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M76 7.9 mm Sniper rifle M72 7.62 mm Machine gun M84 7.62 mm Machine gun M87 12.7 mm Heavy Machine gun AT-3 Sagger AT-4 Spigot M79 "Osa" 90 mm M80 "Zolja" 64 mm rocket grenade launcher Air Force The inventory included MiG-21 (fighter/recon/trainer), MiG-29 (fighter/trainer), Soko J-22 (ground/recon/trainer), Soko G-2 (fighter/bomber/trainer), Soko G-4 (fighter/bomber/target/trainer, Antonov An-2 (cargo), Antonov An-26 (cargo), Yakovlev Yak-40 (VIP), Mil Mi-8 (multirole), Mil Mi-14 (anti-submarine), Kamov Ka-25 (anti-submarine), Kamov Ka-28 (anti-submarine), Aérospatiale Gazelle (attack/utility/recon). Navy The Navy, known as the Yugoslav Navy ( [RMVJ], ) from 1992 to 2003 and the Navy of Serbia and Montenegro (, ) from 2003 to 2006, was based in Kotor and was largely made of vessels inherited from the pre-1992 Federal Yugoslav Navy (, ). During NATO's Operation Allied Force in 1999, the Navy took control over civilian shipping around Kotor, despite NATO's blockade and in several actions the navy's warships fired at NATO aircraft that were on their way to strike Yugoslav targets. The Navy claimed to have shot down three UAVs over Boka Kotorska. The images of the remains of one of them were displayed online. Koni-class frigate (2) Kotor-class frigate (2) Heroj-class submarine (3) Sava-class submarine (2) Una-class submarine (5) Končar-class missile boat (6) Osa class missile boat (10) Jadran sailboat Neštin class minesweeper (7) Kozara river ship Intelligence Security Administration Operational experience Croatian War and Bosnian War (1992–1995), unofficially, logistical support and supplies Insurgency in Kosovo (27 May 1995 – 28 February 1998), belligerent, counter-terrorism Kosovo War (28 March 1998 – 11 June 1999), including NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (23 March – 10 June 1999), belligerent Insurgency in the Preševo Valley (12 June 1999 – 1 June 2001), belligerent, counter-terrorism Statistics Civilians fit for military service were estimated at about 4,888,595 (2001 est.). The 2002 estimate for military expenditures as percent of GDP was 4.6%. Significant reforms were undertaken in the military of Serbia and Montenegro. In 2002 the Serbo-Montenegrin Military force numbered around 117,500 soldiers, supported by some 450,000 reserves. The 100,000 strong Army had 1,500 main battle tanks and 687 armed infantry vehicles. The Navy had 3,500 personnel, of whom 900 were marines. The entire Navy was composed totally out of 6 submarines, 3 frigates, 41 patrol & coastal ships and 14 "other" vessels. The Air force 14,000 personnel had 192 combat aircraft and 72 armed helicopters. Branches Army or Ground Forces (Kopnena vojska – KoV VSCG) Air Force and Air Defense (Ratno Vazduhoplovstvo i Protivvazdušna odbrana – RV i PVO VSCG) Navy (Ratna Mornarica – RM VSCG) Military manpower – military age: 19 years of age (2003 est.) Military manpower – availability: males age 15–49: 3,579,620 | class minesweeper (7) Kozara river ship Intelligence Security Administration Operational experience Croatian War and Bosnian War (1992–1995), unofficially, logistical support and supplies Insurgency in Kosovo (27 May 1995 – 28 February 1998), belligerent, counter-terrorism Kosovo War (28 March 1998 – 11 June 1999), including NATO bombing of Yugoslavia (23 March – 10 June 1999), belligerent Insurgency in the Preševo Valley (12 June 1999 – 1 June 2001), belligerent, counter-terrorism Statistics Civilians fit for military service were estimated at about 4,888,595 (2001 est.). The 2002 estimate for military expenditures as percent of GDP was 4.6%. Significant reforms were undertaken in the military of Serbia and Montenegro. In 2002 the Serbo-Montenegrin Military force numbered around 117,500 soldiers, supported by some 450,000 reserves. The 100,000 strong Army had 1,500 main battle tanks and 687 armed infantry vehicles. The Navy had 3,500 personnel, of whom 900 were marines. The entire Navy was composed totally out of 6 submarines, 3 frigates, 41 patrol & coastal ships and 14 "other" vessels. The Air force 14,000 personnel had 192 combat aircraft and 72 armed helicopters. Branches Army or Ground Forces (Kopnena vojska – KoV VSCG) Air Force and Air Defense (Ratno Vazduhoplovstvo i Protivvazdušna odbrana – RV i PVO VSCG) Navy (Ratna Mornarica – RM VSCG) Military manpower – military age: 19 years of age (2003 est.) Military manpower – availability: males age 15–49: 3,579,620 (2003 est.) Military manpower – fit for military service: males age 15–49: 3,077,660 (2003 est.) Military manpower – reaching military age annually: males: 101,547 (2003 est.) Military expenditures – dollar figure: $954 million (2002) Military expenditures – percent of GDP: 4.6% (2002. est.) International deployment The VSCG was part of MONUC, the UN mission in the Congo. The VSCG was also part of UNAMSIL, the UN mission into Sierra Leone. Last chief of staff of the Military of Serbia and Montenegro was general Ljubiša Jokić. See also Yugoslav People's Army Destruction of Albanian heritage in Kosovo Notes References External links Yugoslavia Ground Forces Serbian and Montenegrin Armed Forces / Vojska Srbije i Crne Gore – |
disputed ethnic Albanian prisoners from Kosovo to the competent UN bodies. In 2002, the government established a commission to coordinate cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and began serving warrants for the arrest of indicted war criminals who have sought refuge in the country. The crackdown on organized crime following the assassination of Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Đinđić; also resulted in the apprehension and transfer to the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in Hague of several persons indicted for war crimes. Immediately preceding the NATO bombing campaign of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in spring 1999, the U.S. and most European countries severed relations with Yugoslavia, and the U.S. embassy was closed. Since October 5, 2000, foreign embassies, including that of the U.S., have reopened, and the country has regained its seat in such international organizations as the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) and the United Nations and is actively participating in International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank projects. As of summer 2003, Serbia and Montenegro has been admitted to the Council of Europe and has indicated that it wishes to join NATO's Partnership for Peace. Foreign aid Subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities with NATO, Belgrade received no foreign aid from the United States and other west European | summer 2003, Serbia and Montenegro has been admitted to the Council of Europe and has indicated that it wishes to join NATO's Partnership for Peace. Foreign aid Subsequent to the outbreak of hostilities with NATO, Belgrade received no foreign aid from the United States and other west European countries, but has received much aid from other countries such as Russia, China, and Greece. Since October 2000, however, the European Union aid has steadily increased, and U.S. restrictions on aid have fallen away as the union of Serbia and Montenegro stepped forward to meet its international obligations. In June 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was able to certify that Serbia and Montenegro relationship with the Republika Srpska was consistent with the Dayton Accords, had released all political prisoners, and was cooperating with ICTY. As a result, the United States is now free to release aid money and support Serbia and Montenegro in international financial institutions, such as the IMF and World Bank. Total U.S. aid to Serbia and Montenegro, including debt forgiveness, exceeded $180 million in fiscal year 2002. The U.S. is the single-largest donor of aid to Serbia and Montenegro. International disputes Several Albanian political parties in Kosovo voice union with Albania Has delimited about half of the boundary with Bosnia and Herzegovina, but sections along the Drina River remain in dispute. There is also a dispute with Bosnia regarding the exclave of Sastavci village in Priboj municipality (which is entirely surrounded by Serbian territory), as well as Serbian "practical" exclave comprising several villages in the same area. Some disputes with Croatia regarding the border. In 2002 there was a border incident regarding river island near Šarengrad, when Serbian border police prevented land owners from Croatia to visit their properties (lying in Serbian territory) using boats. In late 2002, Serbia and Montenegro and Croatia adopted an interim agreement to settle the disputed Prevlaka Peninsula, allowing the withdrawal |
side note, French also used to represent in words like voyage and yeux). Scots In words of French and Gaelic origin, the Early Scots palatal consonant had become or in some cases , and the palatal consonant had become by the Middle Scots period. Those were variously written , , or , and , or (cf. gn and gli in Italian). By the Modern Scots period the yogh had been replaced by the character z, in particular for , (n) and (l), written nz and lz. The original and developed into in some words such as or Zetland for Shetland. Yogh was also used to represent in words such as , (yesterday) and but by the Modern Scots period y had replaced yogh. The pronunciation of MacKenzie (and its variant spellings) (from Scottish Gaelic ), originally pronounced in Scots, shows where yogh became z. Menzies Campbell is another example. After the development of printing In Middle Scots orthography, the use of yogh became confused with a cursive z and the early Scots printers often used z when yogh was not available in their fonts. The yogh glyph can be found in surnames that start with a Y in Scotland and Ireland; for example the surname Yeoman, which would have been spelled . Sometimes, the yogh would be replaced by the letter z, because the shape of the yogh was identical to some forms of handwritten z. In Unicode 1.0, the character yogh was mistakenly unified with the quite different character ezh (Ʒ ʒ), and yogh itself was not added to Unicode until version 3.0. List of Middle English words containing a yogh These are examples of Middle English words that contain the letter yogh in their spellings. ("night") ("eye") ("yea") ("hallowed") ("gate") (past tense of "go", which in ME is often "yede") , (past participles of "yield" and "yean") ("harboured") ("ear") ("hied, hastened") ("gift") ("if") ("yes") ("yesterday") ("yester-") ("yet") ("give" or "if") ("wrought") Scots words with for Placenames Ben Chonzie – a mountain in Perthshire; Branziert – a suburb of Killearn in Stirlingshire; The Branziet – pronounced bringit (IPA ), a farm and settlement near Bardowie, East Dunbartonshire that lends its name to the Branziet Burn and Branziet Bridge; Bunzion – pronounced bunion (IPA ), Lower and Upper Bunzion are farms in the Parish of Cults, Fife; Cadzow – the former name of the town of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire; the word Cadzow continues in modern use in many street names and other names, e.g. Cadzow Castle, Kilncadzow; Calzeat – Lanarkshire; Calziebohalzie – a former farmstead in Stirlingshire with a rare instance of a word containing two yoghs, from Gaelic Coille Buachaille (); Cockenzie – pronounced cockennie (IPA ), from the meaning "cove of Kenneth", a town in East Lothian; Colzium Estate – now pronounced as written, a historic estate and mansion house built on the banks of the Colzium Burn near Kilsyth; Corriemulzie – a river in Sutherland that lends its name to the Corriemulzie Estate; Crailzie Hill – a hill in the Scottish Borders; Culzean – pronounced culain (IPA ), a historic castle in Ayrshire run by the National trust for Scotland; Dalmunzie – now pronounced as written, a historic castle in Perthshire now repurposed as a hotel; Drumelzier – pronounced drumellier (IPA ), a village in the Tweed Valley; Drunzie and Drunzie Feus - two adjacent settlements near Glenfarg in Perth and Kinross; Easter Dalziel – pronounced deeyel (IPA ) from Gaelic Dail Gheal () meaning "white field"; Edzell – now pronounced as written, a village in Angus and the nearby settlement Edzell Woods; Finzean – pronounced fingen (IPA ), an area in rural Aberdeenshire; Funzie Girt – pronounced funyie girt (IPA ), a historic dividing wall on Fetlar; Gartwhinzean – a historic settlement near Crook of Devon in Perth and Kinross; Glenzier – pronounced glinger (IPA ), a village in Dumfries & Galloway which lends its name to Glenzierfoot and the Glenzier Burn; Kailzie Gardens – a historic walled garden near Kirkburn, Scottish Borders; Kilchenzie or Kilkenzie – a small settlement on the Kintyre peninsula, from Choinnich (), the genitive of Coinneach () "Kenneth"; Kilhenzie – a small settlement in South Ayrshire, also from Choinnich; Kirkgunzeon – pronounced kirkgunion (IPA ), a village in Dumfries and Galloway; Lenzie – now pronounced as written (IPA ), but previously lenyie (IPA ), a village near Glasgow; Lochranza – pronounced as written, but found as Loch Ranga as recently as the late 19th century, a village on the Isle of Arran; Menzion – a village in the Borders; Menzieshill – an area of Dundee; Monzie – pronounced money (IPA ), from the Gaelic Moighidh, "a level tract", a parish in Perthshire near Crieff which lends its name to Loch Monzievaird and the Falls of Monzie; Monzievaird – a place in Perthshire generally supposed to be from Gaelic and meaning "Plain of the bards"; Moonzie – a parish in Fife generally supposed to be from Gaelic and meaning "hill of the deer"; Portencalzie – a small settlement near Kirkcolm on the Rhins of Galloway; Pitcalzean – an obscure archaeological enclosure near the village of Nigg, Highland that lends its name to nearby Pitcalzean House; Queenzieburn – pronounced queenieburn (IPA ), a village in Lanarkshire; Ruchazie – now pronounced as written (IPA ), a district of Glasgow; Terringzean Castle – pronounced tringan (IPA ) but with a variety of | in the Insular script introduced at the Christianisation of England by the Hiberno-Scottish mission. It only came to be used as a letter distinct from g in the Middle English period, where it evolved in appearance into ȝ, now considered a separate character. Middle English In the 14th century, the digraph gh arose as an alternative to yogh for /x/, and eventually overtook yogh in popularity; still, the variety of pronunciations persisted, as evidenced by cough, taught, and though. The process of replacing the yogh with gh was slow, and was not completed until the arrival of printing presses (which lacked yogh) in England around the end of the fifteenth century. Not every English word that contains a gh was originally spelled with a yogh: for example, spaghetti is Italian, where the h makes the g hard (i.e., instead of ); ghoul is Arabic, in which the gh was . The medieval author Orm used this letter in three ways when writing Early Middle English. By itself, it represented , so he used this letter for the y in "yet". Doubled, it represented , so he ended his spelling of "may" with two yoghs. Finally, the digraph of yogh followed by an h represented . In the late Middle English period, yogh was no longer used: came to be spelled night. Middle English re-imported G in its French form for (As a further side note, French also used to represent in words like voyage and yeux). Scots In words of French and Gaelic origin, the Early Scots palatal consonant had become or in some cases , and the palatal consonant had become by the Middle Scots period. Those were variously written , , or , and , or (cf. gn and gli in Italian). By the Modern Scots period the yogh had been replaced by the character z, in particular for , (n) and (l), written nz and lz. The original and developed into in some words such as or Zetland for Shetland. Yogh was also used to represent in words such as , (yesterday) and but by the Modern Scots period y had replaced yogh. The pronunciation of MacKenzie (and its variant spellings) (from Scottish Gaelic ), originally pronounced in Scots, shows where yogh became z. Menzies Campbell is another example. After the development of printing In Middle Scots orthography, the use of yogh became confused with a cursive z and the early Scots printers often used z when yogh was not available in their fonts. The yogh glyph can be found in surnames that start with a Y in Scotland and Ireland; for example the surname Yeoman, which would have been spelled . Sometimes, the yogh would be replaced by the letter z, because the shape of the yogh was identical to some forms of handwritten z. In Unicode 1.0, the character yogh was mistakenly unified with the quite different character ezh (Ʒ ʒ), and yogh itself was not added to Unicode until version 3.0. List of Middle English words containing a yogh These are examples of Middle English words that contain the letter yogh in their spellings. ("night") ("eye") ("yea") ("hallowed") ("gate") (past tense of "go", which in ME is often "yede") , (past participles of "yield" and "yean") ("harboured") ("ear") ("hied, hastened") ("gift") ("if") ("yes") ("yesterday") ("yester-") ("yet") ("give" or "if") ("wrought") Scots words with for Placenames Ben Chonzie – a mountain in Perthshire; Branziert – a suburb of Killearn in Stirlingshire; The Branziet – pronounced bringit (IPA ), a farm and settlement near Bardowie, East Dunbartonshire that lends its name to the Branziet Burn and Branziet Bridge; Bunzion – pronounced bunion (IPA ), Lower and Upper Bunzion are farms in the Parish of Cults, Fife; Cadzow – the former name of the town of Hamilton, South Lanarkshire; the word Cadzow continues in modern use in many street names and other names, e.g. Cadzow Castle, Kilncadzow; Calzeat – Lanarkshire; Calziebohalzie – a former farmstead in Stirlingshire with a rare |
October 17. Meetings in the universities." In December 1905, Zamyatin agreed to hide in his flat a paper bag filled with the explosive pyroxylin. The following day, he and thirty other Bolsheviks were arrested by the Okhrana inside their "revolutionary headquarters of the Vyborg district, at the very moment when plans and pistols of various types were spread out on the table." After being arrested and beaten up, Zamyatin managed to smuggle a note out of the prison, instructing his fellow Bolsheviks, "to remove everything compromising from my room and the rooms of my four comrades." Although this was immediately done, Zamyatin did not know of it until much later. During the months he spent in solitary confinement, Zamyatin recalled that he had almost daily nightmares about the paper bag in his flat containing pyroxylin. In the spring of 1906, Zamyatin was released and sent into internal exile in his native Tambov Governorate. However, Zamyatin later wrote that he could not stand life among the devoutly Russian Orthodox peasantry of Lebedyan. Therefore, he escaped and returned to Saint Petersburg where he lived illegally before moving to Helsinki, in the Grand Duchy of Finland. After illegally returning to St. Petersburg, "disguised, clean-shaven, with a pince-nez astride my nose," Zamyatin began to write fiction as a hobby. He was arrested and exiled a second time in 1911. He later recalled, "I lived first in an empty dacha at Sestroretsk, then, in winter, in Lakhta. There amidst snow, solitude, quite, I wrote A Provincial Tale." Life as a naval engineer In 1913, Zamyatin was granted an amnesty as part of the celebrations for 300-years of rule by the House of Romanov and granted the right to return to St. Petersburg. His A Provincial Tale, which satirized life in a small Russian town, was immediately published and brought him a degree of fame. The next year he was tried and acquitted for defaming the Imperial Russian Army in his story Na Kulichkakh (At the World's End). He continued to contribute articles to Marxist newspapers. After graduating as an engineer for the Imperial Russian Navy, Zamyatin worked professionally at home and abroad. Sojourn in England In March 1916, he was sent to the United Kingdom to supervise the construction of icebreakers at the shipyards of Armstrong Whitworth in Walker and Swan Hunter in Wallsend while living in Newcastle upon Tyne. He supervised the building of the Krassin, which retained the distinction of being the most powerful icebreaker in the world into the 1950s. He also worked on the Lenin. Zamyatin later wrote, "My only previous visit to the West had been to Germany. Berlin had impressed me as a condensed, 80-percent version of Petersburg. In England it was quite different: everything was as new and strange as Alexandria and Jerusalem had been some years before." Zamyatin later recalled, "In England, I built ships, looked at ruined castles, listened to the thud of bombs dropped by German Zeppelins, and wrote The Islanders. I regret that I did not see the February Revolution, and know only the October Revolution (I returned to Petersburg, past German submarines, in a ship with lights out, wearing a life belt the whole time, just in time for October). This is the same as never having been in love and waking up one morning already married for ten years or so." Return to Russia Zamyatin's The Islanders, satirizing English life, and the similarly themed A Fisher of Men, were both published after his return to Russia. According to Mirra Ginsburg: "In 1917 he returned to Petersburg and plunged into the seething literary activity that was one of the most astonishing by-products of the revolution in ruined, ravaged, hungry, and epidemic-ridden Russia. He wrote stories, plays, and criticism; he lectured on literature and the writer's craft; he participated in various literary projects and committees - many of them initiated and presided over by Maxim Gorky - and served on various editorial boards, with Gorky, Blok, Korney Chukovsky, Gumilev, Shklovsky, and other leading writers, poets, critics, and linguists. And very soon he came under fire from the newly 'orthodox' - the Proletarian Writers who sought to impose on all art the sole criterion of 'usefulness to the revolution.'" But, as the Russian Civil War still raged, Zamyatin's writings and statements became increasingly satirical and critical toward the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Even though he was an Old Bolshevik and even though, "he accepted the revolution," Zamyatin believed that independent speech and thought are necessary to any healthy society and opposed the Party's increasing suppression of freedom of speech and the censorship of literature, the media, and the arts. In his 1918 essay Scythians?, Zamyatin wrote, "Christ on Golgotha, between two thieves, bleeding to death drop by drop, is the victor - because he has been crucified, because, in practical terms, he has been vanquished. But Christ victorious in practical terms is the Grand Inquisitor. And worse, Christ victorious in practical terms is a paunchy priest in a silk-lined purple robe, who dispenses benedictions with his right hand and collects donations with his left. The Fair Lady, in legal marriage, is simply Mrs. So-and-So, with hair curlers at night and a migraine in the morning. And Marx, having come down to earth, is simply a Krylenko. Such is the irony and such is the wisdom of fate. Wisdom because this ironic law holds the pledge of eternal movement forward. The realization, materialisation, practical victory of an idea immediately gives it a philistine hue. And the true Scythian will smell from a mile away the odor of dwellings, the odor of cabbage soup, the odor of the priest in his purple cassock, the odor of Krylenko -- and will hasten away from the dwellings, into the steppe, to freedom." Later in the same essay, Zamyatin quoted a recent poem by Andrei Bely and used it to further criticize People's Commissar for Military Affairs Nikolai Krylenko and those like him, for having, "covered Russia with a pile of carcasses," and for, "dreaming of socialist-Napoleonic Wars in Europe - throughout the world, throughout the universe! But let us not jest incautiously. Bely is honest, and did not intend to speak about the Krylenkos." In 1919, Zamyatin wrote: "He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned into a pillar of salt and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy." Zamyatin's novel We, which he wrote between 1920 and 1921, is set many centuries in the future. D-503, a mathematician, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass apartment buildings, which assist mass surveillance by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. The structure of the One State is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed based on the theories of F. W. Taylor. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by numbers assigned by the One State. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State. As the novel opens, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to visit extraterrestrial planets. In a deliberate swipe at the expansionist dreams of Nikolai Krylenko and others like him, the One State intends to "force" alien races "to be happy" by accepting the absolutism of the One State and its leader, the Benefactor. Meanwhile, as the spaceship's chief engineer, D-503 begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship. Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, O-90, has been assigned by the One State to visit him on certain nights. She is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life. O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions. While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks vodka, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for a pink ticket sex visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State. Both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. He begins to have dreams, which are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is in a member of MEPHI, an organization of rebels against the One State. I-330 also takes D-503 through secret tunnels to the untamed wilderness outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets human inhabitants whom the One State claims do not exist: hunter gatherers whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of MEPHI are to topple the One State, destroy the Green Wall, and reunite the people of the city with the outside world. Like many other dystopian novels, We does not end happily for I-330 and D-503, it also ends with a general uprising by MEPHI and the One State's survival in doubt. A recurring theme throughout We is that, just as there is no highest number, there can be no final revolution. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Government refused to allow We to be published. In his 1921 essay I Am Afraid, Zamyatin began by criticizing the poets who unconditionally sang the praises of the new Soviet Government. Zamyatin compared them with the Court Poets under the House of Romanov and under the French House of Bourbon. Zamyatin further criticized, "these nimble authors," for knowing, "when to sing hail to the Tsar, and when to the Hammer and Sickle." Zamyatin then wrote: "True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." Zamyatin continued by pointing out that writers in the new Soviet Union were forbidden to criticize and satirise, in the vein of Jonathan Swift and Anatole France, the foibles and failings of the new society. Zamyatin added that, while many compared Russia after the October Revolution to the Athenian democracy at its inception, the Athenian government and people did not fear the satirical stage plays of Aristophanes, in which everyone was mocked and criticized. Zamyatin concluded by pointing out that if the Party did not rid itself of, "this new Catholicism, which is every bit as fearful of every heretical word as the old one," then the only future possible for Russian literature was "in the past." In Zamyatin's 1923 essay, The New Russian Prose, he wrote, "In art, the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized dies of obesity, of entropy." In his 1923 essay, On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other | law holds the pledge of eternal movement forward. The realization, materialisation, practical victory of an idea immediately gives it a philistine hue. And the true Scythian will smell from a mile away the odor of dwellings, the odor of cabbage soup, the odor of the priest in his purple cassock, the odor of Krylenko -- and will hasten away from the dwellings, into the steppe, to freedom." Later in the same essay, Zamyatin quoted a recent poem by Andrei Bely and used it to further criticize People's Commissar for Military Affairs Nikolai Krylenko and those like him, for having, "covered Russia with a pile of carcasses," and for, "dreaming of socialist-Napoleonic Wars in Europe - throughout the world, throughout the universe! But let us not jest incautiously. Bely is honest, and did not intend to speak about the Krylenkos." In 1919, Zamyatin wrote: "He who has found his ideal today is, like Lot's wife, already turned into a pillar of salt and does not move ahead. The world is kept alive only by heretics: the heretic Christ, the heretic Copernicus, the heretic Tolstoy. Our symbol of faith is heresy." Zamyatin's novel We, which he wrote between 1920 and 1921, is set many centuries in the future. D-503, a mathematician, lives in the One State, an urban nation constructed almost entirely of glass apartment buildings, which assist mass surveillance by the secret police, or Bureau of Guardians. The structure of the One State is Panopticon-like, and life is scientifically managed based on the theories of F. W. Taylor. People march in step with each other and are uniformed. There is no way of referring to people except by numbers assigned by the One State. The society is run strictly by logic or reason as the primary justification for the laws or the construct of the society. The individual's behaviour is based on logic by way of formulas and equations outlined by the One State. As the novel opens, the spaceship Integral is being built in order to visit extraterrestrial planets. In a deliberate swipe at the expansionist dreams of Nikolai Krylenko and others like him, the One State intends to "force" alien races "to be happy" by accepting the absolutism of the One State and its leader, the Benefactor. Meanwhile, as the spaceship's chief engineer, D-503 begins a journal that he intends to be carried upon the completed spaceship. Like all other citizens of One State, D-503 lives in a glass apartment building and is carefully watched by the Bureau of Guardians. D-503's lover, O-90, has been assigned by the One State to visit him on certain nights. She is considered too short to bear children and is deeply grieved by her state in life. O-90's other lover and D-503's best friend is R-13, a State poet who reads his verse at public executions. While on an assigned walk with O-90, D-503 meets a woman named I-330. I-330 smokes cigarettes, drinks vodka, and shamelessly flirts with D-503 instead of applying for a pink ticket sex visit; all of these are highly illegal according to the laws of One State. Both repelled and fascinated, D-503 struggles to overcome his attraction to I-330. He begins to have dreams, which are thought to be a symptom of mental illness. Slowly, I-330 reveals to D-503 that she is in a member of MEPHI, an organization of rebels against the One State. I-330 also takes D-503 through secret tunnels to the untamed wilderness outside the Green Wall, which surrounds the city-state. There, D-503 meets human inhabitants whom the One State claims do not exist: hunter gatherers whose bodies are covered with animal fur. The aims of MEPHI are to topple the One State, destroy the Green Wall, and reunite the people of the city with the outside world. Like many other dystopian novels, We does not end happily for I-330 and D-503, it also ends with a general uprising by MEPHI and the One State's survival in doubt. A recurring theme throughout We is that, just as there is no highest number, there can be no final revolution. Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Government refused to allow We to be published. In his 1921 essay I Am Afraid, Zamyatin began by criticizing the poets who unconditionally sang the praises of the new Soviet Government. Zamyatin compared them with the Court Poets under the House of Romanov and under the French House of Bourbon. Zamyatin further criticized, "these nimble authors," for knowing, "when to sing hail to the Tsar, and when to the Hammer and Sickle." Zamyatin then wrote: "True literature can exist only when it is created, not by diligent and reliable officials, but by madmen, hermits, heretics, dreamers, rebels and skeptics." Zamyatin continued by pointing out that writers in the new Soviet Union were forbidden to criticize and satirise, in the vein of Jonathan Swift and Anatole France, the foibles and failings of the new society. Zamyatin added that, while many compared Russia after the October Revolution to the Athenian democracy at its inception, the Athenian government and people did not fear the satirical stage plays of Aristophanes, in which everyone was mocked and criticized. Zamyatin concluded by pointing out that if the Party did not rid itself of, "this new Catholicism, which is every bit as fearful of every heretical word as the old one," then the only future possible for Russian literature was "in the past." In Zamyatin's 1923 essay, The New Russian Prose, he wrote, "In art, the surest way to destroy is to canonize one given form and one philosophy: that which is canonized dies of obesity, of entropy." In his 1923 essay, On Literature, Revolution, Entropy, and Other Matters, Zamyatin wrote: "The law of revolution is red, fiery, deadly; but this death means the birth of a new life, a new star. And the law of entropy is cold, ice blue, like the icy interplanetary infinities. The flame turns from red to an even, warm pink, no longer deadly, but comfortable. The sun ages into a planet, convenient for highways, stores, beds, prostitutes, prisons; this is the law. And if the planet is to be kindled into youth again, it must be set on fire, it must be thrown off the smooth highway of evolution: this is the law. The flame will cool tomorrow, or the day after tomorrow (in the Book of Genesis days are equal to years, ages). But someone must see this already, and speak heretically today about tomorrow. Heretics are the only (bitter) remedy against the entropy of human thought. When the flaming, seething sphere (in science, religion, social life, art) cools, the fiery magma becomes coated with dogma - a rigid, ossified, motionless crust. Dogmatization in science, religion, social life, or art is the entropy of thought. What has become dogma no longer burns; it only gives off warmth - it is tepid, it is cool. Instead of the Sermon on the Mount, under the scorching sun, to upraised-arms and sobbing people, there is drowsy prayer in a magnificent abbey. Instead of Galileo's, 'Be still, it turns!' there are dispassionate computations in a well-heated room in an observatory. On the Galileos, the epigones build their own structures, slowly, bit by bit, like corals. This is the path of evolution - until a new heresy explodes the crush of dogma and all the edifices of the most enduring which have been raised upon it. Explosions are not very comfortable. And therefore the exploders, the heretics, are justly exterminated by fire, by axes, by words. To every today, to every civilization, to the laborious, slow, useful, most useful, creative, coral-building work, heretics are a threat. Stupidly, recklessly, they burst into today from tomorrow; they are romantics. Babeuf was justly beheaded in 1797; he leaped into 1797 across 150 years. It is just to chop off the head of a heretical literature which challenges dogma; this literature is harmful. But harmful literature is more useful than useful literature, for it is anti-entropic, it is a means of challenging calcification, sclerosis, crust, moss, quiescence. It is Utopian, absurd - like Babeuf in 1797. It is right 150 years later." Zamyatin also wrote a number of short stories, in fairy tale form, that constituted satirical criticism of Communist ideology. According to Mirra Ginsburg, "Instead of idealized eulogies to the Revolution, Zamyatin wrote stories like The Dragon, The Cave, and A Story about the Most Important Thing, reflecting the starkness and the territory the time: the little man lost in his uniform, transformed into a dragon with a gun; the starving, frozen intellectual reduced to stealing a few logs of wood; the city turned into a barren, prehistoric landscape - a desert of caves and cliffs and roaring mammoths; fratricide and destruction and blood. In The Church of God, he questions the Bolshevik tenet that the end justifies the means. In The Flood, he gives the central place to individual passions against a background that reflects the vast changes of the time as marginally and obliquely as they are reflected in the consciousness of his characters - residents of an outlying suburb, whose knowledge of the history around them is limited to such facts as the deteriorating quality of coal, the silent machines, the lack of bread." In 1923, Zamyatin arranged for the manuscript of his dystopian science fiction novel We to be smuggled to E.P. Dutton and Company in New York City. After being translated into English by Russian refugee Gregory Zilboorg, the novel was published in 1924. Then, in 1927, Zamyatin went much further. He smuggled the original Russian text to Marc Lvovich Slonim (1894–1976), the editor of an anti-communist Russian émigré magazine and publishing house based in Prague. To the fury of the Soviet State, copies of the Czechoslovakian edition began being smuggled back to the USSR and secretly passed from hand to hand. Zamyatin's secret dealings with Western publishers triggered a mass offensive by the Soviet State against him. These attitudes, writings, and actions, which the Party considered Deviationism made Zamyatin's position increasingly difficult as the 1920s wore on. Zamyatin became, according to Mirra Ginsburg, one of "the first to become the target of concerted hounding by the Party critics and writers." According to Mirra Ginsburg: "Zamyatin's vision was too far-reaching, too nonconformist, and too openly expressed to be tolerated by the purveyors of official and compulsory dogma. Very early he was branded by Trotsky as an internal émigré. He was repeatedly attacked as a bourgeois intellectual, out of tune with the revolution. When the Party-line Russian Association of Proletarian Writers (RAPP) gained full sway in the latter 1920s, with the end of the New Economic Policy and the introduction of the first Five Year Plan, it set out systematically to end all originality and independence in the arts. Art had to serve the ends of the Party or it had no right to exist." Max Eastman, an American Communist who had similarly broken with his former beliefs, described the Politburo's war against Zamyatin in his 1934 book Artists in Uniform. According to Mirra Ginsburg: "All the instruments of power were brought into use in the campaign for conformity. Faced with grim alternatives, most of Zamyatin's erstwhile pupils and colleagues yielded to pressure, recanted publicly, in many cases rewrote their works, and devoted themselves to turning out the gray eulogies to Communist construction demanded by the dictatorship. Other writers, |
the evening of the ninth day of the month to the following evening. Numbers 29:7–11: The tenth day of the seventh month is a holy day and one must not work. For an elevation offering, one must sacrifice a young bull, a ram and seven lambs who are a year old. As well, for a sin offering, one must sacrifice a male goat. Midrashic interpretation Traditionally, Yom Kippur is considered the date on which Moses received the second set of Ten Commandments. It occurred following the completion of the second 40 days of instructions from God. At this same time, the Israelites were granted atonement for the sin of the Golden Calf; hence, its designation as the Day of Atonement. Mishnaic and Talmudic literature Temple service The following summary of the Temple service is based on the traditional Jewish religious account described in Mishnah tractate Yoma, appearing in contemporary traditional Jewish prayer books for Yom Kippur, and studied as part of a traditional Jewish Yom Kippur worship service. While the Temple in Jerusalem was standing (from Biblical times through 70 CE), the Kohen Gadol (High Priest) was mandated by the Torah to perform a complex set of special services and sacrifices for Yom Kippur to attain Divine atonement, the word "kippur" meaning "atone" in Hebrew. These services were considered to be the most important parts of Yom Kippur because through them the Kohen Gadol made atonement for all Jews and the world. During the service, the Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies in the center of the Temple, the only time of the year that anyone went inside. Doing so required special purification and preparation, including five immersions in a mikveh (ritual bath), and four changes of clothing. Seven days prior to Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol was sequestered in the Palhedrin chamber in the Temple, where he reviewed (studied) the service with the sages familiar with the Temple, and was sprinkled with spring water containing ashes of the Red Heifer as purification. The Talmud (Tractate Yoma) also reports that he practiced the incense offering ritual in the Avitnas chamber. On the day of Yom Kippur, the Kohen Gadol had to follow a precise order of services, sacrifices, and purifications: Morning (Tamid) offering: The Kohen Gadol first performed the regular daily (Tamid) offering—usually performed by ordinary priests—in special golden garments, after immersing in a mikveh and washing his hands and feet. Garment change 1: The Kohen Gadol immersed in a special mikveh in the Temple courtyard and changed into special linen garments, and washed his hands and feet twice, once after removing the golden garments and once before putting on the linen garments. Bull as personal sin-offering: The Kohen Gadol leaned (performed Semikha) and made a confession over the bull on behalf of himself and his household, pronouncing the Tetragrammaton. The people prostrated themselves when they heard. He then slaughtered the bull as a chatat (sin-offering) and received its blood in a bowl. Lottery of the goats: At the Eastern (Nikanor) gate, the Kohen Gadol drew lots from a lottery box over two goats. One was selected "for the Lord", and one "for Azazel". The Kohen Gadol tied a red band around the horns of the goat "for Azazel". Incense preparation: The Kohen Gadol ascended the mizbeach (altar) and took a shovel full of embers with a special shovel. He was brought incense. He filled his hands and placed it in a vessel. (The Talmud considered this the most physically difficult part of the service, as the Kohen Gadol had to keep the shovelful of glowing coals balanced and prevent its contents from dropping, using his armpit or teeth, while filling his hands with the incense.) Incense offering: Holding the shovel and the vessel, he entered the Kadosh Hakadashim, the Temple's Holy of Holies. In the days of the First Temple, he placed the shovel between the poles of the Ark of the Covenant. In the days of the Second Temple, he put the shovel where the Ark would have been. He waited until the chamber filled with smoke and left. Sprinkling of bull's blood in the Holy of Holies: The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the bull’s blood and entered the Most Holy Place again. He sprinkled the bull’s blood with his finger eight times, before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second. The Kohen Gadol then left the Holy of Holies, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Goat for the Lord as a sin-offering for Kohanim: The Kohen Gadol went to the eastern end of the Israelite courtyard near the Nikanor Gate, laid his hands (semikha) on the goat "for the Lord", and pronounced confession on behalf of the Kohanim (priests). The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. He then slaughtered the goat, and received its blood in another bowl. Sprinkling of goat's blood in the Holy of Holies: The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the goat’s blood and entered the Kadosh Hakadashim again. He sprinkled the goat’s blood with his finger eight times the same way he had sprinkled the bull’s blood. The blood was sprinkled before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second Temple. The Kohen Gadol then left the Kadosh Hakadashim, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Sprinkling of blood in the Holy: Standing in the Hekhal (Holy), on the other side of the Parochet from the Holy of Holies, the Kohen Gadol took the bull's blood from the stand and sprinkled it with his finger eight times in the direction of the Parochet. He then took the bowl with the goat's blood and sprinkled it eight times in the same manner, putting it back on the stand. Smearing of blood on the Golden (Incense) Altar: The Kohen Gadol removed the goat’s blood from the stand and mixed it with the bull's blood. Starting at the northeast corner, he then smeared the mixture of blood on each of the four corners of the Golden (Incense) altar in the Haichal. He then sprinkled the blood eight times on the altar. Goat for Azazel: The Kohen Gadol left the Haichal and walked to the east side of the Azarah (Israelite courtyard). Near the Nikanor Gate, he leaned his hands (Semikha) on the goat "for Azazel" and confessed the sins of the entire people of Israel. The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. While he made a general confession, individuals in the crowd at the Temple would confess privately. The Kohen Gadol then sent the goat off "to the wilderness". In practice, to prevent its return to human habitation, the goat was led to a cliff outside Jerusalem and pushed off its edge. Preparation of sacrificial animals: While the goat "for Azazel" was being led to the cliff, the Kohen Gadol removed the insides of the bull and intertwined the bodies of the bull and goat. Other people took the bodies to the Beit HaDeshen (place of the ashes). They were burned there after it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had reached the wilderness. Reading the Torah: After it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had been pushed off the cliff, the Kohen Gadol passed through the Nikanor Gate into the Ezrat Nashim (Women’s Courtyard) and read sections of the Torah describing Yom Kippur and its sacrifices. Garment change 2: The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikveh in the Temple courtyard, and changed into a second set of special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet both before removing the linen garments and after putting on the golden ones. Offering of rams: The Kohen Gadol offered two rams as an olah offering, slaughtering them on the north side of the mizbeach (outer altar), receiving their blood in a bowl, carrying the bowl to the outer altar, and dashing the blood on the northeast and southwest corners of the Outer Altar. He dismembered the rams and burned the parts entirely on the outer altar. He then offered the accompanying mincha (grain) offerings and nesachim (wine-libations). Musaf offering: The Kohen Gadol then offered the Musaf offering. Burning of innards: The Kohen Gadol placed the insides of the bull and goat on the outer altar and burned them entirely. Garment change 3: The Kohen Gadol removed his golden garments, immersed in the mikveh, and changed to a new set of linen garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Removal of incense from the Holy of Holies: The Kohen Gadol returned to the Holy of Holies and removed the bowl of incense and the shovel. Garment change 4: The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikveh, and changed into a third set of golden garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Evening (Tamid) offering: The Kohen Gadol completed the afternoon portion of the regular (tamid) daily offering in the special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet a tenth time. The Kohen Gadol wore five sets of garments (three golden and two white linen), immersed in the mikveh five times, and washed his hands and feet ten times. Sacrifices included two (daily) lambs, one bull, two goats, and two rams, with accompanying mincha (meal) offerings, wine libations, and three incense offerings (the regular two daily and an additional one for Yom Kippur). The Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies four times. The Tetragrammaton was pronounced three times, once for each confession. Observance in Israel Yom Kippur is a legal holiday in the modern state of Israel. There are no radio or television broadcasts, airports are shut down, there is no public transportation, and all shops and businesses are closed. In 2013, 73% of the Jewish people of Israel said that they were intending to fast on Yom Kippur. It is very common in Israel to wish "Tsom Kal" ([an] easy fast) or "Tsom Mo'il" ([a] benefiting fast) to everyone before Yom Kippur, even if one does not know whether they will fast or not. It is considered impolite to eat in public on Yom Kippur or to sound music or to drive a motor vehicle. There is no legal prohibition on any of these, but in practice such actions are almost universally avoided in Israel during Yom Kippur, except for emergency services. Over the last few decades, bicycle-riding and inline skating on the empty streets have become common among secular Israeli youths, especially on the eve of Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv In 1973, an air raid siren was sounded on the afternoon of Yom Kippur and radio broadcasts were resumed to alert the public to the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria that launched the Yom Kippur War. Observance by athletes Some notable athletes have observed Yom Kippur, even when it conflicted with playing their sport. In baseball, Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher, decided not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax garnered national attention for his decision, as an example of the conflict between social pressures and personal beliefs. Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg attracted national attention in 1934, nearly three decades earlier, when he refused to play baseball on Yom Kippur, even though the Tigers were in the middle of a pennant race, and he was leading the league in runs batted in. The Detroit Free Press columnist and poet Edgar A. Guest wrote a poem titled "Speaking of Greenberg", which ended with the lines "We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion—and I honor him for that." When Greenberg arrived in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the service stopped suddenly, and the congregation gave an embarrassed Greenberg a standing ovation. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Shawn Green, similarly, made headlines in 2001 for sitting out a game for the first time in 415 games (then the longest streak among active players) on Yom Kippur, even though his team was in the middle of a playoff race. Other baseball players who have similarly sat out games on Yom Kippur include former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees third baseman Kevin Youkilis, former Houston Astros catcher and former Los Angeles Angels manager Brad Ausmus, and outfielder Art Shamsky. Gabe Carimi, the Consensus All-American left tackle in American football who won the 2010 Outland Trophy as the nation's top collegiate interior lineman, faced a conflict in his freshman year of college in 2007. That year Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday, and he fasted until an hour before his football game against Iowa started that night. Carimi said, "Religion is a part of me, and I don't want to just say I'm Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices." In 2004, Matt Bernstein, standout fullback at University of Wisconsin–Madison, fasted on Yom Kippur, then broke his fast on the sidelines before rushing for 123 yards in a game against Penn State. In 2011, golfer Laetitia Beck declined a request to join the University of North Carolina Tar Heels Invitational competition, because it conflicted with Yom Kippur. Instead, she spent the day fasting and praying. She said: "My Judaism is very important to me, and ... on Yom Kippur, no matter what, I have to fast." Boris Gelfand, Israel's top chess player, played his game in the prestigious London Grand Prix Chess Tournament on 25 September 2012 (eve of Yom Kippur) earlier, to avoid playing on the holiday. In 2013, the International Tennis Federation fined the Israel Tennis Association "more than $13,000 ... for the inconvenience" of having to reschedule a tennis match between the Israeli and Belgian teams that was originally scheduled on Yom Kippur. Dudi Sela, Israel's #1 player, quit his quarterfinal match in the third set of the 2017 Shenzhen Open so he could begin observing Yom Kippur by the time the sun set, forfeiting a possible $34,000 in prize money and 90 rankings points. Professional wrestler Bill Goldberg has notably refused to wrestle a match on Yom Kippur. Recognition by the United Nations Since 2016 the United Nations has officially recognized Yom Kippur, stating that from then on no official meetings would take place on the day. In addition, the United Nations stated that, beginning in 2016, they would have nine official holidays and seven floating holidays of which each employee would be able to choose one. It stated that the floating holidays will be Yom Kippur, Day of Vesak, Diwali, Gurpurab, Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Good Friday, and Presidents' Day. This was the first time the United Nations officially recognized any Jewish holiday. Modern scholarship According to textual scholars, the biblical regulations covering Yom Kippur are spliced together from multiple source texts,Cheyne and Black, Encyclopedia Biblica as indicated by the duplication of the confession over the bullock, and the incongruity in one verse stating that the high priest should not enter the Holy of Holies (with the inference that there are exceptions for certain explicitly identified festivals), and the next verse indicating that they can enter whenever they wish (as long as a specific ritual is carried out first). Although Rashi tried to find a harmonistic explanation for this incongruity, the Leviticus Rabbah maintains that it was indeed the case that the high priest could enter at any time if these rituals were carried out. Textual scholars argue that the ritual is composed from three sources, and a couple of redactional additions: prerequisite rituals before the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies (on any occasion), namely a sin offering and a whole offering, followed by the filling of the Holy of Holies with a cloud of incense while wearing linen garments regulations which establish an annual day of fasting and rest, during which the sanctuary and people are purified, without stating the ritual for doing so; this regulation is very similar to the one in the Holiness Code later elaborations of the ceremony, which include the sprinkling of the blood on the mercy seat'', and the use of a scapegoat sent to Azazel; the same source also being responsible for small alterations to related regulations the redactional additions On the basis of their assumptions, these scholars believe that the original ceremony was simply the ritual purification of the sanctuary from any accidental ritual impurity, at the start of each new year, as seen in the Book of Ezekiel. Textual scholars date this original ceremony to before the priestly source, but after JE. According to the Book of Ezekiel, the sanctuary was to be cleansed by the sprinkling of bullock's blood, on the first day of the first and of | the bull’s blood and entered the Most Holy Place again. He sprinkled the bull’s blood with his finger eight times, before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second. The Kohen Gadol then left the Holy of Holies, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Goat for the Lord as a sin-offering for Kohanim: The Kohen Gadol went to the eastern end of the Israelite courtyard near the Nikanor Gate, laid his hands (semikha) on the goat "for the Lord", and pronounced confession on behalf of the Kohanim (priests). The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. He then slaughtered the goat, and received its blood in another bowl. Sprinkling of goat's blood in the Holy of Holies: The Kohen Gadol took the bowl with the goat’s blood and entered the Kadosh Hakadashim again. He sprinkled the goat’s blood with his finger eight times the same way he had sprinkled the bull’s blood. The blood was sprinkled before the Ark in the days of the First Temple, where it would have been in the days of the Second Temple. The Kohen Gadol then left the Kadosh Hakadashim, putting the bowl on a stand in front of the Parochet (curtain separating the Holy from the Holy of Holies). Sprinkling of blood in the Holy: Standing in the Hekhal (Holy), on the other side of the Parochet from the Holy of Holies, the Kohen Gadol took the bull's blood from the stand and sprinkled it with his finger eight times in the direction of the Parochet. He then took the bowl with the goat's blood and sprinkled it eight times in the same manner, putting it back on the stand. Smearing of blood on the Golden (Incense) Altar: The Kohen Gadol removed the goat’s blood from the stand and mixed it with the bull's blood. Starting at the northeast corner, he then smeared the mixture of blood on each of the four corners of the Golden (Incense) altar in the Haichal. He then sprinkled the blood eight times on the altar. Goat for Azazel: The Kohen Gadol left the Haichal and walked to the east side of the Azarah (Israelite courtyard). Near the Nikanor Gate, he leaned his hands (Semikha) on the goat "for Azazel" and confessed the sins of the entire people of Israel. The people prostrated themselves when he pronounced the Tetragrammaton. While he made a general confession, individuals in the crowd at the Temple would confess privately. The Kohen Gadol then sent the goat off "to the wilderness". In practice, to prevent its return to human habitation, the goat was led to a cliff outside Jerusalem and pushed off its edge. Preparation of sacrificial animals: While the goat "for Azazel" was being led to the cliff, the Kohen Gadol removed the insides of the bull and intertwined the bodies of the bull and goat. Other people took the bodies to the Beit HaDeshen (place of the ashes). They were burned there after it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had reached the wilderness. Reading the Torah: After it was confirmed that the goat "for Azazel" had been pushed off the cliff, the Kohen Gadol passed through the Nikanor Gate into the Ezrat Nashim (Women’s Courtyard) and read sections of the Torah describing Yom Kippur and its sacrifices. Garment change 2: The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikveh in the Temple courtyard, and changed into a second set of special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet both before removing the linen garments and after putting on the golden ones. Offering of rams: The Kohen Gadol offered two rams as an olah offering, slaughtering them on the north side of the mizbeach (outer altar), receiving their blood in a bowl, carrying the bowl to the outer altar, and dashing the blood on the northeast and southwest corners of the Outer Altar. He dismembered the rams and burned the parts entirely on the outer altar. He then offered the accompanying mincha (grain) offerings and nesachim (wine-libations). Musaf offering: The Kohen Gadol then offered the Musaf offering. Burning of innards: The Kohen Gadol placed the insides of the bull and goat on the outer altar and burned them entirely. Garment change 3: The Kohen Gadol removed his golden garments, immersed in the mikveh, and changed to a new set of linen garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Removal of incense from the Holy of Holies: The Kohen Gadol returned to the Holy of Holies and removed the bowl of incense and the shovel. Garment change 4: The Kohen Gadol removed his linen garments, immersed in the mikveh, and changed into a third set of golden garments, again washing his hands and feet twice. Evening (Tamid) offering: The Kohen Gadol completed the afternoon portion of the regular (tamid) daily offering in the special golden garments. He washed his hands and feet a tenth time. The Kohen Gadol wore five sets of garments (three golden and two white linen), immersed in the mikveh five times, and washed his hands and feet ten times. Sacrifices included two (daily) lambs, one bull, two goats, and two rams, with accompanying mincha (meal) offerings, wine libations, and three incense offerings (the regular two daily and an additional one for Yom Kippur). The Kohen Gadol entered the Holy of Holies four times. The Tetragrammaton was pronounced three times, once for each confession. Observance in Israel Yom Kippur is a legal holiday in the modern state of Israel. There are no radio or television broadcasts, airports are shut down, there is no public transportation, and all shops and businesses are closed. In 2013, 73% of the Jewish people of Israel said that they were intending to fast on Yom Kippur. It is very common in Israel to wish "Tsom Kal" ([an] easy fast) or "Tsom Mo'il" ([a] benefiting fast) to everyone before Yom Kippur, even if one does not know whether they will fast or not. It is considered impolite to eat in public on Yom Kippur or to sound music or to drive a motor vehicle. There is no legal prohibition on any of these, but in practice such actions are almost universally avoided in Israel during Yom Kippur, except for emergency services. Over the last few decades, bicycle-riding and inline skating on the empty streets have become common among secular Israeli youths, especially on the eve of Yom Kippur in Tel Aviv In 1973, an air raid siren was sounded on the afternoon of Yom Kippur and radio broadcasts were resumed to alert the public to the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt and Syria that launched the Yom Kippur War. Observance by athletes Some notable athletes have observed Yom Kippur, even when it conflicted with playing their sport. In baseball, Sandy Koufax, the Hall of Fame pitcher, decided not to pitch Game 1 of the 1965 World Series because it fell on Yom Kippur. Koufax garnered national attention for his decision, as an example of the conflict between social pressures and personal beliefs. Hall of Fame first baseman Hank Greenberg attracted national attention in 1934, nearly three decades earlier, when he refused to play baseball on Yom Kippur, even though the Tigers were in the middle of a pennant race, and he was leading the league in runs batted in. The Detroit Free Press columnist and poet Edgar A. Guest wrote a poem titled "Speaking of Greenberg", which ended with the lines "We shall miss him on the infield and shall miss him at the bat / But he's true to his religion—and I honor him for that." When Greenberg arrived in synagogue on Yom Kippur, the service stopped suddenly, and the congregation gave an embarrassed Greenberg a standing ovation. Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Shawn Green, similarly, made headlines in 2001 for sitting out a game for the first time in 415 games (then the longest streak among active players) on Yom Kippur, even though his team was in the middle of a playoff race. Other baseball players who have similarly sat out games on Yom Kippur include former Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees third baseman Kevin Youkilis, former Houston Astros catcher and former Los Angeles Angels manager Brad Ausmus, and outfielder Art Shamsky. Gabe Carimi, the Consensus All-American left tackle in American football who won the 2010 Outland Trophy as the nation's top collegiate interior lineman, faced a conflict in his freshman year of college in 2007. That year Yom Kippur fell on a Saturday, and he fasted until an hour before his football game against Iowa started that night. Carimi said, "Religion is a part of me, and I don't want to just say I'm Jewish. I actually do make sacrifices that I know are hard choices." In 2004, Matt Bernstein, standout fullback at University of Wisconsin–Madison, fasted on Yom Kippur, then broke his fast on the sidelines before rushing for 123 yards in a game against Penn State. In 2011, golfer Laetitia Beck declined a request to join the University of North Carolina Tar Heels Invitational competition, because it conflicted with Yom Kippur. Instead, she spent the day fasting and praying. She said: "My Judaism is very important to me, and ... on Yom Kippur, no matter what, I have to fast." Boris Gelfand, Israel's top chess player, played his game in the prestigious London Grand Prix Chess Tournament on 25 September 2012 (eve of Yom Kippur) earlier, to avoid playing on the holiday. In 2013, the International Tennis Federation fined the Israel Tennis Association "more than $13,000 ... for the inconvenience" of having to reschedule a tennis match between the Israeli and Belgian teams that was originally scheduled on Yom Kippur. Dudi Sela, Israel's #1 player, quit his quarterfinal match in the third set of the 2017 Shenzhen Open so he could begin observing Yom Kippur by the time the sun set, forfeiting a possible $34,000 in prize money and 90 rankings points. Professional wrestler Bill Goldberg has notably refused to wrestle a match on Yom Kippur. Recognition by the United Nations Since 2016 the United Nations has officially recognized Yom Kippur, stating that from then on no official meetings would take place on the day. In addition, the United Nations stated that, beginning in 2016, they would have nine official holidays and seven floating holidays of which each employee would be able to choose one. It stated that the floating holidays will be Yom Kippur, Day of Vesak, Diwali, Gurpurab, Orthodox Christmas, Orthodox Good Friday, and Presidents' Day. This was the first time the United Nations officially recognized any Jewish holiday. Modern scholarship According to textual scholars, the biblical regulations covering Yom Kippur are spliced together from multiple source texts,Cheyne and Black, Encyclopedia Biblica as indicated by the duplication of the confession over the bullock, and the incongruity in one verse stating that the high priest should not enter the Holy of Holies (with the inference that there are exceptions for certain explicitly identified festivals), and the next verse indicating that they can enter whenever they wish (as long as a specific ritual is carried out first). Although Rashi tried to find a harmonistic explanation for this incongruity, the Leviticus Rabbah maintains that it was indeed the case that the high priest could enter at any time if these rituals were carried out. Textual scholars argue that the ritual is composed from three sources, and a couple of redactional additions: prerequisite rituals before the high priest can enter the Holy of Holies (on any occasion), namely a sin offering and a whole offering, followed by the filling of the Holy |
Emacs Lisp. Ruby is his first piece of software that has become known outside Japan. Ruby Matsumoto released the first version of the Ruby programming language on 21 December 1995. He still leads the development of the language's reference implementation, MRI (for Matz's Ruby Interpreter). MRuby In April 2012, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new implementation of Ruby called mruby. It is a minimal implementation based on his virtual machine, called ritevm, and is designed to allow software developers to embed Ruby in other programs while keeping memory footprint small and performance optimised. streem In December 2014, Matsumoto open-sourced his work on a new scripting language called streem, a concurrent language based on a programming model similar to shell, with influences from Ruby, Erlang and other functional programming languages. Treasure Data Matsumoto has been listed as | language and its original reference implementation, Matz's Ruby Interpreter (MRI). His demeanor has brought about a motto in the Ruby community: "Matz is nice and so we are nice," commonly abbreviated as MINASWAN. , Matsumoto is the Chief Architect of Ruby at Heroku, an online cloud platform-as-a-service in San Francisco. He is a fellow of Rakuten Institute of Technology, a research and development organisation in Rakuten Inc. He was appointed to the role of technical advisor for VASILY, Inc. starting in June 2014. Early life Born in Osaka Prefecture, Japan, he was raised in Tottori Prefecture from the age of four. According to an interview conducted by Japan Inc., he was a self-taught programmer until the end of high school. He graduated with an information science degree from University of Tsukuba, where he was a member of |
the distiller's art. Nutrition and growth Yeasts are chemoorganotrophs, as they use organic compounds as a source of energy and do not require sunlight to grow. Carbon is obtained mostly from hexose sugars, such as glucose and fructose, or disaccharides such as sucrose and maltose. Some species can metabolize pentose sugars such as ribose, alcohols, and organic acids. Yeast species either require oxygen for aerobic cellular respiration (obligate aerobes) or are anaerobic, but also have aerobic methods of energy production (facultative anaerobes). Unlike bacteria, no known yeast species grow only anaerobically (obligate anaerobes). Most yeasts grow best in a neutral or slightly acidic pH environment. Yeasts vary in regard to the temperature range in which they grow best. For example, Leucosporidium frigidum grows at , Saccharomyces telluris at , and Candida slooffi at . The cells can survive freezing under certain conditions, with viability decreasing over time. In general, yeasts are grown in the laboratory on solid growth media or in liquid broths. Common media used for the cultivation of yeasts include potato dextrose agar or potato dextrose broth, Wallerstein Laboratories nutrient agar, yeast peptone dextrose agar, and yeast mould agar or broth. Home brewers who cultivate yeast frequently use dried malt extract and agar as a solid growth medium. The fungicide cycloheximide is sometimes added to yeast growth media to inhibit the growth of Saccharomyces yeasts and select for wild/indigenous yeast species. This will change the yeast process. The appearance of a white, thready yeast, commonly known as kahm yeast, is often a byproduct of the lactofermentation (or pickling) of certain vegetables. It is usually the result of exposure to air. Although harmless, it can give pickled vegetables a bad flavor and must be removed regularly during fermentation. Ecology Yeasts are very common in the environment, and are often isolated from sugar-rich materials. Examples include naturally occurring yeasts on the skins of fruits and berries (such as grapes, apples, or peaches), and exudates from plants (such as plant saps or cacti). Some yeasts are found in association with soil and insects. Yeasts from the soil and from the skins of fruits and berries have been shown to dominate fungal succession during fruit decay. The ecological function and biodiversity of yeasts are relatively unknown compared to those of other microorganisms. Yeasts, including Candida albicans, Rhodotorula rubra, Torulopsis and Trichosporon cutaneum, have been found living in between people's toes as part of their skin flora. Yeasts are also present in the gut flora of mammals and some insects and even deep-sea environments host an array of yeasts. An Indian study of seven bee species and nine plant species found 45 species from 16 genera colonize the nectaries of flowers and honey stomachs of bees. Most were members of the genus Candida; the most common species in honey stomachs was Dekkera intermedia and in flower nectaries, Candida blankii. Yeast colonising nectaries of the stinking hellebore have been found to raise the temperature of the flower, which may aid in attracting pollinators by increasing the evaporation of volatile organic compounds. A black yeast has been recorded as a partner in a complex relationship between ants, their mutualistic fungus, a fungal parasite of the fungus and a bacterium that kills the parasite. The yeast has a negative effect on the bacteria that normally produce antibiotics to kill the parasite, so may affect the ants' health by allowing the parasite to spread. Certain strains of some species of yeasts produce proteins called yeast killer toxins that allow them to eliminate competing strains. (See main article on killer yeast.) This can cause problems for winemaking but could potentially also be used to advantage by using killer toxin-producing strains to make the wine. Yeast killer toxins may also have medical applications in treating yeast infections (see "Pathogenic yeasts" section below). Marine yeasts, defined as the yeasts that are isolated from marine environments, are able to grow better on a medium prepared using seawater rather than freshwater. The first marine yeasts were isolated by Bernhard Fischer in 1894 from the Atlantic Ocean, and those were identified as Torula sp. and Mycoderma sp. Following this discovery, various other marine yeasts have been isolated from around the world from different sources, including seawater, seaweeds, marine fish and mammals. Among these isolates, some marine yeasts originated from terrestrial habitats (grouped as facultative marine yeast), which were brought to and survived in marine environments. The other marine yeasts were grouped as obligate or indigenous marine yeasts, which confine to marine habitats. However, no sufficient evidence has been found to explain the indispensability of seawater for obligate marine yeasts. It has been reported that marine yeasts are able to produce many bioactive substances, such as amino acids, glucans, glutathione, toxins, enzymes, phytase, and vitamins with potential applications in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and chemical industries as well as for marine culture and environmental protection. Marine yeast was successfully used to produce bioethanol using seawater-based media which will potentially reduce the water footprint of bioethanol. Reproduction Yeasts, like all fungi, may have asexual and sexual reproductive cycles. The most common mode of vegetative growth in yeast is asexual reproduction by budding, where a small bud (also known as a bleb or daughter cell) is formed on the parent cell. The nucleus of the parent cell splits into a daughter nucleus and migrates into the daughter cell. The bud then continues to grow until it separates from the parent cell, forming a new cell. The daughter cell produced during the budding process is generally smaller than the mother cell. Some yeasts, including Schizosaccharomyces pombe, reproduce by fission instead of budding, and thereby creating two identically sized daughter cells. In general, under high-stress conditions such as nutrient starvation, haploid cells will die; under the same conditions, however, diploid cells can undergo sporulation, entering sexual reproduction (meiosis) and producing a variety of haploid spores, which can go on to mate (conjugate), reforming the diploid. The haploid fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is a facultative sexual microorganism that can undergo mating when nutrients are limiting. Exposure of S. pombe to hydrogen peroxide, an agent that causes oxidative stress leading to oxidative DNA damage, strongly induces mating and the formation of meiotic spores. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae reproduces by mitosis as diploid cells when nutrients are abundant, but when starved, this yeast undergoes meiosis to form haploid spores. Haploid cells may then reproduce asexually by mitosis. Katz Ezov et al. presented evidence that in natural S. cerevisiae populations clonal reproduction and selfing (in the form of intratetrad mating) predominate. In nature, mating of haploid cells to form diploid cells is most often between members of the same clonal population and out-crossing is uncommon. Analysis of the ancestry of natural S. cerevisiae strains led to the conclusion that out-crossing occurs only about once every 50,000 cell divisions. These observations suggest that the possible long-term benefits of outcrossing (e.g. generation of diversity) are likely to be insufficient for generally maintaining sex from one generation to the next. Rather, a short-term benefit, such as recombinational repair during meiosis, may be the key to the maintenance of sex in S. cerevisiae. Some pucciniomycete yeasts, in particular species of Sporidiobolus and Sporobolomyces, produce aerially dispersed, asexual ballistoconidia. Uses The useful physiological properties of yeast have led to their use in the field of biotechnology. Fermentation of sugars by yeast is the oldest and largest application of this technology. Many types of yeasts are used for making many foods: baker's yeast in bread production, brewer's yeast in beer fermentation, and yeast in wine fermentation and for xylitol production. So-called red rice yeast is actually a mold, Monascus purpureus. Yeasts include some of the most widely used model organisms for genetics and cell biology. Alcoholic beverages Alcoholic beverages are defined as beverages that contain ethanol (C2H5OH). This ethanol is almost always produced by fermentation – the metabolism of carbohydrates by certain species of yeasts under anaerobic or low-oxygen conditions. Beverages such as mead, wine, beer, or distilled spirits all use yeast at some stage of their production. A distilled beverage is a beverage containing ethanol that has been purified by distillation. Carbohydrate-containing plant material is fermented by yeast, producing a dilute solution of ethanol in the process. Spirits such as whiskey and rum are prepared by distilling these dilute solutions of ethanol. Components other than ethanol are collected in the condensate, including water, esters, and other alcohols, which (in addition to that provided by the oak in which it may be aged) account for the flavour of the beverage. Beer Brewing yeasts may be classed as "top-cropping" (or "top-fermenting") and "bottom-cropping" (or "bottom-fermenting"). Top-cropping yeasts are so called because they form a foam at the top of the wort during fermentation. An example of a top-cropping yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, sometimes called an "ale yeast". Bottom-cropping yeasts are typically used to produce lager-type beers, though they can also produce ale-type beers. These yeasts ferment well at low temperatures. An example of bottom-cropping yeast is Saccharomyces pastorianus, formerly known as S. carlsbergensis. Decades ago, taxonomists reclassified S. carlsbergensis (uvarum) as a member of S. cerevisiae, noting that the only distinct difference between the two is metabolic. Lager strains of S. cerevisiae secrete an enzyme called melibiase, allowing them to hydrolyse melibiose, a disaccharide, into more fermentable monosaccharides. Top- and bottom-cropping and cold- and warm-fermenting distinctions are largely generalizations used by laypersons to communicate to the general public. The most common top-cropping brewer's yeast, S. cerevisiae, is the same species as the common baking yeast. Brewer's yeast is also very rich in essential minerals and the B vitamins (except B12), a feature exploited in food products made from leftover (by-product) yeast from brewing. However, baking and brewing yeasts typically belong to different strains, cultivated to favour different characteristics: baking yeast strains are more aggressive, to carbonate dough in the shortest amount of time possible; brewing yeast strains act more slowly but tend to produce fewer off-flavours and tolerate higher alcohol concentrations (with some strains, up to 22%). Dekkera/Brettanomyces is a genus of yeast known for its important role in the production of 'lambic' and specialty sour ales, along with the secondary conditioning of a particular Belgian Trappist beer. The taxonomy of the genus Brettanomyces has been debated since its early discovery and has seen many reclassifications over the years. Early classification was based on a few species that reproduced asexually (anamorph form) through multipolar budding. Shortly after, the formation of ascospores was observed and the genus Dekkera, which reproduces sexually (teleomorph form), was introduced as part of the taxonomy. The current taxonomy includes five species within the genera of Dekkera/Brettanomyces. Those are the anamorphs Brettanomyces bruxellensis, Brettanomyces anomalus, Brettanomyces custersianus, Brettanomyces naardenensis, and Brettanomyces nanus, with teleomorphs existing for the first two species, Dekkera bruxellensis and Dekkera anomala. The distinction between Dekkera and Brettanomyces is arguable, with Oelofse et al. (2008) citing Loureiro and Malfeito-Ferreira from 2006 when they affirmed that current molecular DNA detection techniques have uncovered no variance between the anamorph and teleomorph states. Over the past decade, Brettanomyces spp. have seen an increasing use in the craft-brewing sector of the industry, with a handful of breweries having produced beers that were primarily fermented with pure cultures of Brettanomyces spp. This has occurred out of experimentation, as very little information exists regarding pure culture fermentative capabilities and the aromatic compounds produced by various strains. Dekkera/Brettanomyces spp. have been the subjects of numerous studies conducted over the past century, although a majority of the recent research has focused on enhancing the knowledge of the wine industry. Recent research on eight Brettanomyces strains available in the brewing industry focused on strain-specific fermentations and identified the major compounds produced during pure culture anaerobic fermentation in wort. Wine Yeast is used in winemaking, where it converts the sugars present (glucose and fructose) in grape juice (must) into ethanol. Yeast is normally already present on grape skins. Fermentation can be done with this endogenous "wild yeast", but this procedure gives unpredictable results, which depend upon the exact types of yeast species present. For this reason, a pure yeast culture is usually added to the must; this yeast quickly dominates the fermentation. The wild yeasts are repressed, which ensures a reliable and predictable fermentation. Most added wine yeasts are strains of S. cerevisiae, though not all strains of the species are suitable. Different S. cerevisiae yeast strains have differing physiological and fermentative properties, therefore the actual strain of yeast selected can have a direct impact on the finished wine. Significant research has been undertaken into the development of novel wine yeast strains that produce atypical flavour profiles or increased complexity in wines. The growth of some yeasts, such as Zygosaccharomyces and Brettanomyces, in wine can result in wine faults and subsequent spoilage. Brettanomyces produces an array of metabolites when growing in wine, some of which are volatile phenolic compounds. Together, these compounds are often referred to as "Brettanomyces character", and are often described as "antiseptic" or "barnyard" type aromas. Brettanomyces is a significant contributor to wine faults within the wine industry. Researchers from the University of British Columbia, Canada, have found a new strain of yeast that has reduced amines. The amines in red wine and Chardonnay produce off-flavors and cause headaches and hypertension in some people. About 30% of people are sensitive to biogenic amines, such as histamines. Baking Yeast, the most common one being S. cerevisiae, is used in baking as a leavening agent, where it converts the food/fermentable sugars present in dough into the gas carbon dioxide. This causes the dough to expand or rise as gas forms pockets or bubbles. When the dough is baked, the yeast dies and the air pockets "set", giving the baked product a soft and spongy texture. The use of potatoes, water from potato boiling, eggs, or sugar in a bread dough accelerates the growth of yeasts. Most yeasts used in baking are of the same species common in alcoholic fermentation. In addition, Saccharomyces exiguus (also known as S. minor), a wild yeast found on plants, fruits, and grains, is occasionally used for baking. In breadmaking, the yeast initially respires aerobically, producing carbon dioxide and water. When the oxygen is depleted, fermentation begins, producing ethanol as a waste product; however, this evaporates during baking. It is not known when yeast was first used to bake bread. The first records that show this use came from Ancient Egypt. Researchers speculate a mixture of flour meal and water was left longer than usual on a warm day and the yeasts that occur in natural contaminants of the flour caused it to ferment before baking. The resulting bread would have been lighter and tastier than the normal flat, hard cake. Today, there are several retailers of baker's yeast; one of the earlier developments in North America is Fleischmann's Yeast, in 1868. During World War II, Fleischmann's developed a granulated active dry | observation later called the "Pasteur effect". In the paper "Mémoire sur la fermentation alcoolique," Pasteur proved that alcoholic fermentation was conducted by living yeasts and not by a chemical catalyst. By the late 18th century two yeast strains used in brewing had been identified: Saccharomyces cerevisiae (top-fermenting yeast) and S. carlsbergensis (bottom-fermenting yeast). S. cerevisiae has been sold commercially by the Dutch for bread-making since 1780; while, around 1800, the Germans started producing S. cerevisiae in the form of cream. In 1825, a method was developed to remove the liquid so the yeast could be prepared as solid blocks. The industrial production of yeast blocks was enhanced by the introduction of the filter press in 1867. In 1872, Baron Max de Springer developed a manufacturing process to create granulated yeast, a technique that was used until the first World War. In the United States, naturally occurring airborne yeasts were used almost exclusively until commercial yeast was marketed at the Centennial Exposition in 1876 in Philadelphia, where Charles L. Fleischmann exhibited the product and a process to use it, as well as serving the resultant baked bread. The mechanical refrigerator (first patented in the 1850s in Europe) liberated brewers and winemakers from seasonal constraints for the first time and allowed them to exit cellars and other earthen environments. For John Molson, who made his livelihood in Montreal prior to the development of the fridge, the brewing season lasted from September through to May. The same seasonal restrictions formerly governed the distiller's art. Nutrition and growth Yeasts are chemoorganotrophs, as they use organic compounds as a source of energy and do not require sunlight to grow. Carbon is obtained mostly from hexose sugars, such as glucose and fructose, or disaccharides such as sucrose and maltose. Some species can metabolize pentose sugars such as ribose, alcohols, and organic acids. Yeast species either require oxygen for aerobic cellular respiration (obligate aerobes) or are anaerobic, but also have aerobic methods of energy production (facultative anaerobes). Unlike bacteria, no known yeast species grow only anaerobically (obligate anaerobes). Most yeasts grow best in a neutral or slightly acidic pH environment. Yeasts vary in regard to the temperature range in which they grow best. For example, Leucosporidium frigidum grows at , Saccharomyces telluris at , and Candida slooffi at . The cells can survive freezing under certain conditions, with viability decreasing over time. In general, yeasts are grown in the laboratory on solid growth media or in liquid broths. Common media used for the cultivation of yeasts include potato dextrose agar or potato dextrose broth, Wallerstein Laboratories nutrient agar, yeast peptone dextrose agar, and yeast mould agar or broth. Home brewers who cultivate yeast frequently use dried malt extract and agar as a solid growth medium. The fungicide cycloheximide is sometimes added to yeast growth media to inhibit the growth of Saccharomyces yeasts and select for wild/indigenous yeast species. This will change the yeast process. The appearance of a white, thready yeast, commonly known as kahm yeast, is often a byproduct of the lactofermentation (or pickling) of certain vegetables. It is usually the result of exposure to air. Although harmless, it can give pickled vegetables a bad flavor and must be removed regularly during fermentation. Ecology Yeasts are very common in the environment, and are often isolated from sugar-rich materials. Examples include naturally occurring yeasts on the skins of fruits and berries (such as grapes, apples, or peaches), and exudates from plants (such as plant saps or cacti). Some yeasts are found in association with soil and insects. Yeasts from the soil and from the skins of fruits and berries have been shown to dominate fungal succession during fruit decay. The ecological function and biodiversity of yeasts are relatively unknown compared to those of other microorganisms. Yeasts, including Candida albicans, Rhodotorula rubra, Torulopsis and Trichosporon cutaneum, have been found living in between people's toes as part of their skin flora. Yeasts are also present in the gut flora of mammals and some insects and even deep-sea environments host an array of yeasts. An Indian study of seven bee species and nine plant species found 45 species from 16 genera colonize the nectaries of flowers and honey stomachs of bees. Most were members of the genus Candida; the most common species in honey stomachs was Dekkera intermedia and in flower nectaries, Candida blankii. Yeast colonising nectaries of the stinking hellebore have been found to raise the temperature of the flower, which may aid in attracting pollinators by increasing the evaporation of volatile organic compounds. A black yeast has been recorded as a partner in a complex relationship between ants, their mutualistic fungus, a fungal parasite of the fungus and a bacterium that kills the parasite. The yeast has a negative effect on the bacteria that normally produce antibiotics to kill the parasite, so may affect the ants' health by allowing the parasite to spread. Certain strains of some species of yeasts produce proteins called yeast killer toxins that allow them to eliminate competing strains. (See main article on killer yeast.) This can cause problems for winemaking but could potentially also be used to advantage by using killer toxin-producing strains to make the wine. Yeast killer toxins may also have medical applications in treating yeast infections (see "Pathogenic yeasts" section below). Marine yeasts, defined as the yeasts that are isolated from marine environments, are able to grow better on a medium prepared using seawater rather than freshwater. The first marine yeasts were isolated by Bernhard Fischer in 1894 from the Atlantic Ocean, and those were identified as Torula sp. and Mycoderma sp. Following this discovery, various other marine yeasts have been isolated from around the world from different sources, including seawater, seaweeds, marine fish and mammals. Among these isolates, some marine yeasts originated from terrestrial habitats (grouped as facultative marine yeast), which were brought to and survived in marine environments. The other marine yeasts were grouped as obligate or indigenous marine yeasts, which confine to marine habitats. However, no sufficient evidence has been found to explain the indispensability of seawater for obligate marine yeasts. It has been reported that marine yeasts are able to produce many bioactive substances, such as amino acids, glucans, glutathione, toxins, enzymes, phytase, and vitamins with potential applications in the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and chemical industries as well as for marine culture and environmental protection. Marine yeast was successfully used to produce bioethanol using seawater-based media which will potentially reduce the water footprint of bioethanol. Reproduction Yeasts, like all fungi, may have asexual and sexual reproductive cycles. The most common mode of vegetative growth in yeast is asexual reproduction by budding, where a small bud (also known as a bleb or daughter cell) is formed on the parent cell. The nucleus of the parent cell splits into a daughter nucleus and migrates into the daughter cell. The bud then continues to grow until it separates from the parent cell, forming a new cell. The daughter cell produced during the budding process is generally smaller than the mother cell. Some yeasts, including Schizosaccharomyces pombe, reproduce by fission instead of budding, and thereby creating two identically sized daughter cells. In general, under high-stress conditions such as nutrient starvation, haploid cells will die; under the same conditions, however, diploid cells can undergo sporulation, entering sexual reproduction (meiosis) and producing a variety of haploid spores, which can go on to mate (conjugate), reforming the diploid. The haploid fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe is a facultative sexual microorganism that can undergo mating when nutrients are limiting. Exposure of S. pombe to hydrogen peroxide, an agent that causes oxidative stress leading to oxidative DNA damage, strongly induces mating and the formation of meiotic spores. The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae reproduces by mitosis as diploid cells when nutrients are abundant, but when starved, this yeast undergoes meiosis to form haploid spores. Haploid cells may then reproduce asexually by mitosis. Katz Ezov et al. presented evidence that in natural S. cerevisiae populations clonal reproduction and selfing (in the form of intratetrad mating) predominate. In nature, mating of haploid cells to form diploid cells is most often between members of the same clonal population and out-crossing is uncommon. Analysis of the ancestry of natural S. cerevisiae strains led to the conclusion that out-crossing occurs only about once every 50,000 cell divisions. These observations suggest that the possible long-term benefits of outcrossing (e.g. generation of diversity) are likely to be insufficient for generally maintaining sex from one generation to the next. Rather, a short-term benefit, such as recombinational repair during meiosis, may be the key to the maintenance of sex in S. cerevisiae. Some pucciniomycete yeasts, in particular species of Sporidiobolus and Sporobolomyces, produce aerially dispersed, asexual ballistoconidia. Uses The useful physiological properties of yeast have led to their use in the field of biotechnology. Fermentation of sugars by yeast is the oldest and largest application of this technology. Many types of yeasts are used for making many foods: baker's yeast in bread production, brewer's yeast in beer fermentation, and yeast in wine fermentation and for xylitol production. So-called red rice yeast is actually a mold, Monascus purpureus. Yeasts include some of the most widely used model organisms for genetics and cell biology. Alcoholic beverages Alcoholic beverages are defined as beverages that contain ethanol (C2H5OH). This ethanol is almost always produced by fermentation – the metabolism of carbohydrates by certain species of yeasts under anaerobic or low-oxygen conditions. Beverages such as mead, wine, beer, or distilled spirits all use yeast at some stage of their production. A distilled beverage is a beverage containing ethanol that has been purified by distillation. Carbohydrate-containing plant material is fermented by yeast, producing a dilute solution of ethanol in the process. Spirits such as whiskey and rum are prepared by distilling these dilute solutions of ethanol. Components other than ethanol are collected in the condensate, including water, esters, and other alcohols, which (in addition to that provided by the oak in which it may be aged) account for the flavour of the beverage. Beer Brewing yeasts may be classed as "top-cropping" (or "top-fermenting") and "bottom-cropping" (or "bottom-fermenting"). Top-cropping yeasts are so called because they form a foam at the top of the wort during fermentation. An example of a top-cropping yeast is Saccharomyces cerevisiae, sometimes called an "ale yeast". Bottom-cropping yeasts are typically used to produce lager-type beers, though they can also produce ale-type beers. These yeasts ferment well at low temperatures. An example of bottom-cropping yeast is Saccharomyces pastorianus, formerly known as S. carlsbergensis. Decades ago, taxonomists reclassified S. carlsbergensis (uvarum) as a member of S. cerevisiae, noting that the only distinct difference between the two is metabolic. Lager strains of S. cerevisiae secrete an enzyme called melibiase, allowing them to hydrolyse melibiose, a disaccharide, into more fermentable monosaccharides. Top- and bottom-cropping and cold- and warm-fermenting distinctions are largely generalizations used by laypersons to communicate to the general public. The most common top-cropping brewer's yeast, S. cerevisiae, is the same species as the common baking yeast. Brewer's yeast is also very rich in essential minerals and the B vitamins (except B12), a feature exploited in food products made from leftover (by-product) yeast from brewing. However, baking and brewing yeasts typically belong to different strains, cultivated to favour different characteristics: baking yeast strains are more aggressive, to carbonate dough in the shortest amount of time possible; brewing yeast strains act more slowly but tend to produce fewer off-flavours and tolerate higher alcohol concentrations (with some strains, up to 22%). Dekkera/Brettanomyces is a genus of yeast known for its important role in the production of 'lambic' and specialty sour ales, along with the secondary conditioning of a particular Belgian Trappist beer. The taxonomy of the genus Brettanomyces has been |
climate makes it particularly suited to the production of high-quality chardonnay, pinot noir and sparkling wine. Yarra Valley towns fall under the Nillumbik and Yarra Ranges Shire Councils. Major towns include Coldstream, Yarra Glen, Healesville and Warburton. It is also the filming location for the first two seasons of The Saddle Club. See also Yarra Valley (wine) Australian wine Shire of Upper Yarra Shire of Healesville | surrounding the Yarra River and generally does not encompass the lower regions including the city and suburban areas, where the topography flattens out, or the upper reaches which are in inaccessible bushland. Included in the Yarra Valley is the sub-region of the Upper Yarra Valley which encompasses the towns of the former Shire of Upper Yarra in the catchment area upstream of and including Woori Yallock. The Yarra Valley is a popular day-trip and tourist area, featuring a range of natural features and agricultural |
the father of three and lives in Merhavia. Navy career In July 1969, as a commando in Shayetet 13, he was badly wounded and mistakenly declared dead during Operation Bulmus 6, the assault on fortified Green Island, Egypt, in the Gulf of Suez (jointly with Sayeret Matkal). Photography career After retiring from active army service, Ya'ari worked as an assistant cameraman for three years at Herzliya Studios. Business career He was CEO of | a commando in Shayetet 13, he was badly wounded and mistakenly declared dead during Operation Bulmus 6, the assault on fortified Green Island, Egypt, in the Gulf of Suez (jointly with Sayeret Matkal). Photography career After retiring from active army service, Ya'ari worked as an assistant cameraman for three years at Herzliya Studios. Business career He was CEO of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems Ltd. In 2016, he became president of GenCell, an |
Kushiro, Hokkaidō and dropped out of Aichi Prefectural University of Fine Arts and Music mid-semester from the fine arts department. He made his debut in 1975 with Kotetsu no Queen and with Harukanaru Asa won the Tezuka prize for an outstanding manga. On 1976, he wrote Blue City for Shukan Shonen Jump. He won an Excellence Prize at the 2008 Japan Media Arts Festival for Munakata Kyouju Ikouroku. Initially, his artistic style was similar to that of Mikiya Mochizuki and had humoristic touches, but moved on to the gekiga style. He is known for using the gekiga style to create detailed and serious science fiction stories based on American and European SF novels but creating a completely different storyline. He had also drawn various works based on ancient and pre-historic histories. Amongst other things, he is known for his graphic novel series, 2001 Nights. His work is acknowledged by the British Museum and was on display during 5 November | Kyojintachi no Densetsu (巨人たちの伝説) 2001 Nights (2001夜物語) A collection of short stories that look to mankind's exploration of space, and examine the possibilities that we could face when we decide to take those first fateful steps into the unknown. Yamataika (ヤマタイカ) Munakata Kyoju Denkiko (宗像教授伝奇考) Saber Tiger Kodoku Experiment Star Dust Memories 2001+5 Kamunabi El Alamein no Shinden (エル・アラメインの神殿) A compilation of World War II short stories from the perspective of the German military personnel. Professor Munakata's British Museum Adventure Follow up on the Museum's exhibition in 2009–2010, first published as a series of 10 episodes in Big Comic in 2010 and then as a book in 2011 by the British Museum Press. Painting books STAR FIELD(1986年、双葉社) CHRONICLE(1996年、朝日ソノラマ) References External links Review on G-wie-Gorilla.de Salon Futura article by Jonathan Clements Entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Professor Munakata's British Museum adventure British Museum 1954 births Living people Manga artists Manga artists from Hokkaido People from |
oil caused the yen to depreciate to a range of ¥290 per US$ to ¥300 per US$ between 1974 and 1976. The re-emergence of trade surpluses drove the yen back up to ¥211 in 1978. This currency strengthening was again reversed by the second oil shock in 1979, with the yen dropping to ¥227 per US$ by 1980. Yen in the early 1980s During the first half of the 1980s, the yen failed to rise in value, though current account surpluses returned and grew quickly. From ¥221 per US$ in 1981, the average value of the yen actually dropped to ¥239 per US$ in 1985. The rise in the current account surplus generated stronger demand for yen in foreign-exchange markets, but this trade-related demand for yen was offset by other factors. A wide differential in interest rates, with United States interest rates much higher than those in Japan, and the continuing moves to deregulate the international flow of capital, led to a large net outflow of capital from Japan. This capital flow increased the supply of yen in foreign-exchange markets, as Japanese investors changed their yen for other currencies (mainly dollars) to invest overseas. This kept the yen weak relative to the dollar and fostered the rapid rise in the Japanese trade surplus that took place in the 1980s. Effect of the Plaza Accord In 1985, a dramatic change began. Finance officials from major nations signed an agreement (the Plaza Accord) affirming that the dollar was overvalued (and, therefore, the yen undervalued). This agreement, and shifting supply and demand pressures in the markets, led to a rapid rise in the value of the yen. From its average of ¥239 per US$ in 1985, the yen rose to a peak of ¥128 in 1988, virtually doubling its value relative to the dollar. After declining somewhat in 1989 and 1990, it reached a new high of ¥123 to US$ in December 1992. In April 1995, the yen hit a peak of under 80 yen/UD$, temporarily making Japan's economy nearly the size of that of the US. Post-bubble years The yen declined during the Japanese asset price bubble and continued to do so afterwards, reaching a low of ¥134 to US$ in February 2002. The Bank of Japan's policy of zero interest rates has discouraged yen investments, with the carry trade of investors borrowing yen and investing in better-paying currencies (thus further pushing down the yen) estimated to be as large as $1 trillion. In February 2007, The Economist estimated that the yen was 15% undervalued against the dollar, and as much as 40% undervalued against the euro. After the global economic crisis of 2008 However, this trend of depreciation reversed after the global economic crisis of 2008. Other major currencies, except the Swiss franc, have been declining relative to the yen. On April 4, 2013, the Bank of Japan announced that they would expand their asset purchase program by $1.4 trillion in two years. The Bank of Japan hopes to bring Japan from deflation to inflation, aiming for 2% inflation. The number of purchases is so large that it is expected to double the money supply, but this move has sparked concerns that the authorities in Japan are deliberately devaluing the yen to boost exports. However, the commercial sector in Japan worried that the devaluation would trigger an increase in import prices, especially for energy and raw materials. Redenomination proposals Numerous proposals have neen made since the 1990s to redenominate the yen by introducing a new unit or new yen, equal to 100 yen, and nearly worth one U.S. dollar. This has not happened to date, since the yen remains trusted globally despite its low unit value, and due to the huge costs of reissuing new currency and updating currency-reading hardware. The negative impact of postponing upgrades to various computer software until redenomination occurs, in particular, was also cited. Coins Coins were introduced in 1870. There were silver 5-, 10-, 20- and 50-sen and 1-yen, and gold 2-, 5-, 10- and 20-yen. Gold 1-yen were introduced in 1871, followed by copper 1-rin, -, 1- and 2-sen in 1873. Cupronickel 5-sen coins were introduced in 1889. In 1897, the silver 1-yen coin was demonetized and the sizes of the gold coins were reduced by 50%, with 5-, 10- and 20-yen coins issued. In 1920, cupro-nickel 10-sen coins were introduced. Production of silver coins ceased in 1938, after which a variety of base metals were used to produce 1-, 5- and 10-sen coins during the Second World War. Clay 5- and 10-sen coins were produced in 1945, but not issued for circulation. After the war, brass 50-sen, 1- and 5-yen were introduced between 1946 and 1948. In 1949, the current type of holed 5-yen was introduced, followed by bronze 10-yen (of the type still in circulation) in 1951. Coins in denominations of less than 1-yen became invalid on December 31, 1953, following enforcement of the . In 1955, the current type of aluminium 1-yen was introduced, along with unholed, nickel 50-yen. In 1957, silver 100-yen pieces were introduced, followed by the holed 50-yen coin in 1959. These were replaced in 1967 by the current cupro-nickel type, along with a smaller 50-yen coin. In 1982, the first 500-yen coins were introduced. The date (expressed as the year in the reign of the emperor at the time the coin was stamped) is on the reverse of all coins, and, in most cases, country name (through 1945, ; after 1945, and the value in kanji is on the obverse, except for the present 5-yen coin where the country name is on the reverse. Alongside with the 5-Swiss franc coin, the 500-yen coin is one of the highest-valued coin to be used regularly in the world, with value of US$4.5 . Because of this high face value, the 500-yen coin has been a favorite target for counterfeiters; it was counterfeited to such an extent that, in 2000, a new series of coins was issued with various security features, but counterfeiting continued. The 1-yen coin is made out of 100% aluminium and can float on water if placed correctly. On various occasions, commemorative coins are minted, often in gold and silver with face values up to 100,000 yen. The first of these were silver ¥100 and ¥1000 Summer Olympic coins issued on the occasion of the 1964 games. Recently this practice is undertaken with the | pieces were introduced, followed by the holed 50-yen coin in 1959. These were replaced in 1967 by the current cupro-nickel type, along with a smaller 50-yen coin. In 1982, the first 500-yen coins were introduced. The date (expressed as the year in the reign of the emperor at the time the coin was stamped) is on the reverse of all coins, and, in most cases, country name (through 1945, ; after 1945, and the value in kanji is on the obverse, except for the present 5-yen coin where the country name is on the reverse. Alongside with the 5-Swiss franc coin, the 500-yen coin is one of the highest-valued coin to be used regularly in the world, with value of US$4.5 . Because of this high face value, the 500-yen coin has been a favorite target for counterfeiters; it was counterfeited to such an extent that, in 2000, a new series of coins was issued with various security features, but counterfeiting continued. The 1-yen coin is made out of 100% aluminium and can float on water if placed correctly. On various occasions, commemorative coins are minted, often in gold and silver with face values up to 100,000 yen. The first of these were silver ¥100 and ¥1000 Summer Olympic coins issued on the occasion of the 1964 games. Recently this practice is undertaken with the 500-yen coin, the first two types were issued in 1985, in commemoration of the science and technology exposition in Tsukuba and the 100th anniversary of the Governmental Cabinet system. The current commemorative 500- and 1000-yen coin series honouring the 47 prefectures of Japan commenced in 2008, with 47 unique designs planned for each denomination. Only one coin per customer is available from banks in each prefecture. 100,000 of each 1000-yen silver coin have been minted. Even though all commemorative coins can be spent like ordinary (non-commemorative) coins, they are not seen often in typical daily use and normally do not circulate. Instead of displaying the Gregorian calendar year of mintage like most nations' coins, yen coins instead display the regnal year of the current emperor's reign. For example, a coin minted in 2009, would bear the date Heisei 21 (the 21st year of Emperor Akihito's reign). Due to the great differences in style, size, weight and the pattern present on the edge of the coin they are very easy for people with visual impairments to tell apart from one another. Current banknotes The issuance of the yen banknotes began in 1872, two years after the currency was introduced. Throughout its history, the denominations have ranged from 10 yen to 10,000 yen; since 1984, the lowest-valued banknote is the 1,000 yen note. Before and during World War II, various bodies issued banknotes in yen, such as the Ministry of Finance and the Imperial Japanese National Bank. The Allied forces also issued some notes shortly after the war. Since then, the Bank of Japan has been the exclusive note issuing authority. The bank has issued five series after World War II. Series E, the current series introduced in 2004, consists of ¥1000, ¥5000, and ¥10,000 notes. The EURion constellation pattern is present in the designs. Japan is generally considered a cash-based society, with 38% of payments in Japan made by cash in 2014. Possible explanations are that cash payments protect one's privacy, merchants do not have to wait for payment, and it does not carry any negative connotation like credit. New banknotes On April 9, 2019, Finance Minister Tarō Asō announced new designs for the ¥1000, ¥5000, and ¥10,000 notes, for use beginning in 2024. The ¥1000 bill will feature Kitasato Shibasaburō and The Great Wave off Kanagawa, the ¥5000 bill will feature Tsuda Umeko and Wisteria flowers, and the ¥10,000 bill will feature Shibusawa Eiichi and Tokyo Station. The Ministry decided to not redesign the ¥2000 note due to low circulation. Determinants of value Beginning in December 1931, Japan gradually shifted from the gold standard system to the managed currency system. The relative value of the yen is determined in foreign exchange markets by the economic forces of supply and demand. The supply of the yen in the market is governed by the desire of yen holders to exchange their yen for other currencies to purchase goods, services, or assets. The demand for the yen is governed by the desire of foreigners to buy goods and services in Japan and by their interest in investing in Japan (buying yen-denominated real and financial assets). Since the 1990s, the Bank of Japan, the country's central bank, has kept interest rates low to spur economic growth. Short-term lending rates have responded to this monetary relaxation and fell from 3.7% to 1.3% between 1993 and 2008. Low interest rates combined with a ready liquidity for the yen prompted investors to borrow money in Japan and invest it in other countries (a practice known as carry trade). This has helped to keep the value of the yen low compared to other currencies. International reserve currency SDR basket The special drawing rights (SDR) valuation is an IMF basket of currencies, including the Japanese yen. The SDR is linked to a basket of five different currencies, with 41.73% for the U.S. dollar, 30.93% for the Euro, 10.92% for the Chinese renminbi, 8.33% for the Japanese yen, and 8.09% for the pound sterling (as of 2016). The percentage for the yen has, however, declined from 18% in 2000. The exchange rate for the Japanese yen is expressed in terms of currency units per U.S. dollar; other rates are expressed as U.S. dollars per currency unit. The SDR currency value is calculated daily and the valuation basket is reviewed and adjusted every five years. The SDR was created in 1969, to support the fixed exchange system. Historical exchange rate Before the war commenced, the yen traded on an average of 3.6 yen to the dollar. During the war, because of overprinting and inflation as the Empire occupied more territory, the yen went as low as 600 yen to the USD. When McArthur and the US forces entered Japan in 1945, they decreed an official conversion rate of 15 yen to the USD. Within 1945–1946: the rate tanked to 50 yen to the USD because of the ongoing inflation. During the first half of 1946, the rate fluctuated to 66 yen to the USD and eventually plummeting to 600 yen to the dollar by 1947 because of the failure of the economic remedies. Eventually, the peg was officially moved to 270 yen to the dollar in 1948 before being adjusted again from 1949 to 1971 to 360 yen to the dollar. The table below shows the monthly average of the U.S. dollar–yen spot rate (JPY per USD) at 17:00 JST: See also Japan Mint Japanese military currency Economy of Japan Capital flows in Japan Monetary and fiscal policy of Japan Balance of payments accounts of Japan (1960–90) List of countries by leading trade partners List of the largest trading partners of Japan Korean won Older currency Japanese mon (currency) Koban (coin) Ryō |
a winter tradition in regions of Europe, particularly the United Kingdom, and subsequently North America. The origin of the folk custom is unclear. Like other traditions associated with Yule (such as the Yule boar), the custom may ultimately derive from Germanic paganism. American folklorist Linda Watts provides the following overview of the custom: The familiar custom of burning the Yule log dates back to earlier solstice celebrations and the tradition of bonfires. The Christmas practice calls for burning a portion of the log each evening until Twelfth Night (January 6). The log is subsequently placed beneath the bed for luck, and particularly for protection from the household threats of lightning and, with some irony, fire. Many have beliefs based on the yule log as it burns, and by counting the sparks and such, they seek to discern their fortunes for the new year and beyond. Watts notes that the Yule log is one of various "emblem[s] of divine light" that feature in winter holiday customs (other examples include the Yule fire and Yule candle). Origins According to the Dictionary of English Folklore, although the concept of Yule extends far into the ancient Germanic record long before Christianization, the first "clear" references to the tradition appear in the 17th century, and thus it is unclear from where or when exactly the custom extends. However, it has long been observed that the custom may have much earlier origins, extending from customs observed in Germanic paganism. As early as 1725, Henry Bourne sought an origin for the Yule log in Anglo-Saxon paganism: Our Fore-Fathers, when the common Devices of Eve were over, and Night was come on, were wont to light up Candles of an uncommon Size, which were called Christmas-Candles, and to lay a Log of Wood upon the Fire, which they termed a Yule-Clog, or Christmas-Block. These were to Illuminate the House, and turn the Night into Day; which custom, in some Measure, is still kept up in the Northern Parts. It hath, in all probability, been derived from the Saxons. For Bede tells us, That [sic] this very Night was observed in this Land before, by the Heathen Saxons. They began, says he, their Year on the Eight of the Calenders of January, which is now our Christmas Party: And the very Night before, which is now Holy to us, was by them called Mædrenack, or the Night of the Mothers … The Yule-Clog therefore hath probably been a Part of those Ceremonies which were perform'd that Night's Ceremonies. It seems to have been used, as an Emblem of the return of the Sun, and the lengthening of the Days. For as both December and January were called Guili or Yule, upon Account of the Sun's Returning, and the Increase of the Days; so, I am apt to believe, the Log has had the Name of the Yule-Log, from its being burnt as an Emblem of the returning Sun, and the Increase of its Light and Heat. This was probably the Reason of the custom among the Heathen Saxons; but I cannot think the Observation of it was continued for the same Reason, after Christianity was embraced. …" More recently, G. R. Willey (1983) says: Communal bon-bons with feasting and jollification have a pagan root—ritual bonfires at the beginning of November once signaled the start of another year and the onset of winter. Their subsequent incorporation into the Christian calendar, to become part and parcel of the festival of Christmas, and, later, their association with the New Year (January 1st) is an intriguing story. Many, if not all, of the various customs and traditions at one time extensively witnessed at Christmas and the 'old' New Year stem from this common source, e.g. Twelfth Night bonfires, including 'Old Meg' from Worcestershire and burning the bush from Herefordshire, first footing, etc. … Any traces of primitive ritual such as scattering of burnt ashes or embers as an omen of fertilisation or purification have long since disappeared. The events of Yule were generally held to have centred on Midwinter (although specific dating is a matter of debate), and feasting, drinking, and sacrifice (blót) were involved. Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the pagan Yule feast "had a pronounced religious character" and that "it is uncertain whether the Germanic Yule feast still had a function in the cult of the dead and in the veneration of the ancestors, a function which the mid-winter sacrifice certainly held for the West European Stone and Bronze Ages." Yule customs and the traditions of the Yule log, Yule goat, and Yule boar (Sonargöltr) are still reflected in the Christmas ham, Yule singing, and others, which Simek takes as "indicat[ing] the significance of the feast in pre-Christian times." Diffusion and modern practices The first mention of a log burned around Christmas comes from Robert Herrick's poetry collection of 1648 where it is called a "Christmas log." It is not referred to as a "Yule log" until John Aubrey's work from 1686. Prior to that century, there has been no evidence of Yule logs let alone evidence that can be traced back to the holiday of Yule. The Yule log is recorded in the folklore archives of much of England, but particularly in collections covering the West Country and the North Country. For example, in his section regarding "Christmas Observances", J. B. Partridge recorded then-current (1914) Christmas customs in Yorkshire, Britain involving the Yule log as related by "Mrs. Day, Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire), a native of Swaledale". The custom is as follows: The Yule log is generally given, and is at once put on the hearth. It is unlucky to have to light it again after it has once been started, and it ought not go out | a matter of debate), and feasting, drinking, and sacrifice (blót) were involved. Scholar Rudolf Simek comments that the pagan Yule feast "had a pronounced religious character" and that "it is uncertain whether the Germanic Yule feast still had a function in the cult of the dead and in the veneration of the ancestors, a function which the mid-winter sacrifice certainly held for the West European Stone and Bronze Ages." Yule customs and the traditions of the Yule log, Yule goat, and Yule boar (Sonargöltr) are still reflected in the Christmas ham, Yule singing, and others, which Simek takes as "indicat[ing] the significance of the feast in pre-Christian times." Diffusion and modern practices The first mention of a log burned around Christmas comes from Robert Herrick's poetry collection of 1648 where it is called a "Christmas log." It is not referred to as a "Yule log" until John Aubrey's work from 1686. Prior to that century, there has been no evidence of Yule logs let alone evidence that can be traced back to the holiday of Yule. The Yule log is recorded in the folklore archives of much of England, but particularly in collections covering the West Country and the North Country. For example, in his section regarding "Christmas Observances", J. B. Partridge recorded then-current (1914) Christmas customs in Yorkshire, Britain involving the Yule log as related by "Mrs. Day, Minchinhampton (Gloucestershire), a native of Swaledale". The custom is as follows: The Yule log is generally given, and is at once put on the hearth. It is unlucky to have to light it again after it has once been started, and it ought not go out until it has burned away. To sit around the Yule log and tell ghost stories is a great thing to do on this night, also card-playing. Two large coloured candles are a Christmas present from the grocery. Just before supper on Christmas Eve (where furmety is eaten), while the Yule log is burning, all other lights are put out, and the candles are lit from the Yule log by the youngest person present. While they are lit, all are silent and wish. It is common practice for the wish to be kept a secret. Once the candles are on the table, silence may be broken. They must be allowed to burn themselves out, and no other lights may be lit that night. H. J. Rose records a similar folk belief from Killinghall, Yorkshire in 1923: "In the last generation the Yule log was still burned, and a piece of it saved to light the next year's log. On Christmas morning something green, a leaf or the like, was brought into the house before anything was taken out." The Yule log is also attested as a custom present elsewhere in the English-speaking world, such as the United States. Robert Meyer, Jr. records in 1947 that a "Yule-Log Ceremony" in Palmer Lake, Colorado had occurred since 1934. He describes the custom: "It starts with the yule log [sic] hunt and is climaxed by drinking of wassail around the fire." In the Southern United States before the end of the American Civil War, the Yule log was also maintained as a tradition. For example, according to scholar Allen Cabaniss: For slaves, Christmas had special meaning. December was a slow work month on the typical plantation, and it became the social season for them. The slaves' holiday lasted until the Yule log burned, which sometimes took over a week. Regional variations and analogues Scholars have observed similarities between the Yule log and the folk custom of the ashen faggot, recorded solely in the West Country of England. First recorded at the beginning of the 19th century, the ashen faggot is burnt on Christmas Eve, is associated with a variety of folk beliefs, and is "made of smaller ash sticks bound into a faggot with strips of hazel, withy, or bramble". G. R. Wiley observes that the ashen faggot may have developed out of the Yule log. The term "Yule log" is not the only term used to refer to the custom. It was commonly called a "Yule Clog" in north-east England, and it was also called the "Yule Block" in the Midlands and West Country and "Gule Block" in Lincolnshire. In Cornwall, the term "Stock of the Mock" was found. Non-English indigenous names in the British Isles include ”Boncyff Nadolig “ or “Blocyn y Gwyliau” (the Christmas Log or the Festival Block) in Wales, Yeel Carline (the Christmas Old Wife) in Scotland and Bloc na Nollag (the Christmas Block) in Ireland. The custom of burning a Yule |
capital of Ivory Coast and an autonomous district. As of the 2014 census, Yamoussoukro is the fifth most populous city in Ivory Coast with a population of 355,573 inhabitants. Located north-west of Abidjan, Yamoussoukro covers among rolling hills and plains. Yamoussoukro became the legal capital of the Ivory Coast in 1983, although the former capital Abidjan retains several political functions. Prior to 2011, what is now the district of Yamoussoukro was part of Lacs Region. The district was created in 2011 and is split into the departments of Attiégouakro and Yamoussoukro. In total, the district contains 169 settlements. Yamoussoukro is a sub-prefecture in Yamoussoukro Department and is also a commune: since 2012, the city of Yamoussoukro has been the sole commune in the autonomous district of Yamoussoukro. History Prehistory Stone tools found in the country from hundreds of thousands of years ago show that the area around Yamoussoukro has been occupied since ancient times. Due to the desertification of the Sahara, many moved south to avoid the harsh conditions. Colonial period Queen Yamoussou, the niece of Kouassi N'Go, ran the city of N'Gokro in 1929 at the time of French colonization. The village of N'Gokro was renamed Yamoussoukro, the suffix Kro meaning town in Baoule. Diplomatic and commercial relations were then established, but in 1909, on the orders of the Chief of Djamlabo, the Akoué revolted against the administration. Bonzi station, from Yamoussoukro on the Bouaflé road, was set on fire, and the French administrator, Simon Maurice, was spared only by the intervention of Kouassi N'Go. As the situation got worse, Maurice, judging that Bonzi had become safe, decided to transfer the French military station to Yamoussoukro, where the French Administration built a pyramid to the memory of Kouassi N'Go, Chief of the Akoué, who was assassinated in 1910 by Akoué rebels, accusing him of being too close to the French. In 1919, the civil station of Yamoussoukro was | the de jure capital of Ivory Coast and an autonomous district. As of the 2014 census, Yamoussoukro is the fifth most populous city in Ivory Coast with a population of 355,573 inhabitants. Located north-west of Abidjan, Yamoussoukro covers among rolling hills and plains. Yamoussoukro became the legal capital of the Ivory Coast in 1983, although the former capital Abidjan retains several political functions. Prior to 2011, what is now the district of Yamoussoukro was part of Lacs Region. The district was created in 2011 and is split into the departments of Attiégouakro and Yamoussoukro. In total, the district contains 169 settlements. Yamoussoukro is a sub-prefecture in Yamoussoukro Department and is also a commune: since 2012, the city of Yamoussoukro has been the sole commune in the autonomous district of Yamoussoukro. History Prehistory Stone tools found in the country from hundreds of thousands of years ago show that the area around Yamoussoukro has been occupied since ancient times. Due to the desertification of the Sahara, many moved south to avoid the harsh conditions. Colonial period Queen Yamoussou, the niece of Kouassi N'Go, ran the city of N'Gokro in 1929 at the time of French colonization. The village of N'Gokro was renamed Yamoussoukro, the suffix Kro meaning town in Baoule. Diplomatic and commercial relations were then established, but in 1909, on the orders of the Chief of Djamlabo, the Akoué revolted against the administration. Bonzi station, from Yamoussoukro on the Bouaflé road, was set on fire, and the French administrator, Simon Maurice, was spared only by the intervention of Kouassi N'Go. As the situation got worse, Maurice, judging that Bonzi had become safe, decided to transfer the French military station to Yamoussoukro, where the French Administration built a pyramid to the memory of Kouassi N'Go, Chief of the Akoué, who was assassinated in 1910 by Akoué rebels, accusing him of being too close to the French. In 1919, the civil station of Yamoussoukro was removed. Félix Houphouët-Boigny became the leader of the village in 1939. A long period passed wherein Yamoussoukro, still a small agricultural town, remained in the shadows. This continued until after the Second World War, which saw the creation of the African Agricultural Union, as well as the first conferences of its chief. However, it was only with independence that Yamoussoukro finally started to rise. In 1950, the village comprised 500 inhabitants. Since independence After 1964, the President Félix Houphouët-Boigny made |
the job of distracting Hera from his affairs by talking incessantly, and when Hera discovered the deception, she cursed Echo to repeat the words of others. Transformation of Zeus Children Roles and epithets Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults. Though the Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity. Aside from local epithets that simply designated the deity as doing something random at some particular place, the epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority: Zeus Aegiduchos or Aegiochos: Usually taken as Zeus as the bearer of the Aegis, the divine shield with the head of Medusa across it, although others derive it from "goat" () and okhē () in reference to Zeus' nurse, the divine goat Amalthea. Zeus Agoraeus (Αγοραιος): Zeus as patron of the marketplace (agora) and punisher of dishonest traders. Zeus Areius (Αρειος): either "warlike" or "the atoning one". Zeus Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος): "Zeus the freedom giver" a cult worshiped in Athens Zeus Horkios: Zeus as keeper of oaths. Exposed liars were made to dedicate a votive statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary at Olympia Zeus Olympios (Ολύμπιος): Zeus as king of the gods and patron of the Panhellenic Games at Olympia Zeus Panhellenios ("Zeus of All the Greeks"): worshipped at Aeacus's temple on Aegina Zeus Xenios (Ξένιος), Philoxenon, or Hospites: Zeus as the patron of hospitality (xenia) and guests, avenger of wrongs done to strangers Additional names and epithets for Zeus are also: A Abrettenus (Ἀβρεττηνός) or Abretanus: surname of Zeus in Mysia Achad: one of his names in Syria. Acraeus (Akraios): his name at Smyrna. Acraea and Acraeus are also attributes given to various goddesses and gods whose temples were situated upon hills, such as Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Pallas, Artemis, and others Acrettenus: his name in Mysia. Adad: one of his names in Syria. Zeus Adados: A Hellenization of the Canaanite Hadad and Assyrian Adad, particularly his solar cult at Heliopolis Adultus: from his being invoked by adults, on their marriage. Aleios (Ἄλειος) Amboulios (Αμβουλιος, "Counsellor") or Latinized Ambulius Apemius (Apemios, Απημιος): Zeus as the averter of ills Apomyius (Απομυιος): Zeus as one who dispels flies Aphesios (Αφεσιος; "Releasing (Rain)") Astrapios (Αστραπαιος; "Lightninger"): Zeus as a weather god B Basileus (Βασιλευς, "King, Chief, Ruler") Bottiaeus/ Bottaios (Βοττιαίος, "of the Bottiaei"): Worshipped at Antioch Libanius wrote that Alexander the Great founded the temple of Zeus Bottiaios, in the place where later the city of Antioch was built. Zeus Bouleus/ Boulaios (Βουλαίος, "of the Council"): Worshipped at Dodona, the earliest oracle, along with Zeus Naos Brontios ("Thunderer"): Zeus as a weather god C Cenaean (Kenaios/ Kenaius, Κηναῖος): a surname of Zeus, derived from cape Cenaeum D Diktaios (Δικταιος): Zeus as lord of the Dikte mountain range, worshipped from Mycenaean times on Crete Dodonian/ Dodonaios (Δωδωναῖος): meaning of Dodona Dylsios (Δύλσιος) E Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος, "of freedom"). At Athens after the Battle of Plataea, Athenians built the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. Some writers said that was called "of freedom" because free men built the portico near his shrine, while others because Athenians escaped subjection to the power of Persia and they were free. Epidôtês/ Epidotes (Επιδωτης; "Giver of Good"): an epithet of Zeus at Mantineia and Sparta Euênemos/ Euanemos (Ευηνεμος; "of Fair Winds", "Giver of Favourable Wind") or Latinized Evenemus/ Evanemus G Zeus Georgos (, "Zeus the Farmer"): Zeus as god of crops and the harvest, worshipped in Athens H Zeus Helioupolites ("Heliopolite" or "Heliopolitan Zeus"): A Hellenization of the Canaanite Baʿal (probably Hadad) worshipped as a sun god at Heliopolis (modern Baalbek) in Syria Herkeios (Ἑρκειος, "of the Courtyard") or Latinized Herceius Hetareios (Ἑταιρεῖος, "of fellowship"): According to the Suda, Zeus was called this among the Cretans. Hikesios (Ἱκεσιος; "of Suppliants") or Latinized Hicesius Hyetios (Ὑετιος; "of the Rain") Hypatos (Ὑπατος, "Supreme, Most High") Hypsistos (Ὕψιστος, "Supreme, Most High") I Ikmaios (Ικμαιος; "of Moisture") or Latinized Icmaeus Ithomatas (Ιθωμάτας) K Zeus Kasios ("Zeus of Mount Kasios" the modern Jebel Aqra) or Latinized Casius: a surname of Zeus, the name may have derived from either sources, one derived from Casion, near Pelusium in Egypt. Another derived from Mount Kasios (Casius), which is the modern Jebel Aqra, is worshipped at a site on the Syrian–Turkish border, a Hellenization of the Canaanite mountain and weather god Baal Zephon Kataibates (Καταιβάτης, "descending") or Latinized Cataebates, because he was sending-down thunderbolts or because he was descending to earth due to his love of women. Keraunios (Κεραυνιος; "of the Thunderbolt") or Latinized Ceraunius Klarios (Κλαριος; "of the Lots") or Latinized Clarius Konios (Κονιος; "of the Dust") or Latinized Conius Koryphaios (Κορυφαιος, "Chief, Leader") or Latinized Coryphaeus Kosmêtês (Κοσμητης; "Orderer") or Latinized Cosmetes Ktesios (Κτησιος, "of the House, Property") or Latinized Ctesius L Zeus Labrandos (Λαβρανδευς; "Furious, Raging", "Zeus of Labraunda"): Worshiped at Caria, depicted with a double-edged axe (labrys), a Hellenization of the Hurrian weather god Teshub Limenoskopos (Λιμενοσκοπος; "Watcher of Sea-Havens") or Latinized Limenoscopus occurs as a surname of several deities, Zeus, Artemis, Aphrodite, Priapus and Pan M Maimaktês (Μαιμακτης; "Boisterous", "the Stormy") or Latinized Maemactes, a surname of Zeus, derived from the Attic calendar month name 'Maimakterion' (Μαιμακτηριών, Latinized Maemacterion) and which that month the Maimakteria was celebrated at Athens Zeus Meilichios/ Meilikhios (Μειλίχιος; "Zeus the Easily-Entreated") Mêkhaneus (Μηχανευς; "Contriver") or Latinized Mechaneus Moiragetes (Μοιραγέτης; "Leader of the Fates", "Guide or Leade of Fate"): Pausanias wrote that this was a surname of Zeus and Apollo at Delphi, because Zeus knew the affairs of men, all that the Fates give them and all that is not destined for them. N Zeus Naos: Worshipped at Dodona, the earliest oracle, along with Zeus Bouleus O Ombrios (Ομβριος; "of the Rain", "Rain-Giver") Ourios (Οὐριος, "of Favourable Wind"). Ancient writers wrote about a sanctuary at the opening of the Black Sea dedicated to the Zeus Ourios (ἱερὸν τοῦ Διὸς τοῦ Οὐρίου). In addition, on the island of Delos a dedication to Zeus Ourios was found. The dedication was made by a citizen of Ascalon, named Damon son of Demetrius, who escaped from pirates. P Philios (Φιλιος; "of Friendship") or Latinized Philius Phyxios (Φυξιος; "of Refuge") or Latinized Phyxius Plousios (Πλουσιος; "of Wealth") or Latinized Plusius S Skotitas (Σκοτιτας; "Dark, Murky") or Latinized Scotitas Sêmaleos (Σημαλεος; "Giver of Signs") or Latinized Semaleus: Sosipolis (Σωσίπολις; "City saviour"): There was a temple of Zeus Sosipolis at Magnesia on the Maeander T Zeus Tallaios ("Solar Zeus"): Worshipped on Crete Teleios (Τελειος; "of Marriage Rites") or Latinized Teleus Theos Agathos (Θεος Αγαθος; "the Good God") or Latinized Theus Agathus Tropaioukho/ Tropaiucho (τροπαιούχῳ, "Guardian of Trophies"): after the Battle of the 300 Champions, Othryades, dedicated the trophy to "Zeus, Guardian of Trophies" . X Xenios (Ξενιος; "of Hospitality, Strangers") or Latinized Xenius Cults of Zeus Panhellenic cults The major center where all Greeks converged to pay honor to their chief god was Olympia. Their quadrennial festival featured the famous Games. There was also an altar to Zeus made not of stone, but of ash, from the accumulated remains of many centuries' worth of animals sacrificed there. Outside of the major inter-polis sanctuaries, there were no modes of worshipping Zeus precisely shared across the Greek world. Most of the titles listed below, for instance, could be found at any number of Greek temples from Asia Minor to Sicily. Certain modes of ritual were held in common as well: sacrificing a white animal over a raised altar, for instance. Zeus Velchanos With one exception, Greeks were unanimous in recognizing the birthplace of Zeus as Crete. Minoan culture contributed many essentials of ancient Greek religion: "by a hundred channels the old civilization emptied itself into the new", Will Durant observed, and Cretan Zeus retained his youthful Minoan features. The local child of the Great Mother, "a small and inferior deity who took the roles of son and consort", whose Minoan name the Greeks Hellenized as Velchanos, was in time assumed as an epithet by Zeus, as transpired at many other sites, and he came to be venerated in Crete as Zeus Velchanos ("boy-Zeus"), often simply the Kouros. In Crete, Zeus was worshipped at a number of caves at Knossos, Ida and Palaikastro. In the Hellenistic period a small sanctuary dedicated to Zeus Velchanos was founded at the Hagia Triada site of a long-ruined Minoan palace. Broadly contemporary coins from Phaistos show the form under which he was worshiped: a youth sits among the branches of a tree, with a cockerel on his knees. On other Cretan coins Velchanos is represented as an eagle and in association with a goddess celebrating a mystic marriage. Inscriptions at Gortyn and Lyttos record a Velchania festival, showing that Velchanios was still widely venerated in Hellenistic Crete. The stories of Minos and Epimenides suggest that these caves were once used for incubatory divination by kings and priests. The dramatic setting of Plato's Laws is along the pilgrimage-route to one such site, emphasizing archaic Cretan knowledge. On Crete, Zeus was represented in art as a long-haired youth rather than a mature adult and hymned as ho megas kouros, "the great youth". Ivory statuettes of the "Divine Boy" were unearthed near the Labyrinth at Knossos by Sir Arthur Evans. With the Kouretes, a band of ecstatic armed dancers, he presided over the rigorous military-athletic training and secret rites of the Cretan paideia. The myth of the death of Cretan Zeus, localised in numerous mountain sites though only mentioned in a comparatively late source, Callimachus, together with the assertion of Antoninus Liberalis that a fire shone forth annually from the birth-cave the infant shared with a mythic swarm of bees, suggests that Velchanos had been an annual vegetative spirit. The Hellenistic writer Euhemerus apparently proposed a theory that Zeus had actually been a great king of Crete and that posthumously, his glory had slowly turned him into a deity. The works of Euhemerus himself have not survived, but Christian patristic writers took up the suggestion. Zeus Lykaios The epithet Zeus Lykaios (Λύκαιος; "wolf-Zeus") is assumed by Zeus only in connection with the archaic festival of the Lykaia on the slopes of Mount Lykaion ("Wolf Mountain"), the tallest peak in rustic Arcadia; Zeus had only a formal connection with the rituals and myths of this primitive rite of passage with an ancient threat of cannibalism and the possibility of a werewolf transformation for the ephebes who were the participants. Near the ancient ash-heap where the sacrifices took place was a forbidden precinct in which, allegedly, no shadows were ever cast. According to Plato, a particular clan would gather on the mountain to make a sacrifice every nine years to Zeus Lykaios, and a single morsel of human entrails would be intermingled with the animal's. Whoever ate the human flesh was said to turn into a wolf, and could only regain human form if he did not eat again of human flesh until the next nine-year cycle had ended. There were games associated with the Lykaia, removed in the fourth century to the first urbanization of Arcadia, Megalopolis; there the major temple was dedicated to Zeus Lykaios. There is, however, the crucial detail that Lykaios or Lykeios (epithets of Zeus and Apollo) may derive from Proto-Greek *, "light", a noun still attested in compounds such as , "twilight", , "year" (lit. "light's course") etc. This, Cook argues, brings indeed much new 'light' to the matter as Achaeus, the contemporary tragedian of Sophocles, spoke of Zeus Lykaios as "starry-eyed", and this Zeus Lykaios may just be the Arcadian Zeus, son of Aether, described by Cicero. Again under this new signification may be seen Pausanias' descriptions of Lykosoura being 'the first city that ever the sun beheld', and of the altar of Zeus, at the summit of Mount Lykaion, before which stood two columns bearing gilded eagles and 'facing the sun-rise'. Further Cook sees only the tale of Zeus' sacred precinct at Mount Lykaion allowing no shadows referring to Zeus as 'god of light' (Lykaios). Additional cults of Zeus Although etymology indicates that Zeus was originally a sky god, many Greek cities honored a local Zeus who lived underground. Athenians and Sicilians honored Zeus Meilichios (Μειλίχιος; "kindly" or "honeyed") while other cities had | newborn child over to Gaia for her to raise, and Gaia takes him to a cave on Mount Aegaeon. Rhea then gives to Cronus, in the place of a child, a stone wrapped in swaddling clothes, which he promptly swallows, unaware that it isn't his son. While Hesiod gives Lyctus as Zeus's birthplace, he is the only source to do so, and other authors give different locations. The poet Eumelos of Corinth (8th century BC), according to John the Lydian, considered Zeus to have been born in Lydia, while the Alexandrian poet Callimachus (c. 310 – c. 240 BC), in his Hymn to Zeus, says that he was born in Arcadia. Diodorus Siculus (fl. 1st century BC) seems at one point to give Mount Ida as his birthplace, but later states he is born in Dicte, and the mythographer Apollodorus (first or second century AD) similarly says he was born in a cave in Dicte. Infancy While the Theogony says nothing of Zeus's upbringing other than that he grew up swiftly, other sources provide more detailed accounts. According to Apollodorus, Rhea, after giving birth to Zeus in a cave in Dicte, gives him to the nymphs Adrasteia and Ida, daughters of Melisseus, to nurse. They feed him on the milk of the she-goat Amaltheia, while the Kouretes guard the cave and beat their spears on their shields so that Cronus cannot hear the infant's crying. Diodorus Siculus provides a similar account, saying that, after giving birth, Rhea travels to Mount Ida and gives the newborn Zeus to the Kouretes, who then takes him to some nymphs (not named), who raised him on a mixture of honey and milk from the goat Amaltheia. He also refers to the Kouretes "rais[ing] a great alarum", and in doing so deceiving Cronus, and relates that when the the Kouretes were carrying the newborn Zeus that the umbilical cord fell away at the river Triton. According to Hyginus, Zeus was raised by a nymph named Amalthea. Since Saturn (Cronus) ruled over the Earth, the heavens and the sea, she hid him by dangling him on a rope from a tree so he was suspended between earth, sea and sky and thus, invisible to his father. King of the gods After reaching manhood, Zeus forced Cronus to disgorge first the stone (which was set down at Pytho under the glens of Parnassus to be a sign to mortal men, the Omphalos) then his siblings in reverse order of swallowing. In some versions, Metis gave Cronus an emetic to force him to disgorge the babies, or Zeus cut Cronus's stomach open. Then Zeus released the brothers of Cronus, the Hecatonchires and the Cyclopes, from their dungeon in Tartarus, killing their guard, Campe. As a token of their appreciation, the Cyclopes gave him thunder and the thunderbolt, or lightning, which had previously been hidden by Gaia. Together, Zeus, his brothers and sisters, Hecatonchires and Cyclopes overthrew Cronus and the other Titans, in the combat called the Titanomachy. The defeated Titans were then cast into a shadowy underworld region known as Tartarus. Atlas, one of the titans who fought against Zeus, was punished by having to hold up the sky. After the battle with the Titans, Zeus shared the world with his elder brothers, Poseidon and Hades, by drawing lots: Zeus received the sky and air, Poseidon the waters, and Hades the world of the dead (the underworld). Gaia resented the way Zeus had treated the Titans, because they were her children. Soon after taking the throne as king of the gods, Zeus had to fight some of Gaia's other children, including the Gigantes. It was prophesied that the Gigantes, children of Gaia born from Uranus's blood, could not be killed by the gods alone, but they could be killed with the help of a mortal. Hearing this, Gaia sought for a certain plant (pharmakon) that would protect the Gigantes even from mortals. Before Gaia or anyone else could get it, Zeus forbade Eos (Dawn), Selene (Moon) and Helios (Sun) to shine, harvested all of the plant himself and then he had Athena summon the mortal Heracles. Porphyrion, the king of the Gigantes, attacked Heracles and Hera, but Zeus caused Porphyrion to lust after Hera, whom Porphyrion then tried to rape, but Zeus struck Porphyrion with his thunderbolt and Heracles (or Apollo) killed him with an arrow. Zeus, with the help of other Olympians and Heracles, destroyed the Gigantes. After the Gigantes failed to defeat Zeus, Gaia mated with Tartarus and gave birth to Typhon. The monstrous Typhon challenged the reign of Zeus. Zeus fought against him in a cataclysmic battle and defeated him with his thunderbolt. He then trapped Typhon in Tartarus. According to Pindar, however, Typhon was trapped in Mount Etna. The Homeric hymn to Apollo states that Hera, angry at Zeus for giving birth to Athena by himself, prayed to Gaia, Uranus, and the Titans to give her a son stronger than Zeus. Hera then slapped the ground and became pregnant with Typhon. Zeus' reign was once challenged by Hera, Poseidon, and Athena, who wished to bind Zeus and overthrow him. The Nereid Thetis called the Hecatoncheire Briareus to rescue Zeus. The other Olympians were scared of Briareus, who then freed Zeus. Prometheus and conflicts with humans When the gods met at Mecone to discuss which portions they will receive after a sacrifice, the titan Prometheus decided to trick Zeus so that humans receive the better portions. He sacrificed a large ox, and divided it into two piles. In one pile he put all the meat and most of the fat, covering it with the ox's grotesque stomach, while in the other pile, he dressed up the bones with fat. Prometheus then invited Zeus to choose; Zeus chose the pile of bones. This set a precedent for sacrifices, where humans will keep the fat for themselves and burn the bones for the gods. Zeus, enraged at Prometheus's deception, prohibited the use of fire by humans. Prometheus, however, stole fire from Olympus in a fennel stalk and gave it to humans. This further enraged Zeus, who punished Prometheus by binding him to a cliff, where an eagle constantly ate Prometheus's liver, which regenerated every night. Prometheus was eventually freed from his misery by Heracles. Now Zeus, angry at humans, decides to give humanity a punishing gift to compensate for the boon they had been given. He commands Hephaestus to mold from earth the first woman, a "beautiful evil" whose descendants would torment the human race. After Hephaestus does so, several other gods contribute to her creation. Hermes names the woman 'Pandora'. Pandora was given in marriage to Prometheus's brother Epimetheus. Zeus gave her a jar which contained many evils. Pandora opened the jar and released all the evils, which made mankind miserable. Only hope remained inside the jar. When Zeus was atop Mount Olympus he was appalled by human sacrifice and other signs of human decadence. He decided to wipe out mankind and flooded the world with the help of his brother Poseidon. After the flood, only Deucalion and Pyrrha remained. This flood narrative is a common motif in mythology. In the Iliad The Iliad is a poem by Homer about the Trojan war and the battle over the City of Troy, in which Zeus plays a major part. Scenes in which Zeus appears include: Book 2: Zeus sends Agamemnon a dream and is able to partially control his decisions because of the effects of the dream Book 4: Zeus promises Hera to ultimately destroy the City of Troy at the end of the war Book 7: Zeus and Poseidon ruin the Achaeans fortress Book 8: Zeus prohibits the other Gods from fighting each other and has to return to Mount Ida where he can think over his decision that the Greeks will lose the war Book 14: Zeus is seduced by Hera and becomes distracted while she helps out the Greeks Book 15: Zeus wakes up and realizes that his own brother, Poseidon has been aiding the Greeks, while also sending Hector and Apollo to help fight the Trojans ensuring that the City of Troy will fall Book 16: Zeus is upset that he couldn't help save Sarpedon's life because it would then contradict his previous decisions Book 17: Zeus is emotionally hurt by the fate of Hector Book 20: Zeus lets the other Gods lend aid to their respective sides in the war Book 24: Zeus demands that Achilles release the corpse of Hector to be buried honourably Other myths Zeus slept with his great-granddaughter, Alcmene, disguised as her husband Amphitryon. This resulted in the birth of Heracles, who would be tormented by Zeus's wife Hera for the rest of his life. After his death, Heracles's mortal parts were incinerated and he joined the gods on Olympus. He married Zeus and Hera's daughter, Hebe, and had two sons with her, Alexiares and Anicetus. When Hades requested to marry Zeus's daughter, Persephone, Zeus approved and advised Hades to abduct Persephone, as her mother Demeter wouldn't allow her to marry Hades. Zeus fell in love with Semele, the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, and started an affair with her. Hera discovered his affair when Semele later became pregnant, and persuaded Semele to sleep with Zeus in his true form. When Zeus showed his true form to Semele, his lightning and thunderbolts burned her to death. Zeus saved the fetus by stitching it into his thigh, and the fetus would be born as Dionysus. In the Orphic "Rhapsodic Theogony" (first century BC/AD), Zeus wanted to marry his mother Rhea. After Rhea refused to marry him, Zeus turned into a snake and raped her. Rhea became pregnant and gave birth to Persephone. Zeus in the form of a snake would mate with his daughter Persephone, which resulted in the birth of Dionysus. Zeus granted Callirrhoe's prayer that her sons by Alcmaeon, Acarnan and Amphoterus, grow quickly so that they might be able to avenge the death of their father by the hands of Phegeus and his two sons. Both Zeus and Poseidon wooed Thetis, daughter of Nereus. But when Themis (or Prometheus) prophesied that the son born of Thetis would be mightier than his father, Thetis was married off to the mortal Peleus. Zeus was afraid that his grandson Asclepius would teach resurrection to humans, so he killed Asclepius with his thunderbolt. This angered Asclepius's father, Apollo, who in turn killed the Cyclopes who had fashioned the thunderbolts of Zeus. Angered at this, Zeus would have imprisoned Apollo in Tartarus. However, at the request of Apollo's mother, Leto, Zeus instead ordered Apollo to serve as a slave to King Admetus of Pherae for a year. According to Diodorus Siculus, Zeus killed Asclepius because of complains from Hades, who was worried that the number of people in the underworld was diminishing because of Asclepius's resurrections. The winged horse Pegasus carried the thunderbolts of Zeus. Zeus took pity on Ixion, a man who was guilty of murdering his father-in-law, by purifying him and bringing him to Olympus. However, Ixion started to lust after Hera. Hera complained about this to her husband, and Zeus decided to test Ixion. Zeus fashioned a cloud that resembles Hera (Nephele) and laid the cloud-Hera in Ixion's bed. Ixion coupled with Nephele, resulting in the birth of Centaurus. Zeus punished Ixion for lusting after Hera by tying him to a wheel that spins forever. Family Seven wives of Zeus According to Hesiod, Zeus had seven wives. His first wife was the Oceanid Metis, whom he swallowed on the advice of Gaia and Uranus, so that no son of his by Metis would overthrow him, as had been foretold. Later, their daughter Athena would be born from the forehead of Zeus. Zeus's next marriage was to his aunt and advisor Themis, who bore the Horae (Seasons) and the Moirai (Fates). Zeus then married the Oceanid Eurynome, who bore the three Charites (Graces). Zeus's fourth wife was his sister, Demeter, who bore Persephone. The fifth wife of Zeus was his aunt, the Titan Mnemosyne, whom he seduced in the form of a mortal shepherd. Zeus and Mnemosyne had the nine Muses. His sixth wife was the Titan Leto, who gave birth to Apollo and Artemis on the island of Delos. Zeus's seventh and final wife was his older sister Hera. Zeus's Rape Victims Zeus and Hera Zeus was the brother and consort of Hera. According to Pausanias, Zeus had turned himself into a cuckoo to woo Hera. By Hera, Zeus sired Ares, Hebe, Eileithyia and Hephaestus, though some accounts say that Hera produced these offspring alone. Some also include Eris, Enyo and Angelos as their daughters. In the section of the Iliad known to scholars as the Deception of Zeus, the two of them are described as having begun their sexual relationship without their parents knowing about it. According to a scholion on Theocritus' Idylls, when Hera was heading toward Mount Thornax alone, Zeus created a terrible storm and transformed himself into a cuckoo bird who flew down and sat on her lap. When Hera saw the cuckoo, she felt pity for him and covered him with her cloak. Zeus then transformed back and took hold of her; because she was refusing to sleep with him due to their mother, he promised to marry her. In one account Hera refused to marry Zeus and hid in a cave to avoid him; an earthborn man named Achilles convinced her to give him a chance, and thus the two had their first sexual intercourse. Zeus then promised Achilles that every person who bore his name shall become famous. According to Callimachus, their wedding feast lasted three thousand years. The Apples of the Hesperides that Heracles was tasked by Eurystheus to take were a wedding gift by Gaia to the couple. Zeus mated with several nymphs and was seen as the father of many mythical mortal progenitors of Hellenic dynasties. Aside from his seven wives, relationships with immortals included Dione and Maia. Among mortals were Semele, Io, Europa and Leda (for more details, see below) and with the young Ganymede (although he was mortal Zeus granted him eternal youth and immortality). Many myths render Hera as jealous of his affairs and a consistent enemy of Zeus' mistresses and their children by him. For a time, a nymph named Echo had the job of distracting Hera from his affairs by talking incessantly, and when Hera discovered the deception, she cursed Echo to repeat the words of others. Transformation of Zeus Children Roles and epithets Zeus played a dominant role, presiding over the Greek Olympian pantheon. He fathered many of the heroes and was featured in many of their local cults. Though the Homeric "cloud collector" was the god of the sky and thunder like his Near-Eastern counterparts, he was also the supreme cultural artifact; in some senses, he was the embodiment of Greek religious beliefs and the archetypal Greek deity. Aside from local epithets that simply designated the deity as doing something random at some particular place, the epithets or titles applied to Zeus emphasized different aspects of his wide-ranging authority: Zeus Aegiduchos or Aegiochos: Usually taken as Zeus as the bearer of the Aegis, the divine shield with the head of Medusa across it, although others derive it from "goat" () and okhē () in reference to Zeus' nurse, the divine goat Amalthea. Zeus Agoraeus (Αγοραιος): Zeus as patron of the marketplace (agora) and punisher of dishonest traders. Zeus Areius (Αρειος): either "warlike" or "the atoning one". Zeus Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος): "Zeus the freedom giver" a cult worshiped in Athens Zeus Horkios: Zeus as keeper of oaths. Exposed liars were made to dedicate a votive statue to Zeus, often at the sanctuary at Olympia Zeus Olympios (Ολύμπιος): Zeus as king of the gods and patron of the Panhellenic Games at Olympia Zeus Panhellenios ("Zeus of All the Greeks"): worshipped at Aeacus's temple on Aegina Zeus Xenios (Ξένιος), Philoxenon, or Hospites: Zeus as the patron of hospitality (xenia) and guests, avenger of wrongs done to strangers Additional names and epithets for Zeus are also: A Abrettenus (Ἀβρεττηνός) or Abretanus: surname of Zeus in Mysia Achad: one of his names in Syria. Acraeus (Akraios): his name at Smyrna. Acraea and Acraeus are also attributes given to various goddesses and gods whose temples were situated upon hills, such as Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, Pallas, Artemis, and others Acrettenus: his name in Mysia. Adad: one of his names in Syria. Zeus Adados: A Hellenization of the Canaanite Hadad and Assyrian Adad, particularly his solar cult at Heliopolis Adultus: from his being invoked by adults, on their marriage. Aleios (Ἄλειος) Amboulios (Αμβουλιος, "Counsellor") or Latinized Ambulius Apemius (Apemios, Απημιος): Zeus as the averter of ills Apomyius (Απομυιος): Zeus as one who dispels flies Aphesios (Αφεσιος; "Releasing (Rain)") Astrapios (Αστραπαιος; "Lightninger"): Zeus as a weather god B Basileus (Βασιλευς, "King, Chief, Ruler") Bottiaeus/ Bottaios (Βοττιαίος, "of the Bottiaei"): Worshipped at Antioch Libanius wrote that Alexander the Great founded the temple of Zeus Bottiaios, in the place where later the city of Antioch was built. Zeus Bouleus/ Boulaios (Βουλαίος, "of the Council"): Worshipped at Dodona, the earliest oracle, along with Zeus Naos Brontios ("Thunderer"): Zeus as a weather god C Cenaean (Kenaios/ Kenaius, Κηναῖος): a surname of Zeus, derived from cape Cenaeum D Diktaios (Δικταιος): Zeus as lord of the Dikte mountain range, worshipped from Mycenaean times on Crete Dodonian/ Dodonaios (Δωδωναῖος): meaning of Dodona Dylsios (Δύλσιος) E Eleutherios (Ἐλευθέριος, "of freedom"). At Athens after the Battle of Plataea, Athenians built the Stoa of Zeus Eleutherios. Some writers said that was called "of freedom" because free men built the portico near his shrine, while others because Athenians escaped subjection to the power of Persia and they were free. Epidôtês/ Epidotes (Επιδωτης; "Giver of Good"): an epithet of Zeus at Mantineia and Sparta Euênemos/ Euanemos (Ευηνεμος; "of Fair Winds", "Giver of Favourable Wind") or Latinized Evenemus/ Evanemus G Zeus Georgos (, "Zeus the Farmer"): Zeus as god of crops and the harvest, worshipped in Athens H Zeus Helioupolites ("Heliopolite" or "Heliopolitan Zeus"): A Hellenization of the Canaanite Baʿal (probably Hadad) worshipped as a sun god at Heliopolis (modern Baalbek) in Syria Herkeios (Ἑρκειος, "of the Courtyard") or Latinized Herceius Hetareios (Ἑταιρεῖος, "of fellowship"): According to the Suda, Zeus was called this among the Cretans. Hikesios (Ἱκεσιος; "of Suppliants") or Latinized Hicesius Hyetios (Ὑετιος; "of the Rain") Hypatos (Ὑπατος, "Supreme, Most High") Hypsistos (Ὕψιστος, "Supreme, Most High") I Ikmaios (Ικμαιος; "of Moisture") or Latinized Icmaeus Ithomatas (Ιθωμάτας) K Zeus Kasios ("Zeus of Mount Kasios" the modern Jebel Aqra) or Latinized Casius: a surname of Zeus, the name may have derived from either sources, one derived from Casion, near Pelusium in Egypt. Another derived from Mount Kasios (Casius), which is the modern Jebel Aqra, is worshipped at a |
adopted the name "Rhodesia" for the territory, in honour of Rhodes. In 1898 "Southern Rhodesia" became the official name for the region south of the Zambezi, which later adopted the name "Zimbabwe". The region to the north, administered separately, was later termed Northern Rhodesia (present-day Zambia). Shortly after Rhodes' the disastrous Rhodes-sponsored Jameson Raid (December 1895 - January 1896) on the South African Republic, the Ndebele rebelled against white rule, led by their charismatic religious leader, Mlimo. The Second Matabele War of 1896-1897 lasted in Matabeleland until 1896, when a British operation had Mlimo assassinated. Shona agitators staged unsuccessful revolts (known as Chimurenga) against company rule during 1896 and 1897. Following these failed insurrections, the Rhodes administration subdued the Ndebele and Shona groups and organised the land with a disproportionate bias favouring Europeans, thus displacing many indigenous peoples. The United Kingdom annexed Southern Rhodesia on 12 September 1923. Shortly after annexation, on 1 October 1923, the first constitution for the new Colony of Southern Rhodesia came into force. Under the new constitution, Southern Rhodesia became a self-governing British colony, subsequent to a 1922 referendum. Rhodesians of all races served on behalf of the United Kingdom during the two World Wars in the early-20th century. Proportional to the white population, Southern Rhodesia contributed more per capita to both the First and Second World Wars than any other part of the Empire, including Britain itself. The 1930 Land Apportionment Act restricted black land ownership to certain segments of the country, setting aside large areas solely for the purchase of the white minority. This act, which led to rapidly rising inequality, became the subject of frequent calls for subsequent land reform. In 1953, in the face of African opposition, Britain consolidated the two Rhodesias with Nyasaland (Malawi) in the ill-fated Central African Federation, which Southern Rhodesia essentially dominated. Growing African nationalism and general dissent, particularly in Nyasaland, persuaded Britain to dissolve the Union in 1963, forming three separate divisions. While multiracial democracy was finally introduced to Northern Rhodesia and Nyasaland, however, Southern Rhodesians of European ancestry continued to enjoy minority rule. Following Zambian independence (effective from October 1964), Ian Smith's Rhodesian Front (RF) government in Salisbury dropped the designation "Southern" in 1964 (once Northern Rhodesia had changed its name to Zambia, having the word Southern before the name Rhodesia became unnecessary and the country simply became known as Rhodesia afterwards). Intent on effectively repudiating the recently adopted British policy of "no independence before majority rule", Smith issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence (commonly abbreviated to "UDI") from the United Kingdom on 11 November 1965. This marked the first such course taken by a rebel British colony since the American declaration of 1776, which Smith and others indeed claimed provided a suitable precedent to their own actions. UDI and civil war (1965–1980) After the Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI), the British government petitioned the United Nations for sanctions against Rhodesia pending unsuccessful talks with Smith's administration in 1966 and 1968. In December 1966, the organisation complied, imposing the first mandatory trade embargo on an autonomous state. These sanctions were expanded again in 1968. The United Kingdom deemed the Rhodesian declaration an act of rebellion, but did not re-establish control by force. A guerrilla war subsequently ensued when Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU), supported actively by communist powers and neighbouring African nations, initiated guerrilla operations against Rhodesia's predominantly white government. ZAPU was supported by the Soviet Union, the Warsaw Pact and associated nations such as Cuba, and adopted a Marxist–Leninist ideology; ZANU meanwhile aligned itself with Maoism and the bloc headed by the People's Republic of China. Smith declared Rhodesia a republic in 1970, following the results of a referendum the previous year, but this went unrecognised internationally. Meanwhile, Rhodesia's internal conflict intensified, eventually forcing him to open negotiations with the militant communists. In March 1978, Smith reached an accord with three African leaders, led by Bishop Abel Muzorewa, who offered to leave the white population comfortably entrenched in exchange for the establishment of a biracial democracy. As a result of the Internal Settlement, elections were held in April 1979, concluding with the United African National Council (UANC) carrying a majority of parliamentary seats. On 1 June 1979, Muzorewa, the UANC head, became prime minister and the country's name was changed to Zimbabwe Rhodesia. The Internal Settlement left control of the Rhodesian Security Forces, civil service, judiciary, and a third of parliament seats to whites. On 12 June, the United States Senate voted to lift economic pressure on the former Rhodesia. Following the fifth Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM), held in Lusaka, Zambia from 1 to 7 August in 1979, the British government invited Muzorewa, Mugabe, and Nkomo to participate in a constitutional conference at Lancaster House. The purpose of the conference was to discuss and reach an agreement on the terms of an independence constitution, and provide for elections supervised under British authority allowing Zimbabwe Rhodesia to proceed to legal independence. With Lord Carrington, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs of the United Kingdom, in the chair, these discussions were mounted from 10 September to 15 December in 1979, producing a total of 47 plenary sessions. On 21 December 1979, delegations from every major interest represented reached the Lancaster House Agreement, effectively ending the guerrilla war. On 11 December 1979, the Rhodesian House of Assembly voted 90 to nil to revert to British colonial status (the 'aye' votes included Ian Smith himself). The bill then passed the Senate and was assented to by the President. With the arrival of Lord Soames, the new Governor, just after 2 p.m. on 12 December 1979, Britain formally took control of Zimbabwe Rhodesia as the Colony of Southern Rhodesia, although on 13 December Soames declared that during his mandate the name Rhodesia and Zimbabwe Rhodesia would continue to be used. Britain lifted sanctions on 12 December, and the United Nations on 16 December, before calling on its member states to do likewise on 21 December. Thus Zambia, Mozambique, Tanzania, Angola and Botswana lifted sanctions on 22–23 December; Australia partly pre-empted this, lifting all but trade sanctions on 18 December, and trade sanctions on 21 December. During the elections of February 1980, Robert Mugabe and the ZANU party secured a landslide victory. Prince Charles, as the representative of Britain, formally granted independence to the new nation of Zimbabwe at a ceremony in Harare in April 1980. Independence era (1980–present) Zimbabwe's first president after its independence was Canaan Banana in what was originally a mainly ceremonial role as Head of State. Robert Mugabe, leader of the ZANU party, was the country's first Prime Minister and Head of Government. Opposition to what was perceived as a Shona takeover immediately erupted around Matabeleland. The Matabele unrest led to what has become known as Gukurahundi (). The Fifth Brigade, a North Korean-trained elite unit that reported directly to the Zimbabwean Prime Minister, entered Matabeleland and massacred thousands of civilians accused of supporting "dissidents". Estimates for the number of deaths during the five-year Gukurahundi campaign ranged from 3,750 to 80,000. Thousands of others were tortured in military internment camps. The campaign officially ended in 1987 after Nkomo and Mugabe reached a unity agreement that merged their respective parties, creating the Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (ZANU–PF). Elections in March 1990 resulted in another victory for Mugabe and the ZANU–PF party, which claimed 117 of the 120 contested seats. During the 1990s, students, trade unionists, and other workers often demonstrated to express their growing discontent with Mugabe and ZANU–PF party policies. In 1996, civil servants, nurses, and junior doctors went on strike over salary issues. The general health of the population also began to significantly decline; by 1997 an estimated 25% of the population had been infected by HIV in a pandemic that was affecting most of southern Africa. Land redistribution re-emerged as the main issue for the ZANU–PF government around 1997. Despite the existence of a "willing-buyer-willing-seller" land reform programme since the 1980s, the minority white Zimbabwean population of around 0.6% continued to hold 70% of the country's most fertile agricultural land. In 2000, the government pressed ahead with its Fast Track Land Reform programme, a policy involving compulsory land acquisition aimed at redistributing land from the minority white population to the majority black population. Confiscations of white farmland, continuous droughts, and a serious drop in external finance and other supports led to a sharp decline in agricultural exports, which were traditionally the country's leading export-producing sector. Some 58,000 independent black farmers have since experienced limited success in reviving the gutted cash crop sectors through efforts on a smaller scale. President Mugabe and the ZANU–PF party leadership found themselves beset by a wide range of international sanctions. In 2002, the nation was suspended from the Commonwealth of Nations due to the reckless farm seizures and blatant election tampering. The following year, Zimbabwean officials voluntarily terminated its Commonwealth membership. In 2001, the United States enacted the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act (ZDERA). It came into effect in 2002 and froze credit to the Zimbabwean government. The bill was sponsored by Bill Frist and co-sponsored by U.S. senators Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, Russ Feingold, and Jesse Helms. Through ZDERA Section 4C ("Multilateral Financing Restriction"), the Secretary of the Treasury is ordered to direct U.S. Directors at the International Financial Institutions listed in Section 3 "to oppose and vote against-- (1) any extension by the respective institution of any loan, credit, or guarantee to the Government of Zimbabwe; or (2) any cancellation or reduction of indebtedness owed by the Government of Zimbabwe to the United States or any international financial institution." By 2003, the country's economy had collapsed. It is estimated that up to a quarter of Zimbabwe's 11 million people had fled the country. Three-quarters of the remaining Zimbabweans were living on less than one U.S. dollar a day. Following elections in 2005, the government initiated "Operation Murambatsvina", an effort to crack down on illegal markets and slums emerging in towns and cities, leaving a substantial section of urban poor homeless. The Zimbabwean government has described the operation as an attempt to provide decent housing to the population, although according to critics such as Amnesty International, authorities have yet to properly substantiate their claims. On 29 March 2008, Zimbabwe held a presidential election along with a parliamentary election. The results of this election were withheld for two weeks, after which it was generally acknowledged that the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T) had achieved a majority of one seat in the lower house of parliament. On 10 July 2008, Russia and China voted UN sanctions on Zimbabwe pushed by the United Kingdom and the United States. The United States drafted the file, which would have placed an arms embargo on Mugabe's regime. However, nine of 15 countries on the UN Security Council opposed it, including Vietnam, South Africa and Libya, which argued that Zimbabwe was not a 'threat to international peace and security.' In late 2008, problems in Zimbabwe reached crisis proportions in the areas of living standards, public health (with a major cholera outbreak in December) and various basic affairs. During this period, NGOs took over from government as a primary provider of food during this period of food insecurity in Zimbabwe. In September 2008, a power-sharing agreement was reached between Tsvangirai and President Mugabe, permitting the former to hold the office of prime minister. Due to ministerial differences between their respective political parties, the agreement was not fully implemented until 13 February 2009. By December 2010, Mugabe was threatening to completely expropriate remaining privately owned companies in Zimbabwe unless "western sanctions" were lifted. A 2011 survey by Freedom House suggested that living conditions had improved since the power-sharing agreement. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs stated in its 2012–2013 planning document that the "humanitarian situation has improved in Zimbabwe since 2009, but conditions remain precarious for many people". On 17 January 2013, Vice-President John Nkomo died of cancer at St Anne's Hospital, Harare, at the age of 78. A new constitution approved in the Zimbabwean constitutional referendum, 2013 curtails presidential powers. Mugabe was re-elected president in the July 2013 Zimbabwean general election which The Economist described as "rigged." and the Daily Telegraph as "stolen". The Movement for Democratic Change alleged massive fraud and tried to seek relief through the courts. In a surprising moment of candour at the ZANU–PF congress in December 2014, President Robert Mugabe accidentally let slip that the opposition had in fact won the contentious 2008 polls by an astounding 73%. After winning the election, the Mugabe ZANU–PF government re-instituted one party rule, doubled the civil service and, according to The Economist, embarked on "misrule and dazzling corruption". A 2017 study conducted by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) concluded that due to the deterioration of government and the economy "the government encourages corruption to make up for its inability to fund its own institutions" with widespread and informal police roadblocks to issue fines to travellers being one manifestation of this. In July 2016 nationwide protests took place regarding the economic collapse in the country, and the finance minister admitted "Right now we literally have nothing." In November 2017, the army led a coup d'état following the dismissal of Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa, placing Mugabe under house arrest. The army denied that their actions constituted a coup. On 19 November 2017, ZANU–PF sacked Robert Mugabe as party leader and appointed former Vice-President Emmerson Mnangagwa in his place. On 21 November 2017, Mugabe tendered his resignation prior to impeachment proceedings being completed. Although under the Constitution of Zimbabwe Mugabe should be succeeded by Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko, a supporter of Grace Mugabe, ZANU–PF chief whip Lovemore Matuke stated to the Reuters news agency that Mnangagwa would be appointed as president. On 30 July 2018 Zimbabwe held its general elections, which were won by the ZANU-PF party led by Mnangagwa. Nelson Chamisa who was leading the main opposition party MDC Alliance contested the election results and filed a petition to the Constitution Court of Zimbabwe. The court confirmed Mnangagwa's victory, making him the newly elected president after Mugabe. In December 2017 the website Zimbabwe News, calculating the cost of the Mugabe era using various statistics, said that at the time of independence in 1980, the country was growing economically at about five per cent a year, and had done so for quite a long time. If this rate of growth had been maintained for the next 37 years, Zimbabwe would have in 2016 a GDP of US$52 billion. Instead it had a formal sector GDP of only US$14 billion, a cost of US$38 billion in lost growth. The population growth in 1980 was among the highest in Africa at about 3.5 per cent per annum, doubling every 21 years. Had this growth been maintained, the population would have been 31 million. Instead, as of 2018, it is about 13 million. The discrepancies were believed to be partly caused by death from starvation and disease, and partly due to decreased fertility. The life expectancy has halved, and death from politically motivated violence sponsored by government exceeds 200,000 since 1980. The Mugabe government has directly or indirectly caused the deaths of at least three million Zimbabweans in 37 years. According to World Food Programme, over two million people are facing starvation because of the recent droughts the country is going through. Geography Zimbabwe is a landlocked country in southern Africa, lying between latitudes 15° and 23°S, and longitudes 25° and 34°E. It is bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the west and southwest, Zambia to the northwest, and Mozambique to the east and northeast. Its northwest corner is roughly 150 meters from Namibia, nearly forming a four-nation quadripoint. Most of the country is elevated, consisting of a central plateau (high veld) stretching from the southwest northwards with altitudes between 1,000 and 1,600 m. The country's extreme east is mountainous, this area being known as the Eastern Highlands, with Mount Nyangani as the highest point at 2,592 m. The highlands are known for their natural environment, with tourist destinations such as Nyanga, Troutbeck, Chimanimani, Vumba and Chirinda Forest at Mount Selinda. About 20% of the country consists of low-lying areas, (the low veld) under 900m. Victoria Falls, one of the world's biggest and most spectacular waterfalls, is located in the country's extreme northwest and is part of the Zambezi river. Geology Over geological time Zimbabwe has experienced two major post-Gondwana erosion cycles (known as African and post-African), and a very subordinate Plio-Pleistocene cycle. Climate Zimbabwe has a subtropical climate with many local variations. The southern areas are known for their heat and aridity, parts of the central plateau receive frost in winter, the Zambezi valley is also known for its extreme heat and the Eastern Highlands usually experience cool temperatures and the highest rainfall in the country. The country's rainy season generally runs from late October to March and the hot climate is moderated by increasing altitude. Zimbabwe is faced with recurring droughts. The most recent one began early in 2015 and lasted into 2016. In 2019, at least 55 elephants died because of the drought. Severe storms are rare. Biodiversity Zimbabwe contains seven terrestrial ecoregions: Kalahari Acacia-Baikiaea woodlands, Southern Africa bushveld, Southern miombo woodlands, Zambezian Baikiaea woodlands, Zambezian and mopane woodlands, Zambezian halophytics, and Eastern Zimbabwe montane forest-grassland mosaic. The country is mostly savannah, although the moist and mountainous eastern highlands support areas of tropical evergreen and hardwood forests. Trees found in these Eastern Highlands include teak, mahogany, enormous specimens of strangling fig, forest Newtonia, big leaf, white stinkwood, chirinda stinkwood, knobthorn and many others. In the low-lying parts of the country fever trees, mopane, combretum and baobabs abound. Much of the country is covered by miombo woodland, dominated by brachystegia species and others. Among the numerous flowers and shrubs are hibiscus, flame lily, snake lily, spider lily, leonotus, cassia, tree wisteria and dombeya. There are around 350 species of mammals that can be found in Zimbabwe. There are also many snakes and lizards, over 500 bird species, and 131 fish species. Environmental issues Large parts of Zimbabwe were once covered by forests with abundant wildlife. Deforestation and poaching has reduced the amount of wildlife. Woodland degradation and deforestation, due to population growth, urban expansion and lack of fuel, are major concerns and have led to erosion and land degradation which diminish the amount of fertile soil. Local farmers have also been criticised by environmentalists for burning off vegetation to heat their tobacco barns. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.31/10, ranking it 81st globally out of 172 countries. Government and politics Zimbabwe is a republic with a presidential system of government. The semi-presidential system was abolished with the adoption of a new constitution after a referendum in March 2013. Under the constitutional changes in 2005, an upper chamber, the Senate, was reinstated. The House of Assembly is the lower chamber of Parliament. Former President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union – Patriotic Front (commonly abbreviated ZANU–PF) has been the dominant political party in Zimbabwe since independence. In 1987 then-prime minister Mugabe revised the constitution, abolishing the ceremonial presidency and the prime ministerial posts to form an executive president, a Presidential system. His ZANU party has won every election since independence, in the 1990 election the second-placed party, Edgar Tekere's Zimbabwe Unity Movement, obtained 20% of the vote. During the 1995 parliamentary elections most opposition parties, including the ZUM, boycotted the voting, resulting in a near-sweep by the ruling party. When the opposition returned to the polls in 2000, they won 57 seats, only five fewer than ZANU. Presidential elections were again held in 2002 amid allegations of vote-rigging, intimidation and fraud. The 2005 Zimbabwe parliamentary elections were held on 31 March and multiple claims of vote rigging, election fraud and intimidation were made by the MDC and Jonathan Moyo, calling for investigations into 32 of the 120 constituencies. Jonathan Moyo participated in the elections despite the allegations and won a seat as an independent member of Parliament. General elections were again held in Zimbabwe on 30 March 2008. The official results required a run-off between Mugabe and Morgan Tsvangirai, the opposition leader; the MDC challenged these results, claiming widespread election fraud by the Mugabe government. The run-off was scheduled for 27 June 2008. On 22 June, citing the continuing unfairness of the process and refusing to participate in a "violent, illegitimate sham of an election process", Tsvangirai pulled out of the presidential run-off, the ZEC held the run-off and President Mugabe received a landslide majority. The MDC-T led by Morgan Tsvangirai is now the majority in the Lower chamber of Parliament. The MDC split into two factions. One faction (MDC-M), now led by Arthur Mutambara contested the elections to the Senate, while the other, led by Tsvangirai, opposed to contesting the elections, stating that participation in a rigged election is tantamount to endorsing Mugabe's claim that past elections were free and fair. The opposition parties have resumed participation in national and local elections as recently as 2006. The two MDC camps had their congresses in 2006 with Tsvangirai being elected to lead MDC-T, which has become more popular than the other group. Mutambara, a robotics professor and former NASA robotics specialist has replaced Welshman Ncube who was the interim leader of MDC-M after the split. Morgan Tsvangirai did not participate in the Senate elections, while the Mutambara faction participated and won five seats in the Senate. The Mutambara formation has been weakened by defections from MPs and individuals who are disillusioned by their manifesto. , the Movement for Democratic Change has become the most popular, with crowds as large as 20,000 attending their rallies as compared to between 500 and 5,000 for the other formation. On 28 April 2008, Tsvangirai and Mutambara announced at a joint news conference in Johannesburg that the two MDC formations were co-operating, enabling the MDC to have a clear parliamentary majority. Tsvangirai said that Mugabe could not remain President without a parliamentary majority. On the same day, Silaigwana announced that the recounts for the final five constituencies had been completed, that the results were being collated and that they would be published on 29 April. In mid-September 2008, after protracted negotiations overseen by the leaders of South Africa and Mozambique, Mugabe and Tsvangirai signed a power-sharing deal which would see Mugabe retain control over the army. Donor nations have adopted a 'wait-and-see' attitude, wanting to see real change being brought about by this merger before committing themselves to funding rebuilding efforts, which are estimated to take at least five years. On 11 February 2009 Tsvangirai was sworn in as Prime Minister by President Mugabe. In November 2008, the government of Zimbabwe spent US$7.3 million donated by the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. A representative of the organisation declined to speculate on how the money was spent, except that it was not for the intended purpose, and the government has failed to honour requests to return the money. In February 2013, Zimbabwe's election chief, Simpson Mtambanengwe, resigned due to ill health. His resignation came months before the country's constitutional referendum and elections. The Status of Zimbabwe politics has been thrown into question by a coup taking place in November 2017, ending Mugabe's 30 year presidential incumbency. Emmerson Mnangagwa was appointed president following this coup, and officially elected with 50.8% of the vote in the 2018 Zimbabwean general election, avoiding a run-off and making him the 3rd President of Zimbabwe. The government has received negative comments among its citizen for always shutting down the internet in the past amid protests such as the one planned on the 31st of July. 2020. Foreign relations Zimbabwe maintains relations with various countries around the world, and maintains close diplomatic relations with neighboring nations. Armed forces The Zimbabwe Defence Forces were set up by unifying three insurrectionist forces – the Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA), the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA), and the Rhodesian Security Forces (RSF) – after the Second Chimurenga and Zimbabwean independence in 1980. The integration period saw the formation of the Zimbabwe National Army (ZNA) and Air Force of Zimbabwe (AFZ) as separate entities under the command of Rtd General Solomon Mujuru and Air Marshal Norman Walsh who retired in 1982, and was replaced by Air Marshal Azim Daudpota who handed over command to Rtd Air Chief Marshal Josiah Tungamirai in 1985. In December 2003, General Constantine Chiwenga, was promoted and appointed Commander of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces. Lieutenant General P. V. Sibanda replaced him as Commander of the Army. The ZNA has an active duty strength of 30,000. The Air Force has about 5,139 standing personnel. The Zimbabwe Republic Police (includes Police Support Unit, Paramilitary Police) is part of the Zimbabwe Defence Forces and numbers 25,000. Following majority rule in early 1980, British Army trainers oversaw the integration of guerrilla fighters into a battalion structure overlaid on the existing Rhodesian armed forces. For the first year, a system was followed where the top-performing candidate became battalion commander. If he or she was from ZANLA, then his or her second-in-command was the top-performing ZIPRA candidate, and vice versa. This ensured a balance between the two movements in the command structure. From early 1981, this system was abandoned in favour of political appointments, and ZANLA and ZANU fighters consequently quickly formed the majority of battalion commanders in the ZNA. The ZNA was originally formed into four brigades, composed of a total of 28 battalions. The brigade support units were composed almost entirely of specialists of the former Rhodesian Army, while unintegrated battalions of the Rhodesian African Rifles were assigned to the 1st, 3rd and 4th Brigades. The Fifth Brigade was formed in 1981 and disbanded in 1988 after the demonstration of mass brutality and murder during the brigade's occupation of Matabeleland in what has become known as Gukurahundi (), the campaign which finished off Mugabe's liberation struggle. The Brigade had been re-formed by 2006, with its commander, Brigadier-General John Mupande praising its "rich history". Human rights There are widespread reports of systematic and escalating violations of human rights in Zimbabwe under the Mugabe administration and the dominant party, the ZANU–PF. According to human rights organisations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch the government of Zimbabwe violates the rights to shelter, food, freedom of movement and residence, freedom of assembly and the protection of the law. In 2009, Gregory Stanton, then President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, stated there was "clear evidence that Mugabe government was guilty of crimes against humanity and that there was sufficient evidence of crimes against humanity to bring Mugabe to trial in front of the International Criminal Court.” Male homosexuality is illegal in Zimbabwe. Since 1995, the government has carried out campaigns against both homosexual men and women. President Mugabe has blamed gays for many of Zimbabwe's problems and viewed homosexuality as an "un-African" and immoral culture brought by European colonists and practised by only "a few whites" in his country. Opposition gatherings are frequently the subject of reprisals by the police force, such as the crackdown on an 11 March 2007 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) rally and several others during the 2008 election campaign. Police actions have been strongly condemned by the UN Secretary-General, Ban Ki-moon, the European Union and the United States. While noting that the activists had suffered injuries, but not mentioning the cause of them, There are also concerns over Fox Southwest media rights and access. The Zimbabwean government is accused of suppressing freedom of the press and freedom of speech. It has been repeatedly accused of using the public broadcaster, the Zimbabwe Broadcasting Corporation, as a propaganda tool. Newspapers critical of the government, such as the Daily News, closed after bombs exploded at their offices and the government refused to renew their licence. BBC News, Sky News, and CNN were banned from filming or reporting from Zimbabwe. In 2009 reporting restrictions on the BBC and CNN were lifted. Sky News continue to report on happenings within Zimbabwe from neighbouring countries like South Africa. On 24 July 2020, the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) expressed concerns over allegations suggesting that Zimbabwean authorities may have used the COVID-19 crisis as a pretext to suppress freedom of expression and peaceful assembly on the streets. The OHCHR spokesperson, Liz Throssell stated that people have a right to protest corruption or anything else. The authorities in Zimbabwe used force to disperse and arrest nurses and health workers, who were peacefully protesting for better salaries and work conditions. The reports suggest that a few members of opposition party and investigative journalists were also arbitrarily arrested and detained for taking part in a protest. On August 5, 2020, the #ZimbabweanLivesMatter campaign on Twitter drew attention of international celebrities and politicians towards human rights abuses in the country, mounting pressure on Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government. The campaign was in response to arrests, abductions and torture of political activists and the incarceration of the journalist, Hopewell Chin'ono, and the Booker prize long-listed author, Tsitsi Dangarembga. Administrative divisions Zimbabwe has a centralised government and is divided into eight provinces and two cities with provincial status, for administrative purposes. Each province has a provincial capital from where government administration is usually carried out. The names of most of the provinces were generated from the Mashonaland and Matabeleland divide at the time of colonisation: Mashonaland was the territory occupied first by the British South Africa Company Pioneer Column and Matabeleland the territory conquered during the First Matabele War. This corresponds roughly to the precolonial territory of the Shona people and the Matabele people, although there are significant ethnic minorities in most provinces. Each province is headed by a Provincial Governor, appointed by the President. The provincial government is run by a Provincial Administrator, appointed by the Public Service Commission. Other government functions at provincial level are carried out by provincial offices of national government departments. The provinces are subdivided into 59 districts and 1,200 wards (sometimes referred to as municipalities). Each district is headed by a District Administrator, appointed by the Public Service Commission. There is also a Rural District Council, which appoints a chief executive officer. The Rural District Council is composed of elected ward councillors, the District Administrator and one representative of the chiefs (traditional leaders appointed under customary law) in the district. Other government functions at district level are carried out by district offices of national government departments. At the ward level there is a Ward Development Committee, comprising the elected ward councillor, the kraalheads (traditional leaders subordinate to chiefs) and representatives of Village Development Committees. Wards are subdivided into villages, each of which has an elected Village Development Committee and a Headman (traditional leader subordinate to the kraalhead). Sanctions Since the early 2000s, Zimbabwe has been under sanctions imposed by the United States and the European Union that have shaped Zimbabwe’s domestic politics as well as the country’s relations with the Western nations. In 2002, Zimbabwe held general elections and ahead of that election the EU sent observers, but Zimbabwe kicked out the election observer team. So, in February 2002 the EU placed what they call targeted or restrictive measures on Zimbabwe. At least 20 government officials were banned from Europe, no more EU money going to the government. Prior to the elections there was $128 million that was budgeted for the Zimbabwean government from 2002 to 2007, this was cancelled. Nevertheless, the EU only stopped funding the government directly but it continued sending money only through Aid agencies and NGOs. After some years the EU and Zimbabwe resolved some of their disputes, a lot of the EU sanctions were removed. Only the late President Mugabe and his wife remained on the list and other government officials were removed. However, the EU still didn't give Zimbabwe money. So, the government channels money through NGOs as it was seen in the 4 March 2019 – 21 March 2019 Cyclone Idai. Zimbabwe received another sanctions from United States. There are two types of U.S. sanctions on Zimbabwe. The first one is Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act [ZIDERA] and the second one is the Targeted Sanctions Program. ZIDERA made several demands, the first one was that Zimbabwe must respect human rights, second Zimbabwe must stop its interference in the DRC, third Zimbabwe must stop its takeover of the white farms. Now, if none of these demands were met, the U.S would not allow the IMF and the World Bank to give Zimbabwe some money. A new ZIDERA came into effect in 2018 with the motto that, Restore Democracy or there won’t be any friendship, there must be free elections, free media and human rights, Zimbabwe must enforce the ruling of the SADC Tribunal. Now the Targeted Sanctions Program was implemented in 2003, there are Zimbabwean companies and people that are on the sanction list and the U.S companies are not allowed to deal with them. The Sanctions on Zimbabwe have been there for more than two decades. In march 2021 the US renewed its sanctions on Zimbabwe. Economy Minerals, gold, and agriculture are the main foreign exports of Zimbabwe. Tourism also plays a key role in its economy. The mining sector remains very lucrative, with some of the world's largest platinum reserves being mined by Anglo American plc and Impala Platinum. The Marange diamond fields, discovered in 2006, are considered the biggest diamond find in over a century. They have the potential to improve the fiscal situation of the country considerably, but almost all revenues from the field have disappeared into the pockets of army officers and ZANU–PF politicians. In terms of carats produced, the Marange field is one of the largest diamond producing projects in the world, estimated to produce 12 million carats in 2014 worth over $350 million. Zimbabwe is the biggest trading partner of South Africa on the continent. Taxes and tariffs are high for private enterprises, while state enterprises are strongly subsidised. State regulation is costly to companies; starting or closing a business is slow and costly. Government spending was predicted to reach 67% of GDP in 2007. Tourism was an important industry for the country, but has been failing in recent years. The Zimbabwe Conservation Task Force released a report in June 2007, estimating 60% of Zimbabwe's wildlife has died since 2000 due to poaching and deforestation. The report warns that the loss of life combined with widespread deforestation is potentially disastrous for the tourist industry. The ICT sector of Zimbabwe has been growing at a fast pace. A report by the mobile internet browser company, Opera, in June/July 2011 has ranked Zimbabwe as Africa's fastest growing market. Since 1 January 2002, the government of Zimbabwe has had its lines of credit at international financial institutions frozen, through U.S. legislation called the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001 (ZDERA). Section 4C instructs the Secretary of the Treasury to direct directors at international financial institutions to veto the extension of loans and credit to the Zimbabwean government. According to the United States, these sanctions target only seven specific businesses owned or controlled by government officials and not ordinary citizens. Zimbabwe maintained positive economic growth throughout the 1980s (5% GDP growth per year) and 1990s (4.3% GDP growth per year). The economy declined from 2000: 5% decline in 2000, 8% in 2001, 12% in 2002 and 18% in 2003. Zimbabwe's involvement from 1998 to 2002 in the war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drained hundreds of millions of dollars from the economy. From 1999 to 2009, Zimbabwe saw the lowest ever economic growth with an annual GDP decrease of 6.1%. The downward spiral of the economy has been attributed mainly to mismanagement and corruption by the government and the eviction of more than 4,000 white farmers in the controversial land confiscations of 2000. The Zimbabwean government and its supporters attest that it was Western policies to avenge the expulsion of their kin that sabotaged the economy. By 2005, the purchasing power of the average Zimbabwean had dropped to the same levels in real terms as 1953. In 2005, the government, led by central bank governor Gideon Gono, started making overtures that white farmers could come back. There were 400 to 500 still left in the country, but much of the land that had been confiscated was no longer productive. By 2016 there were about 300 farms owned by white farmers left out of the original 4,500. The farms left were either too remote or their owners had paid for protection or collaborated with the regime. In January 2007, the government issued long-term leases to some white farmers. At the same time, however, the government also continued to demand that all remaining white farmers, who were given eviction notices earlier, vacate the land or risk being arrested. Mugabe pointed to foreign governments and alleged "sabotage" as the cause of the fall of the Zimbabwean economy, as well as the country's 80% formal unemployment rate. Inflation rose from an annual rate of 32% in 1998, to an official estimated high of 11,200,000% in August 2008 according to the country's Central Statistical Office. This represented a state of hyperinflation, and the central bank introduced a new 100 trillion dollar note. On 29 January 2009, in an effort to counteract runaway inflation, acting Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced that Zimbabweans will be permitted to use other, more stable currencies to do business, alongside the Zimbabwe dollar. In an effort to combat inflation and foster economic growth the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended indefinitely on 12 April 2009. In 2016 Zimbabwe allowed trade in the United States dollar and various other currencies such as the rand (South Africa), the pula (Botswana), the euro, and the Pound Sterling (UK). In February 2019, RBZ Governor introduced a new local currency, the RTGS Dollar in a move to address some of the Zimbabwean economic and financial challenges. After the formation of the Unity Government and the adoption of several currencies instead of the Zimbabwe dollar in 2009, the Zimbabwean economy rebounded. GDP grew by 8–9% a year between 2009 and 2012. In November 2010, the IMF described the Zimbabwean economy as "completing its second year of buoyant economic growth". By 2014, Zimbabwe had recovered to levels seen in the 1990s but between 2012 and 2016 growth faltered. Zimplats, the nation's largest platinum company, has proceeded with US$500 million in expansions, and is also continuing a separate US$2 billion project, despite threats by Mugabe to nationalise the company. The pan-African investment bank IMARA released a favourable report in February 2011 on investment prospects in Zimbabwe, citing an improved revenue base and higher tax receipts. In late January 2013, the Zimbabwean finance ministry reported that they had only $217 in their treasury and would apply for donations to finance the coming elections that is estimated to cost US$107 million. As of October 2014, Metallon Corporation was Zimbabwe's largest gold miner. The group is looking to increase its production to 500,000 troy ounces per annum by 2019. Inflation in Zimbabwe was 42% in 2018. In June 2019, the inflation rate reached 175%, leading to mass unrest across the country and in Harare. Agriculture Zimbabwe's commercial farming sector was traditionally a source of exports and foreign exchange, and provided 400,000 jobs. However, the government's land reform program badly damaged the sector, turning Zimbabwe into a net importer of food products. For example, between 2000 and 2016, annual wheat production fell from 250,000 tons to 60,000 tons, maize was reduced from two million tons to 500,000 tons and cattle slaughtered for beef fell from 605,000 to 244,000. Coffee production, once a prized export commodity, came to a virtual halt after seizure or expropriation of white-owned coffee farms in 2000 and has never recovered. For the past ten years, the International Crops Research Institute for the Semi-Arid Tropics (ICRISAT) has been assisting Zimbabwe's farmers to adopt conservation agriculture techniques, a sustainable method of farming that can help increase yields. By applying the three principles of minimum soil disturbance, legume-based cropping and the use of organic mulch, farmers can improve infiltration, reduce evaporation and soil erosion, and build up organic soil content. Between 2005 and 2011, the number of smallholders practicing conservation agriculture in Zimbabwe increased from 5,000 to more than 150,000. Cereal yields rose between 15 and 100 per cent across different regions. The government declared potato a national strategic food security crop on 18 May 2012. Mvurwi, a region in n Mashonaland Central Province, once fell in the "breadbasket region" of Zimbabwe, with fertile soils. However, over the past 30 years, this is one of the areas that have been negatively impacted by the land reforms, causing it to be less prosperous than it was in the late 20th century. Tourism Since the land reform programme in 2000, tourism in Zimbabwe has steadily declined. But in 2018, 2.6 million tourists arrived in Zimbabwe, which is the peak level till now. In 2016, the total contribution of tourism to Zimbabwe was $1.1 billion (USD), or about 8.1% of Zimbabwe's GDP. It is expected to rise 1.4% in 2017. Employment in travel and tourism, as well as industries travel and tourism indirectly supports, was 5.2% of national employment and is expected to rise by 1.4% in 2017. Several airlines pulled out of Zimbabwe between 2000 and 2007. Australia's Qantas, Germany's Lufthansa, and Austrian Airlines were among the first to pull out and in 2007 British Airways suspended all direct flights to Harare. The country's flagship airline Air Zimbabwe, which operated flights throughout Africa and a few destinations in Europe and Asia, ceased operations in February 2012. As of 2017, several major commercial airlines had resumed flights to Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has several major tourist attractions. Victoria Falls on the Zambezi, which are shared with Zambia, are located in the north west of Zimbabwe. Before the economic changes, much of the tourism for these locations came to the Zimbabwe side but now Zambia is the main beneficiary. The Victoria Falls National Park is also in this area and is one of the eight main national parks in Zimbabwe, the largest of which is Hwange National Park. The Eastern Highlands are a series of mountainous areas near the border with Mozambique. The highest peak in Zimbabwe, Mount Nyangani at is located here as well as the Bvumba Mountains and the Nyanga National Park. World's View is in these mountains and it is from here that places as far away as are visible and, on clear days, the town of Rusape can be seen. Zimbabwe is unusual in Africa in that there are a number of ancient and medieval ruined cities built in a unique dry stone style. Among the most famous of these are the Great Zimbabwe ruins in Masvingo. Other ruins include Khami Ruins, Zimbabwe, Dhlo-Dhlo and Naletale. The Matobo Hills are an area of granite kopjes and wooded valleys commencing some south of Bulawayo in southern Zimbabwe. The hills were formed over 2,000 million years ago with granite being forced to the surface, then being eroded to produce smooth "whaleback dwalas" and broken kopjes, strewn with boulders and interspersed with thickets of vegetation. Mzilikazi, founder of the Ndebele nation, gave the area its name, meaning 'Bald Heads'. They have become a tourist attraction due to their ancient shapes and local wildlife. Cecil Rhodes and other early white pioneers like Leander Starr Jameson are buried in these hills at a site named World's View. Water supply and sanitation Water supply and sanitation in Zimbabwe is defined by many small scale successful programs but also by a general lack of improved water and sanitation systems for the majority of Zimbabwe. According to the World Health Organization in 2012, 80% of Zimbabweans had access to improved, i.e. clean, drinking-water sources, and only 40% of Zimbabweans had access to improved sanitation facilities. Access to improved water supply and sanitation is distinctly less in rural areas. There are many factors which continue to determine the nature, for the foreseeable future, of water supply and sanitation in Zimbabwe. Three major factors are the severely depressed state of the Zimbabwean economy, the reluctance of foreign aid organisations to build and finance infrastructure projects, and the political instability of the Zimbabwean state. Science and technology Zimbabwe has relatively well-developed national infrastructure and a long-standing tradition of promoting research and development (R&D), as evidenced by the levy imposed on tobacco-growers since the 1930s to promote market research. The country also has a well-developed education system, with one in 11 adults holding a tertiary degree. Given the country's solid knowledge base and abundant natural resources, Zimbabwe has the potential to figure among the countries leading growth in sub-Saharan Africa by 2020. Zimbabwe was ranked 120th in the Global Innovation Index in 2020, up from 122nd in 2019. To do so, however, Zimbabwe will need to correct a number of structural weaknesses. For instance, it lacks the critical mass of researchers needed to trigger innovation. Although the infrastructure is in place to harness research and development to Zimbabwe's socio-economic development, universities and research institutions lack the financial and human resources to conduct research and the regulatory environment hampers the transfer of new technologies to the business sector. The economic crisis has precipitated an exodus of university students and professionals in key areas of expertise (medicine, engineering, etc.) that is of growing concern. More than 22% of Zimbabwean tertiary students were completing their degrees abroad in 2012, compared to a 4% average for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. In 2012, there were 200 researchers (head count) employed in the public sector, one-quarter of whom were women. This is double the continental average (91 in 2013) but only one-quarter the researcher density of South Africa (818 per million inhabitants). The government has created the Zimbabwe Human Capital Website to provide | for sub-Saharan Africa as a whole. In 2012, there were 200 researchers (head count) employed in the public sector, one-quarter of whom were women. This is double the continental average (91 in 2013) but only one-quarter the researcher density of South Africa (818 per million inhabitants). The government has created the Zimbabwe Human Capital Website to provide information for the diaspora on job and investment opportunities in Zimbabwe. Despite the fact that human resources are a pillar of any research and innovation policy, the Medium Term Plan 2011–2015 did not discuss any explicit policy for promoting postgraduate studies in science and engineering. The scarcity of new PhDs in science and engineering fields from the University of Zimbabwe in 2013 was symptomatic of this omission. Nor does the development agenda to 2018, the Zimbabwe Agenda for Sustainable Economic Transformation, contain any specific targets for increasing the number of scientists and engineers, or the staffing requirements for industry and other productive sectors. In addition, the lack of co-ordination and coherence among governance structures has led to a multiplication of research priorities and poor implementation of existing policies. The country's Second Science and Technology Policy was launched in June 2012, after being elaborated with UNESCO assistance. It replaces the earlier policy dating from 2002. The 2012 policy prioritises biotechnology, information and communication technologies (ICTs), space sciences, nanotechnology, indigenous knowledge systems, technologies yet to emerge and scientific solutions to emergent environmental challenges. The Second Science and Technology Policy also asserts the government commitment to allocating at least 1% of GDP to research and development, focusing at least 60% of university education on developing skills in science and technology and ensuring that school pupils devote at least 30% of their time to studying science subjects. In 2014, Zimbabwe counted 21 publications per million inhabitants in internationally catalogued journals, according to Thomson Reuters' Web of Science (Science Citation Index Expanded). This placed Zimbabwe sixth out of the 15 SADC countries, behind Namibia (59), Mauritius (71), Botswana (103) and, above all, South Africa (175) and the Seychelles (364). The average for sub-Saharan Africa was 20 scientific publications per million inhabitants, compared to a global average of 176 per million. Demographics Zimbabwe's total population is 12.97 million. According to the United Nations World Health Organization, the life expectancy for men was 56 years and the life expectancy for women was 60 years of age (2012). In 2006 an association of doctors in Zimbabwe made calls for then-President Mugabe to make moves to assist the ailing health service. The HIV infection rate in Zimbabwe was estimated to be 14% for people aged 15–49 in 2009. UNESCO reported a decline in HIV prevalence among pregnant women from 26% in 2002 to 21% in 2004. Some 85% of Zimbabweans are Christian; 62% of the population attends religious services regularly. The largest Christian churches are Anglican, Roman Catholic, Seventh-day Adventist and Methodist. As in other African countries, Christianity may be mixed with enduring traditional beliefs. Ancestral worship is the most practised non-Christian religion, involving spiritual intercession; the mbira dzavadzimu, which means "voice of the ancestors", an instrument related to many lamellophones ubiquitous throughout Africa, is central to many ceremonial proceedings. Mwari simply means "God the Creator" (musika vanhu in Shona). Around 1% of the population is Muslim. Ethnic groups Bantu-speaking ethnic groups make up 98% of the population. The majority people, the Shona, comprise 78%. The Ndebele are the second most populous with 20% of the population. The Ndebele descended from Zulu migrations in the 19th century and the other tribes with which they intermarried. Up to one million Ndebele may have left the country over the last five years , mainly for South Africa. Other Bantu ethnic groups make up the third largest with 2 to 5%: these are Venda, Tonga, Tsonga, Kalanga, Sotho, Ndau, Nambya, Tswana, Xhosa and Lozi. Minority ethnic groups include white Zimbabweans, who make up less than 1% of the total population. White Zimbabweans are mostly of British origin, but there are also Afrikaner, Greek, Portuguese, French and Dutch communities. The white population dropped from a peak of around 278,000, or 4.3% of the population, in 1975 to possibly 120,000 in 1999, and was estimated to be not greater than 50,000, and possibly far fewer, in 2002. The 2012 census lists the total white population at 28,782 (roughly 0.22% of the population), one-twentieth of its 1975 estimated size. Most emigration has been to the United Kingdom (between 200,000 and 500,000 Britons are of Rhodesian or Zimbabwean origin), South Africa, Botswana, Zambia, Mozambique, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Coloureds form 0.5% of the population, and various Asian ethnic groups, mostly of Indian and Chinese origin, are also 0.5%. According to 2012 Census report, 99.7% of the population is of African origin. Official fertility rates over the last decade were 3.6 (2002 Census), 3.8 (2006) and 3.8 (2012 Census). Largest cities Refugee crisis The economic meltdown and repressive political measures in Zimbabwe have led to a flood of refugees into neighbouring countries. An estimated 3.4 million Zimbabweans, a quarter of the population, had fled abroad by mid-2007. Some 3,000,000 of these left for South Africa and Botswana. Apart from the people who fled into the neighbouring countries, there are approximately 36,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs). There is no comprehensive survey,<ref name="IDMC">{{cite web|url=http://www.internal-displacement.org/sub-saharan-africa/zimbabwe/|title=Displacement ] ] Monitoring Centre (IDMC), Internal displacement in Zimbabwe|access-date=22 August 2014|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140825002638/http://www.internal-displacement.org/sub-saharan-africa/zimbabwe|archive-date=25 August 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> although the following figures are available: The above surveys do not include people displaced by Operation Chikorokoza Chapera or beneficiaries of the fast-track land reform programme but who have since been evicted. Languages English is the main language used in the education and judicial systems. The Bantu languages Shona and Ndebele are the principal indigenous languages of Zimbabwe. Shona is spoken by 78% of the population, Ndebele by 20%. Other minority Bantu languages include Venda, Tsonga, Shangaan, Kalanga, Sotho, Ndau and Nambya. Less than 2.5%, mainly the white and "coloured" (mixed race) minorities, consider English their native language. Shona has a rich oral tradition, which was incorporated into the first Shona novel, Feso by Solomon Mutswairo, published in 1956. English is spoken primarily in the cities, but less so in rural areas. Radio and television news now broadcast in Shona, Sindebele and English. Due to its large border with Mozambique, there is a large community of Portuguese speakers in Zimbabwe, mainly in the border areas with Mozambique and in major cities, such as Harare and Bulawayo. Beginning in 2017, teaching Portuguese was included in secondary education of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe has 16 official languages and under the constitution, an Act of Parliament may prescribe other languages as officially recognised languages. Religions According to the 2017 Inter Censal Demography Survey by the Zimbabwe National Statistics Agency 69.2 per cent of Zimbabweans belong to Protestant Christianity, 8.0 per cent are Roman Catholic, in total 84.1 per cent follow one of the denominations of Christianity. 10.2 per cent of the population does not belong to any religion, while the 0.7 per cent is Muslim.Religious composition by country, Pew Research, Washington DC (2012) Pentecostal-Charismatic forms of Christianity, in particular, have grown rapidly in recent years and are playing a prominent role in public, social and political life. Indigenous religion, which predates colonialism, has become relatively marginal, but continues to be an important part of the Zimbabwean religious field. Culture Zimbabwe has many different cultures which may include beliefs and ceremonies, one of them being Shona, Zimbabwe's largest ethnic group. The Shona people have many sculptures and carvings which are made with the finest materials available. Zimbabwe first celebrated its independence on 18 April 1980. Celebrations are held at either the National Sports Stadium or Rufaro Stadium in Harare. The first independence celebrations were held in 1980 at the Zimbabwe Grounds. At these celebrations, doves are released to symbolise peace and fighter jets fly over and the national anthem is sung. The flame of independence is lit by the president after parades by the presidential family and members of the armed forces of Zimbabwe. The president also gives a speech to the people of Zimbabwe which is televised for those unable to attend the stadium. Zimbabwe also has a national beauty pageant, the Miss Heritage Zimbabwe contest which has been held annually ever since 2012. Arts Traditional arts in Zimbabwe include pottery, basketry, textiles, jewellery and carving. Among the distinctive qualities are symmetrically patterned woven baskets and stools carved out of a single piece of wood. Shona sculpture has become better known after finding initial popularity in the 1940s. Most subjects of carved figures of stylised birds and human figures among others are made with sedimentary rocks such as soapstone, as well as harder igneous rocks such as serpentine and the rare stone verdite. Zimbabwean artefacts can be found in countries like Singapore, China and Canada. e.g. Dominic Benhura's statue in the Singapore Botanic Gardens. Shona sculpture has survived through the ages and the modern style is a fusion of African folklore with European influences. World-renowned Zimbabwean sculptors include Nicholas, Nesbert and Anderson Mukomberanwa, Tapfuma Gutsa, Henry Munyaradzi and Locardia Ndandarika. Internationally, Zimbabwean sculptors have managed to influence a new generation of artists, particularly black Americans, through lengthy apprenticeships with master sculptors in Zimbabwe. Contemporary artists like New York sculptor M. Scott Johnson and California sculptor Russel Albans have learned to fuse both African and Afro-diasporic aesthetics in a way that travels beyond the simplistic mimicry of African art by some black artists of past generations in the United States. Several authors are well known within Zimbabwe and abroad. Charles Mungoshi is renowned in Zimbabwe for writing traditional stories in English and in Shona, and his poems and books have sold well with both the black and white communities. Catherine Buckle has achieved international recognition with her two books African Tears and Beyond Tears which tell of the ordeal she went through under the 2000 Land Reform. The first Prime Minister of Rhodesia, Ian Smith, wrote two books – The Great Betrayal and Bitter Harvest. The book The House of Hunger by Dambudzo Marechera won an award in the UK in 1979 and the Nobel Prize-winning author Doris Lessing's first novel The Grass Is Singing, the first four volumes of The Children of Violence sequence, as well as the collection of short stories African Stories are set in Rhodesia. In 2013 NoViolet Bulawayo's novel We Need New Names was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The novel tells the story of the devastation and emigration caused by the brutal suppression of Zimbabwean civilians during the Gukurahundi in the early 1980s. Notable artists include Henry Mudzengerere and Nicolas Mukomberanwa. A recurring theme in Zimbabwean art is the metamorphosis of man into beast. Zimbabwean musicians like Thomas Mapfumo, Oliver Mtukudzi, the Bhundu Boys; Stella Chiweshe, Alick Macheso and Audius Mtawarira have achieved international recognition. Among members of the white minority community, Theatre has a large following, with numerous theatrical companies performing in Zimbabwe's urban areas. Cuisine Like in many African countries, the majority of Zimbabweans depend on a few staple foods. "Mealie meal", also known as cornmeal, is used to prepare sadza or isitshwala, as well as porridge known as bota or ilambazi. Sadza is made by mixing the cornmeal with water to produce a thick paste/porridge. After the paste has been cooking for several minutes, more cornmeal is added to thicken the paste. This is usually eaten as lunch or dinner, usually with sides such as gravy, vegetables (spinach, chomolia, or spring greens/collard greens), beans, and meat (stewed, grilled, roasted, or sundried). Sadza is also commonly eaten with curdled milk (sour milk), commonly known as "lacto" (mukaka wakakora), or dried Tanganyika sardine, known locally as kapenta or matemba. Bota is a thinner porridge, cooked without the additional cornmeal and usually flavoured with peanut butter, milk, butter, or jam. Bota is usually eaten for breakfast. Graduations, weddings, and any other family gatherings will usually be celebrated with the killing of a goat or cow, which will be barbecued or roasted by the family. Even though the Afrikaners are a small group (10%) within the white minority group, Afrikaner recipes are popular. Biltong, a type of jerky, is a popular snack, prepared by hanging bits of spiced raw meat to dry in the shade. Boerewors is served with sadza. It is a long sausage, often well-spiced, composed of beef rather than pork, and barbecued. As Zimbabwe was a British colony, some people there have adopted some colonial-era English eating habits. For example, most people will have porridge in the morning, as well as 10 o'clock tea (midday tea). They will have lunch, often leftovers from the night before, freshly cooked sadza, or sandwiches (which is more common in the cities). After lunch, there is usually 4 o'clock tea (afternoon tea), which is served before dinner. It is not uncommon for tea to be had after dinner. Rice, pasta, and potato-based foods (french fries and mashed potato) also make up part of Zimbabwean cuisine. A local favourite is rice cooked with peanut butter, which is taken with thick gravy, mixed vegetables and meat. A potpourri of peanuts known as nzungu, boiled and sundried maize, black-eyed peas known as nyemba, and bambara groundnuts known as nyimo makes a traditional dish called mutakura. Mutakura can also be the above ingredients cooked individually. One can also find local snacks, such as maputi (roasted/popped maize kernels similar to popcorn), roasted and salted peanuts, sugar cane, sweet potato, pumpkin, and indigenous fruits, such as horned melon, gaka, adansonia, mawuyu, uapaca kirkiana, mazhanje (sugar plum), and many others. Sports Football (also known as soccer) is the most popular sport in Zimbabwe. The Warriors have qualified for the Africa Cup of Nations five times (2004, 2006, 2017, 2019, 2021), and won the Southern Africa championship on six occasions (2000, 2003, 2005, 2009, 2017, 2018) and the Eastern Africa cup once (1985). The team is ranked 115th in the world (Fifa World Rankings Nov 2018). Rugby union is a significant sport in Zimbabwe. The national side have represented the country at 2 Rugby World Cup tournaments in 1987 and 1991. The team are ranked 26 in the world by World Rugby. Cricket also has a following among the white minority. It is one of twelve Test cricket playing nations and an ICC full member as well. Notable cricket players from Zimbabwe include Andy Flower, Heath Streak and Brendan Taylor. Zimbabwe has won eight Olympic medals, one in field hockey with the women's team at the 1980 Summer Olympics in Moscow, and seven by swimmer Kirsty Coventry, three at the 2004 Summer Olympics and four at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Zimbabwe has also done well in the Commonwealth Games and All-Africa Games in swimming with Kirsty Coventry obtaining 11 gold medals in the different competitions. Zimbabwe has also competed at Wimbledon and the Davis Cup in tennis, most notably with the Black family, which comprises Wayne Black, Byron Black and Cara Black. Zimbabwe has also done well in golf. The Zimbabwean Nick Price held the official World Number 1 status longer than any player from Africa has ever done in the 24-year history of the ranking. Other sports played in Zimbabwe are basketball, volleyball, netball, and water polo, as well as squash, motorsport, martial arts, chess, cycling, polocrosse, kayaking and horse racing. However, most of these sports do not have international representatives but instead stay at a junior or national level. Zimbabwean professional rugby league players playing overseas are Masimbaashe Motongo and Judah Mazive. Former players include now SANZAAR CEO Andy Marinos who made an appearance for South Africa at the Super League World Nines and featured for the Sydney Bulldogs as well as Zimbabwe-born former Scotland rugby union international Scott Gray, who spent time at the Brisbane Broncos. Zimbabwe has also had success in karate as Zimbabwe's Samson Muripo became Kyokushin world champion in Osaka, Japan in 2009. Muripo is a two-time World Kyokushi Karate Champion, and was the first black and African person to become the World Kyokushin Karate Champion. Media The media of Zimbabwe is now once again diverse, having come under tight restriction between 2002 and 2008 by the government during the growing economic and political crisis in the country. The Zimbabwean constitution promises freedom of the media and expression. Since the appointment of a new media and information minister in 2013 the media is facing less political interference and the supreme court has ruled some sections of the strict media laws as unconstitutional. In July 2009 the BBC and CNN were able to resume operations and report legally and openly from Zimbabwe. CNN welcomed the move. The Zimbabwe Ministry of Media, Information and Publicity stated that, "the Zimbabwe government never banned the BBC from carrying out lawful activities inside Zimbabwe". The BBC also welcomed the move saying, "we're pleased at being able to operate openly in Zimbabwe once again". In 2010 the Zimbabwe Media Commission was established by the inclusive, power-sharing government. In May 2010 the Commission licensed three new privately owned newspapers, including the previously banned Daily News, for publication. Reporters Without Borders described the decisions as a "major advance". In June 2010 NewsDay became the first independent daily newspaper to be published in Zimbabwe in seven years. ZBC's monopoly in the broadcasting sector was ended with the licensing of two private radio stations in 2012. Since the 2002 Access to Information and Protection of Privacy Act (AIPPA) was passed, a number of privately owned news outlets were shut down by the government, including Daily News whose managing director Wilf Mbanga went on to form the influential The Zimbabwean.Ruzengwe, Blessing (17 March 2005) "The nine lives of Wilf Mbanga", The London Globe via Metrovox. As a result, many press organisations have been set up in both neighbouring and Western countries by exiled Zimbabweans. Because the internet is unrestricted, many Zimbabweans are allowed to access online news sites set up by exiled journalists. Reporters Without Borders claims the media environment in Zimbabwe involves "surveillance, threats, imprisonment, censorship, blackmail, abuse of power and denial of justice are all brought to bear to keep firm control over the news." The main published newspapers are The Herald and The Chronicle which are printed in Harare and Bulawayo respectively. The heavy-handedness on the media has progressively relaxed since 2009. In its 2021 report, Reporters Without Borders ranked the Zimbabwean media as 130th out of 180, noting that "access to information has improved and self-censorship has declined, but journalists are still often attacked or arrested". The government also bans many foreign broadcasting stations from Zimbabwe, including the CBC, Sky News, Channel 4, American Broadcasting Company, Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and Fox News. News agencies and newspapers from other Western countries and South Africa have also been banned from the country. Scouting In the Matabeleland region in Zimbabwe during the Second Matabele War, Robert Baden-Powell, the founder of Scouting, and Frederick Russell Burnham, the American-born Chief of Scouts for the British Army, first met and began their lifelong friendship. In mid-June 1896, during a scouting patrol in the Matobo Hills, Burnham began teaching Baden-Powell woodcraft. Baden-Powell and Burnham discussed the concept of a broad training programme in woodcraft for young men, rich in exploration, tracking, fieldcraft, and self-reliance. It was also during this time in the Matobo Hills that Baden-Powell first started to wear his signature campaign hat like the one worn by Burnham. Scouting in the former Rhodesia and Nyasaland started in 1909 when the first Boy Scout troop was registered. Scouting grew quickly and in 1924 Rhodesia and Nyasaland sent a large contingent to the second World Scout Jamboree in Ermelunden, Denmark. In 1959, Rhodesia hosted the Central African Jamboree at Ruwa. In 2009, Scouts celebrated 100 years of Scouting in Zimbabwe and hundreds of Scouts camped at Gordon Park, a Scout campground and training area, as part of these celebrations. Besides scouting, there are also leadership, life skills and general knowledge courses and training experiences mainly for schoolchildren ranging from pre-school to final year high school students and sometimes those beyond high school. These courses and outings are held at, for example, Lasting Impressions (), Far and Wide Zimbabwe (Far and wide.) and Chimanimani Outward Bound (). National symbols The stone-carved Zimbabwe Bird appears on the national flags and the coats of arms of both Zimbabwe and Rhodesia, as well as on banknotes and coins (first on Rhodesian pound and then Rhodesian dollar). It probably represents the bateleur eagle or the African fish eagle. The famous soapstone bird carvings stood on walls and monoliths of the ancient city of Great Zimbabwe, built, it is believed, sometime between the 13th and 16th centuries by ancestors of the Shona. The ruins, which gave their name to modern Zimbabwe, cover some and are the largest ancient stone construction in Zimbabwe. Balancing Rocks are geological formations all over Zimbabwe. The rocks are perfectly balanced without other supports. They are created when ancient granite intrusions are exposed to weathering, as softer rocks surrounding them erode away. They are often remarked on and have been depicted on both the banknotes of Zimbabwe and the Rhodesian dollar banknotes. The ones found on the current notes of Zimbabwe, named the Banknote Rocks, are located in Epworth, approximately south east of Harare. There are many different formations of the rocks, incorporating single and paired columns of 3 or more rocks. These formations are a feature of south and east tropical Africa from northern South Africa northwards to Sudan. The most notable formations in Zimbabwe are located in the Matobo National Park in Matabeleland. The National Anthem of Zimbabwe is "Blessed be the Land of Zimbabwe" (; ). It was introduced in March 1994 after a nationwide competition to replace "" as a distinctly Zimbabwean song. The winning entry was a song written by Professor Solomon Mutswairo and composed by Fred Changundega. It has been translated into all three of the main languages of Zimbabwe. Health At independence, the policies of racial inequality were reflected in the disease patterns of the black majority. The first five years after independence saw rapid gains in areas such as immunisation coverage, access to health care, and contraceptive prevalence rate. Zimbabwe was thus considered internationally to have an achieved a good record of health development. Zimbabwe suffered occasional outbreaks of acute diseases (such as plague in 1994). The gains on the national health were eroded by structural adjustment in the 1990s, the impact of the HIV/AIDS pandemic and the economic crisis since the year 2000. In 2006, Zimbabwe had one of the lowest life expectancies in the world according to UN figure—44 for men and 43 for women, down from 60 in 1990, but recovered to 60 in 2015. The rapid drop was ascribed mainly to the HIV/AIDS pandemic. Infant mortality rose from 6% in the late 1990s to 12.3% by 2004. By 2016 HIV/AIDS prevalence had been reduced to 13.5% compared to 40% in 1998. The health system has more or less collapsed. At the end of November 2008, some operations at three of Zimbabwe's four major referral hospitals had shut down, along with the Zimbabwe Medical School, and the fourth major hospital had two wards and no operating theatres working. Due to hyperinflation, those hospitals still open were not able to obtain basic drugs and medicines. The situation changed drastically after the Unity Government and the introduction of the multi-currency system in February 2009 although the political and economic crisis also contributed to the emigration of the doctors and people with medical knowledge. In August 2008 large areas of Zimbabwe were struck by the ongoing cholera epidemic. By December 2008 more than 10,000 people had been infected in all but one of Zimbabwe's provinces and the outbreak had spread to Botswana, Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia."Miliband backs African calls for end of Mugabe", The Times, 5 December 2008. On 4 December 2008 the Zimbabwe government declared the outbreak to be a national emergency and asked for international aid. By 9 March 2009 The World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that 4,011 people had succumbed to the waterborne disease since the outbreak began in August 2008, and the total number of cases recorded had reached 89,018. In Harare, the city council offered free graves to cholera victims. There had been signs that the disease is abating, with cholera infections down by about 50% to around 4,000 cases a week. The 2014 maternal mortality rate per 100,000 births for Zimbabwe was 614 compared to 960 in 2010–11 and 232 in 1990. The under five mortality rate, per 1,000 births was 75 in 2014 (94 in 2009). The number of midwives per 1,000 live births was unavailable in 2016 and the lifetime risk of death for pregnant women 1 in 42. Source: UN World Population ProspectsEducation Due to large investments in education since independence, Zimbabwe has the highest adult literacy rate in Africa which in 2013 was 90.70%. This is lower than the 92% recorded in 2010 by the United Nations Development Programme"Zimbabwe: Country Leads in Africa Literacy Race", AllAfrica.com, 14 July 2010. and the 97.0% recorded in the 2002 census, while still substantially higher than 80.4% recorded in the 1992 census. The education department has stated that 20,000 teachers have left Zimbabwe since 2007 and that half of Zimbabwe's children have not progressed beyond primary school. The wealthier portion of the population usually send their children to independent schools as opposed to the government-run schools which are attended by the majority as these are subsidised by the government. School education was made free in 1980, but since 1988, the government has steadily increased the charges attached to school enrolment until they now greatly exceed the real value of fees in 1980. The Ministry of Education of Zimbabwe maintains and operates the government schools but the fees charged by independent schools are regulated by the cabinet of Zimbabwe. Zimbabwe's education system consists of two years of pre-school, seven years of primary and six years of secondary schooling before students can enter university in the country or abroad. The academic year in Zimbabwe runs from January to December, with three terms, broken up by one month holidays, with a total of 40 weeks of school per year. National examinations are written during the third term in November, with "O" level and "A" level subjects also offered in June. There are seven public (Government) universities as well as four church-related universities in Zimbabwe that are fully internationally accredited. The University of Zimbabwe, the first and largest, was built in 1952 and is located in the Harare suburb of Mount Pleasant. Notable alumni from Zimbabwean universities include Welshman Ncube; Peter Moyo (of Amabhubesi); Tendai Biti, Chenjerai Hove, Zimbabwean poet, novelist and essayist; and Arthur Mutambara. Many of the politicians in the government of Zimbabwe have obtained degrees from universities in USA or other universities abroad. National University of Science and Technology (NUST) is the second largest public research university in Zimbabwe located in Bulawayo. It was established in 1991. The National University of Science and Technology strives to become a flourishing and reputable institution not only in Zimbabwe and in Southern Africa but also among the international fraternity of Universities. Its guidance, cultural values is the encouragement of all its members and society of those attitudes of fair mindedness, understanding, tolerance and respect for people and views which are essential for the attainment and maintenance of justice, peace and harmony at all times. Africa University is a United Methodist related university institution located in Manicaland which attracts students from at least 36 African countries. The institution has been growing steadily and has steady study material and learning facilities. The highest professional board |
southern Africa lying wholly within the tropics. It straddles an extensive high inland plateau that drops northwards to the Zambezi valley where the border with Zambia is and similarly drops southwards to the Limpopo valley and the border with South Africa. The country has borders with Botswana 813 km, Mozambique 1,231 km, South Africa 225 km, Zambia 797 km and almost meets Namibia at its westernmost point. Climate The climate is markedly varied by altitude. There is a dry season, including a short cool season during the period May to September when the whole country has very little rain. The rainy season is typically a time of heavy rainfall from November to March. The whole country is influenced by the Intertropical Convergence Zone during January. In years when it is poorly defined there is below-average rainfall and a likelihood of serious drought in the country, as happened in 1983 and 1992. When it is well defined rainfall is average or well above average, as in 1981 and 1986. Terrain Much of the country is on a plateau with a higher central plateau (high veld) forming a watershed between the Zambezi and Limpopo river systems. The flattish watershed region is part of an ancient etchplain called the African Surface covers large swathes of the continent. While the African Surface occupy the higher ground, spurs and small interfluves a younger "post-African" surface occupy lower positions with occasional rock domes, koppies and tors protruding rolling or plain landscape. The Limpopo and the lower Zambezi valleys are broad and relatively flat plains. The eastern end of the watershed terminates in a north-south mountain spine, called the Eastern Highlands. The northeast-southwest oriented central uplands have been uplifted in geologically recent times (Late Pliocene or Pleistocene) deviating the watercourse of upper Zambezi River that used to flow into the Limpopo River to the east to its current outlet at the Mozambique Channel. The northeast-southwest upland and watershed follows the axis of an epeirogenic flexure. Elevation extremes: lowest point: junction of the Runde and Save rivers 162 m highest point: Mount Nyangani 2,592 m Natural resources: coal, chromium ore, asbestos, gold, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium, tin, diamond, platinum group metals Land use: arable land: 10.49% permanent crops: 0.31% other: 89.20% (2011) Irrigated land: 1,735 km² (2003) Total renewable water resources: 20 km3 (2011) | of an epeirogenic flexure. Elevation extremes: lowest point: junction of the Runde and Save rivers 162 m highest point: Mount Nyangani 2,592 m Natural resources: coal, chromium ore, asbestos, gold, nickel, copper, iron ore, vanadium, lithium, tin, diamond, platinum group metals Land use: arable land: 10.49% permanent crops: 0.31% other: 89.20% (2011) Irrigated land: 1,735 km² (2003) Total renewable water resources: 20 km3 (2011) Natural hazards: droughts; floods and severe storms are rare Environment – current issues: deforestation; soil erosion; land degradation; air and water pollution; the black rhinoceros herd – once the largest concentration of the species in the world – has been significantly reduced by poaching; poor mining practices have led to toxic waste and heavy metal pollution Environment – international agreements: party to: Biodiversity, Climate Change, Desertification, Endangered Species, Law of the Sea, Ozone Layer Protection signed, but not ratified: none of the selected agreements Hydrology: The country is divided into six drainage basins. The largest are the Zambezi and the Limpopo. Western parts of Matabeleland connect to the Okavango inland drainage basin through the Nata river. Most of southern Mashonaland and adjacent parts of Masvingo drain through the Save river into the Indian Ocean. Two smaller drainage basins cover parts of Manicaland, |
Smith's administration removed technical obstacles to immigration from southern Europe. A heavily urbanised Coloured population is descended, partially, from early unions between White Rhodesian settlers and local Black African females and later on during the Rhodesia bush war the rape of white Rhodesian females. Many, however, can also trace their ancestry to the Dutch/Khoisan mulatto clans of the Cape. With the exception of a select few who were brought to Zimbabwe as railroad workers, most Asians in Zimbabwe arrived from India pursuing employment or entrepreneurship. An educated class, they have traditionally engaged in retail trade or manufacturing. Languages Zimbabwe has 16 official languages: Chewa, Tonga, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa. English is widely used in administration, law and schools, though less than 2.5%, mainly the white and Coloured (mixed race) minorities, consider it their native language. The rest of the population speak Shona (70%) and Ndebele (20%), Kalanga (2%), etc. Shona has a rich oral tradition, which was incorporated into the first Shona novel, Feso by Solomon Mutswairo, published in 1956. English is spoken primarily in the cities, but less so in rural areas. Television news is broadcast in English, Shona and Ndebele though the local languages time slot falls out of prime viewing time, but radio broadcasts in English, Ndebele, Shona, Kalanga, Nambya, Venda, Suthu and Tonga. English, Ndebele and Shona are given far more airtime. Religions 85 percent of Zimbabweans are Christian, and of that number, 61 percent regularly attend Christian churches. The largest Christian churches are Anglican, Roman Catholic, Seventh Day Adventist and Methodist. However like most former European colonies, Christianity is often mixed with enduring traditional beliefs. Besides Christianity, ancestral worship (Amadlozi) is the most practised non-Christian religion which involves ancestor worship and spiritual intercession. Under 1% of the population is Muslim, although many Zimbabweans are influenced by Abrahamic food laws. Health According to the United Nations World Health Organization, the average life expectancy for men in 2006 was 37 years and for women was 34 years of age, the lowest in the world at the time. An association of doctors in Zimbabwe have made calls for President Mugabe to make moves to assist the ailing health service. Since then it has recovered, and the figures for 2010 to 2015 were 53 and 54 for men and women respectively. Other demographic statistics The following demographic statistics of Zimbabwe in 2019 are from the World Population Review. One birth every 59 seconds One death every 4 minutes One net migrant every 27 minutes Net gain of one person every 1 minute The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Ethnic groups African 99.4% (predominantly Shona; Ndebele is the second largest ethnic group) Other 0.4% Unspecified 0.2% (2012 est.) Languages Shona (official; most widely spoken), Ndebele (official, second most widely spoken), English (official; traditionally used for official business), 13 minority languages (official; includes Chewa, Chibarwe, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Shangani, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, and Xhosa) Religions Protestant 74.8% (includes Apostolic 37.5%, Pentecostal 21.8%, other 15.5%), Roman Catholic 7.3%, other Christian 5.3%, traditional 1.5%, Muslim 0.5%, other 0.1%, none 10.5% (2015 est.) Population 14,030,368 (July 2018 est.) 13,805,084 (July 2017 est.) Age structure 0-14 years: 38.62% (male 2,681,192 /female 2,736,876) 15-24 years: 20.42% (male 1,403,715 /female 1,461,168) 25-54 years: 32.22% (male 2,286,915 /female 2,234,158) 55-64 years: 4.24% (male 233,021 /female 361,759) 65 years and over: 4.5% (male 255,704 /female 375,860) (2018 est.) Median age total: 20.2 years. Country comparison to the world: 190th male: 19.9 years female: 20.4 years (2018 est.) Birth rate 34 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 25th 34.2 births/1,000 population (2017 est.) Death rate 9.9 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 41st 10.2 deaths/1,000 population (2017 est.) Total fertility rate 3.97 children born/woman (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 33rd Official government fertility rates over the past decade were 3.6 (2002 Census), 3.8 (2006 survey also says women actually wanted on average 3.3 children) and 3.8 (2012 Census). Population growth rate 1.68% (2018 est.) Country comparison to | Nations prepared the following estimates. Fertility and births Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted Fertility Rate) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR): Fertility data as of 2010-2011 (DHS Program): Life expectancy at birth Life expectancy from 1950 to 2015 (UN World Population Prospects): Ethnic groups According to 2012 Census report, 99.6% of the population is of African origin. Of the rest of the population, the great bulk—perhaps 30,000 persons—are white Zimbabweans of European ancestry, a minority which had diminished in size prior to independence. The vast black majority has grown at a projected annual rate of 4.3% since 1980. Although present figures are difficult to ascertain, the white community once reproduced itself at an annual rate (under 1.5%) similar to that of most totals in developed nations. Of the two major ethnolinguistic categories, Shona speakers formed a decisive plurality at (80<)% and occupied the eastern two-thirds of Zimbabwe. Ndebele speakers constitute about 16%, and none of the other indigenous ethnic groups came to as much as 2% in recent decades. African speakers of nonindigenous languages included migrant workers from Malawi, Zambia, and Mozambique. Three-quarters of white Zimbabweans are of British or British diasporan origin; at various times many emigrated from South Africa and elsewhere. After World War II, Zimbabwe (then Southern Rhodesia) received a substantial influx of emigrants from the United Kingdom—a handful previously resided in other colonies such as Pakistan and Kenya. Also represented on a much smaller scale were individuals of Afrikaner, Greek, and Portuguese origin. After Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, Ian Smith's administration removed technical obstacles to immigration from southern Europe. A heavily urbanised Coloured population is descended, partially, from early unions between White Rhodesian settlers and local Black African females and later on during the Rhodesia bush war the rape of white Rhodesian females. Many, however, can also trace their ancestry to the Dutch/Khoisan mulatto clans of the Cape. With the exception of a select few who were brought to Zimbabwe as railroad workers, most Asians in Zimbabwe arrived from India pursuing employment or entrepreneurship. An educated class, they have traditionally engaged in retail trade or manufacturing. Languages Zimbabwe has 16 official languages: Chewa, Tonga, Chibarwe, English, Kalanga, Koisan, Nambya, Ndau, Ndebele, Shangani, Shona, sign language, Sotho, Tonga, Tswana, Venda, Xhosa. English is widely used in administration, law and schools, though less than 2.5%, mainly the white and Coloured (mixed race) minorities, consider it their native language. The rest of the population speak Shona (70%) and Ndebele (20%), Kalanga (2%), etc. Shona has a rich oral tradition, which was incorporated into the first Shona novel, Feso by |
MDC, have not been taken into account by the police. Government of Zimbabwe Political power in Zimbabwe is split between three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches, with the President as the head of the executive branch, the Prime Minister the head of the legislative branch and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe the head of the judicial branch. Executive What are the Powers of the Executive? Under the present Zimbabwean Constitution, the President’s powers can be grouped roughly into the following categories: · Power over the Legislature, namely the power to summon, adjourn and dissolve Parliament, and the power to appoint members of Parliament. · Power over the Judiciary, namely the power to appoint judges and other members of the judiciary. · Power to appoint members of the Executive, namely Cabinet Ministers and administrative officers such as public servants. · Power to appoint ambassadors and members of constitutional Commissions. · Power over the security forces, namely the Defence Forces and the Police. · Legislative power, namely the power to enact legislation. · Power to declare war and make peace · Miscellaneous powers, such as the exercise of the prerogative of mercy and the power to confer honours and precedence. The grant of a pardon or respite from execution of sentence or the substitution or suspension of a sentence must be published in the Gazette. |President |Emmerson Mnangagwa |ZANU-PF |24 November 2017 |- |Vice-President |Constantino Chiwenga |ZANU-PF |28 December 2017 |} Under Zimbabwe's Constitution, the president is the head of state, government and commander-in-chief of the defense forces, elected by popular majority vote. Prior to 2013, the president was elected for a 6-year term with no term limits. The new constitution approved in the 2013 constitutional referendum limits the president to two 5-year terms, but this does not take effect retrospectively (Robert Mugabe had held the office from 1987 to 2017). The Cabinet is appointed by the president and responsible to the House of Assembly. The Minister of State for Presidential Affairs is a non-cabinet ministerial position in the government of Zimbabwe. The incumbent is Didymus Mutasa. The duties of the position have yet to be publicly defined. Legislature Parliament consists of the House of Assembly and, since 2005, the Senate, which had previously been abolished in 1990. The House of Assembly has 210 members elected by universal suffrage, including the Speaker, and the Attorney General, and may serve for a maximum of five years. Under the 2013 constitution, the Senate consists of 80 members, of whom 60 are elected for five-year terms in 6-member constituencies representing one of the 10 provinces, elected based on the votes in the lower house election, using party-list proportional representation, distributed using the hare quota. Additionally the Senate consists of 2 seats for each non-metropolitan district of Zimbabwe elected by each provincial assembly of chiefs using SNTV, 1 seat each for the president and deputy president of the National Council of Chiefs and 1 male and 1 female seat for people with disabilities elected on separate ballots using FPTP by an electoral college designated by the National Disability Board. Judiciary The judiciary is headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe who, like their contemporaries, is appointed by the President on the advice of the Judicial Service Commission. The Constitution has a Bill of Rights containing extensive protection of human rights. The Bill of Rights could not be amended for the first 10 years of independence except by unanimous vote of Parliament. The Supreme Court is the highest court of order and the final court of appeal. The Chief Justice is the senior judge. Others who sit on the bench of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe are | government as organized by the 2013 Constitution. Executive power is exercised by the government. Legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. The status of Zimbabwean politics has been thrown into question by a 2017 coup. Political developments since the Lancaster House Agreement The Zimbabwean Constitution, initially from the Lancaster House Agreement a few months before the 1980 elections, chaired by Lord Carrington, institutionalises majority rule and protection of minority rights. Since independence, the Constitution has been amended by the government to provide for: The abolition of seats reserved for whites in the country's parliament in 1987; The abolition of the office of prime minister in 1987 and the creation of an executive presidency. (The office was restored in 2009, and abolished again in 2013.) The abolition of the Senate in 1990 (reintroduced in 2005), and the creation of appointed seats in the House of Assembly. The elected government controls senior appointments in the public service, including the military and police, and ensures that appointments at lower levels are made on an equitable basis by the independent Public Service Commission. ZANU-PF leader Robert Mugabe, elected prime minister in 1980, revised the constitution in 1987 to make himself president. President Mugabe's affiliated party won every election from independence on April 18, 1980, until it lost the parliamentary elections in March 2008 to the Movement for Democratic Change. In some quarters corruption and rigging elections have been alleged. In particular the elections of 1990 were nationally and internationally condemned as being rigged, with the second-placed party, Edgar Tekere's Zimbabwe Unity Movement, winning only 20% of the vote. Presidential elections were held in 2002 amid allegations of vote-rigging, intimidation, and fraud, and again in March 2008. Ethnic rivalry between the Shona and Ndebele has played a large part in Zimbabwe's politics, a consequence of the country's borders defined by its British colonial rulers. This continued after independence in 1980, during the Gukurahundi ethnic cleansing liberation wars in Matabeleland in the 1980s. This led to the political merger of Joshua Nkomo's Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) with the ruling Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) to form ZANU-PF and the appointment of Nkomo as vice president. During 2005, with Mugabe's future in question, factionalism within the Shona has increased. In October 2005 it was alleged that members of the ruling ZANU-PF and the opposition MDC had held secret meetings in London and Washington to discuss plans for a new Zimbabwe after Robert Mugabe. On February 6, 2007, Mugabe orchestrated a Cabinet reshuffle, ousting ministers including 5-year veteran Minister of Finance Herbert Murerwa. Political conditions Since the defeat of the constitutional referendum in 2000, politics in Zimbabwe has been marked by a move from the norms of democratic governance, such as democratic elections, the independence of the judiciary, the rule of law, freedom from racial discrimination, the existence of independent media, civil society and academia. Recent years have seen widespread violations of human rights. Elections have been marked by political violence and intimidation, along with the politicisation of the judiciary, military, police force and public services. Statements by the President and government politicians have referred to a state of war, or Chimurenga, against the opposition political parties, in particular the Movement for Democratic Change – Tsvangirai (MDC-T). Newspapers not aligned with the government have been closed down and members of the judiciary have been threatened and/or arrested. Repressive laws aimed at preventing freedoms of speech, assembly and association have been implemented and subjectively enforced. Members of the opposition are routinely arrested and harassed, with some subjected to torture or sentenced to jail. The legal system has come under increasing threat. The MDC has repeatedly attempted to use the legal system to challenge the ruling ZANU-PF, but the rulings, often in favour of the MDC, have not been taken into account by the police. Government of Zimbabwe Political power in Zimbabwe is split between three branches, the executive, the legislative and the judicial branches, with the President as the head of the executive branch, the Prime Minister the head of the legislative branch and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Zimbabwe the head of the judicial branch. Executive What are the Powers of the Executive? Under the present Zimbabwean Constitution, the President’s powers can be grouped roughly into the following categories: · Power over the Legislature, namely the power to summon, adjourn and dissolve Parliament, and the power to appoint members of Parliament. · Power over the Judiciary, namely the power to appoint judges and other members of the judiciary. · Power to appoint members of the Executive, namely Cabinet Ministers and administrative officers such as public servants. · Power to appoint ambassadors and members of constitutional Commissions. · Power over the security forces, namely the Defence Forces and the Police. · Legislative power, namely the power to enact legislation. · Power to declare war and make peace · Miscellaneous powers, such as the exercise of the prerogative of mercy and the power to confer honours and precedence. The grant of a pardon or respite from execution of sentence or the substitution or suspension of a sentence must be published in the Gazette. |President |Emmerson Mnangagwa |ZANU-PF |24 November 2017 |- |Vice-President |Constantino Chiwenga |
The government intervened by introducing price controls on all basic commodities. (Kanyenze 2004) Many interventionist moves were undertaken to try to reverse some of the negative effects of the Structural Adjustment Programs and to try to strengthen the private sector that was suffering from decreasing output and increasing competition from cheap imported products. Some of the most detrimental policies that followed include: 1980–2000 At the time of independence, annual inflation was 5.4 percent and month-to-month inflation was 0.5 percent. Currency of Z$2, Z$5, Z$10 and Z$20 denominations were released. Roughly 95 percent of transactions used the Zimbabwean dollar. Following the Lancaster House Agreement in December 1979, the transition to majority rule in early 1980, and the lifting of sanctions, Zimbabwe enjoyed a brisk economic recovery. Real growth for 1980–1981 exceeded 20%. However, depressed foreign demand for the country's mineral exports and the onset of a drought cut sharply into the growth rate in 1982, 1983, and 1984. In 1985, the economy rebounded strongly due to a 30% jump in agricultural production. However, it slumped in 1986 to a zero growth rate and registered negative of about minus 3% in 1987, primarily because of drought and the foreign exchange crisis faced by the country. Zimbabwe's GDP grew on average by about 4.5% between 1980 and 1990. In 1992, a World Bank study indicated that more than 500 health centres had been built since 1980. The percentage of children vaccinated increased from 25% in 1980 to 67% in 1988, and life expectancy increased from 55 to 59 years. Enrolment increased by 232 percent one year after primary education was made free, and secondary school enrolment increased by 33 percent in two years. These social policies lead to an increase in the debt ratio. Several laws were passed in the 1980s in an attempt to reduce wage gaps. However, the gaps remained considerable. In 1988, the law gave women, at least in theory, the same rights as men. Previously, they could only take a few personal initiatives without the consent of their father or husband. The government started crumbling when a bonus to independence war veterans was announced in 1997 (which was equal to 3 percent of GDP) followed by unexpected spending due to Zimbabwe's involvement in the Second Congo War in 1998. In 1999, the country also witnessed a drought which further weakened the economy, ultimately leading to the country's bankruptcy in the next decade. In the same year, 1999, Zimbabwe experienced its first defaults on its IMF, World Bank, and African Development Bank debts in addition to debts taken out with Western lenders. 2000–2009 In recent years, there has been considerable economic hardship in Zimbabwe. Many western countries argue that the Government of Zimbabwe's land reform program, recurrent interference with, and intimidation of the judiciary, as well as maintenance of unrealistic price controls and exchange rates has led to a sharp drop in investor confidence. Between 2000 and December 2007, the national economy contracted by as much as 40%; inflation vaulted to over 66,000%, and there were persistent shortages of hard currency, fuel, medicine, and food. GDP per capita dropped by 40%, agricultural output dropped by 51% and industrial production dropped by 47%. The Mugabe Government attribute Zimbabwe's economic difficulties to sanctions imposed by the Western powers. It has been argued that the sanctions imposed by Britain, the US, and the EU have been designed to cripple the economy and the conditions of the Zimbabwean people in an attempt to overthrow President Mugabe's government. These countries on their side argue that the sanctions are targeted against Mugabe and his inner circle and some of the companies they own. Critics point to the so-called "Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001", signed by Bush, as an effort to undermine Zimbabwe's economy. Soon after the bill was signed, IMF cut off its resources to Zimbabwe. Financial institutions began withdrawing support for Zimbabwe. Terms of the sanctions made it such that all economic assistance would be structured in support of "democratisation, respect for human rights and the rule of law." The EU terminated its support for all projects in Zimbabwe. Because of the sanctions and US and EU foreign policy, none of Zimbabwe's debts have been cancelled as in other countries. Other observers also point out how the asset freezes by the EU on people or companies associated with Zimbabwe's Government have had significant economic and social costs to Zimbabwe. As of February 2004, Zimbabwe's foreign debt repayments ceased, resulting in compulsory suspension from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This, and the United Nations World Food Programme stopping its food aid due to insufficient donations from the world community, has forced the government into borrowing from local sources. Hyperinflation 2004–2009 Zimbabwe began experiencing severe foreign exchange shortages, exacerbated by the difference between the official rate and the black market rate in 2000. In 2004 a system of auctioning scarce foreign currency for importers was introduced, which temporarily led to a slight reduction in the foreign currency crisis, but by mid-2005 foreign currency shortages were once again severe. The currency was devalued by the central bank twice, first to 9,000 to the US$, and then to 17,500 to the US$ on 20 July 2005, but at that date it was reported that that was only half the rate available on the black market. In July 2005 Zimbabwe was reported to be appealing to the South African government for US$1 billion of emergency loans, but despite regular rumours that the idea was being discussed no substantial financial support has been publicly reported. The official Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate had been frozen at Z$101,196 per U.S. dollar since early 2006, but as of 27 July 2006 the parallel (black market) rate has reached Z$550,000 per U.S. dollar. By comparison, 10 years earlier, the rate of exchange was only Z$9.13 per USD. In August 2006 the RBZ revalued the Zimbabwean Dollar by 1000 ZWD to 1 (revalued) dollar. At the same time Zimbabwe devalued the Zim Dollar by 60% against the USD. New official exchange rate revalued ZWD 250 per USD. The parallel market rate was about revalued ZWD 1,200 to 1,500 per USD (28 September 2006). In November 2006, it was announced that sometime around 1 December there would be a further devaluation and that the official exchange rate would change to revalued ZWD 750 per USD. This never materialized. However, the parallel market immediately reacted to this news with the parallel rate falling to ZWD 2,000 per USD (18 November 2006) and by year end it had fallen to ZWD 3,000 per USD. On 1 April 2007, the parallel market was asking ZWD 30,000 for US$1. By year end, it was down to about ZWD 2,000,000. On 18 January 2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe began to issue higher denomination ZWD bearer cheques (a banknote with an expiry date), including $10 million bearer cheques – each of which was worth less than US$1.35 (70p Sterling; 0.90 Euro) on the parallel market at the time of first issue. On 4 April 2008 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced new $25 million and $50 million bearer cheques. At the time of first issue they were worth US$0.70 & US$1.40 on the parallel market respectively. On 1 May 2008, the RBZ announced that the dollar would be allowed to float in value subject to some conditions. On 6 May 2008, the RBZ issued new $100 million and $250 million bearer cheques. At the date of first issue the $250 million bearer cheque was worth approximately US$1.30 on the parallel market. On 15 May 2008, a new $500 million bearer cheque was issued by the RBZ. At time of first issue it was worth US$1.93. In a widely unreported parallel move, on 15 May 2008, the RBZ issued three "special agro-cheques" with face values $5 billion (at time of first issue – $19.30), $25 billion ($96.50) & $50 billion ($193). It is further reported that the new agro-cheques can be used to buy any goods and services like the bearer cheques. On 30 July 2008, the Governor of the RBZ, Gideon Gono announced that the Zimbabwe dollar would be redenominated by removing 10 zeroes, with effect from 1 August 2008. ZWD10billion became 1 dollar after the redenomination. More banknotes were issued since Gono vowed to continue printing money: $10,000 and $20,000 (29 September); $50,000 (13 October); $100,000, $500,000 and $1 million (3 November); $10 million(2 December); $50 million and $100 million (4 December); $200 million (9 December); $500 million (11 December); $10 billion (19 December); $1 trillion (17 January 2009) On February 2, 2009, a final denomination was implemented, cutting 12 zeroes, before the Zimbabwe dollar was officially abandoned on April 12, 2009. Pending economic recovery, Zimbabwe relied on foreign currency rather than introducing a new currency. Dollarization: 2009–present In February 2009, the newly installed national unity government (which included the opposition to Mugabe) allowed foreign currency transactions throughout the economy as a measure to stimulate the economy and end inflation. The Zimbabwean dollar quickly lost all credibility, and by April 2009, the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended entirely, to be replaced by the US dollar in government transactions. In 2014 there were eight legal currencies – US dollar, South African rand, Botswana pula, British pound sterling, Australian dollar, Chinese yuan, Indian rupee and Japanese yen. Dollarization reversed inflation, permitting the banking system to stabilize and the economy to resume slow growth after 2009. Dollarization also had other consequences, including: Reduced taxation and financial transparency, as people continued to keep their money out of the formal banking system. Extremely high real interest rates due to lack of capital. Government forced into a "pay as you go" system, unable to spend more than it takes in. Deficits of coinage for everyday transactions, leading to the adoption of South African rand coins, sweets, airtime for mobile phones or even condoms for small change. Counterfeiting currencies with which Zimbabweans are not familiar. 10% growth of the economy a year up to 2012 In January, 2013 Finance Minister Tendai Biti announced that Zimbabwe's national public account held just $217. The election budget for the July 2013 presidential election was $104 million and government budget for 2013 was $3.09 billion at a projected economic growth of 5 per cent. The Economist described the 2013 election as "rigged" and how, after regaining full control of the government, the Mugabe government doubled the civil service and embarked on "...misrule and dazzling corruption." In August 2014, Zimbabwe began selling treasury bills and bonds to pay public sector salaries that have been delayed as GDP growth weakens while the economy experiences deflation. US$2 million was sold in July through private placements of Six-month Treasury bills at an interest rate of 9.5%. According to IMF data, GDP growth was forecast to be 3.1% by the end of 2014, a major decline from an average rate of 10% between 2009 and 2012, while government data showed that consumer prices declined for five consecutive months by the end of June. The Reserve Bank continued to issue large values of treasury bills to support the government's over-budget spending. This added to the money supply and in effect devalued all bank balances, despite them being US Dollar denominated. In November 2016 a pseudo-currency was issued in the form of Bond Notes despite widespread protests against them. In February 2019, John Mangudya, through a monetary policy presentation formally introduced a new currency, the RTGS dollar which consists of electronic balances in banks and mobile wallets, bond notes and bond coins. This completed the conversion of all US Dollar denominated bank balances to a devalued Zimbabwean currency at a rate of 1:1. In June 2019 the use of foreign currencies in local transactions was prohibited as part of the prospective plan for a new national currency and thus ended the dollarization period. There was still low volume trade in US Dollars, particularly in the informal sector and using in-shop bureau de change. In March 2020, blaming the challenges of dealing with COVID-19, the government allowed formal transactions in US Dollars once more. Government of National Unity: 2009–2013 In response to the negative long-term economic situation the three parliamentary parties agreed on a Government of National Unity. Despite serious internal differences this government made some important decisions that improved the general economic situation, first of all the suspension of the national currency, the Zimbabwean Dollar, in April 2009. That stopped hyperinflation and made normal forms of business possible again, by using foreign currency such as the US American Dollar, the South African Rand, the EUs Euro or the Botswana Pula. The former finance minister Tendai Biti (MDC-T) tried to hold a disciplined budget. In 2009 Zimbabwe recorded a period of economic growth for the first time in a decade. Post-Government of National Unity: 2013–present Following ZANU-PF's landslide electoral victory in the 2013 general elections, Patrick Chinamasa was appointed finance minister. Policies encouraging the indigenisation of the economy were fast tracked and laws requiring that 51% or more of non-black Zimbabwean owned companies had to be handed over to black Zimbabweans were implemented. This has been credited with creating further uncertainty in the economy and negatively impacting investment climate in the country. Although legislation dealing with the indigenisation of the Zimbabwean economy has been in development since 2007 and actively initiated by ZANU-PF in 2010 the policy has continued to be accused of being unclear and a form of "racketeering by regulation." The government doubled the civil service and embarked on what the Economist described as "...misrule and dazzling corruption." In April 2014, Chinamasa admitted that the country was heavily in debt and that the country needed to better attract foreign direct investment. Officially Zimbabwe's debt is $7 billion, or over 200% of the country's GDP. However, this figure is disputed, with figures as high as $11 billion being quoted, once debts to other African countries and China are included. As of May 2014, it has been reported that Zimbabwe's economy was in decline following the period of relative economic stability during the Government of National Unity. It is estimated that Zimbabwe's manufacturing sector requires an investment of roughly US$8 billion for working capital and equipment upgrades. In 2016 Tendai Biti, an opposition politician estimated the government was running a deficit of up to 12% of GDP and Zimbabwe began experiencing a significant shortage of US dollars partly due to a consistent trade deficit. This prompted the Zimbabwean government to limit cash withdrawals from banks and change exchange-control regulations in order to try to promote exports and reduce the currency shortage. In June and July 2016, after Government employees had not been paid for weeks, police had set up road blocks to coerce money out of tourists and there were protests throughout Zimbabwe, Patrick Chinamasa, the finance minister, toured Europe in an effort to raise investment capital and loans, admitting "Right now we have nothing." In August 2016 the government announced that it would be laying off 25,000 civil servants (8% of the country's 298,000 | intimidation of the judiciary, as well as maintenance of unrealistic price controls and exchange rates has led to a sharp drop in investor confidence. Between 2000 and December 2007, the national economy contracted by as much as 40%; inflation vaulted to over 66,000%, and there were persistent shortages of hard currency, fuel, medicine, and food. GDP per capita dropped by 40%, agricultural output dropped by 51% and industrial production dropped by 47%. The Mugabe Government attribute Zimbabwe's economic difficulties to sanctions imposed by the Western powers. It has been argued that the sanctions imposed by Britain, the US, and the EU have been designed to cripple the economy and the conditions of the Zimbabwean people in an attempt to overthrow President Mugabe's government. These countries on their side argue that the sanctions are targeted against Mugabe and his inner circle and some of the companies they own. Critics point to the so-called "Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act of 2001", signed by Bush, as an effort to undermine Zimbabwe's economy. Soon after the bill was signed, IMF cut off its resources to Zimbabwe. Financial institutions began withdrawing support for Zimbabwe. Terms of the sanctions made it such that all economic assistance would be structured in support of "democratisation, respect for human rights and the rule of law." The EU terminated its support for all projects in Zimbabwe. Because of the sanctions and US and EU foreign policy, none of Zimbabwe's debts have been cancelled as in other countries. Other observers also point out how the asset freezes by the EU on people or companies associated with Zimbabwe's Government have had significant economic and social costs to Zimbabwe. As of February 2004, Zimbabwe's foreign debt repayments ceased, resulting in compulsory suspension from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This, and the United Nations World Food Programme stopping its food aid due to insufficient donations from the world community, has forced the government into borrowing from local sources. Hyperinflation 2004–2009 Zimbabwe began experiencing severe foreign exchange shortages, exacerbated by the difference between the official rate and the black market rate in 2000. In 2004 a system of auctioning scarce foreign currency for importers was introduced, which temporarily led to a slight reduction in the foreign currency crisis, but by mid-2005 foreign currency shortages were once again severe. The currency was devalued by the central bank twice, first to 9,000 to the US$, and then to 17,500 to the US$ on 20 July 2005, but at that date it was reported that that was only half the rate available on the black market. In July 2005 Zimbabwe was reported to be appealing to the South African government for US$1 billion of emergency loans, but despite regular rumours that the idea was being discussed no substantial financial support has been publicly reported. The official Zimbabwean dollar exchange rate had been frozen at Z$101,196 per U.S. dollar since early 2006, but as of 27 July 2006 the parallel (black market) rate has reached Z$550,000 per U.S. dollar. By comparison, 10 years earlier, the rate of exchange was only Z$9.13 per USD. In August 2006 the RBZ revalued the Zimbabwean Dollar by 1000 ZWD to 1 (revalued) dollar. At the same time Zimbabwe devalued the Zim Dollar by 60% against the USD. New official exchange rate revalued ZWD 250 per USD. The parallel market rate was about revalued ZWD 1,200 to 1,500 per USD (28 September 2006). In November 2006, it was announced that sometime around 1 December there would be a further devaluation and that the official exchange rate would change to revalued ZWD 750 per USD. This never materialized. However, the parallel market immediately reacted to this news with the parallel rate falling to ZWD 2,000 per USD (18 November 2006) and by year end it had fallen to ZWD 3,000 per USD. On 1 April 2007, the parallel market was asking ZWD 30,000 for US$1. By year end, it was down to about ZWD 2,000,000. On 18 January 2008, the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe began to issue higher denomination ZWD bearer cheques (a banknote with an expiry date), including $10 million bearer cheques – each of which was worth less than US$1.35 (70p Sterling; 0.90 Euro) on the parallel market at the time of first issue. On 4 April 2008 the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe introduced new $25 million and $50 million bearer cheques. At the time of first issue they were worth US$0.70 & US$1.40 on the parallel market respectively. On 1 May 2008, the RBZ announced that the dollar would be allowed to float in value subject to some conditions. On 6 May 2008, the RBZ issued new $100 million and $250 million bearer cheques. At the date of first issue the $250 million bearer cheque was worth approximately US$1.30 on the parallel market. On 15 May 2008, a new $500 million bearer cheque was issued by the RBZ. At time of first issue it was worth US$1.93. In a widely unreported parallel move, on 15 May 2008, the RBZ issued three "special agro-cheques" with face values $5 billion (at time of first issue – $19.30), $25 billion ($96.50) & $50 billion ($193). It is further reported that the new agro-cheques can be used to buy any goods and services like the bearer cheques. On 30 July 2008, the Governor of the RBZ, Gideon Gono announced that the Zimbabwe dollar would be redenominated by removing 10 zeroes, with effect from 1 August 2008. ZWD10billion became 1 dollar after the redenomination. More banknotes were issued since Gono vowed to continue printing money: $10,000 and $20,000 (29 September); $50,000 (13 October); $100,000, $500,000 and $1 million (3 November); $10 million(2 December); $50 million and $100 million (4 December); $200 million (9 December); $500 million (11 December); $10 billion (19 December); $1 trillion (17 January 2009) On February 2, 2009, a final denomination was implemented, cutting 12 zeroes, before the Zimbabwe dollar was officially abandoned on April 12, 2009. Pending economic recovery, Zimbabwe relied on foreign currency rather than introducing a new currency. Dollarization: 2009–present In February 2009, the newly installed national unity government (which included the opposition to Mugabe) allowed foreign currency transactions throughout the economy as a measure to stimulate the economy and end inflation. The Zimbabwean dollar quickly lost all credibility, and by April 2009, the Zimbabwean dollar was suspended entirely, to be replaced by the US dollar in government transactions. In 2014 there were eight legal currencies – US dollar, South African rand, Botswana pula, British pound sterling, Australian dollar, Chinese yuan, Indian rupee and Japanese yen. Dollarization reversed inflation, permitting the banking system to stabilize and the economy to resume slow growth after 2009. Dollarization also had other consequences, including: Reduced taxation and financial transparency, as people continued to keep their money out of the formal banking system. Extremely high real interest rates due to lack of capital. Government forced into a "pay as you go" system, unable to spend more than it takes in. Deficits of coinage for everyday transactions, leading to the adoption of South African rand coins, sweets, airtime for mobile phones or even condoms for small change. Counterfeiting currencies with which Zimbabweans are not familiar. 10% growth of the economy a year up to 2012 In January, 2013 Finance Minister Tendai Biti announced that Zimbabwe's national public account held just $217. The election budget for the July 2013 presidential election was $104 million and government budget for 2013 was $3.09 billion at a projected economic growth of 5 per cent. The Economist described the 2013 election as "rigged" and how, after regaining full control of the government, the Mugabe government doubled the civil service and embarked on "...misrule and dazzling corruption." In August 2014, Zimbabwe began selling treasury bills and bonds to pay public sector salaries that have been |
eight were captured. The ZDF considered this operation as a major failure and the code word Lemon was corrupted to mean any failure in all subsequent operations. It was further established that there were no other permanent bases in the area, only some advance posts and temporary bases used by RENAMO as launching pads for food raids into Zimbabwe. The raid was important in establishing the location of the main RENAMO base at Messinse, Chito, Nyazonia, Buetoni, Gorongosa Central Base and Casa Banana. Casa Banana Raid Intelligence sources had indicated that Cassa Banana, RENAMO's national headquarters had a strength of 400 elements. However, the organisation maintained a string of other smaller bases along the Gorongosa Mountains, which were considered as part of the main base. This raised the total estimated strength in the area to 1 000 elements. During the night of 27 August 1985, three Zimbabwe infantry battalions were established in their Form Up Points (FUP) with the help of the SAS and Commando elements. At Chimoio a Fireforce was being given final briefing, and five AFZ planes were given orders for a first light take-off for Gorongosa on the morning of 28 August. The Fireforce was divided into three sections each with one helicopter gunship, two transport helicopters and two transport aircraft with paratroopers. Each Fireforce section was detailed to attack specific suspected RENAMO positions around the Gorongossa Mountains. It was during this three pronged attack that one helicopter observed activity on the ground at the location that had been given at the briefing as Cassa Banana. Fighter jets from Thornhill, which were already in the air, began the raid on Cassa Banana. It took the entire day to conclude the raid. No official records of casualties for either contingent were given. Operation Restore Legacy In October 2017, the ZDF was involved in a coup d'état which resulted in the resignation of long-serving President Robert Mugabe and the formation of a new government under Emmerson Mnangagwa. Equipment Type 63 APC Type 85 AFV Type 89 AFV Notes References Central Intelligence Agency Reuters Central Intelligence Organisation https://www.enca.com/africa/full-statement-by-zim-army-on-state-broadcaster Operation Restore Legacy Further reading Abiodun Alao, 'The Metamorphosis of the Unorthodox: The Integration and Development of the Zimbabwe National Army' (chapter in book compiled by Terence Ranger, 'Soldiers in Zimbabwe's Liberation War'), 1995 Norma J. Kriger, ‘Guerrilla Veterans in Post-war Zimbabwe: Symbolic and Violent Politics,’ 1980–1987, Cambridge UP, 2003 External | forces of Zimbabwe African National Union-PF and the 15,000-strong Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) forces of PF-Zimbabwe African People's Union. The current manpower stands at an estimated strength of 29,000 in the Army, and an estimated 4,000 in the Air Force. Since the Rhodesian Bush War, the armed forces has been mostly involved with the suppression of non-state armed cells in a number of operations. Ministry of Defence In July 1994 the combined Zimbabwe Defence Forces Headquarters was created. Manpower In 2007, the Zimbabwe National Army had an estimated strength of 29,000 and the Air Force of Zimbabwe had an estimated 4,000 men assigned. History At the time of independence, the then Prime Minister Robert Mugabe declared that integrating Zimbabwe's three armed forces would be one of Zimbabwe's top priorities. The existing Rhodesian Army was combined with the two guerrilla armies; the 20,000-strong Zimbabwe African National Liberation Army (ZANLA) forces of Zimbabwe African National Union-PF and the 15,000-strong Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) forces of PF-Zimbabwe African People's Union. A British Military Assistance and Training Team played a pivotal role in assisting the creation of the new army, and was still in place in 2000. The Rhodesian Air Force was eventually reorganised as the Air Force of Zimbabwe. Mozambique Civil War The Mozambique Civil War occurred between the FRELIMO Government and RENAMO. The rebel group was funded by Rhodesian intelligence in the 1970s and later the apartheid South African government to destabilize Mozambique and Zimbabwe. The Zimbabwe Defence Forces got involved to protect Zimbabwe's eastern city of Mutare and the strategic railway line to Mozambique's port city of Beira which were being attacked by RENAMO. This was also seen as assistance to the FRELIMO government which had assisted Zimbabwe rebel fighters based in Mozambique during Rhodesian Bush War. Some RENAMO elements had crossed from Mozambique into Zimbabwe several times, robbing shops along the border and had burned down a timber factory. After several meetings with Mozambican officials it was agreed that the ZDF could conduct "hot pursuits" into Mozambique of any RENAMO elements that may have raided Zimbabwe. On this pretext the ZDF begun planning follow-up operations which would take them deep into Mozambique culminating in occupation of former RENAMO bases at Gorongosa. The decision to send Zimbabwean troops to fight RENAMO was partly influenced by Zimbabwe's close relationship with the Mozambican government which dates back to FRELIMO's assistance for ZANU in its fight against Rhodesia. There was also the underlying fact that FRELIMO and ZANU shared a common Marxist ideology of scientific socialism. The South Africa-backed RENAMO professed to be an anti-communist movement, as did Jonas Savimbi's UNITA movement, which was fighting against the Marxist MPLA government of Angola. There was thus an ideological alliance of the Maputo - Harare - Luanda axis, with support for these governments from the Soviet Union. Operation Lemon |
(Permanent Mission to UNESCO) Zimbabwe and the Commonwealth of Nations Zimbabwe became an independent republic in the Commonwealth of Nations on 18 April 1980. Zimbabwe withdrew from the Commonwealth of Nations in December 2003, due to international criticism of the Government of Zimbabwe's human rights record. Emmerson Mnangagwa, Robert Mugabe's successor as President of Zimbabwe, has stated that Zimbabwe will apply to return to the Commonwealth in late 2018, following in the footsteps of The Gambia returning to the Commonwealth on 8 February 2018. Sibusiso Moyo attended the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting 2018 in his capacity as Minister of Foreign Affairs. The British Government has expressed support for Zimbabwe to return to its membership of | the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979 Rhodesia only had representative offices in London, Bonn, Pretoria, Sydney, Washington, D.C. and Tokyo. Missions in Maputo (then Lourenço Marques) and Lisbon were closed in 1975 following the Carnation Revolution in Portugal. Under Robert Mugabe Zimbabwe ran a new foreign policy which operated more closely with African, Soviet and NAM states. Some white Rhodesians who have left their country following ZANU-PF coming to power have established "embassies" and offices representing a government in exile in places afar as Thailand, Iceland and London. The capital of the country, Harare, currently hosts 51 embassies. Several other countries have ambassadors accredited from other capital cities, mainly Pretoria and Addis Ababa. Several countries have closed their embassies in Zimbabwe in recent years to protest the policies of President Robert Mugabe, with the Czech Republic and Botswana being the latest to announce their intentions to do so. The information provided on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Zimbabwe's website is outdated, and due to the country's growing isolation, several embassies that are listed have closed. The information was checked on the websites of other foreign ministries to ensure accuracy. Africa Americas Asia Europe Oceania Multilateral organizations Zimbabwe has missions to several multilateral |
the Western astrological tradition. Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, three centuries after the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around 130 BC. Hipparchus's lost work on precession never circulated very widely until it was brought to prominence by Ptolemy, and there are few explanations of precession outside the work of Ptolemy until late Antiquity, by which time Ptolemy's influence was widely established. Ptolemy clearly explained the theoretical basis of the western zodiac as being a tropical coordinate system, by which the zodiac is aligned to the equinoxes and solstices, rather than the visible constellations that bear the same names as the zodiac signs. Hindu zodiac According to mathematician-historian Montucla, the Hindu zodiac was adopted from the Greek zodiac through communications between ancient India and the Greek empire of Bactria. The Hindu zodiac uses the sidereal coordinate system, which makes reference to the fixed stars. The tropical zodiac (of Mesopotamian origin) is divided by the intersections of the ecliptic and equator, which shifts in relation to the backdrop of fixed stars at a rate of 1° every 72 years, creating the phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes. The Hindu zodiac, being sidereal, does not maintain this seasonal alignment, but there are still similarities between the two systems. The Hindu zodiac signs and corresponding Greek signs sound very different, being in Sanskrit and Greek respectively, but their symbols are nearly identical. For example, dhanu means "bow" and corresponds to Sagittarius, the "archer", and kumbha means "water-pitcher" and corresponds to Aquarius, the "water-carrier". Middle Ages During the Abbasid era, Greek reference books were systematically translated into Arabic, then Islamic astronomers did their own observations, correcting Ptolemy's Almagest. One such book was Al-Sufi's Book Of Fixed Stars (), which has pictorial depictions of 48 constellations. The book was divided into three sections: constellations of the Zodiac, constellations north of the zodiac, and southern constellations. When Al-Sufi's book, and other works, were translated in the 11th century, there were mistakes made in the translations. As a result, some stars ended up with the names of the constellation they belong to (e.g. Hamal in Aries). The High Middle Ages saw a revival of interest in Greco-Roman magic, first in Kabbalism and later continued in Renaissance magic. This included magical uses of the zodiac, as found, e.g., in the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh. The zodiac is found in medieval stained glass as at Angers Cathedral, where the master glassmaker, André Robin, made the ornate rosettes for the North and South transepts after the fire there in 1451. Mughal king Jahangir issued an attractive series of coins in gold and silver depicting the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Medieval Islamic era Astrology emerged in the 8th century CE as a distinct discipline in Islam, with mix of Indian, Hellenistic Iranian and other traditions blended with Greek and Islamic astronomical knowledge, for example Ptolemy's work and Al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars. A knowledge of the influence that the stars have on events on the earth was extremely important in Islamic civilisation. As a rule, it was believed that the signs of the zodiac and the planets control the destiny not only of people but also of nation; The Zodiac has the ability to determining physical characteristics as well ones intelligence and personal traits. The practice of astrology at this time could easily be divided into 4 broader categories: Genethlialogy, Catarchic Astrology, Interrogational Astrology and General Astrology. However the most common type of astrology was Genethlialogy, which examined all aspects of a person's life in relation to the planetary positions at their birth; more commonly known as our horoscope. Astrology services were offered widely across the empire, mainly in bazaars, where people could pay for a reading. Astrology was valued in the royal courts, for example, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur used astrology to determine the best date for founding the new capital of Baghdad. However, whilst horoscopes were generally widely accepted by society, many scholars condemned the use of astrology and divination; linking it to occult influences. Many theologians and scholars thought that it went against the tenets of Islam; as only God should be able to determine events rather than astrologers looking at the positions of the planets. In order to calculate someone's horoscope, an astrologer would use 3 tools: an astrolabe, ephemeris and a takht. First, the astrologer would use an astrolabe to find the position of the sun, align the rule with the persons time of birth and then align the rete to establish the altitude of the sun on that date. Next, the astrologer would use an Ephemeris, a table denoting the mean position of the planets and stars within the sky at any given time. Finally, the astrologer would add the altitude of the sun taken from the astrolabe, with the mean position of the planets on the person's birthday, and add them together on the takht (also known as the dustboard). The dust board was merely a tablet covered in sand; on which the calculations could be made and erased easily. Once this had been calculated, the astrologer was then able to interpret the horoscope. Most of these interpretations were based on the zodiac in literature. For example, there were several manuals on how to interpret each zodiac sign, the treatise relating to each individual sign and what the characteristics of these zodiacs were. Early modern An example of the use of signs as astronomical coordinates may be found in the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris for the year 1767. The "Longitude of the Sun" columns show the sign (represented as a digit from 0 to and including 11), degrees from 0 to 29, minutes, and seconds. The zodiac symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times. Twelve signs What follows is a list of the signs of the modern zodiac (with the ecliptic longitudes of their first points), where 0° Aries is understood as the vernal equinox, with their Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian names. But note that the Sanskrit and the name equivalents (after c.500 BC) denote the constellations only, not the tropical zodiac signs. The "English translation" isn't usually used by English speakers. The Latin names are standard English usage (except that "Capricorn" is used rather than "Capricornus"). The following table compares the Gregorian dates on which the Sun enters a sign in the Ptolemaic | The term "zodiac" may also refer to the region of the celestial sphere encompassing the paths of the planets corresponding to the band of about 8 arc degrees above and below the ecliptic. The zodiac of a given planet is the band that contains the path of that particular body; e.g., the "zodiac of the Moon" is the band of 5° above and below the ecliptic. By extension, the "zodiac of the comets" may refer to the band encompassing most short-period comets. History Early history As early as the 14th century BC a complete list of the 36 Egyptian decans was placed among the hieroglyphs adorning the tomb of Seti I; they figured again in the temple of Ramesses II, and characterize every Egyptian astrological monument. Both the famous zodiacs of Dendera display their symbols, unmistakably identified by Karl Richard Lepsius. The division of the ecliptic into the zodiacal signs originates in Babylonian astronomy during the first half of the 1st millennium BC. The zodiac draws on stars in earlier Babylonian star catalogues, such as the MUL.APIN catalogue, which was compiled around 1000 BC. Some constellations can be traced even further back, to Bronze Age (First Babylonian dynasty) sources, including Gemini "The Twins," from MAŠ.TAB.BA.GAL.GAL "The Great Twins," and Cancer "The Crab," from AL.LUL "The Crayfish," among others. Around the end of the 5th century BC, Babylonian astronomers divided the ecliptic into 12 equal "signs", by analogy to 12 schematic months of 30 days each. Each sign contained 30° of celestial longitude, thus creating the first known celestial coordinate system. According to calculations by modern astrophysics, the zodiac was introduced between 409 and 398 BC and probably within a very few years of 401 BC. Unlike modern astrologers, who place the beginning of the sign of Aries at the position of the Sun at the vernal equinox in the Northern Hemisphere (March equinox), Babylonian astronomers fixed the zodiac in relation to stars, placing the beginning of Cancer at the "Rear Twin Star" (β Geminorum) and the beginning of Aquarius at the "Rear Star of the Goat-Fish" (δ Capricorni). Due to the precession of the equinoxes, the time of year the Sun is in a given constellation has changed since Babylonian times, the point of March equinox has moved from Aries into Pisces. Because the division was made into equal arcs, 30° each, they constituted an ideal system of reference for making predictions about a planet's longitude. However, Babylonian techniques of observational measurements were in a rudimentary stage of evolution. They measured the position of a planet in reference to a set of "normal stars" close to the ecliptic (±9° of latitude) as observational reference points to help positioning a planet within this ecliptic coordinate system. In Babylonian astronomical diaries, a planet position was generally given with respect to a zodiacal sign alone, less often in specific degrees within a sign. When the degrees of longitude were given, they were expressed with reference to the 30° of the zodiacal sign, i.e., not with a reference to the continuous 360° ecliptic. In astronomical ephemerides, the positions of significant astronomical phenomena were computed in sexagesimal fractions of a degree (equivalent to minutes and seconds of arc). For daily ephemerides, the daily positions of a planet were not as important as the astrologically significant dates when the planet crossed from one zodiacal sign to the next. Hebrew astronomy and astrology Knowledge of the Babylonian zodiac is said to be reflected in the Hebrew Bible; E. W. Bullinger interpreted the creatures appearing in the book of Ezekiel as the middle signs of the four quarters of the Zodiac, with the Lion as Leo, the Bull is Taurus, the Man representing Aquarius and the Eagle representing Scorpio. Some authors have linked the twelve tribes of Israel with the same signs or the lunar Hebrew calendar having twelve lunar months in a lunar year. Martin and others have argued that the arrangement of the tribes around the Tabernacle (reported in the Book of Numbers) corresponded to the order of the Zodiac, with Judah, Reuben, Ephraim, and Dan representing the middle signs of Leo, Aquarius, Taurus, and Scorpio, respectively. Such connections were taken up by Thomas Mann, who in his novel Joseph and His Brothers attributes characteristics of a sign of the zodiac to each tribe in his rendition of the Blessing of Jacob. Hellenistic and Roman era The Babylonian star catalogs entered Greek astronomy in the 4th century BC, via Eudoxus of Cnidus. Babylonia or Chaldea in the Hellenistic world came to be so identified with astrology that "Chaldean wisdom" became among Greeks and Romans the synonym of divination through the planets and stars. Hellenistic astrology derived in part from Babylonian and Egyptian astrology. Horoscopic astrology first appeared in Ptolemaic Egypt (305 BC–30 BC). The Dendera zodiac, a relief dating to ca. 50 BC, is the first known depiction of the classical zodiac of twelve signs. The earliest extant Greek text using the Babylonian division of the zodiac into 12 signs of 30 equal degrees each is the Anaphoricus of Hypsicles of Alexandria (fl.190BC). Particularly important in the development of Western horoscopic astrology was the astrologer and astronomer Ptolemy, whose work Tetrabiblos laid the basis of the Western astrological tradition. Under the Greeks, and Ptolemy in particular, the planets, Houses, and signs of the zodiac were rationalized and their function set down in a way that has changed little to the present day. Ptolemy lived in the 2nd century AD, three centuries after the discovery of the precession of the equinoxes by Hipparchus around 130 BC. Hipparchus's lost work on precession never circulated very widely until it was brought to prominence by Ptolemy, and there are few explanations of precession outside the work of Ptolemy until late Antiquity, by which time Ptolemy's influence was widely established. Ptolemy clearly explained the theoretical basis of the western zodiac as being a tropical coordinate system, by which the zodiac is aligned to the equinoxes and solstices, rather than the visible constellations that bear the same names as the zodiac signs. Hindu zodiac According to mathematician-historian Montucla, the Hindu zodiac was adopted from the Greek zodiac through communications between ancient India and the Greek empire of Bactria. The Hindu zodiac uses the sidereal coordinate system, which makes reference to the fixed stars. The tropical zodiac (of Mesopotamian origin) is divided by the intersections of the ecliptic and equator, which shifts in relation to the backdrop of fixed stars at a rate of 1° every 72 years, creating the phenomenon known as precession of the equinoxes. The Hindu zodiac, being sidereal, does not maintain this seasonal alignment, but there are still similarities between the two systems. The Hindu zodiac signs and corresponding Greek signs sound very different, being in Sanskrit and Greek respectively, but their symbols are nearly identical. For example, dhanu means "bow" and corresponds to Sagittarius, the "archer", and kumbha means "water-pitcher" and corresponds to Aquarius, the "water-carrier". Middle Ages During the Abbasid era, Greek reference books were systematically translated into Arabic, then Islamic astronomers did their own observations, correcting Ptolemy's Almagest. One such book was Al-Sufi's Book Of Fixed Stars (), which has pictorial depictions of 48 constellations. The book was divided into three sections: constellations of the Zodiac, constellations north of the zodiac, and southern constellations. When Al-Sufi's book, and other works, were translated in the 11th century, there were mistakes made in the translations. As a result, some stars ended up with the names of the constellation they belong to (e.g. Hamal in Aries). The High Middle Ages saw a revival of interest in Greco-Roman magic, first in Kabbalism and later continued in Renaissance magic. This included magical uses of the zodiac, as found, e.g., in the Sefer Raziel HaMalakh. The zodiac is found in medieval stained glass as at Angers Cathedral, where the master glassmaker, André Robin, made the ornate rosettes for the North and South transepts after the fire there in 1451. Mughal king Jahangir issued an attractive series of coins in gold and silver depicting the twelve signs of the Zodiac. Medieval Islamic era Astrology emerged in the 8th century CE as a distinct discipline in Islam, with mix of Indian, Hellenistic Iranian and other traditions blended with Greek and Islamic astronomical knowledge, for example Ptolemy's work and Al-Sufi's Book of Fixed Stars. A knowledge of the influence that the stars have on events on the earth was extremely important in Islamic civilisation. As a rule, it was believed that the signs of the zodiac and the planets control the destiny not only of people but also of nation; The Zodiac has the ability to determining physical characteristics as well ones intelligence and personal traits. The practice of astrology at this time could easily be divided into 4 broader categories: Genethlialogy, Catarchic Astrology, Interrogational Astrology and General Astrology. However the most common type of astrology was Genethlialogy, which examined all aspects of a person's life in relation to the planetary positions at their birth; more commonly known as our horoscope. Astrology services were offered widely across the empire, mainly in bazaars, where people could pay for a reading. Astrology was valued in the royal courts, for example, the Abbasid Caliph Al-Mansur used astrology to determine the best date for founding the new capital of Baghdad. However, whilst horoscopes were generally widely accepted by society, many scholars condemned the use of astrology and divination; linking it to occult influences. Many theologians and scholars thought that it went against the tenets of Islam; as only God should be able to determine events rather than astrologers looking at the positions of the planets. In order to calculate someone's horoscope, an astrologer would use 3 tools: an astrolabe, ephemeris and a takht. First, the astrologer would use an astrolabe to find the position of the sun, align the rule with the persons time of birth and then align the rete to establish the altitude of the sun on that date. Next, the astrologer would use an Ephemeris, a table denoting the mean position of the planets and stars within the sky at any given time. Finally, the astrologer would add the altitude of the sun taken from the astrolabe, with the mean position of the planets on the person's birthday, and add them together on the takht (also known as the dustboard). The dust board was merely a tablet covered in sand; on which the calculations could be made and erased easily. Once this had been calculated, the astrologer was then able to interpret the horoscope. Most of these interpretations were based on the zodiac in literature. For example, there were several manuals on how to interpret each zodiac sign, the treatise relating to each individual sign and what the characteristics of these zodiacs were. Early modern An example of the use of signs as astronomical coordinates may be found in the Nautical Almanac and Astronomical Ephemeris for the year 1767. The "Longitude of the Sun" columns show the sign (represented as a digit from 0 to and including 11), degrees from 0 to 29, minutes, and seconds. The zodiac symbols are Early Modern simplifications of conventional pictorial representations of the signs, attested since Hellenistic times. Twelve signs What follows is a list of the signs of the modern zodiac (with the ecliptic longitudes of their first points), where 0° Aries is understood as the vernal equinox, with their Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and Babylonian names. But note that the Sanskrit and the name equivalents (after c.500 BC) denote the constellations only, not the tropical zodiac signs. The "English translation" isn't usually used by English speakers. The Latin names are standard English usage (except that "Capricorn" is used rather than "Capricornus"). The following table compares the Gregorian dates on which the Sun enters a |
prohibited at the time. This resulted in some of his conclusions being false, but for many centuries it was considered heretical to challenge any of his views, so the study of anatomy stultified. During the post-classical era, Middle Eastern science and medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts from Ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and Persia as well as the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda, while making numerous advances and innovations. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus produced commentaries and paraphrases of all Aristotle's works; his books on topics like botany, zoology, and minerals included information from ancient sources, but also the results of his own investigations. His general approach was surprisingly modern, and he wrote, "For it is [the task] of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of natural things." An early pioneer was Conrad Gessner, whose monumental 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, Historia animalium, was published in four volumes between 1551 and 1558. In Europe, Galen's work on anatomy remained largely unsurpassed and unchallenged up until the 16th century. During the Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as studying the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek did pioneering work in microscopy and revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. van Leeuwenhoek's observations were endorsed by Robert Hooke; all living organisms were composed of one or more cells and could not generate spontaneously. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. Having previously been the realm of gentlemen naturalists, over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, zoology became an increasingly professional scientific discipline. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography, laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection; in this Darwin placed the theory of organic evolution on a new footing, by explaining the processes by which it can occur, and providing observational evidence that it had done so. Darwin's theory was rapidly accepted by the scientific community and soon became a central axiom of the rapidly developing science of biology. The basis for modern genetics began with the work of Gregor Mendel on peas in 1865, although the significance of his work was not realized at the time. Darwin gave a new direction to morphology and physiology, by uniting them in a common biological theory: the theory of organic evolution. The result was a reconstruction of the classification of animals upon a genealogical basis, fresh investigation of the development of animals, and early attempts to determine their genetic relationships. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery. In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics, and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the modern synthesis created evolutionary biology. Research in cell biology is interconnected to other fields such as genetics, biochemistry, medical microbiology, immunology, and cytochemistry. With the sequencing of the DNA molecule by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology, developmental biology and molecular genetics. The study of systematics was transformed as DNA sequencing elucidated the degrees of affinity between different organisms. Scope Zoology is the branch of science dealing with animals. A species can be defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sex can produce fertile offspring; about 1.5 million species of animal have been described and it has been estimated that as many as 8 million animal species may exist. An early necessity was to identify the organisms and group them according to their characteristics, differences and relationships, and this is the field of the taxonomist. Originally it was thought that species were immutable, but with the arrival of Darwin's theory of evolution, the field of cladistics came into being, studying the relationships between the different groups or clades. Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, the evolutionary history of a group is known as its phylogeny, and the relationship between the clades can be shown diagrammatically in a cladogram. Although someone who made a scientific study of animals would historically have described themselves as a zoologist, the term has come to refer to those who deal with individual animals, with others describing themselves more specifically as physiologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, pharmacologists, endocrinologists or parasitologists. Branches of zoology Although the study of animal life is ancient, its scientific incarnation is relatively modern. This mirrors the transition from natural history to biology at the start of the 19th century. Since Hunter and Cuvier, comparative anatomical study has been associated with morphography, shaping the modern areas of zoological investigation: anatomy, physiology, histology, embryology, teratology and ethology. Modern zoology first arose in German and British universities. In Britain, Thomas Henry Huxley was a prominent figure. His ideas were centered on the morphology of animals. Many consider him the greatest comparative anatomist of the latter half of the 19th century. Similar to Hunter, his courses were composed of lectures and laboratory practical classes in contrast to the previous format of lectures only. Classification Scientific classification in zoology, is a method by which zoologists group and categorize organisms by biological type, such as genus or species. Biological classification is a form of scientific taxonomy. Modern biological classification has its root in the work of Carl Linnaeus, who grouped species according to shared physical characteristics. These groupings have since been revised to improve consistency with the Darwinian principle of common descent. Molecular phylogenetics, which uses nucleic acid sequence as data, has driven many recent revisions and is likely to continue to do so. Biological classification belongs to the science of zoological systematics. Many scientists now consider the five-kingdom system outdated. Modern alternative classification systems generally start with the three-domain system: Archaea (originally Archaebacteria); Bacteria (originally Eubacteria); Eukaryota (including protists, fungi, plants, and animals) These domains reflect whether the cells have nuclei or not, as well as differences in the chemical composition of the cell exteriors. Further, each kingdom is broken down recursively until each species is separately classified. The order is: Domain; kingdom; phylum; class; order; family; genus; species. The scientific name of an organism is generated from its genus and species. For example, humans are listed as Homo sapiens. Homo is the genus, and sapiens the specific epithet, both of them combined make up the species name. When writing the scientific name of an organism, it is proper to capitalize the first letter in the genus and put all of the specific epithet in lowercase. Additionally, the entire term may be italicized or underlined. The dominant classification system is called the Linnaean taxonomy. It includes ranks and binomial nomenclature. The classification, taxonomy, and nomenclature of zoological organisms is administered by the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature. A merging draft, BioCode, was published in 1997 in an attempt to standardize nomenclature, but has yet to be formally adopted. Vertebrate and invertebrate zoology Vertebrate zoology is the biological discipline that consists of the study of vertebrate animals, that is animals with a backbone, such as fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. The various taxonomically oriented disciplines such as mammalogy, biological anthropology, herpetology, ornithology, and ichthyology seek to identify and classify species and study the structures and mechanisms specific to those groups. The rest of the animal kingdom is dealt with by invertebrate | anatomy stultified. During the post-classical era, Middle Eastern science and medicine was the most advanced in the world, integrating concepts from Ancient Greece, Rome, Mesopotamia and Persia as well as the ancient Indian tradition of Ayurveda, while making numerous advances and innovations. In the 13th century, Albertus Magnus produced commentaries and paraphrases of all Aristotle's works; his books on topics like botany, zoology, and minerals included information from ancient sources, but also the results of his own investigations. His general approach was surprisingly modern, and he wrote, "For it is [the task] of natural science not simply to accept what we are told but to inquire into the causes of natural things." An early pioneer was Conrad Gessner, whose monumental 4,500-page encyclopedia of animals, Historia animalium, was published in four volumes between 1551 and 1558. In Europe, Galen's work on anatomy remained largely unsurpassed and unchallenged up until the 16th century. During the Renaissance and early modern period, zoological thought was revolutionized in Europe by a renewed interest in empiricism and the discovery of many novel organisms. Prominent in this movement were Andreas Vesalius and William Harvey, who used experimentation and careful observation in physiology, and naturalists such as Carl Linnaeus, Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, and Buffon who began to classify the diversity of life and the fossil record, as well as studying the development and behavior of organisms. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek did pioneering work in microscopy and revealed the previously unknown world of microorganisms, laying the groundwork for cell theory. van Leeuwenhoek's observations were endorsed by Robert Hooke; all living organisms were composed of one or more cells and could not generate spontaneously. Cell theory provided a new perspective on the fundamental basis of life. Having previously been the realm of gentlemen naturalists, over the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, zoology became an increasingly professional scientific discipline. Explorer-naturalists such as Alexander von Humboldt investigated the interaction between organisms and their environment, and the ways this relationship depends on geography, laying the foundations for biogeography, ecology and ethology. Naturalists began to reject essentialism and consider the importance of extinction and the mutability of species. These developments, as well as the results from embryology and paleontology, were synthesized in the 1859 publication of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection; in this Darwin placed the theory of organic evolution on a new footing, by explaining the processes by which it can occur, and providing observational evidence that it had done so. Darwin's theory was rapidly accepted by the scientific community and soon became a central axiom of the rapidly developing science of biology. The basis for modern genetics began with the work of Gregor Mendel on peas in 1865, although the significance of his work was not realized at the time. Darwin gave a new direction to morphology and physiology, by uniting them in a common biological theory: the theory of organic evolution. The result was a reconstruction of the classification of animals upon a genealogical basis, fresh investigation of the development of animals, and early attempts to determine their genetic relationships. The end of the 19th century saw the fall of spontaneous generation and the rise of the germ theory of disease, though the mechanism of inheritance remained a mystery. In the early 20th century, the rediscovery of Mendel's work led to the rapid development of genetics, and by the 1930s the combination of population genetics and natural selection in the modern synthesis created evolutionary biology. Research in cell biology is interconnected to other fields such as genetics, biochemistry, medical microbiology, immunology, and cytochemistry. With the sequencing of the DNA molecule by Francis Crick and James Watson in 1953, the realm of molecular biology opened up, leading to advances in cell biology, developmental biology and molecular genetics. The study of systematics was transformed as DNA sequencing elucidated the degrees of affinity between different organisms. Scope Zoology is the branch of science dealing with animals. A species can be defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sex can produce fertile offspring; about 1.5 million species of animal have been described and it has been estimated that as many as 8 million animal species may exist. An early necessity was to identify the organisms and group them according to their characteristics, differences and relationships, and this is the field of the taxonomist. Originally it was thought that species were immutable, but with the arrival of Darwin's theory of evolution, the field of cladistics came into being, studying the relationships between the different groups or clades. Systematics is the study of the diversification of living forms, the evolutionary history of a group is known as its phylogeny, and the relationship between the clades can be shown diagrammatically in a cladogram. Although someone who made a scientific study of animals would historically have described themselves as a zoologist, the term has come to refer to those who deal with individual animals, with others describing themselves more specifically as physiologists, ethologists, evolutionary biologists, ecologists, pharmacologists, endocrinologists or parasitologists. Branches of zoology Although the study |
political party of semi-autonomous Zanzibar. The constitution of Zanzibar requires the party that comes in second in the polls to join a coalition with the winning party. ACT-Wazalendo joined a coalition government with the islands’ ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi in December 2020 after Zanzibar disputed elections. Geography Zanzibar is one of the Indian Ocean islands. It is situated on the Swahili Coast, adjacent to Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania). The northern tip of Unguja island is located at 5.72 degrees south, 39.30 degrees east, with the southernmost point at 6.48 degrees south, 39.51 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel, which at its narrowest point is across. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Unguja is mainly low lying, with its highest point being . Unguja is characterised by beautiful sandy beaches with fringing coral reefs. The reefs are rich in marine biodiversity. The northern tip of Pemba island is located at 4.87 degrees south, 39.68 degrees east, and the southernmost point is located at 5.47 degrees south, 39.72 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel some wide. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Pemba is also mainly low lying, with its highest point being . Climate Zanzibar has a tropical monsoon climate (Am). The heat of summer (corresponding to the Northern Hemisphere winter) is often cooled by strong sea breezes associated with the northeast monsoon (known as Kaskazi in Kiswahili), particularly on the north and east coasts. Being near to the equator, the islands are warm year round. The rainfall regime is split into two main seasons, a primary maximum in March, April, and May in association with the southwest monsoon (known locally as Kusi in Kiswahili), and a secondary maximum in November and December. The months in between receive less rain, with a minimum in July. Wildlife Unguja The main island of Zanzibar, Unguja, has a fauna reflecting its connection to the African mainland during the last Ice Age. Endemic mammals with continental relatives include the Zanzibar red colobus (Procolobus kirkii), one of Africa's rarest primates, with perhaps only 1,500 existing. Isolated on this island for at least 1,000 years, this colobus is recognized as a distinct species, with different coat patterns, calls, and food habits from related colobus species on the mainland. The Zanzibar red colobus lives in a wide variety of drier areas of coastal thickets and coral rag scrub, as well as mangrove swamps and agricultural areas. About one third of them live in and around Jozani Forest. The easiest place to see the colobus is farmland adjacent to the reserve. They are accustomed to people and the low vegetation means they come close to the ground. Rare native animals include the Zanzibar leopard, which is critically endangered, and the recently described Zanzibar servaline genet. There are no large wild animals in Unguja. Forested areas such as Jozani are inhabited by monkeys, bushpigs, small antelopes, African palm civets, and, as shown by a camera trap in June 2018, the elusive leopard. Various species of mongoose can also be found on the island. There is a wide variety of birdlife and a large number of butterflies in rural areas. Pemba Pemba Island is separated from Unguja island and the African continent by deep channels and has a correspondingly restricted fauna, reflecting its comparative isolation from the mainland. The island is home to the Pemba flying fox. Standard of living and health Considerable disparities exist in the standard of living for inhabitants of Pemba and Unguja, as well as the disparity between urban and rural populations. The average annual income is US$2500. About half the population lives below the poverty line. Despite a relatively high standard of primary health care and education, infant mortality in Zanzibar is 54 out of 1,000 live births, which is 10.0 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The child mortality rate in Zanzibar is 73 out of 1,000 live births, which is 21.5 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The birth rate in Tanzania in 2021 is high, 35.64 births per 1000 population, but the rate is falling. It is estimated that 7% of children on Zanzibar have acute malnutrition. Life expectancy at birth is 57 years, which is significantly lower than the 2010 world average of 67.2. The general prevalence of HIV/AIDS in the population of Zanzibar aged 15–64 is 0.5 percent, with the rate much higher in females (0.9 percent) than males (less than 0.1 percent). Environment The northern part of the island presents elevated volumes of trash in the streets, beaches and the ocean—mostly plastic bottles, other plastics and cigarette butts. There is indiscriminate dumping in residential areas. Medical equipment waste is a particular problem on the island. Climate change impact Studies conducted show temperatures and wind speeds have increased strongly over the last 40 years. These climatic stressors, in addition to the changes in rainfall patterns have had significant effects on the seaweed farming, causing seaweed to rot or be destroyed in the process of yielding. Economy Ancient pottery implies trade routes with Zanzibar as far back as the time of the ancient Assyrians. Traders from the Arabian Peninsula, the Persian Gulf region of modern-day Iran (especially Shiraz), and west India probably visited Zanzibar as early as the 1st century. They used the monsoon winds to sail across the Indian Ocean to land at the sheltered harbor located on the site of present-day Zanzibar City. The clove, originating from the Moluccan Islands (today in Indonesia), was introduced in Zanzibar by the Omani sultans in the first half of the 19th century. Zanzibar, mainly Pemba Island, was once the world's leading clove producer, but annual clove sales have plummeted by 80 percent since the 1970s. Zanzibar's clove industry has been crippled by a fast-moving global market, international competition, and a hangover from Tanzania's failed experiment with socialism in the 1960s and 1970s, when the government controlled clove prices and exports. Zanzibar now ranks a distant third with Indonesia supplying 75 percent of the world's cloves compared to Zanzibar's 7 percent. Zanzibar exports spices, seaweed and fine raffia. Beside the Zanzibar State Trading Cooperation, Zanj Spice Limited, also known as 1001 Organic, is the biggest organic spice exporter in Zanzibar. Zanzibar also has a large fishing and dugout canoe production. Tourism is a major foreign currency earner. The Government of Zanzibar legalized foreign exchange bureaux on the islands before mainland Tanzania moved to do so. The effect was to increase the availability of consumer commodities. The government has also established a free port area, which provides the following benefits: contribution to economic diversification by providing a window for free trade as well as stimulating the establishment of support services; administration of a regime that imports, exports, and warehouses general merchandise; adequate storage facilities and other infrastructure to cater for effective operation of trade; and creation of an efficient management system for effective re-exportation of goods. The island's manufacturing sector is limited mainly to import substitution industries, such as cigarettes, shoes, and processed agricultural products. In 1992, the government designated two export-producing zones and encouraged the development of offshore financial services. Zanzibar still imports much of its staple requirements, petroleum products, and manufactured articles. There is also a possibility of oil availability in Zanzibar on the island of Pemba, and efforts have been made by the Tanzanian government and Zanzibar revolutionary government to exploit what could be one of the most significant discoveries in recent memory. Oil would help boost the economy of Zanzibar, but there have been disagreements about dividends between the Tanzanian mainland and Zanzibar, the latter claiming the oil should be excluded in Union matters. In 2007, a Norwegian consultancy firm went to Zanzibar to determine how the region could develop its oil potential. The firm recommended that Zanzibar follow economist Hernando de Soto Polar's ideas about the formalization of property rights for persons living on ancestral land for which they probably do not have a legal deed. Tourism Energy The energy sector in Zanzibar consists of unreliable electric power, petroleum and petroleum products; it is also supplemented by firewood and its related products. Coal and gas are rarely used for either domestic or industrial purposes. Unguja (Zanzibar Island) gets most of its electric power from mainland Tanzania through a 39-kilometer, 100-megawatt submarine cable from Ras Kiromoni (near Dar es Salaam) to Ras Fumba on Unguja. The laying of the cable was begun on 10 October 2012 by the Viscas Corporation of Japan and was funded by a US$28.1 million grant from the United States through the Millennium Challenge Corporation.132kV Sabmarine Cable - Zanzibar Iterconnector at Ras Kiromoni and Ras Fumba , Featured Project, Salem Construction, Ltd. The cable became operational on 13 April 2013. The previous 45-megawatt cable, which was seldom-maintained, was completed by Norway in 1980. Since May 2010, Pemba Island has had a , 25-megawatt, subsea electrical link directly to mainland Tanzania. The cable project was financed through a 45 million euro grant from Norway and contributions of 8 million euros from the Zanzibar government and 4 million euros from the Tanzanian national government. The project ended years of dependence on unreliable and erratic diesel generation subject to frequent power cuts. Only about 20 percent of the cable's capacity was being used in January 2011, so it is anticipated that the cable will meet the island's needs for 20 to 25 years."Reliable electricity attracts investors to Pemba" , Norway: The Official Site in Tanzania, 28 January 2011. Between 70 and 75 percent of the electricity generated is used domestically while less than 20 percent is used industrially. Fuel wood, charcoal and kerosene are widely used as sources of energy for cooking and lighting for most rural and urban areas. The consumption capacity of petroleum, gas, oil, kerosene and industrial diesel oil is increasing annually, going from a total of 5,650 tons consumed in 1997 to more than 7,500 tons in 1999. From 21 May to 19 June 2008, Unguja suffered a major failure of its electricity system, which left the island without electrical service and mostly dependent on diesel generators. The failure originated in mainland Tanzania. Another blackout happened from 10 December 2009 to 23 March 2010, caused by a problem with the submarine cable that formerly supplied electricity from mainland Tanzania. This led to a serious shock to Unguja's fragile economy, which is heavily dependent on foreign tourism. Transport Roads Zanzibar has 1,600 kilometres of roads, of which 85 percent are tarmacked or semi-tarmacked. The remainder are earth roads, which are rehabilitated annually to make them passable throughout the year.. Zanzibar, to ensure the roads are passable at all times and are maintained had established a Road Fund Board, situated at maisala which collects funds and disburses to Ministry of Communication, whom is the Road Agency at this time through the Department of Road Maintenance, known as UUB. The Road Fund Board, oversees a Performance Agreement entered between the Ministry of Communication and Infrastructure, while all the procurements and maintenances are assumed by the later. Public transportation There is no government-owned public transportation in Zanzibar. The privately owned Daladala, as it is officially known in Zanzibar, is the only kind of public transportation. The term Daladala originated from the Kiswahili word DALA(Dollar) or five shillings during the 1970s and 1980s when public transport cost five shillings to travel to the nearest town. Therefore, travelling to town will cost a Dollar("Dala") and returning will again cost a Dollar, hence the term Daladala originated. Stone Town is the main hub for Daladalas on Zanzibar and nearly all journeys will either start or end here. There are two main Dala Dala stations in Stone Town: Darajani market and Mwanakwerekwe market. The Darajani market terminus serves the North and North East of the island and the Mwanakwerekwe market terminus serves the South and South East. As with most of East African transport, the buses do not run on set schedules - instead departing when full. As there is no fixed schedule, it is not possible to book tickets in advance (with the exception of The Zanzibus). There are plans of implementing a government-operated bus service on the island, which will bring the ground transportations more in line with the relatively developed water and air transport infrastructure, but there is currently no timeline available for this project. With Zanzibar visitor numbers set to top 1,000,000 annually, there will be increasing pressure on the current transportation network - the bus network will reduce the number of vehicles on the road and help reduce environmental impact of tourism on Zanzibar. Maritime transport Ports There are five ports in the islands of Unguja and Pemba, all operated and developed by the Zanzibar Ports Corporation. The main port at Malindi, which handles 90 percent of Zanzibar's trade, was built in 1925. The port was rehabilitated between 1989 and 1992 with financial assistance from the European Union. The Italian contractor, Salini Impregilo S.p.A., was supposed to build wharves that lasted 60 years; however, the wharves lasted only 11 years before crumbling and degenerating because the company deviated from the specifications. After a long legal battle, the company was required in 2005 by the International Court of Arbitration to pay Zanzibar US$11.6 million in damages. The port was again rehabilitated between 2004 and 2009 with a 31 million euro grant from the European Union. The contract was awarded to M/S E. Phil and Sons of Denmark. The then-director of the contractor suggested that the rehabilitation would last a minimum of 50 years. But the port is again facing problems, including sinking. Ferry accidents The MV Faith, which began its final journey at the port of Dar es Salaam, sank in May 2009 shortly before docking at the port of Malindi. Six of the 25 people aboard lost their lives. The sinking of the MV Spice Islander I on 10 September 2011, after departing from Unguja island for Pemba Island, was the worst disaster in Tanzanian history. In a report to the Zanzibar House of Representatives on 14 October 2011, Zanzibar's Second Vice President, Ambassador Seif Ali Iddi, said that 2,764 people were missing, 203 bodies had been recovered, and 619 passengers were rescued. It was the worst maritime disaster in Tanzanian history. A presidential commission, however, reported three months later that 1,370 people were missing, 203 bodies had been recovered, and 941 passengers survived. Severe overloading caused the ferry to sink. The MV Skagit, which also began its final journey at the port of Dar es Salaam, capsized in rough seas near Chumbe island on 18 July 2012. The ferry had 447 passengers, with 81 dead, 212 missing and presumed drowned, and 154 rescued. The ferry left port despite warnings from the Tanzania Meteorological Agency for ships not to attempt the crossing from Dar es Salaam to Unguja island because of the rough seas. A presidential commission reported in October 2012 that overloading was the cause of the disaster.Yussuf, Issa (12 October 2012). "Tanzania: Overloading Blamed for Ill-Fated Boat". Daily News (via AllAfrica.com). Retrieved 14 September 2013. Airport Zanzibar's main airport, Abeid Amani Karume International Airport, has been able to handle large passenger planes since 2011, which has resulted in an increase in passenger and cargo inflows and outflows. Since another increase in capacity by the end of 2013, it can serve up to 1.5 million passengers per year. The island can be reached by | Dar es Salaam. Over the next few years, however, almost all of these mainland possessions were lost to European imperial powers. The sultans developed an economy of trade and cash crops in the Zanzibar Archipelago with a ruling Arab elite. Ivory was a major trade good. The archipelago, sometimes referred to by locals as the Spice Islands, was famous worldwide for its cloves and other spices, and plantations were developed to grow them. The archipelago's commerce gradually fell into the hands of traders from the Indian subcontinent, whom Said bin Sultan encouraged to settle on the islands. During his 14-year reign as sultan, Majid bin Said consolidated his power around the east African slave trade. Malindi in Zanzibar City was the Swahili Coast's main port for the slave trade with the Middle East. In the mid-19th century, as many as 50,000 slaves passed annually through the port. One of Majid's brothers, Barghash bin Said, succeeded him and was forced to abolish the slave trade in the Zanzibar Archipelago by the British. He largely developed Unguja's infrastructure. Another brother of Majid, Khalifa bin Said, was the third sultan of Zanzibar and furthered the relationship with the British which led to the archipelago's progress toward abolishing slavery. British protectorate Control of Zanzibar eventually came into the hands of the British Empire; part of the political impetus for this was the 19th century movement for the abolition of the slave trade. Zanzibar was the centre of the east African slave trade. In 1822, the British consul in Muscat pressed Sultan Said to end the slave trade. Said signed the Moresby Treaty, the first of a series of anti-slavery treaties with Britain. The Treaty prohibited slave transport south and east of the Moresby Line, from Cape Delgado in Africa to Diu Head on the coast of India. Said lost the revenue he would have received as duty on all slaves sold, so to make up for this shortfall he encouraged the development of the slave trade in Zanzibar itself. Said came under increasing pressure from the British to abolish slavery entirely. In 1842, Britain told Said it wished to abolish the slave trade to Arabia, Oman, Persia, and the Red Sea. Ships from the Royal Navy were employed to enforce the anti-slavery treaties by capturing any dhows carrying slaves, but with only four ships patrolling a huge area of sea, the British navy found it hard to enforce the treaties as ships from France, Spain, Portugal, and the United States continued to carry slaves. In 1856, Sultan Majid consolidated his power around the African Great Lakes slave trade. But in 1873, Sir John Kirk informed his successor, Sultan Barghash, that a total blockade of Zanzibar was imminent, and Barghash reluctantly signed the Anglo-Zanzibari treaty which abolished the slave trade in the sultan's territories, closed all slave markets and protected liberated slaves. The relationship between Britain and the German Empire, at that time the nearest relevant colonial power, was formalized by the 1890 Heligoland–Zanzibar Treaty, in which Germany agreed to "recognize the British protectorate over ... the islands of Zanzibar and Pemba". In 1890 Zanzibar became a protectorate (not a colony) of Britain. This status meant it remained under the sovereignty of the Sultan of Zanzibar. Prime Minister Salisbury explained the British position: The condition of a protected dependency is more acceptable to the half civilised races, and more suitable for them than direct dominion. It is cheaper, simpler, less wounding to their self-esteem, gives them more career as public officials, and spares them unnecessary contact with white men. From 1890 to 1913, traditional viziers were in charge; they were supervised by advisors appointed by the Colonial Office. However, in 1913 a switch was made to a system of direct rule through residents (effectively governors) from 1913. The death of the pro-British Sultan Hamad bin Thuwaini on 25 August 1896 and the succession of Sultan Khalid bin Barghash, whom the British did not approve of, led to the Anglo-Zanzibar War. On the morning of 27 August 1896, ships of the Royal Navy destroyed the Beit al Hukum Palace. A cease-fire was declared 38 minutes later, and to this day the bombardment stands as the shortest war in history. Zanzibar revolution and merger with Tanganyika On 10 December 1963, the Protectorate that had existed over Zanzibar since 1890 was terminated by the United Kingdom. The United Kingdom did not grant Zanzibar independence, as such, because the UK had never had sovereignty over Zanzibar. Rather, by the Zanzibar Act 1963 of the United Kingdom, the UK ended the Protectorate and made provision for full self-government in Zanzibar as an independent country within the Commonwealth. Upon the Protectorate being abolished, Zanzibar became a constitutional monarchy within the Commonwealth under the Sultan. However, just a month later, on 12 January 1964 Sultan Jamshid bin Abdullah was deposed during the Zanzibar Revolution. The Sultan fled into exile, and the Sultanate was replaced by the People's Republic of Zanzibar, a socialist government led by the Afro-Shirazi Party (ASP). Over 20,000 people were killed and refugees, especially Arabs and Indians, escaped the island as a consequence of the revolution. In April 1964, the republic merged with mainland Tanganyika. This United Republic of Tanganyika and Zanzibar was soon renamed, blending the two names, as the United Republic of Tanzania, within which Zanzibar remains an autonomous region. Demographics The 2002 census is the most recent census for which results have been reported. The total population of Zanzibar was 984,625 – with an annual growth rate of 3.1 percent. The population of Zanzibar City, which was the largest city, was 205,870. Around two-thirds of the people, 622,459, lived on Unguja (Zanzibar Island), with most settled in the densely populated west. Besides Zanzibar City, other towns on Unguja include Chaani, Mbweni, Mangapwani, Chwaka, and Nungwi. Outside of these towns, most people live in small villages and are engaged in farming or fishing. The population of Pemba Island was 362,166. The largest town on the island was Chake-Chake, with a population of 19,283. The smaller towns are Wete and Mkoani. Mafia Island, the other major island of the Zanzibar Archipelago but administered by mainland Tanzania (Tanganyika), had a total population of 40,801. Ethnic origins The people of Zanzibar are of diverse ethnic origins. The first permanent residents of Zanzibar seem to have been the ancestors of the Bantu Hadimu and Tumbatu, who began arriving from the African Great Lakes mainland around AD 1000. They belonged to various mainland ethnic groups and on Zanzibar, generally lived in small villages. They did not coalesce to form larger political units. During Zanzibar's brief period of independence in the early 1960s, the major political cleavage was between the Shirazi (Zanzibar Africans), who made up approximately 56% of the population, and the Zanzibar Arabs, who made up approximately 17%. Today, Zanzibar is inhabited mostly by ethnic Swahili, a Bantu population of sub-Saharan Africans. There are also a number of Arabs, as well as some ethnic Persian, Somalis, and Indian people. Languages Swahili Zanzibaris speak Swahili (Kiswahili), a Bantu language that is extensively spoken in the African Great Lakes region. Swahili is the de facto national and official language of Tanzania. Many local residents also speak Arabic, English, Italian and French. The dialect of Swahili spoken in Zanzibar is called kiunguja. Kiunguja, which has a high percentage of Arabic loanwords, enjoys the status of Standard Swahili not in Tanzania only but also in other countries, where Swahili is spoken. Arabic Three distinct varieties of Arabic are in use in Zanzibar: Standard Arabic, Omani Arabic and Hadrami Arabic. Both varieties are falling out of use, although the Omani one is spoken by a larger group of people (probably, several hundreds). In parallel to this, Standard Arabic, traditionally associated with the Quran and Islamic faith, is very popular not only among ethnic Arabs but also among Muslims of various descent who inhabit Zanzibar. Nevertheless, Standard Arabic is mastered by very few people. This can be attributed to the aggressive policy of Swahilisation. Despite the prestige and importance the Arabic language once enjoyed, today it is no longer the dominant language. Religion Zanzibar's population is almost entirely Muslim, with a small Christian minority containing around 22 000 Christians. Other religious groups that are represented include Hindus, Jains and Sikhs. The Anglican Diocese of Zanzibar was founded in 1892. The first Bishop of Zanzibar was Charles Smythies, who was translated from his former post as Bishop of Nyasaland. Christ Church Cathedral, located in Stone Town, Zanzibar City, is a prominent landmark, and a national heritage asset. Christ Church Cathedral had fallen into poor condition by the late 20th century, but it was fully restored in 2016, at a cost of one million Euros, with a world heritage visitor centre. The restoration was supported by the Tanzanian and Zanzibari governments, and overseen by the diocese in partnership with the World Monuments Fund. The restoration of the spire, clock, and historic Willis organ are still outstanding. Historically the diocese included mainland locations in Tanganyika. In 1963 it was renamed as the Diocese of Zanzibar & Dar es Salaam. Two years later, in 1965, Dar es Salaam became a separate diocese. The original jurisdiction was renamed as the Diocese of Zanzibar & Tanga. In 2001 the mainland links were finally ended, and it is now known as the Diocese of Zanzibar. The diocese includes parishioners on the neighbouring island of Pemba. Ten bishops have served in the diocese from 1892 to the present day. The bishop is Michael Hafidh. It is part of the Province of Tanzania, under the Archbishop of All Tanzania, based at Dodoma. The Roman Catholic Diocese of Zanzibar, headquartered at the St. Joseph's Cathedral in Stone Town, was established in 1980. An apostolic vicariate of Zanzibar had been established in 1906, from a much larger East African jurisdiction. This was suppressed in 1953, when the territory was put under control of the Kenyan church, but it was restored in 1964 after independence. The church created a diocese here shortly before Easter 1980. The bishop is Augustine Ndeliakyama Shao. Zanzibar is part of the Roman Catholic Province of Dar es Salaam, under the Archbishop of Dar es Salaam. Other Christian denominations include the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Tanzania which arrived in Zanzibar town in the 1960s, and a wide range of Pentecostal-Charismatic Christian churches such as the Tanzania Assemblies of God, the Free Pentecostal Church of Tanzania, the Evangelical Assemblies of God, the Pentecostal Church of Tanzania, the Victory Church and the Pentecostal Evangelistic Fellowship of Africa. Pentecostal-Charismatic churches have been present and growing in Zanzibar since the 1980s in relation to economic liberalization and increased labor migration from mainland Tanzania in connection to Zanzibar's expanding tourist sector. There are also Seventh Day Adventist and Baptist churches. Since 2005 there is also an inter-religious body called the Joint Committee of Religious Leaders for Peace (in Swahili Juhudi za Viongozi wa Dini kuimarisha Amani) with representatives from Muslim institutions such as the Islamic law (Kadhi courts), religious property (the Wakf and Trust commission), education (the Muslim academy) and the Mufti'''s office as well as representatives from the Roman Catholic, the Anglican and the Lutheran church. Places of worship The places of worship in the city are predominantly Muslim mosques. There are also Christian churches and temples: Roman Catholic Diocese of Zanzibar (Catholic Church), Anglican Church of Tanzania (Anglican Communion), Evangelical Lutheran Church in Tanzania (Lutheran World Federation), Baptist Convention of Tanzania (Baptist World Alliance), Assemblies of God. Government As an autonomous part of Tanzania, Zanzibar has its own government, known as the Revolutionary Government of Zanzibar. It is made up of the Revolutionary Council and House of Representatives. The House of Representatives has a similar composition to the National Assembly of Tanzania. Fifty members are elected directly from constituencies to serve five-year terms; 10 members are appointed by the President of Zanzibar; 15 special seats are for women members of political parties that have representation in the House of Representatives; six members serve ex officio, including all regional commissioners and the attorney general. Five of these 81 members are then elected to represent Zanzibar in the National Assembly. Unguja has three administrative regions: Zanzibar Central/South, Zanzibar North and Zanzibar Urban/West. Pemba has two: Pemba North and Pemba South. Concerning the independence and sovereignty of Zanzibar, Tanzania Prime Minister Mizengo Pinda said on 3 July 2008 that there was "nothing like the sovereignty of Zanzibar in the Union Government unless the Constitution is changed in future". Zanzibar House of Representatives members from both the ruling party, Chama Cha Mapinduzi, and the opposition party, Civic United Front, disagreed and stood firmly in recognizing Zanzibar as a fully autonomous state. Politics Zanzibar has a government of national unity, with the president of Zanzibar being Hussein Ali Mwinyi, since 1 November 2020. There are many political parties in Zanzibar, but the most popular parties are the Chama Cha Mapinduzi (CCM) and the Civic United Front (CUF). Since the early 1990s, the politics of the archipelago have been marked by repeated clashes between these two parties. Contested elections in October 2000 led to a massacre on 27 January 2001 when, according to Human Rights Watch, the army and police shot into crowds of protestors, killing at least 35 and wounding more than 600. Those forces, accompanied by ruling party officials and militias, also went on a house-to-house rampage, indiscriminately arresting, beating, and sexually abusing residents. Approximately 2,000 temporarily fled to Kenya. Violence erupted again after another contested election on 31 October 2005, with the CUF claiming that its rightful victory had been stolen from it. Nine people were killed. Following 2005, negotiations between the two parties aiming at the long-term resolution of the tensions and a power-sharing accord took place, but they suffered repeated setbacks. The most notable of these took place in April 2008, when the CUF walked away from the negotiating table following a CCM call for a referendum to approve of what had been presented as a done deal on the power-sharing agreement. In November 2009, the then-president of Zanzibar, Amani Abeid Karume, met with CUF secretary-general Seif Sharif Hamad at the State House to discuss how to save Zanzibar from future political turmoil and to end the animosity between them. This move was welcomed by many, including the United States. It was the first time since the multi-party system was introduced in Zanzibar that the CUF agreed to recognize Karume as the legitimate president of Zanzibar. A proposal to amend Zanzibar's constitution to allow rival parties to form governments of national unity was adopted by 66.2 percent of voters on 31 July 2010. The autonomous status of Zanzibar is viewed as comparable to Hong Kong as suggested by some scholars, and with some recognizing the island as an "African Hong Kong". Nowadays, The Alliance for Change and Transparency-Wazalendois (ACT-Wazalendo) is considered the main opposition political party of semi-autonomous Zanzibar. The constitution of Zanzibar requires the party that comes in second in the polls to join a coalition with the winning party. ACT-Wazalendo joined a coalition government with the islands’ ruling party Chama Cha Mapinduzi in December 2020 after Zanzibar disputed elections. Geography Zanzibar is one of the Indian Ocean islands. It is situated on the Swahili Coast, adjacent to Tanganyika (mainland Tanzania). The northern tip of Unguja island is located at 5.72 degrees south, 39.30 degrees east, with the southernmost point at 6.48 degrees south, 39.51 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel, which at its narrowest point is across. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Unguja is mainly low lying, with its highest point being . Unguja is characterised by beautiful sandy beaches with fringing coral reefs. The reefs are rich in marine biodiversity. The northern tip of Pemba island is located at 4.87 degrees south, 39.68 degrees east, and the southernmost point is located at 5.47 degrees south, 39.72 degrees east. The island is separated from the Tanzanian mainland by a channel some wide. The island is about long and wide, with an area of . Pemba is also mainly low lying, with its highest point being . Climate Zanzibar has a tropical monsoon climate (Am). The heat of summer (corresponding to the Northern Hemisphere winter) is often cooled by strong sea breezes associated with the northeast monsoon (known as Kaskazi in Kiswahili), particularly on the north and east coasts. Being near to the equator, the islands are warm year round. The rainfall regime is split into two main seasons, a primary maximum in March, April, and May in association with the southwest monsoon (known locally as Kusi in Kiswahili), and a secondary maximum in November and December. The months in between receive less rain, with a minimum in July. Wildlife Unguja The main island of Zanzibar, Unguja, has a fauna reflecting its connection to the African mainland during the last Ice Age. Endemic mammals with continental relatives include the Zanzibar red colobus (Procolobus kirkii), one of Africa's rarest primates, with perhaps only 1,500 existing. Isolated on this island for at least 1,000 years, this colobus is recognized as a distinct species, with different coat patterns, calls, and food habits from related colobus species on the mainland. The Zanzibar red colobus lives in a wide variety of drier areas of coastal thickets and coral rag scrub, as well as mangrove swamps and agricultural areas. About one third of them live in and around Jozani Forest. The easiest place to see the colobus is farmland adjacent to the reserve. They are accustomed to people and the low vegetation means they come close to the ground. Rare native animals include the Zanzibar leopard, which is critically endangered, and the recently described Zanzibar servaline genet. There are no large wild animals in Unguja. Forested areas such as Jozani are inhabited by monkeys, bushpigs, small antelopes, African palm civets, and, as shown by a camera trap in June 2018, the elusive leopard. Various species of mongoose can also be found on the island. There is a wide variety of birdlife and a large number of butterflies in rural areas. Pemba Pemba Island is separated from Unguja island and the African continent by deep channels and has a correspondingly restricted fauna, reflecting its comparative isolation from the mainland. The island is home to the Pemba flying fox. Standard of living and health Considerable disparities exist in the standard of living for inhabitants of Pemba and Unguja, as well as the disparity between urban and rural populations. The average annual income is US$2500. About half the population lives below the poverty line. Despite a relatively high standard of primary health care and education, infant mortality in Zanzibar is 54 out of 1,000 live births, which is 10.0 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The child mortality rate in Zanzibar is 73 out of 1,000 live births, which is 21.5 percent lower than the rate in mainland Tanzania. The birth rate in Tanzania in 2021 is high, 35.64 births per 1000 population, but the rate is falling. It is estimated that 7% of children on Zanzibar have acute malnutrition. Life expectancy at birth is 57 years, which is significantly lower than the 2010 |
in sub-Saharan Africa, with 44% of the population concentrated along the major transport corridors, while rural areas are sparsely populated. The fertility rate was 6.2 (6.1 in 1996, 5.9 in 2001–02). Largest towns The onset of industrial copper mining on the Copperbelt in the late 1920s triggered rapid urbanisation. Although urbanisation was overestimated during the colonial period, it was substantial. Mining townships on the Copperbelt soon dwarfed existing centres of population and continued to grow rapidly following Zambian independence. Economic decline in the Copperbelt from the 1970s to the 1990s has altered patterns of urban development, but the country's population remains concentrated around the railway and roads running south from the Copperbelt through Kapiri Mposhi, Lusaka, Choma and Livingstone. Ethnic groups The population comprises approximately 73 ethnic groups, most of which are Bantu-speaking. Almost 90% of Zambians belong to the nine main ethnolinguistic groups: the Nyanja-Chewa, Bemba, Tonga, Tumbuka, Lunda, Luvale, Kaonde, Nkoya and Lozi. In the rural areas, ethnic groups are concentrated in particular geographic regions. Many groups are small and not well known. However, all the ethnic groups can be found in significant numbers in Lusaka and the Copperbelt. In addition to the linguistic dimension, tribal identities are relevant in Zambia. These tribal identities are often linked to family allegiance or to traditional authorities. The tribal identities are nested within the main language groups. Immigrants, mostly British or South African, as well as some white Zambian citizens of British descent, live mainly in Lusaka and in the Copperbelt in northern Zambia, where they are either employed in mines, financial and related activities or retired. There were 70,000 Europeans in Zambia in 1964, but many have since left the country. Zambia has a small but economically important Asian population, most of whom are Indians and Chinese. This minority group has a massive impact on the economy controlling the manufacturing sector. An estimated 80,000 Chinese reside in Zambia. In recent years, several hundred dispossessed white farmers have left Zimbabwe at the invitation of the Zambian government, to take up farming in the Southern province. Zambia has a minority of coloureds of mixed race. During colonialism, segregation separated coloureds, blacks and whites in public places including schools, hospitals, and in housing. There has been an increase in interracial relationships due to Zambia's growing economy importing labor. Coloureds are not recorded on the census but are considered a minority in Zambia. According to the World Refugee Survey 2009 published by the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, Zambia had a population of refugees and asylum seekers numbering approximately 88,900. The majority of refugees in the country came from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (47,300 refugees from the DRC living in Zambia in 2007), Angola (27,100; see Angolans in Zambia), Zimbabwe (5,400) and Rwanda (4,900). Zambians are generally welcoming towards foreigners. Beginning in May 2008, the number of Zimbabweans in Zambia began to increase significantly; the influx consisted largely of Zimbabweans formerly living in South Africa who were fleeing xenophobic violence there. Nearly 60,000 refugees live in camps in Zambia, while 50,000 are mixed in with the local populations. Refugees who wish to work in Zambia must apply for permits, which can cost up to $500 per year. Religion Zambia is officially a "Christian nation" under the 1996 constitution, but recognizes and protects freedom of religion. While fewer than three percent of the population still observe indigenous faiths, Zambian Christianity is highly syncretic, and many self-identified Christians blend elements of traditional African religion with their faith. About three-fourths of the population adheres to one of several Protestant denominations, including Anglicanism, New Apostolic Church, Lutheranism, Jehovah's Witnesses, the Seventh-day Adventist Church, and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints; many Zambians also observe broader, nondenominational Christian movements, such as Branhamism, Pentecostalism, and Evangelical denominations. Roughly one-fifth are Roman Catholic. Christianity arrived to Zambia through European colonialism, and its wide variety of sects and movements reflect changing patterns of missionary activity; for example, Catholicism came from Portuguese Mozambique in the east, while Anglicanism reflects British influences from the south. Following its independence in 1964, Zambia saw a greater influx of other church missions from across the world, particularly North America and Germany. In subsequent decades, Western missionary roles have been assumed by native believers (except for some technical positions, such as physicians). After Frederick Chiluba, a Pentecostal Christian, became president in 1991, Pentecostal congregations expanded considerably around the country. A large number of otherwise smaller Christian denominations are disproportionately represented in Zambia. The country has one of the world's largest communities of Seventh-day Adventists on a per-capita basis, accounting for about 1 in 18 Zambians. The Lutheran Church of Central Africa has over 11,000 members in the country. Counting only active preachers, Jehovah's Witnesses, who have been present in Zambia since 1911, have over 190,000 adherents; nearly 800,000 attended the annual observance of Christ's death in 2021. About 12 percent of Zambians are members of the New Apostolic Church; with more than 1.2 million believers, the country has the third-largest community in Africa, out of a total worldwide membership of over 9 million. Not including indigenous beliefs, non-Christian faiths total less than three percent of the population, though are nonetheless highly visible, particularly in urban areas. Followers of the Baháʼí Faith number over 160,000, or 1.5 percent of the population, which is among the largest communities in the world; the William Mmutle Masetlha Foundation, run by the Baháʼí community, is particularly active in areas such as literacy and primary health care. Approximately 0.5 percent of Zambians are Muslim, and a similar proportion are Hindu, in each case highly concentrated in urban areas. About 500 people belong to the Ahmadiyya community, which is variably considered an Islamic movement or a heretical sect. There is also a small but successful Jewish community, composed mostly of Ashkenazis. Languages The exact number of Zambian languages is unknown, although many texts claim that Zambia has 73 languages and/or dialects; this figure is probably due to a non-distinction between language and dialect, based on the criterion of mutual intelligibility. On this basis, the number of Zambian languages would probably be only about 20 or 30. The official language of Zambia is English, which is used for official business and public education. The main local language, especially in Lusaka, is Nyanja (Chewa), followed by Bemba. In the Copperbelt, Bemba is the main language and Nyanja second. Bemba and Nyanja are spoken in the urban areas, in addition to other indigenous languages that are commonly spoken in Zambia. These include Lozi, Tumbuka, Kaonde, Tonga, Lunda and Luvale, which featured on the Zambia National Broadcasting Corporation (ZNBC) local-languages section. Urbanisation has had a dramatic effect on some of the indigenous languages, including the assimilation of words from other languages. Urban dwellers sometimes differentiate between urban and rural dialects of the same language by prefixing the rural languages with 'deep'. Most will thus speak Bemba and Nyanja in the Copperbelt; Nyanja is dominantly spoken in Lusaka and Eastern Zambia. English is used in official communications and is the language of choice at home among – now common – interethnic families. This evolution of languages has led to Zambian slang heard throughout Lusaka and other major cities. The majority of Zambians usually speak more than one language: the official language, English, and the most spoken language in the town or area they live in. Portuguese has been introduced as a second language into the school curriculum due to the presence of a large Portuguese-speaking Angolan community. French is commonly studied in private schools, while some secondary schools have it as an optional subject. A German course has been introduced at the University of Zambia (UNZA). Education The right to equal and adequate education for all is enshrined within the Zambian constitution. The Education Act of 2011 regulates equal and quality education. The Ministry of General Education effectively oversees the provision of quality education through policy and regulation of the education curriculum. Fundamentally, the aim of education in Zambia is to promote the full and well-rounded development of the physical, intellectual, social, affective, moral, and spiritual qualities of all learners. The education system has three core structures: Early childhood education and primary education (Grades 1–7), secondary education (Grades 8–12), and tertiary education. Adult-literacy programs are available for semi-literate and illiterate individuals. The government's annual expenditure on education has increased over the years, from 16.1 percent in 2006 to 20.2 percent in 2015. Health Zambia is experiencing a generalised HIV/AIDS epidemic, with a national HIV prevalence rate of 12.10 percent among adults. However, the country has made progress over the past decade: The prevalence rate of HIV/AIDS for adults aged 15–49 decreased to 13 percent in 2013/14, compared to 16 percent roughly a decade earlier. Other health outcomes have also improved significantly, despite remaining poor by global standards. The maternal mortality rate in 2014 was 398 per 100,000 live births, compared to 591 in 2007; over the same period, the mortality rate of children under five dropped to 75 from 119 per 1,000 live births. Economy Presently, Zambia averages between $7.5 billion and $8 billion of exports annually. It totaled $9.1 billion worth of exports in 2018. In 2015, about 54.4% of Zambians lived below the recognised national poverty line, improved from 60.5% in 2010. Rural poverty rates were about 76.6% and urban rates at about 23.4%. The national poverty line was ZMK 2114 (USD 12.85) per month. Unemployment and underemployment in urban areas are serious problems. Most rural Zambians are subsistence farmers. Zambia ranked 117th out of 128 countries on the 2007 Global Competitiveness Index, which looks at factors that affect economic growth. Social indicators continue to decline, particularly in measurements of life expectancy at birth (about 40.9 years) and maternal mortality (830 per 100,000 pregnancies). Zambia fell into poverty after international copper prices declined in the 1970s. The socialist regime made up for falling revenue with several abortive attempts at International Monetary Fund structural adjustment programs (SAPs). The policy of not trading through the main supply route and line of rail to the sea – the territory was known as Rhodesia (from 1965 to 1979), and now known as Zimbabwe – cost the economy greatly. After the Kaunda regime, (from 1991) successive governments began limited reforms. The economy stagnated until the late 1990s. In 2007 Zambia recorded its ninth consecutive year of economic growth. Inflation was 8.9%, down from 30% in 2000. Zambia is still dealing with economic reform issues such as the size of the public sector, and improving Zambia's social sector delivery systems. Economic regulations and red tape are extensive, and corruption is widespread. The bureaucratic procedures surrounding the process of obtaining licences encourages the widespread use of facilitation payments. Zambia's total foreign debt exceeded $6 billion when the country qualified for Highly Indebted Poor Country Initiative (HIPC) debt relief in 2000, contingent upon meeting certain performance criteria. Initially, Zambia hoped to reach the HIPC completion point, and benefit from substantial debt forgiveness, in late 2003. In January 2003, the Zambian government informed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that it wished to renegotiate some of the agreed performance criteria calling for privatisation of the Zambia National Commercial Bank and the national telephone and electricity utilities. Although agreements were reached on these issues, subsequent overspending on civil service wages delayed Zambia's final HIPC debt forgiveness from late 2003 to early 2005, at the earliest. In an effort to reach HIPC completion in 2004, the government drafted an austerity budget for 2004, freezing civil service salaries and increasing the number of taxes. The tax hike and public sector wage freeze prohibited salary increases and new hires. This sparked a nationwide strike in February 2004. The Zambian government is pursuing an economic diversification program to reduce the economy's reliance on the copper industry. This initiative seeks to exploit other components of Zambia's rich resource base by promoting agriculture, tourism, gemstone mining, and hydro-power. In July 2018, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Zambia's President Edgar Lungu signed 12 agreements in capital Lusaka on areas ranging from trade and investment to tourism and diplomacy. Mining The Zambian economy has historically been based on the copper mining industry. The output of copper had fallen to a low of 228,000 metric tons in 1998 after a 30-year decline in output due to lack of investment, low copper prices, and uncertainty over privatisation. In 2002, following the privatisation of the industry, copper production rebounded to 337,000 metric tons. Improvements in the world copper market have magnified the effect of this volume increase on revenues and foreign exchange earnings. In 2003, exports of nonmetals increased by 25% and accounted for 38% of all export earnings, previously 35%. The Zambian government has recently been granting licenses to international resource companies to prospect for minerals such as nickel, tin, copper, and uranium. The government of Zambia hopes that nickel will take over from copper as the country's top metallic export. In 2009, Zambia was badly hit by the world economic crisis. Agriculture Agriculture plays a very important part in Zambia's economy providing many more jobs than the mining industry. A small number of white Zimbabwean farmers were welcomed into Zambia after their expulsion by Robert Mugabe, whose numbers had reached roughly 150 to 300 people . They farm a variety of crops including tobacco, wheat, and chili peppers on an estimated 150 farms. The skills they brought, combined with general economic liberalisation under the late Zambian president Levy Mwanawasa, has been credited with stimulating an agricultural boom in Zambia. In 2004, for the first time in 26 years, Zambia exported more corn than it imported. In December 2019, the Zambian government unanimously decided to legalize cannabis for medicinal and export purposes only. Tourism Zambia has some of nature's best wildlife and game reserves affording the country with abundant tourism potential. The North Luangwa, South Luangwa and Kafue National Parks have one of the most prolific animal populations in Africa. The Victoria Falls in the Southern part of the country is a major tourist attraction. With 73 ethnic groups, there is also a myriad of traditional ceremonies that take place every year. Energy In 2009, Zambia generated 10.3 TWh of electricity and has been rated high in use of both solar power and hydroelectricity. However, , Zambia began experiencing a serious energy shortage due to the poor 2014/2015 rain season, which resulted in low water levels at the Kariba dam and other major dams. In September 2019, African Green Resources (AGR) announced that it would invest $150 million in 50 megawatt (MW) solar farm, along with irrigation dam and expanding the existing grain silo capacity by 80,000 tonnes. Culture Prior to the establishment of modern Zambia, the inhabitants lived in independent tribes, each with its own way of life. One of the results of the colonial era was the growth of urbanisation. Different ethnic groups started living together in towns and cities, influencing each other's way of life. They also started adopting aspects of global or universal culture, especially in terms of dressing and mannerisms. Much of the original cultures of Zambia have largely survived in rural areas, with some outside influences such as Christianity. Cultures that are specific to certain ethnic groups within Zambia are known as 'Zambian cultures' while those lifestyles that are common across ethnic groups are labelled "Zambian culture" because they are practiced by almost every Zambian. In the urban setting, there is a continuous integration and evolution of these cultures to produce what is called "Zambian culture". Zambia practices several ceremonies and rituals ranging from nationally recognised traditional ceremonies to unrecognised yet important ceremonies. Many of the ceremonies and rituals are performed on special occasions celebrating or marking achievements, anniversaries, the passage of time, coronations and presidential occasions, atonement and purification, graduation, dedication, oaths of allegiance, initiation, marriage, funeral, birth ceremonies and others. Like most African countries, Zambia practices both disclosed and undisclosed ceremonies and rituals. Among the disclosed ceremonies and rituals include calendrical or seasonal, contingent, affliction, divination, initiation and regular or daily ceremonies. Undisclosed ceremonies include those practiced in secret such by spiritual groups like Nyau and Nakisha dancers and traditional marriage counsellors such as alangizi women. As of December 2016, Zambia had 77 calendrical or seasonal traditional ceremonies recognized by government, and this number will increase in the near future. The ceremonies once a year include Nc’wala, Kulonga, Kuoboka, Malaila, Nsengele, Chibwela kumushi, Dantho, Ntongo, Makundu, Lwiindi, Chuungu, and Lyenya. These are known as Zambian traditional ceremonies. Some of the more prominent are: Kuomboka and Kathanga (Western Province), Mutomboko (Luapula Province), Kulamba and Ncwala (Eastern Province), Lwiindi and Shimunenga (Southern Province), Lunda Lubanza (North Western), Likumbi Lyamize (North Western), Mbunda Lukwakwa (North Western Province), Chibwela Kumushi (Central Province), Vinkhakanimba (Muchinga Province), Ukusefya Pa Ng'wena (Northern Province). Popular traditional arts include pottery, basketry (such as Tonga baskets), stools, fabrics, mats, wooden carvings, ivory carvings, wire craft, and copper crafts. Most Zambian traditional music is based on drums (and other percussion instruments) with a lot of singing and dancing. In urban areas, foreign genres of music are popular, particularly Congolese rumba, African-American music and Jamaican reggae. Media The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting Services in Zambia is responsible for the Zambian News Agency, while there are also numerous media outlets throughout the country which include; television stations, newspapers, FM radio stations, and Internet news websites. Sports and games Sports and games are common social aspects of Zambian culture(s) that brings people together for learning, development of skills, fun and joyous moments. Sports and games in Zambia include but not limited to football, athletics, netball, volleyball and indigenous games such as nsolo, chiyenga, waida, hide and seek, walyako, and sojo. These are some of the indigenous games that support socialisation. All these sports and games are part of the Zambian culture(s). The fact that the games are played by more than one person makes them social and edutainment events. The history of some of these games is as old as Zambians themselves. However, Zambia started taking part in popular global sports and games mainly in 1964 Summer olympics. Zambia declared its independence on the day of the closing ceremony of the 1964 Summer Olympics, thereby becoming the first country ever to have entered an Olympic game as one country, and leave it as another. In 2016, Zambia participated for the thirteenth time in the Olympic games. Two medals were won. The medals were won successively in boxing and on the track. In 1984 Keith Mwila won a bronze medal in the light flyweight. In 1996 Samuel Matete won a silver medal in the 400-metre hurdles. Zambia has never participated in the Winter Olympics. Football is the most popular sport in Zambia, and the Zambia national football team has had its triumphant moments in football history. At the Seoul Olympics in 1988, the national team defeated the Italian national team with a score of 4–0. Kalusha Bwalya, Zambia's most celebrated football player, and one of Africa's greatest football players in history scored a hat trick in that match. However, to this day, many pundits say the greatest team Zambia has ever assembled was the one that perished on 28 April 1993 in a plane crash at Libreville, Gabon. Despite this, in 1996, Zambia was ranked 15th on the official FIFA World Football Team rankings, the highest attained by any southern African team. In 2012, Zambia won the African Cup of Nations for the first time after losing in the final twice. They beat Côte d'Ivoire 8–7 in a penalty shoot-out in the final, which was played in Libreville, just a few kilometers away from the plane crash 19 years previously. Rugby Union, boxing and cricket are also popular sports in Zambia. Notably, at one point in the early 2000s, the Australia and South Africa national rugby teams were captained by players born in the same Lusaka hospital, George Gregan and Corné Krige. Until 2014, the Roan Antelope Rugby Club in Luanshya held the Guinness World Record for the tallest rugby union goal posts in the world at 110 ft, 6 inches high. This world record is now held by the Wednesbury Rugby Club. Rugby union in Zambia is a minor but growing sport. They are currently ranked 73rd by the IRB and have 3,650 registered players and three formally organised clubs. Zambia used to play cricket as part of Rhodesia. Zambia has also provided a shinty international, Zambian-born Eddie Tembo representing Scotland in the compromise rules Shinty/Hurling game against Ireland in 2008. In 2011, Zambia was due to host the tenth All-Africa Games, for which three stadiums were to be built in Lusaka, Ndola, and Livingstone. The Lusaka stadium would have a capacity of 70,000 spectators while the other two stadiums would hold 50,000 people each. The government was encouraging the private sector to get involved in the construction of the sports facilities because of a shortage of public funds for the project. Zambia later withdrew its bid to host the 2011 All-Africa Games, citing a lack of funds. Hence, Mozambique took Zambia's place as host. Zambia also produced the first black African (Madalitso Muthiya) to play in the United States Golf Open, one of the four major golf tournaments. In 1989, the country's basketball team had its best performance when it qualified for the FIBA Africa Championship and thus finished as one of Africa's top ten teams. In 2017, Zambia hosted and won the Pan-African football tournament U-20 African Cup of Nation for players age 20 and under. | wars and raids throughout Southern, Central and Eastern Africa as Nguni or Ngoni tribes made their way throughout the region and is referred to as the Mfecane. The arriving Nguni under the leadership of Zwagendaba crossed the Zambezi river moving northwards. The Ngoni were the final blow to the already weakened Maravi Empire. Many Nguni eventually settled around what is today Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania and assimilated into neighbouring tribes. In the western part of Zambia, another Southern African group of Sotho-Tswana heritage called the Kololo manage to conquer the local inhabitants who were migrants from the fallen Luba and Lunda states called the Luyana or Aluyi. The Luyana established the Barotse Kingdom on the floodplains of the Zambezi upon their arrival from Katanga. Under the Kololo, the Kololo language was imposed upon the Luyana until the Luyana revolted and overthrew the Kololo by this time the Luyana language was largely forgotten and a new hybrid language emerged, SiLozi and the Luyana began to refer to themselves as Lozi. At the end of the 18th century, some of the Mbunda migrated to Barotseland, Mongu upon the migration of among others, the Ciyengele. The Aluyi and their leader, the Litunga Mulambwa, especially valued the Mbunda for their fighting ability. By the late 19th century, most of the various peoples of Zambia were established in their current areas. Colonial Period Europeans One of the earliest recorded Europeans to visit the area was the Portuguese explorer Francisco de Lacerda in the late 18th century. Lacerda led an expedition from Mozambique to the Kazembe region in Zambia (with the goal of exploring and to crossing Southern Africa from coast to coast for the first time), and died during the expedition in 1798. The expedition was from then on led by his friend Francisco Pinto. This territory, located between Portuguese Mozambique and Portuguese Angola, was claimed and explored by Portugal in that period. Other European visitors followed in the 19th century. The most prominent of these was David Livingstone, who had a vision of ending the slave trade through the "3 Cs": Christianity, Commerce, and Civilisation. He was the first European to see the magnificent waterfalls on the Zambezi River in 1855, naming them the Victoria Falls after Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. He described them thus: "Scenes so lovely must have been gazed upon by angels in their flight". Locally the falls are known as "Mosi-o-Tunya" or "thundering smoke" in the Lozi or Kololo dialect. The town of Livingstone, near the Falls, is named after him. Highly publicised accounts of his journeys motivated a wave of European visitors, missionaries and traders after his death in 1873. British South Africa Company In 1888, the British South Africa Company (BSA Company), led by Cecil Rhodes, obtained mineral rights from the Litunga of the Lozi people, the Paramount Chief of the Lozi (Ba-rotse) for the area which later became Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia. To the east, in December 1897 a group of the Angoni or Ngoni (originally from Zululand) rebelled under Tsinco, son of King Mpezeni, but the rebellion was put down, and Mpezeni accepted the Pax Britannica. That part of the country then came to be known as North-Eastern Rhodesia. In 1895, Rhodes asked his American scout Frederick Russell Burnham to look for minerals and ways to improve river navigation in the region, and it was during this trek that Burnham discovered major copper deposits along the Kafue River. North-Eastern Rhodesia and Barotziland-North-Western Rhodesia were administered as separate units until 1911 when they were merged to form Northern Rhodesia, a British protectorate. In 1923, the BSA Company ceded control of Northern Rhodesia to the British Government after the government decided not to renew the company's charter. British colonisation In 1923, Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), a conquered territory which was also administered by the BSA Company, became a self-governing British colony. In 1924, after negotiations, the administration of Northern Rhodesia transferred to the British Colonial Office. Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland In 1953, the creation of the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland grouped together Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, and Nyasaland (now Malawi) as a single semi-autonomous region. This was undertaken despite opposition from a sizeable minority of the population, who demonstrated against it in 1960–61. Northern Rhodesia was the center of much of the turmoil and crisis characterizing the federation in its last years. Initially, Harry Nkumbula's African National Congress (ANC) led the campaign, which Kenneth Kaunda's United National Independence Party (UNIP) subsequently took up. Independence A two-stage election held in October and December 1962 resulted in an African majority in the legislative council and an uneasy coalition between the two African nationalist parties. The council passed resolutions calling for Northern Rhodesia's secession from the federation and demanding full internal self-government under a new constitution and a new National Assembly based on a broader, more democratic franchise. The federation was dissolved on 31 December 1963, and in January 1964, Kaunda won the only election for Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia. The Colonial Governor, Sir Evelyn Hone, was very close to Kaunda and urged him to stand for the post. Soon after, there was an uprising in the north of the country known as the Lumpa Uprising led by Alice Lenshina – Kaunda's first internal conflict as leader of the nation. Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia on 24 October 1964, with Kenneth Kaunda as the first president. At independence, despite its considerable mineral wealth, Zambia faced major challenges. Domestically, there were few trained and educated Zambians capable of running the government, and the economy was largely dependent on foreign expertise. This expertise was provided in part by John Willson CMG There were over 70,000 Europeans resident in Zambia in 1964, and they remained of disproportionate economic significance. Post Independence Kaunda's endorsement of Patriotic Front guerrillas conducting raids into neighbouring (Southern) Rhodesia resulted in political tension and a militarisation of the border, leading to its closure in 1973. The Kariba hydroelectric station on the Zambezi River provided sufficient capacity to satisfy the country's requirements for electricity, despite Rhodesian management. On 3 September 1978, civilian airliner, Air Rhodesia Flight 825, was shot down near Kariba by the Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA). 18 people, including children, survived the crash only for most of them to be shot by militants of the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) led by Joshua Nkomo. Rhodesia responded with Operation Gatling, an attack on Nkomo's guerilla bases in Zambia, in particular, his military headquarters just outside Lusaka; this raid became known as the Green Leader Raid. On the same day, two more bases in Zambia were attacked using air power and elite paratroops and helicopter-borne troops. A railway (TAZARA – Tanzania Zambia Railways) to the Tanzanian port of Dar es Salaam, completed in 1975 with Chinese assistance, reduced Zambian dependence on railway lines south to South Africa and west through an increasingly troubled Portuguese Angola. Until the completion of the railway, Zambia's major artery for imports and the critical export of copper was along the TanZam Road, running from Zambia to the port cities in Tanzania. The Tazama oil pipeline was also built from Dar es Salaam to Ndola in Zambia. By the late 1970s, Mozambique and Angola had attained independence from Portugal. Rhodesia's predominantly white government, which issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence in 1965, accepted majority rule under the Lancaster House Agreement in 1979. Civil strife in both Portuguese colonies and a mounting Namibian War of Independence resulted in an influx of refugees and compounded transportation issues. The Benguela railway, which extended west through Angola, was essentially closed to Zambian traffic by the late 1970s. Zambia's support for anti-apartheid movements such as the African National Congress (ANC) also created security problems as the South African Defence Force struck at dissident targets during external raids. Economic troubles In the mid-1970s, the price of copper, Zambia's principal export, suffered a severe decline worldwide. In Zambia's situation, the cost of transporting the copper great distances to the market was an additional strain. Zambia turned to foreign and international lenders for relief, but, as copper prices remained depressed, it became increasingly difficult to service its growing debt. By the mid-1990s, despite limited debt relief, Zambia's per capita foreign debt remained among the highest in the world. Democratisation In June 1990 riots against Kaunda accelerated. Many protesters were killed by the regime in breakthrough June 1990 protests. In 1990 Kaunda survived an attempted coup, and in 1991 he agreed to reinstate multiparty democracy, having instituted one-party rule under the Choma Commission of 1972. Following multiparty elections, Kaunda was removed from office (see below). In the 2000s, the economy stabilised, attaining single-digit inflation in 2006–2007, real GDP growth, decreasing interest rates, and increasing levels of trade. Much of its growth is due to foreign investment in mining and to higher world copper prices. All this led to Zambia being courted enthusiastically by aid donors and saw a surge in investor confidence in the country. Politics Politics in Zambia take place in a framework of a presidential representative democratic republic, whereby the President of Zambia is both head of state and head of government in a pluriform multi-party system. The government exercises executive power, while legislative power is vested in both the government and parliament. Zambia became a republic immediately upon attaining independence in October 1964. From 2011 to 2014, Zambia's president had been Michael Sata, until Sata died on 28 October 2014. After Sata's death, Vice President Guy Scott, a Zambian of Scottish descent, became acting President of Zambia. Presidential elections were held on 22 January 2015. A total number of 11 presidential candidates contested in the election and On 24 January 2015, it was announced that Edgar Chagwa Lungu had won the election to become the 6th President in a tightly contested race. He won 48.33% of the vote, a lead of 1.66% over his closest rival, Hakainde Hichilema, with 46.67%. Nine other candidates all got less than 1% each. In August 2016 Zambian general election president Edgar Lungu won re-election narrowly in the first round of the election. The opposition had allegations of fraud and the governing Patriotic Front (PF) rejected the allegations made by opposition UPND party. In the 2021 general elections, characterised by a 70% voter turnout, Hakainde Hichilema won 59% of the vote, with his closest rival, incumbent president Edgar Chagwa Lungu, receiving 39% of the vote. On 16 August Edgar Lungu conceded in a TV statement, sending a letter and congratulating president-elect Hakainde Hichilema. On 24 August 2021, Hakainde Hichilema was sworn in as the new President of Zambia in a ceremony attended by many heads of states including the head of commonwealth it was held at the Heroes Stadium in the capital city Lusaka. Foreign relations After independence in 1964, the foreign relations of Zambia were mostly focused on supporting liberation movements in other countries in Southern Africa, such as the African National Congress and SWAPO. During the Cold War, Zambia was a member of the Non-Aligned Movement. Military The Zambian Defence Force (ZDF) consists of the Zambia Army (ZA), the Zambia Air Force (ZAF), and the Zambian National Service (ZNS). The ZDF is designed primarily against external threats. In 2019, Zambia signed the UN treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons. Administrative divisions Zambia is administratively divided into ten provinces subdivided into 117 districts, and electorally into 156 constituencies and 1,281 wards. Provinces Central Province Copperbelt Eastern Province Luapula Lusaka Muchinga North-Western Province Northern Province Southern Province Western Province Human rights The government is sensitive to any opposition and criticism and has been quick to prosecute critics using the legal pretext that they had incited public disorder. Libel laws are used to suppress free speech and the press. Same-sex sexual activity is illegal for both males and females in Zambia. A 2010 survey revealed that only 2% of Zambians find homosexuality to be morally acceptable. In December 2019, it was reported that United States Ambassador to Zambia Daniel Lewis Foote was "horrified" by Zambia's jailing of same-sex couple Japhet Chataba and Steven Samba. After an appeal failed and the couple was sentenced to 15 years in prison, Foote asked the Zambian government to review both the case and the country's anti-homosexuality laws. Foote faced a backlash and canceled public appearances after he was threatened on social media, and was subsequently recalled after President Lungu declared him persona non grata. Geography Zambia is a landlocked country in southern Africa, with a tropical climate, and consists mostly of high plateaus with some hills and mountains, dissected by river valleys. At it is the 39th-largest country in the world, slightly smaller than Chile. The country lies mostly between latitudes 8° and 18°S, and longitudes 22° and 34°E. Zambia is drained by two major river basins: the Zambezi/Kafue basin in the center, west, and south covering about three-quarters of the country; and the Congo basin in the north covering about one-quarter of the country. A very small area in the northeast forms part of the internal drainage basin of Lake Rukwa in Tanzania. In the Zambezi basin, there are a number of major rivers flowing wholly or partially through Zambia: the Kabompo, Lungwebungu, Kafue, Luangwa, and the Zambezi itself, which flows through the country in the west and then forms its southern border with Namibia, Botswana and Zimbabwe. Its source is in Zambia but it diverts into Angola, and a number of its tributaries rise in Angola's central highlands. The edge of the Cuando River floodplain (not its main channel) forms Zambia's southwestern border, and via the Chobe River that river contributes very little water to the Zambezi because most are lost by evaporation. Two of the Zambezi's longest and largest tributaries, the Kafue and the Luangwa, flow mainly in Zambia. Their confluences with the Zambezi are on the border with Zimbabwe at Chirundu and Luangwa town respectively. Before its confluence, the Luangwa River forms part of Zambia's border with Mozambique. From Luangwa town, the Zambezi leaves Zambia and flows into Mozambique, and eventually into the Mozambique Channel. The Zambezi falls about over the Victoria Falls, located in the southwest corner of the country, subsequently flowing into Lake Kariba. The Zambezi valley, running along the southern border, is both deep and wide. From Lake Kariba going east, it is formed by grabens and like the Luangwa, Mweru-Luapula, Mweru-wa-Ntipa and Lake Tanganyika valleys, is a rift valley. The north of Zambia is very flat with broad plains. In the west the most notable being the Barotse Floodplain on the Zambezi, which floods from December to June, lagging behind the annual rainy season (typically November to April). The flood dominates the natural environment and the lives, society, and culture of the inhabitants and those of other smaller, floodplains throughout the country. In Eastern Zambia the plateau which extends between the Zambezi and Lake Tanganyika valleys is tilted upwards to the north, and so rises imperceptibly from about in the south to in the centre, reaching in the north near Mbala. These plateau areas of northern Zambia have been categorised by the World Wildlife Fund as a large section of the Central Zambezian miombo woodlands ecoregion. Eastern Zambia shows great diversity. The Luangwa Valley splits the plateau in a curve north-east to south-west, extended west into the heart of the plateau by the deep valley of the Lunsemfwa River. Hills and mountains are found by the side of some sections of the valley, notably in its north-east the Nyika Plateau () on the Malawi border, which extend into Zambia as the Mafinga Hills, containing the country's highest point, Mafinga Central (). The Muchinga Mountains, the watershed between the Zambezi and Congo drainage basins, run parallel to the deep valley of the Luangwa River and form a sharp backdrop to its northern edge, although they are almost everywhere below . Their culminating peak Mumpu is at the western end and at is the highest point in Zambia away from the eastern border region. The border of the Congo Pedicle was drawn around this mountain. The southernmost headstream of the Congo River rises in Zambia and flows west through its northern area firstly as the Chambeshi and then, after the Bangweulu Swamps as the Luapula, which forms part of the border with the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The Luapula flows south then west before it turns north until it enters Lake Mweru. The lake's other major tributary is the Kalungwishi River, which flows into it from the east. The Luvua River drains Lake Mweru, flowing out of the northern end to the Lualaba River (Upper Congo River). Lake Tanganyika is the other major hydrographic feature that belongs to the Congo basin. Its south-eastern end receives water from the Kalambo River, which forms part of Zambia's border with Tanzania. This river has Africa's second highest uninterrupted waterfall, the Kalambo Falls. Climate Zambia is located on the plateau of Central Africa, between above sea level. The average elevation of gives the land a generally moderate climate. The climate of Zambia is tropical, modified by elevation. In the Köppen climate classification, most of the country is classified as humid subtropical or tropical wet and dry, with small stretches of semi-arid steppe climate in the south-west and along the Zambezi valley. There are two main seasons, the rainy season (November to April) corresponding to summer, and the dry season (May/June to October/November), corresponding to winter. The dry season is subdivided into the cool dry season (May/June to August), and the hot dry season (September to October/November). The modifying influence of altitude gives the country pleasant subtropical weather rather than tropical conditions during the cool season of May to August. However, average monthly temperatures remain above over most of the country for eight or more months of the year. Biodiversity There are numerous ecosystems in Zambia, such as forest, thicket, woodland and grassland vegetation types. Zambia has approximately 12,505 identified species – 63% animal species, 33% plant species and 4% bacterial species and other microorganisms. There are an estimated 3,543 species of wild flowering plants, consisting of sedges, herbaceous plants and woody plants. The Northern and North-Western provinces of the country especially have the highest diversity of flowering plants. Approximately 53% of flowering plants are rare and occur throughout the country. Lists, descriptions, and keys of all the plant species of Zambia, as well as several of the neighboring countries, are covered in the Flora Zambesiaca project directed by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. A total of 242 mammal species are found in the country, with most occupying the woodland and grassland ecosystems. The Rhodesian giraffe and Kafue lechwe are some of the well-known subspecies that are endemic to Zambia. An estimated 757 bird species have been seen in the country, of which 600 are either resident or Afrotropic migrants; 470 breed in the country; and 100 are non-breeding migrants. The Zambian barbet is a species endemic to Zambia. Roughly 490 known fish species, belonging to 24 fish families, have been reported in Zambia, with Lake Tanganyika having the highest number of endemic species. The country had a 2019 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 7.5/10, ranking it 39th globally out of 172 countries. Demographics As of the 2010 Zambian census, Zambia's population was 13,092,666. Zambia is racially and ethnically diverse, with 73 distinct ethnic groups. During its colonial administration by the British between 1911 and 1963, the country attracted immigrants from Europe and the Indian subcontinent, the latter of whom came as indentured workers. While most Europeans left after the collapse of white-minority rule, many Asians remained. In the first census—conducted on 7 May 1911—there were a total of 1,497 Europeans; 39 Asiatics and an estimated 820,000 black Africans. Black Africans were not counted in the six censuses conducted in 1911, 1921, 1931, 1946, 1951 and 1956, prior to independence, but their population was estimated. By 1956, there were 65,277 Europeans, 5,450 Asiatics, and an estimated 2,100,000 black Africans. In the 2010 population census, 99.2% were black Africans and 0.8% consisted of other racial groups. Zambia is one of the most highly urbanised countries in sub-Saharan Africa, with 44% of the population concentrated along the major transport corridors, while rural areas are sparsely populated. The fertility rate was 6.2 (6.1 in 1996, 5.9 in 2001–02). Largest towns The onset of industrial copper mining on the Copperbelt in the late 1920s triggered rapid urbanisation. Although urbanisation was overestimated during the colonial period, it was substantial. Mining townships on the Copperbelt soon dwarfed existing centres of population and continued to grow rapidly following Zambian independence. Economic decline in the Copperbelt from the 1970s to the 1990s has altered patterns of urban development, but the country's population remains concentrated around the railway and roads running south from the Copperbelt through Kapiri Mposhi, Lusaka, Choma and Livingstone. Ethnic groups The population comprises approximately 73 ethnic groups, most of which are Bantu-speaking. Almost 90% of Zambians belong to the nine main ethnolinguistic groups: the Nyanja-Chewa, Bemba, Tonga, Tumbuka, Lunda, Luvale, Kaonde, Nkoya and Lozi. In the rural areas, ethnic groups are concentrated in particular geographic regions. Many groups are small and not well known. However, all the ethnic groups can be found in significant numbers in Lusaka and the Copperbelt. In addition to the linguistic dimension, tribal identities are relevant in Zambia. These tribal identities are often linked to family allegiance or to traditional authorities. The tribal identities are nested within the main language groups. Immigrants, mostly British or South African, as well as some white Zambian citizens |
monocotyledons, subdivided into two families, Scitamineae and Musaceae. Based on morphological grounds alone, early systems, such as Bentham and Hooker (1883) placed the Scitamineae as an Ordo (family) of the Epigynae alliance in the monocotyledons, incorporating both of Grisebach's families. Later systems such as the Engler system (1903) and the Wettstein system (1924), also considered Scitamineae as a monocotyledon order and were influential for a long period of time. Variants included Scitaminales (Warming 1912). Hutchinson (1926), although initially using Scitamineae, later followed Takenoshin Nakai (1930). in adopting Zingiberales as the name for the order (6 families) in Division Calyciferae, although credit is generally given to Nakai. This usage was followed by Takhtajan (1966) within superorder Lilianae and by Dahlgren (1985) in its own superorder Zingiberiflorae. In contrast the Cronquist system retained Scitamineae as the name for this order with eight families, but organised the order in the subclass Zingiberidae of the class Liliopsida (monocotyledons). Modern era Using molecular phylogenetics, which was first applied to the order in 1993, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG) system (1998), (which generally followed Dahlgren, but with less divisions) confirmed the position of Zingiberales as a monophyletic order within the monocots, placing it in the commelinoid clade, as sister group to Commelinales, which Dahlgren had treated within a separate superorder. This was an ordinal system that did not examine subordinal structure. The 2003 revision (APG II) changed commelinoid to commelinid, but not the relationships, and this remained unchanged in the subsequent 2009 APG III system and 2016 APG IV system without addressing interfamilial relationships. Subdivision The order, which now has more than 2,600 species, distributed in 68 genera over eight families, has been subdivided from early times. In the Bentham & Hooker system (1883), their Ordo Scitamineae had four tribes: Zingibereae, Maranteae, Canneae, and Museae. These have become progressively divided to form the modern phyletic classification into the following monophyletic families: Zingiberaceae (gingers), Musaceae (bananas), Heliconiaceae (heliconias), Strelitziaceae (bird-of-paradise), Costaceae (spiral gingers), Cannaceae (canna lilies), Marantaceae (prayer plants), and Lowiaceae (Orchidantha). The APG II system (2003) provided a classification of families for the first time, retaining Kress's eight families. Families (genera/species) order Zingiberales Griseb. family Cannaceae Juss. (1/10 Canna cannas) family Costaceae Nakai (7/143 e.g. Costus spiral gingers) family Heliconiaceae Vines (1/194 Heliconia heliconias) family Lowiaceae Ridl. (1/18 Orchidantha) family Marantaceae R.Br. (29/570 e.g. Maranta prayer plants) family Musaceae Juss. (3/91 e.g. Musa bananas) family Strelitziaceae Hutch. (3/7 e.g. Strelitzia birds of paradise) family Zingiberaceae Martinov (50/1,600 e.g. Zingiber gingers) Based on morphology alone, the Zingiberales have been considered to form two main groups, each with four families, utilising the number of fertile stamens; Banana-families Musaceae, Strelitziaceae, Lowiaceae, Heliconiaceae. A paraphyletic basal assemblage with 5 or (rarely) 6 fertile stamens at maturity, arranged in as trimerous inner and outer whorls. In those with five stamina, the sixth may regress and be absent (Strelitziaceae and Lowiaceae, some Musaceae) or develop as an infertile staminode (Heliconiaceae, some Musaceae). Petals and stamens are often fused at the base to form a floral tube. These are known as the banana-families or the bananas on the basis of large banana-like leaves. For this reason these four families were previously all included in Musaceae, but the exact relationship between them remains some what uncertain; Ginger-families Zingiberaceae, Costaceae, Cannaceae, Marantaceae (the gingers). A monophyletic derived terminal clade with the number of fertile stamens reduced to one (Zingiberaceae, Costaceae) or to one half, with a single theca (Cannaceae, Marantaceae). The remaining components of the androecium develop as four or five elaborate petaloid staminodia, highly modified from sterile stamens. This group may have one (Cannaceae, Marantaceae) or two (Zingiberaceae, Costaceae) anther pollen sacs. The infertile stamina are homologous with the fertile stamina in the bananas and other monocots) but assume the structure and function of petals as pollinator attraction. This group demonstrate complex patterns of fusion among their floral organs including the staminodes. In Zingiberaceae and Costaceae the staminodes fuse to form a staminodial labellum which provides much of the floral display. In general the flowers of this group display higher degrees of organ fusion and specialisation. Phylogeny Using combined morphology and molecular data, Kress and colleagues (1993, 1995, 2001) confirmed the broad separation into two clades based on morphology alone, and produced an infraordinal structure. In this scheme, they divided the families of the order as follows, with the ginger group as one suborder, and the banana group divided amongst three separate suborders: Suborder Zingiberineae Kress ("gingers"; 2 superfamilies) Superfamily Cannariae Kress Cannaceae A.L. Jussieu Marantaceae Petersen Superfamily Zingiberariae Kress Costaceae Nakai Zingiberaceae Lindley Suborder Strelitziineae Kress Lowiaceae Ridley Strelitziaceae Hutchinson Suborder Musineae Kress Musaceae A.L. Jussieu Suborder Heliconiineae Kress Heliconiaceae Nakai While the two sister family groups that constitute the Zingiberineae (Cladogram I) and also the basal Strelitziineae (Strelitziaceae-Lowiaceae) sister group (Cladogram II) were strongly supported, the position of Musaceae and Heliconiaceae were not. In the above model (Model 1), Musaceae appears as the first branching family, and Heliconiaceae placed as sister to the Zingiberineae (Cladogram III). Other studies placed these and the Strelitziaceae-Lowiaceae sister group in a trichotomy with the remaining families. While a revision of the first model (Model 2) placed Heliconiaceae as the first branching lineage with Musaceae in a sister relationship with Strelitziineae, which in turn was sister to Zingiberineae (Cladogram IV). A third model (Model 3) supports Musaceae as the basal group but places Heliconiaceae as sister to Strelitziineae (Cladogram V). The failure to resolve the ancient rapid divergences of this order with multi-gene phylogenies and plastid data has important implications for understanding the evolution of characteristics. Finally in 2016 Sass and colleagues, using multiplexed exon capture were able to resolve the entire phylogenetic tree with high support. This confirmed the place of Musaceae as sister to the remaining families, confirming Model 3. Evolution The common ancestor of the Zingiberales together with those of its sister order, the Commelinales, is estimated to have originated 158 Mya (million years ago) in the Early Cretaceous, with separation of the two orders between 80 and 124 Mya, and with rapid radiation into the major lineages in the mid Cretaceous ca. 60–100 Mya and six of the eight families established by the end of the Cretaceous, Estimates of crown group age (most recent common ancestor of the sampled species of the clade of interest) vary widely between 34 and 110 Mya, and may need revision in the light of developing knowledge of the topology of the order. Fossil-calibrated molecular estimates suggest a date of 110 to 80 Mya for the diversification of primary lineages. If Musaceae is the stem family of the order, as seems likely this places the origin of Zingiberales ca. 124 Mya, with diversification occurring ca. 110 Mya in the middle Cretaceous. That origin (124 Mya) was congruent with the breakup of the southern land mass, Gondwana. Probably the ancestral Zingiberales were distributed in tropical Gondwanal and encompassing present-day Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Within this land mass, Australia seems the most likely anestral area, with subsequent dispersals between Africa and neotropical America. Earlier studies had implied Southeast Asia as | spiral gingers) family Heliconiaceae Vines (1/194 Heliconia heliconias) family Lowiaceae Ridl. (1/18 Orchidantha) family Marantaceae R.Br. (29/570 e.g. Maranta prayer plants) family Musaceae Juss. (3/91 e.g. Musa bananas) family Strelitziaceae Hutch. (3/7 e.g. Strelitzia birds of paradise) family Zingiberaceae Martinov (50/1,600 e.g. Zingiber gingers) Based on morphology alone, the Zingiberales have been considered to form two main groups, each with four families, utilising the number of fertile stamens; Banana-families Musaceae, Strelitziaceae, Lowiaceae, Heliconiaceae. A paraphyletic basal assemblage with 5 or (rarely) 6 fertile stamens at maturity, arranged in as trimerous inner and outer whorls. In those with five stamina, the sixth may regress and be absent (Strelitziaceae and Lowiaceae, some Musaceae) or develop as an infertile staminode (Heliconiaceae, some Musaceae). Petals and stamens are often fused at the base to form a floral tube. These are known as the banana-families or the bananas on the basis of large banana-like leaves. For this reason these four families were previously all included in Musaceae, but the exact relationship between them remains some what uncertain; Ginger-families Zingiberaceae, Costaceae, Cannaceae, Marantaceae (the gingers). A monophyletic derived terminal clade with the number of fertile stamens reduced to one (Zingiberaceae, Costaceae) or to one half, with a single theca (Cannaceae, Marantaceae). The remaining components of the androecium develop as four or five elaborate petaloid staminodia, highly modified from sterile stamens. This group may have one (Cannaceae, Marantaceae) or two (Zingiberaceae, Costaceae) anther pollen sacs. The infertile stamina are homologous with the fertile stamina in the bananas and other monocots) but assume the structure and function of petals as pollinator attraction. This group demonstrate complex patterns of fusion among their floral organs including the staminodes. In Zingiberaceae and Costaceae the staminodes fuse to form a staminodial labellum which provides much of the floral display. In general the flowers of this group display higher degrees of organ fusion and specialisation. Phylogeny Using combined morphology and molecular data, Kress and colleagues (1993, 1995, 2001) confirmed the broad separation into two clades based on morphology alone, and produced an infraordinal structure. In this scheme, they divided the families of the order as follows, with the ginger group as one suborder, and the banana group divided amongst three separate suborders: Suborder Zingiberineae Kress ("gingers"; 2 superfamilies) Superfamily Cannariae Kress Cannaceae A.L. Jussieu Marantaceae Petersen Superfamily Zingiberariae Kress Costaceae Nakai Zingiberaceae Lindley Suborder Strelitziineae Kress Lowiaceae Ridley Strelitziaceae Hutchinson Suborder Musineae Kress Musaceae A.L. Jussieu Suborder Heliconiineae Kress Heliconiaceae Nakai While the two sister family groups that constitute the Zingiberineae (Cladogram I) and also the basal Strelitziineae (Strelitziaceae-Lowiaceae) sister group (Cladogram II) were strongly supported, the position of Musaceae and Heliconiaceae were not. In the above model (Model 1), Musaceae appears as the first branching family, and Heliconiaceae placed as sister to the Zingiberineae (Cladogram III). Other studies placed these and the Strelitziaceae-Lowiaceae sister group in a trichotomy with the remaining families. While a revision of the first model (Model 2) placed Heliconiaceae as the first branching lineage with Musaceae in a sister relationship with Strelitziineae, which in turn was sister to Zingiberineae (Cladogram IV). A third model (Model 3) supports Musaceae as the basal group but places Heliconiaceae as sister to Strelitziineae (Cladogram V). The failure to resolve the ancient rapid divergences of this order with multi-gene phylogenies and plastid data has important implications for understanding the evolution of characteristics. Finally in 2016 Sass and colleagues, using multiplexed exon capture were able to resolve the entire phylogenetic tree with high support. This confirmed the place of Musaceae as sister to the remaining families, confirming Model 3. Evolution The common ancestor of the Zingiberales together with those of its sister order, the Commelinales, is estimated to have originated 158 Mya (million years ago) in the Early Cretaceous, with separation of the two orders between 80 and 124 Mya, and with rapid radiation into the major lineages in the mid Cretaceous ca. 60–100 Mya and six of the eight families established by the end of the Cretaceous, Estimates of crown group age (most recent common ancestor of the sampled species of the clade of interest) vary widely between 34 and 110 Mya, and may need revision in the light of developing knowledge of the topology of the order. Fossil-calibrated molecular estimates suggest a date of 110 to 80 Mya for the diversification of primary lineages. If Musaceae is the stem family of the order, as seems likely this places the origin of Zingiberales ca. 124 Mya, with diversification occurring ca. 110 Mya in the middle Cretaceous. That origin (124 Mya) was congruent with the breakup of the southern land mass, Gondwana. Probably the ancestral Zingiberales were distributed in tropical Gondwanal and encompassing present-day Americas, Africa, and Southeast Asia. Within this land mass, Australia seems the most likely anestral area, with subsequent dispersals between Africa and neotropical America. Earlier studies had implied Southeast Asia as the origin. The current distribution of the Zingiberales seems to be a product |
with the optimal strategies for each player. This minimax method can compute probably optimal strategies for all two-player zero-sum games. For the example given above, it turns out that Red should choose action 1 with probability and action 2 with probability , and Blue should assign the probabilities 0, , and to the three actions A, B, and C. Red will then win points on average per game. Solving The Nash equilibrium for a two-player, zero-sum game can be found by solving a linear programming problem. Suppose a zero-sum game has a payoff matrix where element is the payoff obtained when the minimizing player chooses pure strategy and the maximizing player chooses pure strategy (i.e. the player trying to minimize the payoff chooses the row and the player trying to maximize the payoff chooses the column). Assume every element of is positive. The game will have at least one Nash equilibrium. The Nash equilibrium can be found (Raghavan 1994, p. 740) by solving the following linear program to find a vector : The first constraint says each element of the vector must be nonnegative, and the second constraint says each element of the vector must be at least 1. For the resulting vector, the inverse of the sum of its elements is the value of the game. Multiplying by that value gives a probability vector, giving the probability that the maximizing player will choose each possible pure strategy. If the game matrix does not have all positive elements, add a constant to every element that is large enough to make them all positive. That will increase the value of the game by that constant, and will not affect the equilibrium mixed strategies for the equilibrium. The equilibrium mixed strategy for the minimizing player can be found by solving the dual of the given linear program. Alternatively, it can be found by using the above procedure to solve a modified payoff matrix which is the transpose and negation of (adding a constant so it is positive), then solving the resulting game. If all the solutions to the linear program are found, they will constitute all the Nash equilibria for the game. Conversely, any linear program can be converted into a two-player, zero-sum game by using a change of variables that puts it in the form of the above equations and thus such games are equivalent to linear programs, in general. Universal solution If avoiding a zero-sum game is an action choice with some probability for players, avoiding is always an equilibrium strategy for at least one player at a zero-sum game. For any two players zero-sum game where a zero-zero draw is impossible or non-credible after the play is started, such as poker, there is no Nash equilibrium strategy other than avoiding the play. Even if there is a credible zero-zero draw after a zero-sum game is started, it is not better than the avoiding strategy. In this sense, it's interesting to find reward-as-you-go in optimal choice computation shall prevail over all two players zero-sum games concerning starting the game or not. The most common or simple example from the subfield of social psychology is the concept of "social traps". In some cases pursuing individual personal interest can enhance the collective well-being of the group, but in other situations, all parties pursuing personal interest results in mutually destructive behaviour. Copeland's review notes that an n-player non-zero-sum game can be converted into an (n+1)-player zero-sum game, where the n+1st player, denoted the fictitious player, receives the negative of the sum of the gains of the other n-players (the global gain / loss). Zero-sum three-person games It is clear that there are manifold relationships between players in a zero-sum three-person game, in a zero-sum two-person game, anything one player wins is necessarily lost by the other and vice versa; therefore, there is always an absolute antagonism of interests, and that is similar in the three-person game. A particular move of a player in a zero-sum three-person game would be assumed to be clearly beneficial to him and may disbenefits to both other players, or benefits to one and disbenefits to the other opponent. Particularly, parallelism of interests between two players makes a cooperation desirable; it may happen that a player has a choice among various policies: Get into a parallelism interest with another player by adjusting his conduct, or the opposite; that he can choose with which of other two players he prefers to build such parallelism, and to what extent. The picture on the left shows that a typical example of a zero-sum three-person game. If Player 1 chooses to defence, but Player 2 & 3 chooses to offence, both of them will gain one point. At the same time, Player 2 will lose two-point because points are taken away by other players, and it is evident that Player 2 & 3 has parallelism of interests. Complexity It has been theorized by Robert Wright in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that society becomes increasingly non-zero-sum as it becomes more complex, specialized, and interdependent. Extensions In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. Misunderstandings Zero-sum games and particularly their solutions are commonly misunderstood by critics of game theory, usually with respect to the independence and rationality of the players, as well as to the interpretation of utility functions. Furthermore, the word "game" does not imply the model is valid only for recreational games. Politics is sometimes called zero sum. As, in common parlance the idea of a stalemate is perceived to be "zero sum"; though somewhat ironically politics and economics are as far from zero sum as can | zero-sum games. For the example given above, it turns out that Red should choose action 1 with probability and action 2 with probability , and Blue should assign the probabilities 0, , and to the three actions A, B, and C. Red will then win points on average per game. Solving The Nash equilibrium for a two-player, zero-sum game can be found by solving a linear programming problem. Suppose a zero-sum game has a payoff matrix where element is the payoff obtained when the minimizing player chooses pure strategy and the maximizing player chooses pure strategy (i.e. the player trying to minimize the payoff chooses the row and the player trying to maximize the payoff chooses the column). Assume every element of is positive. The game will have at least one Nash equilibrium. The Nash equilibrium can be found (Raghavan 1994, p. 740) by solving the following linear program to find a vector : The first constraint says each element of the vector must be nonnegative, and the second constraint says each element of the vector must be at least 1. For the resulting vector, the inverse of the sum of its elements is the value of the game. Multiplying by that value gives a probability vector, giving the probability that the maximizing player will choose each possible pure strategy. If the game matrix does not have all positive elements, add a constant to every element that is large enough to make them all positive. That will increase the value of the game by that constant, and will not affect the equilibrium mixed strategies for the equilibrium. The equilibrium mixed strategy for the minimizing player can be found by solving the dual of the given linear program. Alternatively, it can be found by using the above procedure to solve a modified payoff matrix which is the transpose and negation of (adding a constant so it is positive), then solving the resulting game. If all the solutions to the linear program are found, they will constitute all the Nash equilibria for the game. Conversely, any linear program can be converted into a two-player, zero-sum game by using a change of variables that puts it in the form of the above equations and thus such games are equivalent to linear programs, in general. Universal solution If avoiding a zero-sum game is an action choice with some probability for players, avoiding is always an equilibrium strategy for at least one player at a zero-sum game. For any two players zero-sum game where a zero-zero draw is impossible or non-credible after the play is started, such as poker, there is no Nash equilibrium strategy other than avoiding the play. Even if there is a credible zero-zero draw after a zero-sum game is started, it is not better than the avoiding strategy. In this sense, it's interesting to find reward-as-you-go in optimal choice computation shall prevail over all two players zero-sum games concerning starting the game or not. The most common or simple example from the subfield of social psychology is the concept of "social traps". In some cases pursuing individual personal interest can enhance the collective well-being of the group, but in other situations, all parties pursuing personal interest results in mutually destructive behaviour. Copeland's review notes that an n-player non-zero-sum game can be converted into an (n+1)-player zero-sum game, where the n+1st player, denoted the fictitious player, receives the negative of the sum of the gains of the other n-players (the global gain / loss). Zero-sum three-person games It is clear that there are manifold relationships between players in a zero-sum three-person game, in a zero-sum two-person game, anything one player wins is necessarily lost by the other and vice versa; therefore, there is always an absolute antagonism of interests, and that is similar in the three-person game. A particular move of a player in a zero-sum three-person game would be assumed to be clearly beneficial to him and may disbenefits to both other players, or benefits to one and disbenefits to the other opponent. Particularly, parallelism of interests between two players makes a cooperation desirable; it may happen that a player has a choice among various policies: Get into a parallelism interest with another player by adjusting his conduct, or the opposite; that he can choose with which of other two players he prefers to build such parallelism, and to what extent. The picture on the left shows that a typical example of a zero-sum three-person game. If Player 1 chooses to defence, but Player 2 & 3 chooses to offence, both of them will gain one point. At the same time, Player 2 will lose two-point because points are taken away by other players, and it is evident that Player 2 & 3 has parallelism of interests. Complexity It has been theorized by Robert Wright in his book Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, that society becomes increasingly non-zero-sum as it becomes more complex, specialized, and interdependent. Extensions In 1944, John von Neumann and Oskar Morgenstern proved that any non-zero-sum game for n players is equivalent to a zero-sum game with n + 1 players; the (n + 1)th player representing the global profit or loss. Misunderstandings Zero-sum games and particularly their solutions are commonly misunderstood by critics of game theory, usually with respect to the independence and rationality of the players, as well as to the interpretation of utility functions. Furthermore, the word "game" does not imply the model is valid only for recreational games. Politics is sometimes called zero sum. As, in common parlance the idea of a stalemate is perceived to be "zero sum"; though somewhat ironically politics and economics are as far from zero sum as can be, because they are not a conserved system. Zero-sum thinking In psychology, zero-sum thinking refers to the perception that a situation is like a zero-sum game, where one person's gain is another's loss. In fiction In the movie Arrival, the protagonist Louise Banks, played by Amy Adams, and her daughter have a conversation in a flashback, entirely based on non-zero-sum game. |
of 1978. The last addition was not made until February 1979 but development continued on bug fixes and touchups, with the last mainframe release in January 1981. The word "Zork" is a nonsense word, often used by MIT hackers as the name for any unfinished program until they were ready to be installed on the system. With the game complete, in 1978 the imps renamed the game Dungeon; by this time it was popular among gamers. That year the developers received notice from TSR Hobbies, the publishers of Dungeons and Dragons, claiming the game violated their trademark; the name was changed back to Zork. Fortran port While being developed at DM, the game's source code was protected by encrypting the files and patching the machine's copy of ITS to not allow access to the directory containing the source code. Digital Equipment Corporation programmer Ted Hess repatched the OS to allow access to the directory, copied the source directory to a TOPS-20 machine, and used a brute-force attack to decrypt the files. Bob Supnik, also at DEC, used the decrypted source to create a Fortran IV port, which allowed the game to run on the smaller PDP-11. Supnik released his version in January 1978, which was ported to many platforms. The source for these versions were taken in the era when the original game was still known as Dungeon. The Fortran version of Dungeon was widely available on DEC VAXen, being one of the most popular items distributed by DECUS, and incorporated features and changes from the original muddle version. In the late 1980s the Fortran version was extensively rewritten for VAX Fortran and became fully compatible with the last MDL release. It has one extra joke: an impassable entrance to the Mill, a reference to DEC's Maynard, Massachusetts headquarters. It also has a gdt command (game debugging technique, a reference to the DDT debugger) which enables the player to move any object (including the player) to any room. Use of gdt requires answering a random question requiring deep knowledge of the game. The game's response to a wrong answer ("A booming voice says 'Wrong, cretin!' and you notice that you have turned into a pile of dust") appears in many "fortune cookie" databases. The Fortran version was also included in the distribution media for some Data General operating systems. It was used as an acceptance test to verify that the OS had been correctly installed. Being able to compile, link, and run the program demonstrated that all of the run-time libraries, compiler, and link editor were installed in the correct locations. A Fortran version was running in an IBM 370 port in the Constituyentes Atomic Center, Argentina, around 1984. Infocom forms In 1979 three of the four original imps founded Infocom as a general programming firm. Two other members of the DM team, Joel Berez and Marc Blank, convinced the founders that it was possible to sell Zork commercially on new personal computers. Such systems, however, did not support MDL, usually did not have a Fortran compiler, and used floppy disk systems storing about 180 kB or even using cassette tapes for storage. Berez and Blank came up with the idea of creating a new computer programming language, "Zork Implementation Language" or "ZIL", which would run within a virtual machine known as the Z-machine. The Z-machine would be ported to various platforms in shells known as the "Z-machine Interpreter Program" or ZIP. Using rented time on a TOPS-20 machine, they built the first ZIP in 1979. To solve the problem of storage space, they first considered using data compression but decided to remove sections of the game until it would fit on a floppy disk. Dave Lebling drew a circle on the Zork map so it contained about half of the original map, about 100 or so locations including everything above ground and a large section surrounding the Round Room. The map was modified to make it more logical and seal off exits that led to no longer-existing areas. Berez became the president of Infocom. The new game was running on TOPS-20 ZIP and a new PDP-11 version of the Z-machine by the end of 1979. Scott Cutler created a TRS-80 version of ZIP in early 1980, and in February the company demonstrated Zork to Personal Software (PS), the distributors of VisiCalc and likely the first software distribution firm for microcomputers. PS agreed to distribute the game in June. Sales begin PS had no interest in the PDP-11 version so Infocom retained the distribution rights; it became the first official sale for the company in November 1980, when it shipped a copy on 8-inch floppy along with a hand-copied version of the manual. Sales of the TRS-80 version through PS began the next month, selling 1,500 copies over the next nine months. Bruce Daniels' Apple II version began sales in February 1981 and PS sold 6,000 copies by September. After Zork began shipping, Lebling began converting the remaining half of the map to ZIL. It was divided into two parts, both modified from the original, to be released as Zork II and Zork III. While Zork I is very similar to the first half of the original game, the sequels are very different from the second half; for example, in II the player cannot return to the white house. Zork II was offered to PS in April and licensed in June 1981, but Infocom worried about PS's commitment to the game. Although the company did not know, sales of VisiCalc were so strong that PS began discontinuing other software to become VisiCorp. Infocom took over distribution in October, releasing both the renamed Zork I and Zork II in November 1981. In 1982 the company completed the port of Zork III and wrote new ZIPs for Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the CP/M systems, and the IBM PC. Zork III shipped on all platforms in the fall of 1982. When Zork became a commercial product at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. It, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions. Reception The Zork series was very successful. Infocom sold more than 250,000 copies of the first three games by 1984, and more than 680,000 copies through 1986, or about one third of Infocom's total game sales. , two million copies had been sold. In 1996, Next Generation listed all the text adventure installments of the series collectively as number 38 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", praising their AI, puzzles, humor, and writing. They further argued that "text adventures in general, and Zork in particular, can offer a greater variety of puzzles, more explorable areas, and better plot development than graphic adventures." [emphasis in original] In 1999, Next Generation listed the Zork series as number 48 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Never mind the great writing or humorous tone that Zork and its direct descendants products, the puzzles that the Zork series offers have yet to be matched by most modern adventure games". Zork I Zork Is sales surprised Infocom by rising, not falling, over time; many dealers sold the game as an essential accessory to those purchasing new computers. It was the best-selling game of 1982, with 32,000 copies sold by the first half of that year; almost 100,000 copies in 1983; more than 150,000 copies in 1984, comprising more than 20% of Infocom's sales that year; and a total of 378,987 copies by 1986. It was so popular that a hint book was printed in invisible ink to guide players through the world without unnecessary spoilers. Zork II Zork II sold 173,204 copies by 1986. Zork III Zork III sold 129,232 copies by 1986. Legacy Sequels The Enchanter trilogy: Enchanter (1983, Infocom) Sorcerer (1984, Infocom) Spellbreaker (1985, Infocom) Games that take place somewhere in the Zork universe: Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams (1985, Infocom) | known as the Z-machine. The Z-machine would be ported to various platforms in shells known as the "Z-machine Interpreter Program" or ZIP. Using rented time on a TOPS-20 machine, they built the first ZIP in 1979. To solve the problem of storage space, they first considered using data compression but decided to remove sections of the game until it would fit on a floppy disk. Dave Lebling drew a circle on the Zork map so it contained about half of the original map, about 100 or so locations including everything above ground and a large section surrounding the Round Room. The map was modified to make it more logical and seal off exits that led to no longer-existing areas. Berez became the president of Infocom. The new game was running on TOPS-20 ZIP and a new PDP-11 version of the Z-machine by the end of 1979. Scott Cutler created a TRS-80 version of ZIP in early 1980, and in February the company demonstrated Zork to Personal Software (PS), the distributors of VisiCalc and likely the first software distribution firm for microcomputers. PS agreed to distribute the game in June. Sales begin PS had no interest in the PDP-11 version so Infocom retained the distribution rights; it became the first official sale for the company in November 1980, when it shipped a copy on 8-inch floppy along with a hand-copied version of the manual. Sales of the TRS-80 version through PS began the next month, selling 1,500 copies over the next nine months. Bruce Daniels' Apple II version began sales in February 1981 and PS sold 6,000 copies by September. After Zork began shipping, Lebling began converting the remaining half of the map to ZIL. It was divided into two parts, both modified from the original, to be released as Zork II and Zork III. While Zork I is very similar to the first half of the original game, the sequels are very different from the second half; for example, in II the player cannot return to the white house. Zork II was offered to PS in April and licensed in June 1981, but Infocom worried about PS's commitment to the game. Although the company did not know, sales of VisiCalc were so strong that PS began discontinuing other software to become VisiCorp. Infocom took over distribution in October, releasing both the renamed Zork I and Zork II in November 1981. In 1982 the company completed the port of Zork III and wrote new ZIPs for Commodore 64, the Atari 8-bit family, the CP/M systems, and the IBM PC. Zork III shipped on all platforms in the fall of 1982. When Zork became a commercial product at Infocom, Infocom agreed that if an Infocom copyright notice was put on the Fortran version, noncommercial distribution would be allowed. It, and C translations thereof, have been included in several Linux distributions. Reception The Zork series was very successful. Infocom sold more than 250,000 copies of the first three games by 1984, and more than 680,000 copies through 1986, or about one third of Infocom's total game sales. , two million copies had been sold. In 1996, Next Generation listed all the text adventure installments of the series collectively as number 38 on their "Top 100 Games of All Time", praising their AI, puzzles, humor, and writing. They further argued that "text adventures in general, and Zork in particular, can offer a greater variety of puzzles, more explorable areas, and better plot development than graphic adventures." [emphasis in original] In 1999, Next Generation listed the Zork series as number 48 on their "Top 50 Games of All Time", commenting that, "Never mind the great writing or humorous tone that Zork and its direct descendants products, the puzzles that the Zork series offers have yet to be matched by most modern adventure games". Zork I Zork Is sales surprised Infocom by rising, not falling, over time; many dealers sold the game as an essential accessory to those purchasing new computers. It was the best-selling game of 1982, with 32,000 copies sold by the first half of that year; almost 100,000 copies in 1983; more than 150,000 copies in 1984, comprising more than 20% of Infocom's sales that year; and a total of 378,987 copies by 1986. It was so popular that a hint book was printed in invisible ink to guide players through the world without unnecessary spoilers. Zork II Zork II sold 173,204 copies by 1986. Zork III Zork III sold 129,232 copies by 1986. Legacy Sequels The Enchanter trilogy: Enchanter (1983, Infocom) Sorcerer (1984, Infocom) Spellbreaker (1985, Infocom) Games that take place somewhere in the Zork universe: Wishbringer: The Magick Stone of Dreams (1985, Infocom) The Zork Anthology comprises the original Zork Trilogy plus: Beyond Zork: The Coconut of Quendor (1987, Infocom) Zork Zero: The Revenge of Megaboz (1988, Infocom) The Zork Quest series: Zork Quest: Assault on Egreth Castle (1988, Infocom, interactive computer comic book) Zork Quest: The Crystal of Doom (1989, Infocom, interactive computer comic book) After a five-year hiatus, the following games were produced: Return to Zork (1993, Infocom/Activision), the first fully graphical Zork adventure, with a point-and-click interface and video footage The Philosopher's Stone (Activision, unfinished text prequel to Zork Nemesis) Zork Nemesis: The Forbidden Lands (1996, Activision) Zork: The Undiscovered Underground (1997, written by Michael Berlyn and Marc Blank (original Infocom implementors) and released by Activision to promote the release of Zork: Grand Inquisitor) Zork: Grand Inquisitor (1997, Activision) |
of [Ar]3d104s2 and is a member of the group 12 of the periodic table. It is a moderately reactive metal and strong reducing agent. The surface of the pure metal tarnishes quickly, eventually forming a protective passivating layer of the basic zinc carbonate, , by reaction with atmospheric carbon dioxide. Zinc burns in air with a bright bluish-green flame, giving off fumes of zinc oxide. Zinc reacts readily with acids, alkalis and other non-metals. Extremely pure zinc reacts only slowly at room temperature with acids. Strong acids, such as hydrochloric or sulfuric acid, can remove the passivating layer and the subsequent reaction with the acid releases hydrogen gas. The chemistry of zinc is dominated by the +2 oxidation state. When compounds in this oxidation state are formed, the outer shell s electrons are lost, yielding a bare zinc ion with the electronic configuration [Ar]3d10. In aqueous solution an octahedral complex, is the predominant species. The volatilization of zinc in combination with zinc chloride at temperatures above 285 °C indicates the formation of , a zinc compound with a +1 oxidation state. No compounds of zinc in positive oxidation states other than +1 or +2 are known. Calculations indicate that a zinc compound with the oxidation state of +4 is unlikely to exist. Zn(III) is predicted to exist in the presence of strongly electronegative trianions; however, there exists some doubt around this possibility. But in 2021 another compound was reported with more evidence that had the oxidation state of +3 with the formula ZnBeB11(CN)12. Zinc chemistry is similar to the chemistry of the late first-row transition metals, nickel and copper, though it has a filled d-shell and compounds are diamagnetic and mostly colorless. The ionic radii of zinc and magnesium happen to be nearly identical. Because of this some of the equivalent salts have the same crystal structure, and in other circumstances where ionic radius is a determining factor, the chemistry of zinc has much in common with that of magnesium. In other respects, there is little similarity with the late first-row transition metals. Zinc tends to form bonds with a greater degree of covalency and much more stable complexes with N- and S- donors. Complexes of zinc are mostly 4- or 6- coordinate, although 5-coordinate complexes are known. Zinc(I) compounds Zinc(I) compounds are rare and need bulky ligands to stabilize the low oxidation state. Most zinc(I) compounds contain formally the [Zn2]2+ core, which is analogous to the [Hg2]2+ dimeric cation present in mercury(I) compounds. The diamagnetic nature of the ion confirms its dimeric structure. The first zinc(I) compound containing the Zn–Zn bond, (η5-C5Me5)2Zn2, is also the first dimetallocene. The [Zn2]2+ ion rapidly disproportionates into zinc metal and zinc(II), and has been obtained only a yellow glass only by cooling a solution of metallic zinc in molten ZnCl2. Zinc(II) compounds Binary compounds of zinc are known for most of the metalloids and all the nonmetals except the noble gases. The oxide ZnO is a white powder that is nearly insoluble in neutral aqueous solutions, but is amphoteric, dissolving in both strong basic and acidic solutions. The other chalcogenides (ZnS, ZnSe, and ZnTe) have varied applications in electronics and optics. Pnictogenides (, , and ), the peroxide (), the hydride (), and the carbide () are also known. Of the four halides, has the most ionic character, while the others (, , and ) have relatively low melting points and are considered to have more covalent character. In weak basic solutions containing ions, the hydroxide forms as a white precipitate. In stronger alkaline solutions, this hydroxide is dissolved to form zincates (). The nitrate , chlorate , sulfate , phosphate , molybdate , cyanide , arsenite , arsenate and the chromate (one of the few colored zinc compounds) are a few examples of other common inorganic compounds of zinc. One of the simplest examples of an organic compound of zinc is the acetate (). Organozinc compounds are those that contain zinc–carbon covalent bonds. Diethylzinc () is a reagent in synthetic chemistry. It was first reported in 1848 from the reaction of zinc and ethyl iodide, and was the first compound known to contain a metal–carbon sigma bond. Test for zinc Cobalticyanide paper (Rinnmann's test for Zn) can be used as a chemical indicator for zinc. 4 g of K3Co(CN)6 and 1 g of KClO3 is dissolved on 100 ml of water. Paper is dipped in the solution and dried at 100 °C. One drop of the sample is dropped onto the dry paper and heated. A green disc indicates the presence of zinc. History Ancient use The Charaka Samhita, thought to have been written between 300 and 500 AD, mentions a metal which, when oxidized, produces pushpanjan, thought to be zinc oxide. Zinc mines at Zawar, near Udaipur in India, have been active since the Mauryan period ( and 187 BCE). The smelting of metallic zinc here, however, appears to have begun around the 12th century AD. One estimate is that this location produced an estimated million tonnes of metallic zinc and zinc oxide from the 12th to 16th centuries. Another estimate gives a total production of 60,000 tonnes of metallic zinc over this period. The Rasaratna Samuccaya, written in approximately the 13th century AD, mentions two types of zinc-containing ores: one used for metal extraction and another used for medicinal purposes. Various isolated examples of the use of impure zinc in ancient times have been discovered. Zinc ores were used to make the zinc–copper alloy brass thousands of years prior to the discovery of zinc as a separate element. Judean brass from the 14th to 10th centuries BC contains 23% zinc. Knowledge of how to produce brass spread to Ancient Greece by the 7th century BC, but few varieties were made. Ornaments made of alloys containing 80–90% zinc, with lead, iron, antimony, and other metals making up the remainder, have been found that are 2,500 years old. A possibly prehistoric statuette containing 87.5% zinc was found in a Dacian archaeological site. The oldest known pills were made of the zinc carbonates hydrozincite and smithsonite. The pills were used for sore eyes and were found aboard the Roman ship Relitto del Pozzino, wrecked in 140 BC. The manufacture of brass was known to the Romans by about 30 BC. They made brass by heating powdered calamine (zinc silicate or carbonate), charcoal and copper together in a crucible. The resulting calamine brass was then either cast or hammered into shape for use in weaponry. Some coins struck by Romans in the Christian era are made of what is probably calamine brass. Strabo writing in the 1st century BC (but quoting a now lost work of the 4th century BC historian Theopompus) mentions "drops of false silver" which when mixed with copper make brass. This may refer to small quantities of zinc that is a by-product of smelting sulfide ores. Zinc in such remnants in smelting ovens was usually discarded as it was thought to be worthless. The Berne zinc tablet is a votive plaque dating to Roman Gaul made of an alloy that is mostly zinc. Early studies and naming Zinc was distinctly recognized as a metal under the designation of Yasada or Jasada in the medical Lexicon ascribed to the Hindu king Madanapala (of Taka dynasty) and written about the year 1374. Smelting and extraction of impure zinc by reducing calamine with wool and other organic substances was accomplished in the 13th century in India. The Chinese did not learn of the technique until the 17th century. Alchemists burned zinc metal in air and collected the resulting zinc oxide on a condenser. Some alchemists called this zinc oxide lana philosophica, Latin for "philosopher's wool", because it collected in wooly tufts, whereas others thought it looked like white snow and named it nix album. The name of the metal was probably first documented by Paracelsus, a Swiss-born German alchemist, who referred to the metal as "zincum" or "zinken" in his book Liber Mineralium II, in the 16th century. The word is probably derived from the German , and supposedly meant "tooth-like, pointed or jagged" (metallic zinc crystals have a needle-like appearance). Zink could also imply "tin-like" because of its relation to German zinn meaning tin. Yet another possibility is that the word is derived from the Persian word seng meaning stone. The metal was also called Indian tin, tutanego, calamine, and spinter. German metallurgist Andreas Libavius received a quantity of what he called "calay" of Malabar from a cargo ship captured from the Portuguese in the year 1596. Libavius described the properties of the sample, which may have been zinc. Zinc was regularly imported to Europe from the Orient in the 17th and early 18th centuries, but was at times very expensive. Isolation Metallic zinc was isolated in India by 1300 AD, much earlier than in the West. Before it was isolated in Europe, it was imported from India in about 1600 CE. Postlewayt's Universal Dictionary, a contemporary source giving technological information in Europe, did not mention zinc before 1751 but the element was studied before then. Flemish metallurgist and alchemist P. M. de Respour reported that he had extracted metallic zinc from zinc oxide in 1668. By the start of the 18th century, Étienne François Geoffroy described how zinc oxide condenses as yellow crystals on bars of iron placed above zinc ore that is being smelted. In Britain, John Lane is said to have carried out experiments to smelt zinc, probably at Landore, prior to his bankruptcy in 1726. In 1738 in Great Britain, William Champion patented a process to extract zinc from calamine in a vertical retort-style smelter. His technique resembled that used at Zawar zinc mines in Rajasthan, but no evidence suggests he visited the Orient. Champion's process was used through 1851. German chemist Andreas Marggraf normally gets credit for discovering pure metallic zinc, even though Swedish chemist Anton von Swab had distilled zinc from calamine four years previously. In his 1746 experiment, Marggraf heated a mixture of calamine and charcoal in a closed vessel without copper to obtain a metal. This procedure became commercially practical by 1752. Later work William Champion's brother, John, patented a process in 1758 for calcining zinc sulfide into an oxide usable in the retort process. Prior to this, only calamine could be used to produce zinc. In 1798, Johann Christian Ruberg improved on the smelting process by building the first horizontal retort smelter. Jean-Jacques Daniel Dony built a different kind of horizontal zinc smelter in Belgium that processed even more zinc. Italian doctor Luigi Galvani discovered in 1780 that connecting the spinal cord of a freshly dissected frog to an iron rail attached by a brass hook caused the frog's leg to twitch. He incorrectly thought he had discovered an ability of nerves and muscles to create electricity and called the effect "animal electricity". The galvanic cell and the process of galvanization were both named for Luigi Galvani, and his discoveries paved the way for electrical batteries, galvanization, and cathodic protection. Galvani's friend, Alessandro Volta, continued researching the effect and invented the Voltaic pile in 1800. Volta's pile consisted of a stack of simplified galvanic cells, each being one plate of copper and one of zinc connected by an electrolyte. By stacking these units in series, the Voltaic pile (or "battery") as a whole had a higher voltage, which could be used more easily than single cells. Electricity is produced because the Volta potential between the two metal plates makes electrons flow from the zinc to the copper and corrode the zinc. The non-magnetic character of zinc and its lack of color in solution delayed discovery of its importance to biochemistry and nutrition. This changed in 1940 when carbonic anhydrase, an enzyme that scrubs carbon dioxide from blood, was shown to have zinc in its active site. The digestive enzyme carboxypeptidase became the second known zinc-containing enzyme in 1955. Production Mining and processing Zinc is the fourth most common metal in use, trailing only iron, aluminium, and copper with an annual production of about 13 million tonnes. The world's largest zinc producer is Nyrstar, a merger of the Australian OZ Minerals and the Belgian Umicore. About 70% of the world's zinc originates from mining, while the remaining 30% comes from recycling secondary zinc. Commercially pure zinc is known as Special High Grade, often abbreviated SHG, and is 99.995% pure. Worldwide, 95% of new zinc is mined from sulfidic ore deposits, in which sphalerite (ZnS) is nearly always mixed with the sulfides of copper, lead and iron. Zinc mines are scattered throughout the world, with the main areas being China, Australia, and Peru. China produced 38% of the global zinc output in 2014. Zinc metal is produced using extractive metallurgy. The ore is finely ground, then put through froth flotation to separate minerals from gangue (on the property of hydrophobicity), to get a zinc sulfide ore concentrate consisting of about 50% zinc, 32% sulfur, 13% iron, and 5% . Roasting converts the zinc sulfide concentrate to zinc oxide: 2 ZnS + 3 → 2 ZnO + 2 The sulfur dioxide is used for the production of sulfuric acid, which is necessary for the leaching process. If deposits of zinc carbonate, zinc silicate, or zinc-spinel (like the Skorpion Deposit in Namibia) are used for zinc production, the roasting can be omitted. For further processing two basic methods are used: pyrometallurgy or electrowinning. Pyrometallurgy reduces zinc oxide with carbon or carbon monoxide at into the metal, which is distilled as zinc vapor to separate it | to rapid cooling of the cast products and fast production for assembly. Another alloy, marketed under the brand name Prestal, contains 78% zinc and 22% aluminium, and is reported to be nearly as strong as steel but as malleable as plastic. This superplasticity of the alloy allows it to be molded using die casts made of ceramics and cement. Similar alloys with the addition of a small amount of lead can be cold-rolled into sheets. An alloy of 96% zinc and 4% aluminium is used to make stamping dies for low production run applications for which ferrous metal dies would be too expensive. For building facades, roofing, and other applications for sheet metal formed by deep drawing, roll forming, or bending, zinc alloys with titanium and copper are used. Unalloyed zinc is too brittle for these manufacturing processes. As a dense, inexpensive, easily worked material, zinc is used as a lead replacement. In the wake of lead concerns, zinc appears in weights for various applications ranging from fishing to tire balances and flywheels. Cadmium zinc telluride (CZT) is a semiconductive alloy that can be divided into an array of small sensing devices. These devices are similar to an integrated circuit and can detect the energy of incoming gamma ray photons. When behind an absorbing mask, the CZT sensor array can determine the direction of the rays. Other industrial uses Roughly one quarter of all zinc output in the United States in 2009 was consumed in zinc compounds; a variety of which are used industrially. Zinc oxide is widely used as a white pigment in paints and as a catalyst in the manufacture of rubber to disperse heat. Zinc oxide is used to protect rubber polymers and plastics from ultraviolet radiation (UV). The semiconductor properties of zinc oxide make it useful in varistors and photocopying products. The zinc zinc-oxide cycle is a two step thermochemical process based on zinc and zinc oxide for hydrogen production. Zinc chloride is often added to lumber as a fire retardant and sometimes as a wood preservative. It is used in the manufacture of other chemicals. Zinc methyl () is used in a number of organic syntheses. Zinc sulfide (ZnS) is used in luminescent pigments such as on the hands of clocks, X-ray and television screens, and luminous paints. Crystals of ZnS are used in lasers that operate in the mid-infrared part of the spectrum. Zinc sulfate is a chemical in dyes and pigments. Zinc pyrithione is used in antifouling paints. Zinc powder is sometimes used as a propellant in model rockets. When a compressed mixture of 70% zinc and 30% sulfur powder is ignited there is a violent chemical reaction. This produces zinc sulfide, together with large amounts of hot gas, heat, and light. Zinc sheet metal is used to make zinc bars. , the most abundant isotope of zinc, is very susceptible to neutron activation, being transmuted into the highly radioactive , which has a half-life of 244 days and produces intense gamma radiation. Because of this, zinc oxide used in nuclear reactors as an anti-corrosion agent is depleted of before use, this is called depleted zinc oxide. For the same reason, zinc has been proposed as a salting material for nuclear weapons (cobalt is another, better-known salting material). A jacket of isotopically enriched would be irradiated by the intense high-energy neutron flux from an exploding thermonuclear weapon, forming a large amount of significantly increasing the radioactivity of the weapon's fallout. Such a weapon is not known to have ever been built, tested, or used. is used as a tracer to study how alloys that contain zinc wear out, or the path and the role of zinc in organisms. Zinc dithiocarbamate complexes are used as agricultural fungicides; these include Zineb, Metiram, Propineb and Ziram. Zinc naphthenate is used as wood preservative. Zinc in the form of ZDDP, is used as an anti-wear additive for metal parts in engine oil. Organic chemistry Organozinc chemistry is the science of compounds that contain carbon-zinc bonds, describing the physical properties, synthesis, and chemical reactions. Many organozinc compounds are important. Among important applications are The Frankland-Duppa Reaction in which an oxalate ester (ROCOCOOR) reacts with an alkyl halide R'X, zinc and hydrochloric acid to form the α-hydroxycarboxylic esters RR'COHCOOR On the downside, organozincs are much less nucleophilic than Grignards, and they are expensive and difficult to handle. Commercially available diorganozinc compounds are dimethylzinc, diethylzinc and diphenylzinc. In one study, the active organozinc compound is obtained from much cheaper organobromine precursors. Zinc has found many uses as a catalyst in organic synthesis including asymmetric synthesis, being cheap and easily available alternative to precious metal complexes. The results (yield and enantiomeric excess) obtained with chiral zinc catalysts are comparable to those achieved with palladium, ruthenium, iridium and others, and zinc becomes a metal catalyst of choice. Dietary supplement In most single-tablet, over-the-counter, daily vitamin and mineral supplements, zinc is included in such forms as zinc oxide, zinc acetate, or zinc gluconate. Generally, zinc supplement is recommended where there is high risk of zinc deficiency (such as low and middle income countries) as a preventive measure. Although zinc sulfate is a commonly used zinc form, zinc citrate, gluconate and picolinate may be valid options as well. These forms are better absorbed than zinc oxide. Gastroenteritis Zinc is an inexpensive and effective part of treatment of diarrhea among children in the developing world. Zinc becomes depleted in the body during diarrhea and replenishing zinc with a 10- to 14-day course of treatment can reduce the duration and severity of diarrheal episodes and may also prevent future episodes for as long as three months. Gastroenteritis is strongly attenuated by ingestion of zinc, possibly by direct antimicrobial action of the ions in the gastrointestinal tract, or by the absorption of the zinc and re-release from immune cells (all granulocytes secrete zinc), or both. Common cold Weight gain Zinc deficiency may lead to loss of appetite. The use of zinc in the treatment of anorexia has been advocated since 1979. At least 15 clinical trials have shown that zinc improved weight gain in anorexia. A 1994 trial showed that zinc doubled the rate of body mass increase in the treatment of anorexia nervosa. Deficiency of other nutrients such as tyrosine, tryptophan and thiamine could contribute to this phenomenon of "malnutrition-induced malnutrition". A meta-analysis of 33 prospective intervention trials regarding zinc supplementation and its effects on the growth of children in many countries showed that zinc supplementation alone had a statistically significant effect on linear growth and body weight gain, indicating that other deficiencies that may have been present were not responsible for growth retardation. Other A Cochrane review stated that people taking zinc supplement may be less likely to progress to age-related macular degeneration. Zinc supplement is an effective treatment for acrodermatitis enteropathica, a genetic disorder affecting zinc absorption that was previously fatal to affected infants. Zinc deficiency has been associated with major depressive disorder (MDD), and zinc supplements may be an effective treatment. Topical use Topical preparations of zinc include those used on the skin, often in the form of zinc oxide. Zinc preparations can protect against sunburn in the summer and windburn in the winter. Applied thinly to a baby's diaper area (perineum) with each diaper change, it can protect against diaper rash. Chelated zinc is used in toothpastes and mouthwashes to prevent bad breath; zinc citrate helps reduce the build-up of calculus (tartar). Zinc pyrithione is widely included in shampoos to prevent dandruff. Topical zinc has also been shown to effectively treat, as well as prolong remission in genital herpes. Biological role Zinc is an essential trace element for humans and other animals, for plants and for microorganisms. Zinc is required for the function of over 300 enzymes and 1000 transcription factors, and is stored and transferred in metallothioneins. It is the second most abundant trace metal in humans after iron and it is the only metal which appears in all enzyme classes. In proteins, zinc ions are often coordinated to the amino acid side chains of aspartic acid, glutamic acid, cysteine and histidine. The theoretical and computational description of this zinc binding in proteins (as well as that of other transition metals) is difficult. Roughly grams of zinc are distributed throughout the human body. Most zinc is in the brain, muscle, bones, kidney, and liver, with the highest concentrations in the prostate and parts of the eye. Semen is particularly rich in zinc, a key factor in prostate gland function and reproductive organ growth. Zinc homeostasis of the body is mainly controlled by the intestine. Here, ZIP4 and especially TRPM7 were linked to intestinal zinc uptake essential for postnatal survival. In humans, the biological roles of zinc are ubiquitous. It interacts with "a wide range of organic ligands", and has roles in the metabolism of RNA and DNA, signal transduction, and gene expression. It also regulates apoptosis. A review from 2015 indicated that about 10% of human proteins (~3000) bind zinc, in addition to hundreds more that transport and traffic zinc; a similar in silico study in the plant Arabidopsis thaliana found 2367 zinc-related proteins. In the brain, zinc is stored in specific synaptic vesicles by glutamatergic neurons and can modulate neuronal excitability. It plays a key role in synaptic plasticity and so in learning. Zinc homeostasis also plays a critical role in the functional regulation of the central nervous system. Dysregulation of zinc homeostasis in the central nervous system that results in excessive synaptic zinc concentrations is believed to induce neurotoxicity through mitochondrial oxidative stress (e.g., by disrupting certain enzymes involved in the electron transport chain, including complex I, complex III, and α-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase), the dysregulation of calcium homeostasis, glutamatergic neuronal excitotoxicity, and interference with intraneuronal signal transduction. L- and D-histidine facilitate brain zinc uptake. SLC30A3 is the primary zinc transporter involved in cerebral zinc homeostasis. Enzymes Zinc is an efficient Lewis acid, making it a useful catalytic agent in hydroxylation and other enzymatic reactions. The metal also has a flexible coordination geometry, which allows proteins using it to rapidly shift conformations to perform biological reactions. Two examples of zinc-containing enzymes are carbonic anhydrase and carboxypeptidase, which are vital to the processes of carbon dioxide () regulation and digestion of proteins, respectively. In vertebrate blood, carbonic anhydrase converts into bicarbonate and the same enzyme transforms the bicarbonate back into for exhalation through the lungs. Without this enzyme, this conversion would occur about one million times slower at the normal blood pH of 7 or would require a pH of 10 or more. The non-related β-carbonic anhydrase is required in plants for leaf formation, the synthesis of indole acetic acid (auxin) and alcoholic fermentation. Carboxypeptidase cleaves peptide linkages during digestion of proteins. A coordinate covalent bond is formed between the terminal peptide and a C=O group attached to zinc, which gives the carbon a positive charge. This helps to create a hydrophobic pocket on the enzyme near the zinc, which attracts the non-polar part of the protein being digested. Signalling Zinc has been recognized as a messenger, able to activate signalling pathways. Many of these pathways provide the driving force in aberrant cancer growth. They can be targeted through ZIP transporters. Other proteins Zinc serves a purely structural role in zinc fingers, twists and clusters. Zinc fingers form parts of some transcription factors, which are proteins that recognize DNA base sequences during the replication and transcription of DNA. Each of the nine or ten ions in a zinc finger helps maintain the finger's structure by coordinately binding to four amino acids in the transcription factor. The transcription factor wraps around the DNA helix and uses its fingers to accurately bind to the DNA sequence. In blood plasma, zinc is bound to and transported by albumin (60%, low-affinity) and transferrin (10%). Because transferrin also transports iron, excessive iron reduces zinc absorption, and vice versa. A similar antagonism exists with copper. The concentration of zinc in blood plasma stays relatively constant regardless of zinc intake. Cells in the salivary gland, prostate, immune system, and intestine use zinc signaling to communicate with other cells. Zinc may be held in metallothionein reserves within microorganisms or in the intestines or liver of animals. Metallothionein in intestinal cells is capable of adjusting absorption of zinc by 15–40%. However, inadequate or excessive zinc intake can be harmful; excess zinc particularly impairs copper absorption because metallothionein absorbs both metals. The human dopamine transporter contains a high affinity extracellular zinc binding site which, upon zinc binding, inhibits dopamine reuptake and amplifies amphetamine-induced dopamine efflux in vitro. The human serotonin transporter and norepinephrine transporter do not contain zinc binding sites. Some EF-hand calcium binding proteins such as S100 or NCS-1 are also able to bind zinc ions. Nutrition Dietary recommendations The U.S. Institute of Medicine (IOM) updated Estimated Average Requirements (EARs) and Recommended Dietary Allowances (RDAs) for zinc in 2001. The current EARs for zinc for women and men ages 14 and up is 6.8 and 9.4 mg/day, respectively. The RDAs are 8 and 11 mg/day. |
In late 1989 and early 1990, Mobutu was weakened by a series of domestic protests, by heightened international criticism of his regime's human rights practices, by a faltering economy, and by government corruption, most notably his massive embezzlement of government funds for personal use. In June 1989, Mobutu visited Washington, D.C., where he was the first African head of state to be invited for a state meeting with newly elected U.S. President George H. W. Bush. In May 1990, Mobutu agreed to the principle of a multi-party system with elections and a constitution. As details of a reform package were delayed, soldiers began looting Kinshasa in September 1991 to protest their unpaid wages. Two thousand French and Belgian troops, some of whom were flown in on U.S. Air Force planes, arrived to evacuate the 20,000 endangered foreign nationals in Kinshasa. In 1992, after previous similar attempts, the long-promised Sovereign National Conference was staged, encompassing over 2,000 representatives from various political parties. The conference gave itself a legislative mandate and elected Archbishop Laurent Monsengwo Pasinya as its chairman, along with Étienne Tshisekedi wa Mulumba, leader of the UDPS, as prime minister. By the end of the year Mobutu had created a rival government with its own prime minister. The ensuing stalemate produced a compromise merger of the two governments into the High Council of Republic–Parliament of Transition (HCR–PT) in 1994, with Mobutu as head of state and Kengo wa Dondo as prime minister. Although presidential and legislative elections were scheduled repeatedly over the next 2 years, they never took place. First Congo War and demise By 1996, tensions from the neighbouring Rwandan Civil War and genocide had spilled over to Zaire (see History of Rwanda). Rwandan Hutu militia forces (Interahamwe), who had fled Rwanda following the ascension of an RPF-led government, had been using Hutu refugee camps in eastern Zaire as bases for incursion against Rwanda. These Hutu militia forces soon allied with the Zairian armed forces (FAZ) to launch a campaign against Congolese ethnic Tutsis in eastern Zaire, known as the Banyamulenge. In turn, these Zairian Tutsis formed a militia to defend themselves against attacks. When the Zairian government began to escalate its massacres in November 1996, the Tutsi militias erupted in rebellion against Mobutu, starting what would become known as the First Congo War. The Tutsi militia was soon joined by various opposition groups and supported by several countries, including Rwanda and Uganda. This coalition, led by Laurent-Désiré Kabila, became known as the Alliance des Forces Démocratiques pour la Libération du Congo-Zaïre (AFDL). The AFDL, now seeking the broader goal of ousting Mobutu, made significant military gains in early 1997, and by the middle of 1997 had almost completely overrun the country. The only thing that seemed to slow the AFDL forces down was the country's ramshackle infrastructure; irregularly used dirt paths and river ports were all that connected some areas to the outside world. Following failed peace talks between Mobutu and Kabila, Mobutu fled into exile in Morocco on 17 May. Kabila named himself president, consolidated power around himself and the AFDL, and marched unopposed into Kinshasa three days later. On 21 May Kabila officially reverted the name of the country to the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Government and politics The country was governed by the Popular Movement of the Revolution as a one-party state as the only legally permitted party in the country, though the Congo had effectively been a one-party state since the MPR's formation despite the constitution nominally allowed for the existence of two parties, the MPR was the only party that was allowed to nominate a candidate for the 1 November 1970 presidential election. Mobutu was confirmed in office by an implausible margin of over 10,131,000 votes against only 157 who voted "no." At parliamentary elections held two weeks later, voters were presented with a single MPR list that was approved with over 99 percent support. The president served as the head of state of Zaïre whose role was to appoint and dismiss cabinet members and determine their areas of responsibility. The ministers, as heads of their respective departments, were to execute the programs and decisions of the president. The president also was to have the power to appoint and dismiss the governors of the provinces and the judges of all courts, including those of the Supreme Court of Justice. The bicameral parliament was replaced by a unicameral legislative body called the Legislative Council. Governors of provinces were no longer elected by provincial assemblies but appointed by the central government. The president had the power to issue autonomous regulations on matters other than those pertaining to the domain of law, without prejudice to other provisions of the constitution. Under certain conditions, the president was empowered to govern by executive order, which carried the force of law. Mobutism The doctrinal foundation was disclosed shortly after its birth, in the form of the Manifesto of N'sele (named so because it was issued from the president's rural residence at N'sele, 60 km upriver from Kinshasa), made public in May 1967. Nationalism, revolution, and authenticity were identified as the major themes of what came to be known as "Mobutism". Nationalism implied the achievement of economic and political independence. Revolution, described as a "truly national revolution, essentially pragmatic", meant "the repudiation of both capitalism and communism". Thus, "neither right nor left" became one of the legitimising slogans of the regime, along with "authenticity". Ministries, Departments or Commissariats In the 1970s and 1980s, Mobutu's government relied on a selected pool of technocrats, often referred to as the "nomenklatura", from which the Head of State drew, and periodically rotated, competent individuals. They comprised the Executive Council and led the full spectrum of Ministries, Departments or, as governmental terminology shifted, Commissariats. Among these individuals were internationally respected appointees such as Djamboleka Lona Okitongono who was named Secretary of Finance, under Citizen Namwisi (Minister of Finance), and later became President of OGEDEP, the National Debt Management Office. Ultimately, Djamboleka became Governor of the Bank of Zaire in the final stage of Mobutu's government. His progress was fairly typical of the rotational pattern established by Mobutu, who retained the most sensitive ministerial portfolios (such as Defense) for himself. Economy The zaïre was introduced to replace the franc as the new national currency. 100 makuta (singular likuta) equaled one zaïre. The likuta was also divided into 100 sengi. However this unit was worth very little, so the smallest coin was for 10 sengi. The currency and the cities named above had actually already been renamed between 1966 and 1971. While the country began to stabilize after Mobutu took control, the economic situation began to decline, and by 1979, the purchasing power was only 4% of that from 1960. Starting in 1976 the IMF provided stabilizing loans to his regime. Much of the money was embezzled by Mobutu and his circle. According to the 1982 report by IMF's envoy Erwin Blumenthal documented. He stated, it is "alarmingly clear that the corruptive system in Zaire with all its wicked and ugly manifestations, its mismanagement and fraud will destroy all endeavors of international institutions, of friendly governments, and of the commercial banks towards recovery and rehabilitation of Zaire's economy". Blumenthal stated that there was "no chance" that creditors would ever recover their loans. Yet the IMF and the World Bank continued to lend money that was either embezzled, stolen, or "wasted on elephant projects". "Structural adjustment programmes" implemented as a condition of IMF loans cut support for health care, education, and infrastructure. Culture The concept of authenticity was derived from the MPR's professed doctrine of "authentic Zairian nationalism and condemnation of regionalism and tribalism". Mobutu defined it as being conscious of one's own personality and one's own values and of being at home in one's culture. In line with the dictates of authenticity, the name of the country was changed to the Republic of Zaire on 27 October 1971, and that of the armed forces to Zairian Armed Forces (Forces Armées Zaïroises—FAZ). This decision was curious, given that the name Congo, which referred both to the river Congo and to the mediaeval Kongo Empire, was fundamentally authentic to pre-colonial African roots, while Zaire is in fact a Portuguese corruption of another African word, Nzadi ("river", by Nzadi o Nzere, "the river that swallows all the other rivers", another name of the Congo river). General Mobutu became Mobutu Sésé Seko and forced all his citizens to adopt African names and many cities were | and political realms, a process that began in 1970 and culminated in the adoption of a new constitution in 1974. By 1976, however, this effort had begun to generate its own inner contradictions, thus paving the way for the resurrection of a Bula Matari ("the breaker of rocks") system of repression and brutality. Constitutional changes By 1967, Mobutu had consolidated his rule and proceeded to give the country a new constitution and a single party. The new constitution was submitted to popular referendum in June 1967 and approved by 98 percent of those voting. It provided that executive powers be centralised in the president, who was to be head of state, head of government, commander in chief of the armed forces and the police, and in charge of foreign policy. But the most far-reaching change was the creation of the Popular Movement of the Revolution (Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution—MPR) on 17 April 1967, marking the emergence of "the nation politically organised". Rather than government institutions being the emanation of the state, the state was henceforth defined as the emanation of the party. Thus, in October 1967 party and administrative responsibilities were merged into a single framework, thereby automatically extending the role of the party to all administrative organs at the central and provincial levels, as well as to the trade unions, youth movements, and student organisations. Three years after changing the country's name to Zaire, Mobutu promulgated a new constitution that consolidated his hold on the country. Every five years (seven years after 1978), the MPR elected a president who was simultaneously nominated as the only candidate for president of the republic; he was confirmed in office via a referendum. Under this system, Mobutu was reelected in 1977 and 1984 by implausibly high margins, claiming a unanimous or near-unanimous "yes" vote. The MPR was defined as the country's "single institution," and its president was vested with "plentitude of power exercise." Every five years, a single list of MPR candidates was returned to the National Assembly, with official figures showing near-unanimous support. All citizens of Zaire automatically became members of the MPR at birth. For all intents and purposes, this gave the president of the MPR—Mobutu—complete political control over the country. Totalitarian expansion Translating the concept of "the nation politically organised" into reality implied a major expansion of state control of civil society. It meant, to begin with, the incorporation of youth groups and worker organisations into the matrix of the MPR. In July 1967, the Political Bureau announced the creation of the Youth of the Popular Revolutionary Movement (Jeunesse du Mouvement Populaire de la Révolution—JMPR), following the launching a month earlier of the National Union of Zairian Workers (Union Nationale des Travailleurs Zaïrois—UNTZA), which brought together into a single organisational framework three preexisting trade unions. Ostensibly, the aim of the merger, in the terms of the Manifesto of N'Sele, was to transform the role of trade unions from "being merely a force of confrontation" into "an organ of support for government policy", thus providing "a communication link between the working class and the state". Similarly, the JMPR was to act as a major link between the student population and the state. In reality, the government was attempting to bring under its control those sectors where opposition to the regime might be centred. By appointing key labour and youth leaders to the MPR Political Bureau, the regime hoped to harness syndical and student forces to the machinery of the state. Nevertheless, as has been pointed out by numerous observers, there is little evidence that co-optation succeeded in mobilising support for the regime beyond the most superficial level. The trend toward co-optation of key social sectors continued in subsequent years. Women's associations were eventually brought under the control of the party, as was the press, and in December 1971 Mobutu proceeded to emasculate the power of the churches. From then on, only three churches were recognised: the Church of Christ in Zaire (L'Église du Christ au Zaïre), the Kimbanguist Church, and the Roman Catholic Church. Nationalisation of the universities of Kinshasa and Kisangani, coupled with Mobutu's insistence on banning all Christian names and establishing JMPR sections in all seminaries, soon brought the Roman Catholic Church and the state into conflict. Not until 1975, and after considerable pressure from the Vatican, did the regime agree to tone down its attacks on the Roman Catholic Church and return some of its control of the school system to the church. Meanwhile, in line with a December 1971 law, which allowed the state to dissolve "any church or sect that compromises or threatens to compromise public order", scores of unrecognised religious sects were dissolved and their leaders jailed. Mobutu was careful also to suppress all institutions that could mobilise ethnic loyalties. Avowedly opposed to ethnicity as a basis for political alignment, he outlawed such ethnic associations as the Association of Lulua Brothers (Association des Lulua Frères), which had been organised in Kasai in 1953 in reaction to the growing political and economic influence in Kasai of the rival Luba people, and Liboke lya Bangala (literally, "a bundle of Bangala"), an association formed in the 1950s to represent the interests of Lingala speakers in large cities. It helped Mobutu that his ethnic affiliation was blurred in the public mind. Nevertheless, as dissatisfaction arose, ethnic tensions surfaced again. Centralisation of power Running parallel to the efforts of the state to control all autonomous sources of power, important administrative reforms were introduced in 1967 and 1973 to strengthen the hand of the central authorities in the provinces. The central objective of the 1967 reform was to abolish provincial governments and replace them with state functionaries appointed by Kinshasa. The principle of centralisation was further extended to districts and territories, each headed by administrators appointed by the central government. The only units of government that still retained a fair measure of autonomy—but not for long—were the so-called local collectivities, i.e. chiefdoms and sectors (the latter incorporating several chiefdoms). The unitary, centralised state system thus legislated into existence bore a striking resemblance to its colonial antecedent, except that from July 1972 provinces |
Earth's crust and about 0.026 μg/L in sea water. It is not found in nature as a native metal, reflecting its intrinsic instability with respect to water. The principal commercial source of zirconium is zircon (ZrSiO4), a silicate mineral, which is found primarily in Australia, Brazil, India, Russia, South Africa and the United States, as well as in smaller deposits around the world. As of 2013, two-thirds of zircon mining occurs in Australia and South Africa. Zircon resources exceed 60 million tonnes worldwide and annual worldwide zirconium production is approximately 900,000 tonnes. Zirconium also occurs in more than 140 other minerals, including the commercially useful ores baddeleyite and eudialyte. Zirconium is relatively abundant in S-type stars, and it has been detected in the sun and in meteorites. Lunar rock samples brought back from several Apollo missions to the moon have a high zirconium oxide content relative to terrestrial rocks. EPR spectroscopy has been used in investigations of the unusual 3+ valence state of zirconium. The EPR spectrum of Zr3+, which has been initially observed as a parasitic signal in Fe‐doped single crystals of ScPO4, was definitively identified by preparing single crystals of ScPO4 doped with isotopically enriched (94.6%)91Zr. Single crystals of LuPO4 and YPO4 doped with both naturally abundant and isotopically enriched Zr have also been grown and investigated. Production Occurrence Zirconium is a by-product of the mining and processing of the titanium minerals ilmenite and rutile, as well as tin mining. From 2003 to 2007, while prices for the mineral zircon steadily increased from $360 to $840 per tonne, the price for unwrought zirconium metal decreased from $39,900 to $22,700 per ton. Zirconium metal is much more expensive than zircon because the reduction processes are costly. Collected from coastal waters, zircon-bearing sand is purified by spiral concentrators to separate lighter materials, which are then returned to the water because they are natural components of beach sand. Using magnetic separation, the titanium ores ilmenite and rutile are removed. Most zircon is used directly in commercial applications, but a small percentage is converted to the metal. Most Zr metal is produced by the reduction of the zirconium(IV) chloride with magnesium metal in the Kroll process. The resulting metal is sintered until sufficiently ductile for metalworking. Separation of zirconium and hafnium Commercial zirconium metal typically contains 1–3% of hafnium, which is usually not problematic because the chemical properties of hafnium and zirconium are very similar. Their neutron-absorbing properties differ strongly, however, necessitating the separation of hafnium from zirconium for nuclear reactors. Several separation schemes are in use. The liquid-liquid extraction of the thiocyanate-oxide derivatives exploits the fact that the hafnium derivative is slightly more soluble in methyl isobutyl ketone than in water. This method is used mainly in United States. In India, TBP-Nitrate solvent extraction process is used for the separation Zr and Hf can also be separated by fractional crystallization of potassium hexafluorozirconate (K2ZrF6), which is less soluble in water than the analogous hafnium derivative. Fractional distillation of the tetrachlorides, also called extractive distillation, is used primarily in Europe. The product of a quadruple VAM (vacuum arc melting) process, combined with hot extruding and different rolling applications is cured using high-pressure, high-temperature gas autoclaving. This produces reactor-grade zirconium that is about 10 times more expensive than the hafnium-contaminated commercial grade. Hafnium must be removed from zirconium for nuclear applications because hafnium has a neutron absorption cross-section 600 times greater than zirconium. The separated hafnium can be used for reactor control rods. Compounds Like other transition metals, zirconium forms a wide range of inorganic compounds and coordination complexes. In general, these compounds are colourless diamagnetic solids wherein zirconium has the oxidation state +4. Far fewer Zr(III) compounds are known, and Zr(II) is very rare. Oxides, nitrides, and carbides The most common oxide is zirconium dioxide, ZrO2, also known as zirconia. This clear to white-coloured solid has exceptional fracture toughness (for a ceramic) and chemical resistance, especially in its cubic form. These properties make zirconia useful as a thermal barrier coating, although it is also a common diamond substitute. Zirconium monoxide, ZrO, is also known and S-type stars are recognised by detection of its emission lines. Zirconium tungstate has the unusual property of shrinking in all dimensions when heated, whereas most other substances expand when heated. Zirconyl chloride is a rare water-soluble zirconium complex with the relatively complicated formula [Zr4(OH)12(H2O)16]Cl8. Zirconium carbide and zirconium nitride are refractory solids. The carbide is used for drilling tools and cutting edges. Zirconium hydride phases are also known. Lead zirconate titanate (PZT) is the most commonly used piezoelectric material, with applications such as ultrasonic transducers, hydrophones, common rail injectors, piezoelectric transformers and micro-actuators. Halides and pseudohalides All four common halides are known, ZrF4, ZrCl4, ZrBr4, and ZrI4. All have polymeric structures and are far less volatile than the corresponding monomeric titanium tetrahalides. All tend to hydrolyse to give the so-called oxyhalides and dioxides. The corresponding tetraalkoxides are also known. Unlike the halides, the alkoxides dissolve in nonpolar solvents. Dihydrogen hexafluorozirconate is used in the metal finishing industry as an etching agent to promote paint adhesion. Organic derivatives Organozirconium chemistry is key to Ziegler–Natta catalysts, used to produce polypropylene. This application exploits the ability of zirconium to reversibly form bonds to carbon. Zirconocene dibromide ((C5H5)2ZrBr2), reported in 1952 by Birmingham and Wilkinson, was the first organozirconium compound. Schwartz's reagent, prepared in 1970 by P. C. Wailes and H. Weigold, is a metallocene used in organic synthesis for transformations of alkenes and alkynes. Most complexes of Zr(II) are derivatives of zirconocene, one example being (C5Me5)2Zr(CO)2. History The zirconium-containing mineral zircon and related minerals (jargoon, hyacinth, jacinth, ligure) were mentioned in biblical writings. The mineral was not known to contain a new element until 1789, when Klaproth analyzed a jargoon from the island of Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He named the new element Zirkonerde (zirconia). Humphry Davy attempted to isolate this new element in 1808 through electrolysis, but failed. Zirconium metal was first obtained in an impure form in 1824 by Berzelius by heating a mixture of potassium and potassium zirconium fluoride in an iron tube. The crystal bar process (also known as the Iodide Process), discovered by Anton Eduard van Arkel and Jan Hendrik de Boer in 1925, was the first industrial process for the commercial production of metallic zirconium. It involves the formation and subsequent thermal decomposition of zirconium tetraiodide, and was superseded in 1945 by the much cheaper Kroll process developed by William Justin Kroll, in which zirconium tetrachloride is reduced by magnesium: ZrCl4 + 2 Mg → Zr + 2 MgCl2 Applications Approximately 900,000 tonnes of zirconium ores were mined in 1995, mostly as zircon. Compounds Most zircon is used directly in high-temperature applications. Because it is refractory, hard, and resistant to chemical attack, zircon finds many applications. Its main use is as an opacifier, conferring a white, opaque appearance to ceramic materials. Because of its chemical resistance, zircon | Nuclear applications Cladding for nuclear reactor fuels consumes about 1% of the zirconium supply, mainly in the form of zircaloys. The desired properties of these alloys are a low neutron-capture cross-section and resistance to corrosion under normal service conditions. Efficient methods for removing the hafnium impurities were developed to serve this purpose. One disadvantage of zirconium alloys is the reactivity with water, producing hydrogen, leading to degradation of the fuel rod cladding: Zr + 2 H2O → ZrO2 + 2 H2 Hydrolysis is very slow below 100 °C, but rapid at temperature above 900 °C. Most metals undergo similar reactions. The redox reaction is relevant to the instability of fuel assemblies at high temperatures. This reaction occurred in the reactors 1, 2 and 3 of the Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant (Japan) after the reactor cooling was interrupted by the earthquake and tsunami disaster of March 11, 2011, leading to the Fukushima I nuclear accidents. After venting the hydrogen in the maintenance hall of those three reactors, the mixture of hydrogen with atmospheric oxygen exploded, severely damaging the installations and at least one of the containment buildings. Zirconium is a constituent of the uranium zirconium hydride (UZrH) nuclear fuel used in TRIGA reactors. Space and aeronautic industries Materials fabricated from zirconium metal and ZrO2 are used in space vehicles where resistance to heat is needed. High temperature parts such as combustors, blades, and vanes in jet engines and stationary gas turbines are increasingly being protected by thin ceramic layers, usually composed of a mixture of zirconia and yttria. Medical uses Zirconium-bearing compounds are used in many biomedical applications, including dental implants and crowns, knee and hip replacements, middle-ear ossicular chain reconstruction, and other restorative and prosthetic devices. Zirconium binds urea, a property that has been utilized extensively to the benefit of patients with chronic kidney disease. For example, zirconium is a primary component of the sorbent column dependent dialysate regeneration and recirculation system known as the REDY system, which was first introduced in 1973. More than 2,000,000 dialysis treatments have been performed using the sorbent column in the REDY system. Although the REDY system was superseded in the 1990s by less expensive alternatives, new sorbent-based dialysis systems are being evaluated and approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Renal Solutions developed the DIALISORB technology, a portable, low water dialysis system. Also, developmental versions of a Wearable Artificial Kidney have incorporated sorbent-based technologies. Sodium zirconium cyclosilicate is used by mouth in the treatment of hyperkalemia. It is a selective sorbent designed to trap potassium ions in preference to other ions throughout the gastrointestinal tract. A mixture of monomeric and polymeric Zr4+ and Al3+ complexes with hydroxide, chloride and glycine, called Aluminium zirconium tetrachlorohydrex gly or AZG, is used in a preparation as an antiperspirant in many deodorant products. It is selected for its ability to obstruct pores in the skin and prevent sweat from leaving the body. Defunct applications Zirconium carbonate (3ZrO2·CO2·H2O) was used in lotions to treat poison ivy but was discontinued because it occasionally caused skin reactions. Safety Although zirconium has no known biological role, the human body contains, on average, 250 milligrams of zirconium, and daily intake is approximately 4.15 milligrams (3.5 milligrams from food and 0.65 milligrams from water), depending on dietary habits. Zirconium is widely distributed in nature and is found in all biological systems, for example: 2.86 μg/g in whole wheat, 3.09 μg/g in brown rice, 0.55 μg/g in spinach, 1.23 μg/g in eggs, and 0.86 μg/g in ground beef. Further, zirconium is commonly used in commercial products (e.g. deodorant sticks, aerosol antiperspirants) and also in water purification (e.g. control of phosphorus pollution, bacteria- and pyrogen-contaminated water). Short-term exposure to zirconium powder can cause irritation, but only contact with the eyes requires medical attention. Persistent exposure to zirconium tetrachloride results in increased mortality in rats and guinea pigs and a decrease of blood hemoglobin and red blood cells in dogs. However, in a study of 20 rats given a standard diet containing ~4% zirconium oxide, there were no adverse effects on growth rate, blood and urine parameters, or mortality. The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) legal limit (permissible exposure limit) for zirconium exposure is 5 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) recommended exposure limit (REL) is 5 mg/m3 over an 8-hour workday and a short term limit of 10 mg/m3. At levels of 25 mg/m3, zirconium is immediately dangerous to life and health. However, zirconium is not considered an industrial health hazard. Furthermore, reports of zirconium-related adverse reactions are rare and, in |
version was introduced for the first time in the Z-car's history, as a response to aftermarket conversions. All 300ZXs now featured T-tops as standard, yet there were some rare hardtops (known as "slicktops") produced as well. The 300ZX was doomed to the same fate of many Japanese sports cars of the time. The mid-'90s trend toward SUVs and the rising Yen:Dollar ratio were both influential in ending North American 300ZX sales in 1996 at over 80,000 units sold (production for other markets continued until 2000). Probably the biggest killer of the 300ZX was its ever-inflating price; at its release it was priced at about $30,000, but in its final year this price had increased to around $50,000. This left many people questioning its value, and despite a final Commemorative Edition of the final 300 units shipped to America (complete with decals and certificates of authenticity), the Z-Car was on hiatus. In Japan, however, the 300ZX lived on for a few more years with a face-lift including a new front fascia, tail lights, headlights, rear spoiler, and a few other minor changes. Nissan 350Z Concept (1999) In the U.S., the Z-car went on hiatus from 1997 to 2002, as Nissan focused more on SUVs and was also in some financial trouble. To keep Z-car interest alive, Nissan launched a restoration program in 1998 for which they purchased original 240Zs, professionally restored them, and re-sold them at dealerships for about $24,000. Nissan next launched a concept car at the 1999 North American International Auto Show, the 240Z Concept. Clearly a throwback to the original, it was a bright orange two-seater with classic swept-back styling. In addition, it was fully functional, with the 2.4-liter 4-cylinder KA24DE engine from the 240SX featuring and of torque. The designers used an original 240Z to provide inspiration and the concept was created in only 12 weeks. The running concept, featuring a 4-cylinder engine compared to the Z-car's traditional 6-cylinder engine, was eventually thought less than a worthy successor to the line. Fifth generation: Nissan 350Z (Z33) In 1999, the French company Renault bought 44.4% of Nissan and Carlos Ghosn became its chief operating officer, but it would not be until 2001 when Ghosn became CEO that he would tell reporters: "We will build the Z. And we will make it profitable." On January 8, 2001, Nissan introduced the Z Concept. Much like the previous Z concept, it debuted at the North American International Auto Show and was painted bright orange. The squat, long-hood/short-deck styling resulted from a competition between Nissan's Japanese, European, and American design studios, with the La Jolla, California studio's design being chosen in March 2000. The product planners hoped to avoid the price problems that plagued the last few years of the 300ZX with a target MSRP of $30,000 while using the Porsche Boxster as a benchmark. In the summer of 2002, the 350Z was released to wide acclaim. It employed a slightly improved version of the 3.5-liter VQ35DE DOHC V6 engine found in multiple Nissan cars at the time, including the Skyline and Pathfinder. Released on July 2002 in Japan at reorganized Nissan Japanese dealerships called Nissan Blue Stage, and August 20, 2002 in the U.S., the 350Z coupé was available in 5 trim packages: '350Z' (Base), 'Enthusiast', 'Performance', 'Touring', and 'Track' editions. In Europe, only the 'Track' trim was available, although it was badged and marketed as '350Z'. This engine initially produced and torque, but in 2005 was increased to and . Prices started at $26,000 US, well below the $30,000 mark initially set forth by Nissan. Coupled to either a 6-speed manual gearbox or 5-speed automatic (the automatic lost in comparison), it was initially available only as a 2-seater hardtop. A convertible model was later introduced in 2004. The 350Z was available in a selection of seven trim packages, depending on the year: "Base", "Enthusiast", "Performance", "Touring", "Grand Touring", "Track" and "Nismo". The base model 350Z, in comparison to the more expensive packages, did not have a limited-slip differential or a traction control system. Touring and Grand Touring models both featured leather seats, Bose entertainment systems, optional satellite navigation, VDC (vehicle dynamic control), and other user conveniences, while the Grand Touring models also added Rays Engineering forged wheels and the Brembo braking system found on the Track and Nismo models. In 2007, Nissan dropped the "Track" version in favor of the "Nismo" edition, but retained the Brembo brakes, Rays Engineering wheels, and simple interior, but added a larger exhaust and aggressive body kit. The second Nismo edition, released in 2007, included revised camshafts, a Nismo sport tuned exhaust, custom Rays Engineering wheels ( in rear), front and rear spoilers and rear diffuser, and a Brembo braking system with four-piston front and two-piston rear calipers (with front and rear rotors). The 2005 35th Anniversary Edition and 2006 350Z were equipped with manual transmissions received a newly revised engine, which increased the redline to 7,000 rpm and increased power to . 2007-2008 models came with the 3.5L VQ35HR engine with dual intakes and a 7,500 rpm redline, which produced a power output of , and featured a more linear powerband in addition to the increased torque at lower revolutions. It is widely believed that this model year (2007–08) is the most desired among enthusiasts due to the car featuring a revised transmission (CD009) which solved all previous issues and the new engine architecture (VQ35HR) which provided an overall faster car. Sixth generation: Nissan 370Z (Z34) On December 30, 2008 the 370Z was introduced as a 2009 model. In June 2009, the second generation 2009 Nismo 370Z debuted. This was followed by the introduction of the 2010 370Z Roadster in late summer of 2009. The 370Z (Z34) is powered by Nissan's 3.7 liter V6 engine, the VQ37VHR. The power output ranges from , with peak torque of , depending on market and variant. The 370Z has an official time of 5.1 seconds. However, the car has also been tested by Motor Trend Magazine, which reported a 4.7 second with of roll out. Quarter mile times range from 13.1 and 13.6 seconds, thus making the 370Z the fastest production Z. The 370Z is available with either a six-speed manual gearbox or a seven-speed automatic with paddle shifters. The six-speed manual is the first production car manual gearbox to feature a system that Nissan refers to as SynchroRev Match, which automatically blips the throttle to match engine and transmission speed during downshifts, thus achieving the same effect as the heel-and-toe downshift technique. Seventh generation: Nissan Z (Z34) The seventh-generation Nissan Z was first hinted at in 2018, when Alfonso Abaisa, Senior Vice President for Global Design at Nissan, confirmed to Australian automotive magazine WhichCar that a successor to the Nissan 370Z was being developed. On March 19, 2020, Nissan filed a trademark for two new logos: one was its new corporate logo, while the other was a new version of the Z-car logo, further confirming the existence of a new Z-car. Then, on May 28, 2020, as part of its global restructuring plan, named "Nissan Next", Nissan's official YouTube channel released a one minute, twelve-second video showcasing its updated vehicle lineup, including the new Z-car; this video also confirmed the claim that the new Z-car would have retro styling, with its overall shape and circular running lights referencing the 240Z. On September 15, 2020, Nissan revealed the prototype version called the "Nissan Z Proto". The prototype is long, which is longer than the current Nissan Z car, the 370Z, and no wider. The production 2022 Nissan Z was revealed on August 17, 2021 in New York City. Debuting as a 2023 model, the Nissan Z is the brand's first Z car without a number in the model name (which in the past had reflected the displacement of the engine). On August 18, 2021, Nissan confirmed that the new Z would not carry the Z35 chassis code, but instead would share the Z34 chassis code of the outgoing 370Z. Engines The first two generations, S30 (240Z/260Z/280Z) and S130 (280ZX) of Z-car were powered by a straight-six engine, (part of the L-series of Nissan engines, which powered most of their vehicles until the early 1980s) with a displacement of 2.4 L in the first incarnation, and increasing to 2.6 L and 2.8 L in the 260Z, and the 280Z and ZX, respectively. The second generation S130, introduced in 1979 was a complete redesign, retaining only the L28 engine and other driveline components. A turbo option was introduced in 1981, bringing performance surpassing that of the original 240Z. The third generation, the 300ZX, switched to a 3.0 L V6. There were two generations of the 300ZX: the Z31 from 1984 to 1989, and the Z32 from 1990 to 1996. Both the Z31 and Z32 came in either non-turbo or turbo trims. During the '90s, the cars price continued to elevate and sales continued to fall. Even a major design change in 1998 couldn't save it, and production finally ended in 1999. While the model names were based on the engine capacity for the US markets, with the 240Z having a 2.4-litre L24 engine and the 260Z having a 2.6-litre L26 engine and so on to the 300ZX 3.0-litre V6, due to Japanese taxation laws relating to engine capacity, some second and third generation (S130 and Z31) Fairlady Z cars were produced for the Japanese domestic market fitted with 2.0L engines. The S130 was available with an L20ET inline 6, while the Z31 had either a RB20DET inline 6 or a | version had all Nissan, Fairlady Z, and 432 badging replaced with "Datsun" and prevented all dealer shipments until they were replaced. The 240Z was released in America on October 22, 1969. Combining good looks, and powerful performance, it sold over 45,000 units through the '71 model year and over 50,000 and 40,000 in 1972 and 1973, respectively. The 260Z was released in 1974. Engine displacement increased to 2.6 L, and Nissan introduced a 2+2 model option with a 30 cm (1 foot) stretched wheelbase and length. Engine power increased to , except for most areas of the U.S., where power decreased to (SAE net horsepower) due to new camshafts, carburetors, and lower compression, that were introduced to comply with new US emissions regulations. The 280Z was released in 1975 for North America only (not to be confused with the second-generation 280ZX) and featured a further engine displacement increase, to 2.8 L. A major change was the introduction of Bosch fuel injection, replacing the previous SU carburetors. This resulted in a power increase to (SAE gross horsepower), offsetting increased weight from added luxury features and an enlarged bumper that met US Federal regulations. Export markets outside North America however kept receiving the Datsun 260Z, until the introduction of the Datsun 280ZX in late 1978. Second generation: Nissan Fairlady 280ZX (S130/Z30) Known as the Datsun/Nissan 280ZX in export markets, the car continued to use the "Fairlady" moniker in the Japanese domestic market where 2-litre inline-six engines were also available and were first introduced in 1978. That same year, main rival Toyota introduced the Supra as its answer to the new Fairlady, although it also continued to produce the Celica that it was based on. The only thing left unchanged from the previous 280Z was the 5-speed manual transmission and 2.8-liter L28 inline-6 engine, while the entire car overall was made more luxurious to meet growing consumer demands. Major changes for this new generation of Z-cars include t-tops, introduced in 1980, and a turbocharged model introduced in 1981, complementing the naturally aspirated (NA) 2-seater and NA 2+2 models. Coupled to either a 3-speed automatic or 5-speed manual transmission, the turbocharged model was capable of and of torque, over the and of the NA engine. Notable models include the 10th Anniversary Edition, featuring gold emblems, gold alloy wheels, and two-toned paint in either gold/red and black, with luxury features such as leather seats, headlamp washers, and automatic climate control. The 280ZX was wildly popular, being hailed as Motor Trends Import Car of the Year for 1979 and going on to set a Z-car sales record of 86,007 units in its first year. While on the one hand, it received praise for taking the Z-car to further levels of comfort and performance, many enthusiasts also lamented the further emphasis on luxury over driving fun. This would continue with the third generation of Z-car, with a clean-sheet redesign that would take the Z-car to further heights. Third generation: Nissan 300ZX (Z31, First model) The Z-car was completely redesigned in 1984, and introduced Nissan's new series of 3.0-liter V6 engine, dubbed the VG series. The same engine was used in the Electramotive (later to become NPTI) GTP ZX-Turbo that dominated the IMSA GTP races in 1988 and 1989. These were available in both VG30E naturally aspirated and VG30ET turbocharged forms producing 160 and 200 bhp (120 and 150 kW) respectively, although some VG30ET powered Z-cars exported outside of the U.S. produced due to a longer cam duration and less emission restrictions. These were showcased in sleek new wedge-shaped styling and given a new name, the 300ZX. Like its predecessor, it proved to be wildly popular and was the second-best selling Z-car in history selling over 70,000 units due in part not only to its new styling but also to even more added luxury features and high performance. When the 300ZX Turbo was released in Japan, it offered the highest HP available in a Japanese standard production car at the time. Much like the 280ZX that preceded it, the first-gen 300ZX was thought by enthusiasts as more GT than a true sports car. It had improved handling, acceleration, and more refinement than any previous model Z-car. Nissan made various changes and claimed improvements to the Z31 model through its entire production. In 1983, Nissan first offered the 300ZX in Japan. It was introduced in the US one year later. All US-market 1984 model Nissan vehicles carried both Datsun and Nissan nameplates. Along with the arrival of their new flagship sports coupe, Nissan launched an aggressive marketing campaign to promote the brand name change from Datsun to Nissan. The 1984 Models can technically be considered the only year of the "Datsun 300ZX". The 1984 300ZX 50th Anniversary Edition was released in celebration of the company's 50th anniversary year. It was based on the standard 300ZX Turbo, but was outfitted with every luxury feature available, a unique black interior with "bodysonic" leather seats in addition to widened fender flares, requisite badging, rear quarter panel flares, and sixteen-inch (406 mm) wheels (400 mm). For the 1985 model year, Nissan dropped the Datsun name brand for good, but the car dealers were still known as Datsun dealers. Paul Newman raced in the 1985 GT1 Challenge and won. This was Newman's fourth national championship. Minor changes were made to the 300ZX including a water-cooled turbocharger and smoked taillights. The 1986 model saw wider flared wheel wells as well as body-color bumpers, and the rear quarter panels were designed specifically to accommodate factory ground effect style side skirts. 1986 turbo models were equipped with an ordinary hood, markedly losing the turbo "scoop" on the driver's side. In order to keep up with quickly aging aesthetics, another slight redesign happened in 1987, consisting of new rounded, restyled and longer front and rear bumpers, new headlights, and new tail lights. The black trim on turbo models was now a charcoal instead of gloss black, and 1987 Turbo models came with special "smoked" turbo-finned wheels. All 1987 model year turbo cars also received an upgraded manual transmission, larger and more powerful brakes, and turbo cars produced from 4/87 and later came equipped with a clutch-type limited-slip differential. For the 1988 models, there were again a few small changes. The turbocharger was switched from the Garrett T3 turbo to a lower-inertia T25 turbo, and the engine from 7.8:1 to an 8.3:1 compression ratio in order to reduce turbocharger spool time and provide an instant boost at any usable RPM. The interior aluminum accents and chrome door handles that adorned the earlier cars were dropped in favor of matching color parts. Another special edition, the "Shiro Special" (SS), was released in 1988. It was only available in pearl white (shiro meaning "white" in Japanese). The SS package consisted of analog gauges and climate controls with a black interior, stiffer sway bars, stiffer springs, non-adjustable suspension, special seats (Recaro), a viscous-coupling limited slip differential, and a special front lower lip spoiler. This package had no options; all 88SS cars are identical. The 1989 Models are identical to 1988 models, though somewhat rare because of Nissan winding-down production early in preparation for the second generation 300ZX. Fourth generation: Nissan 300ZX (Z32, Second model) The only thing unchanged from the previous generation 300ZX is the 3.0-liter V6 engine, now with dual overhead camshafts (DOHC), variable valve timing (VVT) and producing a rated and naturally aspirated. The turbo variant was upgraded with twin Garrett turbochargers and dual intercoolers. This produced with of torque. 0-60 times of 5.0-6.0 seconds were reported, and it had a governed top speed of . Upon its release, the 300ZX, won Motor Trends "Import Car of the Year" in 1990 as well as "One of the Top Ten Performance Cars". Automobile Magazine honored the 300ZX/300ZX Turbo as its "Design of the Year" and added it to their "All Stars" list. Road & Track named the 300ZX Turbo "One of the Ten Best Cars in the World", and Car and Driver added it to their 10Best for the seven years in which it was in production in America. American Z-car sales reached 1 million in 1990. Nissan utilized the Cray-II supercomputer to completely design the new 300ZX with a form of CAD software. This made the 300ZX one of the first production cars to be developed in a CAD program. In return, it featured a whole host of technological advancements. On the twin turbo models, four-wheel steering was available under the name Super HICAS (High Capacity Actively Controlled Steering). The twin turbochargers, intercoolers, and requisite plumbing left for a cramped engine bay; however, everything fit perfectly. Like previous generations Nissan offered a 2+2 model with the Z32. In 1993, a convertible version was introduced for the first time in the Z-car's history, as a response to aftermarket conversions. All 300ZXs now featured T-tops as standard, yet there were some rare hardtops (known as "slicktops") produced as well. The 300ZX was doomed to the same fate of many Japanese sports cars of the time. The mid-'90s trend toward SUVs and the rising Yen:Dollar ratio were both influential in ending North American 300ZX sales in 1996 at over 80,000 units sold (production for other markets continued until 2000). Probably the biggest killer of the 300ZX was its ever-inflating price; at its release it was priced at about $30,000, but in its final year this price had increased to around $50,000. This left many people questioning its value, and despite a final Commemorative Edition of the final 300 units shipped to America (complete with decals and certificates of authenticity), the Z-Car was on hiatus. In Japan, however, the 300ZX lived on for a few more years with a face-lift including a new front fascia, tail lights, headlights, rear spoiler, and a few other minor changes. Nissan 350Z Concept (1999) In the U.S., the Z-car went on hiatus from 1997 to 2002, as Nissan focused more on SUVs and was also in some financial trouble. To keep Z-car interest alive, Nissan launched a restoration program in 1998 for which they purchased original 240Zs, professionally restored them, and re-sold them at dealerships for about $24,000. Nissan next launched a concept car at the 1999 North American International Auto Show, the 240Z Concept. Clearly a throwback to the original, it was a bright orange two-seater with classic swept-back styling. In addition, it was fully functional, with the 2.4-liter 4-cylinder KA24DE engine from the 240SX featuring and of torque. The designers used an original 240Z to provide inspiration and the concept was created in only 12 weeks. The running concept, featuring a 4-cylinder engine compared to the Z-car's traditional 6-cylinder engine, was eventually thought less than a worthy successor to the line. Fifth generation: Nissan 350Z (Z33) In 1999, the French company Renault bought 44.4% of Nissan and Carlos Ghosn became its chief operating officer, but it would not be until 2001 when Ghosn became CEO that he would tell reporters: "We will build the Z. And we will make it profitable." On January 8, 2001, Nissan introduced the Z Concept. Much like the previous Z concept, it debuted at the North American International Auto Show and was painted bright orange. The squat, long-hood/short-deck styling resulted from a competition between Nissan's Japanese, European, and American design studios, with the La Jolla, California studio's design being chosen in March 2000. The product planners hoped to avoid the price problems that plagued the last few years of the 300ZX with a target MSRP of $30,000 while using the Porsche Boxster as a benchmark. In the summer of 2002, the 350Z was released to wide acclaim. It employed a slightly improved version of the 3.5-liter VQ35DE DOHC V6 engine found in multiple Nissan cars at the time, including the Skyline and Pathfinder. Released on July 2002 in Japan at reorganized Nissan Japanese dealerships called Nissan Blue Stage, and August 20, 2002 in the U.S., the 350Z coupé was available in 5 trim packages: '350Z' (Base), 'Enthusiast', 'Performance', 'Touring', and 'Track' editions. In Europe, only the 'Track' trim was available, although it was |
the , which developed to Modern French . John Wycliffe wrote the word as gelows or ielous. Z at the end of a word was pronounced ts, as in English assets, from Old French "enough" (Modern French ), from Vulgar Latin ("to sufficiency"). Last letter of the alphabet In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols. In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to Z being followed by & when her character Jacob Storey says, "He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see." Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. In the German alphabet, the umlauts (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü) and the letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowels a/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling of ss, not as independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order. The German alphabet ends with z. Variant and derived forms A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces is the "tailed z" (German , also ). In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of the origin of the Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character ezh (Ʒ) resembles a tailed z, as does the yogh (ȝ), with which it came to be indistinguishable in Middle English writing. Unicode assigns codepoints and in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively. There is also a variant with a stroke. Pronunciation and use English In modern English orthography, the letter usually represents the sound . It represents in words like seizure. More often, this sound appears as or in words such as measure, decision, etc. In all these words, developed from earlier by yod-coalescence. Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with , though it occurs in words beginning with other letters. It is the least frequently used letter in written English, with a frequency of about 0.08% in words. is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically 'correct' -ize endings, which are closer to Greek, to -ise endings, which are closer to French; however, -yse is preferred over -yze in Oxford spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like analyse. The most common variety of English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the -ize and -yze endings. One native Germanic English word that contains 'z', freeze (past froze, participle frozen) came to be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with 's' (as with choose, chose and chosen). is used in writing to represent the act of sleeping (sometimes using multiple z's like zzzz). It is used because closed-mouth human snoring often sounds like the pronunciation of this letter. Other languages stands for a voiced alveolar or voiced dental sibilant , in Albanian, Breton, Czech, Dutch, French, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Romanian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovak, and the International Phonetic Alphabet. It stands for in Chinese pinyin, Finnish (occurs in loanwords only), and German, and is likewise expressed in Old Norse. In Italian, it represents two phonemes, and . In Portuguese, it stands for in most cases, but also for or (depending on the regional variant) at the end of syllables. In Basque, it represents the sound . Castilian Spanish uses the letter to represent (as English in thing), though in other dialects (Latin American, Andalusian) this sound has merged with . Before voiced consonants, the sound is voiced to or , sometimes debbucalized to (as in the surname Guzmán , or ). This is the only context in which can represent a voiced sibilant in Spanish, though also represents (or , depending on the dialect) in this environment. In Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, usually stands for the sound /s/ and thus shares the value of ; it normally occurs only in loanwords that are spelt with in the source languages. The letter on its own represents in Polish. It is also used in four of the seven officially recognized digraphs: (), ( or ), ( or , sometimes it represents a sequence ) and (), and is the most frequently used of the consonants in that language. (Other Slavic languages avoid digraphs and mark the corresponding phonemes with the (caron) diacritic: , , , ; this system has its origin in Czech orthography of the Hussite period.) can also appear with diacritical marks, namely and , which are used to represent the sounds and . They also appear in the digraphs ( or ) and ( or ). Hungarian uses in the digraphs (expressing , as opposed to the value of , which is ), and (expressing ). In Modern Scots is used in place of the obsolete letter (yogh) and should be pronounced as a hard 'g'. Whilst there are a few common nouns which use in this manner, such as (pronounced 'brulgey' meaning broil), z as a yogh substitute is more common in people's names and place-names. Often the names are mispronounced to follow the apparent English spelling so Mackenzie is commonly pronounced with a 'z' sound. Menzies, however, still retains the correct pronunciation of | late Latin , derived from the imported Greek . The earlier form is jealous; its initial sound is the , which developed to Modern French . John Wycliffe wrote the word as gelows or ielous. Z at the end of a word was pronounced ts, as in English assets, from Old French "enough" (Modern French ), from Vulgar Latin ("to sufficiency"). Last letter of the alphabet In earlier times, the English alphabets used by children terminated not with Z but with & or related typographic symbols. In her 1859 novel Adam Bede, George Eliot refers to Z being followed by & when her character Jacob Storey says, "He thought it [Z] had only been put to finish off th' alphabet like; though ampusand would ha' done as well, for what he could see." Some Latin based alphabets have extra letters on the end of the alphabet. The last letter for the Icelandic, Finnish and Swedish alphabets is Ö, while it is Å for Danish and Norwegian. In the German alphabet, the umlauts (Ä/ä, Ö/ö, and Ü/ü) and the letter ß (Eszett or scharfes S) are regarded respectively as modifications of the vowels a/o/u and as a (standardized) variant spelling of ss, not as independent letters, so they come after the unmodified letters in the alphabetical order. The German alphabet ends with z. Variant and derived forms A glyph variant of Z originating in the medieval Gothic minuscules and the Early Modern Blackletter typefaces is the "tailed z" (German , also ). In some Antiqua typefaces, this letter is present as a standalone letter or in ligatures. Ligated with long s (ſ), it is part of the origin of the Eszett (ß) in the German alphabet. The character ezh (Ʒ) resembles a tailed z, as does the yogh (ȝ), with which it came to be indistinguishable in Middle English writing. Unicode assigns codepoints and in the Letterlike Symbols and Mathematical alphanumeric symbols ranges respectively. There is also a variant with a stroke. Pronunciation and use English In modern English orthography, the letter usually represents the sound . It represents in words like seizure. More often, this sound appears as or in words such as measure, decision, etc. In all these words, developed from earlier by yod-coalescence. Few words in the Basic English vocabulary begin with , though it occurs in words beginning with other letters. It is the least frequently used letter in written English, with a frequency of about 0.08% in words. is more common in the Oxford spelling of British English than in standard British English, as this variant prefers the more etymologically 'correct' -ize endings, which are closer to Greek, to -ise endings, which are closer to French; however, -yse is preferred over -yze in Oxford spelling, as it is closer to the original Greek roots of words like analyse. The most common variety of English it is used in is American English, which prefers both the -ize and -yze endings. One native Germanic English word that contains 'z', freeze (past froze, participle frozen) came to be spelled that way by convention, even though it could have been spelled with 's' (as with choose, chose and chosen). is used in writing |
and women until one day the whole thing just reached critical mass. The thought then occurred, 'Where do all these friends of Zippy live? Do they live in the real world which Zippy has been seen escaping for years—or do they live apart, in a pinhead world of their own?' Thus Dingburg, 'The City Inhabited Entirely by Pinheads' was born. It even had a motto: 'Going too far is half the pleasure of not getting anywhere'. The logical next step was to imagine Dingburg streets and neighborhoods—to create a place where Zippy's wacky rules would be the norm and everyone would play 24-hour Skeeball and worship at the feet of the giant Muffler Man. Zippy had, at last, found his home town." In regard to Zippy's famous catch phrase, at the 2003 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, Griffith recalled the phone call from Bartlett's: Zippy's signature expression of surprise is "Yow!" Appearances elsewhere Following rumors of a Zippy movie project that was never consummated, Griffith devoted dozens of strips to his real and imagined dealings with Hollywood. An animated television series, to be produced by Film Roman and co-written by Diane Noomin, was in negotiations from 1996 to 2001. On July 9, 2004, Zippy made his stage debut in San Francisco in Fun: The Concept at the Dark Room Theatre. Bill Griffith approved of the adaptation, though he did not work on the project. Fun: The Concept was adapted by Denzil J. Meyers with Jim Fourniadis. A collection of about 1,000 Zippy quotes was formerly packaged and distributed with the Emacs text editor. Some installations of the "fortune" command, available on most Unix-type systems, also contain this collection. This gives Zippy a very wide audience, since most Emacs users can have a random Zippy quote printed on their screen by typing "M-x yow" and most Linux or BSD users can get a random quote by typing "fortune zippy" in a shell. However, as a result of a decision by Richard Stallman prompted by FSF lawyer Eben Moglen, motivated by copyright concerns, these quotes were erased in GNU Emacs 22. Zippy under emacs now will only say "Yow! Legally-imposed CULTURE-reduction is CABBAGE-BRAINED!". Zippy can be restored by replacing the yow file with one from an older Emacs. After Griffith criticized Scott Adams' comic Dilbert for being "a kind of childish, depleted shell of a once-vibrant medium," Adams responded a year and half later on May 18, 1998, with a comic strip called Pippy the Ziphead, "cramming as much artwork in as possible so no one will notice there's only one joke... [and] it's on the reader." Dilbert notes that the strip is "nothing but a clown with a small head who says random things" and Dogbert responds that he is "maintaining his artistic integrity by creating a comic that no one will enjoy." Zippy also makes an appearance in the round-robin work The Narrative Corpse where he takes the stick figure protagonist to Croatia for "peace and quiet". Another appearance can be found in the Ramones' comic book-themed compilation Weird Tales of the Ramones, consisting of Zippy asking to play "air glockenspiel" for the band. Books Zippy Stories. Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1981. . San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1986. Nation of Pinheads. Berkeley: And/Or Press, 1982. Reprinted, San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1987. Zippy strips, 1979–1982. Pointed Behavior. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1984. Zippy strips, 1983–1984. Are We Having Fun Yet? Zippy the Pinhead's 29 Day Guide to Random Activities and Arbitrary Donuts. New York: Dutton, 1985. Reprinted, Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1994. Pindemonium. San Francisco: Last Gasp, 1986. Zippy strips, 1985–1986. King Pin: New Zippy Strips. New York: Dutton, 1987. Zippy strips, 1986–7. Pinhead's Progress: More Zippy Strips. New York: Dutton, 1989. Zippy strips, 1987–8. From A to Zippy: Getting There Is All the Fun. New York: Penguin Books, 1991. Zippy strips, 1988–90. Zippy's House of Fun: 54 Months of Sundays. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 1995. (Color strips, May 1990 - September 1994) Zippy and beyond: A Pinhead's Progress - Comic Strips, Stories, Travel Sketches and Animation Material. San Francisco: Cartoon Art Museum, 1997. Zippy Quarterly (eighteen collections, published from January, 1993 until March, 1998) - no ISBN identification for these publications Zippy Annual: A millennial melange of microcephalic malapropisms and metaphysical muzak. ("Vol. 1", "Impressions based on random data".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2000. Zippy Annual 2001. ("Vol. 2", "April 2001 - September 2001".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2001. Zippy Annual 2002. ("Vol. 3", "September 2001 - October 2002".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2002. Zippy Annual 2003. ("Vol. 4", "October 2002 - October 2003".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2003. Zippy: From Here to Absurdity. ("Vol. 5", "November 2003 - November 2004".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2004. Type Z Personality. ("Vol. 6", "December 2004 - December 2005".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2005, Connect the Polka Dots. ("Vol. 7", December 2005 - August 2006".) Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2006. Walk a Mile in My Muu-Muu. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2007. Welcome to Dingburg. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2008. Ding Dong Daddy from Dingburg. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2010. References External links Official site Zippy the Pinhead at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. at Don Markstein's Toonopedia. Archived from the original on September 10, 2015 The Real Zip the Pinhead from Liberty Corner, New Jersey Still asking "Are we having fun yet?" by Bill Griffith, transcript of Griffith's talk at | sometimes snacks on Polysorbate 80. Zippy's unpredictable behavior sometimes causes severe difficulty for others, but never for himself. (For example, drug dealers tried to use him as a drug mule, but lost their stash or were jailed.) He is married to a nearly identical pinhead named Zerbina, has two children, Fuelrod (a boy) and Meltdown (a girl), both apparently in their early teens, and owns a cat named Dingy. His parents, Ebb and Flo, originally from Kansas, live in Florida. Zippy's angst-ridden twin brother Lippy also frequently appears. He is portrayed as Zippy's total opposite, often dressed in a conservative suit, thinking sequentially, and avoiding his brother's penchant for non-sequiturs. In a daily strip dated 8 March 2005, he is depicted as being deeply moved by the poetry of Leonard Cohen, the landscape paintings of Maxfield Parrish, and the music of John Tesh. He has four close friends: Claude Funston, a hapless working man Griffy, a stand-in for Bill Griffith, who often appears in the strip to complain about various aspects of modern life Shelf-Life, a fast-talking schemer always looking for "the next big thing" Vizeen Nurney, a 20-something lounge singer who, despite her rebellious image, has an optimistic and sympathetic nature A humanoid toad, Mr. Toad (less commonly "Mr. the Toad") who embodies blind greed and selfishness, appears occasionally (along with his wife, Mrs. Toad, and their children, Mustang and Blazer), as do The Toadettes, a group of mindless and interchangeable amphibians, who pop up here and there; and the Stupidity Patrol, described by Bill Griffith as "cruising the streets of L.A., correcting the behavior of insensitive louts". Another occasionally occurring character is God, appearing either as a disembodied head or a head superimposed on various peoples' bodies. He is depicted as either conversing with Zippy on various philosophical topics, or commenting on humanity in general. In his daily-strip incarnation, Zippy spends much of his time traveling and commenting on interesting places; recent strips focus on his fascination with roadside icons featuring giant beings; Zippy also frequently participates in his long-running conversation with the giant fiberglass doggie mascot of San Francisco's Doggie Diner chain (later, the Carousel diner near the San Francisco Zoo). For a while the Zippy website encouraged people to send photos of interesting places for Zippy to visit in the strip. In 2007, Griffith began to focus his daily strip on the fictional city of Dingburg, Maryland, Zippy's "birthplace" which, according to the cartoonist, is located "17 miles west of Baltimore." Griffith said, "Over the years, I began to expand Zippy's circle of friends beyond my usual cast of characters to a wider world of people like Zippy--other pinheads. I kept this up for a few months, happily adding more and more muu-muu-clad men and women until one day the whole thing just reached critical mass. The thought then occurred, 'Where do all these friends of Zippy live? Do they live in the real world which Zippy has been seen escaping for years—or do they live apart, in a pinhead world of their own?' Thus Dingburg, 'The City Inhabited Entirely by Pinheads' was born. It even had a motto: 'Going too far is half the pleasure of not getting anywhere'. The logical next step was to imagine Dingburg streets and neighborhoods—to create a place where Zippy's wacky rules would be the norm and everyone would play 24-hour Skeeball and worship at the feet of the giant Muffler Man. Zippy had, at last, found his home town." In regard to Zippy's famous catch phrase, at the 2003 University of Florida Conference on Comics and Graphic Novels, Griffith recalled the phone call from Bartlett's: Zippy's signature expression of surprise is "Yow!" Appearances elsewhere Following rumors of a Zippy movie project that was never consummated, Griffith devoted dozens of strips to his real and imagined dealings with Hollywood. An animated television series, to be produced by Film Roman and co-written by Diane Noomin, was in negotiations from 1996 to 2001. On July 9, 2004, Zippy made his stage debut in San Francisco in Fun: The Concept at the Dark Room Theatre. Bill Griffith approved of the adaptation, though he did not work on the project. Fun: The Concept was adapted by Denzil J. Meyers with Jim Fourniadis. A collection of about 1,000 Zippy quotes was formerly packaged and distributed with the Emacs text editor. Some installations of the "fortune" command, |
westernized clothing for everyday use. The women dress differently depending on whether they are single, engaged, or married. The men wore a leather belt with two strips of hide hanging down front and back. In South Africa, the miniskirt has existed since pre-colonial times. In the African cultures, such as the Basotho, the Batswana, the Bapedi, the Amaswati and the AmaZulu, women wore traditional miniskirts as cultural attire. These skirts are not seen as shameless but used to cover the women's genitals. The skirts are called isigcebhezana and are essential in Zulu ceremonies. For example, Umemulo is a ceremony for women who turn 21 years of age. It represents a huge transition in the woman's life because it is a symbol of her being ready to accept a boyfriend and even get married. Additionally, each stage of a Zulu's life is determined by a specific type of clothing. For an unmarried woman, she wears the skirt and nothing on the top, but as she grows up, the woman starts to cover up her body because a time will come in which she will be a married woman and an old woman. Nonetheless, a special type of clothing is reserved to pregnant women. When a woman is pregnant she wears an ‘isibamba', a thick belt made from dried grass, covered with glass or plastic beadwork, to support her swelling stomach and its additional weight. Societal roles Men The Zulu people govern under a patriarchal society. Men are perceived as the head of the household and seen as authoritative figures. Zulu men identify themselves with great pride and dignity. They also compare themselves to qualities of powerful wild animals such as bulls, lions and elephants. The men contribute to society by acting as defenders, hunters, and lovers. The Zulu men are also in charge of herding the cattle, educating themselves on the lives of disciplined warriors, creating weapons, and learning the art of stick fighting. Stick fighting The art of stick fighting is a celebration of manhood for Zulu men. These men can begin to learn this fighting art form as young as the age of five years old. There are multiple reasons why men learn how to stick fight. For example, men may want to learn so that they can set right any wrongs or insults made towards them. Other reasons some men choose to learn are for sporting purposes, proving skills or manliness, and self-defense. The goal of stick fighting is to injure the opponent and sometimes even kill. There are rules of etiquette that must be abided by when stick fighting. The men can only fight a man the same age as them. One cannot hit the opponent when they lose their stick. Only sticks are allowed when fighting. Women The women in Zulu society often perform domestic chores such as cleaning, raising children, collecting water and firewood, laundry, tending to crops, cooking, and making clothes. Women can be considered as the sole income-earner of the household. A woman's stages of life lead up to the goal of marriage. As a woman approaches puberty, she is known as a tshitshi. A tshitshi reveals her singleness by wearing less clothing. Single women typically do not wear clothing to cover their head, breasts, legs and shoulders. Engaged women wear hairnets to show their marital status to society and married women cover themselves in clothing and headdresses. Also, women are taught to defer to men and treat them with great respect. The women are always bound by a male figure to abide by. Religion and beliefs Most Zulu people state their beliefs to be Christian. Some of the most common churches to which they belong are African Initiated Churches, especially the Zion Christian Church, Nazareth Baptist Church and United African Apostolic Church, although membership of major European Churches, such as the Dutch Reformed, Anglican and Catholic Churches are also common. Nevertheless, many Zulus retain their traditional pre-Christian belief system of ancestor worship in parallel with their Christianity. Traditional Zulu religion includes belief in a creator God (uNkulunkulu) who is above interacting in day-to-day human life, although this belief appears to have originated from efforts by early Christian missionaries to frame the idea of the Christian God in Zulu terms. Traditionally, the more strongly held Zulu belief was in ancestor spirits (amaThongo or amaDlozi), who had the power to intervene in people's lives, for good or ill. This belief continues to be widespread among the modern Zulu population. Traditionally, the Zulu recognize several elements to be present in a human being: the physical body (inyama yomzimba or umzimba); the breath or life force (umoya womphefumulo or umoya); and the "shadow," prestige, or personality (isithunzi). Once the umoya leaves the body, the isithunzi may live on as an ancestral spirit (idlozi) only if certain conditions were met in life. Behaving with ubuntu, or showing respect and generosity towards others, enhances one's moral standing or prestige in the community, one's isithunzi. By contrast, acting in a negative way towards others can reduce the isithunzi, and it is possible for the isithunzi to fade away completely. In order to appeal to the spirit world, a diviner (sangoma) must invoke the ancestors through divination processes to determine the problem. Then, a herbalist (inyanga) prepares a mixture (muthi) to be consumed in order to influence the ancestors. As such, diviners and herbalists play an important part in the daily lives of the Zulu people. However, a distinction is made between white muthi (umuthi omhlope), which has positive effects, such as healing or the prevention or reversal of misfortune, and black muthi (umuthi omnyama), which can bring illness or death to others, or ill-gotten wealth to the user. Users of black muthi are considered witches, and shunned by the society. Christianity had difficulty gaining a foothold among the Zulu people, and when it did it was in a syncretic fashion. Isaiah Shembe, considered the Zulu Messiah, presented a form of Christianity (the Nazareth Baptist Church) which incorporated traditional customs. Furthermore, Zulu people also practice a ceremony called Ukweshwama. The killing of the bull is part of Ukweshwama, an annual ceremony that celebrates a new harvest. It is a day of prayer when Zulus thank their creator and their ancestors. By tradition, a new regiment of young warriors is asked to confront a bull to prove its courage, inheriting the beast's strength as it expires. It is believed this power then transfers to the Zulu king. Bride wealth Zulu people have a system called . This term is particularly used by Zulu people when it comes to bride wealth. Every African ethnic group has different requirements when it comes to bride wealth. In pre-capitalist Zulu society, ilobolo was inextricably linked to the ownership of cattle. During that time, there was not a fixed number of cattle required for the wedding to happen; it could be paid before the marriage or during the marriage. The groom takes the cattle from his father's herd in order to perpetuate the family heritage. Nonetheless, this ritual has changed during colonization because in 1869, Theophilus Shepstone, then Natal Secretary for Native Affairs, formalized the ilobolo payment to 10 cattle for commoners (plus the ingquthu cow for the mother), 15 for hereditary chief siblings and 20-plus for the daughters of a chief. They found it too lenient to let the groom give whatever amount he wants, so they decided to establish a specific number of cattle that would be needed before or at the start of the marriage. This has been accepted by Zulu men who were educated in mission schools, but according to more ritual people this became “untraditional”. Additionally, with the instauration of the Natal Code, some Zulu men decided to settle another way in which they could decrease the ilobo: offer a token payment or bring a present for the father of the prospective bride in order to decrease the ilobolo amount to be paid. The payment of ilobolo can be difficult for some families, but as it is often considered a symbol of pride and respect, many are willing to maintain this tradition as long as possible. Notable | supported by Boer mercenaries. Cetshwayo died in February 1884, killed by Zibhebhu's regime, leaving his son, the 15-year-old Dinuzulu, to inherit the throne. In-fighting between the Zulu continued for years, until in 1897 Zululand was absorbed fully into the British colony of Natal. Apartheid years KwaZulu homeland Under apartheid, the homeland of KwaZulu (Kwa meaning place of) was created for Zulu people. In 1970, the Bantu Homeland Citizenship Act provided that all Zulus would become citizens of KwaZulu, losing their South African citizenship. KwaZulu consisted of many disconnected pieces of land, in what is now KwaZulu-Natal. Hundreds of thousands of Zulu people living on privately owned "black spots" outside of KwaZulu were dispossessed and forcibly moved to bantustans – worse land previously reserved for whites contiguous to existing areas of KwaZulu. By 1993, approximately 5.2 million Zulu people lived in KwaZulu, and approximately 2 million lived in the rest of South Africa. The Chief Minister of KwaZulu, from its creation in 1970 (as Zululand) was Chief Mangosuthu Buthelezi. In 1994, KwaZulu was joined with the province of Natal, to form modern KwaZulu-Natal. Inkatha YeSizwe Inkatha YeSizwe means "the crown of the nation". In 1975, Buthelezi revived the Inkatha YaKwaZulu, predecessor of the Inkatha Freedom Party. This organization was nominally a protest movement against apartheid, but held more conservative views than the ANC. For example, Inkatha was opposed to the armed struggle, and to sanctions against South Africa. Inkatha was initially on good terms with the ANC, but the two organizations came into increasing conflict beginning in 1976 in the aftermath of the Soweto Uprising. Language The language of the Zulu people is "isiZulu", a Bantu language; more specifically, part of the Nguni subgroup. Zulu is the most widely spoken language in South Africa, where it is an official language. More than half of the South African population are able to understand it, with over 9 million first-language and over 15 million second-language speakers. Many Zulu people also speak Xitsonga, Sesotho and others from among South Africa's 11 official languages. Ceremony Umhlanga The Zulu people celebrate an annual event that was established in 1984 called the Umhlanga or Reed Dance. This event takes place at the royal capital near Nongoma. This traditional ceremony is performed by young women from all parts of the kingdom to perform in front of the monarch and his guests. The purpose of this event is to promote pride in virginity and to restrain sexual relationships. Beadwork is a prominent attire that is worn at the Umhlanga. The beadwork is not only worn by the dancers, but by the guests as well. The Umhlanga is not purely for a time of dance. The King also uses this time to speak to the young men and women of the nation. The King discusses current political issues. Beadwork History The creation of beadwork dates back to the times of war for the Zulu people. This particular form of beadwork were known as iziqu, medallions of war. Often worn as a necklace, the beads were displayed in a criss-cross formation across the shoulders. This assemblage of beads by the warriors represented a symbol of bravery. Before the use of glass was apparent to the Zulu, beadwork derived from wood, seeds and berries. It was not until the arrival of Europeans that glass became a trade material with the Portuguese, which soon became abundantly available to the Zulu. Purpose Beadwork is a form of communication for the Zulu people. Typically when one is wearing multiple beads, it is a sign of wealth. The more beads one is wearing, the wealthier they are perceived. The beads have the potential to convey information about a person's age, gender and marital status. The design of the beads often conveys a particular message. However, one must know the context of their use in order to read the message correctly. Depending on the area in which the beadwork was made, some designs can depict different messages compared to other areas. A message could be embedded into the colors and structure of the beads or could be strictly for decorative purposes. Beadwork can be worn in everyday use, but is often worn during important occasions such as weddings, or ceremonies. For example, beadwork is featured during the coming of age for a young girl or worn during dances. The beaded elements complement the costumes worn by the Zulu people to bring out a sense of finery or prestige. Apparel Beadwork is worn by all men, women, and children at any age. Depending on which stage of life an individual is in, the beadwork indicates different meanings. Beadwork is dominantly worn when young Zulu people are courting or in search for love affairs. The wearing of decorative beadwork can act as an attempt to grab the attention of someone of the opposite sex. Also, the gifting of beadwork is a way of communicating interest with lovers. During the transition from single to married women, beadwork is shown through a beaded cloth apron worn over a pleated leather skirt. As for older or mature women, beadwork is displayed in detailed headdresses and cowhide skirts that extend past the knee. These long skirts are also seen on unmarried women and young marriageable-age girls. Men are more conservative when wearing beadwork. However, when a young boy is seen wearing multiple necklaces, it is a sign that he is highly interested by these gifts from various girls. The more gifts he is wearing, the higher prestige he obtains. Colors of beads Various forms of beadwork are found in different color schemes. Typically, there are four different types of color schemes: Isisshunka – white, light blue, dark green, pale yellow, pink, red, black. This color scheme is believed to have no specific meaning. Isithembu – light blue, grass green, bright yellow, red, black. This color scheme derives from clans or clan areas. Umzansi – white, dark blue, grass green, red. This color scheme also derives from clans or clan areas. Isinyolovane – combination of any colors not consistent with other color schemes. This color scheme is often related to connotations of perfection and charm. The colors of beads might hold different meanings based on the area that they originated from. It is often at times that this can lead to misrepresentation or confusion when attempting to understand what the beadwork is communicating. One cannot assume that the color system is standard across South Africa. In some areas, the color green symbolizes jealousy in a certain area, but in another area it symbolizes grass. One must know the origin of the beadwork in order to interpret the message correctly. Clothing Zulus wear a variety of attire, both traditional for ceremonial or culturally celebratory occasions, and modern westernized clothing for everyday use. The women dress differently depending on whether they are single, engaged, or married. The men wore a leather belt with two strips of hide hanging down front and back. In South Africa, the miniskirt has existed since pre-colonial times. In the African cultures, such as the Basotho, the Batswana, the Bapedi, the Amaswati and the AmaZulu, women wore traditional miniskirts as cultural attire. These skirts are not seen as shameless but used to cover the women's genitals. The skirts are called isigcebhezana and are essential in Zulu ceremonies. For example, Umemulo is a ceremony for women who turn 21 years of age. It represents a huge transition in the woman's life because it is a symbol of her being ready to accept a boyfriend and even get married. Additionally, each stage of a Zulu's life is determined by a specific type of clothing. For an unmarried woman, she wears the skirt and nothing on the top, but as she grows up, the woman starts to cover up her body because a time will come in which she will be a married woman and an old woman. Nonetheless, a special type |
and others), melegueta pepper (Aframomum melegueta), myoga (Zingiber mioga), korarima (Aframomum corrorima), turmeric (Curcuma), and cardamom (Amomum, Elettaria). Description Members of the family are small to large herbaceous plants with distichous leaves with basal sheaths that overlap to form a pseudostem. The plants are either self-supporting or epiphytic. Flowers are hermaphroditic, usually strongly zygomorphic, in determinate cymose inflorescences, and subtended by conspicuous, spirally arranged bracts. The perianth is composed of two whorls, a fused tubular calyx, and a tubular corolla with one lobe larger than the other two. Flowers typically have two of their stamenoids (sterile stamens) fused to form a petaloid lip, and have only one fertile stamen. The ovary is inferior and topped by two nectaries, the stigma is funnel-shaped. Some genera yield essential oils used in the perfume industry (Alpinia, Hedychium). Taxonomy Subdivisions Subfamily Siphonochiloideae Tribe Siphonochileae Siphonochilus Subfamily Tamijioideae Tribe Tamijieae Tamijia Subfamily Alpinioideae Siliquamomum (incertae sedis) Tribe Alpinieae Adelmeria Aframomum - grains of paradise Alpinia - galangal Amomum Aulotandra Cyphostigma Elettaria - cardamom Elettariopsis Etlingera Geocharis Geostachys Hornstedtia Lanxangia Leptosolena Plagiostachys Renealmia Vanoverberghia ×Alpingera F. Luc-Cayol (Alpinia × Etlingera) - intergeneric hybrid Tribe Riedelieae Burbidgea Pleuranthodium Riedelia Siamanthus Subfamily Zingiberoideae Caulokaempferia (incertae sedis) | Tribe Alpinieae Adelmeria Aframomum - grains of paradise Alpinia - galangal Amomum Aulotandra Cyphostigma Elettaria - cardamom Elettariopsis Etlingera Geocharis Geostachys Hornstedtia Lanxangia Leptosolena Plagiostachys Renealmia Vanoverberghia ×Alpingera F. Luc-Cayol (Alpinia × Etlingera) - intergeneric hybrid Tribe Riedelieae Burbidgea Pleuranthodium Riedelia Siamanthus Subfamily Zingiberoideae Caulokaempferia (incertae sedis) Tribe Zingibereae Boesenbergia Camptandra Cautleya Cornukaempferia Curcuma - turmeric Curcumorpha Distichochlamys Haniffia Haplochorema Hedychium Hitchenia Kaempferia Kedhalia Laosanthus Myxochlamys Nanochilus Newmania Paracautleya Parakaempferia Pommereschea Pyrgophyllum Rhynchanthus Roscoea Scaphochlamys Smithatris Stadiochilus Stahlianthus Zingiber - ginger Tribe Globbeae Gagnepainia Globba Hemiorchis Distribution The Zingiberaceae have a pantropical distribution in the tropics of Africa, Asia, and the Americas, with their greatest diversity in Southeast Asia. References Bibliography External links List of Indian medicinal plants from Biodiversity of India The phylogeny and a new classification of the gingers (Zingiberaceae): evidence from molecular data Abstracts from the Symposia on the Family Zingiberaceae A New Classification of the Zingiberaceae from the Third Symposium on Zingiberaceae Zomlefer, |
of Mwene Mutapa, meaning "Ravager of the Lands", was bestowed on him and subsequent rulers. The Mutapa Empire ruled territory between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, in what is now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, from the 14th to the 17th century. By its, peak Mutapa had conquered the Dande area of the Tonga and Tavara. The Mutapa Empire predominately engaged in the Indian Ocean transcontinental trade with and via the WaSwahili. The primary exported gold and ivory for silk and ceramics from Asia. Like their contemporaries in Maravi, Mutapa had problems with the arriving Portuguese traders. The peak of this uneasy relationship was reached when the Portuguese attempted to influence the kingdoms internal affairs by establishing markets in the kingdom and converting the population to Christianity. This action caused outrage by the Muslim WaSwahili living in the capital, this chaos gave the Portuguese the excuse they were searching for to warrant an attack on the kingdom and try to control its gold mines and ivory routes. This attack failed when the Portuguese succumb to disease along the Zambezi river. In the 1600s internal disputes and civil war began the decline of Mutapa. The weakened kingdom was finally conquered by the Portuguese and was eventually taken over by rival Shona states. It is hypothesised by Julian Cobbing that the presence of early Europeans slave trading and attempts to control resources in various parts of Bantu Speaking Africa caused the gradual militarization of the people in the region. This can be observed with the Maravi's WaZimba warrior cast who once defeating the Portuguese remained quite militaristic afterwards. The Portuguese presence in the region was also a major reason for the founding of the Rozvi Empire, a breakaway state of Mutapa. The ruler of the Rozvi, Changamire Dombo, became one of the most powerful leaders in South-Central Africa's history. Under his leadership, the Rozvi defeated the Portuguese and expelled them from their trading posts along the Zambezi river. But perhaps the most notable instance of this increased militarization was the rise of the Zulu under the leadership of Shaka. Pressures from the English colonialists in the Cape and increased militarization of the Zulu resulted in the Mfecane (the crushing). The Zulu expanded by assimilating the women and children of tribes they defeated, if the men of these Nguni tribes escaped slaughter, they used the military tactics of the Zulu to attack other groups. This caused mass displacements, wars and raids throughout Southern, Central and Eastern Africa as Nguni or Ngoni tribes made their way throughout the region and is referred to as the Mfecane. The arriving Nguni under the leadership of Zwagendaba crossed the Zambezi river moving northwards. The Ngoni were the final blow to the already weakened Maravi Empire. Many Nguni eventually settled around what is today Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania and assimilated into neighboring tribes. In the western part of Zambia, another Southern African group of Sotho-Tswana heritage called the Kololo manage to conquer the local inhabitants who were migrants from the fallen Luba and Lunda states called the Luyana or Aluyi. The Luyana established the Barotse Kingdom on the floodplains of the Zambezi upon their arrival from Katanga. Under the Kololo, the Kololo language was imposed upon the Luyana until the Luyana revolted and overthrew the Kololo by this time the Luyana language was largely forgotten and a new hybrid language emerged, SiLozi and the Luyana began to refer to themselves as Lozi. At the end of the 18th century, some of the Mbunda migrated to Barotseland, Mongu upon the migration of among others, the Ciyengele. The Aluyi and their leader, the Litunga Mulambwa, especially valued the Mbunda for their fighting ability. By the late 19th century, most of the various peoples of Zambia were established in their current areas. Colonial Period In 1888, Cecil Rhodes, spearheading British commercial and political interests in Central Africa, obtained a mineral rights concessions from local chiefs. In the same year, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe, were proclaimed a British sphere of influence. In the beginning the territory was administered by Rhodes' British South Africa Company (BSAC), which showed little interest in the province and used it mainly as a source of labour. The most important factor in the colony's economy was copper, the discovery of which is due partly to an American scout, Frederick Russell Burnham, who in 1895 led and oversaw the massive Northern Territories (BSA) Exploration Co. expedition which established that major copper deposits existed in Central Africa. Along the Kafue River in then Northern Rhodesia, Burnham saw many similarities to copper deposits he had worked in the United States, and he encountered natives wearing copper bracelets. In 1923 the British government decided not to renew the company's charter; as a result, Southern Rhodesia was annexed formally and granted self-government in 1923. After negotiations the administration of Northern Rhodesia was transferred to the British Colonial Office in 1924 as a protectorate, with Livingstone as capital. The capital was transferred to the more central Lusaka in 1935. A Legislative Council was established, of which five members were elected by the small European minority (only 4,000 people), but none by the African population. In 1928 enormous copper deposits were discovered in the region which then became known as the Copperbelt, transforming Northern Rhodesia from a prospective land of colonization for white farmers to a copper exporter. By 1938 the country produced 13% of the world's copper extraction. The sector was developed by two companies; the Anglo American Corporation (AAC) and the South African Rhodesian Selection Trust (RST), who controlled the sector till independence. The poor safety record and increased taxes triggered a strike of African mineworkers in 1935, known as the Copperbelt strike. The strike was crushed by the authorities; six miners were killed. During the Second World War white miners came out on strike in 1940. Realizing the importance of their products for the war, they demanded higher salaries. This strike was followed by another by African mine workers. Even before the war, there had been talks about merging the two Rhodesias, but the process had been halted by the British authorities, and brought to an absolute stop by the war. Finally, in 1953, both Rhodesias were joined with Nyasaland (now Malawi) to form the Central African Federation. Northern Rhodesia was the centre of much of the turmoil and crises that afflicted the federation in its last years. At the core of the controversy were insistent African demands for greater participation in government and European fears of losing political control. A two-stage election held in October and December 1962 resulted in an African majority in the legislative council and an uneasy coalition between the two African nationalist parties. The council passed resolutions calling for Northern Rhodesia's secession from the federation and demanding full internal self-b under a new constitution, and a new national assembly based on a broader, more democratic franchise. On 31 December 1963, the federation was dissolved, and Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia on 24 October 1964. Independence At independence, despite its considerable mineral wealth, Zambia faced major challenges. Domestically, there were few trained and educated Zambians capable of running the government, and the economy was largely dependent on foreign expertise. Most of Zambia's neighbouring countries were still colonies or under white minority rule. The United National Independence Party (UNIP) won the pre-independence elections, gaining 55 of the 75 seats. The Zambian African National Congress won 10 seats, and the National Progressive Party won all the 10 seats reserved for whites. Kenneth Kaunda was elected Prime Minister, and later the same year president, as the country adopted a presidential system. Kaunda adopted an ideology of African socialism, close to that of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. Economical policies focused on central planning and nationalisation, and a system of one party rule was put in place. Towards one party rule In 1968 Kaunda was re-elected as president. During the following years Zambia adopted a one party system. In 1972 all political parties except UNIP were banned, and this was formalised in a new constitution that was adopted in 1973. The constitution framed a system called "one-party participatory democracy", which in practise meant that UNIP became the sole political factor in the country. It provided for a strong president and a unicameral National Assembly. National policy was formulated by the Central Committee of UNIP. The cabinet executed the central committee's policy. In legislative elections, only candidates running for UNIP were allowed to participate. Even though inter-party competition was out of question, the contest for seats within UNIP was energetic. In the presidential elections, the only candidate allowed to run was the one elected as president of UNIP at the party's general conference. In this way Kaunda was re-elected unopposed with a yes or no vote in 1973, 1978, 1983 and 1988. This did not, however, mean that there was no dissension to the imposition of a one-party rule in the country or within UNIP. Sylvester Mwamba Chisembele who was Cabinet Minister for Western Province (previously Barotse Province) together with UNIP leaders from 7 out of the 8 Provinces established a Committee of 14. The objective of the Committee of 14 which consisted two leaders from each of the 7 provinces was the establishment of a democratically elected council of two leaders from each province to rule the country by consensus with the President as Head of State. If this had been achieved, it would have meant the curtailing of the absolute power residing in President Kaunda. The Committee of 14 attended a meeting in State House at which President Kaunda agreed to consider their proposals. However, later he banned the Committee of 14 and this action was followed by the suspension of Sylvester Chisembele and several leaders were sacked. Chisembele later rejoined the Cabinet as Minister for Eastern Province and two years later in 1977 he was transferred in the same position to the Copperbelt Province, where the political situation was tense, especially so because of the forthcoming General Elections. Simon M. Kapwepwe and Harry Mwaanga Nkumbula, who, before the declaration of a One Party State, had been leaders of the UPP and ANC political parties respectively, had joined UNIP with the intention of challenging for the Presidency. However, their attempt to challenge President Kaunda for the Presidency on the UNIP ticket failed as both were prevented and disqualified by the manipulations of President Kaunda, who stood unopposed. Simon Kapwepwe and Harry Nkumbula challenged the resultant 1978 election of President Kaunda in the High Court, but unsurprisingly their action was unsuccessful. The economy and the copper crisis After independence Zambia adopted a left-wing economic policy. The economy was to some extent run by central planning, under five year plans, private companies were nationalised and incorporated into large state-owned conglomerates. The government's goal was to be self-sufficient, which it sought to achieve through import substitution. At first the plan worked and the economy grew steadily, but in the mid 1970s the economy started to decline drastically. During the period between 1975 and 1990 Zambia's economy dropped by approximately 30%. To deal with the crisis Zambia took big loans from the International Monetary Fund and the Worldbank, hoping that copper prices would rise again soon, instead of issuing structural reforms. Foreign policy Internationally, Zambia's sympathies lay with forces opposing colonial or white-dominated rule. During the next decade, it actively supported movements such as the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) under the independence war and under the subsequent civil war, the Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) in Southern Rhodesia, and the African National Congress (ANC) in their struggle against apartheid in the Republic of South Africa, and the South-West Africa People's Organization (SWAPO) in their struggle for independence for Namibia. Zambia also hosted some of the movements. For instance, the ANC exile headquarters were in Lusaka, and ZAPU had a military base in Zambia. This resulted in security problems, as the South Africa and South Rhodesia raided targets inside Zambia on several occasions. Rhodesian counterinsurgency operations extended into Zambia after Zimbabwe People's Revolutionary Army (ZIPRA) rebels shot down two unarmed Vickers Viscount civilian airliners (Air Rhodesia Flight 825 on 3 September 1978 and Air Rhodesia Flight 827 on 12 February 1979) with Soviet-supplied SA-7 heat-seeking missiles. In retaliation for | Mutapa. The title of Mwene Mutapa, meaning "Ravager of the Lands", was bestowed on him and subsequent rulers. The Mutapa Empire ruled territory between the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers, in what is now Zambia, Zimbabwe and Mozambique, from the 14th to the 17th century. By its, peak Mutapa had conquered the Dande area of the Tonga and Tavara. The Mutapa Empire predominately engaged in the Indian Ocean transcontinental trade with and via the WaSwahili. The primary exported gold and ivory for silk and ceramics from Asia. Like their contemporaries in Maravi, Mutapa had problems with the arriving Portuguese traders. The peak of this uneasy relationship was reached when the Portuguese attempted to influence the kingdoms internal affairs by establishing markets in the kingdom and converting the population to Christianity. This action caused outrage by the Muslim WaSwahili living in the capital, this chaos gave the Portuguese the excuse they were searching for to warrant an attack on the kingdom and try to control its gold mines and ivory routes. This attack failed when the Portuguese succumb to disease along the Zambezi river. In the 1600s internal disputes and civil war began the decline of Mutapa. The weakened kingdom was finally conquered by the Portuguese and was eventually taken over by rival Shona states. It is hypothesised by Julian Cobbing that the presence of early Europeans slave trading and attempts to control resources in various parts of Bantu Speaking Africa caused the gradual militarization of the people in the region. This can be observed with the Maravi's WaZimba warrior cast who once defeating the Portuguese remained quite militaristic afterwards. The Portuguese presence in the region was also a major reason for the founding of the Rozvi Empire, a breakaway state of Mutapa. The ruler of the Rozvi, Changamire Dombo, became one of the most powerful leaders in South-Central Africa's history. Under his leadership, the Rozvi defeated the Portuguese and expelled them from their trading posts along the Zambezi river. But perhaps the most notable instance of this increased militarization was the rise of the Zulu under the leadership of Shaka. Pressures from the English colonialists in the Cape and increased militarization of the Zulu resulted in the Mfecane (the crushing). The Zulu expanded by assimilating the women and children of tribes they defeated, if the men of these Nguni tribes escaped slaughter, they used the military tactics of the Zulu to attack other groups. This caused mass displacements, wars and raids throughout Southern, Central and Eastern Africa as Nguni or Ngoni tribes made their way throughout the region and is referred to as the Mfecane. The arriving Nguni under the leadership of Zwagendaba crossed the Zambezi river moving northwards. The Ngoni were the final blow to the already weakened Maravi Empire. Many Nguni eventually settled around what is today Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Tanzania and assimilated into neighboring tribes. In the western part of Zambia, another Southern African group of Sotho-Tswana heritage called the Kololo manage to conquer the local inhabitants who were migrants from the fallen Luba and Lunda states called the Luyana or Aluyi. The Luyana established the Barotse Kingdom on the floodplains of the Zambezi upon their arrival from Katanga. Under the Kololo, the Kololo language was imposed upon the Luyana until the Luyana revolted and overthrew the Kololo by this time the Luyana language was largely forgotten and a new hybrid language emerged, SiLozi and the Luyana began to refer to themselves as Lozi. At the end of the 18th century, some of the Mbunda migrated to Barotseland, Mongu upon the migration of among others, the Ciyengele. The Aluyi and their leader, the Litunga Mulambwa, especially valued the Mbunda for their fighting ability. By the late 19th century, most of the various peoples of Zambia were established in their current areas. Colonial Period In 1888, Cecil Rhodes, spearheading British commercial and political interests in Central Africa, obtained a mineral rights concessions from local chiefs. In the same year, Northern and Southern Rhodesia, now Zambia and Zimbabwe, were proclaimed a British sphere of influence. In the beginning the territory was administered by Rhodes' British South Africa Company (BSAC), which showed little interest in the province and used it mainly as a source of labour. The most important factor in the colony's economy was copper, the discovery of which is due partly to an American scout, Frederick Russell Burnham, who in 1895 led and oversaw the massive Northern Territories (BSA) Exploration Co. expedition which established that major copper deposits existed in Central Africa. Along the Kafue River in then Northern Rhodesia, Burnham saw many similarities to copper deposits he had worked in the United States, and he encountered natives wearing copper bracelets. In 1923 the British government decided not to renew the company's charter; as a result, Southern Rhodesia was annexed formally and granted self-government in 1923. After negotiations the administration of Northern Rhodesia was transferred to the British Colonial Office in 1924 as a protectorate, with Livingstone as capital. The capital was transferred to the more central Lusaka in 1935. A Legislative Council was established, of which five members were elected by the small European minority (only 4,000 people), but none by the African population. In 1928 enormous copper deposits were discovered in the region which then became known as the Copperbelt, transforming Northern Rhodesia from a prospective land of colonization for white farmers to a copper exporter. By 1938 the country produced 13% of the world's copper extraction. The sector was developed by two companies; the Anglo American Corporation (AAC) and the South African Rhodesian Selection Trust (RST), who controlled the sector till independence. The poor safety record and increased taxes triggered a strike of African mineworkers in 1935, known as the Copperbelt strike. The strike was crushed by the authorities; six miners were killed. During the Second World War white miners came out on strike in 1940. Realizing the importance of their products for the war, they demanded higher salaries. This strike was followed by another by African mine workers. Even before the war, there had been talks about merging the two Rhodesias, but the process had been halted by the British authorities, and brought to an absolute stop by the war. Finally, in 1953, both Rhodesias were joined with Nyasaland (now Malawi) to form the Central African Federation. Northern Rhodesia was the centre of much of the turmoil and crises that afflicted the federation in its last years. At the core of the controversy were insistent African demands for greater participation in government and European fears of losing political control. A two-stage election held in October and December 1962 resulted in an African majority in the legislative council and an uneasy coalition between the two African nationalist parties. The council passed resolutions calling for Northern Rhodesia's secession from the federation and demanding full internal self-b under a new constitution, and a new national assembly based on a broader, more democratic franchise. On 31 December 1963, the federation was dissolved, and Northern Rhodesia became the Republic of Zambia on 24 October 1964. Independence At independence, despite its considerable mineral wealth, Zambia faced major challenges. Domestically, there were few trained and educated Zambians capable of running the government, and the economy was largely dependent on foreign expertise. Most of Zambia's neighbouring countries were still colonies or under white minority rule. The United National Independence Party (UNIP) won the pre-independence elections, gaining 55 of the 75 seats. The Zambian African National Congress won 10 seats, and the National Progressive Party won all the 10 seats reserved for whites. Kenneth Kaunda was elected Prime Minister, and later the same year president, as the country adopted a presidential system. Kaunda adopted an ideology of African socialism, close to that of Julius Nyerere in Tanzania. Economical policies focused on central planning and nationalisation, and a system of one party rule was put in place. Towards one party rule In 1968 Kaunda was re-elected as president. During the following years Zambia adopted a one party system. In 1972 all political parties except UNIP were banned, and this was formalised in a new constitution that was adopted in 1973. The constitution framed a system called "one-party participatory democracy", which in practise meant that UNIP became the sole political factor in the country. It provided for a strong president and a unicameral National Assembly. National policy was formulated by the Central Committee of UNIP. The cabinet executed the central committee's policy. In legislative elections, only candidates running for UNIP were allowed to participate. Even though inter-party competition was out of question, the contest for seats within UNIP was energetic. In the presidential elections, the only candidate allowed to run was the one elected as president of UNIP at the party's general conference. In this way Kaunda was re-elected unopposed with a yes or no vote in 1973, 1978, 1983 and 1988. This did not, however, mean that there was no dissension to the imposition of a one-party rule in the country or within UNIP. Sylvester Mwamba Chisembele who was Cabinet Minister for Western Province (previously Barotse Province) together with UNIP leaders from 7 out of the 8 Provinces established a Committee of 14. The objective of the Committee of 14 which consisted two leaders from each of the 7 provinces was the establishment of a democratically elected council of two leaders from each province to rule the country by consensus with the President as Head of State. If this had been achieved, it would have meant the curtailing of the absolute power residing in President Kaunda. The Committee of 14 attended a meeting in State House at which President Kaunda agreed to consider their proposals. However, later he banned the Committee of 14 and this action was followed by the suspension of Sylvester Chisembele and several leaders were sacked. Chisembele later rejoined the Cabinet as Minister |
and it borders: Angola for 1,110 km, Democratic Republic of the Congo for 1,930 km, Malawi for 837 km, Mozambique for 419 km, Namibia for 233 km, Tanzania for 338 km, Zimbabwe for 797 km, and Botswana, less than . Physical geography Climate Zambia has a tropical climate, modified by the altitude of the country. There is a rainy season that runs from October/November to March/April. Terrain The terrain of Zambia is mostly high plateau, with some hills and mountains. The lowest point is the Zambezi river, at above sea level, with the highest being Mafinga Central in the Mafinga Hills, at above sea level. Zambia is a landlocked country bordered along Zimbabwe in the south divided by Victoria Falls, Congo DR in the north, Tanzania on the northeast, Malawi on the east and Mozambique on the southeast. The general topography of the country is characterized by uplifted planation surfaces. The general elevation of the nation as a whole is tended towards west to east from the Kalahari Basin. The level of land falls from the upper Congo towards the Zambezi depression in the South forming a plateau. Zambia lies in the watershed between DR Congo and Zambezi river systems. Leaving two provinces, all other provinces lie in the country frontier formed between the continental divide separating the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, which traverses from DR Congo to the south of Tanzania. There are three major seasons: a cool dry season | by Victoria Falls, Congo DR in the north, Tanzania on the northeast, Malawi on the east and Mozambique on the southeast. The general topography of the country is characterized by uplifted planation surfaces. The general elevation of the nation as a whole is tended towards west to east from the Kalahari Basin. The level of land falls from the upper Congo towards the Zambezi depression in the South forming a plateau. Zambia lies in the watershed between DR Congo and Zambezi river systems. Leaving two provinces, all other provinces lie in the country frontier formed between the continental divide separating the Atlantic Ocean and the Indian Ocean, which traverses from DR Congo to the south of Tanzania. There are three major seasons: a cool dry season from April to August, a hot dry season from August to November and a warm wet season from November to April. The maximum heat is experienced during November, while the maximum rainfall is received during December. The annual rainfall is more than in the Southern parts, while is more than in the northern parts. Lake Kariba is the man made lake in Africa and the second largest man made lake in the world and it stretches along the Southern border of the province. Ecoregions Nine ecoregions in four biomes are represented in Zambia, the most widespread being Miombo, Mopane and Baikiaea woodland savanna, with grasslands (mainly flooded grassland) and evergreen forest |
city residents. The predominant religion is a blend of traditional beliefs and Christianity. Immigrants, mostly British or South African, as well as some white Zambian citizens (about 40,000), live mainly in Lusaka and in the Copperbelt in northern Zambia, where they are either employed in mines, financial and related activities or retired. Zambia also has a small but economically important Asian population, most of whom are Indians or Chinese. 2010 census Population According to the total population of Zambia is in , compared to only 2,340,000 in 1950. The proportion of children below the age of 15 in 2010 was 46.4%, 50.6% was between 15 and 65 years of age, while 3.1% was 65 years or older. Vital statistics Registration of vital events is in Zambia not complete. The Population Departement of the United Nations prepared the following estimates. Births and deaths Fertility and births Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted TFR) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR) : Fertility data as of 2013-2014 (DHS Program): Fertility rate by religion At national level, the TFR was highest among women with no religious affiliation at 6.5. Among the women with religious affiliation Protestants had the highest TFR of 6.0, followed by Muslims with 5.9 and Catholics with 5.7. Life expectancy Other demographic statistics The following demographic statistics of Zambia in 2019 are from the World Population Review. One birth every 47 seconds One death every 4 minutes One net migrant every 65 minutes Net gain of one person every 1 minutes The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population 16,445,079 (July 2018 est.) Age structure 0-14 years: 45.95% (male 3,796,548 /female 3,759,624) 15-24 years: 20% (male 1,643,364 /female 1,645,713) 25-54 years: 28.79% (male 2,384,765 /female 2,349,877) 55-64 years: 2.95% (male 225,586 /female 260,252) 65 years and over: 2.31% (male 166,224 /female 213,126) (2018 est.) Median age total: 16.8 years. Country comparison to the world: 222nd male: 16.7 years female: 16.9 years (2018 est.) total: 17.2 years male: 17.1 years female: 17.3 years (2010 est.) total: 16.46 years male: 16.26 years female: 16.67 years (2005 est.) total: 16.5 years male: 16.4 years female: 16.6 years (2002 est.) Birth rate 41.1 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 6th Death rate 12 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.) Total fertility rate 5.58 children born/woman (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 8th Population growth rate 2.91% (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 10th Mother's mean age at first birth 19.2 years (2013/14 est.) note: median age at first birth among women 25-29 Net migration rate 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 100th Contraceptive prevalence rate 49% (2013/14) Dependency ratios total dependency ratio: 91.9 (2015 est.) youth dependency ratio: 87.1 (2015 est.) elderly dependency ratio: 4.8 (2015 est.) potential support ratio: 20.8 (2015 est.) | United Nations prepared the following estimates. Births and deaths Fertility and births Total Fertility Rate (TFR) (Wanted TFR) and Crude Birth Rate (CBR) : Fertility data as of 2013-2014 (DHS Program): Fertility rate by religion At national level, the TFR was highest among women with no religious affiliation at 6.5. Among the women with religious affiliation Protestants had the highest TFR of 6.0, followed by Muslims with 5.9 and Catholics with 5.7. Life expectancy Other demographic statistics The following demographic statistics of Zambia in 2019 are from the World Population Review. One birth every 47 seconds One death every 4 minutes One net migrant every 65 minutes Net gain of one person every 1 minutes The following demographic statistics are from the CIA World Factbook, unless otherwise indicated. Population 16,445,079 (July 2018 est.) Age structure 0-14 years: 45.95% (male 3,796,548 /female 3,759,624) 15-24 years: 20% (male 1,643,364 /female 1,645,713) 25-54 years: 28.79% (male 2,384,765 /female 2,349,877) 55-64 years: 2.95% (male 225,586 /female 260,252) 65 years and over: 2.31% (male 166,224 /female 213,126) (2018 est.) Median age total: 16.8 years. Country comparison to the world: 222nd male: 16.7 years female: 16.9 years (2018 est.) total: 17.2 years male: 17.1 years female: 17.3 years (2010 est.) total: 16.46 years male: 16.26 years female: 16.67 years (2005 est.) total: 16.5 years male: 16.4 years female: 16.6 years (2002 est.) Birth rate 41.1 births/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 6th Death rate 12 deaths/1,000 population (2018 est.) Total fertility rate 5.58 children born/woman (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 8th Population growth rate 2.91% (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 10th Mother's mean age at first birth 19.2 years (2013/14 est.) note: median age at first birth among women 25-29 Net migration rate 0 migrant(s)/1,000 population (2018 est.) Country comparison to the world: 100th Contraceptive prevalence rate 49% (2013/14) Dependency ratios total dependency ratio: 91.9 (2015 est.) youth dependency ratio: 87.1 (2015 est.) elderly dependency ratio: 4.8 (2015 est.) potential support ratio: 20.8 (2015 est.) Population distribution one of the highest levels of urbanization in Africa; high density in the central area, particularly around the cities of Lusaka, Ndola, Kitwe, and Mufulira Urbanization urban population: 43.5% of total population (2018) rate of urbanization: 4.23% annual rate of change (2015-20 est.) Sex ratio at birth: 1.03 male(s)/female under 15 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 15-64 years: 1.01 male(s)/female 65 years and over: 0.68 male(s)/female total population: 1 male(s)/female (2010 est.) Life expectancy at birth total population: 53 years male: 51.4 years female: 54.7 years (2018 est.) total population: 52.7 years male: 51.1 years female: 54.4 years (2017 est.) total population:37.24 years male:37.08 years female:37.41 years (2000 est.) Nationality noun:Zambian(s) adjective:Zambian Demographic profile Zambia's mineral rich, youthful population consists primarily of Bantu-speaking |
the government, in relation to their demographic size. Kaunda's political party, the United National Independence Party (UNIP), was founded in 1959 and was in power under Kaunda's leadership from 1964 to 1991. Before 1972, Zambia had three significant political parties: UNIP, the Northern Rhodesian African National Congress, and the United Progressive Party (UPP). The ANC drew its strength from western and southern provinces, while the UPP found some support among Bemba speakers in the copperbelt and northern provinces. Although not strongly supported in all areas of the country, only UNIP had a nationwide following. One-party state In February 1972, Zambia became a one-party state, and all other political parties were banned. Kaunda, the sole candidate, was elected president in the 1973 elections. Elections also were held for the National Assembly. Only UNIP members were permitted to run, but these seats were sharply contested. President Kaunda's mandate was renewed in December 1978 and October 1983 in a "yes" or "no" vote on his candidacy. In the 1983 election, more than 60% of those registered participated and gave President Kaunda a 93% "yes" vote. 1991: Move to a multiparty state Growing opposition to UNIP's monopoly on power led to the rise in 1990 of the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD). The MMD assembled an increasingly impressive group of important Zambians, including prominent UNIP defectors and labor leaders. During the year, President Kaunda agreed to a referendum on the one-party state but, in the face of continued opposition, dropped the referendum and signed a constitutional amendment making Zambia a multi-party state. Zambia's first multi-party elections for parliament and the presidency since the 1960s were held on October 31, 1991. MMD candidate Frederick Chiluba resoundingly carried the presidential election over Kenneth Kaunda with 76% of the vote. To add to the MMD landslide, in the parliamentary elections the MMD won 125 of the 150 elected seats and UNIP the remaining 25. However, UNIP swept the Eastern Province, gathering 19 of its seats there. 1991–2001: MMD and Frederick Chiluba By the end of Chiluba's first term as president (1996), the MMD's commitment to political reform had faded in the face of re-election demands. A number of prominent supporters founded opposing parties. Relying on the MMD's overwhelming majority in parliament, President Chiluba in May 1996 pushed through constitutional amendments that eliminated former President Kaunda and other prominent opposition leaders from the 1996 presidential elections. In the presidential and parliamentary elections held in November 1996, Chiluba was re-elected, and the MMD won 131 of the 150 seats in the National Assembly. Kaunda's UNIP party boycotted the parliamentary polls to protest the exclusion of its leader from the presidential race, alleging in addition that the outcome of the election had been predetermined due to a faulty voter registration exercise. Despite the UNIP boycott, the elections took place peacefully, and five presidential and more than 600 parliamentary candidates from 11 parties participated. Afterward, however, several opposition parties and non-governmental organizations declared the elections neither free nor fair. As President Chiluba began his second term in 1997, the opposition continued to reject the results of the election amid international efforts to encourage the MMD and the opposition to resolve their differences through dialogue. Early in 2001, supporters of President Chiluba mounted a campaign to amend the constitution to enable Chiluba to seek a third term of office. Civil society, opposition parties, and many members of the ruling party complimented widespread popular opposition to exert sufficient pressure on Chiluba to force him to back away from any attempt at a third term. Presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections were held on December 27, 2001. Eleven parties contested the elections. The elections encountered numerous administrative problems. Opposition parties alleged that serious irregularities occurred. Nevertheless, MMD presidential candidate Levy Mwanawasa was declared the victor by a narrow margin, and he was sworn into office on January 2, 2002. Three parties submitted petitions to the High Court, challenging the presidential election results. The courts decided that there had been irregularities but that they were not serious enough to have affected the overall result, thus the election result was upheld. Opposition parties won a majority of parliamentary seats in the December, 2001 election, but subsequent by-elections gave the ruling MMD a slim majority in Parliament. 2001–2008 In the 2006 presidential election was hotly contested, with Mwanawasa being re-elected by a clear margin over principal challengers Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front and Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND). The parliamentary election that same year awarded MMD with 72 seats, the remaining 84 seats split among other parties with the majority of those seats going to the Patriotic Front. The presidency of Levy Mwanawasa until his death in office in mid-2008, was different from the flamboyant expenditure and increasingly apparent corruption of the later years of Frederick Chiluba's terms in office. Indeed, the former president was arrested and charged with several counts of embezzlement and corruption, firmly quashing initial fears that President Mwanawasa would turn a blind eye to the allegations of his predecessor's improprieties. Mwanawasa was accused by some observers of demonstrating an authoritarian streak in early 2004 when his Minister of Home Affairs issued a deportation order to a British citizen and long-time Zambian resident Roy Clarke, who had published a series of satirical attacks on the President in the independent Post newspaper. However, when Clarke appealed to the High Court against the order, the judge ruled that the order was arbitrary and unjustified and quashed the order. President Mwanawasa, true to his mantra of heading a government of laws, respected the court decision and Clarke was allowed to resume his column of satirical critique. Mwanawasa's early zeal to root out corruption also waned somewhat, with key witnesses in the Chiluba trial leaving the country. The Constitutional Review Commission set up by Mwanawasa also hit some turbulence, with arguments as to where its findings should be submitted leading to suspicions that he has been trying to manipulate the outcome. Generally, the Zambian electorate viewed Mwanawasa's rule as a great improvement over Chiluba's. Following Mwanawasa's death in August 2008, Zambian vice president Rupiah Banda succeeded him to the office of president, to be held as a temporary position until the emergency election on October 30, 2008. Banda won by a narrow margin over opposition leader Michael Sata, to complete the remainder of Mwanawasa's term. 2011 elections Rupiah Banda lost re-election in the 2011 Presidential and Parliamentary elections to Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front bringing an end to a total of 20 years rule by 3 presidents from the MMD. 2015–Present Edgar Chagwa Lungu was sworn in as president of Zambia on January | any attempt at a third term. Presidential, parliamentary, and local government elections were held on December 27, 2001. Eleven parties contested the elections. The elections encountered numerous administrative problems. Opposition parties alleged that serious irregularities occurred. Nevertheless, MMD presidential candidate Levy Mwanawasa was declared the victor by a narrow margin, and he was sworn into office on January 2, 2002. Three parties submitted petitions to the High Court, challenging the presidential election results. The courts decided that there had been irregularities but that they were not serious enough to have affected the overall result, thus the election result was upheld. Opposition parties won a majority of parliamentary seats in the December, 2001 election, but subsequent by-elections gave the ruling MMD a slim majority in Parliament. 2001–2008 In the 2006 presidential election was hotly contested, with Mwanawasa being re-elected by a clear margin over principal challengers Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front and Hakainde Hichilema of the United Party for National Development (UPND). The parliamentary election that same year awarded MMD with 72 seats, the remaining 84 seats split among other parties with the majority of those seats going to the Patriotic Front. The presidency of Levy Mwanawasa until his death in office in mid-2008, was different from the flamboyant expenditure and increasingly apparent corruption of the later years of Frederick Chiluba's terms in office. Indeed, the former president was arrested and charged with several counts of embezzlement and corruption, firmly quashing initial fears that President Mwanawasa would turn a blind eye to the allegations of his predecessor's improprieties. Mwanawasa was accused by some observers of demonstrating an authoritarian streak in early 2004 when his Minister of Home Affairs issued a deportation order to a British citizen and long-time Zambian resident Roy Clarke, who had published a series of satirical attacks on the President in the independent Post newspaper. However, when Clarke appealed to the High Court against the order, the judge ruled that the order was arbitrary and unjustified and quashed the order. President Mwanawasa, true to his mantra of heading a government of laws, respected the court decision and Clarke was allowed to resume his column of satirical critique. Mwanawasa's early zeal to root out corruption also waned somewhat, with key witnesses in the Chiluba trial leaving the country. The Constitutional Review Commission set up by Mwanawasa also hit some turbulence, with arguments as to where its findings should be submitted leading to suspicions that he has been trying to manipulate the outcome. Generally, the Zambian electorate viewed Mwanawasa's rule as a great improvement over Chiluba's. Following Mwanawasa's death in August 2008, Zambian vice president Rupiah Banda succeeded him to the office of president, to be held as a temporary position until the emergency election on October 30, 2008. Banda won by a narrow margin over opposition leader Michael Sata, to complete the remainder of Mwanawasa's term. 2011 elections Rupiah Banda lost re-election in the 2011 Presidential and Parliamentary elections to Michael Sata of the Patriotic Front bringing an end to a total of 20 years rule by 3 presidents from the MMD. 2015–Present Edgar Chagwa Lungu was sworn in as president of Zambia on January 25, 2015, succeeding acting-president Guy Scott who briefly held the office after the passing of Michael Chiluyfa Sata. Lungu's presidency has thus far been criticised for failing to halt the depreciating Kwacha. There have also been unsubstantiated reports of Lungu's alleged alcoholism, stemming from a reported physical collapse early in his presidency. The economic challenges facing Zambia, in particular the depreciating Kwacha, have been attributed to the global fall of commodity prices. Zambia derives over 90% of its export earnings from a single commodity, copper, which has lost about 45% of its value on the international commodity market. On 5 January 2016, Lungu successfully concluded long-standing constitutional issues when he assented to the 2015 Constitutional Amendment Bill. This Bill is the result of extensive work begun during the Mwanawasa era (The Mwanakatwe Commission) and continued by the Michael Chilufya Sata appointed Technical Committee. As Justice Minister, Lungu had previously presented the Draft Constitution to parliament where it was subsequently decided that |
and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), to create one of the largest companies in sub-Saharan Africa, with the country's president, Kenneth Kaunda as chairman of the board. The management contracts under which day-to-day operations of the mines had been carried out by Anglo American and RST were ended in 1973. In 1982 NCCM and RCM were merged into the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd (ZCCM). In 1973 a massive increase in the price of oil was followed by a slump in copper prices in 1975, resulting in a diminution of export earnings. In 1973 the price of copper accounted for 95% of all export earnings; this halved in value on the world market in 1975. By 1976 Zambia had a balance-of-payments crisis, and rapidly became massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Third National Development Plan (1978–83) had to be abandoned as crisis management replaced long-term planning. By the mid-1980s Zambia was one of the most indebted nations in the world, relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). The IMF was insisting that the Zambian government should introduce programs aimed at stabilizing the economy and restructuring it to reduce dependence on copper. The proposed measures included: the ending of price controls; devaluation of the kwacha (Zambia's currency); cut-backs in government expenditure; cancellation of subsidies on food and fertilizer; and increased prices for farm produce. Kaunda's removal of food subsidies caused massive increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs; the country's urbanized population rioted in protest. In desperation, Kaunda broke with the IMF in May 1987 and introduced a New Economic Recovery Programme in 1988. However, this did not help him and he eventually moved toward a new understanding with the IMF in 1989. In 1990 Kaunda was forced to make a major policy volteface: he announced the intention to partially privatize the parastatals. Time, however, was running out for him. Like many African independence leaders Kaunda tried to hang on to power but unlike many he called multiparty elections and lost them (to the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD))and abided by the results. Kaunda left office with the inauguration of MMD leader Frederick Chiluba as president on 2 November 1991. Chiluba's economic reforms Zambia's Economic System of Government is Unitary because of that the Frederick Chiluba government (1991–2001), which came to power after democratic multi-party elections in November 1991, was committed to extensive economic reform. Zambia's economic transformation into a free market system began toward the end of 1991 following a change of government. To tackle a serious economic crisis, the government agreed to introduce substantial economic reforms to secure much-needed loans from the World Bank and IMF. One of the greatest challenges was the privatization of the country's copper mines, Zambia's prime export earner. The government privatised many state industries, and maintained positive real interest rates. Exchange controls were eliminated and free market principles endorsed. It remains to be seen whether the Mwanawasa government will follow a similar path of implementing economic reform and undertaking further privatization. Zambia has yet to address issues such as reducing the size of the public sector, which still represents 44% of total formal employment, and improving Zambia's social sector delivery systems. After the government privatized the giant parastatal mining company Zambian Consolidated Copper Mines (ZCCM), donors resumed balance-of-payment support. The final transfer of ZCCM's assets occurred on March 31, 2000. Although balance-of-payment payments are not the answer to Zambia's long-term debt problems, it will in the short term provide the government some breathing room to implement further economic reforms. The government has, however, spent much of its foreign exchange reserves to intervene in the exchange rate mechanism. To continue to do so, however, would jeopardize Zambia's debt relief. Zambia qualified for HIPC debt relief in 2000, contingent upon the country meeting certain performance criteria, and this should offer a long-term solution to Zambia's debt situation. In January 2003, the Zambian Government informed the International Monetary Fund and World Bank that it wished to renegotiate some of the agreed performance criteria calling for privatization of the Zambia National Commercial Bank and the national telephone and electricity utilities. Sectors Mining In 2019, the country was the world's 7th largest producer of copper. The Zambian economy has historically been based on the copper-mining industry. The industrialization of the copper industry is owed partly to Frederick Russell Burnham, the famous American scout who worked for Cecil Rhodes. By 1998, however, output of copper had fallen to a low of 228,000 tonnes, continuing a 30-year decline in output due to lack of investment, and until recently, low copper prices and uncertainty over privatization. In 2001, the first full year of a privatized industry, Zambia recorded its first year of increased productivity since 1973. The future of the copper industry in Zambia was thrown into doubt in January 2002, when investors in Zambia's largest copper mine announced their intention to withdraw their investment. However, surging copper prices from 2004 to the present day rapidly rekindled international interest in Zambia's copper sector with a new buyer found for KCCM and massive investments in expanding capacity launched. China has become a major investor in the Zambian copper industry, and in February 2007, the two countries announced the creation of a Chinese-Zambian economic partnership zone around the Chambishi copper mine. Today copper mining is central to the economic prospects for Zambia and covers 85% of all the country's exports, but concerns remain that the economy is not diversified enough to cope with a collapse in international copper prices. In January 2013, the Zambia Environmental Management Agency (ZEMA) approved 27 mining and exploration licences, with more rumoured to be confirmed. Agriculture The agriculture sector represented 2.7% GDP in 2019. Agriculture accounted for 85% of total employment (formal and informal) for 2000. Maize (corn) is the principal cash crop as well as the staple food. Other important crops include soybean, cotton, sugar, sunflower | among others. Zambia is also eligible to export duty-free goods to the United States under the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The Act allows eligible countries from sub-Saharan Africa to export over 6,400 goods to the United States. For the first time since 1989, in 2007 Zambia's economic growth reached the 6%-7% mark needed to reduce poverty significantly. Copper output has increased steadily since 2004, due to higher copper prices and the opening of new mines. The maize harvest was again good in 2005, helping boost GDP and agricultural exports. Cooperation continues with international bodies on programs to reduce poverty, including a new lending arrangement with the IMF in the second quarter of 2004. A tighter monetary policy will help cut inflation, but Zambia still has a serious problem with high public debt. History Economic policies soon after independence (1964 - 1967) The British South Africa Company (BSAC, originally set up by the British imperialist Cecil Rhodes) retained commercial assets and mineral rights that it acquired from a concession signed with the Litunga of Barotseland in 1892 (the Lochner Concession). Only by threatening to expropriate the BSAC, on the eve of independence, did the incoming Zambian government manage to get the BSAC to relinquish the mineral rights. The Federation's government assigned roles to each of the three territories: Southern Rhodesia was assigned the responsibility of providing managerial and administrative skills; Northern Rhodesia provided copper revenues; and Nyasaland provided the Black labour. After independence, Zambia instituted a program of national development plans, under the direction of a National Commission for Development Planning: the Transitional Development Plan (1964–66) was followed by the First National Development Plan (1966–71). These two plans, which provided for major investment in infrastructure and manufacturing, were largely implemented and were generally successful. This was not true for subsequent plans The Mulungushi Economic Reforms (1968) A major switch in the structure of Zambia's economy came with the Mulungushi Reforms of April 1968: the government declared its intention to acquire equity holdings (usually 51% or more) in a number of key foreign-owned firms, to be controlled by a parastatal conglomerate named the Industrial Development Corporation (INDECO). By January 1970, Zambia had acquired majority holding in the Zambian operations of the two major foreign mining corporations, the Anglo American Corporation and the Rhodesia Selection Trust (RST); the two became the Nchanga Consolidated Copper Mines (NCCM) and Roan Consolidated Mines (RCM), respectively. The Zambian government then created a new parastatal body, the Mining Development Corporation (MINDECO). The Finance and Development Corporation (FINDECO) allowed the Zambian government to gain control of insurance companies and building societies. However, foreign-owned banks (such as Barclays, Standard Chartered and Grindlays) successfully resisted takeover. In 1971, INDECO, MINDECO, and FINDECO were brought together under an omnibus parastatal, the Zambia Industrial and Mining Corporation (ZIMCO), to create one of the largest companies in sub-Saharan Africa, with the country's president, Kenneth Kaunda as chairman of the board. The management contracts under which day-to-day operations of the mines had been carried out by Anglo American and RST were ended in 1973. In 1982 NCCM and RCM were merged into the giant Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines Ltd (ZCCM). In 1973 a massive increase in the price of oil was followed by a slump in copper prices in 1975, resulting in a diminution of export earnings. In 1973 the price of copper accounted for 95% of all export earnings; this halved in value on the world market in 1975. By 1976 Zambia had a balance-of-payments crisis, and rapidly became massively indebted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The Third National Development Plan (1978–83) had to be abandoned as crisis management replaced long-term planning. By the mid-1980s Zambia was one of the most indebted nations in the world, relative to its gross domestic product (GDP). The IMF was insisting that the Zambian government should introduce programs aimed at stabilizing the economy and restructuring it to reduce dependence on copper. The proposed measures included: the ending of price controls; devaluation of the kwacha (Zambia's currency); cut-backs in government expenditure; cancellation of subsidies on food and fertilizer; and increased prices for farm produce. Kaunda's removal of food subsidies caused massive increases in the prices of basic foodstuffs; the country's urbanized population rioted in protest. In desperation, Kaunda broke with the IMF in May 1987 and introduced a New Economic Recovery Programme in 1988. However, this did not help him and he eventually moved toward a new understanding with the IMF in 1989. In 1990 Kaunda was forced to make a major policy volteface: he announced the intention to partially privatize the parastatals. Time, however, was running out for him. Like many African independence leaders Kaunda tried to hang on to power but unlike many he called multiparty elections and lost them (to the Movement for Multiparty Democracy (MMD))and abided by the results. Kaunda left office with the inauguration of MMD leader Frederick Chiluba as president on 2 November 1991. Chiluba's economic reforms Zambia's Economic System of Government is Unitary because of that the Frederick Chiluba government (1991–2001), which came to power after democratic multi-party elections in November 1991, was committed to extensive economic reform. Zambia's economic transformation into a free market system began toward the end of 1991 following a change of government. To tackle a serious economic crisis, the government agreed to introduce substantial economic reforms to secure much-needed loans from the World Bank |
the 'Zambian National Defence Force' (ZNDF). The Commander of Zambia Air Force at the time, Air Commodore Peter Zuze, was promoted to Lieutenant-General and appointed as Deputy Commander of the ZNDF. However, the Zambia Air Force and Zambia National Service resented this system because Army officers filled most senior appointments in the ZNDF and the system was ended in 1980. The country then reverted to the command system inherited at independence where Service Chiefs report to the Head of State through a Minister of Defence. The current (2021) Command is: - President and Commander-in-Chief: Hakainde Hichilema (from 24th August 2021) - Defence Minister: to be appointed - Permanent Secretary for Defence: Stardy Mwale - Commander Zambia Army: Lieut.-General Dennis Sitali Alibuzwi (from 29th August 2021) - Deputy Commander Zambia Army: Major-General Geoffrey Zyeele (from 29th August 2021) - Commander Zambia Air Force: Lieut.-General Collins Barry ((from 29th August 2021) - Deputy Commander Zambia Air Force: Major General Oscar Nyoni - Commandant Zambia National Service: Lieut.-General Patrick Solochi - Deputy Commandant Zambia National Service: Major-General Reuben Mwewa - Commandant Defence Services and Staff Training College: Brigadier General Benson Musonda. Zambia Army Organisation The current Army organisation is: Three infantry brigades - 1 Brigade, Lusaka 2 Brigade, Kabwe (during July 2016 the Brigade Commander was Brigadier Martin Banda) 3 Brigade, Ndola (during March 2017 the Brigade Commander was Brigadier Laston Chabinga) With the following units: 64 Armoured Regiment (tank). U.S. State Department International Military Education and Training records from FY-2006 indicate a Zambian officer attended from 64 Armoured Regiment at Mikango Barracks, east Lusaka. 17 Cavalry Regiment (armoured reconnaissance) 10 Medium Regiment, Kalewa Barracks, Ndola (also given as an artillery regiment/brigade of two Fire Direction Artillery Battalions and one Multiple Rocket Launchers battalion) 1 Engineer Regiment, Mufulira 6 Construction Regiment, raised March 2017? 1 mechanised battalion 6 light infantry battalions, titled 1 to 6 Battalions Zambia Regiment 1 Commando Battalion (special forces), Ndola 48 Marine Unit, Kawambwa, raised July 2015. 3 reserve infantry battalions (7 to 9 Battalions Zambia Regiment) Support units (logistics, transport, medical, ordnance, electrical and mechanical engineering) Specialist schools (armour, artillery, engineers and signals) Equipment Small Arms RPG-7 FN FAL Heckler & Koch G3 AKM AK-47 Sterling submachine gun DShK PK machine gun Vehicles and Towed Artillery Zambia Air Force Zambia Air Force is a small air force that developed from the Northern Rhodesian Air Wing as well as the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Air Force. In recent years the aircraft inventory has largely been updated with Chinese aircraft reflecting the increasing closeness between the Zambian Defence Force and China. During 1999 eight Karakorum-8 jet trainers were delivered and in 2006 Zambia Air Force received two Xian MA60 and five Yakovlev Yak-12 transport aircraft from China. During March 2012 a further eight K-8 were received. Four Harbin Z-9 helicopters were delivered during June 2012, with a further four delivered by March 2013 (when one of the new aircraft was lost in an accident, see below). During April 2014 six Hongdu L-15 Falcon supersonic lead-in fighter/trainer jets were ordered from China, the first arriving in December 2015. Around the same time orders were placed for six SIAI-Marchetti SF.260TW trainer aircraft, one Alenia C-27J Spartan transport aircraft, and a number of Russian-made Mil Mi-17 helicopters. These orders were expected to be delivered during 2016. Recent aircraft losses On 13 March 2013 a Harbin Z-9 helicopter crashed while attempting to land at Lusaka City Airport. The pilot, Major Misapa Mukupa, was killed and the co-pilot, Lieutenant Kenneth Chilala, injured. The helicopter was taking part in Youth Day celebrations and it was suggested the accident was caused by a national flag attached to the aircraft coming loose and then entangled in the tail rotor. On 15 January 2014 a Saab MFI.17 Supporter trainer crashed some 40 km from Livingstone. Both crew were killed. On 19 May 2014 a Saab MFI.15 crashed in Lusaka West. Both crew were killed. The crew were the Deputy Commander ZAF, Major-General Muliokela Muliokela, and Colonel Brian Mweene. On 14 September 2015 an Agusta-Bell AB.205 helicopter crashed near Sinazongwe, apparently while returning from taking Defence Minister Richwell Siamunene on a private trip. Five people were injured. Zambia National Service The Zambia National Service is a defence wing that is mandated to train citizens to serve the republic, develop infrastructure and enhance national food security and contribute to the social economic development. Zambia National Service (ZNS) personnel have been included in peacekeeping contingents deployed by Zambia to the United Nation's MINUSCA mission in the Central African Republic. Six months of training for 400 youths was planned for 2016. This was to include 200 males to be trained at Chiwoko ZNS Training Centre, Katete, Eastern Province, and 200 females to be trained at the Kitwe ZNS training camp. United Nations Peacekeeping Missions Zambia has been an active participant in several UN peacekeeping operations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Zambian personnel have been fated to be caught up in some of the more dramatic incidents of recent UN Peacekeeping in Africa: witnessing the Kibeho Massacre in Rwanda during April 1995; having large numbers of Zambian peacekeepers taken hostage by rebels in Sierra Leone during 2000; and with troops caught up in fighting between Sudanese and South Sudanese forces in the contested Abyei area during May 2011. Despite these crises Zambian forces have generally performed well and earned a reputation as effective peacekeepers. UN missions which have seen the deployment of battalions of Zambian troops, or other significant contingents, include the following. UNAVEM III (United Nations Angola Verification Mission III, February 1995 to June 1997) A Zambian battalion was deployed to southern Angola, based in the town of Menongue. Seven Zambian peacekeepers died during the UNAVEM III deployment. UNAMIR (United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda) Three Zambian fatalities. UNAMSIL (United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone) Thirty-four Zambian fatalities. Zambatt 1, deployed April 2000. Shortly after deployment some 200 Zambian peacekeepers were taken hostage by rebels and some were later murdered. Zambatt 2. Zambatt 3 (Lt. Col. MS Sitwala). On 5 January 2002 six personnel were killed and another 12 injured in an accidental explosion while transferring surrendered mortar bombs to storage. Zambatt 4, deployed mid-2002, 830 strong. Zambatt 5. Zambatt 6. Zambatt 7 (Col. John Siame) – 821 personnel; deployed February 2004 to ... (Note: Sgt [Ms] Megani Forry died of natural causes during deployment, early 2004.) UNMIS (United Nations Mission in the Sudan) Three Zambian fatalities. Four Zambian peacekeepers were wounded on 10 May 2011, shortly before the independence of South Sudan and before an outbreak of fighting when the Zambians were criticised for not better protecting civilians. Zambatt 1 - Deployed for six months, to June 2010. Zambatt 2 - 523 personnel strong; deployed June 2010. MINUSCA (United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission in the Central African Republic) Zambatt 1 (Lt. Col. Kelvin Chiyangi), 750 personnel, including 50 Special Forces, deployed 30 April 2015 to April 2016. Zambatt 2, deployed 22 April 2016. Zambatt 3 (Lt. Col. John Banda), 750 personnel. Undertook pre-deployment training under Zambian, United States and British instructors, before deploying in April 2017. Zambatt 4 (Lt. Col. Ngosa), deployed during April 2018. Zambatt 5 (Lt. Col. Tembo ) was to deploy in mid-2019. Zambatt 6 (Lt. Col. Paul Sapezo) was scheduled to deploy to the Central African Republic in 2020. During 2017 Warrant Officer 2 Boyd Chibuye died whilst deployed in the Central African Republic. On 4 December 2017 a Zambian police member of the UN mission was reported injured in an attack by anti-Balaka fighters in Bria, northern CAR. One Mauritanian policeman was killed and two others injured in this attack. Staff Sergeant Derrick Sichilyango of the Zambian Contingent was killed in a road traffic accident in November 2018. Staff Sergeant Patrick Simasiku Wamunyima and Staff Sergeant Alex Mudenda Musanda, both serving with MINUSCA, died during 2019 and were honoured on the 2020 International Day of United Nations Peacekeepers with the posthumous award of the Dag Hammarskjöld Medal. SADC Missions SAPMIL (SADC Preventive Mission in the Kingdom of Lesotho) During November 2017 a small Southern Africa Development Community (SADC) standby force was deployed to Lesotho to assist that country through an internal security crisis following the assassination of the Lesotho Defence Force Commander, Lieut.-General Khoantle Motšomotšo, on 5 September 2017. This SADC force included a 207-strong military element which had a Zambian Deputy Commander and which included 36 infantry and nine logistics personnel from Zambia. The mission wrapped | positions near Victoria Falls with rocket and mortar fire. The reasons for the attack were disputed but the Zambian government maintained that the troops involved had been deliberately provoked by Rhodesian forces into firing. Around March 1978, the ZNDF claimed to have been involved in repelling a Rhodesian raid on a ZIPRA training camp. It also assisted PLAN insurgents during a raid on a South African military base in the Caprivi Strip. South Africa retaliated by shelling several ZNDF positions near the border, and Rhodesia began targeting ZNDF outposts. Growing Zambian war weariness was a significant factor in Kaunda's influencing the guerrilla movements in Rhodesia to seek peace, resulting in a negotiated end to that conflict. Kaunda also bowed to South African pressure and ordered PLAN to close its rear base facilities in Zambia by 1979. At the same time, the ZNDF embarked on a 70 million kwacha modernisation program with assistance from the Soviet Union. The Soviets provided the Zambian Army with tanks, wheeled armored vehicles, and technical instruction on especially generous terms; the Zambian Air Force received its first fighter aircraft in the form of a Mikoyan-Gurevich MiG-21 squadron at the same time. End of the Cold War and reforms In October 1980, two ZNDF officers, Brigadier Godfrey Miyanda and Colonel Patrick Mkandawire were arrested for planning a coup d'état with the support of an exiled Congolese insurgent movement, the Front for Congolese National Liberation (FLNC). The plot involved arming the FLNC with ZNDF weaponry and later providing that movement with rear operating bases in Zambia as a reward for their efforts if the coup succeeded. The ZNDF and the police apprehended the conspirators before they had opportunity to set the coup in motion and later raided the FLNC's base camp, detaining most of the insurgents. Due in part to the extreme secrecy surrounding the ZNDF's budget and the refusal of the UNIP to allow parliamentary debate on the topic, a number of problems concerning military funding were covered up rather than addressed. For example, the facilities at ZNS training camps were so inadequate that typhoid outbreaks became common among recruits. This was due to lack of funds to filter the camps' drinking water. After a particularly serious typhoid outbreak between 1980 and 1981, the government was forced to suspend and later stop the compulsory national service programme. In November 1982, the ZNDF killed Adamson Mushala in an ambush outside Solwezi, although his followers continued to carry out operations under the leadership of Alexander Saimbwende. The DSC continued to pose a sufficient threat that an Italian mineral survey team had to be evacuated from Northwestern Province in 1984 after being targeted by the guerrillas. Nevertheless, the erosion of South African support ensured that its forces remained small and poorly armed. Mushala and later Saimbwende turned to ivory poaching to sustain their war effort against the ZNDF. As the Mozambican Civil War intensified, the ZNDF had to contend with a number of armed incursions by Mozambican National Resistance (RENAMO) insurgents, who raided Zambian border towns in search of food and other supplies. The ZNDF made it a policy to pursue RENAMO into neighbouring Mozambique in hot pursuit if necessary. In 1988, a second coup d'état attempt was planned, this time by Lieutenant General Christian Tembo and at least three other senior army officers. The conspirators were detained before they could carry it out, but this temporarily jeopardised relations between the Zambian government and the army. The end of the Cold War brought a number of changes to the Zambian political situation and the ZNDF. The ZNDF remained heavily in debt with the former Soviet bloc for military equipment it had purchased in the 1980s, as well as interest accrued. The army in particular was badly affected by the collapse of its Soviet technical training program, which left much of its heavy weapons unserviceable. Following mass protests over President Kaunda's decision to cut subsidies for maize meal and double maize prices in 1990, Captain Mwamba Luchembe single-handedly seized the national radio station and announced a coup d'état. Luchembe held the radio station for only two hours before being arrested. Kaunda's unpopularity led to demonstrations in support of Luchembe, however, and the same day the president announced he would seek a referendum on democratic multi-party elections. Kaunda granted a blanket amnesty to his political opponents as he prepared to accept the return of multi-party elections, which would shortly thereafter end his term of almost three decades. Among those who received amnesty was Alexander Saimbwende, who surrendered to the government and ended the DSC insurgency. The 1991 general elections brought Frederick Chiluba and his opposition Movement for Multi-Party Democracy to power and ushered in a period of reforms for the ZNDF. The Chibula government dismantled the ZNDF's unified command structure and allowed the army, ZNS, and air force to revert to independent commands. The system of political patronage introduced to the ZNDF by Kaunda was also abandoned. A general demobilisation programme was instituted in the army, and parliament gained the ability to debate defence expenditure. The Chibula government immediately formed a Public Accounts Committee to reduce financial irregularities in the ZNDF, most of which were linked to corruption and abuse of the ministerial tender system. Zambia's 1991 constitution formally reinstated the title Zambian Defence Force for the armed forces. In October 1997, Captain Steven Lungu seized control of the national radio station and announced a coup d'état. Lungu dismissed the chiefs of the army and police and announced that he was forming a new Government of National Redemption. He gave President Chibula an ultimatum of three hours to surrender or face death. Loyal ZDF troops responded by storming the radio station, capturing Lungu and five other coup plotters. Command In 1976 Zambia adopted a unified command system, in which the three Service Chiefs reported to a Commander of the 'Zambian National Defence Force' (ZNDF). The Commander of Zambia Air Force at the time, Air Commodore Peter Zuze, was promoted to Lieutenant-General and appointed as Deputy Commander of the ZNDF. However, the Zambia Air Force and Zambia National Service resented this system because Army officers filled most senior appointments in the ZNDF and the system was ended in 1980. The country then reverted to the command system inherited at independence where Service Chiefs report to the Head of State through a Minister of Defence. The current (2021) Command is: - President and Commander-in-Chief: Hakainde Hichilema (from 24th August 2021) - Defence Minister: to be appointed - Permanent Secretary for Defence: Stardy Mwale - Commander Zambia Army: Lieut.-General Dennis Sitali Alibuzwi (from 29th August 2021) - Deputy Commander Zambia Army: Major-General Geoffrey Zyeele (from 29th August 2021) - Commander Zambia Air Force: Lieut.-General Collins Barry ((from 29th August 2021) - Deputy Commander Zambia Air Force: Major General Oscar Nyoni - Commandant Zambia National Service: Lieut.-General Patrick Solochi - Deputy Commandant Zambia National Service: Major-General Reuben Mwewa - Commandant Defence Services and Staff Training College: Brigadier General Benson Musonda. Zambia Army Organisation The current Army organisation is: Three infantry brigades - 1 Brigade, Lusaka 2 Brigade, Kabwe (during July 2016 the Brigade Commander was Brigadier Martin Banda) 3 Brigade, Ndola (during March 2017 the Brigade Commander was Brigadier Laston Chabinga) With the following units: 64 Armoured Regiment (tank). U.S. State Department International Military Education and Training records from FY-2006 indicate a Zambian officer attended from 64 Armoured Regiment at Mikango Barracks, east Lusaka. 17 Cavalry Regiment (armoured reconnaissance) 10 Medium Regiment, Kalewa Barracks, Ndola (also given as an artillery regiment/brigade of two Fire Direction Artillery Battalions and one Multiple Rocket Launchers battalion) 1 Engineer Regiment, Mufulira 6 Construction Regiment, raised March 2017? 1 mechanised battalion 6 light infantry battalions, titled 1 to 6 Battalions Zambia Regiment 1 Commando Battalion (special forces), Ndola 48 Marine Unit, Kawambwa, raised July 2015. 3 reserve infantry battalions (7 to 9 Battalions Zambia Regiment) Support units (logistics, transport, medical, ordnance, electrical and mechanical engineering) Specialist schools (armour, artillery, engineers and signals) Equipment Small Arms RPG-7 FN FAL Heckler & Koch G3 AKM AK-47 Sterling submachine gun DShK PK machine gun Vehicles and Towed Artillery Zambia Air Force Zambia Air Force is a small air force that developed from the Northern Rhodesian Air Wing as well as the former Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland Air Force. In recent years the aircraft inventory has largely been updated with Chinese aircraft reflecting the increasing closeness between the Zambian Defence Force and China. During 1999 eight Karakorum-8 jet trainers were delivered and in 2006 Zambia Air Force received two Xian MA60 and five Yakovlev Yak-12 transport aircraft from China. During March 2012 a further eight K-8 were received. Four Harbin Z-9 helicopters were delivered during June 2012, with a further four delivered by March 2013 (when one of the new aircraft was lost in an accident, see below). During April 2014 six Hongdu L-15 Falcon supersonic lead-in fighter/trainer jets were ordered from China, the first arriving in December 2015. Around the same time orders were placed for six SIAI-Marchetti SF.260TW trainer aircraft, one Alenia C-27J Spartan transport aircraft, and a number of Russian-made Mil Mi-17 helicopters. These orders were expected to be delivered during 2016. Recent aircraft losses On 13 March 2013 a Harbin Z-9 helicopter crashed while attempting to land at Lusaka City Airport. The pilot, |
the Zambian military has provided counter insurgent efforts during major African confrontations such as the Rhodesian Bush War despite not being the main belligerent. Zambia has a history of supporting regional liberation movements and Former President Kenneth Kaunda had previously decreed that "Zambia will not be independent and free until the rest of Africa is Free". Critics have pointed to Zambia's historical stance of non-engagement and détente as a self-preservation act for a historically authoritarian government. As a large central nation, the governability of Zambia relies on the stability and diplomacy of nearby states that surround Zambia. Regional stability has allowed Former President Kenneth Kaunda to maintain power in the relatively poor nation for several decades. Liberation and political support Zambia received its own liberation from colonialism relatively early from Britain. The newly formed Zambian government under President Kenneth Kaunda of the UNIP party was active in the liberation and disputes of its neighbors for decades following its independence. The Zambian government offered shelter for revolutionaries, mediated treaty signings and offered aid and weapons. The continuation of colonial rule in Southern Africa was seen as a slight to Zambia and inherent feelings of African unity drove the new nation to aid its neighbors resist colonial rule. Most notably, Zambia was a haven for revolutionaries from the Namibia liberation party, South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. Zambia provided a rear base for revolutionaries as well as administrative and political aid. SWAPO The South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) is a political party that was formerly an independence movement based in Namibia. Due to pressures from within Namibia, SWAPO moved its headquarters and much of its forces into neighboring Zambia in the 1970s. Zambia became a safe haven for the group and SWAPO set up guerrilla training camps and sent exiled members into Zambia. The Shipanga Crisis, so named for senior SWAPO leader Andreas Shipanga, saw the Zambian government help round up thousands of dissidents and critics of the movement. SWAPO leaders in Namibia saw growing dissent in the SWAPO installations and guerrilla camps in Zambia, and appealed to then President Kaunda for help. After rounding up thousands of perceived rebels, including Shipanga with the aid of Zambia, SWAPO leadership in Namibia became markedly more authoritarian. African National Congress The African National Congress was an anti-apartheid political party based in South Africa, with close ideological ties to the Zambian African National Congress of President Kenneth Kaunda. When the political party was banned in South Africa by the colonial government, many of its leaders went underground or fled to Zambia. Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, became the new headquarters for many ANC leaders in exile from their native South Africa. Zambia thus developed a legacy of being the center of activity for South African liberation and allowed exiled leaders to convene and organize. Former South African President Nelson Mandela had expressed the important role that Zambia played in the liberation of their country during the years of exile. Zambia's policy of liberation through diplomacy and discreet support for African nationalist movements within the region is most poignant in the South African case. Zimbabwe Zambia has also provided key support to the liberation struggles of nearby Zimbabwe from their colonial rulers in the 1960s to 1970s. Specifically, Zambia provided armed and diplomatic support to Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) during their struggles against the British backed Rhodesian government in the Rhodesian Bush War. Zambia provided limited arms and training towards Zimbabwe's African nationalist movements, but largely applied diplomatic approaches to induce liberation in Zimbabwe. This included multiple visits and discussion between the Rhodesian government and Zambia leaders to negotiate a resolution to the civil strife within the country. Eventually, in 1979, the Rhodesian government submitted to international pressures and conducted elections that lead to the eventual renaming of the country as Zimbabwe. UNITA The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was a party in Angola that served as one of the main | and international conflicts throughout the 1970s and 1980s. Most notably, the Zambian military has provided counter insurgent efforts during major African confrontations such as the Rhodesian Bush War despite not being the main belligerent. Zambia has a history of supporting regional liberation movements and Former President Kenneth Kaunda had previously decreed that "Zambia will not be independent and free until the rest of Africa is Free". Critics have pointed to Zambia's historical stance of non-engagement and détente as a self-preservation act for a historically authoritarian government. As a large central nation, the governability of Zambia relies on the stability and diplomacy of nearby states that surround Zambia. Regional stability has allowed Former President Kenneth Kaunda to maintain power in the relatively poor nation for several decades. Liberation and political support Zambia received its own liberation from colonialism relatively early from Britain. The newly formed Zambian government under President Kenneth Kaunda of the UNIP party was active in the liberation and disputes of its neighbors for decades following its independence. The Zambian government offered shelter for revolutionaries, mediated treaty signings and offered aid and weapons. The continuation of colonial rule in Southern Africa was seen as a slight to Zambia and inherent feelings of African unity drove the new nation to aid its neighbors resist colonial rule. Most notably, Zambia was a haven for revolutionaries from the Namibia liberation party, South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) and the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. Zambia provided a rear base for revolutionaries as well as administrative and political aid. SWAPO The South West African People's Organization (SWAPO) is a political party that was formerly an independence movement based in Namibia. Due to pressures from within Namibia, SWAPO moved its headquarters and much of its forces into neighboring Zambia in the 1970s. Zambia became a safe haven for the group and SWAPO set up guerrilla training camps and sent exiled members into Zambia. The Shipanga Crisis, so named for senior SWAPO leader Andreas Shipanga, saw the Zambian government help round up thousands of dissidents and critics of the movement. SWAPO leaders in Namibia saw growing dissent in the SWAPO installations and guerrilla camps in Zambia, and appealed to then President Kaunda for help. After rounding up thousands of perceived rebels, including Shipanga with the aid of Zambia, SWAPO leadership in Namibia became markedly more authoritarian. African National Congress The African National Congress was an anti-apartheid political party based in South Africa, with close ideological ties to the Zambian African National Congress of President Kenneth Kaunda. When the political party was banned in South Africa by the colonial government, many of its leaders went underground or fled to Zambia. Lusaka, the capital of Zambia, became the new headquarters for many ANC leaders in exile from their native South Africa. Zambia thus developed a legacy of being the center of activity for South African liberation and allowed exiled leaders to convene and organize. Former South African President Nelson Mandela had expressed the important role that Zambia played in the liberation of their country during the years of exile. Zambia's policy of liberation through diplomacy and discreet support for African nationalist movements within the region is most poignant in the South African case. Zimbabwe Zambia has also provided key support to the liberation struggles of nearby Zimbabwe from their colonial rulers in the 1960s to 1970s. Specifically, Zambia provided armed and diplomatic support to Zimbabwe African People's Union (ZAPU) and the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) during their struggles against the British backed Rhodesian government in the Rhodesian Bush War. Zambia provided limited arms and training towards Zimbabwe's African nationalist movements, but largely applied diplomatic approaches to induce liberation in Zimbabwe. This included multiple visits and discussion between the Rhodesian government and Zambia leaders to negotiate a resolution to the civil strife within the country. Eventually, in 1979, the Rhodesian government submitted to international pressures and conducted elections that lead to the eventual renaming of the country as Zimbabwe. UNITA The National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) was a party in Angola that served as one of the main belligerents in the Angolan Civil War of 1975 against People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA). Zambia, under Kenneth Kaunda trained and funded UNITA against the MPLA during the civil war. Lusaka remained one of the most ardent supporters of the UNITA African nationalists and UNITA troops trained in Zambia. Since then, Zambia has rescinded its historical support of UNITA and has apologized to the current Angolan government over the historical support of UNITA. Roles in regional disputes Angolan Civil War Zambia was key in facilitating talks between People's Movement for the Liberation of Angola (MPLA) and the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) of the Angolan Civil War. The Angolan Civil War waged on from 1975 onward and involved massive foreign intervention in the face of the Cold War. Initiated by Zambia, the Lusaka Protocol was a treaty that attempted to end the Civil War by disarmament and national reconciliation. The treaty was signed in Lusaka on 20 November 1994 and garnered international support, as well as support from Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe and South African President Nelson Mandela. Ultimately the fighting resumed, and by 1998, the peace process ceased. The Second Congo War The Second Congo war was a major African continental war |
animals – in particular birds and mammals – to humans. The increased pressure on ecosystems is being driven by the "exponential rise" in consumption and trade of commodities such as meat, palm oil, and metals, largely facilitated by developed nations, and by a growing human population. According to Peter Daszak, the chair of the group who produced the report, "there is no great mystery about the cause of the Covid-19 pandemic, or of any modern pandemic. The same human activities that drive climate change and biodiversity loss also drive pandemic risk through their impacts on our environment." Climate change According to a report from the United Nations Environment Programme and International Livestock Research Institute named: "Preventing the next pandemic – Zoonotic diseases and how to break the chain of transmission" climate change is one of the 7 human – related causes of increase in the number of zoonotic diseases. The University of Sydney issued in March 2021 a study that examines factors, increasing the likelihood of epidemics and pandemics like the COVID-19 pandemic. The researchers found that "pressure on ecosystems, climate change and economic development are key factors" in doing so. More zoonotic diseases were found in high-income countries. A 2021 study found possible links between climate change and transmission of COVID-19 by bats. The authors suggest that climate-driven changes in the distribution and richness of bat species harboring coronaviruses may have occurred in eastern Asian hotspots (southern China, Myanmar and Laos), constituting a driver behind the evolution and spread of the virus. Secondary transmission Ebola and Marburg are examples of hemorrhagic viral diseases. History During most of human prehistory groups of hunter-gatherers were probably very small. Such groups probably made contact with other such bands only rarely. Such isolation would have caused epidemic diseases to be restricted to any given local population, because propagation and expansion of epidemics depend on frequent contact with other individuals who have not yet developed an adequate immune response. To persist in such a population, a pathogen either had to be a chronic infection, staying present and potentially infectious in the infected host for long periods, or it had to have other additional species as reservoir where it can maintain itself until further susceptible hosts are contacted and infected. In fact, for many "human" diseases, the human is actually better viewed as an accidental or incidental victim and a dead-end host. Examples include rabies, anthrax, tularemia and West Nile virus. Thus, much of human exposure to infectious disease has been zoonotic. Many modern diseases, even epidemic diseases, started out as zoonotic diseases. It is hard to establish with certainty which diseases jumped from other animals to humans, but there is increasing evidence from DNA and RNA sequencing, that measles, smallpox, influenza, HIV, and diphtheria came to humans this way. Various forms of the common cold and tuberculosis also are adaptations of strains originating in other species. Some experts have suggested that all human viral infections were originally zoonotic. Zoonoses are of interest because they are often previously unrecognized diseases or have increased virulence in populations lacking immunity. The West Nile virus appeared in the United States in 1999 in the New York City area, and moved through the country in the summer of 2002, causing much distress. Bubonic plague is a zoonotic disease, as are salmonellosis, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, and Lyme disease. A major factor contributing to the appearance of new zoonotic pathogens in human populations is increased contact between humans and wildlife. This can be caused either by encroachment of human activity into wilderness areas or by movement of wild animals into areas of human activity. An example of this is the outbreak of Nipah virus in peninsular Malaysia in 1999, when intensive pig farming began on the habitat of infected fruit bats. Unidentified infection of the pigs amplified the force of infection, eventually transmitting the virus to farmers and causing 105 human deaths. Similarly, in recent times avian influenza and West Nile virus have spilled over into human populations probably due to interactions between the carrier host and domestic animals. Highly mobile animals such as bats and birds may present a greater risk of zoonotic transmission than other animals due to the ease with which they can move into areas of human habitation. Because they depend on the human host for part of their life-cycle, diseases such as African schistosomiasis, river blindness, and elephantiasis are not defined as zoonotic, even though they may depend on transmission by insects or other vectors. Use in vaccines The first vaccine | like climate change, unsustainable agriculture, exploitation of wildlife, land use change. Others are linked to changes in human society like more mobility. The organizations propose a set of measures to stop the rise. Contamination of food or water supply The most significant zoonotic pathogens causing foodborne diseases are Escherichia coli O157:H7, Campylobacter, Caliciviridae, and Salmonella. In 2006 a conference held in Berlin focused on the issue of zoonotic pathogen effects on food safety, urging government intervention and public vigilance against the risks of catching food-borne diseases from farm-to-table dining. Many food outbreaks can be linked to zoonotic pathogens. Many different types of food that have an animal origin can become contaminated. Some common food items linked to zoonotic contaminations include eggs, seafood, meat, dairy, and even some vegetables. Outbreaks involving contaminated food should be handled in preparedness plans to prevent widespread outbreaks and to efficiently and effectively contain outbreaks. Farming, ranching and animal husbandry Contact with farm animals can lead to disease in farmers or others that come into contact with infected farm animals. Glanders primarily affects those who work closely with horses and donkeys. Close contact with cattle can lead to cutaneous anthrax infection, whereas inhalation anthrax infection is more common for workers in slaughterhouses, tanneries and wool mills. Close contact with sheep who have recently given birth can lead to clamydiosis, or enzootic abortion, in pregnant women, as well as an increased risk of Q fever, toxoplasmosis, and listeriosis in pregnant or the otherwise immunocompromised. Echinococcosis is caused by a tapeworm which can be spread from infected sheep by food or water contaminated with feces or wool. Bird flu is common in chickens. While rare in humans, the main public health worry is that a strain of bird flu will recombine with a human flu virus and cause a pandemic like the 1918 Spanish flu. In 2017, free range chickens in the UK were temporarily ordered to remain inside due to the threat of bird flu. Cattle are an important reservoir of cryptosporidiosis and mainly affects the immunocompromised. Reports have shown Minks can also get infected. In Western countries also Hepatitis E burden is largely dependent on exposure to animal products, especially pork meat is the important source for infection in this respect. Veterinarians are exposed to unique occupational hazards and zoonotic diseases. In the US, studies have highlighted an increased risk to injuries and a lack of veterinary awareness for these hazards. Research has proved the importance for continued clinical veterinarian education on occupational risks associated with musculoskeletal injuries, animal bites, needle-sticks, and cuts. A July 2020 report by the United Nations Environment Programme stated that the increase in zoonotic pandemics is directly attributable to anthropogenic destruction of nature and the increased global demand for meat, and that the industrial farming of pigs and chickens in particular will be a primary risk factor for the spillover of zoonotic diseases in the future. Wildlife trade or animal attacks The wildlife trade may increase spillover risk because it directly increases the number of interactions across animal species, sometimes on small spaces. The origin of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic is traced to the wet markets in China. Rabies Insect vectors African sleeping sickness Dirofilariasis Eastern equine encephalitis Japanese encephalitis Saint Louis encephalitis Scrub typhus Tularemia Venezuelan equine encephalitis West Nile fever Western equine encephalitis Zika fever Pets Pets can transmit a number of diseases. Dogs and cats are routinely vaccinated against rabies. Pets can also transmit ringworm and Giardia, which are endemic in both animal and human populations. Toxoplasmosis is a common infection of cats; in humans it is a mild disease although it can be dangerous to pregnant women. Dirofilariasis is caused by Dirofilaria immitis through mosquitoes infected by mammals like dogs and cats. Cat-scratch disease is caused by Bartonella henselae and Bartonella quintana from fleas which are endemic in cats. Toxocariasis is infection of humans of any of species of roundworm, including species specific to the dog (Toxocara canis) or the cat (Toxocara cati). Cryptosporidiosis can be spread to humans from pet lizards, such as the leopard gecko. Encephalitozoon cuniculi is a microsporidial parasite carried by many mammals, including rabbits, and is an important opportunistic pathogen in people immunocompromised by HIV/AIDS, organ transplantation, or CD4+ T-lymphocyte deficiency. Pets may also serve as a reservoir of viral disease and contribute to the chronic presence of certain viral diseases |
August 1914 1588 flights had carried 10,197 fare-paying passengers. On 24 April 1912, the Imperial German Navy ordered its first Zeppelin—an enlarged version of the airships operated by DELAG—which received the naval designation Z 1 and entered Navy service in October 1912. On 18 January 1913 Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz, Secretary of State of the German Imperial Naval Office, obtained the agreement of Kaiser Wilhelm II to a five-year program of expansion of German naval-airship strength, involving the building of two airship bases and constructing a fleet of ten airships. The first airship of the program, L 2, was ordered on 30 January. L 1 was lost on 9 September near Heligoland when caught in a storm while taking part in an exercise with the German fleet. 14 crew members drowned, the first fatalities in a Zeppelin accident. Less than six weeks later, on 17 October, LZ 18 (L 2) caught fire during its acceptance trials, killing the entire crew. These accidents deprived the Navy of most of its experienced personnel: the head of the Admiralty Air Department was killed in the L 1 and his successor died in the L 2. The Navy was left with three partially trained crews. The next Navy zeppelin, the M class L 3, did not enter service until May 1914: in the meantime, Sachsen was hired from DELAG as a training ship. By the outbreak of war in August 1914, Zeppelin had started constructing the first M class airships, which had a length of , with a volume of and a useful load of . Their three Maybach C-X engines produced each, and they could reach speeds of up to . During World War I The German airships were operated separately by the Army and Navy. When World War I broke out, the Army took over the three remaining DELAG ships. By this time, it had already decommissioned three older Zeppelins, including Z I. During the war, the Navy Zeppelins were mainly used in reconnaissance missions. Bombing missions, especially those targeting London, captured the German public's imagination, but had little significant material success, although the Zeppelin raids, together with the later bombing raids carried out by aeroplanes, did cause the diversion of men and equipment from the Western Front and fear of the raids had some effect on industrial production. Early offensive operations by Army airships revealed that they were extremely vulnerable to ground fire unless flown at high altitude, and several were lost. No bombs had been developed, and the early raids dropped artillery shells instead. On 5 August 1914 Z VI bombed Liège. Flying at a relatively low altitude because of cloud cover, the airship was damaged by small-arms fire and was destroyed in a forced landing near Bonn. On 21 August Z VII and Z VIII were damaged by ground fire while supporting German army operations in Alsace, and Z VIII was lost. On the night of 24/25 August Z IX bombed Antwerp, dropping bombs near the royal palace and killing five people. A second, less effective, raid was made on the night of 1–2 September and a third on 7 October, but on 8 October Z IX was destroyed in its hangar at Düsseldorf by Flt Lt. Reginald Marix, RNAS. The RNAS had also bombed the Zeppelin bases in Cologne on 22 September 1914. On the eastern front, Z V was brought down by ground fire on 28 August during the Battle of Tannenberg; most of the crew were captured. Z IV bombed Warsaw on 24 September and was also used to support German army operations in East Prussia. By the end of 1914 the Army's airship strength was reduced to four. On 20 March 1915, temporarily forbidden from bombing London by the Kaiser, Z X (LZ 29), LZ 35 and the Schütte-Lanz airship SL 2 set off to bomb Paris: SL 2 was damaged by artillery fire while crossing the front and turned back but the two Zeppelins reached Paris and dropped of bombs, killing only one and wounding eight. On the return journey Z X was damaged by anti-aircraft fire and was damaged beyond repair in the resulting forced landing. Three weeks later LZ 35 suffered a similar fate after bombing Poperinghe. Paris mounted a more effective defense against zeppelin raids than London. Zeppelins attacking Paris had to first fly over the system of forts between the front and the city, from which they were subjected to anti-aircraft fire with reduced risk of collateral damage. The French also maintained a continuous patrol of two fighters over Paris at an altitude from which they could promptly attack arriving zeppelins avoiding the delay required to reach the zeppelin altitude. Two further missions were flown against Paris in January 1916: on 29 January LZ 79 killed 23 and injured another 30 but was so severely damaged by anti-aircraft fire that it crashed during the return journey. A second mission by LZ 77 the following night bombed the suburbs of Asnières and Versailles, with little effect.Robinson 1973, p. 113 Airship operations in the Balkans started in the autumn of 1915, and an airship base was constructed at Szentandras. In November 1915 LZ 81 was used to fly diplomats to Sofia for negotiations with the Bulgarian government. This base was also used by LZ 85 to conduct two raids on Salonika in early 1916: a third raid on 4 May ended with it being brought down by anti-aircraft fire. The crew survived but were taken prisoner. When Romania entered the war in August 1916 LZ 101 was transferred to Yambol and bombed Bucharest on 28 August, 4 September and 25 September. LZ 86, transferred to Szentandras and made a single attack on the Ploiești oil fields on 4 September but was wrecked on attempting to land after the mission. Its replacement, LZ 86, was damaged by anti-aircraft fire during its second attack on Bucharest on 26 September and was damaged beyond repair in the resulting forced landing, and was replaced by LZ 97. At the instigation of the Kaiser a plan was made to bomb Saint Petersburg in December 1916. Two Navy zeppelins were transferred to Wainoden on the Courland Peninsula. A preliminary attempt to bomb Reval on 28 December ended in failure caused by operating problems due to the extreme cold, and one of the airships was destroyed in a forced landing at Seerappen. The plan was subsequently abandoned. In 1917 the German High Command made an attempt to use a Zeppelin to deliver supplies to Lettow-Vorbeck's forces in German East Africa. L 57, a specially lengthened craft was to have flown the mission but was destroyed shortly after completion. A Zeppelin then under construction, L 59, was then modified for the mission: it set off from Yambol on 21 November 1917 and nearly reached its destination, but was ordered to return by radio. Its journey covered and lasted 95 hours. It was then used for reconnaissance and bombing missions in the eastern Mediterranean. It flew one bombing mission against Naples on 10–11 March 1918. A planned attack on Suez was turned back by high winds, and on 7 April 1918 it was on a mission to bomb the British naval base at Malta when it caught fire over the Straits of Otranto, with the loss of all its crew. On 5 January 1918, a fire at Ahlhorn destroyed four of the specialised double sheds along with four Zeppelins and one Schütte-Lanz. In July 1918, the Tondern raid conducted by the RAF and Royal Navy, destroyed two Zeppelins in their sheds. 1914–18 naval patrols The main use of the airship was in reconnaissance over the North Sea and the Baltic, and the majority of airships manufactured were used by the Navy. Patrolling had priority over any other airship activity. During the war almost 1,000 missions were flown over the North Sea alone, compared with about 50 strategic bombing raids. The German Navy had some 15 Zeppelins in commission by the end of 1915 and was able to have two or more patrolling continuously at any one time. However their operations were limited by weather conditions. On 16 February L 3 and L 4 were lost owing to a combination of engine failure and high winds, L 3 crashing on the Danish island of Fanø without loss of life and L 4 coming down at Blaavands Huk; eleven crew escaped from the forward gondola, after which the lightened airship with four crew members remaining in the aft engine car was blown out to sea and lost. At this stage in the war there was no clear doctrine for the use of Naval airships. A single large Zeppelin, L 5, played an unimportant part in the Battle of the Dogger Bank on 24 January 1915. L 5 was carrying out a routine patrol when it picked up Admiral Hipper's radio signal announcing that he was engaged with the British battle cruiser squadron. Heading towards the German fleet's position, the Zeppelin was forced to climb above the cloud cover by fire from the British fleet: its commander then decided that it was his duty to cover the retreating German fleet rather than observe British movements. In 1915 patrols were only carried out on 124 days and in other years the total was considerably less. They prevented British ships from approaching Germany, spotted when and where the British were laying mines and later aided in the destruction of those mines. Zeppelins would sometimes land on the sea next to a minesweeper, bring aboard an officer and show him the mines' locations. In 1917 the Royal Navy began to take effective countermeasures against airship patrols over the North Sea. In April the first Curtiss H.12 Large America long-range flying boats were delivered to RNAS Felixstowe and in July 1917 the aircraft carrier entered service, and launching platforms for aeroplanes were fitted to the forward turrets of some light cruisers. On 14 May L 22 was shot down near Terschelling Bank by an H.12 flown by Lt. Galpin and Sub-Lt. Leckie which had been alerted following interception of its radio traffic. Two abortive interceptions were made by Galpin and Leckie on 24 May and 5 June and on 14 June L 43 was brought down by an H.12 flown by Sub Lts. Hobbs and Dickie. On the same day Galpin and Leckie intercepted and attacked L 46. The Germans had believed that the previous unsuccessful attacks had been made by an aircraft operating from one of the Royal Navy's seaplane carriers; now realising that there was a new threat, Strasser ordered airships patrolling in the Terschilling area to maintain an altitude of at least 4,000 m (13,000 ft), considerably reducing their effectiveness. On 21 August L 23, patrolling off the Danish coast, was spotted by the British 3rd Light Cruiser squadron which was in the area. launched its Sopwith Pup, and Sub-Lt. B. A. Smart succeeded in shooting the Zeppelin down in flames. The cause of the airship's loss was not discovered by the Germans, who believed the Zeppelin had been brought down by anti-aircraft fire from ships. Bombing campaign against Britain At the beginning of the conflict the German command had high hopes for the airships, which were considerably more capable than contemporary light fixed-wing machines: they were almost as fast, could carry multiple machine guns, and had enormously greater bomb-load range and endurance. Contrary to expectation, it was not easy to ignite the hydrogen using standard bullets and shrapnel. The Allies only started to exploit the Zeppelin's great vulnerability to fire when a combination of Pomeroy and Brock explosive ammunition with Buckingham incendiary ammunition was used in fighter aircraft machine guns during 1916. The British had been concerned over the threat posed by Zeppelins since 1909, and attacked the Zeppelin bases early in the war. LZ 25 was destroyed in its hangar at Düsseldorf on 8 October 1914 by bombs dropped by Flt Lt Reginald Marix, RNAS, and the sheds at Cologne as well as the Zeppelin works in Friedrichshafen were also attacked. These raids were followed by the Cuxhaven Raid on Christmas Day 1914, one of the first operations carried out by ship-launched aeroplanes. Airship raids on Great Britain were approved by the Kaiser on 7 January 1915, although he excluded London as a target and further demanded that no attacks be made on historic buildings. The raids were intended to target only military sites on the east coast and around the Thames estuary, but bombing accuracy was poor owing to the height at which the airships flew and navigation was problematic. The airships relied largely on dead reckoning, supplemented by a radio direction-finding system of limited accuracy. After blackouts became widespread, many bombs fell at random on uninhabited countryside. 1915 The first raid on England took place on the night of 19–20 January 1915. Two Zeppelins, L 3 and L 4, intended to attack targets near the River Humber but, diverted by strong winds, eventually dropped their bombs on Great Yarmouth, Sheringham, King's Lynn and the surrounding villages, killing four and injuring 16. Material damage was estimated at £7,740. The Kaiser authorised the bombing of the London docks on 12 February 1915, but no raids on London took place until May. Two Navy raids failed due to bad weather on 14 and 15 April, and it was decided to delay further attempts until the more capable P class Zeppelins were in service. The Army received the first of these, LZ 38, and Erich Linnarz commanded it on a raid over Ipswich on 29–30 April and another, attacking Southend on 9–10 May. LZ 38 also attacked Dover and Ramsgate on 16–17 May, before returning to bomb Southend on 26–27 May. These four raids killed six people and injured six, causing property damage estimated at £16,898. Twice Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS) aircraft tried to intercept LZ 38 but on both occasions it was either able to outclimb the aircraft or was already at too great an altitude for the aircraft to intercept. On 31 May Linnarz commanded LZ 38 on the first raid against London. In total some 120 bombs were dropped on a line stretching from Stoke Newington south to Stepney and then north toward Leytonstone. Seven people were killed and 35 injured. 41 fires were started, burning out seven buildings and the total damage was assessed at £18,596. Aware of the problems that the Germans were experiencing in navigation, this raid caused the government to issue a D notice prohibiting the press from reporting anything about raids that was not mentioned in official statements. Only one of the 15 defensive sorties managed to make visual contact with the enemy, and one of the pilots, Flt Lieut D. M. Barnes, was killed on attempting to land. The first naval attempt on London took place on 4 June: strong winds caused the commander of L 9 to misjudge his position, and the bombs were dropped on Gravesend. L 9 was also diverted by the weather on 6–7 June, attacking Hull instead of London and causing considerable damage. On the same night an Army raid of three Zeppelins also failed because of the weather, and as the airships returned to Evere (Brussels) they ran into a counter-raid by RNAS aircraft flying from Furnes, Belgium. LZ 38 was destroyed on the ground and LZ 37 was intercepted in the air by R. A. J. Warneford, who dropped six bombs on the airship, setting it on fire. All but one of the crew died. Warneford was awarded the Victoria Cross for his achievement. As a consequence of the RNAS raid both the Army and Navy withdrew from their bases in Belgium. After an ineffective attack by L 10 on Tyneside on 15–16 June the short summer nights discouraged further raids for some months, and the remaining Army Zeppelins were reassigned to the Eastern and Balkan fronts. The Navy resumed raids on Britain in August, when three largely ineffective raids were carried out. On 10 August the antiaircraft guns had their first success, causing L 12 to come down into the sea off Zeebrugge, and on 17–18 August L 10 became the first Navy airship to reach London. Mistaking the reservoirs of the Lea Valley for the Thames, it dropped its bombs on Walthamstow and Leytonstone. L 10 was destroyed a little over two weeks later: it was struck by lightning and caught fire off Cuxhaven, and the entire crew was killed. Three Army airships set off to bomb London on 7–8 September, of which two succeeded: SL 2 dropped bombs between Southwark and Woolwich: LZ 74 scattered 39 bombs over Cheshunt before heading on to London and dropping a single bomb on Fenchurch Street station. The Navy attempted to follow up the Army's success the following night. One Zeppelin targeted the benzole plant at Skinningrove and three set off to bomb London: two were forced to turn back but L 13, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Mathy reached London. The bomb-load included a bomb, the largest yet carried. This exploded near Smithfield Market, destroying several houses and killing two men. More bombs fell on the textile warehouses north of St Paul's Cathedral, causing a fire which despite the attendance of 22 fire engines caused over half a million pounds of damage: Mathy then turned east, dropping his remaining bombs on Liverpool Street station. The Zeppelin was the target of concentrated anti-aircraft fire, but no hits were scored and the falling shrapnel caused both damage and alarm on the ground. The raid killed 22 people and injured 87. The monetary cost of the damage was over one sixth of the total damage costs inflicted by bombing raids during the war. After three more raids were scattered by the weather, a five-Zeppelin raid was launched by the Navy on 13 October, the "Theatreland Raid." Arriving over the Norfolk coast at around 18:30, the Zeppelins encountered new ground defences installed since the September raid; these had no success, although the airship commanders commented on the improved defences of the city. L 15 began bombing over Charing Cross, the first bombs striking the Lyceum Theatre and the corner of Exeter and Wellington Streets, killing 17 and injuring 20. None of the other Zeppelins reached central London: bombs fell on Woolwich, Guildford, Tonbridge, Croydon, Hertford and an army camp near Folkestone. A total of 71 people were killed and 128 injured. This was the last raid of 1915, as bad weather coincided with the new moon in both November and December 1915 and continued into January 1916. Although these raids had no significant military impact, the psychological effect was considerable. The writer D. H. Lawrence described one raid in a letter to Lady Ottoline Morrell: 1916 The raids continued in 1916. In December 1915 additional P class Zeppelins and the first of the new Q class airships, were delivered. The Q class was an enlargement of the P class with improved ceiling and bomb-load. The Army took full control of ground defences in February 1916, and a variety of sub 4-inch (less than 102 mm) calibre guns were converted to anti-aircraft use. Searchlights were introduced, initially manned by police. By mid-1916, there were 271 anti-aircraft guns and 258 searchlights across England. Aerial defences against Zeppelins were divided between the RNAS and the Royal Flying Corps (RFC), with the Navy engaging enemy airships approaching the coast while the RFC took responsibility once the enemy had crossed the coastline. Initially the War Office had believed that the Zeppelins used a layer of inert gas to protect themselves from incendiary bullets, and favoured the use of bombs or devices like the Ranken dart. However, by mid-1916 an effective mixture of explosive, tracer and incendiary rounds had been developed. There were 23 airship raids in 1916, in which 125 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. The first raid of 1916 was carried out by the German Navy. Nine Zeppelins were sent to Liverpool on the night of 31 January – 1 February. A combination of poor weather and mechanical problems scattered them across the Midlands and several towns were bombed. A total of 61 people were reported killed and 101 injured by the raid. Despite ground fog, 22 aircraft took off to find the Zeppelins but none succeeded, and two pilots were killed when attempting to land. One airship, the L 19, came down in the North Sea because of engine failure and damage from Dutch ground-fire. Although the wreck stayed afloat for a while and was sighted by a British fishing trawler, the boat's crew refused to rescue the Zeppelin's crew because they were outnumbered, and all 16 crew died. Further raids were delayed by an extended period of poor weather and also by the withdrawal of the majority of Naval Zeppelins in an attempt to resolve the recurrent engine failures. Three Zeppelins set off to bomb Rosyth on 5–6 March but were forced by high winds to divert to Hull, killing 18, injuring 52 and causing £25,005 damage. At the beginning of April raids were attempted on five successive nights. Ten airships set off on 31 March: most turned back and L 15, damaged by antiaircraft fire and an aircraft attacking using Ranken darts, came down in the sea near Margate. Most of the 48 killed in the raid were victims of a single bomb which fell on an Army billet in Cleethorpes. The following night two Navy Zeppelins bombed targets in the north of England, killing 22 and injuring 130. On the night of 2/3 April a six-airship raid was made, targeting the naval base at Rosyth, the Forth Bridge and London. None of the airships bombed their intended targets; 13 were killed, 24 injured and much of the £77,113 damage was caused by the destruction of a warehouse in Leith containing whisky.Robinson 1971 p. 137 Raids on 4/5 April and 5/6 April had little effect, as did a five-Zeppelin raid on 25/6 April and a raid by a single Army Zeppelin the following night. On 2/3 July a nine-Zeppelin raid against Manchester and Rosyth was largely ineffective due to weather conditions, and one was forced to land in neutral Denmark, its crew being interned. On 28–29 July the first raid to include one of the new and much larger R-class Zeppelins, L 31, took place. The 10-Zeppelin raid achieved very little; four turned back early and the rest wandered over a fog-covered landscape before giving up. Adverse | RFC took responsibility once the enemy had crossed the coastline. Initially the War Office had believed that the Zeppelins used a layer of inert gas to protect themselves from incendiary bullets, and favoured the use of bombs or devices like the Ranken dart. However, by mid-1916 an effective mixture of explosive, tracer and incendiary rounds had been developed. There were 23 airship raids in 1916, in which 125 tons of bombs were dropped, killing 293 people and injuring 691. The first raid of 1916 was carried out by the German Navy. Nine Zeppelins were sent to Liverpool on the night of 31 January – 1 February. A combination of poor weather and mechanical problems scattered them across the Midlands and several towns were bombed. A total of 61 people were reported killed and 101 injured by the raid. Despite ground fog, 22 aircraft took off to find the Zeppelins but none succeeded, and two pilots were killed when attempting to land. One airship, the L 19, came down in the North Sea because of engine failure and damage from Dutch ground-fire. Although the wreck stayed afloat for a while and was sighted by a British fishing trawler, the boat's crew refused to rescue the Zeppelin's crew because they were outnumbered, and all 16 crew died. Further raids were delayed by an extended period of poor weather and also by the withdrawal of the majority of Naval Zeppelins in an attempt to resolve the recurrent engine failures. Three Zeppelins set off to bomb Rosyth on 5–6 March but were forced by high winds to divert to Hull, killing 18, injuring 52 and causing £25,005 damage. At the beginning of April raids were attempted on five successive nights. Ten airships set off on 31 March: most turned back and L 15, damaged by antiaircraft fire and an aircraft attacking using Ranken darts, came down in the sea near Margate. Most of the 48 killed in the raid were victims of a single bomb which fell on an Army billet in Cleethorpes. The following night two Navy Zeppelins bombed targets in the north of England, killing 22 and injuring 130. On the night of 2/3 April a six-airship raid was made, targeting the naval base at Rosyth, the Forth Bridge and London. None of the airships bombed their intended targets; 13 were killed, 24 injured and much of the £77,113 damage was caused by the destruction of a warehouse in Leith containing whisky.Robinson 1971 p. 137 Raids on 4/5 April and 5/6 April had little effect, as did a five-Zeppelin raid on 25/6 April and a raid by a single Army Zeppelin the following night. On 2/3 July a nine-Zeppelin raid against Manchester and Rosyth was largely ineffective due to weather conditions, and one was forced to land in neutral Denmark, its crew being interned. On 28–29 July the first raid to include one of the new and much larger R-class Zeppelins, L 31, took place. The 10-Zeppelin raid achieved very little; four turned back early and the rest wandered over a fog-covered landscape before giving up. Adverse weather dispersed raids on 30–31 July and 2–3 August, and on 8–9 August nine airships attacked Hull with little effect. On 24–25 August 12 Navy Zeppelins were launched: eight turned back without attacking and only Heinrich Mathy's L 31 reached London; flying above low clouds, 36 bombs were dropped in 10 minutes on south east London. Nine people were killed, 40 injured and £130,203 of damage was caused. Zeppelins were very difficult to attack successfully at high altitude, although this also made accurate bombing impossible. Aeroplanes struggled to reach a typical altitude of , and firing the solid bullets usually used by aircraft Lewis guns was ineffectual: they made small holes causing inconsequential gas leaks. Britain developed new bullets, the Brock containing oxidant potassium chlorate, and the Buckingham filled with phosphorus, which reacted with the chlorate to catch fire and hence ignite the Zeppelin's hydrogen. These had become available by September 1916. The biggest raid to date was launched on 2–3 September, when twelve German Navy and four Army airships set out to bomb London. A combination of rain and snowstorms scattered the airships while they were still over the North Sea. Only one of the naval airships came within seven miles of central London, and both damage and casualties were slight. The newly commissioned Schütte-Lanz SL 11 dropped a few bombs on Hertfordshire while approaching London: it was picked up by searchlights as it bombed Ponders End and at around 02:15 it was intercepted by a B.E.2c flown by Lt. William Leefe Robinson, who fired three 40-round drums of Brocks and Buckingham ammunition into the airship. The third drum started a fire and the airship was quickly enveloped in flames. It fell to the ground near Cuffley, witnessed by the crews of several of the other Zeppelins and many on the ground; there were no survivors. The victory earned Leefe Robinson a Victoria Cross; the pieces of SL 11 were gathered up and sold as souvenirs by the Red Cross to raise money for wounded soldiers. The loss of SL 11 to the new ammunition ended the German Army's enthusiasm for raids on Britain. The German Navy remained aggressive, and another 12-Zeppelin raid was launched on 23–24 September. Eight older airships bombed targets in the Midlands and northeast, while four R-class Zeppelins attacked London. L 30 did not even cross the coast, dropping its bombs at sea. L 31 approached London from the south, dropping a few bombs on the southern suburbs before crossing the Thames and bombing Leyton, killing eight people and injuring 30. L 32 was piloted by Oberleutnant Werner Peterson of the Naval Airship Service, who had only taken command of L 32 in August 1916. L 32 approached from the south, crossing the English Channel close to Dungeness light house, passing Tunbridge Wells at 12:10 and dropping bombs on Sevenoaks and Swanley before crossing over Purfleet. After receiving heavy gunfire and encountering a multitude of anti-aircraft search lights over London, Peterson decided to head up the Essex coast from Tilbury and abort the mission. Water ballast was dropped to gain altitude and L 32 climbed to 13,000 feet. Shortly afterwards at 12:45 L 32 was spotted by 2nd Lieutenant Frederick Sowrey of the Royal Flying Corps, who had taken off from nearby RAF Hornchurch (known at the time as Sutton's Farm). As Sowrey approached he fired three drums of ammunition into the hull of L 32, including the latest Bock & Pomeroy incendiary rounds. L 32, according to witness accounts, violently turned and lost altitude, burning from both ends and along its back. The airship narrowly missed Billericay High Street as it passed over, one witness saying the windows to her home rattled and the Zeppelin sounded like a hissing freight train. L 32 continued down Hill side and came down at Snail's Hall Farm off Green Farm Lane in Great Burstead, crashing at 01:30 on farm land; the 650-foot-long airship struck a large oak tree. The entire 22 crew were killed. Two crew members jumped rather than be burned (one was said to be Werner Peterson). The crew's bodies were kept in a barn nearby until the 27th September when the Royal Flying Corps transported them to nearby Great Burstead Church. They were interred there until 1966, when they were reinterred at the German Military Cemetery in Cannock Chase. Attending the scene of the crash site were the Royal Naval Intelligence, who recovered the latest secret code book which was found within the gondola of the crashed L32. L 33 dropped a few incendiaries over Upminster and Bromley-by-Bow, where it was hit by an anti-aircraft shell, despite being at an altitude of . As it headed towards Chelmsford it began to lose height and came down close to Little Wigborough. The airship was set alight by its crew, but inspection of the wreckage provided the British with much information about the construction of Zeppelins, which was used in the design of the British R33-class airships. The next raid came on 1 October 1916. Eleven Zeppelins were launched at targets in the Midlands and at London. Only L 31, commanded by the experienced Heinrich Mathy making his 15th raid, reached London. As the airship neared Cheshunt at about 23:20 it was picked up by searchlights and attacked by three aircraft from No. 39 Squadron. 2nd lieutenant Wulstan Tempest succeeded in setting fire to the airship, which came down near Potters Bar. All 19 crew died, many jumping from the burning airship. For the next raid, on 27–28 November, the Zeppelins avoided London for targets in the Midlands. Again the defending aircraft were successful: L 34 was shot down over the mouth of the Tees and L 21 was attacked by two aircraft and crashed into the sea off Lowestoft. There were no further raids in 1916 although the Navy lost three more craft, all on 28 December: SL 12 was destroyed at Ahlhorn by strong winds after sustaining damage in a poor landing, and at Tondern L 24 crashed into the shed while landing: the resulting fire destroyed both L 24 and the adjacent L 17. 1917 To counter the increasingly effective defences new Zeppelins were introduced which had an increased operating altitude of and a ceiling of . The first of these S-class Zeppelins, LZ 91 (L 42) entered service in February 1917. They were basically a modification of the R-class, sacrificing strength and power for improved altitude. The surviving R-class Zeppelins were adapted by removing one of the engines. The improved safety was offset by the extra strain on the airship crews caused by altitude sickness and exposure to extreme cold and operating difficulties caused by cold and unpredictable high winds encountered at altitude. The first raid of 1917 did not occur until 16–17 March: the five Zeppelins encountered very strong winds and none reached their targets. This experience was repeated on 23–24 May. Two days later 21 Gotha bombers attempted a daylight raid on London. They were frustrated by heavy clouds but the effort led the Kaiser to announce that airship raids on London were to stop; under pressure he later relented to allow the Zeppelins to attack under "favorable circumstances". On 16–17 June, another raid was attempted. Six Zeppelins were to take part, but two were kept in their shed by high winds and another two were forced to return by engine failure. L 42 bombed Ramsgate, hitting a munitions store. The month-old L 48, the first U class Zeppelin, was forced to drop to where it was caught by four aircraft and destroyed, crashing near Theberton, Suffolk. After ineffective raids on the Midlands and the north of England on 21–22 August and 24–25 September, the last major Zeppelin raid of the war was launched on 19–20 October, with 13 airships heading for Sheffield, Manchester and Liverpool. All were hindered by an unexpected strong headwind at altitude. L 45 was trying to reach Sheffield, but instead it dropped bombs on Northampton and London: most fell in the north-west suburbs but three 300 kg (660 lb) bombs fell in Piccadilly, Camberwell and Hither Green, causing most of the casualties that night. L 45 then reduced altitude to try to escape the winds but was forced back into the higher air currents by a B.E.2e. The airship then had mechanical failure in three engines and was blown over France, eventually coming down near Sisteron; it was set on fire and the crew surrendered. L 44 was brought down by ground fire over France: L 49 and L 50 were also lost to engine failure and the weather over France. L 55 was badly damaged on landing and later scrapped. There were no more raids in 1917, although the airships were not abandoned but refitted with new, more powerful, engines. 1918 There were only four raids in 1918, all against targets in the Midlands and northern England. Five Zeppelins attempted to bomb the Midlands on 12–13 March to little effect. The following night three Zeppelins set off, but two turned back because of the weather: the third bombed Hartlepool, killing eight and injuring 29. A five-Zeppelin raid on 12–13 April was also largely ineffective, with thick clouds making accurate navigation impossible. However some alarm was caused by the other two, one of which reached the east coast and bombed Wigan, believing it was Sheffield: the other bombed Coventry in the belief that it was Birmingham. The final raid on 5 August 1918 involved four airships and resulted in the loss of L.70 and the death of its entire crew under the command of Fregattenkapitän Peter Strasser, head of the Imperial German Naval Airship Service and the Führer der Luftschiffe. Crossing the North Sea during daylight, the airship was intercepted by a Royal Air Force DH.4 biplane piloted by Major Egbert Cadbury, and shot down in flames. Technological progress Zeppelin technology improved considerably as a result of the increasing demands of warfare. The company came under government control, and new personnel were recruited to cope with the increased demand, including the aerodynamicist Paul Jaray and the stress engineer Karl Arnstein. Many of these technological advances originated from Zeppelin's only serious competitor, the Mannheim-based Schütte-Lanz company. While their dirigibles were never as successful, Professor Schütte's more scientific approach to airship design led to important innovations including the streamlined hull shape, the simpler cruciform fins (replacing the more complicated box-like arrangements of older Zeppelins), individual direct-drive engine cars, anti-aircraft machine-gun positions, and gas ventilation shafts which transferred vented hydrogen to the top of the airship. New production facilities were set up to assemble Zeppelins from components fabricated in Friedrichshafen. The pre-war M-class designs were quickly enlarged, to produce the long duralumin P-class, which increased gas capacity from to , introduced a fully enclosed gondola and had an extra engine. These modifications added to the maximum ceiling, around 9 km/h (6 mph) to the top speed, and greatly increased crew comfort and hence endurance. Twenty-two P-class airships were built; the first, LZ 38, was delivered to the Army on 3 April 1915. The P class was followed by a lengthened version, the Q class. In July 1916 Luftschiffbau Zeppelin introduced the R-class, 199.49 m (644 ft 8 in) long, and with a volume of . These could carry loads of three to four tons of bombs and reach speeds of up to , powered by six Maybach engines. In 1917, following losses to the air defences over Britain, new designs were produced which were capable of flying at much higher altitudes, typically operating at around . This was achieved by reducing the weight of the airship by reducing the weight of the structure, halving the bomb load, removing the defensive armament and by reducing the number of engines to five. However these were not successful as bombers: the greater height at which they operated greatly hindered navigation, and their reduced power made them vulnerable to unfavorable weather conditions. At the beginning of the war Captain Ernst A. Lehmann and Baron Gemmingen, Count Zeppelin's nephew, developed an observation car for use by dirigibles. This was equipped with a wicker chair, chart table, electric lamp and compass, with telephone line and lightning conductor part of the suspension cable. The car's observer would relay navigation and bomb dropping orders to the Zeppelin flying within or above the clouds, so remaining invisible from the ground. Although used by Army airships, they were not used by the Navy, since Strasser considered that their weight meant an unacceptable reduction in bomb load. End of the war The German defeat also marked the end of German military dirigibles, as the victorious Allies demanded a complete abolition of German air forces and surrender of the remaining airships as reparations. Specifically, the Treaty of Versailles contained the following articles dealing explicitly with dirigibles: Article 198"The armed forces of Germany must not include any military or naval air forces ... No dirigible shall be kept." Article 202"On the coming into force of the present Treaty, all military and naval aeronautical material ... must be delivered to the Governments of the Principal Allied and Associated Powers ... In particular, this material will include all items under the following heads which are or have been in use or were designed for warlike purposes:[...] "Dirigibles able to take to the air, being manufactured, repaired or assembled." "Plant for the manufacture of hydrogen." "Dirigible sheds and shelters of every kind for aircraft." "Pending their delivery, dirigibles will, at the expense of Germany, be maintained inflated with hydrogen; the plant for the manufacture of hydrogen, as well as the sheds for dirigibles may at the discretion of the said Powers, be left to Germany until the time when the dirigibles are handed over." On 23 June 1919, a week before the treaty was signed, many Zeppelin crews destroyed their airships in their halls in order to prevent delivery, following the example of the Scuttling of the German fleet at Scapa Flow two days earlier. The remaining dirigibles were transferred to France, Italy, Britain, and Belgium in 1920. A total of 84 Zeppelins were built during the war. Over 60 were lost, roughly evenly divided between accident and enemy action. 51 raids had been made on England alone, in which 5,806 bombs were dropped, killing 557 people and injuring 1,358 while causing damage estimated at £1.5 million. It has been argued the raids were effective far beyond material damage in diverting and hampering wartime production: one estimate is that the due to the 1915–16 raids "one sixth of the total normal output of munitions was entirely lost." After World War I Renaissance Count von Zeppelin had died in 1917, before the end of the war. Dr. Hugo Eckener, who had long envisioned dirigibles as vessels of peace rather than of war, took command of the Zeppelin business, hoping to quickly resume civilian flights. Despite considerable difficulties, they completed two small passenger airships; LZ 120 Bodensee {Scrapped July 1928}, which first flew in August 1919 and in the following months transported passengers between Friedrichshafen and Berlin, and a sister-ship LZ 121 Nordstern, {Scrapped September 1926} which was intended for use on a regular route to Stockholm. However, in 1921 the Allied Powers demanded that these should be handed over as war reparations as compensation for the dirigibles destroyed by their crews in 1919. Germany was not allowed to construct military aircraft and only airships of less than were permitted. This brought a halt to Zeppelin's plans for airship development, and the company temporarily had to resort to manufacturing aluminium cooking utensils. Eckener and his co-workers refused to give up and kept looking for investors and a way to circumvent Allied restrictions. Their opportunity came in 1924. The United States had started to experiment with rigid airships, constructing one of their own, the ZR-1 USS Shenandoah, and buying the R38 (based on the Zeppelin L 70) when the British airship programme was cancelled. However, this broke apart and caught fire during a test flight above the Humber on 23 August 1921, killing 44 crewmen. Under these circumstances, Eckener managed to obtain an order for the next American dirigible. Germany had to pay for this airship itself, as the cost was set against the war reparation accounts, but for the Zeppelin company this was unimportant. LZ 126 made its first flight on 27 August 1924. On 12 October at 07:30 local time the Zeppelin took off for the US under the command of Hugo Eckener. The ship completed its voyage without any difficulties in 80 hours 45 minutes. American crowds enthusiastically celebrated the arrival, and President Calvin Coolidge invited Eckener and his crew to the White House, calling the new Zeppelin an "angel of peace". Given the designation ZR-3 USS Los Angeles and refilled with helium (partly sourced from the Shenandoah) after its Atlantic crossing, the airship became the most successful American airship. It operated reliably for eight years until it was retired in 1932 for economic reasons. It was dismantled in August 1940. Golden age With the delivery of LZ 126, the Zeppelin company had reasserted its lead in rigid airship construction, but it was not yet quite back in business. In 1926 restrictions on airship construction were relaxed by the Locarno treaties, but acquiring the necessary funds for the next project proved a problem in the difficult economic situation of post–World War I Germany, and it took Eckener two years of lobbying and publicity work to secure the realization of LZ 127. Another two years passed before 18 September 1928, when the new dirigible, christened Graf Zeppelin in honour of the Count, flew for the first time. With a total length of and a volume of 105,000 m3, it was the largest dirigible to have been built at the time. Eckener's initial purpose was to use Graf Zeppelin for experimental and demonstration purposes to prepare the way for regular airship traveling, carrying passengers and mail to cover the costs. In October 1928 its first long-range voyage brought it to Lakehurst, the voyage taking 112 hours and setting a new endurance record for airships. Eckener and his crew, which included his son Hans, were once more welcomed enthusiastically, with confetti parades in New York and another invitation to the White House. Graf Zeppelin toured Germany and visited Italy, Palestine, and Spain. A second trip to the United States was aborted in France due to engine failure in May 1929. In August 1929 Graf Zeppelin departed for another daring enterprise: a circumnavigation of the globe. The growing popularity of the "giant of the air" made it easy for Eckener to find sponsors. One of these was the American press tycoon William Randolph Hearst, who requested that the tour officially start in Lakehurst. As with the October 1928 flight to New York, Hearst had placed a reporter, Grace Marguerite Hay Drummond-Hay, on board: she therefore became the first woman to circumnavigate the globe by air. From there, Graf Zeppelin flew to Friedrichshafen, then Tokyo, Los Angeles, and back to Lakehurst, in 21 days 5 hours and 31 minutes. Including the initial and final trips between Friedrichshafen and Lakehurst and back, the dirigible had travelled . In the following year, Graf Zeppelin undertook trips around Europe, and following a successful tour to Recife, Brazil in May 1930, it was decided to open the first regular transatlantic airship line. This line operated between Frankfurt and Recife, and was later extended to Rio de Janeiro, with a stop in Recife. Despite the beginning of the Great Depression and growing competition from fixed-wing aircraft, LZ 127 transported an increasing volume of passengers and mail across the ocean every year until 1936. The ship made another spectacular voyage in July 1931 when it made a seven-day research trip to the Arctic. This had already been a dream of Count von Zeppelin twenty years earlier, which could not be realized at the time due to the outbreak of war. Eckener intended to follow the successful airship with another larger Zeppelin, designated LZ 128. This was to be powered by eight engines, in length, with a capacity of . However the loss of the British passenger airship R101 on 5 October 1930 led the Zeppelin company to reconsider the safety of hydrogen-filled vessels, and the design was abandoned in favour of a new project, LZ 129. This was intended to be filled with inert helium. Hindenburg, the end of an era The coming to power of the Nazi Party in 1933 had important consequences for Zeppelin Luftschiffbau. Zeppelins became a propaganda tool for the new regime: they would now display the Nazi swastika on their fins and occasionally tour Germany to play march music and propaganda speeches to the people. In 1934 Joseph Goebbels, the Minister of Propaganda, contributed two million reichsmarks towards the construction of LZ 129 and in 1935 Hermann Göring established a new airline directed by Ernst Lehmann, the Deutsche Zeppelin Reederei, as a subsidiary of Lufthansa to take over Zeppelin operations. Hugo Eckener was an outspoken anti-Nazi: complaints about the use of Zeppelins for propaganda purposes in 1936 led Goebbels to declare "Dr. Eckener has placed himself outside the pale of society. Henceforth his name is not to be mentioned in the newspapers and his photograph is not to be published". On 4 March 1936 LZ 129 Hindenburg (named after former President of Germany, Paul von Hindenburg) made its first flight. The Hindenburg was the largest airship ever built. It had been designed to use non-flammable helium, but the only supplies of the gas were controlled by the United States, which refused to allow its export. So, in what proved to be a fatal decision, the Hindenburg was filled with flammable hydrogen. Apart from the propaganda missions, LZ 129 was used on the transatlantic service alongside Graf Zeppelin. On 6 May 1937, while landing in Lakehurst after a transatlantic flight, the tail of the ship caught fire, and within seconds, the Hindenburg burst into flames, killing 35 of the 97 people on board and 1 member of the ground crew. The cause of the fire has not been definitively determined. The investigation into the accident concluded that static electricity had ignited hydrogen which had leaked from the gasbags, although there were allegations of sabotage. 13 passengers and 22 crew, including Ernst Lehmann, were killed. Despite the apparent danger, there remained a list of 400 people who still wanted to fly as Zeppelin passengers and had paid for the trip. Their money was refunded in 1940.Graf Zeppelin was retired one month after the Hindenburg wreck and turned into a museum. The intended new flagship Zeppelin was completed in 1938 and, inflated with hydrogen, made some test flights |
enters. As the zygote divides and grows, it does so inside the archegonium. Humans In human fertilization, a released ovum (a haploid secondary oocyte with replicate chromosome copies) and a haploid sperm cell (male gamete)—combine to form a single 2n diploid cell called the zygote. Once the single sperm fuses with the oocyte, the latter completes the division of the second meiosis forming a haploid daughter with only 23 chromosomes, almost all of the cytoplasm, and the male pronucleus. The other product of meiosis is the second polar body with only chromosomes but no ability to replicate or survive. In the fertilized daughter, DNA is then replicated in the two separate pronuclei derived from the sperm and ovum, making the zygote's chromosome number temporarily 4n diploid. After approximately 30 hours from the time of fertilization, a fusion of the pronuclei and immediate mitotic division produce two 2n diploid daughter cells called blastomeres. Between the stages of fertilization and implantation, the developing human is a preimplantation conceptus. There is some dispute about whether this conceptus should no longer be referred to as an embryo, but should now be referred to as a proembryo, which is the terminology that traditionally has been used to refer to plant life. Some ethicists and legal scholars make the argument that it is incorrect to call the conceptus an embryo because it will later differentiate into both intraembryonic and extraembryonic tissues, and can even split to produce multiple embryos (identical twins). Others have pointed out that so-called extraembryonic tissues are really part of the embryo's body that are no longer used after birth (much as milk teeth fall out after childhood). Further, as the embryo splits to form identical twins – leaving the original tissues intact – new embryos are generated, in a process similar to that of cloning an adult human. In the US the National Institutes of Health has determined that the traditional classification of pre-implantation embryo is still correct. After fertilization, the conceptus travels down the oviduct towards the uterus while continuing to divide mitotically without actually increasing in size, in a process called cleavage. After four divisions, the conceptus consists of 16 blastomeres, and it is known as the morula. Through the processes of compaction, cell division, and blastulation, the conceptus takes the form of the blastocyst by the fifth day of development, just as it | with the oocyte, the latter completes the division of the second meiosis forming a haploid daughter with only 23 chromosomes, almost all of the cytoplasm, and the male pronucleus. The other product of meiosis is the second polar body with only chromosomes but no ability to replicate or survive. In the fertilized daughter, DNA is then replicated in the two separate pronuclei derived from the sperm and ovum, making the zygote's chromosome number temporarily 4n diploid. After approximately 30 hours from the time of fertilization, a fusion of the pronuclei and immediate mitotic division produce two 2n diploid daughter cells called blastomeres. Between the stages of fertilization and implantation, the developing human is a preimplantation conceptus. There is some dispute about whether this conceptus should no longer be referred to as an embryo, but should now be referred to as a proembryo, which is the terminology that traditionally has been used to refer to plant life. Some ethicists and legal scholars make the argument that it is incorrect to call the conceptus an embryo because it will later differentiate into both intraembryonic and extraembryonic tissues, and can even split to produce multiple embryos (identical twins). Others have pointed out that so-called extraembryonic tissues are really part of the embryo's body that are no longer used after birth (much as milk teeth fall out after childhood). Further, as the embryo splits to form identical twins – leaving the original tissues intact – new embryos are generated, in a process similar to that of cloning an adult human. In the US the National Institutes of Health has determined that the traditional classification of pre-implantation embryo is still correct. After fertilization, the conceptus travels down the oviduct towards the uterus while continuing |
with 100 flattened planes. It is sometimes called "Zocchi's Golfball". Zocchihedra are designed to handle percentage rolls in games, particularly in role-playing games. History It took three years for Zocchi to design his die, and three more years to get it into production. Zocchi discovered that the die would perform best in water at a depth of , so it floats. Since its introduction, Zocchi has improved the design of the Zocchihedron, filling it with teardrop-shaped free-falling weights to make it settle more swiftly when rolled. The Zocchihedron 2 is a further improved model, and has another filler. Probability distribution of rolls A test | ball with 100 flattened planes. It is sometimes called "Zocchi's Golfball". Zocchihedra are designed to handle percentage rolls in games, particularly in role-playing games. History It took three years for Zocchi to design his die, and three more years to get it into production. Zocchi discovered that the die would perform best in water at a depth of , so it floats. Since its introduction, Zocchi has improved the design of the Zocchihedron, filling it with teardrop-shaped free-falling weights to make it settle more swiftly when rolled. The Zocchihedron 2 is a further improved model, and has another filler. Probability distribution of rolls A test published in White Dwarf magazine concluded that the frequency distribution of the Zocchihedron was substantially uneven. Jason Mills noticed that some numbers were spaced closer together than others, and suspected that this non-uniform placement would cause some numbers to predictably come up more than others. Mills performed 5,164 rolls and the results confirmed these suspicions; some numbers came up significantly more than others. Most notably, rolls of more than 93 or less than 8 were significantly rarer than middling results. Not coincidentally, these numbers |
about him. Other spellings used are Sakari and Sakarias. Life and career Early life The original name of the Topelius family was the Finnish name Toppila, which had been Latinized to Toppelius by the author's grandfather's grandfather and later changed to Topelius. Topelius was born at Kuddnäs, near Nykarleby in Ostrobothnia, the son of a physician of the same name (), who was distinguished as the earliest collector of Finnish folk-songs. As a child he heard his mother, Katarina Sofia Calamnius, sing the songs of the Finnish-Swedish poet Franzén. At the age of eleven, he was sent to school in Oulu and boarded with relatives in the possession of a lending library, where he nurtured his fantasy with the reading of novels. Study in Helsinki He came to Helsingfors, Helsinki in 1831 and became a member of the circle of young nationalist men surrounding Johan Ludvig Runeberg, in whose home he stayed for some time. Topelius became a student at the Imperial Alexander University of Finland in 1833, received his master's degree (cand. philol.) in 1840, the Licentiate degree in history in 1844 and his PhD in 1847, having defended a dissertation titled De modo matrimonia jungendi apud fennos quondam vigente ("About the custom of marriage among the ancient Finns"). Besides history, his academic studies had for periods been devoted both to Theology and Medicine. He was secretary of 1842–1846, was employed by the university library 1846–1861, and taught History, Statistics and Swedish at the school during the same period. Becoming a professor Through the intervention of a friend, , Topelius was named professor extraordinary of the History of Finland at the University in 1854. He was made first ordinary professor of Finnish, Russian and Nordic history in 1863, and exchanged this chair for the one in general history in 1876. He was rector of the university from 1875 until 1878, when he retired as Emeritus Professor and received the title of verkligt statsråd (Finnish: todellinen valtioneuvos, Russian: действительный статский советник; literally "state councillor", a Russian honorary title). Focus on writing Quite early in his career he began to distinguish himself as a lyric poet, with the three successive volumes of his Heather Blossoms (1845–54). The earliest of his historical romances was The Duchess of Finland, published in 1850. | novels related to Finnish history in Swedish. Given name Zacharias is his baptismal name, and this is used on the covers of his printed works. However, "he himself most often used the abbreviation Z. or the form Zachris, even in official contexts", as explained in the National Biography of Finland. Zachris is therefore the preferred form used in recent academic literature about him. Other spellings used are Sakari and Sakarias. Life and career Early life The original name of the Topelius family was the Finnish name Toppila, which had been Latinized to Toppelius by the author's grandfather's grandfather and later changed to Topelius. Topelius was born at Kuddnäs, near Nykarleby in Ostrobothnia, the son of a physician of the same name (), who was distinguished as the earliest collector of Finnish folk-songs. As a child he heard his mother, Katarina Sofia Calamnius, sing the songs of the Finnish-Swedish poet Franzén. At the age of eleven, he was sent to school in Oulu and boarded with relatives in the possession of a lending library, where he nurtured his fantasy with the reading of novels. Study in Helsinki He came to Helsingfors, Helsinki in 1831 and became a member of the circle of young nationalist men surrounding Johan Ludvig Runeberg, in whose home he stayed for some time. Topelius became a student at the Imperial Alexander University of Finland in 1833, received his master's degree (cand. philol.) in 1840, the Licentiate degree in history in 1844 and his PhD in 1847, having defended a dissertation titled De modo matrimonia jungendi apud fennos quondam vigente ("About the custom of marriage among the ancient Finns"). Besides history, his academic studies had for periods been devoted both to Theology and Medicine. He was secretary of 1842–1846, was employed by the university library 1846–1861, and taught History, Statistics and Swedish at the school during the same period. Becoming a professor Through the intervention of a friend, , Topelius was named professor extraordinary of the History of Finland at the University in 1854. He was made first ordinary professor of Finnish, Russian and Nordic history in 1863, and exchanged this chair for the one in general history in 1876. He was rector of the university from 1875 until 1878, when he retired as Emeritus Professor and received the title of verkligt statsråd (Finnish: todellinen valtioneuvos, Russian: действительный статский советник; literally "state councillor", a Russian honorary title). Focus on writing Quite early in his career he began to distinguish himself as a lyric poet, with the three successive volumes of his Heather Blossoms (1845–54). The earliest of his historical romances was The Duchess of Finland, published in 1850. He was also editor-in-chief of the from 1841 to 1860. In 1878, Topelius was allowed to withdraw from his professional duties, but this did not sever his connection with the university; |
botanist, and botanical illustrator John Zorn (born 1953), American composer and saxophonist Max August Zorn (1906–1993), German-born American mathematician Pete Zorn (1950–2016), American-born British musician Trischa Zorn (born 1964), American swimmer, the most successful Paralympian of all time Werner Zorn (born 1942), German computer scientist (1828–1890), Alsatian politician Franz Zorn von Bulach (1858–1925), auxiliary bishop of Strasbourg (1851–1921), Alsatian politician and member of the Reichstag | German influenced cities such as Strasbourg, Kempten, Innsbruck, and Würzburg. Today, the surname Zorn can be frequently found in Bavaria, Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz, and Thüringen. People Anders Zorn (1860–1920), Swedish painter Charles Rudolph Zorn (1844–1916), American politician and farmer Dale Zorn (born 1953), American politician Eric Zorn (born (1958), columnist for the Chicago Tribune, grandson of Max Zorn |
much of Seraph on the Suwanee, set in Florida. Hurston expressed interest in the polyethnic nature of the population in the region (many, such as the Miskito Zambu and Garifuna, were of partial African ancestry and had developed creole cultures). During her last decade, Hurston worked as a freelance writer for magazines and newspapers. In the fall of 1952, she was contacted by Sam Nunn, editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, to go to Florida to cover the murder trial of Ruby McCollum. McCollum was charged with murdering the white Dr. C. Leroy Adams, who was also a politician. McCollum said he had forced her to have sex and bear his child. Hurston recalled what she had seen of white male sexual dominance in the lumber camps in North Florida, and discussed it with Nunn. They both thought the case might be about such "paramour rights", and wanted to "expose it to a national audience". Upon reaching Live Oak, Hurston was surprised not only by the gag order the judge in the trial placed on the defense but by her inability to get residents in town to talk about the case; both blacks and whites were silent. She believed that might have been related to Dr. Adams' alleged involvement in the gambling operation of Ruby's husband Sam McCollum. Her articles were published by the newspaper during the trial. Ruby McCollum was convicted by an all-male, all-white jury, and sentenced to death. Hurston had a special assignment to write a serialized account, The Life Story of Ruby McCollum, over three months in 1953 in the newspaper. Her part was ended abruptly when she and Nunn disagreed about her pay, and she left. Unable to pay independently to return for the appeal and second trial, Hurston contacted journalist William Bradford Huie, with whom she had worked at The American Mercury, to try to interest him in the case. He covered the appeal and second trial, and also developed material from a background investigation. Hurston shared her material with him from the first trial, but he acknowledged her only briefly in his book, Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), which became a bestseller. Hurston celebrated that "McCollum's testimony in her own defense marked the first time that a woman of African-American descent was allowed to testify as to the paternity of her child by a white man. Hurston firmly believed that Ruby McCollum's testimony sounded the death toll of 'paramour rights' in the Segregationist South." Among other positions, Hurston later worked at the Pan American World Airways Technical Library at Patrick Air Force Base in 1957. She was fired for being "too well-educated" for her job. She moved to Fort Pierce, Florida. Taking jobs where she could find them, Hurston worked occasionally as a substitute teacher. At age 60, Hurston had to fight "to make ends meet" with the help of public assistance. At one point she worked as a maid on Miami Beach's Rivo Alto Island. Death During a period of financial and medical difficulties, Hurston was forced to enter St. Lucie County Welfare Home, where she suffered a stroke. She died of hypertensive heart disease on January 28, 1960, and was buried at the Garden of Heavenly Rest in Fort Pierce, Florida. Her remains were in an unmarked grave until 1973. Novelist Alice Walker and fellow Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt found an unmarked grave in the general area where Hurston had been buried; they decided to mark it as hers. Walker commissioned a gray marker inscribed with "ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960." The line "a genius of the south" is from Jean Toomer's poem, Georgia Dusk, which appears in his book Cane. Hurston was born in 1891, not 1901. After Hurston died, her papers were ordered to be burned. A law officer and friend, Patrick DuVal, passing by the house where she had lived, stopped and put out the fire, thus saving an invaluable collection of literary documents for posterity. The nucleus of this collection was given to the University of Florida libraries in 1961 by Mrs. Marjorie Silver, a friend, and neighbor of Hurston. Other materials were donated in 1970 and 1971 by Frances Grover, daughter of E. O. Grover, a Rollins College professor and long-time friend of Hurston's. In 1979, Stetson Kennedy of Jacksonville, who knew Hurston through his work with the Federal Writers Project, added additional papers (Zora Neale Hurston Papers, University of Florida Smathers Libraries, August 2008). Literary career 1920s: The Harlem Renaissance When Hurston arrived in New York City in 1925, the Harlem Renaissance was at its zenith, and she soon became one of the writers at its center. Shortly before she entered Barnard, Hurston's short story "Spunk" was selected for The New Negro, a landmark anthology of fiction, poetry, and essays focusing on African and African-American art and literature. In 1926, a group of young black writers including Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Wallace Thurman, calling themselves the Niggerati, produced a literary magazine called Fire!! that featured many of the young artists and writers of the Harlem Renaissance. In 1927, Hurston traveled to the Deep South to collect African-American folk tales. She also interviewed Cudjoe Kazzola Lewis, of Africatown, Alabama, who was the last known survivor of the enslaved Africans carried aboard Clotilda, an illegal slave ship that had entered the US in 1860, and thus the last known person to have been transported in the Transatlantic slave trade. The next year she published the article "Cudjoe's Own Story of the Last African Slaver" (1928). According to her biographer Robert E. Hemenway, this piece largely plagiarized the work of Emma Langdon Roche, an Alabama writer who wrote about Lewis in a 1914 book. Hurston did add new information about daily life in Lewis' home village of Bantè. Hurston intended to publish a collection of several hundred folk tales from her field studies in the South. She wanted to have them be as close to the original as possible but struggled to balance the expectations of her academic adviser, Franz Boas, and her patron, Charlotte Osgood Mason. This manuscript was not published at the time. A copy was later found at the Smithsonian archives among the papers of anthropologist William Duncan Strong, a friend of Boas. Hurston's Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States was published posthumously in 2001 as Every Tongue Got to Confess. In 1928, Hurston returned to Alabama with additional resources; she conducted more interviews with Lewis, took photographs of him and others in the community, and recorded the only known film footage of him – an African who had been trafficked to the United States through the slave trade. Based on this material, she wrote a manuscript, Barracoon, completing it in 1931. Hemenway described it as "a highly dramatic, semifictionalized narrative intended for the popular reader." It has also been described as a "testimonial text", more in the style of other anthropological studies since the late 20th century. After this round of interviews, Hurston's literary patron, philanthropist Charlotte Osgood Mason, learned of Lewis and began to send him money for his support. Lewis was also interviewed by journalists for local and national publications. Hurston's manuscript Barracoon was eventually published posthumously on May 8, 2018. "Barracoon", or barracks in Spanish, is where captured Africans were temporarily imprisoned before being shipped abroad. In 1929, Hurston moved to Eau Gallie, Florida, where she wrote Mules and Men. It was published in 1935. 1930s By the mid-1930s, Hurston had published several short stories and the critically acclaimed Mules and Men (1935), a groundbreaking work of "literary anthropology" documenting African-American folklore from timber camps in North Florida. In 1930, she collaborated with Langston Hughes on Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a play that they never staged. Their collaboration caused their friendship to fall apart. The play was first staged in 1991. Hurston adapted her anthropological work for the performing arts. Her folk revue, The Great Day, featured authentic African song and dance, and premiered at the John Golden Theatre in New York in January 1932. Despite positive reviews, it had only one performance. The Broadway debut left Hurston in $600 worth of debt. No producers wanted to move forward with a full run of the show. During the 1930s, Zora Neale Hurston produced two other musical revues, From Sun to Sun, which was a revised adaptation of The Great Day, and Singing Steel. Hurston had a strong belief that folklore should be dramatized. Hurston's first three novels were published in the 1930s: Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), written during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). In 1937, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti. 1940s and 1950s In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as The American Mercury and The Saturday Evening Post. Her last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, notable principally for its focus on white characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of "white trash" women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s. In 1952, Hurston was assigned by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. She also contributed to Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie. Posthumous publications Hurston's manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in Smithsonian archives. In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), to which Hurston had contributed, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime writing. Hurston's nonfiction book Barracoon was published in 2018. A barracoon is a type of barracks where slaves were imprisoned before being taken overseas. Spiritual views In Chapter XV of Dust Tracks on a Road, entitled "Religion", Hurston expressed disbelief and disdain for both theism and religious belief. She states:Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. However, though clearly rejecting the Baptist beliefs of her preacher father, her spirituality is a little more complex than mere atheism. She investigates voodoo, going so far as to participate in such rituals, and again in her original uncensored notes for her autobiography shares her admiration for Biblical characters like King David: "He was a man after God's own heart, and was quite servicable in helping God get rid of no-count rascals who were cluttering up the place." Public obscurity Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for both cultural and political reasons. The use of African-American dialect, as featured in Hurston's novels, became less popular. Younger writers felt that it was demeaning to use such dialect, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Also, Hurston had made stylistic choices in dialogue influenced by her academic studies. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period, which she had documented through ethnographic research. Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized her use of dialect, saying that it was a caricature of African-American culture and was rooted in a post-Civil War, white racist tradition. These writers, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, criticized Hurston's later work as not advancing the movement. Richard Wright, in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, said: But since the late 20th century, there has been a revival of interest in Hurston. Critics have since praised her skillful use of idiomatic speech. During the 1930s and 1940s, when her work was published, the pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright, a former communist. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms. He had become disenchanted with communism, but he used the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright. Hurston, who was a conservative, was on the other side of the disputes over the promise of left-wing politics for African-Americans. In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support had created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians. Despite increasing difficulties, Hurston maintained her independence and a determined optimism. She wrote in a 1957 letter: But ... I have made phenomenal growth as a creative artist. ... I am not materialistic ... If I do happen to die without money, somebody will bury me, though I do not wish it to be that way. Posthumous recognition Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, celebrates her life annually in Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. It is home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts, and a library named for her opened in January 2004. The Zora Neale Hurston House in Fort Pierce has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. The city celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties, and the several-day event at the end of April known as Zora! Festival. Author Alice Walker sought to identify Hurston's unmarked grave in 1973. She installed a grave marker inscribed with "A Genius of the South". Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, reviving interest in Hurston's work. In 1991, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a 1930 play by Langston Hughes and Hurston, was first staged; it was staged in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater. In 1994, Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. Barnard College dedicated its 2003 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference to Hurston. 'Jumpin' at the Sun': Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston focused on her work and influence. Alice Walker's Gildersleeve lecture detailed her work on discovering and publicizing Hurston's legacy. The Zora Neale Hurston Award was established in 2008; it is awarded to an American Library Association member who has "demonstrated leadership in promoting African American literature". Hurston was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010. The novel Harlem Mosaics (2012) by Whit Frazier depicts the friendship between Langston Hughes and Hurston and tells the story of how their friendship fell apart during their collaboration on the 1930 play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. On January 7, 2014, the 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle. She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015. An excerpt from her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was recited in the documentary film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, directed by Ava DuVernay, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. Hurston was honored in a play written and performed by students at Indian River Charter High School in October 2017, January 2018, and January 2019. The play was based on letters written between Hurston and Vero Beach entrepreneur, architect and pioneer, Waldo E. Sexton. Politics Hurston was a Republican who was generally sympathetic to the foreign policy non-interventionism of the Old Right and a fan of Booker T. Washington's self-help politics. She disagreed with the philosophies (including Communism and the New Deal) supported by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who was in the 1930s a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in several of his poems. John McWhorter has called Hurston "America's favorite black conservative" while David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito have argued that she can better be characterized as a libertarian. Despite much common ground with the Old Right in domestic and foreign policy, Hurston was not a social conservative. Her writings show an affinity for feminist individualism. In this respect, her views were similar to two libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries: Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson. Although her personal quotes show disbelief of religion, Hurston did not negate spiritual matters as evidenced from her 1942 autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road: In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to Roosevelt and Truman's interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston compared the United States government to a "fence" in stolen goods and a Mafia-like a protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same "people who claim that it is a noble thing to die | Jonah's Gourd Vine (1934); Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937), written during her fieldwork in Haiti and considered her masterwork; and Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939). In 1937, Hurston was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship to conduct ethnographic research in Jamaica and Haiti. Tell My Horse (1938) documents her account of her fieldwork studying spiritual and cultural rituals in Jamaica and vodoun in Haiti. 1940s and 1950s In the 1940s, Hurston's work was published in such periodicals as The American Mercury and The Saturday Evening Post. Her last published novel, Seraph on the Suwanee, notable principally for its focus on white characters, was published in 1948. It explores images of "white trash" women. Jackson (2000) argues that Hurston's meditation on abjection, waste, and the construction of class and gender identities among poor whites reflects the eugenics discourses of the 1920s. In 1952, Hurston was assigned by the Pittsburgh Courier to cover the small-town murder trial of Ruby McCollum, the prosperous black wife of the local bolita racketeer, who had killed a racist white doctor. She also contributed to Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), a book by journalist and civil rights advocate William Bradford Huie. Posthumous publications Hurston's manuscript Every Tongue Got to Confess (2001), a collection of folktales gathered in the 1920s, was published posthumously after being discovered in Smithsonian archives. In 2008, The Library of America selected excerpts from Ruby McCollum: Woman in the Suwannee Jail (1956), to which Hurston had contributed, for inclusion in its two-century retrospective of American true crime writing. Hurston's nonfiction book Barracoon was published in 2018. A barracoon is a type of barracks where slaves were imprisoned before being taken overseas. Spiritual views In Chapter XV of Dust Tracks on a Road, entitled "Religion", Hurston expressed disbelief and disdain for both theism and religious belief. She states:Prayer seems to me a cry of weakness, and an attempt to avoid, by trickery, the rules of the game as laid down. I do not choose to admit weakness. I accept the challenge of responsibility. Life, as it is, does not frighten me, since I have made my peace with the universe as I find it, and bow to its laws. However, though clearly rejecting the Baptist beliefs of her preacher father, her spirituality is a little more complex than mere atheism. She investigates voodoo, going so far as to participate in such rituals, and again in her original uncensored notes for her autobiography shares her admiration for Biblical characters like King David: "He was a man after God's own heart, and was quite servicable in helping God get rid of no-count rascals who were cluttering up the place." Public obscurity Hurston's work slid into obscurity for decades, for both cultural and political reasons. The use of African-American dialect, as featured in Hurston's novels, became less popular. Younger writers felt that it was demeaning to use such dialect, given the racially charged history of dialect fiction in American literature. Also, Hurston had made stylistic choices in dialogue influenced by her academic studies. Thinking like a folklorist, Hurston strove to represent speech patterns of the period, which she had documented through ethnographic research. Several of Hurston's literary contemporaries criticized her use of dialect, saying that it was a caricature of African-American culture and was rooted in a post-Civil War, white racist tradition. These writers, associated with the Harlem Renaissance, criticized Hurston's later work as not advancing the movement. Richard Wright, in his review of Their Eyes Were Watching God, said: But since the late 20th century, there has been a revival of interest in Hurston. Critics have since praised her skillful use of idiomatic speech. During the 1930s and 1940s, when her work was published, the pre-eminent African-American author was Richard Wright, a former communist. Unlike Hurston, Wright wrote in explicitly political terms. He had become disenchanted with communism, but he used the struggle of African Americans for respect and economic advancement as both the setting and the motivation for his work. Other popular African-American authors of the time, such as Ralph Ellison, dealt with the same concerns as Wright. Hurston, who was a conservative, was on the other side of the disputes over the promise of left-wing politics for African-Americans. In 1951, for example, Hurston argued that New Deal economic support had created a harmful dependency by African Americans on the government and that this dependency ceded too much power to politicians. Despite increasing difficulties, Hurston maintained her independence and a determined optimism. She wrote in a 1957 letter: But ... I have made phenomenal growth as a creative artist. ... I am not materialistic ... If I do happen to die without money, somebody will bury me, though I do not wish it to be that way. Posthumous recognition Zora Neale Hurston's hometown of Eatonville, Florida, celebrates her life annually in Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. It is home to the Zora Neale Hurston Museum of Fine Arts, and a library named for her opened in January 2004. The Zora Neale Hurston House in Fort Pierce has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. The city celebrates Hurston annually through various events such as Hattitudes, birthday parties, and the several-day event at the end of April known as Zora! Festival. Author Alice Walker sought to identify Hurston's unmarked grave in 1973. She installed a grave marker inscribed with "A Genius of the South". Alice Walker published "In Search of Zora Neale Hurston" in the March 1975 issue of Ms. magazine, reviving interest in Hurston's work. In 1991, Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life, a 1930 play by Langston Hughes and Hurston, was first staged; it was staged in New York City by the Lincoln Center Theater. In 1994, Hurston was inducted into the National Women's Hall of Fame. In 2002, scholar Molefi Kete Asante listed Zora Neale Hurston on his list of 100 Greatest African Americans. Barnard College dedicated its 2003 Virginia C. Gildersleeve Conference to Hurston. 'Jumpin' at the Sun': Reassessing the Life and Work of Zora Neale Hurston focused on her work and influence. Alice Walker's Gildersleeve lecture detailed her work on discovering and publicizing Hurston's legacy. The Zora Neale Hurston Award was established in 2008; it is awarded to an American Library Association member who has "demonstrated leadership in promoting African American literature". Hurston was inducted as a member of the inaugural class of the New York Writers Hall of Fame in 2010. The novel Harlem Mosaics (2012) by Whit Frazier depicts the friendship between Langston Hughes and Hurston and tells the story of how their friendship fell apart during their collaboration on the 1930 play Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life. On January 7, 2014, the 123rd anniversary of Hurston's birthday was commemorated by a Google Doodle. She was one of twelve inaugural inductees to the Alabama Writers Hall of Fame on June 8, 2015. An excerpt from her autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road was recited in the documentary film August 28: A Day in the Life of a People, directed by Ava DuVernay, which debuted at the opening of the Smithsonian's National Museum of African American History and Culture in 2016. Hurston was honored in a play written and performed by students at Indian River Charter High School in October 2017, January 2018, and January 2019. The play was based on letters written between Hurston and Vero Beach entrepreneur, architect and pioneer, Waldo E. Sexton. Politics Hurston was a Republican who was generally sympathetic to the foreign policy non-interventionism of the Old Right and a fan of Booker T. Washington's self-help politics. She disagreed with the philosophies (including Communism and the New Deal) supported by many of her colleagues in the Harlem Renaissance, such as Langston Hughes, who was in the 1930s a supporter of the Soviet Union and praised it in several of his poems. John McWhorter has called Hurston "America's favorite black conservative" while David T. Beito and Linda Royster Beito have argued that she can better be characterized as a libertarian. Despite much common ground with the Old Right in domestic and foreign policy, Hurston was not a social conservative. Her writings show an affinity for feminist individualism. In this respect, her views were similar to two libertarian novelists who were her contemporaries: Rose Wilder Lane and Isabel Paterson. Although her personal quotes show disbelief of religion, Hurston did not negate spiritual matters as evidenced from her 1942 autobiography Dust Tracks on a Road: In 1952, Hurston supported the presidential campaign of Senator Robert A. Taft. Like Taft, Hurston was against Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal policies. She also shared his opposition to Roosevelt and Truman's interventionist foreign policy. In the original draft of her autobiography, Dust Tracks on a Road, Hurston compared the United States government to a "fence" in stolen goods and a Mafia-like a protection racket. Hurston thought it ironic that the same "people who claim that it is a noble thing to die for freedom and democracy… wax frothy if anyone points out the inconsistency of their morals… We, too, consider machine gun bullets good laxatives for heathens who get constipated with toxic ideas about a country of their own." She was scathing about those who sought "freedoms" for those abroad but denied it to people in their home countries: Roosevelt "can call names across an ocean" for his Four Freedoms, but he did not have "the courage to speak even softly at home." When Truman dropped the atomic bombs on Japan she called him "the Butcher of Asia". Hurston opposed the Supreme Court ruling in the Brown v. Board of Education case of 1954. She felt that if separate schools were truly equal (and she believed that they were rapidly becoming so), educating black students in physical proximity to white students would not result in better education. Also, she worried about the demise of black schools and black teachers as a way to pass on the cultural tradition to future generations of African Americans. She voiced this opposition in a letter, "Court Order Can't Make the Races Mix", that was published in the Orlando Sentinel in August 1955. Hurston had not reversed her long-time opposition to segregation. Rather, she feared that the Court's ruling could become a precedent for an all-powerful federal government to undermine individual liberty on a broad range of issues in the future. Hurston also opposed preferential treatment for African-Americans, saying: Criticism Thoughts on integration Darwin Turner, an English professor, and specialist in African-American literature faulted Hurston in 1971 for opposing integration and for opposing programs to guarantee blacks the right to work. Even though criticized, Hurston appeared to oppose integration based on pride and her sense of independence. She would not "bow low before the white man", and claimed "adequate Negro schools" already existed in 1955. Hurston is described as a "trailblazer for black women's empowerment" because of her numerous individual achievements and her strong belief that black women could be "self-made". However, a common criticism of her work is that the vagueness of her racial politics in her writing, particularly about black feminism, makes her "a prime candidate for white intellectual idolatry." Research and representation Other authors criticized Hurston for her sensationalist representation of voodoo. In The Crisis magazine in 1943, Harold Preece criticized Hurston for her perpetuation of "Negro primitivism" in order to advance her own literary career. The Journal of Negro History complained that her work on voodoo was an indictment of African-American ignorance and superstition. Jeffrey Anderson states that Hurston's research methods were questionable and that she fabricated material for her works on voodoo. He observed that she admitted to inventing dialogue for her book Mules and Men in a letter to Ruth Benedict and described fabricating the Mules and Men story of rival voodoo doctors as a child in her later autobiography. Anderson believes that many of Hurston's other claims in her voodoo writings are dubious as well. Several authors have contended that Hurston engaged in significant plagiarism in at least three works, claiming the article "Cudjo's own story of the last African slaver" was only 25% original, the rest being plagiarized, and that she also plagiarized much of her work on voodoo.<ref>Carolyn Morrow Long, Spiritual merchants : religion, magic, and commerce", p. 123 ; see also Anderson.</ref> Selected bibliography "Journey's End" (Negro World, 1922), poetry "Night" (Negro World, 1922), poetry "Passion" (Negro World, 1922), poetryColor Struck (Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life, 1925), play Muttsy (Opportunity: A Journal of Negro Life) 1926, short story. "Sweat" (1926), short story "How It Feels to Be Colored Me" (1928), essay "Hoodoo in America" (1931) in The Journal of American Folklore"The Gilded Six-Bits" (1933), short storyJonah's Gourd Vine (1934), novelMules and Men (1935), non-fictionTheir Eyes Were Watching God (1937), novelTell My Horse (1938), non-fictionMoses, Man of the Mountain (1939), novelDust Tracks on a Road (1942), autobiographySeraph on the Suwanee (1948), novel "What White Publishers Won't Print" (Negro Digest, 1950) I Love Myself When I Am Laughing… and Then Again When I Am Looking Mean and Impressive: A Zora Neale Hurston Reader (Alice Walker, ed.; 1979) The Sanctified Church (1981)Spunk: Selected Stories (1985)Mule Bone: A Comedy of Negro Life (play, with Langston Hughes; edited with introductions by George Houston Bass and Henry Louis Gates Jr.; 1991) The Complete Stories (introduction by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sieglinde Lemke; 1995) Novels & Stories: Jonah's Gourd Vine, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Moses, Man of the Mountain, Seraph on the Suwanee, Selected Stories (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.; Library of America, 1995) Folklore, Memoirs, & Other Writings: Mules and Men, Tell My Horse, Dust Tracks on a Road, Selected Articles (Cheryl A. Wall, ed.; Library of America, 1995) Every Tongue Got to Confess: Negro Folk-tales from the Gulf States (2001) Zora Neale Hurston: A Life in Letters, collected and edited by Carla Kaplan (2003)Collected Plays (2008)Barracoon: The Story of the Last "Black Cargo" (2018) Hitting a Straight Lick with a Crooked Stick: Stories from the Harlem Renaissance (2020) Film, television, and radio In 1935 and 1936, Zora Neale Hurston shot documentary footage as part of her fieldwork in Florida and Haiti. Included are rare ethnographic evidence of the Hoodoo and Vodou religion in the U.S. and Haiti. In 1989, PBS aired a drama based on Hurston's life entitled Zora is My Name!The 1992–95 PBS children's television series Ghostwriter, which had an emphasis on reading and writing skills, featured the lead characters attending the fictitious Zora Neale Hurston Middle School in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York. The 2004 film Brother to Brother, set in part during the Harlem Renaissance, featured Hurston (portrayed by Aunjanue Ellis). Their Eyes Were Watching God was adapted for a 2005 film of the same title by Oprah Winfrey's Harpo Productions, with a teleplay by Suzan-Lori Parks. The film starred Halle Berry as Janie Starks. On April 9, 2008, PBS broadcast a 90-minute documentary, Zora Neale Hurston: Jump at the Sun, written and produced by filmmaker Kristy Andersen, as part of the American Masters series. In 2009, Hurston was featured in a 90-minute documentary about the WPA Writers' Project titled Soul of a People: Writing America's Story, which premiered on the Smithsonian Channel. Her work in Florida during the 1930s is highlighted in the companion book, Soul of a People: The WPA Writers' Project Uncovers Depression America. In 2017, Jackie Kay presented a 30-minute BBC Radio 4 documentary about Hurston called A Woman Half in Shadow, first broadcast on April 17, and subsequently available as a podcast."The death and rebirth of Zora Neale Hurston" , Seriously ... , BBC. Rozonda Thomas plays Hurston in the 2017 film Marshall. See also Florida literature Kevin Brown (author) References Notes Citations 28th Zora Neale Hurston Festival of the Arts and Humanities. ZORA! Festival. The Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community, 2017. Web. 10 April 2017. Abcarian, Richard, and Marvin Klotz. "Zora Neale Hurston." In Literature: The Human Experience, 9th edition. New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2006, pp. 1562–63. Anderson, Christa S. "African American Women." PBS. Public Broadcasting Service, 2005. Web. 9 April 2017. Baym, Nina (ed.), "Zora Neale Hurston." In The Norton Anthology of American Literature, 6th edition, Vol. D. New York, W. W. Norton & Co., 2003, pp. 1506–07. Beito, David T. "Zora Neale Hurston," American Enterprise 6 (September/October 1995), pp. 61–3. Beito, David T. and Beito, Linda Royster, "Isabel Paterson, Rose Wilder Lane, and Zora Neale Hurston on War, Race, the State, and Liberty". Independent Review 12 (Spring 2008). Boyd, Valerie (2003). Wrapped in Rainbows: The Life of Zora Neale Hurston. New York: Scribner. . Ellis, C. Arthur. Zora Hurston And The Strange Case Of Ruby McCollum, 1st edition. Lutz, FL: Gadfly Publishing, 2009. Estate of Zora Neale Hurston. "Zora Neale Hurston." The Official Website of Zora Neale Hurston. Zora Neale Hurston Trust, 2015. Web. 11 April 2017. Flynn, Elisabeth, Caitlin Deasy, and Rachel Ruah. "The Upbringing and Education of Zora Neale Hurston." Project Mosaic: Hurston. Rollins College, 11 July 2011. Web. 11 April 2017. Harrison, Beth. "Zora Neale Hurston and Mary Austin: A Case Study in Ethnography, Literary Modernism, and Contemporary Ethnic Fiction. MELUS. 21.2 (1996) 89–106. . Hemenway, Robert E. Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography. Urbana, Ill: University of Illinois Press, 1977. . Hemenway, Robert E. "Zora Neale Hurston." In Paul Lauter and Richard Yarborough (eds.), The Heath Anthology of American Literature, 5th edition, Vol. D. New York: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2006, pp. 1577–78. Jones, Sharon L. A Critical Companion to Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Reference to Her Life and |
believed to have been written in 498–518. The style is characterized by Photius as concise, clear and pure. The historian's object was to account for the decline of the Roman Empire from the pagan point of view. Zosimus is the only non-Christian source for much of what he reports. In contrast to Polybius, who had narrated the rise of the Roman Empire, Zosimus documented the events and causes which led to its decline. Though the decline of the Roman Empire was Zosimus' primary subject, he also discussed events connected with Persian, and Greek history, perhaps in imitation of Polybius. It is clear that Photius and Evagrius did not have any more of Zosimus' work than what survives today. Yet it is likely that either a part of the work has been lost or, more likely, that Zosimus did not live to finish it; for it does not cover all the areas that Zosimus himself tells us he intended to discuss. There does not seem much probability in the conjecture that the monks and other ecclesiastics succeeded in suppressing that portion of the work in which the evil influences of their body were to be more especially touched upon. If the work was thus left incomplete, that circumstance would account for some carelessness of style which is here and there apparent. There may appear some difficulty at first sight, however, in the statement of Photius, that the work, in the form in which he saw it, appeared to him to be a second edition. But it would seem that Photius was under some misapprehension. It is called in the manuscripts Historia Nova (in what sense is not quite clear). This may perhaps have misled Photius. He himself remarks that he had not seen the first edition. Zosimus was a pagan, and is by no means sparing of the faults and crimes of the Christian emperors. In consequence of this his credibility has been fiercely assailed by several Christian writers, and has been sometimes defended merely because his history tended to the discredit of many leading persons in the Christian party. The question does not, as has sometimes been supposed, turn upon the credibility of the historians whom Zosimus followed, for he did not adhere in all cases to their judgment with respect to events and characters. For instance, although Zosimus followed Eunapius for the period 270–404, he entirely differed from Eunapius in his account of Stilicho and Serena. Of modern writers, Caesar Baronius, Lelio Bisciola, Kaspar von Barth, Johann Daniel Ritter, Richard Bentley, and G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, have taken the derogatory side. Bentley in particular speaks of Zosimus with great contempt. On the other hand, his historical authority has been maintained by Leunclavius, G. B. von Schirach, J. Matth. Schrockh, and Reitemeier. Editions The history of Zosimus was first printed in the Latin translation of Leunclavius, accompanied by a defence of the historian (Basel, 1576, fol.). The first two books, in Greek, with the translation of Leunclavius, were printed by H. Stephanus, in his edition of Herodian | monks and other ecclesiastics succeeded in suppressing that portion of the work in which the evil influences of their body were to be more especially touched upon. If the work was thus left incomplete, that circumstance would account for some carelessness of style which is here and there apparent. There may appear some difficulty at first sight, however, in the statement of Photius, that the work, in the form in which he saw it, appeared to him to be a second edition. But it would seem that Photius was under some misapprehension. It is called in the manuscripts Historia Nova (in what sense is not quite clear). This may perhaps have misled Photius. He himself remarks that he had not seen the first edition. Zosimus was a pagan, and is by no means sparing of the faults and crimes of the Christian emperors. In consequence of this his credibility has been fiercely assailed by several Christian writers, and has been sometimes defended merely because his history tended to the discredit of many leading persons in the Christian party. The question does not, as has sometimes been supposed, turn upon the credibility of the historians whom Zosimus followed, for he did not adhere in all cases to their judgment with respect to events and characters. For instance, although Zosimus followed Eunapius for the period 270–404, he entirely differed from Eunapius in his account of Stilicho and Serena. Of modern writers, Caesar Baronius, Lelio Bisciola, Kaspar von Barth, Johann Daniel Ritter, Richard Bentley, and G. E. M. de Ste. Croix, have taken the derogatory side. Bentley in particular speaks of Zosimus with great contempt. On the other hand, his historical authority has been maintained by Leunclavius, G. B. von Schirach, J. Matth. Schrockh, and Reitemeier. Editions The history of Zosimus was first printed in the Latin translation of Leunclavius, accompanied by a defence of the historian (Basel, 1576, fol.). The first two books, in Greek, with the translation of Leunclavius, were printed by H. Stephanus, in his edition of Herodian (Paris, 1581). The first complete edition of the Greek text of Zosimus was that by F. Sylburg (Scriptores Hist. Rom. Min., vol. iii., Frankfurt, 1590). Later editions are those published at Oxford (1679), at Zeitz and Jena, edited by Cellarius, with annotations of his own and others (1679, 1713, 1729). The next edition is that by Reitemeier, who, though he consulted no fresh manuscripts, made good use of the critical remarks of Heyne and other scholars (Leipzig, 1784). Bekker produced a reliable edition in 1837 at Bonn. There is a German translation by Seybold and Heyler, and also an English and a French translation. (Schöll, Gesch. d. Griech. Lit. vol. iii, p. 232 ; Fabric. Bibl. Graec. vol. |
from God in the afterlife, while neglecting to give zakat can result in damnation. Zakat is considered part of the covenant between God and a Muslim. Verse 2.177 (Picktall translation) sums up the Quranic view of charity and almsgiving (Another name for Zakat is the "Poor Due"): According to Yusuf al-Qaradawi, verse 9.5 of the Quran makes zakat one of three prerequisites for pagans to become Muslims: "but if they repent, establish prayers, and practice zakat they are your brethren in faith". The Quran also lists who should receive the benefits of zakat, discussed in more detail below. Hadith Each of the most trusted hadith collections in Islam have a book dedicated to zakat. Sahih Bukhari's Book 24, Sahih Muslim's Book 5, and Sunan Abu-Dawud's Book 9 discuss various aspects of zakat, including who must pay, how much, when and what. The 2.5% rate is also mentioned in the hadiths. The hadiths admonish those who do not give the zakat. According to the hadith, refusal to pay or mockery of those who pay zakat is a sign of hypocrisy, and God will not accept the prayers of such people. The sunna also describes God's punishment for those who refuse or fail to pay zakat. On the day of Judgment, those who did not give the zakat will be held accountable and punished. The hadith contain advice on the state-authorized collection of the zakat. The collectors are required not to take more than what is due, and those who are paying the zakat are asked not to evade payment. The hadith also warn of punishment for those who take zakat when they are not eligible to receive it (see Distribution below). Amount The amount of zakat to be paid by an individual depends on the amount of money and the type of assets the individual possesses. The Quran does not provide specific guidelines on which types of wealth are taxable under the zakat, nor does it specify percentages to be given. But the customary practice is that the amount of zakat paid on capital assets (e.g. money) is 2.5% (). Zakat is additionally payable on agricultural goods, precious metals, minerals, and livestock at a rate varying between 2.5% and 20% (1/5), depending on the type of goods. Zakat is usually payable on assets continuously owned over one lunar year that are in excess of the nisab, a minimum monetary value. However, Islamic scholars have disagreed on this issue. For example, Abu Hanifa did not regard the nisab limit to be a pre-requisite for zakat, in the case of land crops, fruits and minerals. Other differences between Islamic scholars on zakat and nisab are acknowledged as follows by Yusuf al-Qaradawi, Unlike prayers, we observe that even the ratio, the exemption, the kinds of wealth that are zakatable are subject to differences among scholars. Such differences have serious implications for Muslims at large when it comes to their application of the Islamic obligation of zakat. For example, some scholars consider the wealth of children and insane individuals zakatable, others don't. Some scholars consider all agricultural products zakatable, others restrict zakat to specific kinds only. Some consider debts zakatable, others don't. Similar differences exist for business assets and women's jewelry. Some require certain minimum (nisab) for zakatability, some don't. etc. The same kind of differences also exist about the disbursement of zakat. – Shiekh Mahmud Shaltut Failure to pay The consequence of failure to pay zakat has been a subject of extensive legal debate in traditional Islamic jurisprudence, particularly when a Muslim is willing to pay zakat but refuses to pay it to a certain group or the state. According to classical jurists, if the collector is unjust in the collection of zakat but just in its distribution, the concealment of property from him is allowed. If, on the other hand, the collector is just in the collection but unjust in the distribution, the concealment of property from him is an obligation (wajib). Furthermore, if the zakat is concealed from a just collector because the property owner wanted to pay his zakat to the poor himself, they held that he should not be punished for it. If collection of zakat by force was not possible, use of military force to extract it was seen as justified, as was done by Abu Bakr during the Ridda Wars, on the argument that refusing to submit to just orders is a form of treason. However, Abu Hanifa, the founder of the Hanafi school, disapproved of fighting when the property owners undertake to distribute the zakat to the poor themselves. Some classical jurists held the view that any Muslim who consciously refuses to pay zakat is an apostate, since the failure to believe that it is a religious duty (fard) is a form of unbelief (kufr), and should be killed. However, prevailing opinion among classical jurists prescribed sanctions such as fines, imprisonment or corporal punishment. Some classical and contemporary scholars such as Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh and Yusuf al-Qaradawi have stated that the person who fails to pay Zakat should have the payment taken from them, along with half of his wealth. Additionally, those who failed to pay the zakat would face God's punishment in the afterlife on the day of Judgment. In modern states where zakat payment is compulsory, failure to pay is regulated by state law similarly to tax evasion. Distribution According to the Quran's Surah Al-Tawba, there are eight categories of people (asnaf) who qualify to benefit from zakat funds. Islamic scholars have traditionally interpreted this verse as identifying the following eight categories of Muslim causes to be the proper recipients of zakat: Those living without means of livelihood (Al-Fuqarā'''), the poor Those who cannot meet their basic needs (Al-Masākīn), the needy To zakat collectors (Al-Āmilīyn 'Alihā) To persuade those sympathetic to or expected to convert to Islam (Al-Mu'allafatu Qulūbuhum), recent converts to Islam, and potential allies in the cause of Islam To free from slavery or servitude (Fir-Riqāb), slaves of Muslims who have or intend to free from their master by means of a kitabah contract Those who have incurred overwhelming debts while attempting to satisfy their basic needs (Al-Ghārimīn), debtors who in pursuit of a worthy goal incurred a debt Those fighting for a religious cause or a cause of God (Fī Sabīlillāh), or for Jihad in the way of Allah by means of pen, word, or sword, or for Islamic warriors who fight against the unbelievers but are not salaried soldiers.Juynboll, T.W. Handleiding tot de Kennis van de Mohaamedaansche Wet volgens de Leer der Sjafiitische School, 3rd Edition, Brill Academic, pp. 85–88 Wayfarers, stranded travellers (Ibnu Al-Sabīl), travellers who are traveling with a worthy goal but cannot reach their destination without financial assistance Zakat should not be given to one's own parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, spouses or the descendants of the Muhammad. Neither the Quran nor the Hadiths specify the relative division of zakat into the above eight categories. According to the Reliance of the Traveller, the Shafi'i school requires zakat is to be distributed equally among the eight categories of recipients, while the Hanafi school permits zakat to be distributed to all the categories, some of them, or just one of them. Classical schools of Islamic law, including Shafi'i, are unanimous that collectors of zakat are to be paid first, with the balance to be distributed equally amongst the remaining seven categories of recipients, even in cases where one group's need is more demanding. Muslim scholars disagree whether zakat recipients can include non-Muslims. Islamic scholarship, historically, has taught that only Muslims can be recipients of zakat. In recent times, some state that zakat may be paid to non-Muslims after the needs of Muslims have been met, finding nothing in the Quran or sunna to indicate that zakat should be paid to Muslims only. Additionally, the zakat funds may be spent on the administration of a centralized zakat collection system. Representatives of the Salafi movement include propagation of Islam and any struggle in righteous cause among permissible ways of spending, while others argue that zakat funds should be spent on social welfare and economic development projects, or science and technology education. Some hold spending them for defense to be permissible if a Muslim country is under attack. Also, it is forbidden to disburse zakat funds into investments instead of being given to one of the above eight categories of recipients. Role in society The zakat is considered by Muslims to be an act of piety through which one expresses concern for the well-being of fellow Muslims, as well as preserving social harmony between the wealthy and the poor. Zakat promotes a more equitable redistribution of wealth and fosters a sense of solidarity amongst members of the Ummah. Historical practice Zakat, an Islamic practice initiated by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was first collected on the first day of Muharram. It has played an important role throughout its history. Schact suggests that the idea of zakat may have entered Islam from Judaism, with roots in the Hebrew and Aramaic word zakut. However, some Islamic scholars disagree that the Qur'anic verses on zakat (or zakah) have roots in Judaism. The caliph Abu Bakr, believed by Sunni Muslims to be Muhammad's successor, was the first to institute a statutory zakat system. Abu Bakr established the principle that the zakat must be paid to the legitimate representative of Muhammad's authority (i.e. himself). Other Muslims disagreed and refused to pay zakat to Abu Bakr, leading to accusations of apostasy and, ultimately, the Ridda wars. The second and third caliphs, Umar ibn al-Khattab and Usman ibn Affan, continued Abu Bakr's codification of the zakat. Uthman also modified the zakat collection protocol by decreeing that only "apparent" wealth was taxable, which had the effect of limiting zakat to mostly being paid on agricultural land and produce. During the reign of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the issue of zakat was tied to legitimacy of his government. After Ali, his supporters refused to pay zakat to Muawiyah I, as they did not recognize his legitimacy. The practice of Islamic state-administered zakat was short-lived in Medina. During the reign of Umar bin Abdul Aziz (717–720 A.D.), it is reported that no one in Medina needed the zakat. After him, zakat came more to be considered as an individual responsibility. This view changed over Islamic history. Sunni Muslims and rulers, for example, considered collection and disbursement of zakat as one of the functions of an Islamic state; this view has continued in modern Islamic countries. Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam, and in various Islamic polities of the past was expected to be paid by all practising Muslims who have | view that any Muslim who consciously refuses to pay zakat is an apostate, since the failure to believe that it is a religious duty (fard) is a form of unbelief (kufr), and should be killed. However, prevailing opinion among classical jurists prescribed sanctions such as fines, imprisonment or corporal punishment. Some classical and contemporary scholars such as Ishaq Ibn Rahwayh and Yusuf al-Qaradawi have stated that the person who fails to pay Zakat should have the payment taken from them, along with half of his wealth. Additionally, those who failed to pay the zakat would face God's punishment in the afterlife on the day of Judgment. In modern states where zakat payment is compulsory, failure to pay is regulated by state law similarly to tax evasion. Distribution According to the Quran's Surah Al-Tawba, there are eight categories of people (asnaf) who qualify to benefit from zakat funds. Islamic scholars have traditionally interpreted this verse as identifying the following eight categories of Muslim causes to be the proper recipients of zakat: Those living without means of livelihood (Al-Fuqarā'''), the poor Those who cannot meet their basic needs (Al-Masākīn), the needy To zakat collectors (Al-Āmilīyn 'Alihā) To persuade those sympathetic to or expected to convert to Islam (Al-Mu'allafatu Qulūbuhum), recent converts to Islam, and potential allies in the cause of Islam To free from slavery or servitude (Fir-Riqāb), slaves of Muslims who have or intend to free from their master by means of a kitabah contract Those who have incurred overwhelming debts while attempting to satisfy their basic needs (Al-Ghārimīn), debtors who in pursuit of a worthy goal incurred a debt Those fighting for a religious cause or a cause of God (Fī Sabīlillāh), or for Jihad in the way of Allah by means of pen, word, or sword, or for Islamic warriors who fight against the unbelievers but are not salaried soldiers.Juynboll, T.W. Handleiding tot de Kennis van de Mohaamedaansche Wet volgens de Leer der Sjafiitische School, 3rd Edition, Brill Academic, pp. 85–88 Wayfarers, stranded travellers (Ibnu Al-Sabīl), travellers who are traveling with a worthy goal but cannot reach their destination without financial assistance Zakat should not be given to one's own parents, grandparents, children, grandchildren, spouses or the descendants of the Muhammad. Neither the Quran nor the Hadiths specify the relative division of zakat into the above eight categories. According to the Reliance of the Traveller, the Shafi'i school requires zakat is to be distributed equally among the eight categories of recipients, while the Hanafi school permits zakat to be distributed to all the categories, some of them, or just one of them. Classical schools of Islamic law, including Shafi'i, are unanimous that collectors of zakat are to be paid first, with the balance to be distributed equally amongst the remaining seven categories of recipients, even in cases where one group's need is more demanding. Muslim scholars disagree whether zakat recipients can include non-Muslims. Islamic scholarship, historically, has taught that only Muslims can be recipients of zakat. In recent times, some state that zakat may be paid to non-Muslims after the needs of Muslims have been met, finding nothing in the Quran or sunna to indicate that zakat should be paid to Muslims only. Additionally, the zakat funds may be spent on the administration of a centralized zakat collection system. Representatives of the Salafi movement include propagation of Islam and any struggle in righteous cause among permissible ways of spending, while others argue that zakat funds should be spent on social welfare and economic development projects, or science and technology education. Some hold spending them for defense to be permissible if a Muslim country is under attack. Also, it is forbidden to disburse zakat funds into investments instead of being given to one of the above eight categories of recipients. Role in society The zakat is considered by Muslims to be an act of piety through which one expresses concern for the well-being of fellow Muslims, as well as preserving social harmony between the wealthy and the poor. Zakat promotes a more equitable redistribution of wealth and fosters a sense of solidarity amongst members of the Ummah. Historical practice Zakat, an Islamic practice initiated by the Islamic prophet Muhammad, was first collected on the first day of Muharram. It has played an important role throughout its history. Schact suggests that the idea of zakat may have entered Islam from Judaism, with roots in the Hebrew and Aramaic word zakut. However, some Islamic scholars disagree that the Qur'anic verses on zakat (or zakah) have roots in Judaism. The caliph Abu Bakr, believed by Sunni Muslims to be Muhammad's successor, was the first to institute a statutory zakat system. Abu Bakr established the principle that the zakat must be paid to the legitimate representative of Muhammad's authority (i.e. himself). Other Muslims disagreed and refused to pay zakat to Abu Bakr, leading to accusations of apostasy and, ultimately, the Ridda wars. The second and third caliphs, Umar ibn al-Khattab and Usman ibn Affan, continued Abu Bakr's codification of the zakat. Uthman also modified the zakat collection protocol by decreeing that only "apparent" wealth was taxable, which had the effect of limiting zakat to mostly being paid on agricultural land and produce. During the reign of Ali ibn Abu Talib, the issue of zakat was tied to legitimacy of his government. After Ali, his supporters refused to pay zakat to Muawiyah I, as they did not recognize his legitimacy. The practice of Islamic state-administered zakat was short-lived in Medina. During the reign of Umar bin Abdul Aziz (717–720 A.D.), it is reported that no one in Medina needed the zakat. After him, zakat came more to be considered as an individual responsibility. This view changed over Islamic history. Sunni Muslims and rulers, for example, considered collection and disbursement of zakat as one of the functions of an Islamic state; this view has continued in modern Islamic countries. Zakat is one of the five pillars of Islam, and in various Islamic polities of the past was expected to be paid by all practising Muslims who have the financial means (nisab). In addition to their zakat obligations, Muslims were encouraged to make voluntary contributions (sadaqat). The zakat was not collected from non-Muslims, although they were required to pay the jizyah tax. Depending on the region, the dominant portion of zakat went typically to Amil (the zakat collectors) or Sabīlillāh (those fighting for religious cause, the caretaker of local mosque, or those working in the cause of God such as proselytizing non-Muslims to convert to Islam). Contemporary practice According to the researcher Russell Powell in 2010, zakat was mandatory by state law in Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, and Yemen. There were government-run voluntary zakat contribution programs in Bahrain, Bangladesh, Egypt, Indonesia, Iran, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Maldives and the United Arab Emirates. In a 2019 study conducted by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding that examined philanthropy for American Muslims in comparison to other faith and non-faith groups, it was found that for American Muslims, Zakat was an important driver of charitable giving. This results in American Muslims being the most likely faith group studied to be motivated to donate based on a believed religious obligation (zakat), and a “feeling that those with more should help those with less”, referencing again the concept and religious imperative behind Zakat. Zakat status in Muslim countries Collection Today, in most Muslim countries, Zakat is at the discretion of Muslims over how and whether to pay, typically enforced by fear of God, peer pressure and an individual's personal feelings. Among the Sunni Muslims, Zakat committees, linked to a religious cause or local mosque, collect zakat. Among the Shia Muslims, deputies on behalf of Imams collect the zakat. In six of the 47 Muslim-majority countries—Libya, Malaysia, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Yemen—zakat is obligatory and collected by the state. In Jordan, Bahrain, Kuwait, Lebanon, and Bangladesh, the zakat is regulated by the state, but contributions are voluntary. The states where Zakat is compulsory differ in their definition of the base for zakat computation. Zakat is generally levied on livestock (except in Pakistan) and agricultural produce, although the types of taxable livestock and produce differ from country to country. Zakat is imposed on cash and precious metals in four countries with different methods of assessment. Income is subject to zakat in Saudi Arabia and Malaysia, while only Sudan imposes zakat on "wealth that yields income". In Pakistan, property is exempt from the zakat calculation basis, and the compulsory zakat is primarily collected from the agriculture sector. Under compulsory systems of zakat tax collection, such as Malaysia and Pakistan, evasion is very common and the zakat (alms tax) is regressive. A considerable number of Muslims accept their duty to pay zakat, but deny that the state has a right to levy it, and they may pay zakat voluntarily while evading official collection. In discretion-based systems of collection, studies suggest zakat is collected from and paid only by a fraction of Muslim population who can pay. In the United Kingdom, which has a Muslim minority, more than three out of ten Muslims gave to charity (Zakat being described as "the Muslim practice of charitable donations"), according to a 2013 poll of 4000 people. According to the self-reported poll, British Muslims, on average, gave US$567 to charity in 2013, compared to $412 for Jews, $308 for Protestants, $272 for Catholics and $177 for atheists. Distribution The primary sources of sharia also do not specify to whom the zakat should be paid to zakat |
1973, when it was transferred to the Illinois Department of Conservation. In 1950, the Illinois Dunes Preservation Society was established to maintain the natural qualities of the beach. With the help of the Illinois Department of Conservation, the area south of Beach Road was established as the state's first natural preserve. The sections of the northern beach, between Beach Road and the Wisconsin state border, were acquired by the state between 1971 and 1982. The Illinois Beach Resort and Conference Center is located at the south beach. The North Point Marina, one of the largest in the Great Lakes region, is at the north beach. It is Illinois' newest and largest marina. On May 9, 2000, the area encompassing Illinois Beach State Park and North Point Marina was officially designated as the Cullerton Complex in honor of William J. Cullerton, Sr., a war hero, avid environmentalist, and long-time friend of conservation. Demographics At the 2010 census, there were 24,508 people, 7,552 households and 5,558 families residing in the city. The population density was . There were 8,036 housing units at an average density of . The racial make-up was 48.9% White, 31.10% African American, 0.4% Native American, 2.3% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 12% from other races and 5% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 27.7% of the population. There were 7,552 households, of which 44.1% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 48.9% were married couples living together, 20.0% had a female householder with no husband present and 26.4% were non-families. 21.6% of all households were made up of individuals, and 6.3% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.96 and the average family size was 3.44. 33.2% of the population were under the age of 18, 9.5% from 18 to 24, 31.4% from 25 to 44, 17.4% from 45 to 64 and 8.4% were 65 years of age or older. The median age was 30 years. For every 100 females, there were 94.3 males. For every 100 females age 18 and over, there were 88.0 males. The median household income was $45,723 and the median family income was $50,378. Males had a median income of $37,455 and females $27,563. The per capita income was $17,730. About 10.1% of families and 11.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.5% of those under age 18 and 7.7% of those age 65 or over. Transportation The city is served by Metra's Union Pacific/North Line through Zion railway station on the east side. It connects the city to Chicago, Kenosha and intermediate communities. Pace bus line 571 provides internal transit service in Zion and connects the city to Waukegan. Sports The 8,500-seat Fielders Stadium was planned to open in May 2010. Once completed, it was to host | median household income was $45,723 and the median family income was $50,378. Males had a median income of $37,455 and females $27,563. The per capita income was $17,730. About 10.1% of families and 11.9% of the population were below the poverty line, including 15.5% of those under age 18 and 7.7% of those age 65 or over. Transportation The city is served by Metra's Union Pacific/North Line through Zion railway station on the east side. It connects the city to Chicago, Kenosha and intermediate communities. Pace bus line 571 provides internal transit service in Zion and connects the city to Waukegan. Sports The 8,500-seat Fielders Stadium was planned to open in May 2010. Once completed, it was to host the home games of the Lake County Fielders North American League baseball team co-owned by the actor Kevin Costner. The Fielders' name is an homage to Costner's 1989 film Field of Dreams, with the logo showing a ballplayer standing in a field of corn. The Fielders' site has been subject to a court dispute between the owners and the city over a breach in contract. Notable people Jarvis Brown, member of 1991 World Series champion Minnesota Twins Richard Bull, actor, "Nels Olson" on Little House on the Prairie Gary Coleman, actor, "Arnold Jackson" on Diff'rent Strokes Joe Daniels, drummer for Local H John Alexander Dowie, founder of Zion Paul Erickson, baseball player, mostly with Chicago Cubs John Hammond, general manager of the Orlando Magic and former general manager of the Milwaukee Bucks James Gordon Lindsay, pastor and founder of Christ for the Nations Institute Scott Lucas, lead singer and guitarist for Local H Billy McKinney, former NBA player, former NBA general manager, former commentator and current head scout for the Milwaukee Bucks Juan Moreno, two-time Olympic silver medalist (1992 and 1988) in Taekwondo in the Fin-weight (under 50 kg) class and three-time Olympian (2000, 1992, 1988); assistant coach with the U.S. Olympic Team at the 2008 Olympics Russell Nype, star of Broadway's Call Me Madam and Hello, Dolly! and Tony Award winner Shoes, power pop band including Gary Klebe, Jeff Murphy, John Murphy Lenzelle Smith Jr. (born 1991), basketball player in the Israel Basketball Premier League Controversy Until the 1940s, Zion enshrined the Flat Earth doctrine in its religious code. The former city seal was the subject of a 1990 Federal Court case, because it featured a crown and scepter, a dove, a cross and the words "God Reigns". The founder of Zion and designer of the city seal, John Alexander Dowie, intended for these to be Christian symbols and added them "for the purpose of the extension of the Kingdom of God upon earth ... where God shall rule in every department of family, industry, commercial, educational, ecclesiastical and political life". The court ruled the city could not use these religious symbols in its seals and emblems. While the Christian symbolism was removed, the phrase "In God We |
African equines with distinctive black-and-white striped coats. There are three living species: the Grévy's zebra (Equus grevyi), plains zebra (E. quagga), and the mountain zebra (E. zebra). Zebras share the genus Equus with horses and asses, the three groups being the only living members of the family Equidae. Zebra stripes come in different patterns, unique to each individual. Several theories have been proposed for the function of these stripes, with most evidence supporting them as a deterrent for biting flies. Zebras inhabit eastern and southern Africa and can be found in a variety of habitats such as savannahs, grasslands, woodlands, shrublands, and mountainous areas. Zebras are primarily grazers and can subsist on lower-quality vegetation. They are preyed on mainly by lions and typically flee when threatened but also bite and kick. Zebra species differ in social behaviour, with plains and mountain zebra living in stable harems consisting of an adult male or stallion, several adult females or mares, and their young or foals; while Grévy's zebra live alone or in loosely associated herds. In harem-holding species, adult females mate only with their harem stallion, while male Grévy's zebras establish territories which attract females and the species is promiscuous. Zebras communicate with various vocalisations, body postures and facial expressions. Social grooming strengthens social bonds in plains and mountain zebras. Zebras' dazzling stripes make them among the most recognisable mammals. They have been featured in art and stories in Africa and beyond. Historically, they have been highly sought after by exotic animal collectors, but unlike horses and donkeys, zebras have never been truly domesticated. The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) lists the Grévy's zebra as endangered, the mountain zebra as vulnerable and the plains zebra as near-threatened. The quagga, a type of plains zebra, was driven to extinction in the 19th century. Nevertheless, zebras can be found in numerous protected areas. Etymology The English name "zebra" dates back to 1600, deriving from Italian, Spanish or Portuguese. Its origins may lie in the Latin equiferus meaning "wild horse"; from equus ("horse") and ferus ("wild, untamed"). Equiferus appears to have entered into Portuguese as ezebro or zebro, which was originally used for a legendary equine in the wilds of the Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Ages. In ancient times, the zebra was called hippotigris ("horse tiger") by the Greeks and Romans. The word "zebra" was traditionally pronounced with a long initial vowel, but over the course of the 20th century the pronunciation with the short initial vowel became the norm in the UK and the Commonwealth. The pronunciation with a long initial vowel remains standard in US English. Taxonomy and evolution Zebras are classified in the genus Equus (known as equines) along with horses and asses. These three groups are the only living members of the family Equidae. The plains zebra and mountain zebra were traditionally placed in the subgenus Hippotigris (C. H. Smith, 1841) in contrast to the Grévy's zebra which was considered the sole species of subgenus Dolichohippus (Heller, 1912). Groves and Bell (2004) placed all three species in the subgenus Hippotigris. A 2013 phylogenetic study found that the plains zebra is more closely related to Grévy's zebras than mountain zebras. The extinct quagga was originally classified as a distinct species. Later genetic studies have placed it as the same species as the plains zebra, either a subspecies or just the southernmost population. Molecular evidence supports zebras as a monophyletic lineage. Equus originated in North America and direct paleogenomic sequencing of a 700,000-year-old middle Pleistocene horse metapodial bone from Canada implies a date of 4.07 million years ago (mya) for the most recent common ancestor of the equines within the range of 4.0 to 4.5 mya. Horses split from asses and zebras around 4 mya, and equines entered Eurasia around 3 mya. Zebras and asses diverged from each other close to 2.8 mya and zebra ancestors entered Africa around 2.3 mya. The mountain zebra diverged from the other species around 1.75 mya and the plains and Grévy's zebra split around 1.5 mya. The cladogram of Equus below is based on Vilstrup and colleagues (2013): Living species Fossil record In addition to the three living species, some fossil zebras have also been identified. Equus koobiforensis is an early zebra or equine basal to zebras found in the Shungura Formation, Ethiopia and the Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, and dated to around 2.3 mya. E. oldowayensis is identified from remains in Olduvai Gorge dating to 1.8 mya. Fossil skulls of E. mauritanicus from Algeria which date to around 1 mya appears to show affinities with the plains zebra. E. capensis, known as the Cape zebra, appeared around 2 mya and lived throughout southern and eastern Africa. Non-African equines that may have been basal to zebras include E. sansaniensis of Eurasia (circa 2.5 mya) and E. namadicus (circa 2.5 mya) and E. sivalensis (circa 2.0 mya) of the Indian subcontinent. A 2017 mitochondrial DNA study placed the Eurasian E. ovodovi and the subgenus Sussemionus lineage as closer to zebras than to asses. Hybridisation Fertile hybrids have been reported in the wild between plains and Grévy's zebra. Hybridisation has also been recorded between the plains and mountain zebra, though it is possible that these are infertile due to the difference in chromosome numbers between the two species. Captive zebras have been bred with horses and donkeys; these are known as zebroids. A zorse is a cross between a zebra and a horse; a zonkey between a zebra and a donkey and a zoni between a zebra and a pony. Zebroids are usually infertile and may suffer from dwarfism. Characteristics As with all wild equines, zebra have barrel-chested bodies with tufted tails, elongated faces and long necks with long, erect manes. Their elongated, slender legs end in a single spade-shaped toe covered in a hard hoof. Their dentition is adapted for grazing; they have large incisors that clip grass blades and highly crowned, ridged molars well suited for grinding. Males have spade-shaped canines, which can be used as weapons in fighting. The eyes of zebras are at the sides and far up the head, which allows them to see above the tall grass while grazing. Their moderately long, erect ears are movable and can locate the source of a sound. Unlike horses, zebras and asses have chestnut callosities only on their front limbs. In contrast to other living equines, zebra forelimbs are longer than their back limbs. Diagnostic traits of the zebra skull include: its relatively small size with a straight profile, more projected eye sockets, narrower rostrum, reduced postorbital bar, a V-shaped groove separating the metaconid and metastylid of the teeth and both halves of the enamel wall being rounded. Stripes Zebras are easily recognised by their bold black-and-white striping patterns. The belly and legs are white when unstriped, but the muzzle is dark and the skin underneath the coat is uniformly black. Young or foals are born with brown and white coats, and the brown darkens with age. The general pattern is a dorsal line that extends from the forehead to the tail. From there, the stripes stretch downward except on the rump, where they develop species-specific patterns, and near the nose where they curve toward the nostrils. Stripes split above the front legs, creating shoulder stripes. The stripes on the legs, ears and tail are separate and horizontal. Zebras also have complex patterns around the eyes and the lower jaw. Striping patterns are unique to an individual and heritable. During embryonic development, the stripes appear at eight months, but the patterns may be determined at three to five weeks. For each species there is a point in embryonic development where the stripes are perpendicular to the dorsal and spaced apart. However, this happens at three weeks of development for the plains zebra, four weeks for the mountain zebra, and five for Grévy's zebra. The difference in timing is thought to be responsible for the differences in the striping patterns of the different species. Various abnormalities of the patterns have been documented in plains zebras. Melanistic zebras have high concentrations of dark stripes on the torso but low concentrations on the legs. "Spotted" individuals display interruptions in black striping patterns. There have even been morphs with white spots on dark backgrounds. Striping abnormalities have been linked to inbreeding. Albino zebras have been recorded in the forests of Mount Kenya, with the dark stripes being blonde. The quagga had brown and white stripes on the head and neck, brown upper parts and a white belly, tail and legs. Function The function of stripes in zebras has been discussed among biologists since at least the 19th century. Popular hypotheses include the following: The crypsis hypothesis was proposed by Alfred Wallace in 1896 and suggests that the stripes allow the animal to blend in with its environment or break out its outline so predators can not perceive it as a single entity. Zebra stripes may provide particularly good camouflage at nighttime, which is when lions and hyenas are actively hunting. In 1871, Charles Darwin remarked that "the zebra is conspicuously striped, and stripes on the open plains of South Africa cannot afford any protection". Zebras graze in open habitat and do not behave cryptically, being noisy, fast, and social. They do not freeze when detecting a predator. In addition, lions and hyenas do not appear to be able to discern stripes beyond a certain distance in daylight, thus making the stripes useless in disrupting the outline. Stripes also do not appear to make zebras more difficult to find than uniformly coloured animals of similar size, and predators may still be able to detect them by scent or hearing. The camouflaging stripes of woodland living ungulates like bongos and bushbucks are much less vivid and lack the sharp contrast with the background colour. In addition, unlike tiger stripes, the spatial frequencies of zebra stripes do not line up with their environment. A 2014 study could not find any correlations between striping patterns and woodland habitats. The confusion hypothesis states that the stripes confuse predators, be it by: making it harder to distinguish individuals in a group as well as determining the number of zebras in a group; making it difficult to determine an individual's outline when the group flees; reducing a predator's ability to follow a target during a chase; dazzling an assailant so they have difficulty making contact; or making it difficult for a predator to judge the zebra's size, speed and trajectory via motion dazzle. This theory has been proposed by several biologists since at least the 1970s. A 2014 computer study of zebra stripes found that the motion signals made by zebra stripes give out misleading information and can cause confusion via the wagon-wheel effect or barber pole illusion. The researchers concluded that this could be used against mammalian predators or biting flies. The use of the stripes for confusing against mammalian predators has been questioned. The stripes of zebras could make group size look smaller, and thus more attractive to predators. Zebras also tend to scatter when fleeing from attackers and thus the stripes could not obscure an individual's outline. Lions, in particular, appear to have no difficulty targeting and making contact with zebras when they get close and take them by ambush. In addition, no correlations have been found between the amount of stripes and populations of mammal predators. The aposematic hypothesis suggests that the stripes serve as warning colouration as they are recognisable up close. Biologist L. H. Matthews proposed in 1971 that the stripes on the side of the mouth signal to the animal's bite. As with known aposematic mammals, zebras have high predation pressures and make no attempt to hide. However they are frequently preyed on by lions, suggesting that stripes do not deter them but may work on smaller predators. In addition, zebras are not slow and sluggish like known aposematic mammals. The social function hypothesis states that stripes serve a role in intraspecific or individual recognition, social bonding, mutual grooming facilitation, or a signal of fitness. Darwin wrote in 1871 that "a female zebra would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra" while Wallace stated in 1871 that: "The stripes therefore may be of use by enabling stragglers to distinguish their fellows at a distance". Regarding species and individual identification, zebras have limited range overlap with each other and horses can recognise each other using visual cues. In addition, no correlation has been found between striping and social behaviour among equines. There is also no link found between fitness and striping. The thermoregulatory hypothesis suggests that stripes help to control a zebra's body temperature. In 1971, biologist H. A. Baldwin noted that black stripes absorbed heat while the white ones reflected it. In 1990, zoologist Desmond Morris proposed that the stripes set up convection currents to cool the animal. A study from 2015 determined that environmental temperature is a strong predictor for zebra striping patterns. Another study from 2019 also concluded that the stripes played a role in regulating heat. Air currents move faster over the heat-absorbing black hairs than the white ones. At the junction of the stripes, the air swirls and cools down the animal. In addition, zebras appear to be able to raise the hair of the black stripes while keeping white hair flat. During the hottest times of the day, the raised hair may help transfer heat from the skin to the hair surface, while during the cooler early morning, the raised black hair can trap air to prevent heat loss. Others have found no evidence that zebras have cooler bodies than other ungulates whose habitat they share, or that striping correlates with temperature. A 2018 experimental study which dressed water-filled metal barrels in horse, zebra and cattle hides found that zebra stripes have no effect on thermoregulation. The fly protection hypothesis holds that the stripes deter biting flies. Horse flies, in particular, spread diseases that are lethal to | signal to the animal's bite. As with known aposematic mammals, zebras have high predation pressures and make no attempt to hide. However they are frequently preyed on by lions, suggesting that stripes do not deter them but may work on smaller predators. In addition, zebras are not slow and sluggish like known aposematic mammals. The social function hypothesis states that stripes serve a role in intraspecific or individual recognition, social bonding, mutual grooming facilitation, or a signal of fitness. Darwin wrote in 1871 that "a female zebra would not admit the addresses of a male ass until he was painted so as to resemble a zebra" while Wallace stated in 1871 that: "The stripes therefore may be of use by enabling stragglers to distinguish their fellows at a distance". Regarding species and individual identification, zebras have limited range overlap with each other and horses can recognise each other using visual cues. In addition, no correlation has been found between striping and social behaviour among equines. There is also no link found between fitness and striping. The thermoregulatory hypothesis suggests that stripes help to control a zebra's body temperature. In 1971, biologist H. A. Baldwin noted that black stripes absorbed heat while the white ones reflected it. In 1990, zoologist Desmond Morris proposed that the stripes set up convection currents to cool the animal. A study from 2015 determined that environmental temperature is a strong predictor for zebra striping patterns. Another study from 2019 also concluded that the stripes played a role in regulating heat. Air currents move faster over the heat-absorbing black hairs than the white ones. At the junction of the stripes, the air swirls and cools down the animal. In addition, zebras appear to be able to raise the hair of the black stripes while keeping white hair flat. During the hottest times of the day, the raised hair may help transfer heat from the skin to the hair surface, while during the cooler early morning, the raised black hair can trap air to prevent heat loss. Others have found no evidence that zebras have cooler bodies than other ungulates whose habitat they share, or that striping correlates with temperature. A 2018 experimental study which dressed water-filled metal barrels in horse, zebra and cattle hides found that zebra stripes have no effect on thermoregulation. The fly protection hypothesis holds that the stripes deter biting flies. Horse flies, in particular, spread diseases that are lethal to equines such as African horse sickness, equine influenza, equine infectious anemia and trypanosomiasis. In addition, zebra hair is shorter or the same length as the mouthparts of horse flies. Caro and colleagues (2019) reported this hypothesis as the "emerging consensus among biologists". It was found that flies were less likely to land on black-and-white striped surfaces than uniformly coloured ones in 1930 by biologist R. Harris. A 2012 study concurred this and concluded that the stripes reflect contrasting light patterns rather than the uniform patterns these insects use to locate food and water. A 2014 study found a correlation between the amount of striping and the presence of horse and tsetse flies. Among wild equines, zebras live in areas with the highest fly activity. Other studies have found that zebras are rarely targeted by these insect species. Caro and colleagues studied captive zebras and horses and found that neither could deter flies from a distance, but zebra stripes made it difficult for flies to make a landing, both for zebras and horses dressed in zebra print coats. A 2020 study found that zebra stripes do not dazzle or work like a barber pole against flies since checkered patterns also repel them. White or light stripes painted on dark bodies have also been found to reduce fly irritations in both cattle and humans. Ecology and behaviour Zebras may travel or migrate to better watered areas. Plains zebras have been recorded travelling between Namibia and Botswana, the longest land migration of mammals in Africa. When migrating, they appear to rely on some memory of the locations where foraging conditions were best and may predict conditions months after their arrival. Plains zebras are more water-dependent and live in more mesic environments than other species. They seldom wander from a water source. Grévy's zebras can survive almost a week without water but will drink daily when it is plentiful and conserve water well. Mountain zebras can be found at elevations of up to . Zebras may spend seven hours a day sleeping. During the day, they sleep standing up, while at night they lie down. They regularly rub against trees, rocks, and other objects and roll around in dust for protection against flies and irritation. Except for the mountain zebra, zebras can roll over completely. Zebras eat primarily grasses and sedges but may also consume bark, leaves, buds, fruits, and roots if their favoured foods are scarce. Compared to ruminants, zebras have a simpler and less efficient digestive system. Nevertheless, they can subsist on lower-quality vegetation. Zebras may spend 60–80% of their time feeding, depending on the availability and quality of vegetation. The plains zebra is a pioneer grazer, mowing down the upper, less nutritious grass canopy and preparing the way for more specialised grazers, which depend on shorter and more nutritious grasses below. Zebras are preyed on mainly by lions. Leopards, cheetahs, spotted hyenas, brown hyenas and wild dogs pose less of a threat to adults. Nile crocodiles also prey on zebras when they near water. Biting and kicking are a zebra's defense tactics. When threatened by lions, zebras flee, and when caught they are rarely effective in fighting off the big cats. The zebra can reach a speed of compared to for the lion, but maximum acceleration is respectively and . A lion has to surprise a zebra within the first six seconds of breaking cover. However, a 2018 study found that zebras do not escape lions by speed alone but by sideways turning, especially when the predator is close behind. With smaller predators like hyenas and dogs, zebras may act more aggressively, especially in defense of their young. Social structure Zebra species have two basic social structures. Plains and mountain zebras live in stable, closed family groups or harems consisting of one stallion, several mares, and their offspring. These groups have their own home ranges, which overlap, and they tend to be nomadic. Stallions form and expand their harems by recruiting young mares from their natal (birth) harems. The stability of the group remains even when the family stallion dies or is displaced. Plains zebra groups also live in a fission–fusion society. They gather into large herds and may create temporarily stable subgroups within a herd, allowing individuals to interact with those outside their group. Among harem-holding species, this behaviour has otherwise only been observed in primates such as the gelada and the hamadryas baboon. Females of these species benefit as males give them more time for feeding, protection for their young, and protection from predators and harassment by outside males. Among females in a harem, a linear dominance hierarchy exists based on the time at which they join the group. Harems travel in a consistent filing order with the high-ranking mares and their offspring leading the groups followed by the next-highest ranking mare and her offspring, and so on. The family stallion takes up the rear. Young of both sexes leave their natal groups as they mature; females are usually herded by outside males to be included as permanent members of their harems. In the more arid-living Grévy's zebras, adults have more fluid associations and adult males establish large territories, marked by dung piles, and monopolise the females that enter them. This species lives in habitats with sparser resources and standing water and grazing areas may be separated. Groups of lactating females are able to remain in groups with nonlactating ones and usually gather at foraging areas. The most dominant males establish territories near watering holes, where more sexually receptive females gather. Subdominants have territories farther away, near foraging areas. Mares may wander through several territories but remain in one when they have young. Staying in a territory offers a female protection from harassment by outside males, as well as access to a renewable resource. In all species, excess males gather in bachelor groups. These are typically young males that are not yet ready to establish a harem or territory. With the plains zebra, the males in a bachelor group have strong bonds and have a linear dominance hierarchy. Bachelor groups tend to be at the periphery of herds and when the herd moves, the bachelors trail behind. Mountain zebra bachelor groups may also include young females that have recently left their natal group, as well as old males they have lost their harems. A territorial Grévy's zebra stallion may tolerate non-territorial bachelors who wander in their territory, however when a mare in oestrous is present the territorial stallion keeps other stallions at bay. Bachelors prepare for their adult roles with play fights and greeting/challenge rituals, which make up most of their activities. Fights between males usually occur over mates and involve biting and kicking. In plains zebra, stallions fight each other over recently matured mares to bring into their group and her family stallion will fight off other males trying to abduct her. As long as a harem stallion is healthy, he is not usually challenged. Only unhealthy stallions have their harems taken over, and even then, the new stallion gradually takes over, pushing the old one out without a fight. Agonistic behaviour between male Grévy's zebras occurs at the border of their territories. Communication Zebras produce a number of vocalisations and noises. The plains zebra has a distinctive, high-pitched contact call (commonly called "barking") heard as "a-ha, a-ha, a-ha" or "kwa-ha, kaw-ha, ha, ha". The call of the Grévy's zebra has been described as "something like a hippo's grunt combined with a donkey's wheeze", while the mountain zebra is relatively silent. Loud snorting in zebras is associated with alarm. Squealing is usually made when in pain, but bachelors also squeal while play fighting. Zebras also communicate with visual displays, and the flexibility of their lips allows them to make complex facial expressions. Visual displays also incorporate the positions of the head, ears, and tail. A zebra may signal an intention to kick by laying back its ears and sometimes lashing the tail. Flattened ears, bared teeth, and abrupt movement of the heads may be used as threatening gestures, particularly among stallions. When meeting for the first time, or after they have separated, individuals may greet each other by rubbing and sniffing their noses followed by rubbing their cheeks, moving their noses along their bodies and sniffing each other's genitals. They then may rub and press their shoulders against each other and rest their heads on one another. This greeting is usually performed among harem or territorial males or among bachelor males playing. Plains and mountain zebras strengthen their social bonds with grooming. Members of a harem nip and scrape along the neck, shoulder, and back with their teeth and lips. Grooming usually occurs between mothers and foals and between stallions and mares. Grooming shows social status and eases aggressive behaviour. Although Grévy's zebras do not perform social grooming, they do sometimes rub against another individual. Reproduction and parenting Among plains and mountain zebras, the adult females mate only with their harem stallion, while in Grévy's zebras, mating is more promiscuous and the males have larger testes for sperm competition. Oestrus in female zebras lasts five to ten days; physical signs include frequent urination, flowing mucus, and swollen, everted (inside out) labia. In addition, females in oestrous will |
executed in steps that are usually termed machine cycles (M-cycles), each of which can take between three and six clock periods (T-states). Each M-cycle corresponds roughly to one memory access or internal operation. Many instructions actually end during the M1 of the next instruction which is known as a fetch/execute overlap. The Z80 machine cycles are sequenced by an internal state machine which builds each M-cycle out of 3, 4, 5 or 6 T-states depending on context. This avoids cumbersome asynchronous logic and makes the control signals behave consistently at a wide range of clock frequencies. It also means that a higher frequency crystal must be used than without this subdivision of machine cycles (approximately 2–3 times higher). It does not imply tighter requirements on memory access times, since a high resolution clock allows more precise control of memory timings and so memory can be active in parallel with the CPU to a greater extent, allowing more efficient use of available memory bandwidth. One central example of this is that, for opcode fetch, the Z80 combines two full clock cycles into a memory access period (the M1-signal). In the Z80 this signal lasts for a relatively larger part of the typical instruction execution time than in a design such as the 6800, 6502, or similar, where this period would typically last typically 30-40% of a clock cycle. With memory chip affordability (i.e. access times around 450-250 ns in the 1980s) typically determining the fastest possible access time, this meant that such designs were locked to a significantly longer clock cycle (i.e. lower internal clock speed) than the Z80. Memory was generally slow compared to the state machine sub-cycles (clock cycles) used in contemporary microprocessors. The shortest machine cycle that could safely be used in embedded designs has therefore often been limited by memory access times, not by the maximum CPU frequency (especially so during the home computer era). However, this relation has slowly changed during the last decades, particularly regarding SRAM; cacheless, single-cycle designs such as the eZ80 have therefore become much more meaningful recently. The content of the refresh register R is sent out on the lower half of the address bus along with a refresh control signal while the CPU is decoding and executing the fetched instruction. During refresh the contents of the Interrupt register I are sent out on the upper half of the address bus. Compatible peripherals Zilog introduced a number of peripheral parts for the Z80, which all support the Z80's interrupt handling system and I/O address space. These include the Counter/Timer Channel (CTC), the SIO (Serial Input Output), the DMA (Direct Memory Access), the PIO (Parallel Input-Output) and the DART (Dual Asynchronous Receiver Transmitter). As the product line developed, low-power, high-speed and CMOS versions of these chips were introduced. Like the 8080, 8085 and 8086 processors, but unlike processors such as the Motorola 6800 and MOS Technology 6502, the Z80 and 8080 has a separate control line and address space for I/O instructions. While some Z80-based computers such as the Osborne 1 used "Motorola-style" memory mapped input/output devices, usually the I/O space was used to address one of the many Zilog peripheral chips compatible with the Z80. Zilog I/O chips supported the Z80's new mode 2 interrupts which simplified interrupt handling for large numbers of peripherals. The Z80 was officially described as supporting 16-bit (64 KB) memory addressing, and 8-bit (256 ports) I/O-addressing. All I/O instructions actually assert the entire 16-bit address bus. OUT (C),reg and IN reg,(C) places the contents of the entire 16 bit BC register on the address bus; OUT (n),A and IN A,(n) places the contents of the A register on b8-b15 of the address bus and n on b0-b7 of the address bus. A designer could choose to decode the entire 16 bit address bus on I/O operations in order to take advantage of this feature, or use the high half of the address bus to select subfeatures of the I/O device. This feature has also been used to minimise decoding hardware requirements, such as in the Amstrad CPC/PCW and ZX81. Second sources and derivatives Second sources Mostek, which produced the first Z80 for Zilog, offered it as second-source as MK3880. SGS-Thomson (now STMicroelectronics) was a second-source, too, with their Z8400. Sharp and NEC developed second sources for the NMOS Z80, the LH0080 and μPD780C, respectively. The LH0080 was used in various home computers and personal computers made by Sharp and other Japanese manufacturers, including Sony MSX computers, and a number of computers in the Sharp MZ series. Toshiba made a CMOS-version, the TMPZ84C00, which is believed (but not verified) to be the same design also used by Zilog for its own CMOS Z84C00. There were also Z80-chips made by GoldStar (now LG) and the BU18400 series of Z80-clones (including DMA, PIO, CTC, DART and SIO) in NMOS and CMOS made by ROHM Electronics. In East Germany, an unlicensed clone of the Z80, known as the U880, was manufactured. It was very popular and was used in Robotron's and VEB Mikroelektronik Mühlhausen's computer systems (such as the KC85-series) and also in many self-made computer systems. In Romania another unlicensed clone could be found, named MMN80CPU and produced by Microelectronica, used in home computers like TIM-S, HC, COBRA. Also, several clones of Z80 were created in the Soviet Union, notable ones being the T34BM1, also called КР1858ВМ1 (parallelling the Soviet 8080-clone KR580VM80A). The first marking was used in pre-production series, while the second had to be used for a larger production. Though, due to the collapse of Soviet microelectronics in the late 1980s, there are many more T34BM1s than КР1858ВМ1s. Derivatives Compatible with the original Z80 Hitachi developed the HD64180, a microcoded and partially dynamic Z80 in CMOS, with on chip peripherals and a simple MMU giving a 1 MB address space. It was later second sourced by Zilog, initially as the Z64180, and then in the form of the slightly modified Z180 which has bus protocol and timings better adapted to Z80 peripheral chips. Z180 has been maintained and further developed under Zilog's name, the newest versions being based on the fully static S180/L180 core with very low power draw and EMI (noise). Toshiba developed the 84 pin Z84013 / Z84C13 and the 100 pin Z84015 / Z84C15 series of "intelligent peripheral controllers", basically ordinary NMOS and CMOS Z80 cores with Z80 peripherals, watchdog timer, power on reset, and wait state generator on the same chip. Manufactured by Sharp as well as Toshiba. These products are today second sourced by Zilog. The 32-bit Z80 compatible Zilog Z380, introduced 1994, is used mainly in telecom equipment. Zilog's fully pipelined Z80 compatible eZ80 with an 8/16/24-bit word length and a linear 16 MB address space was introduced in 2001. It exists in versions with on chip SRAM or flash memory, as well as with integrated peripherals. One variant has on chip MAC (media access controller), and available software include a TCP/IP stack. In contrast with the Z800 and Z280, there are only a few added instructions (primarily LEAs, PEAs, and variable-address 16/24-bit loads), but instructions are instead executed between 2 and 11 times as clock cycle efficient as on the original Z80 (with a mean value around 3-5 times). It is currently specified for clock frequencies up to 50 MHz. Kawasaki developed the binary compatible KL5C8400 which is approximately 1.2-1.3 times as clock cycle efficient as the original Z80 and can be clocked at up to 33 MHz. Kawasaki also produces the KL5C80A1x family, which has peripherals as well as a small RAM on chip; it is approximately as clock cycle efficient as the eZ80 and can be clocked at up to 10 MHz (2006). The NEC μPD9002 was a hybrid CPU compatible with both Z80 and x86 families. The Chinese Actions Semiconductor's audio processor family of chips (ATJ2085 and others) contains a Z80-compatible MCUs together with a 24-bit dedicated DSP processor. These chips are used in many MP3 and media player products. The T80 (VHDL) and TV80 (Verilog) synthesizable soft cores are available from OpenCores.org. The National Semiconductor NSC800 announced in 1980 is used in many TeleSecurity Timmann (TST) electronic cipher machines and the Canon X-07. The NSC 800 is fully compatible with the Z-80 instruction set. The NSC800 uses a multiplexed bus like the 8085 but has a different pinout than the Z80. Non-compatible The Toshiba TLCS 900 series of high volume (mostly OTP) microcontrollers are based on the Z80; they share the same basic BC,DE,HL,IX,IY register structure, and largely the same instructions, but are not binary compatible, while the previous TLCS 90 is Z80-compatible. The NEC 78K series microcontrollers are based on the Z80; they share the same basic BC,DE,HL register structure, and has similar (but differently named) instructions; not binary compatible. Partly compatible Rabbit Semiconductor's Rabbit 2000/3000/4000 microprocessors/microcontrollers are based on the HD64180/Z180 architecture, although they are not fully binary compatible. No longer produced The ASCII Corporation R800 was a fast 16-bit processor used in MSX TurboR computers; it was software, but not hardware compatible with the Z80 (signal timing, pinout & function of pins differ from the Z80). Zilog's NMOS Z800 and CMOS Z280 were 16-bit Z80-implementations (before the HD64180 / Z180) with a 16 MB paged MMU address space; they added many orthogonalizations and addressing modes to the Z80 instruction set. Minicomputer features — such as user and system modes, multiprocessor support, on chip MMU, on chip instruction and data cache and so on — were seen rather as more complexity than as functionality and support for the (usually electronics-oriented) embedded systems designer, it also made it very hard to predict instruction execution times. Certain arcade games such as Pang/Buster Bros use an encrypted "Kabuki" Z80 CPU manufactured by VLSI Technology, where the decryption keys are stored in its internal battery-backed memory, to avoid piracy and illegal bootleg games. Notable uses Desktop computers During the late 1970s and early 1980s, the Z80 was used in a great number of fairly anonymous business-oriented machines with the CP/M operating system, a combination that dominated the market at the time. Four well-known examples of Z80 business computers running CP/M are the Heathkit H89, the portable Osborne 1, the Kaypro series, and the Epson QX-10. Less well-known was the expensive high-end Otrona Attache. Some systems used multi-tasking operating system software (like MP/M or Morrow's Micronix) to share the one processor between several concurrent users. Multiple home computers were introduced that used the Z80 as the main processor or as a plug-in option to allow access to software written for the Z80. Notable are the TRS-80 series, including the original model (later retronymed "Model I"), Model II, Model III, and Model 4, which were equipped with a Z80 as their main processor, and some (but not all) other TRS-80 models which used the Z80 as either the main or a secondary processor. Other notable machines were the DEC Rainbow 100, and the Seequa Chameleon, both of which featured both an Intel 8088 and a Z80 CPU, to support either 8-bit CP/M-80 applications running on the Z80, or a custom MS-DOS that was not fully compatible with PC DOS applications running on the 8088. In 1981, Multitech (later to become Acer) introduced the Microprofessor I, a simple and inexpensive training system for the Z80 microprocessor. Currently, it is still manufactured and sold by Flite Electronics International Limited in Southampton, England. In 1985, Sharp introduced the Hotbit and Gradiente introduced the Expert, which became the dominant 8-bit home computers in Brazil until the late 1980s. Portable and handheld computers Use of the Z80 in lighter, battery-operated devices became more widespread with the availability of CMOS versions of the processor. It also inspired the development of other CMOS based processors, such as the LH5801 from Sharp. The Sharp PC-1500, a BASIC-programmable pocket computer was released in 1981, followed by the improved Sharp PC-1600 in 1986 and the Sharp PC-E220 in 1991. Later models of the Sharp Wizard series of personal organizers also were Z80 based. Laptops which could run the CP/M operating system just like the desktop machines followed with Epson PX-8 Geneva in 1984, and in 1985 the Epson PX-4 and Bondwell-2. While the laptop market in subsequent years moved to more powerful Intel 8086 processors and the MS-DOS operating system, light-weight Z80-based systems with a longer battery life were still being introduced, such as the Cambridge Z88 in 1988 and the Amstrad NC100 in 1992. The Z80-derived Z8S180 also found its way into an early pen-operated personal digital assistant, the Amstrad PenPad PDA600 in 1993. Hong Kong-based VTech produced a line of small laptop computers called 'Lasers' based on a Z80. The last two were the Laser PC5 and PC6. The Cidco MailStation Mivo 100, first released in 1999, was a stand-alone portable email device, with a Z80-based microcontroller. Texas Instruments produced a line of pocket organizers (ending in 2000) using Toshiba processors built around a Z80 core; the first of these was the TI PS-6200 and after a lengthy production run of some dozen models culminated in their PocketMate series. Embedded systems and consumer electronics The Zilog Z80 has long been a popular microprocessor in embedded systems and microcontroller cores, where it remains in widespread use today. Applications of the Z80 include uses in consumer electronics, industrial products, and electronic musical instruments. For example, Z80 was used in the groundbreaking music synthesizer Prophet-5, as well as in the first MIDI synthesizer Prophet 600. Casio used the Z80A in its PV-1000 video game console. A good number of early-1980s arcade video games, including the arcade game Pac-Man, contain Z80 CPUs. The Z80 was used in the Sega Master System and Sega Game Gear consoles. The Sega Genesis contains a Z80, with its | LXI H and so on), within the instruction mnemonic itself (LDA, LHLD and so on), or both at the same time (LDAX B, STAX D and so on). Illustration of four syntaxes, using samples of equivalent, or (for 8086) very similar, load and store instructions. The Z80 syntax uses parentheses around an expression to indicate that the value should be used as a memory address (as mentioned below), while the 8086 syntax uses brackets instead of ordinary parentheses for this purpose. Both Z80 and 8086 use the + sign to indicate that a constant is added to a base register to form an address. Note that the 8086 is not a complete superset of the Z80. BX is the only 8086 register pair that can be used as a pointer. New syntax Because Intel claimed a copyright on their assembly mnemonics, a new assembly syntax had to be developed for the Z80. This time a more systematic approach was used: All registers and register pairs are explicitly denoted by their full names Parentheses are consistently used to indicate "memory contents at" (constant address or variable pointer dereferencing) with the exception of one jump instruction JP (HL). JP (XY) is merely a variation of JP (HL) loading the new PC address. All load and store instructions use the same mnemonic name, LD, for LOAD (a return to the simplistic Datapoint 2200 vocabulary); other common instructions, such as ADD and INC, use the same mnemonic regardless of addressing mode or operand size. This is possible because the operands themselves carry enough information. These principles made it straightforward to find names and forms for all new Z80 instructions, as well as orthogonalizations of old ones, such as LD BC,(1234). Apart from naming differences, and despite a certain discrepancy in basic register structure, the Z80 and 8086 syntax are virtually isomorphic for a large portion of instructions. Only quite superficial similarities (such as the word MOV, or the letter X, for extended register) exist between the 8080 and 8086 assembly languages, although 8080 programs can be translated to 8086 assembly language by translator programs. Instruction set and encoding The Z80 uses 252 out of the available 256 codes as single byte opcodes ("root instruction" which are all inherited from the 8080); the four remaining codes are used extensively as opcode prefixes: CB and ED enable extra instructions, and DD or FD select IX+d or IY+d respectively (in some cases without displacement d) in place of HL. This scheme gives the Z80 a large number of permutations of instructions and registers; Zilog categorizes these into 158 different "instruction types", 78 of which are the same as those of the Intel 8080 (allowing operation of all 8080 programs on a Z80). The Zilog documentation further groups instructions into the following categories (most from the 8080, others entirely new like the Block and Bit instructions, and others 8080 instructions with more versatile addressing modes, like the 16-bit loads, I/O, rotates/shifts and relative jumps): Load and Exchange Block Transfer and Search Arithmetic and Logical Rotate and Shift Bit Manipulation (set, reset, test) Jump, Call and Return Input/Output Basic CPU Control No explicit multiply instructions are available in the original Z80, though registers A and HL can be multiplied by powers of two with ADD A,A and ADD HL,HL instructions (similarly IX and IY also). Shift instructions can also multiply or divide by powers of two. Different sizes and variants of additions, shifts, and rotates have somewhat differing effects on flags because most of the flag-changing properties of the 8080 were copied. However, the parity flag bit P of the 8080 (bit 2) is called P/V (parity/overflow) in the Z80 as it serves the additional purpose of a twos complement overflow indicator, a feature lacking in the 8080. Arithmetic instructions on the Z80 set it to indicate overflow rather than parity, while bitwise instructions still use it as a parity flag. (This introduces a subtle incompatibility of the Z80 with code written for the 8080, as the Z80 sometimes indicates signed overflow where the 8080 would indicate parity, possibly causing the logic of some practical 8080 software to fail on the Z80.) This new overflow flag is used for all new Z80-specific 16-bit operations (, ) as well as for 8-bit arithmetic operations, while the 16-bit operations inherited from the 8080 (, , ) do not affect it. Also, bit 1 of the flags register (a spare bit on the 8080) is used as a flag, N, that indicates whether the last arithmetic instruction executed was a subtraction or addition. The Z80 version of the instruction (Decimal Adjust Accumulator for BCD arithmetic) checks the N flag and behaves accordingly, so a (hypothetical) subtraction followed later by will yield a different result on an old 8080 than on the Z80. However, this would likely be erroneous code on the 8080, as was defined for addition only on that processor. The Z80 has six new instructions that can load the DE, BC, and SP register pairs from memory, and load memory from these three register pairs—unlike the 8080. As on the 8080, load instructions do not affect the flags (except for the special purpose I and R register loads). A result of a regular encoding (common with the 8080) is that each of the 8-bit registers can be loaded from themselves (e.g. ). This is effectively a . New block transfer instructions can move up to 64 kilobytes from memory to memory or between memory and I/O peripheral ports. Block instructions and (LoaD,Increment/Decrement,Repeat) use HL to point to the source address, DE to the destination address, and BC as a byte counter. Bytes are copied from source to destination, the pointers are incremented or decremented, and the byte counter is decremented until BC reaches zero. Non-repeating versions and move a single byte and bump the pointers and byte counter, which if it becomes zero resets the P/V flag. Corresponding memory-to-I/O instructions , , , , , , and operate similarly. The Z80 can input and output any register to an I/O port using register C to designate the port. (The 8080 only performs I/O through the accumulator A, using a direct port address specified in the instruction; a self-modifying code technique is required to use a variable 8080 port address.) The last group of block instructions perform a compare operation between the byte at (HL) and the accumulator A. Register pair DE is not used. The repeating versions and only terminate if BC goes to zero or a match is found. HL is left pointing to the byte after () or before () the matching byte. If no match is found the Z flag is reset. There are non-repeating versions and . Unlike the 8080, the Z80 can jump to a relative address ( instead of ) using a signed 8-bit displacement. Only the Zero and Carry flags can be tested for these new two-byte instructions. (All 8080 jumps and calls, conditional or not, are three-byte instructions.) A two-byte instruction specialized for program looping is also new to the Z80: (Decrement Jump if Non-Zero) takes a signed 8-bit displacement as an immediate operand. The B register is decremented, and if the result is nonzero then program execution jumps relative to PC; the flags remain unaltered. To perform an equivalent loop on an 8080 requires separate rement and conditional jump (to a two-byte absolute address) instructions (totalling four bytes), and the alters the flag register. The index register (IX/IY, often abbreviated XY) instructions can be useful for accessing data organised in fixed heterogenous structures (such as records) or at fixed offsets relative a variable base address (as in recursive stack frames) and can also reduce code size by removing the need for multiple short instructions using non-indexed registers. However, although they may save speed in some contexts when compared to long/complex "equivalent" sequences of simpler operations, they incur a lot of additional CPU time (e.g., 19 T states to access one indexed memory location vs. as little as 11 to access the same memory using HL and to point to the next). Thus, for simple or linear accesses of data, use of IX and IY tend to be slower and occupy more memory. Still, they may be useful in cases where the 'main' registers are all occupied, by removing the need to save/restore registers. Their officially undocumented 8-bit halves (see below) can be especially useful in this context, for they incur less slowdown than their 16-bit parents. Similarly, instructions for 16-bit additions are not particularly fast (11 clocks) in the original Z80 (being 1 clock slower than in the 8080/8085); nonetheless, they are about twice as fast as performing the same calculations using 8-bit operations, and equally important, they reduce register usage. It was not uncommon for programmers to "poke" different offset displacement bytes (which were typically calculated dynamically) into indexed instructions; this is an example of self-modifying code which was regular practice on nearly all early 8-bit processors with non-pipelined execution units. The index registers have a parallel instruction to , which is . This is often seen in stack-oriented languages like Forth which at the end of every Forth word (atomic subroutines comprising the language) must jump unconditionally back to their thread interpreter routines. Typically this jump instruction appears many hundreds of times in an application, and using rather than saves a byte and two T states for each occurrence. This naturally makes the index register unavailable for any other use, or else the need to constantly reload it would negate its efficiency. The 10-year-newer microcoded Z180 design could initially afford more "chip area", permitting a slightly more efficient implementation (using a wider ALU, among other things); similar things can be said for the Z800, Z280, and Z380. However, it was not until the fully pipelined eZ80 was launched in 2001 that those instructions finally became approximately as cycle-efficient as it is technically possible to make them, i.e. given the Z80 encodings combined with the capability to do an 8-bit read or write every clock cycle. Undocumented instructions The index registers, IX and IY, were intended as flexible 16 bit pointers, enhancing the ability to manipulate memory, stack frames and data structures. Officially, they were treated as 16-bit only. In reality they were implemented as a pair of 8-bit registers, in the same fashion as the HL register, which is accessible either as 16 bits or separately as the High and Low registers. The binary opcodes (machine language) were identical, but preceded by a new opcode prefix. Zilog published the opcodes and related mnemonics for the intended functions, but did not document the fact that every opcode that allowed manipulation of the H and L registers was equally valid for the 8 bit portions of the IX and IY registers. For example, the opcode 26h followed by an immediate byte value will load that value into the H register. Preceding this two-byte instruction with the IX register's opcode prefix, DD, would instead result in the most significant 8 bits of the IX register being loaded with that same value. A notable exception to this would be instructions similar to which make use of both the HL and IX or IY registers in the same instruction; in this case the DD prefix is only applied to the (IX+d) portion of the instruction. The halves of the XY registers could also hold operands for 8-bit arithmetic, logical and compare instructions, sparing the regular 8-bit registers for other use. The undocumented ability to increment and decrement the upper half of an index register made it easy to expand the range of the normal indexed instructions, without having to resort to the documented or . There are several other undocumented instructions as well. Undocumented or illegal opcodes are not detected by the Z80 and have various effects, some of which are useful. However, as they are not part of the formal definition of the instruction set, different implementations of the Z80 are not guaranteed (or especially likely) to work the same way for every undocumented opcode. Bugs The instruction does not conform to the Z80 documentation. Both the and instructions are supposed to leave the carry (C) flag unmodified. The instruction operates correctly; however, during the execution of the instruction, the carry flag takes the results of a spurious compare between the accumulator (A) and the last output of the instruction. Example code EXAMPLE 1: The following Z80 assembler source code is for a subroutine named HELLO_WORLD. This is an introductory program which will print a message to the video display and then exit. Though simple, it demonstrates how an assembler source code is formatted and interacts with the display hardware through a computer operating system. This is necessarily specific to a particular computer hardware, operating system and assembler software. The example used is the TRS-80 Model 4 running TRSDOS/LS-DOS 6.x, produced by Tandy/Radio Shack and Logical Systems, with most any assembler sold by Radio Shack or Misosys Inc. (Series I/EDTASM, ALDS, EDAS or MRAS with -GC switch). The principal features of this configuration are universal to Z80 assemblers, even under CP/M. EXAMPLE 2: The following Z80 assembly source code is for a subroutine named memcpy that copies a block of data bytes of a given size from one location to another. Important: the example code does not handle the case where the destination block overlaps the source; a serious limitation, but one that is irrelevant for some applications—such as, especially, when the source is in ROM and the destination in RAM, so they can never overlap. The sample code is extremely inefficient, intended to illustrate various instruction types, rather than best practices for speed. The data block is copied one byte at a time, and the data movement and looping logic utilizes 16-bit operations. Furthermore, the Z80 has a single instruction that will execute the entire loop (LDIR). Note that the assembled code is binary-compatible with the Intel 8080 and 8085 CPUs. Instruction execution Each instruction is executed in steps that are usually termed machine cycles (M-cycles), each of which can take between three and six clock periods (T-states). Each M-cycle corresponds roughly to one memory access or internal operation. Many instructions actually |
to the programmer. Video output was black-and-white, character-based. However, the ZX80 character set included some simple block-based graphics glyphs, allowing basic graphics to be accomplished, with some effort. One advantage to using monochrome video is that different colour broadcast standards (e.g. PAL, SECAM) simply weren't an issue when the system was sold outside the UK. Expansion Other than the built-in cassette and video ports, the only provided means of expansion was a slot opening at the rear of the case, which exposed an expansion bus edge connector on the motherboard. The same slot bus was continued on the ZX81, and later the ZX Spectrum, which encouraged a small cottage industry of expansion devices, including memory packs, printers and even floppy drives. The original Sinclair ZX80 RAM Pack held either 1, 2 or 3 KB of static RAM and a later model held 16 KB of dynamic RAM (DRAM). Following the ZX81's release, a ZX81 8 KB ROM was available to upgrade the ZX80 at a cost of around 20% of a real ZX81. It came with a thin keyboard overlay and a ZX81 manual. By simply taking off the top cover of the ZX80 and prying the old ROM from its socket and carefully inserting the new ROM and adding the keyboard overlay, the ZX80 would now function almost identically to the proper ZX81 – except for SLOW mode, due to the differences in hardware between the two models. The process was easily reversed to return the ZX80 to its original configuration. One common modification by hobbyist users was to attach a full-size keyboard, optionally moving the motherboard into a larger case. This had the dual advantages of making the machine easier to type on, while increasing ventilation to the motherboard. Versions The UK version of the machine was the standard, and only changes that were absolutely necessary to sell units in other markets were made. In fact, the only real change made in most markets involved the video output frequency (the ZX80 used an external power transformer, so differences in AC line frequency and outlet were not an issue to the machine itself). One outcome of this is that the machine had some keyboard keys and characters that were distinctly British: was used instead of , instead of or , and the character set and keyboard included the Pound symbol. Reception The ZX80 was widely advertised as the first personal computer for under £100 GBP (US$200.) Kilobaud Microcomputing liked the design of the preassembled version, and said that the screen flickering during input or output | ZX80. Both computers can be made by hobbyists using commercially available discrete logic chips or FPGAs. Firmware The ROM contained the Sinclair BASIC programming language, editor, and operating system. BASIC commands were not entered by typing them out but were instead selected somewhat similarly to a programmable graphing calculator - each key had a few different functions selected by both context and modes as well as with the shift key. Case The machine was mounted in a small white plastic case, with a one-piece blue membrane keyboard on the front. There were problems with durability, reliability and overheating (despite appearances, the black stripes visible on the top rear of the case are merely cosmetic, and are not ventilation slots). Video output Display was over an RF connection to a household television, and simple offline program storage was possible using a cassette recorder. The video display generator of the ZX80 used minimal hardware plus a combination of software to generate a video signal. This was an idea that was popularised by Don Lancaster in his 1978 book The TV Cheap Video Cookbook and his "TV Typewriter". As a result of this approach the ZX80 could only generate a picture when it was idle, i.e. waiting for a key to be pressed. When running a BASIC program, or even when pressing a key for any input, the display would, therefore, blank out momentarily while the processor was busy. This made moving graphics difficult since the program had to introduce a pause for input to display the next change in graphical output. The later ZX81 improved on this somewhat because it could run in a "slow" mode while creating a video signal, or in a "fast" mode without generating a video signal (typically used for lengthy calculations). Another issue was that the main RAM was used to store the screen display, with the result that the available screen size would gradually decrease as the size of a program increased (and vice versa); with 1 KB RAM, running a 990 byte program would result in only one row of characters being visible on the screen; a full screen (32×24) would leave only 384 bytes to the programmer. Video output was black-and-white, character-based. However, the ZX80 character set included some simple block-based graphics glyphs, allowing basic graphics to be accomplished, with some effort. One advantage to using monochrome video is that different colour broadcast standards (e.g. PAL, SECAM) simply weren't an issue when the system was sold outside the UK. Expansion Other than the built-in cassette and video ports, the only provided means of expansion was a slot opening at the rear of the |
128. The main menu screen lacked the Spectrum 128's "Tape Test" option, and the ROM was altered to account for a new 1986 Amstrad copyright message. These changes resulted in minor incompatibility problems with software that accessed ROM routines at certain addresses. Production costs had been reduced and the retail price dropped to £139–£149. The new keyboard did not include the BASIC keyword markings that were found on earlier Spectrums, except for the keywords LOAD, CODE and RUN which were useful for loading software. Instead, the +2 boasted a menu system, almost identical to the ZX Spectrum 128, where one could switch between 48K BASIC programming with the keywords, and 128K BASIC programming in which all words (keywords and otherwise) must be typed out in full (although the keywords are still stored internally as one character each). Despite these changes, the layout remained identical to that of the 128. The ZX Spectrum +2 power supply was a grey version of the ZX Spectrum+ and 128 power supply. ZX Spectrum +2A The ZX Spectrum +2A was a variant of the Spectrum +3, also released in 1987, and housed inside a black case. The Spectrum +2A/+3 motherboard (AMSTRAD part number Z70830) was designed such that it could be assembled without the floppy disk controller or associated logic and a +2 style "datacorder" connected. Originally, Amstrad planned to introduce an additional disk interface for the +2A/+2B called the AMSTRAD SI-1, but it never appeared. If an external disk drive was added, the "+2A" on the system OS menu would change to a +3. The power supply of the ZX Spectrum +2A used the same pinout as the +3. The power supply purchased with the +2A/B had "Sinclair +2" written on the case. ZX Spectrum +3 The ZX Spectrum +3, released in 1987, looked similar to the +2A but featured a built-in 3-inch floppy disk drive (like the Amstrad CPC 6128) instead of the tape drive, and was in a black case. It was launched in 1987, initially retailed for £249 and then later £199 and was the only Spectrum capable of running the CP/M operating system without additional hardware. The +3 saw the addition of two more 16 KB ROMs. One was home to the second part of the reorganised 128 ROM and the other hosted the +3's disk operating system. This was a modified version of Amstrad's PCWDOS (the disk access code used in LocoScript), called +3DOS. These two new 16 KB ROMs and the original two 16 KB ROMs were now physically implemented together as two 32 KB chips. To be able to run CP/M, which requires RAM at the bottom of the address space, the bank-switching was further improved, allowing the ROM to be paged out for another 16 KB of RAM. Such core changes brought incompatibilities: Removal of several lines on the expansion bus edge connector (video, power, and IORQGE); caused many external devices problems; some such as the VTX5000 modem could be used via the "FixIt" device. Dividing ROMCS into two lines, to disable both ROMs. Reading a non-existent I/O port no longer returned the last attribute; caused certain games such as Arkanoid to be unplayable. Memory timing changes; certain RAM banks were now contended causing high-speed colour-changing effects to fail. The keypad scanning routines from the ROM were removed. Move 1 byte address in ROM. Some older 48K and 128K games were incompatible with the machine. The ZX Interface 1 was incompatible due to differences in ROM and expansion connector, making it impossible to connect and use the Microdrive units. There was a regression in sound quality from the previous 128K models – an error with a resistor placement meant sound was distorted. The ZX Spectrum +3 power supply provides the same voltages as the one supplied with +2A/B. This power supply has the same DIN connector so can be used with the +2A/B. The power supply purchased with the +3 had "Sinclair +3" written on the case. Production of the +3 ceased in December 1990, believed to be in response to Amstrad relaunching their CPC range. At the time, it was estimated about 15% of ZX Spectrums sold had been +3 models. Production of the +2B (the only other model then still in production) continued, as it was believed not to be in competition with other computers in Amstrad's product range. ZX Spectrum +2B and +3B The ZX Spectrum +2B and ZX Spectrum +3B were functionally similar in design to the Spectrum +2A and +3. The main electronic differences were changes to the generation of the audio output signal to resolve problems with clipping. Unlike the +2A and +3, the Spectrum +2B and +3B do not share a common motherboard. The +2B board (AMSTRAD part number Z70833) has no provision for floppy disk controller circuitry and the +3B motherboard (Amstrad part number Z70835) has no provision for connecting an internal tape drive. Production of all Amstrad Spectrum models ended in 1992. Clones and re-creations Official clones Sinclair licensed the Spectrum design to Timex Corporation in the United States, that sold several machines under the Timex Sinclair brand. An enhanced version of the original Spectrum, with better sound, graphics and other modifications was marketed in the US by Timex as the Timex Sinclair 2068. Timex's derivatives were largely incompatible with Sinclair systems. Some of the Timex innovations were later adopted by Sinclair Research. A case in point was the abortive Pandora portable Spectrum, whose ULA had the high resolution video mode pioneered in the T/S 2068. Pandora had a flat-screen monitor and Microdrives and was intended to be Sinclair's business portable. After Amstrad bought the computer business of Sinclair Research, Sir Clive retained the rights to the Pandora project, and it evolved into the Cambridge Computer Z88, launched in 1987. Starting in 1984, Timex of Portugal developed and produced several Timex branded computers, including the Timex Computer 2048, highly compatible with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, which was very successful in both Portugal and Poland. An NTSC version was also made, initially intended for a United States release, but it was sold only in Chile, Ecuador and Argentina. Timex of Portugal also made a PAL version of the T/S 2068, called the Timex Computer 2068 (or TC 2068 for short) which had different buffers for both the ULA and the CPU, which significantly increased the compatibility with ZX Spectrum software when compared to the North American model (the T/S 2068). The expansion port was also modified and made to be 100% compatible with the ZX Spectrum's, which bypassed the need for a "Twister Board" expansion that the T/S 2068 needed to make it compatible with ZX Spectrum expansion hardware. It also had the AY sound output routed to the monitor/TV speakers instead of the internal twitter. The software developed for the TC 2068 is completely compatible with the T/S 2068, since the ROMs weren't altered. Timex of Portugal also developed a ZX Spectrum "emulator" on cartridge form that mapped the first 16 KB exactly like the earlier TC 2048 computer did. Several other upgrades were made available, including a BASIC64 cartridge that enabled the TC 2068 to use high resolution (512x192) modes. Despite having an AY-3-8912 sound chip, it's not connected in the same ports as in the ZX Spectrum 128K, rendering the TC 2048 incompatible with the AY sound that the Spectrum 128K games produced. Due to all its advantages compared to the usual T/S 2068, a North American company, Zebra Systems, licensed the Timex TC 2068 and sold it in the United States as the Zebra Silver Avenger. They also sold the FDD 3000 as the Zebra FDD 3000 in a silver case (as opposed to the European black cases) to match their colour scheme. Timex of Portugal was working on a successor to the TC 2068 called the TC 3256, using a Z80A CPU and featuring 256 KB of RAM, which would feature a ZX Spectrum BASIC operating mode and a CP/M operating mode, but the company pulled the plug on its development as the 8-bit market was no longer profitable by the end of 1989. Only one complete and fully working prototype of the TC3256 was made. In India, deciBells Electronics introduced a licensed version of the Spectrum+ in 1988. Dubbed the "dB Spectrum+", it did reasonably well in the Indian market and sold many units until 1990, when the market died away. Unofficial clones Numerous unofficial Spectrum clones were produced, especially in the Eastern and Central European countries (e.g. in USSR, Romania, and Czechoslovakia) where several models were produced (such as the Tim-S, HC85, HC91, Cobra, Junior, CIP, CIP 3, Jet, Didaktik Gama), some featuring CP/M and a 5.25"/3.5" floppy disk. There were also clones produced in South America (e.g. Microdigital TK90X and TK95, made in Brazil and the Czerweny CZ, made in Argentina). In the Soviet Union, ZX Spectrum clones were assembled by thousands of small start-ups and distributed through poster ads and street stalls. Over 50 such clone models existed. Some of them are still being produced, such as the Pentagon and ATM Turbo. In the UK, Spectrum peripheral vendor Miles Gordon Technology (MGT) released the SAM Coupé as a potential successor with some Spectrum compatibility. By this point, the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST had taken hold of the market, leaving MGT in eventual receivership. Recreations In 2013, an FPGA-based redesign of the original ZX Spectrum known as the ZX Uno, was formally announced. All of its hardware, firmware and software are open source, released as Creative Commons license Share-alike. The use of a Spartan FPGA allows the system to not only re-implement the ZX Spectrum, but many other 8 bit computers and games consoles The device can also run modern open FPGA machines such as the Chloe 280SE. The Uno was successfully crowdfunded in 2016 and the first boards went on sale during the same year. In January 2014, Elite Systems, who produced a successful range of software for the original ZX Spectrum in the 1980s, announced plans for a Spectrum-themed bluetooth keyboard that would attach to mobile devices. The company used a crowdfunding campaign to fund the Recreated ZX Spectrum, which would be compatible with games the company had already released on iTunes and Google Play. Elite Systems took down its Spectrum Collection application the following month, due to complaints from authors of the original 1980's game software that they had not been paid for the content. Wired described the finished device, which was styled as an original Spectrum 48k keyboard, as "absolutely gorgeous" but said it was ultimately more of an expensive novelty than an actual Spectrum. In July 2019, Eurogamer reported that many of the orders had yet to be delivered due to a dispute between Elite Systems and their manufacturer, Eurotech. Later in 2014, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega retro video game console was announced by Retro Computers Ltd and crowdfunded on Indiegogo with the backing of Clive Sinclair. The Vega, released in 2015, took the form of a handheld TV game but the lack of a full keyboard led to criticism from reviewers due to the large number of text adventures supplied with the device. Most reviewers branded the device cheap and uncomfortable to use The follow-up, the ZX Spectrum Vega+ was designed as a handheld game console. Despite reaching its crowdfunding target in March 2016, the company failed to fulfil the majority of orders. On 30 July 2018, Eurogamer reported that one backer had received a ZX Vega+ console and quoted them as being "quite disappointed" that "the few supplied sample games don't work" and that the "build quality's not the greatest". Reviewing the Vega+, The Register criticised numerous aspects and features of the machine, including its design and build quality and summed up by saying that the "entire feel is plasticky and inconsequential". Retro Computers Ltd was wound up on 1 February 2019. The ZX Spectrum Next is an expanded and updated version of the ZX Spectrum computer implemented with FPGA technology funded by a Kickstarter campaign in April 2017, with the board-only computer delivered to backers later that year. The finished machine, including a case designed by Rick Dickinson who died during the development of the project, was released to backers in February 2020. MagPi called it "a lovely piece of kit", noting that it is "well-designed and well-built: authentic to the original, and with technology that nods to the past while remaining functional and relevant in the modern age". PC Pro magazine called the Next "undeniably impressive" while noting that the printed manual lacked an index, and that some features are "not quite ready". A further Kickstarter for an improved revision of the hardware was funded in August 2020. Peripherals Several peripherals were marketed by Sinclair: the ZX Printer was already on the market, as the ZX Spectrum expansion bus was partially backwards-compatible with that of the ZX81. The ZX Interface 1 add-on module included 8 KB of ROM, an RS-232 serial port, a proprietary LAN interface (called ZX Net), and an interface for the connection of up to eight ZX Microdrives – somewhat unreliable but speedy tape-loop cartridge storage devices released in July 1983. These were used in a revised version on the Sinclair QL, whose storage format was electrically compatible but logically incompatible with the Spectrum's. Sinclair also released the ZX Interface 2 which added two joystick ports and a ROM cartridge port. There were a plethora of third-party hardware addons. The better known of these included the Kempston joystick interface, the Morex Peripherals Centronics/RS-232 interface, the Currah Microspeech unit (speech synthesis), Videoface Digitiser, RAM pack, the Cheetah Marketing SpecDrum, a drum machine, and the Multiface, a snapshot and disassembly tool from Romantic Robot. Keyboards were especially popular in view of the original's notorious "dead flesh" feel. There were disk drive interfaces, such as the Abbeydale Designers/Watford Electronics SPDOS, Abbeydale Designers/Kempston KDOS and Opus Discovery. The SPDOS and KDOS interfaces were the first to come bundled with office productivity software (Tasword Word Processor, Masterfile database and Omnicalc spreadsheet). This bundle, together with OCP's Stock Control, Finance and Payroll systems, introduced small businesses to a streamlined, computerised operation. The most popular floppy disk systems (except in East Europe) were the DISCiPLE and +D systems released by Miles Gordon Technology in 1987 and 1988 respectively. Both systems had the ability to store memory images onto disk snapshots could later be used to restore the Spectrum to its exact previous state. They were both compatible with the Microdrive command syntax, which made porting existing software much simpler. During the mid-1980s, Telemap Group Ltd | 26,000 of these original boards were manufactured, subsequent serial number analysis shows that only 16,000 were produced, almost all of which fell in the serial number range 001-000001 to 001-016000. An online tool now exists to allow users to ascertain the likely issue number of their ZX Spectrum by inputting the serial number. The Sinclair models featured audio line in and out, in the form of an "ear" and "mic" socket. An external tape recorder was needed to load the majority of software released, or the ZX Microdrive. Either socket could be connected to headphones or an amplifier as an audio output, although this would not disable the internal speaker. The original ZX Spectrum model experienced numerous changes to its motherboard design; mainly to improve manufacturing efficiencies, but also to correct bugs from previous boards. Another issue was with the Spectrum's power supply. In March 1983, Sinclair issued an "URGENT" recall warning for all owners of models bought after 1 January 1983. Plugs with a plain (rather than textured) surface were at risk of causing shock, and were asked to be sent back to Sinclair's office in Broad Lane, Cottenham. It's not known how many power supplies were returned, and how many still exist in the wild. ZX Spectrum+ Planning of the ZX Spectrum+ started in June 1984, and was released on October 15. This 48 KB Spectrum (development code-name TB) introduced a new QL-style case with an injection-moulded keyboard and a reset button that was basically a switch that shorted across the CPU reset capacitor. Electronically, it was identical to the previous 48 KB model. It was possible to change the system boards between the original case and the Spectrum+ case. It retailed for . A DIY conversion-kit for older machines was available. Early on, the machine outsold the rubber-key model 2:1; however, some retailers reported a failure rate of up to 30%, compared with a more usual 5–6% for the older model. In early 1985, the original Spectrum was officially discontinued and the ZX Spectrum+ was reduced in price to . ZX Spectrum 128 In 1985, Sinclair developed the ZX Spectrum 128 (code-named Derby) in conjunction with their Spanish distributor Investrónica (a subsidiary of El Corte Inglés department store group). Investrónica had helped adapt the ZX Spectrum+ to the Spanish market after the Spanish government introduced a special tax on all computers with 64 KB RAM or less, and a law which obliged all computers sold in Spain to support the Spanish alphabet and show messages in Spanish. The appearance of the ZX Spectrum 128 was similar to the ZX Spectrum+, with the exception of a large external heatsink for the internal 7805 voltage regulator added to the right hand end of the case, replacing the internal heatsink in previous versions. This external heatsink led to the system's nickname, "The Toast Rack". New features included 128 KB RAM with RAM disc commands 'save !"name"', three-channel audio via the AY-3-8912 chip, MIDI compatibility, an RS-232 serial port, an RGB monitor port, 32 KB of ROM including an improved BASIC editor, and an external keypad. The machine was simultaneously presented for the first time and launched in September 1985 at the SIMO '85 trade show in Spain, with a price of 44,250 pesetas. Because of the large number of unsold Spectrum+ models, Sinclair decided not to start selling in the UK until January 1986 at a price of . No external keypad was available for the UK release, although the ROM routines to use it and the port itself remained. The Z80 processor used in the Spectrum has a 16-bit address bus, which means only 64 KB of memory can be directly addressed. To facilitate the extra 80 KB of RAM the designers used bank switching so the new memory would be available as eight pages of 16 KB at the top of the address space. The same technique was used to page between the new 16 KB editor ROM and the original 16 KB BASIC ROM at the bottom of the address space. The new sound chip and MIDI out abilities were exposed to the BASIC programming language with the command PLAY and a new command SPECTRUM was added to switch the machine into 48K mode, keeping the current BASIC program intact (although there is no command to switch back to 128K mode). To enable BASIC programmers to access the additional memory, a RAM disk was created where files could be stored in the additional 80 KB of RAM. The new commands took the place of two existing user-defined-character spaces causing compatibility problems with certain BASIC programs. The ZX Spectrum 128 had no internal speaker, unlike its predecessors. Sound was produced from the television speaker instead. The Spanish version had the "128K" logo in white; the British one had the same logo in red. Amstrad models ZX Spectrum +2 The ZX Spectrum +2 was Amstrad's first Spectrum, coming shortly after their purchase of the Spectrum range and "Sinclair" brand in 1986. The machine featured an all-new grey case featuring a spring-loaded keyboard, dual joystick ports, and a built-in cassette recorder dubbed the "Datacorder" (like the Amstrad CPC 464), but was in most respects identical to the ZX Spectrum 128. The main menu screen lacked the Spectrum 128's "Tape Test" option, and the ROM was altered to account for a new 1986 Amstrad copyright message. These changes resulted in minor incompatibility problems with software that accessed ROM routines at certain addresses. Production costs had been reduced and the retail price dropped to £139–£149. The new keyboard did not include the BASIC keyword markings that were found on earlier Spectrums, except for the keywords LOAD, CODE and RUN which were useful for loading software. Instead, the +2 boasted a menu system, almost identical to the ZX Spectrum 128, where one could switch between 48K BASIC programming with the keywords, and 128K BASIC programming in which all words (keywords and otherwise) must be typed out in full (although the keywords are still stored internally as one character each). Despite these changes, the layout remained identical to that of the 128. The ZX Spectrum +2 power supply was a grey version of the ZX Spectrum+ and 128 power supply. ZX Spectrum +2A The ZX Spectrum +2A was a variant of the Spectrum +3, also released in 1987, and housed inside a black case. The Spectrum +2A/+3 motherboard (AMSTRAD part number Z70830) was designed such that it could be assembled without the floppy disk controller or associated logic and a +2 style "datacorder" connected. Originally, Amstrad planned to introduce an additional disk interface for the +2A/+2B called the AMSTRAD SI-1, but it never appeared. If an external disk drive was added, the "+2A" on the system OS menu would change to a +3. The power supply of the ZX Spectrum +2A used the same pinout as the +3. The power supply purchased with the +2A/B had "Sinclair +2" written on the case. ZX Spectrum +3 The ZX Spectrum +3, released in 1987, looked similar to the +2A but featured a built-in 3-inch floppy disk drive (like the Amstrad CPC 6128) instead of the tape drive, and was in a black case. It was launched in 1987, initially retailed for £249 and then later £199 and was the only Spectrum capable of running the CP/M operating system without additional hardware. The +3 saw the addition of two more 16 KB ROMs. One was home to the second part of the reorganised 128 ROM and the other hosted the +3's disk operating system. This was a modified version of Amstrad's PCWDOS (the disk access code used in LocoScript), called +3DOS. These two new 16 KB ROMs and the original two 16 KB ROMs were now physically implemented together as two 32 KB chips. To be able to run CP/M, which requires RAM at the bottom of the address space, the bank-switching was further improved, allowing the ROM to be paged out for another 16 KB of RAM. Such core changes brought incompatibilities: Removal of several lines on the expansion bus edge connector (video, power, and IORQGE); caused many external devices problems; some such as the VTX5000 modem could be used via the "FixIt" device. Dividing ROMCS into two lines, to disable both ROMs. Reading a non-existent I/O port no longer returned the last attribute; caused certain games such as Arkanoid to be unplayable. Memory timing changes; certain RAM banks were now contended causing high-speed colour-changing effects to fail. The keypad scanning routines from the ROM were removed. Move 1 byte address in ROM. Some older 48K and 128K games were incompatible with the machine. The ZX Interface 1 was incompatible due to differences in ROM and expansion connector, making it impossible to connect and use the Microdrive units. There was a regression in sound quality from the previous 128K models – an error with a resistor placement meant sound was distorted. The ZX Spectrum +3 power supply provides the same voltages as the one supplied with +2A/B. This power supply has the same DIN connector so can be used with the +2A/B. The power supply purchased with the +3 had "Sinclair +3" written on the case. Production of the +3 ceased in December 1990, believed to be in response to Amstrad relaunching their CPC range. At the time, it was estimated about 15% of ZX Spectrums sold had been +3 models. Production of the +2B (the only other model then still in production) continued, as it was believed not to be in competition with other computers in Amstrad's product range. ZX Spectrum +2B and +3B The ZX Spectrum +2B and ZX Spectrum +3B were functionally similar in design to the Spectrum +2A and +3. The main electronic differences were changes to the generation of the audio output signal to resolve problems with clipping. Unlike the +2A and +3, the Spectrum +2B and +3B do not share a common motherboard. The +2B board (AMSTRAD part number Z70833) has no provision for floppy disk controller circuitry and the +3B motherboard (Amstrad part number Z70835) has no provision for connecting an internal tape drive. Production of all Amstrad Spectrum models ended in 1992. Clones and re-creations Official clones Sinclair licensed the Spectrum design to Timex Corporation in the United States, that sold several machines under the Timex Sinclair brand. An enhanced version of the original Spectrum, with better sound, graphics and other modifications was marketed in the US by Timex as the Timex Sinclair 2068. Timex's derivatives were largely incompatible with Sinclair systems. Some of the Timex innovations were later adopted by Sinclair Research. A case in point was the abortive Pandora portable Spectrum, whose ULA had the high resolution video mode pioneered in the T/S 2068. Pandora had a flat-screen monitor and Microdrives and was intended to be Sinclair's business portable. After Amstrad bought the computer business of Sinclair Research, Sir Clive retained the rights to the Pandora project, and it evolved into the Cambridge Computer Z88, launched in 1987. Starting in 1984, Timex of Portugal developed and produced several Timex branded computers, including the Timex Computer 2048, highly compatible with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum 48K, which was very successful in both Portugal and Poland. An NTSC version was also made, initially intended for a United States release, but it was sold only in Chile, Ecuador and Argentina. Timex of Portugal also made a PAL version of the T/S 2068, called the Timex Computer 2068 (or TC 2068 for short) which had different buffers for both the ULA and the CPU, which significantly increased the compatibility with ZX Spectrum software when compared to the North American model (the T/S 2068). The expansion port was also modified and made to be 100% compatible with the ZX Spectrum's, which bypassed the need for a "Twister Board" expansion that the T/S 2068 needed to make it compatible with ZX Spectrum expansion hardware. It also had the AY sound output routed to the monitor/TV speakers instead of the internal twitter. The software developed for the TC 2068 is completely compatible with the T/S 2068, since the ROMs weren't altered. Timex of Portugal also developed a ZX Spectrum "emulator" on cartridge form that mapped the first 16 KB exactly like the earlier TC 2048 computer did. Several other upgrades were made available, including a BASIC64 cartridge that enabled the TC 2068 to use high resolution (512x192) modes. Despite having an AY-3-8912 sound chip, it's not connected in the same ports as in the ZX Spectrum 128K, rendering the TC 2048 incompatible with the AY sound that the Spectrum 128K games produced. Due to all its advantages compared to the usual T/S 2068, a North American company, Zebra Systems, licensed the Timex TC 2068 and sold it in the United States as the Zebra Silver Avenger. They also sold the FDD 3000 as the Zebra FDD 3000 in a silver case (as opposed to the European black cases) to match their colour scheme. Timex of Portugal was working on a successor to the TC 2068 called the TC 3256, using a Z80A CPU and featuring 256 KB of RAM, which would feature a ZX Spectrum BASIC operating mode and a CP/M operating mode, but the company pulled the plug on its development as the 8-bit market was no longer profitable by the end of 1989. Only one complete and fully working prototype of the TC3256 was made. In India, deciBells Electronics introduced a licensed version of the Spectrum+ in 1988. Dubbed the "dB Spectrum+", it did reasonably well in the Indian market and sold many units until 1990, when the market died away. Unofficial clones Numerous unofficial Spectrum clones were produced, especially in the Eastern and Central European countries (e.g. in USSR, Romania, and Czechoslovakia) where several models were produced (such as the Tim-S, HC85, HC91, Cobra, Junior, CIP, CIP 3, Jet, Didaktik Gama), some featuring CP/M and a 5.25"/3.5" floppy disk. There were also clones produced in South America (e.g. Microdigital TK90X and TK95, made in Brazil and the Czerweny CZ, made in Argentina). In the Soviet Union, ZX Spectrum clones were assembled by thousands of small start-ups and distributed through poster ads and street stalls. Over 50 such clone models existed. Some of them are still being produced, such as the Pentagon and ATM Turbo. In the UK, Spectrum peripheral vendor Miles Gordon Technology (MGT) released the SAM Coupé as a potential successor with some Spectrum compatibility. By this point, the Commodore Amiga and Atari ST had taken hold of the market, leaving MGT in eventual receivership. Recreations In 2013, an FPGA-based redesign of the original ZX Spectrum known as the ZX Uno, was formally announced. All of its hardware, firmware and software are open source, released as Creative Commons license Share-alike. The use of a Spartan FPGA allows the system to not only re-implement the ZX Spectrum, but many other 8 bit computers and games consoles The device can also run modern open FPGA machines such as the Chloe 280SE. The Uno was successfully crowdfunded in 2016 and the first boards went on sale during the same year. In January 2014, Elite Systems, who produced a successful range of software for the original ZX Spectrum in the 1980s, announced plans for a Spectrum-themed bluetooth keyboard that would attach to mobile devices. The company used a crowdfunding campaign to fund the Recreated ZX Spectrum, which would be compatible with games the company had already released on iTunes and Google Play. Elite Systems took down its Spectrum Collection application the following month, due to complaints from authors of the original 1980's game software that they had not been paid for the content. Wired described the finished device, which was styled as an original Spectrum 48k keyboard, as "absolutely gorgeous" but said it was ultimately more of an expensive novelty than an actual Spectrum. In July 2019, Eurogamer reported that many of the orders had yet to be delivered due to a dispute between Elite Systems and their manufacturer, Eurotech. Later in 2014, the Sinclair ZX Spectrum Vega retro video game console was announced by Retro Computers Ltd and crowdfunded on Indiegogo with the backing of Clive Sinclair. The Vega, released in 2015, took the form of a handheld TV game but the lack of a full keyboard led to criticism from reviewers due to the large number of text adventures supplied with the device. Most reviewers branded the device cheap and uncomfortable to use The follow-up, the ZX Spectrum Vega+ was designed as a handheld game console. Despite reaching its crowdfunding target in March 2016, the company failed to fulfil the majority of orders. On 30 July 2018, Eurogamer reported that one backer had received a ZX Vega+ console and quoted them as being "quite disappointed" that "the few supplied sample games don't work" and that the "build quality's not the greatest". Reviewing the Vega+, The Register criticised numerous aspects and features of the machine, including its design and build quality and summed up by saying that the "entire feel is plasticky and inconsequential". Retro Computers Ltd was wound up on 1 February 2019. The ZX Spectrum Next is an expanded and updated version of the ZX Spectrum computer implemented with FPGA technology funded by a Kickstarter campaign in April 2017, with the board-only computer delivered to backers later that year. The finished machine, including a case designed by Rick Dickinson who died during the development of the project, was released |
"Zechariah" mentioned by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew, "from the blood of innocent Abel to the blood of Zacharias the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar". Jesus' words are interpreted as: from the first victim of a murder (Abel), to the last martyr (Zechariah), by which Zechariah ben Jehoiada was more likely meant, as representing the last of the martyrs recorded in the Masoretic Text. However, some scholars still identify him with the later prophet Zechariah, rather | the eleventh of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Prophet The Book of Zechariah introduces him as the son of Berechiah, the son of Iddo. The Book of Ezra names Zechariah as the son of Iddo, but it is likely that Berechiah was Zechariah's father, and Iddo was his grandfather. His prophetical career probably began in the second year of Darius the Great, king of the Achaemenid Empire (520 BC). His greatest concern appears to have been with the building of the Second Temple. Possible allusion by Jesus He was probably |
sent by a follow-up message without the need to retrigger the note. Conventionally, messages could also address a whole Instrument or an entire Family, as an equivalent to channel messages. Some MDPL messages were direct carryovers from MIDI, given more pronounceable names in order to avoid ambiguity, but most messages were new and based on a very different, although innovative, control logic. The resolution of message parameters could be any multiple of 8-bit, potentially extending 7-bit resolution typical of MIDI to 32 or more bits. There were also some higher-level messages corresponding to advanced program parameters, such as modulation, envelopes and 3D spatialization of voices, as well as instrument-specific messages for guitar, wind, and drum controllers. Message types The basic synthesis control messages were: Articulation - 'note on/off' in MIDI Pitch (note number and offset in 0.2 cents) Frequency (in Hz) Loudness - 'velocity' in MIDI Amplitude - 'volume' in MIDI Even/Odd Harmonic balance Pitched/Unpitched balance Roughness Attack character Inharmonicity Pan Left/Right, Up/Down, Front/Back Spatialization distance and azimuth/elevation angles Program Change - immediately and future notes Timbre space X/Y/Z Multiple output levels Time tag Modulation rate/depth/wavetype Controller (performance-oriented) messages included: Key Velocity/Number/Pressure Pitch Bend Wheel Mod Wheel 1/2/3 Switch pedal 1 (Sustain)/ 2 (Soft pedal) /3 /4 Continuous pedal 1 (Volume)/2 /3 /4 Pick/bow Velocity/Position/Pressure Fret/fingerboard Position/Pressure Wind flow or pressure (breath controller) Embouchure (bite) Wind controller keypads Lip pressure/frequency Drum head striking point X/Y position and distance/angle from center X/Y/X position in space Velocity in X/Y/Z dimension Acceleration in X/Y/Z dimension Outcome of the project Although ZIPI provided many | notes, resulting in up to 1,016,127 individual note addresses. Instruments in a Family could be assembled from different physical devices. This arrangement allowed fine per-note control of synthesis parameters, especially useful for non-standard scenarios such as MIDI wind controller or MIDI guitar controller. For example, instant note-on capability could mask the deficiencies of note detection (tracking) in guitar MIDI systems, especially on lower strings. When triggered, the note would begin sounding as a noise or an arbitrary low note until the controller logic had tracked the actual pitch, which would be sent by a follow-up message without the need to retrigger the note. Conventionally, messages could also address a whole Instrument or an entire Family, as an equivalent to channel messages. Some MDPL messages were direct carryovers from MIDI, given more pronounceable names in order to avoid ambiguity, but most messages were new and based on a very different, although innovative, control logic. The resolution of message parameters could be any multiple of 8-bit, potentially extending 7-bit resolution typical of MIDI to 32 or more bits. There were also some higher-level messages corresponding to advanced program parameters, such as modulation, envelopes and 3D spatialization of voices, as well as instrument-specific messages for guitar, wind, and drum controllers. Message types The basic synthesis control messages were: Articulation - 'note on/off' in MIDI Pitch (note number and offset in 0.2 cents) Frequency (in Hz) Loudness - 'velocity' in MIDI Amplitude - 'volume' in MIDI Even/Odd Harmonic balance Pitched/Unpitched balance Roughness Attack character Inharmonicity Pan Left/Right, Up/Down, Front/Back Spatialization distance and azimuth/elevation angles Program Change - immediately and future notes Timbre space X/Y/Z Multiple output levels Time tag Modulation rate/depth/wavetype Controller (performance-oriented) messages included: Key Velocity/Number/Pressure Pitch Bend Wheel Mod Wheel 1/2/3 Switch pedal 1 (Sustain)/ 2 (Soft pedal) /3 /4 Continuous pedal 1 (Volume)/2 /3 /4 Pick/bow Velocity/Position/Pressure Fret/fingerboard Position/Pressure Wind flow or pressure (breath controller) Embouchure (bite) Wind controller keypads Lip pressure/frequency Drum head |
a long and continuous chain, from the Biblical era until its redaction by Shimon bar Yochai. Some fully accept the claims that the Kabbalah's teachings are in essence a revelation from God to the Biblical patriarch Abraham, Moses and other ancient figures, but were never printed and made publicly available until the time of the Zohar's medieval publication. The greatest acceptance of this sequence of events is held within Haredi Judaism, especially Chasidic groups. R' Yechiel Michel Epstein (d.1908), and R' Yisrael Meir Kagan (d.1933) both believed in the authenticity of the Zohar. Rabbis Eliyahu Dessler (d.1953) and Gedaliah Nadel (d.2004) maintained that it is acceptable to believe that the Zohar was not written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai and that it had a late authorship. Within Orthodox Judaism the traditional view that Shimon bar Yochai was the author is prevalent. R' Menachem Mendel Kasher in a 1958 article in the periodical Sinai argues against the claims of Gershom Scholem that the Zohar was written in the 13th Century by R' Moses de León. He writes: Many statements in the works of the Rishonim (medieval commentors who preceded de León) refer to Medrashim that we are not aware of. He writes that these are in fact references to the Zohar. This has also been pointed out by R' David Luria in his work "Kadmus Sefer Ha'Zohar". The Zohar's major opponent Elijah Delmedigo refers to the Zohar as having existed for "only" 300 years. Even he agrees that it was extant at the time of R' Moses de León. He cites a document from R' Yitchok M' Acco who was sent by the Ramban to investigate the Zohar. The document brings witnesses that attest to the existence of the manuscript. It is impossible to accept that R' Moses de León managed to forge a work within the scope of the Zohar (1700 pages) within a period of six years as Scholem claims. A comparison between the Zohar and de León's other works show major stylistic differences. Although he made use of his manuscript of the Zohar, many ideas presented in his works contradict or ignore ideas mentioned in the Zohar. Luria also points this out. Many of the Midrashic works achieved their final redaction in the Geonic period. Some of the anachronistic terminologies of the Zohar may date from that time. Out of the thousands of words used in the Zohar, Scholem finds two anachronistic terms and nine cases of ungrammatical usage of words. This proves that the majority of the Zohar was written within the accepted time frame and only a small amount was added later (in the Geonic period as mentioned). Some hard to understand terms may be attributed to acronyms or codes. He finds corollaries to such a practice in other ancient manuscripts. The "borrowings" from medieval commentaries may be explained in a simple manner. It is not unheard of that a note written on the side of a text should on later copying be added to the main part of the text. The Talmud itself has Geonic additions from such a cause. Certainly, this would apply to the Zohar to which there did not exist other manuscripts to compare it with. He cites an ancient manuscript that refers to a book Sod Gadol that seems to in fact be the Zohar. Concerning the Zohar's lack of knowledge of the land of Israel, Scholem bases this on the many references to a city Kaputkia (Cappadocia) which he states was situated in Turkey, not in Israel. Another theory as to the authorship of the Zohar is that it was transmitted like the Talmud before it was transcribed: as an oral tradition reapplied to changing conditions and eventually recorded. This view believes that the Zohar was not written by Shimon bar Yochai, but is a holy work because it consisted of his principles. Jews in non-Orthodox Jewish denominations accept the conclusions of historical academic studies on the Zohar and other kabbalistic texts. As such, most non-Orthodox Jews have long viewed the Zohar as pseudepigraphy and apocrypha. Nonetheless, many accepted that some of its contents had meaning for modern Judaism. Siddurim edited by non-Orthodox Jews often have excerpts from the Zohar and other kabbalistic works, e.g. Siddur Sim Shalom edited by Jules Harlow, even though the editors are not kabbalists. In recent years there has been a growing willingness of non-Orthodox Jews to study the Zohar, and a growing minority have a position that is similar to the Modern Orthodox position described above. This seems pronounced among Jews who follow the path of Jewish Renewal. Modern critical views The first systematic and critical academic proof for the authorship of Moses de León was given by Adolf Jellinek in his 1851 monograph "Moses ben Shem-tob de León und sein Verhältnis zum Sohar" and later adopted by the historian Heinrich Graetz in his "History of the Jews", vol. 7. The young kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem began his career at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a famous lecture in which he promised to refute Graetz and Jellinek, but after years of strained research Gershom Scholem contended in 1941 that de León himself was the most likely author of the Zohar. Among other things, Scholem noticed the Zohar's frequent errors in Aramaic grammar, its suspicious traces of Spanish words and sentence patterns, and its lack of knowledge of the land of Israel. Other Jewish scholars have also suggested the possibility that the Zohar was written by a group of people, including de León. This theory generally presents de León as having been the leader of a mystical school, whose collective effort resulted in the Zohar. Even if de León wrote the text, the entire contents of the book may not be fraudulent. Parts of it may be based on older works, and it was a common practice to ascribe the authorship of a document to an ancient rabbi in order to give the document more weight. It is possible that Moses de León considered himself to be channeling the words of Rabbi Shimon. In the Encyclopaedia Judaica article written by Professor Gershom Scholem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem there is an extensive discussion of the sources cited in the Zohar. Scholem views the author of the Zohar as having based the Zohar on a wide variety of pre-existing Jewish sources, while at the same time inventing a number of fictitious works that the Zohar supposedly quotes, e.g., the Sifra de-Adam, the Sifra de-Hanokh, the Sifra di-Shelomo Malka, the Sifra de-Rav Hamnuna Sava, the Sifra de-Rav Yeiva Sava, the Sifra de-Aggadeta, the Raza de-Razin and many others. Scholem's views are widely held as accurate among historians of the Kabbalah, but like all textual historical investigations, are not uncritically accepted; most of the following conclusions are still accepted as accurate, although academic analysis of the original texts has progressed dramatically since Scholem's ground-breaking research. Scholars who continue to research the background of the Zohar include Yehuda Liebes (who wrote his doctorate thesis for Scholem on the subject, Dictionary of the Vocabulary of the Zohar in 1976), and Daniel C. Matt, also a student of Scholem's who has reconstructed a critical edition of the Zohar based on original, unpublished manuscripts. While many original ideas in the Zohar are presented as being from (fictitious) Jewish mystical works, many ancient and clearly rabbinic mystical teachings are presented without their real, identifiable sources' being named. Academic studies of the Zohar show that many of its ideas are based in the Talmud, various works of midrash, and earlier Jewish mystical works. Scholem writes: The writer had expert knowledge of the early material and he often used it as a foundation for his expositions, putting into it variations of his own. His main sources were the Babylonian Talmud, the complete Midrash Rabbah, the Midrash Tanhuma, and the two Pesiktot (Pesikta De-Rav Kahana or Pesikta Rabbati), the Midrash on Psalms, the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, and the Targum Onkelos. Generally speaking, they are not quoted exactly, but translated into the peculiar style of the Zohar and summarized.... ... Less use is made of the halakhic Midrashim, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the other Targums, nor of the Midrashim like the Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim, the Midrash on Proverbs, and the Alfabet de-R. Akiva. It is not clear whether the author used the Yalkut Shimoni, or whether he knew the sources of its aggadah separately. Of the smaller Midrashim he used the Heikhalot Rabbati, the Alfabet de-Ben Sira, the Sefer Zerubabel, the Baraita de-Ma'aseh Bereshit, [and many others]... The author of the Zohar drew upon the Bible commentaries written by medieval rabbis, including Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimhi and even authorities as late as Nahmanides and Maimonides. Scholem gives a variety of examples of such borrowings. The Zohar draws upon early mystical texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir, and the early medieval writings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz. Another influence on the Zohar that Scholem, and scholars like Yehudah Liebes and Ronit Meroz have identified was a circle of Spanish Kabbalists in Castile who dealt with the appearance of an evil side emanating from within the world of the sephirot. Scholem saw this dualism of good and evil within the Godhead as a kind of "gnostic" inclination within Kabbalah, and as a predecessor of the Sitra Ahra (the other, evil side) in the Zohar. The main text of the Castile circle, the Treatise on the Left Emanation, was written by Jacob ha-Cohen in around 1265. Contents Printings, editions, and indexing The Tikunei haZohar was first printed in Mantua in 1557. The main body of the Zohar was printed in Cremona in 1558 (a one-volume edition), in Mantua in 1558-1560 (a three-volume edition), and in Salonika in 1597 (a two-volume edition). Each of these editions included somewhat different texts. When they were printed there were many partial manuscripts in circulation that were not available to the first printers. These were later printed as "Zohar Chadash" (lit. "New Zohar"), but Zohar Chadash actually contains parts that pertain to the Zohar, as well as Tikunim (plural of Tikun, "Repair") that are akin to Tikunei haZohar, as described below. The term "Zohar", in usage, may refer to just the first Zohar collection, with or without the applicable sections of Zohar Chadash, or to the entire Zohar and Tikunim. Citations referring to the Zohar conventionally follow the volume and page numbers of the Mantua edition; while citations referring to Tikkunei haZohar follow the edition of Ortakoy (Constantinople) 1719 whose text and pagination became the basis for most subsequent editions. Volumes II and III begin their numbering anew, so citation can be made by parashah and page number (e.g. Zohar: Nasso 127a), or by volume and page number (e.g. Zohar III:127a). Zohar The earlier part of the Zohar, also known as Zohar 'Al haTorah (Zohar on the Torah, זוהר על התורה) or Midrash Rashbi, contains several smaller "books", as described below. This book was published in three volumes: Volume 1 on Bereishit (Genesis), Volume 2 on Shemot (Exodus) and Volume 3 on Vayikra, Bamidbar and Devarim (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). At the start of the first volume is printed a "Preface to the Book of the Zohar" (pages 1a to 14b). After this introduction is the Zohar's commentary on most of the parashahs of the Torah. There is Zohar on all of the parashahs of Bereishit through the book of Vayikra; in Bamidbar there is no Zohar on the last two parashas: Matot (although on this parashah there is a small paragraph on page 259b) and Mas'ei. In Devarim there is no Zohar on Devarim, Re'eh, Ki-Tavo, Nitzavim, and veZot haBerakhah. Printed within these three volumes are these smaller books: Sifra diTzni'uta/Book of the Hidden (ספרא דצניעותא)This small "book", three pages long (Volume 2, parashat Teruma, pages 176b-179a), the name of which, "Book of the Hidden", attests to its veiled and cryptic character, is considered by some an important and concentrated part of the Zohar. Its enumerations and anatomical references are reminiscent of the Sefer Yetzirah, the latter being remazim (hints) of divine characteristics. Externally it is a commentary on seminal verses in Bereishit (and therefore in the version published in Cremona it is printed in parashat Bereishit). It has five chapters. Intrinsically it includes, according to Rashbi, the foundation of Kabbalah, which is explained at length in the Zohar and in the books of Kabbalah after it. Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo said, "Rashbi – may his merit protect us – said (Zohar Vol. 2, page 176a), Sifra diTzni'uta is five chapters that are included in a Great Palace and fill the entire earth,' meaning, these five paragraphs include all the wisdom of Kabbalah... for, Sifra diTzni'uta is the 'little that holds the much'; brevity with wonderful and glorious wisdom." There are those who attribute Sifra diTzni'uta to the patriarch Yaakov; however, Rabbi Eliezer Tzvi of Kamarno in his book Zohar Chai wrote, "Sifra diTzni'uta was composed by Rashbi... and he arranged [it] from baraitas that were transmitted to Tannaim from mount Sinai from the days of Moshe, similar to the way Rabeinu HaKadosh arranged the six orders of Mishnah from that which was repeated from before."Idra Rabba/The Great Assembly (אדרא רבא) The Idra Rabba is found in the Zohar Vol. 3, parashat Nasso (pp. 127b-145a), and its name means, "The Great Assembly". "Idra" is a sitting-place of sages, usually circular, and the word "Rabba/Great" differentiates this section from the section Idra Zuta, which was an assembly of fewer sages that occurred later, as mentioned below. Idra Rabba contains the discussion of nine of Rashbi's friends, who gathered together to discuss great and deep secrets of Kabbalah. The nine are: Rabbi Elazar his son, Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yossi bar Yaakov, Rabbi Yitzchak, Rabbi Chezkiyah bar Rav, Rabbi Chiyya, Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yisa. After the opening of the discussion by Rashbi, the sages rise, one after the other, and lecture on the secret of Divinity, while Rashbi adds to and responds to their words. The lectures in this section mainly explain the words of the Sifra diTzni'uta, in a similar manner as the Gemara explains the Mishnah. As described in the Idra Rabba, before the Idra disjourned, three of the students died: Rabbi Yossi bar Yaakov, Rabbi Chezkiyah bar Rav, and Rabbi Yisa. As it is told, these students filled up with Godly light and therefore journeyed to the eternal world after their deaths. The remaining students saw their friends being carried away by angels. Rabbi Shimon said some words and they were calmed. He shouted out, "Perhaps, God forbid, a decree has been passed upon us to be punished, for through us has been revealed that which has not been revealed since the time Moshe stood on Mount Sinai!" At that instant a heavenly voice emerged and said, "Fortunate are you Rabbi Shimon! and fortunate is your portion and the portion of the friends who remain alive with you! For it has been revealed to you that which has not been revealed to all the upper hosts."Idra Zuta/The Smaller Assembly (אדרא זוטא) The Idra Zuta is found in the Zohar Vol. 3, parashat Haazinu (p. 287b to 296b), and is called "Idra Zuta", which means, "The Smaller Assembly", distinguishing it from the aforementioned Greater Assembly, the Idra Rabba. In the Idra Zuta, Rashbi's colleagues convene again, this time seven in number, after the three mentioned above died. In the Idra Zuta the Chevraya Kadisha are privileged to hear teachings from Rashbi that conclude the words that were explained in the Idra Rabba.Ra'aya Meheimna/The Faithful Shepherd (רעיא מהימנא) The book Ra'aya Meheimna, the title of which means "The Faithful Shepherd", and which is by far the largest "book" included in the book of the Zohar, is what Moshe, the "Faithful Shepherd", teaches and reveals to Rashbi and his friends, who include Tannaim and Amoraim. In this assembly of Holy Friends, which took place in the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, secrets of and revelations on mitzvot of the Torah are explained and clarified — roots and deep meanings of mitzvot. Since it deals with mitzvot, from Ra'aya Meheimna it is possible to learn very much about the ways of the halakhic rulings of the Rabbis. Ra'aya Meheimna is distributed over several parashiyot throughout the Zohar. Part of it is known and even printed on separate pages, and part of it is weaved into the body of the Zohar. Ra'aya Meiheimna is found in Vols. 2 and 3 of the Zohar, but is not found explicitly in Vol. 1. Several great rabbis and sages have tried to find the Ra'aya Meheimna, which originally is a vast book on all the 613 mitzvot, and arrange it according to the order of positive commandments and negative commandments, and even print it as a book on its own. In the lessons at the end of the Zohar, Ra'aya Meheimna is sometimes referred to as "Chibra Kadma'ah" — "the preceding book". Regarding the importance of Ra'aya Meheimna, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero said, "Know that this book, which is called Ra'aya Meheimna, which Rashbi made with the tzadikim who are in Gan Eden, was a repair of the Shekhinah, and an aid and support for it in the exile, for there is no aid or support for the Shekhinah besides the secrets of the Torah... And everything that he says here of the secrets and the concepts—it is all with the intention of unifying the Shekhinah and aiding it during the exile.Midrash haNe'elam/The Hidden Midrash (מדרש הנעלם) Midrash haNe'elam is located within the body of the Zohar (parashat Vayera, Chayei Sarah, Toldot) and the Zohar Chadash (pp. 2b-30b; 46b-47b (in the Zohar Chadash edition by Rav Reuven Margoliot), and in parashat Balak, Ki Teitze, and the entire Zohar Chadash on Shir haShirim, Ruth, and Eikah.) According to Ramaz, it is fit to be called Midrash haNe'elam because "its topic is mostly the neshamah (an upper level of soul), the source of which is in Beri'ah, which is the place of the upper Gan Eden; and it is written in the Pardes that drash is in Beri'ah... and the revealed midrash is the secret of externality, and Midrash haNe'elam is the secret of internality, which is the neshamah. And this derush is founded on the neshamah; its name befits it – Midrash haNe'elam. The language of Midrash haNe'elam is sometimes Hebrew, sometimes Aramaic, and sometimes both mixed. Unlike the body of the Zohar, its drashas are short and not long. Also, the topics | even though the editors are not kabbalists. In recent years there has been a growing willingness of non-Orthodox Jews to study the Zohar, and a growing minority have a position that is similar to the Modern Orthodox position described above. This seems pronounced among Jews who follow the path of Jewish Renewal. Modern critical views The first systematic and critical academic proof for the authorship of Moses de León was given by Adolf Jellinek in his 1851 monograph "Moses ben Shem-tob de León und sein Verhältnis zum Sohar" and later adopted by the historian Heinrich Graetz in his "History of the Jews", vol. 7. The young kabbalah scholar Gershom Scholem began his career at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem with a famous lecture in which he promised to refute Graetz and Jellinek, but after years of strained research Gershom Scholem contended in 1941 that de León himself was the most likely author of the Zohar. Among other things, Scholem noticed the Zohar's frequent errors in Aramaic grammar, its suspicious traces of Spanish words and sentence patterns, and its lack of knowledge of the land of Israel. Other Jewish scholars have also suggested the possibility that the Zohar was written by a group of people, including de León. This theory generally presents de León as having been the leader of a mystical school, whose collective effort resulted in the Zohar. Even if de León wrote the text, the entire contents of the book may not be fraudulent. Parts of it may be based on older works, and it was a common practice to ascribe the authorship of a document to an ancient rabbi in order to give the document more weight. It is possible that Moses de León considered himself to be channeling the words of Rabbi Shimon. In the Encyclopaedia Judaica article written by Professor Gershom Scholem of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem there is an extensive discussion of the sources cited in the Zohar. Scholem views the author of the Zohar as having based the Zohar on a wide variety of pre-existing Jewish sources, while at the same time inventing a number of fictitious works that the Zohar supposedly quotes, e.g., the Sifra de-Adam, the Sifra de-Hanokh, the Sifra di-Shelomo Malka, the Sifra de-Rav Hamnuna Sava, the Sifra de-Rav Yeiva Sava, the Sifra de-Aggadeta, the Raza de-Razin and many others. Scholem's views are widely held as accurate among historians of the Kabbalah, but like all textual historical investigations, are not uncritically accepted; most of the following conclusions are still accepted as accurate, although academic analysis of the original texts has progressed dramatically since Scholem's ground-breaking research. Scholars who continue to research the background of the Zohar include Yehuda Liebes (who wrote his doctorate thesis for Scholem on the subject, Dictionary of the Vocabulary of the Zohar in 1976), and Daniel C. Matt, also a student of Scholem's who has reconstructed a critical edition of the Zohar based on original, unpublished manuscripts. While many original ideas in the Zohar are presented as being from (fictitious) Jewish mystical works, many ancient and clearly rabbinic mystical teachings are presented without their real, identifiable sources' being named. Academic studies of the Zohar show that many of its ideas are based in the Talmud, various works of midrash, and earlier Jewish mystical works. Scholem writes: The writer had expert knowledge of the early material and he often used it as a foundation for his expositions, putting into it variations of his own. His main sources were the Babylonian Talmud, the complete Midrash Rabbah, the Midrash Tanhuma, and the two Pesiktot (Pesikta De-Rav Kahana or Pesikta Rabbati), the Midrash on Psalms, the Pirkei de-Rabbi Eliezer, and the Targum Onkelos. Generally speaking, they are not quoted exactly, but translated into the peculiar style of the Zohar and summarized.... ... Less use is made of the halakhic Midrashim, the Jerusalem Talmud, and the other Targums, nor of the Midrashim like the Aggadat Shir ha-Shirim, the Midrash on Proverbs, and the Alfabet de-R. Akiva. It is not clear whether the author used the Yalkut Shimoni, or whether he knew the sources of its aggadah separately. Of the smaller Midrashim he used the Heikhalot Rabbati, the Alfabet de-Ben Sira, the Sefer Zerubabel, the Baraita de-Ma'aseh Bereshit, [and many others]... The author of the Zohar drew upon the Bible commentaries written by medieval rabbis, including Rashi, Abraham ibn Ezra, David Kimhi and even authorities as late as Nahmanides and Maimonides. Scholem gives a variety of examples of such borrowings. The Zohar draws upon early mystical texts such as the Sefer Yetzirah and the Bahir, and the early medieval writings of the Hasidei Ashkenaz. Another influence on the Zohar that Scholem, and scholars like Yehudah Liebes and Ronit Meroz have identified was a circle of Spanish Kabbalists in Castile who dealt with the appearance of an evil side emanating from within the world of the sephirot. Scholem saw this dualism of good and evil within the Godhead as a kind of "gnostic" inclination within Kabbalah, and as a predecessor of the Sitra Ahra (the other, evil side) in the Zohar. The main text of the Castile circle, the Treatise on the Left Emanation, was written by Jacob ha-Cohen in around 1265. Contents Printings, editions, and indexing The Tikunei haZohar was first printed in Mantua in 1557. The main body of the Zohar was printed in Cremona in 1558 (a one-volume edition), in Mantua in 1558-1560 (a three-volume edition), and in Salonika in 1597 (a two-volume edition). Each of these editions included somewhat different texts. When they were printed there were many partial manuscripts in circulation that were not available to the first printers. These were later printed as "Zohar Chadash" (lit. "New Zohar"), but Zohar Chadash actually contains parts that pertain to the Zohar, as well as Tikunim (plural of Tikun, "Repair") that are akin to Tikunei haZohar, as described below. The term "Zohar", in usage, may refer to just the first Zohar collection, with or without the applicable sections of Zohar Chadash, or to the entire Zohar and Tikunim. Citations referring to the Zohar conventionally follow the volume and page numbers of the Mantua edition; while citations referring to Tikkunei haZohar follow the edition of Ortakoy (Constantinople) 1719 whose text and pagination became the basis for most subsequent editions. Volumes II and III begin their numbering anew, so citation can be made by parashah and page number (e.g. Zohar: Nasso 127a), or by volume and page number (e.g. Zohar III:127a). Zohar The earlier part of the Zohar, also known as Zohar 'Al haTorah (Zohar on the Torah, זוהר על התורה) or Midrash Rashbi, contains several smaller "books", as described below. This book was published in three volumes: Volume 1 on Bereishit (Genesis), Volume 2 on Shemot (Exodus) and Volume 3 on Vayikra, Bamidbar and Devarim (Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy). At the start of the first volume is printed a "Preface to the Book of the Zohar" (pages 1a to 14b). After this introduction is the Zohar's commentary on most of the parashahs of the Torah. There is Zohar on all of the parashahs of Bereishit through the book of Vayikra; in Bamidbar there is no Zohar on the last two parashas: Matot (although on this parashah there is a small paragraph on page 259b) and Mas'ei. In Devarim there is no Zohar on Devarim, Re'eh, Ki-Tavo, Nitzavim, and veZot haBerakhah. Printed within these three volumes are these smaller books: Sifra diTzni'uta/Book of the Hidden (ספרא דצניעותא)This small "book", three pages long (Volume 2, parashat Teruma, pages 176b-179a), the name of which, "Book of the Hidden", attests to its veiled and cryptic character, is considered by some an important and concentrated part of the Zohar. Its enumerations and anatomical references are reminiscent of the Sefer Yetzirah, the latter being remazim (hints) of divine characteristics. Externally it is a commentary on seminal verses in Bereishit (and therefore in the version published in Cremona it is printed in parashat Bereishit). It has five chapters. Intrinsically it includes, according to Rashbi, the foundation of Kabbalah, which is explained at length in the Zohar and in the books of Kabbalah after it. Rabbi Shalom Buzaglo said, "Rashbi – may his merit protect us – said (Zohar Vol. 2, page 176a), Sifra diTzni'uta is five chapters that are included in a Great Palace and fill the entire earth,' meaning, these five paragraphs include all the wisdom of Kabbalah... for, Sifra diTzni'uta is the 'little that holds the much'; brevity with wonderful and glorious wisdom." There are those who attribute Sifra diTzni'uta to the patriarch Yaakov; however, Rabbi Eliezer Tzvi of Kamarno in his book Zohar Chai wrote, "Sifra diTzni'uta was composed by Rashbi... and he arranged [it] from baraitas that were transmitted to Tannaim from mount Sinai from the days of Moshe, similar to the way Rabeinu HaKadosh arranged the six orders of Mishnah from that which was repeated from before."Idra Rabba/The Great Assembly (אדרא רבא) The Idra Rabba is found in the Zohar Vol. 3, parashat Nasso (pp. 127b-145a), and its name means, "The Great Assembly". "Idra" is a sitting-place of sages, usually circular, and the word "Rabba/Great" differentiates this section from the section Idra Zuta, which was an assembly of fewer sages that occurred later, as mentioned below. Idra Rabba contains the discussion of nine of Rashbi's friends, who gathered together to discuss great and deep secrets of Kabbalah. The nine are: Rabbi Elazar his son, Rabbi Abba, Rabbi Yehuda, Rabbi Yossi bar Yaakov, Rabbi Yitzchak, Rabbi Chezkiyah bar Rav, Rabbi Chiyya, Rabbi Yossi and Rabbi Yisa. After the opening of the discussion by Rashbi, the sages rise, one after the other, and lecture on the secret of Divinity, while Rashbi adds to and responds to their words. The lectures in this section mainly explain the words of the Sifra diTzni'uta, in a similar manner as the Gemara explains the Mishnah. As described in the Idra Rabba, before the Idra disjourned, three of the students died: Rabbi Yossi bar Yaakov, Rabbi Chezkiyah bar Rav, and Rabbi Yisa. As it is told, these students filled up with Godly light and therefore journeyed to the eternal world after their deaths. The remaining students saw their friends being carried away by angels. Rabbi Shimon said some words and they were calmed. He shouted out, "Perhaps, God forbid, a decree has been passed upon us to be punished, for through us has been revealed that which has not been revealed since the time Moshe stood on Mount Sinai!" At that instant a heavenly voice emerged and said, "Fortunate are you Rabbi Shimon! and fortunate is your portion and the portion of the friends who remain alive with you! For it has been revealed to you that which has not been revealed to all the upper hosts."Idra Zuta/The Smaller Assembly (אדרא זוטא) The Idra Zuta is found in the Zohar Vol. 3, parashat Haazinu (p. 287b to 296b), and is called "Idra Zuta", which means, "The Smaller Assembly", distinguishing it from the aforementioned Greater Assembly, the Idra Rabba. In the Idra Zuta, Rashbi's colleagues convene again, this time seven in number, after the three mentioned above died. In the Idra Zuta the Chevraya Kadisha are privileged to hear teachings from Rashbi that conclude the words that were explained in the Idra Rabba.Ra'aya Meheimna/The Faithful Shepherd (רעיא מהימנא) The book Ra'aya Meheimna, the title of which means "The Faithful Shepherd", and which is by far the largest "book" included in the book of the Zohar, is what Moshe, the "Faithful Shepherd", teaches and reveals to Rashbi and his friends, who include Tannaim and Amoraim. In this assembly of Holy Friends, which took place in the Beit Midrash of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, secrets of and revelations on mitzvot of the Torah are explained and clarified — roots and deep meanings of mitzvot. Since it deals with mitzvot, from Ra'aya Meheimna it is possible to learn very much about the ways of the halakhic rulings of the Rabbis. Ra'aya Meheimna is distributed over several parashiyot throughout the Zohar. Part of it is known and even printed on separate pages, and part of it is weaved into the body of the Zohar. Ra'aya Meiheimna is found in Vols. 2 and 3 of the Zohar, but is not found explicitly in Vol. 1. Several great rabbis and sages have tried to find the Ra'aya Meheimna, which originally is a vast book on all the 613 mitzvot, and arrange it according to the order of positive commandments and negative commandments, and even print it as a book on its own. In the lessons at the end of the Zohar, Ra'aya Meheimna is sometimes referred to as "Chibra Kadma'ah" — "the preceding book". Regarding the importance of Ra'aya Meheimna, Rabbi Moshe Cordovero said, "Know that this book, which is called Ra'aya Meheimna, which Rashbi made with the tzadikim who are in Gan Eden, was a repair of the Shekhinah, and an aid and support for it in the exile, for there is no aid or support for the Shekhinah besides the secrets of the Torah... And everything that he says here of the secrets and the concepts—it is all with the intention of unifying the Shekhinah and aiding it during the exile.Midrash haNe'elam/The Hidden Midrash (מדרש הנעלם) Midrash haNe'elam is located within the body of the Zohar (parashat Vayera, Chayei Sarah, Toldot) and the Zohar Chadash (pp. 2b-30b; 46b-47b (in the Zohar Chadash edition by Rav Reuven Margoliot), and in parashat Balak, Ki Teitze, and the entire Zohar Chadash on Shir haShirim, Ruth, and Eikah.) According to Ramaz, it is fit to be called Midrash haNe'elam because "its topic is mostly the neshamah (an upper level of soul), the source of which is in Beri'ah, which is the place of the upper Gan Eden; and it is written in the Pardes that drash is in Beri'ah... and the revealed midrash is the secret of externality, and Midrash haNe'elam is the secret of internality, which is the neshamah. And this derush is founded on the neshamah; its name befits it – Midrash haNe'elam. The language of Midrash haNe'elam is sometimes Hebrew, sometimes Aramaic, and sometimes both mixed. Unlike the body of the Zohar, its drashas are short and not long. Also, the topics it discusses — the work of Creation, the nature the soul, the days of Mashiach, and Olam Haba — are not of the type found in the Zohar, which are the nature of God, the emanation of worlds, the "forces" of evil, and more.Idra deVei Mashkana, Heikhalot, Raza deRazin, Saba deMishpatim, Tosefta, and Sitrei TorahIn the Zohar there are more sections that are of different nature with regard to their contents and importance, as follows: Idra deVei Mashkana ("Assembly of the House of the Tabernacle") deals mainly with the secrets of prayer, and is found in the Zohar Vol. 2, parashat Mishpatim (pp. 122b-123b). Heikhalot ("Palaces") deals in describing the palaces of Gan Eden, and Gehinom, and contains many matters related to prayer. It is found in the Zohar Vol. 1, parashat Bereishit (pp 38a-45b); Vol. 2 parashat Pekudei (pp. 244b-262b, heikhalot of holiness; pp. 262b-268b, heikhalot of impurity). Raza deRazin ("Secret of Secrets") deals with revealing the essence of a man via the features of his face and hands. It is found in the Zohar Vol. 2,parashat Yitro (pp. 70a-75a). Saba deMishpatim ("The Elder on Statutes") is the commentary of Rav Yiba Saba regarding transmigration of souls, and punishments of the body in the grave. It is found in the Zohar Vol. 2,parashat Mishpatim (pp. 94a-114a). Tosefta are paragraphs containing the beginnings of chapters on the wisdom of the Kabbalah of the Zohar, and it is dispersed in all three volumes of the Zohar. Sitrei Torah are drashas of verses from the Torah regarding matters of the soul and the secret of Divinity, and they are dispersed in the Zohar Vol. 1. For more books and sources mentioned in the Zohar, see also below. Zohar Chadash/The New Zohar (זוהר חדש) After the book of the Zohar had been printed (in Mantua and in Cremona, in the Jewish years 5318-5320 or 1558-1560? CE), many more manuscripts were found that included paragraphs pertaining to the Zohar in their content and had not been included in printed editions. The manuscripts pertained also to all parts of the Zohar; some were similar to Zohar on the Torah, some were similar to the inner parts of the Zohar (Midrash haNe'elam, Sitrei Otiyot and more), and some pertained to Tikunei haZohar. Some thirty years after the first edition of the Zohar was printed, the manuscripts were gathered and arranged according to the parashas of the Torah and the megillot (apparently the arrangement was done by the Kabbalist, Rabbi Avraham haLevi of Tsfat), and were printed first in Salonika in Jewish year 5357 (1587? CE), and then in Kraków (5363), and afterwards many times in various editions. There is Zohar Chadash on the Torah for many parashas across the chumash, namely, on chumash Bereishit: Bereishit, Noach, Lekh Lekha, Vayeira, Vayeishev; on chumash Shemot: Beshalach, Yitro, Terumah, Ki Tissa; on chumash Vayikra: Tzav, Acharei, Behar; on chumash Bamidbar: Chukat, Balak, Matot; on chumash Devarim: Va'etchanan, Ki Tetze, Ki Tavo. Within the paragraphs of Zohar Chadash are inserted Sitrei Otiyot ("Secrets of the Letters") and Midrash haNe'elam, on separate pages. Afterwards follows the midrashim – Midrash haNe'elam on the megillot: Shir haShirim, Ruth, and Eikhah. And at the end are printed Tikunim (Tikunei Zohar Chadash, תיקוני זוהר חדש), like the Tikunei haZohar. Tikunei haZohar/Rectifications of the Zohar (תיקוני הזוהר) Tikunei haZohar, which was printed as a separate book, includes seventy commentaries called "Tikunim" (lit. Repairs) and an additional eleven Tikkunim. In some editions, Tikunim are printed that were already printed in the Zohar Chadash, which in their content and style also pertain to Tikunei haZohar. Each of the seventy Tikunim of Tikunei haZohar begins by explaining the word "Bereishit" (בראשית), and continues by explaining other verses, mainly in parashat Bereishit, and also from the rest of Tanakh. And all this is in the way of Sod, in commentaries that reveal the hidden and mystical aspects of the Torah. Tikunei haZohar and Ra'aya Meheimna are similar in style, language, and concepts, and are different from the rest of the Zohar. For example, the idea of the Four Worlds is found in Tikunei haZohar and Ra'aya Meheimna but not elsewhere, as is true of the very use of the term "Kabbalah". In terminology, what is called Kabbalah in →Tikunei haZohar and Ra'aya Meheimna is simply called razin (clues or hints) in the rest of the Zohar. In Tikunei haZohar there are many references to "chibura kadma'ah" (meaning "the earlier book"). This refers to the main body of the Zohar. Parts of the Zohar: summary of Rabbinic view The traditional Rabbinic view is that most of the Zohar and the parts included in it (i.e. those parts mentioned above) were written and compiled by Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, but some parts preceded Rashbi and he used them (such as Sifra deTzni'uta; see above), and some parts were written or arranged in generations after Rashbi's passing (for example, Tannaim after Rashbi's time are occasionally mentioned). However, aside from the parts of the Zohar mentioned above, in the Zohar are mentioned tens of earlier sources that Rashbi and his Chevraya Kadisha had, and they were apparently the foundation of the Kabbalistic tradition of the Zohar. These include Sefer Raziel, Sifra de'Agad'ta, Sifra de'Adam haRishon, Sifra de'Ashmedai, Sifra Chakhmeta 'Ila'ah diVnei Kedem, Sifra deChinukh, Sifra diShlomoh Malka, Sifra Kadma'i, Tzerufei de'Atvun de'Itmasru le'Adam beGan 'Eden, and more. In the Jewish view this indicates more, that the teaching of the Sod in the book of the Zohar was not invented in the Tannaic period, but rather it is a tradition from ancient times that Rashbi and his Chevraya Kadisha used and upon which they built and founded their Kabbalah, and also that its roots are in the Torah that was given by Hashem to Moshe on Sinai. Viewpoint and exegesis: Rabbinic view According to the Zohar, the moral perfection of man influences the ideal world of the Sefirot; for although the Sefirot accept everything from the Ein Sof (Heb. אין סוף, infinity), the Tree of Life itself is dependent upon man: he alone can bring about the divine effusion. This concept is somewhat akin to the concept of Tikkun olam. The dew that vivifies the universe flows from the just. By the practice of virtue and by moral perfection, man may increase the outpouring of heavenly grace. Even physical life is subservient to virtue. This, says the Zohar, is indicated in the words "for the Lord God had not caused it to rain" (Gen. 2:5), which means that there had not yet been beneficent action in heaven, because man had not yet been created to pray for it. The Zohar assumes four kinds of Biblical text exegesis, from the literal to the more mystical: The simple, literal meaning of the text: Peshat The allusion or hinted/allegorical meaning: Remez The rabbinic comparison through sermon or illustration and metaphor: Derash The secret/mysterious/hidden meaning: Sod The initial letters of these words (P, R, D, S) form together the word PaRDeS ("paradise/orchard"), which became the designation for the Zohar's view of a fourfold meaning of the text, of which the mystical sense is considered the highest part. Academic views In Eros and Kabbalah, Moshe Idel (Professor of Jewish Mysticism, Hebrew University in Jerusalem) argues that the fundamental distinction between the rational-philosophic strain of Judaism and mystical Judaism, as exemplified by the Zohar, is the mystical belief that the Godhead is complex, rather than simple, and that divinity is dynamic and incorporates sex, having both male and female dimensions. These polarities must be conjoined (have yihud, "union") to maintain the harmony of the cosmos. Idel characterizes this metaphysical point of view as "ditheism", holding that there are two aspects to God, and the process of union as "theoeroticism". This ditheism, the dynamics it entails, and its reverberations within creation is arguably the central interest of the Zohar, making up a huge proportion of its discourse (pp. 5–56). Mention should also be made of the work of Elliot Wolfson (Professor of Jewish Mysticism, New York University), who has almost single-handedly challenged the conventional view, which is affirmed by Idel as well. Wolfson likewise recognizes the importance of heteroerotic symbolism in the kabbalistic understanding of the divine nature. The oneness of God is perceived in androgynous terms as the pairing of male and female, the former characterized as the capacity to overflow and the latter as the potential to receive. Where Wolfson breaks with Idel and other scholars of the kabbalah is in his insistence that the consequence of that heteroerotic union is the restoration of the female to the male. Just as, in the case of the original Adam, the woman was constructed from man, and their carnal cleaving together was portrayed as becoming one flesh, so the ideal for kabbalists is the reconstitution of what Wolfson calls the male androgyne. Much closer in spirit to some ancient Gnostic dicta, Wolfson understands the eschatological ideal in traditional Kabbalah to have been the female becoming male (see his Circle in the Square and Language, Eros, Being). Commentaries The first known commentary on the book of Zohar, "Ketem Paz", was written by Rabbi Shimon Lavi of Libya. Another important and influential commentary on Zohar, 22-volume "Or Yakar", was written by Rabbi Moshe Cordovero of the Tzfat (i.e. Safed) kabbalistic school in the 16th century. The Vilna Gaon authored a commentary on the Zohar. Rabbi Tzvi Hirsch of Zidichov wrote a commentary on the Zohar entitled Ateres Tzvi. A major commentary on the Zohar is the Sulam written by Rabbi Yehuda Ashlag. A full translation of the Zohar into Hebrew was made by the late Rabbi Daniel Frish of Jerusalem under the title Masok MiDvash. Influence Judaism On the one hand, the Zohar was lauded by many rabbis because it opposed religious formalism, stimulated one's imagination and emotions, and for many people helped reinvigorate the experience of prayer. In many places prayer had become a mere external religious exercise, while prayer was supposed to be a means of transcending earthly affairs and placing oneself in union with God. According to the Jewish Encyclopedia, "On the other hand, the Zohar was censured by many rabbis because it propagated many superstitious beliefs, and produced a host of mystical dreamers, whose overexcited imaginations peopled the world with spirits, demons, and all kinds of good and bad influences." Many classical rabbis, especially Maimonides, viewed all such beliefs as a violation of Judaic principles of faith. Its mystic mode of explaining some commandments was applied by its commentators to all religious observances, and produced a strong tendency to substitute mystic Judaism in the place of traditional rabbinic Judaism. For example, Shabbat, the Jewish Sabbath, began to be looked upon as the embodiment of God in temporal life, and every ceremony performed on that day was considered to have an influence upon the superior world. Elements of the Zohar crept into the liturgy of the 16th and 17th centuries, and the religious poets not only used the allegorism and symbolism of the Zohar in their compositions, but even adopted its style, e.g. the use of erotic terminology to illustrate the relations between man and God. Thus, in the language of some Jewish poets, the beloved one's curls indicate the mysteries of the Deity; sensuous pleasures, and especially intoxication, typify the highest degree of divine love as ecstatic contemplation; while the wine-room represents merely the state through which the human qualities merge or are exalted into those of God. In the 17th century, it was proposed that only Jewish men who were at least 40 years old could study Kabbalah, |
code – that just has to be there, and the built-in management interface is difficult to modify or replace. Zope 3 was a rewrite of the software that attempts to address these shortcomings while retaining the advantages of Zope that led to its popularity. BlueBream is based on a component architecture that makes it easy to mix software components of various origins written in Python. Although originally intended as a replacement for Zope 2, the Zope Component Architecture has instead been backported to Zope 2, starting with Zope 2.8. Many Zope platforms such as Plone are going through the same type of piece-by-piece rewriting. The first production release of the new software, Zope X3 3.0.0, was released on November 6, 2004. History The Zope 3 project started in February 2001 as an effort to develop a new version of Zope as an almost complete rewrite, with the goal to retain the successful features of Zope 2 while trying to fix some of its shortcomings. The goal was to create a more developer-friendly and flexible platform for programming web applications than Zope 2 is. The project began with the development of a component architecture, which allows the structuring of code into small, composable units with introspectable interfaces. The interfaces are supported by an interface package in order to provide the functionality of explicitly declared interfaces to the Python language. The first production release of the software, Zope X3, was released on November 6, 2004. In January 2010 Zope 3 was renamed BlueBream. Technology The goal of the project was to enable programmers to use Zope in order to expose arbitrary Python objects as model objects to the web without the need to make these objects fulfill particular behavior requirements. In Zope 2 there had been many behavior requirements to allow objects to participate in the framework, which resulted in a large amount of mixin base classes and special attributes. BlueBream uses a model/view architecture, separating the presentation code from the problem domain code. Views and models are linked together by the component architecture. The libraries underlying BlueBream have been evolving into a collection of useful libraries for web application development rather than a single, monolithic application server. BlueBream includes separate packages for interfaces, component architecture, HTTP server, publisher, Zope Object Database (ZODB), Zope Page Templates, I18N, security policy, and so on. The component architecture is used to glue these together. The component architecture is configured using a ZCML (Zope Configuration Markup Language), an XML based configuration file language. The Zope 3 project pioneered the practice of sprints for open source software development. Sprints are intensive development sessions when programmers, often from different countries, gather in one room and work together for a couple of days or even several weeks. During the sprints various practices drawn from agile software development are used, such as pair programming and test-driven development. Besides the goal of developing software, sprints are also useful for geographically separated developers to meet in person and attracting new people to the project. They also serve as a way for the participants to learn from each other. BlueBream is considered a stable framework, used on production projects worldwide, most notably Launchpad. Zope Toolkit As a result of the development of Zope 3 / BlueBream, there are now many independent Python packages used and developed as a part of BlueBream, and although many of these are usable outside of BlueBream, many are not. The Zope Toolkit (ZTK) project was started to clarify which packages were usable outside BlueBream, and to improve the re-usability of the packages. Thus the Zope Toolkit is a base for the Zope frameworks. Zope 2.12 is the first release of a web framework that builds on Zope Toolkit, and Grok and BlueBream were set to have releases based on the ZTK during 2010. Grok In 2006 the Grok project was started by a number of Zope 3 developers who wanted to make Zope 3 technology more agile in use and more accessible to newcomers. Grok has since then seen regular releases and its core technology (Martian, grokcore.component) is also finding uptake in other Zope 3 and Zope 2 based projects. Zope 4 In late 2017, development began on Zope 4. Zope 4 is a successor to Zope 2.13, making many changes that are not backwards compatible with Zope 2. Zope 5 Zope 5 was released in 2020. Zope Page Templates As mentioned previously, Zope Page Templates are themselves XHTML documents, which means they can be viewed and edited using normal HTML editors or XHTML compliant tools (a big advantage compared to other template languages used for Web applications). Templates can also be checked for XHTML compliance so you can be fairly confident that | various origins written in Python. Although originally intended as a replacement for Zope 2, the Zope Component Architecture has instead been backported to Zope 2, starting with Zope 2.8. Many Zope platforms such as Plone are going through the same type of piece-by-piece rewriting. The first production release of the new software, Zope X3 3.0.0, was released on November 6, 2004. History The Zope 3 project started in February 2001 as an effort to develop a new version of Zope as an almost complete rewrite, with the goal to retain the successful features of Zope 2 while trying to fix some of its shortcomings. The goal was to create a more developer-friendly and flexible platform for programming web applications than Zope 2 is. The project began with the development of a component architecture, which allows the structuring of code into small, composable units with introspectable interfaces. The interfaces are supported by an interface package in order to provide the functionality of explicitly declared interfaces to the Python language. The first production release of the software, Zope X3, was released on November 6, 2004. In January 2010 Zope 3 was renamed BlueBream. Technology The goal of the project was to enable programmers to use Zope in order to expose arbitrary Python objects as model objects to the web without the need to make these objects fulfill particular behavior requirements. In Zope 2 there had been many behavior requirements to allow objects to participate in the framework, which resulted in a large amount of mixin base classes and special attributes. BlueBream uses a model/view architecture, separating the presentation code from the problem domain code. Views and models are linked together by the component architecture. The libraries underlying BlueBream have been evolving into a collection of useful libraries for web application development rather than a single, monolithic application server. BlueBream includes separate packages for interfaces, component architecture, HTTP server, publisher, Zope Object Database (ZODB), Zope Page Templates, I18N, security policy, and so on. The component architecture is used to glue these together. The component architecture is configured using a ZCML (Zope Configuration Markup Language), an XML based configuration file language. The Zope 3 project pioneered the practice of sprints for open source software development. Sprints are intensive development sessions when programmers, often from different countries, gather in one room and work together for a couple of days or even several weeks. During the sprints various practices drawn from agile software development are used, such as pair programming and test-driven development. Besides the goal of developing software, sprints are also useful for geographically separated developers to meet in person and attracting new people to the project. They also serve as a way for the participants to learn from each other. BlueBream is considered a stable framework, used on production projects worldwide, most notably Launchpad. Zope Toolkit As a result of the development |
styles of fighting may use only two sticks, variations of Bantu/Nguni stick-fighting throughout Southern Africa incorporate shields as part of the stick-fighting weaponry. Zulu stick-fighting uses an isikhwili or attacking stick, an ubhoko or defending stick and an ihawu or defending shield. The object is for two opposing warriors to fight each other to establish which of them is the strongest or the "Bull" (Inkunzi). In modern times this usually occurs as part of the wedding ceremony where warriors from the bridegroom's household and area welcome warriors from the bride's household and area to meet to "get to know each other", other groups of warriors may also be welcome to join in. Warriors do this by engaging in combat with one another. An "induna" or War Captain / Referee from each group of warriors keeps his crew in check and keeps order between fighters. This tradition is one which arguably developed in societies, cultures | of which is used for defense and the other for offense. Little armor is used. Although Nguni/Xhosa styles of fighting may use only two sticks, variations of Bantu/Nguni stick-fighting throughout Southern Africa incorporate shields as part of the stick-fighting weaponry. Zulu stick-fighting uses an isikhwili or attacking stick, an ubhoko or defending stick and an ihawu or defending shield. The object is for two opposing warriors to fight each other to establish which of them is the strongest or the "Bull" (Inkunzi). In modern times this usually occurs as part of the wedding ceremony where warriors from the bridegroom's household and area welcome warriors |
thousands more to its own customers. In February 1982 Timex obtained a licence from Sinclair to sell the ZX81 directly through thousands of retail outlets in the US, paying Sinclair Research a 5 per cent royalty on all Sinclair hardware and software sold by Timex. The company was later to produce its own licensed clones and variants of the ZX81. By August 1982 Sinclair had lowered the American mail-order price of the assembled ZX81 to $99.95 and kit to $79.95, and its advertisements stated that "more than 10,000 are sold every week". In December 1981 Mitsui obtained rights to distribute the ZX81 in Japan, selling it by mail order for ¥38,700 (equivalent to £83 in 1982 prices), and had sold 5,000 units by July 1982. The Japanese market's favourable reaction to the ZX81 led Mitsui to begin selling the ZX81 over the counter in large bookshops from September 1982, with annual sales of 20,000 units predicted. In the Netherlands, the regular Sinclair ZX81 was for sale as well as a Bang & Olufsen branded version called Beocomp. The ZX81 was also sold for a while in duty-free shops at UK airports. However, this fell foul of government export restrictions aimed at preventing the Soviet bloc countries from obtaining Western high technology goods. It was not uncommon for visitors from the Soviet Union and other eastern European countries to pick up gadgets in Western countries with the aim of transferring their technology to their own states' industries. In 1983 the government ordered that the ZX81s were to be withdrawn from sale at airports. There was no such restriction on sales to communist China and in November 1983 Sinclair Research announced that it had signed an agreement to export ZX81 kits to a factory in Guangzhou, where they would be assembled for the Chinese market. Reception Reviews of the ZX81 highlighted the great value for money offered by the machine but noted its technical shortcomings. As Tim Hartnell put it in Your Computer, "the ZX81 is both a delight and a disappointment". He applauded the improvements that had been made over the ZX80, such as a much better manual, display and string handling, and called the ZX81 "a very good first computer" that "will open the world of computing to many who would be denied access to it by cost." However, the built-in memory was so small that use of a memory expansion pack was "mandatory for any worthwhile use". He also found the ZX81 to be alarmingly unreliable, having to have his first two test machines replaced before getting one that worked properly. New Scientist's Malcolm Peltu commented that it was "great technical value for money particularly for computing enthusiasts" but thought that others were "likely to be bored very quickly by the basic system". He highlighted weaknesses in the manual and Sinclair's accompanying software, criticising them for "a misconceived design and sloppiness in execution which make the machine seem harder to use and more limited than it should" and questioned whether it might be more worthwhile to save up for a more powerful computer such as Acorn or Commodore's offerings. Overall, he concluded, the ZX81 might have a limited value in helping to teach BASIC programming and overcoming psychological barriers to computing, but "the Sinclair systems have a long way to go before they raise the quality and level of understanding of the nature and use of computer-based information systems among computer unbelievers." While the editor of Personal Computer World was on holiday in May 1981, his colleagues publicised the magazine's review of the ZX81 with a cover showing a chimpanzee with the machine above the strapline "Editor benchtests the ZX81". (The chimp returned in later issues to "benchtest" all of Sinclair's subsequent computers.) The review, which was written by PCW staffer Dave Tebbutt, acknowledged that the machine had significant shortcomings but nonetheless represented "absolutely amazing value for money". He described the ZX81 as "a lovely product which will have enormous appeal to people wanting to find out more about computers, but without it costing them an arm and a leg" and concluded: "If you know nothing about computers and you want to enjoy finding out about them, then this machine offers a value for money way of doing just that. Children will love the ZX81, there can be no question about that, and I suspect that more than a few people who are already familiar with computers will buy one, just to have a bit of fun." Paul Taylor of the Financial Times found the ZX81 to be "a powerful and flexible little computer ideally suited as a fun introduction to the mysteries of home computing" but cautioned readers about its limitations. It lacked ready-made software, the keyboard was not easy to use, it did not have sufficiently advanced graphics to be able to replicate arcade-style games and its built-in memory was inadequate. Even so, he suggested, "the ZX81 is a unique British product, part toy, part puzzle, part learning tool and I think that, provided one accepts its limitations and recognises that any computer will only do what it is told to do, it is good value as an introduction to the hobby of home computing." The Age described the ZX81 as "not extremely sophisticated, and its memory capability is rather limited. It also has a rather toy-like appearance". It concluded that the computer was "an ideal toy for youngsters who want to become acquainted with the computer world. It is responsive, cheap, and very easy to use". Billy Garrett of Byte, who already owned a ZX80, complimented the Timex/Sinclair 1000's manual (although he regretted the removal of the British original's humour), the "state-of-the-art circuitry", and the BASIC for being "remarkably powerful" despite the small ROM size. He concluded that "the major use ... will probably be for learning about BASIC or computers in general. [It] has limited expansion capabilities, and the keyboard is too small and cramped for any serious work". David Babsky described the ZX81 as "a wonderfully brainy little micro which won't let you waste your time and make a fool of yourself". In a comparison between the ZX81 and IBM PC published in Which Micro?, he commended the ZX81's user-friendliness and its on-the-fly syntax checking of BASIC programs, which he described as "the feature that I, as a newcomer to computing, want to see incorporated into every micro." Peripherals and software The success of the ZX81 led almost immediately to enthusiasts producing a huge variety of peripherals and software. Clive Sinclair was "amused and gratified" by the attention the machine received but other than what Clarke described as "a few remarkably poor programs on cassette", his company made little effort to exploit the demand, effectively ceding a very lucrative market to third party suppliers, a decision that undoubtedly forfeited a lot of potential earnings. W.H. Smith, for instance, was able to exploit a peculiarity of the ZX81; owners found that technically obsolete low-fidelity mono tape cassette recorders worked better as storage devices than higher-quality music systems. Smith's purchased cheap "shoebox" cassette recorders in the Far East and sold them with the W.H. Smiths logo as "data recorders". Over 100,000 were sold in 18 months. Sinclair released only two official peripherals for the ZX81, a 16 KB RAM pack (actually the same one previously released for the ZX80, but rebadged) and the ZX Printer, both of which plugged into the edge connector at the rear of the ZX81. They retailed at a launch price of £49.95 each but both had notable flaws. The RAM pack was top-heavy and was supported only by the edge connector. It had a habit of falling out of its socket at crucial points and crashing the ZX81, losing anything that the user had typed in. Users turned to using sticky lumps of chewing gum, double-sided tape or Blu-Tack to cure what became known as the "RAM pack wobble" problem. The ZX Printer was a tiny spark printer that used two electrically charged styli to burn away the surface of aluminium-coated paper to reveal the black underlay. It worked reasonably well at first but its output deteriorated rapidly after a time. Many non-Sinclair peripherals aimed to remedy the ZX81's flaws and provide many new capabilities. These included RAM packs providing up to 64 KB of extra memory and promising to "fit snugly ... giving a firm connection" to the computer, typewriter-style keyboards, more advanced printers and sound generators, and even a hard disk interface, which Clive Sinclair thought was "quite overgilding the lily". A wide range of software was also published. Within only a year of the ZX81's launch, around 200 independent companies had been established to manufacture and sell Sinclair-compatible hardware. The people behind the ZX81 cottage industry were very often not computer professionals but were, as the Financial Times noted, "school teachers, civil servants, electrical engineers and technicians [who] have set up small operations in their own time". The ZX81's popularity was publicly demonstrated in January 1982 when civil servant Mike Johnstone organised a "ZX Microfair" at Westminster Central Hall. Seventy exhibitors set up stalls with only a few hundred visitors expected in a hall with a capacity of 650 people. Tens of thousands, mostly youths, came from around Britain, and the police had to control the crowd. They queued for three hours around the hall, with a group of 50 entering as another group left. About 12,000 entered the hall; Clarke, who was only able to enter after identifying himself as a journalist, wrote that "no one knows how many gave up in despair". The exhibitors sold thousands of pounds' worth of software and hardware "as fast as three pairs of hands on each stall could hand them over and stuff the fivers into improvised overflowing cash boxes", he added. The fair also showed Sinclair Research's relatively unimportant role in the computer's success, with only small crowds at its booth compared to the "rugby scrum" elsewhere. By August 1983 seven more ZX Microfairs were held, with the 14th ZX Microfair at Alexandra Palace in November 1984, still organised by Johnstone. Thousands of ZX81 programs were published, either as type-in programs or as ready-made applications that could be loaded from cassette tape. Many computer magazines featured ZX81 program listings – some, such as Sinclair Programs, were dedicated entirely to listings – while many individuals became the archetypal "bedroom programmers", producing games and applications which they produced, marketed, recorded, and sold from their own homes. Some went on to found their own software houses, employing teams of programmers – some still at school – to produce programs for the ZX81 and other computers. Existing companies also sold software; Psion produced a series of ZX81 programs in close association with Sinclair, including a flight simulator, while ICL's range of ZX81 programs sold over 100,000 cassettes in less than three months. Psion's success with the ZX81 had a profound effect on the future of the company. Its work on the ZX81 database program Vu-File led to Psion switching its focus to the development of personal digital assistants, which resulted in the launch in 1984 of the Psion Organiser, the world's first handheld personal computer. Some of the most popular ZX81 games (Psion's Flight Simulation being an example) were rewritten for the Spectrum to take advantage of the newer machine's colour and sound capabilities. Enterprising programmers were able to produce games for the ZX81 using nothing more than text characters and the machine's limited text semigraphics. Some ZX81 games achieved lasting fame, such as 3D Monster Maze, a tense first-person perspective game that involved the player escaping a labyrinth with a Tyrannosaurus rex in pursuit. Written in a combination of BASIC and machine code, its innovative design led it to be hailed as the first home computer 3D game and a landmark in the history of computer and video games. One of the more bizarre software products for the ZX81 came about as a result of music companies attempting to capitalise on the popularity of Sinclair's computers. In 1983, EMI released a single by Chris Sievey that had a ZX81 program recorded on the B-side. Island Records responded with XL1 by Buzzcocks frontman Pete Shelley, packaged with a program for the ZX Spectrum. Clones and variants Sinclair's licensing agreement with Timex enabled the American company to produce three clones or offshoots of Sinclair machines for the US market. These were the Timex Sinclair 1000, Timex Sinclair 1500 (both variants of the ZX81) and the Timex Sinclair 2068 (a variant of the ZX Spectrum). The TS1000 was launched in July 1982 and sparked a massive surge of interest; at one point, the Timex phoneline was receiving over 5,000 calls an hour, 50,000 a week, inquiring about the machine or about microcomputers in general. It was virtually identical to the ZX81 save for re-branding and the addition of an extra 1 KB of memory, totalling 2 KB. In the five months following the TS1000's launch, the company sold 550,000 machines, earning Sinclair over $1.2 million in royalties. Timex produced a second version of the ZX81 in the form of the TS1500, essentially an Americanised ZX81 launched in August 1983. It dispensed with the membrane keyboard and used a case similar to that of the ZX Spectrum, incorporating 16 KB of on-board memory. It was effectively a stopgap between the ZX81 and Spectrum. However, it was unsuccessful due to increased competition from rival US machines and the after-effects of Timex's botched marketing of the TS1000. Although the TS1000 had initially been a great success, Timex failed to provide the essential RAM pack upgrades to the market for two or three months after it launched the TS1000. Consumers would take the machine home, plug it in and find that it would not do anything useful due to the lack of memory. In addition, consumers' attitude in the US was quite different from that in the UK. Clive Sinclair told Informatics magazine in June 1981 that "our competitors thought that consumers didn't want to learn programming. We [Sinclair Research] think they failed because of this and because of price." Timex evidently shared this belief but events proved it to be a false assumption. The TS1000/ZX81's price advantage was erased when its main rivals – the Texas Instruments TI-99/4A and the Commodore VIC-20 – had their prices cut to below the all-important $100 mark. Competitors such as Apple, Atari, Commodore and Texas Instruments promoted their machines as being for business or entertainment rather than education, highlighting the value of computers with ready-made applications and more advanced features such as graphics, colour and sound. By late 1983 Wayne Green reported a "rising chorus of frustrated Timex users who are telling friends not to waste their money." "Hard core" early adopters, he wrote, "became discouraged with the quality of the product, with the poverty of software available and with the almost total lack of information on how to cope with it." Consumers deserted the TS1000 once its novelty value had worn off and, as publishers of programming guides found to their cost, the American public showed little interest in using the machine to learn about computer programming. American retailers were left with large stocks of unsold machines. Burned by this experience, many were unwilling to stock the later Timex Sinclair machines in large numbers and the big chain stores dropped the Timex Sinclair line altogether. Some companies outside the US and UK produced their own "pirate" versions of the ZX81 and Timex Sinclair computers, aided by weak intellectual property laws in their countries of origin. Several Brazilian companies produced ZX81 clones, notably the TK series (such as the TK85) from Microdigital Eletronica of Brazil) and Prológica's CP-200. Czerweny Electrónica of Argentina produced the CZ1000 and CZ1500, clones of the ZX81 and TS1500 respectively. Lambda Electronics of Hong Kong produced the Lambda 3000, based on the ZX81, which was itself widely copied by other Chinese manufacturers. The machines were not all straight copies of the ZX81; some, such as the CP-200, came with extra memory and a larger case (often with a chiclet keyboard in place of the original membrane keyboard). One clone, the TL801 from TELLAB of Italy, could emulate either the ZX80 or ZX81 and switch between the two machines via a jumper. Impact and legacy The ZX81 had an immediate impact on the fortunes of Sinclair Research and Clive Sinclair himself. The company's profitability rose enormously, from a pretax profit of £818,000 on a turnover of £4.6 million in 1980–81 to £8.55 million on a turnover of £27.17 million in 1981–82. Clive Sinclair became one of the UK's highest-profile businessmen and a millionaire, receiving a £1 million bonus on top of a salary of £13,000. He received a knighthood in the Queen's Birthday Honours and the Young Businessman of the Year award in 1983. The machine also had a widespread and lasting social impact in the United Kingdom, according to Clive Sinclair, purchasers of the ZX81 came from "a reasonably broad spectrum" that ranged from readers of the upmarket Observer and Sunday Times newspapers to the more downmarket but numerous Sun readers. The largest age group was around 30 years old. The Financial Times reported in March 1982 that most Sinclair computers were being bought for educational purposes, both for adults and children, though the children were usually able to learn much more quickly. Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy note that the popularity of the ZX81 was "subtly different from the run-of-the-mill social fad"; although most enthusiasts were in their teens or early twenties, many were older users – often parents who had become fascinated by the ZX81s that they had bought for their children. However, the ZX81 boom was overwhelmingly male-dominated. One of the ZX81's key legacies was that it spurred large numbers of people to try programming for the first time. The ZX81 plays a significant part in the plot of William Gibson's 2003 novel Pattern Recognition. One character, an artist using old ZX81s as a sculptural medium, explains the cultural and intellectual impact that the machine had on British society: Among those whose first experience of home computing was provided by the ZX81 are Terry Pratchett (who used it for "very primitive word processing"), Edward de Bono and – perhaps proving William Gibson's point – many video game developers including Charles Cecil, Raffaele Cecco, Pete Cooke, David Perry (whose first published game, a driving game, involved "a black blob avoiding other black blobs"), Rhianna Pratchett, and Jon Ritman. Even 30 years after launch, the ZX81 has a German user forum, and one in English. New hardware and software continue to be developed for the ZX81, including a ZX81-based webserver; the ZXpand, a combined SD card interface, 32K configurable memory expansion, and optional joystick port and AY sound interface; and new games on cassette tape by Cronosoft, such as Tut-Tut, Virus, One Little Ghost, and many more, as well as releases by Revival Studios, such as Avalanche, Mayhem, Down, Stairrunner and more. References Bibliography Books News reports Other sources External links ZX81 The Archive ZX81 Software Downloads Sinclair ZX81 Teardown – a detailed look at the ZX81's hardware Computer-related introductions in 1981 Z80-based home computers Home computers | local rival Acorn Computers put forward their proposed Proton computer, a design – of which a prototype did not yet exist – based on the Acorn Atom. To Sinclair's dismay, the contract to produce the BBC Micro went to Acorn, which launched the machine in January 1982. Paul Kriwaczek, the producer of The Computer Programme, explained his reservations in a March 1982 interview with Your Computer: Sinclair was critical of the BBC's decision, accusing it of incompetence and arrogance. Shortly after Acorn won the BBC contract the Government issued a recommended list of computers, including the BBC Micro and Research Machines 380Z, that schools could purchase, with the aid of a grant, for half price; Sinclair's computers were not included on the list. Sinclair responded by launching his own half-price deal, offering schools the chance to buy a ZX81 and 16 KB RAM pack for £60, plus a ZX Printer at half price, for a total cost of £90. As the cheapest Government-approved system was £130, this was an attractive offer for some schools and about 2,300 bought Sinclair's package, although 85% adopted the BBC Micro. Development and manufacture The development of the ZX81 got under way even before the ZX80 had been launched. Sinclair's chief engineer, Jim Westwood, was given the task of improving the ZX80's hardware to reduce the number of components and thus bring down the cost. He also sought to fix some of the more annoying problems with the ZX80. Westwood and his colleagues found that the component count could be reduced greatly by combining eighteen of the ZX80's chips into a single uncommitted logic array (ULA), a type of general-purpose chip full of logic gates that were connected up as the customer required during chip manufacture. This short-lived technology of the day was cheaper and quicker than the design of a customised logic chip, which typically required very high volumes to recoup its development cost. Ferranti produced the new chip for Sinclair, who hailed Westwood's design as a triumph of innovation: "The ZX81 had four chips when our nearest competitor in this respect, the TRS-80, had 44." Only 70% of the logic gates on the ULA were supposed to be used, but Sinclair decided to use them all to squeeze more functions in. This resulted in the machine becoming uncomfortably warm during usage. Computing folklore held that the ZX81 had to be refrigerated by balancing a carton of cold milk on top of the case. The ZX81's ROM was doubled to 8 KB, from the ZX80's 4 KB ROM. This enabled a fuller implementation of a version of ANSI Minimal BASIC (termed Sinclair BASIC by the company). Clive Sinclair re-commissioned a company called Nine Tiles, which had produced the ZX80 ROM, to develop the new ROM software for the ZX81. The code was written by John Grant, the owner of Nine Tiles, and Steve Vickers, who had joined the company in January 1980. Grant concentrated on the software that drove the ZX81's hardware, while Vickers developed the new BASIC and the accompanying manual. Sinclair's brief to the pair was fairly non-specific but primarily concerned remedying a key defect of the ZX80 so that the new machine could be used for practical programming and calculations. Vickers later recalled: The new ROM incorporated trigonometric and floating-point functions, which its predecessor had lacked – the ZX80 could only deal with whole numbers. Grant came up with one of the ZX81's more novel features, a syntax checker that indicated errors in BASIC code as soon as it was entered (rather than, as was standard at the time, only disclosing coding errors when a program was run). Unfortunately for Vickers, he introduced a briefly notorious error – the so-called "square-root bug" that caused the square root of 0.25 to be returned erroneously as 1.3591409 – as a result of problems with integrating the ZX Printer code into the ROM. Although it was eventually fixed, the bug became the subject of controversy and Sinclair was forced to replace some of the ZX81s sold to early customers. On a more positive note, Vickers' work on the manual was received favourably, being described in 1983 as "one of the classic texts on BASIC". Max Phillips commented in a What Micro? retrospective: The task of designing the ZX81's case again fell to Rick Dickinson, who produced an updated version of the ZX80's wedge-shaped case. This time round, the design team were able to use injection moulding, which enabled them to deliver a higher-quality case. Dickinson originally envisaged the ZX81 as "an expandable range of boxes following a vaguely modular approach with a common width", though this approach was eventually dropped. From start to finish, the design process took about six months. The ZX81 was launched on 5 March 1981 in two versions (though with identical components) – a pre-assembled machine or a cheaper kit version, which the user could assemble himself. Both versions were manufactured in Dundee, Scotland by Timex Corporation at the company's Dryburgh factory. Timex had not been an obvious choice of manufacturing subcontractor, as the company had little previous experience in assembling electronics. It was a well-established manufacturer of mechanical watches but was facing a crisis at the beginning of the 1980s. Profits had dwindled to virtually zero as the market for mechanical watches stagnated in the face of competition from the digital and quartz watches. Recognising the trend, Timex's director, Fred Olsen, determined that the company would diversify into other areas of business. This shift by Timex came at an ideal time for Sinclair. The ZX80 had proved more popular than expected and Sinclair's existing manufacturer, a small electronics company in St Ives, lacked the resources to deal with the demand. Timex took over production of the ZX80 late in 1980. The arrangement worked well for both companies and Timex took on the manufacture of the ZX81, aided by capital investment in its Dundee plant. Sinclair initially planned to produce 10,000 ZX81s a month, rising to 30,000 a month within a year. However, Timex initially had significant problems in producing enough ZX81s to satisfy demand. As a consequence, it took up to nine weeks for ZX81s to be delivered by mail order. It was not until September 1981, five months after the launch of the ZX81, that the delivery times finally came down to the promised twenty-eight days. Those who already owned or had recently ordered the ZX80 were not excluded; anyone who had ordered a ZX80 in the two weeks before the ZX81's launch would receive the newer machine, while existing owners were able to upgrade their ZX80s by plugging an extra £20 ROM chip into the circuit board. The reliability of the ZX81 was controversial. W.H. Smith, one of the machine's key distributors, had a company policy of ordering a third more ZX81s than were actually required for sale, so that it would have enough replacements for faulty machines. Similar problems were reported in the US market, where contemporary reports suggested that only a third of the ZX81s shipped actually worked. However, figures released by Sinclair claimed that only 2.4 per cent of pre-assembled machines were returned, although 13 per cent of kits were returned. Clive Sinclair strongly denied any problem with reliability: Sinclair attributed the higher failure rate of the kits to customers breaking the components by inserting or soldering them the wrong way, though the company admitted that there was a persistent problem with power supplies that affected both kits and pre-assembled ZX81s. The bigger problem was perhaps Sinclair's lack of after-sales service, which Robin Clarke of New Scientist described as "one of the worst after-sales performance records of any company ever established." The Financial Times observed that "Clive Sinclair's offices are filled with returned computers which can take months to be repaired." The company's slowness in replacing returns and delivering freshly ordered machines meant that Sinclair Research gained a reputation for poor customer service. Marketing The marketing of the ZX81 was handled by Sinclair's long-standing marketing agency Primary Contact (now part of Ogilvy & Mather), which had provided marketing services for Sinclair since 1971 and was to continue doing so until 1985. Sinclair's entry into the nascent home computing market gave Primary Contact a major challenge – how to market a product simultaneously at hobbyists and at the "man on the street", who probably had little or no computer literacy. The answer was to pursue what the journalist David O'Reilly of MicroScope magazine described as a single-minded "user-friendly strategy." Chris Fawkes, one of Primary Contact's directors, explained: "We brought personal computers to the mass market by showing that you didn't have to be a whizzkid to use one." As Clive Sinclair put it in a 1982 interview with Your Computer, According to Ben Rosen, by pricing the ZX81 so low, "Sinclair has opened up a completely new market among people who had never previously considered owning a computer." Clive Sinclair acknowledged the role that guesswork had played in his decision to launch the ZX81 on such a large scale: "It was a surmise that the man in the street would want such a computer. He does, and our information is that a lot of people are using the machines avidly." A New Scientist retrospective published in 1986 commented: High-profile advertising was central to the marketing campaign. Although Sinclair Research was a relatively small company, it had a long-standing policy of using large-scale advertisements that stood out in stark contrast to the more muted advertisements of other manufacturers. Superlatives, exhortations, appeals to patriotism, testimonials, eye-catching drawings and photographs on double-page spreads, varying from month to month, were used to drum up mail order business for Sinclair. The launch advertising for the ZX81 illustrates this approach. A photograph of the ZX81 alongside the official Sinclair peripherals dominated the centre of a double-page spread. The value for money of Sinclair's products was emphasised by the prices being printed in larger type than any other text on the spread. The ZX81's benefits were promoted with the aspirational slogan "Sinclair ZX81 Personal Computer – the heart of a system that grows with you". The advertisement highlighted ZX81 BASIC Programming, the manual written by Steve Vickers, as "a complete course in BASIC programming, from first principles to complex programs." The educational benefits of the ZX81 were stressed ("it's still very simple to teach yourself computing") and its technical advantages were explained in relatively non-technical terms. For instance, the ZX81's idiosyncratic method of typing commands with a single keystroke – the result of the memory-saving method of using one-byte tokens to represent keywords – was presented as "eliminat[ing] a great deal of tiresome typing". The ZX81's British character was emphasised; it was "designed by Sinclair and custom-built in Britain." Sinclair's advertising in the United States provides an illustration of how the company perceived the ZX81's purpose: This approach to advertising was driven by Sinclair's reliance on mail-order marketing. It came with a high up-front cost in terms of purchasing space in publications but it had the advantage of ensuring that all sales were firm and pre-paid. A big splash on launch produced a large influx of cash at the outset of a campaign, though it did also depend on the advertiser having enough product to satisfy the initial surge in demand. The advertisements served an additional purpose of priming the market for over-the-counter sales by "getting the story across", as Clive Sinclair put it: "Not that big a proportion do buy on mail order, but they see the ads, and that helps to prepare them for buying when the item appears in the shops." Sinclair himself became a focal point for the marketing campaign, putting a human face on the business, while Sinclair Research was portrayed in the media as a plucky British challenger taking on the technical and marketing might of giant American and Japanese corporations. As David O'Reilly noted, "by astute use of public relations, particularly playing up his image of a Briton taking on the world, Sinclair has become the best-known name in micros." The popular press soon latched onto the image. His "Uncle Clive" persona is said to have been created by the gossip columnist for Personal Computer World, while the media praised Sinclair as a visionary genius (or even, in the words of The Sun, "the most prodigious inventor since Leonardo.") As Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy put it, Sinclair outgrew "the role of microcomputer manufacturer and accepted the mantle of pioneering boffin leading Britain into a technological utopia." Pricing was central to the marketing strategy, as it had been through Sinclair's career. The ZX81 had been designed to meet a £70 price point and was launched at a price of £69.95 (built) or £49.95 (kit). One Sinclair brochure presented a side-by-side comparison of the ZX81 with the four machines that Sinclair considered its main rivals – the Acorn Atom, Apple II Plus, Commodore PET and TRS-80. The comparison highlighted the vast differences in cost, from £630 in the case of the Apple II Plus to just £70 for the ZX81, though even by Sinclair's own comparison the Apple was by far the more capable machine. According to Sinclair himself, the £69.95 price was chosen after applying the "experience curve" developed by the Boston Consulting Group. Sinclair's prior experience in the calculator market had highlighted the fact that a product will be more profitable selling at (for instance) twice the manufactured cost than at three times. He could have launched the ZX81 at a higher price, marketing it in a more traditional way as a premium product, but chose not to. In effect, he used the lower price to establish an unassailable lead before the competition moved in. An essential part of Sinclair's marketing strategy was to use regular cost-cutting at strategic intervals to maintain market share. Ian Adamson and Richard Kennedy comment that Sinclair's approach was "to secure and extend [his] market lead and panic the competition. While most companies reduce prices when their products are in steep decline, Sinclair tends to discount shortly after sales have peaked. The advantage of his approach is that vacillating customers are drawn into the fold while the product's promotion retains a commercial urgency, and the costings of the competition are thrown into utter disarray." This tactic proved highly successful, with Sinclair announcing by March 1982 that it had sold 250,000 ZX81s worldwide. 50,000 computers were sold each month, 60% outside the UK, despite Sinclair and W. H. Smith being the only distributors. When sales fell in the wake of the launch of its successor, the ZX Spectrum, Sinclair reduced the price of the pre-assembled version to £49.95 in May 1982. It was cut by another £10 the following April. Despite the increased competition from much more capable computers, the ZX81 was still shipping in excess of 30,000 units a month even as late as July 1983, more than two years after it had been launched. By that time, according to Sinclair Research, over 1.5 million ZX81s had been sold. Distribution The ZX81's distribution arrangements were an essential part of its success and marked a watershed in the way that computers were sold in the UK. Sinclair had previously made its name as a mail-order retailer – the ZX81 was initially available only through mail-order – but the only truly effective way to reach the mass market was via high street stores. Fortunately for Sinclair, an opportunity to do just that was provided by W.H. Smith, a venerable book- and magazine-seller and stationery chain. The company had stagnated in the 1970s and was looking for ways to revitalise its image and expand its product range. Smith's had begun selling audio and photographic equipment and calculators at the end of the 1970s, with a modest degree of success. In 1980 its marketing development manager, John Rowland, hit upon the idea of creating "Computer Know-How" sections in major branches to sell computer books and magazines. Most of the items on display were imports from the United States but their relatively high cost reduced their attractiveness to the casual buyer. The commercial success and mass market potential of the ZX80 caught Rowland's interest; he approached Sinclair, saw a prototype ZX81 and agreed to market the machine through Smith's on an exclusive basis for the first six months after launch. As Rowland put it, "what we've done now is bring the computer-orientated publications together with an actual computer, to create the Computer Know-How section of the store", alongside computer software and blank cassette tapes. The ZX81 would be sold in 112 stores around the UK and would serve as the centrepiece of the "Computer Know-How" sections. Selling the ZX81 over the counter was seen as something of a gamble and Rowland's colleagues were initially unenthusiastic about the scheme. Branch buyers thought that the ZX81 was unlikely to sell more than 10–15 units per branch at launch. Rowland himself thought that the ZX81 would sell about 10,000 units during the first five months of the retail agreement, equivalent to one month's mail order sales by Sinclair. In the event, the ZX81 was a massive success for Smith's, it went on sale for £99 making it the first home PC in the UK to retail for under £100. The "Computer Know-How" sections were swamped with eager customers, overwhelming the 300 staff who had been trained to demonstrate the machines; a Financial Times correspondent wrote of being "dazed and bewildered by the crowds of schoolchildren clustered round the ZX81 in your local branch of W.H. Smith." Within a year, Smith's had sold 350,000 ZX81s, making an estimated net profit of £10 million. Sales of peripherals, software, books and magazines netted even more profit. The British chain stores Boots, John Menzies and Currys began selling the ZX81 as soon as Smith's exclusive distribution deal expired and a number of companies secured overseas distribution rights for the ZX81, which was being sold in 18 countries by March 1982. Sinclair launched the ZX81 in the United States in November 1981 at a price of $149.95 assembled and $99.95 in kit form, initially selling directly to the American market by mail order. To be useful the computer needed an extra 16 KB RAM pack which cost $49.95. Sales reached 15,000 a month by January 1982, while American Express sold thousands more to its own customers. In February 1982 Timex obtained a licence from Sinclair to sell the ZX81 directly through thousands of retail outlets in the US, paying Sinclair Research a 5 per cent royalty on all Sinclair hardware and software sold by Timex. The company was later to produce its own licensed clones and variants of the ZX81. By August 1982 Sinclair had lowered the American mail-order price of the assembled ZX81 to $99.95 and kit to $79.95, and its advertisements stated that "more than 10,000 are sold every week". In December 1981 Mitsui obtained rights to distribute the ZX81 in Japan, selling it by mail order for ¥38,700 (equivalent to £83 in 1982 prices), and had sold 5,000 units by July 1982. The Japanese market's favourable reaction to the ZX81 led Mitsui to begin selling the ZX81 over the counter in large bookshops from September 1982, with annual sales of 20,000 units predicted. In the Netherlands, the regular Sinclair ZX81 was for sale as well as a Bang & Olufsen branded version called Beocomp. The ZX81 was also sold for a while in duty-free shops at UK airports. However, this fell foul of government export restrictions aimed at preventing the Soviet bloc countries from obtaining Western high technology goods. It was not uncommon for visitors from the Soviet Union and other eastern European countries to pick up gadgets in Western countries with the aim of transferring their technology to their own states' industries. In 1983 the government ordered that the ZX81s were to be withdrawn from sale at airports. There was no such restriction on sales to communist China and in November 1983 Sinclair Research announced that it had signed an agreement to export ZX81 kits to a factory in Guangzhou, where they would be assembled for the Chinese market. Reception Reviews of the ZX81 highlighted the great value for money offered by the machine but noted its technical shortcomings. As Tim Hartnell put it in Your Computer, "the ZX81 is both a delight and a disappointment". He applauded the improvements that had been made over the ZX80, such as a much better manual, display and string handling, and called the ZX81 "a very good first computer" that "will open the world of computing to many who would be denied access to it by cost." However, the built-in memory was so small that use of a memory expansion pack was "mandatory for any worthwhile use". He also found the ZX81 to be alarmingly unreliable, having to have his first two test machines replaced before |
polypropylene. Stereoregular poly(1-alkene) can be isotactic or syndiotactic depending on the relative orientation of the alkyl groups in polymer chains consisting of units −[CH2−CHR]−, like the CH3 groups in the figure. In the isotactic polymers, all stereogenic centers CHR share the same configuration. The stereogenic centers in syndiotactic polymers alternate their relative configuration. A polymer that lacks any regular arrangement in the position of its alkyl substituents (R) is called atactic. Both isotactic and syndiotactic polypropylene are crystalline, whereas atactic polypropylene, which can also be prepared with special Ziegler–Natta catalysts, is amorphous. The stereoregularity of the polymer is determined by the catalyst used to prepare it. Classes Heterogeneous catalysts The first and dominant class of titanium-based catalysts (and some vanadium-based catalysts) for alkene polymerization can be roughly subdivided into two subclasses: catalysts suitable for homopolymerization of ethylene and for ethylene/1-alkene copolymerization reactions leading to copolymers with a low 1-alkene content, 2–4 mol% (LLDPE resins), and catalysts suitable for the synthesis of isotactic 1-alkenes. The overlap between these two subclasses is relatively small because the requirements to the respective catalysts differ widely. Commercial catalysts are supported by being bound to a solid with a high surface area. Both TiCl4 and TiCl3 give active catalysts. The support in the majority of the catalysts is MgCl2. A third component of most catalysts is a carrier, a material that determines the size and the shape of catalyst particles. The preferred carrier is microporous spheres of amorphous silica with a diameter of 30–40 mm. During the catalyst synthesis, both the titanium compounds and MgCl2 are packed into the silica pores. All these catalysts are activated with organoaluminum compounds such as Al(C2H5)3. All modern supported Ziegler–Natta catalysts designed for polymerization of propylene and higher 1-alkenes are prepared with TiCl4 as the active ingredient and MgCl2 as a support. Another component of all such catalysts is an organic modifier, usually an ester of an aromatic diacid or a diether. The modifiers react both with inorganic ingredients of the solid catalysts as well as with organoaluminum cocatalysts. These catalysts polymerize propylene and other 1-alkenes to highly crystalline isotactic polymers. Homogeneous catalysts A second class of Ziegler–Natta catalysts are soluble in the reaction medium. Traditionally such homogeneous catalysts were derived from metallocenes, but the structures of active catalysts have been significantly broadened to include nitrogen-based ligands. Metallocene catalysts These | or hafnium. They are usually used in combination with a different organoaluminum cocatalyst, methylaluminoxane (or methylalumoxane, MAO). These catalysts traditionally contain metallocenes but also feature multidentate oxygen- and nitrogen-based ligands. Ziegler–Natta catalysts are used to polymerize terminal alkenes (ethylene and alkenes with the vinyl double bond): n CH2=CHR → −[CH2−CHR]n−; History The 1963 Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded to German Karl Ziegler, for his discovery of first titanium-based catalysts, and Italian Giulio Natta, for using them to prepare stereoregular polymers from propylene. Ziegler–Natta catalysts have been used in the commercial manufacture of various polyolefins since 1956. As of 2010, the total volume of plastics, elastomers, and rubbers produced from alkenes with these and related (especially Phillips) catalysts worldwide exceeds 100 million tonnes. Together, these polymers represent the largest-volume commodity plastics as well as the largest-volume commodity chemicals in the world. In the early 1950s workers at Phillips Petroleum discovered that chromium catalysts are highly effective for the low-temperature polymerization of ethylene, which launched major industrial technologies culminating in the Phillips catalyst. A few years later, Ziegler discovered that a combination of titanium tetrachloride (TiCl4) and diethylaluminium chloride (Al(C2H5)2Cl) gave comparable activities for the production of polyethylene. Natta used crystalline α-TiCl3 in combination with Al(C2H5)3 to produce first isotactic polypropylene. Usually Ziegler catalysts refer to titanium-based systems for conversions of ethylene and Ziegler–Natta catalysts refer to systems for conversions of propylene. In the 1970s, magnesium chloride was discovered to greatly enhance the activity of the titanium-based catalysts. These catalysts were so active that the residual titanium was no longer removed from the product. They enabled the commercialization of linear low-density polyethylene (LLDPE) resins and allowed the development of noncrystalline copolymers. Also, in the 1960s, BASF developed a gas-phase, mechanically-stirred polymerization process for making polypropylene. In that process, the particle bed in the reactor was either not fluidized or not fully fluidized. In 1968, the first gas-phase fluidized-bed polymerization process, the Unipol process, was commercialized by Union Carbide to produce polyethylene. In the mid-1980s, the Unipol process was further extended to produce polypropylene. The features of the fluidized-bed process, including its simplicity and product quality, made it widely accepted all over the world. As of today, the fluidized-bed process is one of the two most widely used technologies for producing polypropylene. In the 1970s, magnesium chloride-supported Ziegler–Natta catalysts were introduced. These |
while attending Hamburg University of Applied Sciences (HAW) in the late 1990s, meeting Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi and Ramzi bin al-Shibh, forming what is now known as the Hamburg cell. Jarrah was recruited by Osama bin Laden for the attacks in 1999. Unique among the hijackers, he was close to his family and girlfriend. He was reportedly the only hijacker who had any significant apprehensions about carrying out the attacks. Jarrah arrived in the United States in June 2000. He trained at Huffman Aviation together with Atta and Al-Shehhi with their flight instructor Rudi Dekkers from June 2000 to January 2001, after relocating to Florida from New Jersey. On September 7, 2001, Jarrah flew from Fort Lauderdale to Newark. Four days later, he boarded United Airlines Flight 93, and was believed to have taken over as the pilot of the aircraft along with his team of hijackers, which included Saeed al-Ghamdi, Ahmed al-Nami and Ahmed al-Haznawi, who together made an attempt to crash the plane into either the U.S. Capitol or the White House, which was thwarted when the passengers started a revolt against the hijackers. Early life and education Jarrah was born in Beirut, Lebanon, to a wealthy family. He was brought up in the Muslim quarter of the city, Tarik Jdideh, and received his primary and secondary education from schools in that area. His parents were nominally Sunni Muslim, although they lived a secular lifestyle. In his childhood, he had always wanted to fly planes, but his family discouraged this. "I stopped him from being a pilot," his father told the Wall Street Journal a week after the attacks. "I only have one son and I was afraid that he would crash." From 1995 to 1996, while Jarrah was still living in Yemen, according to his family, somebody of the same name rented an apartment in Brooklyn, New York. The landlords claimed it was the same Ziad Jarrah as in the FBI photographs. In the spring of 1996, Jarrah moved to Germany with his cousin, Salim. They were there to take a certificate course in German at the University of Greifswald, which was required of foreigners studying in Germany who do not speak the language. While sharing an apartment with his cousin, he reportedly attended discos and beach parties, and his attendance at the mosque fell off. He met Aysel Şengün, a German-born woman of Turkish ancestry studying dentistry, and the two became good friends. They dated on and off for the remainder of his life and lived together briefly, which vexed his more religious friends. In September 1997, Jarrah left Greifswald and instead began studying aerospace engineering at the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) in Hamburg, while working at a Volkswagen paint shop in nearby Wolfsburg. While in Hamburg, he rented an apartment from Rosemarie Canel, who would paint a portrait of him that he would bring back as a gift for his mother that December. The 9/11 Commission Report states that Jarrah was a member of the Hamburg cell, along with Mohamed Atta and the others. He did not live with any of the others, however, and can be confirmed to have met with any of them in Hamburg only on a single occasion: that of Said Bahaji's wedding at the al-Quds Mosque in October 1999. Training in Afghanistan In late 1999, Jarrah, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Said Bahaji, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight Russian soldiers in the Second Chechen War. Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi convinced them at the last minute to travel instead to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. They were told they were on a highly secret mission and were instructed to return to Germany after the operation and enroll in flight school. In October 1999, Ziad Jarrah was filmed at Said Bahaji's wedding with other 9/11 hijackers, including Marwan al-Shehhi. In 2006, a video surfaced showing Jarrah, still bearded, reading his will in January 2000 along with Mohamed Atta. Not long after this, Jarrah shaved his beard and began to act in a more secular way, according to Şengün. Many of the future hijackers attempted to hide their radicalism and blend in with the population. To hide his travels to Afghanistan (which may have concerned security officials at international airports) Jarrah reported his passport stolen in February 2000 and received a blank duplicate, just as hijackers Atta and Shehhi had done the previous month. Jarrah dropped out of the Fachhochschule and began looking at flight schools. He claimed that this was to fulfill his childhood dream of being a pilot. After looking in several countries, he decided that none of the flight schools in Europe were adequate. On the advice of a childhood friend, he prepared to move to the United States. In the United States Jarrah apparently entered the United States on seven separate occasions, more than any other hijacker. On May 25, 2000, he applied for and received a five-year US B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin. On June 27, 2000, he went to the U.S. for the first time, arriving at Newark International Airport. He then traveled to Florida together with al-Shehhi and Atta, where the three men enrolled full-time at Huffman Aviation, in Venice. Jarrah did not apply for a change in his status, from a tourist visa to a student visa, thus violating his immigration status. Jarrah was enrolled in flight school for six months, from June 2000 to January 15, 2001. At the flight school, many of his classmates remember him fondly, describing him as kind and trustworthy, and remember him drinking beer occasionally. Jarrah was unique among the hijackers in that he did not live with any other hijackers, but rather lived with a German student named Thorsten Biermann. Biermann did not observe Jarrah acting particularly religiously or overtly politically. Jarrah occasionally flew back to Germany to visit Aysel Şengün, his Turkish-German girlfriend, and called or e-mailed her nearly every day. Rudi Dekkers, a Dutchman and the flight instructor of Huffman Aviation (which is now out of business), was interviewed after the attacks in 2001 by authorities. According to Dekkers, both Jarrah and Al-Shehhi were good students, unlike Atta, who misbehaved and refused to follow instructions. Dekkers told Atta that he was going to kick him out of the school if his behavior didn't change, and as a response, Atta's behavior began to improve. Dekkers also said that he went with Al-Shehhi and Jarrah to a bar in Sarasota, Florida named Shamrock Pub after one of their flight lessons. At the bar, they talked to Dekkers about their plans after getting their pilot licenses, and Jarrah said to Dekkers "I got a job lined up and we are planning to become pilots." Jarrah had obtained his | attendance at the mosque fell off. He met Aysel Şengün, a German-born woman of Turkish ancestry studying dentistry, and the two became good friends. They dated on and off for the remainder of his life and lived together briefly, which vexed his more religious friends. In September 1997, Jarrah left Greifswald and instead began studying aerospace engineering at the Fachhochschule (University of Applied Sciences) in Hamburg, while working at a Volkswagen paint shop in nearby Wolfsburg. While in Hamburg, he rented an apartment from Rosemarie Canel, who would paint a portrait of him that he would bring back as a gift for his mother that December. The 9/11 Commission Report states that Jarrah was a member of the Hamburg cell, along with Mohamed Atta and the others. He did not live with any of the others, however, and can be confirmed to have met with any of them in Hamburg only on a single occasion: that of Said Bahaji's wedding at the al-Quds Mosque in October 1999. Training in Afghanistan In late 1999, Jarrah, Mohamed Atta, Marwan al-Shehhi, Said Bahaji, and Ramzi bin al-Shibh decided to travel to Chechnya to fight Russian soldiers in the Second Chechen War. Khalid al-Masri and Mohamedou Ould Slahi convinced them at the last minute to travel instead to Afghanistan to meet with Osama bin Laden and train for terrorist attacks. They were told they were on a highly secret mission and were instructed to return to Germany after the operation and enroll in flight school. In October 1999, Ziad Jarrah was filmed at Said Bahaji's wedding with other 9/11 hijackers, including Marwan al-Shehhi. In 2006, a video surfaced showing Jarrah, still bearded, reading his will in January 2000 along with Mohamed Atta. Not long after this, Jarrah shaved his beard and began to act in a more secular way, according to Şengün. Many of the future hijackers attempted to hide their radicalism and blend in with the population. To hide his travels to Afghanistan (which may have concerned security officials at international airports) Jarrah reported his passport stolen in February 2000 and received a blank duplicate, just as hijackers Atta and Shehhi had done the previous month. Jarrah dropped out of the Fachhochschule and began looking at flight schools. He claimed that this was to fulfill his childhood dream of being a pilot. After looking in several countries, he decided that none of the flight schools in Europe were adequate. On the advice of a childhood friend, he prepared to move to the United States. In the United States Jarrah apparently entered the United States on seven separate occasions, more than any other hijacker. On May 25, 2000, he applied for and received a five-year US B-1/B-2 (tourist/business) visa in Berlin. On June 27, 2000, he went to the U.S. for the first time, arriving at Newark International Airport. He then traveled to Florida together with al-Shehhi and Atta, where the three men enrolled full-time at Huffman Aviation, in Venice. Jarrah did not apply for a change in his status, from a tourist visa to a student visa, thus violating his immigration status. Jarrah was enrolled in flight school for six months, from June 2000 to January 15, 2001. At the flight school, many of his classmates remember him fondly, describing him as kind and trustworthy, and remember him drinking beer occasionally. Jarrah was unique among the hijackers in that he did not live with any other hijackers, but rather lived with a German student named Thorsten Biermann. Biermann did not observe Jarrah acting particularly religiously or overtly politically. Jarrah occasionally flew back to Germany to visit Aysel Şengün, his Turkish-German girlfriend, and called or e-mailed her nearly every day. Rudi Dekkers, a Dutchman and the flight instructor of Huffman Aviation (which is now out of business), was interviewed after the attacks in 2001 by authorities. According to Dekkers, both Jarrah and Al-Shehhi were good students, unlike Atta, who misbehaved and refused to follow instructions. Dekkers told Atta that he was going to kick him out of the school if his behavior didn't change, and as a response, Atta's behavior began to improve. Dekkers also said that he went with Al-Shehhi and Jarrah to a bar in Sarasota, Florida named Shamrock Pub after one of their flight lessons. At the bar, they talked to Dekkers about their plans after getting their pilot licenses, and Jarrah said to Dekkers "I got a job lined up and we are planning to become pilots." Jarrah had obtained his license to fly small aircraft in August 2000, and began training to fly large jets later that year. He flew to Beirut to visit his family, and then to Germany to visit his girlfriend, Şengün. He brought her back to the United States for a ten-day visit, and she even attended a flight school session with him. In late January 2001, he again flew to Beirut to visit his father, who was ill, and then to Germany to visit his girlfriend. He returned |
the Kadimah nationalist Jewish students' movement; he used the term in 1890 in his journal Selbstemanzipation! (Self-Emancipation), itself named almost identically to Leon Pinsker's 1882 book Auto-Emancipation. Overview The common denominator among all Zionists has been a claim to the land historically known as Palestine, and in Jewish writings as Eretz Israel as a national homeland of the Jews and as the legitimate focus for Jewish national self-determination. It is based on historical ties and religious traditions linking the Jewish people to the Land of Israel. Zionism does not have a uniform ideology, but has evolved in a dialogue among a plethora of ideologies: General Zionism, Religious Zionism, Labor Zionism, Revisionist Zionism, Green Zionism, etc. In the early decades it foresaw the homeland of the Jews as extending not only over historic Palestine, but into Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt, with its borders more or less coinciding with the major riverine and water-rich areas of the Levant. After almost two millennia of the Jewish diaspora residing in various countries without a national state, the Zionist movement was founded in the late 19th century by secular Jews, largely as a response by Ashkenazi Jews to rising antisemitism in Europe, exemplified by the Dreyfus affair in France and the anti-Jewish pogroms in the Russian Empire. The political movement was formally established by the Austro-Hungarian journalist Theodor Herzl in 1897 following the publication of his book Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). At that time, the movement sought to encourage Jewish migration to Ottoman Palestine particularly among those Jewish communities who were poor, unassimilated and whose 'floating' presence caused disquiet, in Herzl's view, among assimilated Jews and stirred anti-Semitism among Christians. Although initially one of several Jewish political movements offering alternative responses to Jewish assimilation and antisemitism, Zionism expanded rapidly. In its early stages, supporters considered setting up a Jewish state in the historic territory of Palestine. After World War II and the destruction of Jewish life in Central and Eastern Europe where these alternative movements were rooted, it became dominant in the thinking about a Jewish national state. Creating an alliance with Great Britain and securing support for some years for Jewish emigration to Palestine, Zionists also recruited European Jews to immigrate there, especially Jews who lived in areas of the Russian Empire where anti-semitism was raging. The alliance with Britain was strained as the latter realized the implications of the Jewish movement for Arabs in Palestine, but the Zionists persisted. The movement was eventually successful in establishing Israel on May 14, 1948 (5 Iyyar 5708 in the Hebrew calendar), as the homeland for the Jewish people. The proportion of the world's Jews living in Israel has steadily grown since the movement emerged. By the early 21st century, more than 40% of the world's Jews lived in Israel, more than in any other country. These two outcomes represent the historical success of Zionism and are unmatched by any other Jewish political movement in the past 2,000 years. In some academic studies, Zionism has been analyzed both within the larger context of diaspora politics and as an example of modern national liberation movements. Zionism also sought the assimilation of Jews into the modern world. As a result of the diaspora, many of the Jewish people remained outsiders within their adopted countries and became detached from modern ideas. So-called "assimilationist" Jews desired complete integration into European society. They were willing to downplay their Jewish identity and in some cases to abandon traditional views and opinions in an attempt at modernization and assimilation into the modern world. A less extreme form of assimilation was called cultural synthesis. Those in favor of cultural synthesis desired continuity and only moderate evolution, and were concerned that Jews should not lose their identity as a people. "Cultural synthesists" emphasized both a need to maintain traditional Jewish values and faith and a need to conform to a modernist society, for instance, in complying with work days and rules. In 1975, the United Nations General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which designated Zionism as "a form of racism and racial discrimination". The resolution was repealed in 1991 by replacing Resolution 3379 with Resolution 46/86. Opposition to Zionism (being against a Jewish state), according to historian Geoffrey Alderman, can be legitimately described as racist. Beliefs Zionism was established with the political goal of creating a Jewish state in order to create a nation where Jews could be the majority, rather than the minority which they were in a variety of nations in the diaspora. Theodor Herzl, the ideological father of Zionism, considered Antisemitism to be an eternal feature of all societies in which Jews lived as minorities, and that only a separation could allow Jews to escape eternal persecution. "Let them give us sovereignty over a piece of the Earth's surface, just sufficient for the needs of our people, then we will do the rest!" he proclaimed exposing his plan. Herzl considered two possible destinations to colonize, Argentina and Palestine. Jewish settlement of Argentina was the project of Maurice de Hirsch. Herzl preferred Argentina for its vast and sparsely populated territory and temperate climate but conceded that Palestine would have greater attraction because of the historic ties of Jews with that area. He also accepted to evaluate Joseph Chamberlain's proposal for possible Jewish settlement in Great Britain's East African colonies. Aliyah (migration, literally "ascent") to the Land of Israel is a recurring theme in Jewish prayers. Rejection of life in the Diaspora is a central assumption in Zionism. Supporters of Zionism believed that Jews in the Diaspora were prevented from their full growth in Jewish individual and national life. Zionists generally preferred to speak Hebrew, a Semitic language that developed under conditions of freedom in ancient Judah, and worked to modernize and adapt it for everyday use. Zionists sometimes refused to speak Yiddish, a language they thought had developed in the context of European persecution. Once they moved to Israel, many Zionists refused to speak their (diasporic) mother tongues and adopted new, Hebrew names. Hebrew was preferred not only for ideological reasons, but also because it allowed all citizens of the new state to have a common language, thus furthering the political and cultural bonds among Zionists. Major aspects of the Zionist idea are represented in the Israeli Declaration of Independence: History Since the first centuries of the CE, most Jews have lived outside the area commonly known as Palestine, following the destruction of the Second Temple and the massacre of the Jews in Jerusalem. Of the 600,000 (Tacitus) or 1,000,000 (Josephus) Jews of Jerusalem, all of them either died of starvation, were killed or were sold into slavery. A minority presence of Jews has been attested for almost all of the period. For example, according to tradition, the Jewish community of Peki'in has maintained a Jewish presence since the Second Temple period. According to the Tanakh, God had assigned Canaan to the Jews as a Promised Land, a belief conserved also in the Septuagint and both Christian and Islamic tradition. The Diaspora began in 586 BCE during the Babylonian occupation of Israel. The Babylonians destroyed the First Temple, which was central to Jewish culture at the time. After the 1st-century Great Revolt and the 2nd-century Bar Kokhba revolt, the Roman Empire banned Jews from Jerusalem and called the territory Syria Palaestina. Zion is a hill near Jerusalem (now in the city), widely symbolizing the Land of Israel. In the middle of the 16th century, the Portuguese Sephardi Joseph Nasi, with the support of the Ottoman Empire, tried to gather the Portuguese Jews, first to migrate to Cyprus, then owned by the Republic of Venice, and later to resettle in Tiberias. Nasi – who never converted to Islam – eventually obtained the highest medical position in the empire, and actively participated in court life. He convinced Suleiman I to intervene with the Pope on behalf of Ottoman-subject Portuguese Jews imprisoned in Ancona. Between the 4th and 19th centuries, Nasi's was the only practical attempt to establish some sort of Jewish political center in Palestine. In the 17th century Sabbatai Zevi (1626–1676) announced himself as the Messiah and gained many Jews to his side, forming a base in Salonika. He first tried to establish a settlement in Gaza, but moved later to Smyrna. After deposing the old rabbi Aaron Lapapa in the spring of 1666, the Jewish community of Avignon, France prepared to emigrate to the new kingdom. The readiness of the Jews of the time to believe the messianic claims of Sabbatai Zevi may be largely explained by the desperate state of Central European Jewry in the mid-17th century. The bloody pogroms of Bohdan Khmelnytsky had wiped out one-third of the Jewish population and destroyed many centers of Jewish learning and communal life. In the 19th century, a current in Judaism supporting a return to Zion grew in popularity, particularly in Europe, where antisemitism and hostility toward Jews were growing. The idea of returning to Palestine was rejected by the conferences of rabbis held in that epoch. Individual efforts supported the emigration of groups of Jews to Palestine, pre-Zionist Aliyah, even before 1897, the year considered as the start of practical Zionism. The Reformed Jews rejected this idea of a return to Zion. The conference of rabbis, at Frankfurt am Main, July 15–28, 1845, deleted from the ritual all prayers for a return to Zion and a restoration of a Jewish state. The Philadelphia Conference, 1869, followed the lead of the German rabbis and decreed that the Messianic hope of Israel is "the union of all the children of God in the confession of the unity of God". The Pittsburgh Conference, 1885, reiterated this Messianic idea of reformed Judaism, expressing in a resolution that "we consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community; and we therefore expect neither a return to Palestine, nor a sacrificial worship under the sons of Aaron, nor the restoration of any of the laws concerning a Jewish state". Jewish settlements were proposed for establishment in the upper Mississippi region by W.D. Robinson in 1819. Others were developed near Jerusalem in 1850, by the American Consul Warder Cresson, a convert to Judaism. Cresson was tried and condemned for lunacy in a suit filed by his wife and son. They asserted that only a lunatic would convert to Judaism from Christianity. After a second trial, based on the centrality of American 'freedom of faith' issues and antisemitism, Cresson won the bitterly contested suit. He emigrated to Ottoman Palestine and established an agricultural colony in the Valley of Rephaim of Jerusalem. He hoped to "prevent any attempts being made to take advantage of the necessities of our poor brethren ... (that would) ... FORCE them into a pretended conversion." Moral but not practical efforts were made in Prague to organize a Jewish emigration, by Abraham Benisch and Moritz Steinschneider in 1835. In the United States, Mordecai Noah attempted to establish a Jewish refuge opposite Buffalo, New York on Grand Isle, 1825. These early Jewish nation building efforts of Cresson, Benisch, Steinschneider and Noah failed. Sir Moses Montefiore, famous for his intervention in favor of Jews around the world, including the attempt to rescue Edgardo Mortara, established a colony for Jews in Palestine. In 1854, his friend Judah Touro bequeathed money to fund Jewish residential settlement in Palestine. Montefiore was appointed executor of his will, and used the funds for a variety of projects, including building in 1860 the first Jewish residential settlement and almshouse outside of the old walled city of Jerusalem—today known as Mishkenot Sha'ananim. Laurence Oliphant failed in a like attempt to bring to Palestine the Jewish proletariat of Poland, Lithuania, Romania, and the Turkish Empire (1879 and 1882). The official beginning of the construction of the New Yishuv in Palestine is usually dated to the arrival of the Bilu group in 1882, who commenced the First Aliyah. In the following years, Jewish immigration to Palestine started in earnest. Most immigrants came from the Russian Empire, escaping the frequent pogroms and state-led persecution in what are now Ukraine and Poland. They founded a number of agricultural settlements with financial support from Jewish philanthropists in Western Europe. Additional Aliyahs followed the Russian Revolution and its eruption of violent pogroms. At the end of the 19th century, Jews were a small minority in Palestine. In the 1890s, Theodor Herzl infused Zionism with a new ideology and practical urgency, leading to the First Zionist Congress at Basel in 1897, which created the World Zionist Organization (WZO). Herzl's aim was to initiate necessary preparatory steps for the development of a Jewish state. Herzl's attempts to reach a political agreement with the Ottoman rulers of Palestine were unsuccessful and he sought the support of other governments. The WZO supported small-scale settlement in Palestine; it focused on strengthening Jewish feeling and consciousness and on building a worldwide federation. The Russian Empire, with its long record of state-organized genocide and ethnic cleansing ("pogroms"), was widely regarded as the historic enemy of the Jewish people. The Zionist movement's headquarters were located in Berlin, as many of its leaders were German Jews who spoke German. Organisation Zionism developed from Proto-Zionist initiatives and movements, such as Hovevei Zion. It coalesced and became organised in the form of the Zionist Congress, which created nation-building institutions and acted in Ottoman and British Palestine as well as internationally. Pre-state institutions Zionist Organization (ZO), est. 1897 Zionist Congress (est. 1897), the supreme organ of the ZO Palestine Office (est. 1908), the executive arm of the ZO in Palestine Jewish National Fund (JNF), est. 1901 to buy and develop land in Palestine Keren Hayesod, est. 1920 to collect funds Jewish Agency, est. 1929 as the worldwide operative branch of the ZO Funding The Zionist enterprise was mainly funded by major benefactors who made large contributions, sympathisers from Jewish communities across the world (see for instance the Jewish National Fund's collection boxes), and the settlers themselves. The movement established a bank for administering its finances, the Jewish Colonial Trust (est. 1888, incorporated in London in 1899). A local subsidiary was formed in 1902 in Palestine, the Anglo-Palestine Bank. A list of pre-state large contributors to Pre-Zionist and Zionist enterprises would include, alphabetically, Isaac Leib Goldberg (1860–1935), Zionist leader and philanthropist from Russia Maurice de Hirsch (1831–1896), German Jewish financier and philanthropist, founder of the Jewish Colonization Association Moses Montefiore (1784–1885), British Jewish banker and philanthropist in Britain and the Levant, initiator and financier of Proto-Zionism Edmond James de Rothschild (1845–1934), French Jewish banker and major donor of the Zionist project Pre-state self-defense A list of Jewish pre-state self-defense organisations in Palestine would include Bar-Giora (organization) (1907-1909) HaMagen, "The Shield" (1915–17) HaNoter, "The Guard" (pre-WWI, distinct from the British Madate-period Notrim) Hashomer (1909-1920) Haganah (1920-1948) Palmach (1941-1948) Territories considered Throughout the first decade of the Zionist movement, there were several instances where Zionist figures supported a Jewish state in places outside Palestine, such as Uganda and Argentina. Even Theodor Herzl, the founder of political Zionism was initially content with any Jewish self-governed state. A major concern in considering other territories was the Russian pogroms, in particular the Kishinev massacre, and the resultant need for quick resettlement. However, other Zionists emphasized the memory, emotion and tradition linking Jews to the Land of Israel. Zion became the name of the movement, after the place where King David established his kingdom, following his conquest of the Jebusite fortress there (II Samuel 5:7, I Kings 8:1). The name Zion was synonymous with Jerusalem. Palestine only became Herzl's main focus after his Zionist manifesto 'Der Judenstaat' was published in 1896, but even then he was hesitant to focus efforts solely on resettlement in Palestine when speed was of the essence. In 1903, British Colonial Secretary Joseph Chamberlain offered Herzl 5,000 square miles in the Uganda Protectorate for Jewish settlement. Called the Uganda Scheme, it was introduced the same year to the World Zionist Organization's Congress at its sixth meeting, where a fierce debate ensued. Some groups felt that accepting the scheme would make it more difficult to establish a Jewish state in Palestine, the African land was described as an "ante-chamber to the Holy Land". It was decided to send a commission to investigate the proposed land by 295 to 177 votes, with 132 abstaining. The following year, Congress sent a delegation to inspect the plateau. A temperate climate due to its high elevation, was thought to be suitable for European settlement. However, the area was populated by a large number of Maasai, who did not seem to favour an influx of Europeans. Furthermore, the delegation found it to be filled with lions and other animals. After Herzl died in 1904, the Congress decided on the fourth day of its seventh session in July 1905 to decline the British offer and, according to Adam Rovner, "direct all future settlement efforts solely to Palestine". Israel Zangwill's Jewish Territorialist Organization aimed for a Jewish state anywhere, having been established in 1903 in response to the Uganda Scheme. It was supported by a number of the Congress's delegates. Following the vote, which had been proposed by Max Nordau, Zangwill charged Nordau that he "will be charged before the bar of history," and his supporters blamed the Russian voting bloc of Menachem Ussishkin for the outcome of the vote. The subsequent departure of the JTO from the Zionist Organization had little impact. The Zionist Socialist Workers Party was also an organization that favored the idea of a Jewish territorial autonomy outside of Palestine. As an alternative to Zionism, Soviet authorities established a Jewish Autonomous Oblast in 1934, which remains extant as the only autonomous oblast of Russia. Balfour Declaration and the Palestine Mandate Lobbying by Russian Jewish immigrant Chaim Weizmann, together with fear that American Jews would encourage the US to support Germany in the war against Russia, culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917. It endorsed the creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine, as follows: In 1922, the League of Nations adopted the declaration, and granted to Britain the Palestine Mandate: Weizmann's role in obtaining the Balfour Declaration led to his election as the Zionist movement's leader. He remained in that role until 1948, and then was elected as the first President of Israel after the nation gained independence. A number of high-level representatives of the international Jewish women's community participated in the First World Congress of Jewish Women, which was held in Vienna, Austria, in May 1923. One of the main resolutions was: "It appears ... to be the duty of all Jews to co-operate in the social-economic reconstruction of Palestine and to assist in the settlement of Jews in that country." Jewish migration to Palestine and widespread Jewish land purchases from feudal landlords contributed to landlessness among Palestinian Arabs, fueling unrest. Riots erupted in Palestine in 1920, 1921 and 1929, in which both Jews and Arabs were killed. Britain was responsible for the Palestinian mandate and, after the Balfour Declaration, it supported Jewish immigration in principle. But, in response to the violent events noted above, the Peel Commission published a report proposing new provisions and restrictions in Palestine. In 1927, Ukrainian Jew Yitzhak Lamdan wrote an epic poem titled Masada to reflect the plight of the Jews, calling for a "last stand". In 1941, Theodore Newman Kaufman published Germany Must Perish! which argued that only the dismemberment of Germany would lead to world peace. Anti-German articles, such as the Daily Express calling for an "Anti-Nazi boycott", in response to German antisemitism were published during Adolf Hitler's rise, as well. This has given birth to the conspiracy theory that Jews started the holocaust, although the Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels was largely responsible for ignoring the patriotic Jew, and for instead promoting anti-German materials as "evidence" that the Jews needed to be eradicated. Rise of Hitler In 1933, Hitler came to power in Germany, and in 1935 the Nuremberg Laws made German Jews (and later Austrian and Czech Jews) stateless refugees. Similar rules were applied by the many Nazi allies in Europe. The subsequent growth in Jewish migration and the impact of Nazi propaganda aimed at the Arab world led to the 1936–1939 Arab revolt in Palestine. Britain established the Peel Commission to investigate the situation. The commission did not consider the situation of Jews in Europe but called for a two-state solution and compulsory transfer of populations. Britain rejected this solution and instead implemented the White Paper of 1939. This planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 additional Jewish migrants. At the end of the five-year period in 1944, only 51,000 of the 75,000 immigration certificates provided for had been utilized, and the British offered to allow immigration to continue beyond cutoff date of 1944, at a rate of 1500 per month, until the remaining quota was filled. According to Arieh Kochavi, at the end of the war, the Mandatory Government had 10,938 certificates remaining and gives more details about government policy at the time. The British maintained the policies of the 1939 White Paper until the end of the Mandate. The growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and the devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C., including via the highly effective American Palestine Committee. During World War II, as the horrors of the Holocaust became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the One Million Plan, a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, a massive wave of stateless Jews, mainly Holocaust survivors, began migrating to Palestine in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project. The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. The British, having faced the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against mass Jewish immigration into Palestine, were now facing opposition by Zionist groups in Palestine for subsequent restrictions. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was a joint British and American committee set up to examine the political, economic and social conditions in Palestine as they bore upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement and the well-being of the peoples living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution. Following the failure of the 1946–47 London Conference on Palestine, at which the United States refused to support the British leading to both the Morrison–Grady Plan and the Bevin Plan being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947. Post-World War II With the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Stalin reversed his long-standing opposition to Zionism, and tried to mobilize worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet war effort. A Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in Moscow. Many thousands of Jewish refugees fled the Nazis and entered the Soviet Union during the war, where they reinvigorated Jewish religious activities and opened new synagogues. In May 1947 Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the United Nations that the USSR supported the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The USSR formally voted that way in the UN in November 1947. However once Israel was established, Stalin reversed positions, favoured the Arabs, arrested the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and launched attacks on Jews in the USSR. In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem. This partition plan was adopted on November 29, 1947, with UN GA Resolution 181, 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. The vote led to celebrations in Jewish communities and protests in Arab communities throughout Palestine. Violence throughout the country, previously a Jewish insurgency against the British, with some sporadic Jewish-Arab fighting, spiralled into the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Palestinian Arabs, known in Arabic as al-Nakba ("the Catastrophe"). More than a quarter had already fled prior to the declaration of the State of Israel and the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The flight and expulsion of the Palestinians has since been widely, and controversially, described as having involved ethnic cleansing. According to a growing consensus between Israeli and Palestinian historians, expulsion and destruction of villages played a part in the origin of the Palestinian refugees. While British scholar Efraim Karsh states that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs, despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay, many historians dismiss this claim as devoid of evidence. Morris, with others of the New Historians school, concur that Arab instigation was not the major cause of the refugees' flight. and state that the major cause of Palestinian flight was instead military actions by the Israeli Defence Force and fear of them and that Arab instigation can only explain a small part of the exodus and not a large part of it. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization has functioned mainly as an organization dedicated to assisting and encouraging Jews to migrate to Israel. It has provided political support for Israel in other countries but plays little role in internal Israeli politics. The movement's major success since 1948 was in providing logistical support for migrating Jews and, most importantly, in assisting Soviet Jews in their struggle with the authorities over the right to leave the USSR and to practice their religion in freedom, and the exodus of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. In 1944–45, Ben-Gurion described the One Million Plan to foreign officials as being the "primary goal and top priority of the Zionist movement." The immigration restrictions of the British White Paper of 1939 meant that such a plan could not be put into large scale effect until the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. The new country's immigration policy had some opposition within the new Israeli government, such as those who argued that there was "no | planned to end Jewish immigration by 1944 and to allow no more than 75,000 additional Jewish migrants. At the end of the five-year period in 1944, only 51,000 of the 75,000 immigration certificates provided for had been utilized, and the British offered to allow immigration to continue beyond cutoff date of 1944, at a rate of 1500 per month, until the remaining quota was filled. According to Arieh Kochavi, at the end of the war, the Mandatory Government had 10,938 certificates remaining and gives more details about government policy at the time. The British maintained the policies of the 1939 White Paper until the end of the Mandate. The growth of the Jewish community in Palestine and the devastation of European Jewish life sidelined the World Zionist Organization. The Jewish Agency for Palestine under the leadership of David Ben-Gurion increasingly dictated policy with support from American Zionists who provided funding and influence in Washington, D.C., including via the highly effective American Palestine Committee. During World War II, as the horrors of the Holocaust became known, the Zionist leadership formulated the One Million Plan, a reduction from Ben-Gurion's previous target of two million immigrants. Following the end of the war, a massive wave of stateless Jews, mainly Holocaust survivors, began migrating to Palestine in small boats in defiance of British rules. The Holocaust united much of the rest of world Jewry behind the Zionist project. The British either imprisoned these Jews in Cyprus or sent them to the British-controlled Allied Occupation Zones in Germany. The British, having faced the 1936–1939 Arab revolt against mass Jewish immigration into Palestine, were now facing opposition by Zionist groups in Palestine for subsequent restrictions. In January 1946 the Anglo-American Committee of Inquiry was a joint British and American committee set up to examine the political, economic and social conditions in Palestine as they bore upon the problem of Jewish immigration and settlement and the well-being of the peoples living there; to consult representatives of Arabs and Jews, and to make other recommendations 'as necessary' for an interim handling of these problems as well as for their eventual solution. Following the failure of the 1946–47 London Conference on Palestine, at which the United States refused to support the British leading to both the Morrison–Grady Plan and the Bevin Plan being rejected by all parties, the British decided to refer the question to the UN on February 14, 1947. Post-World War II With the German invasion of the USSR in 1941, Stalin reversed his long-standing opposition to Zionism, and tried to mobilize worldwide Jewish support for the Soviet war effort. A Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee was set up in Moscow. Many thousands of Jewish refugees fled the Nazis and entered the Soviet Union during the war, where they reinvigorated Jewish religious activities and opened new synagogues. In May 1947 Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko told the United Nations that the USSR supported the partition of Palestine into a Jewish and an Arab state. The USSR formally voted that way in the UN in November 1947. However once Israel was established, Stalin reversed positions, favoured the Arabs, arrested the leaders of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and launched attacks on Jews in the USSR. In 1947, the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine recommended that western Palestine should be partitioned into a Jewish state, an Arab state and a UN-controlled territory, Corpus separatum, around Jerusalem. This partition plan was adopted on November 29, 1947, with UN GA Resolution 181, 33 votes in favor, 13 against, and 10 abstentions. The vote led to celebrations in Jewish communities and protests in Arab communities throughout Palestine. Violence throughout the country, previously a Jewish insurgency against the British, with some sporadic Jewish-Arab fighting, spiralled into the 1947–1949 Palestine war. The conflict led to an exodus of about 711,000 Palestinian Arabs, known in Arabic as al-Nakba ("the Catastrophe"). More than a quarter had already fled prior to the declaration of the State of Israel and the start of the 1948 Arab–Israeli War. Later, a series of laws passed by the first Israeli government prevented Palestinians from returning to their homes, or claiming their property. They and many of their descendants remain refugees. The flight and expulsion of the Palestinians has since been widely, and controversially, described as having involved ethnic cleansing. According to a growing consensus between Israeli and Palestinian historians, expulsion and destruction of villages played a part in the origin of the Palestinian refugees. While British scholar Efraim Karsh states that most of the Arabs who fled left of their own accord or were pressured to leave by their fellow Arabs, despite Israeli attempts to convince them to stay, many historians dismiss this claim as devoid of evidence. Morris, with others of the New Historians school, concur that Arab instigation was not the major cause of the refugees' flight. and state that the major cause of Palestinian flight was instead military actions by the Israeli Defence Force and fear of them and that Arab instigation can only explain a small part of the exodus and not a large part of it. Since the creation of the State of Israel, the World Zionist Organization has functioned mainly as an organization dedicated to assisting and encouraging Jews to migrate to Israel. It has provided political support for Israel in other countries but plays little role in internal Israeli politics. The movement's major success since 1948 was in providing logistical support for migrating Jews and, most importantly, in assisting Soviet Jews in their struggle with the authorities over the right to leave the USSR and to practice their religion in freedom, and the exodus of 850,000 Jews from the Arab world, mostly to Israel. In 1944–45, Ben-Gurion described the One Million Plan to foreign officials as being the "primary goal and top priority of the Zionist movement." The immigration restrictions of the British White Paper of 1939 meant that such a plan could not be put into large scale effect until the Israeli Declaration of Independence in May 1948. The new country's immigration policy had some opposition within the new Israeli government, such as those who argued that there was "no justification for organizing large-scale emigration among Jews whose lives were not in danger, particularly when the desire and motivation were not their own" as well as those who argued that the absorption process caused "undue hardship". However, the force of Ben-Gurion's influence and insistence ensured that his immigration policy was carried out. Types The multi-national, worldwide Zionist movement is structured on representative democratic principles. Congresses are held every four years (they were held every two years before the Second World War) and delegates to the congress are elected by the membership. Members are required to pay dues known as a shekel. At the congress, delegates elect a 30-man executive council, which in turn elects the movement's leader. The movement was democratic from its inception and women had the right to vote. Until 1917, the World Zionist Organization pursued a strategy of building a Jewish National Home through persistent small-scale immigration and the founding of such bodies as the Jewish National Fund (1901 – a charity that bought land for Jewish settlement) and the Anglo-Palestine Bank (1903 – provided loans for Jewish businesses and farmers). In 1942, at the Biltmore Conference, the movement included for the first time an express objective of the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. The 28th Zionist Congress, meeting in Jerusalem in 1968, adopted the five points of the "Jerusalem Program" as the aims of Zionism today. They are: Unity of the Jewish People and the centrality of Israel in Jewish life Ingathering of the Jewish People in its historic homeland, Eretz Israel, through Aliyah from all countries Strengthening of the State of Israel, based on the prophetic vision of justice and peace Preservation of the identity of the Jewish People through fostering of Jewish and Hebrew education, and of Jewish spiritual and cultural values Protection of Jewish rights everywhere Since the creation of modern Israel, the role of the movement has declined. It is now a peripheral factor in Israeli politics, though different perceptions of Zionism continue to play roles in Israeli and Jewish political discussion. Labor Zionism Labor Zionism originated in Eastern Europe. Socialist Zionists believed that centuries of oppression in antisemitic societies had reduced Jews to a meek, vulnerable, despairing existence that invited further antisemitism, a view originally stipulated by Theodor Herzl. They argued that a revolution of the Jewish soul and society was necessary and achievable in part by Jews moving to Israel and becoming farmers, workers, and soldiers in a country of their own. Most socialist Zionists rejected the observance of traditional religious Judaism as perpetuating a "Diaspora mentality" among the Jewish people, and established rural communes in Israel called "kibbutzim". The kibbutz began as a variation on a "national farm" scheme, a form of cooperative agriculture where the Jewish National Fund hired Jewish workers under trained supervision. The kibbutzim were a symbol of the Second Aliyah in that they put great emphasis on communalism and egalitarianism, representing Utopian socialism to a certain extent. Furthermore, they stressed self-sufficiency, which became an essential aspect of Labor Zionism. Though socialist Zionism draws its inspiration and is philosophically founded on the fundamental values and spirituality of Judaism, its progressive expression of that Judaism has often fostered an antagonistic relationship with Orthodox Judaism. Labor Zionism became the dominant force in the political and economic life of the Yishuv during the British Mandate of Palestine and was the dominant ideology of the political establishment in Israel until the 1977 election when the Israeli Labor Party was defeated. The Israeli Labor Party continues the tradition, although the most popular party in the kibbutzim is Meretz. Labor Zionism's main institution is the Histadrut (general organisation of labor unions), which began by providing strikebreakers against a Palestinian worker's strike in 1920 and until 1970s was the largest employer in Israel after the Israeli government. Liberal Zionism General Zionism (or Liberal Zionism) was initially the dominant trend within the Zionist movement from the First Zionist Congress in 1897 until after the First World War. General Zionists identified with the liberal European middle class to which many Zionist leaders such as Herzl and Chaim Weizmann aspired. Liberal Zionism, although not associated with any single party in modern Israel, remains a strong trend in Israeli politics advocating free market principles, democracy and adherence to human rights. Their political arm was one of the ancestors of the modern-day Likud. Kadima, the main centrist party during the 2000s that split from Likud and is now defunct, however, did identify with many of the fundamental policies of Liberal Zionist ideology, advocating among other things the need for Palestinian statehood in order to form a more democratic society in Israel, affirming the free market, and calling for equal rights for Arab citizens of Israel. In 2013, Ari Shavit suggested that the success of the then-new Yesh Atid party (representing secular, middle-class interests) embodied the success of "the new General Zionists." Dror Zeigerman writes that the traditional positions of the General Zionists—"liberal positions based on social justice, on law and order, on pluralism in matters of State and Religion, and on moderation and flexibility in the domain of foreign policy and security"—are still favored by important circles and currents within certain active political parties. Philosopher Carlo Strenger describes a modern-day version of Liberal Zionism (supporting his vision of "Knowledge-Nation Israel"), rooted in the original ideology of Herzl and Ahad Ha'am, that stands in contrast to both the romantic nationalism of the right and the Netzah Yisrael of the ultra-Orthodox. It is marked by a concern for democratic values and human rights, freedom to criticize government policies without accusations of disloyalty, and rejection of excessive religious influence in public life. "Liberal Zionism celebrates the most authentic traits of the Jewish tradition: the willingness for incisive debate; the contrarian spirit of davka; the refusal to bow to authoritarianism." Liberal Zionists see that "Jewish history shows that Jews need and are entitled to a nation-state of their own. But they also think that this state must be a liberal democracy, which means that there must be strict equality before the law independent of religion, ethnicity or gender." Revisionist Zionism Revisionist Zionists, led by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, developed what became known as Nationalist Zionism, whose guiding principles were outlined in the 1923 essay Iron Wall. In 1935 the Revisionists left the World Zionist Organization because it refused to state that the creation of a Jewish state was an objective of Zionism. Jabotinsky believed that, Zionism is a colonising adventure and it therefore stands or falls by the question of armed force. It is important to build, it is important to speak Hebrew, but, unfortunately, it is even more important to be able to shoot—or else I am through with playing at colonization.Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Original Sins: Reflections on the History of Zionism and Israel, Olive Branch Press, 1993 p.103. and that Although the Jews originated in the East, they belonged to the West culturally, morally, and spiritually. Zionism was conceived by Jabotinsky not as the return of the Jews to their spiritual homeland but as an offshoot or implant of Western civilization in the East. This worldview translated into a geostrategic conception in which Zionism was to be permanently allied with European colonialism against all the Arabs in the eastern Mediterranean. The revisionists advocated the formation of a Jewish Army in Palestine to force the Arab population to accept mass Jewish migration. Supporters of Revisionist Zionism developed the Likud Party in Israel, which has dominated most governments since 1977. It advocates Israel's maintaining control of the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and takes a hard-line approach in the Arab–Israeli conflict. In 2005, the Likud split over the issue of creation of a Palestinian state in the occupied territories. Party members advocating peace talks helped form the Kadima Party. Religious Zionism Religious Zionism is an ideology that combines Zionism and observant Judaism. Before the establishment of the State of Israel, Religious Zionists were mainly observant Jews who supported Zionist efforts to build a Jewish state in the Land of Israel. After the Six-Day War and the capture of the West Bank, a territory referred to in Jewish terms as Judea and Samaria, right-wing components of the Religious Zionist movement integrated nationalist revindication and evolved into Neo-Zionism. Their ideology revolves around three pillars: the Land of Israel, the People of Israel and the Torah of Israel. Green Zionism Green Zionism is a branch of Zionism primarily concerned with the environment of Israel. The only specifically environmentalist Zionist party is the Green Zionist Alliance. Post-Zionism During the last quarter of the 20th century, classic nationalism in Israel declined. This led to the rise of post-Zionism. Post-Zionism asserts that Israel should abandon the concept of a "state of the Jewish people" and strive to be a state of all its citizens, or a binational state where Arabs and Jews live together while enjoying some type of autonomy. Non-Jewish support Political support for the Jewish return to the Land of Israel predates the formal organization of Jewish Zionism as a political movement. In the 19th century, advocates of the restoration of the Jews to the Holy Land were called Restorationists. The return of the Jews to the Holy Land was widely supported by such eminent figures as Queen Victoria, Napoleon Bonaparte, King Edward VII, President John Adams of the United States, General Smuts of South Africa, President Masaryk of Czechoslovakia, philosopher and historian Benedetto Croce from Italy, Henry Dunant (founder of the Red Cross and author of the Geneva Conventions), and scientist and humanitarian Fridtjof Nansen from Norway. The French government, through Minister M. Cambon, formally committed itself to "... the renaissance of the Jewish nationality in that Land from which the people of Israel were exiled so many centuries ago." In China, top figures of the Nationalist government, including Sun Yat-sen, expressed their sympathy with the aspirations of the Jewish people for a National Home. Christian Zionism Some Christians actively supported the return of Jews to Palestine even prior to the rise of Zionism, as well as subsequently. Anita Shapira, a history professor emerita at Tel Aviv University, suggests that evangelical Christian restorationists of the 1840s 'passed this notion on to Jewish circles'. Evangelical Christian anticipation of and political lobbying within the UK for Restorationism was widespread in the 1820s and common beforehand. It was common among the Puritans to anticipate and frequently to pray for a Jewish return to their homeland. One of the principal Protestant teachers who promoted the biblical doctrine that the Jews would return to their national homeland was John Nelson Darby. His doctrine of dispensationalism is credited with promoting Zionism, following his 11 lectures on the hopes of the church, the Jew and the gentile given in Geneva in 1840. However, others like C H Spurgeon, both Horatius and Andrew Bonar, Robert Murray M'Chyene, and J C Ryle were among a number of prominent proponents of both the importance and significance of a Jewish return, who were not dispensationalist. Pro-Zionist views were embraced by many evangelicals and also affected international foreign policy. The Russian Orthodox ideologue Hippolytus Lutostansky, also known as the author of multiple antisemitic tracts, insisted in 1911 that Russian Jews should be "helped" to move to Palestine "as their rightful place is in their former kingdom of Palestine". Notable early supporters of Zionism include British Prime Ministers David Lloyd George and Arthur Balfour, American President Woodrow Wilson and British Major-General Orde Wingate, whose activities in support of Zionism led the British Army to ban him from ever serving in Palestine. According to Charles Merkley of Carleton University, Christian Zionism strengthened significantly after the Six-Day War of 1967, and many dispensationalist and non-dispensationalist evangelical Christians, especially Christians in the United States, now strongly support Zionism. Martin Luther King Jr. was a strong supporter of Israel and Zionism, although the Letter to an Anti-Zionist Friend is a work falsely attributed to him. In the last years of his life, the founder of the Latter Day Saint movement, Joseph Smith, declared, "the time for Jews to return to the land of Israel is now." In 1842, Smith sent Orson Hyde, an Apostle of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, to Jerusalem to dedicate the land for the return of the Jews. Some Arab Christians publicly supporting Israel include US author Nonie Darwish, and former Muslim Magdi Allam, author of Viva Israele, both born in Egypt. Brigitte Gabriel, a Lebanese-born Christian US journalist and founder of the American Congress for Truth, urges Americans to "fearlessly speak out in defense of America, Israel and Western civilization". Muslim Zionism Muslims who have publicly defended Zionism include Tawfik Hamid, Islamic thinker and reformer and former member of al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya, an Islamist militant group that is designated as a terrorist organization by the United States and European Union, Sheikh Prof. Abdul Hadi Palazzi, Director of the Cultural Institute of the Italian Islamic Community and Tashbih Sayyed, a Pakistani-American scholar, journalist, and author. On occasion, some non-Arab Muslims such as some Kurds and Berbers have also voiced support for Zionism. While most Israeli Druze identify as ethnically Arab, today, tens of thousands of Israeli Druze belong to "Druze Zionist" movements. During the Palestine Mandate era, As'ad Shukeiri, a Muslim scholar ('alim) of the Acre area, and the father of PLO founder Ahmad Shukeiri, rejected the values of the Palestinian Arab national movement and was opposed to the anti-Zionist movement. He met routinely with Zionist officials and had a part in every pro-Zionist Arab organization from the beginning of the British Mandate, publicly rejecting Mohammad Amin al-Husayni's use of Islam to attack Zionism. Some Indian Muslims have also expressed opposition to Islamic anti-Zionism. In August 2007, a delegation of the All India Organization of Imams and mosques led by its president Maulana Jamil Ilyas visited Israel. The meeting led to a joint statement expressing "peace and goodwill from Indian Muslims", developing dialogue between Indian Muslims and Israeli Jews, and rejecting the perception that the Israeli–Palestinian conflict is of a religious nature. The visit was organized by the American Jewish Committee. The purpose of the visit was to promote meaningful debate about the status of Israel in the eyes of Muslims worldwide and to strengthen the relationship between India and Israel. It is suggested that the visit could "open Muslim minds across the world to understand the democratic nature of the state of Israel, especially in the Middle East". Hindu support for Zionism After Israel's creation in 1948, the Indian National Congress government opposed Zionism. Some writers have claimed that this was done in order to get more Muslim votes in India (where Muslims numbered over 30 million at the time). However, conservative Hindu nationalists, led by the Sangh Parivar, openly supported Zionism, as did Hindu Nationalist intellectuals like Vinayak Damodar Savarkar and Sita Ram Goel. Zionism, seen as a national liberation movement for the repatriation of the Jewish people to their homeland then under British colonial rule, appealed to many Hindu Nationalists, who viewed their struggle for independence from British rule and the Partition of India as national liberation for long-oppressed Hindus. An international opinion survey has shown that India is the most pro-Israel country in the world. In more current times, conservative Indian parties and organizations tend to support Zionism. This has invited attacks on the Hindutva movement by parts of the Indian left opposed to Zionism, and allegations that Hindus are conspiring with the "Jewish Lobby." Anti-Zionism Zionism is opposed by a wide variety of organizations and individuals. Among those opposing Zionism were and are some secular Jews, some branches of Judaism (Satmar Hasidim and Neturei Karta), the former Soviet Union, many in the Muslim world, and Palestinians. Reasons for opposing Zionism are varied, and they include: the perception that land confiscations are unfair; expulsions of Palestinians; violence against Palestinians; and alleged racism. Arab states in particular strongly oppose Zionism, which they believe is responsible for the 1948 Palestinian exodus. The preamble of the African Charter on Human and Peoples' Rights, which has been ratified by 53 African countries , includes an undertaking to eliminate Zionism together with other practices including colonialism, neo-colonialism, apartheid, "aggressive foreign military bases" and all forms of discrimination. Zionism was also opposed for other reasons by some Jews even before the establishment of the state of Israel because "Zionism constitutes a danger, both spiritual and physical, to the existence of our people". In 1945 US President Franklin D Roosevelt met with king Ibn Saud of Saudi Arabia. Ibn Saud pointed out that it was Germany who had committed crimes against the Jews and so Germany should be punished. Palestinian Arabs had done no harm to European Jews and did not deserve to be punished by losing their land. Roosevelt on return to the US concluded that Israel "could only be established and maintained by force." Catholic Church and Zionism The initial response of the Catholic Church seemed to be one of strong opposition to Zionism. Shortly after the 1897 Basel Conference, the semi-official Vatican periodical (edited by the Jesuits) Civiltà Cattolica gave its biblical-theological judgement on political Zionism: "1827 years have passed since the prediction of Jesus of Nazareth was fulfilled ... that [after the destruction of Jerusalem] the Jews would be led away to be slaves among all the nations and that they would remain in the dispersion [diaspora, galut] until the end of the world." The Jews should not be permitted to return to Palestine with sovereignty: "According to the Sacred Scriptures, the Jewish people must always live dispersed and vagabondo [vagrant, wandering] among the other nations, so that they may render witness to Christ not only by the Scriptures ... but by their very existence". Nonetheless, Theodore Herzl travelled to Rome in late January 1904, after the sixth Zionist Congress (August 1903) and six months before his death, looking for some kind of support. On January 22, Herzl first met the Papal Secretary of State, Cardinal Rafael Merry del Val. According to Herzl's private diary notes, the Cardinal's interpretation of the history of Israel was the same as that of the Catholic Church, but he also asked for the conversion of the Jews to Catholicism. Three days later, Herzl met Pope Pius X, who replied to his request of support for a Jewish return to Israel in the same terms, saying that "we are unable to favor this movement. We cannot prevent the Jews from going to Jerusalem, but we could never sanction it ... The Jews have not recognized our Lord, therefore we cannot recognize the Jewish people." In 1922, the same periodical published a piece by its Viennese correspondent, "anti-Semitism is nothing but the absolutely necessary and natural reaction to the Jews' arrogance... Catholic anti-Semitism – while never going beyond the moral law – adopts all necessary means to emancipate the Christian people from the abuse they suffer from their sworn enemy". This initial attitude changed over the next 50 years, until 1997, when at the Vatican symposium of that year, Pope John Paul II rejected the Christian roots of antisemitism, stating that "... the wrong and unjust interpretations of the New Testament relating to the Jewish people and their supposed guilt [in Christ's death] circulated for too long, engendering sentiments of hostility toward this people." Characterization as colonialism, ethnic cleansing, or racist David Ben-Gurion stated that "There will be no discrimination among citizens of the Jewish state on the basis of race, religion, sex, or class." Likewise, Vladimir Jabotinsky avowed "the minority will not be rendered defenseless... [the] aim of democracy is to guarantee that the minority too has influence on matters of state policy." Supporters of Zionism, such as Chaim Herzog, argue that the movement is non-discriminatory and contains no racist aspects. However, critics of Zionism consider it a colonialist or racist movement. According to historian Avi Shlaim, throughout its history up to present day, Zionism "is replete with manifestations of deep hostility and contempt towards the indigenous population." Shlaim balances this by pointing out that there have always been individuals within the Zionist movement that have criticized such attitudes. He cites the example of Ahad Ha'am, who after visiting Palestine in 1891, published a series of articles criticizing the aggressive behaviour and political ethnocentrism of Zionist settlers. Ha'am wrote that the Zionists "behave towards the Arabs with hostility and cruelty, trespass unjustly upon their boundaries, beat them shamefully without reason and even brag about it, and nobody stands to check this contemptible and dangerous tendency" and that they believed that "the only language that the Arabs understand is that of force." Some criticisms of Zionism claim that Judaism's notion of the "chosen people" is the source of racism in Zionism, despite, according to Gustavo Perednik, that being a religious concept unrelated to Zionism. Zionism has been characterized as colonialism, and Zionism has been criticized for promoting unfair confiscation of land, involving the expulsion of, and causing violence towards, the Palestinians. The characterization of Zionism as colonialism has been described by, among others, Nur Masalha, Gershon Shafir, Michael Prior, Ilan Pappe, and Baruch Kimmerling. Noam Chomsky, John P. Quigly, Nur Masalha, and Cheryl Rubenberg have criticized Zionism, saying that it unfairly confiscates land and expels Palestinians. Isaac Deutscher has called Israelis the 'Prussians of the Middle East', who have achieved a 'totsieg', a 'victorious rush into the grave' as a result of dispossessing 1.5 million Palestinians. Israel had become the 'last remaining colonial power' of the twentieth century. Saleh Abdel Jawad, Nur Masalha, Michael Prior, Ian Lustick, and John Rose have criticized Zionism for having been responsible for violence against Palestinians, such as the Deir Yassin massacre, Sabra and Shatila massacre, and Cave of the Patriarchs massacre. Others, such as Shlomo Avineri and Mitchell Bard, view Zionism not as a colonialist movement, but as a national movement that is contending with the Palestinian one. South African rabbi David Hoffman rejected the claim that Zionism is a 'settler-colonial undertaking' and instead characterized Zionism as a national program of affirmative action, adding that there is unbroken Jewish presence in Israel back to antiquity. Edward Said and Michael Prior claim that the notion of expelling the Palestinians was an early component of Zionism, citing Herzl's diary from 1895 which states "we shall endeavour to expel the poor population across the border unnoticed—the process of expropriation and the removal of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly." This quotation has been critiqued by Efraim Karsh for misrepresenting Herzl's purpose. He describes it as "a feature of Palestinian propaganda", writing that Herzl was referring to the voluntary resettlement of squatters living on land purchased by Jews, and that the full diary entry stated, "It goes without saying that we shall respectfully tolerate persons of other faiths and protect their property, their honor, and their freedom with the harshest means of coercion. This is another area in which we shall set the entire world a wonderful example ... Should there be many such immovable owners in individual areas [who would not sell their property to us], we shall simply leave them there and develop our commerce in the direction of other areas which belong to us." Derek Penslar says that Herzl may have been considering either South America or Palestine when he wrote the diary entry about expropriation. According to Walter Laqueur, although many Zionists proposed transfer, it was never official Zionist policy and in 1918 Ben-Gurion "emphatically rejected" it. Ilan Pappe argued that Zionism results in ethnic cleansing. This view diverges from other New Historians, such as Benny Morris, who accept the Palestinian exodus narrative but place it in the context of war, not ethnic cleansing. When Benny Morris was asked about the Expulsion of Palestinians from Lydda and Ramle, he responded "There are circumstances in history that justify ethnic cleansing. I know that this term is completely negative in the discourse of the 21st century, but when the choice is between ethnic cleansing and genocide—the annihilation of your people—I prefer ethnic cleansing." In 1938, Mahatma Gandhi rejected Zionism, saying that the establishment of a Jewish national home in Palestine is a religious act and therefore must not be performed by force, comparing it to the Partition of India into Hindu and Muslim countries. He wrote, "Palestine belongs to the Arabs in the same sense that England belongs to the English or France to the French. It is wrong and inhuman to impose the Jews on the Arabs ... Surely it would be a crime against humanity to reduce the proud Arabs so that Palestine can be restored to the Jews partly or wholly as their national home ... They can settle in Palestine only by the goodwill of the Arabs. They should seek to convert the Arab heart." Gandhi later told American journalist Louis Fischer in 1946 that "Jews have a good case in Palestine. If the Arabs have a claim to Palestine, the Jews have a prior claim". In December 1973, the UN passed a series of resolutions condemning South Africa and included a reference to an "unholy alliance between Portuguese colonialism, Apartheid and Zionism." At the time there was little cooperation between Israel and South Africa, although the two countries would develop a close relationship during the 1970s. Parallels have also been drawn between aspects of South Africa's apartheid regime and certain Israeli policies toward the Palestinians, which are seen as manifestations of racism in Zionist thinking. In 1975 the UN General Assembly passed Resolution 3379, which said "Zionism is a form of racism and racial discrimination". According to the resolution, "any doctrine of racial differentiation of superiority is scientifically false, morally condemnable, socially unjust, and dangerous." The resolution named the occupied territory of Palestine, Zimbabwe, and South Africa as examples of racist regimes. Resolution 3379 was pioneered by the Soviet Union and passed with numerical support from Arab and African states amidst accusations that Israel was supportive of the apartheid regime in South Africa. The resolution was robustly criticised by the US representative, Daniel Patrick Moynihan as an 'obscenity' and a 'harm ... done to the United Nations'. 'In 1991 the resolution was repealed with UN General Assembly Resolution 46/86, after Israel declared that it would only participate in the Madrid Conference of 1991 if the resolution were revoked. Arab countries sought to associate Zionism with racism in connection with a 2001 UN conference on racism, which took place in Durban, South Africa, which caused the United States and Israel to walk away from the conference as a response. The final text of the conference did not connect Zionism with racism. A human |
and the compositions are not renovated. There have been no significant new works created since the 1950s; the existing zarzuela repertoire is costly to produce, and many classics have been performed only sporadically in recent years, at least professionally. The genre has again found favour in Spain and elsewhere: younger people, in particular, have been drawn to its lyrical music and theatrical spectacle in the 1940s and 1950s. Spanish radio and television have dedicated time to zarzuela in 1978, not least in a popular series of programs produced by TVE and entitled Antología de la zarzuela ("Zarzuela Anthology"). These were based on lip syncs of the classic recordings of the 1940s and 1950s. Some years earlier, impresario José Tamayo worked a theatrical show of the same name which popularized pieces of zarzuela through several national and international tours. Zarzuela in Catalonia While the zarzuela tradition flourished in Madrid and other Spanish cities, Catalonia developed its own zarzuela, with librettos in Catalan. The atmosphere, the plots, and the music were quite different from the model that triumphed in Madrid, as the Catalan zarzuela was looking to attract a different public, the bourgeois classes. Catalan zarzuela was turned little by little into what is called, in Catalan, teatre líric català ("Catalan lyric theater"), with a personality of its own, and with modernista lyricists and composers such as Enric Granados or Enric Morera. In the final years of the 19th century, as modernisme emerged, one of the notable modernistas, and one of Felip Pedrell's pupils, Amadeu Vives came onto the Barcelona scene. He contributed to the creation of the Orfeó Català in 1891, along with Lluís Millet. In spite of a success sustained over many years, his musical ambition took him to Madrid, where zarzuela had a higher profile. Vives became one of the most important zarzuela composers, with such masterpieces as Doña Francisquita. Zarzuela in Cuba and Mexico In Cuba the afrocubanismo zarzuelas of Ernesto Lecuona (María la O; El cafetal), Eliseo Grenet (La virgen morena) and Gonzalo Roig (Cecilia Valdés, based on Cirilo Villaverde's classic novel) represent a brief golden age of political and cultural importance. These and other works centred on the plight of the mulata woman and other black underclasses in Cuban society. The outstanding star of many of these productions was Rita Montaner. Mexico likewise had its own zarzuela traditions. One example is Carlo Curti's La cuarta plana, starring Esperanza Iris. Zarzuela in the Philippines Due to Spanish colonization, the Zarzuela Musical Theatre has been widely adapted by Filipinos in their native cultures, notably in urban areas. The theatre was only introduced by the Spanish in 1878, despite having colonial rule since the middle of the 16th century. During this time, the plays were performed only by Spanish people. By 1880, majority of the performers and writers were Filipinos, notably Philippine national hero, José Rizal, who was fond of the play. Afterwards, local languages, instead of Spanish, were used to perform the complex theatre, with additions from multiple cultures throughout the archipelago. When the Philippines was colonized by the Americans in the early 20th century, the humor from the moro-moro play was added into the Philippine zarzuela, while moving away from the traditional Spanish zarzuela. The theatre afterwards was used by Filipinos to express freedom from discrimination and colonial rule, depicting the Filipino people triumphant against the Spanish and Americans by the end of each play. The revolutionary overtones of the play prompted the American colonialists to arrest various performers and writers of the Philippine zarzuela, to the extent of forcefully shutting down entire zarzuela companies in the Philippines. In the 1920s, due to the introduction of the cinema, the zarzuela became widely popular in the rural areas, disabling the Americans from stopping the plays from spreading. The Philippine zarzuela evolved into a kind of comedy of manners distinct to the Filipino taste. In 2011, the performing art was cited by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as one of the intangible cultural heritage of the Philippines under the performing arts category that the government may nominate in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. In 2012, through a partnership with UNESCO, the Philippine government established the documents needed for the safeguarding of the Philippine zarzuela. UNESCO has cited the Philippine zarzuela as the national theatre and opera of the Philippines. Recorded zarzuela From 1950 onwards, zarzuela prospered in a series of LP recordings from EMI, Hispavox and others, with worldwide distribution. A series produced by the Alhambra company of Madrid, the majority conducted by the leading Spanish conductor Ataulfo Argenta had particular success. Many featured singers soon to become world-famous, such as Teresa Berganza, Alfredo Kraus and Pilar Lorengar; and later, Montserrat Caballé and Plácido Domingo. Less known performers such as Ana María Iriarte, Inés Ribadeneira, Toñy Rosado, Carlos Munguía, Renato Cesari, and others frequently lent their voices to the recordings. The choirs of Orfeón Donostiarra and Singers' Choir of Madrid also contributed, rounding out the overall quality of the works. After Argenta's death others such as Indalecio Cisneros and Rafael Frühbeck | masterpieces from this period were Barbieri's Pan y toros and Gaztambide's El juramento. Another notable composer from this period was Emilio Arrieta. Romantic zarzuela After the Glorious Revolution of 1868, the country entered a deep crisis (especially economically), which was reflected in theatre. The public could not afford high-priced theatre tickets for grandiose productions, which led to the rise of the Teatros Variedades ("variety theatres") in Madrid, with cheap tickets for one-act plays (sainetes). This "theatre of an hour" had great success and zarzuela composers took to the new formula with alacrity. Single-act zarzuelas were classified as género chico ("little genre") whilst the longer zarzuelas of three acts, lasting up to four hours, were called género grande ("grand genre"). Zarzuela grande battled on at the Teatro de la Zarzuela de Madrid, founded by Barbieri and his friends in the 1850s. A newer theatre, the Apolo, opened in 1873. At first it attempted to present the género grande, but it soon yielded to the taste and economics of the time, and became the "temple" of the more populist género chico in the late 1870s. Musical content from this era ranges from full-scale operatic arias (romanzas) through to popular songs, and dialogue from high poetic drama to lowlife comedy characters. There are also many types of zarzuela in between the two named genres, with a variety of musical and dramatic flavours. Many of the greatest zarzuelas were written in the 1880s and 1890s, but the form continued to adapt to new theatrical stimuli until well into the 20th century. With the onset of the Spanish Civil War, the form rapidly declined, and the last romantic zarzuelas to hold the stage were written in the 1950s. Whilst Barbieri produced the greatest zarzuela grande in El barberillo de Lavapiés, the classic exponent of the género chico was his pupil Federico Chueca, whose La gran vía (composed with Joaquín Valverde Durán) was a cult success both in Spain and throughout Europe. The musical heir of Chueca was José Serrano, whose short, one act género chico zarzuelas - notably La canción del olvido, Alma de dios and the much later Los claveles and La dolorosa - form a stylistic bridge to the more musically sophisticated zarzuelas of the 20th century. While the zarzuela featured (or even glorified) popular customs, festivals, and manners of speech, especially those of Madrid, something never found in a zarzuela is social criticism. They celebrated the established order of society; if a zarzuela advocated for anything, it would be for the slowing or elimination of social change. 20th century From about 1900, the term ("degraded" or "low genre") was coined to describe an emerging form of entertainment allied to the (revue) type of musical comedy: these were musical works similar to the zarzuela but lighter and bolder in their social criticism, with scenes portraying sexual themes and many verbal double entendres. One popular work from the género ínfimo years is La corte de Faraón (1910), by Vicente Lleó, which was based on the French operetta Madame Putiphar. In the second decade of the century, the influences of Viennese operetta and the English followers of Sullivan such as Lionel Monckton made themselves felt, in works such as Molinos de viento and El asombro de Damasco (both by Pablo Luna), before the Spanish tradition great acts was reasserted in Amadeu Vives's Doña Francisquita (1923). The zarzuela continued to flourish in the 1930s, thanks to composers of the stature of Pablo Sorozábal – who reinvigorated it as a vehicle for socio-political comment – Federico Moreno Torroba, and Francisco Alonso. However, the Spanish Civil War brought a decline of the genre, and after the Second World War, its extinction as a live genre was almost total. There were no new authors and the compositions are not renovated. There have been no significant new works created since the 1950s; the existing zarzuela repertoire is costly to produce, and many classics have been performed only sporadically in recent years, at least professionally. The genre has again found favour in Spain and elsewhere: younger people, in particular, have been drawn to its lyrical music and theatrical spectacle in the 1940s and 1950s. Spanish radio and television have dedicated time to zarzuela in 1978, not least in a popular series of programs produced by TVE and entitled Antología de la zarzuela ("Zarzuela Anthology"). These were based on lip syncs of the classic recordings of the 1940s and 1950s. Some years earlier, impresario José Tamayo worked a theatrical show of the same name which popularized pieces of zarzuela through several national and international tours. Zarzuela in Catalonia While the zarzuela tradition flourished in Madrid and other Spanish cities, Catalonia developed its own zarzuela, with librettos in Catalan. The atmosphere, the plots, and the music were quite different from the model that triumphed in Madrid, as the Catalan zarzuela was looking to attract a different public, the bourgeois classes. Catalan zarzuela was turned little by little into what is called, in Catalan, teatre líric català ("Catalan lyric theater"), with a personality of its own, and with modernista lyricists and composers such as Enric Granados or Enric Morera. In the final years of the 19th century, as modernisme emerged, one of the notable modernistas, and one of Felip Pedrell's pupils, Amadeu Vives came onto the Barcelona scene. He contributed to the creation of the Orfeó Català in 1891, along with Lluís Millet. In spite of a success sustained over many years, his musical ambition took him to Madrid, where zarzuela had a higher profile. Vives became one of the most important zarzuela composers, with such masterpieces as Doña Francisquita. Zarzuela in Cuba and Mexico In Cuba the afrocubanismo zarzuelas of Ernesto Lecuona (María la O; El cafetal), Eliseo Grenet (La virgen morena) and Gonzalo Roig (Cecilia Valdés, based on Cirilo Villaverde's classic novel) represent a brief golden age of political and cultural importance. These and other works centred on the plight of the mulata woman and other black underclasses in Cuban society. The outstanding star of many of these productions was Rita Montaner. Mexico likewise had its own zarzuela traditions. One example is Carlo Curti's La cuarta plana, starring Esperanza Iris. Zarzuela in the Philippines Due to Spanish colonization, the Zarzuela Musical Theatre has been widely adapted by Filipinos in their native cultures, notably in urban areas. The theatre was only introduced by the Spanish in 1878, despite having colonial rule since the middle of the 16th century. During this time, the plays were performed only by Spanish people. By 1880, majority of the performers and writers were Filipinos, notably Philippine national hero, José Rizal, who was fond of the play. Afterwards, local languages, instead of Spanish, were used to perform the complex theatre, with additions from multiple cultures throughout the archipelago. When the Philippines was colonized by the Americans in the early 20th century, the humor from the moro-moro play was added into the Philippine zarzuela, while moving away from the traditional Spanish zarzuela. The theatre afterwards was used by Filipinos to express freedom from discrimination and colonial rule, depicting the Filipino people triumphant against the Spanish and Americans by the end of each play. The revolutionary overtones of the play prompted the American colonialists to arrest various performers and writers of the Philippine zarzuela, to the extent of forcefully shutting down entire zarzuela companies in the Philippines. In the 1920s, due to the introduction of the cinema, the zarzuela became widely popular in the rural areas, disabling the Americans from stopping the plays from spreading. The Philippine zarzuela evolved into a kind of comedy of manners distinct to the Filipino taste. In 2011, the performing art was cited by the National Commission for Culture and the Arts as one of the intangible cultural heritage of the Philippines under the performing arts category that the government may nominate in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists. In 2012, through a partnership with UNESCO, the Philippine government established the documents needed for the safeguarding of the Philippine zarzuela. UNESCO has cited the Philippine zarzuela as the national theatre and opera of the Philippines. Recorded zarzuela From 1950 onwards, zarzuela prospered in a series of LP recordings from EMI, Hispavox and others, with worldwide distribution. A |
eliminating pieces that spawn from one of the sides of the screen, before they reach the center of the playfield, by pointing at a specific piece and shooting it to either swap it with the current player color and thus arrange the same color pieces in a row or column, or else shooting it to match the color. A month before release, Zoop was one of four games played in the preliminary rounds of the Blockbuster World Video Game Championship II competition, a rare instance of an as-yet-unreleased game being used in a video game competition. The game was published for the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, MS-DOS, Macintosh, PlayStation, Game Boy, Sega Saturn, and Atari Jaguar. Shortly after its release, to spark interest in the game, the SNES version was offered as part of a limited "rent one, get one free" promotion by Blockbuster. Gameplay Zoop is a real-time puzzle game, like Plotting, where the player controls a triangle in the center of the screen. Every second (or more often in advanced levels), a piece comes in from the side and possibly pushes other pieces forward. Two consecutive pieces will never come in from the same quadrant, and runs of consecutive identical pieces on one row are longer, statistically, than one might expect. If a piece falls into the center square, the game is over. If the player shoots a piece of the same color as their triangle, it will be "zooped" (cleared) and points are earned. If the piece behind the target piece is also of the same color, it is also "zooped". The same goes for the next piece, and so on. If a piece of a different color from the player's current piece is shot, the player's piece will switch colors with it. This is also what happens when a piece of a different color is encountered after zooping one or more pieces of the same color. When the quota of "zooped" pieces is met, the game speeds up, and (before level 10) the background changes. Various special pieces do different things, such as a proximity bomb (shaped like a lightning bolt) that blows up pieces in a 3×3 area centered at the target piece, or a line bomb (often shaped like a gear) that clears a whole target line of pieces. To make gameplay more difficult, the game also employed what was referred to as "Opti-Challenge" backgrounds. As the levels progressed, the backgrounds would become increasingly distracting. Early on, this would involve the use of contrasting colors and increasingly intricate color schemes. Background patterns would also become more intricate and would make subtle use of asymmetrical elements. Although the "Opti-Challenge" technique of the game was used as a selling point, very little information exists about the technique itself, and no other game on the market has ever claimed to use "Opti-Challenge" graphics. The sound effects have a cartoonish tone to match the vivid colors used through the stages, while the music is | the game is unlikely to have any future re-releases or sequels. Both the Genesis and Super NES versions of Zoop are identical in terms of gameplay, aside from graphical and audio differences between the two. The MS-DOS version of the game has support for various sound cards, and it features wavetable-like MIDI music. The PlayStation version was released a month after the system was launched, and it features more advanced visuals compared to the 16-bit versions. The Game Boy port is the only version across all platforms that features a multiplayer mode. It also received a port to the Atari Jaguar that was developed by Electric Spectacle Productions and published by Atari Corporation on 5 January 1996, with graphics that are more in line with the previously released versions but sporting a more jazz-style soundtrack, in addition to being one of the last releases for the system. Zoop was also only released in Japan for the Sega Saturn by Media Quest on 29 November 1996, featuring similar visuals to those found in the PlayStation port. Reception The four reviewers of Electronic Gaming Monthly criticized the Game Gear version as having poor audio even by Game Gear standards but otherwise were divided about the game. One of them said "it is more like work than anything else, and it certainly isn't addictive", two of them said it lacks anything special but is still addictive and enjoyable for players of all skill levels, and the fourth called it "a must-try". Reviewing the SNES version, a critic for Next Generation found the gameplay to be too complicated, concluding that "it's not bad really, but the idea isn't that intuitive, and once you get past the learning curve it lacks the addictive quality this kind of game needs." GamePros The Axe Grinder similarly said that, while the game is fun and has good graphics and music, it lacks the addictive pull that an action puzzler needs to distinguish itself. Sega Saturn Magazine (previously Sega Magazine) gave the Genesis/Mega Drive version a 62%, saying the game "has the curious compulsiveness of Tetris to a degree", but that it is overshadowed by more complex and graphically impressive games then on the market. Cover Girl of GamePro was pleased with the music and graphics, particularly the use of eye-tricking background contrasts in the later levels. She found the level select and five difficulty modes broaden the accessibility, but criticized that the game sends the player back to the beginning whenever they lose. She concluded that while falling |
In addition, the Japanese government, dissatisfied with the pro-Kuomintang policy of Zhang Zuolin, and now his son, threatened to "take the most decisive measures to ensure that the Kuomintang flag never flies over Manchuria". The" young Marshal " supported Nanjing, and Feng's troops were pushed back to the outlying provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan, and in July 1929, Japan officially recognized Kuomintang China. At the same time, Zhang Xueliang and Chiang Kai-shek held a personal meeting in Beiping, at which a decision was made on the armed seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railway or CER. By pushing Zhang Xueliang to take this step, Chiang Kai-shek sought to make the young marshal completely dependent on Nanjing and at the same time raise his prestige and get most of the profits from the operation of the CER at the disposal of Nanjing. Zhang Xueliang, in turn, believed that the capture of the CER would strengthen his position in the Northeast, allow him to personally manage the profits of the CER, and ensure his independence from Nanjing. As a result, on July 10, 1929, the Conflict on the CER began. However, the Red Army showed a higher combat capability, and the conflict ended with the signing of the Khabarovsk Protocol of December 22, 1929. In 1930, when warlords Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan attempted to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government, Chang stepped in to support the Nanking (Nanjing)-based government against the Northern warlords in exchange for control of the key railroads in Hopeh (Hebei) and the customs revenues from the port city of Tianjin. A year later, in the September 18 Mukden Incident, Japanese troops attacked Chang's forces in Mukden (Shenyang) in order to provoke a full-on war with China, which Chiang did not want to face until his forces were stronger. In accordance with this strategy, Zhang's armies withdrew from the front lines without significant engagements, leading to the effective Japanese occupation of Zhang's former northeastern domain. There has been speculation that Chiang Kai-Shek wrote a letter to Chang asking him to pull his forces back, but Zhang later stated that he himself issued the orders. Apparently, Chang was aware of how weak his forces were compared to the Japanese and wished to preserve his position by retaining a sizeable army. Nonetheless, this would still be in line with Chiang's overall strategic standings. Chang later traveled in Europe before returning to China to take command of the Encirclement Campaigns, first in Hopeh-Honan (Henan)-Anhui and later in the Northwest. Xi'an incident On 6 April 1936, Chang met with CPC delegate Zhou Enlai to plan the end of the Chinese Civil War. KMT leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at the time took a non-aggressive position against Japan and considered the communists to be a greater danger to the Republic of China than the Japanese, and his overall strategy was to annihilate the communists before focusing his efforts on the Japanese. He believed that "communism was a cancer while the Japanese represented a superficial wound." Growing nationalist anger against Japan made this position very unpopular, and led to Chang's action against Chiang, known as the Xi'an Incident. On 12 December 1936, Chang and General Yang Hucheng kidnapped Chiang and imprisoned him until he agreed to form a united front with the communists against the Japanese invasion. After two weeks of negotiations, Chiang agreed to unite with the communists and drive the Japanese out of China. When Chiang was released on 26 December, Chang chose to return to the capital city of Nanking with him; once they were away from Chang's loyal troops, Chiang had him placed under house arrest. From then on, he was under constant watch and lived near the Nationalist capital city, wherever it moved to. Later life from 1949 In 1949, Chang was transferred to Taiwan, where he remained under loose house arrest for the next 40 years in a villa in Taipei's northern suburbs, where he received the occasional guests. Much of his time was spent studying Ming dynasty literature, the Manchu language, collecting Chinese fan paintings, calligraphy and other works of art by illustrious artists (a collection of more than 200 works, using his studio's name "Dingyuanzhai" (), was auctioned with tremendous success by Sotheby's on 10 April 1994). Zhang studied the New Testament Bible. In 1964, he formally married Edith Chao, daughter of a senior official, who | was the effective ruler of Northeast China and much of northern China after the assassination of his father, Zhang Zuolin (the "Old Marshal"), by the Japanese on 4 June 1928. He was an instigator of the 1936 Xi'an Incident, in which Chiang Kai-shek, the leader of China's ruling party, was arrested in order to force him to enter into a truce with the insurgent Communist Party of China and form a united front against Japan, which had occupied Manchuria. Chiang agreed, but when he had an opportunity, he seized Chang, who then spent over 50 years under house arrest, first in mainland China and then in Taiwan. Chang is regarded by the Communist Party of China as a patriotic hero for his role in the Xi'an Incident. He was also known for having an affair with Edda Mussolini. Biography Early life Chang Hsüeh-liang was born in Haicheng, Liaoning province on 3 June 1901, Chang was educated by private tutors and, unlike his father, felt at ease in the company of westerners. He graduated from Fengtian Military Academy, was made a colonel in the Fengtian Army, and appointed the commander of his father's bodyguards in 1919. In 1921 he was sent to Japan to observe military maneuvers, where he developed a special interest in aircraft. Later, he developed an air corps for the Fengtian Army, which was widely used in the battles that took place within the Great Wall during the 1920s. In 1922, he was promoted to Major General and commanded an army-sized force. Two years later, he was also made commander of the air units. Upon the death of his father in 1928, he succeeded him as the leader of the Northeast Peace Preservation Forces (popularly "Northeast Army"), which controlled China's northeastern provinces of Heilongjiang, Fengtian, and Jilin (Kirin). In December of the same year he proclaimed his allegiance to the Kuomintang (KMT; Chinese Nationalist Party). Warlord to republican general The Japanese believed that Chang Hsüeh-liang, who was known as a womanizer and an opium addict, would be much more subject to Japanese influence than was his father. On this premise, an officer of the Japanese Kwantung Army therefore killed his father, Zhang Zuolin (the "Old Marshal"), in the Huanggutun incident, by exploding a bomb above his train while it crossed under a railroad bridge. Surprisingly, the younger Chang proved to be more independent and skilled than anyone had expected and declared his support for Chiang Kai-shek, leading to the reunification of China in 1928. With the assistance of Australian journalist William Henry Donald, he overcame his opium addiction in 1933. He was given the nickname "Hero of History" () by PRC historians because of his desire to reunite China and rid it of Japanese invaders; and was willing to pay the price and become "vice" leader of China (not because it was good that he was supporting the Kuomintang). In order to rid his command of Japanese influence, he had two prominent pro-Tokyo officials executed in front of the assembled guests at a dinner party in January 1929. It was a hard decision for him to make. The two had powers over the heads of others. In May 1929, relations between the Kuomintang Nanjing and the excessively strengthened Feng Yuxiang worsened. In addition, the Japanese government, dissatisfied with the pro-Kuomintang policy of Zhang Zuolin, and now his son, threatened to "take the most decisive measures to ensure that the Kuomintang flag never flies over Manchuria". The" young Marshal " supported Nanjing, and Feng's troops were pushed back to the outlying provinces of Chahar and Suiyuan, and in July 1929, Japan officially recognized Kuomintang China. At the same time, Zhang Xueliang and Chiang Kai-shek held a personal meeting in Beiping, at which a decision was made on the armed seizure of the Chinese Eastern Railway or CER. By pushing Zhang Xueliang to take this step, Chiang Kai-shek sought to make the young marshal completely dependent on Nanjing and at the same time raise his prestige and get most of the profits from the operation of the CER at the disposal of Nanjing. Zhang Xueliang, in turn, believed that the capture of the CER would strengthen his position in the Northeast, allow him to personally manage the profits of the CER, and ensure his independence from Nanjing. As a result, on July 10, 1929, the Conflict on the CER began. However, the Red Army showed a higher combat capability, and the conflict ended with the signing of the Khabarovsk Protocol of December 22, 1929. In 1930, when warlords Feng Yuxiang and Yan Xishan attempted to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang government, Chang stepped in to support the Nanking (Nanjing)-based government against the Northern warlords in exchange for control of the key railroads in Hopeh (Hebei) and the customs revenues from the port city of Tianjin. A year later, in the September 18 Mukden Incident, Japanese troops attacked Chang's forces in Mukden (Shenyang) in order to provoke a full-on war with China, which Chiang did not want to face until his forces were stronger. In accordance with this strategy, Zhang's armies withdrew from the front lines without significant engagements, leading to the effective Japanese occupation of Zhang's former northeastern domain. There has been speculation that Chiang Kai-Shek wrote a letter to Chang asking him to pull his forces back, but Zhang later stated that he himself issued the orders. Apparently, Chang was aware of how weak his forces were compared to the Japanese and wished to preserve his position by retaining a sizeable army. Nonetheless, this would still be in line with Chiang's overall strategic standings. Chang later traveled in Europe before returning to China to take command of the Encirclement Campaigns, first in Hopeh-Honan (Henan)-Anhui and later in the Northwest. Xi'an incident On 6 April 1936, Chang met with CPC delegate Zhou Enlai to plan the end of the Chinese Civil War. KMT leader Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek at the time took a non-aggressive position against Japan and considered the communists to be a greater danger to the Republic of China than |
the son of Cushi, and great-great grandson of King Hezekiah, ninth in the literary order of the Twelve Minor Prophets. He prophesied in the days of Josiah, ruler of the Kingdom of Judah (640–609 BCE), but before Josiah's reform in 621 BCE, and was contemporary with Jeremiah, with whom he had much in common. The unique source containing the minimal knowledge of his personality and rhetorical and literary qualities is the short, three chapter book of the Old Testament which bears his name. The scene of his activity was the city of Jerusalem, which he seems to know well. The existence of two Zephaniahs linked to the book is considered purely hypothetical. Date of activity Under the two preceding kings of Judah, Amon of Judah and Manasseh of Judah, the cult of other deities, especially Baal and Astarte, had developed in Jerusalem, bringing with it elements of alien culture and morals. Josiah, a dedicated reformer, wished to put an end to perceived misuse of the holy places. One of the most zealous champions and advisers of this reform was Zephaniah, and his writing remains one of the most important documents for the understanding of the era of Josiah. Boldly predicting the destruction of Judah for the evil committed by its occupants, the prophet spoke against the religious and moral corruption, when, in view of the idolatry which had penetrated even into the sanctuary, he warned that God would "destroy out of this place the remnant of Baal, and the names of the idolatrous priests" (Zeph 1:4), and pleaded for a return to the simplicity of their fathers instead of the luxurious foreign clothing which was worn especially in | the short, three chapter book of the Old Testament which bears his name. The scene of his activity was the city of Jerusalem, which he seems to know well. The existence of two Zephaniahs linked to the book is considered purely hypothetical. Date of activity Under the two preceding kings of Judah, Amon of Judah and Manasseh of Judah, the cult of other deities, especially Baal and Astarte, had developed in Jerusalem, bringing with it elements of alien culture and morals. Josiah, a dedicated reformer, wished to put an end to perceived misuse of the holy places. One of the most zealous champions and advisers of this reform was Zephaniah, and his writing remains one of the most important documents for the understanding of the era of Josiah. Boldly predicting the destruction of Judah for the evil committed by its occupants, the prophet spoke against the religious and moral corruption, when, in view of the idolatry which had penetrated even into the sanctuary, he warned that God would "destroy out of this place the remnant of Baal, and the names of the idolatrous priests" (Zeph 1:4), and pleaded for a return to the simplicity of their fathers instead of the luxurious foreign clothing which was worn especially in aristocratic circles (1:8). The age of Zephaniah was also a key historical period, because the lands of Western Asia were overrun by foreigners due to the migration of the Scythians in the last decades of the seventh century BC, and because Jerusalem was only a few decades before its downfall in 586 BC. In light of these events, a message of impending judgment is the primary burden of this figure's preaching (1:7). The Book of Zephaniah The Book of Zephaniah contains the fundamental ideas of the preaching of Zephaniah. The scheme of the book in its present form is as follows: Zephaniah 1:2-2:3. Warnings about the "day of the Lord", a Dies irae, dies illa of the Old Testament. The judgment of the Lord will descend on Judah and Jerusalem as a punishment for the awful degeneracy in religious life (1:4-7a); it will extend to all classes of the people (1:7b-13), and will be attended with all the horrors of a frightful catastrophe (1:14-18); therefore, repent and seek the Lord (2:1-3). Zephaniah 2:4-15. Not only Jerusalem, but the entire world is subject to judgment, including the Philistines, (4-7) Moabites, Ammonites, (8-11) Ethiopians, (12) Assyrians and Ninevites (13-15). Zephaniah 3:1-8. The Prophet focuses once again on Jerusalem: "Woe to the provoking, and redeemed city ... She hath not hearkened to the voice, neither hath she received discipline." The severest reckoning will be required of the leading classes of the civil community, and of the Prophets and priests |
Albert III of Austria Count of Zollern, including a list of people with the title County of | III of Austria Count of Zollern, including a list of people with the title County of Zollern, a medieval county of in South West Germany Zollern II/IV Colliery, |
accounts. Niccolò de' Conti, a contemporary of Zheng He, was also an eyewitness of ships in Southeast Asia, claiming to have seen five-masted junks weighing about 2,000 tons. There are even some sources that claim some of the treasure ships might have been as long as . On the ships were navigators, explorers, sailors, doctors, workers, and soldiers, along with the translator and diarist Gong Zhen. The largest ships in the fleet, the Chinese treasure ships described in Chinese chronicles, would have been nearly twice as long as any other wooden ship recorded thereafter until the 20th century, surpassing Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, long, which was launched in 1765, and the Vasa of 1627. The first ships to attain long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Many scholars consider it unlikely that any of Zheng He's ships were in length and have proposed much shorter lengths, as low as . One explanation for the seemingly-inefficient size of the colossal ships was that the 44 largest Zhang treasure ships were used only by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of the ships, seaworthy or not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead six-masted 2000-liao ships. That would give burthen of 500 tons and a displacement tonnage of about 800 tons. However recent finds after the discovery of the Longjiang shipyards site from 2005 indicate the ships sourced tropical hardwood from Indonesia and were lined with palm fibres and concrete to maintain seaworthiness for a hull of much larger proportions. The rudder remains suggest the highest end of estimates were possible, supporting the 1962 find nearby of a bracket, in diameter for steering a vessel of as stated in the court documents, and dated to about 600 years. However, authorities agree that more is needed to be found to establish the true length. Death One theory is that Admiral Zheng He died in 1433, during or shortly after the seventh voyage. Another is that Zheng He continued to serve as the defender of Nanjing, dying in 1435. A tomb was built for Zheng He at the southern slope of Cattle Head Hill, Nanjing. The original tomb was a horseshoe-shaped grave. It is a cenotaph believed to contain his clothes and headgear. In 1985, the tomb was rebuilt following a Muslim style. Legacy Zheng's voyages were long neglected in official Chinese histories but have become well known in China and abroad since the publication of Liang Qichao's Biography of Our Homeland's Great Navigator, Zheng He in 1904. Imperial China In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials minimized the importance of Zheng He and his expeditions throughout the many regnal and dynastic histories they compiled. The information in the Yongle and Xuande Emperors' official annals was incomplete and even erroneous, and other official publications omitted them completely. Although some have seen that as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages, it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and the expeditions, unauthorized by and in fact counter to the injunctions of the dynastic founder, presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty. State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from the surviving Yuan Mongols from the north. The relocation of the capital to Beijing in the north exacerbated this threat dramatically. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for the land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions. Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. The Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. The battle had two salient effects. Firstly, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Secondly, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released the emperor after his half-brother had already ascended and declared the new Jingtai era. Not until 1457 and the restoration of the former emperor would political stability return. Upon his return to power, China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In that environment, funding for naval expeditions was simply absent. However, missions from Southeastern Asia continued to arrive for decades. Depending on local conditions, they could reach such frequency that the court found it necessary to restrict them. The History of Ming records imperial edicts forbade Java, Champa, and Siam from sending their envoys more often than once every three years. Southeast Asia Veneration Among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Zheng He became a figure of folk veneration. Even some of his crew members who happened to stay in some port sometimes did so as well, such as "Poontaokong" on Sulu. The temples of the cult, called after either of his names, Cheng Hoon or Sam Po, are peculiar to overseas Chinese except for a single temple in Hongjian originally constructed by a returned Filipino Chinese in the Ming dynasty and rebuilt by another Filipino Chinese after the original was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. (The same village of Hongjian, in Fujian's Jiaomei township, is also the ancestral home of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino.) Malacca The oldest and most important Chinese temple in Malacca is the 17th-century Cheng Hoon Teng, dedicated to Guanyin. During Dutch colonial rule, the head of the Cheng Hoon Temple was appointed as chief over the community's Chinese inhabitants. Following Zheng He's arrival, the sultan and the sultana of Malacca visited China at the head of over 540 of their subjects, bearing ample tribute. Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor. The letter requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. Malay (but not Chinese) annals record that in 1459, a princess named Hang Li Po or Hang Liu was sent from China to marry the sultan. She came with 500 high-ranking young men and a few hundred handmaidens as her entourage. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace, creating the descendants now known as the Peranakan. Owing to this supposed lineage, the Peranakan still use special honorifics: Baba for the men and Nyonya for the women. Indonesia The Chinese Indonesian community have established temples dedicated to Zheng He in Jakarta, Cirebon, Surabaya, and Semarang. In 1961, the Indonesian Islamic leader and scholar Hamka credited Zheng He for playing an important role in the development of Islam in Indonesia. The Brunei Times credits Zheng He with building Chinese Muslim communities in Palembang and along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines. These Muslims allegedly followed the Hanafi school in the Chinese language. The Malay Annals also record a number of Hanafi mosques in Semarang and Ancol, for instance were converted directly into temples of the Zheng He cult during the 1460s and the 1470s. The Sam Poo Kong temple in Semarang was built to commemorate Zheng He's voyage to Java. Modern scholarship In the 1950s, historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the Haijin edict and was isolated from European technological advancements. Modern historians point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to participate in Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century, and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. Moreover, revisionist historians such as Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China. Although the Ming dynasty prohibited shipping with the Haijin edict, it was a policy of the Hongwu Emperor that long preceded Zheng He and the ban, so obviously disregarded by the Yongle Emperor, was eventually lifted entirely. However, the ban on maritime shipping forced countless numbers of people into smuggling and piracy. Neglect of the imperial navy and Nanjing dockyards after Zheng | until the 20th century, surpassing Admiral Nelson's HMS Victory, long, which was launched in 1765, and the Vasa of 1627. The first ships to attain long were 19th century steamers with iron hulls. Many scholars consider it unlikely that any of Zheng He's ships were in length and have proposed much shorter lengths, as low as . One explanation for the seemingly-inefficient size of the colossal ships was that the 44 largest Zhang treasure ships were used only by the Emperor and imperial bureaucrats to travel along the Yangtze for court business, including reviewing Zheng He's expedition fleet. The Yangtze river, with its calmer waters, may have been navigable by these treasure ships. Zheng He, a court eunuch, would not have had the privilege in rank to command the largest of the ships, seaworthy or not. The main ships of Zheng He's fleet were instead six-masted 2000-liao ships. That would give burthen of 500 tons and a displacement tonnage of about 800 tons. However recent finds after the discovery of the Longjiang shipyards site from 2005 indicate the ships sourced tropical hardwood from Indonesia and were lined with palm fibres and concrete to maintain seaworthiness for a hull of much larger proportions. The rudder remains suggest the highest end of estimates were possible, supporting the 1962 find nearby of a bracket, in diameter for steering a vessel of as stated in the court documents, and dated to about 600 years. However, authorities agree that more is needed to be found to establish the true length. Death One theory is that Admiral Zheng He died in 1433, during or shortly after the seventh voyage. Another is that Zheng He continued to serve as the defender of Nanjing, dying in 1435. A tomb was built for Zheng He at the southern slope of Cattle Head Hill, Nanjing. The original tomb was a horseshoe-shaped grave. It is a cenotaph believed to contain his clothes and headgear. In 1985, the tomb was rebuilt following a Muslim style. Legacy Zheng's voyages were long neglected in official Chinese histories but have become well known in China and abroad since the publication of Liang Qichao's Biography of Our Homeland's Great Navigator, Zheng He in 1904. Imperial China In the decades after the last voyage, Imperial officials minimized the importance of Zheng He and his expeditions throughout the many regnal and dynastic histories they compiled. The information in the Yongle and Xuande Emperors' official annals was incomplete and even erroneous, and other official publications omitted them completely. Although some have seen that as a conspiracy seeking to eliminate memories of the voyages, it is likely that the records were dispersed throughout several departments and the expeditions, unauthorized by and in fact counter to the injunctions of the dynastic founder, presented a kind of embarrassment to the dynasty. State-sponsored Ming naval efforts declined dramatically after Zheng's voyages. Starting in the early 15th century, China experienced increasing pressure from the surviving Yuan Mongols from the north. The relocation of the capital to Beijing in the north exacerbated this threat dramatically. At considerable expense, China launched annual military expeditions from Beijing to weaken the Mongolians. The expenditures necessary for the land campaigns directly competed with the funds necessary to continue naval expeditions. Further, in 1449, Mongolian cavalry ambushed a land expedition personally led by the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu Fortress, less than a day's march from the walls of the capital. The Mongolians wiped out the Chinese army and captured the emperor. The battle had two salient effects. Firstly, it demonstrated the clear threat posed by the northern nomads. Secondly, the Mongols caused a political crisis in China when they released the emperor after his half-brother had already ascended and declared the new Jingtai era. Not until 1457 and the restoration of the former emperor would political stability return. Upon his return to power, China abandoned the strategy of annual land expeditions and instead embarked upon a massive and expensive expansion of the Great Wall of China. In that environment, funding for naval expeditions was simply absent. However, missions from Southeastern Asia continued to arrive for decades. Depending on local conditions, they could reach such frequency that the court found it necessary to restrict them. The History of Ming records imperial edicts forbade Java, Champa, and Siam from sending their envoys more often than once every three years. Southeast Asia Veneration Among the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, Zheng He became a figure of folk veneration. Even some of his crew members who happened to stay in some port sometimes did so as well, such as "Poontaokong" on Sulu. The temples of the cult, called after either of his names, Cheng Hoon or Sam Po, are peculiar to overseas Chinese except for a single temple in Hongjian originally constructed by a returned Filipino Chinese in the Ming dynasty and rebuilt by another Filipino Chinese after the original was destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. (The same village of Hongjian, in Fujian's Jiaomei township, is also the ancestral home of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino.) Malacca The oldest and most important Chinese temple in Malacca is the 17th-century Cheng Hoon Teng, dedicated to Guanyin. During Dutch colonial rule, the head of the Cheng Hoon Temple was appointed as chief over the community's Chinese inhabitants. Following Zheng He's arrival, the sultan and the sultana of Malacca visited China at the head of over 540 of their subjects, bearing ample tribute. Sultan Mansur Shah (r. 1459–1477) later dispatched Tun Perpatih Putih as his envoy to China, carrying a letter from the sultan to the Ming emperor. The letter requested the hand of an imperial daughter in marriage. Malay (but not Chinese) annals record that in 1459, a princess named Hang Li Po or Hang Liu was sent from China to marry the sultan. She came with 500 high-ranking young men and a few hundred handmaidens as her entourage. They eventually settled in Bukit Cina. It is believed that a significant number of them married into the local populace, creating the descendants now known as the Peranakan. Owing to this supposed lineage, the Peranakan still use special honorifics: Baba for the men and Nyonya for the women. Indonesia The Chinese Indonesian community have established temples dedicated to Zheng He in Jakarta, Cirebon, Surabaya, and Semarang. In 1961, the Indonesian Islamic leader and scholar Hamka credited Zheng He for playing an important role in the development of Islam in Indonesia. The Brunei Times credits Zheng He with building Chinese Muslim communities in Palembang and along the shores of Java, the Malay Peninsula, and the Philippines. These Muslims allegedly followed the Hanafi school in the Chinese language. The Malay Annals also record a number of Hanafi mosques in Semarang and Ancol, for instance were converted directly into temples of the Zheng He cult during the 1460s and the 1470s. The Sam Poo Kong temple in Semarang was built to commemorate Zheng He's voyage to Java. Modern scholarship In the 1950s, historians such as John Fairbank and Joseph Needham popularized the idea that after Zheng He's voyages China turned away from the seas due to the Haijin edict and was isolated from European technological advancements. Modern historians point out that Chinese maritime commerce did not totally stop after Zheng He, that Chinese ships continued to participate in Southeast Asian commerce until the 19th century, and that active Chinese trading with India and East Africa continued long after the time of Zheng. Moreover, revisionist historians such as Jack Goldstone argue that the Zheng He voyages ended for practical reasons that did not reflect the technological level of China. Although the Ming dynasty prohibited shipping with the Haijin edict, it was a policy of the Hongwu Emperor that long preceded Zheng He and the ban, so obviously disregarded by the Yongle Emperor, was eventually lifted entirely. However, the ban on maritime shipping forced countless numbers of people into smuggling and piracy. Neglect of the imperial navy and Nanjing dockyards after Zheng He's voyages left the coast highly vulnerable to Japanese wokou during the 16th century. Richard von Glahn, a UCLA professor of Chinese history, commented that most treatments of Zheng He present him wrongly, "offer counterfactual arguments," and "emphasize China's missed opportunity" by focusing on failures, instead of accomplishments. In contrast, Glahn asserts that "Zheng He reshaped Asia" because maritime history in the 15th century was essentially the Zheng He story and the effects of his voyages. Cultural influence Despite the official neglect, the adventures of the fleet captured the imagination of some Chinese with some writing novelizations of the voyages, such as the Romance of the Three-Jeweled Eunuch in 1597. On his travels, Zheng He built mosques and also spread the worship of Mazu. He apparently never found time for a pilgrimage to Mecca but sent sailors there on his last voyage. He played an important part in developing relations between China and Islamic countries. Zheng He also visited Muslim shrines of Islamic holy men in the Fujian. In modern times, interest in Zheng He has revived substantially. In Vernor Vinge's 1999 science fiction novel A Deepness in the Sky, an interstellar society of commercial traders in human space are named the Qeng Ho, after the admiral. The expeditions featured prominently in Heather Terrell's 2005 novel The Map Thief. For the 600th anniversary of Zheng He's voyages in 2005, China Central Television produced a special television series, Zheng He Xia Xiyang, starring Gallen Lo as Zheng He. He is also mentioned in part of the main storyline of the first-person shooter game Far Cry 3. The Star Trek series Picard further featured an advanced starship named USS Zheng He. There was even a US Navy boat that was acquired for picket duty during World War II that was named Cheng Ho by its previous owner. In Civilization VI Zheng He is a 'great admiral' unit that grants bonuses to trade and naval combat. Relics Nanjing Temple of Mazu Zheng He built the Tianfei Palace (), a temple in honor of the goddess Mazu, in Nanjing after the fleet returned from its first western voyage in 1407. Taicang Stele The "Deed of Foreign Connection and Exchange" () or "Tongfan Deed Stele" is located in the Tianfei Palace in Liuhe, Taicang, whence the expeditions first departed. The stele was submerged and lost but has been rebuilt. Nanshan Stele To thank the Celestial Wife for her blessings, Zheng He and his colleagues rebuilt the Tianfei Palace in Nanshan, Changle County, Fujian Province as well before they left on their last voyage. At the renovated temple, they raised a stele, "A Record of Tianfei Showing Her Presence and Power" (), discussing their earlier voyages. Sri Lankan Stele The Galle Trilingual Inscription in Sri Lanka was discovered in the city of Galle in 1911 and is preserved at the National Museum of Colombo. The three languages used in the inscription were Chinese, Tamil, and Persian. The inscription praises Buddha and describes the fleet's donations to the famous Tenavarai Nayanar temple of Tondeswaram frequented by both Hindus and Buddhists. Tomb and Museum Zheng He's tomb in Nanjing has been repaired and a small museum built next to it, but his body was buried at sea off the Malabar Coast near Calicut, in western India. However, his sword and other personal possessions were interred in a Muslim tomb inscribed in Arabic. The tomb of Zheng He's assistant Hong Bao was recently unearthed in Nanjing as well. Commemoration In the People's Republic of China, 11 July is Maritime Day (, Zhōngguó Hánghǎi Rì) and is devoted to the memory of Zheng He's first voyage. Initially Kunming Changshui International Airport was to be named Zheng He International Airport. In 2015, Emotion Media Factory dedicated a special multimedia show "Zheng He is coming" for amusement park Romon U-Park (Ningbo, China). The show became a finalist of the amusement industry prestigious Brass Rings Awards by IAAPA. Zheng He is the namesake of the ROCS Cheng Ho missile frigate in Taiwan. The People's Liberation Army Navy ship Zhang He (AX-81) is a Chinese training ship named for him. Like her namesake, she serves as a goodwill ambassador for China, becoming the first Chinese Navy ship to visit the United States in 1989 and completing a circumnavigation of the globe in 2012. The China National Space Administration has named its proposed sample-return spacecraft ZhengHe. Its mission to explore Near-Earth asteroid 2016 HO3 is scheduled to launch in 2024. Gallery See also Chang Yuchun Chinese exploration |
left in the process table, causing a resource leak. In some situations this may be desirable – the parent process wishes to continue holding this resource – for example if the parent creates another child process it ensures that it will not be allocated the same PID. On modern UNIX-like systems (that comply with SUSv3 specification in this respect), the following special case applies: if the parent explicitly ignores SIGCHLD by setting its handler to SIG_IGN (rather than simply ignoring the signal by default) or has the SA_NOCLDWAIT flag set, all child exit status information will be discarded and no zombie processes will be left. Zombies can be identified in the output from the Unix ps command by the presence of a "Z" in the "STAT" column. Zombies that exist for more than a short period of time typically indicate a bug in the parent program, or just an uncommon decision to not reap children (see example). If the parent program is no longer running, zombie processes typically indicate a bug in the operating system. As with other resource leaks, the presence of a few zombies is not worrisome in itself, but may indicate a problem that would grow serious under heavier loads. Since there is no memory allocated to zombie processes – the only system memory usage is for the process table entry itself – the primary concern with many zombies is not running out of memory, but rather running out of process table entries, concretely process ID numbers. To remove zombies from a system, the SIGCHLD signal can be sent to the parent manually, using the kill command. If the parent process still refuses to reap the zombie, and if it would be fine to terminate the parent process, the next step can be to remove the parent process. When a process loses its parent, init becomes its new parent. init periodically executes the wait system call to reap any zombies with init as parent. Example Synchronously waiting for the specific child processes in a (specific) order may leave zombies present longer than the above-mentioned "short period of time". It is not necessarily a program bug. #include <sys/wait.h> #include <stdio.h> #include <stdlib.h> #include <unistd.h> int main(void) { pid_t pids[10]; int i; for (i = 9; i >= 0; --i) { pids[i] = fork(); if (pids[i] == 0) { printf("Child%d\n", | is a process in the "Terminated state". This occurs for the child processes, where the entry is still needed to allow the parent process to read its child's exit status: once the exit status is read via the wait system call, the zombie's entry is removed from the process table and it is said to be "reaped". A child process always first becomes a zombie before being removed from the resource table. In most cases, under normal system operation zombies are immediately waited on by their parent and then reaped by the system – processes that stay zombies for a long time are generally an error and cause a resource leak, but the only resource they occupy is the process table entry – process ID. The term zombie process derives from the common definition of zombie — an undead person. In the term's metaphor, the child process has "died" but has not yet been "reaped". Also, unlike normal processes, the kill command has no effect on a zombie process. Zombie processes should not be confused with orphan processes: an orphan process is a process that is still executing, but whose parent has died. When the parent dies, the orphaned child process is adopted by init (process ID 1). When orphan processes die, they do not remain as zombie processes; instead, they are waited on by init. The result is that a process that is both a zombie and an orphan will be reaped automatically. Overview When a process ends via exit, all of the memory and resources associated with it are deallocated so they can be used by other processes. However, the process's entry in the process table remains. The parent can read the child's exit status by executing the wait system call, whereupon the zombie is removed. The wait call may be executed in sequential code, but it is commonly executed in a handler for the SIGCHLD signal, which the parent receives whenever a child has died. After the zombie is removed, its process identifier (PID) and entry in the process table can then be reused. However, if a parent fails to call wait, the zombie will be left in the process table, causing a resource leak. In some situations this may be desirable – the parent process wishes to continue holding this resource – for example if the parent |
flush points can affect the speed as well as the amount (ratio) of compression. Data length There is no limit to the length of data that can be compressed or decompressed. Repeated calls to the library allow an unlimited number of blocks of data to be handled. Some ancillary code (counters) may suffer from overflow for long data streams, but this does not affect the actual compression or decompression. When compressing a long (or infinite) data stream, it is advisable to write regular full-flush points. Applications Today, zlib is something of a de facto standard, to the point that zlib and DEFLATE are often used interchangeably in standards documents, with thousands of applications relying on it for compression, either directly or indirectly. These include: The Linux kernel, where zlib is used to implement compressed network protocols, compressed file systems, and to decompress the kernel image at boot time. GNU Binutils and GNU Debugger (GDB) libpng, the reference implementation for the PNG image format, which specifies DEFLATE as the stream compression for its bitmap data. libwww, an API for Web applications like Web browsers. The Apache HTTP Server, which uses zlib to implement HTTP/1.1. Similarly, the cURL library uses zlib to decompress HTTP responses. The OpenSSH client and server, which rely on zlib to perform the optional compression offered by the Secure Shell protocol. The OpenSSL and GnuTLS security libraries, which can optionally use zlib to compress TLS connections. The FFmpeg multimedia library, which uses zlib to read and write the DEFLATE-compressed parts of stream formats, such as Matroska. The rsync remote file synchronizer, which uses zlib to implement optional protocol compression. The dpkg and RPM package managers, which use zlib to unpack files from compressed software packages. The Apache Subversion and CVS version control systems, which use zlib to compress traffic to and from remote repositories. The Apache ORC column-oriented data storage format use ZLib as its default compression method. The Git version control system uses zlib to store the contents of its data objects (blobs, trees, commits and tags). The PostgreSQL RDBMS uses zlib with custom dump format (pg_dump -Fc) for database backups. The class System.IO.Compression.DeflateStream of the Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 and higher. The "deflate" utility in TORNADO as part of VxWorks Operating System made by Wind River Systems uses zlib to compress boot ROM images. , raw zlib compression program, part of qpdf The MySQL RDBMS uses ZLib LZ77 for compression in InnoDB Tables zlib is also used in many embedded devices, such as the Apple iPhone and Sony PlayStation 3, because the code is portable, liberally licensed, and has a relatively small memory footprint. Forks A commonly used library built on an old codebase, zlib is also frequently forked by third-parties that claim improvements to this library: Intel | of the corrupt data is provided. Full-flush points are useful for large data streams on unreliable channels, where some data loss is unimportant, such as in some multimedia applications. However, creating many flush points can affect the speed as well as the amount (ratio) of compression. Data length There is no limit to the length of data that can be compressed or decompressed. Repeated calls to the library allow an unlimited number of blocks of data to be handled. Some ancillary code (counters) may suffer from overflow for long data streams, but this does not affect the actual compression or decompression. When compressing a long (or infinite) data stream, it is advisable to write regular full-flush points. Applications Today, zlib is something of a de facto standard, to the point that zlib and DEFLATE are often used interchangeably in standards documents, with thousands of applications relying on it for compression, either directly or indirectly. These include: The Linux kernel, where zlib is used to implement compressed network protocols, compressed file systems, and to decompress the kernel image at boot time. GNU Binutils and GNU Debugger (GDB) libpng, the reference implementation for the PNG image format, which specifies DEFLATE as the stream compression for its bitmap data. libwww, an API for Web applications like Web browsers. The Apache HTTP Server, which uses zlib to implement HTTP/1.1. Similarly, the cURL library uses zlib to decompress HTTP responses. The OpenSSH client and server, which rely on zlib to perform the optional compression offered by the Secure Shell protocol. The OpenSSL and GnuTLS security libraries, which can optionally use zlib to compress TLS connections. The FFmpeg multimedia library, which uses zlib to read and write the DEFLATE-compressed parts of stream formats, such as Matroska. The rsync remote file synchronizer, which uses zlib |
Gaming World stated that "ZIL ... is functionally dead", and reported rumors of a "completely new parser that may never be used". In May 1993, Graham Nelson released the first version of his Inform compiler, which also generates Z-machine story files as its output, even though the Inform source language is quite different from ZIL. Inform has become popular in the interactive fiction community. A large proportion of interactive fiction is in the form of Z-machine story files. Demand for the ability to create larger game files led Nelson to specify versions 7 and 8 of the Z-machine, though version 7 is rarely used. Because of the way addresses are handled, a version 3 story file can be up to 128K in length, a version 5 story can be up to 256K in length, and a version 8 story can be up to 512k in length. Though these sizes may seem small by today's computing standards, for text-only adventures, these are large enough for elaborate games. During the 1990s, Nelson drew up a Z-Machine Standard based on detailed studies of the existing Infocom files. Interpreters Interpreters for Z-code files are available on a wide variety of platforms. The Inform website lists links to freely available interpreters for 15 desktop operating systems (including 8-bit microcomputers from the 1980s such as the Apple II, TRS-80, and ZX Spectrum, and grouping "Unix" and "Windows" as one each), 10 mobile operating systems (including Palm OS and the Game Boy), and four interpreter platforms (Emacs, Java, JavaScript, and Scratch). According to Nelson, it is "possibly the most portable virtual machine ever created". Popular interpreters include Nitfol and Frotz. Nitfol makes use of the Glk API, and supports versions 1 through 8 of the Z-machine, including the version 6 graphical Z-machine. Save files are stored in the standard Quetzal save format. Binary files are available for several different operating systems, including the classic Mac OS, Unix-like systems, DOS, and Windows. Frotz was written in C by Stefan Jokisch in 1995 for DOS. Over time it was ported to other platforms, such as Unix-like systems, RISC OS, and iOS. Sound effects and | supports versions 1 through 8 of the Z-machine, including the version 6 graphical Z-machine. Save files are stored in the standard Quetzal save format. Binary files are available for several different operating systems, including the classic Mac OS, Unix-like systems, DOS, and Windows. Frotz was written in C by Stefan Jokisch in 1995 for DOS. Over time it was ported to other platforms, such as Unix-like systems, RISC OS, and iOS. Sound effects and graphics were supported to varying degrees. By 2002, development stalled and the program was picked up by David Griffith. The code base was split between virtual machine and user interface portions in such a way that the virtual machine became independent from any user interface. This allowed more variety in porting Frotz. One of the stranger ports is also one of the simplest: an instant messaging bot is wrapped around a version of Frotz with the minimum IO functionality creating a bot with which one can play most Z-machine games using an instant messaging client. Another popular client for macOS and other Unix-like systems is Zoom. It supports the same Quetzal save-format, but the packaging of the file-structure is different. See also Glulx – Similar to the Z-machine, but relieves several legacy limitations Inform – A computer language that can produce Z-machine programs SCUMM – Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion by LucasArts, a graphical system similar to Z-machine TADS – Like Glulx, made to |
1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 ... any number may be written.Grimm, R.E., "The Autobiography of Leonardo Pisano", Fibonacci Quarterly 11/1 (February 1973), pp. 99–104. Here Leonardo of Pisa uses the phrase "sign 0", indicating it is like a sign to do operations like addition or multiplication. From the 13th century, manuals on calculation (adding, multiplying, extracting roots, etc.) became common in Europe where they were called algorismus after the Persian mathematician al-Khwārizmī. The most popular was written by Johannes de Sacrobosco, about 1235 and was one of the earliest scientific books to be printed in 1488. Until the late 15th century, Hindu–Arabic numerals seem to have predominated among mathematicians, while merchants preferred to use the Roman numerals. In the 16th century, they became commonly used in Europe. Mathematics 0 is the integer immediately preceding 1. Zero is an even number because it is divisible by 2 with no remainder. 0 is neither positive nor negative, or both positive and negative. Many definitions include 0 as a natural number, in which case it is the only natural number that is not positive. Zero is a number which quantifies a count or an amount of null size. In most cultures, 0 was identified before the idea of negative things (i.e., quantities less than zero) was accepted. As a value or a number, zero is not the same as the digit zero, used in numeral systems with positional notation. Successive positions of digits have higher weights, so the digit zero is used inside a numeral to skip a position and give appropriate weights to the preceding and following digits. A zero digit is not always necessary in a positional number system (e.g., the number 02). In some instances, a leading zero may be used to distinguish a number. Elementary algebra The number 0 is the smallest non-negative integer. The natural number following 0 is 1 and no natural number precedes 0. The number 0 may or may not be considered a natural number, but it is an integer, and hence a rational number and a real number (as well as an algebraic number and a complex number). The number 0 is neither positive nor negative, and is usually displayed as the central number in a number line. It is neither a prime number nor a composite number. It cannot be prime because it has an infinite number of factors, and cannot be composite because it cannot be expressed as a product of prime numbers (as 0 must always be one of the factors). Zero is, however, even (i.e. a multiple of 2, as well as being a multiple of any other integer, rational, or real number). The following are some basic (elementary) rules for dealing with the number 0. These rules apply for any real or complex number x, unless otherwise stated. Addition: x + 0 = 0 + x = x. That is, 0 is an identity element (or neutral element) with respect to addition. Subtraction: x − 0 = x and 0 − x = −x. Multiplication: x · 0 = 0 · x = 0. Division: = 0, for nonzero x. But is undefined, because 0 has no multiplicative inverse (no real number multiplied by 0 produces 1), a consequence of the previous rule. Exponentiation: x0 = = 1, except that the case x = 0 may be left undefined in some contexts. For all positive real x, . The expression , which may be obtained in an attempt to determine the limit of an expression of the form as a result of applying the lim operator independently to both operands of the fraction, is a so-called "indeterminate form". That does not simply mean that the limit sought is necessarily undefined; rather, it means that the limit of , if it exists, must be found by another method, such as l'Hôpital's rule. The sum of 0 numbers (the empty sum) is 0, and the product of 0 numbers (the empty product) is 1. The factorial 0! evaluates to 1, as a special case of the empty product. Other branches of mathematics In set theory, 0 is the cardinality of the empty set: if one does not have any apples, then one has 0 apples. In fact, in certain axiomatic developments of mathematics from set theory, 0 is defined to be the empty set. When this is done, the empty set is the von Neumann cardinal assignment for a set with no elements, which is the empty set. The cardinality function, applied to the empty set, returns the empty set as a value, thereby assigning it 0 elements. Also in set theory, 0 is the lowest ordinal number, corresponding to the empty set viewed as a well-ordered set. In propositional logic, 0 may be used to denote the truth value false. In abstract algebra, 0 is commonly used to denote a zero element, which is a neutral element for addition (if defined on the structure under consideration) and an absorbing element for multiplication (if defined). In lattice theory, 0 may denote the bottom element of a bounded lattice. In category theory, 0 is sometimes used to denote an initial object of a category. In recursion theory, 0 can be used to denote the Turing degree of the partial computable functions. Related mathematical terms A zero of a function f is a point x in the domain of the function such that . When there are finitely many zeros these are called the roots of the function. This is related to zeros of a holomorphic function. The zero function (or zero map) on a domain D is the constant function with 0 as its only possible output value, i.e., the function f defined by for all x in D. The zero function is the only function that is both even and odd. A particular zero function is a zero morphism in category theory; e.g., a zero map is the identity in the additive group of functions. The determinant on non-invertible square matrices is a zero map. Several branches of mathematics have zero elements, which generalize either the property , or the property or both. Physics The value zero plays a special role for many physical quantities. For some quantities, the zero level is naturally distinguished from all other levels, whereas for others it is more or less arbitrarily chosen. For example, for an absolute temperature (as measured in kelvins), zero is the lowest possible value (negative temperatures are defined, but negative-temperature systems are not actually colder). This is in contrast to for example temperatures on the Celsius scale, where zero is arbitrarily defined to be at the freezing point of water. Measuring sound intensity in decibels or phons, the zero level is arbitrarily set at a reference value—for example, at a value for the threshold of hearing. In physics, the zero-point energy is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical physical system may possess and is the energy of the ground state of the system. Chemistry Zero has been proposed as the atomic number of the theoretical element tetraneutron. It has been shown that a cluster of four neutrons may be stable enough to be considered an atom in its own right. This would create an element with no protons and no charge on its nucleus. As early as 1926, Andreas von Antropoff coined the term neutronium for a conjectured form of matter made up of neutrons with no protons, which he placed as the chemical element of atomic number zero at the head of his new version of the periodic table. It was subsequently placed as a noble gas in the middle of several spiral representations of the periodic system for classifying the chemical elements. Computer science The most common practice throughout human history has been to start counting at one, and this is the practice in early classic computer programming languages such as Fortran and COBOL. However, in the late 1950s LISP introduced zero-based numbering for arrays while Algol 58 introduced completely flexible basing for array subscripts (allowing any positive, negative, or zero integer as base for array subscripts), and most subsequent programming languages adopted one or other of these positions. For example, the elements of an array are numbered starting from 0 in C, so that for an array of n items the sequence of array indices runs from 0 to . This permits an array element's location to be calculated by adding the index directly to address of the array, whereas 1-based languages precalculate the array's base address to be the position one element before the first. There can be confusion between 0- and 1-based indexing, for example Java's JDBC indexes parameters from 1 although Java itself uses 0-based indexing. In databases, it is possible for a field not to have a value. It is then said to have a null value. For numeric fields it is not the value zero. For text fields this is not blank nor the empty string. The presence of null values leads to three-valued logic. No longer is a condition either true or false, but it can be undetermined. Any computation including a null value delivers a null result. A null pointer is a pointer in a computer program that does not point to any object or function. In C, the integer constant 0 is converted into the null pointer at compile time when it appears in a pointer context, and so 0 is a standard way to refer to the null pointer in code. However, the internal representation of the null pointer may be any bit pattern (possibly different values for different data types). In mathematics both −0 and +0 represent exactly the same number, i.e., there is no "positive zero" or "negative zero" distinct from zero. However, in some computer hardware signed number representations, zero has two distinct representations, a positive one grouped with the positive numbers and a negative one grouped with the negatives; this kind of dual representation is known as signed zero, with the latter form sometimes called negative zero. These representations include the signed magnitude and one's complement binary integer representations (but not the two's complement binary form used in most modern computers), and most floating point number representations (such as IEEE 754 and IBM S/390 floating point formats). In binary, 0 represents the value for "off", which means no electricity flow. Zero is the value of false in many programming languages. The Unix epoch (the date and time associated with a zero timestamp) begins the midnight before the first of January 1970. The Classic Mac OS epoch and Palm OS epoch (the date and time associated with a zero timestamp) begins the midnight before the first of January 1904. Many APIs and operating systems that require applications to return an integer value as an exit status typically use zero to indicate success and non-zero values to indicate specific error or warning conditions. Programmers often use a slashed zero to avoid confusion with the letter "O". Other fields In comparative zoology and cognitive science, recognition that some animals display awareness of the concept of zero leads to the conclusion that the capability for numerical abstraction arose early in the evolution of species. In telephony, pressing 0 is often used for dialling out of a company network or to a different city or region, and 00 is used for dialling abroad. In some countries, dialling 0 places a call for operator assistance. DVDs that can be played in any region are sometimes referred to as being "region 0" Roulette wheels usually feature a "0" space (and sometimes also a "00" space), whose presence is ignored when calculating payoffs (thereby allowing the house to win in the long run). In Formula One, if the reigning World Champion no longer competes in Formula One in the year following their victory in the title race, 0 is given to one of the drivers of the team that the reigning champion won the title with. This happened in 1993 and 1994, with Damon Hill driving car 0, due to the reigning World Champion (Nigel Mansell and Alain Prost respectively) not competing in the championship. On the U.S. Interstate Highway System, in most states exits are numbered based on the nearest milepost from the highway's western or southern terminus within that state. Several that are less than half a mile (800 m) from state boundaries in that direction are numbered as Exit 0. Symbols and representations The modern numerical digit 0 is usually written as a circle or ellipse. Traditionally, many print typefaces made the capital letter O more rounded than the narrower, elliptical digit 0. Typewriters originally made no distinction in shape between O and 0; some models did not even have a separate key for the digit 0. The distinction came into prominence on modern character displays. | been used historically. Etymology The word zero came into the English language via French from the Italian , a contraction of the Venetian form of Italian via ṣafira or ṣifr. In pre-Islamic time the word (Arabic ) had the meaning "empty". evolved to mean zero when it was used to translate () from India. The first known English use of zero was in 1598. The Italian mathematician Fibonacci (c. 1170–1250), who grew up in North Africa and is credited with introducing the decimal system to Europe, used the term zephyrum. This became in Italian, and was then contracted to in Venetian. The Italian word was already in existence (meaning "west wind" from Latin and Greek ) and may have influenced the spelling when transcribing Arabic . Modern usage Depending on the context, there may be different words used for the number zero, or the concept of zero. For the simple notion of lacking, the words "nothing" and "none" are often used. Sometimes, the word "nought" or "naught" is used. It is often called "oh" in the context of reading out a string of digits, such as telephone numbers, street addresses, credit card numbers, military time, or years (e.g. a phone number 555-0123 would be pronounced "five five five oh one two three"; a year such as 1907 is often pronounced "nineteen oh seven"). The presence of other digits avoids confusion with the letter O. For this reason, systems that include alphanumeric strings (e.g. Canadian postal codes) may exclude the use of the letter O. Slang words for zero include "zip", "zilch", "nada", and "scratch." "Nil" is used for many sports in British English. Several sports have specific words for a score of zero, such as "love" in tennis – from French l'oeuf, "the egg" – and "duck" in cricket, a shortening of "duck's egg"; "goose egg" is another general slang term used for zero. History Ancient Near East Ancient Egyptian numerals were of base 10. They used hieroglyphs for the digits and were not positional. By 1770 BC, the Egyptians had a symbol for zero in accounting texts. The symbol nfr, meaning beautiful, was also used to indicate the base level in drawings of tombs and pyramids, and distances were measured relative to the base line as being above or below this line. By the middle of the 2nd millennium BC, the Babylonian mathematics had a sophisticated sexagesimal positional numeral system. The lack of a positional value (or zero) was indicated by a space between sexagesimal numerals. In a tablet unearthed at Kish (dating to as early as 700 BC), the scribe Bêl-bân-aplu used three hooks as a placeholder in the same Babylonian system. By 300 BC, a punctuation symbol (two slanted wedges) was co-opted to serve as this placeholder. The Babylonian placeholder was not a true zero because it was not used alone, nor was it used at the end of a number. Thus numbers like 2 and 120 (2×60), 3 and 180 (3×60), 4 and 240 (4×60) looked the same, because the larger numbers lacked a final sexagesimal placeholder. Only context could differentiate them. Pre-Columbian Americas The Mesoamerican Long Count calendar developed in south-central Mexico and Central America required the use of zero as a placeholder within its vigesimal (base-20) positional numeral system. Many different glyphs, including this partial quatrefoil——were used as a zero symbol for these Long Count dates, the earliest of which (on Stela 2 at Chiapa de Corzo, Chiapas) has a date of 36 BC. Since the eight earliest Long Count dates appear outside the Maya homeland, it is generally believed that the use of zero in the Americas predated the Maya and was possibly the invention of the Olmecs. Many of the earliest Long Count dates were found within the Olmec heartland, although the Olmec civilization ended by the , several centuries before the earliest known Long Count dates. Although zero became an integral part of Maya numerals, with a different, empty tortoise-like "shell shape" used for many depictions of the "zero" numeral, it is assumed not to have influenced Old World numeral systems. Quipu, a knotted cord device, used in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region to record accounting and other digital data, is encoded in a base ten positional system. Zero is represented by the absence of a knot in the appropriate position. Classical antiquity The ancient Greeks had no symbol for zero (μηδέν), and did not use a digit placeholder for it. They seemed unsure about the status of zero as a number. Some of them asked themselves, "How can not being be?", leading to philosophical and, by the medieval period, religious arguments about the nature and existence of zero and the vacuum. The paradoxes of Zeno of Elea depend in large part on the uncertain interpretation of zero. By AD 150, Ptolemy, influenced by Hipparchus and the Babylonians, was using a symbol for zero () in his work on mathematical astronomy called the Syntaxis Mathematica, also known as the Almagest. This Hellenistic zero was perhaps the earliest documented use of a numeral representing zero in the Old World. Ptolemy used it many times in his Almagest (VI.8) for the magnitude of solar and lunar eclipses. It represented the value of both digits and minutes of immersion at first and last contact. Digits varied continuously from as the Moon passed over the Sun (a triangular pulse), where twelve digits was the angular diameter of the Sun. Minutes of immersion was tabulated from , where 0′0″ used the symbol as a placeholder in two positions of his sexagesimal positional numeral system, while the combination meant a zero angle. Minutes of immersion was also a continuous function (a triangular pulse with convex sides), where d was the digit function and 31′20″ was the sum of the radii of the Sun's and Moon's discs. Ptolemy's symbol was a placeholder as well as a number used by two continuous mathematical functions, one within another, so it meant zero, not none. The earliest use of zero in the calculation of the Julian Easter occurred before AD311, at the first entry in a table of epacts as preserved in an Ethiopic document for the years AD311 to 369, using a Ge'ez word for "none" (English translation is "0" elsewhere) alongside Ge'ez numerals (based on Greek numerals), which was translated from an equivalent table published by the Church of Alexandria in Medieval Greek. This use was repeated in AD525 in an equivalent table, that was translated via the Latin nulla or "none" by Dionysius Exiguus, alongside Roman numerals. When division produced zero as a remainder, nihil, meaning "nothing", was used. These medieval zeros were used by all future medieval calculators of Easter. The initial "N" was used as a zero symbol in a table of Roman numerals by Bede—or his colleagues—around AD 725. China The Sūnzĭ Suànjīng, of unknown date but estimated to be dated from the 1st to , and Japanese records dated from the 18th century, describe how the Chinese counting rods system enabled one to perform decimal calculations. As noted in Xiahou Yang's Suanjing (425–468 AD) that states that to multiply or divide a number by 10, 100, 1000, or 10000, all one needs to do, with rods on the counting board, is to move them forwards, or back, by 1, 2, 3, or 4 places, According to A History of Mathematics, the rods "gave the decimal representation of a number, with an empty space denoting zero." The counting rod system is considered a positional notation system. In AD 690, Empress Wǔ promulgated Zetian characters, one of which was "〇"; originally meaning 'star', it subsequently came to represent zero. Zero was not treated as a number at that time, but as a "vacant position". Qín Jiǔsháo's 1247 Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections is the oldest surviving Chinese mathematical text using a round symbol for zero. Chinese authors had been familiar with the idea of negative numbers by the Han Dynasty , as seen in The Nine Chapters on the Mathematical Art. India Pingala (c. 3rd/2nd century BC), a Sanskrit prosody scholar, used binary numbers in the form of short and long syllables (the latter equal in length to two short syllables), a notation similar to Morse code. Pingala used the Sanskrit word śūnya explicitly to refer to zero. The concept of zero as a written digit in the decimal place value notation was developed in India, presumably as early as during the Gupta period , with the oldest unambiguous evidence dating to the 7th century. A symbol for zero, a large dot likely to be the precursor of the still-current hollow symbol, is used throughout the Bakhshali manuscript, a practical manual on arithmetic for merchants. In 2017, three samples from the manuscript were shown by radiocarbon dating to come from three different centuries: from AD 224–383, AD 680–779, and AD 885–993, making it South Asia's oldest recorded use of the zero symbol. It is not known how the birch bark fragments from different centuries forming the manuscript came to be packaged together. The Lokavibhāga, a Jain text on cosmology surviving in a medieval Sanskrit translation of the Prakrit original, which is internally dated to AD 458 (Saka era 380), uses a decimal place-value system, including a zero. In this text, śūnya ("void, empty") is also used to refer to zero. The Aryabhatiya (c. 500), states sthānāt sthānaṁ daśaguṇaṁ syāt "from place to place each is ten times the preceding." Rules governing the use of zero appeared in Brahmagupta's Brahmasputha Siddhanta (7th century), which states the sum of zero with itself as zero, and incorrectly division by zero as: A positive or negative number when divided by zero is a fraction with the zero as denominator. Zero divided by a negative or positive number is either zero or is expressed as a fraction with zero as numerator and the finite quantity as denominator. Zero divided by zero is zero. Epigraphy There are numerous copper plate inscriptions, with the same small o in them, some of them possibly dated to the 6th century, but their date or authenticity may be open to doubt. A stone tablet found in the ruins of a temple near Sambor on the Mekong, Kratié Province, Cambodia, includes the inscription of "605" in Khmer numerals (a set of numeral glyphs for the Hindu–Arabic numeral system). The number is the year of the inscription in the Saka era, corresponding to a date of AD 683. The first known use of special glyphs for the decimal digits that includes the indubitable appearance of a symbol for the digit zero, a small circle, appears on a stone inscription found at the Chaturbhuj Temple, Gwalior, in India, dated 876. Zero is also used as a placeholder in the Bakhshali manuscript, portions of which date from AD 224–383. Middle Ages Transmission to Islamic culture The Arabic-language inheritance of science was largely Greek, followed by Hindu influences. In 773, at Al-Mansur's behest, translations were made of many ancient treatises including Greek, Roman, Indian, and others. In AD 813, astronomical tables were prepared by a Persian mathematician, Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī, using Hindu numerals; and about 825, he published a book synthesizing Greek and Hindu knowledge and also contained his own contribution to mathematics including an explanation of the use of zero. This book was later translated into Latin in the 12th century under the title Algoritmi de numero Indorum. This title means "al-Khwarizmi on the Numerals of the Indians". The word "Algoritmi" was the translator's Latinization of Al-Khwarizmi's name, and the word "Algorithm" or "Algorism" started to acquire a meaning of any arithmetic based on decimals. Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Khwarizmi, in 976, stated that if no number appears in the place of tens in a calculation, a little circle should be used "to keep the rows". This circle was called ṣifr. Transmission to Europe The Hindu–Arabic numeral system (base 10) reached Western Europe in the 11th century, via Al-Andalus, through Spanish Muslims, the Moors, together with knowledge of classical astronomy and instruments like the astrolabe; Gerbert of Aurillac is credited with reintroducing the lost teachings into Catholic Europe. For this reason, the numerals came to be known in Europe as "Arabic numerals". The Italian mathematician Fibonacci or Leonardo of Pisa was instrumental in bringing the system into European mathematics in 1202, stating: After my father's appointment by his homeland as state official in the customs house of Bugia for the Pisan merchants who thronged to it, he took charge; and in view of its future usefulness and convenience, had me in my boyhood come to him and there wanted me to devote myself to and be instructed in the study of calculation for some days. There, following my introduction, as a consequence of marvelous instruction in the art, to the nine digits of the Hindus, the knowledge of the art very much appealed to me before all others, and for it I realized that all its aspects were studied in Egypt, Syria, Greece, Sicily, and Provence, with their varying methods; and at these places thereafter, while on business. I pursued my study in depth and learned the give-and-take of disputation. But all this even, and the algorism, as well as the art of Pythagoras, I considered as almost a mistake in respect to the method of the Hindus (Modus Indorum). Therefore, embracing more stringently that method of the Hindus, and taking stricter pains in its study, while adding certain things from my own understanding and inserting also certain things from the niceties of Euclid's geometric art. I have striven to compose this book in its entirety as understandably as I could, dividing it into fifteen chapters. Almost everything which I have introduced I have displayed with exact proof, in order that those further seeking this knowledge, with its pre-eminent method, might be instructed, and further, in order that the Latin people might not be discovered to be without it, as they have been up to now. If I have perchance omitted anything more or less proper or necessary, I beg indulgence, since there is no one who is blameless and utterly provident in all things. The nine Indian figures are: 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1. With these nine figures, and with the sign 0 ... any number may be written.Grimm, R.E., "The Autobiography of Leonardo Pisano", Fibonacci Quarterly 11/1 (February 1973), pp. 99–104. Here Leonardo of Pisa uses the phrase "sign 0", indicating it is like a sign to do operations like addition or multiplication. From the 13th century, manuals on calculation (adding, multiplying, extracting |
1990 due to protests of the local population and lack of funds. Recently, the construction plans are being reconsidered. History The earliest evidence of settlement in the region dates from the 8th century BC: the inhabitants were apparently linked with the Lusatian and East Pomeranian cultures. There was a settlement near the Żarnowiec lake from the seventh to the tenth century AD. A village known alternately as Sarnkow, Sarnowitz, Sarnowicz or Czarnowicz is first mentioned in sources dating from the thirteenth century, when it was inhabited by the Kashubians. In 1215, Żarnowiec belonged to the Cistercian order based in Oliwa Abbey, which founded a monastery for women there. In the 13th century the local monastery was granted various privileges including ownership of five nearby villages of Kartoszyno, Lubkowo, Odargowo, Świecino, Wierzchucino, what was confirmed by King of Poland Przemysł II in 1295 in Gdańsk. In 1297 the monastery received special economic and juridical privileges from Mściwój II, Duke of Pomerania. It was located within fragmented medieval Poland. In fourteenth century Żarnowiec, together with all of Pomerelia was annexed from Poland by the Teutonic Order. In 1433, it was raided by a Hussite army. In 1454 the territory was formally re-incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland by King Casimir IV Jagiellon. In 1462, during the subsequent Thirteen Years' War, the Polish army under | of the local population and lack of funds. Recently, the construction plans are being reconsidered. History The earliest evidence of settlement in the region dates from the 8th century BC: the inhabitants were apparently linked with the Lusatian and East Pomeranian cultures. There was a settlement near the Żarnowiec lake from the seventh to the tenth century AD. A village known alternately as Sarnkow, Sarnowitz, Sarnowicz or Czarnowicz is first mentioned in sources dating from the thirteenth century, when it was inhabited by the Kashubians. In 1215, Żarnowiec belonged to the Cistercian order based in Oliwa Abbey, which founded a monastery for women there. In the 13th century the local monastery was granted various privileges including ownership of five nearby villages of Kartoszyno, Lubkowo, Odargowo, Świecino, Wierzchucino, what was confirmed by King of Poland Przemysł II in 1295 in Gdańsk. In 1297 the monastery received special economic and juridical privileges from Mściwój II, Duke of Pomerania. It was located within fragmented medieval Poland. In fourteenth century Żarnowiec, together with all of Pomerelia was annexed from Poland by the Teutonic Order. In 1433, it was raided by a Hussite army. In 1454 the territory was formally re-incorporated into the Kingdom of Poland by King Casimir IV Jagiellon. In 1462, during the subsequent Thirteen Years' War, the Polish army under Piotr Dunin defeated the Teutonic Knights there (see Battle |
and first-order predicate logic. All expressions in Z notation are typed, thereby avoiding some of the paradoxes of naive set theory. Z contains a standardized catalogue (called the mathematical toolkit) of commonly used mathematical functions and predicates, defined using Z itself. Because Z notation (just like the APL language, long before it) uses many non-ASCII symbols, the specification includes suggestions for rendering the Z notation symbols in ASCII and in LaTeX. There are also Unicode encodings for all standard Z symbols. Standards ISO completed a Z standardization effort in 2002. This standard and a technical corrigendum are available from ISO free: the standard is publicly available from the ISO ITTF site free of charge and, separately, available for purchase from the ISO site; the technical corrigendum is available from the ISO site free of charge. Award In 1992, “Her Majesty the Queen [was] graciously pleased to approve the Prime Minister’s recommendation that The Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement should be conferred this year upon Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Oxford University Computing Laboratory [gained] the Award jointly with IBM United Kingdom Laboratories Limited for the development of a programming method based on elementary set theory and logic known as the Z notation, and its application in the IBM Customer Information Control System (CICS) product.” See also Z User Group (ZUG) Community Z Tools (CZT) project Other formal methods (and languages using formal specifications): FDM (Formal Development Methodology), revolving around the Ina Jo and Ina Flo specification sub-languages, quite popular in the 1980s and 1990s VDM-SL, the main alternative to Z B-Method, developed | defined using Z itself. Because Z notation (just like the APL language, long before it) uses many non-ASCII symbols, the specification includes suggestions for rendering the Z notation symbols in ASCII and in LaTeX. There are also Unicode encodings for all standard Z symbols. Standards ISO completed a Z standardization effort in 2002. This standard and a technical corrigendum are available from ISO free: the standard is publicly available from the ISO ITTF site free of charge and, separately, available for purchase from the ISO site; the technical corrigendum is available from the ISO site free of charge. Award In 1992, “Her Majesty the Queen [was] graciously pleased to approve the Prime Minister’s recommendation that The Queen’s Award for Technological Achievement should be conferred this year upon Oxford University Computing Laboratory. Oxford University Computing Laboratory [gained] the Award jointly with IBM United Kingdom Laboratories Limited for the development of a programming method based on elementary set theory and logic known as the Z notation, and its application in the IBM Customer Information |
form. In crystals of anthranilic acid there are two molecules in the unit cell. One molecule is in the zwitterion form, the other is not. In the solid state, H4EDTA is a zwitterion with two protons having been transferred from carboxylic acid groups to the nitrogen atoms. In Psilocybin the proton on the dimethyl amino group is labile and may jump to the phosphate group to form a compound which is not a zwitterion. Theoretical studies Insight to the equilibrium in solution may be gained from the results of theoretical calculations. For example, pyridoxal phosphate, a form of vitamin B6, in aqueous solution is predicted to have an equilibrium favoring a tautomeric form in which a proton is transferred from the phenolic -OH group to the nitrogen atom. Because tautomers are different compounds, they sometimes have different enough structures that they can be detected independently in their mixture. This allows experimental analysis of the equilibrium. Betaines and similar compounds The compound trimethylglycine, which was isolated from sugar beet, was named as "betaine". Later, other compounds were discovered that contain the same structural motif, a quaternary nitrogen atom with a carboxylate group attached to it via a –CH2– link. At the present time, all compounds whose structure includes this motif are known as betaines. Betaines do not isomerize because the chemical groups attached to the nitrogen atom are not labile. These compounds may be classed as permanent zwitterions, as isomerisation to a molecule with no electrical charges does not occur, or is very slow. Other examples of permanent zwitterions include phosphatidylcholines, which also contain a quaternary nitrogen atom, but with a negatively-charged phosphate group in place of a carboxylate group; sulfobetaines, which contain a quaternary nitrogen atom and a negatively charged sulfonate group; and pulmonary surfactants such as dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine. Lauramidopropyl betaine is the major component of cocamidopropyl betaine. Conjugated Zwitterions Strongly polarized conjugated compounds (conjugated zwitterions) are typically very reactive, share diradical character, activate strong bonds and small molecules, and serve as transient intermediates in catalysis. Donor-acceptor entities are of vast use in photochemistry (photoinduced electron transfer), organic | ammonium group. Similarly, a molecule containing a phosphonium group and a carboxylate group cannot isomerize. Amino acids The equilibrium is established in two stages. In one stage, a proton is transferred from the carboxyl group to a water molecule. + + In the other stage a proton is transferred from the hydronium ion to the amine group + + Overall, the reaction is an isomerization reaction The ratio of the concentrations of the two species in solution is independent of pH as it is equal to the value of the equilibrium constant K for the isomerization reaction. [X] signifies the concentration of the chemical species X at equilibrium. It is generally assumed that K > 1, that is, that the zwitterion is the predominant amino acid isomer in aqueous solution. It has been suggested, on the basis of theoretical analysis, that the zwitterion is stabilized in aqueous solution by hydrogen bonding with solvent water molecules. Analysis of neutron diffraction data for glycine showed that it was in the zwitterionic form in the solid state and confirmed the presence of hydrogen bonds. Theoretical calculations have been used to show that zwitterions may also be present in the gas phase for some cases different from the simple carboxylic acid-to-amine transfer. The pKa values for deprotonation of the common amino acids span the approximate range . This is also consistent with the |
polynomial equation in one unknown by successive elimination of unknowns. He then solved the high order equation by Southern Song dynasty mathematician Qin Jiushao's "Ling long kai fang" method published in Shùshū Jiǔzhāng (“Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections”) in 1247 (more than 570 years before English mathematician William Horner's method using synthetic division). To do this, he makes use of what is currently known as the Pascal triangle, which he labels as the diagram of an ancient method first discovered by Jia Xian before 1050. The final equation and one of its solutions is given for each of the 288 problems. Zhu also found square and cube roots by solving quadratic and cubic equations, and added to the understanding of series and progressions, classifying them according to the coefficients of the Pascal triangle. He also showed how to solve systems of linear equations by reducing the matrix of their coefficients to diagonal form. His methods pre-date Blaise Pascal, William Horner, and modern matrix methods by many centuries. The preface of the book describes how Zhu traveled around China for 20 years as a teacher of mathematics. The methods of Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns form the foundation for Wu's method of characteristic set. References Yoshio Mikami Development of Mathematics in China and Japan, Chapter 14 Chu Shih-chieh p89-98. 1913 Leipzig. Library of Congress catalog card number 61-13497. Du, Shiran, "Zhu Shijie". | Suan hsüeh Ch'i-mong (), written in 1299, is an elementary textbook on mathematics in three volumes, 20 chapters and 259 problems. This book also showed how to measure different two-dimensional shapes and three-dimensional solids. The Introduction had an important influence on the development of mathematics in Japan. The book was once lost in China until Qing dynasty mathematician Luo Shilin bought a Korean printed edition, and re-published in Yangzhou. Since then this book was reprinted several times. Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns Zhu's second book, Jade Mirror of the Four Unknowns, written in 1303, is his most important work. With this book, Zhu advanced Chinese algebra. The first four of the 288 problems for solution illustrate his method of the four unknowns. He shows how to convert a problem stated verbally into a system of polynomial equations (up to 14th order), by using up to four unknowns: 天 Heaven, 地 Earth, 人 Man, 物 Matter, and then how to reduce the system to a single polynomial equation in one unknown by successive elimination of unknowns. He then solved the high order equation by Southern Song dynasty mathematician Qin Jiushao's "Ling long kai fang" method published in Shùshū Jiǔzhāng (“Mathematical Treatise in Nine Sections”) in 1247 (more than 570 years before English mathematician William Horner's method using synthetic division). To do this, he makes use of what is currently known as the Pascal triangle, which he labels as the diagram of an ancient method first discovered by Jia Xian before 1050. The final equation and one of |
technology Joseph Needham. It had pictures painted on thin panes of paper or mica on the sides of a light cylindrical canopy bearing vanes at the top. When placed over a lamp it would give an impression of movement of animals or men. Needham mentions several other descriptions of figures moving after the lighting of a candle or lamp, but some of these have a semi-fabulous context or can be compared to heat operated carousel toys. It is possible that all these early Chinese examples were actually the same as, or very similar to, the "trotting horse lamp" [走馬燈] known in China since before 1000 AD. This is a lantern which on the inside has cut-out silhouettes or painted figures attached to a shaft with a paper vane impeller on top, rotated by heated air rising from a lamp. The moving silhouettes are projected on the thin paper sides of the lantern. Some versions added extra motion with jointed heads, feet or hands of figures triggered by a transversely connected iron wire. None of these lamps are known to have featured sequential substitution of images depicting motion and thus don't display animation in the way that the zoetrope does. John Bate described a simple device in his 1634 book "The Mysteries of Nature and Art". It consisted of "a light card, with several images set upon it" fastened on the four spokes of a wheel which was turned around by heat inside a glass or horn cylinder, "so that you would think the immages to bee living creatures by their motion". The description seems rather close to a simple four-phase animation device depicted and described in Henry V. Hopwood's 1899 book Living Pictures (see picture). Hopwood gave no name, date or any additional information for this toy that rotated when blown upon. A similar device inside a small zoetrope drum with four slits, was marketed around 1900 by a Parisian company as L'Animateur (or The Animator). However, Bate's device as it is seen in the accompanying illustration seems not to have actually animated the images, but rather to have moved the images around spatially. Invention Simon Stampfer (1833) Simon Stampfer, one of the inventors of the phenakistiscope animation disc (or "stroboscope discs" as he called them), suggested in July 1833 in a pamphlet that the sequence of images for the stroboscopic animation could be placed on either a disc, a cylinder or a looped strip of paper or canvas stretched around two parallel rollers. Stampfer chose to publish his invention in the shape of a disc. William Horner (1834) After taking notice of Joseph Plateau's invention of the phénakisticope (published in London as "phantasmascope") British mathematician William George Horner thought up a cylindrical variation and published details about its mathematical principles in January 1834. He called his device the Dædaleum, as a reference to the Greek myth of Daedalus. Horner's revolving drum had viewing slits between the pictures, instead of above as the later zoetrope variations would have. Horner planned to publish the dædaleum with optician King, Jr in Bristol but it "met with some impediment probably in the sketching of the figures". Experimental photographic sequence viewers (1850s–1860s) During the next three decades the phénakisticope remained the more common animation device, while relatively few experimental variations followed the idea of Horner's dædaleum or Stampfer's stroboscopic cylinder. Most of the zoetrope-like devices created between 1833 and 1865 were intended for viewing photographic sequences, often with a stereoscopic effect. These included Johann Nepomuk Czermak's Stereophoroskop, about which he published an article in 1855. On February 27, 1860, Peter Hubert Desvignes received British patent no. 537 for 28 monocular and stereoscopic variations of cylindrical stroboscopic devices. This included a version that used an endless band of pictures running between two spools that was intermittently lit by an electric spark. Desvignes' Mimoscope, received an Honourable Mention "for ingenuity of construction" at the 1862 International Exhibition in London. It could "exhibit drawings, models, single or stereoscopic photographs, so as to animate animal movements, or that of machinery, showing various other illusions." Desvignes "employed models, insects and other objects, instead of pictures, with perfect success." The horizontal slits (like in Czermak's Stereophoroskop) allowed a much improved view, with both eyes, of the opposite pictures. William Ensign Lincoln & Milton Bradley's Zoetrope (1865–1867) William Ensign Lincoln invented the definitive zoetrope in 1865 when he was about 18 years old and a sophomore at Brown University, Providence, Rhode Island. Lincoln's patented version had the viewing slits on a level above the pictures, which allowed the use of easily replaceable strips of images. It also had an illustrated paper disc on the base, which was not always exploited on the commercially produced versions. On advice of a local bookstore owner, Lincoln sent a model to color lithographers and board game manufacturers Milton Bradley and Co. Some shop owners advertised the zoetrope in American newspapers in December 1866. The instrument was first patented in the U.K. on March 6, 1867, under no. 629 by Henry Watson Hallett (as a communication to him by Milton Bradley). In the United States it was patented as the Zoëtrope on April 23, 1867, by William E. Lincoln – as an assignor to Milton Bradley. Over the years Milton Bradley released at least seven numbered series with twelve zoetrope strips each, as well as a set of twelve strips by Professor Robert Hallowell Richards showing the gradual transformations from one isometric form to another, and one separately available strip showing the progress of the Grecian bend (a woman morphing into a camel). The London Stereoscopic & Photographic Company was licensed as the British publisher and repeated most of the Milton Bradley animations, while adding a set of twelve animations by famous British illustrator George Cruikshank in 1870. James Clerk Maxwell's improved zoetrope In 1868 James Clerk Maxwell had an improved zoetrope constructed. Instead of slits it used concave lenses with a focal length equaling the diameter of the cylinder. The virtual image was thus seen in the centre and appeared much more sharp and steady than in the original zoetrope. Maxwell drew several strips that mostly demonstrated subjects relating to physics, like the vibrations of a harp string or Helmholtz's vortex rings threading through each other. An article about the "Zootrope perfectionné" was published in French scientific magazine Le Cosmos in 1869, but the device was never marketed. Maxwell's original zoetrope and some strips are kept in the collection of the Cavendish Museum in Cambridge. Linear zoetropes A linear zoetrope consists of an opaque linear screen with thin vertical slits in it. Behind each slit is an image, often illuminated. A motion picture is seen by moving past the display. Linear zoetropes have several differences compared to cylindrical zoetropes due to their different geometries. Linear zoetropes can have arbitrarily long animations and can cause images to appear wider than their actual sizes. Subway zoetropes Japan Linear zoetrope-like advertising was in use in Japan in the early 1990s, for example on the line between the Narita airport and central Tokyo. United States In September 1980, independent filmmaker Bill Brand installed a type of linear zoetrope he called the "Masstransiscope" in an unused subway platform at the former Myrtle Avenue station on the New York City Subway. It consists of a wall with 228 slits; behind each slit is a hand-painted panel, and riders of passing trains see a motion picture. After falling into a state of disrepair, the "Masstransiscope" was restored in late 2008. Since then, a variety of artists and advertisers have begun to use subway tunnel walls to produce a zoetrope effect when viewed from moving trains. Joshua Spodek, as an astrophysics graduate student, conceived of and led the development of a class of linear zoetropes that saw the zoetrope's first commercial success in over a century. A display of his design debuted in September 2001 in the Atlanta subway system tunnel and showed an advertisement to riders moving past. The display is internally lit and nearly long, with an animation lasting around 20 seconds. His design soon appeared, both commercially and artistically, in subway systems around North America, Asia, and Europe. In April 2006, the Washington Metro installed advertisement zoetropes between the Metro Center and Gallery Place subway stations. A similar advertisement was installed on the PATH train in New Jersey, between the World Trade Center and Exchange Place stations. At around the same time, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system installed a zoetrope-type advertisement between the Embarcadero and Montgomery stations which could be viewed by commuters traveling in either direction. The BART ads are still visible, though they are changed infrequently: a particular ad may remain up for several months before being replaced. The New York City Subway hosted two digital linear zoetropes through its Arts for Transit program. One, "Bryant Park in Motion", was installed in 2010 at the Bryant | A motion picture is seen by moving past the display. Linear zoetropes have several differences compared to cylindrical zoetropes due to their different geometries. Linear zoetropes can have arbitrarily long animations and can cause images to appear wider than their actual sizes. Subway zoetropes Japan Linear zoetrope-like advertising was in use in Japan in the early 1990s, for example on the line between the Narita airport and central Tokyo. United States In September 1980, independent filmmaker Bill Brand installed a type of linear zoetrope he called the "Masstransiscope" in an unused subway platform at the former Myrtle Avenue station on the New York City Subway. It consists of a wall with 228 slits; behind each slit is a hand-painted panel, and riders of passing trains see a motion picture. After falling into a state of disrepair, the "Masstransiscope" was restored in late 2008. Since then, a variety of artists and advertisers have begun to use subway tunnel walls to produce a zoetrope effect when viewed from moving trains. Joshua Spodek, as an astrophysics graduate student, conceived of and led the development of a class of linear zoetropes that saw the zoetrope's first commercial success in over a century. A display of his design debuted in September 2001 in the Atlanta subway system tunnel and showed an advertisement to riders moving past. The display is internally lit and nearly long, with an animation lasting around 20 seconds. His design soon appeared, both commercially and artistically, in subway systems around North America, Asia, and Europe. In April 2006, the Washington Metro installed advertisement zoetropes between the Metro Center and Gallery Place subway stations. A similar advertisement was installed on the PATH train in New Jersey, between the World Trade Center and Exchange Place stations. At around the same time, the San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system installed a zoetrope-type advertisement between the Embarcadero and Montgomery stations which could be viewed by commuters traveling in either direction. The BART ads are still visible, though they are changed infrequently: a particular ad may remain up for several months before being replaced. The New York City Subway hosted two digital linear zoetropes through its Arts for Transit program. One, "Bryant Park in Motion", was installed in 2010 at the Bryant Park subway station, and was created by Spodek and students at New York University's Tisch School of Arts' Interactive Telecommunications Program. The other, "Union Square in Motion", was installed in 2011 by Spodek and students and alumni from Parsons the New School for Design's Art, Media, and Technology program in the Union Square station. Other places The Kyiv Metro (in Kyiv, Ukraine) also featured an advertisement about 2008 for Life mobile telephone carrier in one of its subway tunnels that featured the zoetrope effect. It was quickly taken down. In Mexico City, Mexico, an advertisement for the Honda Civic featuring a zoetrope effect was placed in one of the Line 2 tunnels. The Zurich Airport Skymetro features a linear zoetrope. 3D zoetropes 3D zoetropes apply the same principle to three-dimensional models, as already practiced by Czermak (1855) and Desvignes (1860) in predecessors of the zoetrope. In 1887, Étienne-Jules Marey used a large zoetrope to animate a series of plaster models based on his chronophotographs of birds in flight. Modern equivalents normally dispense with the slitted drum and instead use a rapidly flashing strobe light to illuminate the models, producing much clearer and sharper distortion-free results. The models are mounted on a rotating base and the light flashes on and off within an extremely small fraction of a second as each successive model passes the same spot. The stroboscopic effect makes each seem to be a single animated object. By allowing the rotation speed to be slightly out of synchronization with the strobe, the animated objects can be made to appear to also move slowly forwards or backwards, according to how much faster or slower each rotation is than the corresponding series of strobe flashes. Ghibli The Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, Japan hosts a 3D zoetrope featuring characters from the animated movie My Neighbour Totoro. The zoetrope is accompanied by an explanatory display, and is part of an exhibit explaining the principles of animation and historical devices. Toy Story Pixar created a 3D zoetrope inspired by Ghibli's for its touring exhibition, which first showed at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and features characters from Toy Story 2. Two more 3D Zoetropes were created by Pixar, both featuring 360-degree viewing. One was installed at Disney California Adventure, sister park to Disneyland, but has since been moved to The Walt Disney Studios Lot in Burbank, CA. The other was installed at Hong Kong Disneyland from 2010 until 2017, and is now shown in Disneyland Paris as of late 2019. The original Toy Story Zoetrope still travels worldwide and has been shown in 34 national museums and art galleries in 18 countries since 2005. All Things Fall All Things Fall is a 3D printed zoetrope, created by British artist Mat Collishaw. It is inspired by a painting by Ippolito Scarsella of The Massacre of Innocents. The work was presented during the solo exhibition Black Mirror at Galleria Borghese in Rome. It is made of steel, aluminium, plaster, resin, lit by LED lights and powered by an electric motor. Of his work, Collishaw says: "The zoetrope literally repeats characters to create an overwhelming orgy of violence that is simultaneously appalling and compelling." Each model figure was 3D printed with a fused deposition modeling technique in acrylonitrile butadiene styrene. Peter Hudson Over the period 2002–2016, Peter Hudson and the makers at Spin Art, LLC, have created multiple interactive 3D stroboscopic zoetrope art installations. This began with Sisyphish (2002), a human powered zoetrope that used strobe light to animate human figures swimming on a large rotating disk. Sisyphish, sometimes called The Playa Swimmers, was originally unveiled at the arts and culture event, Burning Man, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada. Peter has since created stroboscopic zoetropes from 2004 to present including: Deeper (2004), Homouroboros (2007), Tantalus (2008), and Charon, which toured Europe and the United Kingdom in summer of 2012. The Charon zoetrope is built to resemble and rotate in the same kinetic fashion as a ferris wheel, stands at 32 feet high, weighs 8 tons and features twenty rowing skeleton figures representing the mythological character, Charon, who carries souls of the newly deceased across the river Styx. Hudson's most recent zoetrope creation is entitled Eternal Return, took two years to build, and was unveiled in 2014 in the Black Rock Desert. Peter Hudson's zoetropes are based in San Francisco are exhibited at various festivals and special events in the United States and internationally throughout the year. Giant Zoetropes An 1857 textbook on physics mentioned an early cylindrical stroboscopic installation with moving images that was 18 feet (5.5 meters) in diameter and had been exhibited in Frankfurt. A "Great Zoetrope ; or: Wheel of Life", 50 feet (15 meters) in circumference, with "life-size figures", was installed in the Concert Hall of the Crystal Palace in London by permission of the London Stereoscopic and Photographic Company. The programme featured at least four animations based on strips in their catalogue. The huge cylinder was turned around by a gas engine and was operative at least from late 1867 to spring 1868. In 2008, Artem Limited, a UK visual effects house, built a 10-meter wide, 10-metric ton zoetrope for Sony, called the BRAVIA-drome, to promote Sony's motion interpolation technology. It features 64 |
clear and moonless night sky. Another phenomenon – a faint but slightly brighter oval glow – directly opposite of the Sun is the gegenschein, which is caused by backscattered sunlight. The interplanetary dust in the Solar System collectively forms a thick, pancake-shaped cloud called the zodiacal cloud, which straddles the ecliptic plane. The particle sizes range between 10 and 300 micrometres, implying masses from one nanogram to tens of micrograms. The Pioneer 10 spacecraft observations in the 1970s linked zodiacal light with the interplanetary dust cloud in the Solar System. Analysis of images of impact debris from the Juno spacecraft shows that the distribution of the dust extends from Earth's orbit to the 4:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter at , and suggests that the dust is from Mars. Viewing In the mid-latitudes, the zodiacal light is best observed in the western sky in the spring after the evening twilight has completely disappeared, or in the eastern sky in the autumn just before the morning twilight appears. The zodiacal light appears as a column, brighter at the horizon and tilted at the angle of the ecliptic. The light scattered from extremely small dust particles is strongly forward scattering, although the zodiacal light actually extends all the way around the sky, hence it is brightest when observing at a small angle with the Sun. This is why it is most clearly visible near sunrise or sunset when the sun is blocked, but the dust particles nearest the line of sight to the sun are not. The dust band that causes the zodiacal light is uniform across the whole ecliptic. The dust further from the ecliptic is almost undetectable except when viewed at a small angle with the sun. Thus it is possible to see more of the width at small angles toward the sun, and it appears wider near the horizon, closer to the sun under the horizon. Origin The source of the dust has been long debated. Until recently, it was thought that the dust originated from the tails of active comets and from collisions between asteroids in the asteroid belt. Many of our meteor showers have no known active comet parent bodies. Over 85 percent of the dust is attributed to occasional fragmentations of Jupiter-family comets that are nearly dormant. Jupiter-family comets have orbital periods of less than 20 years and are considered dormant when not actively outgassing, but may do so in the future. The first fully dynamical model of the zodiacal cloud demonstrated that only if the dust was released in orbits that approach Jupiter, is it stirred up enough to explain the thickness of the zodiacal dust cloud. The dust in meteoroid streams is much larger, 300 to 10,000 micrometres in diameter, and falls apart into smaller zodiacal dust grains over time. The Poynting–Robertson effect forces the dust into more circular (but still elongated) orbits, while spiralling slowly into the Sun. Hence a continuous source of new particles is needed to maintain the zodiacal cloud. Cometary dust and dust generated by collisions among the asteroids are believed to be mostly responsible for the maintenance of the dust cloud producing the zodiacal light and the gegenschein. Particles can be reduced in size by collisions or by space weathering. When ground down to sizes less than 10 micrometres, the grains are removed from the inner Solar System by solar radiation pressure. The dust is then replenished by the infall from comets. Zodiacal dust around nearby stars is called exozodiacal dust; it is a potentially important source of noise for directly imaging extrasolar planets. It has been pointed out that this exozodiacal dust, or hot debris disks, can be an indicator of planets, as planets tend to scatter the comets to the inner Solar System. In 2015, new results from the secondary ion dust spectrometer COSIMA on board the ESA/Rosetta orbiter confirmed that the parent bodies of | the glow is visible as a band along the entire zodiac, completely straddling the ecliptic. In fact, zodiacal light spans the entire sky and largely contributes to the total natural light in a clear and moonless night sky. Another phenomenon – a faint but slightly brighter oval glow – directly opposite of the Sun is the gegenschein, which is caused by backscattered sunlight. The interplanetary dust in the Solar System collectively forms a thick, pancake-shaped cloud called the zodiacal cloud, which straddles the ecliptic plane. The particle sizes range between 10 and 300 micrometres, implying masses from one nanogram to tens of micrograms. The Pioneer 10 spacecraft observations in the 1970s linked zodiacal light with the interplanetary dust cloud in the Solar System. Analysis of images of impact debris from the Juno spacecraft shows that the distribution of the dust extends from Earth's orbit to the 4:1 orbital resonance with Jupiter at , and suggests that the dust is from Mars. Viewing In the mid-latitudes, the zodiacal light is best observed in the western sky in the spring after the evening twilight has completely disappeared, or in the eastern sky in the autumn just before the morning twilight appears. The zodiacal light appears as a column, brighter at the horizon and tilted at the angle of the ecliptic. The light scattered from extremely small dust particles is strongly forward scattering, although the zodiacal light actually extends all the way around the sky, hence it is brightest when observing at a small angle with the Sun. This is why it is most clearly visible near sunrise or sunset when the sun is blocked, but the dust particles nearest the line of sight to the sun are not. The dust band that causes the zodiacal light is uniform across the whole ecliptic. The dust further from the ecliptic is almost undetectable except when viewed at a small angle with the sun. Thus it is possible to see more of the width at small angles toward the sun, and it appears wider near the horizon, closer to the sun under the horizon. Origin The source of the dust has been long debated. |
December 15th is celebrated within the Esperanto movement as Esperanto Culture Day as it is customary to purchase a new book on Esperanto on that occasion. Zamenhof's 150th birth anniversary 15 December 2009 marked 150 years since Zamenhof's birth, and there were several events to celebrate. On this date, the authorities in his home town of Białystok, Poland, opened a new Zamenhof Center, and a symposium honoring Zamenhof was held in New York City, featuring talks by Arika Okrent and Humphrey Tonkin among other professors. Also on this date, the search engine Google, in 33 national | the birthday of Esperanto creator L. L. Zamenhof. It is the most widely celebrated day in Esperanto culture. On this day, Esperantists hold information sessions and cultural gatherings to promote literature in Esperanto. The history of celebrating Esperanto on Zamenhof's birthday can be traced back to 17 December 1878, when at a birthday party for his 19th birthday he presented to his friends his Lingwe uniwersala, the first version of his international language. By 1887, this language had evolved into what is now recognized as Esperanto when he published the Unua Libro. December 15th previously used to be also known as Esperanto |
function, like the Riemann zeta function, but only summed over primes Riemann zeta function, the archetypal example Ruelle zeta function Selberg zeta function of a Riemann surface Shimizu L-function Shintani zeta function Subgroup zeta function Witten zeta function of a Lie group Zeta function of an incidence algebra, a function that maps every interval of a poset to the constant value 1. Despite not resembling a holomorphic function, the special case for the poset of integer divisibility is related as a formal Dirichlet series to the Riemann zeta function. Zeta function of an operator or spectral zeta function See also Other functions called zeta functions, but not analogous to the Riemann zeta function Jacobi zeta function Weierstrass zeta function Topics related to zeta functions Artin conjecture Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture Riemann hypothesis and the generalized Riemann hypothesis. Selberg | generalization of the Riemann zeta function Local zeta function of a characteristic-p variety Matsumoto zeta function Minakshisundaram–Pleijel zeta function of a Laplacian Motivic zeta function of a motive Multiple zeta function, or Mordell–Tornheim zeta function of several variables p-adic zeta function of a p-adic number Prime zeta function, like the Riemann zeta function, but only summed over primes Riemann zeta function, the archetypal example Ruelle zeta function Selberg zeta function of a Riemann surface Shimizu L-function Shintani zeta function Subgroup zeta function Witten zeta function of a Lie group Zeta function of an incidence algebra, a function that maps every interval of a poset to the constant value 1. Despite not resembling a holomorphic function, the special case for the poset of integer divisibility is related as a formal Dirichlet series to the Riemann zeta function. Zeta function of an operator or spectral zeta function See also Other functions called zeta |
and Mazda meaning "Wisdom" in Avestan). Zoroaster keeps the two attributes separate as two different concepts in most of the Gathas yet sometimes combines them into one form. Zoroaster also claims that Ahura Mazda is omniscient but not omnipotent. In the Gathas, Ahura Mazda is noted as working through emanations known as the Amesha Spenta and with the help of "other ahuras", of which Sraosha is the only one explicitly named of the latter category. Scholars and theologians have long debated on the nature of Zoroastrianism, with dualism, monotheism, and polytheism being the main terms applied to the religion. Some scholars assert that Zoroastrianism's concept of divinity covers both being and mind as immanent entities, describing Zoroastrianism as having a belief in an immanent self-creating universe with consciousness as its special attribute, thereby putting Zoroastrianism in the pantheistic fold sharing its origin with Indian Hinduism. In any case, Asha, the main spiritual force which comes from Ahura Mazda, is the cosmic order which is the antithesis of chaos, which is evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting cosmic conflict involves all of creation, mental/spiritual and material, including humanity at its core, which has an active role to play in the conflict. In the Zoroastrian tradition, druj comes from Angra Mainyu (also referred to in later texts as "Ahriman"), the destructive spirit/mentality, while the main representative of Asha in this conflict is Spenta Mainyu, the creative spirit/mentality. Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind and interacts with creation through emanations known as the Amesha Spenta, the bounteous/holy immortals, which are representative and guardians of different aspects of creation and the ideal personality. Ahura Mazda, through these Amesha Spenta, is assisted by a league of countless divinities called Yazatas, meaning "worthy of worship", and each is generally a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of creation. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made the ultimate triumph of good against Angra Mainyu evident. Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail over the evil Angra Mainyu, at which point reality will undergo a cosmic renovation called Frashokereti and limited time will end. In the final renovation, all of creation—even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to or chose to descend into "darkness"—will be reunited with Ahura Mazda in the Kshatra Vairya (meaning "best dominion"), being resurrected to immortality. In Middle Persian literature, the prominent belief was that at the end of time a savior-figure known as the Saoshyant would bring about the Frashokereti, while in the Gathic texts the term Saoshyant (meaning "one who brings benefit") referred to all believers of Mazdayasna but changed into a messianic concept in later writings. Zoroastrian theology includes foremost the importance of following the Threefold Path of Asha revolving around Good Thoughts, Good Words, and Good Deeds. There is also a heavy emphasis on spreading happiness, mostly through charity, and respecting the spiritual equality and duty of both men and women. Zoroastrianism's emphasis on the protection and veneration of nature and its elements has led some to proclaim it as the "world's first proponent of ecology." The Avesta and other texts call for the protection of water, earth, fire and air making it, in effect, an ecological religion: "It is not surprising that Mazdaism…is called the first ecological religion. The reverence for Yazatas (divine spirits) emphasizes the preservation of nature (Avesta: Yasnas 1.19, 3.4, 16.9; Yashts 6.3–4, 10.13)." However, this particular assertion is limited to natural forces held as emanations of asha by the fact that early Zoroastrians had a duty to exterminate "evil" species, a dictate no longer followed in modern Zoroastrianism. Practices The religion states that active and ethical participation in life through good deeds formed from good thoughts and good words is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will and Zoroastrianism as such rejects extreme forms of asceticism and monasticism but historically has allowed for moderate expressions of these concepts. In Zoroastrian tradition, life is a temporary state in which a mortal is expected actively to participate in the continuing battle between Asha and Druj. Prior to its incarnation at the birth of the child, the urvan (soul) of an individual is still united with its fravashi (personal/higher spirit), which has existed since Ahura Mazda created the universe. Prior to the splitting off of the urvan the fravashi participates in the maintenance of creation led by Ahura Mazda. During the life of a given individual, the fravashi acts as a source of inspiration to perform good actions and as a spiritual protector. The fravashis of ancestors cultural, spiritual, and heroic, associated with illustrious bloodlines, are venerated and can be called upon to aid the living. On the fourth day after death, the urvan is reunited with its fravashi, whereupon the experiences of life in the material world are collected for use in the continuing battle for good in the spiritual world. For the most part, Zoroastrianism does not have a notion of reincarnation, at least not until the Frashokereti. Followers of Ilm-e-Kshnoom in India believe in reincarnation and practice vegetarianism, among other currently non-traditional opinions, although there have been various theological statements supporting vegetarianism in Zoroastrianism's history and claims that Zoroaster was vegetarian. In Zoroastrianism, water (aban) and fire (atar) are agents of ritual purity, and the associated purification ceremonies are considered the basis of ritual life. In Zoroastrian cosmogony, water and fire are respectively the second and last primordial elements to have been created, and scripture considers fire to have its origin in the waters (re. which conception see Apam Napat). Both water and fire are considered life-sustaining, and both water and fire are represented within the precinct of a fire temple. Zoroastrians usually pray in the presence of some form of fire (which can be considered evident in any source of light), and the culminating rite of the principal act of worship constitutes a "strengthening of the waters". Fire is considered a medium through which spiritual insight and wisdom are gained, and water is considered the source of that wisdom. Both fire and water are also hypostasized as the Yazatas Atar and Anahita, which worship hymns and litanies dedicated to them. A corpse is considered a host for decay, i.e., of druj. Consequently, scripture enjoins the safe disposal of the dead in a manner such that a corpse does not pollute the good creation. These injunctions are the doctrinal basis of the fast-fading traditional practice of ritual exposure, most commonly identified with the so-called Towers of Silence for which there is no standard technical term in either scripture or tradition. Ritual exposure is currently mainly practiced by Zoroastrian communities of the Indian subcontinent, in locations where it is not illegal and diclofenac poisoning has not led to the virtual extinction of scavenger birds. Other Zoroastrian communities either cremate their dead, or bury them in graves that are cased with lime mortar, though Zoroastrians are keen to dispose of their dead in the most environmentally harmless way possible. For a variety of social and political factors the Zoroastrians of the Indian subcontinent, namely the Parsis and Iranis have not engaged in conversion since at least the 18th Century. Zoroastrian high priests have historically opined there is no reason to not allow conversion which is also supported by the Revayats and other scripture though later priests have condemned these judgements. Within Iran, many of the beleaguered Zoroastrians have been also historically opposed or not practically concerned with the matter of conversion. Currently though, The Council of Tehran Mobeds (the highest ecclesiastical authority within Iran) endorses conversion but conversion from Islam to Zoroastrianism is illegal under the laws of the Islamic Republic of Iran. History Classical antiquity The roots of Zoroastrianism are thought to lie in a common prehistoric Indo-Iranian religious system dating back to the early 2nd millennium BCE. The prophet Zoroaster himself, though traditionally dated to the 6th century BCE, is thought by many modern historians to have been a reformer of the polytheistic Iranian religion who lived in the 10th century BCE. Zoroastrianism as a religion was not firmly established until several centuries later. Zoroastrianism enters recorded history in the mid-5th century BCE. Herodotus' The Histories (completed c. 440 BCE) includes a description of Greater Iranian society with what may be recognizably Zoroastrian features, including exposure of the dead. The Histories is a primary source of information on the early period of the Achaemenid era (648–330 BCE), in particular with respect to the role of the Magi. According to Herodotus, the Magi were the sixth tribe of the Medes (until the unification of the Persian empire under Cyrus the Great, all Iranians were referred to as "Mede" or "Mada" by the peoples of the Ancient World) and wielded considerable influence at the courts of the Median emperors. Following the unification of the Median and Persian empires in 550 BCE, Cyrus the Great and later his son Cambyses II curtailed the powers of the Magi after they had attempted to sow dissent following their loss of influence. In 522 BCE, the Magi revolted and set up a rival claimant to the throne. The usurper, pretending to be Cyrus' younger son Smerdis, took power shortly thereafter. Owing to the despotic rule of Cambyses and his long absence in Egypt, "the whole people, Persians, Medes and all the other nations" acknowledged the usurper, especially as he granted a remission of taxes for three years. Darius I and later Achaemenid emperors acknowledged their devotion to Ahura Mazda in inscriptions, as attested to several times in the Behistun inscription, and appear to have continued the model of coexistence with other religions. Whether Darius was a follower of the teachings of Zoroaster has not been conclusively established as there is no indication of note that worship of Ahura Mazda was exclusively a Zoroastrian practice. According to later Zoroastrian legend (Denkard and the Book of Arda Viraf), many sacred texts were lost when Alexander the Great's troops invaded Persepolis and subsequently destroyed the royal library there. Diodorus Siculus's Bibliotheca historica, which was completed circa 60 BCE, appears to substantiate this Zoroastrian legend. According to one archaeological examination, the ruins of the palace of Xerxes bear traces of having been burned. Whether a vast collection of (semi-)religious texts "written on parchment in gold ink", as suggested by the Denkard, actually existed remains a matter of speculation. Alexander's conquests largely displaced Zoroastrianism with Hellenistic beliefs, though the religion continued to be practiced many centuries following the demise of the Achaemenids in mainland Persia and the core regions of the former Achaemenid Empire, most notably Anatolia, Mesopotamia, and the Caucasus. In the Cappadocian kingdom, whose territory was formerly an Achaemenid possession, Persian colonists, cut off from their co-religionists in Iran proper, continued to practice the faith [Zoroastrianism] of their forefathers; and there Strabo, observing in the first century B.C., records (XV.3.15) that these "fire kindlers" possessed many "holy places of the Persian Gods", as well as fire temples. Strabo further states that these were "noteworthy enclosures; and in their midst there is an altar, on which there is a large quantity of ashes and where the magi keep the fire ever burning." It was not until the end of the Parthian period (247 – 224) that Zoroastrianism would receive renewed interest. Late antiquity As late as the Parthian period, a form of Zoroastrianism was without a doubt the dominant religion in the Armenian lands. The Sassanids aggressively promoted the Zurvanite form of Zoroastrianism, often building fire temples in captured territories to promote the religion. During the period of their centuries-long suzerainty over the Caucasus, the Sassanids made attempts to promote Zoroastrianism there with considerable successes, and it was prominent in the pre-Christian Caucasus (especially modern-day Azerbaijan). Due to its ties to the Christian Roman Empire, Persia's arch-rival since Parthian times, the Sassanids were suspicious of Roman Christianity, and after the reign of Constantine the Great, sometimes persecuted it. The Sassanid authority clashed with their Armenian subjects in the Battle of Avarayr ( 451), making them officially break with the Roman Church. But the Sassanids tolerated or even sometimes favored the Christianity of the Church of the East. The acceptance of Christianity in Georgia (Caucasian Iberia) saw the Zoroastrian religion there slowly but surely decline, but as late the 5th century it was still widely practised as something like a second established religion. Decline in the Middle Ages Most of the Sassanid Empire was overthrown by the Arabs over the course of 16 years in the 7th century. Although the administration of the state was rapidly Islamicized and subsumed under the Umayyad Caliphate, in the beginning "there was little serious pressure" exerted on newly subjected people to adopt Islam. Because of their sheer numbers, the conquered Zoroastrians had to be treated as dhimmis (despite doubts of the validity of this identification that persisted down the centuries), which made them eligible for protection. Islamic jurists took the stance that only Muslims could be perfectly moral, but "unbelievers might as well be left to their iniquities, so long as these did not vex their overlords." In the main, once the conquest was over and "local terms were agreed on", the Arab governors protected the local populations in exchange for tribute. The Arabs adopted the Sassanid tax-system, both the land-tax levied on land owners and the poll-tax levied on individuals, called jizya, a tax levied on non-Muslims (i.e., the dhimmis). In time, this poll-tax came to be used as a means to humble the non-Muslims, and a number of laws and restrictions evolved to emphasize their inferior status. Under the early orthodox caliphs, as long as the non-Muslims paid their taxes and adhered to the dhimmi laws, administrators were enjoined to leave non-Muslims "in their religion and their land." (Caliph Abu Bakr, qtd. in ). Under Abbasid rule, Muslim Iranians (who by then were in the majority) in many instances showed severe disregard for and mistreated local Zoroastrians. For example, in the 9th century, a deeply venerated cypress tree in Khorasan (which Parthian-era legend supposed had been planted by Zoroaster himself) was felled for the construction of a palace in Baghdad, away. In the 10th century, on the day that a Tower of Silence had been completed at much trouble and expense, a Muslim official contrived to get up onto it, and to call the adhan (the Muslim call to prayer) from its walls. This was turned into a pretext to annex the building. Ultimately, Muslim scholars like Al-Biruni found few records left of the belief of for instance the Khawarizmians because figures like Qutayba ibn Muslim "extinguished and ruined in every possible way all those who knew how to write and read the Khawarizmi writing, who knew the history of the country and who studied their sciences." As a result, "these things are involved in so much obscurity that it is impossible to obtain an accurate knowledge of the history of the country since the time of Islam…" Conversion Though subject to a new leadership and harassment, the Zoroastrians were able to continue their former ways, although there was a slow but steady social and economic pressure to convert, with the nobility and city-dwellers being the first to do so, while Islam was accepted more slowly among the peasantry and landed gentry. "Power and worldly-advantage" now lay with followers of Islam, and although the "official policy was one of aloof contempt, there were individual Muslims eager to proselytize and ready to use all sorts of means to do so." In time, a tradition evolved by which Islam was made to appear as a partly Iranian religion. One example of this was a legend that Husayn, son of the fourth caliph Ali and grandson of Islam's prophet Muhammad, had married a captive Sassanid princess named Shahrbanu. This "wholly fictitious figure" was said to have borne Husayn a son, the historical fourth Shi'a imam, who claimed that the caliphate rightly belonged to him and his descendants, and that the Umayyads had wrongfully wrested it from him. The alleged descent from the Sassanid house counterbalanced the Arab nationalism of the Umayyads, and the Iranian national association with a Zoroastrian past was disarmed. Thus, according to scholar Mary Boyce, "it was no longer the Zoroastrians alone who stood for patriotism and loyalty to the past." The "damning indictment" that becoming Muslim was Un-Iranian only remained an idiom in Zoroastrian texts. With Iranian support, the Abbasids overthrew the Umayyads in 750, and in the subsequent caliphate government—that nominally lasted until 1258—Muslim Iranians received marked favor in the new government, both in Iran and at the capital in Baghdad. This mitigated the antagonism between Arabs and Iranians, but sharpened the distinction between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Abbasids zealously persecuted heretics, and although this was directed mainly at Muslim sectarians, it also created a harsher climate for non-Muslims. Survival Despite economic and social incentives to convert, Zoroastrianism remained strong in some regions, particularly in those furthest away from the Caliphate capital at Baghdad. In Bukhara (in present-day Uzbekistan), resistance to Islam required the 9th-century Arab commander Qutaiba to convert his province four times. The first three times the citizens reverted to their old religion. Finally, the governor made their religion "difficult for them in every way", turned the local fire temple into a mosque, and encouraged the local population to attend Friday prayers by paying each attendee two dirhams. The cities where Arab governors resided were particularly vulnerable to such pressures, and in these cases the Zoroastrians were left with no choice but to either conform or migrate to regions that had a more amicable administration. The 9th century came to define the great number of Zoroastrian texts that were composed or re-written during the 8th to 10th centuries (excluding copying and lesser amendments, which continued for some time thereafter). All of these works are in the Middle Persian dialect of that period (free of Arabic words), and written in the difficult Pahlavi script (hence the adoption of the term "Pahlavi" as the name of the variant of the language, and of the genre, of those Zoroastrian books). If read aloud, these books would still have been intelligible to the laity. Many of these texts are responses to the tribulations of the time, and all of | were in the possession of the Greeks. Under Shapur II, Arderbad Mahrespandand revised the canon to ensure its orthodox character, while under Khosrow I, the Avesta was translated into Pahlavi. The compilation of the Avesta can be authoritatively traced, however, to the Sasanian Empire, of which only fraction survive today if the Middle Persian literature is correct. The later manuscripts all date from after the fall of the Sasanian Empire, the latest being from 1288, 590 years after the fall of the Sasanian Empire. The texts that remain today are the Gathas, Yasna, Visperad and the Vendidad, of which the latter's inclusion is disputed within the faith. Along with these texts is the individual, communal, and ceremonial prayer book called the Khordeh Avesta, which contains the Yashts and other important hymns, prayers, and rituals. The rest of the materials from the Avesta are called "Avestan fragments" in that they are written in Avestan, incomplete, and generally of unknown provenance. Middle Persian (Pahlavi) Middle Persian and Pahlavi works created in the 9th and 10th century contain many religious Zoroastrian books, as most of the writers and copyists were part of the Zoroastrian clergy. The most significant and important books of this era include the Denkard, Bundahishn, Menog-i Khrad, Selections of Zadspram, Jamasp Namag, Epistles of Manucher, Rivayats, Dadestan-i-Denig, and Arda Viraf Namag. All Middle Persian texts written on Zoroastrianism during this time period are considered secondary works on the religion, and not scripture. Nonetheless, these texts have had a strong influence on the religion. Zoroaster Zoroastrianism was founded by Zoroaster (or Zarathushtra) in ancient Iran. The precise date of the founding of the religion is uncertain and estimates vary wildly from 2000 BCE to "200 years before Alexander". Zoroaster was born - in either Northeast Iran or Southwest Afghanistan - into a culture with a polytheistic religion, which featured excessive animal sacrifice and the excessive ritual use of intoxicants, and his life was influenced profoundly by the attempts of his people to find peace and stability in the face of constant threats of raiding and conflict. Zoroaster's birth and early life are little documented but speculated upon heavily in later texts. What is known is recorded in the Gathas, forming the core of the Avesta, which contain hymns thought to have been composed by Zoroaster himself. Born into the Spitama clan, he refers to himself as a poet-priest and prophet. He had a wife, three sons, and three daughters, the numbers of which are gathered from various texts. Zoroaster rejected many of the gods of the Bronze Age Iranians and their oppressive class structure, in which the Kavis and Karapans (princes and priests) controlled the ordinary people. He also opposed cruel animal sacrifices and the excessive use of the possibly hallucinogenic Haoma plant (conjectured to have been a species of ephedra and/or Peganum harmala), but did not condemn either practice outright, providing moderation was observed. Zoroaster in legend According to later Zoroastrian tradition, when Zoroaster was 30 years old, he went into the Daiti river to draw water for a Haoma ceremony; when he emerged, he received a vision of Vohu Manah. After this, Vohu Manah took him to the other six Amesha Spentas, where he received the completion of his vision. This vision radically transformed his view of the world, and he tried to teach this view to others. Zoroaster believed in one supreme creator deity and acknowledged this creator's emanations (Amesha Spenta) and other divinities which he called Ahuras (Yazata). Some of the deities of the old religion, the Daevas (Devas in Sanskrit), appeared to delight in war and strife and were condemned as evil workers of Angra Mainyu by Zoroaster. Zoroaster's ideas were not taken up quickly; he originally only had one convert: his cousin Maidhyoimanha. The local religious authorities opposed his ideas, considering that their faith, power, and particularly their rituals were threatened by Zoroaster's teaching against the bad and overly-complicated ritualization of religious ceremonies. Many did not like Zoroaster's downgrading of the Daevas to evil ones not worthy of worship. After twelve years of little success, Zoroaster left his home. In the country of King Vishtaspa, the king and queen heard Zoroaster debating with the religious leaders of the land and decided to accept Zoroaster's ideas as the official religion of their kingdom after having Zoroaster prove himself by healing the king's favorite horse. Zoroaster is believed to have died in his late 70s, either by murder by a Turanian or old age. Very little is known of the time between Zoroaster and the Achaemenian period, except that Zoroastrianism spread to Western Iran and other regions. By the time of the founding of the Achaemenid Empire, Zoroastrianism is believed to have been already a well-established religion. Cypress of Kashmar The Cypress of Kashmar is a mythical cypress tree of legendary beauty and gargantuan dimensions. It is said to have sprung from a branch brought by Zoroaster from Paradise and to have stood in today's Kashmar in northeastern Iran and to have been planted by Zoroaster in honor of the conversion of King Vishtaspa to Zoroastrianism. According to the Iranian physicist and historian Zakariya al-Qazwini King Vishtaspa had been a patron of Zoroaster who planted the tree himself. In his ʿAjā'ib al-makhlūqāt wa gharā'ib al-mawjūdāt, he further describes how the Al-Mutawakkil in 247 AH (861 AD) caused the mighty cypress to be felled, and then transported it across Iran, to be used for beams in his new palace at Samarra. Before, he wanted the tree to be reconstructed before his eyes. This was done in spite of protests by the Iranians, who offered a very great sum of money to save the tree. Al-Mutawakkil never saw the cypress, because he was murdered by a Turkish soldier (possibly in the employ of his son) on the night when it arrived on the banks of the Tigris. Fire Temple of Kashmar Kashmar Fire Temple was the first Zoroastrian fire temple built by Vishtaspa at the request of Zoroaster in Kashmar. In a part of Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the story of finding Zarathustra and accepting Vishtaspa's religion is regulated that after accepting Zoroastrian religion, Vishtaspa sends priests all over the universe And Azar enters the fire temples (domes) and the first of them is Adur Burzen-Mihr who founded in Kashmar and planted a cypress tree in front of the fire temple and made it a symbol of accepting the Bahi religion And he sent priests all over the world, and commanded all the famous men and women to come to that place of worship. According to the Paikuli inscription, during the Sasanian Empire, Kashmar was part of Greater Khorasan, and the Sasanians worked hard to revive the ancient religion. It still remains a few kilometers above the ancient city of Kashmar in the castle complex of Atashgah. Principal beliefs Humata, Huxta, Huvarshta (Good Thoughts, Good Words, Good Deeds), the Threefold Path of Asha, is considered the core maxim of Zoroastrianism especially by modern practitioners. In Zoroastrianism, good transpires for those who do righteous deeds for its own sake, not for the search of reward. Those who do evil are said to be attacked and confused by the druj and are responsible for aligning themselves back to Asha by following this path. In Zoroastrianism, Ahura Mazda is the beginning and the end, the creator of everything that can and cannot be seen, the eternal and uncreated, the all-good and source of Asha. In the Gathas, the most sacred texts of Zoroastrianism thought to have been composed by Zoroaster himself, Zoroaster acknowledged the highest devotion to Ahura Mazda, with worship and adoration also given to Ahura Mazda's manifestations (Amesha Spenta) and the other ahuras (Yazata) that support Ahura Mazda. Daena (din in modern Persian and meaning "that which is seen") is representative of the sum of one's spiritual conscience and attributes, which through one's choice Asha is either strengthened or weakened in the Daena. Traditionally, the manthras, spiritual prayer formulas, are believed to be of immense power and the vehicles of Asha and creation used to maintain good and fight evil. Daena should not be confused with the fundamental principle of Asha, believed to be the cosmic order which governs and permeates all existence, and the concept of which governed the life of the ancient Indo-Iranians. For these, asha was the course of everything observable—the motion of the planets and astral bodies; the progression of the seasons; and the pattern of daily nomadic herdsman life, governed by regular metronomic events such as sunrise and sunset, and was strengthened through truth-telling and following the Threefold Path. All physical creation (getig) was thus determined to run according to a master plan—inherent to Ahura Mazda—and violations of the order (druj) were violations against creation, and thus violations against Ahura Mazda. This concept of asha versus the druj should not be confused with Western and especially Abrahamic notions of good versus evil, for although both forms of opposition express moral conflict, the asha versus druj concept is more systemic and less personal, representing, for instance, chaos (that opposes order); or "uncreation", evident as natural decay (that opposes creation); or more simply "the lie" (that opposes truth and goodness). Moreover, in the role as the one uncreated creator of all, Ahura Mazda is not the creator of druj, which is "nothing", anti-creation, and thus (likewise) uncreated and developed as the antithesis of existence through choice. In this schema of asha versus druj, mortal beings (both humans and animals) play a critical role, for they too are created. Here, in their lives, they are active participants in the conflict, and it is their spiritual duty to defend Asha, which is under constant assault and would decay in strength without counteraction. Throughout the Gathas, Zoroaster emphasizes deeds and actions within society and accordingly extreme asceticism is frowned upon in Zoroastrianism but moderate forms are allowed within. Central to Zoroastrianism is the emphasis on moral choice, to choose the responsibility and duty for which one is in the mortal world, or to give up this duty and so facilitate the work of druj. Similarly, predestination is rejected in Zoroastrian teaching and the absolute free will of all conscious beings is core, with even divine beings having the ability to choose. Humans bear responsibility for all situations they are in, and in the way they act toward one another. Reward, punishment, happiness, and grief all depend on how individuals live their lives. In the 19th century, through contact with Western academics and missionaries, Zoroastrianism experienced a massive theological change that still affects it today. The Rev. John Wilson led various missionary campaigns in India against the Parsi community, disparaging the Parsis for their "dualism" and "polytheism" and as having unnecessary rituals while declaring the Avesta to not be "divinely inspired". This caused mass dismay in the relatively uneducated Parsi community, which blamed its priests and led to some conversions towards Christianity. The arrival of the German orientalist and philologist Martin Haug led to a rallied defense of the faith through Haug's reinterpretation of the Avesta through Christianized and European orientalist lens. Haug postulated that Zoroastrianism was solely monotheistic with all other divinities reduced to the status of angels while Ahura Mazda became both omnipotent and the source of evil as well as good. Haug's thinking was subsequently disseminated as a Parsi interpretation, thus corroborating Haug's theory, and the idea became so popular that it is now almost universally accepted as doctrine (though being reevaluated in modern Zoroastrianism and academia). It has been argued by Dr Almut Hintze that this designation of monotheism is not wholly perfect and that Zoroastrianism instead has its "own form of monotheism" which combines elements of dualism and polytheism. It has otherwise been opined that Zoroastrianism is totally monotheistic with only dualistic elements. Throughout Zoroastrian history, shrines and temples have been the focus of worship and pilgrimage for adherents of the religion. Early Zoroastrians were recorded as worshiping in the 5th century BCE on mounds and hills where fires were lit below the open skies. In the wake of Achaemenid expansion, shrines were constructed throughout the empire and particularly influenced the role of Mithra, Aredvi Sura Anahita, Verethragna and Tishtrya, alongside other traditional Yazata who all have hymns within the Avesta and also local deities and culture-heroes. Today, enclosed and covered fire temples tend to be the focus of community worship where fires of varying grades are maintained by the clergy assigned to the temples. Cosmology: Creation of the universe According to the Zoroastrian creation myth, Ahura Mazda existed in light and goodness above, while Angra Mainyu existed in darkness and ignorance below. They have existed independently of each other for all time, and manifest contrary substances. Ahura Mazda first manifested seven divine beings called Amesha Spentas, who support him and represent beneficent aspects of personality and creation, along with numerous Yazatas, divinities worthy of worship. Ahura Mazda then created the material and visible world itself in order to ensnare evil. Ahura Mazda created the floating, egg-shaped universe in two parts: first the spiritual (menog) and 3,000 years later, the physical (getig). Ahura Mazda then created Gayomard, the archetypical perfect man, and Gavaevodata, the primordial bovine. While Ahura Mazda created the universe and humankind, Angra Mainyu, whose very nature is to destroy, miscreated demons, evil daevas, and noxious creatures (khrafstar) such as snakes, ants, and flies. Angra Mainyu created an opposite, evil being for each good being, except for humans, which he found he could not match. Angra Mainyu invaded the universe through the base of the sky, inflicting Gayomard and the bull with suffering and death. However, the evil forces were trapped in the universe and could not retreat. The dying primordial man and bovine emitted seeds, which were protect by Mah, the Moon. From the bull's seed grew all beneficial plants and animals of the world and from the man's seed grew a plant whose leaves became the first human couple. Humans thus struggle in a two-fold universe of the material and spiritual trapped and in long combat with evil. The evils of this physical world are not products of an inherent weakness, but are the fault of Angra Mainyu's assault on creation. This assault turned the perfectly flat, peaceful, and ever day-lit world into a mountainous, violent place that is half night. Eschatology: Renovation and judgment Zoroastrianism also includes beliefs about the renovation of the world (Frashokereti) and individual judgment (cf. general and particular judgment), including the resurrection of the dead, which are alluded to in the Gathas but developed in later Avestan and Middle Persian writings. Individual judgment at death is at the Chinvat Bridge ("bridge of judgement" or "bridge of choice"), which each human must cross, facing a spiritual judgment, though modern belief is split as to whether it is representative of a mental decision during life to choose between good and evil or an afterworld location. Humans' actions under their free will through choice determine the outcome. According to tradition, the soul is judged by the Yazatas Mithra, Sraosha, and Rashnu, where depending on the verdict one is either greeted at the bridge by a beautiful, sweet-smelling maiden or by an ugly, foul-smelling old hag representing their Daena affected by their actions in life. The maiden leads the dead safely across the bridge, which widens and becomes pleasant for the righteous, towards the House of Song. The hag leads the dead down a bridge that narrows to a razor's edge and is full of stench until the departed falls off into the abyss towards the House of Lies. Those with a balance of good and evil go to Hamistagan, a purgatorial realm mentioned in the 9th century work Dadestan-i Denig. The House of Lies is considered temporary and reformative; punishments fit the crimes, and souls do not rest in eternal damnation. Hell contains foul smells and evil food, a smothering darkness, and souls are packed tightly together although they believe they are in total isolation. In ancient Zoroastrian eschatology, a 3,000-year struggle between good and evil will be fought, punctuated by evil's final assault. During the final assault, the sun and moon will darken and humankind will lose its reverence for religion, family, and elders. The world will fall into winter, and Angra Mainyu's most fearsome miscreant, Azi Dahaka, will break free and terrorize the world. According to legend, the final savior of the world, known as the Saoshyant, will be born to a virgin impregnated by the seed of Zoroaster while bathing in a lake. The Saoshyant will raise the dead—including those in all afterworlds—for final judgment, returning the wicked to hell to be purged of bodily sin. Next, all will wade through a river of molten metal in which the righteous will not burn but through which the impure will be completely purified. The forces of good will ultimately triumph over evil, rendering it forever impotent but not destroyed. The Saoshyant and Ahura Mazda will offer a bull as a final sacrifice for all time and all humans will become immortal. Mountains will again flatten and valleys will rise; the House of Song will descend to the moon, and the earth will rise to meet them both. Humanity will require two judgments because there are as many aspects to our being: spiritual (menog) and physical (getig). Thus, Zoroastrianism can be said to be a universalist religion with respect to salvation in that all souls are redeemed at the final judgement. Ritual and prayer The central ritual of Zoroastrianism is the Yasna, which is a recitation of the eponymous book of the Avesta and sacrificial ritual ceremony involving Haoma. Extensions to the Yasna ritual are possible through use of the Visperad and Vendidad, but such an extended ritual is rare in modern Zoroastrianism. The Yasna itself descended from Indo-Iranian sacrificial ceremonies and animal sacrifice of varying degrees are mentioned in the Avesta and are still practiced in Zoroastrianism albeit through reduced forms such as the sacrifice of fat before meals. High rituals such as the Yasna are considered to be the purview of the Mobeds with a corpus of individual and communal rituals and prayers included in the Khordeh Avesta. A Zoroastrian is welcomed into the faith through the Navjote/Sedreh Pushi ceremony, which is traditionally conducted during the later childhood or pre-teen years of the aspirant, though there |
(4th century?) disciple of St. Basil and saint Zeno (consul 448) (447–451), Roman general and consul Zeno (emperor) (c. 425 – 491), Roman Emperor Zeno (Bishop of Mérida) (5th century), Greek Bishop of Mérida, Extremadura Arts, entertainment, and media Zeno's Conscience, a novel by Italian writer Italo Svevo Zeno (film), a 2009 New Zealand short film Zeno (periodical), a German-language journal Zeno.org, a German digital library Zeno (album), a 2019 album by Muzi Zeno Mountain EP a 2020 EP by Guster Grand Zeno the Omni-King, a character in the manga Dragon Ball Super Zeno Zoldyck, | in the manga Hunter x Hunter. Other Ozone Zeno, a French paraglider design Zeno Mountain Farm, a non-profit, year round organization that hosts camps for people with and without disabilities Zeno, ancient name for the village of Akköse Zeno, Ohio, a community in the United States Zeno (crater), a lunar impact crater, named for Zeno of Citium Zeno (programming language), an imperative procedural programming language designed to be easy to learn and user friendly Zeno-Watch Basel, a Swiss clockmaker company specialised in aviation watches See also Quantum Zeno effect, an effect in quantum mechanics which disallows certain conditions in the decaying of a quantum state San Zeno (disambiguation) Xeno (disambiguation) Xenon (disambiguation) Zenon (disambiguation) |
point another time, and at appropriate points between those two points for intervening times. In this view motion is just change in position over time. Hermann Weyl Another proposed solution is to question one of the assumptions Zeno used in his paradoxes (particularly the Dichotomy), which is that between any two different points in space (or time), there is always another point. Without this assumption there are only a finite number of distances between two points, hence there is no infinite sequence of movements, and the paradox is resolved. According to Hermann Weyl, the assumption that space is made of finite and discrete units is subject to a further problem, given by the "tile argument" or "distance function problem". According to this, the length of the hypotenuse of a right angled triangle in discretized space is always equal to the length of one of the two sides, in contradiction to geometry. Jean Paul Van Bendegem has argued that the Tile Argument can be resolved, and that discretization can therefore remove the paradox. Henri Bergson An alternative conclusion, proposed by Henri Bergson in his 1896 book Matter and Memory, is that, while the path is divisible, the motion is not. In this argument, instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes do not physically exist. An object in relative motion cannot have an instantaneous or determined relative position, and so cannot have its motion fractionally dissected. Peter Lynds In 2003, Peter Lynds put forth a very similar argument: all of Zeno's motion paradoxes are resolved by the conclusion that instants in time and instantaneous magnitudes do not physically exist. Lynds argues that an object in relative motion cannot have an instantaneous or determined relative position (for if it did, it could not be in motion), and so cannot have its motion fractionally dissected as if it does, as is assumed by the paradoxes. For more about the inability to know both speed and location, see Heisenberg uncertainty principle. Nick Huggett Nick Huggett argues that Zeno is assuming the conclusion when he says that objects that occupy the same space as they do at rest must be at rest. Paradoxes in modern times Infinite processes remained theoretically troublesome in mathematics until the late 19th century. With the epsilon-delta definition of limit, Weierstrass and Cauchy developed a rigorous formulation of the logic and calculus involved. These works resolved the mathematics involving infinite processes. While mathematics can calculate where and when the moving Achilles will overtake the Tortoise of Zeno's paradox, philosophers such as Kevin Brown and Francis Moorcroft claim that mathematics does not address the central point in Zeno's argument, and that solving the mathematical issues does not solve every issue the paradoxes raise. Popular literature often misrepresents Zeno's arguments. For example, Zeno is often said to have argued that the sum of an infinite number of terms must itself be infinite–with the result that not only the time, but also the distance to be travelled, become infinite. However, none of the original ancient sources has Zeno discussing the sum of any infinite series. Simplicius has Zeno saying "it is impossible to traverse an infinite number of things in a finite time". This presents Zeno's problem not with finding the sum, but rather with finishing a task with an infinite number of steps: how can one ever get from A to B, if an infinite number of (non-instantaneous) events can be identified that need to precede the arrival at B, and one cannot reach even the beginning of a "last event"? A humorous take is offered by Tom Stoppard in his 1972 play Jumpers, in which the principal protagonist, the philosophy professor George Moore, suggests that according to Zeno's paradox, Saint Sebastian, a 3rd Century Christian saint martyred by being shot with arrows, died of fright. Debate continues on the question of whether or not Zeno's paradoxes have been resolved. In The History of Mathematics: An Introduction (2010) Burton writes, "Although Zeno's argument confounded his contemporaries, a satisfactory explanation incorporates a now-familiar idea, the notion of a 'convergent infinite series.'" Bertrand Russell offered a "solution" to the paradoxes based on the work of Georg Cantor, but Brown concludes "Given the history of 'final resolutions', from Aristotle onwards, it's probably foolhardy to think we've reached the end. It may be that Zeno's arguments on motion, because of their simplicity and universality, will always serve as a kind of 'Rorschach image' onto which people can project their most fundamental phenomenological concerns (if they have any)." A similar ancient Chinese philosophic consideration Ancient Chinese philosophers from the Mohist School of Names during the Warring States period of China (479-221 BC) developed equivalents to some of Zeno's paradoxes. The scientist and historian Sir Joseph Needham, in his Science and Civilisation in China, describes an ancient Chinese paradox from the surviving Mohist School of Names book of logic which states, in the archaic ancient Chinese script, "a one-foot stick, every day take away half of it, in a myriad ages it will not be exhausted." Several other paradoxes from this philosophical school (more precisely, movement) are known, but their modern interpretation is more speculative. Quantum Zeno effect In 1977, physicists E. C. George Sudarshan and B. Misra discovered that the dynamical evolution (motion) of a quantum system can be hindered (or even inhibited) through observation of the system. This effect is usually called the "quantum Zeno effect" as it is strongly reminiscent of Zeno's arrow paradox. This effect was first theorized in 1958. Zeno behaviour In the field of verification and design of timed and hybrid systems, the system behaviour is called Zeno if it includes an infinite number of discrete steps in a finite amount of time. Some formal verification techniques exclude these behaviours from analysis, if they are not equivalent to non-Zeno behaviour. In systems design these behaviours will also often be excluded from system models, since they cannot be implemented with a digital controller. Lewis Carroll and Douglas Hofstadter What the Tortoise Said to Achilles, written in 1895 by Lewis Carroll, was an attempt to reveal an analogous paradox in the realm of pure logic. If Carroll's argument is valid, the implication is that Zeno's paradoxes of motion are not essentially problems of space and time, but go right to the heart of reasoning itself. Douglas Hofstadter made Carroll's article a centrepiece | contradiction. They are also credited as a source of the dialectic method used by Socrates. Some mathematicians and historians, such as Carl Boyer, hold that Zeno's paradoxes are simply mathematical problems, for which modern calculus provides a mathematical solution. Some philosophers, however, say that Zeno's paradoxes and their variations (see Thomson's lamp) remain relevant metaphysical problems. The origins of the paradoxes are somewhat unclear. Diogenes Laërtius, a fourth source for information about Zeno and his teachings, citing Favorinus, says that Zeno's teacher Parmenides was the first to introduce the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise. But in a later passage, Laërtius attributes the origin of the paradox to Zeno, explaining that Favorinus disagrees. Paradoxes of motion Dichotomy paradox Suppose Atalanta wishes to walk to the end of a path. Before she can get there, she must get halfway there. Before she can get halfway there, she must get a quarter of the way there. Before traveling a quarter, she must travel one-eighth; before an eighth, one-sixteenth; and so on. The resulting sequence can be represented as: This description requires one to complete an infinite number of tasks, which Zeno maintains is an impossibility. This sequence also presents a second problem in that it contains no first distance to run, for any possible (finite) first distance could be divided in half, and hence would not be first after all. Hence, the trip cannot even begin. The paradoxical conclusion then would be that travel over any finite distance can be neither completed nor begun, and so all motion must be an illusion. This argument is called the "Dichotomy" because it involves repeatedly splitting a distance into two parts. An example with the original sense can be found in an asymptote. It is also known as the Race Course paradox. Achilles and the tortoise In the paradox of Achilles and the tortoise, Achilles is in a footrace with the tortoise. Achilles allows the tortoise a head start of 100 meters, for example. Suppose that each racer starts running at some constant speed, one faster than the other. After some finite time, Achilles will have run 100 meters, bringing him to the tortoise's starting point. During this time, the tortoise has run a much shorter distance, say 2 meters. It will then take Achilles some further time to run that distance, by which time the tortoise will have advanced farther; and then more time still to reach this third point, while the tortoise moves ahead. Thus, whenever Achilles arrives somewhere the tortoise has been, he still has some distance to go before he can even reach the tortoise. As Aristotle noted, this argument is similar to the Dichotomy. It lacks, however, the apparent conclusion of motionlessness. Arrow paradox In the arrow paradox, Zeno states that for motion to occur, an object must change the position which it occupies. He gives an example of an arrow in flight. He states that in any one (duration-less) instant of time, the arrow is neither moving to where it is, nor to where it is not. It cannot move to where it is not, because no time elapses for it to move there; it cannot move to where it is, because it is already there. In other words, at every instant of time there is no motion occurring. If everything is motionless at every instant, and time is entirely composed of instants, then motion is impossible. Whereas the first two paradoxes divide space, this paradox starts by dividing time—and not into segments, but into points. Three other paradoxes as given by Aristotle Paradox of place From Aristotle: Paradox of the grain of millet Description of the paradox from the Routledge Dictionary of Philosophy: Aristotle's refutation: Description from Nick Huggett: The moving rows (or stadium) From Aristotle: For an expanded account of Zeno's arguments as presented by Aristotle, see Simplicius's commentary On Aristotle's Physics. Proposed solutions Diogenes the Cynic According to Simplicius, Diogenes the Cynic said nothing upon hearing Zeno's arguments, but stood up and walked, in order to demonstrate the falsity of Zeno's conclusions (see solvitur ambulando). To fully solve any of the paradoxes, however, one needs to show what is wrong with the argument, not just the conclusions. Through history, several solutions have been proposed, among the earliest recorded being those of Aristotle and Archimedes. Aristotle Aristotle (384 BC−322 BC) remarked that as the distance decreases, the time needed to cover those distances also decreases, so that the time needed also becomes increasingly small. Aristotle also distinguished "things infinite in respect of divisibility" (such as a unit of space that can be mentally divided into ever smaller units while remaining spatially the same) from things (or distances) that are infinite in extension ("with respect to their extremities"). Aristotle's objection to the arrow paradox was that "Time is not composed of indivisible nows any more than any other magnitude is composed of indivisibles." Archimedes Before 212 BC, Archimedes had developed a method to derive a finite |
Line's Haymarket North Extension tunnel lies beneath the bridge. Name The bridge's full name commemorates Boston area leader and civil rights activist Leonard P. Zakim who championed "building bridges between peoples", and the Battle of Bunker Hill. Originally, Massachusetts Governor A. Paul Cellucci sought to name it the "Freedom Bridge". In 2000, however, local clergy and religious leaders, including Cardinal Bernard Francis Law, requested the Zakim name shortly after Zakim's death from myeloma. Although Cellucci agreed to the naming, community leaders from Charlestown objected to the name as they felt that since the design reflected the nearby Bunker Hill memorial, it should be named the "Bunker Hill Freedom bridge". Allegations of antisemitism were leveled against members of the mostly white, Irish Catholic community as reasons for resistance to the Zakim name, based on some comments quoted in the Boston Globe. Several local neo-Nazis also complained about the honor for Zakim and launched an unsuccessful petition drive to drop his name from the Bunker Hill one (the petition needed 100 signatures to be reviewed by the Massachusetts State Legislature and only 20 people signed it). In response, several community leaders spoke out against the allegations in a press conference, stating that the claims, made by Professor Jonathan Sarna, were his alone and did not reflect the community's historical (not racial) basis of favoring the "Bunker Hill" name, though they dodged questions about the false claim that no Jews had fought in the battle of Bunker Hill. Eventually a compromise between the Boston City Council, the Massachusetts State Legislature and community activists brought about the current name. As with the Hoover Dam, different communities call the bridge by different colloquial names. Landscape design and public art Placement of footings for the Zakim Bridge required environmental permits to relocate areas of open water surface, changing the contour of the Charles River shoreline. The process of landscape design and environmental mitigation under the bridge deck and around the bridge supports allowed for the creation of a new and accessible public landscape designed by Carol R. Johnson Associates. This under bridge landscape contains a series of perforated stainless steel lighting-based public artworks, entitled, Five Beacons for the Lost Half Mile. Pedestrians and cyclists are able to travel from Charlestown toward Cambridge over the adjacent North Bank Pedestrian Bridge to North Point Park. This bridge is a link in the Charles River Bike Path. Dedication The bridge was dedicated on October 4, 2002, in a ceremony held on the new span. The dedication speakers included members of Zakim's family, government officials, and a performance of the song "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Introducing the song, Springsteen said about Zakim, "... I knew him a little bit during the last year of his life, he was one of those people whose, intensity, inner spirit you could feel even when he was very ill and uh. ... I guess, you know, we honor his memory obviously not with this beautiful bridge, very lovely, but by continuing on in his fight for social justice." Gallery See also Josh Zakim List of crossings of the Charles River References External links The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill | contour of the Charles River shoreline. The process of landscape design and environmental mitigation under the bridge deck and around the bridge supports allowed for the creation of a new and accessible public landscape designed by Carol R. Johnson Associates. This under bridge landscape contains a series of perforated stainless steel lighting-based public artworks, entitled, Five Beacons for the Lost Half Mile. Pedestrians and cyclists are able to travel from Charlestown toward Cambridge over the adjacent North Bank Pedestrian Bridge to North Point Park. This bridge is a link in the Charles River Bike Path. Dedication The bridge was dedicated on October 4, 2002, in a ceremony held on the new span. The dedication speakers included members of Zakim's family, government officials, and a performance of the song "Thunder Road" by Bruce Springsteen. Introducing the song, Springsteen said about Zakim, "... I knew him a little bit during the last year of his life, he was one of those people whose, intensity, inner spirit you could feel even when he was very ill and uh. ... I guess, you know, we honor his memory obviously not with this beautiful bridge, very lovely, but by continuing on in his fight for social justice." Gallery See also Josh Zakim List of crossings of the Charles River References External links The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge web site Fact sheet on the Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge Description and history on bostonroads.com Zakim bridge as viewed from former location of Spaulding Rehab Hospital Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Memorial Bridge | foundations Zakim Bridge architect pays to keep the lights on Bland Zakim Bridge leaves us feeling blue MassDOT Reveals Zakim Bridge New Lighting New Lighting Revealed for Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge A new type of Cape escape, and a Zakim unveiling Lawrence model bridge builders meet their role model The Leonard P. Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge – Philips Color Kinetics Case Study Zakim Bridge Turns 15 Bridges completed in 2003 Zakim Transportation in Cambridge, Massachusetts Towers in Massachusetts Cable-stayed bridges in the United States Interstate 93 Landmarks in North End, Boston U.S. Route 1 Buildings and structures in Cambridge, Massachusetts Bridges in Middlesex County, Massachusetts Road bridges in Massachusetts Bridges on the Interstate Highway System Bridges of the United |
RIAA Diamond Certified album, was released September 10, 2008. The release includes seven bonus tracks and a bonus DVD, including four television performances from The Tube in November 1983. The band performed at the 2009 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo on the final night on March 22, 2009. In July, the band appeared on VH1's Storytellers, in celebration of their four decades as recording artists. La Futura and subsequent events (2012–2018) Billy Gibbons stated in an interview in August 2011 that a new album had been recorded, with initial recording taking place in Malibu, California, before moving to Houston, but was still unnamed and had yet to be mixed and mastered. Gibbons said that the expected release date was sometime in March or April 2012 but, later, a late summer or early fall release date was announced. The album was subsequently released on September 11, 2012. Entitled La Futura, the album was produced by Rick Rubin. The first single from the album, "I Gotsta Get Paid", debuted in an advertising campaign for Jeremiah Weed Whiskey and appears on the soundtrack of the film Battleship. The song itself is an interpretation of "25 Lighters" by Texan hip hop DJ DMD and rappers Lil' Keke and Fat Pat. The first four songs from La Futura debuted on June 5, 2012, on an EP called Texicali. DJ Screw was a major influence on the album as well, particularly because Gibbons and Screw both worked with engineer G. L. Moon during the late 1990s. On March 3 2015 the band began a North American tour with a concert in Red Bank, New Jersey, at the Count Basie Theatre. After rescheduled dates and additions, the tour wrapped up with a concert in Highland Park, Illinois, at the Ravinia Pavilion on August 27, with opening act Blackberry Smoke. Jeff Beck joined ZZ Top for seven concerts on the tour. On September 9, 2016, ZZ Top released a new live album entitled Tonite at Midnight: Live Greatest Hits from Around the World. In 2017, ZZ Top announced their "2017 Tonnage Tour" which was to last from February 19 to March 14. However, they were forced to cancel last few dates of their tour due to the ailment of bassist Dusty Hill. In 2018, the band announced their six-day Las Vegas run of shows to be held at the Venetian, starting from April 20, 2019. Upcoming sixteenth studio album and death of Hill (2019–present) Gibbons told Las Vegas Review-Journal in April 2020 that the band had been "cooking up another round of wicked sounds for the next ZZ record". On June 21, 2020, Gibbons stated interest in having guitarist Jeff Beck appear on the album. In July 2021, Hill was forced to leave a tour after a hip injury. ZZ Top performed without him at the Village Commons in New Lenox, Illinois, with Hill's guitar tech Elwood Francis on bass. Five days later, on July 28, ZZ Top announced that Hill had died at his home in Houston at the age of 72. His wife later reported that he had suffered from chronic bursitis. Gibbons confirmed that the band would continue with Francis, per Hill's wishes. Hill had already recorded bass and vocals for ZZ Top's upcoming album. Other appearances ZZ Top appeared in a cameo in Back to the Future Part III as an Old west band, playing an acoustic version of their song “Doubleback” with a large fiddle band. ZZ Top played Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, along with the Blues Brothers and James Brown. ZZ Top also performed at the 2008 Orange Bowl game in Miami, as well as the Auto Club 500 NASCAR event at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. On June 23, 2008, ZZ Top celebrated the release of their first live concert DVD titled Live from Texas with the world premiere, a special appearance, and charity auction at the Hard Rock Cafe in Houston. The DVD was officially released on June 24, 2008. The featured performance was culled from a concert filmed at the Nokia Theater in Grand Prairie, Texas, on November 1, 2007. On January 22, 2010, Billy Gibbons accompanied Will Ferrell and others playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" on Conan O'Brien's last Tonight Show appearance. O'Brien joined in on guitar. In June 2011, various media sources reported that the new song "Flyin' High" would debut in space. Astronaut and friend of ZZ Top Michael Fossum was given the released single to listen to on his trip to the International Space Station. On June 4, 2014, ZZ Top opened the CMT Awards ceremony, performing "La Grange" with Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line. Style The Guardian described ZZ Top as "part traditional, part contrary, and part of the deep seam of Texas weirdness that stretched from the 13th Floor Elevators through to the Butthole Surfers". Texas Monthly described their music as "loud, macho, greasy, and distorted", with "unrepentant misogynistic references". In the early 1980s, ZZ Top embraced synthesizers and drum machines, drawing inspiration from British electronic acts such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Depeche Mode (while deriving their dance moves from the former). Hill and Gibbons worked as a kind of double act, looking similar and employing simple stage choreography that Hill described as "low-energy, high-impact". Band members Current members Billy Gibbons – guitar, lead and backing vocals (1969–present) Frank Beard – drums, percussion (1969–present) Elwood Francis – bass, backing vocals (2021–present) Former members Lanier Greig – bass, Hammond organ (1969; died 2013) Dan Mitchell – drums (1969) Billy Etheridge – bass (1969–1970) Dusty Hill – bass, backing and lead vocals, keyboards (1970–2021; died 2021) Session guests Pete Tickle – acoustic guitar on "Mushmouth Shoutin'" from Rio Grande Mud (1971) Terry Manning – synthesizer, drum machine on Eliminator (1982) James Harman – harmonica on "What's Up with That" from Rhythmeen (1996); Mescalero (2002); La Futura (2012) () Marimbas de Chiapas – marimba on Mescalero (2002) Dan Dugmore – pedal steel guitar on Mescalero (2002) Joe Hardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ on La Futura (2012) () Dave Sardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ on La Futura (2012) Touring guests Jeff Beck – guitar on "Hey Mr. Millionaire" from XXX (1999) John Douglas – drums, percussion () Discography Studio albums ZZ Top's First Album (1971) Rio Grande Mud (1972) Tres Hombres (1973) Fandango! (1975) Tejas (1976) Degüello (1979) El Loco (1981) Eliminator (1983) Afterburner (1985) Recycler (1990) Antenna (1994) Rhythmeen (1996) XXX (1999) Mescalero (2003) La Futura (2012) Filmography In addition to recording and performing concerts, ZZ Top has also been involved with films and television. In 1990, the group appeared as the "band at the party" in the film Back to the Future Part III and played the "Three Men in a Tub" in the movie Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme. ZZ Top made further appearances, including the "Gumby with a Pokey" episode of Two and a Half Men in 2010 and the "Hank Gets Dusted" episode of King of the Hill in 2007. The band also guest hosted an episode of WWE Raw. Billy Gibbons also had a recurring role as the father of Angela Montenegro in the television show Bones; though the character is never named, it is strongly implied that Gibbons is playing himself. Their song "Sharp Dressed Man" was one of the theme songs used for the television show Duck Dynasty, and on the series finale of the show they appeared with Si Robertson as a vocalist to perform the song on stage during Robertson's retirement party. Black Dahlia Films, led by Jamie Burton Chamberlin, of Seattle and Los Angeles, has contributed documentaries and back line screen work (the footage on back screens during live shows) and has become an integral part of the band's film-making. In November 2020, it was announced that the 2019 Netflix documentary That Little Ol' Band from Texas was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Music Film with the award ceremony scheduled for March 2021. Awards and achievements ZZ Top's music videos won multiple VMA awards during the 1980s, topping the categories of Best Group Video, Best Direction, and Best Art Direction for "Legs", "Sharp Dressed Man" and "Rough Boy", respectively. Among high honors for ZZ Top have been induction into Hollywood's RockWalk in 1994, the Texas House of Representatives naming them "Official Heroes for the State of Texas", a declaration of "ZZ Top Day" in | released in 2008. The Eliminator re-release also features a collector's edition version containing a DVD featuring several videos and additional live tracks. The Eliminator Collector's Edition CD/DVD, celebrating the 25th anniversary of the band's iconic RIAA Diamond Certified album, was released September 10, 2008. The release includes seven bonus tracks and a bonus DVD, including four television performances from The Tube in November 1983. The band performed at the 2009 Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo on the final night on March 22, 2009. In July, the band appeared on VH1's Storytellers, in celebration of their four decades as recording artists. La Futura and subsequent events (2012–2018) Billy Gibbons stated in an interview in August 2011 that a new album had been recorded, with initial recording taking place in Malibu, California, before moving to Houston, but was still unnamed and had yet to be mixed and mastered. Gibbons said that the expected release date was sometime in March or April 2012 but, later, a late summer or early fall release date was announced. The album was subsequently released on September 11, 2012. Entitled La Futura, the album was produced by Rick Rubin. The first single from the album, "I Gotsta Get Paid", debuted in an advertising campaign for Jeremiah Weed Whiskey and appears on the soundtrack of the film Battleship. The song itself is an interpretation of "25 Lighters" by Texan hip hop DJ DMD and rappers Lil' Keke and Fat Pat. The first four songs from La Futura debuted on June 5, 2012, on an EP called Texicali. DJ Screw was a major influence on the album as well, particularly because Gibbons and Screw both worked with engineer G. L. Moon during the late 1990s. On March 3 2015 the band began a North American tour with a concert in Red Bank, New Jersey, at the Count Basie Theatre. After rescheduled dates and additions, the tour wrapped up with a concert in Highland Park, Illinois, at the Ravinia Pavilion on August 27, with opening act Blackberry Smoke. Jeff Beck joined ZZ Top for seven concerts on the tour. On September 9, 2016, ZZ Top released a new live album entitled Tonite at Midnight: Live Greatest Hits from Around the World. In 2017, ZZ Top announced their "2017 Tonnage Tour" which was to last from February 19 to March 14. However, they were forced to cancel last few dates of their tour due to the ailment of bassist Dusty Hill. In 2018, the band announced their six-day Las Vegas run of shows to be held at the Venetian, starting from April 20, 2019. Upcoming sixteenth studio album and death of Hill (2019–present) Gibbons told Las Vegas Review-Journal in April 2020 that the band had been "cooking up another round of wicked sounds for the next ZZ record". On June 21, 2020, Gibbons stated interest in having guitarist Jeff Beck appear on the album. In July 2021, Hill was forced to leave a tour after a hip injury. ZZ Top performed without him at the Village Commons in New Lenox, Illinois, with Hill's guitar tech Elwood Francis on bass. Five days later, on July 28, ZZ Top announced that Hill had died at his home in Houston at the age of 72. His wife later reported that he had suffered from chronic bursitis. Gibbons confirmed that the band would continue with Francis, per Hill's wishes. Hill had already recorded bass and vocals for ZZ Top's upcoming album. Other appearances ZZ Top appeared in a cameo in Back to the Future Part III as an Old west band, playing an acoustic version of their song “Doubleback” with a large fiddle band. ZZ Top played Super Bowl XXXI in 1997, along with the Blues Brothers and James Brown. ZZ Top also performed at the 2008 Orange Bowl game in Miami, as well as the Auto Club 500 NASCAR event at the Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. On June 23, 2008, ZZ Top celebrated the release of their first live concert DVD titled Live from Texas with the world premiere, a special appearance, and charity auction at the Hard Rock Cafe in Houston. The DVD was officially released on June 24, 2008. The featured performance was culled from a concert filmed at the Nokia Theater in Grand Prairie, Texas, on November 1, 2007. On January 22, 2010, Billy Gibbons accompanied Will Ferrell and others playing Lynyrd Skynyrd's "Free Bird" on Conan O'Brien's last Tonight Show appearance. O'Brien joined in on guitar. In June 2011, various media sources reported that the new song "Flyin' High" would debut in space. Astronaut and friend of ZZ Top Michael Fossum was given the released single to listen to on his trip to the International Space Station. On June 4, 2014, ZZ Top opened the CMT Awards ceremony, performing "La Grange" with Luke Bryan and Florida Georgia Line. Style The Guardian described ZZ Top as "part traditional, part contrary, and part of the deep seam of Texas weirdness that stretched from the 13th Floor Elevators through to the Butthole Surfers". Texas Monthly described their music as "loud, macho, greasy, and distorted", with "unrepentant misogynistic references". In the early 1980s, ZZ Top embraced synthesizers and drum machines, drawing inspiration from British electronic acts such as Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark and Depeche Mode (while deriving their dance moves from the former). Hill and Gibbons worked as a kind of double act, looking similar and employing simple stage choreography that Hill described as "low-energy, high-impact". Band members Current members Billy Gibbons – guitar, lead and backing vocals (1969–present) Frank Beard – drums, percussion (1969–present) Elwood Francis – bass, backing vocals (2021–present) Former members Lanier Greig – bass, Hammond organ (1969; died 2013) Dan Mitchell – drums (1969) Billy Etheridge – bass (1969–1970) Dusty Hill – bass, backing and lead vocals, keyboards (1970–2021; died 2021) Session guests Pete Tickle – acoustic guitar on "Mushmouth Shoutin'" from Rio Grande Mud (1971) Terry Manning – synthesizer, drum machine on Eliminator (1982) James Harman – harmonica on "What's Up with That" from Rhythmeen (1996); Mescalero (2002); La Futura (2012) () Marimbas de Chiapas – marimba on Mescalero (2002) Dan Dugmore – pedal steel guitar on Mescalero (2002) Joe Hardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ on La Futura (2012) () Dave Sardy – piano, Hammond B3 organ on La Futura (2012) Touring guests Jeff Beck – guitar on "Hey Mr. Millionaire" from XXX (1999) John Douglas – drums, percussion () Discography Studio albums ZZ Top's First Album (1971) Rio Grande Mud (1972) Tres Hombres (1973) Fandango! (1975) Tejas (1976) Degüello (1979) El Loco (1981) Eliminator (1983) Afterburner (1985) Recycler (1990) Antenna (1994) Rhythmeen (1996) XXX (1999) Mescalero (2003) La Futura (2012) Filmography In addition to recording and performing concerts, ZZ Top has also been involved with films and television. In 1990, the group appeared as the "band at the party" in the film Back to the Future Part III and played the "Three Men in a Tub" in the movie Mother Goose Rock 'n' Rhyme. ZZ Top made further appearances, including the "Gumby with a Pokey" episode of Two and a Half Men in 2010 and the "Hank Gets Dusted" episode of King of the Hill in 2007. The band also guest hosted an episode of WWE Raw. Billy Gibbons also had a recurring role as the father of Angela Montenegro in the television show Bones; though the character is never named, it is strongly implied that Gibbons is playing himself. Their song "Sharp Dressed Man" was one of the theme songs used for the television show Duck Dynasty, and on the series finale of the show they appeared with Si Robertson as a vocalist to perform the song on stage during Robertson's retirement party. Black Dahlia Films, led by Jamie Burton Chamberlin, of Seattle and Los Angeles, has contributed documentaries and back line screen work (the footage on back screens during live shows) and has become an integral part of |
science, zero is thus often used as the base case for many kinds of numerical recursion. Proofs and other sorts of mathematical reasoning in computer science often begin with zero. For these reasons, in computer science it is not unusual to number from zero rather than one. Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter of a publication "Chapter 0", especially if it is of an introductory nature. One of the classic instances was in the first edition of K&R. In recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians, where many constructions are defined to be numbered from 0. If an array is used to represent a cycle, it is convenient to obtain the index with a modulo function, which can result in zero. Numerical properties With zero-based numbering, a range can be expressed as the half-open interval, [0,n), as opposed to the closed interval, [1,n]. Empty ranges, which often occur in algorithms, are tricky to express with a closed interval without resorting to obtuse conventions like [1,0]. Because of this property, zero-based indexing potentially reduces off-by-one and fencepost errors. On the other hand, the repeat count n is calculated in advance, making the use of counting from 0 to n−1 (inclusive) less intuitive. Some authors prefer one-based indexing as it corresponds more closely to how entities are indexed in other contexts. Another property of this convention is in the use of modular arithmetic as implemented in modern computers. Usually, the modulo function maps any integer modulo N to one of the numbers , where . Because of this, many formulas in algorithms (such as that for calculating hash table indices) can be elegantly expressed in code using the modulo operation when array indices start at zero. Pointer operations can also be expressed more elegantly on a zero-based index due to the underlying address/offset logic mentioned above. To illustrate, suppose a is the memory address of the first element of an array, and i is the index of the desired element. To compute the address of the desired element, if the index numbers count from 1, the desired address is computed by this expression: a + s × (i − 1) where s is the size of each element. In contrast, if the index numbers count from 0, the expression becomes: a + s × i This simpler expression is more efficient to compute at run time. However, a language wishing to index arrays from 1 could adopt the convention that every array address is represented by ; that is, rather than using the address of the first array element, such a language would use the address of a fictitious element located immediately before the first actual element. The indexing expression for a 1-based index would then be: a′ + s × i Hence, the efficiency benefit at run time of zero-based indexing is not inherent, but is an artifact of the decision to represent an array with the address of its first element rather than the address of the fictitious zeroth element. However, the address of that fictitious element could very well be the address of some other item in memory not related to the array. Superficially, the fictitious element doesn't scale well to multidimensional arrays. Indexing multidimensional arrays from zero makes a naive (contiguous) conversion to a linear address space (systematically varying one index after the other) look simpler than when indexing from one. For instance, when mapping the three-dimensional array to a linear array L[M⋅N⋅P], both with M⋅N⋅P elements, the index r in the linear array to access a specific element with in zero-based indexing, i.e. [0 ≤ x < P], [0 ≤ y < N], [0 ≤ z < M], and [0 ≤ r < M⋅N⋅P], is calculated by . Organizing all arrays with 1-based indices ([1 ≤ x′ ≤ P], [1 ≤ y′ ≤ N], [1 ≤ z′ ≤ M], [1 ≤ r′ ≤ M⋅N⋅P]), and assuming an analogous arrangement of the elements, gives to access the same element, which arguably looks more complicated. Of course, {{math|r''' r + 1,}} since and A simple and everyday life example is positional notation which the invention of the zero made possible. In positional notation, tens, hundreds, thousands and all other digits start with zero, only units start at one. This situation can lead to some confusion in terminology. In a zero-based indexing scheme, the first element is "element number zero"; likewise, the twelfth element is "element number eleven". Therefore, an analogy from the ordinal numbers to the quantity of objects numbered appears; the highest index of n objects will be and it refers to the nth element. For this reason, the first element is sometimes referred to as the zeroth element, in an attempt to avoid confusion. Science In mathematics, many sequences of numbers or of polynomials are indexed by nonnegative integers, for example the Bernoulli numbers and the Bell numbers. In both mechanics and statistics, the zeroth moment is defined, representing total mass in the case of physical density, or total probability, i.e. one, for a probability distribution. The zeroth law of thermodynamics was formulated after the first, second, and third laws, but considered more fundamental, thus its name. In biology, an organism is said to have zero order intentionality if it shows "no intention of anything at all". This would include a situation where the organism's genetically predetermined phenotype results in a fitness benefit to itself, because it did not "intend" to express its genes. In the similar sense, a computer may be considered from this perspective a zero order intentional entity as it does not "intend" to express the code of the programs it runs. In biological or medical experiments, initial measurements made before any experimental time has passed are said to be on the 0 day of the experiment. In genomics, both 0-based and 1-based systems are used for genome coordinates. Patient zero (or index case) is the initial patient in the population sample of an epidemiological investigation. Other fields The year zero does not exist in the widely used Gregorian calendar or in its predecessor, the Julian calendar. Under those systems, the year 1 BC is followed by AD 1. However, there is a year zero in astronomical year numbering (where it coincides with the Julian year 1 BC) and in ISO 8601:2004 (where it coincides with the Gregorian year 1 BC) as well as in all Buddhist and Hindu calendars. In many countries, the ground floor in buildings is considered as floor | science often begin with zero. For these reasons, in computer science it is not unusual to number from zero rather than one. Hackers and computer scientists often like to call the first chapter of a publication "Chapter 0", especially if it is of an introductory nature. One of the classic instances was in the first edition of K&R. In recent years this trait has also been observed among many pure mathematicians, where many constructions are defined to be numbered from 0. If an array is used to represent a cycle, it is convenient to obtain the index with a modulo function, which can result in zero. Numerical properties With zero-based numbering, a range can be expressed as the half-open interval, [0,n), as opposed to the closed interval, [1,n]. Empty ranges, which often occur in algorithms, are tricky to express with a closed interval without resorting to obtuse conventions like [1,0]. Because of this property, zero-based indexing potentially reduces off-by-one and fencepost errors. On the other hand, the repeat count n is calculated in advance, making the use of counting from 0 to n−1 (inclusive) less intuitive. Some authors prefer one-based indexing as it corresponds more closely to how entities are indexed in other contexts. Another property of this convention is in the use of modular arithmetic as implemented in modern computers. Usually, the modulo function maps any integer modulo N to one of the numbers , where . Because of this, many formulas in algorithms (such as that for calculating hash table indices) can be elegantly expressed in code using the modulo operation when array indices start at zero. Pointer operations can also be expressed more elegantly on a zero-based index due to the underlying address/offset logic mentioned above. To illustrate, suppose a is the memory address of the first element of an array, and i is the index of the desired element. To compute the address of the desired element, if the index numbers count from 1, the desired address is computed by this expression: a + s × (i − 1) where s is the size of each element. In contrast, if the index numbers count from 0, the expression becomes: a + s × i This simpler expression is more efficient to compute at run time. However, a language wishing to index arrays from 1 could adopt the convention that every array address is represented by ; that is, rather than using the address of the first array element, such a language would use the address of a fictitious element located immediately before the first actual element. The indexing expression for a 1-based index would then be: a′ + s × i Hence, the efficiency benefit at run time of zero-based indexing is not inherent, but is an artifact of the decision to represent an array with the address of its first element rather than the address of the fictitious zeroth element. However, the address of that fictitious element could very well be the address of some other item in memory not related to the array. Superficially, the fictitious element doesn't scale well to multidimensional arrays. Indexing multidimensional arrays from zero makes a naive (contiguous) conversion to a linear address space (systematically varying one index after the other) look simpler than when indexing from one. For instance, when mapping the three-dimensional array to a linear array L[M⋅N⋅P], both with M⋅N⋅P elements, the index r in the linear array to access a specific element with in zero-based indexing, i.e. [0 ≤ x < P], [0 ≤ y < N], [0 ≤ z < M], and [0 ≤ r < M⋅N⋅P], is calculated by . Organizing all arrays with 1-based indices ([1 ≤ x′ ≤ P], [1 ≤ y′ ≤ N], [1 ≤ z′ ≤ M], [1 ≤ r′ ≤ M⋅N⋅P]), and assuming an analogous arrangement of the elements, gives to access |
customs could also be seen as early attempts of ethnographic categorization. In his poem "Xijing fu", Zhang shows that he was aware of the new foreign religion of Buddhism, introduced via the Silk Road, as well as the legend of the birth of Buddha with the vision of the white elephant bringing about conception. In his "Western Metropolis Rhapsody" (), Zhang described court entertainments such as juedi (), a form of theatrical wrestling accompanied by music in which participants butted heads with bull horn masks. With his "Responding to Criticism" (Ying jian ), a work modeled on Yang Xiong's "Justification Against Ridicule", Zhang was an early writer and proponent of the Chinese literary genre shelun, or hypothetical discourse. Authors of this genre created a written dialogue between themselves and an imaginary person (or a real person of their entourage or association); the latter poses questions to the author on how to lead a successful life. He also used it as a means to criticize himself for failing to obtain high office, but coming to the conclusion that the true gentleman displays virtue instead of greed for power. In this work, Dominik Declercq asserts that the person urging Zhang to advance his career in a time of government corruption most likely represented the eunuchs or Empress Liang's (116–150) powerful relatives in the Liang clan. Declercq states that these two groups would have been "anxious to know whether this famous scholar could be lured over to their side", but Zhang flatly rejected such an alignment by declaring in this politically charged piece of literature that his gentlemanly quest for virtue trumped any desire of his for power. Zhang wrote about the various love affairs of emperors dissatisfied with the imperial harem, going out into the city incognito to seek out prostitutes and sing-song girls. This was seen as a general criticism of the Eastern Han emperors and their imperial favorites, guised in the criticism of earlier Western Han emperors. Besides criticizing the Western Han emperors for lavish decadence, Zhang also pointed out that their behavior and ceremonies did not properly conform with the Chinese cyclical beliefs in yin and yang. In a poem criticizing the previous Western Han Dynasty, Zhang wrote: Achievements in science and technology Mathematics For centuries the Chinese approximated pi as 3; Liu Xin (d. AD 23) made the first known Chinese attempt at a more accurate calculation of 3.1457, but there is no record detailing the method he used to obtain this figure. In his work around 130, Zhang Heng compared the celestial circle to the diameter of the earth, proportioning the former as 736 and the latter as 232, thus calculating pi as 3.1724. In Zhang's day, the ratio 4:3 was given for the area of a square to the area of its inscribed circle and the volume of a cube and volume of the inscribed sphere should also be 42:32. In formula, with D as diameter and V as volume, D3:V = 16:9 or V=D3; Zhang realized that the value for diameter in this formula was inaccurate, noting the discrepancy as the value taken for the ratio. Zhang then attempted to remedy this by amending the formula with an additional D3, hence V=D3 + D3 = D3. With the ratio of the volume of the cube to the inscribed sphere at 8:5, the implied ratio of the area of the square to the circle is √8:√5. From this formula, Zhang calculated pi as the square root of 10 (or approximately 3.162). Zhang also calculated pi as = 3.1466 in his book Ling Xian (). In the 3rd century, Liu Hui made the calculation more accurate with his π algorithm, which allowed him to obtain the value 3.14159. Later, Zu Chongzhi (429–500) approximated pi as or 3.141592, the most accurate calculation for pi the ancient Chinese would achieve. Astronomy In his publication of AD 120 called The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe (靈憲, Ling Xian, lit. "Sublime Model"), Zhang Heng theorized that the universe was like an egg "as round as a crossbow pellet" with the stars on the shell and the Earth as the central yolk. This universe theory is congruent with the geocentric model as opposed to the heliocentric model. Although the ancient Warring States (403–221 BC) Chinese astronomers Shi Shen and Gan De had compiled China's first star catalogue in the 4th century BC, Zhang nonetheless catalogued 2,500 stars which he placed in a "brightly shining" category (the Chinese estimated the total to be 14,000), and he recognized 124 constellations. In comparison, this star catalogue featured many more stars than the 850 documented by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (c. 190–c.120 BC) in his catalogue, and more than Ptolemy (AD 83–161), who catalogued over 1,000. Zhang supported the "radiating influence" theory to explain solar and lunar eclipses, a theory which was opposed by Wang Chong (AD 27–97). In the Ling Xian, Zhang wrote: Zhang Heng viewed these astronomical phenomena in supernatural terms as well. The signs of comets, eclipses, and movements of heavenly bodies could all be interpreted by him as heavenly guides on how to conduct affairs of state. Contemporary writers also wrote about eclipses and the sphericity of heavenly bodies. The music theorist and mathematician Jing Fang (78–37 BC) wrote about the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon while discussing eclipses: The Moon and the planets are Yin; they have shape but no light. This they receive only when the Sun illuminates them. The former masters regarded the Sun as round like a crossbow bullet, and they thought the Moon had the nature of a mirror. Some of them recognized the Moon as a ball too. Those parts of the Moon which the Sun illuminates look bright, those parts which it does not, remain dark. The theory posited by Zhang and Jing was supported by later pre-modern scientists such as Shen Kuo (1031–1095), who expanded on the reasoning of why the Sun and Moon were spherical. The theory of the celestial sphere surrounding a flat, square Earth was later criticized by the Jin-dynasty scholar-official Yu Xi (fl. 307–345). He suggested that the Earth could be round like the heavens, a spherical Earth theory fully accepted by mathematician Li Ye (1192-1279) but not by mainstream Chinese science until European influence in the 17th century. Extra tank for inflow clepsydra The outflow clepsydra was a timekeeping device used in China as long ago as the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC), and certainly by the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC). The inflow clepsydra with an indicator rod on a float had been known in China since the beginning of the Han Dynasty in 202 BC and had replaced the outflow type. The Han Chinese noted the problem with the falling pressure head in the reservoir, which slowed the timekeeping of the device as the inflow vessel was filled. Zhang Heng was the first to address this problem, indicated in his writings from 117, by adding an extra compensating tank between the reservoir and the inflow vessel. Zhang also mounted two statuettes of a Chinese immortal and a heavenly guard on the top of the inflow clepsydra, the two of which would guide the indicator rod with their left hand and point out the graduations with their right. Joseph Needham states that this was perhaps the ancestor of all clock jacks that would later sound the hours found in mechanical clocks by the 8th century, but he notes that these figures did not actually move like clock jack figurines or sound the hours. Many additional compensation tanks were added to later clepsydras in the tradition of Zhang Heng. In 610 the Sui Dynasty (581–618) engineers Geng Xun and Yuwen Kai crafted an unequal-armed steelyard balance able to make seasonal adjustments in the pressure head of the compensating tank, so that it could control the rate of water flow for different lengths of day and night during the year. Zhang mentioned a "jade dragon's neck", which in later times meant a siphon. He wrote of the floats and indicator-rods of the inflow clepsydra as follows: Water-powered armillary sphere Zhang Heng is the first person known to have applied hydraulic motive power (i.e. by employing a waterwheel and clepsydra) to rotate an armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument representing the celestial sphere. The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) invented the first armillary sphere in 255 BC. The Chinese armillary sphere was fully developed by 52 BC, with the astronomer Geng Shouchang's addition of a permanently fixed equatorial ring. In AD 84 the astronomers Fu An and Jia Kui added the ecliptic ring, and finally Zhang Heng added the horizon and meridian rings. This invention is described and attributed to Zhang in quotations by Hsu Chen and Li Shan, referencing his book Lou Shui Chuan Hun Thien I Chieh (Apparatus for Rotating an Armillary Sphere by Clepsydra Water). It was likely not an actual book by Zhang, but a chapter from his Hun I or Hun I Thu Chu, written in 117 AD. His water-powered armillary influenced the design of later Chinese water clocks and led to the discovery of the escapement mechanism by the 8th century. The historian Joseph Needham (1900–1995) states: What were the factors leading to the first escapement clock in China? The chief tradition leading to Yi Xing (AD 725 ) was of course the succession of 'pre-clocks' which had started with Zhang Heng about 125. Reason has been given for believing that these applied power to the slow turning movement of computational armillary spheres and celestial globes by means of a water-wheel using clepsydra drip, which intermittently exerted the force of a lug to act on the teeth of a wheel on a polar-axis shaft. Zhang Heng in his turn had composed this arrangement by uniting the armillary rings of his predecessors into the equatorial armillary sphere, and combining it with the principles of the water-mills and hydraulic trip-hammers which had become so widespread in Chinese culture in the previous century. Zhang did not initiate the Chinese tradition of hydraulic engineering, which began during the mid Zhou Dynasty (c. 6th century BC), through the work of engineers such as Sunshu Ao and Ximen Bao. Zhang's contemporary, Du Shi, (d. AD 38) was the first to apply the motive power of waterwheels to operate the bellows of a blast furnace to make pig iron, and the cupola furnace to make cast iron. Zhang provided a valuable description of his water-powered armillary sphere in the treatise of 125, stating: The equatorial ring goes around the belly of the armillary sphere 91 and 5/19 (degrees) away from the pole. The circle of the ecliptic also goes round the belly of the instrument at an angle of 24 (degrees) with the equator. Thus at the summer solstice the ecliptic is 67 (degrees) and a fraction away from the pole, while at the winter solstice it is 115 (degrees) and a fraction away. Hence (the points) where the ecliptic and the equator intersect should give the north polar distances of the spring and autumn equinoxes. But now (it has been recorded that) the spring equinox is 90 and 1/4 (degrees) away from the pole, and the autumn equinox is 92 and 1/4 (degrees) away. The former figure is adopted only because it agrees with the (results obtained by the) method of measuring solstitial sun shadows as embodied in the Xia (dynasty) calendar. Zhang Heng's water-powered armillary sphere had profound effects on Chinese astronomy and mechanical engineering in later generations. His model and its complex use of gears greatly influenced the water-powered instruments of later astronomers such as Yi Xing (683–727), Zhang Sixun (fl. 10th century), Su Song (1020–1101), Guo Shoujing (1231–1316), and many others. Water-powered armillary spheres in the tradition of Zhang Heng's were used in the eras of the Three Kingdoms (220–280) and Jin Dynasty (266–420), yet the design for it was temporarily out of use between 317 and 418, due to invasions of northern Xiongnu nomads. Zhang Heng's old instruments were recovered in 418, when Emperor Wu of Liu Song (r. 420–422) captured the ancient capital of Chang'an. Although still intact, the graduation marks and the representations of the stars, Moon, Sun, and planets were quite worn down by time and rust. In 436, the emperor ordered Qian Luozhi, the Secretary of the Bureau of Astronomy and Calendar, to recreate Zhang's device, which he managed to do successfully. Qian's water-powered celestial globe was still in use at the time of the Liang Dynasty (502–557), and successive models of water-powered armillary spheres were designed in subsequent dynasties. Zhang's seismoscope From the earliest times, the Chinese were concerned with the destructive force of earthquakes. It was recorded in Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian of 91 BC that in 780 BC an earthquake had been powerful enough to divert the courses of three rivers. It was not known at the time that earthquakes were caused by the shifting of tectonic plates in the Earth's crust; instead, the people of the ancient Zhou Dynasty explained them as disturbances with cosmic yin and yang, along with the heavens' displeasure with acts committed (or the common peoples' grievances ignored) by the current ruling dynasty. These theories were ultimately derived from the ancient text of the Yijing (Book of Changes), in its fifty-first hexagram. There were other early theories about earthquakes, developed by those such as the ancient Greeks. Anaxagoras (c. 500–428 BC) believed that they were caused by excess water near the surface crust of the earth bursting into the Earth's hollows; Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) believed that the saturation of the Earth with water caused them; Anaximenes (c. 585–c. 525 BC) believed they were the result of massive pieces of the Earth falling into the cavernous hollows due to drying; and Aristotle (384–322 BC) believed they were caused by instability of vapor (pneuma) caused by the drying of the moist Earth by the Sun's rays. During the Han Dynasty, many learned scholars—including Zhang Heng—believed in the "oracles of the winds". These oracles of the occult observed the direction, force, and timing of the winds, to speculate about the operation of the cosmos and to predict events on Earth. These ideas influenced Zhang Heng's views on the cause of earthquakes. In 132, Zhang Heng presented to the Han court what many historians consider to be his most impressive invention, the first seismoscope. A seismoscope records the motions of Earth's shaking, but unlike a seismometer, it does not retain a time record of those motions. It was named "earthquake weathervane" (hòufēng dìdòngyí 候風地動儀), and it was able to roughly determine the direction (out of eight directions) where the earthquake came from. According to the Book of Later Han (compiled by Fan Ye in the 5th century), his bronze urn-shaped device, with a swinging pendulum inside, was able to detect the direction of an earthquake hundreds of miles/kilometers away. This was essential for the Han government in sending quick aid and relief to regions devastated by this type of natural disaster. The Book of Later Han records that, on one occasion, Zhang's device was triggered, though no observer had felt any seismic disturbance; several days later a messenger arrived from the west and reported that an earthquake had occurred in Longxi (modern Gansu Province), the same direction that Zhang's device had indicated, and thus the court was forced to admit the efficacy of the device. To indicate the direction of a distant earthquake, Zhang's device dropped a bronze ball from one of eight tubed projections shaped as dragon heads; the ball fell into the mouth of a corresponding metal object shaped as a toad, each representing a direction like the points on a compass rose. His device had eight mobile arms (for all eight directions) connected with cranks having catch mechanisms at the periphery. When tripped, a crank and right angle lever would raise a dragon head and release a ball which had been supported by the lower jaw of the dragon head. His device also included a vertical pin passing through a slot in the crank, a catch device, a pivot on a projection, a sling suspending the pendulum, an attachment for the sling, and a horizontal bar supporting the pendulum. Wang Zhenduo (王振鐸) argued that the technology of the Eastern Han era was sophisticated enough to produce such a device, as evidenced by contemporary levers and cranks used in other devices such as crossbow triggers. Later Chinese of subsequent periods were able to reinvent Zhang's seismoscope. They included the 6th-century mathematician and surveyor Xindu Fang of the Northern Qi Dynasty (550–577) and the astronomer and mathematician Lin Xiaogong of the Sui Dynasty (581–618). Like Zhang, Xindu Fang and Lin Xiaogong were given imperial patronage for their services in craftsmanship of devices for the court. By the time of the Yuan Dynasty (1271–1368), it was acknowledged that all devices previously made were preserved, except for that of the seismoscope. This was discussed by the scholar Zhou Mi around 1290, who remarked that the books of Xindu Fang and Lin Xiaogong detailing their seismological devices were no longer to be found. Horwitz, Kreitner, and Needham speculate if Tang Dynasty (618–907) era seismographs found their way to contemporary Japan; according to Needham, "instruments of apparently traditional type there in which a pendulum carries pins projecting in many directions and able to pierce a surrounding paper cylinder, have been described." Hong-sen Yan states that modern replicas of Zhang's device have failed to reach the level of accuracy and sensitivity described in Chinese historical records. Wang Zhenduo presented two different models of the seismoscope based on the ancient descriptions of Zhang's device. In his 1936 reconstruction, the central pillar (du zhu) of the device was a suspended pendulum acting as a movement sensor, while the central pillar of his second model in 1963 was an inverted pendulum. According to Needham, while working in the Seismological Observatory of Tokyo University in 1939, Akitsune Imamura and Hagiwara made a reconstruction of Zhang's device. While it was John Milne and Wang Zhenduo who argued early on that Zhang's "central pillar" was a suspended pendulum, Imamura was the first to propose an inverted model. He argued that transverse shock would have rendered Wang's immobilization mechanism ineffective, as it would not have prevented further motion that could knock other balls out of their position. On June 13, 2005, modern Chinese seismologists announced that they had successfully created a replica of the instrument. Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, a Professor of Early Chinese History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, names Zhang Heng as one of several high-ranking Eastern-Han officials who engaged in crafts that were traditionally reserved for artisans (gong 工), such as mechanical engineering. | Zhang's memorial discussing the reasons behind these natural disasters, he criticized the new recruitment system of Zuo Xiong which fixed the age of eligible candidates for the title "Filial and Incorrupt" at age forty. The new system also transferred the power of the candidates' assessment to the Three Excellencies rather than the Generals of the Household, who by tradition oversaw the affairs of court gentlemen. Although Zhang's memorial was rejected, his status was significantly elevated soon after to Palace Attendant, a position he used to influence the decisions of Emperor Shun. With this prestigious new position, Zhang earned a salary of 2,000 bushels and had the right to escort the emperor. As Palace Attendant to Emperor Shun, Zhang Heng attempted to convince him that the court eunuchs represented a threat to the imperial court. Zhang pointed to specific examples of past court intrigues involving eunuchs, and convinced Shun that he should assume greater authority and limit their influence. The eunuchs attempted to slander Zhang, who responded with a fu rhapsody called "Fu on Pondering the Mystery", which vents his frustration. Rafe de Crespigny states that Zhang's rhapsody used imagery similar to Qu Yuan's (340–278 BC) poem "Li Sao" and focused on whether or not good men should flee the corrupted world or remain virtuous within it. Literature and poetry While working for the central court, Zhang Heng had access to a variety of written materials located in the Archives of the Eastern Pavilion. Zhang read many of the great works of history in his day and claimed he had found ten instances where the Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian (145–90 BC) and the Book of Han by Ban Gu (AD 32–92) differed from other ancient texts that were available to him. His account was preserved and recorded in the 5th century text of the Book of Later Han by Fan Ye (398–445). His rhapsodies and other literary works displayed a deep knowledge of classic texts, Chinese philosophy, and histories. He also compiled a commentary on the Taixuan (, "Great Mystery") by the Daoist author Yang Xiong (53 BC–AD 18). Xiao Tong (501–531), a crown prince of the Liang Dynasty (502–557), immortalized several of Zhang's works in his literary anthology Selections of Refined Literature (Wen xuan ). Zhang's fu rhapsodies include "Western Metropolis Rhapsody" (Xī jīng fù ), "Eastern Metropolis Rhapsody" (Dōng jīng fù ), "Southern Capital Rhapsody" (Nán dū fù ), "Rhapsody on Contemplating the Mystery" (Sī xuán fù ), and "Rhapsody on Returning to the Fields" (Guī tián fù ). The latter fuses Daoist ideas with Confucianism and was a precursor to later Chinese metaphysical nature poetry, according to Liu Wu-chi. A set of four short lyric poems (shi 詩) entitled "Lyric Poems on Four Sorrows" (Sì chóu shī ), is also included with Zhang's preface. This set constitutes some of the earliest heptasyllabic shi Chinese poetry written. While still in Luoyang, Zhang became inspired to write his "Western Metropolis Rhapsody" and "Eastern Metropolis Rhapsody", which were based on the "Rhapsody on the Two Capitals" by the historian Ban Gu. Zhang's work was similar to Ban's, although the latter fully praised the contemporaneous Eastern Han regime while Zhang provided a warning that it could suffer the same fate as the Western Han if it too declined into a state of decadence and moral depravity. These two works satirized and criticized what he saw as the excessive luxury of the upper classes. Zhang's "Southern Capital Rhapsody" commemorated his home city of Nanyang, home of the restorer of the Han Dynasty, Guangwu. In Zhang Heng's poem "Four Sorrows", he laments that he is unable to woo a beautiful woman due to the impediment of mountains, snows and rivers. Rafe de Crespigny, Tong Xiao, and David R. Knechtges claim that Zhang wrote this as an innuendo hinting at his inability to keep in contact with the emperor, hindered by unworthy rivals and petty men. This poem is one of the first in China to have seven words per line. His "Four Sorrows" reads: In another poem of his called "Stabilizing the Passions" (Dìng qíng fù 定情賦) — preserved in a Tang Dynasty (618–907) encyclopedia, but referred to earlier by Tao Qian (365–427) in praise of Zhang's lyrical minimalism — Zhang displays his admiration for an attractive and exemplary woman. This simpler type of fu poem influenced later works by the prominent official and scholar Cai Yong (132–192). Zhang wrote: Zhang's long lyrical poems also revealed a great amount of information on urban layout and basic geography. His rhapsody "Sir Based-On-Nothing" provides details on terrain, palaces, hunting parks, markets, and prominent buildings of Chang'an, the Western Han capital. Exemplifying his attention to detail, his rhapsody on Nanyang described gardens filled with spring garlic, summer bamboo shoots, autumn leeks, winter rape-turnips, perilla, evodia, and purple ginger. Zhang Heng's writing confirms the size of the imperial hunting park in the suburbs of Chang'an, as his estimate for the circumference of the park's encircling wall agrees with the historian Ban Gu's estimate of roughly 400 li (one li in Han times was equal to 415.8 m, or 1,364 ft, making the circumference of the park wall 166,320 m, or 545,600 ft). Along with Sima Xiangru (179–117 BC), Zhang listed a variety of animals and hunting game inhabiting the park, which were divided in the northern and southern portions of the park according to where the animals had originally come from: northern or southern China. Somewhat similar to the description of Sima Xiangru, Zhang described the Western Han emperors and their entourage enjoying boat outings, water plays, fishing, and displays of archery targeting birds and other animals with stringed arrows from the tops of tall towers along Chang'an's Kunming Lake. The focus of Zhang's writing on specific places and their terrain, society, people, and their customs could also be seen as early attempts of ethnographic categorization. In his poem "Xijing fu", Zhang shows that he was aware of the new foreign religion of Buddhism, introduced via the Silk Road, as well as the legend of the birth of Buddha with the vision of the white elephant bringing about conception. In his "Western Metropolis Rhapsody" (), Zhang described court entertainments such as juedi (), a form of theatrical wrestling accompanied by music in which participants butted heads with bull horn masks. With his "Responding to Criticism" (Ying jian ), a work modeled on Yang Xiong's "Justification Against Ridicule", Zhang was an early writer and proponent of the Chinese literary genre shelun, or hypothetical discourse. Authors of this genre created a written dialogue between themselves and an imaginary person (or a real person of their entourage or association); the latter poses questions to the author on how to lead a successful life. He also used it as a means to criticize himself for failing to obtain high office, but coming to the conclusion that the true gentleman displays virtue instead of greed for power. In this work, Dominik Declercq asserts that the person urging Zhang to advance his career in a time of government corruption most likely represented the eunuchs or Empress Liang's (116–150) powerful relatives in the Liang clan. Declercq states that these two groups would have been "anxious to know whether this famous scholar could be lured over to their side", but Zhang flatly rejected such an alignment by declaring in this politically charged piece of literature that his gentlemanly quest for virtue trumped any desire of his for power. Zhang wrote about the various love affairs of emperors dissatisfied with the imperial harem, going out into the city incognito to seek out prostitutes and sing-song girls. This was seen as a general criticism of the Eastern Han emperors and their imperial favorites, guised in the criticism of earlier Western Han emperors. Besides criticizing the Western Han emperors for lavish decadence, Zhang also pointed out that their behavior and ceremonies did not properly conform with the Chinese cyclical beliefs in yin and yang. In a poem criticizing the previous Western Han Dynasty, Zhang wrote: Achievements in science and technology Mathematics For centuries the Chinese approximated pi as 3; Liu Xin (d. AD 23) made the first known Chinese attempt at a more accurate calculation of 3.1457, but there is no record detailing the method he used to obtain this figure. In his work around 130, Zhang Heng compared the celestial circle to the diameter of the earth, proportioning the former as 736 and the latter as 232, thus calculating pi as 3.1724. In Zhang's day, the ratio 4:3 was given for the area of a square to the area of its inscribed circle and the volume of a cube and volume of the inscribed sphere should also be 42:32. In formula, with D as diameter and V as volume, D3:V = 16:9 or V=D3; Zhang realized that the value for diameter in this formula was inaccurate, noting the discrepancy as the value taken for the ratio. Zhang then attempted to remedy this by amending the formula with an additional D3, hence V=D3 + D3 = D3. With the ratio of the volume of the cube to the inscribed sphere at 8:5, the implied ratio of the area of the square to the circle is √8:√5. From this formula, Zhang calculated pi as the square root of 10 (or approximately 3.162). Zhang also calculated pi as = 3.1466 in his book Ling Xian (). In the 3rd century, Liu Hui made the calculation more accurate with his π algorithm, which allowed him to obtain the value 3.14159. Later, Zu Chongzhi (429–500) approximated pi as or 3.141592, the most accurate calculation for pi the ancient Chinese would achieve. Astronomy In his publication of AD 120 called The Spiritual Constitution of the Universe (靈憲, Ling Xian, lit. "Sublime Model"), Zhang Heng theorized that the universe was like an egg "as round as a crossbow pellet" with the stars on the shell and the Earth as the central yolk. This universe theory is congruent with the geocentric model as opposed to the heliocentric model. Although the ancient Warring States (403–221 BC) Chinese astronomers Shi Shen and Gan De had compiled China's first star catalogue in the 4th century BC, Zhang nonetheless catalogued 2,500 stars which he placed in a "brightly shining" category (the Chinese estimated the total to be 14,000), and he recognized 124 constellations. In comparison, this star catalogue featured many more stars than the 850 documented by the Greek astronomer Hipparchus (c. 190–c.120 BC) in his catalogue, and more than Ptolemy (AD 83–161), who catalogued over 1,000. Zhang supported the "radiating influence" theory to explain solar and lunar eclipses, a theory which was opposed by Wang Chong (AD 27–97). In the Ling Xian, Zhang wrote: Zhang Heng viewed these astronomical phenomena in supernatural terms as well. The signs of comets, eclipses, and movements of heavenly bodies could all be interpreted by him as heavenly guides on how to conduct affairs of state. Contemporary writers also wrote about eclipses and the sphericity of heavenly bodies. The music theorist and mathematician Jing Fang (78–37 BC) wrote about the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon while discussing eclipses: The Moon and the planets are Yin; they have shape but no light. This they receive only when the Sun illuminates them. The former masters regarded the Sun as round like a crossbow bullet, and they thought the Moon had the nature of a mirror. Some of them recognized the Moon as a ball too. Those parts of the Moon which the Sun illuminates look bright, those parts which it does not, remain dark. The theory posited by Zhang and Jing was supported by later pre-modern scientists such as Shen Kuo (1031–1095), who expanded on the reasoning of why the Sun and Moon were spherical. The theory of the celestial sphere surrounding a flat, square Earth was later criticized by the Jin-dynasty scholar-official Yu Xi (fl. 307–345). He suggested that the Earth could be round like the heavens, a spherical Earth theory fully accepted by mathematician Li Ye (1192-1279) but not by mainstream Chinese science until European influence in the 17th century. Extra tank for inflow clepsydra The outflow clepsydra was a timekeeping device used in China as long ago as the Shang Dynasty (c. 1600–c. 1050 BC), and certainly by the Zhou Dynasty (1122–256 BC). The inflow clepsydra with an indicator rod on a float had been known in China since the beginning of the Han Dynasty in 202 BC and had replaced the outflow type. The Han Chinese noted the problem with the falling pressure head in the reservoir, which slowed the timekeeping of the device as the inflow vessel was filled. Zhang Heng was the first to address this problem, indicated in his writings from 117, by adding an extra compensating tank between the reservoir and the inflow vessel. Zhang also mounted two statuettes of a Chinese immortal and a heavenly guard on the top of the inflow clepsydra, the two of which would guide the indicator rod with their left hand and point out the graduations with their right. Joseph Needham states that this was perhaps the ancestor of all clock jacks that would later sound the hours found in mechanical clocks by the 8th century, but he notes that these figures did not actually move like clock jack figurines or sound the hours. Many additional compensation tanks were added to later clepsydras in the tradition of Zhang Heng. In 610 the Sui Dynasty (581–618) engineers Geng Xun and Yuwen Kai crafted an unequal-armed steelyard balance able to make seasonal adjustments in the pressure head of the compensating tank, so that it could control the rate of water flow for different lengths of day and night during the year. Zhang mentioned a "jade dragon's neck", which in later times meant a siphon. He wrote of the floats and indicator-rods of the inflow clepsydra as follows: Water-powered armillary sphere Zhang Heng is the first person known to have applied hydraulic motive power (i.e. by employing a waterwheel and clepsydra) to rotate an armillary sphere, an astronomical instrument representing the celestial sphere. The Greek astronomer Eratosthenes (276–194 BC) invented the first armillary sphere in 255 BC. The Chinese armillary sphere was fully developed by 52 BC, with the astronomer Geng Shouchang's addition of a permanently fixed equatorial ring. In AD 84 the astronomers Fu An and Jia Kui added the ecliptic ring, and finally Zhang Heng added the horizon and meridian rings. This invention is described and attributed to Zhang in quotations by Hsu Chen and Li Shan, referencing his book Lou Shui Chuan Hun Thien I Chieh (Apparatus for Rotating an Armillary Sphere by Clepsydra Water). It was likely not an actual book by Zhang, but a chapter from his Hun I or Hun I Thu Chu, written in 117 AD. His water-powered armillary influenced the design of later Chinese water clocks and led to the discovery of the escapement mechanism by the 8th century. The historian Joseph Needham (1900–1995) states: What were the factors leading to the first escapement clock in China? The chief tradition leading to Yi Xing (AD 725 ) was of course the succession of 'pre-clocks' which had started with Zhang Heng about 125. Reason has been given for believing that these applied power to the slow turning movement of computational armillary spheres and celestial globes by means of a water-wheel using clepsydra drip, which intermittently exerted the force of a lug to act on the teeth of a wheel on a polar-axis shaft. Zhang Heng in his turn had composed this arrangement by uniting the armillary rings of his predecessors into the equatorial armillary sphere, and combining it with the principles of the water-mills and hydraulic trip-hammers which had become so widespread in Chinese culture in the previous century. Zhang did not initiate the Chinese tradition of hydraulic engineering, which began during the mid Zhou Dynasty (c. 6th century BC), through the work of engineers such as Sunshu Ao and Ximen Bao. Zhang's contemporary, Du Shi, (d. AD 38) was the first to apply the motive power of waterwheels to operate the bellows of a blast furnace to make pig iron, and the cupola furnace to make cast iron. Zhang provided a valuable description of his water-powered armillary sphere in the treatise of 125, stating: The equatorial ring goes around the belly of the armillary sphere 91 and 5/19 (degrees) away from the pole. The circle of the ecliptic also goes round the belly of the instrument at an angle of 24 (degrees) with the equator. Thus at the summer solstice the ecliptic is 67 (degrees) and a fraction away from the pole, while at the winter solstice it is 115 (degrees) and a fraction away. Hence (the points) where the ecliptic and the equator intersect should give the north polar distances of the spring and autumn equinoxes. But now (it has been recorded that) the spring equinox is 90 and 1/4 (degrees) away from the pole, and the autumn equinox is 92 and 1/4 (degrees) away. The former figure is adopted only because it agrees with the (results obtained by the) method of measuring solstitial sun shadows as embodied in the Xia (dynasty) calendar. Zhang Heng's water-powered armillary sphere had profound effects on Chinese astronomy and mechanical engineering in later generations. His model and its |
Riots began a new period of the LGBT rights movement that in the next decade would cause dramatic change both inside the LGBT community and in the mainstream American culture. New Left The rapid rise of a "New Left" applied the class perspective of Marxism to postwar America, but had little organizational connection with older Marxist organizations such as the Communist Party, and even went as far as to reject organized labor as the basis of a unified left-wing movement. Sympathetic to the ideology of C. Wright Mills, the New Left differed from the traditional left in its resistance to dogma and its emphasis on personal as well as societal change. Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) became the organizational focus of the New Left and was the prime mover behind the opposition to the War in Vietnam. The 1960s left also consisted of ephemeral campus-based Trotskyist, Maoist and anarchist groups, some of which by the end of the 1960s had turned to militancy. Crime The 1960s was also associated with a large increase in crime and urban unrest of all types. Between 1960 and 1969 reported incidences of violent crime per 100,000 people in the United States nearly doubled and have yet to return to the levels of the early 1960s. Large riots broke out in many cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Oakland, California and Washington, D.C. By the end of the decade, politicians like George Wallace and Richard Nixon campaigned on restoring law and order to a nation troubled with the new unrest. Science and technology Science Space exploration The Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union dominated the 1960s. The Soviets sent the first man, Yuri Gagarin, into outer space during the Vostok 1 mission on 12 April 1961 and scored a host of other successes, but by the middle of the decade the U.S. was taking the lead. In May 1961, President Kennedy set the goal for the United States of landing a man on the Moon by the end of the 1960s. In June 1963, Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space during the Vostok 6 mission. In 1965, Soviets launched the first probe to hit another planet of the Solar System (Venus), Venera 3, and the first probe to make a soft landing on and transmit from the surface of the Moon, Luna 9. In March 1966, the Soviet Union launched Luna 10, which became the first space probe to enter orbit around the Moon, and in September, 1968, Zond 5 flew the first terrestrial beings, including two tortoises, to circumnavigate the Moon. The deaths of astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger B. Chaffee in the Apollo 1 fire on 27 January 1967 put a temporary hold on the U.S. space program, but afterward progress was steady, with the Apollo 8 crew (Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, William Anders) being the first manned mission to orbit another celestial body (the Moon) during Christmas of 1968. On 20 July 1969, Apollo 11, the first human spaceflight landed on the Moon. Launched on 16 July 1969, it carried mission Commander Neil Armstrong, Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, and the Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. Apollo 11 fulfilled President John F. Kennedy's goal of reaching the Moon by the end of the 1960s, which he had expressed during a speech given before a joint session of Congress on 25 May 1961: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." The Soviet program lost its sense of direction with the death of chief designer Sergey Korolyov in 1966. Political pressure, conflicts between different design bureaus, and engineering problems caused by an inadequate budget would doom the Soviet attempt to land men on the Moon. A succession of unmanned American and Soviet probes traveled to the Moon, Venus, and Mars during the 1960s, and commercial satellites also came into use. Other scientific developments 1960 – The female birth-control contraceptive, the pill, was released in the United States after Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval. 1963 – The measles vaccine was released after being approved by the FDA 1964 – The discovery and confirmation of the Cosmic microwave background in 1964 secured the Big Bang as the best theory of the origin and evolution of the universe. 1965 – AstroTurf introduced. 1967 – First heart transplantation operation by Professor Christiaan Barnard in South Africa. 1967 – Discovery of the first known pulsar (a rapidly spinning neutron star). During the late 1960s, the Green Revolution took a major leap in agricultural production. Technology Shinkansen, the world's first high-speed rail service began in 1964. Automobiles As the 1960s began, American cars showed a rapid rejection of 1950s styling excess, and would remain relatively clean and boxy for the entire decade. The horsepower race reached its climax in the late 1960s, with muscle cars sold by most makes. The compact Ford Mustang, launched in 1964, was one of the decade's greatest successes. The "Big Three" American automakers enjoyed their highest ever sales and profitability in the 1960s, but the demise of Studebaker in 1966 left American Motors Corporation as the last significant independent. The decade would see the car market split into different size classes for the first time, and model lineups now included compact and mid-sized cars in addition to full-sized ones. The popular modern hatchback, with front-wheel-drive and a two-box configuration, was born in 1965 with the introduction of the Renault 16, many of this car's design principles live on in its modern counterparts: a large rear opening incorporating the rear window, foldable rear seats to extend boot space. The Mini, released in 1959, had first popularised the front wheel drive two-box configuration, but technically was not a hatchback as it had a fold-down bootlid. Japanese cars also began to gain acceptance in the Western market, and popular economy models such as the Toyota Corolla, Datsun 510, and the first popular Japanese sports car, the Datsun 240Z, were released in the mid- to late-1960s. Electronics and communications 1960 – The first working laser was demonstrated in May by Theodore Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories. 1960 – Tony Hoare announces the Quicksort algorithm, the most common sorter on computers. 1961 – Unimate, the first industrial robot, was introduced. 1962 – First transatlantic satellite broadcast via the Telstar satellite. 1962 – The first computer video game, Spacewar!, was invented. 1962 – Red LEDs were developed. 1963 – The first geosynchronous communications satellite, Syncom 2, is launched. 1963 – First transpacific satellite broadcast via the Relay 1 satellite. 1963 – Touch-Tone telephones introduced. 1963 – Sketchpad was the first touch interactive computer graphics program. 1963 – The Nottingham Electronic Valve company produced the first home video recorder called the "Telcan". 1964 – 8-track tape audio format was developed. 1964 – The Compact Cassette was introduced. 1964 – The first successful Minicomputer, Digital Equipment Corporation's 12-bit PDP-8, was marketed. 1964 – The programming language BASIC was created. 1964 – The world's first supercomputer, the CDC 6600, was introduced. 1964 – Fairchild Semiconductor released ICs with dual in-line packaging. 1967 – PAL and SECAM broadcast color television systems started publicly transmitting in Europe. 1967 – The first Automatic Teller Machine was opened in Barclays Bank, London. 1968 – Ralph Baer developed his Brown Box (a working prototype of the Magnavox Odyssey). 1968 – The first public demonstration of the computer mouse, the paper paradigm Graphical user interface, video conferencing, teleconferencing, email, and hypertext. 1969 – ARPANET, the research-oriented prototype of the Internet, was introduced. 1969 – CCD invented at AT&T Bell Labs, used as the electronic imager in still and video cameras. Additional notable worldwide events The Manson Murders occurred between 8–10 August 1969, when actress Sharon Tate, coffee heiress Abigail Folger, and several others were brutally murdered in the Tate residence by Charles Manson's "family." Rosemary LaBianca & Leno LaBianca were also murdered by the Manson family the following night. Canada celebrated its 100th anniversary of Confederation in 1967 by hosting Expo 67, the World's Fair, in Montreal, Quebec. During the anniversary celebrations, French president Charles De Gaulle visited Canada, and caused a considerable uproar by declaring his support for Québécois independence. Popular culture The counterculture movement dominated the second half of the 1960s, its most famous moments being the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967, and the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York in 1969. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were widely used medicinally, spiritually and recreationally throughout the late 1960s, and were popularized by Timothy Leary with his slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters also played a part in the role of "turning heads on". Psychedelic influenced the music, artwork and films of the decade, and a number of prominent musicians died of drug overdoses (see 27 Club). There was a growing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, and many attempts were made to found communes, which varied from supporting free love to religious puritanism. Music The rock 'n' roll movement of the 1950s quickly came to an end in 1959 with the day the music died (as explained in the song "American Pie"), the scandal of Jerry Lee Lewis' marriage to his 13-year-old cousin, and the induction of Elvis Presley into the U.S. Army. As the 1960s began, the major rock 'n' roll stars of the '50s such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard had dropped off the charts and popular music in the U.S. came to be dominated by girl groups, surf music, novelty pop songs, clean-cut teen idols, and Motown music. Another important change in music during the early 1960s was the American folk music revival which introduced Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte, Odetta, Phil Ochs, and many other singer-songwriters to the public. Girl groups and female singers, such as the Shirelles, Betty Everett, Little Eva, the Dixie Cups, the Ronettes, Martha and the Vandellas and the Supremes dominated the charts in the early 1960s. This style consisted typically of light pop themes about teenage romance and lifestyles, backed by vocal harmonies and a strong rhythm. Most girl groups were African-American, but white girl groups and singers, such as Lesley Gore, the Angels, and the Shangri-Las also emerged during this period. Around the same time, record producer Phil Spector began producing girl groups and created a new kind of pop music production that came to be known as the Wall of Sound. This style emphasized higher budgets and more elaborate arrangements, and more melodramatic musical themes in place of a simple, light-hearted pop sound. Spector's innovations became integral to the growing sophistication of popular music from 1965 onward. Also during the early '60s, surf rock emerged, a rock subgenre that was centered in Southern California and based on beach and surfing themes, in addition to the usual songs about teenage romance and innocent fun. The Beach Boys quickly became the premier surf rock band and almost completely and single-handedly overshadowed the many lesser-known artists in the subgenre. Surf rock reached its peak in 1963–1965 before gradually being overtaken by bands influenced by the British Invasion and the counterculture movement. The car song also emerged as a rock subgenre in the early 60s, which focused on teenagers' fascination with car culture. The Beach Boys also dominated this subgenre, along with the duo Jan and Dean. Such notable songs include "Little Deuce Coupe," "409," and "Shut Down," all by the Beach Boys; Jan and Dean's "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Drag City," Ronny and the Daytonas' "Little GTO," and many others. Like girl groups and surf rock, car songs also became overshadowed by the British Invasion and the counterculture movement. The early 1960s also saw the golden age of another rock subgenre, the teen tragedy song, which focused on lost teen romance caused by sudden death, mainly in traffic accidents. Such songs included Mark Dinning's "Teen Angel," Ray Peterson's "Tell Laura I Love Her," Jan and Dean's "Dead Man's Curve," the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack," and perhaps the subgenre's most popular, "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. In the early 1960s, Britain became a hotbed of rock 'n' roll activity during this time. In late 1963, the Beatles embarked on their first US tour and cult singer Dusty Springfield released her first solo single. A few months later, rock 'n' roll founding father Chuck Berry emerged from a -year prison stint and resumed recording and touring. The stage was set for the spectacular revival of rock music. In the UK, the Beatles played raucous rock 'n' roll – as well as doo wop, girl-group songs, show tunes – and wore leather jackets. Their manager Brian Epstein encouraged the group to wear suits. Beatlemania abruptly exploded after the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Late in 1965, the Beatles released the album Rubber Soul which marked the beginning of their transition to a sophisticated power pop group with elaborate studio arrangements and production, and a year after that, they gave up touring entirely to focus only on albums. A host of imitators followed the Beatles in the so-called British Invasion, including groups like the Rolling Stones and the Kinks who would become legends in their own right. As the counterculture movement developed, artists began making new kinds of music influenced by the use of psychedelic drugs. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix emerged onto the scene in 1967 with a radically new approach to electric guitar that replaced Chuck Berry, previously seen as the gold standard of rock guitar. Rock artists began to take on serious themes and social commentary/protest instead of simplistic pop themes. A major development in popular music during the mid-1960s was the movement away from singles and towards albums. Previously, popular music was based around the 45 single (or even earlier, the 78 single) and albums such as they existed were little more than a hit single or two backed with filler tracks, instrumentals, and covers. The development of the AOR (album oriented rock) format was complicated and involved several concurrent events such as Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, the introduction by Bob Dylan of "serious" lyrics to rock music, and the Beatles' new studio-based approach. In any case, after 1965 the vinyl LP had definitively taken over as the primary format for all popular music styles. Blues also continued to develop strongly during the '60s, but after 1965, it increasingly shifted to the young white rock audience and away from its traditional black audience, which moved on to other styles such as soul and funk. Jazz music and pop standards during the first half of the '60s was largely a continuation of '50s styles, retaining its core audience of young, urban, college-educated whites. By 1967, the death of several important jazz figures such as John Coltrane and Nat King Cole precipitated a decline in the genre. The takeover of rock in the late '60s largely spelled the end of jazz and standards as mainstream forms of music, after they had dominated much of the first half of the 20th century. Country music gained popularity on the West Coast, due in large part to the Bakersfield sound, led by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Female country artists were also becoming more mainstream (in a genre dominated by men in previous decades), with such acts as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette. Significant events in music in the 1960s Elvis Presley returned to civilian life in the U.S. after two years away in the U.S. Army. He resumes his musical career by recording "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" in March 1960. Country music stars Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed when their plane crashed in Camden, TN while returning home from a Kansas City benefit show in March 1963. In July 1964, a plane crash claimed the life of another country music legend, Jim Reeves, when the plane he was piloting crashed in a turbulent thunderstorm while on final approach to Nashville International Airport. Sam Cooke was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles, California [11 December 1964] at age 33 under suspicious circumstances. Motown Record Corporation was founded in 1960. Its first Top Ten hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot 100, and was Motown's first million-selling record. Newcastle born Eric Burdon and his Band "The Animals" hit the No. 1 in charts in the U.S. with their hit single, "The House of the Rising Sun" in 1964. Folksinger and activist Joan Baez released her debut album on Vanguard Records in December 1960. The Marvelettes scored Motown Record Corporation's first US 1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman" in 1961. Motown would score 110 Billboard Top-Ten hits during its run. The Four Seasons released three straight number one hits In a widely anticipated and publicized event, The Beatles arrive in America in February 1964, spearheading the British Invasion. The Mary Poppins Original Soundtrack tops record charts. Sherman Brothers receive Grammys and double Oscars. Lesley Gore at age 17 hits number one on Billboard with "It's My Party" and number two with "You Don't Own Me" behind the Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand". The Supremes scored twelve number-one hit singles between 1964 and 1969, beginning with "Where Did Our Love Go". The Kinks release "You Really Got Me" in August 1964, which tops the British charts; it is regarded as the first hard rock hit and a blueprint for related genres, such as heavy metal. John Coltrane released A Love Supreme in late 1964, considered among the most acclaimed jazz albums of the era. The Grateful Dead was formed in 1965 (originally The Warlocks) thus paving the way for the emergence of acid rock. Bob Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Cilla Black's number-one hit "Anyone Who Had a Heart" still remains the top-selling single by a female artist in the UK from 1964. The Rolling Stones had a huge No. 1 hit with their song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in the summer of 1965. The Byrds released a cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", which reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts and repeated the feat in the U.K. shortly thereafter. The extremely influential track effectively creates the musical subgenre of folk rock. Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is a top-five hit on both sides of the Atlantic during the summer of 1965. Bob Dylan's 1965 albums Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited ushered in album-focused rock and the "folk rock" genre. Simon and Garfunkel released "The Sound of Silence" single in 1965. The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds in 1966, which significantly influenced the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album released the following year. Bob Dylan was called "Judas" by an audience member during the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, the start of the bootleg recording industry follows, with recordings of this concert circulating for 30 years – wrongly labeled as The Royal Albert Hall Concert – before a legitimate release in 1998 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. In February 1966, Nancy Sinatra's song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " became very popular. In 1966, The Supremes A' Go-Go was the first album by a female group to reach the top position of the Billboard magazine pop albums chart in the United States. The Seekers were the first Australian Group to have a number one with "Georgy Girl" in 1966. Jefferson Airplane released the influential Surrealistic Pillow in 1967. The Velvet Underground released its self-titled debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967. The Doors released its self-titled debut album The Doors in January 1967. Love released Forever Changes in 1967. The Procol Harum released A Whiter Shade of Pale in 1967. Cream released "Disraeli Gears" in 1967. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released two successful albums during 1967, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques. The Moody Blues released the album Days of Future Passed in November 1967. R & B legend Otis Redding has his first No. 1 hit with "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay". He also played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 just before he died in a plane crash. Pink Floyd released its debut record The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Bob Dylan released the Country rock album John Wesley Harding in December 1967. The Bee Gees released their international debut album Bee Gees 1st in July 1967 which included the pop standard "To Love Somebody". The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 was the beginning of the "Summer of Love". The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. It was nicknamed "The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love". Johnny Cash released At Folsom Prison in 1968. 1968: after The Yardbirds fold, Led Zeppelin was formed by Jimmy Page | Curve," the Shangri-Las' "Leader of the Pack," and perhaps the subgenre's most popular, "Last Kiss" by J. Frank Wilson and the Cavaliers. In the early 1960s, Britain became a hotbed of rock 'n' roll activity during this time. In late 1963, the Beatles embarked on their first US tour and cult singer Dusty Springfield released her first solo single. A few months later, rock 'n' roll founding father Chuck Berry emerged from a -year prison stint and resumed recording and touring. The stage was set for the spectacular revival of rock music. In the UK, the Beatles played raucous rock 'n' roll – as well as doo wop, girl-group songs, show tunes – and wore leather jackets. Their manager Brian Epstein encouraged the group to wear suits. Beatlemania abruptly exploded after the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Late in 1965, the Beatles released the album Rubber Soul which marked the beginning of their transition to a sophisticated power pop group with elaborate studio arrangements and production, and a year after that, they gave up touring entirely to focus only on albums. A host of imitators followed the Beatles in the so-called British Invasion, including groups like the Rolling Stones and the Kinks who would become legends in their own right. As the counterculture movement developed, artists began making new kinds of music influenced by the use of psychedelic drugs. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix emerged onto the scene in 1967 with a radically new approach to electric guitar that replaced Chuck Berry, previously seen as the gold standard of rock guitar. Rock artists began to take on serious themes and social commentary/protest instead of simplistic pop themes. A major development in popular music during the mid-1960s was the movement away from singles and towards albums. Previously, popular music was based around the 45 single (or even earlier, the 78 single) and albums such as they existed were little more than a hit single or two backed with filler tracks, instrumentals, and covers. The development of the AOR (album oriented rock) format was complicated and involved several concurrent events such as Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, the introduction by Bob Dylan of "serious" lyrics to rock music, and the Beatles' new studio-based approach. In any case, after 1965 the vinyl LP had definitively taken over as the primary format for all popular music styles. Blues also continued to develop strongly during the '60s, but after 1965, it increasingly shifted to the young white rock audience and away from its traditional black audience, which moved on to other styles such as soul and funk. Jazz music and pop standards during the first half of the '60s was largely a continuation of '50s styles, retaining its core audience of young, urban, college-educated whites. By 1967, the death of several important jazz figures such as John Coltrane and Nat King Cole precipitated a decline in the genre. The takeover of rock in the late '60s largely spelled the end of jazz and standards as mainstream forms of music, after they had dominated much of the first half of the 20th century. Country music gained popularity on the West Coast, due in large part to the Bakersfield sound, led by Buck Owens and Merle Haggard. Female country artists were also becoming more mainstream (in a genre dominated by men in previous decades), with such acts as Patsy Cline, Loretta Lynn, and Tammy Wynette. Significant events in music in the 1960s Elvis Presley returned to civilian life in the U.S. after two years away in the U.S. Army. He resumes his musical career by recording "It's Now or Never" and "Are You Lonesome Tonight?" in March 1960. Country music stars Patsy Cline, Cowboy Copas, and Hawkshaw Hawkins were killed when their plane crashed in Camden, TN while returning home from a Kansas City benefit show in March 1963. In July 1964, a plane crash claimed the life of another country music legend, Jim Reeves, when the plane he was piloting crashed in a turbulent thunderstorm while on final approach to Nashville International Airport. Sam Cooke was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles, California [11 December 1964] at age 33 under suspicious circumstances. Motown Record Corporation was founded in 1960. Its first Top Ten hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot 100, and was Motown's first million-selling record. Newcastle born Eric Burdon and his Band "The Animals" hit the No. 1 in charts in the U.S. with their hit single, "The House of the Rising Sun" in 1964. Folksinger and activist Joan Baez released her debut album on Vanguard Records in December 1960. The Marvelettes scored Motown Record Corporation's first US 1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman" in 1961. Motown would score 110 Billboard Top-Ten hits during its run. The Four Seasons released three straight number one hits In a widely anticipated and publicized event, The Beatles arrive in America in February 1964, spearheading the British Invasion. The Mary Poppins Original Soundtrack tops record charts. Sherman Brothers receive Grammys and double Oscars. Lesley Gore at age 17 hits number one on Billboard with "It's My Party" and number two with "You Don't Own Me" behind the Beatles "I Want To Hold Your Hand". The Supremes scored twelve number-one hit singles between 1964 and 1969, beginning with "Where Did Our Love Go". The Kinks release "You Really Got Me" in August 1964, which tops the British charts; it is regarded as the first hard rock hit and a blueprint for related genres, such as heavy metal. John Coltrane released A Love Supreme in late 1964, considered among the most acclaimed jazz albums of the era. The Grateful Dead was formed in 1965 (originally The Warlocks) thus paving the way for the emergence of acid rock. Bob Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival. Cilla Black's number-one hit "Anyone Who Had a Heart" still remains the top-selling single by a female artist in the UK from 1964. The Rolling Stones had a huge No. 1 hit with their song "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" in the summer of 1965. The Byrds released a cover of Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man", which reached No. 1 on the U.S. charts and repeated the feat in the U.K. shortly thereafter. The extremely influential track effectively creates the musical subgenre of folk rock. Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone" is a top-five hit on both sides of the Atlantic during the summer of 1965. Bob Dylan's 1965 albums Bringing It All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited ushered in album-focused rock and the "folk rock" genre. Simon and Garfunkel released "The Sound of Silence" single in 1965. The Beach Boys released Pet Sounds in 1966, which significantly influenced the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album released the following year. Bob Dylan was called "Judas" by an audience member during the Manchester Free Trade Hall concert, the start of the bootleg recording industry follows, with recordings of this concert circulating for 30 years – wrongly labeled as The Royal Albert Hall Concert – before a legitimate release in 1998 as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966, The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert. In February 1966, Nancy Sinatra's song "These Boots Are Made for Walkin' " became very popular. In 1966, The Supremes A' Go-Go was the first album by a female group to reach the top position of the Billboard magazine pop albums chart in the United States. The Seekers were the first Australian Group to have a number one with "Georgy Girl" in 1966. Jefferson Airplane released the influential Surrealistic Pillow in 1967. The Velvet Underground released its self-titled debut album The Velvet Underground & Nico in 1967. The Doors released its self-titled debut album The Doors in January 1967. Love released Forever Changes in 1967. The Procol Harum released A Whiter Shade of Pale in 1967. Cream released "Disraeli Gears" in 1967. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released two successful albums during 1967, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques. The Moody Blues released the album Days of Future Passed in November 1967. R & B legend Otis Redding has his first No. 1 hit with "Sitting on the Dock of the Bay". He also played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 just before he died in a plane crash. Pink Floyd released its debut record The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Bob Dylan released the Country rock album John Wesley Harding in December 1967. The Bee Gees released their international debut album Bee Gees 1st in July 1967 which included the pop standard "To Love Somebody". The Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 was the beginning of the "Summer of Love". The Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967. It was nicknamed "The Soundtrack of the Summer of Love". Johnny Cash released At Folsom Prison in 1968. 1968: after The Yardbirds fold, Led Zeppelin was formed by Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones; and, released their debut album Led Zeppelin. Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin as lead singer, became an overnight sensation after their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and released their second album Cheap Thrills in 1968. Gram Parsons with The Byrds released the influential LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo in late 1968, forming the basis for country rock. The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the influential double LP Electric Ladyland in 1968 that furthered the guitar and studio innovations of his previous two albums. Simon and Garfunkel released the single "Mrs. Robinson" in 1968; featured in the film The Graduate. Country music newcomer Jeannie C. Riley released the country and pop hit "Harper Valley PTA" in 1968, which is about a miniskirt-wearing mother of a teenage girl who was criticized by the local PTA for supposedly setting a bad example for her daughter, but turns the tables by exposing some of the PTA members' wrongdoings. The song, along with Riley's mod persona in connection with it, apparently gave country music a "sexual revolution" of its own, as hemlines of other female country artists' stage dresses began rising in the years that followed. Sly & the Family Stone revolutionized black music with their 1968 hit single "Dance to the Music" and by 1969 became international sensations with the release of their hit record Stand!. The band cemented their position as a vital counterculture band when they performed at the Woodstock Festival. The Gun released "Race with the Devil" in October 1968. After a long performance drought, Elvis Presley made a successful return to TV and live performances after spending most of the decade making movies, beginning with his '68 Comeback Special in December 1968 on NBC, followed in 1969 by a summer engagement in Las Vegas. Presley's return to live performing set the stage for his many concert tours and continued Vegas engagements throughout the 1970s until his death in 1977. The Foundations released Build Me Up Buttercup in December 1968 The Rolling Stones filmed the TV special The Rolling Stones Rock and Roll Circus in December 1968 but the film was not released for transmission. Considered for decades as a fabled "lost" performance until released in North America on Laserdisc and VHS in 1996. Features performances from The Who; The Dirty Mac featuring John Lennon, Eric Clapton and Mitch Mitchell; Jethro Tull and Taj Mahal. Spooky Tooth released their second album Spooky Two in March 1969. The album was an important hard rock milestone. The Woodstock Festival, and four months later, the Altamont Free Concert in 1969. The Who released and toured the first rock opera Tommy in 1969. Proto-punk band MC5 released the live album Kick Out the Jams in 1969. Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band released the avant garde Trout Mask Replica in 1969. Creedence Clearwater Revival released "Fortunate Son" in 1969. The song amassed popularity with the Anti-War movement at the time and would later be used in films, TV shows, and video games depicting the Vietnam War or the U.S during the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Stooges released their debut album in 1969. The Beatles released Abbey Road in 1969. King Crimson released their debut album In the Court of the Crimson King in 1969. Led Zeppelin released two of their self titled debut albums Led Zeppelin I and Led Zeppelin II in 1969. Film The highest-grossing film of the decade was 20th Century Fox's The Sound of Music (1965). Some of Hollywood's most notable blockbuster films of the 1960s include: 2001: A Space Odyssey The Apartment The Birds I Am Curious (Yellow) Bonnie and Clyde Breakfast at Tiffany's Bullitt Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid Carnival of Souls Cleopatra Cool Hand Luke The Dirty Dozen Doctor Zhivago Dr. Strangelove Easy Rider Exodus Faces Funny Girl Goldfinger The Graduate Guess Who's Coming to Dinner Head How the West Was Won The Hustler Ice Station Zebra In the Heat of the Night The Italian Job It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World Jason and the Argonauts Judgment at Nuremberg The Jungle Book Lawrence of Arabia The Lion in Winter The Longest Day The Love Bug A Man for All Seasons The Manchurian Candidate Mary Poppins Medium Cool Midnight Cowboy My Fair Lady Night of the Living Dead The Pink Panther The Odd Couple Oliver! One Hundred and One Dalmatians One Million Years B.C. Planet of the Apes Psycho Romeo and Juliet Rosemary's Baby The Sound of Music Spartacus Swiss Family Robinson To Kill a Mockingbird Valley of the Dolls West Side Story Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? The Wild Bunch The counterculture movement had a significant effect on cinema. Movies began to break social taboos such as sex and violence causing both controversy and fascination. They turned increasingly dramatic, unbalanced, and hectic as the cultural revolution was starting. This was the beginning of the New Hollywood era that dominated the next decade in theatres and revolutionized the film industry. Films of this time also focused on the changes happening in the world. Dennis Hopper's Easy Rider (1969) focused on the drug culture of the time. Movies also became more sexually explicit, such as Roger Vadim's Barbarella (1968) as the counterculture progressed. In Europe, Art Cinema gains wider distribution and sees movements like la Nouvelle Vague (The French New Wave) featuring French filmmakers such as Roger Vadim, François Truffaut, Alain Resnais, and Jean-Luc Godard; Cinéma vérité documentary movement in Canada, France and the United States; Swedish filmmaker Ingmar Bergman, Chilean filmmaker Alexandro Jodorowsky and Polish filmmakers Roman Polanski and Wojciech Jerzy Has produced original and offbeat masterpieces and the high-point of Italian filmmaking with Michelangelo Antonioni and Federico Fellini making some of their most known films during this period. Notable films from this period include: La Dolce Vita, 8½; La Notte; L'Eclisse, The Red Desert; Blowup; Fellini Satyricon; Accattone; The Gospel According to St. Matthew; Theorem; Winter Light; The Silence; Persona; Shame; A Passion; Au Hasard Balthazar; Mouchette; Last Year at Marienbad; Chronique d'un été; Titicut Follies; High School; Salesman; La jetée; Warrendale; Knife in the Water; Repulsion; The Saragossa Manuscript; El Topo; A Hard Day's Night; and the cinema verite Dont Look Back. In Japan, a film version of the story of the forty-seven ronin entitled Chushingura: Hana no Maki, Yuki no Maki directed by Hiroshi Inagaki was released in 1962, the legendary story was also remade as a television series in Japan. Academy Award-winning Japanese director Akira Kurosawa produced Yojimbo (1961), and Sanjuro (1962), which both starred Toshiro Mifune as a mysterious Samurai swordsman for hire. Like his previous films both had a profound influence around the world. The Spaghetti Western genre was a direct outgrowth of the Kurosawa films. The influence of these films is most apparent in Sergio Leone's A Fistful of Dollars (1964) starring Clint Eastwood and Walter Hill's Last Man Standing (1996). Yojimbo was also the origin of the "Man with No Name" trend which included Sergio Leone's For a Few Dollars More, and The Good, The Bad and The Ugly both also starring Clint Eastwood, and arguably continued through his 1968 opus Once Upon a Time in the West, starring Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, Claudia Cardinale, and Jason Robards. The Magnificent Seven a 1960 American western film directed by John Sturges was a remake of Akira Kurosawa's 1954 film, Seven Samurai. The 1960s were also about experimentation. With the explosion of light-weight and affordable cameras, the underground avant-garde film movement thrived. Canada's Michael Snow, Americans Kenneth Anger, Stan Brakhage, Andy Warhol, and Jack Smith. Notable films in this genre are: Dog Star Man; Scorpio Rising; Wavelength; Chelsea Girls; Blow Job; Vinyl; Flaming Creatures. Aside of Walt Disney's most important blockbusters One Hundred and One Dalmatians, Mary Poppins and The Jungle Book, Animated feature films which are of notable status include Gay Purr-ee, Hey There, It's Yogi Bear!, The Man Called Flintstone, Mad Monster Party?, Yellow Submarine and A Boy Named Charlie Brown. Significant events in the film industry in the 1960s Removal of the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code in 1967. The decline and end of the Studio System. The rise of "art house" films and theaters. The end of the classical hollywood cinema era. The beginning of the New Hollywood Era due to the counterculture. The rise of independent producers that worked outside the Studio System. Move to all-color production in Hollywood films. The invention of the Nagra 1/4", sync-sound, portable open-reel tape deck. Expo 67 where new film formats like Imax were invented and new ways of displaying film were tested. Flat-bed film editing tables appear, like the Steenbeck, they eventually replace the Moviola editing platform. The French New Wave. Direct Cinema and Cinéma vérité documentaries. The beginning of the Golden Age of Porn in 1969, which continued throughout the 1970s and into the first half of the 1980s. Television The most prominent American TV series of the 1960s include: The Ed Sullivan Show, Star Trek, Peyton Place, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Andy Williams Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Batman, McHale's Navy, Laugh-In, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Fugitive, The Tonight Show, Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan's Island, Mission: Impossible, The Flintstones, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Lassie, The Danny Thomas Show, The Lucy Show, My Three Sons, The Red Skelton Show, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. The Flintstones was a favoured show, receiving 40 million views an episode with an average of 3 million views a day. Some programming such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became controversial by challenging the foundations of America's corporate and governmental controls; making fun of world leaders, and questioning U.S. involvement in and escalation of the Vietnam War. Walt Disney, the founder of the Walt Disney Co. died on 15 December 1966, from a major tumor in his left lung. Fashion Significant fashion trends of the 1960s include: The Beatles exerted an enormous influence on young men's fashions and hairstyles in the 1960s which included most notably the mop-top haircut, the Beatle boots and the Nehru jacket. The hippie movement late in the decade also had a strong influence on clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye and batik fabrics, as well as paisley prints. The bikini came into fashion in 1963 after being featured in the film Beach Party. Mary Quant popularised the miniskirt, which became one of the most popular fashion rages in the late 1960s among young women and teenage girls. Its popularity continued throughout the first half of the 1970s and then disappeared temporarily from mainstream fashion before making a comeback in the mid-1980s. Men's mainstream hairstyles ranged from the pompadour, the crew cut, the flattop hairstyle, the tapered hairstyle, and short, parted hair in the early part of the decade, to longer parted hairstyles with sideburns towards the latter half of the decade. Women's mainstream hairstyles ranged from beehive hairdos, the bird's nest hairstyle, and the chignon hairstyle in the early part of the decade, to very short styles popularized by Twiggy and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby towards the latter half of the decade. African-American hairstyles for men and women included the afro. Literature Sports Olympics There were six Olympic Games held during the decade. These were: 1960 Summer Olympics 25 August – 11 September 1960, in Rome, Italy 1960 Winter Olympics 18–28 February 1960, in Squaw Valley, California, United States 1964 Summer Olympics 10–24 October 1964, in Tokyo, Japan 1964 Winter Olympics 29 January – 9 February 1964, in Innsbruck, Austria 1968 Summer Olympics 12–27 October 1968, in Mexico City, Mexico 1968 Winter Olympics 6–18 February 1968, in Grenoble, France Association football There were two FIFA World Cups during the decade: 1962 FIFA World Cup hosted in Chile, won by Brazil 1966 FIFA World Cup hosted and won by England Baseball The first wave of Major League Baseball expansion in 1961 included the formation of the Los Angeles Angels, the move to Minnesota to become the Minnesota Twins by the former Washington Senators and the formation of a new franchise called the Washington Senators. Major League Baseball sanctioned both the Houston Colt .45s and the New York Mets as new National League franchises in 1962. In 1969, the American League expanded when the Kansas City Royals and Seattle Pilots, were admitted to the league prompting the expansion of the post-season (in the form of the League Championship Series) for the first time since the creation of the World Series. The Pilots stayed just one season in Seattle before moving and becoming the Milwaukee Brewers in 1970. The National League also added two teams in 1969, the Montreal Expos and San Diego Padres. By 1969, the New York Mets won the World Series in only the 8th year of the team's existence. Basketball The NBA tournaments during the 1960s were dominated by the Boston Celtics, who won eight straight titles from 1959 to 1966 and added two more consecutive championships in 1968 and 1969, aided by such players as Bob Cousy, Bill Russell and John Havlicek. Other notable NBA players included Wilt Chamberlain, Elgin Baylor, Jerry West and Oscar Robertson. At the NCAA level, the UCLA Bruins also proved dominant. Coached by John Wooden, they were helped by Lew Alcindor and by Bill Walton to win championships and dominate the American college basketball landscape during the decade. Disc sports (Frisbee) Alternative sports, using the flying disc, began in the mid-sixties. As numbers of young people became alienated from social norms, they resisted and looked for alternatives. They would form what would become known as the counterculture. The forms of escape and resistance would manifest in many ways including social activism, alternative lifestyles, experimental living through foods, dress, music and alternative recreational activities, including that of throwing a Frisbee. Starting with promotional efforts from Wham-O and Irwin Toy (Canada), a few tournaments and professionals using Frisbee show tours to perform at universities, fairs and sporting events, disc sports such as freestyle, double disc court, guts, disc ultimate and disc golf became this sports first events. Two sports, the team sport of disc ultimate and disc golf are very popular worldwide and are now being played semi professionally. The World Flying Disc Federation, Professional Disc Golf Association and the Freestyle Players Association are the official rules and sanctioning organizations for flying disc sports worldwide. Major League Ultimate (MLU) and the American Ultimate Disc League (AUDL) are the first semi-professional ultimate leagues. Racing In motorsports, the Can-Am and Trans-Am series were both established in 1966. The Ford GT40 won outright in the 24 Hours of Le Mans. Graham Hill edged out Jackie Stewart and Denny Hulme for the World Championship in Formula One. People Activists Some activist leaders of the 1960s period include: Joan Baez James Baldwin James Bevel Stokely Carmichael Rennie Davis David Dellinger Bob Dylan Medgar Evers Lawrence Ferlinghetti Allen Ginsberg Dick Gregory Abbie Hoffman Jesse Jackson Barbara Jordan Bernard Lafayette Timothy Leary John Lennon John Lewis Martin Luther King Jr. James Meredith Diane Nash Phil Ochs Yoko Ono Jerry Rubin Mario Savio Fred Shuttlesworth Gloria Steinem Malcolm X Andrew Young Actors / Entertainers Eddie Albert Jack Albertson Steve Allen Woody Allen Julie Andrews James Arness Fred Astaire Richard Attenborough Stéphane Audran Charles Aznavour Carroll Baker Barbara Bain Lucille Ball Martin Balsam Anne Bancroft Brigitte Bardot Richard Basehart Alan Bates Anne Baxter Warren Beatty Jean-Paul Belmondo Robert Blake Brian Blessed Dirk Bogarde Richard Boone Shirley Booth Ernest Borgnine Tom Bosley Stephen Boyd Marlon Brando Lloyd Bridges Charles Bronson Mel Brooks Jim Brown Lenny Bruce Yul Brynner Richard Burton Raymond Burr Sid Caesar Michael Caine Rory Calhoun Claudia Cardinale Yvonne De Carlo Leslie Caron John Carradine Diahann Carroll Johnny Carson John Cassavetes George Chakiris Julie Christie Lee Van Cleef Montgomery Clift Lee J. Cobb James Coburn Joan Collins Sean Connery Chuck Connors Robert Conrad Bill Cosby Tom Courtenay Bob Crane Johnny Crawford Bing Crosby Robert Culp Tony Curtis Peter Cushing Sammy Davis Jr. Doris Day Ruby Dee Sandra Dee Alain Delon Catherine Deneuve Brandon deWilde Angie Dickinson Troy Donahue Diana Dors Kirk Douglas James Drury Patty Duke Faye Dunaway Robert Duvall Dick Van Dyke Clint Eastwood Barbara Eden Anita Ekberg Peter Falk Mia Farrow Mel Ferrer José Ferrer Peter Finch Albert Finney Jo Van Fleet Henry Fonda Jane Fonda Peter Fonda Glenn Ford John Forsythe Anthony Franciosa Louis de Funès Clark Gable Eva Gabor Zsa Zsa Gabor James Garner Judy Garland Vittorio Gassman Jackie Gleason Cary Grant Stewart Granger Lorne Greene Andy Griffith Alec Guinness Fred Gwynne Gene Hackman Larry Hagman Jonathan Harris Richard Harris William Hartnell Tippi Hedren Van Heflin Audrey Hepburn Katharine Hepburn Charlton Heston Dustin Hoffman William Holden James Hong Dennis Hopper Bob Hope Rock Hudson Jeffrey Hunter Tab Hunter John Ireland Burl Ives Glynis Johns Carolyn Jones Shirley Jones Katy Jurado Anna Karina Danny Kaye Brian Keith George Kennedy Gene Kelly Grace Kelly Jack Kelly Eartha Kitt Jack Klugman Don Knotts Martin Landau Burt Lancaster Angela Lansbury Peter Lawford Cloris Leachman Bruce Lee Christopher Lee Janet Leigh Jack Lemmon Jerry Lewis Robert Loggia Gina Lollobrigida Julie London Sophia Loren Peter Lorre Darren McGavin Fred MacMurray Shirley MacLaine Jayne Mansfield Karl Malden Dorothy Malone Dean Martin Lee Marvin James Mason Marcello Mastroianni David McCallum Roddy McDowall Steve McQueen Burgess Meredith Toshiro Mifune Vera Miles Sal Mineo Robert Mitchum Elizabeth Montgomery Roger Moore Marilyn Monroe Jeanne Moreau Rita Moreno Harry Morgan Robert Morse Don Murray Patricia Neal Paul Newman Julie Newmar Barbara Nichols Leslie Nielsen Leonard Nimoy David Niven Kim Novak Maureen O'Hara Laurence Olivier Peter O'Toole Geraldine Page Janis Paige Eleanor Parker Jack Palance Gregory Peck George Peppard Anthony Perkins Michel Piccoli Donald Pleasence Suzanne Pleshette Christopher Plummer Sidney Poitier Paula Prentiss Elvis Presley Vincent Price Anthony Quayle Anthony Quinn Tony Randall Lynn Redgrave Michael Redgrave Vanessa Redgrave Oliver Reed Robert Reed Carl Reiner Lee Remick Don Rickles Diana Rigg Thelma Ritter Robert Redford Burt Reynolds Debbie Reynolds Jason Robards Cliff Robertson Edward G. Robinson Cesar Romero Mickey Rooney Barbara Rush Eva Marie Saint George Sanders Telly Savalas John Saxon Maximilian Schell George C. Scott George Segal Jean Seberg Edie Sedgwick Peter Sellers Omar Sharif William Shatner Jean Simmons Frank Sinatra Ann Sothern Robert Stack Terence Stamp James Stewart Barbra Streisand Woody Strode Barry Sullivan Ed Sullivan Donald Sutherland Max von Sydow Sharon Tate Jacques Tati Elizabeth Taylor Rod Taylor Jean-Louis Trintignant Patrick Troughton Cicely Tyson Raf Vallone Robert Vaughn Robert Wagner Eli Wallach Burt Ward John Wayne Raquel Welch Adam West Stuart Whitman Richard Widmark Jonathan Winters Shelley Winters Natalie Wood Joanne Woodward Keenan Wynn Efrem Zimbalist Jr. Filmmakers Alfred Hitchcock Stanley Kubrick Ingmar Bergman Federico Fellini Orson Welles Roman Polanski Akira Kurosawa Jean-Luc Godard Pier Paolo Pasolini François Truffaut Sergio Leone David Lean Sidney Lumet John Ford Dennis Hopper John Huston John Sturges Sam Peckinpah Billy Wilder Blake Edwards Arthur Penn Michelangelo Antonioni Alain Resnais Claude Chabrol George Romero Eric Rohmer Don Siegel Jean Rouch Robert Mulligan Andreï Tarkovsky Luchino Visconti Jerry Lewis Luis Buñuel Joseph Losey Richard Fleisher Joseph L. Mankiewicz John Huston Luigi Comencini Elia Kazan Stuart Rosenberg Woody Allen Mike Nichols Robert Wise Norman Jewison Mario Bava Lucio Fulci Robert Aldrich Stanley Kramer Howard Hawks Jacques Tati Lewis Milestone Mikhaïl Kalatozov Stanley Donen George Cukor John Frankenheimer Sydney Pollack Ken Loach Michael Powell Anthony Mann Jack Clayton Vittorio De Sica Musicians Paul Anka Louis Armstrong Eddy Arnold Chet Atkins Burt Bacharach Joan Baez Pearl Bailey Tony Bennett Chuck Berry Art Blakey Bobby Bland Pat Boone David Bowie James Brown Solomon Burke Jerry Butler Glen Campbell Johnny Cash Ray Charles Chubby Checker Lou Christie Eric Clapton Dee Clark Petula Clark Patsy Cline Rosemary Clooney Nat "King" Cole Sam Cooke Leonard Cohen John Coltrane King Crimson Bing Crosby Bobby Darin Miles Davis Sammy Davis Jr. Neil Diamond Bo Diddley Dion DiMucci Fats Domino Bob Dylan Duke Ellington Art Farmer Eddie Fisher Ella Fitzgerald Tennessee Ernie Ford Aretha Franklin Marvin Gaye Robin Gibb Dizzy Gillespie Eydie Gormé Buddy Guy Merle Haggard Lena Horne Burl Ives Etta James Sonny James Waylon Jennings George Jones Quincy Jones Tom Jones Janis Joplin B.B. King Ben E. King Freddie King Eartha Kitt Frankie Laine Brenda Lee Peggy Lee Jerry Lee Lewis Loretta Lynn Manfred Mann Bob Marley Dean Martin Johnny Mathis Curtis Mayfield Barry McGuire Roger Miller Charles Mingus Guy Mitchell Joni Mitchell Thelonious Monk Bill Monroe Wes Montgomery Jim Morrison Ricky Nelson Sandy Nelson Willie Nelson Roy Orbison Buck Owens Dolly Parton Elvis Presley Ray Price Charley Pride Lou Rawls Jerry Reed Jimmy Reed Lou Reed Della Reese Otis Redding Cliff Richard Little Richard Jeannie C. Riley Tex Ritter Max Roach Marty Robbins Jimmy Rodgers Sonny Rollins Neil Sedaka Pete Seeger Nina Simone Frank Sinatra Hank Snow Rod Stewart Joan Sutherland Hank Thompson Conway Twitty Ernest Tubb Big Joe Turner Ike & Tina Turner Sarah Vaughan Bobby Vee Gene Vincent Porter Wagoner Dionne Warwick Dinah Washington Muddy Waters Kitty Wells Dottie West Howlin' Wolf Andy Williams Jackie Wilson Nancy Wilson Stevie Wonder Faron Young Neil Young Frank Zappa Bands The Beatles The Beach Boys The Supremes The Rolling Stones The Jimi Hendrix Experience Pink Floyd Led Zeppelin Jefferson Airplane The Mamas & the Papas Creedence Clearwater Revival Simon and Garfunkel The Animals The Doors Cream The Jackson 5 The Righteous Brothers Grateful Dead The Velvet Underground The Shadows The Yardbirds Moody Blues The Who The Kinks Iron Butterfly Blood, Sweat and Tears The Four Tops The Temptations The Zombies Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass The Ronettes The Mothers of Invention The Hollies The Stooges Santana The Marvelettes Procol Harum The Monkees The Miracles The Impressions Gladys Knight & the Pips Writers Kurt Vonnegut Isaac Asimov Ray Bradbury Doctor Seuss Gabriel Garcia Marquez Arthur Miller Sylvia Plath Philip K. Dick Carlos Castaneda Truman Capote John Steinbeck Arthur C. Clarke Harper Lee Jack Kerouac Robert Heinlein Ken Kesey Joseph Heller Henry Miller Hunter S. Thompson Edward Albee Gore Vidal William S. Burroughs Frank Herbert Charles M. Schultz Anthony Burgess Thomas Pinchon Tom Stoppard Seamus Heaney Joseph Campbell Edward Abbey Norman Podhoretz Amiri Baraka James Graham Ballard Noël Coward Philip Larkin Agatha Christie James Baldwin Lorraine Hansberry Sports figures Hank Aaron Muhammad Ali Ernie Banks Gordon Banks Elgin Baylor Yogi Berra George Best Abebe Bikila Lou Brock Jim Brown Matt Busby Dick Butkus John Carlos Věra Čáslavská Wilt Chamberlain Bobby Charlton Jack Charlton Roberto Clemente Otis Davis Alfredo Di Stefano Yukio Endō Lee Evans Eusebio Garrincha Bob Gibson Charles Greene John Havlicek Bob Hayes Jim Hines Geoff Hurst Giacinto Facchetti Peggy Fleming Paul Hornung Vince Lombardi Rafer Johnson Sam Jones K. C. Jones Kipchoge Keino Mickey Mantle Vincent Matthews Willie Mays Willie McCovey Bobby Moore Pedro Morales Joe Namath Jack Nicklaus Ray Nitschke Al Oerter Arnold Palmer Pelé Richard Petty Ferenc Puskás Alf Ramsey Oscar Robertson Frank Robinson Bobby Robson Bill Russell Satch Sanders Gale Sayers Bill Shankly Ronnie Ray Smith Tommie Smith Bart Starr Giovanni Trapattoni Johnny Unitas Jerry West Fred Williamson Mamo Wolde Lev Yashin See also 1960s decor Baby Boomers (people who were children or teenagers during this decade) List of underground newspapers of the 1960s counterculture The Sixties Unplugged (book) Timelines The following articles contain brief timelines which list the most prominent events of the decade: 1960 • 1961 • 1962 • 1963 • 1964 • 1965 • 1966 • 1967 • 1968 • 1969 • Timeline of 1960s counterculture Notes References Further reading Anastakis, Dimitry, ed. The Sixties: passion, politics, and style (McGill-Queen's Press-MQUP, 2008.) Canadian emphasis Baugess, James S., and Abbe Debolt, eds. Encyclopedia of the Sixties: A Decade of Culture and Counterculture (2 vol, 2012; also E-book) 871pp; 500 entries by scholars excerpt and text search; online review Berton, Pierre. 1967: the Last Good Year (Toronto: Doubleday Canada, 1997). Canadian events Brooks, Victor. Last Season of Innocence: The Teen Experience in the 1960s (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) 207 pp. Brown, Timothy Scott. West Germany and the Global Sixties (2013) Christiansen, Samantha and Zachary Scarlett, ed. The Third World and the Global 1960s (New York: Berghahn, 2013) Introduction Farber, David, and Beth Bailey, eds. The Columbia guide to America in the 1960s (Columbia University Press, 2003). Farber, David, ed. The Sixties: From Memory to History (1994), Scholarly essays on the United States Flamm, Michael W. and David Steigerwald. Debating the 1960s: Liberal, Conservative, and Radical Perspectives (2007) on USA Maurice Isserman and Michael Kazin, America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s (6th ed. 2020) Marwick, Arthur. The Sixties: Cultural Revolution in Britain, France, Italy, and the United States, c.1958-c.1974 (Oxford University Press, 1998, ) Matusow, Allen, The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s (1984) excerpt Padva, Gilad. Animated Nostalgia and Invented Authenticity in Arte's Summer of the Sixties. In Padva, Gilad, Queer Nostalgia in Cinema and Pop Culture, pp. 13–34 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, ). Palmer, Bryan D. Canada's 1960s: The Ironies of Identity in a Rebellious Era. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2009. Sandbrook, Dominic. Never Had It So Good: A History of Britain from Suez to the Beatles (2006) 928pp; excerpt and text search Sandbrook, Dominic. White Heat: A History of Britain in the Swinging Sixties (2 vol 2007) Strain, Christopher B. The Long Sixties: America, 1955–1973 (Wiley, 2017). xii, 204 pp. Unger, Debi, and Irwin Unger, eds. The Times Were a Changin': The Sixties Reader (1998) excerpt and text search Historiography DeKoven, Marianne. The Sixties and the Emergence of the Postmodern (Duke University Press, 2004) Farber, David R. The Sixties: From Memory to History (1994) excerpt and text search Hunt, Andrew. "When Did the |
Russian forces conclude capture of the Chechen capital Grozny. February 9 – Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 50 years, which lasts until March and kills 800 people. February 21 – UNESCO holds the inaugural celebration of International Mother Language Day. February 29 – A rare century leap year date occurs. Usually, century years are common years due to not being exactly divisible by 400. 2000 is the first such year to have a February 29 since the year 1600, making it only the second such occasion since the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in the late 16th century. The next such leap year will occur in 2400. March March 4 – The PlayStation 2 is released in Japan, followed by other releases in western markets in late 2000. March 8 – Naka-Meguro derailment: A sideswipe collision of two Tokyo Metro trains kills five people. March 10 – The NASDAQ Composite Index reaches an all-time high of 5,048. Two weeks later, the NASDAQ-100, S&P 500, and Wilshire 5000 reach their peaks prior to the Dot-com bubble, ending a bull market run that had lasted over 17 years. March 12 Pope John Paul II apologizes for the wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages. A Zenit-3SL sea launch fails due to a software bug. March 13 – The United States dollar becomes the official currency of Ecuador, replacing the Ecuadorian sucre. March 17 – Uganda mass death: 778 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in Uganda. April April 3 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors. April 22 – In a predawn raid, federal agents seize 6-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami and fly him to his Cuban father in Washington, D.C., ending one of the most publicized custody battles in U.S. history. April 30 – Canonization of Faustina Kowalska in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide. May May 1 – A new class of composite material is fabricated, which has a combination of physical properties never before seen in a natural or man-made material. May 3 – In San Antonio, Texas, computer pioneer Datapoint files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. May 4 – The 7.6 Central Sulawesi earthquake affects Banggai, Indonesia, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong), leaving 46 dead and 264 injured. May 5 After originating in the Philippines, the ILOVEYOU computer virus spreads quickly throughout the world. A rare conjunction of seven celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, planets Mercury–Saturn) occurs during the new moon. May 11 – India's population reaches 1 billion. May 13 A fireworks factory disaster in Enschede, Netherlands, kills 23. Millennium Force opens at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio as the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster May 24 – Real Madrid C.F. defeats Valencia CF 3–0 in the UEFA Champions League Final at Stade de France to win their second title between 1998 and 2002, and their eighth overall. June June 4 – The 7.9 Enggano earthquake shakes southwestern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong), killing 103 people and injuring 2,174–2,585. June 5 – 405 The Movie, the first short film widely distributed on the Internet, is released. June 10 – July 2 – Belgium and the Netherlands jointly host the UEFA Euro 2000 football tournament, which is won by France. June 17 – A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day. June 26 – A preliminary draft of genomes, as part of the Human Genome Project, is finished. It is announced at the White House by President Clinton. June 28 – Elián González returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel González, ending a protracted custody battle. June 30 – At the Roskilde Festival near Copenhagen, Denmark, nine die and 26 are injured on a set while the rock group Pearl Jam performs. July July 1 – The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden is officially opened for traffic. July 2 – France defeats Italy 2–1 after extra time in the final of the European Championship, becoming the first team to win the World Cup and European Championship consecutively. July 7 – The draft assembly of Human Genome Project announced at the White House by President Bill Clinton, Francis Collins, and Craig Venter. July 10 – In southern Nigeria, a leaking petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers who were scavenging gasoline. July 14 – A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth. July 25 – Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde aircraft, crashes into a hotel in Gonesse just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and 4 in the hotel. August August 3 – Rioting erupts on the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, after more than 100 people besiege a block of flats allegedly housing a convicted paedophile. This is the latest vigilante violence against suspected sex offenders since the beginning of the "naming and shaming" anti-pedophile campaign by the tabloid newspaper News of the World. August 7 – DeviantART is launched. August 8 – The Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor. August 12 – The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea during one of the largest Russian naval exercises since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of all 118 men on board. August 14 – Tsar Nicholas II and his family are canonized by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. September September 6 – The last wholly Swedish-owned arms manufacturer, Bofors, is sold to American arms manufacturer United Defense. September 6–8 – World leaders attend the Millennium Summit at U.N. Headquarters. September 7–14 – Fuel protests take place in the United Kingdom, with refineries blockaded, and supply to the country's network of petrol stations halted. September 10 – Operation Barras: A British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment that were held captive for over two weeks during the Sierra Leone Civil War, all of which were rescued. September 13 – Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X for US$29.95. September 15 – October 1 – The 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia, is the first Olympic Games of the 2000s. September 16 – Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze is last seen alive; this day is taken as the commemoration date of his death. September 26 – The Greek ferry Express Samina sinks off the coast of the island of Paros; 80 out of a total of over 500 passengers perish in one of Greece's worst sea disasters. September 29 – HM Prison Maze, a prison used to incarcerate members of illegal paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland closes as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. October October 3 – Approximate start of Autumn 2000 Western Europe floods (particularly affecting England) precipitated by days of heavy rain. October 5 – Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milošević. October 11 – of coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky (considered a greater environmental disaster than the Exxon Valdez oil spill). October 12 – In Aden, Yemen, USS Cole is badly damaged by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who place a small boat laden with explosives alongside the United States Navy destroyer, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39. October 17 – A Great North Eastern Railway Intercity 225 Express Train derails, killing four people and injuring many others, in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. October 22 The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper exposes Japanese archeologist Shinichi Fujimura as a fraud; Japanese archaeologists had based their treatises on his findings. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong formally negotiate Japan-Singapore Economic Agreement for a New Age Partnership (JSEPA). October 26 Pakistani authorities announce that their police have found an apparent mummy of an alleged Persian Princess in the province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The governments of Iran, Pakistan as well as the Taliban of Afghanistan all claim the mummy until Pakistan announces it is a modern-day forgery in April 2001. The New York Yankees defeat the New York Mets 4–2 in the fifth game | agreement to purchase Time Warner for $162 billion (the largest-ever corporate merger). January 14 The Dow Jones Industrial Average closes at 11,722.98 (at the peak of the Dot-com bubble). The United Nations' International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia sentences five Bosnian Croats to up to 25 years in prison for the 1993 killing of more than 100 Bosnian Muslims. January 30 – Kenya Airways Flight 431 crashes off the Ivory Coast into the Atlantic Ocean, killing 169 people. January 31 Alaska Airlines Flight 261 crashes off the California coast into the Pacific Ocean; all 88 passengers and crew are killed. Dr. Harold Shipman is found guilty of murdering 15 patients between 1995 and 1998 at Hyde, Greater Manchester, UK, and sentenced to life imprisonment. The subsequent enquiry considers him to have killed at least 215 people. February February 5 – Second Chechen War: Novye Aldi massacre – Russian forces summarily execute 56-60 civilians in a suburb of Grozny. February 6 – Second Chechen War: Battle of Grozny (1999–2000) ends with Russian forces conclude capture of the Chechen capital Grozny. February 9 – Torrential rains in Africa lead to the worst flooding in Mozambique in 50 years, which lasts until March and kills 800 people. February 21 – UNESCO holds the inaugural celebration of International Mother Language Day. February 29 – A rare century leap year date occurs. Usually, century years are common years due to not being exactly divisible by 400. 2000 is the first such year to have a February 29 since the year 1600, making it only the second such occasion since the Gregorian Calendar was introduced in the late 16th century. The next such leap year will occur in 2400. March March 4 – The PlayStation 2 is released in Japan, followed by other releases in western markets in late 2000. March 8 – Naka-Meguro derailment: A sideswipe collision of two Tokyo Metro trains kills five people. March 10 – The NASDAQ Composite Index reaches an all-time high of 5,048. Two weeks later, the NASDAQ-100, S&P 500, and Wilshire 5000 reach their peaks prior to the Dot-com bubble, ending a bull market run that had lasted over 17 years. March 12 Pope John Paul II apologizes for the wrongdoings by members of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the ages. A Zenit-3SL sea launch fails due to a software bug. March 13 – The United States dollar becomes the official currency of Ecuador, replacing the Ecuadorian sucre. March 17 – Uganda mass death: 778 members of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God die in Uganda. April April 3 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: Microsoft is ruled to have violated United States antitrust laws by keeping "an oppressive thumb" on its competitors. April 22 – In a predawn raid, federal agents seize 6-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami and fly him to his Cuban father in Washington, D.C., ending one of the most publicized custody battles in U.S. history. April 30 – Canonization of Faustina Kowalska in the presence of 200,000 people and the first Divine Mercy Sunday celebrated worldwide. May May 1 – A new class of composite material is fabricated, which has a combination of physical properties never before seen in a natural or man-made material. May 3 – In San Antonio, Texas, computer pioneer Datapoint files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. May 4 – The 7.6 Central Sulawesi earthquake affects Banggai, Indonesia, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong), leaving 46 dead and 264 injured. May 5 After originating in the Philippines, the ILOVEYOU computer virus spreads quickly throughout the world. A rare conjunction of seven celestial bodies (Sun, Moon, planets Mercury–Saturn) occurs during the new moon. May 11 – India's population reaches 1 billion. May 13 A fireworks factory disaster in Enschede, Netherlands, kills 23. Millennium Force opens at Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio as the world's tallest and fastest roller coaster May 24 – Real Madrid C.F. defeats Valencia CF 3–0 in the UEFA Champions League Final at Stade de France to win their second title between 1998 and 2002, and their eighth overall. June June 4 – The 7.9 Enggano earthquake shakes southwestern Sumatra with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VI (Strong), killing 103 people and injuring 2,174–2,585. June 5 – 405 The Movie, the first short film widely distributed on the Internet, is released. June 10 – July 2 – Belgium and the Netherlands jointly host the UEFA Euro 2000 football tournament, which is won by France. June 17 – A centennial earthquake (6.5 on the Richter scale) hits Iceland on its national day. June 26 – A preliminary draft of genomes, as part of the Human Genome Project, is finished. It is announced at the White House by President Clinton. June 28 – Elián González returns to Cuba with his father, Juan Miguel González, ending a protracted custody battle. June 30 – At the Roskilde Festival near Copenhagen, Denmark, nine die and 26 are injured on a set while the rock group Pearl Jam performs. July July 1 – The Øresund Bridge between Denmark and Sweden is officially opened for traffic. July 2 – France defeats Italy 2–1 after extra time in the final of the European Championship, becoming the first team to win the World Cup and European Championship consecutively. July 7 – The draft assembly of Human Genome Project announced at the White House by President Bill Clinton, Francis Collins, and Craig Venter. July 10 – In southern Nigeria, a leaking petroleum pipeline explodes, killing about 250 villagers who were scavenging gasoline. July 14 – A powerful solar flare, later named the Bastille Day event, causes a geomagnetic storm on Earth. July 25 – Air France Flight 4590, a Concorde aircraft, crashes into a hotel in Gonesse just after takeoff from Paris, killing all 109 aboard and 4 in the hotel. August August 3 – Rioting erupts on the Paulsgrove estate in Portsmouth, Hampshire, England, after more than 100 people besiege a block of flats allegedly housing a convicted paedophile. This is the latest vigilante violence against suspected sex offenders since the beginning of the "naming and shaming" anti-pedophile campaign by the tabloid newspaper News of the World. August 7 – DeviantART is launched. August 8 – The Confederate submarine H. L. Hunley is raised to the surface after 136 years on the ocean floor. August 12 – The Russian submarine Kursk sinks in the Barents Sea during one of the largest Russian naval exercises since the 1991 dissolution of the Soviet Union, resulting in the deaths of all 118 men on board. August 14 – Tsar Nicholas II and his family are canonized by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. September September 6 – The last wholly Swedish-owned arms manufacturer, Bofors, is sold to American arms manufacturer United Defense. September 6–8 – World leaders attend the Millennium Summit at U.N. Headquarters. September 7–14 – Fuel protests take place in the United Kingdom, with refineries blockaded, and supply to the country's network of petrol stations halted. September 10 – Operation Barras: A British military operation to free five soldiers from the Royal Irish Regiment that were held captive for over two weeks during the Sierra Leone Civil War, all of which were rescued. September 13 – Steve Jobs introduces the public beta of Mac OS X for US$29.95. September 15 – October 1 – The 2000 Summer Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia, is the first Olympic Games of the 2000s. September 16 – Ukrainian journalist Georgiy Gongadze is last seen alive; this day is taken as the commemoration date of his death. September 26 – The Greek ferry Express Samina sinks off the coast of the island of Paros; 80 out of a total of over 500 passengers perish in one of Greece's worst sea disasters. September 29 – HM Prison Maze, a prison used to incarcerate members of illegal paramilitaries during the Troubles in Northern Ireland closes as a result of the Good Friday Agreement. October October 3 – Approximate start of Autumn 2000 Western Europe floods (particularly affecting England) precipitated by days of heavy rain. October 5 – Mass demonstrations in Belgrade lead to resignation of Yugoslavia's president Slobodan Milošević. October 11 – of coal sludge spill in Martin County, Kentucky (considered a greater environmental disaster than the Exxon Valdez oil spill). October 12 – In Aden, Yemen, USS Cole is badly damaged by two Al-Qaeda suicide bombers, who place a small boat laden with explosives alongside the United States Navy destroyer, killing 17 crew members and wounding at least 39. October 17 – A Great North Eastern Railway Intercity 225 Express Train derails, killing four people and injuring many others, in Hatfield, Hertfordshire, United Kingdom. October 22 The Mainichi Shimbun newspaper exposes Japanese archeologist Shinichi Fujimura as a fraud; Japanese archaeologists had based their treatises on his findings. Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and Singaporean Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong formally negotiate Japan-Singapore Economic Agreement for a New Age Partnership (JSEPA). October 26 Pakistani authorities announce that their police have found an apparent mummy of an alleged Persian Princess in the province of Balochistan, Pakistan. The governments of Iran, Pakistan as well as the Taliban of Afghanistan all claim the mummy until Pakistan announces it is a modern-day forgery in April 2001. The New York Yankees defeat the New York Mets 4–2 in the fifth game of the World Series to win the first "Subway Series" since 1956 by 4 games to 1. The series win was the Yankees third in a row and 26th overall. October 31 Soyuz TM-31 is launched, carrying the first resident crew to the International Space Station. The ISS has been continuously crewed since. Singapore Airlines Flight 006 collides with construction equipment in the Chiang Kai Shek International Airport, resulting in 83 deaths. November November 2 – The first resident crew enters the International Space Station. November 7 In London, a criminal gang raids the Millennium Dome to steal the Millennium Star diamond, but police surveillance catches them in the act. The 2000 United States Presidential Election: No winner can be declared, prompting a controversial recount in Florida. November 11 – Kaprun disaster, Austria: A funicular fire in an Alpine tunnel kills 155 skiers and snowboarders. November 12 – The United States recognizes the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. November 17 – A catastrophic landslide in Log pod Mangartom, Slovenia, kills 7, and causes millions of SIT of damage. It is one of the worst catastrophes in Slovenia in the past 100 years. December December 7 – Kadisoka temple is discovered in Sleman, Yogyakarta, Indonesia. December 12 – Bush v. Gore: The United States Supreme Court rules that the recount of the 2000 presidential election in Florida should be halted and the original results be certified, thus making George W. Bush the winner of the U.S. presidential election. December 15 – The third and final reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is shut down and the station is shut down completely. December 24 - The Christmas Eve bombings in several churches in Indonesia, kills 18 people. December 25 – The Luoyang Christmas fire at a shopping center in China kills 309 people. World population Births January–March January 8 – Noah Cyrus, American |
culminates in Australia's 13–12 victory over Great Britain at the Sydney Cricket Ground before about 24,450 spectators. American Roy Sullivan is struck by lightning for the seventh time. June 26 Elvis Presley holds his last concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis. Some 200,000 protesters march through the streets of San Francisco, protesting Anita Bryant's anti-gay remarks and the murder of Robert Hillsborough. 16-year-old shop assistant Jayne Macdonald is murdered by the Yorkshire Ripper in Leeds, England. June 27 – Djibouti receives its independence from France. June 30 The Southeast Asia Treaty Organization is permanently disbanded. The Women Marines are disbanded, and the women are integrated into regular Marine Corps. U.S. President Jimmy Carter announces the cancellation of the B-1 Bomber program (it is later revived by the Reagan Administration). July July 1 CKO (a Canadian all news radio network) begins broadcasting. The East African Community is dissolved. The Championships, Wimbledon (tennis) – Virginia Wade wins the women's singles title in the centenary year of the tournament, Wade's first and only Wimbledon title and her third and final Grand Slam title overall; she remains the last British woman to win the singles title at Wimbledon. July 5 – General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq overthrows Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the first elected Prime Minister of Pakistan. July 9 – The Pinochet dictatorship in Chile organises the youth event of Acto de Chacarillas, a ritualised act reminiscent of Francoist Spain. July 10 – A temperature of , a record for continental Europe, is recorded in Greece. July 13 Somalia declares war on Ethiopia, starting the Ethio-Somali War. The New York City blackout of 1977 lasts for 25 hours, resulting in looting and other disorder. July 15 – Anti-drug campaigner Donald Mackay disappears near Griffith, New South Wales (presumed murdered). July 19 – 20 – Flooding in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, caused by massive rainfall, kills over 75 people and causes billions in damage. July 21 – 24 – The Libyan–Egyptian War, sparked by a Libyan raid on Sallum, begins. July 21 – Süleyman Demirel, of AP forms the new government of Turkey (41st government a three-party coalition, so-called second national front ()). July 22 – The purged Chinese Communist leader Deng Xiaoping is restored to power nine months after the "Gang of Four" was expelled from power in a coup d'état. July 24 – Led Zeppelin presents its last American concert in Oakland, California, at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum. A brawl erupts between Led Zeppelin's crew and the staff of the promoter Bill Graham, resulting in criminal assault charges for several members of the Led Zeppelin group including the drummer John Bonham. July 27 – The Soviet Politburo orders Boris Yeltsin to demolish the Ipatiev House, where Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and his family were shot in 1918. Yeltsin eventually calls this a barbarian act. July 28 The first oil through the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System reaches Valdez, Alaska. Emanuel Jaques, 12, is abducted after being lured into an apartment building under false pretenses on Yonge Street in downtown Toronto. His strangled body is found several days later under a pile of wood on the building's rooftop. Four men are apprehended for the crime. July 30 – Left-wing German terrorists Susanne Albrecht, Brigitte Mohnhaupt and Christian Klar assassinate Jürgen Ponto, chairman of the Dresdner Bank in Oberursel, West Germany. August August 3 United States Senate hearings on Project MKUltra are held. The Tandy Corporation TRS-80 Model I computer is announced at a press conference. August 4 – U.S. President Jimmy Carter signs legislation creating the United States Department of Energy. August 7 – Mount Usu volcano in Japan erupts. August 9 – The military-controlled government of Uruguay announces that it will return the nation to civilian rule through general elections in 1981 for a President and Congress. August 9 – Hulk Hogan debuts as The Super Destroyer for Championship Wrestling from Florida when he is defeated by Don Serrano at John Carroll Catholic High School's gym in Fort Pierce, Florida August 10 – David Berkowitz is captured in Yonkers, New York, after over a year of murders in New York City as the "Son of Sam". August 12 – The NASA Space Shuttle, named Enterprise, makes its first test free-flight from the back of a Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft. August 15 The Big Ear, a radio telescope operated by Ohio State University as part of the SETI project, receives a radio signal from deep space; the event is named the Wow! signal for a notation made by a volunteer on the project. Herbert Kappler escapes from the Caelian Hill military hospital in Rome. August 16 Elvis Presley, the "King of Rock and Roll", dies in his home in Graceland at age 42. 75,000 fans line the streets of Memphis for his funeral, which occurred on August 18. Supertanker Pierre Guillaumat is launched at Saint-Nazaire; she is the all-time world's largest ship (by deadweight tonnage and length overall) at launch. August 17 The Soviet icebreaker Arktika becomes the first surface ship to reach the North Pole. New York City ban on Concorde test flights is overturned. August 19 – Comedian Groucho Marx dies of pneumonia at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, at the age of 86 (born 1890). August 20 – Voyager program: The United States launches the Voyager 2 spacecraft. August 21 – Actor/dancer Danny Lockin is murdered by a man he met in a Garden Grove, California, bar just hours after taping a winning skit on The Gong Show. August 26 – The National Assembly of Quebec passes the Charter of the French Language (Law 101, La charte de la langue française) making French the official language of the Canadian province of Quebec. September September – Evangelical pastor Oral Roberts publishes plans to build the 'City of God Hospital' in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The towers are completed in 1981 for $120m ($299m, in 2012) September 3 – The Commodore PET computer is first sold. September 4 – The Golden Dragon massacre takes place in San Francisco. September 5 Voyager program: Voyager 1 is launched after a brief delay. German Autumn: Employers Association President Hanns Martin Schleyer is kidnapped in Cologne, West Germany. The kidnappers kill three escorting police officers and his chauffeur. They demand the release of Red Army Faction prisoners. September 7 – Treaties between Panama and the United States on the status of the Panama Canal are signed. The U.S. agrees to transfer control of the canal to Panama at the end of the 20th century. September 8 – Interpol issues a resolution against the copyright infringement of video tapes and other material, which is still cited in warnings on opening pre-credits of videocassettes and DVDs. September 10 – Hamida Djandoubi's is the last guillotine execution in France (at Marseille) and the last legal beheading in the western world. September 11 – Atari, Inc. releases its Video Computer System in North America. September 12 – South African activist Steve Biko dies after suffering a massive head injury in police custody in Pretoria. September 13 – Soap debuts on ABC and launches the career of Billy Crystal. September 14 – Manacled Mormon case begins with the alleged abduction in England of a young Mormon missionary. September 18 – Courageous (U.S.), skippered by Ted Turner, sweeps the Australian challenger Australia in the 24th America's Cup yacht race. September 19 Under pressure from the Carter Administration, President of Nicaragua Anastasio Somoza Debayle lifts the state of siege in Nicaragua. North Korean agents abduct Yutaka Kume from Noto Peninsula starting the North Korean abductions of Japanese citizens. September 20 – The Petrozavodsk phenomenon is observed in the Soviet Union and some northern European countries. September 23 – Jazz-rock group Steely Dan releases their sixth studio album Aja; it becomes their highest charting album in the United States at No. 3 and goes on to sell over 5 million copies. September 28 – The Porsche 928 debuts at the Geneva Motor Show. September 29 Singer-songwriter Billy Joel releases his fifth studio album The Stranger; it becomes the first of several hit albums, spawning five hit singles, going 10× platinum in the US, and later ranking at No. 70 on the list of Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. The modern Food Stamp Program begins when the Food Stamp Act of 1977 is enacted. October October 1 – Energy Research and Development Administration combined with the Federal Energy Administration to form United States Department of Energy. October 7 The Soviet Union adopts its third Constitution. The Soviet National Anthem's lyrics are returned after a 24-year period, with Joseph Stalin's name omitted. Pelé plays his final professional football game as a member of the New York Cosmos. October 13 – German Autumn: Four Palestinians hijack Lufthansa Flight 181 to Somalia and demand the release of 11 Red Army Faction members. October 14 – Anita Bryant is hit with pies by four gay rights activists during a press conference in Des Moines, Iowa. October 15 – World's End Murders: Christine Eadie and Helen Scott, both 17, disappear after leaving the World's End pub in Edinburgh, Scotland. Their bodies are found tied and strangled in the countryside the next day. In 2014, serial killer Angus Sinclair is convicted of the crime. October 17 – 18 – German Autumn: GSG 9 troopers storm the hijacked Lufthansa passenger plane in Mogadishu, Somalia; three of the four hijackers die. October 18 German Autumn: Red Army Faction members Andreas Baader, Jan-Carl Raspe and Gudrun Ensslin commit suicide in Stammheim prison; Irmgard Möller fails (their supporters still claim they were murdered). They are buried on October 27. Elizabeth II, Queen of Canada, opens the third session of the 30th Canadian Parliament. Reggie Jackson blasts three home runs to lead the New York Yankees to victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers in the sixth and deciding game of the World Series. October 19 – German Autumn: Kidnapped industrialist Hanns Martin Schleyer is found murdered in Mulhouse, France. October 20 – Three members of the rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd die in a charter plane crash outside Gillsburg, Mississippi, three days after the release of their fifth studio album Street Survivors. October 21 – The European Patent Institute is founded. October 23 – The president of Catalonia, Josep Tarradellas, returns to Barcelona from exile and the autonomous government of Catalonia, the Generalitat, is restored. October 26 The last natural smallpox case is discovered in Merca district, Somalia. The WHO and the CDC consider this date the anniversary of the eradication of smallpox, a great success of vaccination and, by extension, of modern science. Space Shuttle program: Last test taxi flight of Space Shuttle Enterprise, over California. October 27 – British punk band Sex Pistols release Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols on the Virgin Records label. Despite refusal by major retailers in the UK to stock it, it enters the UK Album Charts at number one the week after its release. October 28 – Hong Kong police attack the ICAC headquarters. November November 1 – 2060 Chiron, first of the outer Solar System asteroids known as Centaurs, is discovered by Charlie Kowal. November 2 – The worst storm in Athens' modern history causes havoc across the Greek capital and kills 38 people. November 6 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia fails, killing 39. November 8 Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina. San Francisco elects City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official of any large city in the U.S. November 9 – Gen. Hugo Banzer, president of the military government of Bolivia, announces that the constitutional democracy will be restored in 1978 instead of 1980 as previously provided. November 10 – The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever is released. Featuring five new Bee Gees compositions, it will go on to become the then best selling album of all time. November 19 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to make an official visit to Israel, when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, seeking a permanent peace settlement. TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes at Madeira Airport, Funchal, Portugal, killing 131 and leaving 33 survivors. November 22 British Airways inaugurates regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service. The TCP/IP test succeeds, connecting 3 ARPANET nodes (of 111), in what eventually becomes the Internet protocol. November 28 – Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp records "On Green Dolphin Street", the first digitally recorded album to be released commercially in the USA. November 30 – The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is founded as a specialized agency of the United Nations. December December – The Colombo Plan for Co-operative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific (CESDAP) is implemented. December 1 – Lockheed's top-secret stealth aircraft project, designated Have Blue and precursor to the U.S. Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, makes its first flight. December 4 Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor. Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 is hijacked and crashes in Tanjung Kupang, Johor, Malaysia, killing all 100 passengers and crew on board. December 5 The Solar System, produced and directed by Thomas G. Smith for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, is released. It led to the producer hiring Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a company producing visual effects for films such as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. December 6 – South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana, although it is not recognized by any other country. December 10 – 1977 Australian federal election: Malcolm Fraser's Liberal/National Country Coalition Government is re-elected with a slightly reduced majority, defeating the Labor Party led by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Consequently, Whitlam resigned as ALP leader after holding the job for nearly 11 years; he would be replaced by former Treasurer Bill Hayden. December 11 – after losing 26 games, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the US National Football League record their very first win; against the New Orleans Saints. December 13 – a chartered Douglas DC-3 aircraft carrying the University of Evansville basketball team to Nashville, Tennessee, crashes in rain and dense fog about 90 seconds after takeoff from Evansville Regional Airport; 29 people die in the crash, including 14 members of the team and head coach Bob Watson. December 16 Mikhail Baryshnikov's 1976 production of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker comes to CBS a year after premiering onstage at the Kennedy Center. This adaptation will become the most popular television production of the work. Saturday Night Fever is released in theaters and becomes the biggest dancing movie of all time. The movie launches the career of its star John Travolta and catapults the Bee Gees — who performed several songs on the soundtrack — to newfound success. December 18 – SA de Transport Aérien Flight 730, an international charter service from Zurich to Funchal Airport (Madeira), hits the sea during a landing attempt. Many of the 36 who die drown, trapped inside the sinking aircraft. Twenty-one people survive with the help of rescuers and by swimming to the shore. December 20 – Djibouti and Vietnam join the United Nations. December 22 – A grain elevator explodes in Westwego, Louisiana, United States, killing 36 people. Date unknown Portugal's traditional naming conventions change such that children's surnames can come from either the mother or the father, not just from the father. Mount Ngauruhoe in New Zealand makes its latest eruption in Tongariro National Park Births January January 1 Donna Ares, Bosnian singer (d. 2017) Axel, Argentine singer and songwriter Lasha Bugadze, Georgian novelist and playwright Craig Reucassel, Australian comedian Jerry Yan, Taiwanese singer January 2 Gavin Mahon, English footballer Aleš Píša, Czech ice hockey player January 3 A. J. Burnett, American baseball player Mayumi Iizuka, Japanese voice actress January 4 – Irán Castillo, Mexican actress and singer Brian O’Connor (Pitcher) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O%27Connor_(pitcher) January 8 – Francesco Coco, Italian footballer January 9 – Scoonie Penn, American basketball player January 11 Anni Friesinger-Postma, German speed skater Devin Ratray, American actor January 12 – Piolo Pascual, Filipino actor January 13 – Orlando Bloom, British actor January 14 Ruco Chan, Hong Kong actor Narain Karthikeyan, Indian Formula One driver January 15 – Giorgia Meloni, Italian politician January 17 – Leigh Whannell, Australian actor and writer January 19 – Taliesin Jaffe, American voice actor and actor January 20 – Melody, Belgian singer January 21 – Jerry Trainor, American actor, comedian and musician January 22 – Hidetoshi Nakata, Japanese footballer January 23 – Kamal Heer, Punjabi singer and musician January 24 – Johann Urb, American actor January 25 Christian Ingebrigtsen, Norwegian singer Hatem Trabelsi, Tunisian footballer January 26 Nicholaus Arson, Swedish guitarist and songwriter Vince Carter, American basketball player January 28 – Takuma Sato, Japanese racing driver January 31 Mark Dutiaume, Canadian hockey player Kerry Washington, African-American actress February February 1 – Lari Ketner, American professional basketball player (d. 2014) February 2 Shakira, Colombian singer-songwriter and musician Jessica Wahls, German pop singer February 3 Daddy Yankee, Puerto Rican singer Maitland Ward, American actress February 4 Bruno Castanheira, Portuguese cyclist (d. 2014) Gavin DeGraw, American singer-songwriter February 5 Adam Everett, American baseball player Ben Ainslie, British sailor February 7 Paul Comrie, Canadian ice hockey player Mariusz Pudzianowski, Polish strongman February 8 Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist Barry Hall, Australian rules footballer February 10 Salif Diao, Senegalese footballer Morihiro Hashimoto, Japanese darts player (d. 2017) February 11 – Mike Shinoda, American musician, singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and graphic designer February 14 – Elmer Symons, motorcycle enduro racer (d. 2007) February 16 Ian Clarke, Irish computer scientist Paul Brittain, American actor and comedian February 18 Ike Barinholtz, American actor, comedian and screenwriter László Nemes, Hungarian film director and screenwriter February 19 – Gianluca Zambrotta, Italian footballer February 20 Stephon Marbury, American basketball player Amal Hijazi, Lebanese singer and model Gail Kim, Canadian professional wrestler and actress February 21 Cyrine Abdelnour, Lebanese singer, actress, and model Jonathan Safran Foer, American author Steve Francis, American basketball player Ben Ikin, Australian rugby league player Kevin Rose, American television host February 23 – Kristina Šmigun-Vähi, Estonian skier February 24 Floyd Mayweather Jr., boxing champion Jason Akermanis, Australian rules footballer February 26 – Shane Williams, Welsh rugby player February 27 – Ji Sung, South Korean actor February 28 Jason Aldean, American country music singer Rafael Amaya, Mexican model, singer, and actor March March 1 – Rens Blom, Dutch athlete March 2 Chris Martin, British rock musician Heather McComb, American actress March 3 – Ronan Keating, Irish singer March 4 Ana Guevara, Mexican track and field athlete Daniel Klewer, German footballer March 5 – Wally Szczerbiak, Spanish-born basketball player March 6 Paquillo Fernández, Spanish race walker Santino Marella, Canadian professional wrestler March 7 Ronan O'Gara, Irish rugby player Mitja Zastrow, German-born swimmer March 8 Reagan Pasternak, Canadian actress James Van Der Beek, American actor March 9 Lydia Mackay, American voice actress Bree Turner, American actress Peter Enckelman, Finnish footballer Shannon Miller, American gymnast Robin Thicke, American-Canadian R&B singer-songwriter, musician, composer, and actor March 11 Becky Hammon, American basketball player Jason Greeley, Canadian singer March 14 Naoki Matsuda, Japanese footballer (d. 2011) Kim Nam-il, South Korean footballer March 15 Adrian Burnside, Australian baseball player Brian Tee, Japanese American actor Joe Hahn, Korean-American musician, DJ, director and visual artist (Linkin Park) Norifumi Yamamoto, Japanese mixed martial artist (d. 2018) March 16 Richard Swift, American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and short-film maker (d. 2018) Mónica Cruz, Spanish actress and dancer Ismael La Rosa, Peruvian actor March 18 Arkady Babchenko, Russian journalist Zdeno Chára, Czechoslovakian (now Slovakia) hockey player March 23 Sammy Morris, American football player Edwin Siu, Hong Kong actor and singer March 24 Jessica Chastain, American actress Darren Lockyer, Australian rugby league player March 25 – Édgar Ramírez, Venezuelan actor March 26 – Bianca Kajlich, American actress March 27 Vítor Meira, Brazilian racing driver Roger Velasco, American actor March 28 – Annie Wersching, American actress April April 1 Vitor Belfort, Brazilian mixed martial artist Paul Kalanithi, Indian-American neurosurgeon and writer (d. 2015) April 2 Michael Fassbender, Irish-German actor Nicki Pedersen, Danish motorcycle rider April 3 – Aiden Leslie, American pop singer-songwriter April 4 – Adam Dutkiewicz, American musician April 5 Jonathan Erlich, Israeli tennis player Daniel Majstorović, Swedish soccer player April 8 – Mehran Ghassemi, Iranian journalist (d. 2008) April 9 – Gerard Way, American musician and comic book writer April 10 – Stephanie Sheh, American voice actress April 12 Tobias Angerer, German cross-country skier Sarah Monahan, Australian actress Sarah Jane Morris, American actress April 14 Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress Nate Fox, American professional basketball player (d. 2014) Rob McElhenney, American actor April 15 Matt Holt, American heavy metal singer (d. 2017) Dejan Milojevic, Serbian basketball player April 16 Freddie Ljungberg, Swedish footballer Tameka Empson, English actress April 17 – Frederik Magle, Danish composer, concert organist, and pianist April 19 – Bryan Spears, American film and television producer April 21 – Jamie Salé, Canadian figure skater April 22 Anna Eriksson, Finnish pop-rock singer Steven Price, British film composer April 23 Arash, Iranian-Swedish singer, entertainer and producer John Cena, American professional wrestler, actor and rapper Eric Edelstein, American actor and voice actor Andruw Jones, Antillean baseball player Kal Penn, American actor, producer, and former civil servant April 24 Carlos Beltrán, Puerto Rican baseball player Rebecca Mader, English actress April 25 – Manolo Cardona, Colombian actor April 26 Jason Earles, American actor, comedian, and martial artist Tom Welling, American actor, director, producer, and model April 27 – Dai Fujikura, Japanese composer April 30 Robert Evans, Welsh playwright Alexandra Holden, American actress Ole Jørn Myklebust, Norwegian jazz musician May May 3 Eric Church, American country music singer Ryan Dempster, Canadian baseball player May 4 – Emily Perkins, Canadian actress May 5 Choi Kang-hee, South Korean actress Virginie Efira, Belgian actress and television anchor Jessica Schwarz, German film and television actress May 8 Pepe Sánchez, Argentine basketball player Chiaki Takahashi, Japanese voice actress May 10 Nick Heidfeld, German racing driver Chas Licciardello, Australian comedian May 11 Janne Ahonen, Finnish ski jumper Victor Matfield, South African rugby player May 12 Graeme Dott, Scottish snooker player Rebecca Herbst, American actress Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian | 6 – The Kelly Barnes Dam, located above Toccoa Falls Bible College near Toccoa, Georgia fails, killing 39. November 8 Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos discovers the tomb of Philip II of Macedon at Vergina. San Francisco elects City Supervisor Harvey Milk, the first openly gay elected official of any large city in the U.S. November 9 – Gen. Hugo Banzer, president of the military government of Bolivia, announces that the constitutional democracy will be restored in 1978 instead of 1980 as previously provided. November 10 – The soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever is released. Featuring five new Bee Gees compositions, it will go on to become the then best selling album of all time. November 19 Egyptian President Anwar Sadat becomes the first Arab leader to make an official visit to Israel, when he meets with Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, seeking a permanent peace settlement. TAP Portugal Flight 425 crashes at Madeira Airport, Funchal, Portugal, killing 131 and leaving 33 survivors. November 22 British Airways inaugurates regular London to New York City supersonic Concorde service. The TCP/IP test succeeds, connecting 3 ARPANET nodes (of 111), in what eventually becomes the Internet protocol. November 28 – Jazz saxophonist Archie Shepp records "On Green Dolphin Street", the first digitally recorded album to be released commercially in the USA. November 30 – The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is founded as a specialized agency of the United Nations. December December – The Colombo Plan for Co-operative Economic and Social Development in Asia and the Pacific (CESDAP) is implemented. December 1 – Lockheed's top-secret stealth aircraft project, designated Have Blue and precursor to the U.S. Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk, makes its first flight. December 4 Jean-Bédel Bokassa, president of the Central African Republic, crowns himself Emperor. Malaysian Airline System Flight 653 is hijacked and crashes in Tanjung Kupang, Johor, Malaysia, killing all 100 passengers and crew on board. December 5 The Solar System, produced and directed by Thomas G. Smith for Encyclopaedia Britannica Films, is released. It led to the producer hiring Industrial Light & Magic (ILM), a company producing visual effects for films such as the Star Wars and Indiana Jones films. December 6 – South Africa grants independence to Bophuthatswana, although it is not recognized by any other country. December 10 – 1977 Australian federal election: Malcolm Fraser's Liberal/National Country Coalition Government is re-elected with a slightly reduced majority, defeating the Labor Party led by former Prime Minister Gough Whitlam. Consequently, Whitlam resigned as ALP leader after holding the job for nearly 11 years; he would be replaced by former Treasurer Bill Hayden. December 11 – after losing 26 games, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers of the US National Football League record their very first win; against the New Orleans Saints. December 13 – a chartered Douglas DC-3 aircraft carrying the University of Evansville basketball team to Nashville, Tennessee, crashes in rain and dense fog about 90 seconds after takeoff from Evansville Regional Airport; 29 people die in the crash, including 14 members of the team and head coach Bob Watson. December 16 Mikhail Baryshnikov's 1976 production of Tchaikovsky's ballet The Nutcracker comes to CBS a year after premiering onstage at the Kennedy Center. This adaptation will become the most popular television production of the work. Saturday Night Fever is released in theaters and becomes the biggest dancing movie of all time. The movie launches the career of its star John Travolta and catapults the Bee Gees — who performed several songs on the soundtrack — to newfound success. December 18 – SA de Transport Aérien Flight 730, an international charter service from Zurich to Funchal Airport (Madeira), hits the sea during a landing attempt. Many of the 36 who die drown, trapped inside the sinking aircraft. Twenty-one people survive with the help of rescuers and by swimming to the shore. December 20 – Djibouti and Vietnam join the United Nations. December 22 – A grain elevator explodes in Westwego, Louisiana, United States, killing 36 people. Date unknown Portugal's traditional naming conventions change such that children's surnames can come from either the mother or the father, not just from the father. Mount Ngauruhoe in New Zealand makes its latest eruption in Tongariro National Park Births January January 1 Donna Ares, Bosnian singer (d. 2017) Axel, Argentine singer and songwriter Lasha Bugadze, Georgian novelist and playwright Craig Reucassel, Australian comedian Jerry Yan, Taiwanese singer January 2 Gavin Mahon, English footballer Aleš Píša, Czech ice hockey player January 3 A. J. Burnett, American baseball player Mayumi Iizuka, Japanese voice actress January 4 – Irán Castillo, Mexican actress and singer Brian O’Connor (Pitcher) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_O%27Connor_(pitcher) January 8 – Francesco Coco, Italian footballer January 9 – Scoonie Penn, American basketball player January 11 Anni Friesinger-Postma, German speed skater Devin Ratray, American actor January 12 – Piolo Pascual, Filipino actor January 13 – Orlando Bloom, British actor January 14 Ruco Chan, Hong Kong actor Narain Karthikeyan, Indian Formula One driver January 15 – Giorgia Meloni, Italian politician January 17 – Leigh Whannell, Australian actor and writer January 19 – Taliesin Jaffe, American voice actor and actor January 20 – Melody, Belgian singer January 21 – Jerry Trainor, American actor, comedian and musician January 22 – Hidetoshi Nakata, Japanese footballer January 23 – Kamal Heer, Punjabi singer and musician January 24 – Johann Urb, American actor January 25 Christian Ingebrigtsen, Norwegian singer Hatem Trabelsi, Tunisian footballer January 26 Nicholaus Arson, Swedish guitarist and songwriter Vince Carter, American basketball player January 28 – Takuma Sato, Japanese racing driver January 31 Mark Dutiaume, Canadian hockey player Kerry Washington, African-American actress February February 1 – Lari Ketner, American professional basketball player (d. 2014) February 2 Shakira, Colombian singer-songwriter and musician Jessica Wahls, German pop singer February 3 Daddy Yankee, Puerto Rican singer Maitland Ward, American actress February 4 Bruno Castanheira, Portuguese cyclist (d. 2014) Gavin DeGraw, American singer-songwriter February 5 Adam Everett, American baseball player Ben Ainslie, British sailor February 7 Paul Comrie, Canadian ice hockey player Mariusz Pudzianowski, Polish strongman February 8 Yucef Merhi, Venezuelan artist Barry Hall, Australian rules footballer February 10 Salif Diao, Senegalese footballer Morihiro Hashimoto, Japanese darts player (d. 2017) February 11 – Mike Shinoda, American musician, singer, songwriter, rapper, record producer, and graphic designer February 14 – Elmer Symons, motorcycle enduro racer (d. 2007) February 16 Ian Clarke, Irish computer scientist Paul Brittain, American actor and comedian February 18 Ike Barinholtz, American actor, comedian and screenwriter László Nemes, Hungarian film director and screenwriter February 19 – Gianluca Zambrotta, Italian footballer February 20 Stephon Marbury, American basketball player Amal Hijazi, Lebanese singer and model Gail Kim, Canadian professional wrestler and actress February 21 Cyrine Abdelnour, Lebanese singer, actress, and model Jonathan Safran Foer, American author Steve Francis, American basketball player Ben Ikin, Australian rugby league player Kevin Rose, American television host February 23 – Kristina Šmigun-Vähi, Estonian skier February 24 Floyd Mayweather Jr., boxing champion Jason Akermanis, Australian rules footballer February 26 – Shane Williams, Welsh rugby player February 27 – Ji Sung, South Korean actor February 28 Jason Aldean, American country music singer Rafael Amaya, Mexican model, singer, and actor March March 1 – Rens Blom, Dutch athlete March 2 Chris Martin, British rock musician Heather McComb, American actress March 3 – Ronan Keating, Irish singer March 4 Ana Guevara, Mexican track and field athlete Daniel Klewer, German footballer March 5 – Wally Szczerbiak, Spanish-born basketball player March 6 Paquillo Fernández, Spanish race walker Santino Marella, Canadian professional wrestler March 7 Ronan O'Gara, Irish rugby player Mitja Zastrow, German-born swimmer March 8 Reagan Pasternak, Canadian actress James Van Der Beek, American actor March 9 Lydia Mackay, American voice actress Bree Turner, American actress Peter Enckelman, Finnish footballer Shannon Miller, American gymnast Robin Thicke, American-Canadian R&B singer-songwriter, musician, composer, and actor March 11 Becky Hammon, American basketball player Jason Greeley, Canadian singer March 14 Naoki Matsuda, Japanese footballer (d. 2011) Kim Nam-il, South Korean footballer March 15 Adrian Burnside, Australian baseball player Brian Tee, Japanese American actor Joe Hahn, Korean-American musician, DJ, director and visual artist (Linkin Park) Norifumi Yamamoto, Japanese mixed martial artist (d. 2018) March 16 Richard Swift, American singer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, producer and short-film maker (d. 2018) Mónica Cruz, Spanish actress and dancer Ismael La Rosa, Peruvian actor March 18 Arkady Babchenko, Russian journalist Zdeno Chára, Czechoslovakian (now Slovakia) hockey player March 23 Sammy Morris, American football player Edwin Siu, Hong Kong actor and singer March 24 Jessica Chastain, American actress Darren Lockyer, Australian rugby league player March 25 – Édgar Ramírez, Venezuelan actor March 26 – Bianca Kajlich, American actress March 27 Vítor Meira, Brazilian racing driver Roger Velasco, American actor March 28 – Annie Wersching, American actress April April 1 Vitor Belfort, Brazilian mixed martial artist Paul Kalanithi, Indian-American neurosurgeon and writer (d. 2015) April 2 Michael Fassbender, Irish-German actor Nicki Pedersen, Danish motorcycle rider April 3 – Aiden Leslie, American pop singer-songwriter April 4 – Adam Dutkiewicz, American musician April 5 Jonathan Erlich, Israeli tennis player Daniel Majstorović, Swedish soccer player April 8 – Mehran Ghassemi, Iranian journalist (d. 2008) April 9 – Gerard Way, American musician and comic book writer April 10 – Stephanie Sheh, American voice actress April 12 Tobias Angerer, German cross-country skier Sarah Monahan, Australian actress Sarah Jane Morris, American actress April 14 Sarah Michelle Gellar, American actress Nate Fox, American professional basketball player (d. 2014) Rob McElhenney, American actor April 15 Matt Holt, American heavy metal singer (d. 2017) Dejan Milojevic, Serbian basketball player April 16 Freddie Ljungberg, Swedish footballer Tameka Empson, English actress April 17 – Frederik Magle, Danish composer, concert organist, and pianist April 19 – Bryan Spears, American film and television producer April 21 – Jamie Salé, Canadian figure skater April 22 Anna Eriksson, Finnish pop-rock singer Steven Price, British film composer April 23 Arash, Iranian-Swedish singer, entertainer and producer John Cena, American professional wrestler, actor and rapper Eric Edelstein, American actor and voice actor Andruw Jones, Antillean baseball player Kal Penn, American actor, producer, and former civil servant April 24 Carlos Beltrán, Puerto Rican baseball player Rebecca Mader, English actress April 25 – Manolo Cardona, Colombian actor April 26 Jason Earles, American actor, comedian, and martial artist Tom Welling, American actor, director, producer, and model April 27 – Dai Fujikura, Japanese composer April 30 Robert Evans, Welsh playwright Alexandra Holden, American actress Ole Jørn Myklebust, Norwegian jazz musician May May 3 Eric Church, American country music singer Ryan Dempster, Canadian baseball player May 4 – Emily Perkins, Canadian actress May 5 Choi Kang-hee, South Korean actress Virginie Efira, Belgian actress and television anchor Jessica Schwarz, German film and television actress May 8 Pepe Sánchez, Argentine basketball player Chiaki Takahashi, Japanese voice actress May 10 Nick Heidfeld, German racing driver Chas Licciardello, Australian comedian May 11 Janne Ahonen, Finnish ski jumper Victor Matfield, South African rugby player May 12 Graeme Dott, Scottish snooker player Rebecca Herbst, American actress Maryam Mirzakhani, Iranian mathematician (d. 2017) Rachel Wilson, Canadian actress May 13 Samantha Morton, English actress Christopher Ralph, Canadian actor May 14 Roy Halladay, American baseball player (d. 2017) Ada Nicodemou, Australian actress May 16 Melanie Lynskey, New Zealand actress Emilíana Torrini, Icelandic singer May 19 Kelly Sheridan, Canadian voice actress Katrin Pärn, Estonian actress and singer May 23 Richard Ayoade, British actor Ilia Kulik, Russian figure skater Yevgeny Rodionov, Russian soldier (d. 1996) Heather Wahlquist, American actress May 24 – Jeet Gannguli, Indian singer, music director and score composer May 26 Misaki Ito, Japanese actress Lauri Saag, Estonian mycologist and lichenologist Luca Toni, Italian footballer May 27 Abderrahmane Hammad, Algerian athlete Tommie van der Leegte, Dutch soccer player May 28 – Elisabeth Hasselbeck, American talk show host May 29 Massimo Ambrosini, Italian football player Rory Albanese, American comedian, comedy writer and television producer May 31 Phil Devey, Canadian baseball player Domenico Fioravanti, Italian swimmer Greg Leeb, Canadian ice hockey player Joachim Olsen, Danish athlete and politician Moses Sichone, Zambian footballer Petr Tenkrát, Czech ice hockey player June June 1 Sarah Wayne Callies, American actress Jónsi, Icelandic singer June 2 – Zachary Quinto, American actor June 7 – Chen Luyun, Chinese basketball (d. 2015) June 8 – Kanye West, American rapper and record producer June 9 – Peja Stojaković, Serbian basketball player June 11 Geoff Ogilvy, Australian golfer Shane Meier, Canadian actor June 12 – Ana Tijoux, French-Chilean musician June 14 – Chris McAlister, American football player June 16 – Kerry Wood, American baseball player June 17 – Bartosz Brożek, Polish philosopher and jurist June 18 Kaja Kallas, 19th Prime Minister of Estonia Majed Moqed, Saudi Arabian terrorist (d. 2001) June 19 Peter Warrick, American football player Veronika Vařeková, Czech model Maria Cioncan, distance runner from Romania (d. 2007) June 20 – Aaron Moule, Australian rugby league player June 21 – Jochen Hecht, German ice hockey player June 22 Ryōko Ono, Japanese voice actress Bernadette Heerwagen, German actress Denis Moschitto, German actor June 23 Gladys Reyes, Filipina actress Jason Mraz, American singer-songwriter June 24 – Mal Michael, Papua New Guinean footballer June 25 Layla El, English dancer, model, and retired professional wrestler Naoya Tsukahara, Japanese gymnast June 26 William Kipsang, Kenyan long-distance runner Tite Kubo, Japanese manga artist who created BLEACH June 27 Arkadiusz Radomski, Polish footballer Raúl, Spanish footballer June 28 – Harun Tekin, Turkish rock vocalist and guitarist (Mor ve Ötesi) June 29 Jeff Baena, American screenwriter and film director Will Kemp, English actor and dancer Zuleikha Robinson, British actress and singer Bradley Stryker, American actor July July 1 Tom Frager, French-born singer and surfer Jarome Iginla, Canadian hockey player Liv Tyler, American actress July 2 – Carl Froch, British boxer July 5 – Steven Sharp Nelson, American cellist July 6 – Audrey Fleurot, French actress July 8 Maciej Jachowski, Polish actor and singer Belinda Lee, Singaporean television host and actress Milo Ventimiglia, American actor Wang Zhizhi, Chinese basketball player July 9 – Noppadol Sangnil, Thai snooker player July 10 Cary Fukunaga, American film director, writer, and cinematographer Schapelle Corby, Australian convicted drug smuggler Chiwetel Ejiofor, English actor Li Zimeng, Chinese host July 11 Casper Crump, Danish actor Finau Maka, Tongan rugby union footballer Edward Moss, American impersonator July 12 Soa Palelei, Australian mixed martial artist Jejomar Binay Jr., Filipino politician Steve Howey, American actor Brock Lesnar, American professional wrestler and former mixed martial artist Peter Schaefer, Canadian ice hockey player July 13 Jonah Lotan, Israeli actor Ashley Scott, American actress Kari Wahlgren, American voice actress July 14 Victoria, Crown Princess of Sweden Jed Madela, Filipino recording artist and TV host July 15 Lana Parrilla, American actress Ray Toro, American rock guitarist July 18 Alfian Sa'at, Singaporean writer, poet and playwright Alexander Morozevich, Russian chess Grandmaster Alfian bin Sa'at, Singaporean writer, poet and playwright July 19 – Jean-Sébastien Aubin, Canadian ice hockey player July 21 – Paul Casey, English golfer July 24 Danny Dyer, English actor Mehdi Mahdavikia, Iranian football player July 26 Tony Sampson, Canadian voice and television actor Rebecca St. James, Australian-born Christian musician July 27 Martha Madison, American actress Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Irish actor Jason Zimbler, American actor July 28 Manu Ginóbili, Argentine basketball player Rahman "Rock" Harper, American personality, restaurateur Allan Hawco, Canadian actor and producer July 30 – Jaime Pressly, American actress July 31 – Tim Couch, American football player August August 1 – Helder Mota Ricardo, East Timorese footballer August 2 – Edward Furlong, American actor August 3 – Tom Brady, American football player and entrepreneur August 8 Michael Chernus, American actor Marílson Gomes dos Santos, Brazilian long-distance runner Lindsay Sloane, American actress August 11 – Pablo Lucio Vasquez, American murderer, execution by lethal injection (d. 2016) August 12 Plaxico Burress, American football player Park Yong-ha, South Korean actor and singer (d. 2010) August 13 Michael Klim, Australian swimmer Miho Konishi, Japanese actress August 15 Martin Biron, Canadian hockey player Igor Cassina, Italian gymnast Nicole Paggi, American actress Anthony Rocca, Australian rules footballer August 16 – Tamer Hosny, Egyptian singer-songwriter and actor August 17 Ahmed al-Nami, Saudi Arabian terrorist (d. 2001) Tarja Turunen, Finnish operatic soprano Claire Richards, English singer Thierry Henry, French footballer William Gallas, French footballer August 18 – Lukáš Bauer, Czech cross-country skier August 19 – Callum Blue, English actor August 20 Felipe Contepomi, Argentine rugby player Manuel Contepomi, Argentine rugby player Henning Stensrud, Norwegian ski jumper August 22 – JP Auclair, Canadian freeskiier. (d. 2014) August 23 Nicole Bobek, American figure skater Kenta Miyake, Japanese voice actor August 24 Per Gade, Danish footballer Jürgen Macho, Austrian footballer John Green, American author, vlogger, and editor Robert Enke, German footballer (d. 2009) August 25 Masumi Asano, Japanese voice actress Lawrence Leung, Australian comedian, writer, and director August 26 – Morris Peterson, American basketball player August 29 – Martha Ehlin, Swedish sports teacher (d. 2016) August 30 Shaun Alexander, American football player Jens Ludwig, German guitarist Félix Sánchez, American-Dominican athlete Sayori Ishizuka, Japanese voice actress August 31 Jeff Hardy, American professional wrestler Ian Harte, Irish footballer Craig Nicholls, Australian rock musician and songwriter September September 1 – Kathleen de Leon Jones, Filipino-Australian actress, dancer, singer and television performer (Hi-5) September 2 Frédéric Kanouté, Malian soccer player Elitsa Todorova, Bulgarian singer-songwriter September 4 Ian Grushka, American bassist (New Found Glory) Lucie Silvas, English singer Kia Stevens, American professional wrestler and actress September 6 – Kiyoshi Hikawa, Japanese enka singer September 9 – Soulja Slim, American rapper (d. 2003) September 11 Jackie Buscarino, American voice actress, writer and producer Ludacris, American rapper and actor September 12 2 Chainz, American rapper James McCartney, English musician and songwriter Idan Raichel, Israeli singer-songwriter September 13 – Fiona Apple, American singer September 15 Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author Angela Aki, Japanese singer-songwriter Tom Hardy, English actor Jason Terry, American basketball player September 18 – Kieran West, British Olympic oarsman September 20 – Namie Amuro, Japanese singer September 21 – Marc de Hond, Dutch television presenter and wheelchair basketball player (d. 2020) September 22 – Paul Sculthorpe, English rugby league player September 23 Nozomi Momoi, Japanese AV idol, and murder victim (d. 2002) Suzanne Tamim, Lebanese singer, actress, and murder victim (d. 2008) September 24 Elizabeth Bogush, American actress Kabeer Gbaja-Biamila, American football player September 25 Clea DuVall, American actress Joel David Moore, American actor Atsushi Aoki, Japanese professional wrestler (d. 2019) September 26 – Sirena Irwin, American actress and voice actress September 27 – Andrus Värnik, Estonian javelin thrower September 28 Se-Ri Pak, South Korean golfer Kristal Tin, Hong Kong actress September 30 Roy Carroll, Irish footballer Sun Jihai, Chinese footballer October October 2 – Didier Défago, Swiss Olympic alpine skier October 5 – Hugleikur Dagsson, Icelandic artist October 6 – Daniel Brière, Canadian ice hockey player October 8 – Anne-Caroline Chausson, French mountain bicycle racer October 11 Matt Bomer, American film, stage, and television actor Claudia Palacios, Colombian journalist and newsreader October 12 – Bode Miller, American skier October 13 Paul Pierce, American basketball player Kiele Sanchez, American actress October 14 Kelly Schumacher, American basketball and volleyball player Oleg Velyky, Ukrainian and German handball player World champion 2007 (d. 2010) October 15 – David Trezeguet, French footballer October 16 – John Mayer, American musician and record producer October 17 Dudu Aouate, Israeli footballer André Villas-Boas, Portuguese football manager October 18 Jyothika, Indian actress Ryan Nelsen, New Zealand footballer Paul Stalteri, Canadian footballer October 21 – Brett Goldin, South African actor (d. 2006) October 25 – Birgit Prinz, German footballer October 26 Jon Heder, American actor and voice artist Louis Crayton, Swiss/Liberian footballer October 27 Mat Lucas, American voice actor Kumar Sangakkara, Sri Lankan cricketer October 28 – Jonas Rasmussen, Danish badminton player October 29 – Brendan Fehr, Canadian actor November November 2 – Maajid Nawaz, British-Pakistani activist and radio presenter November 4 – Larry Bigbie, American baseball player November 6 Dušan Kecman, Serbian basketball player Patrícia Tavares, Portuguese actress November 8 Nick Punto, Italian-American baseball player João Rodrigo Silva Santos, Brazilian soccer player (d. 2013) November 10 Brittany Murphy, American actress and singer (d. 2009) Lea Moreno Young, American actress November 11 Scoot McNairy, American actor Ben Hollioake, English cricketer (d. 2002) November 13 Chanel Cole, New Zealand-born singer Huang Xiaoming, Chinese actor and singer November 15 – Sean Murray, American actor November 16 Oksana Baiul, Ukrainian figure skater Maggie Gyllenhaal, American actress November 17 – Ryk Neethling, South African swimmer November 18 – Trent Barrett, Australian rugby league player November 19 – Kerri Strug, American gymnast November 20 Daniel Svensson, Swedish drummer Josh Turner, American country music singer November 21 Jonas Jennings, American football player Tobias Sammet, German singer and songwriter November 22 – Michael Preston, English footballer November 23 Christopher Amott, Swedish musician David Lucas, English footballer November 24 – Colin Hanks, American actor November 26 – Stu Block, Canadian metal singer and songwriter November 28 – DeMya Walker, American basketball player November 30 – Nelsan Ellis, African-American film and television actor and playwright (d. 2017) December December 1 – Brad Delson, American musician (Linkin Park) December 6 Andrew Flintoff, English cricketer Paul McVeigh, Irish footballer Miwa Yasuda, Japanese voice actress December 7 – Luke Donald, English golfer December 8 Elsa Benítez, Mexican model and television host Sébastien Chabal, French rugby union player Ryan Newman, American race car driver Matthias Schoenaerts, Belgian actor and producer December 11 – Peter Stringer, Irish rugby union player December 12 – Adam Saitiev, Chechen wrestler, Olympic gold medalist December 14 Jamie Peacock, English rugby league player KaDee Strickland, American actress December 16 Kevin Gillespie, American comic book artist Anu Nieminen, Finnish badminton player December 17 – Oxana Fedorova, Russian model December 20 – Sonja Aldén, Swedish pop singer December 21 Gregor Horvatič, Slovenian politician Emmanuel Macron, 25th President of France |
U.S. soldiers. January 11 – United States Surgeon General Luther Terry reports that smoking may be hazardous to one's health (the first such statement from the U.S. government). January 12 Zanzibar Revolution: The predominantly Arab government of Zanzibar is overthrown by African nationalist rebels; a United States Navy destroyer evacuates 61 U.S. citizens. Routine U.S. naval patrols of the South China Sea begin. January 13 – Anti-Muslim riots break out in Calcutta, resulting in 100 deaths. January 15 The nightclub Whisky a Go Go opens its doors on Sunset Strip in Hollywood, California, United States. Johnny Rivers leads the first house band at the club, which helps pave the club's way to international fame and contributes to the beginning of rock n' roll on the Strip. The Teamsters union negotiates the first national labor contract in the United States. January 16 – The musical Hello, Dolly! opens in New York's St. James Theatre. January 18 – Plans to build the New York City World Trade Center are announced. January 20 – Meet the Beatles!, the first Beatles album from Capitol Records in the United States, is released ten days after Chicago's Vee-Jay Records releases Introducing... The Beatles. The two record companies battle it out in court for months, eventually coming to a conclusion. January 22 – Kenneth Kaunda is inaugurated as the first Prime Minister of Northern Rhodesia. January 23 – Thirteen years after its proposal and nearly two years after its passage by the United States Senate, the 24th Amendment to the United States Constitution, prohibiting the use of poll taxes in national elections, is ratified. January 27 France and the People's Republic of China announce their decision to establish diplomatic relations. U.S. Senator Margaret Chase Smith, 66, announces her candidacy for the Republican presidential nomination. January 28 – A U.S. Air Force jet training aircraft that strays into East Germany is shot down by Soviet fighters near Erfurt; all three crewmen are killed. January 29 – February 9 – The 1964 Winter Olympics are held in Innsbruck, Austria. January 29 The Soviet Union launches two scientific satellites, Elektron I and II, from a single rocket. Ranger 6 is launched by NASA, on a mission to carry television cameras and crash-land on the Moon. January 30 – General Nguyễn Khánh leads a bloodless military coup d'état, replacing Dương Văn Minh as Prime Minister of South Vietnam. February February 1 – The Beatles vault to the #1 spot on the U.S. singles charts for the first time, with "I Want to Hold Your Hand", starting the British Invasion in the United States. February 3 – Protesting against alleged de facto school racial segregation, Black and Puerto Rican groups in New York City boycott public schools. February 4 – The Government of the United States authorizes the Twenty-fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, outlawing the poll tax. February 5 – India backs out of its promise to hold a plebiscite in the disputed territory of Kashmir. In 1948, India had taken the issue of Kashmir to the United Nations Security Council and offered to hold a plebiscite in the held Kashmir under UN supervision. February 6 – Cuba cuts off the normal water supply to the United States Guantanamo Bay Naval Base, in reprisal for the U.S. seizure 4 days earlier of 4 Cuban fishing boats off the coast of Florida. February 7 An all-white jury in Jackson, Mississippi, United States, trying Byron De La Beckwith for the murder of Medgar Evers in June 1963, reports that it cannot reach a verdict, resulting in a mistrial. The Beatles arrive from the UK at New York City's JFK International Airport, receiving a tumultuous reception from an estimated 4,000, marking the first occurrence of "Beatlemania" in the United States. The "Fab Four" stayed in suites 1260, 1263, 1264 and 1273 of the Plaza Hotel. February 9 – The Beatles appear on The Ed Sullivan Show, marking their first live performance on American television. Seen by an estimated 73,000,000 viewers, the appearance becomes the catalyst for the mid-1960s "British Invasion" of American popular music. February 10 – Melbourne–Voyager collision: 82 Australian sailors die when a Royal Australian Navy aircraft carrier and a destroyer collide off New South Wales, Australia. February 11 Greeks and Turks begin fighting in Limassol, Cyprus. The Republic of China severs diplomatic relations with France because of French recognition of the People's Republic of China. February 17 – Gabonese president Léon M'ba is toppled by a military coup and his arch-rival, Jean-Hilaire Aubame, is installed in his place. However, French intervention restores M'ba's government the next day. February 23 – Chrysler's second generation Hemi racing engine is showcased at the Daytona 500. The 426 hemi-powered Plymouth of Richard Petty (#43) wins. Hemi-powered Plymouths finish in first, second and third places. February 25 – Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali) beats Sonny Liston in Miami Beach, Florida, and is crowned the heavyweight champion of the world. February 26 – U.S. politician John Glenn withdraws from the race for the Democratic Party Senate nomination, following a domestic accident. February 27 – The Italian government asks for help to keep the Leaning Tower of Pisa from toppling over. February 29 – U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson announces that the United States has developed a jet airplane (the A-11), capable of sustained flight at more than and of altitudes of more than . March March 4 – President of the US Teamsters, Jimmy Hoffa is convicted by a federal jury of jury tampering in 1962 and receives a jail sentence. March 6 Constantine II becomes King of Greece, upon the death of his father King Paul. Boxer Cassius Clay announces the change of his name to Muhammad Ali. March 9 New York Times Co. v Sullivan (376 US 254 1964): The United States Supreme Court rules that under the First Amendment, speech criticizing political figures cannot be censored. The London Fisheries Convention is signed, giving signatories the right of full access to fishing grounds within 12 nautical miles of the western European coastline. March 10 Soviet military forces shoot down an unarmed reconnaissance bomber that had strayed into East Germany; the 3 U.S. flyers parachute to safety. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., United States Ambassador to South Vietnam, wins the New Hampshire Republican primary. March 12 – Malcolm X leaves the Nation of Islam. March 14 – A Dallas, Texas, jury finds Jack Ruby guilty of killing John F. Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. March 15 – Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor marry (for the first time) in Montreal. March 18 – 1964 Moscow protest: Approximately 50 Moroccan students break into the embassy of Morocco in the Soviet Union and stage an all‐day sit-in protesting against sentencing of eleven people to death for the alleged assassination attempt of King Hassan II of Morocco. March 19 – The American Jerrie Mock sets out to become the first woman to fly solo around the world from March 19, completing her flight on April 17. March 20 – June 6 – The first United Nations Conference on Trade and Development takes place. March 20 – The precursor of the European Space Agency, ESRO (European Space Research Organization) is established per an agreement signed on June 14, 1962. March 21 – Non ho l'età by Gigliola Cinquetti (music by Nicola Salerno, text by Mario Panzeri) wins the Eurovision Song Contest 1964 for Italy. March 27 (Good Friday) – The Great Alaskan earthquake, the second-most powerful known (and the most powerful earthquake recorded in North American history) at a magnitude of 9.2, strikes Southcentral Alaska, killing 125 people and inflicting massive damage to the city of Anchorage. March 28 King Saud of Saudi Arabia abdicates the throne. His brother, Prince Faisal, does not officially assume the throne until November. Radio Caroline becomes the United Kingdom's first "Pirate" radio station, broadcasting from a ship anchored just outside UK territorial waters on the east coast. March 31 – The military overthrows Brazilian President João Goulart in a coup, starting 21 years of dictatorship in Brazil. It ends in 1985. April April 1 – Deployed military rule in Brazil ends the government of democratically elected president, João Goulart. April 4 The Beatles hold the top 5 positions in the Billboard Top 40 singles in America, an unprecedented achievement. The top songs in America as listed on April 4, in order, are: "Can't Buy Me Love", "Twist and Shout", "She Loves You", "I Want to Hold Your Hand", and "Please Please Me". April 7 – IBM announces the System/360. April 8 – Gemini 1 is launched, the first unmanned test of the 2-man spacecraft. April 9 – The United Nations Security Council adopts by a 9–0 vote a resolution deploring a British air attack on a fort in Yemen 12 days earlier, in which 25 persons have been reported killed. April 11 – The Brazilian Congress elects Field Marshal Humberto de Alencar Castelo Branco as President of Brazil. April 12 – In Detroit, Malcolm X delivers a speech entitled "The Ballot or the Bullet" April 13 At the 36th Academy Awards ceremony, Sidney Poitier becomes the first African-American to win an Academy Award in the category Best Actor in a Leading Role in Lilies of the Field. April 14 – A Delta rocket's third-stage motor ignites prematurely in an assembly room at Cape Canaveral, killing 3 people. April 16 – In the Assize Court at Buckingham, UK, sentences totalling 307 years are passed on twelve men who stole £2,600,000 in used bank notes, after holding up the night train from Glasgow to London in August 1963 – a heist that becomes known as the Great Train Robbery. April 19 – In Laos, the coalition government of Prince Souvanna Phouma is deposed by a right-wing military group, led by Brig. Gen. Kouprasith Abhay. Not supported by the United States, the coup is ultimately unsuccessful, and Souvanna Phouma is reinstated, remaining as Prime Minister until 1975. April 20 U.S. President Lyndon Johnson in New York, and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Moscow, simultaneously announce plans to cut back production of materials for making nuclear weapons. Nelson Mandela makes his "I Am Prepared to Die" speech at the opening of the Rivonia Trial, a key event for the anti-apartheid movement. In the UK, BBC Two television starts broadcasting for the first time. April 22 British businessman Greville Wynne, imprisoned in Moscow since 1963 for spying, is exchanged for Soviet spy Gordon Lonsdale. The 1964 New York World's Fair opens to celebrate the 300th anniversary of New Amsterdam being taken over by British forces under the Duke of York (later King James II) and being renamed New York in 1664. The fair runs until October 18, 1964, and reopens April 21, 1965, finally closing October 17, 1965. Although not internationally sanctioned, due to being within ten years of the Seattle World's Fair in 1962, so that some countries decline to attend, many have pavilions with exotic crafts, art and food. April 25 – Thieves steal the head of the Little Mermaid statue in Copenhagen, Denmark (Henrik Bruun confesses in 1997). April 26 – Tanganyika and Zanzibar merge to form Tanzania. May May – The first fatality occurs at Disneyland in California, United States: a 15-year-old boy is injured while riding the Matterhorn Bobsleds and dies three days later as a result of his injuries. May 1 – At 4:00 a.m., John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kurtz run the first computer program written in BASIC (Beginners' All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code), an easy to learn high level programming language which they have created. BASIC is eventually included on many computers and even some games consoles. May 2 Vietnam War: Attack on USNS Card – An explosion caused by Viet Cong commandos causes carrier USNS Card to sink in the port of Saigon. Some 400–1,000 students march through Times Square, New York, and another 700 in San Francisco, in the first major student demonstration against the Vietnam War. Smaller marches also occur in Boston, Seattle, and Madison, WI. United States Senator Barry Goldwater receives more than 75% of the votes in the Texas Republican presidential primary. Henry Hezekiah Dee and Charles Eddie Moore, hitchhiking in Meadville, Mississippi, are kidnapped, beaten, murdered by members of the Ku Klux Klan. Their badly decomposed bodies are found by chance in July during the search for missing activists Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner. May 4 – The United States Congress recognizes Bourbon whiskey as a "distinctive product of the United States". May 7 Pacific Air Lines Flight 773 crashes near San Ramon, California, killing all 44 aboard; the FBI later reports that a cockpit recorder tape indicates that the pilot and co-pilot had been shot by a suicidal passenger. At a mail rockets demonstration by Gerhard Zucker on Hasselkopf Mountain near Braunlage (Lower Saxonia, Germany), three people are killed by a rocket explosion. May 9 – South Korean President Park Chung-hee reshuffles his Cabinet, after a series of student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. May 11 – Terence Conran opens the first Habitat store on London's Fulham Road. May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest the Vietnam War; the first such act of war resistance. May 22 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson makes a speech at the University of Michigan, introducing the concept of the "Great Society". May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse from Paris. May 24 – 25 – The crowd at a football match in Lima, Peru riots over a referee's decision in the Peru-Argentina game; 319 are killed, 500 injured. May 27 – Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies; he is later succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri. May 27 – The ongoing Colombian Conflict starts. May 28 – The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is released by the Arab League. May 29 – Having deposed them in a January coup, South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh had rival Generals Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim convicted of "lax morality". June June 2 Senator Barry Goldwater wins the California Republican primary, making him the overwhelming favorite for the party's nomination as President of the United States. Five million shares of stock in the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat) are offered for sale at $20 a share, and the issue is quickly sold out. June 3 – South Korean President Park Chung-hee declares martial law in Seoul, after 10,000 student demonstrators overpower police. June 11 Greece rejects direct talks with Turkey over Cyprus. Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21. June 12 – Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison. June 19 – U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, 32, is seriously injured in a private plane crash at Southampton, Massachusetts; the pilot is killed. June 20 – The Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It does not see its first victory, however, until 2 years 1966. At the same event, the AC Cobra wins its class in its second Le Mans appearance. June 21 Civil rights movement: Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner – Three Congress of Racial Equality workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, are abducted and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan with local law enforcement officials involved in the conspiracy. Their bodies are not found until August 4. Spain beats the Soviet Union 2–1 to win the 1964 European Nations Cup. June 26 – Moise Tshombe returns to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from exile in Spain. July July 2 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States. July 6 – Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom. July 16 – At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, in a speech written for him by Karl Hess, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice", and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". July 18 Six days of race riots begin in Harlem, New York, United States, apparently prompted by the shooting of a teenager. Judith Graham Pool publishes her discovery of cryoprecipitate, a frozen blood clotting product made from plasma primarily to treat hemophiliacs around the world. July 19 – Vietnam War: At a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister and military leader Nguyễn Khánh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam. July 20 Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack a provincial capital, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children). The National Movement of the Revolution is established in the Republic of the Congo, becoming the country's sole legal political party. July 21 – Race riots begin in Singapore between ethnic Chinese and Malays. July 22 – The second meeting of the Organisation of African Unity is held. July 24 – A minor criticality accident takes place at a United Nuclear Corporation Fuels recovery plant in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, United States, causing the death of one worker. July 27 – Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000. July 31 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes). August August 2 – Vietnam War: United States destroyer Maddox is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks one gunboat, while the other two leave the battle. August 5 Vietnam War: Operation Pierce Arrow – Aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Simba rebel army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo captures Stanleyville, and takes 1,000 Western hostages. August 7 – Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces. August 8 – A Rolling Stones gig in Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police. August 13 – The last judicial hanging in the United Kingdom takes place when murderers Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen are executed at Walton Prison in Liverpool. August 16 – Vietnam War: In a coup, General Nguyễn Khánh replaces Dương Văn Minh as South Vietnam's chief of state and establishes a new constitution, drafted partly by the U.S. Embassy. August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated. August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work. August 22 – Goalkeeper Derek Foster of Sunderland becomes the youngest-ever player to play in the English Football League, aged 15 years and 185 days. August 24 – 27 – The Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City nominates incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson for a full term, and U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. August 27 – Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Actress. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for Best Picture. August 28 – 30 – Philadelphia 1964 race riot: Tensions between African American residents and police lead to 341 injuries and 774 arrests. September September 2 – Indian Hungry generation poets, including Malay Roy Choudhury, are arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state and obscenity in literature. September 4 – The Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth in Scotland. September 10 – The African Development Bank (AfDB) is founded. September 11 – In Jacksonville, Florida, during a tour of the United States, John Lennon announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience. September 14 The third period of the Second Vatican Council opens. The London Daily Herald ceases publication, replaced by The Sun. September 18 – In Athens, King Constantine II of Greece marries Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who becomes Europe's youngest Queen at age 18 years, 19 days. September 21 – The island of Malta obtains independence from the United Kingdom. September 24 – The Warren Commission, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, submits its written report. September 25 – The Mozambican War of Independence is launched by FRELIMO. October October – Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer. October 1 Three thousand student activists at University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The Shinkansen high-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and Osaka. October 5 Twenty-three men and thirty-one women escape to West Berlin through a narrow tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh begin an 8-day visit to Canada. October 10 – 24 – The 1964 Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo, Japan, the first in an Asian country. October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits. October 14 – American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States. October 14 – 15 – Nikita Khrushchev is deposed as leader of the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin assume power. October 15 The Labour Party wins the parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom, ending 13 years of Conservative Party rule. The new prime minister is Harold Wilson. October 16 Harold Wilson becomes British Prime Minister after leading the Labour Party to a narrow election win over the Conservative government of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, which has been in power for 13 years and had four different leaders during that time. 596 (nuclear test): The People's Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang. October 18 – The New York World's Fair closes for the year (it reopens April 21, 1965). October 21 – The film version of the hit Broadway stage musical My Fair Lady premieres in New York City. The movie stars Audrey Hepburn in the role of Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison repeating his stage performance as Professor Henry Higgins (which will win him an Academy Award for Best Actor). The film will win seven other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. October 22 Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official Flag of Canada. A 5.3 kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble. October 24 – Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule. October 26 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes the last man executed in Western Australia, for murdering 8 citizens in Perth between 1959 and 1963. October 27 – In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rebel leader Christopher Gbenye takes 60 Americans and 800 Belgians hostage. October 29 – A collection of irreplaceable gemstones, including the Star of India, is stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. November November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five B-57 jet bombers and other planes. November 3 1964 United States presidential election: Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote. The Bolivian government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro is overthrown by a military rebellion led by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander-in-chief of the armed forces. November 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 3 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails. November 10 – | student demonstrations against his efforts to restore diplomatic and trade relations with Japan. May 11 – Terence Conran opens the first Habitat store on London's Fulham Road. May 12 – Twelve young men in New York City publicly burn their draft cards to protest the Vietnam War; the first such act of war resistance. May 22 – U.S. President Lyndon Johnson makes a speech at the University of Michigan, introducing the concept of the "Great Society". May 23 – Madeline Dassault, 63, wife of a French plane manufacturer and politician, is kidnapped while leaving her car in front of her Paris home; she is found unharmed the next day in a farmhouse from Paris. May 24 – 25 – The crowd at a football match in Lima, Peru riots over a referee's decision in the Peru-Argentina game; 319 are killed, 500 injured. May 27 – Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru dies; he is later succeeded by Lal Bahadur Shastri. May 27 – The ongoing Colombian Conflict starts. May 28 – The Charter of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) is released by the Arab League. May 29 – Having deposed them in a January coup, South Vietnamese leader Nguyen Khanh had rival Generals Tran Van Don and Le Van Kim convicted of "lax morality". June June 2 Senator Barry Goldwater wins the California Republican primary, making him the overwhelming favorite for the party's nomination as President of the United States. Five million shares of stock in the Communications Satellite Corporation (Comsat) are offered for sale at $20 a share, and the issue is quickly sold out. June 3 – South Korean President Park Chung-hee declares martial law in Seoul, after 10,000 student demonstrators overpower police. June 11 Greece rejects direct talks with Turkey over Cyprus. Cologne school massacre: In Cologne, West Germany, Walter Seifert attacks students and teachers in an elementary school with a flamethrower, killing 10 and injuring 21. June 12 – Nelson Mandela and 7 others are sentenced to life imprisonment in South Africa, and sent to the Robben Island prison. June 19 – U.S. Senator Edward Kennedy, 32, is seriously injured in a private plane crash at Southampton, Massachusetts; the pilot is killed. June 20 – The Ford GT40 makes its first appearance at the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It does not see its first victory, however, until 2 years 1966. At the same event, the AC Cobra wins its class in its second Le Mans appearance. June 21 Civil rights movement: Murders of Chaney, Goodman, and Schwerner – Three Congress of Racial Equality workers, Michael Schwerner, Andrew Goodman and James Chaney, are abducted and murdered near Philadelphia, Mississippi, by local members of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan with local law enforcement officials involved in the conspiracy. Their bodies are not found until August 4. Spain beats the Soviet Union 2–1 to win the 1964 European Nations Cup. June 26 – Moise Tshombe returns to the Democratic Republic of the Congo from exile in Spain. July July 2 – President Lyndon Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law, officially abolishing racial segregation in the United States. July 6 – Malawi receives its independence from the United Kingdom. July 16 – At the Republican National Convention in San Francisco, in a speech written for him by Karl Hess, U.S. presidential nominee Barry Goldwater declares that "extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice", and "moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue". July 18 Six days of race riots begin in Harlem, New York, United States, apparently prompted by the shooting of a teenager. Judith Graham Pool publishes her discovery of cryoprecipitate, a frozen blood clotting product made from plasma primarily to treat hemophiliacs around the world. July 19 – Vietnam War: At a rally in Saigon, South Vietnamese Prime Minister and military leader Nguyễn Khánh calls for expanding the war into North Vietnam. July 20 Vietnam War: Viet Cong forces attack a provincial capital, killing 11 South Vietnamese military personnel and 40 civilians (30 of which are children). The National Movement of the Revolution is established in the Republic of the Congo, becoming the country's sole legal political party. July 21 – Race riots begin in Singapore between ethnic Chinese and Malays. July 22 – The second meeting of the Organisation of African Unity is held. July 24 – A minor criticality accident takes place at a United Nuclear Corporation Fuels recovery plant in Wood River Junction, Rhode Island, United States, causing the death of one worker. July 27 – Vietnam War: The U.S. sends 5,000 more military advisers to South Vietnam, bringing the total number of United States forces in Vietnam to 21,000. July 31 – Ranger program: Ranger 7 sends back the first close-up photographs of the Moon (images are 1,000 times clearer than anything ever seen from Earth-bound telescopes). August August 2 – Vietnam War: United States destroyer Maddox is attacked in the Gulf of Tonkin. Air support from the carrier USS Ticonderoga sinks one gunboat, while the other two leave the battle. August 5 Vietnam War: Operation Pierce Arrow – Aircraft from carriers USS Ticonderoga and USS Constellation bomb North Vietnam in retaliation for strikes against U.S. destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. The Simba rebel army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo captures Stanleyville, and takes 1,000 Western hostages. August 7 – Vietnam War: The United States Congress passes the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, giving U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson broad war powers to deal with North Vietnamese attacks on U.S. forces. August 8 – A Rolling Stones gig in Scheveningen gets out of control. Riot police end the gig after about fifteen minutes, upon which spectators start to fight the riot police. August 13 – The last judicial hanging in the United Kingdom takes place when murderers Gwynne Owen Evans and Peter Anthony Allen are executed at Walton Prison in Liverpool. August 16 – Vietnam War: In a coup, General Nguyễn Khánh replaces Dương Văn Minh as South Vietnam's chief of state and establishes a new constitution, drafted partly by the U.S. Embassy. August 18 – The International Olympic Committee bans South Africa from the Tokyo Olympics on the grounds that its teams are racially segregated. August 20 – The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (Intelsat) began to work. August 22 – Goalkeeper Derek Foster of Sunderland becomes the youngest-ever player to play in the English Football League, aged 15 years and 185 days. August 24 – 27 – The Democratic National Convention in Atlantic City nominates incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson for a full term, and U.S. Senator Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota as his running mate. August 27 – Walt Disney's Mary Poppins has its world premiere in Los Angeles. It will go on to become Disney's biggest moneymaker, and winner of 5 Academy Awards, including a Best Actress. It is the first Disney film to be nominated for Best Picture. August 28 – 30 – Philadelphia 1964 race riot: Tensions between African American residents and police lead to 341 injuries and 774 arrests. September September 2 – Indian Hungry generation poets, including Malay Roy Choudhury, are arrested on charges of conspiracy against the state and obscenity in literature. September 4 – The Forth Road Bridge opens over the Firth of Forth in Scotland. September 10 – The African Development Bank (AfDB) is founded. September 11 – In Jacksonville, Florida, during a tour of the United States, John Lennon announces that the Beatles will not play to a segregated audience. September 14 The third period of the Second Vatican Council opens. The London Daily Herald ceases publication, replaced by The Sun. September 18 – In Athens, King Constantine II of Greece marries Princess Anne-Marie of Denmark, who becomes Europe's youngest Queen at age 18 years, 19 days. September 21 – The island of Malta obtains independence from the United Kingdom. September 24 – The Warren Commission, the first official investigation of the assassination of United States President John F. Kennedy, submits its written report. September 25 – The Mozambican War of Independence is launched by FRELIMO. October October – Dr. Robert Moog demonstrates the prototype Moog synthesizer. October 1 Three thousand student activists at University of California, Berkeley, surround and block a police car from taking a CORE volunteer arrested for not showing his ID, when he violated a ban on outdoor activist card tables. This protest eventually explodes into the Berkeley Free Speech Movement. The Shinkansen high-speed rail system, the world's first such system, is inaugurated in Japan, for the first sector between Tokyo and Osaka. October 5 Twenty-three men and thirty-one women escape to West Berlin through a narrow tunnel under the Berlin Wall. Elizabeth II and The Duke of Edinburgh begin an 8-day visit to Canada. October 10 – 24 – The 1964 Summer Olympics are held in Tokyo, Japan, the first in an Asian country. October 12 – The Soviet Union launches Voskhod 1 into Earth orbit as the first spacecraft with a multi-person crew and the first flight without space suits. The flight is cut short and lands again on October 13 after 16 orbits. October 14 – American civil rights movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. becomes the youngest recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, which is awarded to him for leading non-violent resistance to end racial prejudice in the United States. October 14 – 15 – Nikita Khrushchev is deposed as leader of the Soviet Union; Leonid Brezhnev and Alexei Kosygin assume power. October 15 The Labour Party wins the parliamentary elections in the United Kingdom, ending 13 years of Conservative Party rule. The new prime minister is Harold Wilson. October 16 Harold Wilson becomes British Prime Minister after leading the Labour Party to a narrow election win over the Conservative government of Sir Alec Douglas-Home, which has been in power for 13 years and had four different leaders during that time. 596 (nuclear test): The People's Republic of China explodes an atomic bomb in Sinkiang. October 18 – The New York World's Fair closes for the year (it reopens April 21, 1965). October 21 – The film version of the hit Broadway stage musical My Fair Lady premieres in New York City. The movie stars Audrey Hepburn in the role of Eliza Doolittle and Rex Harrison repeating his stage performance as Professor Henry Higgins (which will win him an Academy Award for Best Actor). The film will win seven other Academy Awards, including Best Picture. October 22 Canada: A Federal Multi-Party Parliamentary Committee selects a design to become the new official Flag of Canada. A 5.3 kiloton nuclear device is detonated at the Tatum Salt Dome, from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, as part of the Vela Uniform program. This test is the Salmon phase of the Atomic Energy Commission's Project Dribble. October 24 – Northern Rhodesia, a former British protectorate, becomes the independent Republic of Zambia, ending 73 years of British rule. October 26 – Eric Edgar Cooke becomes the last man executed in Western Australia, for murdering 8 citizens in Perth between 1959 and 1963. October 27 – In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, rebel leader Christopher Gbenye takes 60 Americans and 800 Belgians hostage. October 29 – A collection of irreplaceable gemstones, including the Star of India, is stolen from the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. November November 1 – Mortar fire from North Vietnamese forces rains on the Bien Hoa Air Base, killing four U.S. servicemen, wounding 72, and destroying five B-57 jet bombers and other planes. November 3 1964 United States presidential election: Incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson defeats Republican challenger Barry Goldwater with over 60 percent of the popular vote. The Bolivian government of President Víctor Paz Estenssoro is overthrown by a military rebellion led by General Alfredo Ovando Candía, commander-in-chief of the armed forces. November 5 – Mariner program: Mariner 3 spacecraft is launched from Cape Kennedy but fails. November 10 – Australia partially reintroduces compulsory military service due to the Indonesian Confrontation. November 19 – The United States Department of Defense announces the closing of 95 military bases and facilities, including Fort Jay, the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Brooklyn Army Terminal. November 21 Second Vatican Council: The third period of the Catholic Church's ecumenical council closes. Lumen gentium, the Dogmatic Constitution on the Church, is promulgated. The Verrazano-Narrows Bridge across New York Bay opens to traffic (the world's longest suspension bridge at this time). November 24 – Belgian paratroopers and mercenaries capture Stanleyville, but a number of hostages die in the fighting, among them American Evangelical Covenant Church missionary Dr. Paul Carlson. November 28 Mariner program: NASA launches the Mariner 4 space probe from Cape Kennedy toward Mars to take television pictures of that planet in July 1965. Vietnam War: United States National Security Council members, including Robert McNamara, Dean Rusk, and Maxwell Taylor, agree to recommend a plan for a 2-stage escalation of bombing in North Vietnam, to President Lyndon B. Johnson. France performs an underground nuclear test at Ecker, Algeria. December December 1 – Gustavo Díaz Ordaz takes office as President of Mexico. December 3 Berkeley Free Speech Movement: Police arrest about 800 students at the University of California, Berkeley, following their takeover of and massive sit-in at the Sproul Hall administration building. The sit-in most directly protested the U.C. Regents' decision to punish student activists for what many thought had been justified civil disobedience earlier in the conflict. The Danish football club Brøndby IF is founded as a merger between the two local clubs Brøndbyøster Idrætsforening and Brøndbyvester Idrætsforening. The club wins the national championship Danish Superliga 10 times, and the Danish Cups six times, after joining the Danish top-flight football league in 1981. December 5 – Australian Senate election, 1964: The Liberal/Country Coalition Government led by Prime Minister Robert Menzies hold their status quo, while the Labor Party led by Arthur Calwell lose one seat to the Democratic Labor Party, who hold the balance of power in the Senate alongside independent Reg Turnbull. December 6 – The 1-hour stop-motion animated special Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, based on the popular Christmas song, is broadcast for the first time, on NBC. It becomes a Christmas tradition in the United States, still being shown on television more than 50 years later. December 10 – Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. December 11 – Che Guevara addresses the United Nations General Assembly. A bazooka attack is launched at the Headquarters of the United Nations in New York City. December 12 – Jamhuri Day: Kenya becomes a republic, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first President. December 14 – Heart of Atlanta Motel v. United States (379 US 241 1964): The U.S. Supreme Court rules that, in accordance with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, establishments providing public accommodation must refrain from racial discrimination. December 18 – The Christmas flood of 1964 begins in the United States, affecting the Pacific Northwest and some of Northern California. It will continue until January 7, resulting in 19 deaths, serious damage to buildings, roads and bridges, and the loss of 4,000 head of livestock. December 21 – The General Dynamics F-111 Aardvark supersonic attack aircraft, developed for the U.S. Air Force, makes its first flight, at Carswell Air Force Base, Texas. December 22 A cyclone in the Palk Strait destroys the Indian town of Dhanushkodi, killing 1800 people. The Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird makes its first flight at Palmdale, California. December 23 – Wonderful Radio London becomes the United Kingdom's fourth "Pirate" radio station, broadcasting from MV Galaxy (a former US Navy minesweeper) anchored off the east coast of England, with an |
Russian space station Mir is carried out near Nadi, Fiji, with Mir falling into the South Pacific Ocean. April April 1 Hainan Island incident: A Chinese fighter jet collides with a U.S. EP-3E surveillance aircraft, which is forced to make an emergency landing in Hainan, China. The U.S. crew is detained for 10 days and the F-8 Chinese pilot, Wang Wei, goes missing and is presumed dead. In the Netherlands, the Act on the Opening up of Marriage goes into effect. The Act allows same-sex couples to marry legally. April 2 – Former Federal Republic of Yugoslavia President Slobodan Milošević surrenders to police special forces, to be tried on charges of war crimes. April 28 – Soyuz TM-32 lifts off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, carrying the first space tourist, American Dennis Tito. May May 6 – Space tourist Dennis Tito returns to Earth aboard Soyuz TM-31. (Soyuz TM-32 is left docked at the International Space Station as a new lifeboat.) May 7 – In Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina, an attempt is made to reconstruct the Ferhadija mosque. However, the ceremony results in mass riots by Serb nationalists, who beat and stone Bosnian Muslims. May 13 – Silvio Berlusconi wins the general election and becomes Prime Minister of Italy for the second time. May 22 – A large trans-Neptunian object (28978 Ixion) is found during the Deep Ecliptic Survey. May 24 Sherpa Temba Tsheri, 15, becomes the youngest person to reach the summit of Mount Everest. Versailles wedding hall disaster in Jerusalem, Israel; a partial building collapse kills 23 people and injures 380 others. June June 1 Crown Prince Dipendra of Nepal kills his father, the king, his mother and other members of the royal family with an assault rifle and then shoots himself in the Nepalese royal massacre. Dipendra, who briefly survives, automatically becomes King of Nepal. A Hamas suicide bomber kills 21, mostly teenagers, in the Dolphinarium disco in Tel Aviv, Israel. June 4 – Gyanendra ascends the throne of Nepal on the death of his nephew, Dipendra. June 5–9 – Tropical Storm Allison produces 36 inches (900 mm) of rain in Houston, killing 22, damaging the Texas Medical Center, and causing more than of damage overall. June 19 – A missile hits a soccer field in northern Iraq (Tel Afr County), killing 23 and wounding 11. According to U.S. officials, it is an Iraqi missile that malfunctioned. June 21 – The world's longest train is run by BHP Iron Ore between Newman and Port Hedland in Western Australia (a distance of ); the train consists of 682 loaded iron ore wagons and 8 GE AC6000CW locomotives, giving a gross weight of almost 100,000 tonnes and moves 82,262 tonnes of ore; the train is long. June 23 – The 8.4 southern Peru earthquake shakes coastal Peru with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VIII (Severe). A destructive tsunami follows, leaving at least 75 people dead, and 2,687 injured. July July 2 – The world's first self-contained artificial heart is implanted in Robert Tools in the United States. July 4 – Vladivostok Air Flight 352 crashes on approach to landing at Irkutsk Airport, Russia, killing 145. July 7 – 2001 Bradford riots: Race riots erupt in Bradford in the north of England after National Front members reportedly stab an Asian man outside a pub. July 9 – Gdańsk is flooded, 4 people die and about 200 million zł is estimated in losses. July 13 – The International Olympic Committee awards Beijing the right to host the 2008 Summer Olympics. July 16 – The People's Republic of China and the Russian Federation sign the 2001 Sino-Russian Treaty of Friendship ("Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation"). July 20–22 – The 27th G8 summit takes place in Genoa, Italy. Massive demonstrations are held against the meeting by members of the anti-globalization movement. One demonstrator, Carlo Giuliani, is killed by a policeman. Several others are badly injured during a police attack on a school used by the protesters as their headquarters. July 24 Bandaranaike Airport attack: Tamil Tigers attack Bandaranaike International Airport in Sri Lanka, causing an estimated $500 million of damage. Simeon Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, deposed as the last Tsar of Bulgaria when a child, is sworn in as the democratically elected 48th Prime Minister of Bulgaria. August August 6 – Erwadi fire incident, 28 mentally ill persons bound by chains were burnt to death at a faith based institution at Erwadi, Tamil Nadu, India. August 8 – Albanian rebels ambush a convoy of the Army of the Republic of Macedonia near Tetovo, killing 10 soldiers. August 9 – A Sbarro restaurant in Jerusalem is attacked by a Palestinian terrorist, who kills 15 civilians and injures 130. August 10 – In Angola, a train triggers a landmine, causing 252 deaths. August 21 – NATO decides to send a peace-keeping force to the Republic of Macedonia. August 24 – Air Transat Flight 236 runs out of fuel over the Atlantic Ocean (en route to Lisbon from Toronto) and makes an emergency landing in the Azores, all 306 people onboard survive. August 25 – 2001 Marsh Harbour Cessna 402 crash: Eight people, including singer Aaliyah and several members of her record company are killed as their overloaded aircraft crashes shortly after takeoff from Marsh Harbour Airport, The Bahamas. August 31–September 1 – The 2001 Vancouver TV realignment occurs in British Columbia, Canada. August 31 – The World Conference against Racism 2001 begins in Durban, South Africa. September September 1 – Nakai, the first captive orca to be born as a result of artificial insemination, is born at SeaWorld San Diego. September 3 In Belfast, Protestant loyalists begin a picket of Holy Cross, a Catholic primary school for girls. For the next 11 weeks, riot police escort the schoolchildren and their parents through hundreds of protesters, amid rioting and heightened violence. The United States, Canada and Israel withdraw from the U.N. Conference on Racism because they feel that the issue of Zionism is overemphasized. September 4 – Tokyo DisneySea opens to the public as part of the Tokyo Disney Resort in Urayasu, Chiba, Japan. September 6 – United States v. Microsoft Corp.: The United States Justice Department announces that it no longer seeks to break up software maker Microsoft, and will instead seek a lesser antitrust penalty. September 9 A suicide bomber kills Ahmad Shah Massoud, military commander of the Afghan Northern Alliance. 68 people die of methanol poisoning in Pärnu County, Estonia. The Unix billennium is reached, marking the beginning of the use of 10-digit decimal Unix time stamps. September 10 Donald Rumsfeld gives a speech regarding $2.3 trillion in Pentagon spending that cannot be accounted for. He identifies the Pentagon bureaucracy as the biggest threat to America. Antônio da Costa Santos, mayor of Campinas, Brazil is assassinated. Charles Ingram apparently wins £1 million on Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, but the prize is cancelled after he is accused of cheating. September 11 – Approximately 2,977 victims are killed or fatally injured in the September 11 attacks at the World Trade Center in New York City, The Pentagon in Arlington County, Virginia, and in rural Shanksville, Pennsylvania after American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 are hijacked and crash into the World Trade Center's Twin Towers, American Airlines Flight 77 is hijacked and crashes into the Pentagon, and United Airlines Flight 93 is hijacked and crashes into grassland in Shanksville, as a result of passengers fighting to regain control of the airplane. The World Trade Center towers collapse as a result of the crashes. September 13 Civilian aircraft traffic resumes in the United States after the September 11 attacks. British politician William Hague resigns as Leader of the Opposition and Leader of the Conservative Party September 14 – Historic National Prayer Service held at Washington National Cathedral for victims of the September 11 attacks. A similar service is held in Canada on Parliament Hill, the largest vigil ever held in the nation's capital. September 17 – The New York Stock Exchange reopens for trading after the September 11 attacks, the longest closure since the Great Depression. September 18 – The 2001 anthrax attacks commence as letters containing anthrax spores are mailed from Princeton, New Jersey, to ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, the New York Post, and the National Enquirer. Twenty-two people in total are exposed, with five resulting fatalities. September 20 – In an address to a joint session of Congress and the American people, U.S. President George W. Bush declares a "War on Terror". September 21 In Toulouse, France, the AZote Fertilisant chemical factory explodes, killing 29 and seriously wounding over 2,500. Increased racial tensions in Peterborough, England, following the September 11 attacks result in the murder of Ross Parker by a gang of ten Muslims in a racially motivated attack. Deep Space 1 flies within 2,200 km of Comet Borrelly. September 27 – Zug massacre: In Zug, Switzerland, Friedrich Leibacher shoots 18 citizens, killing 14 and then himself. October October 1 – Militants attack the state legislature building in Srinagar, Kashmir, killing 38. October 2 – Swissair seeks for bankruptcy protection and grounds its entire fleet, resulting in over 230 flights cancelled and stranding 18,000 people worldwide. October 4 – Siberia Airlines Flight 1812 was shot down over the Black Sea en route from Tel Aviv, Israel, to Novosibirsk, Russia; all 78 people on board are killed. October 7 – War in Afghanistan: In response to the September 11 attacks, the United States invades Afghanistan, with participation from other nations, thus officially beginning the War on Terror. October 8 Linate Airport disaster: A twin-engine Cessna and Scandinavian Airlines jetliner collide in heavy fog during takeoff from Milan, Italy, killing 118 people. U.S. President George W. Bush announces the establishment of the Office of Homeland Security. October 9 – Second mailing of anthrax letters from Trenton, New Jersey in the 2001 anthrax attacks. October 15 – NASA's Galileo spacecraft passes within of Jupiter's moon Io. October 17 – Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Ze'evi becomes the first Israeli minister to be assassinated in a terrorist attack. October 19 – An Indonesian fishing boat, the SIEV X, sinks on route to Christmas Island, killing 353 people, mostly asylum seekers. October 23 The Provisional Irish Republican Army commences disarmament after peace talks. The iPod is first introduced by Apple. October 25 – Citing connotations with the Rwandan genocide, the government of Rwanda adopts a new national flag for the country. November November – VAG, the public transport operator in Nuremberg, Germany, begins testing a hybrid capabus which uses a diesel-electric drive system with electric double-layer capacitors. November 2 – The Glocal Forum, leading international organization in the field of city-to-city cooperation, is established by Israeli politician Uri Savir. November 4 Hurricane Michelle hits Cuba, destroying crops and thousands of homes. The Police Service of Northern Ireland is established, as successor to the Royal Ulster Constabulary. November 7 – Sabena, the national airline of Belgium, goes bankrupt. November 10 2001 Australian federal election: John Howard's Liberal/National Coalition Government is re-elected with a slightly increased majority, defeating the Labor Party led by Kim Beazley. Heavy rains and mudslides in Algeria kill more than 900. November 11 – Two French journalists Pierre Billaud and Johanne Sutton, and a German colleague Volker Handloik, are killed in Afghanistan during an attack on the convoy they are traveling in. November 12 American Airlines Flight 587 crashes in Queens minutes after takeoff from John F. Kennedy International Airport, killing all 260 on board. War in Afghanistan: Taliban forces abandon Kabul, ahead of advancing Northern Alliance troops. November 13 – In the first such act since World War II, U.S. President George W. Bush signs an executive order allowing military tribunals against any foreigners suspected of having connections to terrorist acts or planned acts against the United States. November 14 – War in Afghanistan: Northern Alliance fighters take over the capital Kabul. November 15 – Microsoft releases the Xbox in the United States and enters the video game market. November 23 – The Convention on Cybercrime is signed in Budapest, Hungary. November 27 – A hydrogen atmosphere is discovered on the extrasolar planet Osiris by the Hubble Space Telescope, the first atmosphere detected on an extrasolar planet. December December – The International Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty produces a report on Responsibility to protect. December 1 – The last Trans World Airlines flight lands at St. Louis International Airport, following TWA's purchase by American Airlines. December 2 Enron files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection 5 days after Dynegy cancels a US$8.4 billion buyout bid (to this point, the largest bankruptcy in U.S. history). 1998–2002 Argentine great depression: Corralito – The government effectively freezes all bank accounts for twelve months leading to December 2001 riots in Argentina. December 11 The People's Republic of China joins the World Trade Organization. The United States government indicts Zacarias Moussaoui for involvement in the September 11 attacks. The United States Customs Service raids members of international software piracy group DrinkOrDie in Operation Buccaneer. December 13 2001 Indian Parliament attack: Nine people and five terrorists are killed in a terrorist attack in New Delhi, leading to the 2001–02 India–Pakistan standoff. U.S. President George W. Bush announces the US withdrawal from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty. December 15 – The Leaning Tower of Pisa reopens after 11 years and $27,000,000 spent to fortify it, without fixing its famous lean. December 19 A record high barometric pressure of 1085.6 hPa (32.06 inHg) is recorded at Tosontsengel, Zavkhan, Mongolia. Argentine economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina. December 22 Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Northern Alliance, hands over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by President Hamid Karzai. British Islamic terrorist Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63. December 27 The People's Republic of China is | economic crisis: December riots: Riots erupt in Buenos Aires, Argentina. December 22 Burhanuddin Rabbani, political leader of the Northern Alliance, hands over power in Afghanistan to the interim government headed by President Hamid Karzai. British Islamic terrorist Richard Reid attempts to destroy a passenger airliner by igniting explosives hidden in his shoes aboard American Airlines Flight 63. December 27 The People's Republic of China is granted permanent normal trade status with the United States. Tropical Storm Vamei forms within 1.5 degrees of the equator. No other tropical cyclone in recorded history has come as close to the equator. December 29 – A fire at the Mesa Redonda shopping center in Lima, Peru, kills at least 291 people. Births January–April January 1 – Angourie Rice, Australian actress January 3 – Deni Avdija, Israeli basketball player January 9 – Rodrygo, Brazilian footballer January 14 – Cora Jade, American professional wrestler January 15 – Alexandra Agiurgiuculese, Romanian-Italian rhythmic gymnast February 13 – Kaapo Kakko, Finnish ice hockey player February 15 – Haley Tju, American actress February 19 – David Mazouz, American actor February 21 – Isabella Acres, American actress February 24 – Ramona Marquez, British actress March 4 – Freya Anderson, English freestyle swimmer March 10 – Alyssa Carson, American space enthusiast and undergraduate student April 5 – Thylane Blondeau, French model May–August May 8 – Jordyn Huitema, Canadian soccer player May 14 – Jack Hughes, American ice hockey player May 17 – AJ Mitchell, American singer-songwriter and musician May 22 – Emma Chamberlain, American YouTuber May 31 – Iga Świątek, Polish tennis player June 1 – Ed Oxenbould, Australian actor June 4 – Takefusa Kubo, Japanese footballer June 12 – Théo Maledon, French basketball player July 2 – Abraham Attah, Ghanaian actor July 10 – Isabela Moner, American actress and singer August 22 – LaMelo Ball, American basketball player September–December September 3 – Kaia Gerber, American model and actress September 5 – Bukayo Saka, English footballer October 1 – Mason Greenwood, English footballer October 13 – Caleb McLaughlin, American actor October 14 – Rowan Blanchard, American actress October 25 – Princess Elisabeth, Duchess of Brabant, daughter and Heiress Apparent of Philippe, King of the Belgians November 8 – Tilly Ramsay, English television presenter December 1 – Aiko, Princess Toshi of Japan December 14 – Joshua Rush, American actor December 18 – Billie Eilish, American singer Deaths January January 1 – Ray Walston, American actor (b. 1914) January 2 – William P. Rogers, American diplomat (b. 1913) January 7 – Charles Helou, 9th President of Lebanon (b. 1913) January 9 – Paul Vanden Boeynants, 2-time Prime Minister of Belgium (b. 1919) January 12 Bill Hewlett, American businessman (b. 1913) Adhemar da Silva, Brazilian athlete (b. 1927) January 18 – Laurent-Désiré Kabila, president of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (b. 1939) January 27 – Marie-José of Belgium, last Queen of Italy (b. 1906) January 30 – Michel Marcel Navratil, last French citizen and male survivor of the Titanic disaster (b. 1908) January 31 – Gordon R. Dickson, Canadian writer (b. 1923) February February 4 J. J. Johnson, American jazz trombonist (b. 1924) Iannis Xenakis, Greek composer (b. 1922) February 7 Dale Evans, American actress, singer, and songwriter (b. 1912) King Moody, American actor (b. 1929) February 9 – Herbert A. Simon, American economist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1916) February 10 – Lewis Arquette, American film actor, writer and producer (b. 1935) February 13 – Ugo Fano, Italian-born American physicist (b. 1912) February 18 Balthus, French painter (b. 1908) Dale Earnhardt, American auto racing driver (b. 1951) February 19 Stanley Kramer, American film director (b. 1913) Charles Trenet French singer and songwriter (b. 1913) February 20 – Rosemary DeCamp, American actress (b. 1910) February 24 – Claude Shannon, American mathematician (b. 1916) February 25 – Sir Don Bradman, Australian cricketer (b. 1908) March March 4 Jean René Bazaine, French painter (b. 1904) Harold Stassen, American politician, 25th Governor of Minnesota (b. 1907) March 10 – Michael Woodruff, British surgeon and organ transplantation pioneer (b. 1911) March 12 – Robert Ludlum, American author (b. 1927) March 15 – Ann Sothern, American actress and singer (b. 1909) March 18 – John Phillips, American singer-songwriter (b. 1935) March 20 – Ilie Verdeț, 51st Prime Minister of Romania (b. 1925) March 22 – William Hanna, American animator and businessman (b. 1910) March 29 – John Lewis, American jazz pianist and composer (b. 1920) March 31 – Clifford Shull, American physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1915) April April 7 David Graf, American actor (b. 1950) Beatrice Straight, American actress (b. 1914) April 11 – Sir Harry Secombe, Welsh entertainer (b. 1921) April 14 – Hiroshi Teshigahara, Japanese director (b. 1927) April 15 – Joey Ramone, American musician and singer (b. 1951) April 20 Va'ai Kolone, Prime Minister of Samoa (b. 1911) Giuseppe Sinopoli, Italian conductor and composer (b. 1946) April 25 – Michele Alboreto, Italian racing driver (b. 1956) April 29 – Barend Biesheuvel, Prime Minister of the Netherlands (1971–1973) (b. 1920) May May 11 – Douglas Adams, English author (b. 1952) May 12 – Perry Como, American singer (b. 1912) May 13 Jason Miller, American actor and playwright (b. 1939) R. K. Narayan, Indian novelist (b. 1906) May 17 – Jacques-Louis Lions, French mathematician (b. 1928) May 21 – Mahmoud Zuabi, 61st Prime Minister of Syria (b. 1935) May 22 – Jenő Fock, 49th Prime Minister of Hungary (b. 1916) May 24 – Javier Urruticoechea, Spanish footballer (b. 1952) May 26 – Anne Haney, American actress (b. 1934) May 31 – Arlene Francis, American actress and game show panelist (b. 1907) June June 1 Nepalese royal massacre: King Birendra of Nepal (b. 1944) Queen Aishwarya of Nepal (b. 1949) Prince Nirajan of Nepal (b. 1978) Princess Shruti of Nepal (b. 1976) Nkosi Johnson, South African AIDS awareness campaigner (b. 1989) June 2 – Imogene Coca, American actress (b. 1908) June 3 – Anthony Quinn, Mexican-American actor (b. 1915) June 4 – King Dipendra of Nepal (b. 1971) June 7 – Víctor Paz Estenssoro, 45th President of Bolivia (b. 1907) June 10 – Leila Pahlavi, Iranian princess (b. 1970) June 11 – Timothy McVeigh, American terrorist (b. 1968) June 15 – Henri Alekan, French cinematographer (b. 1909) June 17 – Donald J. Cram, American chemist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1919) June 21 John Lee Hooker, American musician (b. 1917) Soad Hosny, Egyptian actress (b. 1942) Carroll O'Connor, American actor (b. 1924) June 22 – Luis Carniglia, Argentine footballer and manager (b. 1917) June 23 – Corinne Calvet, French actress (b. 1925) June 27 Tove Jansson, Finnish author and illustrator (b. 1914) Jack Lemmon, American actor and director (b. 1925) Joan Sims, English actress (b. 1930) June 28 – Mortimer J. Adler, American philosopher (b. 1902) June 29 – Maximos V Hakim, Egyptian patriarch (b. 1908) June 30 Chet Atkins, American guitarist and record producer (b. 1924) Joe Fagan, English footballer and manager (b. 1921) Joe Henderson, American jazz tenor saxophonist (b. 1937) July July 1 – Nikolay Basov, Soviet physicist, Nobel Prize laureate (b. 1922) July 10 – Álvaro Magaña, 38th President of El Salvador (b. 1925) July 11 – Herman Brood, Dutch musician (b. 1946) July 17 – Katharine Graham, American publisher (b. 1917) July 21 – Sivaji Ganesan, Indian actor (b. 1928) July 22 – Maria Gorokhovskaya, Soviet gymnast (b. 1921) July 26 – Josef Klaus, 16th Chancellor of Austria (b. 1910) July 28 – Ahmed Sofa, Bengali writer (b. 1943) July 29 – Edward Gierek, Polish politician (b. 1913) July 31 Poul Anderson, American author (b. 1926) Francisco da Costa Gomes, 15th President of Portugal (b. 1914) August August 4 – Lorenzo Music, American actor, writer, producer, and musician (b. 1937) August 5 – Vyacheslav Adamczyk, Belarusian journalist, writer, playwright and screenwriter. (b. 1933) August 6 Larry Adler, American musician (b. 1914) Jorge Amado, Brazilian writer (b. 1912) Dương Văn Minh, President of Vietnam (b. 1916) Wilhelm Mohnke, German general (b. 1911) August 15 – Richard Chelimo, Kenyan athlete (b. 1972) August 19 – Donald Woods, South African journalist and anti-apartheid activist (b. 1933) August 20 Fred Hoyle, British astronomer and writer (b. 1915) Kim Stanley, American actress (b. 1925) August 22 – Bernard Heuvelmans, Belgian-French cryptozoologist (b. 1916) August 23 – Kathleen Freeman, American actress (b. 1919) August 24 – Jane Greer, American actress (b. 1924) August 25 – Aaliyah, American singer and actress (b. 1979) August 26 – Marita Petersen, 8th Prime Minister of Faroe Islands (b. 1940) August 30 – A. F. M. Ahsanuddin Chowdhury, 9th President of Bangladesh (b. 1915) September September 2 Christiaan Barnard, South African cardiac surgeon (b. 1922) Troy Donahue, American actor (b. 1936) September 3 Pauline Kael, American film critic (b. 1919) Thuy Trang, Vietnamese American actress (b. 1973) September 9 – Ahmad Shah Massoud, Afghan military commander (b. 1953) September 11 – 2,996 people (2,977 victims and 19 hijackers) who died in the September 11 attacks (see 2001 in the United States) September 12 – Victor Wong, Chinese-American actor (b. 1927) September 13 – Charles Régnier, German actor, director, radio actor, and translator (b. 1914) September 14 – Dorothy McGuire, American actress (b. 1916) September 20 – Marcos Pérez Jiménez, |
January 4 – Iron Eyes Cody, Italian-American actor (b. 1904) January 6 – Michel Petrucciani, French jazz pianist and composer (b. 1962) January 11 Teuvo Aura, Finnish politician, 33rd Prime Minister of Finland (b. 1912) Fabrizio De André, Italian singer and songwriter (b. 1940) Brian Moore, Northern Irish-Canadian writer (b. 1921) January 12 – Betty Lou Gerson, American actress (b. 1914) January 14 – Jerzy Grotowski, Polish theatre director (b. 1933) January 21 – Susan Strasberg, American actress (b. 1938) January 22 – Graham Staines, Australian missionary (b. 1941) January 23 – Joe D'Amato, Italian film director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter (b. 1936) January 25 – Robert Shaw, American conductor (b. 1916) February February 1 – Barış Manço, Turkish singer and television personality (b. 1943) February 2 - Deborah Makepeace, English actress (b. 1957). February 5 – Wassily Leontief, Russian economist (b. 1906) February 7 King Hussein of Jordan (b. 1935) Bobby Troup, American actor, jazz pianist, singer and songwriter (b. 1918) February 8 – Dame Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish author (b. 1919) February 12 – Heinz Schubert, German actor and photographer (b. 1925) February 14 Buddy Knox, American singer and songwriter (b. 1933) John Ehrlichman, American Watergate scandal figure (b. 1925) February 15 Big L, American rapper (b. 1974) Henry Way Kendall, American physicist (b. 1926) February 16 – Björn Afzelius, Swedish singer, songwriter and guitarist (b. 1947) February 18 – Andreas Feininger, French-born photographer (b. 1906) February 20 Sarah Kane, English playwright (b. 1971) Gene Siskel, American film critic (b. 1946) February 21 – Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist (b. 1918) February 25 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist (b. 1912) February 28 Bing Xin, Chinese author and poet (b. 1900) Bill Talbert, American tennis player (b. 1918) March March 2 – Dusty Springfield, English pop singer (b. 1939) March 3 Jackson C. Frank, American folk musician (b. 1943) Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist (b. 1904) March 4 Harry Blackmun, American judge, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (b. 1908) Fritz Honegger, Swiss politician, 79th President of Switzerland (b. 1917) March 5 – Richard Kiley, American actor (b. 1922) March 6 Dennis Viollet, English footballer (b. 1933) Emir Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain (b. 1931) March 7 – Stanley Kubrick, American film director and producer (b. 1928) March 8 Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine writer (b. 1914) Peggy Cass, American actress, comedian, and game show panelist (b. 1924) Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player (b. 1914) March 10 Oswaldo Guayasamín, Ecuadorian painter and sculptor (b. 1919) Kusumagraj, Indian poet, playwright and novelist (b. 1912) March 12 – Yehudi Menuhin, American violinist (b. 1916) March 13 – Garson Kanin, American playwright and screenwriter (b. 1912) March 14 – Kirk Alyn, American actor (b. 1910) March 17 Ernest Gold, Austrian-born composer (b. 1921) Humberto Fernández-Morán, Venezuelan research scientist (b. 1924) Hildegard Peplau, American nurse and theorist (b. 1909) March 19 – Tofilau Eti Alesana, Samoan politician, 6th Prime Minister of Samoa (b. 1924) March 21 Jean Guitton, French philosopher (b. 1901) Ernie Wise, English comedian (b. 1925) March 22 – David Strickland, American actor (b. 1969) March 24 – Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German politician (b. 1902) March 29 – Joe Williams, American singer (b. 1918) March 30 – Igor Netto, Soviet–Russian footballer (b. 1930) March 31 – Yuri Knorozov, Russian linguist and epigrapher (b. 1922) April April 4 Faith Domergue, American actress (b. 1924) Jumabek Ibraimov, 5th Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan (b. 1944) Bob Peck, English actor (b. 1945) April 9 – Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, Nigerese military officer, 5th President of Niger (b. 1949) April 10 – Jean Vander Pyl, American actress (b. 1919) April 13 – Willi Stoph, German politician, 2-time Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic (b. 1914) April 14 Ellen Corby, American actress (b. 1911) Anthony Newley, English actor, singer and songwriter (b. 1931) April 15 – Harvey Postlethwaite, English engineer and race car designer (b. 1944) April 16 – Skip Spence, Canadian-American singer and songwriter (b. 1946) April 19 – Hermine Braunsteiner, German Nazi prison guard (b. 1919) April 20 – Rick Rude, American professional wrestler (b. 1958) April 21 – Charles "Buddy" Rogers, American actor (b. 1904) April 22 – Bert Remsen, American actor (b. 1925) April 25 Michael Morris, Irish journalist and 6th President of the International Olympic Committee (b. 1914) Roger Troutman, American funk musician (b. 1951) April 26 – Jill Dando, British television journalist (b. 1961) April 27 – Al Hirt, American trumpeter and bandleader (b. 1922) April 28 Rory Calhoun, American actor (b. 1922) Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist (b. 1921) Alf Ramsey, English footballer and manager (b. 1920) May May 2 – Oliver Reed, English actor (b. 1938) May 8 Dana Plato, American actress (b. 1964) Dirk Bogarde, English actor (b. 1921) May 10 – Shel Silverstein, American author and poet (b. 1930) May 12 – Saul Steinberg, Romanian-born cartoonist (b. 1914) May 13 – Gene Sarazen, American golfer (b. 1902) May 17 – Henry Jones, American actor (b. 1912) May 18 – Betty Robinson, American athlete (b. 1911) May 19 – Candy Candido, American voice actor (b. 1913) May 21 – Vanessa Brown, Austrian-born American actress (b. 1928) May 23 – Owen Hart, Canadian professional wrestler (b. 1965) May 26 – Paul Sacher, Swiss conductor (b. 1906) June June 1 – Christopher Cockerell, English engineer (b. 1910) June 5 – Mel Tormé, American singer (b. 1925) June 9 – Andrew L. Stone, American screenwriter, director and producer (b. 1902) June 11 – DeForest Kelley, American actor (b. 1920) June 12 – Sergey Khlebnikov, Soviet speed skater (b. 1955) June 16 – Screaming Lord Sutch, English politician (b. 1940) June 17 Basil Hume, English cardinal (b. 1923) Paul-Émile de Souza, Beninese army officer and political figure (b. 1930) June 19 Henri, Count of Paris, French nobleman (b. 1908) Mario Soldati, Italian writer and film director (b. 1906) June 25 Fred Trump, American real estate developer (b. 1905) Yevgeny Morgunov, Soviet and Russian actor, film director, and script writer (b. 1927) June 27 Siegfried Lowitz, German actor (b. 1914) Georgios Papadopoulos, 69th Prime Minister of Greece and 4th President of Greece (b. 1919) June 28 – Vere Bird, 1st Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda (b. 1910) June 30 – Édouard Boubat, French photojournalist and art photographer (b. 1923) July July 1 Dennis Brown, Jamaican reggae singer (b. 1957) Edward Dmytryk, American film director (b. 1908) Guy Mitchell, American singer (b. 1927) Joshua Nkomo, Zimbabwean politician (b. 1917) Sylvia Sidney, American actress (b. 1910) July 2 – Mario Puzo, American author (b. 1920) July 3 – Mark Sandman, American rock musician and artist (b. 1952) July 6 – Joaquín Rodrigo, Spanish composer (b. 1901) July 8 Pete Conrad, American astronaut (b. 1930) Frank Lubin, Lithuanian-American basketball player (b. 1910) Shafik Wazzan, 27th Prime Minister of Lebanon (b. 1925) July 11 – Helen Forrest, American jazz singer (b. 1917) July 12 Rajendra Kumar, Indian film actor, producer and director (b. 1929) Bill Owen, English actor (b. 1914) July 14 Władysław Hasior, Polish sculptor (b. 1928) Gar Samuelson, American drummer (b. 1958) July 16 John F. Kennedy Jr., American lawyer, journalist, and magazine publisher (b. 1960) Carolyn Bessette-Kennedy, American actress and model (b. 1966) July 20 – Sandra Gould, American actress (b. 1916) July 21 – David Ogilvy, French Advertising executive (b. 1911) July 23 – King Hassan II of Morocco (b. 1929) July 26 – Trygve Haavelmo, Norwegian economist (b. 1911) July 27 Aleksandr Danilovich Aleksandrov, Soviet/Russian mathematician, physicist and philosopher (b. 1912) Phaedon Gizikis, Greek general, 5th President of Greece (b. 1917) July 29 – Anatoliy Solovianenko, Soviet operatic tenor (b. 1932) August August 1 – Nirad C. Chaudhuri, Bengali writer (b. 1897) August 4 – Victor Mature, American actor (b. 1913) August 7 – Brion James, American actor (b. 1945) August 10 – Giuseppe Delfino, Italian fencer (b. 1921) August 11 – Henk Chin A Sen, 2nd Prime Minister of Suriname (b. 1934) August 13 – Jaime Garzón, Colombian journalist and comedian (b. 1960) August 14 – Pee Wee Reese, American baseball player (b. 1918) August 17 – Reiner Klimke, German equestrian (b. 1936) August 22 – Aleksandr Demyanenko, Russian film and theater actor (b. 1937) August 23 – James White, Irish writer (b. 1928) September September 6 – Lagumot Harris, 3rd President of Nauru (b. 1938) September 8 – Moondog, American musician and composer (b. 1916) September 9 – Ruth Roman, American actress (b. 1922) September 10 – Alfredo Kraus, Spanish tenor (b. 1927) September 11 – Gonzalo Rodríguez, Uruguayan racing driver (b. 1972) September 12 – Allen Stack, American swimmer (b. 1928) September 14 – Charles Crichton, English film director (b. 1910) September 20 – Raisa Gorbacheva, Soviet first lady (b. 1932) September 22 – George C. Scott, American actor (b. 1927) September 24 – Ester Boserup, Danish economist (b. 1910) September 25 – Marion Zimmer Bradley, American writer (b. 1930) October October 2 – Muhammad Nasiruddin al-Albani, Albanian Islamic scholar (b. 1914) October 3 – Akio Morita, Japanese businessman (b. 1921) October 4 Bernard Buffet, French painter (b. 1928) Art Farmer, American jazz trumpeter (b. 1928) October 6 Gorilla Monsoon, American professional wrestler and announcer (b. 1937) Amália Rodrigues, Portuguese fado singer and actress (b. 1920) October 9 Milt Jackson, American musician (b. 1923) Akhtar Hameed Khan, Pakistani businessman (b. 1914) October 11 – Galina Bystrova, Soviet athlete (b. 1934) October 12 – Wilt Chamberlain, American professional basketball player (b. 1936) October 14 – Julius Nyerere, 1st President of Tanzania (b. 1922) October 17 – Nicholas Metropolis, Greek-American physicist (b. 1915) October 19 – Nathalie Sarraute, Russian-born Francophone lawyer and writer (b. 1900) October 20 – Jack Lynch, Taoiseach of Ireland (b. 1917) October 21 – John Bromwich, Australian tennis player (b. 1918) October 23 – András Hegedüs, Hungarian politician, 45th Prime Minister of Hungary (b. 1922) October 24 – John Chafee, American politician (b. 1922) October 25 – Payne Stewart, American golfer (b. 1957) October 26 Hoyt Axton, American singer and actor (b. 1938) Abraham Polonsky, American screenwriter and director (b. 1910) October 27 Frank De Vol, American arranger, composer, and actor (b. 1911) Karen Demirchyan, Speaker of the National Assembly of Armenia (b. 1932) Robert Mills, American physicist (b. 1927) Leonard Petrosyan, 3rd Prime Minister of Artsakh (b. 1953) Vazgen Sargsyan, Armenian military commander and politician, 12th Prime Minister of Armenia (assassinated) (b. 1959) October 28 – Rafael Alberti, Spanish poet (b. 1902) October 31 – Greg Moore, Canadian race car driver (b. 1975) November November 1 Bhekimpi Dlamini, 4th Prime Minister of Swaziland (b. 1924) Theodore Hall, American physicist and spy (b. 1925) Walter Payton, American football player (b. 1954) November 2 – Demetrio B. Lakas, 27th President of Panama (b. 1925) November 3 – Ian Bannen, Scottish actor (b. 1928) November 8 – Leon Štukelj, Slovene gymnast (b. 1898) November 11 Mary Kay Bergman, American voice actress (b. 1961) Vivian Fuchs, English geologist (b. 1908) Jacobo Timerman, Argentine journalist and author (b. 1923) November 12 – Mohammad Mohammadullah, 3rd President of Bangladesh (b. 1921) November 16 – Daniel Nathans, American microbiologist (b. 1928) November 18 Paul Bowles, American novelist (b. 1910) Horst P. Horst, American photographer (b. 1906) Doug Sahm, American musician (b. 1941) November 20 – Amintore Fanfani, Italian politician, 32nd Prime Minister of Italy (b. 1908) November 21 – Quentin Crisp, English writer (b. 1908) December December 1 – Fritz Fischer, German historian (b. 1908) December 2 – Charlie Byrd, American jazz musician and classical guitarist (b. 1925) December 3 John Archer, American actor (b. 1915) Scatman John, American musician (b. 1942) Madeline Kahn, American actress, singer and comedian (b. 1942) December 4 – Nilde Iotti, Italian politician (b. 1920) December 5 – Nathan Jacobson, American mathematician (b. 1910) December 7 – Darling Légitimus, French actress (b. 1907) December 9 – Yakov Rylsky, Soviet sabre fencer (b. 1928) December 10 Rick Danko, Canadian musician (b. 1943) Franjo Tuđman, 1st President of Croatia (b. 1922) December 12 Paul Cadmus, American artist (b. 1904) Joseph Heller, American novelist (b. 1923) December 13 – Stane Dolanc, Yugoslav politician (b. 1925) December 17 Rex Allen, American actor, singer, and songwriter (b. 1920) Jürgen Moser, German-American mathematician (b. 1928) Grover Washington Jr., American saxophonist (b. 1943) December 18 – Robert Bresson, French filmmaker (b. 1901) December 19 – Desmond Llewelyn, British actor (b. 1914) December | force, Indonesian president BJ Habibie announces that he will do so. September 14 – Kiribati, Nauru and Tonga join the United Nations. September 21 – The 921 earthquake, also known as the Jiji earthquake (magnitude 7.6 on the Richter scale), kills about 2,400 people in Taiwan. October October – NASA loses one of its probes, the Mars Climate Orbiter. October 1 – Shanghai Pudong International Airport opens in China, taking over all international flights from Hongqiao. October 5 – Thirty-one people die in the Ladbroke Grove rail crash, west of London, England. October 12 – Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif attempts to dismiss Army Chief General Pervez Musharraf, who is out of the country. The generals lead a coup d'état, ousting Sharif's administration, and Musharraf takes control of the government. October 13 – The United States Senate rejects ratification of the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT). October 27 – Gunmen open fire in the Armenian Parliament, killing Prime Minister Vazgen Sargsyan, Parliament Chairman Karen Demirchyan, and six other members. October 29 – A super cyclonic storm impacts Orissa, India, killing approximately 10,000 people. October 30 – : A pub catches fire in Inchon, South Korea, killing 56 people. October 31 EgyptAir Flight 990, travelling from New York City to Cairo, crashes off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing all 217 on board. Roman Catholic Church and several Lutheran Church leaders sign the Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification, attempting to resolve a centuries-old doctrinal dispute over the nature of faith and salvation. November November 6 – Australians defeat a referendum proposing the replacement of the Queen and the Governor General with a President to make Australia a republic. November 12 – The 7.2 Düzce earthquake shakes northwestern Turkey with a maximum Mercalli intensity of IX (Violent). At least 845 people are killed and almost 5,000 are injured. November 20 – China launches the first Shenzhou spacecraft. November 23 – The National Assembly of Kuwait revokes a 1985 law that granted women's suffrage. November 26 – The 7.5 Ambrym earthquake shakes Vanuatu and a destructive tsunami follows, killing 10 and injuring 40. November 27 – The centre-left Labour Party takes control of the New Zealand government, with leader Helen Clark becoming the second female Prime Minister in New Zealand's history. November 30 – The ExxonMobil merger is completed, forming the largest corporation in the world at that time. December December 3 After rowing for 81 days and 5,486 kilometers (2,962 nautical miles), Tori Murden becomes the first woman to cross the Atlantic Ocean by rowboat alone, when she reaches Guadeloupe from the Canary Islands. NASA loses radio contact with the Mars Polar Lander, moments before the spacecraft enters the Martian atmosphere. December 5 – Bolivian municipal elections, the first election contested by Evo Morales' Movement for Socialism. December 18 – NASA launches the Terra platform into orbit, carrying five Earth Observation instruments, including ASTER, CERES, MISR, MODIS and MOPITT. December 20 – The sovereignty of Macau is transferred from the Portuguese Republic to the People's Republic of China after 442 years of Portuguese settlement. December 26 – Cyclones Lothar and Martin kill 140 people as they cross France, southern Germany, and Switzerland. December 27 – Storm Martin causes damage throughout France, Spain, Switzerland and Italy, including an emergency due to flooding at the Blayais Nuclear Power Plant. December 31 The U.S. turns over complete administration of the Panama Canal to the Panamanian Government, as stipulated in the Torrijos–Carter Treaties of 1977. Boris Yeltsin resigns as president of Russia, leaving Prime Minister Vladimir Putin as the acting president. 3rd millennium celebrations. Births January January 1 Gianluca Scamacca, Italian soccer player Diamond White, American actress, voice artist, and singer January 4 Daniel Arzani, Australian footballer Nico Hischier, Swiss ice hockey player Collin Sexton, American basketball player January 6 – Elena Radionova, Russian figure skater January 8 Ignas Brazdeikis, Canadian basketball player Damiano David, Italian singer-songwriter January 9 – Li Zhuhao, Chinese swimmer January 10 – Mason Mount, English footballer January 11 – Christian Nodal, Mexican singer January 12 Nicolás Schiappacasse, Uruguayan footballer Xavier Tillman, American basketball player January 15 – Martin Nečas, Czech ice hockey player January 18 – Karan Brar, American actor January 25 – Jai Waetford, Australian singer January 28 – Roman Bravo-Young, American wrestler January 29 – HRVY, British singer February February 7 – Bea Miller, American actress, singer, and songwriter February 9 – Saúl Coco, Equatoguinean footballer February 10 – Tiffany Espensen, Chinese-American actress February 11 Candace Hill, American track and field athlete Andriy Lunin, Ukrainian footballer February 12 – Jaylen Hands, American basketball player February 14 – Tyler Adams, American soccer player February 17 – Alex de Minaur, Australian tennis player February 18 – Lorraine McNamara, American ice dancer February 19 Quinn Lord, Canadian actor Hugo Gonzalez, Spanish swimmer February 20 Jarrett Culver, American basketball player Lea van Acken, German actress February 21 – Metawin Opas-iamkajorn, Thai actor and singer February 24 – Riley Herbst, American professional stock car racing driver February 25 – Gianluigi Donnarumma, Italian footballer February 28 – Luka Dončić, Slovenian basketball player March March 2 – Abdullah Al-Qwabani, Yemeni long-distance runner March 4 – Brooklyn Beckham, British model and son of David and Victoria Beckham March 5 Madison Beer, American singer Yeri, South Korean singer March 6 – Abdul Hakim Sani Brown, Japanese athlete March 14 – Marvin Bagley III, American basketball player March 16 Bailie Key, American artistic gymnast Antonis Stergiakis, Greek footballer Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Canadian-Dominican baseball player March 19 – Jack Higgins, Australian rules footballer March 22 – Mick Schumacher, German racing driver March 24 – Arina Openysheva, Russian swimmer March 25 – Jin Ji-hee, South Korean actress March 30 – Jota, Portuguese footballer March 31 – Sawyer Fredericks, American singer April April 1 – Jairus Aquino, Filipino actor April 3 – Arisha Razi, Pakistani actress April 4 – Sheku Kanneh-Mason, British cellist April 5 Maria Astashkina, Russian swimmer Sharlene San Pedro, Filipina actress and singer April 8 CiCi Bellis, American tennis player José Gomes, Portuguese footballer April 9 Ikhsan Fandi, Singaporean footballer Lil Nas X, American rapper, singer, and songwriter April 11 – Yianni Diakomihalis, American wrestler April 14 Matteo Guendouzi, French footballer Chase Young, American football player April 15 Zachary Lagha, Canadian ice dancer Denis Shapovalov, Canadian tennis player April 16 – Wendell Carter Jr., American basketball player April 18 – Michael Andrew, American swimmer April 19 – Corentin Moutet, French tennis player April 20 Fabio Quartararo, French motorbike racer Carly Rose Sonenclar, American actress and singer April 24 – Jerry Jeudy, American football player April 26 – Alexander Petrov, Russian figure skater April 28 – Justin Haley, American professional stock car racing driver April 30 – Jorden van Foreest, Dutch chess grandmaster May May 1 – Akhyar Rashid, Malaysian footballer May 5 Jonny Gray, Canadian actor Justin Kluivert, Dutch footballer Nathan Chen, American figure skater May 8 Maykel Massó, Cuban long jumper Rebeca Andrade, Brazilian artistic gymnast May 11 – Sabrina Carpenter, American actress, singer, and songwriter May 22 – Camren Bicondova, American actress and dancer May 24 – Charlie Plummer, American actor May 25 Brec Bassinger, American actress Ibrahima Konaté, French footballer May 26 – Kerry Ingram, English actress May 27 Lily-Rose Depp, French-American actress and model Maria Kameneva, Russian swimmer May 30 Eddie Nketiah, English footballer Sean Giambrone, American actor May 31 – Roman Sadovsky, Canadian figure skater June June 1 – Dmitri Aliev, Russian figure skater June 2 – Wei Yi, Chinese chess prodigy June 4 Kim So-hyun, South Korean actress Drew Pavlou, Australian activist June 9 Michael DiPietro, Canadian ice hockey player Zane Smith, American professional stock car racing driver June 11 Kai Havertz, German footballer Saxon Sharbino, American actress June 12 – CarryMinati, Indian YouTuber June 13 – Callum Coleman-Jones, Australian rules footballer June 14 – Tzuyu, Taiwanese singer June 17 – Elena Rybakina, Russian–Kazakh tennis player June 18 – Trippie Redd, American rapper June 19 – Jordan Poole, American basketball player June 21 – Natalie Alyn Lind, American actress June 24 – Mads Roerslev, Danish footballer June 27 – Chandler Riggs, American actor June 28 – Markéta Vondroušová, Czech tennis player June 29 – Nikita Volodin, Russian pair skater July July 1 – Charles Armstrong-Jones, Viscount Linley July 2 Robert Thomas, Canadian ice hockey player Nicolò Zaniolo, Italian footballer July 4 – Moa Kikuchi, Japanese singer and dancer July 6 – Denis Khodykin, Russian pair skater July 10 April Ivy, Portuguese singer and composer Matthew Real, Brazilian-American soccer player July 12 – Nur Dhabitah Sabri, Malaysian diver July 13 – Leong Jun Hao, Malaysian badminton player July 15 – Seda Tutkhalyan, Russian artistic gymnast July 17 – Lisandro Cuxi, Portuguese-French singer July 19 – Kim So-hye, South Korean actress and singer July 20 Princess Alexandra of Hanover Goga Bitadze, Georgian basketball player Ellie Downie, British artistic gymnast Pop Smoke, American rapper (d. 2020) July 28 – Troy Brown Jr., American basketball player July 30 – Joey King, American actress August August 2 – Emma Bale, Belgian singer August 3 – Yoo Yeon-jung, South Korean singer August 5 – Kim Si-hyeon, South Korean singer and host August 6 – Hunter Greene, American baseball pitcher August 7 Dejan Joveljić, Serbian footballer Sydney McLaughlin, American hurdler and sprinter August 9 – Deniss Vasiļjevs, Latvian figure skater August 10 – Ja Morant, American basketball player August 11 Kevin Knox, American basketball player Mary-Sophie Harvey, Canadian swimmer August 12 – Matthijs de Ligt, Dutch footballer August 14 – Bryce Hall, American social media personality August 16 – Karen Chen, American figure skater August 22 Dakota Goyo, Canadian actor Mai Mihara, Japanese figure skater Ricardo Hurtado, American actor August 26 – Leonie Kullmann, German swimmer August 27 Mitchell van Bergen, Dutch footballer Mile Svilar, Belgian footballer August 28 – Prince Nikolai of Denmark August 31 – Miomir Kecmanović, Serbian tennis player September September 3 – Rich Brian, Indonesian rapper September 4 – Ellie Darcey-Alden, English actress September 5 – Alexey Erokhov, Russian figure skater September 7 – Michelle Creber, Canadian actress and singer September 8 – Shubman Gill, Indian cricketer September 13 – Ekaterina Borisova, Russian pair skater September 14 – Emma Kenney, American actress September 15 – Jaren Jackson Jr., American basketball player September 16 Mao Yi, Chinese gymnast Brady Tkachuk, American ice hockey player September 17 – Daniel Huttlestone, English actor September 21 Alexander Isak, Swedish footballer Wang Junkai, Chinese singer September 22 Kim Yoo-jung, South Korean actress Erin Pitt, Canadian actress September 28 – Kayla Day, American tennis player September 30 – Flávia Saraiva, Brazilian artistic gymnast October October 1 – Christopher Taylor, Jamaican sprinter October 2 – Martin Kaut, Czech ice hockey player October 6 – Trevor Lawrence, American football quarterback October 14 Quinn Hughes, American ice hockey player Wu Yibing, Chinese tennis player Laura Zeng, American rhythmic gymnast October 15 Bailee Madison, American actress Alexei Sancov, Moldovan swimmer Ben Woodburn, British footballer October 17 – Gabrielle Fa'amausili, New Zealand swimmer October 19 – Carlotta Truman, German singer October 20 Chuu, South Korean singer and television personality YoungBoy Never Broke Again, American rapper October 23 Noah Balta, Australian rules footballer Belle Delphine, English internet personality, model, and YouTuber Joseph Andre Garcia, Filipino actor October 27 – Amy Tinkler, British artistic gymnast October 30 – Wang Yan, Chinese gymnast November November 1 – Buddy Handleson, American actor November 9 – Karol Sevilla, Mexican actress and singer November 10 Armand Duplantis, American-born Swedish pole vaulter João Félix, Portuguese footballer Kiernan Shipka, American actress November 11 Fan Yilin, Chinese artistic gymnast X González, American activist November 12 – Choi Yoo-jung, South Korean singer and songwriter November 13 Merveille Fundambu, Congolese football midfielder Lando Norris, British racing driver November 16 – Bol Bol, American basketball player November 19 – Evgenia Medvedeva, Russian figure skater November 26 – Olivia O'Brien, American singer December December 4 Kang Mi-na, South Korean singer and actress Kim Do-yeon, South Korean singer December 5 – Willy Braciano, Ivorian footballer (d. 2021) December 9 – Monique Conti, Australian rules footballer December 23 – Dmitrii Kozlovskii, Russian figure skater December 28 – Iqbaal Ramadhan, Indonesian actor and singer December 29 – Nadine Joy Nathan, Singaporean artistic gymnast December 30 – Jean-Clair Todibo, French footballer Deaths January January 4 – Iron Eyes Cody, Italian-American actor (b. 1904) January 6 – Michel Petrucciani, French jazz pianist and composer (b. 1962) January 11 Teuvo Aura, Finnish politician, 33rd Prime Minister of Finland (b. 1912) Fabrizio De André, Italian singer and songwriter (b. 1940) Brian Moore, Northern Irish-Canadian writer (b. 1921) January 12 – Betty Lou Gerson, American actress (b. 1914) January 14 – Jerzy Grotowski, Polish theatre director (b. 1933) January 21 – Susan Strasberg, American actress (b. 1938) January 22 – Graham Staines, Australian missionary (b. 1941) January 23 – Joe D'Amato, Italian film director, producer, cinematographer, and screenwriter (b. 1936) January 25 – Robert Shaw, American conductor (b. 1916) February February 1 – Barış Manço, Turkish singer and television personality (b. 1943) February 2 - Deborah Makepeace, English actress (b. 1957). February 5 – Wassily Leontief, Russian economist (b. 1906) February 7 King Hussein of Jordan (b. 1935) Bobby Troup, American actor, jazz pianist, singer and songwriter (b. 1918) February 8 – Dame Iris Murdoch, Anglo-Irish author (b. 1919) February 12 – Heinz Schubert, German actor and photographer (b. 1925) February 14 Buddy Knox, American singer and songwriter (b. 1933) John Ehrlichman, American Watergate scandal figure (b. 1925) February 15 Big L, American rapper (b. 1974) Henry Way Kendall, American physicist (b. 1926) February 16 – Björn Afzelius, Swedish singer, songwriter and guitarist (b. 1947) February 18 – Andreas Feininger, French-born photographer (b. 1906) February 20 Sarah Kane, English playwright (b. 1971) Gene Siskel, American film critic (b. 1946) February 21 – Gertrude B. Elion, American biochemist and pharmacologist (b. 1918) February 25 – Glenn T. Seaborg, American chemist (b. 1912) February 28 Bing Xin, Chinese author and poet (b. 1900) Bill Talbert, American tennis player (b. 1918) March March 2 – Dusty Springfield, English pop singer (b. 1939) March 3 Jackson C. Frank, American folk musician (b. 1943) Gerhard Herzberg, German-born chemist (b. 1904) March 4 Harry Blackmun, American judge, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court (b. 1908) Fritz Honegger, Swiss politician, 79th President of Switzerland (b. 1917) March 5 – Richard Kiley, American actor (b. 1922) March 6 Dennis Viollet, English footballer (b. 1933) Emir Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain (b. 1931) March 7 – Stanley Kubrick, American film director and producer (b. 1928) March 8 Adolfo Bioy Casares, Argentine writer (b. 1914) Peggy Cass, American actress, comedian, and game show panelist (b. 1924) Joe DiMaggio, American baseball player (b. 1914) March 10 Oswaldo Guayasamín, Ecuadorian painter and sculptor (b. 1919) Kusumagraj, Indian poet, playwright and novelist (b. 1912) March 12 – Yehudi Menuhin, American violinist (b. 1916) March 13 – Garson Kanin, American playwright and screenwriter (b. 1912) March 14 – Kirk Alyn, American actor (b. 1910) March 17 Ernest Gold, Austrian-born composer (b. 1921) Humberto Fernández-Morán, Venezuelan research scientist (b. 1924) Hildegard Peplau, American nurse and theorist (b. 1909) March 19 – Tofilau Eti Alesana, Samoan politician, 6th Prime Minister of Samoa (b. 1924) March 21 Jean Guitton, French philosopher (b. 1901) Ernie Wise, English comedian (b. 1925) March 22 – David Strickland, American actor (b. 1969) March 24 – Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, German politician (b. 1902) March 29 – Joe Williams, American singer (b. 1918) March 30 – Igor Netto, Soviet–Russian footballer (b. 1930) March 31 – Yuri Knorozov, Russian linguist and epigrapher (b. 1922) April April 4 Faith Domergue, American actress (b. 1924) Jumabek Ibraimov, 5th Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan (b. 1944) Bob Peck, English actor (b. 1945) April 9 – Ibrahim Baré Maïnassara, Nigerese military officer, 5th President of Niger (b. 1949) April 10 – Jean Vander Pyl, American actress (b. 1919) April 13 – Willi Stoph, German politician, 2-time Prime Minister of the German Democratic Republic (b. 1914) April 14 Ellen Corby, American actress (b. 1911) Anthony Newley, English actor, singer and songwriter (b. 1931) April 15 – Harvey Postlethwaite, English engineer and race car designer (b. 1944) April 16 – Skip Spence, Canadian-American singer and songwriter (b. 1946) April 19 – Hermine Braunsteiner, German Nazi prison guard (b. 1919) April 20 – Rick Rude, American professional wrestler (b. 1958) April 21 – Charles "Buddy" Rogers, American actor (b. 1904) April 22 – Bert Remsen, American actor (b. 1925) April 25 Michael Morris, Irish journalist and 6th President of the International Olympic Committee (b. 1914) Roger Troutman, American funk musician (b. 1951) April 26 – Jill Dando, British television journalist (b. 1961) April 27 – Al Hirt, American trumpeter and bandleader (b. 1922) April 28 Rory Calhoun, American actor (b. 1922) Arthur Leonard Schawlow, American physicist (b. 1921) Alf Ramsey, English footballer and manager (b. 1920) May May 2 – Oliver Reed, English actor (b. 1938) May 8 Dana Plato, American actress (b. 1964) Dirk Bogarde, English actor (b. 1921) May 10 – Shel Silverstein, American author and poet (b. 1930) May 12 – Saul Steinberg, Romanian-born cartoonist (b. 1914) May 13 – Gene Sarazen, American golfer (b. 1902) May 17 – Henry Jones, American actor (b. 1912) May 18 – Betty Robinson, American athlete (b. 1911) May 19 – Candy Candido, American voice actor (b. 1913) May 21 – Vanessa Brown, Austrian-born American |
crashed on the flanks of Mount Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 people on board. On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island accident Worldwide trends Superpower tensions had cooled by the 1970s, with the bellicose US–Soviet confrontations of the 1950s–60s giving way to the policy of "détente", which promoted the idea that the world's problems could be resolved at the negotiating table. Détente was partially a reaction against the policies of the previous 25 years, which had brought the world dangerously close to nuclear war on several occasions, and because the US was in a weakened position following the failure of the Vietnam War. As part of détente, the US also restored ties with the People's Republic of China, partially as a counterweight against Soviet expansionism. The US–Soviet geopolitical rivalry nonetheless continued through the decade, although in a more indirect faction as the two superpowers jockeyed relentlessly for control of smaller countries. American and Soviet intelligence agencies gave funding, training, and material support to insurgent groups, governments, and armies across the globe, each seeking to gain a geopolitical advantage and install friendly governments. Coups, civil wars, and terrorism went on across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and also in Europe where a spate of Soviet-backed Marxist terrorist groups were active throughout the decade. Over half the world's population in the 1970s lived under a repressive dictatorship. In 1979, a new wrinkle appeared in the form of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Shia theocracy of Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and declared itself hostile to both Western democracy and godless communism. People were deeply influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonized and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure. The Green Revolution of the late 1960s brought about self-sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class. Other common global ethos of the 1970s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the work force. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a breadwinner. The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes to and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s. The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, in a world increasingly polarized between the United States and the Soviet Union. Assassinations and attempts Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include: King of Saudi Arabia Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is assassinated on March 25, 1975, by his half-brother's son, Faisal bin Musaid. Arthur Bremer plotted to assassinate Governor of Alabama, George Wallace on May 15, 1972, while Wallace was making a campaign trip in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace would later be paralyzed from the waist down. Arthur Bremer was sentenced to the Maryland Correctional Institute, and would later be released in 2007. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, President of Bangladesh, and almost his entire family was assassinated in the early hours of August 15, 1975, when a group of Bangladesh Army personnel went to his residence and killed him, during a coup d'état. U.S. President Gerald Ford was nearly assassinated twice in September 1975 in Sacramento and San Francisco, California. Christian Democratic leader and former Prime Minister of Italy Aldo Moro was kidnapped and later killed by the Red Brigades on May 9, 1978. Raymond Lee Harvey and his confidant Osvaldo Ortiz plotted to assassinate President Jimmy Carter while Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles, California, on May 5, 1979. Economy The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression. Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. U.S. manufacturing industries began to decline as a result, with the United States running its last trade surplus () in 1975. In contrast, Japan and West Germany experienced economic booms and started overtaking the U.S. as the world's leading manufacturers. In 1970, Japan overtook West Germany to become the world's second-largest economy. Japan would rank as the world's second-largest economy until 1994 when the European Economic Area (18 countries under a single market) came into effect. In the US, the average annual inflation rate from 1900 to 1970 was approximately 2.5%. From 1970 to 1979, however, the average rate was 7.06%, and topped out at 13.29% in December 1979. This period is also known for "stagflation", a phenomenon in which inflation and unemployment steadily increased. It led to double-digit interest rates that rose to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5 in December 1980, the highest in history. A rising cost of housing was reflected in the average price of a new home in the U.S. The average price of a new home in the U.S. was $23,450 in 1970 up to $68,700 by 1980. By the time of 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the misery index (the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate) had reached an all-time high of 21.98%. The economic problems of the 1970s would result in a sluggish cynicism replacing the optimistic attitudes of the 1950s and 1960s and a distrust of government and technology. Faith in government was at an all-time low in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, as exemplified by the low voter turnout in the 1976 United States presidential election. There was also the 1973–74 stock market crash. Great Britain also experienced considerable economic turmoil during the decade as outdated industries proved unable to compete with Japanese and German wares. Labor strikes happened with such frequency as to almost paralyze the country's infrastructure. Following the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 with the purpose of implementing extreme economic reforms. In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a growing dependence on food imported from democratic nations. On the other hand, export-driven economic development in Asia, especially by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), resulted in rapid economic transformation and industrialization. Their abundance of cheap labor, combined with educational and other policy reforms, set the foundation for development in the region during the 1970s and beyond. Oil crisis Economically, the 1970s were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and 1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the United States was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days and weekends. In the United States, customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The realization that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable without potentially harming the environment ended the belief in limitless progress that had existed since the 19th century. As a result, ecological awareness rose substantially, which had a major effect on the economy. Science and technology Science The 1970s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit, and the laser. Stephen Hawking developed his theories of black holes and the boundary-condition of the universe at this period with his theory called Hawking radiation. The biological sciences greatly advanced, with molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, and genetics achieving their modern forms in this decade. Biodiversity became a cause of major concern as habitat destruction, and Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium revolutionized evolutionary thought. Space exploration As the 1960s ended, the United States had made two successful crewed lunar landings. Many Americans lost interest afterward, feeling that since the country had accomplished President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, there was no need for further missions. There was also a growing sentiment that the billions of dollars spent on the space program should be put to other uses. The Moon landings continued through 1972, but the near loss of the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970 served to further anti-NASA feelings. Plans for missions up to Apollo 20 were canceled, and the remaining Apollo and Saturn hardware was used for the Skylab space station program in 1973–1974, and for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), which was carried out in July 1975. Many of the ambitious projects NASA had planned for the 1970s were canceled amid heavy budget cutbacks, and instead it would devote most of the decade to the development of the Space Shuttle. ASTP was the last crewed American space flight for the next five years. The year 1979 witnessed the spectacular reentry of Skylab over Australia. NASA had planned for a Shuttle mission to the space station, but the shuttles were not ready to fly until 1981, too late to save it. Meanwhile, the Soviets, having failed in their attempt at crewed lunar landings, canceled the program in 1972. By then, however, they had already begun Salyut, the world's first space station program, which began in 1971. This would have problems of its own, especially the tragic loss of the Soyuz 11 crew in July 1971 and the near-loss of the Soyuz 18a crew during launch in April 1975. It eventually proved a success, with missions as long as six months being conducted by the end of the decade. In terms of unmanned missions, a variety of lunar and planetary probes were launched by the US and Soviet programs during the decade. The most successful of these include the Soviet Lunokhod program, a series of robotic lunar missions which included the first unmanned sample return from another world, and the American Voyagers, which took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets to visit all of them except Pluto by the end of the 1980s. China entered the space race in 1970 with the launching of its first satellite, but technological backwardness and limited funds would prevent the country from becoming a significant force in space exploration. Japan launched a satellite for the first time in 1972. The European Space Agency was founded during the decade as well. Biology The second generation of face lifts were first attempted in the 1970s, popularizing the procedure for millions. The first MRI image was published in 1973. César Milstein and Georges Köhler reported their discovery of how to use hybridoma cells to isolate monoclonal antibodies, effectively beginning the history of monoclonal antibody use in science. Carl Woese and George E. Fox classified archaea as a new, separate domain of life. "Lucy", a fossilized hominid of the species Australopithecus afarensis, was discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia by Donald Johanson in 1974, providing evidence for bipedalism as an early occurrence in human evolution. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979 after the last smallpox case in 1977. The first organisms genetically engineered were bacteria in 1973 and then mice in 1974. 1977 The first complete DNA genome to be sequenced is that of bacteriophage φX174. In 1978, Louise Brown became the first child to be born via in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. Social science Social science intersected with hard science in the works in natural language processing by Terry Winograd (1973) and the establishment of the first cognitive sciences department in the world at MIT in 1979. The fields of generative linguistics and cognitive psychology went through a renewed vigor with symbolic modeling of semantic knowledge while the final devastation of the long-standing tradition of behaviorism came about through the severe criticism of B. F. Skinner's work in 1971 by the cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. Technology Concorde makes the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight. Electronics and communications The birth of modern computing was in the 1970s, which saw the development of: Intel 4004, the world's first general microprocessor the C programming language rudimentary personal computers, with the launch of the Datapoint 2200 pocket calculators the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console the Sony Walkman, built in 1978 by Japanese audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara consumer video games, after the release of Computer Space the earliest floppy disks, invented at IBM, which were 8 inches wide and long, commercially available by 1971 email, with the first transmission in 1971 electronic paper, developed by Nick Sheridon at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) the Xerox Alto of 1973, the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI) The 1970s were also the start of: fiber optics, which transformed the communications industry microwave ovens, which became commercially available VCRs and Betamax, which became commercially available the first voicemail system, known as the Speech Filing System (SFS), invented by Stephen J. Boies in 1973 e-commerce, invented in 1979 by Michael Aldrich DiscoVision in 1978, the first commercial optical disc storage medium positron emission tomography, invented in 1972 by Edward J. Hoffman and fellow scientist Michael Phelps cell phones, with the first call transmitted in 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola car phone services, first available in Finland in 1971 in form of the zero-generation ARP (Autoradiopuhelin, or Car Radiophone) service Apple Computer Company, founded in 1976 Rail British Rail introduced high-speed trains on InterCity services. The trains consisted of British Rail Class 43 diesel-electric locomotives at either end with British Rail Mark 3 carriages. The trains were built in the United Kingdom by British Rail Engineering Limited. The high speed trains ran at speeding up journeys between towns and cities and is still known as the InterCity 125. Amtrak was formed in the United States in 1971, assuming responsibility for inter-city passenger operations throughout the country. In 1976, Conrail was formed to take over assets of six bankrupt freight railroads in the northeastern US. Automobiles The 1970s was an era of fuel price increases, rising insurance rates, safety concerns, and emissions controls. The 1973 oil crisis caused a move towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. Attempts were made to produce electric cars, but they were largely unsuccessful. In the United States, imported cars became a significant factor for the first time, and several domestic-built subcompact models entered the market. American-made cars such as the "quirky" AMC Gremlin, the jelly bean shaped AMC Pacer, and Pontiac Firebird's powerful Trans Am "sum up" the decade. Muscle cars and convertible models faded from favor during the early-1970s. It was believed that the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado would be the last American-built convertible; ending the open body style that once dominated the auto industry. Cars in the U.S. from the early 1970s are noted more for their power than their styling, but they even lost their power by Malaise era of the late-1970s. Styling on American cars became progressively more boxy and rectilinear during the 1970s, with coupes being the most popular body style. Wood paneling and shag carpets dominated the interiors. Many automobiles began to lose their character and looked the same across brands and automakers, as well as featuring "luxury" enhancements such as vinyl roofs and opera windows. Only a few had "real personalities" such as the AMC Gremlin, which was America's first modern subcompact, and the AMC Pacer. "These two cars embody a sense of artful desperation that made them stand out from the crowd and epitomize at once the best and worst of the seventies." Automobiles in the U.S. reached the largest sizes they would ever attain, but by 1977, General Motors managed to downsize its full-size models to more manageable dimensions. Ford followed suit two years later, with Chrysler offering new small front-wheel-drive models, but was suffering from a worsening financial situation caused by various factors. By 1979, the company was near bankruptcy, and under its new president Lee Iacocca (who had been fired from Ford the year before), asked for a government bailout. American Motors beat out the U.S. Big Three to subcompact sized model (the Gremlin) in 1970, but its fortunes declined throughout the decade, forcing it into a partnership with the French automaker Renault in 1979. European car design underwent major changes during the 1970s due to the need for performance with high fuel efficiency—designs such as the Volkswagen Golf and Passat, BMW 3, 5, and 7 series, and Mercedes-Benz S-Class appeared at the latter half of the decade. Ford Europe, specifically Ford Germany, also eclipsed the profits of its American parent company. The designs of Giorgetto Giugiaro became dominant, along with those of Marcello Gandini in Italy. The 1970s also saw the decline and practical failure of the British car industry—a combination of militant strikes and poor quality control effectively halted development at British Leyland, owner of all other British car companies during the 1970s. The Japanese automobile industry flourished during the 1970s, compared to other major auto markets. Japanese vehicles became internationally renowned for their affordability, reliability, and fuel-efficiency, which was very important to many customers after the oil crisis of 1973. Japanese car manufacturing focused on computerized robotic manufacturing techniques and lean manufacturing, contributing to high-efficiency and low production costs. The Honda Civic was introduced in 1973, and sold well due to its high fuel-efficiency. By 1975 Toyota overtook Volkswagen as the top-selling imported automobile brand in the U.S., with over a million cars sold per year by this point. Other popular compact cars included the Toyota Corolla and the Datsun Sunny, in addition to other cars from those companies and others such as Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Mazda. Society Role of women in society The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing feminism across the world and with the presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state outside monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world during the 1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions. Non-monarch women heads of state and heads of government in this period included Isabel Perón as the first woman President in Argentina and the first woman non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977 (and taking office again in 1980), Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime minister of Sri Lanka (Former Ceylon) and first female head of government in the world, re-elected in 1970, Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel and acting Chairman Soong Ching-ling of the People's Republic of China continuing their leadership from the sixties, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979. Both Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher would remain important political figures in the following decade in the 1980s. Social movements Anti-war protests The opposition to the War in Vietnam that began in the 1960s grew exponentially during the early 1970s. One of the best-known anti-war demonstrations was the Kent State shootings. In 1970, university students were protesting the war and the draft. Riots ensued during the weekend and the National Guard was called in to maintain the peace. However, by 4 May 1970, tensions arose again, and as the crowd grew larger, the National Guard started shooting. Four students were killed and nine injured. This event caused disbelief and shock throughout the country and became a staple of anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Environmentalism The 1970s started a mainstream affirmation of the environmental issues early activists from the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin, had warned of. The Apollo 11 mission, which had occurred at the end of the previous decade, had transmitted back concrete images of the Earth as an integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public willingness to preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first Earth Day, in which over two thousand colleges and universities and roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools participated. Sexual Revolution The 1960s counterculture movement had rapidly undone many existing social taboos, and divorce, extramarital sex, and homosexuality were increasingly accepted in the Western world. The event of legalized abortion and over-the-counter birth control pills also played a major factor. Western Europe was in some ways more progressive on sexual liberation than the United States, as nudity in film and on TV had been gradually accepted there from the mid-1960s, and many European countries during this time began allowing women to go topless in public places. Nudist culture was also popular during the decade, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. Child erotica found a niche market, but would eventually be banned under child pornography laws in the 1980s to 1990s. The market for adult entertainment in the 1970s was large, and driven in part by the sizable baby boomer population, and the 1972 movie Behind the Green Door, an X-rated feature, became one of the top-grossing films of the year. Playboy Magazine appeared increasingly dull and old-fashioned next to new, more explicit sex-themed magazines such as Penthouse Magazine and Hustler Magazine. By the end of the decade, there was an increasing backlash against libertine sexual attitudes, and the event of the AIDS epidemic helped bring about an end to the Sexual Revolution. Adult movie theaters, which had exploded in numbers during the 1970s and were widely seen as a symptom of urban decay in the US, declined as pornographic movies would largely shift to VHS tapes during the succeeding decade. Crime and urban decay Crime rates in the US had been low from the 1940s until the mid-1960s, but began to escalate after 1965 due to a complex of social, economic, and demographic factors. By the 1970s, crime and blighted urban areas were a serious cause of concern, New York City being particularly affected. In 1972, the US Supreme Court ruled capital punishment unconstitutional, then reversed the ruling only four years later. Feminism The Second-Wave Feminist Movement in the United States, which had begun in the 1960s, carried over to the 1970s, and took a prominent role within society. The fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution (which legalized female suffrage) in 1970 was commemorated by the Women's Strike for Equality and other protests. 1971 saw Erin Pizzey establish the world's first domestic violence shelter in Chiswick, London and Pizzey and her colleagues opened further facilities throughout the next few years. This work inspired similar networks of safe houses for female victims of abuse in other countries, with the first shelter in continental Europe opening in Amsterdam in 1974. With the anthology Sisterhood is Powerful and other works, such as Sexual Politics, being published at the start of the decade, feminism started to reach a larger audience than ever before. In addition, the Supreme Court's 1973 decision of Roe v. Wade, which constitutionalized the right to an abortion, brought the women's rights movement into the national political spotlight. Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Betty Ford, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Robin Morgan, Kate Millet and Elizabeth Holtzman, among many others, led the movement for women's equality. Even musically, the women's movement had its shining moment. Australian-American singer Helen Reddy, recorded the song "I Am Woman", which became an anthem for the women's liberation movement. "I Am Woman" reached No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and even won Helen her one and only Grammy Award. Another movement to arise was the 1970s Goddess movement, which took place to combat patriarchal ideas of religion. Most efforts of the movement, especially aims at social equality and repeal of the remaining oppressive, sexist laws, were successful. Doors of opportunity were more numerous and much further open than before as women gained unheard of success in business, politics, education, science, the law, and even the home. Although most aims of the movement were successful, however, there were some significant failures, most notably the failure to ratify the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution with only three more states needed to ratify it (efforts to ratify ERA in the unratified states continues to this day and twenty-two states have adopted state ERAs). Also, the wage gap failed to close, but it did become smaller. The second wave feminist movement in the United States largely ended in 1982 with the failure of the Equal Rights Amendment, and with new conservative leadership in Washington, D.C.. American women created a brief, but powerful, third-wave in the early 1990s which addressed sexual harassment (inspired by the Anita Hill–Clarence Thomas Senate Judiciary Committee hearings of 1991). The results of the movement included a new awareness of such issues among women, and unprecedented numbers of women elected to public office, particularly the United States Senate. Civil rights The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s began to fracture in the 1970s, as social groups began defining themselves more by their differences than by their universalities. The Black Nationalist movement grew out of frustrations with the "non-violent" strategies of earlier Civil Rights Activists. With the April 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and June 1968 assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, many Black people were compelled to reject ideas of negotiation and instead embrace isolation. The feminist movement also splintered from a larger push for Civil Rights in the 1970s. The seventies were seen as the "woman's turn", though many feminists incorporated civil rights ideals into their movement. A feminist who had inherited the leadership position of the civil rights movement from her husband, Coretta Scott King, as leader of the black movement, called for an end to all discrimination, helping and encouraging the Woman's Liberation movement, and other movements as well. At the National Women's Conference in 1977 a minority women's resolution, promoted by King and others, passed to ensure racial equality in the movement's goals. Similarly, the gay movement made a huge step forward in the 1970s with the election of political figures such as Harvey Milk to public office and the advocating of anti-gay discrimination legislation passed and not passed during the decade. Many celebrities, including Freddie Mercury and Andy Warhol, also "came out" during this decade, bringing gay culture further into the limelight. Youth suffrage The Twenty-sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution was ratified on July 1, 1971, lowering the voting age for all federal and state elections from 21 years to 18 years. The primary impetus for this change was the fact that young men were being drafted to fight in the Vietnam War before they were old enough to vote. Popular culture The most prominent events and trends in popular culture of the decade (particularly in the Anglosphere) include: Music During the early 1970s, popular music continued to be dominated by musicians who had achieved fame during the 1960s such as the Rolling Stones, The Who, Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, The Grateful Dead, and Eric Clapton. In addition, many newcomer rock groups such as Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin appeared. The Beatles disbanded in 1970, but each member of the band immediately released a highly successful solo album, and Paul McCartney especially would remain extremely popular throughout the decade. Singer-songwriters such as Elton John, James Taylor and Jackson Browne also came into vogue during the early 1970s. The 1970s saw the rapid commercialization of rock music, and by mid-decade there were a spate of bands derisively dubbed "corporate rock" due to the notion that they had been created by record labels to produce simplistic, radio-friendly songs that offered clichés rather than meaningful lyrics. Such bands included The Doobie Brothers, Bread, Styx, Kansas, and REO Speedwagon. Funk, an offshoot of soul music with a greater emphasis on beats, and influences from rhythm and blues, jazz, and psychedelic rock, was also very popular. The mid-1970s also saw the rise of disco music, which dominated during the last half of the decade with bands like the Bee Gees, Chic, ABBA, Village People, Boney M, Donna Summer, KC and the Sunshine Band, and others. In response to this, rock music became increasingly hard-edged, with early metal artists like Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, and Deep Purple. Minimalism also emerged, led by composers such as Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Michael Nyman. This was a break from the intellectual serial music in the tradition of Schoenberg, which lasted from the early 1900s to 1960s. The 1970s also saw artists from Motown records become popular across the globe. Artists like the Jackson 5, Stevie Wonder and Marvin Gaye dominated the record charts across the world and had a significant influence on pop culture, including breaking down racial barriers. Experimental classical music influenced both art rock and progressive rock genres with bands such as Pink Floyd, Yes, Todd Rundgren's Utopia, Supertramp, Rush, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson, Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, The Moody Blues and Soft Machine. Hard rock and Heavy metal also emerged among British bands Led Zeppelin, Queen, The Who, Black Sabbath, UFO, Deep Purple, Uriah Heep, and Judas Priest. Australian band AC/DC also found its hard-rock origins in the early 1970s and its breakthrough in 1979's Highway to Hell, while popular American rock bands included Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd and shock rockers Alice Cooper, Blue Öyster Cult, and Kiss, and guitar-oriented Ted Nugent and Van Halen. In Europe, there was a surge of popularity in the early decade for glam rock. After a successful return to live performing in the late 60s with his TV special, Elvis Presley remained popular in Vegas and on concert tours throughout the United States until his death in 1977. His 1973 televised concert, Aloha from Hawaii Via Satellite, aired in over 40 countries in Europe and Asia, as well as the United States, making it one of the most popular concert events of the decade. The second half of the decade saw the rise of punk rock, when a spate of fresh, young rock groups playing stripped-down hard rock came to prominence at a time when most of the artists associated with the 1960s to early 1970s were in creative decline. Punk bands included The Sex Pistols, The Clash, The Ramones, The Talking Heads, and more. The highest-selling album was Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon (1973). It remained on the Billboard 200 albums chart for 741 weeks. Electronic instrumental progressive rock was particularly significant in continental Europe, allowing bands like Kraftwerk, Tangerine Dream, Can, and Faust to circumvent the language barrier. Their synthesiser-heavy "krautrock", along with the work of Brian Eno (for a time the keyboard player with Roxy Music), would be a major influence on subsequent synthrock. The mid-1970s saw the rise of electronic art music musicians such as Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis, and Tomita, who with Brian Eno were a significant influence of the development of new-age music. Japanese band Yellow Magic Orchestra helped to pioneer synthpop, with their self-titled album (in 1978) setting a template with less minimalism and with a strong emphasis on melody, and drawing from a wider range of influences than had been employed by Kraftwerk. YMO also introduced the microprocessor-based Roland MC-8 sequencer and TR-808 rhythm machine to popular music. In the first half of the 1970s, many jazz musicians from the Miles Davis school achieved cross-over success through jazz-rock fusion with bands like Weather Report, Return to Forever, The Headhunters and The Mahavishnu Orchestra who also influenced this genre and many others. In Germany, Manfred Eicher started the ECM label, which quickly made a name for "chamber jazz". Towards the end of the decade, Jamaican reggae music, already popular in the Caribbean and Africa since the early 1970s, became very popular in the U.S. and in Europe, mostly because of reggae superstar and legend Bob Marley. The mid-1970s saw the reemergence of acoustic jazz with the return of artists like Dexter Gordon to the US music scene, who, along with a number of other artists, such as trumpet innovators like Don Ellis and Woody Shaw, who were among the last of the decade's traditionally-oriented acoustic jazz musicians to be signed to major record labels, to receive critical and widespread commercial recognition and multiple Grammy nominations. The late 1970s also saw the beginning of hip hop music with disc jockeys like DJ Kool Herc and Afrika Bambaataa taking loops from funk and soul records and play them repeatedly at block parties and dance clubs. At the end of the 1970s, popular songs like "Rapper's Delight" by Sugarhill Gang gave hip hop a wider audience. Hip hop was also influenced by the song "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" by Gil Scott-Heron. Country music also continued to increase in popularity in the 1970s. Between 1977 and 1979, it became more mainstream, particularly with the outlaw movement, led by Waylon Jennings and Willie Nelson. The 70s also saw the rise of a country music subgenre, southern rock, led by the Allman Brothers Band. Other artists; such as Conway Twitty, Loretta Lynn, Don Williams, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton, Ronnie Milsap, Crystal Gayle, and Barbara Mandrell; all scored hits throughout the 70s which reached both country and pop charts. The genre also saw its golden age of vocal duos and groups in this decade; with Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn, George Jones and Tammy Wynette, Jim Ed Brown and Helen Cornelius, the Bellamy Brothers, the Oak Ridge Boys, the Statler Brothers, Dave & Sugar, and The Kendalls. The genre also became more involved in Hollywood toward the end of the decade, with country-themed action films such as Smokey and the Bandit and Every Which Way But Loose, a trend that continued into the early 80s with Urban Cowboy and Bronco Billy. A major event in music in the early 1970s was the deaths of popular rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, and Jim Morrison, all at the age of 27. Two of popular music's most successful artists from other eras died within eight weeks of each other in 1977. Elvis Presley, the best-selling singer of all time, died on August 16, 1977. Presley's funeral was held at Graceland, on Thursday, August 18, 1977. Bing Crosby, who sold about 50 million records, died on October 14, 1977. His single, White Christmas, remains as the best selling single of all time, confirmed by the Guinness Records. In addition to the deaths in the 1970s, breakups of bands and duos; such as the Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Everly Brothers, and others; occurred over the course of the decade. Statistically, Led Zeppelin and Elton John were the most successful musical acts of the 1970s, both having sold more than 300 million records since 1969. Film Oscar winners of the decade were Patton (1970), The French Connection (1971), The Godfather (1972), The Sting (1973), The Godfather Part II (1974), One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975), Rocky (1976), Annie Hall (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), and Kramer vs. Kramer (1979). The top ten highest-grossing films of the decade are (in order from highest to lowest grossing): Star Wars, Jaws, Grease, The Exorcist, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, Superman, The Godfather, Saturday Night Fever, Rocky, and Jaws 2. Two of these movies came out on the same day: June 16, 1978. In 1970s European cinema, the failure of the Prague Spring brought about nostalgic motion pictures such as István Szabó's Szerelmesfilm (1970). German New Wave and Rainer Fassbinder's existential movies characterized film-making in Germany. The movies of the Swedish director Ingmar Bergman reached a new level of expression in motion pictures like Cries and Whispers (1973). Car chase movies also became a popular film genre of the 1970s with such films as Dirty Mary, Crazy Larry in 1974, and perhaps the genre's most popular film Smokey and the Bandit in 1977. Asian cinema of the 1970s catered to the rising middle class fantasies and struggles. In the Bollywood cinema of India, this was epitomized by the movies of Bollywood superhero Amitabh Bachchan. Another Asian touchstone beginning in the early 1970s was Hong Kong martial arts film which sparked a greater interest in Chinese martial arts around the world. Martial arts film reached the peak of its popularity largely in part due to its greatest icon, Bruce Lee. During the 1970s, Hollywood continued the New Hollywood revolution of the late-1960s with young film-makers. Top-grossing Jaws (1975) ushered in the blockbuster era of filmmaking, though it was eclipsed two years later by the science-fiction film Star Wars (1977). Saturday Night Fever (1977) single-handedly touched off disco mania in the U.S. The Godfather (1972) was also one of the decade's greatest successes and its first follow-up, The Godfather Part II (1974) was also successful for a sequel. The Rocky Horror Picture Show flopped in its 1975 debut, only to reappear as a more-popular midnight show later in the decade. Still in limited release decades after its premiere, it is the longest-running theatrical release in film history. The Exorcist (1973) was a box office success for the horror genre, inspiring many other so-called "devil (Satan)" films like The Omen and both of their own sequels. All That Jazz (1979) gained high critical praise, winning four Oscars and several other awards. It was an inductee of the 2001 National Film Registry list. Television United Kingdom In the United Kingdom, colour channels were now available; three stations had begun broadcasting in colour between 1967 and 1969. However, many viewers continued to watch black-and-white television sets for most of the decade, which meant for example that televised snooker (in which the colour of balls is important) did not reach the heights of its popularity until the 1980s. Notable dramas included Play for Today and Pennies from Heaven. In police dramas, there was a move towards increasing realism; popular shows included Dixon of Dock Green, Z-Cars, Softly, Softly, and The Sweeney. The science fiction show Doctor Who reached its peak. 1970s UK television featured a mix of traditional and more modern comedy. Morecambe and Wise, The Benny Hill Show, Are You Being Served? and Dad's Army had their origins in the variety show and radio comedy of the first half of the century. Many popular British situation comedies (sit-coms) were gentle, unchallenging comedies of middle-class life; typical examples were Terry and June and Sykes. However, the middle-class settings of The Good Life and The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin contrasted with their anti-establishment theme of people rejecting traditional social norms. A harsher side of society was shown by comedy series like Porridge and Rising Damp, while sitcoms such as Mind Your Language, Love Thy Neighbour and Till Death Us Do Part reflected social unease brought about by post-war immigration. Spike Milligan's Q and the still-popular Monty Python's Flying Circus both used surreal comedy, originating from the 1950s The Goon Show. The television information retrieval service Teletext was initially introduced when the BBC Ceefax system went live on 23 September 1974. In the late 1970s, BBC2's unveiled a new identity, a twin-striped "2", which was the first electronically generated symbol and scrolled on and off the screen. United States As the 1970s began, the Big Three TV networks were rapidly re-engineering their lineups, noting that existing programs were not attracting the youth audience. Most existing programs still operated on paradigms established in the 1950s, and some shows had literally been on the air since the dawn of TV broadcasting in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Shows that had low ratings or insufficient youth appeal were cancelled as networks scrambled to attract the large baby boomer audience. To reflect the new social trends, television changed dramatically with more urban and edgy settings, and replaced the popular rural/country wholesome look of the 1950s and 1960s, seen as outmoded and unable to connect with young, educated urban audiences. This particular trend was known as the rural purge. Television was transformed by what became termed as "social consciousness" programming, such as All in the Family and Soap, which broke down television barriers. Many advertising trends of the 1970s also reflected this growing social consciousness | in the province of Quebec in Canada. In 1970, radical Quebec nationalist and Marxist militants of the Front de libération du Québec (FLQ) kidnapped the Quebec labour minister Pierre Laporte and British Trade Commissioner James Cross during the October Crisis, resulting in Laporte being killed, and the enactment of martial law in Canada under the War Measures Act, resulting in a campaign by the Canadian government which arrests suspected FLQ supporters. The election of the Parti Québécois led by René Lévesque in the province of Quebec in Canada, brings the first political party committed to Quebec independence into power in Quebec. Lévesque's government pursues an agenda to secede Quebec from Canada by democratic means and strengthen Francophone Québécois culture in the late 1970s, such as the controversial Charter of the French Language more commonly known in Quebec and Canada as "Bill 101". Martial law was declared in the Philippines on September 21, 1972, by dictator Ferdinand Marcos. In Cambodia, the communist leader Pol Pot led a revolution against the American-backed government of Lon Nol. On April 17, 1975, Pot's forces captured Phnom Penh, the capital, two years after America had halted the bombings of their positions. His communist government, the Khmer Rouge, forced people out of the cities to clear jungles and establish a radical, Marxist agrarian society. Buddhist priests and monks, along with anyone who spoke foreign languages, had any sort of education, or even wore glasses were tortured or killed. As many as 3 million people may have died. Vietnam invaded the country at the start of 1979, overthrowing the Khmer Rouge and installing a satellite government. This provoked a brief, but furious border war with China in February of that year. The Iranian Revolution of 1979 transformed Iran from an autocratic pro-Western monarchy under Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to a theocratic Islamist government under the leadership of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. Distrust between the revolutionaries and Western powers led to the Iran hostage crisis on November 4, 1979, where 66 diplomats, mainly from the United States, were held captive for 444 days. Growing internal tensions take place in Yugoslavia beginning with the Croatian Spring movement in 1971 which demands greater decentralization of power to the constituent republics of Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia's communist ruler Joseph Broz Tito subdues the Croatian Spring movement and arrests its leaders, but does initiate major constitutional reform resulting in the 1974 Constitution which decentralized powers to the republics, gave them the official right to separate from Yugoslavia, and weakened the influence of Serbia (Yugoslavia's largest and most populous constituent republic) in the federation by granting significant powers to the Serbian autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina. In addition, the 1974 Constitution consolidated Tito's dictatorship by proclaiming him president-for-life. The 1974 Constitution would become resented by Serbs and began a gradual escalation of ethnic tensions. Coups The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include: 1970 – Coup in Syria, led by Hafez al-Assad. 1971 – Military coup in Uganda led by Idi Amin. 1973 – Coup d'état in Chile on September 11th, Salvador Allende was overthrown and killed in a military attack on the presidential palace. Augusto Pinochet takes power backed by the military junta. 1974 – Military coup in Ethiopia led to the overthrowing of Haile Selassie by the communist junta led by General Aman Andom and Mengistu Haile Mariam, ending one of the world's longest-lasting monarchies in history. 1974 – (25 April) Carnation Revolution in Portugal started as a military coup organized by the Armed Forces Movement (Portuguese: Movimento das Forças Armadas, MFA) composed of military officers who opposed the Portuguese fascist regime, but the movement was soon coupled with an unanticipated and popular campaign of civil support. It would ultimately lead to the decolonization of all its colonies, but leave power vacuums that led to civil war in newly independent Lusophone African nations. 1975 - Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, President of Bangladesh, and almost his entire family was assassinated in the early hours of August 15, 1975, when a group of Bangladesh Army personnel went to his residence and killed him, during a coup d'état. 1976 – Jorge Rafael Videla seizes control of Argentina in 1976 through a coup sponsored by the Argentine military, establishing himself as a dictator of a military junta government in the country. 1977 – Military coup in Pakistan political leaders including Zulfikar Ali Bhutto arrested. Martial law declared 1979 – an Attempted coup in Iran, backed by the United States, to overthrow the interim government, which had come to power after the Iranian Revolution. 1979 - Coup in El Salvador, President General Carlos Humberto Romero, was overthrown by junior ranked officers, that formed a Junta government, which lead the beginning of a 12-year civil war. Terrorist attacks The most notable terrorist attacks of the decade include: The Munich massacre takes place at the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany, where Palestinians belonging to the terrorist group Black September organization kidnapped and murdered eleven Israeli athletes. Rise in the use of terrorism by militant organizations across the world. Groups in Europe like the Red Brigades and the Baader-Meinhof Gang were responsible for a spate of bombings, kidnappings, and murders. Violence continued in Northern Ireland and the Middle East. Radical American groups existed as well, such as the Weather Underground and the Symbionese Liberation Army, but they never achieved the size or strength of their European counterparts. On September 6, 1970, the world witnessed the beginnings of modern rebellious fighting in what is today called as Skyjack Sunday. Palestinian terrorists hijacked four airliners and took over 300 people on board as hostage. The hostages were later released, but the planes were blown up. Prominent political events Worldwide 1973 oil crisis and 1979 energy crisis The presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state and heads of government in a number of countries across the world, many being the first women to hold such positions, such as Soong Ching-ling continuing as the first Chairwoman of the People's Republic of China until 1972, Isabel Perón as the first woman President in Argentina in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Americas United States President Richard Nixon resigned as president on August 9, 1974, while facing charges for impeachment for the Watergate scandal. Augusto Pinochet rose to power as ruler of Chile after overthrowing the country's Socialist president Salvador Allende in 1973 with the assistance of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) of the United States. Pinochet would remain the dictator of Chile until 1990. Suriname was granted independence from the Netherlands on November 25, 1975. In Guyana, the Rev. Jim Jones led several hundred people from his People's Temple in California to create and maintain a Utopian Marxist commune in the jungle named Jonestown. Amid allegations of corruption, mental, sexual, and physical abuse by Jones on his followers, and denying them the right to leave Jonestown, a Congressional committee and journalists visited Guyana to investigate in November 1978. The visitors (and several of those trying to leave Jonestown with them) were attacked and shot by Jones' guards at the airport while trying to depart Guyana together. Congressman Leo Ryan was among those who were shot to death. The demented Jones then ordered everyone in the commune to commit suicide. The people drank or were forced to drink, cyanide-laced fruit punch (Flavor Aid). A total of over 900 dead were found (approximately 1/3 of which were children), including Jones, who had shot himself. Multiple units of the United States military were organized, mobilized, and sent to Guyana to recover over 900 deceased Jonestown residents. After rejections from the Guyanese Government for the United States to bury the Jonestown dead in Guyana, US military personnel were then tasked to prepare and transport the human remains from Guyana for burial in the USA. The US General Accounting Office later detailed an approximate cost of $4.4 million (in taxpayer dollars) for Jonestown's clean-up and recovery operation expenses. Greenland was granted self-government (or "home rule") within the Kingdom of Denmark on November 29, 1979. Europe Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative party rose to power in the United Kingdom in 1979, initiating a neoliberal economic policy of reducing government spending, weakening the power of trade unions, and promoting economic and trade liberalization. Francisco Franco died after 39 years in power. Juan Carlos I was crowned king of Spain and called for the reintroduction of democracy. The dictatorship in Spain ended. The first general elections were held in 1977 and Adolfo Suárez became Prime minister of Spain after his Centrist Democratic Union won. The Socialist and Communist parties were legalized. The current Spanish Constitution was signed in 1978. In 1972, Erich Honecker was chosen to lead East Germany, a role he would fill for the whole of the 1970s and 1980s. The mid-1970s were a time of extreme recession for East Germany, and as a result of the country's higher debts, consumer goods became more and more scarce. If East Germans had enough money to procure a television set, a telephone, or a Trabant automobile, they were placed on waiting lists which caused them to wait as much as a decade for the item in question. The Soviet Union under the leadership of Leonid Brezhnev, having the largest armed forces and the largest stockpile of nuclear weapons in the world, pursued an agenda to lessen tensions with its rival superpower, the United States, for most of the seventies. That policy known as détente abruptly ended with the Soviet invasion in Afghanistan at the end of 1979. While known as a "period of stagnation" in Soviet historiography, the Seventies are largely considered as a sort of a golden age of the USSR in terms of stability and relative well-being. Nevertheless, hidden inflation continued to increase for the second straight decade, and production consistently fell short of demand in agriculture and consumer goods manufacturing. By the end of the 1970s, signs of social and economic stagnation were becoming very pronounced. Enver Hoxha's rule in Albania was characterized in the 1970s by growing isolation, first from a very public schism with the Soviet Union the decade before, and then by a split in friendly relations with China in 1978. Albania normalized relations with Yugoslavia in 1971, and attempted trade agreements with other European nations, but was met with vocal disapproval by the United Kingdom and United States. 1978 would become known as the "Year of Three Popes". In August, Paul VI, who had ruled since 1963, died. His successor was Cardinal Albino Luciano, who took the name John Paul. But only 33 days later, he was found dead, and the Catholic Church had to elect another pope. On October 16, Karol Wojtyła, a Polish cardinal, was elected, becoming Pope John Paul II. He was the first non-Italian pope since 1523. Asia On September 17, 1978, the Camp David Accords are signed between Israel and Egypt. The Accords led directly to the 1979 Egypt–Israel Peace Treaty. They also resulted in Sadat and Begin sharing the 1978 Nobel Peace Prize. Major changes in the People's Republic of China. US president Richard Nixon visited the country in 1972 following visits by Henry Kissinger in 1971, restoring relations between the two countries, although formal diplomatic ties were not established until 1979. In 1976, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai both died, leading to the end of the Cultural Revolution and beginning a new era. After the brief rule of Mao's chosen successor Hua Guofeng, Deng Xiaoping emerged as China's paramount leader, and began to shift the country towards market economics and away from ideologically driven policies. In 1979, Deng Xiaoping visited the US. In 1971, the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek, then-President of the Republic of China (Taiwan), were expelled from the United Nations and replaced by the People's Republic of China. Chiang Kai-shek died in 1975, and in 1978 his son Chiang Ching-kuo became president, beginning a shift towards democratization in Taiwan. In Iraq, Saddam Hussein began to rise to power by helping to modernize the country. One major initiative was removing the Western monopoly on oil, which later during the high prices of 1973 oil crisis would help Hussein's ambitious plans. On July 16, 1979, he assumed the presidency cementing his rise to power. His presidency led to the breaking off of a Syrian-Iraqi unification, which had been sought under his predecessor Ahmed Hassan al-Bakr and would lead to the Iran–Iraq War starting in the 1980s. Japan's economic growth surpassed the rest of the world in the 1970s, unseating the United States as the world's foremost industrial power. On April 17, 1975, the Khmer Rouge, led by Pol Pot, took over Cambodia's capital Phnom Penh. From 1975 to 1979, the Khmer Rouge carried out the Cambodian genocide that killed nearly two million. On April 13, 1975, the Lebanese Civil War began. 1978 Zia ul Haq comes to power 1979 Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto hanged in jail Africa Idi Amin, President of Uganda from 1971 to 1979, after rising to power in a coup becomes infamous for his brutal dictatorship in Uganda. Amin's regime persecutes opposition to his rule, pursues a racist agenda of removing Asians from Uganda (particularly Indians who arrived in Uganda during British colonial rule). Amin initiates the Ugandan–Tanzanian War in 1978 in alliance with Libya based on an expansionist agenda to annex territory from Tanzania which results in Ugandan defeat and Amin's overthrow in 1979. South African activist Steve Biko dies in 1977. Francisco Macías Nguema ruled Equatorial Guinea as a brutal dictator from 1969 until his overthrow and execution in 1979. Jean-Bédel Bokassa, who had ruled the Central African Republic since 1965, proclaimed himself Emperor Bokasa I and renamed his impoverished country the Central African Empire in 1977. He was overthrown two years later and went into exile. Disasters Natural disasters On January 5, 1970, the 7.1 Tonghai earthquake shakes Tonghai County, Yunnan province, China, with a maximum Mercalli intensity of X (Extreme). Between 10,000 and 14,621 were killed and 26,783 were injured. On May 31, 1970, the 1970 Ancash earthquake caused a landslide that buried the town of Yungay, Peru; more than 47,000 people were killed. "Essay on Super Cyclone in Orissa" The 1970 Bhola cyclone, a 120-mph (193 km/h) tropical cyclone, hit the densely populated Ganges Delta region of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh) on November 12 and 13, 1970, killing an estimated 500,000 people. The storm remains to date the deadliest tropical cyclone in world history. On October 29, 1971, the 1971 Odisha cyclone in the Bay of Bengal, in the Indian state of Odisha, killed 10,000 people. June, 1972, Hurricane Agnes hit the east coast of the United States, resulting in 128 deaths and causing over $2.1 Billion in damage. On April 3, 1974, the 1974 Super Outbreak occurred in the U.S. producing 148 tornadoes and killing a total of 330 people. On December 24, 1974, Cyclone Tracy devastated the Australian city of Darwin. Bangladesh famine of 1974 — Official records claim a death toll of 26,000. However, various sources claim about 1,000,000. On August 8, 1975, the Banqiao Dam, in China's Henan Province, failed after a freak typhoon; over 200,000 people perished. On February 4, 1976, a major earthquake in Guatemala and Honduras killed more than 22,000. On July 28, 1976, a 7.5 earthquake flattened Tangshan, China, killing 242,769 people and injuring 164,851. On August 17, 1976, a magnitude 8 earthquake struck Moro Gulf near the island of Sulu in Mindanao, Philippines causing a tsunami killing 5,000 to 8,000 people. Super Typhoon Tip affected areas in the southwestern Pacific Ocean from October 4–19, 1979. Off the coast of Guam, Tip became the largest and most powerful tropical cyclone ever recorded, with a gale diameter of almost 1,400 miles, 190-mph winds, and a record intensity of 870 millibars. Non-natural disasters October 2, 1970, Plane Crash involving the Wichita State University Football Team On November 14, 1970, Southern Airways Flight 932 carrying the entire Marshall (West Virginia) football team and boosters crashed into a mountainside near Ceredo, West Virginia, on approach to Tri-State Airport in heavy rain and fog. They were returning from a road game loss at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. There were no survivors. On July 30, 1971, All Nippon Airways Flight 58 collided with a JASDF fighter plane, killing all 162 on board. The JASDF pilot survived. On December 29, 1972, Eastern Air Lines Flight 401 crashed in the Florida Everglades while its crew was distracted. 101 people died in the accident while 75 survived. On January 22, 1973, an Alia Boeing 707, chartered by Nigeria Airways, crashed upon landing at Nigeria's Kano Airport after one of its landing gear struts collapsed. 176 of the 202 people on board perished, leaving 26 survivors. On March 3, 1974, Turkish Airlines Flight 981 crashed in northern France after a cargo hatch blowout, killing all 346 people aboard. On April 4, 1975, the rear loading ramp on a USAF Lockheed C-5 Galaxy blew open mid-flight, causing explosive decompression that crippled the aircraft. 153 were killed in the incident while 175 survived. On November 10, 1975, the U.S. Great Lakes bulk freighter SS Edmund Fitzgerald foundered on Lake Superior with the loss of all 29 crewmen. On September 10, 1976, in the Zagreb mid-air collision, a British Airways Hawker Siddeley Trident and an Inex-Adria Aviopromet Douglas DC-9 collided near Zagreb, Yugoslavia (now Croatia), killing all 176 aboard both planes and another person on the ground. On March 27, 1977, two Boeing 747s (a KLM and a Pan Am) collided on the runway in heavy fog at Los Rodeos Airport in Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain, killing 583 people – the worst aviation disaster on record. On January 1, 1978, Air India Flight 855 crashed into sea off the coast of India, killing all 213 aboard. On September 25, 1978, PSA Flight 182 collided with a private Cessna 172 over San Diego, California, and crashed into a local neighborhood. All 135 on the PSA aircraft, both pilots of the Cessna, and 7 people on the ground (144 total) were killed. On May 25, 1979, American Airlines Flight 191, outbound from O'Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, lost an engine during take-off and crashed, killing all 271 on board and 2 others on the ground. It was and remains the deadliest single-plane crash on American soil. On November 28, 1979, Air New Zealand Flight 901 crashed on the flanks of Mount Erebus in Antarctica, killing all 257 people on board. On March 28, 1979, Three Mile Island accident Worldwide trends Superpower tensions had cooled by the 1970s, with the bellicose US–Soviet confrontations of the 1950s–60s giving way to the policy of "détente", which promoted the idea that the world's problems could be resolved at the negotiating table. Détente was partially a reaction against the policies of the previous 25 years, which had brought the world dangerously close to nuclear war on several occasions, and because the US was in a weakened position following the failure of the Vietnam War. As part of détente, the US also restored ties with the People's Republic of China, partially as a counterweight against Soviet expansionism. The US–Soviet geopolitical rivalry nonetheless continued through the decade, although in a more indirect faction as the two superpowers jockeyed relentlessly for control of smaller countries. American and Soviet intelligence agencies gave funding, training, and material support to insurgent groups, governments, and armies across the globe, each seeking to gain a geopolitical advantage and install friendly governments. Coups, civil wars, and terrorism went on across Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and also in Europe where a spate of Soviet-backed Marxist terrorist groups were active throughout the decade. Over half the world's population in the 1970s lived under a repressive dictatorship. In 1979, a new wrinkle appeared in the form of Islamic fundamentalism, as the Shia theocracy of Ayatollah Khomeini overthrew the Shah of Iran and declared itself hostile to both Western democracy and godless communism. People were deeply influenced by the rapid pace of societal change and the aspiration for a more egalitarian society in cultures that were long colonized and have an even longer history of hierarchical social structure. The Green Revolution of the late 1960s brought about self-sufficiency in food in many developing economies. At the same time an increasing number of people began to seek urban prosperity over agrarian life. This consequently saw the duality of transition of diverse interaction across social communities amid increasing information blockade across social class. Other common global ethos of the 1970s world included increasingly flexible and varied gender roles for women in industrialized societies. More women could enter the work force. However, the gender role of men remained as that of a breadwinner. The period also saw the socioeconomic effect of an ever-increasing number of women entering the non-agrarian economic workforce. The Iranian revolution also affected global attitudes to and among those of the Muslim faith toward the end of the 1970s. The global experience of the cultural transition of the 1970s and an experience of a global zeitgeist revealed the interdependence of economies since World War II, in a world increasingly polarized between the United States and the Soviet Union. Assassinations and attempts Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include: King of Saudi Arabia Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud is assassinated on March 25, 1975, by his half-brother's son, Faisal bin Musaid. Arthur Bremer plotted to assassinate Governor of Alabama, George Wallace on May 15, 1972, while Wallace was making a campaign trip in Laurel, Maryland. Wallace would later be paralyzed from the waist down. Arthur Bremer was sentenced to the Maryland Correctional Institute, and would later be released in 2007. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, President of Bangladesh, and almost his entire family was assassinated in the early hours of August 15, 1975, when a group of Bangladesh Army personnel went to his residence and killed him, during a coup d'état. U.S. President Gerald Ford was nearly assassinated twice in September 1975 in Sacramento and San Francisco, California. Christian Democratic leader and former Prime Minister of Italy Aldo Moro was kidnapped and later killed by the Red Brigades on May 9, 1978. Raymond Lee Harvey and his confidant Osvaldo Ortiz plotted to assassinate President Jimmy Carter while Carter was to give a speech at the Civic Center Mall in Los Angeles, California, on May 5, 1979. Economy The 1970s were perhaps the worst decade of most industrialized countries' economic performance since the Great Depression. Although there was no severe economic depression as witnessed in the 1930s, economic growth rates were considerably lower than previous decades. As a result, the 1970s adversely distinguished itself from the prosperous postwar period between 1945 and 1973. The oil shocks of 1973 and 1979 added to the existing ailments and conjured high inflation throughout much of the world for the rest of the decade. U.S. manufacturing industries began to decline as a result, with the United States running its last trade surplus () in 1975. In contrast, Japan and West Germany experienced economic booms and started overtaking the U.S. as the world's leading manufacturers. In 1970, Japan overtook West Germany to become the world's second-largest economy. Japan would rank as the world's second-largest economy until 1994 when the European Economic Area (18 countries under a single market) came into effect. In the US, the average annual inflation rate from 1900 to 1970 was approximately 2.5%. From 1970 to 1979, however, the average rate was 7.06%, and topped out at 13.29% in December 1979. This period is also known for "stagflation", a phenomenon in which inflation and unemployment steadily increased. It led to double-digit interest rates that rose to unprecedented levels (above 12% per year). The prime rate hit 21.5 in December 1980, the highest in history. A rising cost of housing was reflected in the average price of a new home in the U.S. The average price of a new home in the U.S. was $23,450 in 1970 up to $68,700 by 1980. By the time of 1980, when U.S. President Jimmy Carter was running for re-election against Ronald Reagan, the misery index (the sum of the unemployment rate and the inflation rate) had reached an all-time high of 21.98%. The economic problems of the 1970s would result in a sluggish cynicism replacing the optimistic attitudes of the 1950s and 1960s and a distrust of government and technology. Faith in government was at an all-time low in the aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, as exemplified by the low voter turnout in the 1976 United States presidential election. There was also the 1973–74 stock market crash. Great Britain also experienced considerable economic turmoil during the decade as outdated industries proved unable to compete with Japanese and German wares. Labor strikes happened with such frequency as to almost paralyze the country's infrastructure. Following the Winter of Discontent, Margaret Thatcher was elected prime minister in 1979 with the purpose of implementing extreme economic reforms. In Eastern Europe, Soviet-style command economies began showing signs of stagnation, in which successes were persistently dogged by setbacks. The oil shock increased East European, particularly Soviet, exports, but a growing inability to increase agricultural output caused growing concern to the governments of the COMECON block, and a growing dependence on food imported from democratic nations. On the other hand, export-driven economic development in Asia, especially by the Four Asian Tigers (Hong Kong, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan), resulted in rapid economic transformation and industrialization. Their abundance of cheap labor, combined with educational and other policy reforms, set the foundation for development in the region during the 1970s and beyond. Oil crisis Economically, the 1970s were marked by the energy crisis which peaked in 1973 and 1979 (see 1973 oil crisis and 1979 oil crisis). After the first oil shock in 1973, gasoline was rationed in many countries. Europe particularly depended on the Middle East for oil; the United States was also affected even though it had its own oil reserves. Many European countries introduced car-free days and weekends. In the United States, customers with a license plate ending in an odd number were only allowed to buy gasoline on odd-numbered days, while even-numbered plate-holders could only purchase gasoline on even-numbered days. The realization that oil reserves were not endless and technological development was not sustainable without potentially harming the environment ended the belief in limitless progress that had existed since the 19th century. As a result, ecological awareness rose substantially, which had a major effect on the economy. Science and technology Science The 1970s witnessed an explosion in the understanding of solid-state physics, driven by the development of the integrated circuit, and the laser. Stephen Hawking developed his theories of black holes and the boundary-condition of the universe at this period with his theory called Hawking radiation. The biological sciences greatly advanced, with molecular biology, bacteriology, virology, and genetics achieving their modern forms in this decade. Biodiversity became a cause of major concern as habitat destruction, and Stephen Jay Gould's theory of punctuated equilibrium revolutionized evolutionary thought. Space exploration As the 1960s ended, the United States had made two successful crewed lunar landings. Many Americans lost interest afterward, feeling that since the country had accomplished President John F. Kennedy's goal of landing on the Moon by the end of the 1960s, there was no need for further missions. There was also a growing sentiment that the billions of dollars spent on the space program should be put to other uses. The Moon landings continued through 1972, but the near loss of the Apollo 13 mission in April 1970 served to further anti-NASA feelings. Plans for missions up to Apollo 20 were canceled, and the remaining Apollo and Saturn hardware was used for the Skylab space station program in 1973–1974, and for the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project (ASTP), which was carried out in July 1975. Many of the ambitious projects NASA had planned for the 1970s were canceled amid heavy budget cutbacks, and instead it would devote most of the decade to the development of the Space Shuttle. ASTP was the last crewed American space flight for the next five years. The year 1979 witnessed the spectacular reentry of Skylab over Australia. NASA had planned for a Shuttle mission to the space station, but the shuttles were not ready to fly until 1981, too late to save it. Meanwhile, the Soviets, having failed in their attempt at crewed lunar landings, canceled the program in 1972. By then, however, they had already begun Salyut, the world's first space station program, which began in 1971. This would have problems of its own, especially the tragic loss of the Soyuz 11 crew in July 1971 and the near-loss of the Soyuz 18a crew during launch in April 1975. It eventually proved a success, with missions as long as six months being conducted by the end of the decade. In terms of unmanned missions, a variety of lunar and planetary probes were launched by the US and Soviet programs during the decade. The most successful of these include the Soviet Lunokhod program, a series of robotic lunar missions which included the first unmanned sample return from another world, and the American Voyagers, which took advantage of a rare alignment of the outer planets to visit all of them except Pluto by the end of the 1980s. China entered the space race in 1970 with the launching of its first satellite, but technological backwardness and limited funds would prevent the country from becoming a significant force in space exploration. Japan launched a satellite for the first time in 1972. The European Space Agency was founded during the decade as well. Biology The second generation of face lifts were first attempted in the 1970s, popularizing the procedure for millions. The first MRI image was published in 1973. César Milstein and Georges Köhler reported their discovery of how to use hybridoma cells to isolate monoclonal antibodies, effectively beginning the history of monoclonal antibody use in science. Carl Woese and George E. Fox classified archaea as a new, separate domain of life. "Lucy", a fossilized hominid of the species Australopithecus afarensis, was discovered in the Afar region of Ethiopia by Donald Johanson in 1974, providing evidence for bipedalism as an early occurrence in human evolution. After successful vaccination campaigns throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, the WHO certified the eradication of smallpox in December 1979 after the last smallpox case in 1977. The first organisms genetically engineered were bacteria in 1973 and then mice in 1974. 1977 The first complete DNA genome to be sequenced is that of bacteriophage φX174. In 1978, Louise Brown became the first child to be born via in vitro fertilisation, or IVF. Social science Social science intersected with hard science in the works in natural language processing by Terry Winograd (1973) and the establishment of the first cognitive sciences department in the world at MIT in 1979. The fields of generative linguistics and cognitive psychology went through a renewed vigor with symbolic modeling of semantic knowledge while the final devastation of the long-standing tradition of behaviorism came about through the severe criticism of B. F. Skinner's work in 1971 by the cognitive scientist Noam Chomsky. Technology Concorde makes the world's first commercial passenger-carrying supersonic flight. Electronics and communications The birth of modern computing was in the 1970s, which saw the development of: Intel 4004, the world's first general microprocessor the C programming language rudimentary personal computers, with the launch of the Datapoint 2200 pocket calculators the Magnavox Odyssey, the first home video game console the Sony Walkman, built in 1978 by Japanese audio-division engineer Nobutoshi Kihara consumer video games, after the release of Computer Space the earliest floppy disks, invented at IBM, which were 8 inches wide and long, commercially available by 1971 email, with the first transmission in 1971 electronic paper, developed by Nick Sheridon at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) the Xerox Alto of 1973, the first computer to use the desktop metaphor and mouse-driven graphical user interface (GUI) The 1970s were also the start of: fiber optics, which transformed the communications industry microwave ovens, which became commercially available VCRs and Betamax, which became commercially available the first voicemail system, known as the Speech Filing System (SFS), invented by Stephen J. Boies in 1973 e-commerce, invented in 1979 by Michael Aldrich DiscoVision in 1978, the first commercial optical disc storage medium positron emission tomography, invented in 1972 by Edward J. Hoffman and fellow scientist Michael Phelps cell phones, with the first call transmitted in 1973, Martin Cooper of Motorola car phone services, first available in Finland in 1971 in form of the zero-generation ARP (Autoradiopuhelin, or Car Radiophone) service Apple Computer Company, founded in 1976 Rail British Rail introduced high-speed trains on InterCity services. The trains consisted of British Rail Class 43 diesel-electric locomotives at either end with British Rail Mark 3 carriages. The trains were built in the United Kingdom by British Rail Engineering Limited. The high speed trains ran at speeding up journeys between towns and cities and is still known as the InterCity 125. Amtrak was formed in the United States in 1971, assuming responsibility for inter-city passenger operations throughout the country. In 1976, Conrail was formed to take over assets of six bankrupt freight railroads in the northeastern US. Automobiles The 1970s was an era of fuel price increases, rising insurance rates, safety concerns, and emissions controls. The 1973 oil crisis caused a move towards smaller, fuel-efficient vehicles. Attempts were made to produce electric cars, but they were largely unsuccessful. In the United States, imported cars became a significant factor for the first time, and several domestic-built subcompact models entered the market. American-made cars such as the "quirky" AMC Gremlin, the jelly bean shaped AMC Pacer, and Pontiac Firebird's powerful Trans Am "sum up" the decade. Muscle cars and convertible models faded from favor during the early-1970s. It was believed that the 1976 Cadillac Eldorado would be the last American-built convertible; ending the open body style that once dominated the auto industry. Cars in the U.S. from the early 1970s are noted more for their power than their styling, but they even lost their power by Malaise era of the late-1970s. Styling on American cars became progressively more boxy and rectilinear during the 1970s, with coupes being the most popular body style. Wood paneling and shag carpets dominated the interiors. Many automobiles began to lose their character and looked the same across brands and automakers, as well as featuring "luxury" enhancements such as vinyl roofs and opera windows. Only a few had "real personalities" such as the AMC Gremlin, which was America's first modern subcompact, and the AMC Pacer. "These two cars embody a sense of artful desperation that made them stand out from the crowd and epitomize at once the best and worst of the seventies." Automobiles in the U.S. reached the largest sizes they would ever attain, but by 1977, General Motors managed to downsize its full-size models to more manageable dimensions. Ford followed suit two years later, with Chrysler offering new small front-wheel-drive models, but was suffering from a worsening financial situation caused by various factors. By 1979, the company was near bankruptcy, and under its new president Lee Iacocca (who had been fired from Ford the year before), asked for a government bailout. American Motors beat out the U.S. Big Three to subcompact sized model (the Gremlin) in 1970, but its fortunes declined throughout the decade, forcing it into a partnership with the French automaker Renault in 1979. European car design underwent major changes during the 1970s due to the need for performance with high fuel efficiency—designs such as the Volkswagen Golf and Passat, BMW 3, 5, and 7 series, and Mercedes-Benz S-Class appeared at the latter half of the decade. Ford Europe, specifically Ford Germany, also eclipsed the profits of its American parent company. The designs of Giorgetto Giugiaro became dominant, along with those of Marcello Gandini in Italy. The 1970s also saw the decline and practical failure of the British car industry—a combination of militant strikes and poor quality control effectively halted development at British Leyland, owner of all other British car companies during the 1970s. The Japanese automobile industry flourished during the 1970s, compared to other major auto markets. Japanese vehicles became internationally renowned for their affordability, reliability, and fuel-efficiency, which was very important to many customers after the oil crisis of 1973. Japanese car manufacturing focused on computerized robotic manufacturing techniques and lean manufacturing, contributing to high-efficiency and low production costs. The Honda Civic was introduced in 1973, and sold well due to its high fuel-efficiency. By 1975 Toyota overtook Volkswagen as the top-selling imported automobile brand in the U.S., with over a million cars sold per year by this point. Other popular compact cars included the Toyota Corolla and the Datsun Sunny, in addition to other cars from those companies and others such as Subaru, Mitsubishi, and Mazda. Society Role of women in society The role of women in society was profoundly altered with growing feminism across the world and with the presence and rise of a significant number of women as heads of state outside monarchies and heads of government in a number of countries across the world during the 1970s, many being the first women to hold such positions. Non-monarch women heads of state and heads of government in this period included Isabel Perón as the first woman President in Argentina and the first woman non-monarch head of state in the Western hemisphere in 1974 until being deposed in 1976, Elisabeth Domitien becomes the first woman Prime Minister of the Central African Republic, Indira Gandhi continuing as Prime Minister of India until 1977 (and taking office again in 1980), Sirimavo Bandaranaike, Prime minister of Sri Lanka (Former Ceylon) and first female head of government in the world, re-elected in 1970, Prime Minister Golda Meir of Israel and acting Chairman Soong Ching-ling of the People's Republic of China continuing their leadership from the sixties, Lidia Gueiler Tejada becoming the interim President of Bolivia beginning from 1979 to 1980, Maria de Lourdes Pintasilgo becoming the first woman Prime Minister of Portugal in 1979, and Margaret Thatcher becoming the first woman Prime Minister of the United Kingdom in 1979. Both Indira Gandhi and Margaret Thatcher would remain important political figures in the following decade in the 1980s. Social movements Anti-war protests The opposition to the War in Vietnam that began in the 1960s grew exponentially during the early 1970s. One of the best-known anti-war demonstrations was the Kent State shootings. In 1970, university students were protesting the war and the draft. Riots ensued during the weekend and the National Guard was called in to maintain the peace. However, by 4 May 1970, tensions arose again, and as the crowd grew larger, the National Guard started shooting. Four students were killed and nine injured. This event caused disbelief and shock throughout the country and became a staple of anti-Vietnam demonstrations. Environmentalism The 1970s started a mainstream affirmation of the environmental issues early activists from the 1960s, such as Rachel Carson and Murray Bookchin, had warned of. The Apollo 11 mission, which had occurred at the end of the previous decade, had transmitted back concrete images of the Earth as an integrated, life-supporting system and shaped a public willingness to preserve nature. On April 22, 1970, the United States celebrated its first Earth Day, in which over two thousand colleges and universities and roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools participated. Sexual Revolution The 1960s counterculture movement had rapidly undone many existing social taboos, and divorce, extramarital sex, and homosexuality were increasingly accepted in the Western world. The event of legalized abortion and over-the-counter birth control pills also played a major factor. Western Europe was in some ways more progressive on sexual liberation than the United States, as nudity in film and on TV had been gradually accepted there from the mid-1960s, and many European countries during this time began allowing women to go topless in public places. Nudist culture was also popular during the decade, especially in Germany and Scandinavia. Child erotica found a niche market, but would eventually be banned under child pornography laws in the 1980s to 1990s. The market for adult entertainment in the 1970s was large, and driven in part by the sizable baby boomer population, and the 1972 movie Behind the Green Door, an X-rated feature, became one of the top-grossing films of the year. Playboy Magazine appeared increasingly dull and old-fashioned next to new, more explicit sex-themed magazines such as Penthouse Magazine and Hustler Magazine. By the end of the decade, there was an increasing backlash against libertine sexual attitudes, and the event of the |
again in 1999 after the bombing of the Chinese embassy during the bombing of Serbia by NATO forces, which caused three deaths, and allegations of Chinese espionage at the Los Alamos Nuclear Facility. Financial crisis hits East and Southeast Asia in 1997 and 1998 after a long period of phenomenal economic development, which continues by 1999. This crisis begins to be felt by the end of the decade. In Japan, after three decades of economic growth put them in second place in the world's economies, the situation worsened after 1993. The recession went on into the early first decade of the 21st century, bringing an end to the seemingly unlimited prosperity that the country had before enjoyed. Less affluent nations such as India, Malaysia, and Vietnam also saw tremendous improvements in economic prosperity and quality of life during the 1990s. Restructuring following the end of the Cold War was beginning. However, there was also the continuation of terrorism in Third World regions that were once the "frontlines" for American and Soviet foreign politics, particularly in Asia. Europe By 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms were causing major inflation and economic chaos. A coup attempt by hard-liners in August 1991 failed, marking the effective end of the Soviet Union. All its constituent republics declared their independence in 1991, and on Christmas, Gorbachev resigned from office. After 73 years, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The new Russian Federation was headed by Boris Yeltsin and would face severe economic difficulty. Oligarchs took over Russia's energy and industrial sectors, reducing almost half the country to poverty. With a 3% approval rating, Yeltsin had to buy the support of the oligarchs to win reelection in 1996. Economic turmoil and devaluation of the ruble continued, and with heart and alcohol troubles, Yeltsin stepped down from office on the last day of 1999, handing power to Vladimir Putin. Russian financial crisis in the 1990s results in mass hyperinflation and prompts economic intervention from the International Monetary Fund and western countries to help Russia's economy recover. The first McDonald's restaurant opens in Moscow in 1990 with then-President of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR and future Russian President Boris Yeltsin attending, symbolizing Russia's transition towards a capitalist free market economy and a move towards adopting elements of western culture. Oil and gas were discovered in many countries in the former Soviet bloc, leading to economic growth and wider adoption of trade between nations. These trends were also fueled by inexpensive fossil energy, with low petroleum prices caused by increased production of oil. Political stability and decreased militarization due to the winding down of the Cold War led to economic development and higher standards of living for many citizens. Most of Europe enjoyed growing prosperity during the 1990s. However, problems including the massive 1995 general strikes in France following a recession and the difficulties associated with German reunification lead to sluggish growth in these countries. However, both the French and German economies improve in the latter half of the decade. Meanwhile, the economies of particularly Spain, Scandinavia and former Eastern Bloc countries accelerate at rapid speed during the decade although unemployment being mild due to many having experienced a deep recession for the start of the decade. After the early 1990s recession, the United Kingdom and Ireland experience rapid economic growth and falling unemployment that continues throughout the decade. Economic growth would continue until the Late 2000s recession marking the longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in history. Some Eastern European economies struggled after the fall of communism, but Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania saw economic growth rates in the late 1990s. With the creation of the EU there is freedom of movement between member states, such as the 1992 and 1995 free trade agreements. The euro is adopted by the European Union on 1 January 1999, which begins a process of phasing out national currencies of EU countries. South America The sluggish economies of Brazil, by a new emphasis on free markets for all their citizens, and Mexico, under economist president Ernesto Zedillo elected in 1994, were in their best shape by the late 1990s. Technology and science Technology The 1990s were a revolutionary decade for digital technology. Between 1990 and 1997, individual personal computer ownership in the US rose from 15% to 35%. Cell phones of the early-1990s and earlier ones were very large, lacked extra features, and were used by only a few percent of the population of even the wealthiest nations. Only a few million people used online services in 1990, and the World Wide Web, which would have a significant impact on technology for many decades, had only just been invented. The first web browser went online in 1993 and by 2001, more than 50% of some Western countries had Internet access, and more than 25% had cell phone access. Electronics and communications On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. Driven by mass adoption, consumer personal computer specifications increased dramatically during the 1990s, from 512 KB RAM 12 MHz Turbo XTs in 1990, to 25–66 MHz 80486-class processor at the start of the popularization of the World Wide Web mid-decade, to over 1 GHz CPUs with close to a gigabyte of RAM by 2000. Y2K spread fear throughout the United States and eventually the world in the last half of the decade, particularly in 1999, about possible massive computer malfunctions on 1 January 2000. As a result, many people stocked up on supplies for fear of a worldwide disaster. After significant effort to upgrade systems on the part of software engineers, no failures occurred when the clocks rolled over into 2000. Advancements in computer modems, ISDN, cable modems, and DSL lead to faster connections to the Internet. The first Pentium microprocessor is introduced and developed by the Intel Corporation. Email becomes popular; as a result, Microsoft acquires the popular Hotmail webmail service. Instant messaging and the buddy list feature becomes popular. AIM and ICQ are two early protocols. Businesses start to build e-commerce websites; e-commerce-only companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, AOL, and Yahoo! grow rapidly. The introduction of affordable, smaller satellite dishes and the DVB-S standard in the mid-1990s expanded satellite television services that carried up to 500 television channels. The first MP3 player, the MPMan, is released in late spring of 1998. It came with 32 MB of flash memory expandable to 64 MB. By the mid-2000s, the MP3 player would overtake the CD player in popularity. The first GSM network is launched in Finland in 1991. Digital single-lens reflex cameras and regular digital cameras become commercially available. They would replace film cameras by the mid-2000s. IBM introduces the wide Microdrive hard drive in 170 MB and 340 MB capacities. Apple in 1998 introduces the iMac all-in-one computer, initiating a trend in computer design towards translucent plastics and multicolor case design, discontinuing many legacy technologies like serial ports, and beginning a resurgence in the company's fortunes that continues to this day. CD burner drives are introduced. The CD-ROM drive became standard for most personal computers during the decade. The DVD media format is developed and popularized along with a plethora of Flash memory card standards in 1994. Pagers are initially popular but ultimately are replaced by mobile phones by the early-2000s. Hand-held satellite phones are introduced towards the end of the decade. The 24-hour news cycle becomes popular with the Gulf War between late 1990 and early 1991 and CNN's coverage of Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Though CNN had been running 24-hour newscasts since 1980, it was not until the Gulf War that the general public took large notice and others imitated CNN's non-stop news approach. Portable CD players, introduced during the late 1980s, became very popular and had a profound impact on the music industry and youth culture during the 1990s. Software Microsoft Windows operating systems become virtually ubiquitous on IBM PC compatibles. Microsoft introduces Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98 to the market, which gain immediate popularity. Macintosh System 7 was released in 1991. For much of the decade, Apple would struggle to develop a next-generation operating system, starting with Copland and culminating in its December 1996 buyout of NeXT and the 1999 release of Mac OS X Server 1.0. The development of web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer makes surfing the World Wide Web easier and more user friendly. The Java programming language is developed by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle). In 1991, development of the free Linux kernel is started by Linus Torvalds in Finland. Rail Transportation The opening of the Channel Tunnel between France and the United Kingdom saw the commencement by the three national railway companies of Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, respectively SNCB/NMBS, SNCF and British Rail of the joint Eurostar service. On 14 November 1994 Eurostar services began between Waterloo International station in London, Gare du Nord in Paris and Brussels South in Brussels. In 1995 Eurostar was achieving an average end-to-end speed of between London and Paris. On 8 January 1996 Eurostar launched services from a second railway station in the UK when Ashford International was opened. Journey times between London and Brussels were reduced by the opening of the High Speed 1 line on 14 December 1997. Automobiles The 1990s began with another recession that dampened car sales. General Motors suffered huge losses thanks to an inefficient structure, stale designs, and poor quality. Sales improved with the economy by the mid-1990s, but GM's US market share gradually declined to less than 40% (from a peak of 50% in the 1970s). While the new Saturn division fared well, Oldsmobile fell sharply and attempts to remake the division as a European-style luxury car were unsuccessful. Cars in the 1990s had a rounder, more streamlined shape than those from the 1970s and 1980s; this style would continue early into the 2000s and to a lesser extent later on. Chrysler ran into financial troubles again as the 1990s started. Like GM, the company too had a stale model lineup (except for the best-selling minivans) that was largely based on the aging K-car platform. In 1992, chairman Lee Iacocca retired, and the company began a remarkable revival, introducing the new LH platform and "Cab-Forward" styling, along with a highly successful redesign of the full-sized Dodge Ram in 1994. Chrysler's minivans continued to dominate the market despite increasing competition. In 1998, Daimler-Benz (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz) merged with Chrysler. The following year, it was decided to retire Plymouth, which had been on a long decline since the 1970s. Ford continued to fare well in the 1990s, with the second and third generations of the Ford Taurus being named the best selling car in the United States from 1992 to 1996. However, the Taurus would be outsold and dethroned by the Toyota Camry starting in 1997, which became the best-selling car in the United States for the rest of the decade and into the 2000s. Ford also introduced the Ford Explorer, 1991 being the first model year. Fords Explorer became the best-selling SUV on the market; outselling both the Chevy Blazer and Jeep Cherokee. Japanese cars continued to be highly successful during the decade. The Honda Accord vied with the Taurus most years for being the best-selling car in the United States during the early part of the decade. Although launched in 1989, the luxury brands Lexus and Infiniti began car sales of 1990 model year vehicles and saw great success. Lexus would go on to outsell Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the United States by 1991, and would outsell Cadillac and Lincoln by the end of the decade. SUVs and trucks became hugely popular during the economic boom in the second half of the decade. Many makes that had never built a truck before started selling SUVs. Car styling during the 1990s became gradually more round and ovoid, the third-generation Taurus and Mercury Sable being some of the more extreme examples. Safety features such as airbags and shoulder belts became mandatory equipment on new cars. Science Physicists develop M-theory. Detection of extrasolar planets orbiting stars other than the sun. In the United Kingdom, the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep was confirmed by the Roslin Institute, and was reported by global media on 26 February 1997. Dolly would trigger a raging controversy on cloning and bioethical concerns regarding possible human cloning continue to this day. Human Genome Project begins. DNA identification of individuals finds wide application in criminal law. Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and revolutionized astronomy. Unfortunately, a flaw in its main mirror caused it to produce fuzzy, distorted images. This was corrected by a shuttle repair mission in 1993. Protease inhibitors introduced allowing HAART therapy against HIV; drastically reduces AIDS mortality. NASA's spacecraft Pathfinder lands on Mars and deploys a small roving vehicle, Sojourner, which analyzes the planet's geology and atmosphere. The Hale–Bopp comet swings past the sun for the first time in 4,200 years in April 1997. Development of biodegradable products, replacing products made from styrofoam; advances in methods for recycling of waste products (such as paper, glass, and aluminum). Genetically engineered crops are developed for commercial use. Discovery of dark matter, dark energy, brown dwarfs, and first confirmation of black holes. The Galileo probe orbits Jupiter, studying the planet and its moons extensively. Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 (formally designated D/1993 F2, nicknamed String of Pearls for its appearance) was a comet that broke apart and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system objects.. The Global Positioning System (GPS) becomes fully operational. Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is discovered by Andrew Wiles. Construction started in 1998 on the International Space Station. Environment At the beginning of the decade, sustainable development and environmental protection became serious issues for governments and the international community. In 1987, the publication of the Brundtland Report by the United Nations had paved the way to establish an environmental governance. In 1992 the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, in which several countries committed to protect the environment, signing a Convention on Biological Diversity. The prevention of the destruction of the tropical rainforests of the world is a major environmental cause that first came into wide public concern in the early 1990s, and has continued and accelerated. The Chernobyl disaster had significant impact on public opinion at the end of the 1980s, and the fallout was still causing cancer deaths well into the 1990s and possibly even into the 21st century. All along the 1990s, several environmental NGOs helped improve environmental awareness among public opinion and governments. The most famous of these organizations during this decade was Greenpeace, which did not hesitate to lead illegal actions in the name of environmental preservation. These organizations also drew attention on the large deforestion of the Amazon Rainforest during the period. Global warming as an aspect of climate change also became a major concern, and the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after the Earth Summit helped coordinate efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. From 1995, the UNFCCC held annual summits on climate change, leading to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997, a binding agreement signed by several developed countries. Society The 1990s represented continuing social liberalization in most countries, though coupled with an increase in the influence of capitalism, which would continue until the Great Recession of the late 2000s/early 2010s. Youth culture in the 1990s responded to this by embracing both environmentalism and entrepreneurship. Western world fashions reflected this by often turning highly individualistic and/or counter-cultural, which was influenced by Generation X and early millennials: tattoos and body piercing gained popularity, and "retro" styles inspired by fashions of the 1960s and 1970s were also prevalent. Some young people became increasingly involved in extreme sports and outdoor activities that combined embracing athletics with the appreciation of nature. Those born from 1990 to 1996 are generally considered part of the Millennial Generation, along with those born in the 1980s, while those born from 1997 onward are often considered part of Generation Z, the post-Millennial generation. In 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of diseases. Increasing acceptance of homosexuality occurred in the western world, slowly starting in the early 1990s. Third-wave feminism Anita Hill and other women testify before the United States Congress on being sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Thomas was narrowly confirmed by the United States Senate, but Hill's testimony, and the testimony of other harassed women, begins a national debate on the issue. Record numbers of women are elected to high office in the United States in 1992, the "Year of the Woman." Violence against women takes center stage as an important issue internationally. In the United States the Violence Against Women Act was passed, which greatly affected the world community through the United Nations. The law's author, Joe Biden, and UN Ambassador and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Hillary Clinton (see below) become vocal advocates of action against violence against women. Women reach great heights of power in the United States government. Hillary Clinton, leading policy proposals, traveling abroad as a State Department representative to 82 nations, advising her husband, and being elected a Senator (in 2000), is the most openly empowered and politically powerful First Lady in American history; Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno take two of the cabinet's top jobs as United States Secretary of State (#1), and United States Attorney General (#4), respectively. Sheila Widnall becomes head and Secretary of the Air Force and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Sandra Day O'Connor as the second woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. More nations than ever before are led by elected women Presidents and Prime Ministers. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 1988 victory in Pakistan makes women leaders in Muslim states unextraordinary. In Turkey, Tansu Çiller became the first female prime minister in 1993 (till 1996). In popular culture, British pop group the Spice Girls also played a part in the feminist movement, boosting popularity with their slogan "Girl Power!", while country music superstar Shania Twain declared female supremacy in her 1995 hit song "Any Man of Mine." Additional significant worldwide events Worldwide New Year's Eve celebrations on December 31, 1999 welcoming the year 2000. Europe 1991 – January Events (Lithuania) - Soviet Union military troops attack Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius, killing 14 people and wounding 1000. In Paris, Diana, Princess of Wales and her friend, Dodi Al-Fayed, were killed in a car accident in August 1997, when their chauffeured, hired Mercedes-Benz S-Class crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The chauffeur, Henri Paul died at the scene, as did Al-Fayed. Diana and an Al-Fayed bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the accident. The Princess of Wales died at a Paris hospital hours later. The bodyguard, Rees-Jones, is the sole survivor of the now infamous accident. Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize, dies at age 87. The birth of the "Second Republic" in Italy, with the Mani Pulite investigations of 1994. The Channel Tunnel across the English Channel opens in 1994, connecting France and England. it is the third-longest rail tunnel in the world, but with the undersea section of being the longest undersea tunnel in the world. The resignation of President Boris Yeltsin on 31 December 1999 resulting in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's succession to the position. North America O. J. Simpson murder case – O. J. Simpson's trial, described in the American media as the "trial of the century" and enormous United States media attention is focused on the trial. On October 3, 1995, Simpson was found "not guilty" of double-murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. With help from clinical fertility drugs, an Iowa mother, Bobbie McCaughey, gave birth to the first surviving septuplets in 1997. There followed a media frenzy and widespread support for the family. John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed when Kennedy's private plane crashes off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in July 1999. Debate on assisted suicide highly publicized by Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian, charged with multiple counts of homicide of his terminally ill patients through the decade. Beer keg registration becomes popular public policy in United States. The 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas in 1992 was popularly observed in the United States, despite controversy and protests against the victimization of Native Americans by Columbus' expeditions. The holiday was labeled by some as racist, in view of Native American experiences of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and cultural destruction. Matthew Shepard is murdered near the University of Wyoming for being gay. This sparks intense national and international media attention and outrage. He becomes a major symbol in the LGBT rights movement and the fight against homophobia. Shanda Sharer was murdered on January 11, 1992. She was lured away from her house and held captive by a group of teenage girls. She was tortured for hours and burned alive. She died from smoke inhalation. Those that were found guilty and sentenced to prison were Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence. According to Melinda, she was jealous of the relationship that her former partner Amanda Heavrin had with Shanda Sharer. Karla Homolka was arrested with her husband, Paul Bernardo in 1993. Both sexually tortured and killed their victims. Their first victim was Karla's 15-year-old sister Tammy Homolka. The second and third victims were Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Karla told the investigators that she reluctantly did what Paul told her to do because he was abusive and was given a deal. She was sentenced to only 12 years in prison (10 years for Mahaffy and French but only two years for Tammy). Later, investigators discovered videotapes of the crimes which proved that Karla was a willing participant. But by that time the deal had already been made. In 1995, Paul was sentenced to life in prison. Karla was released from prison in 2005. Polly Klaas (January 3, 1981 – October 1993) was kidnapped by Richard Allen Davis from her home during a slumber party. She was later strangled to death. After her death, her father, Marc Klaas, established the KlaasKids Foundation. Jonbenet Ramsey (August 6, 1990 – December 25, 1996) was a child beauty pageant contestant who was missing and found dead in her Boulder, Colorado, home. The crime terrified the nation and the world. Her parents were initially considered to be suspects in her death but were cleared in 2003 when DNA from her clothes were tested. To this day, her murderer has not been found and brought to justice. Lorena Bobbitt was charged with malicious wounding for severing husband John Bobbitt's penis after she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Bobbitt, for which he was charged. Both parties were acquitted of their respective charges. American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor John Denver died in a plane crash in Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove in October 12 1997. Scandal rocked the sport of figure skating when skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked during practice by an assailant hired by Jeff Gillooly, former husband of skater Tonya Harding. The attack was carried out in an attempt to injure Kerrigan's leg to the point of being unable to compete in the upcoming 1994 Winter Olympics, thereby securing Harding a better spot to win a gold medal. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people then themselves in the Columbine High School shooting in April 1999, which would lead to inspiring many future school shooters, which have become a uniquely American phenomenon, with more than 230 school shootings occurring since Columbine. Asia Massive immigration wave of Jews from the Commonwealth of Independent States to Israel – With the end of the Soviet Union, Israel faced a mass influx of Russian Jews, many of whom had high expectations the country was unable to meet. Israel also came under Iraqi missile attack during the Gulf War, but acquiesced to US pressure not to retaliate militarily, which could have disrupted the US-Arab alliance. The US and Netherlands then rushed anti-missile batteries to Israel to defend the country against missile attacks. Vizconde massacre – On 30 June 1991 Three members of the Vizconde Family: Estrellita, Carmela and Jennifer were found dead inside of their house in BF Homes, Parañaque, Metro Manila, Philippines. it was described in the Philippines as the "trial of the century". in 2010 Hubert Webb and his men were later acquitted by the Supreme Court for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The Spratly Islands issue became one of the most controversial in Southeast Asia. The closing Mass of the X World Youth Day 1995 was held in Rizal Park on 15 January 1995, attended by more than 5 million people. This is the record gathering of the Roman Catholic Church. The Philippines celebrates the 100-year anniversary of Philippine Independence in 1998 with its theme: "Kalayaan: Kayamanan ng Bayan". Popular culture Film Dogme 95 becomes an important European artistic motion picture movement by the end of the decade. The first full-length CGI movie, Pixar's Toy Story, is released, revolutionizing animated films. Titanic becomes a cultural phenomenon throughout the world, and eventually becomes the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing over $1.8 billion worldwide. It would hold this record for over a decade until 2010 when director James Cameron had another one of his films take the title, that being Avatar. Family animated feature films began to gain popularity during the decade, though the late-1990s (1997, 1998 and 1999) were more known. Don Bluth's animation studio released a number of underperfoming family animated films such as Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin and closed down in 1995. In 1994, former Disney employee Jeffrey Katzenberg founded DreamWorks SKG which would produce its first two animated films: The Prince of Egypt and Antz which were both aimed more at adults than children and were both critical and commercially successful. Meanwhile, films by Walt Disney Feature Animation became popular once more when the studio returned to making family traditionally animated musical classic films, most notable films were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Lion King. This era was known as the Disney Renaissance. Other significant animated films have also gained cult status such as The Jetsons Movie, The Princess and the Goblin, Happily Ever After, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, The Thief and the Cobbler, Once Upon a Forest, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Felidae, The Swan Princess, Balto, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Cats Don't Dance, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, The Rugrats Movie, Kirikou and the Sorceress, The King and I, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut and The Iron Giant. Live-action films featuring computer-animated characters became popular with films such as Casper, James and the Giant Peach, 101 Dalmatians, Men in Black, Small Soldiers and Stuart Little, although live-action/traditional cel animated film featuring traditional characters like Cool World, The Pagemaster and Space Jam were also prevalent. Japanese anime films continued in the 1990s as Studio Ghibli's continued to dominate with films such as Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke (which became the highest-grossing anime film at the time) and My Neighbors the Yamadas. Other significant anime films which gained cult status include Roujin Z, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, Patlabor 2: The Movie, Ninja Scroll, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Ghost in the Shell, Memories, The End of Evangelion, Perfect Blue, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and the Pokémon film series which started with the first two entries Pokémon: The First Movie and Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Award winners {| class="wikitable" |- ! style="width:9%"|Award ! style="width:9%"|1990 ! style="width:9%"|1991 ! style="width:9%"|1992 ! style="width:9%"|1993 ! style="width:9%"|1994 ! style="width:9%"|1995 ! style="width:9%"|1996 ! style="width:9%"|1997 ! style="width:9%"|1998 ! style="width:9%"|1999 |- | Academy Award for Best Picture winners | Dances with Wolves | The Silence of the Lambs | Unforgiven | Schindler's List | Forrest Gump | Braveheart | The English Patient | Titanic | Shakespeare in Love | American Beauty |- | Palme d'Or winners at the Cannes Film Festival| Wild at Heart | Barton Fink | The Best Intentions | Farewell My Concubine and The Piano | Pulp Fiction | Underground | Secrets & Lies | Taste of Cherry and The Eel | Eternity and a Day | Rosetta |- | César Award for Best Film winners| Cyrano de Bergerac | Tous les matin du monde | Savage Nights | Smoking/No Smoking | Wild Reeds | La haine | Ridicule | Same Old Song | The Dreamlife of Angels | Venus Beauty Institute |- | Golden Lion winners at the Venice Film Festival''' | Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead| Close to Eden| The Story of Qiu Ju| Short Cuts and Three Colours: Blue| Vive L'Amour and Before the Rain| Cyclo| Michael Collins| Fireworks| The Way We Laughed| Not One Less|} Highest-grossing The 25 highest-grossing films of the decade are: Music The 1990s were a decade that saw marketing become more segmented, as MTV gradually shifted away from music videos beginning in 1992 and radio splintered into narrower formats aimed at various niches. However, they are perhaps best known for grunge, gangsta rap, R&B, teen pop; eurodance, electronic dance music, the renewed popularity of punk rock mainly because of the band Green Day (which would also help create a new genre pop punk) and for being the decade that alternative rock became mainstream. U2 was one of the most popular 1990s bands, their groundbreaking Zoo TV and PopMart tours were the top selling tours of 1992 and 1997. Glam metal dies out through its own accord in the music mainstream by 1991. Grunge became popular in the early 1990s due to the success of Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Alice in Chains' Dirt and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger. Pop punk also becomes popular with such artists as Green Day, Blink-182, Weezer, Social Distortion, the Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX and Rancid. Other successful alternative acts included Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Nickelback, Creed, Radiohead, Gin Blossoms, Soul Asylum, Third Eye Blind, Stone Temple Pilots, Faith No More, the Smashing Pumpkins, Live, Everclear, Bush, Screaming Trees and Ween. Dr. Dre's 1992 album The Chronic provided a template for modern gangsta rap, and gave rise to other emerging artists of the genre, including Snoop Dogg. Due to the success of Death Row Records and Tupac Shakur, West Coast gangsta rap commercially dominated hip hop during the early-to-mid 1990s, along with Bad Boy Records and the Notorious B.I.G. on the East Coast. Hip hop became the best selling music genre by the mid-1990s. In the United Kingdom, the uniquely British alternative rock Britpop genre emerged as part of the more general Cool Britannia culture, with Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede, Supergrass and Elastica. The impact of boy band pop sensation Take That lead to the formation of other boy bands in the UK and Ireland such as East 17 and Boyzone. Female pop icons Spice Girls took the world by storm, becoming the most commercially successful British group since the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Also, R&B has Des'Ree, Mark Morrison and Sade. Their global success brought about a widespread scene of teen pop acts around the world such as All Saints, Backstreet Boys, Hanson, NSYNC, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who came to prominence into the new millennium. 1991 also saw the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury from AIDS-related pneumonia. Most musicians from Canada (Snow, Celine Dion, The Barenaked Ladies, Shania Twain, Len, Sarah McLachlan, and Alanis Morissette) became known worldwide. Contemporary R&B and quiet storm continued in popularity among adult audiences, which began during the 1980s. Popular African-American contemporary R&B artists included Mariah Carey, D'Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston, Brandy, En Vogue, TLC, Destiny's Child, Toni Braxton, Boyz II Men, Dru Hill and Vanessa L. Williams. The Tibetan Freedom Concert brought 120,000 people together in the interest of increased human rights and autonomy for Tibet from China. Freddie Mercury, Kurt Cobain, Selena, Tupac Shakur and the Notorious B.I.G. are the most publicized music-related deaths of the decade, in 1991, 1994, 1995, 1996, and 1997 respectively. Richey Edwards of Manic Street Preachers was publicized in the media in 1991 following an incident involving Steve Lamacq backstage after a live show, in which Edwards carved '4 Real' into his arm. Edwards disappeared in 1995, which was highly publicized. He is still missing, but was presumed dead in 2008. Controversy surrounded the Prodigy with the release of the track "Smack My Bitch Up". The National Organization for Women (NOW) claimed that the track was "advocating violence against women" due to the lyrics of that song. The music video (directed by Jonas Åkerlund) featured a first-person POV of someone going clubbing, indulging in drugs and alcohol, getting into fist fights, abusing women and picking up a prostitute. At the end of the video the camera pans over to a mirror, revealing the subject to be a woman. 1994 became a breakthrough year for punk rock in California, with the success of bands like Bad Religion, Social Distortion, Blink-182, Green Day, the Offspring, Rancid and similar groups following. This success would continue to grow over the next decade, the 2000s. The 1990s also became the most important decade for ska punk/reggae rock, with the success of many bands like Buck-O-Nine, Goldfinger, Less Than Jake, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Murphy's Law, No Doubt, Reel Big Fish, Save Ferris, Sublime and Sugar Ray. The rave movement that emerged in the late 1980s rose. Rave spawned genres such as Intelligent dance music and Drum and bass. The latter is an offshoot of jungle techno and breakbeat. Popular artists included Moby, Fatboy Slim, Björk, Aphex Twin, Orbital, the Orb, the Chemical Brothers, Basement Jaxx, Todd Terry, 808 State, Primal Scream, the Shamen, the KLF and the Prodigy. The rise of industrial music, somewhat a fusion of synthpop and heavy metal, rose to worldwide popularity with bands like Godflesh, Nine Inch Nails, Rammstein, Ministry and Marilyn Manson. Groove metal was born through the efforts of Pantera, whose seventh studio album Far Beyond Driven (1994) was notable for going number one on Billboard 200. Another heavy metal subgenre called nu metal, which mixed metal with hip hop influences, becomes popular with bands like Korn, Slipknot and Limp Bizkit selling millions of albums worldwide. Metallica's 1991 eponymous album Metallica is the best-selling album of the SoundScan era, while extreme metal acts such as Death, Mayhem, Darkthrone, Emperor, Cannibal Corpse and others experienced popularity throughout the decade. In the 1990s, country music became a worldwide phenomenon thanks to Billy Ray Cyrus, Shania Twain and Garth Brooks. The latter enjoyed one of the most successful careers in popular music history, breaking records for both sales and concert attendance throughout the decade. The RIAA has certified his recordings at a combined (128× platinum), denoting roughly 113 million United States shipments. Other artists that experienced success during this time included Clint Black, Sammy Kershaw, Aaron Tippin, Travis Tritt, Suzy Bogguss, Alan Jackson, Lorrie Morgan and the newly formed duo of Brooks & Dunn; George Strait, whose career began in the 1980s, also continued to have widespread success in this decade and beyond. Female artists such as Reba McEntire, Faith Hill, Martina McBride, Deana Carter, LeAnn Rimes and Mary Chapin Carpenter all released platinum selling albums in the 1990s. The Dixie Chicks became one of the most popular country bands in the 1990s and early 2000s. Their 1998 debut album Wide Open Spaces went on to become certified 12x platinum while their 1999 album Fly went on to become 10x platinum. Television TV shows, mostly sitcoms, were popular with the American audience. Series such as Roseanne, Coach, Empty Nest, Mr. Belvedere, 227, Cheers, The Cosby Show, Growing Pains, Night Court, The Hogan Family, A Different World, Amen, ALF, Perfect Strangers, Family Matters, Charles in Charge, Saved by the Bell, My Two Dads, Newhart, Dear John, Designing Women, The Golden Girls, Who's the Boss?, Head of the Class, and Seinfeld, which premiered in the eighties, and Frasier, a spin-off of the 1980s hit Cheers were viewed throughout the 1990s. These sitcoms, along with Friends, That '70s Show, Ellen, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, Full House, Nurses, Murphy Brown, The Wonder Years, Living Single, Step by Step, NewsRadio, Blossom, The King of Queens, Major Dad, Fired Up, Jesse, Parker Lewis Can't Lose, For Your Love, The Steve Harvey Show, The Larry Sanders Show, Sex and the City, Arliss, Dream On, Grace Under Fire, Mad About You, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, The Naked Truth, The Jeff Foxworthy Show, The Jamie Foxx Show, Smart Guy, The Wayans Bros., Malcolm & Eddie, Clueless, Moesha, The Parent 'Hood, Unhappily Ever After, Roc, Martin, Hangin' with Mr. Cooper, In Living Color, Sister, Sister, Boy Meets World, Ned and Stacey, Becker, Veronica's Closet, Two Guys and a Girl, The Drew Carey Show, Wings, The John Larroquette Show, Caroline in the City, Sports Night, Home Improvement, Will & Grace, Married... with Children, Evening Shade, Cosby, Spin City, The Nanny, 3rd Rock from the Sun, Suddenly Susan, Cybill, Just Shoot Me!, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Dharma and Greg turned TV in new directions and defined the humor of the decade. Furthermore, Saturday Night Live experienced a new era of success during the 1990s, launching the careers of popular comedians and actors such as Chris Farley, Dana Carvey, Phil Hartman, Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell, Molly Shannon, Mike Myers, Chris Rock, Norm McDonald, David Spade, Cheri Oteri and others. In early 1993, one of the last westerns ever to air on television was Walker, Texas Ranger, a crime drama which also starred Chuck Norris as the title character. Lasting for nine seasons, the show tackled a wide variety of subjects, and was one of the few shows ever to perform karate. 1993 also saw its debut of the medical–mystery drama, Diagnosis Murder, a comeback vehicle for Dick Van Dyke, who guest-starred on an episode of its sequel, Jake and The Fatman, where the show got off to a rocky start, and became one of television's long-running mysteries, that lasted until its cancelation in 2001. Medical dramas started to come into television in the 1990s. One show stood out as a critical and ratings success for NBC. In 1994, ER, which starred Anthony Edwards, Noah Wyle and George Clooney, was a domestic and international success, lasting until 2009 and spawning series such as Grey's Anatomy (2005–present). It made NBC the most watched channel in the United States. This show launched the career of George Clooney. That same year, Chicago Hope, that starred Héctor Elizondo, Mandy Patinkin and Adam Arkin, was also a popular series for CBS, lasting between 1994 and 2000.Beverly Hills, 90210 ran on Fox from 1990 to 2000. It established the teen soap genre paving the way for Dawson's Creek, Felicity, Party of Five, and other shows airing later in the decade. The show was then remade and renamed simply 90210 and premiered in 2008. Beverly Hills, 90210 spun-off Melrose Place, a popular TV show that dominated throughout the 1990s as well. Baywatch, a popular TV show that dominated throughout the 1990s, became the most watched TV show in history and influenced pop culture.Sex and the Citys straight portrayal of relationships and sexuality caused controversy and acclaim, leading to a new generation of sexually progressive television shows that would be seen in the 2000s. The fantasy and science fiction was popular on television, with NBC airing seaQuest DSV beginning in 1993, This series is a Steven Spielberg production, made Jonathan Brandis popular teen idol, but after three seasons it was canceled.Touched By an Angel, broadcast by CBS in 1994. The series was intended as the comeback vehicle of Della Reese, and also launched the career of Roma Downey. It wasn't an immediate hit, and was canceled the following year, but revived the following year, thanks to die hard fans who approached a letter-writing campaign, where it ran for eight more seasons. Crime drama and police detective shows returned after soap-operas died down. After the successful debuts of Law & Order, NYPD Blue and Homicide: Life on the Street, Nash Bridges, a comeback vehicle for Don Johnson, lasting six seasons (1996–2001) which also dealt with escapist entertainment, rather than tackling issues. Reality television began on MTV; this would grow in importance in the Western world into the next decade. During the mid-1990s, two of the biggest professional wrestling companies: World Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Federation were in a ratings battle that was called the Monday Night Wars (1995–2001). Each company fought to draw more viewers to their respective Monday night wrestling show. The "War" ended in 2001 when WWE bought WCW. In November 2001, there was a Winner Takes All match with both companies in a Pay-Per-View called Survivor Series. WWF won the match; putting a final end to WCW. As an animated sitcom, The Simpsons, premiered on Fox in December 1989, became a domestic and international success in the 1990s. The show has aired more than 600 episodes and has become an institution of pop culture. It has spawned the adult-oriented animated sitcom genre, inspiring racier shows such as Beavis and Butt-head (1993–1997), Daria (1997–2001), along with South Park and Family Guy, the latter two of which began in 1997 and 1999 respectively and continue to air new episodes through the 2000s and into the 2010s. Japanese anime was popular in the 1980s, and expanded to a worldwide audience by the 1990s, for its expansive spectrum of story subjects and themes not limited to comedy and superhero action found in the US, and well produced, and well written, visual and story content that came to showcase animation's potential for | in the Baltic Sea, killing 852 people. June 29, 1995: The Sampoong Department Store collapses in Seoul, South Korea, killing 502 people. December 20, 1995: American Airlines Flight 965, a Boeing 757, hit a mountain in Colombia at night, killing 159 people. July 17, 1996: Trans World Airlines Flight 800, a Boeing 747-131, exploded and crashed into the Atlantic Ocean near East Moriches, New York, killing 230. November 12, 1996: A Saudia Boeing 747 and a Kazakhstan Airlines Ilyushin Il-76 collided over the town of Charkhi Dadri, outside New Delhi, India, killing 349. August 6, 1997: Korean Air Flight 801, a Boeing 747-300, crashed into a hill on the island of Guam, killing 228 people. September 26, 1997: Garuda Indonesia Flight 152 crashed in bad weather, killing 234. September 2, 1998: Swissair Flight 111, a McDonnell Douglas MD-11, crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Nova Scotia near the towns of Peggys Cove and Bayswater, killing 229. October 31, 1999: EgyptAir Flight 990, a Boeing 767, crashed off the coast of Nantucket, Massachusetts, killing 217. Economics Many countries, institutions, companies, and organizations were prosperous during the 1990s. High-income countries such as the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, and those in Western Europe experienced steady economic growth for much of the decade. However, in the former Soviet Union GDP decreased as their economies restructured to produce goods they needed and some capital flight occurred. GATT update and creation of the World Trade Organization and other global economic institutions, but opposition by anti-globalization activists showed up in nearly every GATT summit, like the demonstrations in Seattle in December 1999. The anti-globalization protests at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference of 1999 in Seattle began on 30 November 1999. This marked the beginning of a steady increase in anti-globalization protests that occurred in the first decade of the 21st century as well as increasing hostility to neoliberalism. U.S. inflation moderated, beginning in 1990 at 5.39%, falling to a low of 1.55% in 1998 and rising slightly to 2.19% in 1999. North America The decade is seen as a time of great prosperity in the United States and Canada, largely due to the unexpected advent of the Internet and the explosion of technology industries that came with it. The U.S. and Canadian economies experienced their longest period of peacetime economic expansion beginning in 1991. Personal incomes doubled from the recession in 1990, and there was higher productivity overall. The Wall Street stock exchange stayed over the 10,500 mark from 1999 to 2001. After the 1992 booming of the US stock market, Alan Greenspan coined the phrase "irrational exuberance". The North American Free Trade Agreement, which phases out trade barriers between the United States, Mexico, and Canada, was signed into law by President Bill Clinton. Asia The government of the People's Republic of China announced major privatization of state-owned industries in September 1997. China entered the 1990s in a turbulent period, shunned by much of the world after the Tiananmen Square Massacre and controlled by hard line politicians who reigned in private enterprise and attempted to revive old-fashioned propaganda campaigns. Relations with the United States deteriorated sharply, and the Chinese leadership was further embarrassed by the disintegration of communism in Europe. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping travelled to southern China in his last major public appearance to revitalize faith in market economics and stop the country's slide back into Maoism. Afterwards, China recovered, and would experience explosive economic growth during the rest of the decade. In spite of this, dissent continued to be suppressed, and CPC General Secretary Jiang Zemin launched a brutal crackdown against the Falun Gong religious sect in 1999. Deng Xiaoping himself died in 1997 at the age of 93. Relations with the US deteriorated again in 1999 after the bombing of the Chinese embassy during the bombing of Serbia by NATO forces, which caused three deaths, and allegations of Chinese espionage at the Los Alamos Nuclear Facility. Financial crisis hits East and Southeast Asia in 1997 and 1998 after a long period of phenomenal economic development, which continues by 1999. This crisis begins to be felt by the end of the decade. In Japan, after three decades of economic growth put them in second place in the world's economies, the situation worsened after 1993. The recession went on into the early first decade of the 21st century, bringing an end to the seemingly unlimited prosperity that the country had before enjoyed. Less affluent nations such as India, Malaysia, and Vietnam also saw tremendous improvements in economic prosperity and quality of life during the 1990s. Restructuring following the end of the Cold War was beginning. However, there was also the continuation of terrorism in Third World regions that were once the "frontlines" for American and Soviet foreign politics, particularly in Asia. Europe By 1990, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms were causing major inflation and economic chaos. A coup attempt by hard-liners in August 1991 failed, marking the effective end of the Soviet Union. All its constituent republics declared their independence in 1991, and on Christmas, Gorbachev resigned from office. After 73 years, the Soviet Union had ceased to exist. The new Russian Federation was headed by Boris Yeltsin and would face severe economic difficulty. Oligarchs took over Russia's energy and industrial sectors, reducing almost half the country to poverty. With a 3% approval rating, Yeltsin had to buy the support of the oligarchs to win reelection in 1996. Economic turmoil and devaluation of the ruble continued, and with heart and alcohol troubles, Yeltsin stepped down from office on the last day of 1999, handing power to Vladimir Putin. Russian financial crisis in the 1990s results in mass hyperinflation and prompts economic intervention from the International Monetary Fund and western countries to help Russia's economy recover. The first McDonald's restaurant opens in Moscow in 1990 with then-President of the Supreme Soviet of the Russian SFSR and future Russian President Boris Yeltsin attending, symbolizing Russia's transition towards a capitalist free market economy and a move towards adopting elements of western culture. Oil and gas were discovered in many countries in the former Soviet bloc, leading to economic growth and wider adoption of trade between nations. These trends were also fueled by inexpensive fossil energy, with low petroleum prices caused by increased production of oil. Political stability and decreased militarization due to the winding down of the Cold War led to economic development and higher standards of living for many citizens. Most of Europe enjoyed growing prosperity during the 1990s. However, problems including the massive 1995 general strikes in France following a recession and the difficulties associated with German reunification lead to sluggish growth in these countries. However, both the French and German economies improve in the latter half of the decade. Meanwhile, the economies of particularly Spain, Scandinavia and former Eastern Bloc countries accelerate at rapid speed during the decade although unemployment being mild due to many having experienced a deep recession for the start of the decade. After the early 1990s recession, the United Kingdom and Ireland experience rapid economic growth and falling unemployment that continues throughout the decade. Economic growth would continue until the Late 2000s recession marking the longest uninterrupted period of economic growth in history. Some Eastern European economies struggled after the fall of communism, but Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania saw economic growth rates in the late 1990s. With the creation of the EU there is freedom of movement between member states, such as the 1992 and 1995 free trade agreements. The euro is adopted by the European Union on 1 January 1999, which begins a process of phasing out national currencies of EU countries. South America The sluggish economies of Brazil, by a new emphasis on free markets for all their citizens, and Mexico, under economist president Ernesto Zedillo elected in 1994, were in their best shape by the late 1990s. Technology and science Technology The 1990s were a revolutionary decade for digital technology. Between 1990 and 1997, individual personal computer ownership in the US rose from 15% to 35%. Cell phones of the early-1990s and earlier ones were very large, lacked extra features, and were used by only a few percent of the population of even the wealthiest nations. Only a few million people used online services in 1990, and the World Wide Web, which would have a significant impact on technology for many decades, had only just been invented. The first web browser went online in 1993 and by 2001, more than 50% of some Western countries had Internet access, and more than 25% had cell phone access. Electronics and communications On 6 August 1991, CERN, a pan European organization for particle research, publicized the new World Wide Web project. Although the basic applications and guidelines that make the Internet possible had existed for almost two decades, the network did not gain a public face until the 1990s. Driven by mass adoption, consumer personal computer specifications increased dramatically during the 1990s, from 512 KB RAM 12 MHz Turbo XTs in 1990, to 25–66 MHz 80486-class processor at the start of the popularization of the World Wide Web mid-decade, to over 1 GHz CPUs with close to a gigabyte of RAM by 2000. Y2K spread fear throughout the United States and eventually the world in the last half of the decade, particularly in 1999, about possible massive computer malfunctions on 1 January 2000. As a result, many people stocked up on supplies for fear of a worldwide disaster. After significant effort to upgrade systems on the part of software engineers, no failures occurred when the clocks rolled over into 2000. Advancements in computer modems, ISDN, cable modems, and DSL lead to faster connections to the Internet. The first Pentium microprocessor is introduced and developed by the Intel Corporation. Email becomes popular; as a result, Microsoft acquires the popular Hotmail webmail service. Instant messaging and the buddy list feature becomes popular. AIM and ICQ are two early protocols. Businesses start to build e-commerce websites; e-commerce-only companies such as Amazon.com, eBay, AOL, and Yahoo! grow rapidly. The introduction of affordable, smaller satellite dishes and the DVB-S standard in the mid-1990s expanded satellite television services that carried up to 500 television channels. The first MP3 player, the MPMan, is released in late spring of 1998. It came with 32 MB of flash memory expandable to 64 MB. By the mid-2000s, the MP3 player would overtake the CD player in popularity. The first GSM network is launched in Finland in 1991. Digital single-lens reflex cameras and regular digital cameras become commercially available. They would replace film cameras by the mid-2000s. IBM introduces the wide Microdrive hard drive in 170 MB and 340 MB capacities. Apple in 1998 introduces the iMac all-in-one computer, initiating a trend in computer design towards translucent plastics and multicolor case design, discontinuing many legacy technologies like serial ports, and beginning a resurgence in the company's fortunes that continues to this day. CD burner drives are introduced. The CD-ROM drive became standard for most personal computers during the decade. The DVD media format is developed and popularized along with a plethora of Flash memory card standards in 1994. Pagers are initially popular but ultimately are replaced by mobile phones by the early-2000s. Hand-held satellite phones are introduced towards the end of the decade. The 24-hour news cycle becomes popular with the Gulf War between late 1990 and early 1991 and CNN's coverage of Desert Storm and Desert Shield. Though CNN had been running 24-hour newscasts since 1980, it was not until the Gulf War that the general public took large notice and others imitated CNN's non-stop news approach. Portable CD players, introduced during the late 1980s, became very popular and had a profound impact on the music industry and youth culture during the 1990s. Software Microsoft Windows operating systems become virtually ubiquitous on IBM PC compatibles. Microsoft introduces Windows 3.1, Windows 95, and Windows 98 to the market, which gain immediate popularity. Macintosh System 7 was released in 1991. For much of the decade, Apple would struggle to develop a next-generation operating system, starting with Copland and culminating in its December 1996 buyout of NeXT and the 1999 release of Mac OS X Server 1.0. The development of web browsers such as Netscape Navigator and Internet Explorer makes surfing the World Wide Web easier and more user friendly. The Java programming language is developed by Sun Microsystems (now Oracle). In 1991, development of the free Linux kernel is started by Linus Torvalds in Finland. Rail Transportation The opening of the Channel Tunnel between France and the United Kingdom saw the commencement by the three national railway companies of Belgium, France and the United Kingdom, respectively SNCB/NMBS, SNCF and British Rail of the joint Eurostar service. On 14 November 1994 Eurostar services began between Waterloo International station in London, Gare du Nord in Paris and Brussels South in Brussels. In 1995 Eurostar was achieving an average end-to-end speed of between London and Paris. On 8 January 1996 Eurostar launched services from a second railway station in the UK when Ashford International was opened. Journey times between London and Brussels were reduced by the opening of the High Speed 1 line on 14 December 1997. Automobiles The 1990s began with another recession that dampened car sales. General Motors suffered huge losses thanks to an inefficient structure, stale designs, and poor quality. Sales improved with the economy by the mid-1990s, but GM's US market share gradually declined to less than 40% (from a peak of 50% in the 1970s). While the new Saturn division fared well, Oldsmobile fell sharply and attempts to remake the division as a European-style luxury car were unsuccessful. Cars in the 1990s had a rounder, more streamlined shape than those from the 1970s and 1980s; this style would continue early into the 2000s and to a lesser extent later on. Chrysler ran into financial troubles again as the 1990s started. Like GM, the company too had a stale model lineup (except for the best-selling minivans) that was largely based on the aging K-car platform. In 1992, chairman Lee Iacocca retired, and the company began a remarkable revival, introducing the new LH platform and "Cab-Forward" styling, along with a highly successful redesign of the full-sized Dodge Ram in 1994. Chrysler's minivans continued to dominate the market despite increasing competition. In 1998, Daimler-Benz (the parent company of Mercedes-Benz) merged with Chrysler. The following year, it was decided to retire Plymouth, which had been on a long decline since the 1970s. Ford continued to fare well in the 1990s, with the second and third generations of the Ford Taurus being named the best selling car in the United States from 1992 to 1996. However, the Taurus would be outsold and dethroned by the Toyota Camry starting in 1997, which became the best-selling car in the United States for the rest of the decade and into the 2000s. Ford also introduced the Ford Explorer, 1991 being the first model year. Fords Explorer became the best-selling SUV on the market; outselling both the Chevy Blazer and Jeep Cherokee. Japanese cars continued to be highly successful during the decade. The Honda Accord vied with the Taurus most years for being the best-selling car in the United States during the early part of the decade. Although launched in 1989, the luxury brands Lexus and Infiniti began car sales of 1990 model year vehicles and saw great success. Lexus would go on to outsell Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the United States by 1991, and would outsell Cadillac and Lincoln by the end of the decade. SUVs and trucks became hugely popular during the economic boom in the second half of the decade. Many makes that had never built a truck before started selling SUVs. Car styling during the 1990s became gradually more round and ovoid, the third-generation Taurus and Mercury Sable being some of the more extreme examples. Safety features such as airbags and shoulder belts became mandatory equipment on new cars. Science Physicists develop M-theory. Detection of extrasolar planets orbiting stars other than the sun. In the United Kingdom, the first cloned mammal, Dolly the sheep was confirmed by the Roslin Institute, and was reported by global media on 26 February 1997. Dolly would trigger a raging controversy on cloning and bioethical concerns regarding possible human cloning continue to this day. Human Genome Project begins. DNA identification of individuals finds wide application in criminal law. Hubble Space Telescope was launched in 1990 and revolutionized astronomy. Unfortunately, a flaw in its main mirror caused it to produce fuzzy, distorted images. This was corrected by a shuttle repair mission in 1993. Protease inhibitors introduced allowing HAART therapy against HIV; drastically reduces AIDS mortality. NASA's spacecraft Pathfinder lands on Mars and deploys a small roving vehicle, Sojourner, which analyzes the planet's geology and atmosphere. The Hale–Bopp comet swings past the sun for the first time in 4,200 years in April 1997. Development of biodegradable products, replacing products made from styrofoam; advances in methods for recycling of waste products (such as paper, glass, and aluminum). Genetically engineered crops are developed for commercial use. Discovery of dark matter, dark energy, brown dwarfs, and first confirmation of black holes. The Galileo probe orbits Jupiter, studying the planet and its moons extensively. Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 (formally designated D/1993 F2, nicknamed String of Pearls for its appearance) was a comet that broke apart and collided with Jupiter in July 1994, providing the first direct observation of an extraterrestrial collision of solar system objects.. The Global Positioning System (GPS) becomes fully operational. Proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is discovered by Andrew Wiles. Construction started in 1998 on the International Space Station. Environment At the beginning of the decade, sustainable development and environmental protection became serious issues for governments and the international community. In 1987, the publication of the Brundtland Report by the United Nations had paved the way to establish an environmental governance. In 1992 the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, in which several countries committed to protect the environment, signing a Convention on Biological Diversity. The prevention of the destruction of the tropical rainforests of the world is a major environmental cause that first came into wide public concern in the early 1990s, and has continued and accelerated. The Chernobyl disaster had significant impact on public opinion at the end of the 1980s, and the fallout was still causing cancer deaths well into the 1990s and possibly even into the 21st century. All along the 1990s, several environmental NGOs helped improve environmental awareness among public opinion and governments. The most famous of these organizations during this decade was Greenpeace, which did not hesitate to lead illegal actions in the name of environmental preservation. These organizations also drew attention on the large deforestion of the Amazon Rainforest during the period. Global warming as an aspect of climate change also became a major concern, and the creation of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) after the Earth Summit helped coordinate efforts to reduce carbon emissions in the atmosphere. From 1995, the UNFCCC held annual summits on climate change, leading to the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997, a binding agreement signed by several developed countries. Society The 1990s represented continuing social liberalization in most countries, though coupled with an increase in the influence of capitalism, which would continue until the Great Recession of the late 2000s/early 2010s. Youth culture in the 1990s responded to this by embracing both environmentalism and entrepreneurship. Western world fashions reflected this by often turning highly individualistic and/or counter-cultural, which was influenced by Generation X and early millennials: tattoos and body piercing gained popularity, and "retro" styles inspired by fashions of the 1960s and 1970s were also prevalent. Some young people became increasingly involved in extreme sports and outdoor activities that combined embracing athletics with the appreciation of nature. Those born from 1990 to 1996 are generally considered part of the Millennial Generation, along with those born in the 1980s, while those born from 1997 onward are often considered part of Generation Z, the post-Millennial generation. In 1990, the World Health Organization removed homosexuality from its list of diseases. Increasing acceptance of homosexuality occurred in the western world, slowly starting in the early 1990s. Third-wave feminism Anita Hill and other women testify before the United States Congress on being sexually harassed by Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas. Thomas was narrowly confirmed by the United States Senate, but Hill's testimony, and the testimony of other harassed women, begins a national debate on the issue. Record numbers of women are elected to high office in the United States in 1992, the "Year of the Woman." Violence against women takes center stage as an important issue internationally. In the United States the Violence Against Women Act was passed, which greatly affected the world community through the United Nations. The law's author, Joe Biden, and UN Ambassador and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, and Hillary Clinton (see below) become vocal advocates of action against violence against women. Women reach great heights of power in the United States government. Hillary Clinton, leading policy proposals, traveling abroad as a State Department representative to 82 nations, advising her husband, and being elected a Senator (in 2000), is the most openly empowered and politically powerful First Lady in American history; Madeleine Albright and Janet Reno take two of the cabinet's top jobs as United States Secretary of State (#1), and United States Attorney General (#4), respectively. Sheila Widnall becomes head and Secretary of the Air Force and Ruth Bader Ginsburg joins Sandra Day O'Connor as the second woman on the U.S. Supreme Court. More nations than ever before are led by elected women Presidents and Prime Ministers. Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's 1988 victory in Pakistan makes women leaders in Muslim states unextraordinary. In Turkey, Tansu Çiller became the first female prime minister in 1993 (till 1996). In popular culture, British pop group the Spice Girls also played a part in the feminist movement, boosting popularity with their slogan "Girl Power!", while country music superstar Shania Twain declared female supremacy in her 1995 hit song "Any Man of Mine." Additional significant worldwide events Worldwide New Year's Eve celebrations on December 31, 1999 welcoming the year 2000. Europe 1991 – January Events (Lithuania) - Soviet Union military troops attack Lithuanian independence supporters in Vilnius, killing 14 people and wounding 1000. In Paris, Diana, Princess of Wales and her friend, Dodi Al-Fayed, were killed in a car accident in August 1997, when their chauffeured, hired Mercedes-Benz S-Class crashed in the Pont de l'Alma tunnel. The chauffeur, Henri Paul died at the scene, as did Al-Fayed. Diana and an Al-Fayed bodyguard, Trevor Rees-Jones, survived the accident. The Princess of Wales died at a Paris hospital hours later. The bodyguard, Rees-Jones, is the sole survivor of the now infamous accident. Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun who won the Nobel Peace Prize, dies at age 87. The birth of the "Second Republic" in Italy, with the Mani Pulite investigations of 1994. The Channel Tunnel across the English Channel opens in 1994, connecting France and England. it is the third-longest rail tunnel in the world, but with the undersea section of being the longest undersea tunnel in the world. The resignation of President Boris Yeltsin on 31 December 1999 resulting in Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's succession to the position. North America O. J. Simpson murder case – O. J. Simpson's trial, described in the American media as the "trial of the century" and enormous United States media attention is focused on the trial. On October 3, 1995, Simpson was found "not guilty" of double-murder of ex-wife Nicole Brown Simpson and her friend, Ronald Goldman. With help from clinical fertility drugs, an Iowa mother, Bobbie McCaughey, gave birth to the first surviving septuplets in 1997. There followed a media frenzy and widespread support for the family. John F. Kennedy, Jr., his wife Carolyn Bessette and sister-in-law Lauren Bessette are killed when Kennedy's private plane crashes off the coast of Martha's Vineyard in July 1999. Debate on assisted suicide highly publicized by Michigan doctor Jack Kevorkian, charged with multiple counts of homicide of his terminally ill patients through the decade. Beer keg registration becomes popular public policy in United States. The 500th anniversary of Christopher Columbus' discovery of the Americas in 1992 was popularly observed in the United States, despite controversy and protests against the victimization of Native Americans by Columbus' expeditions. The holiday was labeled by some as racist, in view of Native American experiences of colonialism, slavery, genocide, and cultural destruction. Matthew Shepard is murdered near the University of Wyoming for being gay. This sparks intense national and international media attention and outrage. He becomes a major symbol in the LGBT rights movement and the fight against homophobia. Shanda Sharer was murdered on January 11, 1992. She was lured away from her house and held captive by a group of teenage girls. She was tortured for hours and burned alive. She died from smoke inhalation. Those that were found guilty and sentenced to prison were Melinda Loveless, Laurie Tackett, Hope Rippey, and Toni Lawrence. According to Melinda, she was jealous of the relationship that her former partner Amanda Heavrin had with Shanda Sharer. Karla Homolka was arrested with her husband, Paul Bernardo in 1993. Both sexually tortured and killed their victims. Their first victim was Karla's 15-year-old sister Tammy Homolka. The second and third victims were Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French. Karla told the investigators that she reluctantly did what Paul told her to do because he was abusive and was given a deal. She was sentenced to only 12 years in prison (10 years for Mahaffy and French but only two years for Tammy). Later, investigators discovered videotapes of the crimes which proved that Karla was a willing participant. But by that time the deal had already been made. In 1995, Paul was sentenced to life in prison. Karla was released from prison in 2005. Polly Klaas (January 3, 1981 – October 1993) was kidnapped by Richard Allen Davis from her home during a slumber party. She was later strangled to death. After her death, her father, Marc Klaas, established the KlaasKids Foundation. Jonbenet Ramsey (August 6, 1990 – December 25, 1996) was a child beauty pageant contestant who was missing and found dead in her Boulder, Colorado, home. The crime terrified the nation and the world. Her parents were initially considered to be suspects in her death but were cleared in 2003 when DNA from her clothes were tested. To this day, her murderer has not been found and brought to justice. Lorena Bobbitt was charged with malicious wounding for severing husband John Bobbitt's penis after she was repeatedly sexually assaulted by Bobbitt, for which he was charged. Both parties were acquitted of their respective charges. American singer-songwriter, guitarist, and actor John Denver died in a plane crash in Monterey Bay near Pacific Grove in October 12 1997. Scandal rocked the sport of figure skating when skater Nancy Kerrigan was attacked during practice by an assailant hired by Jeff Gillooly, former husband of skater Tonya Harding. The attack was carried out in an attempt to injure Kerrigan's leg to the point of being unable to compete in the upcoming 1994 Winter Olympics, thereby securing Harding a better spot to win a gold medal. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold kill 13 people then themselves in the Columbine High School shooting in April 1999, which would lead to inspiring many future school shooters, which have become a uniquely American phenomenon, with more than 230 school shootings occurring since Columbine. Asia Massive immigration wave of Jews from the Commonwealth of Independent States to Israel – With the end of the Soviet Union, Israel faced a mass influx of Russian Jews, many of whom had high expectations the country was unable to meet. Israel also came under Iraqi missile attack during the Gulf War, but acquiesced to US pressure not to retaliate militarily, which could have disrupted the US-Arab alliance. The US and Netherlands then rushed anti-missile batteries to Israel to defend the country against missile attacks. Vizconde massacre – On 30 June 1991 Three members of the Vizconde Family: Estrellita, Carmela and Jennifer were found dead inside of their house in BF Homes, Parañaque, Metro Manila, Philippines. it was described in the Philippines as the "trial of the century". in 2010 Hubert Webb and his men were later acquitted by the Supreme Court for failure of the prosecution to prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt. The Spratly Islands issue became one of the most controversial in Southeast Asia. The closing Mass of the X World Youth Day 1995 was held in Rizal Park on 15 January 1995, attended by more than 5 million people. This is the record gathering of the Roman Catholic Church. The Philippines celebrates the 100-year anniversary of Philippine Independence in 1998 with its theme: "Kalayaan: Kayamanan ng Bayan". Popular culture Film Dogme 95 becomes an important European artistic motion picture movement by the end of the decade. The first full-length CGI movie, Pixar's Toy Story, is released, revolutionizing animated films. Titanic becomes a cultural phenomenon throughout the world, and eventually becomes the highest-grossing film of all time, grossing over $1.8 billion worldwide. It would hold this record for over a decade until 2010 when director James Cameron had another one of his films take the title, that being Avatar. Family animated feature films began to gain popularity during the decade, though the late-1990s (1997, 1998 and 1999) were more known. Don Bluth's animation studio released a number of underperfoming family animated films such as Rock-a-Doodle, Thumbelina and The Pebble and the Penguin and closed down in 1995. In 1994, former Disney employee Jeffrey Katzenberg founded DreamWorks SKG which would produce its first two animated films: The Prince of Egypt and Antz which were both aimed more at adults than children and were both critical and commercially successful. Meanwhile, films by Walt Disney Feature Animation became popular once more when the studio returned to making family traditionally animated musical classic films, most notable films were Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas and The Lion King. This era was known as the Disney Renaissance. Other significant animated films have also gained cult status such as The Jetsons Movie, The Princess and the Goblin, Happily Ever After, An American Tail: Fievel Goes West, Ferngully: The Last Rainforest, Tom and Jerry: The Movie, The Thief and the Cobbler, Once Upon a Forest, We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story, Batman: Mask of the Phantasm, Felidae, The Swan Princess, Balto, Beavis and Butt-Head Do America, Cats Don't Dance, Anastasia, Quest for Camelot, The Rugrats Movie, Kirikou and the Sorceress, The King and I, South Park: Bigger, Longer, Uncut and The Iron Giant. Live-action films featuring computer-animated characters became popular with films such as Casper, James and the Giant Peach, 101 Dalmatians, Men in Black, Small Soldiers and Stuart Little, although live-action/traditional cel animated film featuring traditional characters like Cool World, The Pagemaster and Space Jam were also prevalent. Japanese anime films continued in the 1990s as Studio Ghibli's continued to dominate with films such as Only Yesterday, Porco Rosso, Pom Poko, Whisper of the Heart, Princess Mononoke (which became the highest-grossing anime film at the time) and My Neighbors the Yamadas. Other significant anime films which gained cult status include Roujin Z, Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, Patlabor 2: The Movie, Ninja Scroll, Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie, Ghost in the Shell, Memories, The End of Evangelion, Perfect Blue, Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade, and the Pokémon film series which started with the first two entries Pokémon: The First Movie and Pokémon: The Movie 2000. Award winners {| class="wikitable" |- ! style="width:9%"|Award ! style="width:9%"|1990 ! style="width:9%"|1991 ! style="width:9%"|1992 ! style="width:9%"|1993 ! style="width:9%"|1994 ! style="width:9%"|1995 ! style="width:9%"|1996 ! style="width:9%"|1997 ! style="width:9%"|1998 ! style="width:9%"|1999 |- | Academy Award for Best Picture winners | Dances with Wolves | The Silence of the Lambs | Unforgiven | Schindler's List | Forrest Gump | Braveheart | The English Patient | Titanic | Shakespeare in Love | American Beauty |- | Palme d'Or winners at the Cannes Film Festival| Wild at Heart | Barton Fink | The Best Intentions | Farewell My Concubine and The Piano | Pulp Fiction | Underground | Secrets & Lies | Taste of Cherry and The Eel | Eternity and a Day | Rosetta |- | César Award for Best Film winners| Cyrano de Bergerac | Tous les matin du monde | Savage Nights | Smoking/No Smoking | Wild Reeds | La haine | Ridicule | Same Old Song | The Dreamlife of Angels | Venus Beauty Institute |- | Golden Lion winners at the Venice Film Festival''' | Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead| Close to Eden| The Story of Qiu Ju| Short Cuts and Three Colours: Blue| Vive L'Amour and Before the Rain| Cyclo| Michael Collins| Fireworks| The Way We Laughed| Not One Less|} Highest-grossing The 25 highest-grossing films of the decade are: Music The 1990s were a decade that saw marketing become more segmented, as MTV gradually shifted away from music videos beginning in 1992 and radio splintered into narrower formats aimed at various niches. However, they are perhaps best known for grunge, gangsta rap, R&B, teen pop; eurodance, electronic dance music, the renewed popularity of punk rock mainly because of the band Green Day (which would also help create a new genre pop punk) and for being the decade that alternative rock became mainstream. U2 was one of the most popular 1990s bands, their groundbreaking Zoo TV and PopMart tours were the top selling tours of 1992 and 1997. Glam metal dies out through its own accord in the music mainstream by 1991. Grunge became popular in the early 1990s due to the success of Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Alice in Chains' Dirt and Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger. Pop punk also becomes popular with such artists as Green Day, Blink-182, Weezer, Social Distortion, the Offspring, Bad Religion, NOFX and Rancid. Other successful alternative acts included Red Hot Chili Peppers, R.E.M., Nickelback, Creed, Radiohead, Gin Blossoms, Soul Asylum, Third Eye Blind, Stone Temple Pilots, Faith No More, the Smashing Pumpkins, Live, Everclear, Bush, Screaming Trees and Ween. Dr. Dre's 1992 album The Chronic provided a template for modern gangsta rap, and gave rise to other emerging artists of the genre, including Snoop Dogg. Due to the success of Death Row Records and Tupac Shakur, West Coast gangsta rap commercially dominated hip hop during the early-to-mid 1990s, along with Bad Boy Records and the Notorious B.I.G. on the East Coast. Hip hop became the best selling music genre by the mid-1990s. In the United Kingdom, the uniquely British alternative rock Britpop genre emerged as part of the more general Cool Britannia culture, with Oasis, Blur, Pulp, Suede, Supergrass and Elastica. The impact of boy band pop sensation Take That lead to the formation of other boy bands in the UK and Ireland such as East 17 and Boyzone. Female pop icons Spice Girls took the world by storm, becoming the most commercially successful British group since the Beatles, the Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin. Also, R&B has Des'Ree, Mark Morrison and Sade. Their global success brought about a widespread scene of teen pop acts around the world such as All Saints, Backstreet Boys, Hanson, NSYNC, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera who came to prominence into the new millennium. 1991 also saw the death of Queen frontman Freddie Mercury from AIDS-related pneumonia. Most musicians from Canada (Snow, Celine Dion, The Barenaked Ladies, Shania Twain, Len, Sarah McLachlan, and Alanis Morissette) became known worldwide. Contemporary R&B and quiet storm continued in popularity among adult audiences, which began during the 1980s. Popular African-American contemporary R&B artists included Mariah Carey, D'Angelo, Lauryn Hill, Whitney Houston, Brandy, En Vogue, TLC, Destiny's Child, |
paramilitaries killed 1000 Salvadoran civilians. The United States, along with members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, invaded Grenada in 1983. The Iran–Contra affair erupted which involved U.S. interventionism in Nicaragua, resulting in members of the U.S. government being indicted in 1986. U.S. military action began against Panama in December 1989 to overthrow its dictator, Manuel Noriega resulting in 3,500 civilian casualties and the restoration of democratic rule. Battle of Cuito Cuanavale took place as part of the Angolan civil war and South African Border War from 1987 to 1988. The battle involved the largest fighting in Africa since World War II between military forces from Angola, Cuba (expeditionary forces) and Namibia versus military forces from South Africa and the dissident Angolan UNITA organization. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and the Armenia started in 1988 and lasted six years. Civil wars and guerrilla wars The most notable internal conflicts of the decade include: The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 occurred in the People's Republic of China in 1989, in which pro-democracy protesters demanded political reform. The protests were crushed by the People's Liberation Army. The First Intifada (First Uprising) in the Gaza Strip and West Bank began in 1987 when Palestinian Arabs mounted large-scale protests against the Israeli military presence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, largely inhabited by Palestinians. The First Intifada would continue until peace negotiations began between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government in 1993. Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) – Throughout the decade, Lebanon was engulfed in civil war between Islamic and Christian factions. The Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front began a violent campaign for independence in New Caledonia. Greenpeace's attempts to monitor French nuclear testing on Mururoa were halted by the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. The Second Sudanese Civil War erupts in 1983 between the Muslim government of Sudan in the north and non-Muslim rebel secessionists in Southern Sudan. The conflict continues through the present day Darfur genocide. Internal conflict in Peru: The communist Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement starts its fight against the Peruvian state in 1980, that would continue until the end of the 1990s. Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown by a popular uprising on February 6, 1986. The Troubles in Northern Ireland continued. Coups The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include: A military coup is launched in Suriname on February 25, 1980; the country's politics are dominated by the military until 1991. Nigeria suffered multiple military coups in 1983 and 1985. Sitiveni Rabuka staged two military coups in Fiji in 1987, and declared the country a republic the same year. The "Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution" – a series of interconnected coups d'états – take place in Yugoslavia from 1988 to 1989 through mass protests organized and committed by supporters of Serbian politician Slobodan Milošević overthrow the governments of Serbia's autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, and the government of Montenegro, and finally the main government of Serbia with Milošević becoming President of Serbia. Nuclear threats Operation Opera – a 1981 surprise Israeli air strike that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor being constructed near Baghdad. Israeli military intelligence assumed this was for the purpose of plutonium production to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Israeli intelligence also believed that the summer of 1981 would be the last chance to destroy the reactor before it would be loaded with nuclear fuel. US President Reagan's decision to station intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe provoked mass protests involving more than one million people. Decolonization and independence In 1982, Canada gained official independence from the United Kingdom with the Canada Act 1982, authorized by the signature by Elizabeth II. This act severed all political dependencies of the United Kingdom in Canada (although the Queen remained the head of state). In 1986, Australia gained full independence from the United Kingdom with the Australia Act 1986, which severed the last remaining powers of the British government over the Australian government, including the removal of the privy council as the highest court of appeal. Australia retained the queen as head of state. In 1986, New Zealand and the United Kingdom fully separated New Zealand's governments from the influence of the British Parliament, resulting in New Zealand's full independence with the Constitution Act 1986 which also reorganised the New Zealand government. Independence was granted to Vanuatu from the British/French condominium (1980), Kiribati from joint US-British government (1981) and Palau from the United States (1986). Zimbabwe becomes independent from official colonial rule of the United Kingdom in 1980. Independence was given to Antigua and Barbuda, Belize (both 1981), and Saint Kitts and Nevis (1983) in the Caribbean; and Brunei in the Far East in 1984 Prominent political events Americas Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president in 1980. In international affairs, Reagan pursued a hardline policy towards preventing the spread of communism, initiating a considerable buildup of U.S. military power to challenge the Soviet Union. He further directly challenged the Iron Curtain by demanding that the Soviet Union dismantle the Berlin Wall. The Reagan Administration accelerated the War on Drugs, publicized through anti-drug campaigns including the Just Say No campaign of First Lady Nancy Reagan. Drugs gained attention in the US as a serious problem in the '80s. Cocaine was relatively popular among celebrities and affluent youth, while crack, a cheaper offshoot of the drug, was linked to high crime rates in inner cities during the American crack epidemic. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1968) (PATCO) declared a strike on August 3, 1981, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek. The strike caused considerable disruption of the U.S. air transportation system. Resolution came when Ronald Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, banning them from federal service for life. After seeking appeals, many of the controllers were re-hired while the FAA attempted to replace much of their air traffic control staffing. The remainder continued to be banned until President Clinton lifted the final aspects in 1993. Political unrest in the province of Quebec, which, due to the many differences between the dominant francophone population and the anglophone minority, and also to francophone rights in the predominantly English-speaking Canada, came to a head in 1980 when the provincial government called a public referendum on partial separation from the rest of Canada. The referendum ended with the "no" side winning majority (59.56% no, 40.44% yes). Military dictatorships give way to democracy in Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1984–85), Brazil (1985–1988) and Chile (1988–89). This marked the end of the Operation Condor for 30 years. Europe The European Community's enlargement continued with the accession of Greece in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986. In 1983, Bettino Craxi became the first socialist to hold the office of Prime Minister of Italy; he remained in power until 1987, becoming one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in the history of Italian Republic. At the end of his presidency the Mani pulite corruption scandal broke up, causing the collapse of the political system. Significant political reforms occurred in a number of communist countries in eastern Europe as the populations of these countries grew increasingly hostile and politically active in opposing communist governments. These reforms included attempts to increase individual liberties and market liberalization, and promises of democratic renewal. The collapse of communism in eastern Europe was generally peaceful, the exception being Romania, whose leader Nicolae Ceaușescu tried to keep the people isolated from the events happening outside the country. While making a speech in Bucharest in December 1989, he was booed and shouted down by the crowd, and then tried to flee the city with his wife Elena. Two days later, they were captured, charged with genocide, and shot on Christmas Day. In Yugoslavia, following the death of communist leader Josip Broz Tito in May 1980, the trend of political reform of the communist system occurred along with a trend towards ethnic nationalism and inter-ethnic hostility, especially in Serbia, beginning with the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts followed by the agenda of Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević who aggressively pushed for increased political influence of Serbs in the late 1980s, condemning non-Serb Yugoslav politicians who challenged his agenda as being enemies of Serbs. There was continuing civil strife in Northern Ireland, including the adoption of hunger strikes by Irish Republican Army prisoners seeking the reintroduction of political status. Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, and initiated major reforms to the Soviet Union's government through increasing the rights of expressing political dissent and opening elections to opposition candidates (while maintaining legal dominance of the Communist Party). Gorbachev pursued negotiation with the United States to decrease tensions and eventually end the Cold War. At the end of the decade, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 would be followed in 1990 by the German reunification. During 1989, most of the communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed. The United Kingdom was governed by the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first female leader of a Western country. Under her Premiership, the party introduced widespread economic reforms including the privatisation of industries and the de-regulation of stock markets echoing similar reforms of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. She was also a staunch opponent of communism, earning her the nickname The Iron Lady. Poor industrial relations marked the beginning of the decade; the UK miners' strike (1984–85) was a major industrial action affecting the UK coal industry. The strike by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was led by Arthur Scargill, although some NUM members considered it to be unconstitutional and did not observe it. The BBC has referred to the strike as "the most bitter industrial dispute in British history." At its height, the strike involved 142,000 mineworkers, making it the biggest since the 1926 General Strike. In November 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, who had led the Soviet Union since 1964,and died. He was followed in quick succession by Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief, and Konstantin Chernenko, both of whom were in poor health during their short tenures in office. Asia South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan came to power at the end of 1979 and ruled as a dictator until his presidential term expired in 1987. He was responsible for the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980 when police and soldiers battled armed protesters. Relations with North Korea showed little sign of improvement during the 1980s. In 1983, when Chun was in Burma, a bomb apparently planted by North Korean agents killed a number of South Korean government officials. After leaving office, he was succeeded by Roh Tae Woo, the first democratic ruler of the country, which saw its international prestige greatly rise with hosting the Olympics in 1988. Roh pursued a policy of normalizing relations with China and the Soviet Union, but had to face militant left-wing student groups who demanded reunification with North Korea and the withdrawal of US troops. In the Philippines, after almost 20 years of dictatorship, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos left the presidency and was replaced by Corazon Aquino through the "People Power Revolution" from February 22 to 25, 1986. This has been considered by some a peaceful revolution despite the fact that the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued an order to disperse the crowds on EDSA (the main thoroughfare in Metro Manila). Martial law in Taiwan ended and the first democratic elections in 1987, having lasted 38 and 27 years. The 1988 Summer Olympics for the first time, after democratic reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. Disasters Natural disasters Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington, U.S. on May 18, 1980, killing 57 people. On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area during Game 3 of the 1989 World Series, gaining worldwide attention. Sixty-five people were killed and thousands injured, with major structural damage on freeways and buildings and broken gas-line fires in San Francisco, California. The cost of the damage totaled $13 billion (1989 USD). The 1988–89 North American drought decimated the US with many parts of the country affected. This was the worst drought to hit the United States in many years. The drought caused $60 billion in damage (between $80 billion and $120 billion for 2008 USD). The concurrent heat waves killed 5,800 to 17,000 people in the United States. Hurricane Allen (1980), Hurricane Alicia (1983), Hurricane Gilbert (1988), Hurricane Joan (1988), and Hurricane Hugo (1989) were some notably destructive Atlantic hurricanes of the 1980s. Other natural disasters of the 1980s include the 1982–1983 El Niño which brought destructive weather to most of the world; the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which registered 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale and devastated Mexico City and other areas throughout central Mexico; the 1985 Nevado del Ruiz lahar in Colombia; the 1986 Lake Nyos limnic eruption in Cameroon; and the 1988 Armenian earthquake, which rocked the Caucasus region of the USSR. Non-natural disasters On April 25, 1980, Dan-Air Flight 1008 crashed on approach to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. All 146 people on board were killed. On August 19, 1980, Saudia Flight 163 caught fire moments after takeoff from the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. The flight quickly returned to the airport, but evacuation of the plane was delayed and all 301 people aboard died. On July 9, 1982, Pan Am Flight 759 was forced down by a wind shear microburst, killing 153 people. In 1984, the Bhopal disaster resulted from a toxic MIC gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing 3,000 immediately and ultimately claiming 15,000–20,000 lives. On September 1, 1983, Soviet Union fighter jets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was carrying 269 people, none of whom survived. On August 2, 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashed on approach to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas. 137 people were killed while 27 survived. June 21, 1985, Air India Flight 182, flight from Montreal Canada is blown up over Irish waters by a bomb placed in the luggage compartment. This was the greatest act of terrorism until the September 11 attacks of 2001. Japan Airlines Flight 123, carrying 524 people, crashed on August 12, 1985, while on a flight from Tokyo to Osaka killing 520 of the people on board, leaving four survivors. This was, and still is, the worst single-plane crash ever. On December 12, 1985, Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashed seconds after lifting off from Gander, Newfoundland. All 256 people on board, many of them U.S. servicemen returning home from duty overseas, perished. On January 28, 1986, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing all of the crew on board. This was the first disaster involving the destruction of a NASA space shuttle. A faulty O-ring was the cause of the accident. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl disaster, a large-scale nuclear meltdown in the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, spread a large amount of radioactive material across Europe, killing 47 people, dooming countless others to future radiation-related cancer, and causing the displacement of 300,000 people. On June 14, 1986, Fantasyland's Mindbender inside West Edmonton Mall, derails and kills 3 people, injuring one, and slams into a concrete post. On August 31, 1986, Aeroméxico Flight 498 crashed after colliding with a private Piper Cherokee over Cerritos, California, killing everyone on both airplanes and several others on the ground. On the same day, the Soviet passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov sank after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Black Sea, killing 423 people. On September 27, 1986 Cliff Burton died in a bus crash while on tour with his band, Metallica On May 9, 1987, an uncontained engine failure on LOT Flight 5055 caused an in-flight fire on board the airliner, which subsequently crashed, killing all 183 passengers and crew. On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed almost immediately after takeoff from Detroit Wayne Airport in Michigan, killing 156 people. On November 28, 1987, a fire broke out on South African Airways Flight 295, eventually causing the aircraft to crash into the Indian Ocean. All 159 aboard were killed. On December 7, 1987, 43 people were killed when an irate former USAir employee went on a rampage aboard PSA Flight 1771. On December 20, 1987, the Philippine passenger ferry MV Doña Paz burned and sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector. With an estimated death toll of over 4,000, this was and remains the world's deadliest peacetime maritime disaster. On July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by the U.S. missile cruiser USS Vincennes over the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on the plane. The event is one of the most controversial aviation occurrences of all time, with the true cause disputed between the Americans and the Iranians. On December 21, 1988, an American passenger 747 airliner en route from Frankfurt to Detroit (via London and New York) Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb while it was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing the 259 passengers and crew members on board and 11 people on the ground. This was the worst terrorist attack to have occurred on British soil. On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound spilling an estimated equivalent of 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil. Although not among the largest oil spills in history, its remote and sensitive location made it one of the most devastating ecological disasters ever. The after effects of the spill continue to be felt to this day. On April 15, 1989, The Hillsborough disaster occurs during a FA Cup Semi-Final in Sheffield, England fatally crushing 96 football fans and injuring nearly 1,000 more. On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, carrying 296 people, suffered an in-flight engine failure and was forced to crash-land at Sioux City, Iowa. 185 survived, while 111 were killed when the plane burst into flames upon touchdown. Assassinations and attempts Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include: On April 12, 1980, William R. Tolbert, Jr., the President of Liberia, is killed during a military coup. His death marks the end of Americo-Liberian rule in Liberia. Musician and former member of the Beatles John Lennon was assassinated in New York City on December 8, 1980. Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981, by John Hinckley, a mentally disturbed young man who also stalked actress Jodie Foster. Reagan's press secretary James Brady was also shot, along with a police officer and a U.S. Secret Service agent. The latter two recovered, along with Reagan himself, but Brady used a wheelchair as a result of brain damage thereafter and would become an advocate of gun control. On May 13, 1981, there was an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square. The would-be assassin was a Turkish man named Mehmet Ali Agca, who was subsequently sentenced to life in prison, but would be pardoned in 2000. At the time, it was widely believed that he was an agent of the Soviet Union or Bulgaria, due to the Pope's vocal anti-communist stance. Agca himself told dozens of conflicting stories over the years, and his motive remains unclear. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated at a military parade in Cairo on October 6, 1981. Philippine Opposition Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated in Manila on August 21, 1983. American singer-songwriter and musician Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father at his home in Los Angeles on April 1, 1984. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984, by her own bodyguards in response to the Indian Army's attack on Golden Temple to destroy Sikh Militant stronghold in Amritsar earlier in the decade. In 1984, there was an assassination attempt on the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Government by the IRA. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in February 1986. The assassin has never been identified. On October 15, 1987, the President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was killed during a coup d'état organised by his former colleague, Blaise Compaoré. Technology Medicine and biology The 1980s had many fundamental advances in medicine and biology. The first surrogate pregnancy of an unrelated child took place on April 13, 1986, in Michigan. The first genetically modified crops, tobacco (Nicotiana) plants were grown in China in 1988. Gene therapy techniques became established by the end of the 1980s, allowing gene tagging and gene therapy to become a possibility, both of which were first performed in human beings in May 1989 and September 1990, respectively. Electronics and computers Arcade and video games had been growing in popularity since the late 1970s, and by 1982 were a major industry. But a variety of factors, including a glut of low-quality games and the rise of home computers, caused a tremendous crash in late 1983. For the next three years, the video game market practically ceased to exist in the US. But in the second half of the decade, it would be revived by Nintendo, whose Famicom console and mascot Mario had been enjoying considerable success in Japan since 1983. Renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System, it would claim 90% of the American video game market by 1989. The 1980s are considered to be the decade when video games achieved massive popularity. In 1980, Pac-Man was introduced to the arcades, and became one of the most popular video games of all time. Also in 1980, Game & Watch was created; it was not one of the most well known game systems, but it facilitated mini-games and was concurrent with the NES. Donkey Kong, released in 1981, was a smash arcade hit and market breakthrough for Nintendo. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, The Legend of Zelda, and the Mega Man series would become major hits for the console. The personal computer experienced explosive growth in the 1980s, transitioning from a hobbyist's toy to a full-fledged consumer product. The IBM PC, launched in 1981, became the dominant computer for professional users. Commodore created the most popular home computers of both 8-bit and 16-bit generations. MSX standard was the dominant computer platform in Japan and in most parts of Asia. Apple superseded its Apple II and Lisa models by introducing the first Macintosh computer in 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse, which started to become general features in computers after the middle of the decade. Electronics and computers were also at the forefront of the advertising industry, with many commercials like "1984" from Apple achieving acclaim and pop-culture relevance. Walkman and boomboxes, invented during the late 1970s, became very popular as they were introduced to various countries in the early 1980s, and had a profound impact on the music industry and youth culture. Consumer VCRs and video rental stores became commonplace as VHS won out over the competing Betamax standard. In addition, in the early 1980s various companies began selling compact, modestly priced synthesizers to the public. This, along with the development of Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), made it easier to integrate and synchronize synthesizers and other electronic instruments, like drum machines, for use in musical composition. High definition television (HDTV) of both the analog and digital variety were first developed in the 1980s though their use did not become widespread until the mid-2000s. In 1981, Hayes Microcomputer Products started selling the Smartmodem. The Smartmodem paved the way for the modern modems that exist today, mainly because it was the first modem to transform what had previously required a two-stage process into a process involving only one stage. The Smartmodem contributed to the rise in popularity of BBS systems in the 80s and early 90s, which were the main way to connect to remote computers and perform various social and entertainment activities before the Internet and the World Wide Web finally became popular in the mid-1990s. Information technology During the decade Microsoft released the operating systems MS-DOS (1981), Windows 1.0 (1985), and Windows 2.0 (1987). The CD - the most basic CD ("Digital Audio Compact Disc") was released in October 1982 for distribution and listening to digital audio, and at the time contained up to 74 minutes of music. TCP/IP: ARPANET officially changed its main protocol from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, when the new protocols were activated. The TCP/IP protocol will become the dominant communications protocol from then onwards, and would be used as the foundation on which the Internet would be based. The GNU Project (1983). The Free Software Foundation (1985). FidoNet - In 1984, FidoNet was launched, enabling BBS users to send private messages (e-mails) and public messages (in the forum) between all BBS systems that were connected to the FidoNet network, in addition to sending files to each other. The rise in popularity and availability of the Internet around the world around the mid-1990s eventually contributed to the irrelevance of FidoNet. World Wide Web - In 1989, the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a project to his employer CERN, based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. In mid-November 1989 he would develop the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the internet. In the coming years Berners-Lee developed the system which would later become the foundation of the World Wide Web. Space exploration American interplanetary probes continued in the 1980s, the Voyager duo being the most known. After making a flyby of Jupiter in 1979, they went near Saturn in 1980–1981. Voyager 2 reached Uranus in 1986 (just a few days before the Challenger disaster), and Neptune in 1989 before the probes exited the solar system. No American probes were launched to Mars in the 1980s, and the Viking probes, launched there in 1975, completed their operations by 1982. The Soviets launched two Mars probes in 1988, but they failed. The arrival of Halley's Comet in 1986 was met by a series of Soviet, Japanese and European Space Agency (ESA) probes, namely Halley Armada. After a six-year hiatus, American space flights with astronauts resumed with the launch of the space shuttle Columbia in April 1981. The shuttle program progressed smoothly from there, with three more orbiters entering service in 1983–1985. But that all came to an end with the tragic loss of the Challenger (STS-51-L) on January 28, 1986, taking with it seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, who was to have been the first teacher in space. In full view of the world, a faulty O-ring on the right solid rocket booster allowed hot gases to burn through the external fuel tank and cause it to explode, destroying the shuttle in the process. Extensive efforts were made to improve NASA's increasingly careless management practices, and to make the shuttle safer. Flights resumed with the launch of Discovery in September 1988. The Soviet program with cosmonauts went well during the decade, experiencing only minor setbacks. The Salyut 6 space station, launched in 1977, was replaced by Salyut 7 in 1982. Then came Mir in 1986, which ended up operating for more than a decade, and was destined to be the last in the line of Soviet space stations that had begun in 1971. One of the Soviet Union's last "superprojects" was the Buran space shuttle; it was only used once, in 1988. Automobiles The American auto industry began in the 1980s in a thoroughly grim situation, faced with poor quality control, rising import competition, and a severe economic downturn. Chrysler and American Motors (AMC) were near bankruptcy, and Ford was little better off. Only GM continued with business as usual. But the auto makers recovered with the economy by 1983, and in 1985 auto sales in the United States hit a new record. However, the Japanese were now a major presence, and would begin manufacturing cars in the US to get around tariffs. In 1986, Hyundai became the first Korean auto maker to enter the American market. In the same year, the Yugoslavian-built Yugo was brought to the US, but the car was so small and cheap, that it became the subject of jokes. It was sold up to 1991, when economic sanctions against Yugoslavia forced its withdrawal from the American market. As the decade progressed, cars became smaller and more efficient in design. In 1983, Ford design teams began to incorporate aerodynamic styling to decrease drag while in motion. The Thunderbird was one of the first cars to receive these design changes. In 1985, Ford released the Taurus with a design that was revolutionary among domestic mass market automobiles. General Motors began suffering significant losses in the late 1980s, partially the result of chairman Roger Smith's restructuring attempts, and partially because of increasingly dated cars. An example were customers who increasingly purchased European luxury cars rather than Cadillacs. In 1985, GM started Saturn (the first new American make since the Edsel), with the goal of producing high-quality import fighters. Production would not begin until 1990. Chrysler introduced its new compact, front-wheel drive K-cars in 1981. Under the leadership of Lee Iacocca, the company turned a profit again the following year, and by 1983 paid off its government loans. A succession of models using this automobile platform followed. The most significant were the minivans in 1984. These proved a to be popular and they would dominate the van market for more than a decade. In 1987, Chrysler purchased the Italian makes of Lamborghini and Maserati. In the same year, Chrysler bought AMC from Renault laying to rest the last significant independent U.S. automaker, but acquiring the hugely profitable Jeep line and continuing the Eagle brand until the late 1990s. The DMC DeLorean was the brainchild of John DeLorean, a flamboyant former GM executive. Production of the gull-winged sports car began in Northern Ireland in 1981. John DeLorean was arrested in October 1982 in a sting operation where he was attempting to sell cocaine to save his struggling company. He was acquitted of all charges in 1984, but too late for the DeLorean Motor Company, which closed down in 1983. The DeLorean gained renewed fame afterward as the time machine in the Back to the Future film trilogy. The imposition of CAFE fuel-mileage standards in 1979 spelled the end of big-block engines, but performance cars and convertibles reemerged in the 1980s. Turbochargers were widely used to boost the performance of small cars, and technology from fuel injection began to take over from the widely used application of carburetors by the late 1980s. Front-wheel drive also became dominant. The Eighties marked the decline of European brands in North America by the end of the decade. Renault, Citroen, and Peugeot ceased importation by the end of the decade. Alfa Romeo would continue until 1993. Fiat also ceased imports to North America in the Eighties. Economics The early 1980s was marked by a severe global economic recession that affected much of the developed world. Inflation peaked in the U.S. in April 1980 at 14.76% and subsequently fell to a low of 1.10% in December 1986 but then rebounded to 4.65% at the end of the decade. Finland's economy grew by almost the fastest pace in the world, which eventually culminated in the recession of the 1990s Finnish economy. In Finland, the 1980s were called the "Nousukausi", or "economic upswing". International debt crisis in developing countries, reliance of these countries on aid from the International Monetary Fund. Revival of laissez faire/neoliberal economics in the developed world led by the UK and US governments emphasising reduced government intervention, lower taxes and deregulation of the stock markets associated with an economic revival in the mid- to late '80s. Consumers became more sophisticated in their tastes (a trend begun in the 1960s), and things such as European cars and designer clothing became fashionable in the US. Mexico suffers from a debt crisis starting in 1982. Economic problems worsened in 1985 by resignation of most officials of the Mexican government after a failed response of emergency aid in the Mexico City earthquake (September 19) just after the 175th anniversary of Independence holiday (September 16). In 1988, Carlos Salinas de Gortari won a controversial presidential election amid charges of voter fraud, bribery, corruption and other abuses of power. Enactment of the Canada–United States Free Trade Agreement in 1989 to further establish a strong economic bond between the two prosperous neighbor countries of North America. In the Soviet Union, the eleventh Five-Year Plan was initiated in 1981 during a period of economic stagnation that began in the late 1970s. The Plan was a near failure, as most of the targets were not met. With the ascent of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Communist Party, the twelfth Five-Year Plan sought to accelerate and restructure the Soviet economy through reforms to decentralize production and distribution systems. Under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, China embarked on extensive reforms in the 1980s, opening the country's economy to the West and allowing capitalist enterprises to operate in a market socialist system. The corruption of Communist Party leadership was met by dissent from students and workers in the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 which were suppressed by the People's Liberation Army. The Solidarity movement began in Poland in 1980, involving workers demanding political liberalization and democracy in Poland. Attempts by the Communist government to prevent the rise of the Solidarity movement failed and negotiations between the movement and the government took place. Solidarity would be instrumental in encouraging people in other communist states to demand political reform. The financial world and the stock market were glamorized in a way they had not been since the 1920s, and figures like Donald Trump and Michael Milken were widely seen as symbols of the decade. Widespread fear of Japanese economic strength would grip the United States in the '80s. The "Black Monday" stock market crash on October 19, 1987, decreased the value of the Dow Jones Industrial Average by more than 22%, causing widespread secondary drops in world markets. During the 1980s, for the first time in world history, transpacific trade (with East Asia, such as China, and Latin America, primarily with Mexico) equaled that of transatlantic trade (with Western Europe or with neighboring Canada), solidifying American economic power. The Savings and Loan Scandal. The phrase Big Bang, used in reference to the sudden deregulation of financial markets, was coined to describe measures, including abolition of fixed commission charges and of the distinction between stockjobbers and stockbrokers on the London Stock Exchange and change from open-outcry to electronic, screen-based trading, effected by Margaret Thatcher in 1986. Popular culture The most prominent events and trends in popular culture of the decade (particularly in the Anglosphere) include: Music In the United States, MTV was launched and music videos began to have a larger effect on the record industry. Pop artists such as Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston, Duran Duran, Prince, Cyndi Lauper and Madonna mastered the format and helped turn this new product into a profitable business. New wave and synthpop were developed by many British and American artists, and became popular phenomena throughout the decade, especially in the early and mid 1980s. Music grew fragmented and combined into subgenres such as house, goth, and rap metal. The advent of numerous new technologies had a significant impact on 1980s music, and led to a distinct production aesthetic that included synthesizer sounds, drum machines and drum reverb. Michael Jackson was one of the icons of the 1980s and his leather jacket, glove, and Moonwalk dance were often imitated. Jackson's 1982 album Thriller became—and currently remains—the best-selling album of all time, with sales estimated by various sources as somewhere between 65 and 110 million copies worldwide. His 1987 album Bad sold over 45 million copies and became the first album to have five number-one singles chart on the Billboard Hot 100. Jackson had the most number-one singles throughout the decade (9), and spent the most weeks at number one (27 weeks). His 1987 Bad World Tour grossed over $125 million worldwide, making it the highest grossing world tour by a solo artist during the decade. Jackson earned numerous awards and titles during the 1980s, the most notable of which were a record eight Grammy Awards and eight American Music Awards in 1984, and the honor of "Artist of the Decade" by U.S. President George H.W. Bush. Jackson was arguably the biggest star during this time, and would eventually sell more than one billion records around the world. Prince was a popular star of the 1980s and the most successful chart act of the decade. His breakthrough album 1999, released in 1982, produced three top-ten hits and the album itself charted at number nine on the Billboard Hot 100. His sixth studio album Purple Rain was an international success, boosting Prince to superstardom and selling over 25 million copies worldwide. The album produced the US number-one singles, "When Doves Cry" and "Let's Go Crazy" and sold 13 million copies in the U.S. as of 1996. Prince released an album every year for the rest of the decade, all charting within the top ten, with the exception of Lovesexy. In the 1990s, he infamously changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol in response to a record dispute with Warner Brothers. He went on to sell over 120 million records worldwide and win seven Grammy Awards. Madonna and Whitney Houston were groundbreaking female artists of the decade. The keyboard synthesizer and drum machine were among the most popular instruments in music during the 1980s, especially in new wave music. After the 1980s, electronic instruments continued to be the main component of mainstream pop. Hard rock, heavy metal, and glam metal became some of the most dominant music genres of the decade, peaking with the arrival of such bands as Mötley Crüe, Guns N' Roses, Metallica, Iron Maiden, Bon Jovi, Def Leppard, Poison, Europe, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, and virtuoso guitarists such as Joe Satriani and Yngwie Malmsteen. The scene also helped 1970s hard rock artists such as AC/DC, Heart, | and attacks on US personnel in Germany and Turkey. The South African Border War between South Africa and the alliance of Angola, Namibia and Zambia ended in 1989, ending over thirty years of conflict. The United States engaged in significant direct and indirect conflict in the decade via alliances with various groups in a number of Central and South American countries claiming that the U.S. was acting to oppose the spread of communism and end illicit drug trade. The U.S. government supported the government of Colombia's attempts to destroy its large illicit cocaine-trafficking industry and provided support for right-wing military government in the Salvadoran civil war which became controversial after the El Mozote massacre on December 11, 1981, in which U.S.-trained Salvadoran paramilitaries killed 1000 Salvadoran civilians. The United States, along with members of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, invaded Grenada in 1983. The Iran–Contra affair erupted which involved U.S. interventionism in Nicaragua, resulting in members of the U.S. government being indicted in 1986. U.S. military action began against Panama in December 1989 to overthrow its dictator, Manuel Noriega resulting in 3,500 civilian casualties and the restoration of democratic rule. Battle of Cuito Cuanavale took place as part of the Angolan civil war and South African Border War from 1987 to 1988. The battle involved the largest fighting in Africa since World War II between military forces from Angola, Cuba (expeditionary forces) and Namibia versus military forces from South Africa and the dissident Angolan UNITA organization. The First Nagorno-Karabakh War between Azerbaijan and the Armenia started in 1988 and lasted six years. Civil wars and guerrilla wars The most notable internal conflicts of the decade include: The Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 occurred in the People's Republic of China in 1989, in which pro-democracy protesters demanded political reform. The protests were crushed by the People's Liberation Army. The First Intifada (First Uprising) in the Gaza Strip and West Bank began in 1987 when Palestinian Arabs mounted large-scale protests against the Israeli military presence in the Gaza Strip and West Bank, largely inhabited by Palestinians. The First Intifada would continue until peace negotiations began between the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Israeli government in 1993. Lebanese Civil War (1975–1990) – Throughout the decade, Lebanon was engulfed in civil war between Islamic and Christian factions. The Kanak Socialist National Liberation Front began a violent campaign for independence in New Caledonia. Greenpeace's attempts to monitor French nuclear testing on Mururoa were halted by the sinking of the Rainbow Warrior. The Second Sudanese Civil War erupts in 1983 between the Muslim government of Sudan in the north and non-Muslim rebel secessionists in Southern Sudan. The conflict continues through the present day Darfur genocide. Internal conflict in Peru: The communist Túpac Amaru Revolutionary Movement starts its fight against the Peruvian state in 1980, that would continue until the end of the 1990s. Haitian dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier was overthrown by a popular uprising on February 6, 1986. The Troubles in Northern Ireland continued. Coups The most prominent coups d'état of the decade include: A military coup is launched in Suriname on February 25, 1980; the country's politics are dominated by the military until 1991. Nigeria suffered multiple military coups in 1983 and 1985. Sitiveni Rabuka staged two military coups in Fiji in 1987, and declared the country a republic the same year. The "Anti-Bureaucratic Revolution" – a series of interconnected coups d'états – take place in Yugoslavia from 1988 to 1989 through mass protests organized and committed by supporters of Serbian politician Slobodan Milošević overthrow the governments of Serbia's autonomous provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina, and the government of Montenegro, and finally the main government of Serbia with Milošević becoming President of Serbia. Nuclear threats Operation Opera – a 1981 surprise Israeli air strike that destroyed the Iraqi nuclear reactor being constructed near Baghdad. Israeli military intelligence assumed this was for the purpose of plutonium production to further an Iraqi nuclear weapons program. Israeli intelligence also believed that the summer of 1981 would be the last chance to destroy the reactor before it would be loaded with nuclear fuel. US President Reagan's decision to station intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe provoked mass protests involving more than one million people. Decolonization and independence In 1982, Canada gained official independence from the United Kingdom with the Canada Act 1982, authorized by the signature by Elizabeth II. This act severed all political dependencies of the United Kingdom in Canada (although the Queen remained the head of state). In 1986, Australia gained full independence from the United Kingdom with the Australia Act 1986, which severed the last remaining powers of the British government over the Australian government, including the removal of the privy council as the highest court of appeal. Australia retained the queen as head of state. In 1986, New Zealand and the United Kingdom fully separated New Zealand's governments from the influence of the British Parliament, resulting in New Zealand's full independence with the Constitution Act 1986 which also reorganised the New Zealand government. Independence was granted to Vanuatu from the British/French condominium (1980), Kiribati from joint US-British government (1981) and Palau from the United States (1986). Zimbabwe becomes independent from official colonial rule of the United Kingdom in 1980. Independence was given to Antigua and Barbuda, Belize (both 1981), and Saint Kitts and Nevis (1983) in the Caribbean; and Brunei in the Far East in 1984 Prominent political events Americas Ronald Reagan was elected U.S. president in 1980. In international affairs, Reagan pursued a hardline policy towards preventing the spread of communism, initiating a considerable buildup of U.S. military power to challenge the Soviet Union. He further directly challenged the Iron Curtain by demanding that the Soviet Union dismantle the Berlin Wall. The Reagan Administration accelerated the War on Drugs, publicized through anti-drug campaigns including the Just Say No campaign of First Lady Nancy Reagan. Drugs gained attention in the US as a serious problem in the '80s. Cocaine was relatively popular among celebrities and affluent youth, while crack, a cheaper offshoot of the drug, was linked to high crime rates in inner cities during the American crack epidemic. The Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (1968) (PATCO) declared a strike on August 3, 1981, seeking better working conditions, better pay, and a 32-hour workweek. The strike caused considerable disruption of the U.S. air transportation system. Resolution came when Ronald Reagan fired over 11,000 striking air traffic controllers who had ignored the order, banning them from federal service for life. After seeking appeals, many of the controllers were re-hired while the FAA attempted to replace much of their air traffic control staffing. The remainder continued to be banned until President Clinton lifted the final aspects in 1993. Political unrest in the province of Quebec, which, due to the many differences between the dominant francophone population and the anglophone minority, and also to francophone rights in the predominantly English-speaking Canada, came to a head in 1980 when the provincial government called a public referendum on partial separation from the rest of Canada. The referendum ended with the "no" side winning majority (59.56% no, 40.44% yes). Military dictatorships give way to democracy in Argentina (1983), Uruguay (1984–85), Brazil (1985–1988) and Chile (1988–89). This marked the end of the Operation Condor for 30 years. Europe The European Community's enlargement continued with the accession of Greece in 1981 and Spain and Portugal in 1986. In 1983, Bettino Craxi became the first socialist to hold the office of Prime Minister of Italy; he remained in power until 1987, becoming one of the longest-serving Prime Ministers in the history of Italian Republic. At the end of his presidency the Mani pulite corruption scandal broke up, causing the collapse of the political system. Significant political reforms occurred in a number of communist countries in eastern Europe as the populations of these countries grew increasingly hostile and politically active in opposing communist governments. These reforms included attempts to increase individual liberties and market liberalization, and promises of democratic renewal. The collapse of communism in eastern Europe was generally peaceful, the exception being Romania, whose leader Nicolae Ceaușescu tried to keep the people isolated from the events happening outside the country. While making a speech in Bucharest in December 1989, he was booed and shouted down by the crowd, and then tried to flee the city with his wife Elena. Two days later, they were captured, charged with genocide, and shot on Christmas Day. In Yugoslavia, following the death of communist leader Josip Broz Tito in May 1980, the trend of political reform of the communist system occurred along with a trend towards ethnic nationalism and inter-ethnic hostility, especially in Serbia, beginning with the 1986 Memorandum of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts followed by the agenda of Serbian communist leader Slobodan Milošević who aggressively pushed for increased political influence of Serbs in the late 1980s, condemning non-Serb Yugoslav politicians who challenged his agenda as being enemies of Serbs. There was continuing civil strife in Northern Ireland, including the adoption of hunger strikes by Irish Republican Army prisoners seeking the reintroduction of political status. Mikhail Gorbachev became leader of the Soviet Union in 1985, and initiated major reforms to the Soviet Union's government through increasing the rights of expressing political dissent and opening elections to opposition candidates (while maintaining legal dominance of the Communist Party). Gorbachev pursued negotiation with the United States to decrease tensions and eventually end the Cold War. At the end of the decade, the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 would be followed in 1990 by the German reunification. During 1989, most of the communist governments in Eastern Europe collapsed. The United Kingdom was governed by the Conservative Party under Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, the first female leader of a Western country. Under her Premiership, the party introduced widespread economic reforms including the privatisation of industries and the de-regulation of stock markets echoing similar reforms of U.S. President Ronald Reagan. She was also a staunch opponent of communism, earning her the nickname The Iron Lady. Poor industrial relations marked the beginning of the decade; the UK miners' strike (1984–85) was a major industrial action affecting the UK coal industry. The strike by the National Union of Mineworkers (NUM) was led by Arthur Scargill, although some NUM members considered it to be unconstitutional and did not observe it. The BBC has referred to the strike as "the most bitter industrial dispute in British history." At its height, the strike involved 142,000 mineworkers, making it the biggest since the 1926 General Strike. In November 1982, Leonid Brezhnev, who had led the Soviet Union since 1964,and died. He was followed in quick succession by Yuri Andropov, the former KGB chief, and Konstantin Chernenko, both of whom were in poor health during their short tenures in office. Asia South Korean president Chun Doo Hwan came to power at the end of 1979 and ruled as a dictator until his presidential term expired in 1987. He was responsible for the Gwangju Uprising in May 1980 when police and soldiers battled armed protesters. Relations with North Korea showed little sign of improvement during the 1980s. In 1983, when Chun was in Burma, a bomb apparently planted by North Korean agents killed a number of South Korean government officials. After leaving office, he was succeeded by Roh Tae Woo, the first democratic ruler of the country, which saw its international prestige greatly rise with hosting the Olympics in 1988. Roh pursued a policy of normalizing relations with China and the Soviet Union, but had to face militant left-wing student groups who demanded reunification with North Korea and the withdrawal of US troops. In the Philippines, after almost 20 years of dictatorship, Philippine president Ferdinand Marcos left the presidency and was replaced by Corazon Aquino through the "People Power Revolution" from February 22 to 25, 1986. This has been considered by some a peaceful revolution despite the fact that the Armed Forces of the Philippines issued an order to disperse the crowds on EDSA (the main thoroughfare in Metro Manila). Martial law in Taiwan ended and the first democratic elections in 1987, having lasted 38 and 27 years. The 1988 Summer Olympics for the first time, after democratic reforms in Taiwan and South Korea. Disasters Natural disasters Mount St. Helens erupted in Washington, U.S. on May 18, 1980, killing 57 people. On October 17, 1989, the Loma Prieta earthquake struck the San Francisco Bay Area during Game 3 of the 1989 World Series, gaining worldwide attention. Sixty-five people were killed and thousands injured, with major structural damage on freeways and buildings and broken gas-line fires in San Francisco, California. The cost of the damage totaled $13 billion (1989 USD). The 1988–89 North American drought decimated the US with many parts of the country affected. This was the worst drought to hit the United States in many years. The drought caused $60 billion in damage (between $80 billion and $120 billion for 2008 USD). The concurrent heat waves killed 5,800 to 17,000 people in the United States. Hurricane Allen (1980), Hurricane Alicia (1983), Hurricane Gilbert (1988), Hurricane Joan (1988), and Hurricane Hugo (1989) were some notably destructive Atlantic hurricanes of the 1980s. Other natural disasters of the 1980s include the 1982–1983 El Niño which brought destructive weather to most of the world; the 1985 Mexico City earthquake, which registered 8.0 on the moment magnitude scale and devastated Mexico City and other areas throughout central Mexico; the 1985 Nevado del Ruiz lahar in Colombia; the 1986 Lake Nyos limnic eruption in Cameroon; and the 1988 Armenian earthquake, which rocked the Caucasus region of the USSR. Non-natural disasters On April 25, 1980, Dan-Air Flight 1008 crashed on approach to Tenerife in the Canary Islands. All 146 people on board were killed. On August 19, 1980, Saudia Flight 163 caught fire moments after takeoff from the Saudi Arabian capital of Riyadh. The flight quickly returned to the airport, but evacuation of the plane was delayed and all 301 people aboard died. On July 9, 1982, Pan Am Flight 759 was forced down by a wind shear microburst, killing 153 people. In 1984, the Bhopal disaster resulted from a toxic MIC gas leak at the Union Carbide plant in Bhopal, India, killing 3,000 immediately and ultimately claiming 15,000–20,000 lives. On September 1, 1983, Soviet Union fighter jets shot down Korean Air Lines Flight 007, which was carrying 269 people, none of whom survived. On August 2, 1985, Delta Air Lines Flight 191 crashed on approach to Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport in Texas. 137 people were killed while 27 survived. June 21, 1985, Air India Flight 182, flight from Montreal Canada is blown up over Irish waters by a bomb placed in the luggage compartment. This was the greatest act of terrorism until the September 11 attacks of 2001. Japan Airlines Flight 123, carrying 524 people, crashed on August 12, 1985, while on a flight from Tokyo to Osaka killing 520 of the people on board, leaving four survivors. This was, and still is, the worst single-plane crash ever. On December 12, 1985, Arrow Air Flight 1285 crashed seconds after lifting off from Gander, Newfoundland. All 256 people on board, many of them U.S. servicemen returning home from duty overseas, perished. On January 28, 1986, the NASA Space Shuttle Challenger disintegrated 73 seconds after launch, killing all of the crew on board. This was the first disaster involving the destruction of a NASA space shuttle. A faulty O-ring was the cause of the accident. On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl disaster, a large-scale nuclear meltdown in the Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union, spread a large amount of radioactive material across Europe, killing 47 people, dooming countless others to future radiation-related cancer, and causing the displacement of 300,000 people. On June 14, 1986, Fantasyland's Mindbender inside West Edmonton Mall, derails and kills 3 people, injuring one, and slams into a concrete post. On August 31, 1986, Aeroméxico Flight 498 crashed after colliding with a private Piper Cherokee over Cerritos, California, killing everyone on both airplanes and several others on the ground. On the same day, the Soviet passenger ship Admiral Nakhimov sank after colliding with the bulk carrier Pyotr Vasev in the Black Sea, killing 423 people. On September 27, 1986 Cliff Burton died in a bus crash while on tour with his band, Metallica On May 9, 1987, an uncontained engine failure on LOT Flight 5055 caused an in-flight fire on board the airliner, which subsequently crashed, killing all 183 passengers and crew. On August 16, 1987, Northwest Airlines Flight 255 crashed almost immediately after takeoff from Detroit Wayne Airport in Michigan, killing 156 people. On November 28, 1987, a fire broke out on South African Airways Flight 295, eventually causing the aircraft to crash into the Indian Ocean. All 159 aboard were killed. On December 7, 1987, 43 people were killed when an irate former USAir employee went on a rampage aboard PSA Flight 1771. On December 20, 1987, the Philippine passenger ferry MV Doña Paz burned and sank after colliding with the oil tanker MT Vector. With an estimated death toll of over 4,000, this was and remains the world's deadliest peacetime maritime disaster. On July 3, 1988, Iran Air Flight 655 was shot down by the U.S. missile cruiser USS Vincennes over the Strait of Hormuz, killing all 290 people on the plane. The event is one of the most controversial aviation occurrences of all time, with the true cause disputed between the Americans and the Iranians. On December 21, 1988, an American passenger 747 airliner en route from Frankfurt to Detroit (via London and New York) Pan Am Flight 103 was destroyed by a bomb while it was flying over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing the 259 passengers and crew members on board and 11 people on the ground. This was the worst terrorist attack to have occurred on British soil. On March 24, 1989, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground on Bligh Reef in Alaska's Prince William Sound spilling an estimated equivalent of 260,000 to 750,000 barrels of crude oil. Although not among the largest oil spills in history, its remote and sensitive location made it one of the most devastating ecological disasters ever. The after effects of the spill continue to be felt to this day. On April 15, 1989, The Hillsborough disaster occurs during a FA Cup Semi-Final in Sheffield, England fatally crushing 96 football fans and injuring nearly 1,000 more. On July 19, 1989, United Airlines Flight 232, carrying 296 people, suffered an in-flight engine failure and was forced to crash-land at Sioux City, Iowa. 185 survived, while 111 were killed when the plane burst into flames upon touchdown. Assassinations and attempts Prominent assassinations, targeted killings, and assassination attempts include: On April 12, 1980, William R. Tolbert, Jr., the President of Liberia, is killed during a military coup. His death marks the end of Americo-Liberian rule in Liberia. Musician and former member of the Beatles John Lennon was assassinated in New York City on December 8, 1980. Ronald Reagan was shot in Washington, D.C. on March 30, 1981, by John Hinckley, a mentally disturbed young man who also stalked actress Jodie Foster. Reagan's press secretary James Brady was also shot, along with a police officer and a U.S. Secret Service agent. The latter two recovered, along with Reagan himself, but Brady used a wheelchair as a result of brain damage thereafter and would become an advocate of gun control. On May 13, 1981, there was an assassination attempt on Pope John Paul II in Saint Peter's Square. The would-be assassin was a Turkish man named Mehmet Ali Agca, who was subsequently sentenced to life in prison, but would be pardoned in 2000. At the time, it was widely believed that he was an agent of the Soviet Union or Bulgaria, due to the Pope's vocal anti-communist stance. Agca himself told dozens of conflicting stories over the years, and his motive remains unclear. Egyptian president Anwar Sadat was assassinated at a military parade in Cairo on October 6, 1981. Philippine Opposition Senator Benigno Aquino Jr. was assassinated in Manila on August 21, 1983. American singer-songwriter and musician Marvin Gaye was shot dead by his father at his home in Los Angeles on April 1, 1984. Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi was assassinated on October 31, 1984, by her own bodyguards in response to the Indian Army's attack on Golden Temple to destroy Sikh Militant stronghold in Amritsar earlier in the decade. In 1984, there was an assassination attempt on the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher and the Conservative Government by the IRA. Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated in February 1986. The assassin has never been identified. On October 15, 1987, the President of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara, was killed during a coup d'état organised by his former colleague, Blaise Compaoré. Technology Medicine and biology The 1980s had many fundamental advances in medicine and biology. The first surrogate pregnancy of an unrelated child took place on April 13, 1986, in Michigan. The first genetically modified crops, tobacco (Nicotiana) plants were grown in China in 1988. Gene therapy techniques became established by the end of the 1980s, allowing gene tagging and gene therapy to become a possibility, both of which were first performed in human beings in May 1989 and September 1990, respectively. Electronics and computers Arcade and video games had been growing in popularity since the late 1970s, and by 1982 were a major industry. But a variety of factors, including a glut of low-quality games and the rise of home computers, caused a tremendous crash in late 1983. For the next three years, the video game market practically ceased to exist in the US. But in the second half of the decade, it would be revived by Nintendo, whose Famicom console and mascot Mario had been enjoying considerable success in Japan since 1983. Renamed the Nintendo Entertainment System, it would claim 90% of the American video game market by 1989. The 1980s are considered to be the decade when video games achieved massive popularity. In 1980, Pac-Man was introduced to the arcades, and became one of the most popular video games of all time. Also in 1980, Game & Watch was created; it was not one of the most well known game systems, but it facilitated mini-games and was concurrent with the NES. Donkey Kong, released in 1981, was a smash arcade hit and market breakthrough for Nintendo. Super Mario Bros., Super Mario Bros. 2, Super Mario Bros. 3, The Legend of Zelda, and the Mega Man series would become major hits for the console. The personal computer experienced explosive growth in the 1980s, transitioning from a hobbyist's toy to a full-fledged consumer product. The IBM PC, launched in 1981, became the dominant computer for professional users. Commodore created the most popular home computers of both 8-bit and 16-bit generations. MSX standard was the dominant computer platform in Japan and in most parts of Asia. Apple superseded its Apple II and Lisa models by introducing the first Macintosh computer in 1984. It was the first commercially successful personal computer to use a graphical user interface (GUI) and mouse, which started to become general features in computers after the middle of the decade. Electronics and computers were also at the forefront of the advertising industry, with many commercials like "1984" from Apple achieving acclaim and pop-culture relevance. Walkman and boomboxes, invented during the late 1970s, became very popular as they were introduced to various countries in the early 1980s, and had a profound impact on the music industry and youth culture. Consumer VCRs and video rental stores became commonplace as VHS won out over the competing Betamax standard. In addition, in the early 1980s various companies began selling compact, modestly priced synthesizers to the public. This, along with the development of Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI), made it easier to integrate and synchronize synthesizers and other electronic instruments, like drum machines, for use in musical composition. High definition television (HDTV) of both the analog and digital variety were first developed in the 1980s though their use did not become widespread until the mid-2000s. In 1981, Hayes Microcomputer Products started selling the Smartmodem. The Smartmodem paved the way for the modern modems that exist today, mainly because it was the first modem to transform what had previously required a two-stage process into a process involving only one stage. The Smartmodem contributed to the rise in popularity of BBS systems in the 80s and early 90s, which were the main way to connect to remote computers and perform various social and entertainment activities before the Internet and the World Wide Web finally became popular in the mid-1990s. Information technology During the decade Microsoft released the operating systems MS-DOS (1981), Windows 1.0 (1985), and Windows 2.0 (1987). The CD - the most basic CD ("Digital Audio Compact Disc") was released in October 1982 for distribution and listening to digital audio, and at the time contained up to 74 minutes of music. TCP/IP: ARPANET officially changed its main protocol from NCP to TCP/IP on January 1, 1983, when the new protocols were activated. The TCP/IP protocol will become the dominant communications protocol from then onwards, and would be used as the foundation on which the Internet would be based. The GNU Project (1983). The Free Software Foundation (1985). FidoNet - In 1984, FidoNet was launched, enabling BBS users to send private messages (e-mails) and public messages (in the forum) between all BBS systems that were connected to the FidoNet network, in addition to sending files to each other. The rise in popularity and availability of the Internet around the world around the mid-1990s eventually contributed to the irrelevance of FidoNet. World Wide Web - In 1989, the British computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee first proposed a project to his employer CERN, based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers. In mid-November 1989 he would develop the first successful communication between a Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) client and server via the internet. In the coming years Berners-Lee developed the system which would later become the foundation of the World Wide Web. Space exploration American interplanetary probes continued in the 1980s, the Voyager duo being the most known. After making a flyby of Jupiter in 1979, they went near Saturn in 1980–1981. Voyager 2 reached Uranus in 1986 (just a few days before the Challenger disaster), and Neptune in 1989 before the probes exited the solar system. No American probes were launched to Mars in the 1980s, and the Viking probes, launched there in 1975, completed their operations by 1982. The Soviets launched two Mars probes in 1988, but they failed. The arrival of Halley's Comet in 1986 was met by a series of Soviet, Japanese and European Space Agency (ESA) probes, namely Halley Armada. After a six-year hiatus, American space flights with astronauts resumed with the launch of the space shuttle Columbia in April 1981. The shuttle program progressed smoothly from there, with three more orbiters entering service in 1983–1985. But that all came to an end with the tragic loss of the Challenger (STS-51-L) on January 28, 1986, taking with it seven astronauts, including Christa McAuliffe, who was to have been the first teacher in space. In full view of the world, a faulty O-ring on the right solid rocket booster allowed hot gases to burn through the external fuel tank and cause it to explode, destroying the shuttle in the process. Extensive efforts were made to improve NASA's increasingly careless management practices, and to make the shuttle safer. Flights resumed with the launch of Discovery in September 1988. The Soviet program with cosmonauts went well during the decade, experiencing only minor setbacks. The Salyut 6 space station, launched in 1977, was replaced by Salyut 7 in 1982. Then came Mir in 1986, which ended up operating for more than a decade, and was destined to be the last in the line of Soviet space stations that had begun in 1971. One of the Soviet Union's last "superprojects" was the Buran space shuttle; it was only used once, in 1988. Automobiles The American auto industry began in the 1980s in a thoroughly grim situation, faced with poor quality control, rising import competition, and a severe economic downturn. Chrysler and American Motors (AMC) were near bankruptcy, and Ford was little better off. Only GM continued with business as usual. But the auto makers recovered with the economy by 1983, and in 1985 auto sales in the United States hit a new record. However, the Japanese were now a major presence, and would begin manufacturing cars in the US to get around tariffs. In 1986, Hyundai became the first Korean auto maker to enter the American market. In the same year, the Yugoslavian-built Yugo was brought to the US, but the car was so small and cheap, that it became the subject of jokes. It was sold up to 1991, when economic sanctions against Yugoslavia forced its withdrawal from the American market. As the decade progressed, cars became smaller and more efficient in design. In 1983, Ford design teams began to incorporate aerodynamic styling to decrease drag while in motion. The Thunderbird was one of the first cars to receive these design changes. In 1985, Ford released the Taurus with a design that was revolutionary among domestic mass market automobiles. General Motors began suffering significant losses in the late 1980s, partially the result of chairman Roger Smith's restructuring attempts, and partially because of increasingly dated cars. An example were customers who increasingly purchased European luxury cars rather than Cadillacs. In 1985, GM started Saturn (the first new American make since the Edsel), with the goal of producing high-quality import fighters. Production would not begin until 1990. Chrysler introduced its new compact, front-wheel drive K-cars in 1981. Under the leadership of Lee Iacocca, the company turned a profit again the following year, and by 1983 paid off its government loans. A succession of models using this automobile platform followed. The most significant were the minivans in 1984. These proved a to be popular and they would dominate the van market for more than a decade. In 1987, Chrysler purchased the Italian makes of Lamborghini and Maserati. In the same year, Chrysler bought AMC from Renault laying to rest the last significant independent U.S. automaker, but acquiring the hugely profitable Jeep line and continuing the Eagle brand until the late 1990s. The DMC DeLorean was the brainchild of John DeLorean, a flamboyant former GM executive. Production of the gull-winged sports car began in Northern Ireland in 1981. John DeLorean was arrested in October 1982 in a sting operation where he was attempting to sell cocaine to save his struggling company. He was acquitted of all charges in 1984, but too late for the DeLorean Motor Company, which closed down in 1983. The DeLorean gained renewed fame afterward as the time machine in the Back to the Future film trilogy. The imposition of CAFE fuel-mileage standards in 1979 spelled the end of big-block engines, but performance cars and convertibles reemerged in the 1980s. Turbochargers were widely used to boost the performance of small cars, and technology from fuel |
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