weak topology to the element of if and only if converges to in or for all . In particular, if is a sequence in , then converges weakly to if as for all . In this case, it is customary to write or, sometimes, Other properties If is equipped with the weak topology, then addition and scalar multiplication remain continuous operations, and is a locally convex topological vector space. If is a normed space, then the dual space is itself a normed vector space by using the norm This norm gives rise to a topology, called the strong topology, on . This is the topology of uniform convergence. The uniform and strong topologies are generally different for other spaces of linear maps; see below. Weak-* topology The weak* topology is an important example of a polar topology. A space can be embedded into its double dual X** by Thus is an injective linear mapping, though not necessarily surjective (spaces for which this canonical embedding is surjective are called reflexive). The weak-* topology on is the weak topology induced by the image of . In other words, it is the coarsest topology such that the maps Tx, defined by from to the base field or remain continuous. Weak-* convergence A net in is convergent to in the weak-* topology if it converges pointwise: for all . In particular, a sequence of converges to provided that for all . In this case, one writes as . Weak-* convergence is sometimes called the simple convergence or the pointwise convergence. Indeed, it coincides with the pointwise convergence of linear functionals. Properties If is a separable (i.e. has a countable dense subset) locally convex space and H is a norm-bounded subset of its continuous dual space, then H endowed with the weak* (subspace) topology is a metrizable topological space. If is a separable metrizable locally convex space then the weak* topology on the continuous dual space of is separable. Properties on normed spaces By definition, the weak* topology is weaker than the weak topology on . An important fact about the weak* topology is the Banach–Alaoglu theorem: if is normed, then the closed unit ball in is weak-compact (more generally, the polar in of a neighborhood of 0 in is weak-compact). Moreover, the closed unit ball in a normed space is compact in the weak topology if and only if is reflexive. In more generality, let be locally compact valued field (e.g., the reals, the complex numbers, or any of the p-adic number systems). Let be a normed topological vector space over , compatible with the absolute value in . Then in , the topological dual space of continuous -valued linear functionals on , all norm-closed balls are compact in the weak-* topology. If is a normed space, then a subset of the continuous dual is weak* compact if and only if it is weak* closed and norm-bounded. This implies, in particular, the when is an infinite-dimensional normed space then the closed unit ball at the origin in the dual space of does not contain any weak* neighborhood of 0. If is a normed space, then is separable if and only if the weak-* topology on the closed unit ball of is metrizable, in which case the weak* topology is metrizable on norm-bounded subsets of . If a normed space has a dual space that is separable (with
Work (EP), a 2015 EP by Marcus Marr and Chet Faker Work!, a 1986 album by Mulgrew Miller Work 1989–2002, a 2002 album by Orbital Work (album), a 2010 album by Shout Out Louds Songs "Work" (ASAP Ferg song) (2012) "Work" (Iggy Azalea song) (2013) "Work" (Ciara song) (2009) "Work" (Jars of Clay song) (2006) "Work" (Jimmy Eat World song) (2004) "Work" (Rihanna song) (2016) "Work" (Kelly Rowland song) (2008) "Work" (The Saturdays song) (2008) "Work" (The 2 Bears song) (2012) "Work", a 1980 song by Bob Marley and the Wailers from Uprising "Work", a 2006 song by Mac Boney from Grand Hustle Presents: In da Streetz Volume 4 "Work", a 1998 song by Gang Starr from Moment of Truth "Work", a 2018 song by ionnalee from Everyone Afraid to Be Forgotten "Work", a 2013 single by Jme "Work", a 2018 song by Little Big Town from Wanderlust "Work", a 1990 song by Lou Reed and John Cale from Songs for Drella "Work", a 1956 song by Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins from Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins Other uses Work (film), a 1915 silent film starring Charlie Chaplin Work (painting), by Ford Madox Brown Work (professional wrestling), a term with several meanings Work (vehicle), an electric vehicle by StreetScooter Work: A Story of Experience, an 1873 novel by Louisa May Alcott Good works or works, a person's actions or deeds in contrast	Marley and the Wailers from Uprising "Work", a 2006 song by Mac Boney from Grand Hustle Presents: In da Streetz Volume 4 "Work", a 1998 song by Gang Starr from Moment of Truth "Work", a 2018 song by ionnalee from Everyone Afraid to Be Forgotten "Work", a 2013 single by Jme "Work", a 2018 song by Little Big Town from Wanderlust "Work", a 1990 song by Lou Reed and John Cale from Songs for Drella "Work", a 1956 song by Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins from Thelonious Monk and Sonny Rollins Other uses Work (film), a 1915 silent film starring Charlie Chaplin Work (painting), by Ford Madox Brown Work (professional wrestling), a term with several meanings Work (vehicle), an electric vehicle by StreetScooter
Christian who enjoys painting, reading the Bible, sketching and writing poetry. He has suffered from asthma at times. On January 29, 2014, Wright's daughter Carmen Delgina auditioned for the American televised singing competition American Idol. As of 2019, Wright and other members of the Sugarhill Gang continue to perform in '80s nostalgia shows. References External links 1957 births Living people African-American male rappers Rappers from New Jersey The Sugarhill Gang members 21st-century American rappers	the Sugarhill Gang. The group was part of the African-American hip hop movement in the 1970s and 1980s. Career Wonder Mike is best known for being a member of The Sugarhill Gang, the first hip hop act to produce a record, "Rapper's Delight" in 1979. He is known for his large stature, standing . Personal life Wright is a born-again Christian who enjoys painting, reading the Bible, sketching and writing poetry. He has suffered from asthma at
in to end the 73-day strike. Civil rights United Packinghouse Workers of America became the main union of the Rath Company, welcoming black workers, but United Auto Workers Local 838 continued to refuse black members. With the power of the union, Anna Mae Weems, Ada Treadwell, Charles Pearson and Jimmy Porter formed an anti-discrimination department at Rath by the 1950s. This department helped organize protests against local places that discriminated against blacks. Porter would go on to organize the first black radio station in Waterloo, KBBG, in 1978. Weems became the head of the anti-discrimination department and local NAACP chapter. On May 31, 1966, Eddie Wallace Sallis was found dead in the local jail. The black community felt the death was suspicious, and protests were held. On June 4, Weems led a march on city hall to encourage investigation into his death. The march led to the creation of the Waterloo Human Rights Commission, which lasted only a year due to lack of funding. On Sept. 7, 1967, a city report, "Waterloo's Unfinished Business", was released. The report covered the ongoing problems in housing, education and employment faced by Waterloo's black community. It confirmed the housing bias faced by black residents, that many of the schools were generally 80% of one race, and that 80% of black residents held service jobs. In a 2007 article, the Courier covered some changes in the 40 years since, finding that housing was now mostly divided by socioeconomic status, schools still violated the desegregation plan, and black unemployment was still double that of white residents. The Iowa Supreme Court outlawed school segregation in 1868. A 1967 commission found most schools were still segregated and recommended immediate desegregation, which Mayor Lloyd Turner opposed. In 1969, the Waterloo school board voted to allow open enrollment in all their schools to encourage integration. Many parents felt it was not enough. Despite the efforts between 1967 and 1970, already-black schools in the area increased in their segregation. Protests and riots By the 1960s, Rath was in decline and jobs there were harder to come by. A federal government program trained 1,200 local youths with the promise of summer jobs, only to hire two as bricklayers. Starting in the summer months of 1966, Waterloo was subject to riots over race relations between the white community and the black community. Many white residents expressed confusion as to why riots were occurring in Waterloo, while younger black residents felt they were being treated unfairly, as their conditions seemed worse than those of their white neighbors. In 1967, the black population of Waterloo was equivalent to 8%, and according to the Courier, had a 4% unemployment rate. Yet despite being a northern city, Waterloo was unofficially segregated at the time, as 95% of its black population lived in "East" Waterloo. While the white community felt East High was "integrated" with a 45% black student body, the black community pointed out that the elementary school in "East" Waterloo had only one white pupil. Protests were mostly organized by black youths aged 16–25. Protests became riots when the youth felt protesting wasn't effective. Protests turned into riots in July 1968 and reached critical mass by that September, with buildings on East 4th street torched and vandalized. In August 1968, East High students Terri and Kathy Pearson gave the principal a list of grievances detailing how they felt the discrimination could be lessened. The principal refused to implement any of the requested changes. Student protests and walkouts continued through September. Students were angry that no African American history course was being taught, and that interracial dating was discouraged by teachers and administrators. On Sep 13, 1968, during an East High School football game, police attempted to arrest a black youth. He resisted arrest, drawing attention of students in the stands. Black students fought and argued with the police, and police responded by using clubs and mace. The riot continued into the east side of Waterloo, with a subsequent fire that claimed a lumber mill and three homes. There was an attempt to set East High on fire as well. The riot lasted until midnight and resulted in seven officers injured and thirteen youths jailed. The National Guard was called in the following day. The riots were called off and a solution was reached thanks to civil rights leader William G Parker Present day In 2003, Governor Tom Vilsack created a task force to close the racial achievement gap in Waterloo. In 2009, a fair housing report, "Analysis of Impediments to Fair Housing Choice", compiled by Mullin & Lonergan Associates Inc., found Waterloo to be Iowa's most segregated city. "Historical patterns of racial segregation persist in Waterloo. Of the 20 cities in Iowa with populations exceeding 25,000, Waterloo ranks as the most segregated." Many activists who participated in the original protests feel that Waterloo has remained the same. In 2015, Huffpost listed Waterloo as the 10th worst city for black Americans. The site noted that the city's black residents have a 24% unemployment rate compared to 3.9% for whites, giving Waterloo one of the highest black unemployment rates among Midwest cities. Waterloo still has a higher percentage of blacks than most Iowa cities. In December 2012, Derrick Ambrose Jr. was shot by a police officer. Ambrose's family maintains he was unarmed, while the officer stated that he felt his life was in danger. A grand jury acquitted the officer. The shooting sparked outrage in the community. Flood of 2008 June 2008 saw the worst flooding the Waterloo – Cedar Falls area had ever recorded; other major floods include the Great Flood of 1993. The flood control system constructed in the 1970s–90s largely functioned as designed. In areas not protected by the system, the Cedar River poured out of its banks and into parking lots, backyards and across the farmland surrounding the city. Although much damage was done, the larger downstream city of Cedar Rapids was much harder hit. An area of the west side of the downtown and an area near the former Rath Packing facility were impacted, not directly by water coming from the river, but as a result of storm runoff draining toward the river but then being trapped on the back side of the flood levy system. These areas did not have lift stations or alternate pumping capacity sufficient to force this water back to the river side of the control system. Areas where lift stations had been constructed (Virden Creek and East 7th Street) to pump this storm runoff into the swollen river remained largely dry (the east and north sides of downtown). Several areas experienced water seeping into basements due to high water-table levels. Historical Crests According to the National Weather Service, the ten highest crests of the Cedar River recorded at East 7th Street in downtown Waterloo: Crests reported in the 1960s and earlier were before completion of major flood control projects and therefore may not be directly comparable. In September 2016, flood watches and warnings were put into effect for Waterloo and its surrounding cities. The crest was expected to just barely hit the height of the 2008 flood. Geography According to the United States Census Bureau, the city has a total area of , of which is land and is water. The average elevation of Waterloo is 846 feet above sea level. The population density is 1101 people per square mile, considered low for an urban area. Climate Waterloo has a humid continental climate zone (Köppen classification Dfa), typical of the state of Iowa, and is part of USDA Plant Hardiness zone 5a. The normal monthly mean temperature ranges from in January to in July. On average, there are 22 nights annually with a low at or below , 58 days annually with a high at or below freezing, and 16 days with a high at or above . As the mean first and last occurrence of freezing temperatures is October 1 and April 29, respectively, this allows for a growing season of 154 days. Temperature records range from on March 1, 1962 and January 16, 2009 up to on July 13 and 14, 1936, during the Dust Bowl. The record cold daily maximum is on February 2, 1996, while conversely the record warm daily minimum is on July 31, 1917 and August 16, 1988. Normal annual precipitation equivalent is spread over an average 112 days, with heavier rainfall in spring and summer, but observed annual rainfall has ranged from in 1910 and 1993, respectively. The wettest month on record is July 1999 with ; on the 2nd of that month, of rain fell, making for the heaviest rainfall in a single calendar day. The driest months are October 1952 and November 1954 with trace amounts each. Winter snowfall is moderate, and averages per season, spread over an average 27 days, and snow cover of or more is seen on 67 days, mostly from December to March. Winter snowfall has ranged from in 1967–68 to in 1904–05. The most snow in a calendar day and month is and on January 3, 1971 and in December 2000, respectively. Demographics 2010 census As of the census of 2010, there were 68,406 people, 28,607 households, 17,233 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 30,723 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 77.3% White, 15.5% African American, 0.3% Native American, 1.1% Asian, 0.3% Pacific Islander, 2.6% from other races, and 3.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 5.6% of the population. There were 28,607 households, of which 29.9% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 40.3% were married couples living together, 14.9% had a female householder with no husband present, 5.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 39.8% were non-families. 31.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 11.2% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.35 and the average family size was 2.95. The median age in the city was 35.9 years. 23.7% of residents were under the age of 18; 10.4% were between the ages of 18 and 24; 26.4% were from 25 to 44; 25.5% were from 45 to 64; and 14% were 65 years of age or older. The gender makeup of the city was 48.4% male and 51.6% female. 2000 census As of the 2000 census, there were 68,747 people, 28,169 households, and 17,746 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 29,499 housing units at an average density of . The racial makeup of the city was 79.2% White, 14.5% African American, 1.1% Asian, 1.9% from other races, and 2.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino people of any race were 3.2% of the population. There were 28,169 households, out of which 29.0% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 46.0% were married couples living together, 13.3% had a female householder with no husband present, and 37.0% were non-families. 30.0% of all households were made up of individuals, and 12.1% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.39 and the average family size was 2.97. Age spread: 24.7% under the age of 18, 10.6% from 18 to 24, 27.5% from 25 to 44, 22.0% from 45 to 64, and 15.3% who were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 36 years. For every 100 females, there were 92.2 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.0 males. The median income for a household in the city was $34,092, and the median income for a family was $42,731. Males had	were 92,342 patron visits resulting in a circulation of 199,249 items. The total collection consisted of 607,583 items. The library's reference services, supported by 4.75 FTE librarians, answered 28,970 questions. Its 99 public access computers provided over 30,047 sessions for patrons and the library's wireless network hosted 30,692 sessions. (Waterloo Public Library Annual Report). . The library is governed by a board of trustees, nominated by the city mayor and confirmed by the city council: John Berry, Larry Bjortomt, Ivy Hagedorn, Kathleen Wernimont and Cindy Wells. The library is directed by Nick Rossman, MLS.<> The Waterloo Public Library is in a renovated Great Depression era building that served as a post office and federal building (Waterloo Public Library history ). The building was renovated in the late 1970s for use as a library. In 2011, the Waterloo Public Library celebrated 30 years at its Commercial Street location. Two New Deal-funded murals by artist Edgar Britton are on display at the library. Exposition is an image of the National Cattle Congress, and Holiday is of a picnic. Pop culture The 2015 film Carol uses Waterloo in a major plot point. The independent film Bros uses Waterloo as its main setting. Government Waterloo is administered by the mayor and council system of government. One council member is elected from each of Waterloo's five wards, and two are elected at-large. The current mayor is Quentin Hart. He is the City's first Black mayor. Education Hawkeye Community College is located in Waterloo. Neighboring Cedar Falls is home to the University of Northern Iowa. Almost all of the city is within the Waterloo Community School District. The three public high schools in the city are Waterloo West High School, Waterloo East High School, and Expo High School. Additionally a portion of the city is within the Cedar Falls Community School District. Waterloo's private high schools are Waterloo Christian School and Columbus Catholic High School, which is supported by the Catholic parishes of Waterloo and Cedar Falls. Waterloo Christian is a non-denominational college preparatory school located on the grounds of Walnut Ridge Baptist Church. The school's colors are green and yellow, and its mascot is the "Regent." Columbus' mascot is the "Sailor", a connection to the school's namesake Christopher Columbus, and its colors are green and white. There is also a wide array of elementary and junior high schools in the area, with open enrollment available. Media Radio FM stations AM stations Television 2 KGAN 2 (CBS) – located in Cedar Rapids 7 KWWL 7 (NBC, The CW on DT2, Me-TV on DT3) – located in Waterloo 9 KCRG 9 (ABC) – located in Cedar Rapids 12 KIIN 12 (PBS/IPTV) – located in Iowa City 17 K17ET 17 / K31PO-D 44 (TBN) 20 KWKB 20 (This TV) – located in Iowa City 28 KFXA 28 (Fox) – located in Cedar Rapids 32 KRIN 32 (PBS/IPTV) 40 KFXB-TV 40 (CTN) – located in Dubuque 48 KPXR-TV 48 (Ion) – located in Cedar Rapids Print The Courier, daily newspaper The Cedar Valley What Not, weekly advertiser Infrastructure Transportation Waterloo is located at the north end of Interstate 380. U.S. Highways 20, 63, and 218 and Iowa Highway 21, also run through the metropolitan area. The Avenue of the Saints runs through Waterloo. American Airlines provides non-stop air service to and from Chicago from the Waterloo Regional Airport as of April 3, 2012. As of October 27, 2014, American Airlines runs two flights to/from Chicago O'Hare (ORD). Departures to Chicago are early morning and mid/late afternoon. Arrivals are early/mid-afternoon and evening. Waterloo is served by a metropolitan bus system (MET), which serves most areas of Cedar Falls and Waterloo. Most routes meet at the central bus station in downtown Waterloo. The system operates Monday through Saturday. During the week the earliest bus is at 5:45 am from downtown Waterloo, and the last bus arrives downtown at 6:40 pm. Service is limited on Saturdays. Waterloo is served by one daily intercity bus arrival and departure to Chicago and Des Moines, provided by Burlington Trailways. New service to and from Mason City and Minneapolis/St. Paul provided by Jefferson Lines started in the fall of 2009. There are currently five taxi operators in Waterloo and Cedar Falls: First Call, Yellow, City Cab, Cedar Valley Cab, and Dolly's Taxi. The Chicago Central railroad runs through Waterloo. Utilities The MidAmerican Energy Company supplies Waterloo with electricity and natural gas. The Waterloo Water Works supplies potable water with a capacity of 50,400,000 GPD (gallons per day) with an average use of 13,400,000 GPD and a peak use of 28,800,000 GPD. News reports indicate that 18.5% of the system's output in 2013, or 851 million gallons, was unaccounted for. Sanitation service (sewage) is operated by the city of Waterloo, with a capacity of 36,500,000 GPD and an average use of 14,000,000 GPD. Healthcare Waterloo is home to two hospitals, Mercy One Waterloo Medical Center, which has 366 beds, and Unity Point Health Allen Memorial Hospital, with 234 beds. Neighboring Cedar Falls is home to Sartori Memorial Hospital, with 83 beds. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls metropolitan area has 295 physicians, 69 dentists, 52 chiropractors, 24 vision specialists and 21 nursing/retirement homes. Notable people Julie Adams, actress in Creature from the Black Lagoon, many other movies and TV series Michele Bachmann (born 1956), former Minnesota Congresswoman David Barrett, cornerback for New York Jets and Arizona Cardinals William Birenbaum (1923–2010), college administrator who served as president of Antioch College Horace Boies (1827–1923), Governor of Iowa, 1890–1894 Bob Bowlsby, Commissioner, Big 12 Athletic Conference 2012 present; athletic director, Stanford University 2006–2012; University of Iowa, 1991–2005 Jack Bruner, MLB player for Chicago White Sox, and St. Louis Browns Don Denkinger, Major League Baseball umpire, made famous for "the call" in Game 6 of the 1985 World Series Adam DeVine, star of TV program Workaholics Loren Doxey, medical doctor accused of murder in 1909 but never tried Pearlretta DuPuy (1871–1939), zither player and club leader Rich Folkers, MLB player for New York Mets, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres, and Milwaukee Brewers Travis Fulton, mixed martial arts fighter, most career wins in the history of the sport Dan Gable, Olympic wrestling champion, multiple NCAA champion from Iowa State University, and distinguished collegiate coach John Wayne Gacy (1942–1994), serial killer Kim Guadagno, First Lieutenant Governor of New Jersey Mike Haffner, professional football player Nikole Hannah-Jones, investigative journalist formerly with ProPublica, now staff reporter at The New York Times and 2020 Pulitzer Prize winner for Commentary Writing Lou Henry Hoover (1874–1944), wife of President Herbert Hoover and First Lady of the United States, 1929–1933 MarTay Jenkins (born 1975), NFL wide receiver and kick returner Anesa Kajtazovic, Iowa State Representative, youngest woman elected to Iowa Legislature and first Bosnian American member of the legislature Arthur R. Kelly (1878–1959), architect Chris Klieman (born 1967), football head coach, Kansas State; born in Waterloo Bonnie Koloc (born 1946), singer and folk musician John Hooker Leavitt, banker, state senator, son of Roger Hooker Leavitt Jason Lewis, born 1955, talk radio host and U.S. Congressman for Minnesota's 2nd congressional district Jack Little, songwriter, born in Great Britain, raised in Waterloo J.J. Moses (born 1979), NFL wide receiver and current Director of Player Engagement for Houston Texans Charles W. Mullan (1845–1919), Iowa Attorney General Larry Nemmers, NFL referee Thunderbolt Patterson, professional wrestler Joe Pelton, poker player Don Perkins, running back for Dallas Cowboys Cal Petersen, ice hockey goaltender Alfred C. Richmond, retired U.S. Coast Guard commandant Mike Ritland, US Navy SEAL Reggie Roby (1961–2005), punter for University of Iowa Hawkeyes and five NFL teams, three-time Pro-Bowler Zud Schammel (born 1910), NFL guard for the Green Bay Packers Sean Schemmel, voice actor Duane Slick, (born 1961) fine art painter and professor Tom Smith, football player Paul Sohl, U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Tracie Spencer (born 1976), winner of Star Search in 1987 as a singer, recorded music across many genres, acted and modeled Darren Sproles, running back for NFL's San Diego Chargers, New Orleans Saints, and Philadelphia Eagles Suzanne Stephens (born 1946), clarinetist The Sullivan Brothers, five sons who died together on the USS Juneau during World War II Corey Taylor, vocalist from Slipknot and Stone Sour Michael Townley, assassin Mike van Arsdale, mixed martial artist, signed with the UFC Mona Van Duyn (1921–2004), winner of 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry and 1992–1993 U.S. Poet Laureate; born in Waterloo Emily West (born 1981), country music singer/songwriter, signed with Capitol Records Nancy Youngblut, actress Pat McLaughlin (born 1950), Grammy-nominated songwriter and musician, collaborated with John Prine, Dan Auerbach and many others
— Frankfurter was pardoned by a Swiss court. Aftermath Gustloff was given a state funeral in his birthplace of Schwerin in Mecklenburg, with Adolf Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, Hermann Göring, Heinrich Himmler, Martin Bormann and Joachim von Ribbentrop in attendance. Thousands of Hitler Youth members lined the route. His coffin, transported on a special train from Davos to Schwerin, made stops in Stuttgart, Würzburg, Erfurt, Halle, Magdeburg and Wittenberg. Gustloff's widow, mother and brother attended the funeral and received personal condolences from Hitler. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was the first at Gustloff's funeral to recite a few lines in his honour. Gustloff was proclaimed a Blutzeuge of the Nazi cause and his murder became part of the propaganda that served as pretext for the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. His wife Hedwig, who had been Hitler's secretary, received from Hitler personally a monthly "honorary pay" of 400 Reichsmark, the equivalent of some $13,000 today. Unlike the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris in 1938, Gustloff's death was not immediately politicized to incite Kristallnacht. Hitler did not want to risk any domestic bouts of antisemitism to cause Germany to lose the recently awarded right to host the 1936 Summer Olympics, since his antisemitic policies had already led to calls to relocate the games. Namesakes The German cruise ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff was named for Gustloff by the Nazi regime. The ship was sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 in January 1945 in the Baltic Sea while carrying civilian refugees and military personnel from the advancing Red Army. About 9,400 lives were lost, the greatest death toll from the sinking of a single vessel in human history. The disaster remains relatively unknown. In 1933 the Nazi Party created the Wilhelm-Gustloff-Stiftung ("The Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation"), a national corporation funded by properties and wealth confiscated from Jews. It ran the Gustloff Werke ("Gustloff Factories"), a group of businesses that had been confiscated from their Jewish owners or partners. The small arms factory Berlin Suhler Waffen und Fahrzeugwerke was renamed Wilhelm Gustloff Werke in Gustloff's honour in 1939. See also Assassination in Davos, a 1975	and Wittenberg. Gustloff's widow, mother and brother attended the funeral and received personal condolences from Hitler. Ernst Wilhelm Bohle was the first at Gustloff's funeral to recite a few lines in his honour. Gustloff was proclaimed a Blutzeuge of the Nazi cause and his murder became part of the propaganda that served as pretext for the 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom. His wife Hedwig, who had been Hitler's secretary, received from Hitler personally a monthly "honorary pay" of 400 Reichsmark, the equivalent of some $13,000 today. Unlike the assassination of the German diplomat Ernst vom Rath by Herschel Grynszpan in Paris in 1938, Gustloff's death was not immediately politicized to incite Kristallnacht. Hitler did not want to risk any domestic bouts of antisemitism to cause Germany to lose the recently awarded right to host the 1936 Summer Olympics, since his antisemitic policies had already led to calls to relocate the games. Namesakes The German cruise ship MV Wilhelm Gustloff was named for Gustloff by the Nazi regime. The ship was sunk by the Soviet submarine S-13 in January 1945 in the Baltic Sea while carrying civilian refugees and military personnel from the advancing Red Army. About 9,400 lives were lost, the greatest death toll from the sinking of a single vessel in human history. The disaster remains relatively unknown. In 1933 the Nazi Party created the Wilhelm-Gustloff-Stiftung ("The Wilhelm Gustloff Foundation"), a national corporation funded by properties and wealth confiscated from Jews. It ran the Gustloff Werke ("Gustloff Factories"), a group of businesses that had been confiscated from their Jewish owners or partners. The small arms factory Berlin Suhler Waffen und Fahrzeugwerke was renamed Wilhelm Gustloff Werke in Gustloff's honour in 1939. See also Assassination in Davos, a 1975 Swiss feature film concerning the assassination. Crabwalk – the assassination of Gustloff is an element of the plot of this 2002 novel, even though its main subject is the sinking of the passenger ship named in his memory. Herbert Norkus Horst Wessel List of Nazis who died in the Beer Hall Putsch References Further reading Peter Bollier, 4. Februar 1936: das Attentat auf Wilhelm Gustloff; in: Roland Aergerter (Hrsg.), Politische Attentate des 20. Jahrhunderts,
the Interior. The Redskins' previous venue, Griffith Stadium, was owned by the Griffith family, owners of the Washington Senators, who relocated and became the Minnesota Twins in 1961. In 1962, Washington became the final professional American football franchise to integrate. First, the Redskins selected running back Ernie Davis of Syracuse as the first overall pick of in the 1962 NFL Draft (held December 4, 1961); Davis was the first black player to win the Heisman Trophy and the first to be the top selection in an NFL draft. Washington also took fullback Ron Hatcher of Michigan State in the eighth round (99th overall), who became the first black player to sign a contract with the team. In mid-December 1961, Marshall announced that on draft day, he had traded the rights to Davis to the Cleveland Browns, who wanted Davis to join the league's leading rusher, Jim Brown, in their backfield. Davis was traded for veteran running back Bobby Mitchell (who became a wide receiver in Washington) and 1962 first-round draft choice Leroy Jackson of Western Illinois. The move was made under unfortunate circumstances – as it turned out that Davis had leukemia, and died without ever playing a down in professional football. The Redskins ended the 1962 season with their best record in five years: Mitchell led the league with 11 touchdowns, and caught 72 passes and was selected to the Pro Bowl. In time, Mitchell would be joined by other black players like receiver Charley Taylor, running back Larry Brown, defensive back Brig Owens, and guard John Nisby from the Pittsburgh Steelers. George Allen's revival (1971–1980) After the death of Lombardi and Austin's unsuccessful 1970 season, Williams signed former Los Angeles Rams head coach George Allen as head coach on January 6, 1971. Partial to seasoned veterans instead of highly touted young players, Allen's teams became known as the Over-the-Hill Gang. That season, the Redskins made the playoffs for the first time since 1945 with a 9–4–1 mark with Redskins first-year head coach George Allen winning the 1971 NFL Coach of the Year Award, the second of his career, winning his first Coach of the Year Award in 1967 as the head coach of the Rams. However, they lost in the Divisional Playoffs to the San Francisco 49ers, 24–20. The following season, the Redskins hosted their first post-season game in Washington since 1942, where they beat the Green Bay Packers 16–3 in the NFC Divisional Playoffs. The Redskins reached the NFC Championship Game, and in a much-anticipated match-up against the archrival Dallas Cowboys, the Redskins would not disappoint. The Redskins placekicker Curt Knight kicked an 18-yard field goal in the second quarter to get the scoring underway, then Redskins quarterback Billy Kilmer connected with Redskins wide receiver Charley Taylor on a 15-yard touchdown pass and Washington had a 10–3 lead at halftime. In the fourth quarter, Kilmer again went to Taylor, this time for a 45-yard touchdown. Knight added three more field goals that period and The Over-The-Hill-Gang defense allowed only a second-quarter field goal. The final score was Washington 26, Dallas 3. After defeating the Dallas Cowboys to win the NFC Championship, the Redskins went on to lose to the undefeated Miami Dolphins 14–7 in Super Bowl VII. Redskins running back Larry Brown would be named the 1972 NFL's Most Valuable Player. The Redskins again made the playoffs in 1973, 1974, and 1976, only to lose all three times in the first round. After his Redskins failed to make the playoffs in 1977 despite posting a 9–5 record, Allen was fired and was replaced by new head coach Jack Pardee, a star linebacker under Allen in Los Angeles and Washington. In his first year, his team started 6–0 but then lost 8 of the last 10 games. Then in the offseason, Redskins majority owner Jack Kent Cooke moved from Los Angeles to Virginia and took over the team's day-by-day operations from Edward Bennett Williams. The Redskins chose well during the 1979 NFL Draft, where they drafted future stars Don Warren and Monte Coleman. They opened the 1979 season 6–2 and were 10–5 heading into the season finale at Texas Stadium, against whom a win would assure a playoff spot and a possible NFC East title. Washington led 34–28 with time running out, but quarterback Roger Staubach then led the Cowboys in a fourth-quarter comeback with two touchdown passes. The 35–34 loss knocked the 10–6 Redskins out of playoff contention. Pardee's quick success with the team did not go unnoticed, however, and he was named Associated Press Coach of the Year and UPI NFC Coach of the Year. Pardee's tenure did not last long though, for he was fired after posting a 6–10 record in 1980. He did, however, draft Art Monk in the first round. Joe Gibbs era (1981–1992) On January 13, 1981, owner Jack Kent Cooke signed the offensive coordinator of the San Diego Chargers, Joe Gibbs, as their head coach. Also during the off-season, the Redskins acquired Mark May, Russ Grimm, and Dexter Manley in the 1981 NFL Draft, all of whom became significant contributors to the team for the next few years. After starting the 1981 season 0–5, the Redskins won eight out of their next 11 games and finished the season 8–8. Starting on September 21, 1982, the NFL faced a 57-day long players' strike, which reduced the 1982 season from a 16-game schedule to a nine-game schedule. Because of the shortened season, the NFL adopted a special 16-team playoff tournament, in which eight teams from each conference were seeded 1–8 based on their regular season records. After the strike was settled, the Redskins dominated, winning six out of the seven remaining games to make the playoffs for the first time since 1976. In January 1983, during the second round of the playoffs against the Minnesota Vikings, John Riggins rushed for a Redskins playoff record 185 yards, leading Washington to a 21–7 win. The game is perhaps best known for a moment when the stadium physically shook as a crowd chanted "We Want Dallas!", which later became a rallying cry of sorts for Redskin fans before games against the Cowboys. In the NFC Championship Game against them at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, Redskins defensive end Dexter Manley knocked Cowboys' quarterback Danny White out for the rest of the game and sent him into the locker room shortly before halftime. Later in the game, Redskins defensive tackle Darryl Grant's interception, which he returned for a 10-yard touchdown, off one of Cowboys' backup quarterback Gary Hogeboom's passes which was tipped by Dexter Manley to score the decisive points. John Riggins rushed for 140 yards and two touchdowns on 36 carries and the Redskins went on to defeat the Cowboys' by a score of 31–17. The Redskins' first Super Bowl win, and their first NFL Championship in 40 years, was in Super Bowl XVII, where the Redskins defeated the Miami Dolphins 27–17. Riggins provided the game's signature play when, on 4th and inches, with the Redskins down 17–13, the coaches called "70 Chip", a play designed for short yardage. Riggins instead gained by running through would-be tackler Don McNeal and getting the go-ahead touchdown. The Redskins ended up winning by a 27–17 score with John Riggins winning the Super Bowl MVP. After the 1982 season Redskins placekicker Mark Moseley was the first and only placekicker in NFL history to be named the NFL's Most Valuable Player; Moseley made 20 of 21 field goals attempted in 1982. Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs also won his first NFL Coach of the Year Award in 1982 which was the first of his back-to-back NFL Coach of the Year Awards, his second coming in the 1983 NFL season. The 1983 season marked the rookie debut of cornerback Darrell Green, selected in the 1983 NFL Draft along with Charles Mann, Green would go on to play his entire 20-year NFL career for the Redskins. On October 1, 1983, the Redskins lost to the Green Bay Packers 48–47 in the highest-scoring Monday night football game in history, in which both teams combine for more than of total offense. Then during the regular-season finale on December 17, 1983, Moseley set an NFL scoring record with 161 points while Riggins' total of 144 points was second. This marked the first time since 1951 that the top two scorers in a season played on the same team. They dominated the NFL with a 14-win season which included scoring a then NFL record 541 points, many of which came from Riggins, who scored 24 touchdowns. Redskins quarterback Joe Theismann would also be named the 1983 NFL's Most Valuable Player finishing the season with a career-high in both yards passing 3,714 yds., and touchdown passes thrown, 29 Td's while throwing only 11 interceptions. In the postseason, the Redskins beat the Los Angeles Rams 51–7. The next week, Washington beat the San Francisco 49ers 24–21 in the NFC Championship Game. It was their final win of the season because two weeks later, the Raiders beat the Redskins 38–9 in Super Bowl XVIII. The Redskins finished the 1984 season with an 11–5 record, and won the NFC East for the third consecutive season. However, they lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Chicago Bears, 23–19. On November 18, 1985, while playing against the Giants, Theismann broke his leg during a sack by Lawrence Taylor. The compound fracture forced him to retire after a 12-year career, during which he became the Redskins' all-time leader in pass attempts and completions. The Redskins finished 3rd in the NFC East behind the Cowboys and missed the wild card to the Giants by virtue of tiebreakers. The 1986 offseason's major highlight occurred during the 1986 NFL Draft, when the Redskins picked up future Super Bowl MVP Mark Rypien in the sixth round, also the Redskins defensive end Dexter Manley set a franchise single-season record when he recorded 18.5 sacks while earning 1st Team All-Pro honors and being selected to the Pro bowl. In 1986 season, the road to the playoffs was even harder, with the Redskins making the postseason as a wild-card team despite having a regular-season record of 12–4. They won the Wild Card playoff against the Rams, and then again in the Divisional playoffs against the Bears. This game was Gibbs's 70th career, which made him the winningest head coach in Redskins history. The season ended next week, however, when the Redskins lost to the eventual Super Bowl XXI Champion Giants 17–0 in the NFC Championship game. The 1987 season began with a 24-day players' strike, reducing the 16-game season to 15. The games for weeks 4–6 were won with all replacement players. The Redskins have the distinction of being the only team with no players crossing the picket line. Those three victories are often credited with getting the team into the playoffs and the basis for the 2000 movie The Replacements. The Redskins won their second championship in Super Bowl XXII on January 31, 1988, in San Diego, California. The Redskins routed the Denver Broncos 42–10 after starting the game in a 10–0 deficit, the largest come-from-behind victory in Super Bowl history, which was tied by the New Orleans Saints in Super Bowl XLIV and the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XLIX. This game is more famous for the stellar performance by quarterback Doug Williams who passed for four touchdowns in the second quarter en route to becoming the first black quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory while also winning the games Super Bowl MVP award. Rookie running back Timmy Smith had a great performance as well, running for a Super Bowl record . 1988 started off with a boom and the club had a 5–3 record at mid-season, but a 2nd half swoon saw them miss the playoffs with a 7–9 record. The 1989 Redskins finished with a 10–6 record but missed the playoffs. That season is best remembered for the Redskins prolific wide receiver trio nicknamed "The Posse" consisting of wide receivers Art Monk, Gary Clark, and Ricky Sanders who became the first trio of wide receivers in NFL history to post 1,000-plus yards in the same season. Also, in a week-14 victory against the San Diego Chargers, Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs achieved his 100th career victory. 100. The Redskins returned to the playoffs in 1990 as a Wild Card team, but lost in the Divisional round to the 49ers. The 1991 season started with a franchise-record 11 straight victories. Also during the season, "The Hogs", under the coaching of Redskins offensive line coach Joe Bugel, allowed a league-low and franchise-record nine sacks – the third-lowest total in NFL history. The 1991 Redskins offense also dominated under the brilliant coaching of offensive-minded head football coach Joe Gibbs, scoring 485 points which was the most by any team in the 1991 NFL season. The 1991 Redskins defense was also dominant under the coaching of defensive coordinator and guru Richie Petitbon, giving up only 224 total points which was second-best of any team in the NFL in 1991, while also not allowing a single point to opponents in 3 of the 16 games played that season. After posting a 14–2 record, the Redskins made and dominated the playoffs, beating the Falcons and Lions by a combined score of 64–17. On January 26, 1992, the Redskins won Super Bowl XXVI by defeating the Buffalo Bills 37–24 with Mark Rypien winning the games Super Bowl MVP award. After the Super Bowl, the Redskins set another franchise record by sending eight players to the Pro Bowl. The 1991 Washington Redskins are widely considered one of the best teams in NFL history. The Redskins success in 1992 culminated in a trip to the playoffs as a wild card team, but they lost in the Divisional playoffs to the 49ers, 20–13. The most impressive feat during the season occurred on October 12, 1992, when Art Monk became the NFL's all-time leading pass receiver against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football by catching his 820th career reception. The era ended on March 5, 1993, when Joe Gibbs retired after 12 years of coaching with the Redskins. In what proved to be a temporary retirement, Gibbs pursued an interest in NASCAR by founding Joe Gibbs Racing. End of RFK and Cooke ownership (1993–1998) After the end of Gibbs' first tenure, the Redskins hired former Redskins player Richie Petitbon for the 1993 season. However, his first and only year as head coach, the Redskins finished with a record of 4–12. Petitbon was fired at the end of the season and on February 2, 1994, Norv Turner was hired as head coach after being the offensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys. 1994 was even worse as they finished 3–13, their worst season in over 30 years. Their sole bright spot that year came on October 9, 1994, linebacker Monte Coleman played in his 206th career game with the Redskins, which broke Art Monk's team record for games played (Coleman retired at season's end with 216 games played). They improved to 6–10 in 1995 where they were able to get a season sweep on the eventual Super Bowl XXX Champions the Dallas Cowboys. On March 13, 1996, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, Maryland Governor Parris Glendening, and Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry signed a contract that paved the way for the immediate start of construction for the new home of the Redskins (now FedExField). The 1996 season saw Washington post their first winning record in 4 years by finishing 9–7. On December 22, 1996, the Redskins played their final game at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, a victory over the Dallas Cowboys 37–10, and finished their tenure at the stadium with a 173–102–3 record, including 11–1 in the playoffs. On April 6, 1997, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke died of congestive heart failure at the age of 84. In his will, Cooke left the Redskins to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, with instructions that the foundation sell the team. His estate, headed by son John Kent Cooke, took over ownership of the Redskins and at his memorial service, John Kent Cooke announced that the new stadium in Landover, Maryland would be named Jack Kent Cooke Stadium. On September 14, 1997, the Redskins played in their new stadium for the first time and beat the Arizona Cardinals, 19–13 in overtime. On November 23, 1997, they played the New York Giants and the result was a 7–7 tie, the Redskins first tie game since the 1971 season. They would finish 1997 8–7–1 and would miss the playoffs for the fifth season in a row. One bright spot during the season, however, occurred on December 13, 1997, when Darrell Green played in his 217th career game as a Redskin, breaking Monte Coleman's record for games played. The 1998 season started with a seven-game losing streak, and the Redskins finished with a 6–10 record. Daniel Snyder ownership and lack of success (1999–2019) After two seasons, John Kent Cooke was unable to raise sufficient funds to permanently purchase the Redskins, and on May 25, 1999, Daniel Snyder gained unanimous approval (31–0) from league owners and bought the franchise for $800 million, a deal that was the most expensive team-purchasing deal in sporting history. One of his first acts as team owner occurred on November 21, 1999, when he sold the naming-rights to Jack Kent Cooke Stadium to the highest bidder, FedEx, who renamed the stadium FedExField. In Snyder's first season as owner, the Redskins went 10–6, including a four-game winning streak early in the season, and made it to the playoffs for the first time in Norv Turner's career (and the first time for the Redskins since 1992) in the final game of the season (on January 2, 2000, against the Dolphins). Running back Stephen Davis rushed for a then club-record 1,405 yards and quarterback Brad Johnson completed a then club-record 316 passes and threw for more than 4,000 yards in regular play that season. They then beat the Detroit Lions in the first round of the playoffs, but lost to the Buccaneers, 14–13. The 2000 season started with the selection of future Pro Bowler Chris Samuels and the tumultuous LaVar Arrington in the 2000 NFL Draft and included five consecutive wins in the first half of the season. However, they ended up going 7–6 with Turner being fired as head coach prior to the end of the season. Terry Robiskie was named interim coach to finish out the season, which ended with an 8–8 record. During the final game of the season, Larry Centers became the NFL's all-time leader in receptions by a running back with 685. Marty Schottenheimer era (2001) On January 3, 2001, the Redskins hired former Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Marty Schottenheimer as head coach. The 2001 season began with a loss to the San Diego Chargers, 30–3, two days before the September 11, 2001, attacks. On September 13, 2001, the Redskins announced the establishment of the Redskins Relief Fund to help families of the victims of the attack at the Pentagon. During the course of the season, the Redskins raised more than $700,000. They finished the season with an 8–8 record and Schottenheimer was fired after the final game. Snyder later said in a 2013 interview that he was fired due to his over-controlling nature. Steve Spurrier era (2002–2003) On January 14, 2002, Snyder hired University of Florida coach Steve Spurrier, the Redskins' fifth new head coach in 10 years. They finished with a 7–9 record, their first losing season in four years. A bittersweet moment during the season occurred on December 29, when Darrell Green concluded his 20th and final season as the Redskins defeated the Cowboys 20–14 at FedExField. During his 20 seasons, he set an NFL record for consecutive seasons with at least one interception (19) and a Redskins team record for regular-season games played (295) and started (258). The Redskins finished the 2003 season with a 5–11 record, their worst since 1994. The one bright note of the season was on December 7, when defensive end Bruce Smith sacked Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer in the fourth quarter. With his 199th career sack, Smith broke Reggie White's all-time NFL mark. After two mediocre years, Spurrier resigned after the 2003 season with three years left on his contract. Return of Joe Gibbs (2004–2007) For the 2004 season, Snyder successfully lured former coach Joe Gibbs away from NASCAR to return as head coach and team president. His employment came with a promise of decreased intervention in football operations from Snyder. Snyder also expanded FedExField to a league-high capacity of 91,665 seats. Gibbs' return to the franchise did not pay instant dividends as the Redskins finished the 2004 season with a record of 6–10. Despite an impressive defense, the	game is more famous for the stellar performance by quarterback Doug Williams who passed for four touchdowns in the second quarter en route to becoming the first black quarterback to lead his team to a Super Bowl victory while also winning the games Super Bowl MVP award. Rookie running back Timmy Smith had a great performance as well, running for a Super Bowl record . 1988 started off with a boom and the club had a 5–3 record at mid-season, but a 2nd half swoon saw them miss the playoffs with a 7–9 record. The 1989 Redskins finished with a 10–6 record but missed the playoffs. That season is best remembered for the Redskins prolific wide receiver trio nicknamed "The Posse" consisting of wide receivers Art Monk, Gary Clark, and Ricky Sanders who became the first trio of wide receivers in NFL history to post 1,000-plus yards in the same season. Also, in a week-14 victory against the San Diego Chargers, Redskins head coach Joe Gibbs achieved his 100th career victory. 100. The Redskins returned to the playoffs in 1990 as a Wild Card team, but lost in the Divisional round to the 49ers. The 1991 season started with a franchise-record 11 straight victories. Also during the season, "The Hogs", under the coaching of Redskins offensive line coach Joe Bugel, allowed a league-low and franchise-record nine sacks – the third-lowest total in NFL history. The 1991 Redskins offense also dominated under the brilliant coaching of offensive-minded head football coach Joe Gibbs, scoring 485 points which was the most by any team in the 1991 NFL season. The 1991 Redskins defense was also dominant under the coaching of defensive coordinator and guru Richie Petitbon, giving up only 224 total points which was second-best of any team in the NFL in 1991, while also not allowing a single point to opponents in 3 of the 16 games played that season. After posting a 14–2 record, the Redskins made and dominated the playoffs, beating the Falcons and Lions by a combined score of 64–17. On January 26, 1992, the Redskins won Super Bowl XXVI by defeating the Buffalo Bills 37–24 with Mark Rypien winning the games Super Bowl MVP award. After the Super Bowl, the Redskins set another franchise record by sending eight players to the Pro Bowl. The 1991 Washington Redskins are widely considered one of the best teams in NFL history. The Redskins success in 1992 culminated in a trip to the playoffs as a wild card team, but they lost in the Divisional playoffs to the 49ers, 20–13. The most impressive feat during the season occurred on October 12, 1992, when Art Monk became the NFL's all-time leading pass receiver against the Denver Broncos on Monday Night Football by catching his 820th career reception. The era ended on March 5, 1993, when Joe Gibbs retired after 12 years of coaching with the Redskins. In what proved to be a temporary retirement, Gibbs pursued an interest in NASCAR by founding Joe Gibbs Racing. End of RFK and Cooke ownership (1993–1998) After the end of Gibbs' first tenure, the Redskins hired former Redskins player Richie Petitbon for the 1993 season. However, his first and only year as head coach, the Redskins finished with a record of 4–12. Petitbon was fired at the end of the season and on February 2, 1994, Norv Turner was hired as head coach after being the offensive coordinator of the Dallas Cowboys. 1994 was even worse as they finished 3–13, their worst season in over 30 years. Their sole bright spot that year came on October 9, 1994, linebacker Monte Coleman played in his 206th career game with the Redskins, which broke Art Monk's team record for games played (Coleman retired at season's end with 216 games played). They improved to 6–10 in 1995 where they were able to get a season sweep on the eventual Super Bowl XXX Champions the Dallas Cowboys. On March 13, 1996, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke, Maryland Governor Parris Glendening, and Prince George's County Executive Wayne K. Curry signed a contract that paved the way for the immediate start of construction for the new home of the Redskins (now FedExField). The 1996 season saw Washington post their first winning record in 4 years by finishing 9–7. On December 22, 1996, the Redskins played their final game at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, a victory over the Dallas Cowboys 37–10, and finished their tenure at the stadium with a 173–102–3 record, including 11–1 in the playoffs. On April 6, 1997, Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke died of congestive heart failure at the age of 84. In his will, Cooke left the Redskins to the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation, with instructions that the foundation sell the team. His estate, headed by son John Kent Cooke, took over ownership of the Redskins and at his memorial service, John Kent Cooke announced that the new stadium in Landover, Maryland would be named Jack Kent Cooke Stadium. On September 14, 1997, the Redskins played in their new stadium for the first time and beat the Arizona Cardinals, 19–13 in overtime. On November 23, 1997, they played the New York Giants and the result was a 7–7 tie, the Redskins first tie game since the 1971 season. They would finish 1997 8–7–1 and would miss the playoffs for the fifth season in a row. One bright spot during the season, however, occurred on December 13, 1997, when Darrell Green played in his 217th career game as a Redskin, breaking Monte Coleman's record for games played. The 1998 season started with a seven-game losing streak, and the Redskins finished with a 6–10 record. Daniel Snyder ownership and lack of success (1999–2019) After two seasons, John Kent Cooke was unable to raise sufficient funds to permanently purchase the Redskins, and on May 25, 1999, Daniel Snyder gained unanimous approval (31–0) from league owners and bought the franchise for $800 million, a deal that was the most expensive team-purchasing deal in sporting history. One of his first acts as team owner occurred on November 21, 1999, when he sold the naming-rights to Jack Kent Cooke Stadium to the highest bidder, FedEx, who renamed the stadium FedExField. In Snyder's first season as owner, the Redskins went 10–6, including a four-game winning streak early in the season, and made it to the playoffs for the first time in Norv Turner's career (and the first time for the Redskins since 1992) in the final game of the season (on January 2, 2000, against the Dolphins). Running back Stephen Davis rushed for a then club-record 1,405 yards and quarterback Brad Johnson completed a then club-record 316 passes and threw for more than 4,000 yards in regular play that season. They then beat the Detroit Lions in the first round of the playoffs, but lost to the Buccaneers, 14–13. The 2000 season started with the selection of future Pro Bowler Chris Samuels and the tumultuous LaVar Arrington in the 2000 NFL Draft and included five consecutive wins in the first half of the season. However, they ended up going 7–6 with Turner being fired as head coach prior to the end of the season. Terry Robiskie was named interim coach to finish out the season, which ended with an 8–8 record. During the final game of the season, Larry Centers became the NFL's all-time leader in receptions by a running back with 685. Marty Schottenheimer era (2001) On January 3, 2001, the Redskins hired former Cleveland Browns and Kansas City Chiefs head coach Marty Schottenheimer as head coach. The 2001 season began with a loss to the San Diego Chargers, 30–3, two days before the September 11, 2001, attacks. On September 13, 2001, the Redskins announced the establishment of the Redskins Relief Fund to help families of the victims of the attack at the Pentagon. During the course of the season, the Redskins raised more than $700,000. They finished the season with an 8–8 record and Schottenheimer was fired after the final game. Snyder later said in a 2013 interview that he was fired due to his over-controlling nature. Steve Spurrier era (2002–2003) On January 14, 2002, Snyder hired University of Florida coach Steve Spurrier, the Redskins' fifth new head coach in 10 years. They finished with a 7–9 record, their first losing season in four years. A bittersweet moment during the season occurred on December 29, when Darrell Green concluded his 20th and final season as the Redskins defeated the Cowboys 20–14 at FedExField. During his 20 seasons, he set an NFL record for consecutive seasons with at least one interception (19) and a Redskins team record for regular-season games played (295) and started (258). The Redskins finished the 2003 season with a 5–11 record, their worst since 1994. The one bright note of the season was on December 7, when defensive end Bruce Smith sacked Giants quarterback Jesse Palmer in the fourth quarter. With his 199th career sack, Smith broke Reggie White's all-time NFL mark. After two mediocre years, Spurrier resigned after the 2003 season with three years left on his contract. Return of Joe Gibbs (2004–2007) For the 2004 season, Snyder successfully lured former coach Joe Gibbs away from NASCAR to return as head coach and team president. His employment came with a promise of decreased intervention in football operations from Snyder. Snyder also expanded FedExField to a league-high capacity of 91,665 seats. Gibbs' return to the franchise did not pay instant dividends as the Redskins finished the 2004 season with a record of 6–10. Despite an impressive defense, the team struggled offensively. Quarterback Mark Brunell—an off-season acquisition from the Jacksonville Jaguars—struggled in his first season, and was replaced midway through the season by backup Patrick Ramsey. On the other hand, some of Gibbs' other new signings, such as cornerback Shawn Springs and linebacker Marcus Washington, did very well. The Redskins also picked Sean Taylor from University of Miami during the draft in Gibbs' first season. The 2005 season started with three wins, including win on September 19 against the Dallas Cowboys. Dallas led 13–0 with less than four minutes left when Brunell threw a touchdown pass to Moss on a fourth-down play. Then, with 2:44 left, Brunell connected with Moss again on a touchdown pass and Nick Novak kicked the game-winning extra point. It was the Redskins' first victory at Texas Stadium since 1995. They then fell into a slump, losing six of the next eight games which included three straight losses in November, and their playoff chances looked bleak. On December 18, 2005, the Redskins beat Cowboys, 35–7, which marked the first time since 1995 that the Redskins swept the season series with Dallas. The Redskins clinched their first playoff berth since 1999. The game also culminated impressive season performances by individuals. Portis set a team mark for most rushing yards in a single season with , and Moss set a team record for most receiving yards in a single season with , breaking Bobby Mitchell's previous record set in 1963. Also, Chris Cooley's 71 receptions broke Jerry Smith's season record for a Redskins tight end. In the first round of the playoffs, the Redskins met the Buccaneers. The Redskins won 17–10, after taking an early 14–0 lead, which they thought they lost until replay showed that a touchdown, which would have tied the game, was an incomplete pass. In that game, the Redskins broke the record for fewest offensive yards (120) gained in a playoff victory, with one of their two touchdowns being from a defensive run after a fumble recovery. The following weekend, they played the Seahawks, who defeated the Redskins 20–10, ending their hopes of reaching their first NFC Championship Game since 1991. The first major move of the 2006 off-season was the hiring of Kansas City Chiefs' offensive coordinator Al Saunders as offensive coordinator. Gibbs also added former Buffalo Bills defensive coordinator Jerry Gray to his staff as secondary/cornerbacks coach and lost quarterbacks coach Bill Musgrave to the Falcons. The Redskins also picked up future starters Rocky McIntosh, Anthony Montgomery, Reed Doughty, and Kedric Golston in the 2006 NFL Draft. After winning only three of the first nine games, Gibbs benched quarterback Brunell for former first-round draft pick Jason Campbell. After losing his first game as a starter to Tampa Bay, Campbell got his first NFL victory against the Carolina Panthers, bringing the Redskins out of a three-game losing streak. The highlight of the season happened on November 5, and concluded with one of the most exciting endings in the history of the Cowboys–Redskins rivalry. Tied 19–19, Troy Vincent blocked a last-second field goal attempt by Dallas that would have given them the win. Sean Taylor picked up the ball and ran , breaking tackles along the way. It was thought that the game would then go in overtime, however because of a defensive face mask penalty, the Redskins would get an untimed down. Novak kicked a field goal, giving Washington a 22–19 victory. However, the Redskins finished the year with a 5–11 record, which resulted in them being last in the NFC East. This marked the second losing season of Joe Gibbs' second term as head coach with the Redskins, compared to the one losing season he had in his first 12-year tenure as head coach. The Redskins began the 2007 season by "winning ugly" starting the season off 2–0. The Redskins kept winning and losing close games, the only exception to this a 34–3 rout of the Detroit Lions. The Redskins continued to win ugly and lose ugly to be 5–3 at the halfway mark. However, the Redskins would begin to collapse. The team lost their next three games to fall to 5–6. On Monday, November 26, Redskins safety Sean Taylor was shot by home intruders early in the morning in his Miami home. The next morning, Taylor died from severe blood loss. However, the Redskins rebounded to finish to 9–7 and clinch the final playoff spot in the NFC Washington trailed 13–0 entering the 4th quarter to the Seattle Seahawks in the Wild Card round, but rallied to take a 14–13 lead, but Redskins kicker Shaun Suisham missed a field goal later in the game, and the Seahawks scored on the next drive and converted the two-point conversion. To close the game, Todd Collins threw two interceptions, each returned for a touchdown, and the Redskins fell 35–14. Jim Zorn era (2008–2009) After Joe Gibbs announced his retirement following the 2007 season, Jim Zorn was hired as head coach, and brought in a West Coast Offense. The 2008 season started well, as the Redskins started the season 6–2. Furthermore, Redskins RB Clinton Portis led the NFL in rushing yards. However, things turned for the worse in early November, when they were routed 23–6 by the Pittsburgh Steelers and Portis' injuries finally caught up to him. The Redskins continued to struggle, falling all the way to 7–7, with their only win during that six-week period being a 3-point victory of the then-2–8 Seattle Seahawks. The Redskins managed to upset the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 16, but were eliminated from playoff contention. The team's fortunes continued to slide in 2009, as they finished 4–12. Zorn was fired and replaced by Mike Shanahan after the season. Mike Shanahan era (2010–2013) On April 4, the Redskins acquired Donovan McNabb in a trade from the rival Philadelphia Eagles. However, the Redskins struggled to a 6–10 finish, once again 4th place in the division. The McNabb era came to an abrupt end when he was traded to Minnesota in August 2011. The troublesome After cutting the injury-rattled Clinton Portis, the Redskins had no important offensive players left except for Santana Moss. Mike Shanahan surprised most observers by his decision to name John Beck, an obscure free-agent quarterback, as the starter. However, Shanahan suddenly reversed direction by naming veteran backup Rex Grossman to the starting position. In Week 1, Grossman threw for 305 yards and two touchdown passes as the Redskins crushed the Giants 28–14, ending a six-game losing streak against that team. The Washington Redskins started the season 2–0, but then struggled to a 5–11 finish, however, they managed to win both meetings over the eventual Super Bowl champion New York Giants. In 2012, the Redskins traded several high draft picks to the St. Louis Rams in order to take Baylor quarterback Robert Griffin III second overall in the 2012 NFL Draft. Although the need for a franchise quarterback was obvious, many journalists had doubts about the value of giving up a lot for a single player. In the opening game of the season, Griffin threw for 320 yards and two touchdown passes in a 40–32 victory over the New Orleans Saints to give the team its highest-scoring game since 2005. The Redskins struggled to a 3–6 start, but in Week 11, the Redskins would host the struggling Philadelphia Eagles. Griffin would have one of the best games of his career to date, as the Redskins won 31–6 with long touchdowns to Santana Moss and Aldrick Robinson. The Redskins would win their next 6 games after that, including the crucial final game of the season against the Cowboys, which would clinch the division for and send the Redskins to the playoffs. The Redskins hosted the Seattle Seahawks in the Wild Card round but lost 24–14. Hopes were high for a repeat division title in 2013. However, these hopes were in vain, as poor play and controversy stirred during the entire year, leading to a disastrous 3–13 campaign. Even though most players had a down year compared to 2012, Pierre Garçon had his greatest season statistically yet. Garcon broke Art Monk's 29-year-old franchise record for catches in a single season. Garcon had 113 catches total, which broke Monk's 106 catches in 1984 by seven. The Redskins fired Shanahan and most of his staff after the season. Jay Gruden era (2014–2019) On January 9, 2014, the Redskins hired Jay Gruden as their head coach. Gruden became the eighth head coach of the team since Daniel Snyder purchased the franchise in 1999. The Redskins struggled throughout the season, having three different quarterbacks start games, amounting to a 4–12 record. Defense coordinator Jim Haslett was fired at the end of the season. On January 7, 2015, the Redskins hired Scot McCloughan to be their general manager. McCloughan took over control of the roster from Bruce Allen, who was given the sole title of team president after the hiring. In October 2015, the Redskins had their largest comeback win in franchise history, coming back to win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers 31–30 after being down 0–24 in the second quarter. The Redskins clinched the NFC East division title on December 26, when they beat the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 16, 38–24. The division title was their third since Snyder took over ownership of the team, and was the first since the 1999 season to be clinched before Week 17. The Redskins hosted the Green Bay Packers in the Wild Card round on January 10, 2016, but lost 35–18, ending their 2015 season. Kirk Cousins, who took over as starting quarterback in the preseason, finished the season with career highs in touchdowns (29), yards (4,166), and completion percentage (69.8%). His completion percentage led the league, while his 29 touchdowns tied him for second on the franchise single-season list. The team's offense in 2016 set several franchise records, including having over 6,000 total net yards, which was only the third time in franchise history the team had accomplished that. Quarterback Kirk Cousins also set single-season team records in attempts, completions, and passing yards, breaking many of his records he had previously set in 2015. DeSean Jackson, Pierre Garçon, Jamison Crowder, Robert Kelley, Chris Thompson, Jordan Reed, Vernon Davis, and Matt Jones all finished the season with at least 500 yards from scrimmage, tying the 2011 New Orleans Saints for the most in a single season in NFL history. Despite the numerous records set, the Redskins missed the playoffs, losing 19–10 in a "win and in" situation against the New York Giants in the final week of the season. However, the Redskins still finished the season with a record of 8–7–1, giving the team their first consecutive winning seasons in nearly 20 years. In contrast with the record setting offense, the team's defense had a poor season, finishing 29 out of 32 teams in total defense, which led to the firing of defensive coordinator Joe Barry, as well as three of his assistants. In 2017, Cousins had his third straight season with 4,000 passing yards while once again playing under the franchise tag. For the second straight season, the Redskins missed the playoffs, finishing 7–9. During the 2018 offseason, the Redskins traded for quarterback Alex Smith to replace Kirk Cousins as he left for the Minnesota Vikings in free agency. Despite early success starting the season 6–3, their best start since 2008, the team finished the season 1–6 due to injuries. In a game against the Houston Texans on November 18, 2018, Alex Smith suffered a compound and spiral fracture to his tibia and fibula in his right leg when he was sacked by Kareem Jackson and J. J. Watt which forced him to miss the rest of the season. This led to Colt McCoy, Mark Sanchez, and Josh Johnson starting games in the second half of the season. The team finished at 7–9 and missed the playoffs for the third consecutive year, with a league-high 25 players on injured reserve. Due to Smith's injury, the Redskins acquired Case Keenum from the Denver Broncos in the 2019 offseason, and drafted Dwayne Haskins from Ohio State in the 2019 NFL Draft. With a league worst 0–5 start to the season, tying with the Cincinnati Bengals, and their worst start since 2001, the Redskins fired Gruden on October 7, 2019, with offensive line coach Bill Callahan serving as the interim head coach for the rest of the season. Gruden finished as the longest-tenured head coach in the Snyder era with six seasons, a 35–49–1 regular season record and one playoff appearance. The Redskins finished the season at 3–13, with victories over the Detroit Lions and Carolina Panthers, and missed the playoffs for the fourth straight year. The record was their worst since going 3–13 in 2013 and was the second worst of any team that season, behind only the Bengals at 2–14. Name change and restructuring (2020–present) Ron Rivera era The team underwent several changes in 2020, including retiring the Redskins name and logo and hiring former Carolina Panthers head coach Ron Rivera in the same role, as well as naming Jason Wright as team president, the first black person named to that position in NFL history. Some notable members of Rivera's staff include former Jacksonville Jaguars and Oakland Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio as defensive coordinator and Scott Turner, the son of former Redskins head coach Norv Turner, as offensive coordinator. Under Rivera and Del Rio, the team switched their defensive scheme from a 3–4 defense, of which the team had used under both Shanahan and Gruden's tenure, to a 4–3 defense. Due to their 3–13 record the previous season, the team had the second overall pick in the 2020 NFL Draft and selected Chase Young, a highly touted defensive end out of Ohio State. Dwayne Haskins, the team's first-round draft pick from 2019, was released prior to the season's end due to ineffective play and not meeting the team's standards off the field. Despite that, Washington would eventually win the division for the first time since 2015 at 7–9, becoming only the third team in NFL history to win a division with a losing record in a non-strike year after the 2010 Seattle Seahawks and 2014 Carolina Panthers, the latter of which Rivera also coached. Earlier in 2020, minority owners Robert Rothman, Dwight Schar, and Frederick W. Smith were reported to have hired an investment banking firm to help search for potential buyers for their stake in the team, worth around 40 percent combined. The group, who bought their stake in 2003, were reported to have urged Snyder to change the name for years. In April 2021, Snyder was approved by the league for a debt waiver of $400 million to acquire the remaining 40 percent in a deal worth over $800 million. Some other additions and changes in 2021 included the team hiring Martin Mayhew as general manager and Marty Hurney as another high-ranking executive. With the hiring of Mayhew, who is black, Washington became the first team in NFL history to concurrently have a minority general manager, head coach, and president. In contrast, Ryan Kerrigan, the franchise's all-time leader in sacks, left the team as a free agent to sign with the division rival Philadelphia Eagles. In addition, a year-long independent investigation into the team's workplace culture under owner Daniel Snyder, led by lawyer Beth Wilkinson, was concluded in July 2021. It found that several incidents of sexual harassment, bullying, and intimidation were commonplace throughout the organization under his ownership. The NFL fined the team $10 million in response, with Snyder also voluntary stepping down from running the team's day-to-day operations for a few months, giving those responsibilities to his wife Tanya. Redskins name and logo controversy The team's former Redskins branding, used from 1933 until 2020, was one of the leading examples of the Native American mascot controversy as the term redskin has been defined as offensive, disparaging, and taboo. Various people and groups, such as the National Congress of American Indians (NCAI), considered the name a racial slur and attempted to get the team to change it for decades. Supporters of the name countered both the dictionary definition of the term and the testimony of Native Americans by asserting that their use of the name was intended respectfully, and referred only to the football team and its history. In a 2013 letter "To the Washington Redskins Nation", team owner Daniel Snyder stated that while respecting those that say they are offended, a poll conducted by the Annenberg Public Policy Center in 2004 found that 90% of Native Americans were not offended by the name and logo. This poll was essentially replicated in 2016 by The Washington Post with nearly identical results. However, public opinion polling, which places the question about the Redskins within a longer telephone survey on other topics, was deemed scientifically questionable by academic researchers. As an alternative, social scientists from the University of Michigan and University of California at Berkeley performed a study in 2020 that measured Native American opinion in detail, finding that 49% had responded that the name was offensive, with the level of offense increasing to 67% for those with a stronger involvement in Native American culture. In 2014 when the franchise was entangled in a legal trademark protection case, the Washington Post announced their editorials would no longer use the "Redskins" name, and subsequently other news outlets would informally call them by their geographically-related area such as "the Washington pro football team" or avoid publishing their nickname, altogether. ESPN updated their employee work policies to allow their reporters to choose how to refer to the team going forward. Following renewed attention to questions of racial justice in wake of the George Floyd protests in 2020, a letter signed by 87 shareholders and investors was sent to team and league sponsors Nike, FedEx, and PepsiCo urging them to cut their ties unless the name was changed. Around the same time, several retail companies began removing Redskins merchandise from their stores. In response, the team underwent a review in July 2020 and announced that it would retire its name. The team played as the Washington Football Team until a permanent name could be chosen. On February 2, 2022, the Washington Football Team announced their new name as the Washington Commanders. Logos and uniforms The franchise's primary colors are burgundy and gold. From 1961 through 1978, Washington wore gold pants with both the burgundy and white jerseys, although details of the jerseys and pants changed a few times during this period. Gold face masks were introduced in 1978 and remain as such to this day; previous to that they were grey. Throughout most of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s, Washington was just one of three other teams that primarily wore their white jerseys at home (the others being the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins). The tradition of wearing white jerseys over burgundy pants at home, which is considered the "classic" look,
Prince of Galilee William II of Sicily (1155–1189) William II, Lord of Béthune (died 1214), nicknamed William the Red William II, Count of Perche (died 1226), Bishop of Châlons William II of Dampierre (1196–1231) William II Longespee (c. 1204–m William de Wickwane (died 1285), Archbishop of York (1279–1285) William II, Lord of Egmond (died 1304) William II de Soules (died c. 1320), Lord of Liddesdale and Butler of Scotland William II, Earl of Ross (ruled 1274–1323) William II, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg (1300s–1369) William II, Count of Hainaut (1307–1345), Count of Holland and Count of	William II, Margrave of Meissen (1371–1425) William II, Duke of Bavaria (ruled 1404–1417) William II d'Estouteville (1412–1483), French bishop and cardinal William II, Princely count of Henneberg-Schleusingen (1415–1444) William II, Duke of Brunswick-Calenberg-Göttingen or William the Younger (1425–1503), Duke of Brunswick-Lüneburg William II, Landgrave of Hesse (1469–1509) William II de La Marck (1542–1578), Dutch Lord of Lumey and admiral of the Watergeuzen William II, Prince of Orange (1626–1650), stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Netherlands William II of Scotland (1650–1702), William III of England William II, Prince of Nassau-Dillenburg (1670–1724) William II, Landgrave of Hesse-Wanfried-Rheinfels (1671–1731) William II of the Netherlands (1792–1849), Grand Duke of Luxembourg and Duke
her death, and was a deputy minister of arts and culture from 1994 to 1996. A member of the African National Congress (ANC) political party, she served on the ANC's National Executive Committee and headed its Women's League. Madikizela-Mandela was known to her supporters as the "Mother of the Nation". Born to a Mpondo family in Bizana, and a qualified social worker, she married anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in Johannesburg in 1958; they remained married for 38 years and had two children together. In 1963, after Mandela was imprisoned following the Rivonia Trial; she became his public face during the 27 years he spent in jail. During that period, she rose to prominence within the domestic anti-apartheid movement. Madikizela-Mandela was detained by apartheid state security services on various occasions, tortured, subjected to banning orders, and banished to a rural town, and she spent several months in solitary confinement. In the mid-1980s Madikizela-Mandela exerted a "reign of terror", and was "at the centre of an orgy of violence" in Soweto, which led to condemnation by the anti-apartheid movement in South Africa, and a rebuke by the ANC in exile. During this period, her home was burned down by residents of Soweto. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) established by Nelson Mandela's government to investigate human rights abuses found Madikizela-Mandela to have been "politically and morally accountable for the gross violations of human rights committed by the Mandela United Football Club", her security detail. Madikizela-Mandela endorsed the necklacing of alleged police informers and apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder, most notoriously the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei whose kidnapping she was convicted of. Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990, and the couple separated in 1992; their divorce was finalised in March 1996. She visited him during his final illness. As a senior ANC figure, she took part in the post-apartheid ANC government, although she was dismissed from her post amid allegations of corruption. In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of theft and fraud, and she temporarily withdrew from active politics before returning several years later. Early life and education Madikizela-Mandela's Xhosa name was Nomzamo ("She who tries"). She was born in the village of Mbongweni, Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now the Eastern Cape province. She was the fifth of nine children, seven sisters and a brother. Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, who had a white father and Xhosa mother, were both teachers. Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher. Gertrude died when Winnie was nine years old, resulting in the break-up of her family when the siblings were sent to live with different relatives. Madikizela-Mandela went on to become the head girl at her high school in Bizana. Upon leaving school, she went to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. She earned a degree in social work in 1956, and decades later earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand. She held a number of jobs in various parts of what was then the Bantustan of Transkei; including with the Transkei government, living at various points of time at Bizana, Shawbury and Johannesburg. Her first job was as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Marriage to Nelson Mandela Madikizela met lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957, when he was still married to Evelyn Mase. She was 22 years old and standing at a bus stop in Soweto when Mandela first saw her and charmed her, securing a lunch date the following week. The couple married in 1958 and had two daughters, Zenani (born 1958) and Zindziwa (born 1960). Mandela was arrested and jailed in 1963, and was not released until 1990. The couple separated in 1992. They finalised their divorce in March 1996 with an unspecified out-of-court settlement. During the divorce hearing, Nelson Mandela rejected Madikizela-Mandela's assertion that arbitration could salvage the marriage, and cited her infidelity as a cause of the divorce, saying "... I am determined to get rid of the marriage". Her attempt to obtain a settlement up to US $5million (R70 million) – half of what she claimed her ex-husband was worth – was dismissed when she failed to appear in court for a settlement hearing. When asked in a 1994 interview about the possibility of reconciliation, she said: "I am not fighting to be the country's First Lady. In fact, I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone." Madikizela-Mandela was involved in a lawsuit at the time of her death, claiming that she was entitled to Mandela's homestead in Qunu, through customary law, despite her divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996. Her case was dismissed by the Mthatha High Court in 2016, and she was reportedly preparing to appeal to the Constitutional Court at the time of her death, after failing at the Supreme Court of Appeal in January 2018. Apartheid: 1963–1985 Winnie Mandela emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the latter part of her husband's imprisonment. Due to her political activities, she was regularly detained by the National Party government. She was subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, imprisoned, and banished to the remote town of Brandfort. Her longest jailing was for 491 days (as noted in her account 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69), beginning on 12 May 1969, at Pretoria Central Prison, where she spent months in solitary confinement, and was tortured and beaten. By her own account, her experience in prison "hardened" her. From 1977 to 1985, she was banished to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State and confined to the area,. It was at this time that she became well known in the Western world. She organised a creche with a non-governmental organization, Operation Hunger and a clinic in Brandfort with Dr Abu Baker Asvat, her personal physician, campaigned actively for equal rights and was promoted by the ANC as a symbol of their struggle against apartheid. While in exile in Brandfort, she, and those who attempted to assist her, were harassed by the apartheid police. In a leaked letter to Jacob Zuma in October 2008, outgoing President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki alluded to the role the ANC had created for Nelson and Winnie Mandela, as representative symbols of the brutality of apartheid: In the context of the global struggle for the release of political prisoners in our country, our movement took a deliberate decision to profile Nelson Mandela as the representative personality of these prisoners, and therefore to use his personal political biography, including the persecution of his wife, Winnie Mandela, dramatically to present to the world and the South African community the brutality of the apartheid system. Beaten by the apartheid police, she developed an addiction to painkillers and alcohol as a result of a back injury caused by the assault. Violence and criminal proceedings During a speech in Munsieville on 13 April 1986, Madikizela-Mandela endorsed the practice of necklacing (burning people alive using rubber tyres filled with petrol) by saying: "With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country." Further tarnishing her reputation were accusations by her bodyguard, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, and others, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that she had ordered kidnapping and murder during the second half of the 1980s. Return to Soweto and Mandela United Football Club: 1986–1989 Madikizela-Mandela returned to Soweto from Brandfort in late 1985, in defiance of a banning order. During her banishment, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (CoSATU) had formed a mass-movement against apartheid. The new organisations relied more heavily on collective decision-making structures, rather than on individual charisma. She took a more militaristic approach, eschewing the approach of the newer bodies, and began dressing in military garb, and surrounding herself with bodyguards: the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC). Living in Madikizela-Mandela's home, the putative "soccer team" began hearing family disputes and delivering "judgments" and "sentences", and eventually became associated with kidnapping, torture and murder. She was implicated in at least 15 deaths during this time	apartheid government collaborators, and her security detail carried out kidnapping, torture, and murder, most notoriously the killing of 14-year-old Stompie Sepei whose kidnapping she was convicted of. Nelson Mandela was released from prison on 11 February 1990, and the couple separated in 1992; their divorce was finalised in March 1996. She visited him during his final illness. As a senior ANC figure, she took part in the post-apartheid ANC government, although she was dismissed from her post amid allegations of corruption. In 2003, Madikizela-Mandela was convicted of theft and fraud, and she temporarily withdrew from active politics before returning several years later. Early life and education Madikizela-Mandela's Xhosa name was Nomzamo ("She who tries"). She was born in the village of Mbongweni, Bizana, Pondoland, in what is now the Eastern Cape province. She was the fifth of nine children, seven sisters and a brother. Her parents, Columbus and Gertrude, who had a white father and Xhosa mother, were both teachers. Columbus was a history teacher and a headmaster, and Gertrude was a domestic science teacher. Gertrude died when Winnie was nine years old, resulting in the break-up of her family when the siblings were sent to live with different relatives. Madikizela-Mandela went on to become the head girl at her high school in Bizana. Upon leaving school, she went to Johannesburg to study social work at the Jan Hofmeyr School of Social Work. She earned a degree in social work in 1956, and decades later earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of the Witwatersrand. She held a number of jobs in various parts of what was then the Bantustan of Transkei; including with the Transkei government, living at various points of time at Bizana, Shawbury and Johannesburg. Her first job was as a social worker at Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto. Marriage to Nelson Mandela Madikizela met lawyer and anti-apartheid activist Nelson Mandela in 1957, when he was still married to Evelyn Mase. She was 22 years old and standing at a bus stop in Soweto when Mandela first saw her and charmed her, securing a lunch date the following week. The couple married in 1958 and had two daughters, Zenani (born 1958) and Zindziwa (born 1960). Mandela was arrested and jailed in 1963, and was not released until 1990. The couple separated in 1992. They finalised their divorce in March 1996 with an unspecified out-of-court settlement. During the divorce hearing, Nelson Mandela rejected Madikizela-Mandela's assertion that arbitration could salvage the marriage, and cited her infidelity as a cause of the divorce, saying "... I am determined to get rid of the marriage". Her attempt to obtain a settlement up to US $5million (R70 million) – half of what she claimed her ex-husband was worth – was dismissed when she failed to appear in court for a settlement hearing. When asked in a 1994 interview about the possibility of reconciliation, she said: "I am not fighting to be the country's First Lady. In fact, I am not the sort of person to carry beautiful flowers and be an ornament to everyone." Madikizela-Mandela was involved in a lawsuit at the time of her death, claiming that she was entitled to Mandela's homestead in Qunu, through customary law, despite her divorce from Nelson Mandela in 1996. Her case was dismissed by the Mthatha High Court in 2016, and she was reportedly preparing to appeal to the Constitutional Court at the time of her death, after failing at the Supreme Court of Appeal in January 2018. Apartheid: 1963–1985 Winnie Mandela emerged as a leading opponent of apartheid during the latter part of her husband's imprisonment. Due to her political activities, she was regularly detained by the National Party government. She was subjected to house arrest, kept under surveillance, imprisoned, and banished to the remote town of Brandfort. Her longest jailing was for 491 days (as noted in her account 491 Days: Prisoner Number 1323/69), beginning on 12 May 1969, at Pretoria Central Prison, where she spent months in solitary confinement, and was tortured and beaten. By her own account, her experience in prison "hardened" her. From 1977 to 1985, she was banished to the town of Brandfort in the Orange Free State and confined to the area,. It was at this time that she became well known in the Western world. She organised a creche with a non-governmental organization, Operation Hunger and a clinic in Brandfort with Dr Abu Baker Asvat, her personal physician, campaigned actively for equal rights and was promoted by the ANC as a symbol of their struggle against apartheid. While in exile in Brandfort, she, and those who attempted to assist her, were harassed by the apartheid police. In a leaked letter to Jacob Zuma in October 2008, outgoing President of South Africa Thabo Mbeki alluded to the role the ANC had created for Nelson and Winnie Mandela, as representative symbols of the brutality of apartheid: In the context of the global struggle for the release of political prisoners in our country, our movement took a deliberate decision to profile Nelson Mandela as the representative personality of these prisoners, and therefore to use his personal political biography, including the persecution of his wife, Winnie Mandela, dramatically to present to the world and the South African community the brutality of the apartheid system. Beaten by the apartheid police, she developed an addiction to painkillers and alcohol as a result of a back injury caused by the assault. Violence and criminal proceedings During a speech in Munsieville on 13 April 1986, Madikizela-Mandela endorsed the practice of necklacing (burning people alive using rubber tyres filled with petrol) by saying: "With our boxes of matches and our necklaces we shall liberate this country." Further tarnishing her reputation were accusations by her bodyguard, Jerry Musivuzi Richardson, and others, at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that she had ordered kidnapping and murder during the second half of the 1980s. Return to Soweto and Mandela United Football Club: 1986–1989 Madikizela-Mandela returned to Soweto from Brandfort in late 1985, in defiance of a banning order. During her banishment, the United Democratic Front (UDF) and Congress of South African Trade Unions (CoSATU) had formed a mass-movement against apartheid. The new organisations relied more heavily on collective decision-making structures, rather than on individual charisma. She took a more militaristic approach, eschewing the approach of the newer bodies, and began dressing in military garb, and surrounding herself with bodyguards: the Mandela United Football Club (MUFC). Living in Madikizela-Mandela's home, the putative "soccer team" began hearing family disputes and delivering "judgments" and "sentences", and eventually became associated with kidnapping, torture and murder. She was implicated in at least 15 deaths during this time period. In 1988, Madikizela-Mandela's home was burned by high school students in Soweto, in retaliation for the actions of the Mandela United Football Club. By 1989, after appeals from local residents, and after the Seipei kidnapping, the UDF (in the guise of the Mass Democratic Movement, or MDM), "disowned" her for "violating human rights ... in the name of the struggle against apartheid". The ANC in exile issued a statement criticising her judgment, after she refused to heed instructions, issued from prison by Nelson Mandela, to dissociate herself from the Football Club, and after attempts at mediation by an ANC crisis committee failed. Lolo Sono and Siboniso Shabalala In November 1988, 21-year-old Lolo Sono, and his 19-year-old friend Siboniso Shabalala, disappeared in Soweto. Sono's father said he saw his son in a kombi with Madikizela-Mandela, and that his son had been badly beaten. Sono’s mother claimed that Madikizela-Mandela had labelled her son a spy, and had said she was "taking him away". At the subsequent Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings, Sono's stepmother said, "I am pleading with Mrs Mandela today, in front of the whole world, that please, Mrs Mandela, give us our son back. Even if he is dead, let Mrs Mandela give us the remains of our son, so that we must bury him decently." Sono and Shabalala's bodies were exhumed from pauper's graves in Soweto's Avalon Cemetery in 2013, by the National Prosecuting Authority's Missing People's Task Team, having been stabbed soon after their abductions. Seipei and Asvat killings On 29 December 1988, Jerry Richardson, who was coach of the Mandela United Football Club, abducted 14-year-old James Seipei (also known as Stompie Sepei) and three other youths from the home of Methodist minister Paul Verryn, with Richardson claiming that Madikizela-Mandela had the youths taken to her home because she suspected the minister was sexually abusing them (allegations that were baseless). The four were beaten to get them to admit to having had sex with the minister. Negotiations that lasted 10 days, by senior ANC and community leaders to get the kidnapped boys released by Madikizela-Mandela failed. Seipei was accused of being an informer, and his body later found in a field with stab wounds to the throat on 6 January 1989. In 1991, Mrs Mandela was acquitted of all but the kidnapping of Sepei. A key witness, Katiza Cebekhulu, who was going to testify that Madikizela-Mandela had killed Sepei, had been tortured and kidnapped to Zambia by her supporters prior to the trial, to prevent him testifying against her. Her six-year jail sentence was reduced to a fine on appeal. In 1992, she was accused of ordering the murder of Abu Baker Asvat, a family friend and prominent Soweto doctor, who had examined Seipei at Mandela's house, after Seipei had been abducted but before he had been killed. Mandela's role in the Asvat killing was later probed as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in 1997. Asvat's murderer testified that she paid the equivalent of $8,000 and supplied the firearm used in the killing, which took place on 27 January 1989. The hearings were later adjourned amid claims that witnesses were being intimidated on Madikizela-Mandela's orders. In a 2017 documentary about the life and activism of Madikizela-Mandela, former Soweto police officer Henk Heslinga alleged that
At the time of his marriage, William's father, John Yeats, was studying law, but would later pursue art studies at Heatherley School of Fine Art, in London. William's mother, Susan Mary Pollexfen, came from Sligo, from a wealthy merchant family, which owned a milling and shipping business. Soon after William's birth, the family relocated to the Pollexfen home at Merville, Sligo, to stay with her extended family, and the young poet came to think of the area as his childhood and spiritual home. Its landscape became, over time, both personally and symbolically, his "country of the heart". So too did its location by the sea; John Yeats stated that "by marriage with a Pollexfen, we have given a tongue to the sea cliffs". The Butler Yeats family were highly artistic; his brother Jack became an esteemed painter, while his sisters Elizabeth and Susan Mary—known to family and friends as Lollie and Lily—became involved in the Arts and Crafts movement. Yeats was raised a member of the Protestant Ascendancy, which was at the time undergoing a crisis of identity. While his family was broadly supportive of the changes Ireland was experiencing, the nationalist revival of the late 19th century directly disadvantaged his heritage and informed his outlook for the remainder of his life. In 1997, his biographer R. F. Foster observed that Napoleon's dictum that to understand the man you have to know what was happening in the world when he was twenty "is manifestly true of W.B.Y." Yeats's childhood and young adulthood were shadowed by the power-shift away from the minority Protestant Ascendancy. The 1880s saw the rise of Charles Stewart Parnell and the home rule movement; the 1890s saw the momentum of nationalism, while the Irish Catholics became prominent around the turn of the century. These developments had a profound effect on his poetry, and his subsequent explorations of Irish identity had a significant influence on the creation of his country's biography. In 1867, the family moved to England to aid their father, John, to further his career as an artist. At first, the Yeats children were educated at home. Their mother entertained them with stories and Irish folktales. John provided an erratic education in geography and chemistry and took William on natural history explorations of the nearby Slough countryside. On 26 January 1877, the young poet entered the Godolphin School, which he attended for four years. He did not distinguish himself academically, and an early school report describes his performance as "only fair. Perhaps better in Latin than in any other subject. Very poor in spelling". Though he had difficulty with mathematics and languages (possibly because he was tone deaf), he was fascinated by biology and zoology. In 1879 the family moved to Bedford Park taking a two-year lease on 8 Woodstock Road. For financial reasons, the family returned to Dublin toward the end of 1880, living at first in the suburbs of Harold's Cross and later in Howth. In October 1881, Yeats resumed his education at Dublin's Erasmus Smith High School. His father's studio was nearby and William spent a great deal of time there, where he met many of the city's artists and writers. During this period he started writing poetry, and, in 1885, the Dublin University Review published Yeats's first poems, as well as an essay entitled "The Poetry of Sir Samuel Ferguson". Between 1884 and 1886, William attended the Metropolitan School of Art—now the National College of Art and Design—in Thomas Street. In March 1888 the family moved to 3 Blenheim Road in Bedford Park where they would remain until 1902. The rent on the house in 1888 was £50 a year. He began writing his first works when he was seventeen; these included a poem—heavily influenced by Percy Bysshe Shelley—that describes a magician who set up a throne in central Asia. Other pieces from this period include a draft of a play about a bishop, a monk, and a woman accused of paganism by local shepherds, as well as love-poems and narrative lyrics on German knights. The early works were both conventional and, according to the critic Charles Johnston, "utterly unIrish", seeming to come out of a "vast murmurous gloom of dreams". Although Yeats's early works drew heavily on Shelley, Edmund Spenser, and on the diction and colouring of pre-Raphaelite verse, he soon turned to Irish mythology and folklore and the writings of William Blake. In later life, Yeats paid tribute to Blake by describing him as one of the "great artificers of God who uttered great truths to a little clan". In 1891, Yeats published John Sherman and "Dhoya", one a novella, the other a story. The influence of Oscar Wilde is evident in Yeats's theory of aesthetics, especially in his stage plays, and runs like a motif through his early works. The theory of masks, developed by Wilde in his polemic The Decay of Lying can clearly be seen in Yeats's play The Player Queen, while the more sensual characterisation of Salomé, in Wilde's play of the same name, provides the template for the changes Yeats made in his later plays, especially in On Baile's Strand (1904), Deirdre (1907), and his dance play The King of the Great Clock Tower (1934). Young poet The family returned to London in 1887. In March 1890 Yeats joined the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, and with Ernest Rhys co-founded the Rhymers' Club, a group of London-based poets who met regularly in a Fleet Street tavern to recite their verse. Yeats later sought to mythologize the collective, calling it the "Tragic Generation" in his autobiography, and published two anthologies of the Rhymers' work, the first one in 1892 and the second one in 1894. He collaborated with Edwin Ellis on the first complete edition of William Blake's works, in the process rediscovering a forgotten poem, "Vala, or, the Four Zoas". Yeats had a lifelong interest in mysticism, spiritualism, occultism and astrology. He read extensively on the subjects throughout his life, became a member of the paranormal research organisation "The Ghost Club" (in 1911) and was especially influenced by the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg. As early as 1892, he wrote: "If I had not made magic my constant study I could not have written a single word of my Blake book, nor would The Countess Kathleen ever have come to exist. The mystical life is the centre of all that I do and all that I think and all that I write." His mystical interests—also inspired by a study of Hinduism, under the Theosophist Mohini Chatterjee, and the occult—formed much of the basis of his late poetry. Some critics disparaged this aspect of Yeats's work. His first significant poem was "The Island of Statues", a fantasy work that took Edmund Spenser and Shelley for its poetic models. The piece was serialized in the Dublin University Review. Yeats wished to include it in his first collection, but it was deemed too long, and in fact, was never republished in his lifetime. Quinx Books published the poem in complete form for the first time in 2014. His first solo publication was the pamphlet Mosada: A Dramatic Poem (1886), which comprised a print run of 100 copies paid for by his father. This was followed by the collection The Wanderings of Oisin and Other Poems (1889), which arranged a series of verse that dated as far back as the mid-1880s. The long title poem contains, in the words of his biographer R. F. Foster, "obscure Gaelic names, striking repetitions [and] an unremitting rhythm subtly varied as the poem proceeded through its three sections": We rode in sorrow, with strong hounds three, Bran, Sceolan, and Lomair, On a morning misty and mild and fair. The mist-drops hung on the fragrant trees, And in the blossoms hung the bees. We rode in sadness above Lough Lean, For our best were dead on Gavra's green. "The Wanderings of Oisin" is based on the lyrics of the Fenian Cycle of Irish mythology and displays the influence of both Sir Samuel Ferguson and the Pre-Raphaelite poets. The poem took two years to complete and was one of the few works from this period that he did not disown in his maturity. Oisin introduces what was to become one of his most important themes: the appeal of the life of contemplation over the appeal of the life of action. Following the work, Yeats never again attempted another long poem. His other early poems, which are meditations on the themes of love or mystical and esoteric subjects, include Poems (1895), The Secret Rose (1897), and The Wind Among the Reeds (1899). The covers of these volumes were illustrated by Yeats's friend Althea Gyles. During 1885, Yeats was involved in the formation of the Dublin Hermetic Order. The society held its first meeting on 16 June, with Yeats acting as its chairman. The same year, the Dublin Theosophical lodge was opened in conjunction with Brahmin Mohini Chatterjee, who travelled from the Theosophical Society in London to lecture. Yeats attended his first séance the following year. He later became heavily involved with the Theosophy and with hermeticism, particularly with the eclectic Rosicrucianism of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. During séances held from 1912, a spirit calling itself "Leo Africanus" apparently claimed it was Yeats's Daemon or anti-self, inspiring some of the speculations in Per Amica Silentia Lunae. He was admitted into the Golden Dawn in March 1890 and took the magical motto —translated as 'Devil is God inverted'. He was an active recruiter for the sect's Isis-Urania Temple, and brought in his uncle George Pollexfen, Maud Gonne, and Florence Farr. Although he reserved a distaste for abstract and dogmatic religions founded around personality cults, he was attracted to the type of people he met at the Golden Dawn. He was involved in the Order's power struggles, both with Farr and Macgregor Mathers, and was involved when Mathers sent Aleister Crowley to repossess Golden Dawn paraphernalia during the "Battle of Blythe Road". After the Golden Dawn ceased and splintered into various offshoots, Yeats remained with the Stella Matutina until 1921. Maud Gonne In 1889, Yeats met Maud Gonne, a 23-year-old English heiress and ardent Irish nationalist. She was eighteen months younger than Yeats and later claimed she met the poet as a "paint-stained art student." Gonne admired "The Island of Statues" and sought out his acquaintance. Yeats began an obsessive infatuation, and she had a significant and lasting effect on his poetry and his life thereafter. In later years he admitted, "it seems to me that she [Gonne] brought into my life those days—for as yet I saw only what lay upon the surface—the middle of the tint, a sound as of a Burmese gong, an over-powering tumult that had yet many pleasant secondary notes." Yeats's love was unrequited, in part due to his reluctance to participate in her nationalist activism. In 1891 he visited Gonne in Ireland and proposed marriage, but was rejected. He later admitted that from that point "the troubling of my life began". Yeats proposed to Gonne three more times: in 1899, 1900 and 1901. She refused each proposal, and in 1903, to his dismay, married the Irish nationalist Major John MacBride. His only other love affair during this period was with Olivia Shakespear, whom he first met in 1894, and parted from in 1897. Yeats derided MacBride in letters and in poetry. He was horrified by Gonne's marriage, at losing his muse to another man; in addition, her conversion to Catholicism before marriage offended him; Yeats was Protestant/agnostic. He worried his muse would come under the influence of the priests and do their bidding. Gonne's marriage to MacBride was a disaster. This pleased Yeats, as Gonne began to visit him in London. After the birth of her son, Seán MacBride, in 1904, Gonne and MacBride agreed to end the marriage, although they were unable to agree on the child's welfare. Despite the use of intermediaries, a divorce case ensued in Paris in 1905. Gonne made a series of allegations against her husband with Yeats as her main 'second', though he did not attend court or travel to France. A divorce was not granted, for the only accusation that held up in court was that MacBride had been drunk once during the marriage. A separation was granted, with Gonne having custody of the baby and MacBride having visiting rights. Yeats's friendship with Gonne ended, yet, in Paris in 1908, they finally consummated their relationship. "The long years of fidelity rewarded at last" was how another of his lovers described the event. Yeats was less sentimental and later remarked that "the tragedy of sexual intercourse is the perpetual virginity of the soul." The relationship did not develop into a new phase after their night together, and soon afterwards Gonne wrote to the poet indicating that despite the physical consummation, they could not continue as they had been: "I have prayed so hard to have all earthly desire taken from my love for you and dearest, loving you as I do, I have prayed and I am praying still that the bodily desire for me may be taken from you too." By January 1909, Gonne was sending Yeats letters praising the advantage given to artists who abstain from sex. Nearly twenty years later, Yeats recalled the night with Gonne in his poem "A Man Young and Old": My arms are like the twisted thorn And yet there beauty lay; The first of all the tribe lay there And did such pleasure take; She who had brought great Hector down And put all Troy to wreck. In 1896, Yeats was introduced to Lady Gregory by their mutual friend Edward Martyn. Gregory encouraged Yeats's nationalism and convinced him to continue focusing on writing drama. Although he was influenced by French Symbolism, Yeats concentrated on an identifiably Irish content and this inclination was reinforced by his involvement with a new generation of younger and emerging Irish authors. Together with Lady Gregory, Martyn, and other writers including J. M. Synge, Seán O'Casey, and Padraic Colum, Yeats was one of those responsible for the establishment of the "Irish Literary Revival" movement. Apart from these creative writers, much of the impetus for the Revival came from the work of scholarly translators who were aiding in the discovery of both the ancient sagas and Ossianic poetry and the more recent folk song tradition in Irish. One of the most significant of these was Douglas Hyde, later the first President of Ireland, whose Love Songs of Connacht was widely admired.	These changes reflected Pound's distaste for Victorian prosody. A more indirect influence was the scholarship on Japanese Noh plays that Pound had obtained from Ernest Fenollosa's widow, which provided Yeats with a model for the aristocratic drama he intended to write. The first of his plays modelled on Noh was At the Hawk's Well, the first draft of which he dictated to Pound in January 1916. The emergence of a nationalist revolutionary movement from the ranks of the mostly Roman Catholic lower-middle and working class made Yeats reassess some of his attitudes. In the refrain of "Easter, 1916" ("All changed, changed utterly / A terrible beauty is born"), Yeats faces his own failure to recognise the merits of the leaders of the Easter Rising, due to his attitude towards their ordinary backgrounds and lives. Yeats was close to Lady Gregory and her home place of Coole Park, County Galway. He would often visit and stay there as it was a central meeting place for people who supported the resurgence of Irish literature and cultural traditions. His poem, "The Wild Swans at Coole" was written there, between 1916 and 1917. He wrote prefaces for two books of Irish mythological tales, compiled by Lady Gregory: Cuchulain of Muirthemne (1902), and Gods and Fighting Men (1904). In the preface of the latter, he wrote: "One must not expect in these stories the epic lineaments, the many incidents, woven into one great event of, let us say the War for the Brown Bull of Cuailgne or that of the last gathering at Muirthemne." Politics Yeats was an Irish nationalist, who sought a kind of traditional lifestyle articulated through poems such as 'The Fisherman'. But as his life progressed, he sheltered much of his revolutionary spirit and distanced himself from the intense political landscape until 1922, when he was appointed Senator for the Irish Free State. In the earlier part of his life, Yeats was a member of the Irish Republican Brotherhood. In the 1930s Yeats was fascinated with the authoritarian, anti-democratic, nationalist movements of Europe, and he composed several marching songs for the Blueshirts, although they were never used. He was a fierce opponent of individualism and political liberalism and saw the fascist movements as a triumph of public order and the needs of the national collective over petty individualism. On the other hand, he was also an elitist who abhorred the idea of mob-rule, and saw democracy as a threat to good governance and public order. After the Blueshirt movement began to falter in Ireland, he distanced himself somewhat from his previous views, but maintained a preference for authoritarian and nationalist leadership. D. P. Moran called him a minor poet and "crypto-Protestant conman." Marriage to Georgie Hyde-Lees By 1916, Yeats was 51 years old and determined to marry and produce an heir. His rival, John MacBride, had been executed for his role in the 1916 Easter Rising, so Yeats hoped that his widow, Maud Gonne, might remarry. His final proposal to Gonne took place in mid-1916. Gonne's history of revolutionary political activism, as well as a series of personal catastrophes in the previous few years of her life—including chloroform addiction and her troubled marriage to MacBride—made her a potentially unsuitable wife; biographer R. F. Foster has observed that Yeats's last offer was motivated more by a sense of duty than by a genuine desire to marry her. Yeats proposed in an indifferent manner, with conditions attached, and he both expected and hoped she would turn him down. According to Foster, "when he duly asked Maud to marry him and was duly refused, his thoughts shifted with surprising speed to her daughter." Iseult Gonne was Maud's second child with Lucien Millevoye, and at the time was twenty-one years old. She had lived a sad life to this point; conceived as an attempt to reincarnate her short-lived brother, for the first few years of her life she was presented as her mother's adopted niece. When Maud told her that she was going to marry, Iseult cried and told her mother that she hated MacBride. When Gonne took action to divorce MacBride in 1905, the court heard allegations that he had sexually assaulted Iseult, then eleven. At fifteen, she proposed to Yeats. In 1917, he proposed to Iseult but was rejected. That September, Yeats proposed to 25-year-old Georgie Hyde-Lees (1892–1968), known as George, whom he had met through Olivia Shakespear. Despite warnings from her friends—"George ... you can't. He must be dead"—Hyde-Lees accepted, and the two were married on 20 October. Their marriage was a success, in spite of the age difference, and in spite of Yeats's feelings of remorse and regret during their honeymoon. The couple went on to have two children, Anne and Michael. Although in later years he had romantic relationships with other women, Georgie herself wrote to her husband "When you are dead, people will talk about your love affairs, but I shall say nothing, for I will remember how proud you were." During the first years of marriage, they experimented with automatic writing; she contacted a variety of spirits and guides they called "Instructors" while in a trance. The spirits communicated a complex and esoteric system of philosophy and history, which the couple developed into an exposition using geometrical shapes: phases, cones, and gyres. Yeats devoted much time to preparing this material for publication as A Vision (1925). In 1924, he wrote to his publisher T. Werner Laurie, admitting: "I dare say I delude myself in thinking this book my book of books". Nobel Prize In December 1923, Yeats was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his always inspired poetry, which in a highly artistic form gives expression to the spirit of a whole nation". He was aware of the symbolic value of an Irish winner so soon after Ireland had gained independence, and sought to highlight the fact at each available opportunity. His reply to many of the letters of congratulations sent to him contained the words: "I consider that this honour has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe's welcome to the Free State." Yeats used the occasion of his acceptance lecture at the Royal Academy of Sweden to present himself as a standard-bearer of Irish nationalism and Irish cultural independence. As he remarked, "The theatres of Dublin were empty buildings hired by the English travelling companies, and we wanted Irish plays and Irish players. When we thought of these plays we thought of everything that was romantic and poetical because the nationalism we had called up—the nationalism every generation had called up in moments of discouragement—was romantic and poetical." The prize led to a significant increase in the sales of his books, as his publishers Macmillan sought to capitalise on the publicity. For the first time he had money, and he was able to repay not only his own debts but those of his father. Old age and death By early 1925, Yeats's health had stabilised, and he had completed most of the writing for A Vision (dated 1925, it actually appeared in January 1926, when he almost immediately started rewriting it for a second version). He had been appointed to the first Irish Senate in 1922, and was re-appointed for a second term in 1925. Early in his tenure, a debate on divorce arose, and Yeats viewed the issue as primarily a confrontation between the emerging Roman Catholic ethos and the Protestant minority. When the Roman Catholic Church weighed in with a blanket refusal to consider their anti position, The Irish Times countered that a measure to outlaw divorce would alienate Protestants and "crystallise" the partition of Ireland. In response, Yeats delivered a series of speeches that attacked the "quixotically impressive" ambitions of the government and clergy, likening their campaign tactics to those of "medieval Spain." "Marriage is not to us a Sacrament, but, upon the other hand, the love of a man and woman, and the inseparable physical desire, are sacred. This conviction has come to us through ancient philosophy and modern literature, and it seems to us a most sacrilegious thing to persuade two people who hate each other... to live together, and it is to us no remedy to permit them to part if neither can re-marry." The resulting debate has been described as one of Yeats's "supreme public moments", and began his ideological move away from pluralism towards religious confrontation. His language became more forceful; the Jesuit Father Peter Finlay was described by Yeats as a man of "monstrous discourtesy", and he lamented that "It is one of the glories of the Church in which I was born that we have put our Bishops in their place in discussions requiring legislation". During his time in the Senate, Yeats further warned his colleagues: "If you show that this country, southern Ireland, is going to be governed by Roman Catholic ideas and by Catholic ideas alone, you will never get the North... You will put a wedge in the midst of this nation". He memorably said of his fellow Irish Protestants, "we are no petty people". In 1924, he chaired a coinage committee charged with selecting a set of designs for the first currency of the Irish Free State. Aware of the symbolic power latent in the imagery of a young state's currency, he sought a form that was "elegant, racy of the soil, and utterly unpolitical". When the house finally decided on the artwork of Percy Metcalfe, Yeats was pleased, though he regretted that compromise had led to "lost muscular tension" in the finally depicted images. He retired from the Senate in 1928 because of ill health. Towards the end of his life—and especially after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and Great Depression, which led some to question whether democracy could cope with deep economic difficulty—Yeats seems to have returned to his aristocratic sympathies. During the aftermath of the First World War, he became sceptical about the efficacy of democratic government, and anticipated political reconstruction in Europe through totalitarian rule. His later association with Pound drew him towards Benito Mussolini, for whom he expressed admiration on a number of occasions. He wrote three "marching songs"—never used—for the Irish General Eoin O'Duffy's Blueshirts. At the age of 69 he was 'rejuvenated' by the Steinach operation which was performed on 6 April 1934 by Norman Haire. For the last five years of his life Yeats found a new vigour evident from both his poetry and his intimate relations with younger women. During this time, Yeats was involved in a number of romantic affairs with, among others, the poet and actress Margot Ruddock, and the novelist, journalist and sexual radical Ethel Mannin. As in his earlier life, Yeats found erotic adventure conducive to his creative energy, and, despite age and ill-health, he remained a prolific writer. In a letter of 1935, Yeats noted: "I find my present weakness made worse by the strange second puberty the operation has given me, the ferment that has come upon my imagination. If I write poetry it will be unlike anything I have done". In 1936, he undertook editorship of the Oxford Book of Modern Verse, 1892–1935. From 1935 to 1936 he travelled to the Western Mediterranean island of Majorca with Indian-born Shri Purohit Swami and from there the two of them performed the majority of the work in translating the principal Upanishads from Sanskrit into common English; the resulting work, The Ten Principal Upanishads, was published in 1938. He died at the Hôtel Idéal Séjour, in Menton, France, on 28 January 1939, aged 73. He was buried after a discreet and private funeral at Roquebrune-Cap-Martin. Attempts had been made at Roquebrune to dissuade the family from proceeding with the removal of the remains to Ireland due to the uncertainty of their identity. His body had earlier been exhumed and transferred to the ossuary. Yeats and George had often discussed his death, and his express wish was that he be buried quickly in France with a minimum of fuss. According to George, "His actual words were 'If I die, bury me up there [at Roquebrune] and then in a year's time when the newspapers have forgotten me, dig me up and plant me in Sligo'." In September 1948, Yeats's body was moved to the churchyard of St Columba's Church, Drumcliff, County Sligo, on the Irish Naval Service corvette LÉ Macha. The person in charge of this operation for the Irish Government was Seán MacBride, son of Maud Gonne
and historians, and also among the general public. The war guilt question pervaded the entire history of the Weimar Republic. Weimar embodied this debate until its demise, after which it was subsequently taken up as a campaign argument by the Nazi Party. this debate also took place in other countries involved in the conflict, such as in the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom. Entire organizations were formed in Germany chiefly to consider this question, including the War Guilt Section () and the Center for the Study of the Causes of the War (); existing institutions such as the Potsdam Reichsarchiv spent significant resources researching or propagandizing about it. While the war guilt question made it possible to investigate the deep-rooted causes of the First World War, although not without provoking a great deal of controversy, it also made it possible to identify other aspects of the conflict, such as the role of the masses and the question of Germany's special path to democracy, the Sonderweg. The war guilt debate motivated numerous historians such as Hans Delbrück, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Gerhard Hirschfeld to take part. In 1961, German historian Fritz Fischer published Germany's Aims in the First World War, in which he argued that the German government had an expansionist foreign policy and had started a war of aggression in 1914. Fischer's thesis ignited a furious debate in Germany, which became known as the Fischer controversy. A century after the original events, this debate continues among historians into the 21st century. The main outlines of the debate include: how much room to maneuver was available diplomatically and politically; the inevitable consequences of pre-war armament policies; the role of domestic policy and social and economic tensions in the foreign relations of the states involved; the role of public opinion and their experience of war in the face of organized propaganda; the role of economic interests and top military commanders in torpedoing deescalation and peace negotiations; the theory; and the long-term trends which tend to contextualize the First World War as a condition or preparation for the Second, such as Raymond Aron who views the two world wars as the new Thirty Years' War, a theory reprised by Enzo Traverso in his work. Political turmoil: political murders, and attempted power seizures The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and sought to overthrow the Republic and do so themselves. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian monarchy like the German Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War. In the next five years, the central government, assured of the support of the Reichswehr, dealt severely with the occasional outbreaks of violence in Germany's large cities. The left claimed that the Social Democrats had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, while the army and the government-financed Freikorps committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against striking workers. The first challenge to the Weimar Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the Bavarian government in Munich and declared the creation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The uprising was brutally attacked by Freikorps, which consisted mainly of ex-soldiers dismissed from the army and who were well-paid to put down forces of the Far Left. The Freikorps was an army outside the control of the government, but they were in close contact with their allies in the Reichswehr. On 13 March 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, 12,000 Freikorps soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp, a right-wing journalist, as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Kapp government collapsed after only four days on 17 March. Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the SPD leaders did not want to lend support to the growing USPD, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of SPD supporters by the reactionary forces in the Freikorps on the instructions of the SPD ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group that could have withstood the Nazi movement. Other rebellions were put down in March 1921 in Saxony and Hamburg. One of the manifestations of the sharp political polarisation that had occurred were the right-wing motivated assassinations of important representatives of the young republic. In August 1921, Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger and Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau were murdered by members of the Organisation Consul. in June 1922, who had been defamed as compliant with regard to the Treaty of Versailles. While Erzberger was attacked for signing the armistice agreement in 1918, Rathenau as foreign minister was responsible, among other things, for the reparations issue. He had also sought to break Germany's isolation after World War I through the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. However, he also drew right-wing extremist hatred as a Jew (see also Weimar antisemitism). The solidarity expressed in large, public funeral processions for those murdered, and the passage of a were intended to put a stop to the right-wing enemies of the Weimar Republic. However, right-wing state criminals were not permanently deterred from their activities, and the lenient sentences they were given by judges influenced by imperial conservatism were a contributing factor. In 1922, Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Russia, which allowed Germany to train military personnel in exchange for giving Russia military technology. This was against the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany to 100,000 soldiers and no conscription, naval forces of 15,000 men, twelve destroyers, six battleships, and six cruisers, no submarines or aircraft. However, Russia had pulled out of the First World War against the Germans as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and was excluded from the League of Nations. Thus, Germany seized the chance to make an ally. Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign Minister who signed the treaty, was assassinated two months later by two ultra-nationalist army officers. Further pressure from the political right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch (aka Munich Putsch), a failed power seizure staged by the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler in Munich. In 1920, the German Workers' Party had become the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazi party, which would eventually become a driving force in the collapse of Weimar. Hitler named himself as chairman of the party in July 1921. On 8 November 1923, the Kampfbund, in a pact with Erich Ludendorff, took over a meeting by Bavarian prime minister Gustav von Kahr at a beer hall in Munich. Ludendorff and Hitler declared that the Weimar government was deposed and that they were planning to take control of Munich the following day. But the 3,000 rebels were no match yet for the Bavarian authorities. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason, the minimum sentence for the charge. However, Hitler served less than eight months, in a comfortable cell, receiving a daily stream of visitors, until his release on 20 December 1924. While in jail, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf, which laid out his ideas and future policies. Hitler now decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power. Golden Era (1924–1929) Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for 100 days in 1923, and served as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, a period of relative stability for the Weimar Republic, known in Germany as Goldene Zwanziger ("Golden Twenties"). Prominent features of this period were a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest. Once civil stability had been restored, Stresemann began stabilising the German currency, which promoted confidence in the German economy and helped the recovery that was so greatly needed for the German nation to keep up with their reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation. Once the economic situation had stabilised, Stresemann could begin putting a permanent currency in place, called the Rentenmark (October 1923), which again contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the Weimar Republic's economy. To help Germany meet reparation obligations, the Dawes Plan was created in 1924. This was an agreement between American banks and the German government in which the American banks lent money to German banks with German assets as collateral to help it pay reparations. The German railways, the National Bank and many industries were therefore mortgaged as securities for the stable currency and the loans. Germany was the first state to establish diplomatic relations with the new Soviet Union. Under the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany accorded it formal (de jure) recognition, and the two mutually cancelled all pre-war debts and renounced war claims. In October 1925 the Treaty of Locarno was signed by Germany, France, Belgium, Britain and Italy; it recognised Germany's borders with France and Belgium. Moreover, Britain, Italy and Belgium undertook to assist France in the case that German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland. Locarno paved the way for Germany's admission to the League of Nations in 1926. Germany signed arbitration conventions with France and Belgium and arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, undertaking to refer any future disputes to an arbitration tribunal or to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Other foreign achievements were the evacuation of foreign troops from the Ruhr in 1925. In 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member, improving her international standing and giving the right to vote on League matters. Overall trade increased and unemployment fell. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but gave the appearance of a stable democracy. Even Stresemann's 'German People's party' failed to gain nationwide recognition, and instead featured in the 'flip-flop' coalitions. The Grand Coalition headed by Muller inspired some faith in the government, but that didn't last. Governments frequently lasted only a year, comparable to the political situation in France during the 1930s. The major weakness in constitutional terms was the inherent instability of the coalitions, which often fell prior to elections. The growing dependence on American finance was to prove fleeting, and Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Great Depression. Culture The 1920s saw a remarkable cultural renaissance in Germany. During the worst phase of hyperinflation in 1923, the clubs and bars were full of speculators who spent their daily profits so they would not lose the value the following day. Berlin intellectuals responded by condemning the excesses of what they considered capitalism, and demanding revolutionary changes on the cultural scenery. Influenced by the brief cultural explosion in the Soviet Union, German literature, cinema, theatre and musical works entered a phase of great creativity. Innovative street theatre brought plays to the public, and the cabaret scene and jazz bands became very popular. According to the cliché, modern young women were Americanized, wearing makeup, short hair, smoking and breaking with traditional mores. The euphoria surrounding Josephine Baker in the metropolis of Berlin for instance, where she was declared an "erotic goddess" and in many ways admired and respected, kindled further "ultramodern" sensations in the minds of the German public. Art and a new type of architecture taught at "Bauhaus" schools reflected the new ideas of the time, with artists such as George Grosz being fined for defaming the military and for blasphemy. Artists in Berlin were influenced by other contemporary progressive cultural movements, such as the Impressionist and Expressionist painters in Paris, as well as the Cubists. Likewise, American progressive architects were admired. Many of the new buildings built during this era followed a straight-lined, geometrical style. Examples of the new architecture include the Bauhaus Building by Gropius, Grosses Schauspielhaus, and the Einstein Tower. Not everyone, however, was happy with the changes taking place in Weimar culture. Conservatives and reactionaries feared that Germany was betraying its traditional values by adopting popular styles from abroad, particularly those Hollywood was popularising in American films, while New York became the global capital of fashion. Germany was more susceptible to Americanization, because of the close economic links brought about by the Dawes plan. In 1929, three years after receiving the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize, Stresemann died of a heart attack at age 51. When the New York Stock Exchange crashed in October 1929, American loans dried up and the sharp decline of the German economy brought the "Golden Twenties" to an abrupt end. Social policy under Weimar A wide range of progressive social reforms were carried out during and after the revolutionary period. In 1919, legislation provided for a maximum working 48-hour workweek, restrictions on night work, a half-holiday on Saturday, and a break of thirty-six hours of continuous rest during the week. That same year, health insurance was extended to wives and daughters without their own income, people only partially capable of gainful employment, people employed in private cooperatives, and people employed in public cooperatives. A series of progressive tax reforms were introduced under the auspices of Matthias Erzberger, including increases in taxes on capital and an increase in the highest income tax rate from 4% to 60%. Under a governmental decree of 3 February 1919, the German government met the demand of the veterans' associations that all aid for the disabled and their dependents be taken over by the central government (thus assuming responsibility for this assistance) and extended into peacetime the nationwide network of state and district welfare bureaus that had been set up during the war to coordinate social services for war widows and orphans. The Imperial Youth Welfare Act of 1922 obliged all municipalities and states to set up youth offices in charge of child protection, and also codified a right to education for all children, while laws were passed to regulate rents and increase protection for tenants in 1922 and 1923. Health insurance coverage was extended to other categories of the population during the existence of the Weimar Republic, including seamen, people employed in the educational and social welfare sectors, and all primary dependents. Various improvements were also made in unemployment benefits, although in June 1920 the maximum amount of unemployment benefit that a family of four could receive in Berlin, 90 marks, was well below the minimum cost of subsistence of 304 marks. In 1923, unemployment relief was consolidated into a regular programme of assistance following economic problems that year. In 1924, a modern public assistance programme was introduced, and in 1925 the accident insurance programme was reformed, allowing diseases that were linked to certain kinds of work to become insurable risks. In addition, a national unemployment insurance programme was introduced in 1927. Housing construction was also greatly accelerated during the Weimar period, with over 2 million new homes constructed between 1924 and 1931 and a further 195,000 modernised. Renewed crisis and decline (1930–1933) Onset of the Great Depression In 1929, the onset of the depression in the United States of America produced a severe economic shock in Germany and was further made worse by the bankruptcy of the Austrian Creditanstalt bank. Germany's fragile economy had been sustained by the granting of loans through the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929). When American banks withdrew their line of credit to German companies, the onset of severe unemployment could not be abated by conventional economic measures. Unemployment thereafter grew dramatically, at 4 million in 1930, and in September 1930 a political earthquake shook the republic to its foundations. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), until then a minor far-right party, increased its votes to 19%, becoming Germany's second largest party, while the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) also increased its votes; this made the unstable coalition system by which every chancellor had governed increasingly unworkable. The last years of the Weimar Republic was marred by even more systemic political instability than in the previous years as political violence increased. Four Chancellors (Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher) and, from 30 January to 23 March 1933, Hitler governed through presidential decree rather than through parliamentary consultation. This effectively rendered parliament as a means of enforcing constitutional checks and balances powerless. Brüning's policy of deflation (1930–1932) On 29 March 1930, after months of lobbying by General Kurt von Schleicher on behalf of the military, the finance expert Heinrich Brüning was appointed as Müller's successor by Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg. The new government was expected to lead a political shift towards conservatism. As Brüning had no majority support in the Reichstag, he became, through the use of the emergency powers granted to the Reichspräsident (Article 48) by the constitution, the first Weimar chancellor to operate independently of parliament. This made him dependent on the Reichspräsident, Hindenburg. After a bill to reform the Reich's finances was opposed by the Reichstag, it was made an emergency decree by Hindenburg. On 18 July, as a result of opposition from the SPD, KPD, DNVP and the small contingent of NSDAP members, the Reichstag again rejected the bill by a slim margin. Immediately afterward, Brüning submitted the president's decree that the Reichstag be dissolved. The consequent general election on 14 September resulted in an enormous political shift within the Reichstag: 18.3% of the vote went to the NSDAP, five times the percentage won in 1928. As a result, it was no longer possible to form a pro-republican majority, not even with a grand coalition that excluded the KPD, DNVP and NSDAP. This encouraged an escalation in the number of public demonstrations and instances of paramilitary violence organised by the NSDAP. Between 1930 and 1932, Brüning tried to reform the Weimar Republic without a parliamentary majority, governing, when necessary, through the President's emergency decrees. In line with the contemporary economic theory (subsequently termed "leave-it-alone liquidationism"), he enacted a draconian policy of deflation and drastically cutting state expenditure. Among other measures, he completely halted all public grants to the obligatory unemployment insurance introduced in 1927, resulting in workers making higher contributions and fewer benefits for the unemployed. Benefits for the sick, invalid and pensioners were also reduced sharply. Additional difficulties were caused by the different deflationary policies pursued by Brüning and the Reichsbank, Germany's central bank. In mid-1931, the United Kingdom abandoned the gold standard and about 30 countries (the sterling bloc) devalued their currencies, making their goods around 20% cheaper than those produced by Germany. As the Young Plan did not allow a devaluation of the Reichsmark, Brüning triggered a deflationary internal devaluation by forcing the economy to reduce prices, rents, salaries and wages by 20%. Debate continues as to whether this policy was without alternative: some argue that the Allies would not in any circumstances have allowed a devaluation of the Reichsmark, while others point to the Hoover Moratorium as a sign that the Allies understood that the situation had changed fundamentally and further German reparation payments were impossible. Brüning expected that the policy of deflation would temporarily worsen the economic situation before it began to improve, quickly increasing the German economy's competitiveness and then restoring its creditworthiness. His long-term view was that deflation would, in any case, be the best way to help the economy. His primary goal was to remove Germany's reparation payments by convincing the Allies that they could no longer be paid. Anton Erkelenz, chairman of the German Democratic Party and a contemporary critic of Brüning, famously said that the policy of deflation is: In 1933, the American economist Irving Fisher developed the theory of debt deflation. He explained that a deflation causes a decline of profits, asset prices and a still greater decline in the net worth of businesses. Even healthy companies, therefore, may appear over-indebted and facing bankruptcy. The consensus today is that Brüning's policies exacerbated the German economic crisis and the population's growing frustration with democracy, contributing enormously to the increase in support for Hitler's NSDAP. Most German capitalists and landowners originally supported the conservative experiment more from the belief that conservatives would best serve their interests rather than any particular liking for Brüning. As more of the working and middle classes turned against Brüning, however, more of the capitalists and landowners declared themselves in favour of his opponents Hitler and Hugenberg. By late 1931, the conservative movement was dead and Hindenburg and the Reichswehr had begun to contemplate dropping Brüning in favour of accommodating Hugenberg and Hitler. Although Hindenburg disliked Hugenberg and despised Hitler, he was no less a supporter of the sort of anti-democratic counter-revolution that the DNVP and NSDAP represented. In April 1932, Brüning had actively supported Hindenburg's successful campaign against Hitler for re-election as Reichspräsident; five weeks later, on 30 May 1932, he had lost Hindenburg's support and resigned as Reichskanzler. Papen deal Hindenburg then appointed Franz von Papen as new Reichskanzler. Papen lifted the ban on the NSDAP's SA paramilitary, imposed after the street riots, in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the backing of Hitler. Papen was closely associated with the industrialist and land-owning classes and pursued an extremely conservative policy along Hindenburg's lines. He appointed as Reichswehr Minister Kurt von Schleicher, and all the members of the new cabinet were of the same political opinion as Hindenburg. The government was expected to assure itself of the co-operation of Hitler. Since the republicans were not yet ready to take action, the Communists did not want to support the republic and the conservatives had shot their political bolt, Hitler and Hugenberg were certain to achieve power. Elections of July 1932 Because most parties opposed the new government, Papen had the Reichstag dissolved and called for new elections. The general elections on 31 July 1932 yielded major gains for the Communists, and for the Nazis, who won 37.3% of the vote—their high-water mark in a free election. The Nazi party then supplanted the Social Democrats as the largest party in the Reichstag, although it did not gain a majority. The immediate question was what part the now large Nazi Party would play in the Government of the country. The party owed its huge increase to growing support from middle-class people, whose traditional parties were swallowed up by the Nazi Party. The millions of radical adherents at first forced the Party towards the Left. They wanted a renewed Germany and a new organisation of German society. The left of the Nazi party strove desperately against any drift into the train of such capitalist and feudal reactionaries. Therefore, Hitler refused ministry under Papen, and demanded the chancellorship for himself, but was rejected by Hindenburg on 13 August 1932. There was still no majority in the Reichstag for any government; as a result, the Reichstag was dissolved and elections took place once more in the hope that a stable majority would result. Schleicher cabinet The 6 November 1932 elections yielded 33% for the Nazis, two million voters fewer than in the previous election. Franz von Papen stepped down and was succeeded as Chancellor (Reichskanzler) by General Kurt von Schleicher on 3 December. Schleicher, a retired army officer, had developed in an atmosphere of semi-obscurity and intrigue that encompassed the Republican military policy. He had for years been in the camp of those supporting the Conservative counter-revolution. Schleicher's bold and unsuccessful plan was to build a majority in the Reichstag by uniting the trade unionist left wings of the various parties, including that of the Nazis led by Gregor Strasser. This policy did not prove successful either. In this brief Presidential Dictatorship intermission, Schleicher assumed the role of "Socialist General" and entered into relations with the Christian Trade Unions, the relatively left of the Nazi party, and even with the Social Democrats. Schleicher planned for a sort of labour government under his Generalship. But the Reichswehr officers were not prepared for this, the working class had a natural distrust of their future allies, and the great capitalists and landowners also did not like the plans. Hitler learned from Papen that the general had not received from Hindenburg the authority to abolish the Reichstag parliament, whereas any majority of seats did. The cabinet (under a previous interpretation of Article 48) ruled without a sitting Reichstag, which could vote only for its own dissolution. Hitler also learned that all past crippling Nazi debts were to be relieved by German big business. On 22 January, Hitler's efforts to persuade Oskar von Hindenburg, the President's son and confidant, included threats to bring criminal charges over estate taxation irregularities at the President's Neudeck estate; although extra were soon allotted to Hindenburg's property. Outmaneuvered by Papen and Hitler on plans for the new cabinet, and having lost Hindenburg's confidence, Schleicher asked for new elections. On 28 January, Papen described Hitler to Paul von Hindenburg as only a minority part of an alternative, Papen-arranged government. The four great political movements, the SPD, Communists, Centre, and the Nazis were in opposition. On 29 January, Hitler and Papen thwarted a last-minute threat of an officially sanctioned Reichswehr takeover, and on 30 January 1933 Hindenburg accepted the new Papen-Nationalist-Hitler coalition, with the Nazis holding only three of eleven Cabinet seats: Hitler as Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick as Minister of the Interior and Hermann Göring as Minister Without Portfolio. Later that day, the first cabinet meeting was attended by only two political parties, representing a minority in the Reichstag: The Nazis and the German National People's Party (DNVP), led by Alfred Hugenberg, with 196 and 52 seats respectively. Eyeing the Catholic Centre Party's 70 (plus 20 BVP) seats, Hitler refused their leader's demands for constitutional "concessions" (amounting to protection) and planned for dissolution of the Reichstag. Hindenburg, despite his misgivings about the Nazis' goals and about Hitler as a personality, reluctantly agreed to Papen's theory that, with Nazi popular support on the wane, Hitler could now be controlled as Chancellor. This date, dubbed by the Nazis as the Machtergreifung (seizure of power), is commonly seen as the beginning of Nazi Germany. End of the Weimar Republic Hitler's chancellorship (1933) Hitler was sworn in as Chancellor on the morning of 30 January 1933 in what some observers later described as a brief and indifferent ceremony. By early February, a mere week after Hitler's assumption of the chancellorship, the government had begun to clamp down on the opposition. Meetings of the left-wing parties were banned and even some of the moderate parties found their members threatened and assaulted. Measures with an appearance of legality suppressed the Communist Party in mid-February and included the plainly illegal arrests of Reichstag deputies. On 27 February 1933 the Reichtstag burned to the ground, apparently after an act of arson by Dutch council communist Marinus van der Lubbe. Hitler blamed the fire on the KPD (though Van der Lubbe was not a member of the party) and convinced Hinderburg to issue the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day. The decree invoked Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution and "indefinitely suspended" a number of constitutional protections of civil liberties, allowing the Nazi government to take swift action against political meetings, arresting and killing the Communists. Hitler and the Nazis exploited the German state's broadcasting and aviation facilities in a massive attempt to sway the electorate, but this election yielded a scant majority of 16 seats for the NSDAP-DNVP coalition. At the Reichstag elections, which took place on 5 March 1933, the NSDAP obtained 17 million votes. The Communist, Social Democrat and Catholic Centre votes stood firm. This was the last multi-party election of the Weimar Republic and the last multi-party all-German election for 57 years. Hitler addressed disparate interest groups, stressing the necessity for a definitive solution to the perpetual instability of the Weimar Republic. He now blamed Germany's problems on the Communists, even threatening their lives on 3 March. Former Chancellor Heinrich Brüning proclaimed that his Centre Party would resist any constitutional change and appealed to the President for an investigation of the Reichstag fire. Hitler's successful plan was to induce what remained of the now Communist-depleted Reichstag to grant him, and the Government, the authority to issue decrees with the force of law. The hitherto Presidential Dictatorship hereby was to give itself a new legal form. On 15 March, the first cabinet meeting was attended by the two coalition parties, representing a minority in the Reichstag: The Nazis and the DNVP led by Alfred Hugenberg (288 + 52 seats). According to the Nuremberg Trials, this cabinet meeting's first order of business was how at last to achieve the complete counter-revolution by means of the constitutionally allowed Enabling Act, requiring a 66% parliamentary majority. This Act would, and did, lead Hitler and the NSDAP toward his goal of unfettered dictatorial powers. Hitler cabinet meeting in mid-March At the cabinet meeting on 15 March, Hitler introduced the Enabling Act, which would have authorised the cabinet to enact legislation without the approval of the Reichstag. Meanwhile, the only remaining question for the Nazis was whether the Catholic Centre Party would support the Enabling Act in the Reichstag, thereby providing the majority required to ratify a law that amended the constitution. Hitler expressed his confidence to win over the centre's votes. Hitler is recorded at the Nuremberg Trials as being sure of eventual Centre Party Germany capitulation and thus rejecting of the DNVP's suggestions to "balance" the majority through further arrests, this time of Social Democrats. Hitler, however, assured his coalition partners that arrests would resume after the elections and, in fact, some 26 SPD Social Democrats were physically removed. After meeting with Centre leader Monsignor Ludwig Kaas and other Centre Trade Union leaders daily and denying them a substantial participation in the government, negotiation succeeded in respect of guarantees towards Catholic civil-servants and education issues. At the last internal Centre meeting prior to the debate on the Enabling Act, Kaas expressed no preference or suggestion on the vote, but as a way of mollifying opposition by Centre members to the granting of further powers to Hitler, Kaas somehow arranged for a letter of constitutional guarantee from Hitler himself prior to his voting with the centre en bloc in favour of the Enabling Act. This guarantee was not ultimately given. Kaas, the party's chairman since 1928, had strong connections to the Vatican Secretary of State, later Pope Pius XII. In return for pledging his support for the act, Kaas would use his connections with the Vatican to set in train and draft the Holy See's long desired Reichskonkordat with Germany (only possible with the co-operation of the Nazis). Ludwig Kaas is considered along with Papen as being one of the two most important political figures in the creation of the Nazi regime. Enabling Act negotiations On 20 March, negotiation began between Hitler and Frick on one side and the Catholic Centre Party (Zentrum) leaders—Kaas, Stegerwald and Hackelsburger on the other. The aim was to settle on conditions under which Centre would vote in favour of the Enabling Act. Because of the Nazis' narrow majority in the Reichstag, Centre's support was necessary to receive the required two-thirds majority vote. On 22 March, the negotiations concluded; Hitler promised to continue the existence of the German states, agreed not to use the new grant of power to change the constitution, and promised to retain Zentrum members in the civil service. Hitler also pledged to protect the Catholic confessional schools and to respect the concordats signed between the Holy See and Bavaria (1924), Prussia (1929) and Baden (1931). Hitler also agreed to mention these promises in his speech to the Reichstag before the vote on the Enabling Act. The ceremonial opening of the Reichstag on 21 March was held at the Garrison Church in Potsdam, a shrine of Prussianism, in the presence of many Junker landowners and representatives of the imperial military caste. This impressive and often emotional spectacle—orchestrated by Joseph Goebbels—aimed to link Hitler's government with Germany's imperial past and portray Nazism as a guarantor of the nation's future. The ceremony helped convince the "old guard" Prussian military elite of Hitler's homage to their long tradition and, in turn, produced the relatively convincing view that Hitler's government had the support of Germany's traditional protector—the Army. Such support would publicly signal a return to conservatism to curb the problems affecting the Weimar Republic, and that stability might be at hand. In a cynical and politically adroit move, Hitler bowed in apparently respectful humility before President and Field Marshal Hindenburg. Passage of the Enabling Act The Reichstag convened on 23 March 1933 at the Kroll Opera House, and in the midday opening, Hitler made a historic speech, appearing outwardly calm and conciliatory. Hitler presented an appealing prospect of respect towards Christianity by paying tribute to the Christian faiths as "essential elements for safeguarding the soul of the German people". He promised to respect their rights and declared that his government's "ambition is a peaceful accord between Church and State" and that he hoped "to improve [their] friendly relations with the Holy See". This speech aimed especially at the future recognition by the named Holy See and therefore to the votes of the Centre Party addressing many concerns Kaas had voiced during the previous talks. Kaas is considered to have had a hand therefore in the drafting of the speech. Kaas is also reported as voicing the Holy See's desire for Hitler as	country ran out of allies and its economic resources were running out; support among the population began to crumble in 1916 and by mid-1918 there was support for the war only among the die-hard monarchists and conservatives. The decisive blow came with the entry of the United States into the conflict, which made its vast industrial resources available to the beleaguered Allies. By late summer 1918, the German reserves were exhausted while fresh American troops arrived in France at the rate of 10,000 a day. Retreat and defeat were at hand, and the Army told the Kaiser to abdicate for it could no longer support him. Although in retreat, the German armies were still on French and Belgian territory when the war ended on 11 November. Ludendorf and Hindenburg soon proclaimed that it was the defeatism of the civilian population that had made defeat inevitable. The die-hard nationalists then blamed the civilians for betraying the army and the surrender. This was the "stab-in-the-back myth" that was unceasingly propagated by the right in the 1920s and ensured that many monarchists and conservatives would refuse to support the government of what they called the "November criminals". Politics Within the Weimar Republic For the first time in German history political parties had power. Despite the fact that political parties had representation, there were so many parties in the Weimar Republic that it became difficult to agree on certain topics. Factors that made the republic have a hard time were extremist parties within the republic. There were extremist Left/Right-wing parties. These included the National Socialists (Nazi Party) on the right (wing) side of the political spectrum and the Communists on the left (wing) side of the political spectrum. These parties were anti-republican and would oppose each other and cause violence between them. In the Weimar Republic the left consisted of the Communists (KPD) and the Social Democrats (SPD). The Center consisted of the Democratic party (DDP), the Catholic Center Party (Z) and the People’s Party (DVP). The right consisted of the German Nationalist Party (DNVP) and the National Socialist Party (NSDAP-Nazi). Unlike American political parties, German political parties had narrower bases of support generally based on class, occupation and religion. They were therefore less inclined to compromise and more inclined to have programs based on clear sets of ideas (ideologies). When Adolf Hitler rose to power, he removed all political parties in the Weimar Republic. This included the Communist party and any other party that existed. Hitler (and the SA, SS) started making actions against Jewish people in the Weimar Republic. When Paul Von Hindenburg died Hitler was able to take over the whole Weimar Republic and proclaim himself the Führer and caused the Fall of the republic, the new German Reich would bring terror to Europe as Hitler would fight the most deadly war in history. (World War II) Years of crisis (1919–1923) Burden from the First World War In the four years following the First World War, the situation for German civilians remained dire. The severe food shortages improved little to none up until 1923. Many German civilians expected life to return to prewar normality following the removal of the naval blockade in June 1919. Instead, the struggles induced by the First World War persisted for the decade following. Throughout the war German officials made rash decisions to combat the growing hunger of the nation, most of which were highly unsuccessful. Examples include the nationwide pig slaughter, Schweinemord, in 1915. The rationale behind exterminating the population of swine was to decrease the use of potatoes and turnips for animal consumption, transitioning all foods toward human consumption. In 1922, now three years after the German signing of the Treaty of Versailles, meat consumption in the country had not increased since the war era. 22 kg per person per year was still less than half of the 52 kg statistic in 1913, before the onset of the war. German citizens felt the food shortages even deeper than during the war, because the reality of the nation contrasted so starkly with their expectations. The burdens of the First World War lightened little in the immediate years following, and with the onset of the Treaty of Versailles, coupled by mass inflation, Germany still remained in a crisis. The continuity of pain showed the Weimar authority in a negative light, and public opinion was one of the main sources behind its failure. Treaty of Versailles The growing post-war economic crisis was a result of lost pre-war industrial exports, the loss of supplies in raw materials and foodstuffs due to the continental blockade, the loss of the colonies, and worsening debt balances, exacerbated by an exorbitant issue of promissory notes raising money to pay for the war. Military-industrial activity had almost ceased, although controlled demobilisation kept unemployment at around one million. In part, the economic losses can also be attributed to the Allied blockade of Germany until the Treaty of Versailles. The Allies permitted only low import levels of goods that most Germans could not afford. After four years of war and famine, many German workers were exhausted, physically impaired and discouraged. Millions were disenchanted with what they considered capitalism and hoping for a new era. Meanwhile, the currency depreciated, and would continue to depreciate following the French invasion of the Ruhr. The treaty was signed 28 June 1919 and is easily divided into four categories: territorial issues, disarmament demands, reparations, and assignment of guilt. The German colonial empire was stripped and given over to Allied forces. The greater blow to Germans however was that they were forced to give up the territory of Alsace-Lorraine. Many German borderlands were demilitarised and allowed to self-determine. The German military was forced to have no more than 100,000 men with only 4,000 officers. Germany was forced to destroy all its fortifications in the West and was prohibited from having an air force, tanks, poison gas, and heavy artillery. Many ships were scuttled and submarines and dreadnoughts were prohibited. Germany was forced under Article 235 to pay 20 billion gold marks, about 4.5 billion dollars by 1921. Article 231 placed Germany and her allies with responsibility for causing all the loss and damage suffered by the Allies. While Article 235 angered many Germans, no part of the treaty was more fought over than Article 231. The German peace delegation in France signed the Treaty of Versailles, accepting mass reductions of the German military, the prospect of substantial war reparations payments to the victorious allies, and the controversial "War Guilt Clause". Explaining the rise of extreme nationalist movements in Germany shortly after the war, British historian Ian Kershaw points to the "national disgrace" that was "felt throughout Germany at the humiliating terms imposed by the victorious Allies and reflected in the Versailles Treaty...with its confiscation of territory on the eastern border and even more so its 'guilt clause'." Adolf Hitler repeatedly blamed the republic and its democracy for accepting the oppressive terms of this treaty. The Republic's first Reichspräsident ("Reich President"), Friedrich Ebert of the SPD, signed the new German constitution into law on 11 August 1919. The new post-World War Germany, stripped of all colonies, became 13% smaller in its European territory than its imperial predecessor. Of these losses, a large proportion consisted of provinces that were originally Polish, and the Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, seized by Germany in 1870, and where Germans constituted a majority within the Alsatian portion of said imperial province and also within half of Lorraine. Allied Rhineland occupation The occupation of the Rhineland took place following the Armistice with Germany of 11 November 1918. The occupying armies consisted of American, Belgian, British and French forces. In 1920, under massive French pressure, the Saar was separated from the Rhine Province and administered by the League of Nations until a plebiscite in 1935, when the region was returned to the Deutsches Reich. At the same time in 1920, the districts of Eupen and Malmedy were transferred to Belgium (see German-Speaking Community of Belgium). Shortly after, France completely occupied the Rhineland, strictly controlling all important industrial areas. Reparations The actual amount of reparations that Germany was obliged to pay out was not the 132 billion marks decided in the London Schedule of 1921 but rather the 50 billion marks stipulated in the A and B Bonds. Historian Sally Marks says the 112 billion marks in "C bonds" were entirely chimerical—a device to fool the public into thinking Germany would pay much more. The actual total payout from 1920 to 1931 (when payments were suspended indefinitely) was 20 billion German gold marks, worth about US$5 billion or £1 billion British pounds. 12.5 billion was cash that came mostly from loans from New York bankers. The rest was goods such as coal and chemicals, or from assets like railway equipment. The reparations bill was fixed in 1921 on the basis of a German capacity to pay, not on the basis of Allied claims. The highly publicised rhetoric of 1919 about paying for all the damages and all the veterans' benefits was irrelevant for the total, but it did determine how the recipients spent their share. Germany owed reparations chiefly to France, Britain, Italy and Belgium; the US Treasury received $100 million. Hyperinflation In the early post-war years, inflation was growing at an alarming rate, but the government simply printed more currency to pay debts. By 1923, the Republic claimed it could no longer afford the reparations payments required by the Versailles Treaty, and the government defaulted on some payments. In response, French and Belgian troops occupied the Ruhr region, Germany's most productive industrial region at the time, taking control of most mining and manufacturing companies in January 1923. Strikes were called, and passive resistance was encouraged. These strikes lasted eight months, further damaging both the economy and society. The strike prevented some goods from being produced, but one industrialist, Hugo Stinnes, was able to create a vast empire out of bankrupt companies. Because the production costs in Germany were falling almost hourly, the prices for German products were unbeatable. Stinnes made sure that he was paid in dollars, which meant that by mid-1923, his industrial empire was worth more than the entire German economy. By the end of the year, over two hundred factories were working full-time to produce paper for the spiralling bank note production. Stinnes' empire collapsed when the government-sponsored inflation was stopped in November 1923. In 1919, one loaf of bread cost 1 mark; by 1923, the same loaf of bread cost 100 billion marks. Since striking workers were paid benefits by the state, much additional currency was printed, fuelling a period of hyperinflation. The 1920s German inflation started when Germany had no goods to trade. The government printed money to deal with the crisis; this meant payments within Germany were made with worthless paper money, and helped formerly great industrialists to pay back their own loans. This also led to pay raises for workers and for businessmen who wanted to profit from it. Circulation of money rocketed, and soon banknotes were being overprinted to a thousand times their nominal value and every town produced its own promissory notes; many banks and industrial firms did the same. The value of the Papiermark had declined from 4.2 marks per U.S. dollar in 1914 to one million per dollar by August 1923. This led to further criticism of the Republic. On 15 November 1923, a new currency, the Rentenmark, was introduced at the rate of one trillion (1,000,000,000,000) Papiermark for one Rentenmark, an action known as redenomination. At that time, one U.S. dollar was equal to 4.2 Rentenmark. Reparation payments were resumed, and the Ruhr was returned to Germany under the Locarno Treaties, which defined the borders between Germany, France, and Belgium. War guilt question In the wake of the Treaty of Versailles which placed the responsibility for the outbreak of the war entirely on Germany and imposed crushing reparations upon Germany because of it, the question of German war guilt became a central point of debate in Germany both among politicians and historians, and also among the general public. The war guilt question pervaded the entire history of the Weimar Republic. Weimar embodied this debate until its demise, after which it was subsequently taken up as a campaign argument by the Nazi Party. this debate also took place in other countries involved in the conflict, such as in the French Third Republic and the United Kingdom. Entire organizations were formed in Germany chiefly to consider this question, including the War Guilt Section () and the Center for the Study of the Causes of the War (); existing institutions such as the Potsdam Reichsarchiv spent significant resources researching or propagandizing about it. While the war guilt question made it possible to investigate the deep-rooted causes of the First World War, although not without provoking a great deal of controversy, it also made it possible to identify other aspects of the conflict, such as the role of the masses and the question of Germany's special path to democracy, the Sonderweg. The war guilt debate motivated numerous historians such as Hans Delbrück, Wolfgang J. Mommsen, and Gerhard Hirschfeld to take part. In 1961, German historian Fritz Fischer published Germany's Aims in the First World War, in which he argued that the German government had an expansionist foreign policy and had started a war of aggression in 1914. Fischer's thesis ignited a furious debate in Germany, which became known as the Fischer controversy. A century after the original events, this debate continues among historians into the 21st century. The main outlines of the debate include: how much room to maneuver was available diplomatically and politically; the inevitable consequences of pre-war armament policies; the role of domestic policy and social and economic tensions in the foreign relations of the states involved; the role of public opinion and their experience of war in the face of organized propaganda; the role of economic interests and top military commanders in torpedoing deescalation and peace negotiations; the theory; and the long-term trends which tend to contextualize the First World War as a condition or preparation for the Second, such as Raymond Aron who views the two world wars as the new Thirty Years' War, a theory reprised by Enzo Traverso in his work. Political turmoil: political murders, and attempted power seizures The Republic was soon under attack from both left- and right-wing sources. The radical left accused the ruling Social Democrats of having betrayed the ideals of the workers' movement by preventing a communist revolution and sought to overthrow the Republic and do so themselves. Various right-wing sources opposed any democratic system, preferring an authoritarian monarchy like the German Empire. To further undermine the Republic's credibility, some right-wingers (especially certain members of the former officer corps) also blamed an alleged conspiracy of Socialists and Jews for Germany's defeat in the First World War. In the next five years, the central government, assured of the support of the Reichswehr, dealt severely with the occasional outbreaks of violence in Germany's large cities. The left claimed that the Social Democrats had betrayed the ideals of the revolution, while the army and the government-financed Freikorps committed hundreds of acts of gratuitous violence against striking workers. The first challenge to the Weimar Republic came when a group of communists and anarchists took over the Bavarian government in Munich and declared the creation of the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The uprising was brutally attacked by Freikorps, which consisted mainly of ex-soldiers dismissed from the army and who were well-paid to put down forces of the Far Left. The Freikorps was an army outside the control of the government, but they were in close contact with their allies in the Reichswehr. On 13 March 1920 during the Kapp Putsch, 12,000 Freikorps soldiers occupied Berlin and installed Wolfgang Kapp, a right-wing journalist, as chancellor. The national government fled to Stuttgart and called for a general strike against the putsch. The strike meant that no "official" pronouncements could be published, and with the civil service out on strike, the Kapp government collapsed after only four days on 17 March. Inspired by the general strikes, a workers' uprising began in the Ruhr region when 50,000 people formed a "Red Army" and took control of the province. The regular army and the Freikorps ended the uprising on their own authority. The rebels were campaigning for an extension of the plans to nationalise major industries and supported the national government, but the SPD leaders did not want to lend support to the growing USPD, who favoured the establishment of a socialist regime. The repression of an uprising of SPD supporters by the reactionary forces in the Freikorps on the instructions of the SPD ministers was to become a major source of conflict within the socialist movement and thus contributed to the weakening of the only group that could have withstood the Nazi movement. Other rebellions were put down in March 1921 in Saxony and Hamburg. One of the manifestations of the sharp political polarisation that had occurred were the right-wing motivated assassinations of important representatives of the young republic. In August 1921, Finance Minister Matthias Erzberger and Foreign Minister Walther Rathenau were murdered by members of the Organisation Consul. in June 1922, who had been defamed as compliant with regard to the Treaty of Versailles. While Erzberger was attacked for signing the armistice agreement in 1918, Rathenau as foreign minister was responsible, among other things, for the reparations issue. He had also sought to break Germany's isolation after World War I through the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo with the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. However, he also drew right-wing extremist hatred as a Jew (see also Weimar antisemitism). The solidarity expressed in large, public funeral processions for those murdered, and the passage of a were intended to put a stop to the right-wing enemies of the Weimar Republic. However, right-wing state criminals were not permanently deterred from their activities, and the lenient sentences they were given by judges influenced by imperial conservatism were a contributing factor. In 1922, Germany signed the Treaty of Rapallo with the Soviet Russia, which allowed Germany to train military personnel in exchange for giving Russia military technology. This was against the Treaty of Versailles, which limited Germany to 100,000 soldiers and no conscription, naval forces of 15,000 men, twelve destroyers, six battleships, and six cruisers, no submarines or aircraft. However, Russia had pulled out of the First World War against the Germans as a result of the 1917 Russian Revolution, and was excluded from the League of Nations. Thus, Germany seized the chance to make an ally. Walther Rathenau, the Jewish Foreign Minister who signed the treaty, was assassinated two months later by two ultra-nationalist army officers. Further pressure from the political right came in 1923 with the Beer Hall Putsch (aka Munich Putsch), a failed power seizure staged by the Nazi Party under Adolf Hitler in Munich. In 1920, the German Workers' Party had become the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), or Nazi party, which would eventually become a driving force in the collapse of Weimar. Hitler named himself as chairman of the party in July 1921. On 8 November 1923, the Kampfbund, in a pact with Erich Ludendorff, took over a meeting by Bavarian prime minister Gustav von Kahr at a beer hall in Munich. Ludendorff and Hitler declared that the Weimar government was deposed and that they were planning to take control of Munich the following day. But the 3,000 rebels were no match yet for the Bavarian authorities. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years in prison for high treason, the minimum sentence for the charge. However, Hitler served less than eight months, in a comfortable cell, receiving a daily stream of visitors, until his release on 20 December 1924. While in jail, Hitler dictated Mein Kampf, which laid out his ideas and future policies. Hitler now decided to focus on legal methods of gaining power. Golden Era (1924–1929) Gustav Stresemann was Reichskanzler for 100 days in 1923, and served as foreign minister from 1923 to 1929, a period of relative stability for the Weimar Republic, known in Germany as Goldene Zwanziger ("Golden Twenties"). Prominent features of this period were a growing economy and a consequent decrease in civil unrest. Once civil stability had been restored, Stresemann began stabilising the German currency, which promoted confidence in the German economy and helped the recovery that was so greatly needed for the German nation to keep up with their reparation repayments, while at the same time feeding and supplying the nation. Once the economic situation had stabilised, Stresemann could begin putting a permanent currency in place, called the Rentenmark (October 1923), which again contributed to the growing level of international confidence in the Weimar Republic's economy. To help Germany meet reparation obligations, the Dawes Plan was created in 1924. This was an agreement between American banks and the German government in which the American banks lent money to German banks with German assets as collateral to help it pay reparations. The German railways, the National Bank and many industries were therefore mortgaged as securities for the stable currency and the loans. Germany was the first state to establish diplomatic relations with the new Soviet Union. Under the Treaty of Rapallo, Germany accorded it formal (de jure) recognition, and the two mutually cancelled all pre-war debts and renounced war claims. In October 1925 the Treaty of Locarno was signed by Germany, France, Belgium, Britain and Italy; it recognised Germany's borders with France and Belgium. Moreover, Britain, Italy and Belgium undertook to assist France in the case that German troops marched into the demilitarised Rhineland. Locarno paved the way for Germany's admission to the League of Nations in 1926. Germany signed arbitration conventions with France and Belgium and arbitration treaties with Poland and Czechoslovakia, undertaking to refer any future disputes to an arbitration tribunal or to the Permanent Court of International Justice. Other foreign achievements were the evacuation of foreign troops from the Ruhr in 1925. In 1926, Germany was admitted to the League of Nations as a permanent member, improving her international standing and giving the right to vote on League matters. Overall trade increased and unemployment fell. Stresemann's reforms did not relieve the underlying weaknesses of Weimar but gave the appearance of a stable democracy. Even Stresemann's 'German People's party' failed to gain nationwide recognition, and instead featured in the 'flip-flop' coalitions. The Grand Coalition headed by Muller inspired some faith in the government, but that didn't last. Governments frequently lasted only a year, comparable to the political situation in France during the 1930s. The major weakness in constitutional terms was the inherent instability of the coalitions, which often fell prior to elections. The growing dependence on American finance was to prove fleeting, and Germany was one of the worst hit nations in the Great Depression. Culture The 1920s saw a remarkable cultural renaissance in Germany. During the worst phase of hyperinflation in 1923, the clubs and bars were full of speculators who spent their daily profits so they would not lose the value the following day. Berlin intellectuals responded by condemning the excesses of what they considered capitalism, and demanding revolutionary changes on the cultural scenery. Influenced by the brief cultural explosion in the Soviet Union, German literature, cinema, theatre and musical works entered a phase of great creativity. Innovative street theatre brought plays to the public, and the cabaret scene and jazz bands became very popular. According to the cliché, modern young women were Americanized, wearing makeup, short hair, smoking and breaking with traditional mores. The euphoria surrounding Josephine Baker in the metropolis of Berlin for instance, where she was declared an "erotic goddess" and in many ways admired and respected, kindled further "ultramodern" sensations in the minds of the German public. Art and a new type of architecture taught at "Bauhaus" schools reflected the new ideas of the time, with artists such as George Grosz being fined for defaming the military and for blasphemy. Artists in Berlin were influenced by other contemporary progressive cultural movements, such as the Impressionist and Expressionist painters in Paris, as well as the Cubists. Likewise, American progressive architects were admired. Many of the new buildings built during this era followed a straight-lined, geometrical style. Examples of the new architecture include the Bauhaus Building by Gropius, Grosses Schauspielhaus, and the Einstein Tower. Not everyone, however, was happy with the changes taking place in Weimar culture. Conservatives and reactionaries feared that Germany was betraying its traditional values by adopting popular styles from abroad, particularly those Hollywood was popularising in American films, while New York became the global capital of fashion. Germany was more susceptible to Americanization, because of the close economic links brought about by the Dawes plan. In 1929, three years after receiving the 1926 Nobel Peace Prize, Stresemann died of a heart attack at age 51. When the New York Stock Exchange crashed in October 1929, American loans dried up and the sharp decline of the German economy brought the "Golden Twenties" to an abrupt end. Social policy under Weimar A wide range of progressive social reforms were carried out during and after the revolutionary period. In 1919, legislation provided for a maximum working 48-hour workweek, restrictions on night work, a half-holiday on Saturday, and a break of thirty-six hours of continuous rest during the week. That same year, health insurance was extended to wives and daughters without their own income, people only partially capable of gainful employment, people employed in private cooperatives, and people employed in public cooperatives. A series of progressive tax reforms were introduced under the auspices of Matthias Erzberger, including increases in taxes on capital and an increase in the highest income tax rate from 4% to 60%. Under a governmental decree of 3 February 1919, the German government met the demand of the veterans' associations that all aid for the disabled and their dependents be taken over by the central government (thus assuming responsibility for this assistance) and extended into peacetime the nationwide network of state and district welfare bureaus that had been set up during the war to coordinate social services for war widows and orphans. The Imperial Youth Welfare Act of 1922 obliged all municipalities and states to set up youth offices in charge of child protection, and also codified a right to education for all children, while laws were passed to regulate rents and increase protection for tenants in 1922 and 1923. Health insurance coverage was extended to other categories of the population during the existence of the Weimar Republic, including seamen, people employed in the educational and social welfare sectors, and all primary dependents. Various improvements were also made in unemployment benefits, although in June 1920 the maximum amount of unemployment benefit that a family of four could receive in Berlin, 90 marks, was well below the minimum cost of subsistence of 304 marks. In 1923, unemployment relief was consolidated into a regular programme of assistance following economic problems that year. In 1924, a modern public assistance programme was introduced, and in 1925 the accident insurance programme was reformed, allowing diseases that were linked to certain kinds of work to become insurable risks. In addition, a national unemployment insurance programme was introduced in 1927. Housing construction was also greatly accelerated during the Weimar period, with over 2 million new homes constructed between 1924 and 1931 and a further 195,000 modernised. Renewed crisis and decline (1930–1933) Onset of the Great Depression In 1929, the onset of the depression in the United States of America produced a severe economic shock in Germany and was further made worse by the bankruptcy of the Austrian Creditanstalt bank. Germany's fragile economy had been sustained by the granting of loans through the Dawes Plan (1924) and the Young Plan (1929). When American banks withdrew their line of credit to German companies, the onset of severe unemployment could not be abated by conventional economic measures. Unemployment thereafter grew dramatically, at 4 million in 1930, and in September 1930 a political earthquake shook the republic to its foundations. The National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP), until then a minor far-right party, increased its votes to 19%, becoming Germany's second largest party, while the Communist Party of Germany (KPD) also increased its votes; this made the unstable coalition system by which every chancellor had governed increasingly unworkable. The last years of the Weimar Republic was marred by even more systemic political instability than in the previous years as political violence increased. Four Chancellors (Heinrich Brüning, Franz von Papen, Kurt von Schleicher) and, from 30 January to 23 March 1933, Hitler governed through presidential decree rather than through parliamentary consultation. This effectively rendered parliament as a means of enforcing constitutional checks and balances powerless. Brüning's policy of deflation (1930–1932) On 29 March 1930, after months of lobbying by General Kurt von Schleicher on behalf of the military, the finance expert Heinrich Brüning was appointed as Müller's successor by Reichspräsident Paul von Hindenburg. The new government was expected to lead a political shift towards conservatism. As Brüning had no majority support in the Reichstag, he became, through the use of the emergency powers granted to the Reichspräsident (Article 48) by the constitution, the first Weimar chancellor to operate independently of parliament. This made him dependent on the Reichspräsident, Hindenburg. After a bill to reform the Reich's finances was opposed by the Reichstag, it was made an emergency decree by Hindenburg. On 18 July, as a result of opposition from the SPD, KPD, DNVP and the small contingent of NSDAP members, the Reichstag again rejected the bill by a slim margin. Immediately afterward, Brüning submitted the president's decree that the Reichstag be dissolved. The consequent general election on 14 September resulted in an enormous political shift within the Reichstag: 18.3% of the vote went to the NSDAP, five times the percentage won in 1928. As a result, it was no longer possible to form a pro-republican majority, not even with a grand coalition that excluded the KPD, DNVP and NSDAP. This encouraged an escalation in the number of public demonstrations and instances of paramilitary violence organised by the NSDAP. Between 1930 and 1932, Brüning tried to reform the Weimar Republic without a parliamentary majority, governing, when necessary, through the President's emergency decrees. In line with the contemporary economic theory (subsequently termed "leave-it-alone liquidationism"), he enacted a draconian policy of deflation and drastically cutting state expenditure. Among other measures, he completely halted all public grants to the obligatory unemployment insurance introduced in 1927, resulting in workers making higher contributions and fewer benefits for the unemployed. Benefits for the sick, invalid and pensioners were also reduced sharply. Additional difficulties were caused by the different deflationary policies pursued by Brüning and the Reichsbank, Germany's central bank. In mid-1931, the United Kingdom abandoned the gold standard and about 30 countries (the sterling bloc) devalued their currencies, making their goods around 20% cheaper than those produced by Germany. As the Young Plan did not allow a devaluation of the Reichsmark, Brüning triggered a deflationary internal devaluation by forcing the economy to reduce prices, rents, salaries and wages by 20%. Debate continues as to whether this policy was without alternative: some argue that the Allies would not in any circumstances have allowed a devaluation of the Reichsmark, while others point to the Hoover Moratorium as a sign that the Allies understood that the situation had changed fundamentally and further German reparation payments were impossible. Brüning expected that the policy of deflation would temporarily worsen the economic situation before it began to improve, quickly increasing the German economy's competitiveness and then restoring its creditworthiness. His long-term view was that deflation would, in any case, be the best way to help the economy. His primary goal was to remove Germany's reparation payments by convincing the Allies that they could no longer be paid. Anton Erkelenz, chairman of the German Democratic Party and a contemporary critic of Brüning, famously said that the policy of deflation is: In 1933, the American economist Irving Fisher developed the theory of debt deflation. He explained that a deflation causes a decline of profits, asset prices and a still greater decline in the net worth of businesses. Even healthy companies, therefore, may appear over-indebted and facing bankruptcy. The consensus today is that Brüning's policies exacerbated the German economic crisis and the population's growing frustration with democracy, contributing enormously to the increase in support for Hitler's NSDAP. Most German capitalists and landowners originally supported the conservative experiment more from the belief that conservatives would best serve their interests rather than any particular liking for Brüning. As more of the working and middle classes turned against Brüning, however, more of the capitalists and landowners declared themselves in favour of his opponents Hitler and Hugenberg. By late 1931, the conservative movement was dead and Hindenburg and the Reichswehr had begun to contemplate dropping Brüning in favour of accommodating Hugenberg and Hitler. Although Hindenburg disliked Hugenberg and despised Hitler, he was no less a supporter of the sort of anti-democratic counter-revolution that the DNVP and NSDAP represented. In April 1932, Brüning had actively supported Hindenburg's successful campaign against Hitler for re-election as Reichspräsident; five weeks later, on 30 May 1932, he had lost Hindenburg's support and resigned as Reichskanzler. Papen deal Hindenburg then appointed Franz von Papen as new Reichskanzler. Papen lifted the ban on the NSDAP's SA paramilitary, imposed after the street riots, in an unsuccessful attempt to secure the backing of Hitler. Papen was closely associated with the industrialist and land-owning classes and pursued an extremely conservative policy along Hindenburg's lines. He appointed as Reichswehr Minister Kurt von Schleicher, and all the members of the new cabinet were of the same political opinion as Hindenburg. The government was expected to assure itself of the co-operation of Hitler. Since the republicans were not yet ready to take action, the Communists did not want to support the republic and the conservatives had shot their political bolt, Hitler and Hugenberg were certain to achieve power. Elections of July 1932 Because most parties opposed the new government, Papen had the Reichstag dissolved and called for new elections. The general elections on 31 July 1932 yielded major gains for the Communists, and for the Nazis, who won 37.3% of the vote—their high-water mark in a free election. The Nazi party then supplanted the Social Democrats as the largest party in the Reichstag, although it did not gain a majority. The immediate question was what part the now large Nazi Party would play in the Government of the country. The party owed its huge increase to growing support from middle-class people, whose traditional parties were swallowed up by the Nazi Party. The millions of radical adherents at first forced the Party towards the Left. They wanted a renewed Germany and a new organisation of German society. The left of the Nazi party strove desperately against any drift into the train of such capitalist and feudal reactionaries. Therefore, Hitler refused ministry under Papen, and demanded the chancellorship for himself, but was rejected by Hindenburg on 13 August 1932. There was still no majority in the Reichstag for any government; as a result, the Reichstag was dissolved and elections took place once more in the hope that a stable majority would result. Schleicher cabinet The 6 November 1932 elections yielded 33% for the Nazis, two million voters fewer than in the previous election. Franz von Papen stepped down and was succeeded as Chancellor (Reichskanzler) by General Kurt von Schleicher on 3 December. Schleicher, a retired army officer, had developed in an atmosphere of semi-obscurity and intrigue that encompassed the Republican military policy. He had for years been in the camp of those supporting the Conservative counter-revolution. Schleicher's bold and unsuccessful plan was to build a majority in the Reichstag by uniting the trade unionist left wings of the various parties, including that of the Nazis led by Gregor Strasser. This policy did not prove successful either. In this brief Presidential Dictatorship intermission, Schleicher assumed the role of "Socialist General" and entered into relations with the Christian Trade Unions, the relatively left of the Nazi party, and even with the Social Democrats. Schleicher planned for a sort of labour government under his Generalship. But the Reichswehr officers were not prepared for this, the working class had a natural distrust of their future allies, and the great capitalists and landowners also did not like the plans. Hitler learned from Papen that the general had not received from Hindenburg the authority to abolish the Reichstag parliament, whereas any majority of seats did. The cabinet (under a previous interpretation of Article 48) ruled without a sitting Reichstag, which could vote only for its own dissolution. Hitler also learned that all past crippling Nazi debts were to be relieved by German big business. On 22 January, Hitler's efforts to persuade Oskar von Hindenburg, the President's son and confidant, included threats to bring criminal charges over estate taxation irregularities at the President's Neudeck estate; although extra were soon allotted to Hindenburg's property. Outmaneuvered by Papen and Hitler on plans for the new cabinet, and having lost Hindenburg's confidence, Schleicher asked for new elections. On 28 January, Papen described Hitler to Paul von Hindenburg as only a minority part of an alternative, Papen-arranged government. The four great political movements, the SPD, Communists, Centre, and the Nazis were in opposition. On 29 January, Hitler and Papen thwarted a last-minute threat of an officially sanctioned Reichswehr takeover, and on 30 January 1933 Hindenburg accepted the new Papen-Nationalist-Hitler coalition, with the Nazis holding only three of eleven Cabinet seats: Hitler as Chancellor, Wilhelm Frick as Minister of the Interior