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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1965_French_presidential_election | 1965 French presidential election | Presidential elections were held in France on 5 December 1965, with a second round on 19 December. They were the first direct presidential elections in the Fifth Republic and the first since the Second Republic in 1848. It had been widely expected that incumbent president Charles de Gaulle would be re-elected, but the election was notable for the unexpectedly strong performance of his left-wing challenger François Mitterrand.
== Background ==
This was the second presidential election since the beginning of the Fifth Republic. Under the first draft of the 1958 constitution, the president was to be elected by an electoral college, in order to appease concerns about de Gaulle's allegedly authoritarian or Bonapartist tendencies. There had been a historical reluctance in France to have a directly elected president, because Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte (the winner of the 1848 presidential election) had seized power in the 1851 coup d'état, before the end of his term. However, a direct presidential election had always been essential to de Gaulle's political vision, and he had it adopted by the 1962 referendum.
== Candidates ==
When the electoral campaign started, the majority of political commentators believed that de Gaulle would succeed in winning re-election in a single round. Many of the leaders of the opposition parties were therefore reluctant to challenge de Gaulle. Furthermore, some potential candidates such as former Prime Minister Pierre Mendès-France declined to run, due to their opposition to direct presidential elections. De Gaulle did not expect a significant challenger, announced his candidacy only one month before the first round of voting, and did not lead a very active campaign.
The centre-left paper L'Express campaigned for the nomination of a candidate of the non-Communist opposition. One potential challenger identified was Gaston Defferre, Mayor of Marseille and an internal opponent of the then leader of the French Section of the Workers' International (SFIO, socialist party), Guy Mollet. In his municipality, Defferre led a coalition composed of the SFIO, the Radical Party, and the centre-right Popular Republican Movement (MRP). Nevertheless, the leaders of these parties refused to support his candidacy.
The failure of Defferre's candidacy led to other politicians entering the race. The MRP leader Jean Lecanuet was nominated by his party and the National Centre of Independents and Peasants (CNIP) to represent the centre. He ran a liberal and pro-European campaign, influenced by John F. Kennedy, and criticizing the "archaism" and the "nationalism" of de Gaulle in a bid to rally younger and more moderate conservatives.
François Mitterrand, a former Fourth Republic minister who did not belong to any party, offered to run as the sole candidate of the left. Mitterrand had been an opponent to de Gaulle since 1958 (like the Communists but contrary to the SFIO leadership) and had written the book The Permanent Coup d'État, strongly criticising de Gaulle's policies. He obtained the support from several left-wing parties, including the French Communist Party (PCF), which wished to get out of its isolation.
== Results ==
Despite running a somewhat lacklustre campaign, de Gaulle won the first round by over three million votes. However, he came up short of a majority, forcing a runoff being held two weeks later, pitting him against Mitterrand. Tixier-Vignancour supported Mitterrand in the second round, Lecanuet called on his voters not to vote for de Gaulle. De Gaulle defeated Mitterrand by a decisive margin in the runoff. However, Mitterrand performed better than expected, one of the first warnings that de Gaulle's popularity was waning.
De Gaulle retained his Prime Minister Georges Pompidou but decided to carry out a cabinet reshuffle. He dismissed his Economy Minister Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, thus damaging relations in the majority coalition with Giscard's party, the Independent Republicans, the last allies of the Gaullists.
== Further reading ==
Williams, Philip M., David Goldey, and Martin Harrison. French politicians and elections 1951–1969 (Cambridge UP, 1970). |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habiba_Ghribi | Habiba Ghribi | Habiba Ghribi (Arabic: حبيبة الغريبي, born 9 April 1984) is a Tunisian middle- and long-distance runner who specialises in the 3000 metres steeplechase. She won the gold medal at the 2012 Summer Olympics, giving her country its first Olympic medal by a woman. She is also the Tunisian record holder in the event, having run 9:05.36 at the Memorial van Damme in Brussels in September 2015.
Ghribi competed at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships a number of times but found greater success on the track, winning a steeplechase silver at the 2006 African Championships in Athletics and a bronze in the 1500 metres at the 2009 Mediterranean Games. She represented Tunisia at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, finishing thirteenth in the first ever women's Olympic steeplechase race. In the 2016 Müller Anniversary Games, she won the women's 3000m steeplechase. She was voted the Best Sportswoman of 2009 by the Arabic daily newspaper Assahafa.
== Career ==
Ghribi began her career as a cross country runner and competed in the junior race at the 2000 IAAF World Cross Country Championships at the age of fifteen, finishing in 46th place (the second best of the Tunisian team). She competed in the senior short race in 2002, finishing in 76th. Ghribi competed at the 2002 African Championships in Athletics in Radès, Tunisia and ended up in 11th place in the 5000 metres final. Ghribi won the gold in the junior race at the 2002 Pan Arab Cross Country Championships. She also went back to the junior race in 2003 IAAF World Cross Country Championships, improving to 23rd place and heading the Tunisian team to 7th place overall. After modest finishes in the World Cross Country short race in the 2004 and 2005, she switched to focus on the 3000 m steeplechase on the track instead when it became a world championship event.
Ghribi took part in her first World Championships in Athletics at the 2005 Helsinki Championships and finished eighth in her heat, not managing to qualify for the women's final but setting a personal best and Tunisian record of 9:51.49 nevertheless. She gained her first major medal in the event the following year, taking the silver medal at the 2006 African Championships in Athletics behind world medallist Jeruto Kiptum
Ghribi's next major competition was the 2008 Beijing Olympics. This was the first time that the Olympics had held a women's steeplechase competition and she greatly improved her record to 9:25.50 in the Olympic heats, but was a little slower in the final and finished 13th overall.
Ghribi competed at a number of major events in 2009, starting with her first ever long race at the 2009 IAAF World Cross Country Championships where she finished in 41st place. After this she ran in the 1500 metres at the 2009 Mediterranean Games and achieved a personal best of 4:12.37 on her way to a bronze medal. She made her second world steeplechase appearance at the 2009 World Championships in Athletics and further improved her best by a significant amount in the World final. Her time of 9:12.52 took her up to sixth place. Ghribi closed the year with a performance at the 2009 IAAF World Athletics Final results, but she failed to finish the race.
In recognition of her achievements in 2009, Ghribi topped a poll organised by the Arabic language daily Assahafa and was named as the "Best Sportswoman in 2009" in Tunisia.
In September 2015 she ran a personal best, Tunisian national record, African record and the 4th fastest time ever of 9:05.36 at the Memorial van Damme in Brussels, Belgium.
In June 2016, Ghribi was officially named the 2012 Olympic champion in the women's 3000 m steeplechase, several months after the original gold medalist, Yuliya Zaripova of Russia, was disqualified due to a doping violation. As of December 2016, Ghribi was considering legal action to recover at least $38,000 in prize money that Zaripova had received at events from which she was later disqualified.
== Personal bests ==
All information taken from IAAF profile.
== Competition record ==
== Personal life ==
Habiba Ghribi married her coach, Khaled Boudhraa, who is of Algerian origin. She announced her divorce after the London Olympics. She later got engaged to athlete Bouabdellah Tahri. On September 30, 2017, Habiba Ghribi married Yassine Saya, a Tunisian businessman. She gave birth to a daughter, Alyssa, on May 2, 2019, in Canada.
== References ==
== External links ==
Habiba Ghribi at World Athletics |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rana_Ayyub | Rana Ayyub | Rana Ayyub (born 1 May 1984) is an Indian journalist and opinion columnist with The Washington Post. She is author of the investigative book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up.
== Background and family ==
Rana Ayyub was born in Mumbai, India. Her father Mohammad Ayyub Waqif, was a writer with Blitz, a Mumbai-based magazine, and a member of the progressive writers movement. Her uncle, Abdul Haq Azmi, was a distinguished scholar of Hadith and served as a senior professor at Darul Uloom Deoband.
She contracted polio at the age of five, leaving her left hand and right leg immobile, and eventually recovered from the disease. When Mumbai witnessed riots in 1992–93, Ayyub's father was warned by a Sikh friend that local men were coming after his daughters. Rana, nine at the time, fled with her sister to stay with the Sikh friend's relatives for three months before reuniting with their family in Deonar, a Muslim-majority suburb, which is where she largely grew up. Ayyub is a practising Muslim.
She graduated in English literature from Sophia College, Mumbai where she was a classmate of Richa Chada and Shuchi Talati.
== Career ==
=== Investigative journalist at Tehelka ===
Ayyub worked for Tehelka (lit. "commotion/uproar"), a Delhi-based investigative and political news magazine. By her own account, a report by her was instrumental in sending Amit Shah, a close associate of Narendra Modi, to jail for several months in 2010.
At Tehelka, Ayyub worked as an investigative journalist and her big assignment was to carry out the sting operation upon which her book Gujarat Files was based. At the end of the sting operation, the management of Tehelka refused to publish any story written by Rana or based on the data collected by her. Ayyub continued to work with Tehelka for several months more. In November 2013, her boss Tarun Tejpal, the editor-in-chief and major shareholder of Tehelka, was accused of sexual harassment by one of his journalist subordinates. Ayyub resigned from Tehelka in protest against the organisation's handling of the charge against Tejpal. She now works independently.
=== Opinions writer at The Washington Post ===
In September 2019, Washington Post nominated Ayyub as Contributing Global Opinions Writer with the paper.
In 2021, on the BBC show HARDtalk, Ayyub explained that she is in a position to express critical views about the government because she writes of international media, given that Indian media publications are censoring their journalists.
In October 2020, HarperCollins India published an open letter written by Ayyub, to protest the controversial appointment of Actor Gajendra Chauhan as the Chairman of Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), as part of the book Inquilab: A Decade of Protest which contains speeches, lectures and letters said to "capture the most important events and issues of the past ten years."
== Notable work ==
=== The Gujarat sting operation ===
As an investigative journalist working with Tehelka, Rana Ayyub took up a project to conduct a prolonged sting operation aimed at snaring politicians and government officials of Gujarat and get them to reveal any potential cover-ups regarding the Gujarat riots of 2002. Rana Posing as Maithili Tyagi, a filmmaker from the American Film Institute, and set about befriending her intended targets. She spent around ten months in disguise, and got paid a regular monthly salary from Tehelka during this period. However, at the end of the exercise, the management of Tehelka felt that the recordings which she had made over the months did not provide any new or sensational information, that the data gathered by her was of inadequate quality, and that they could not publish any story on the basis of the new data.
==== The book ====
In her book Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up, Ayyub documented the verbatim transcripts of recordings, made using a concealed recording device, of many bureaucrats and police officers of Gujarat. The recordings were made in the course of an undercover investigation to reveal the views of bureaucrats and police officers on encounter killings and the aftermath of the 2002 Gujarat violence. Ayyub had been posing as 'Maithili Tyagi', a student of the American Film Institute, having an ideological affinity for the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh's beliefs, to enable her to make the recordings.
==== Dispute with Tehelka ====
Tarun Tejpal and Shoma Chaudhury have disputed Ayyub's claim that her story on fake encounters in Gujarat, which was the result of an eight-month long undercover investigation, was dropped by them. According to Tejpal, Ayyub's story was "incomplete". According to Chaudhury, Ayyub's story "did not meet the necessary editorial standards." Ayyub has responded to Tejpal and Chaudhury's assertions by noting that:I must say I am not the only one to complain about dropped stories in Tehelka, the list is fairly big… Shoma Choudhury and Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka cited editorial decisions and gaps. The book is a bestseller and is getting rave reviews for its content. Let the reader be the judge.
==== Reception ====
Historian Ramachandra Guha had called Ayyub's Gujarat Files "a brave book." Jyoti Malhotra has noted that many journalists have privately applauded Ayyub's courage in authoring Gujarat Files. Priya Ramani has commented: "The abuses from the paid foot soldiers on Twitter bounce off her spiral curls smoothly." Reflecting on the procedure used by Ayyub in composing Gujarat Files, Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay has observed: "Going undercover and interviewing many who had been in the thick of gruesome extra-constitutional operations required bravado and this must be appreciated."
Ayyub's investigation of the alleged Gujarat fake encounters has been listed by Outlook magazine as one of the twenty greatest magazine stories of all time across the world.
In 2018, Ayyub was awarded the "most Resilient Global journalist" by Dutch non-profit Free Press Unlimited for resisting attempts to stifle her work.
In the Haren Pandya murder case, the Supreme Court of India dismissed Rana Ayyub's book, stating that "it is based upon surmises, conjectures, and suppositions and has no evidentiary value." Ayyub termed the court's comments "puzzling", stating that the CBI had used her work as evidence in other related cases, and noting that no officer or bureaucrat had denied her claims or taken her to court.
=== Reporting from Kashmir ===
In 2019, Ayyub accompanied Dexter Filkins from The New Yorker on a trip to Kashmir to report on the violence by the government towards the Kashmiri population following the revocation of the special status of Kashmir by the Modi-led Indian government. Their report of torture inflicted on the Kashmiri population, including minors, sharply contrasted with official accounts from the Indian state and state media, which portrayed the region as calm. Prior to their report, the Indian government’s claims could not be verified due to a full communication blackout and a de facto curfew imposed in Kashmir.
== Controversies ==
=== Judicial proceedings ===
In February 2022, Ayyub received scrutiny after the Enforcement Directorate (ED) locked assets worth over ₹1.77 crore of hers. This was done in relation to a money laundering case filed against her, for allegedly embezzling funds she acquired from the public in the name of charity. ED stated that Ayyub had transferred those funds to other accounts for personal spendings.
The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) in Mumbai has pointed out that only 10 per cent of the COVID relief funds were used for relief work, and the rest of the funds were transferred to her father's and sister's accounts and then transferred again to her personal account.
The money laundering charges against Ayyub have been described as sham charges by international observers. According to commentators, the money laundering allegations are part of a broader campaign by the Indian authorities aimed at intimidating Ayyub and silencing her criticism of Modi's government.
FIR was filed against Ayyub in Dharwad due to her alleged comments against anti-hijab protestors as Hindu terrorists.
In 2022, UN experts have called on the Indian government to stop the judicial harassment against Ayyub, that included twice freezing Ayyub's bank account. The experts labelled the accusations related to the funds raised by Ayyub for pandemic relief work as "the bogus allegations [that] can be traced back to a far-right social media group."
== Awards and recognition ==
In October 2011, Rana Ayyub received the Sanskriti award for excellence in journalism.
The 'Citation of Excellence' was conferred to Rana Ayyub in the 2017 edition of the Global Shining Light Award for her undercover investigation revealing state's top officials’ complicity during the 2002 Gujarat Riots.
Actress Richa Chadda claimed to have been inspired by Rana Ayyub, who is also her friend, in 2016 film Chalk n Duster, where she plays a journalist.
In 2018, Ayyub was awarded the Most Resilient Journalist Award by Free Press Unlimited for continuing her work "despite being harassed both online and offline and receiving death threats."
In 2019, Ayyub has been listed as one of ten global journalists who face maximum threats to their lives by the Time magazine.
In February 2020, Ayyub was awarded with McGill Medal for journalistic courage at University of Georgia's Grady College.
Ayyub is the 2020 Voices of Courage and Conscience Awardee from the Muslim Public Affairs Council of America.
In 2021, Ayyub received the Excellence in International Journalism and Human Rights Award by Texas Tech University College of Media and Communication.
In 2021, Ayyub was awarded the Overseas Press Club Award for best commentary on international news for her op-eds in The Washington Post.
On 28 June 2022, Ayyub was awarded the International John Aubuchon Award by the National Press Club.
On 23 October 2024, Ayyub was awarded Canadian Journalists for Free Expression (CJFE) International Press Freedom Award.
== Threats ==
Online violence against Ayyub is primarily driven by Twitter users aligned with Hindu nationalism and the ruling BJP. An International Center for Journalists (ICFJ) report found that Twitter has failed to address the abuse against her while withholding some of her tweets at the demand of the Indian Government. As per ICFJ's analysis, Ayyub receives abuse within 14 seconds of posting a tweet.
In 2018, Ayyub was at the receiving end of multiple death and rape threats on twitter. Her personal details were made public and a deepfake pornographic video was released. In April 2018 she filed a complaint with Delhi Police, who subsequently decided to close the case in August 2020 saying that "despite efforts the culprits could not be identified yet."
Several United Nations Special Rapporteurs, associated with the Human Rights Council have intervened in her case three times, warned of the "serious risk" to her life, and called on the authorities in India to "act urgently to protect" her from death threats following an online hate campaign. The US State department's 2020 Human Rights Report specifically mentions the online trolling and death threats faced by Ayyub. In its report documenting online attacks against journalists around the world, the international non-profit Reporters Without Borders discussed the hate speech unleashed against Ayyub and called on the government and Delhi police to protect her.
In 2022, Trads (members of Hindu nationalist alt-right groups) had created Bulli Bai, an app for fake online auction of Muslim women in India with intention to denigrate and harass the minorities. Ayyub and several prominent women journalists in India were targeted. They were also targeted with thousands of hate messages by the secret app Tek Fog allegedly used by the BJP supporters. The app was used to spread right wing propaganda online.
in November 2024, Ayyub was doxxed, and her phone number was leaked by a right-wing account on X. As a result, she received hundreds of calls and messages and states that she received no respite despite filing a complaint with the police.
In November 2025, Ayyub received threats of violence against her and her father from an unknown international number. Rana claimed that these threats were made to intimidate her into writing a column on the 1984 anti-Sikh riots that occurred after the assassination of Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Rana Ayyub at Wikimedia Commons
Rana Ayyub on Twitter
Rana Ayyub at Washington Post |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chris_Ngige | Chris Ngige | Chris Nwabueze Ngige (born 8 August 1952) is a Nigerian politician and medical doctor who served as minister of Labour and Employment of Nigeria under President Muhammadu Buhari's administration from 2015 to 2023. He was elected Senator for Anambra Central Constituency in April 2011. He was the governor of Anambra State in Nigeria from May 2003 to March 2006 under the People's Democratic Party (PDP).
== Background ==
A medical doctor by profession, Ngige graduated from the University of Nigeria-Nsukka in 1979. Chris immediately went into the civil service, serving at the National Assembly and state house clinics at different times. He retired in 1998 as a deputy director in the Federal Ministry of Health.
== Political career ==
Dr. Chris Nwabueze Ngige entered politics, becoming a member of the People's Democratic Party (PDP). In 1999, he was Assistant National Secretary and Zonal Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the South East region of Nigeria.
In 2003, he was elected governor of Anambra State in controversial circumstances. He quickly broke ranks with his political godfather, Chris Uba the brother of Andy Uba, after an unsuccessful attempt on 10 July 2003 to have him removed from office, through a fabricated letter of resignation which the state assembly accepted. In August, 2006, an Election Tribunal led by Justice Nabaruma nullified Ngige's 2003 victory. He appealed to the Nigerian Federal Court of Appeal, but the annulment was confirmed on 15 March 2006, in a judgment awarding victory to Peter Obi of the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA). No further appeals were possible, and Ngige accepted the judgment in good faith, calling on the people of Anambra to give their support to his successor.
Following Peter Obi's subsequent impeachment, Ngige attempted to participate in state governorship elections in April 2007, but was frustrated by the Independent National Electoral Commission and federal 'disqualification', even after a Federal High Court had voided the disqualification. In the final event, Obi's impeachment was overturned anyway, and Obi served out his four years. At the time, Ngige was also severely criticized for appearing naked at the dreaded Okija voodoo shrine during his campaign to be made governor.
On 6 February 2010, Ngige again contested for the governorship of Anambra State. Other notable politicians who contested with him included Andy Uba, Charles Soludo, Nicholas Ukachukwu, Mrs. Uche Ekwunife, Ralph Nwosu, and the incumbent governor, Peter Obi. In all, there were 25 candidates for that election. Peter Obi won that election and started his second term as the governor of Anambra State.
In April 2011, Ngige ran for election for senator of Anambra Central, on the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) platform. After voting problems in some areas of the constituency on 9 April, the election in these areas was held on 25 April and Ngige was declared the winner over former Minister of Information and Communications Professor Dora Akunyili of the APGA, with 69,765 votes to Akunyili's 69,292.
Ngige's tenure as a senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria ended following his defeat in the 2015 election by Hon. Mrs Uche Ekwunife who was sworn in as the senator representing Anambra Central Senatorial District in the 8th National Assembly of Nigeria.
On 11 November 2015, Ngige was named minister of Labour and Employment by President Muhammadu Buhari. In 2019, Chris Ngige was nominated by President Muhammadu Buhari as a returning minister for screening by the National Assembly. On 21 August 2019, he was sworn in by the president as the Minister of Labour and Employment.
On 19 April 2022, Ngige declared interest to run for the post of the President of the Republic of Nigeria under the All Progressive Congress (APC)'s banner. The experienced politician, who had served as Governor of Anambra State, Senator and Minister described himself as "jack of all trade and masters of all".
== Controversies and fraud allegations ==
=== Electoral and political controversies ===
Ngige's 2003 election as Governor of Anambra State was controversial. His victory was later nullified in March 2006 by the Court of Appeal, which declared Peter Obi of the APGA the rightful winner. He accepted the ruling. A 2012 profile also noted his election was annulled by the courts on grounds of "electoral malpractice".
=== 2025 fraud charges and arraignment ===
On 12 December 2025, Ngige was arraigned before the Federal Capital Territory High Court in Gwarinpa, Abuja, on an eight-count charge filed by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC). The charges relate to his tenure as the supervising minister of the Nigeria Social Insurance Trust Fund (NSITF) between September 2015 and May 2023. The EFCC alleges Ngige used his position to confer unfair advantages on companies linked to his associates by awarding contracts. The charges are brought under Sections 19 and 17(a) of the Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Act, 2000.
Ngige is separately accused of corruptly accepting monetary gifts totaling ₦119.78 million from these contractors. The funds were allegedly funneled through entities named the "Dr Chris Nwabueze Ngige Campaign Organisation" and the "Senator (Dr) Chris Ngige Scholarship Scheme".
Ngige pleaded not guilty to all charges.
== See also ==
Cabinet of Nigeria
List of governors of Anambra State
== References ==
== External links ==
Official Nuhu Ribadu for President campaign website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_Biwott | Nicholas Biwott | Nicholas Kipyator Kiprono arap Biwott (22 February 1940 – 11 July 2017) was a Kenyan businessman, politician, and philanthropist, who worked in the governments of the fathers of Kenyan independence, Jomo Kenyatta and Daniel arap Moi. He held eight senior civil servant and ministerial positions that included Minister of State (1979–82), Minister of Energy (1984-1985, 1990), Minister of East African and Regional Co-operation (1998–99) and Minister of Regional Development, Science, and Technology (1982).
Biwott was widely regarded as one of the most powerful and competent ministers of president Moi's government. He was also at the forefront of efforts to deepen regional cooperation. Former president Uhuru Kenyatta eulogised Biwott as a "patriot and diligent leader, who spent decades building schools and hospitals and spearheading every other kind of development including marketing Kenya abroad".
== Early life ==
Biwott was born in Tot, Chebior village, Elgeyo-Marakwet District in the Rift Valley Province of British Kenya, on 22 February 1940 to Maria Soti and Joseph Cheserem Soti, a market trader and cattle herder in Eldoret. He attended Tambach Intermediate School from 1951 to 1954, after which he joined Kapsabet High School.
After finishing secondary school in 1959, Biwott began working at the Department of Information in Eldoret, after which he published the Kalenjin monthly newsletter with Kendagor Bett.
He attended the University of Melbourne, Australia, from 1962 to 1964, where he earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and Political Science, as well as a Diploma in Public Administration.
Biwott then served as a District Officer in Nkubu in the South Imenti Division of Meru District from 1964 to 1965, returning to the University of Melbourne in 1966 to study for a master's degree in Economics under a Commonwealth scholarship.
== Political career ==
Biwott was a member of parliament for 28 years. In 1974, he ran unsuccessfully as a prospective MP for the Keiyo South Constituency. At the next election (1979), he was successful, standing on KANU ticket in Keiyo-Marakwet, retaining the seat in 1983 and 1988. In 1992, 1997, and 2002 he was elected the MP for Keiyo South Constituency. In the Parliamentary elections held on 27 December 2007, running on a KANU ticket, he lost his seat to Jackson Kiptanui Arap Kamai of the Orange Democratic Party (ODM). The ODM swept to victory in all but one of KANU's seats on the Rift Valley.
Following the 2002 election, Biwott served on the Devolution Committee of the Constitution of Kenya Review Commission. Biwott was the only Member of Parliament who abstained on the Constitutional Referendum held in 2005, stating that the Draft Constitution 'would divide the country along ethnic lines'. The draft Constitution was rejected at the Referendum.
In 2005, Biwott contested for the leadership of the Kenya African National Union (KANU), the former ruling party founded by the late Mzee Kenyatta, but lost the post to Uhuru Kenyatta following a decision by the Kenyan High Court.
== Service in government of Kenya ==
=== District Officer ===
Biwott entered government service in 1965 as the District Officer, in South Imenti and Tharaka, Meru District (January 1965–66). As District Officer Biwott instituted, on a 'harambee' basis, community fundraising programmes to aid the development of local irrigation projects and roads, to build a health centre at Nkwene and schools at Nkubu and Kanyakine, develop employment at the Igoji quarries and promote the planting of coffee and tea. He was also actively involved in the resettlement of previously European owned land through the 'Land Transfer' programme, part of the 'Million Acres' scheme, and played a central role in the rehabilitation of the Mau Mau, many of whom still remained in the Mau Forest four years after the end of the 'Emergency', helping to persuade them to give up violence and organising the resettlement of many on to their own land.
=== Ministry of Agriculture ===
Having completed his master's degree in Australia in 1968, Nicholas Biwott returned to public service in the Ministry of Agriculture, GOK, Personal Assistant to Minister Bruce MacKenzie (1968–70). He coordinated cereal production, the marketing of cereal crops and the management of the Ministry's fertiliser policy, and helped develop research into new strains of wheat and maize more suited to the growing conditions in Kenya. He played a similar co-ordinating role for the Ministry's work with the East African Council of Ministers (MacKenzie was also a member of the council), guiding Kenya's policy in the region in the development of ports, railways and the East African Airways.
=== Treasury ===
In 1971 Nicholas Biwott moved to the Treasury as Senior Secretary under the Minister of Finance and Economic Planning, Mwai Kibaki. In 1972, he created and headed the External Aid Division and technical assistance program dealing with external resources, bringing in experts and arranging cultural exchanges. Notably, he helped facilitate the establishment of the French School in Nairobi (now called the Lycee Denis Diderot), the French Cultural Centre with the Alliance de Francais, and the German Friederich Ebert Stiftung Foundation in co-operation with the Goethe Institut.
=== Ministry of Home Affairs ===
In late 1978, Nicholas Biwott transferred to the Ministry of Home Affairs on the personal recommendation of President Kenyatta to work with his vice-president and the Minister of Home Affairs, Daniel arap Moi.
In 1974, Biwott stood as a candidate for the Keiyo South constituency in the general election of that year but was narrowly defeated.
Following the 1974 election, Nicholas Biwott was recalled to the Ministry of Home Affairs as Under Secretary (1974–78) to Minister Daniel arap Moi, Kenya's vice-president. With the ageing President Kenyatta unable to fulfil all the functions of the presidency, Moi took a leading role in the East African region with the result that Nicholas Biwott spent much of the next four years dealing with the Organisation of African Unity, the Commonwealth, the 'non-aligned' states and promoting the 'good neighbourliness' policy with states bordering Kenya.
Kenyatta's death in 1978 saw Daniel arap Moi elevated to the presidency and Nicholas Biwott promoted to Deputy Permanent Secretary in the Office of the President (1978–79).
=== Minister of State ===
Following the election of 1979 (in which he was elected Member of Parliament for 1979 Keiyo South election, a seat he retained until December 2007), Nicholas Biwott returned to the Office of the President but now promoted to Minister of State (1979–82) with responsibility for science and technology, cabinet affairs, land settlement, and immigration.
Under his auspices the Kenya Medical Research Institute was established in the same year to carry out health science research in Kenya. (Now in its 31st year, KEMRI continues its work as "a leading centre of excellence in the promotion of quality health").
=== Minister of Regional Development, Science and Technology ===
In September 1982, he was appointed Minister of Regional Development, Science, and Technology. Learning from examples of other regional development policies, notably in Australia and Tennessee in the US, he created two regional development authorities, the Lake Basin Development Authority and the Kerio Valley Development Authority.
=== Minister of Energy ===
In September 1983, Nicholas Biwott was made Minister of Energy and Regional Development and in March 1988 (following a reorganisation of ministry portfolios) he became Minister of Energy, a post he held until January 1991.
Over the next seven years, he was instrumental in establishing the National Oil Corporation, the building of National Oil storage facilities near Nairobi and connecting them to the Mombasa refinery, and extending the pipeline from Nairobi to Kisumu and Eldoret. This period that saw rapid advances in efforts to improve Kenya's electricity supply and delivery with a rural electrification programme, work beginning on the Sondu Miriu Dam, and the completions of the Masinga Multi Purpose Dam, the Kiambere Hydro Electric Dam and the Turkwell Hydro Electric Multi Purpose Dam.
=== Minister of East African and Regional Co-operation ===
Although he remained a member of parliament, Biwott held no position in the Government of Kenya from 1991 until he re-entered government as Minister of State in the Office of the President of East Africa in 1997 before, in January 1998, he established and was appointed Minister of the new Ministry of East African and Regional Co-operation (1998–99).
Nicholas Biwott played a central role in COMESA – the Common Market for East and Central Africa, co-ordinating with COMESA partner Ministers legislation for an East African Road network, legislation for an East African Legislative Assembly, and becoming Chairman of both COMESA and of the East Africa Council of Ministers.
=== Minister of Trade and Industry, Tourism and East African Cooperation ===
In September 1999, Biwott's ministerial portfolio was expanded when he became Minister of Trade and Industry, Tourism, and East African Cooperation (1999–2001), a post he held for the next three years during which he established a Tourist Trust Fund with the European Union, set up the Tourist Police and re-introduced the East Africa Safari Rallies.
Biwott's promotion of Kenyan tourism met with some praise. He was variously described as "the hardest working minister of tourism Kenya has ever had" and as "the best minister of tourism in 25 years".
In May 2001, (following a further reorganisation of Ministry responsibilities) Nicholas Biwott continued as the Minister of Trade and Industry and East African Tourism (2001–02). Over the next eighteen months he established the Small Medium Trade Trust Fund with the European Union, introduced an Intellectual Property bill which was passed as an Act, accomplished a free trade area with COMESA, established the Africa Trade Insurance Agency to cover foreign investments against political risk, and served as Chairman of the African Caribbean Pacific Group (ACP) at the World Trade Organization.
== Businessman ==
Biwott led an active business life and was regarded as one of Kenya's most successful entrepreneurs.
As a teenager in the late 1950s, Biwott worked alongside his father who had established a successful fruit and vegetable business in Eldoret. The young Biwott also borrowed small amounts of money from a local bank with which to expand his own business sideline selling meat products and eggs. Nicholas Biwott continued to expand his own business and in the late 1960s formed ABC Foods selling food and animal feed products.
Within a few years, Nicholas Biwott was able to invest in farms and businesses, taking advantage of the post-independence banking policies at the time by which Kenyans were granted loans on favourable terms. In 1969, aged 29, Biwott purchased the Eldoret Town International Harvester (IH) dealership (now FMD trading as Lima Ltd). He also purchased a dairy farm in the same year, started an importer exporter business in 1972, purchased two wheat farms in 1974, invested in the sole agency for IH in Kenya for agricultural tractors and implements in 1975, and purchased a local air operator in 1977 (now Air Kenya).
Biwott's business philosophy of purchasing small or failing businesses, investing and re-investing in them over many years, appears to have paid dividends. He is now regarded as one of Kenya's wealthiest businessmen.
Biwott's businesses in Kenya employ thousands of people and one company of which he is the major shareholder, has for many years been listed among Kenya's top 10 corporate taxpayers.
== Philanthropy ==
Mr Biwott supported a number of projects in the areas of education, health and medicine, and assisting small businesses. In 2008, he established the Mbegu Trust 'to develop education and opportunity in Kenya'.
Nicholas Biwott took a personal and active role in the development of education in Kenya, particularly the education of girls, through the building of numerous schools. These included the Maria Soti Educational Centre a model school for girls from all backgrounds built as a tribute to his mother, as well as the Biwott Secondary School.
Biwott also played an active role in raising funds for the building of many other colleges and educational projects, and was the founder and patron of the Keiyo South Education Foundation that provides bursaries to needy students for primary and secondary education.
Health and Medical Services
Nicholas Biwott led the development of multiple health and medical service projects, including at least two sub-district hospitals, three health centres and eight dispensaries.
For many years, he also worked for and supported the National Fund for the Disabled of Kenya, of which from 1980 he was a member and trustee of the Management Committee, and the Advocacy, Publicity and Fundraising Committee, and ultimately its chairman.
== Controversy ==
Nicholas Biwott's name is raised by political detractors regarding several controversies, largely dating to the years 1989–92. His supporters maintain that the allegations, none of which have ever been proved, arose from the campaign at the time to introduce multi-party democracy in Kenya coupled with Biwott's association with President Moi.
The most serious of the allegations surrounding Biwott is the fact of his being named as a person of interest by Scotland Yard detective John Troon in his final report on the 1990 murder of Kenya's Foreign Affairs Minister Robert Ouko. Troon's basis for naming Biwott in his final report on the Ouko murder was based on statements by two witnesses: Marianne Brinner-Mattern and Dominico Airgahi. The testimony of these witnesses has since come under scrutiny.
Marianne Brinner-Mattern and Dominico Airgahi were directors of a company known as ‘BAK Group’. In 1987, ‘BAK Group’ had been awarded a contract by the Kenyan Government to revamp a Molasses plant in Kisumu, Kenya. The contract was terminated before Ouko’s death because of the company’s failure to raise bilateral funding and to conduct an agreed-upon feasibility study. The study was subsequently awarded to US company F.C. Schaffer who were nominated and paid for by the US Embassy and USAID under the leadership of Dalmas Otieno, the then Minister of Industry since assuming the ministry from Dr Robert Ouko.
Before Ouko’s murder, the ‘BAK Group’ were claiming $150,000 in damages from the Kenyan Government on the grounds of an unfair contract termination. After Ouko’s death, their damages claim on the Kenyan Government rose to $5.975 million. As it later emerged, while Airaghi and Briner-Mattern were dealing with the Kenya Government, Airaghi was on bail having been convicted of fraud and extortion by a court in Milan in 1987. Briner-Mattern had been a key witness in that court hearing; the Milanese judge presiding said of her witness testimony that it was best to draw a “compassionate veil” over her statements, further commenting on her “unreliability” as a witness.
Ten government officials, including Biwott, were held in police custody for questioning for two weeks in November 1991, but a Kenyan Police investigation concluded that there was no 'evidence to support the allegations that Biwott was involved in the disappearance and subsequent death of the late minister Dr. Robert John Ouko'.
In December 2003, Biwott issued a formal complaint against New Scotland Yard through his lawyer on the basis that Troon's investigation was 'fundamentally flawed and, in many cases erroneous' and called on New Scotland Yard 'to investigate Troon and to issue an apology. The request was ultimately turned down in December 2004 by the Metropolitan Police as the original investigation 'did not involve a citizen of the United Kingdom, potential suspect, or even witnesses', and because 'the resources of the Metropolitan Police are limited'. Another reason given for the refusal by the Metropolitan Police to review the case was that the Kenyan Parliamentary Select Committee (PSC) was investigating the death of Dr Robert Ouko and that it was 'open to Mr Biwott to make any representations he wishes to that Inquiry'.
The Select Committee's proceedings, however, were abruptly terminated as Nicholas Biwott began to give his testimony. The PSC led by Gor Sunguh would not allow the cross-examination of witnesses by Nicholas Biwott’s lawyers. Some members of the Committee decided they could not continue serving on the Committee. Six members – Paul Muite, Mirugi Kariuki, Dr Abdulahi Ali, Njoki S. Ndung’u and Otieno Kajwang – resigned during its hearings. Four others left to take up other appointments. New members were appointed to the Committee. At the end there were 10 members, of which four did not sign Sungu’s report.
Parliament in 2005 refused to consider Sungu’s report. It was tabled again on December 8, 2010, but was rejected by Members of parliament for being “shoddy” and for having been used “to settle political scores”.
=== Defamation ===
In 2000, High Court Judge Alnashir Visram awarded Mr Biwott a record damages of Sh30 million, the biggest settlement in a defamation case in Kenya. Biwott was awarded the Sh30 million damages after he sued a British journalist, Chester Stern, and others for linking him to the Ouko murder in a book entitled 'Dr Iain West's Casebook'. Chester Stern and the book's publishers, Little Brown, stated that they would "vigorously defend" the action but ultimately they did not do so and the case was uncontested.
Judge Visram ruled that author and pathologist lain West and journalist Chester Stern, the book’s co-authors, pay KES 15 million in compensatory damages and another KES 15 million in exemplary damages. Bookpoint and Bookstop, popular Nairobi bookshops, also paid Biwott 10 million in damages for stocking copies of the book Dr Ian West's Casebook.
A number of local dailies were also sued by Biwott over the coverage of this defamatory story. In March of 2002, Kalamaka Ltd., the publisher of the People Daily newspaper, was found guilty of the “unmitigated and defenceless character assassination” of Mr. Biwott. Biwott was awarded Kshs 20 million in damages.
Biwott's case is said to have contributed to the development of defamation law in Kenya. Biwott's case was referenced in 2005 in a defamation and libel case filed by former Chief Justice Evans Gicheru. Gicheru had sued Andrew Morton, author of a biography on the president "Moi -The making of an African statesman" and the publisher Michael O Mara Books.
== Death, memorial and funeral ==
On the morning of 11 July 2017, Biwott died of complications arising from kidney failure at the Nairobi hospital.
A memorial service was held at Milimani AIC on 18 July 2017. On the 20th of July, a second memorial service was held at the Maria Soti Girls Educational Centre Kaptarakwa, in Keiyo, Elgeyo/Marakwet County. Over 20,000 people attended his memorial services.
In the final speech of the funeral, President Uhuru Kenyatta eulogized the late Biwott as a "true patriot".
"When the history of this country is written, it will include many men and women in this country who quietly but firmly and confidently are responsible for what Kenya is today – a sound country, a stable country with a growing economy. And Nicholas Biwott is one of those people."
Nicholas Biwott was buried in a wooden casket contrary to some misleading information that circulated in the Kenyan social media space prior to his burial, alleging that he would be buried in a gold coffin.
References
Cohen, David William & Odhiambo, E. S. Atieno (2004). The Risks of Knowledge: Investigations into the Death of the Hon. Minister John Robert Ouko in Kenya, 1990. Ohio University Press. ISBN 0-8214-1597-2. Ohio University
== External links ==
Parliament.go.ke
Nicholas Biwott: Kenya's power broker
Hon.Nicholas Biwott 1940-2017 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Bachelor_(American_TV_series)_season_1 | The Bachelor (American TV series) season 1 | The Bachelor was the first season of ABC reality television series The Bachelor. The show featured 31-year-old Alex Michel, a Harvard educated management consultant from Charlottesville, Virginia. The season premiered on March 25, 2002, and concluded on April 25, 2002 with Michel choosing to pursue a relationship with 23-year-old event planner Amanda Marsh. They broke up several months later.
== Contestants ==
The following is the list of bachelorettes for this season:
=== Future appearances ===
Trista Rehn was chosen to be the Bachelorette for the first season of The Bachelorette. Shannon Oliver appeared in episode 3 of the first season of The Bachelorette to give Trista advice.
Amy Anzel appeared in Trista's wedding mini-series and would go on to act in several projects, most notably having a role in Kick Ass 2. She also competed in the UK version of The Apprentice in 2022.
== Elimination Chart ==
The contestant won the competition.
The contestant was eliminated at the rose ceremony.
== Episodes ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_highest_mountains_on_Earth | List of highest mountains on Earth | There are at least 108 mountains on Earth with elevations of 7,200 m (23,622 ft; 4 mi) or greater above sea level. Of these, 14 are more than 8,000 m (26,247 ft; 5 mi). The vast majority of these mountains are part of either the Himalayas or the Karakoram mountain ranges located on the edge of the Indian Plate and Eurasian Plate in China, India, Nepal, and Pakistan.
== Discussion ==
The dividing line between a mountain with multiple peaks and separate mountains is not always clear (see also Highest unclimbed mountain). A popular and intuitive way to distinguish mountains from subsidiary peaks is by their height above the highest saddle connecting it to a higher summit, a measure called topographic prominence or re-ascent (the higher summit is called the "parent peak"). A common definition of a mountain is a summit with 300 m (984 ft) prominence. Alternatively, a relative prominence (prominence/height) is used (usually 7–8%) to reflect that in higher mountain ranges everything is on a larger scale. The table below lists the highest 100 summits with at least 500 m (1,640 ft) prominence, approximating a 7% relative prominence. A drawback of a prominence-based list is that it may exclude well-known or spectacular mountains that are connected via a high ridge to a taller summit, such as Eiger, Nuptse or Annapurna IV. A few such peaks and mountains with nearly sufficient prominence are included in this list, and given a rank of "S".
It is very unlikely that all given heights are correct to the nearest metre; indeed, the sea level is often problematic to define when a mountain is remote from the sea. Different sources often differ by many metres, and the heights given below may well differ from those elsewhere in this encyclopedia. As an extreme example, Ulugh Muztagh on the north Tibetan Plateau is often listed as 7,723 m (25,338 ft) to 7,754 m (25,440 ft), but appears to be only 6,973 m (22,877 ft) to 6,987 m (22,923 ft). Some mountains differ by more than 100 m (330 ft) on different maps, while even very thorough current measurements of Mount Everest range from 8,840 m (29,003 ft) to 8,849 m (29,032 ft). These discrepancies serve to emphasize the uncertainties in the listed heights.
Though some parts of the world, especially the most mountainous parts, have never been thoroughly mapped, it is unlikely that any mountains this high have been overlooked, because synthetic aperture radar can and has been used to measure elevations of most otherwise inaccessible places. Still, heights or prominences may be revised, so that the order of the list may change and even new mountains could enter the list over time. To be safe, the list has been extended to include all 7,200 m (23,622 ft) peaks.
The highest mountains above sea level are generally not the highest mountains above the surrounding terrain, also called the highest free-standing mountains. There is no precise definition of surrounding base, but Denali, Mount Kilimanjaro and Nanga Parbat are possible candidates for the tallest mountain on land by this measure.
The bases of mountain islands are below sea level, and given this consideration. Mauna Kea (4,207 m (13,802 ft) above sea level) is the world's tallest mountain and volcano, rising about 10,203 m (33,474 ft) from the Pacific Ocean floor. Mount Lamlam on Guam is periodically claimed to be among the world's highest mountains because it is adjacent to the Mariana Trench; the most extreme claim is that, measured from Challenger Deep 313 kilometres (194 mi) away, Mount Lamlam is 11,530 metres (37,820 ft) tall. Ojos del Salado has the greatest rise on Earth: 13,420 m (44,029 ft) vertically to the summit from the bottom of the Atacama Trench, which is about 560 km (350 mi) away, although most of this rise is not part of the mountain.
The highest mountains are also not generally the most voluminous. Mauna Loa (4,169 m or 13,678 ft) is the largest mountain on Earth in terms of base area (about 5,200 km2 or 2,000 sq mi) and volume (about 42,000 km3 or 10,000 cu mi), although, due to the intergrade of lava from Kilauea, Hualalai and Mauna Kea, the volume can only be estimated based on surface area and height of the edifice. Mount Kilimanjaro is the largest non-shield volcano in terms of both base area (635 km2 or 245 sq mi) and volume (4,793 km3 or 1,150 cu mi). Mount Logan is the largest non-volcanic mountain in base area (311 km2 or 120 sq mi).
The highest mountains above sea level are also not those with peaks farthest from the centre of the Earth, because the shape of the Earth is not spherical. Sea level closer to the equator is several kilometres farther from the centre of the Earth. The summit of Chimborazo, Ecuador's tallest mountain, is usually considered to be the farthest point from the Earth's centre, although the southern summit of Peru's tallest mountain, Huascarán, is another contender. Both have elevations above sea level more than 2 km (1.2 mi) less than that of Everest.
== Geographical distribution ==
Almost all mountains in the list are located in the Himalaya and Karakoram ranges to the south and west of the Tibetan plateau. All peaks 7,000 m (22,966 ft) or higher are located in East, Central or South Asia in a rectangle edged by Noshaq (7,492 m or 24,580 ft) on the Afghanistan–Pakistan border in the west, Jengish Chokusu (Tuōmù'ěr Fēng, 7,439 m or 24,406 ft) on the Kyrgyzstan–Xinjiang border to the north, Gongga Shan (Minya Konka, 7,556 m or 24,790 ft) in Sichuan to the east, and Kabru (7,412 m or 24,318 ft) on the Sikkim–Nepal border to the south.
As of November 2025, the highest peaks on four of the mountains—Gangkhar Puensum, Labuche Kang III, Tongshanjiabu and Apsarasas Kangri, all located in India, Bhutan or China—have not been ascended. The most recent peak to have its first ever ascent is Karjiang, in China, on 13 August 2024.
The highest mountain outside of Asia is Aconcagua (6,961 m or 22,838 ft), the 189th highest in the world.
== List of highest peaks ==
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
List of mountain ranges of the world
List of tallest mountains in the Solar System
Olympus Mons, the tallest mountain on any planet in the Solar System
Rheasilvia crater's central peak, the tallest mountain in the Solar System
List of elevation extremes by country
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Sources ==
== External links ==
SummitPost.org (currently with detailed description of 30 of the top 100 peaks)
Prominence lists (including all mountains in the world with >1,450m prominence)
Alpine Club Himalayan index (Especially informative for history of ascents and location of obscure peaks)
BlankontheMap site on mountains of Northern Kashmir (in French)
Hispar area: expedition reports and maps
List of highest mountains down to 6750 metres |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_U.S._Figure_Skating_Championships | 2016 U.S. Figure Skating Championships | The 2016 Prudential U.S. Figure Skating Championships were held from January 15–24 in Saint Paul, Minnesota at the Xcel Energy Center and Bloomington Ice Garden. Medals were awarded in the disciplines of men's singles, ladies singles, pair skating, and ice dancing at the senior, junior, novice, intermediate, and juvenile levels. The results were part of the U.S. selection criteria for the 2016 Four Continents, 2016 World Junior Championships, and the 2016 World Championships.
The host was announced in November 2012.
== Qualifying ==
Competitors qualified at regional and sectional competitions held from October to November 2015.
Following sectional competitions, U.S. Figure Skating published a list of skaters who had qualified or earned a bye. Skaters who subsequently withdrew included Jason Brown, Jordan Moeller, Joshua Farris, Richard Dornbush, and Lydia Erdman / Alexey Shchepetov.
== Medal summary ==
=== Senior ===
=== Junior ===
=== Novice ===
=== Intermediate ===
=== Juvenile ===
== Senior results ==
=== Senior men ===
=== Senior ladies ===
=== Senior pairs ===
Tarah Kayne / Daniel O'Shea won both segments to win their first national title by nearly 15 points, with a total score of 211.65 points. Defending champions Alexa Scimeca / Chris Knierim earned silver with a total of 196.80 points. Marissa Castelli / Mervin Tran placed third in both segments to earn bronze, and Madeline Aaron / Max Settlage maintained their fourth-place standing from the short to earn pewter.
=== Senior ice dance ===
Maia Shibutani / Alex Shibutani overcame a 0.47 point deficit from the short dance to overtake defending champions Madison Chock / Evan Bates and win their first senior national title.
== Junior results ==
=== Junior men ===
=== Junior ladies ===
=== Junior pairs ===
=== Junior ice dance ===
== Novice results ==
=== Novice men ===
=== Novice ladies ===
=== Novice pairs ===
=== Novice ice dance ===
== International team selections ==
=== Winter Youth Olympics ===
The team for the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics was announced in October 2015.
=== Four Continents ===
The team for the 2016 Four Continents Championships was announced on January 24, 2016.
=== World Junior Championships ===
The team for the 2016 World Junior Championships was announced on January 24, 2016. Nathan Chen withdrew due to injury and was replaced by first alternate Tomoki Hiwatashi.
=== World Championships ===
The team for the 2016 World Championships was announced on January 24, 2016. Nathan Chen withdrew due to injury and was replaced by first alternate Grant Hochstein.
On March 23, it was announced that Polina Edmunds withdrew due to an injury and first alternate, Mirai Nagasu will replace her.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Schedule of events Archived 2016-01-21 at the Wayback Machine at IceNetwork |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4th_Parliament_of_Singapore | 4th Parliament of Singapore | The 4th Parliament of Singapore was a meeting of the Parliament of Singapore. Its first session commenced on 7 February 1977 and was prorogued on 2 October 1978. It commenced its second session on 26 December 1978 and was dissolved on 5 December 1980.
The members of the 4th Parliament were elected in the 1976 general election. Parliament was controlled by a People's Action Party majority, led by Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew and his Cabinet. The Speaker was Dr Yeoh Ghim Seng.
The fourth Parliament had eight changes throughout the term, with a series of four by-elections ensuing in 1977 and 1979, making it one of the largest change of Parliament's composition since the vacation of Barisan Sosialis during the first Parliament.
== Officeholders ==
Speaker: Yeoh Ghim Seng (PAP)
Deputy Speaker: Tang See Chim (PAP)
Prime Minister: Lee Kuan Yew (PAP)
Deputy Prime Minister:
Goh Keng Swee (PAP)
S. Rajaratnam (PAP), from 1 June 1980
Leader of the House: E. W. Barker (PAP)
Party Whip of the People's Action Party: Sia Kah Hui
== Composition ==
== Members ==
This is the list of members of the 4th Parliament of Singapore elected in the 1977 general election.
== Notes ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neeraj_Chopra#:~:text=Post%20Tokyo%20Olympics,-Chopra%20at%20the&text=In%20June%202022%20at%20the,at%20the%20Stockholm%20Diamond%20League. | Neeraj Chopra | Lieutenant Colonel Neeraj Chopra (born 24 December 1997) is an Indian javelin thrower. Considered one of the greatest, he has won gold medals at the Olympic Games, World Championships and Asian Games. Chopra has won the Diamond League once. He won his first Olympic gold in 2020 and became the first Asian javelin thrower to do so. He became the first Asian to win a gold medal in javelin throw at the 2023 World Championships. He has won golds in every major tournament and has an unbelievable podium finish streak in tournaments since 2020. Since his performance at the 2016 World U20 Championship, he continues to hold the junior javelin throw world record.
Chopra is the first athletics gold medalist for India. As of 2024, he is one of only two Indians to have won an individual Olympic gold medal, the youngest-ever Indian Olympic gold medalist in an individual event and the only individual to have won gold on his Olympic debut. He is one of the five individual multiple medalists for India at the Olympics after his silver medal at the 2024 Olympics. He was the first Indian to win at the World U-20 Championships, where he achieved a world U20 record throw of 86.48 m in 2016, becoming the first Indian athlete to set a world record in athletics.
Chopra's silver medal at the 2022 edition made him the second Indian athlete to win a medal at the World Championships. He has also won gold at the 2018 Commonwealth Games and is a multiple Asian Games gold medalist. He won gold at the 2018 and 2022 Asian Games, while also serving as the flag-bearer in the former edition.
Since June 2021, he has shown consistent results, finishing as a winner or runner-up in 24 consecutive competitions, finishing first overall in qualifying rounds at two back-to-back Olympic Games, and first and second overall in qualifying rounds at two back-to-back World Championships.
== Early life ==
=== Family ===
Chopra was born on 24 December 1997 in a Haryanvi Ror agricultural family in Khandra village in Panipat district of Haryana. His mother Saroj Devi and father Satish Chopra are both farmers. He has two sisters Savita Chopra and Sangeeta Chopra.
=== Education and early training ===
Chopra did his initial schooling from Bhartiya Vidya Niketan Public School, Panipat. After some locals teased him about his obesity, he enrolled in a gym in Panipat. While training there, he saw javelin throwers practising at the Shivaji Stadium and took up the sport. In 2010, he moved to Panchkula to train at the Tau Devi Lal Sports Complex, aged 13. After moving to Panchkula, he joined the Dayanand Anglo-Vedic College, Chandigarh, where he completed his schooling.
Alongside his schooling, Chopra won several national javelin championships in 2012 and 2014. Based on his performance at sports tournaments, Chopra was recruited into the Indian Army in 2016, where he was selected for the Mission Olympics Wing training at the Army Sports Institute in Pune. In 2021, he enrolled at Lovely Professional University in Jalandhar, Punjab and then proceeded to complete his Bachelor of Arts degree.
== Personal life ==
In January 2025, Chopra married former tennis player and coach Himani Mor.
== Career ==
=== Beginnings (2010–2012) ===
In 2010, Chopra took part in a trial at the Sports Authority of India centre in Panipat. On observing his ability to achieve good throws without any formal training, javelin thrower Jaiveer Singh started training him. He learned the basics of the sport from Singh and practised with athletes at Jalandhar. He finished third at the district event, and persuaded his family to let him train at the SAI centre to hone his abilities. After training at SAI for a year, the 13-year-old Chopra moved to train at the Tau Devi Lal Stadium in Panchkula, one of the only two facilities in Haryana with a synthetic runway. As the facility lacked a specialised javelin coach, he trained under Naseem Ahmad, a running coach.
At the time, he and fellow javelin thrower Parminder Singh watched videos of Jan Zelezny to try and emulate his style. Initially, he achieved throws of around 55 m (180 ft), but slowly increased his range. At the National Junior Athletics Championships held at Lucknow in October 2012, he won the gold medal with a new junior national record throw of 68.40 m (224.4 ft).
=== International level emergence (2013–2016) ===
In 2013, Chopra competed in his first international competition, the World Youth Championships in Donetsk, Ukraine, where he finished 19th in the overall classification with a best throw of 66.75 m. He won his first international medal in 2014, a silver at the Youth Olympics Qualification in Bangkok. At the 2014 senior nationals, he achieved his first throw of over 70 m (230 ft). In 2015, he broke the then world junior record at the 2015 All India Inter-University Athletics meet with a throw of 81.04 m (265.9 ft), which was his first throw over 80 m (260 ft). Chopra finished fifth at the 2015 National Games in Kerala. He also participated at the 2015 Asian Athletics Championships where he finished 9th with a best throw of 70.50 m. As a result of his performance, he was called to the national-level training camp at the Netaji Subhas National Institute of Sports in Patiala in early 2016. According to him, this was a turning point in his career, as he received better facilities, better food and an improved standard of training from what was available at Panchkula. Also, training with national level javelin throwers helped boost his morale. He was assigned 2010 Commonwealth Games bronze medalist Kashinath Naik as his coach.
At the 2016 South Asian Games, Chopra achieved a new personal best when he won gold with a throw of 82.23 m (269.8 ft) in Guwahati on 9 February. After the event, he began training under Australian coach Gary Calvert, who was appointed as the national javelin coach. He also sustained a back injury in April 2016 during the Federation Cup in New Delhi, which affected his performance. In July 2016, he won the gold medal at the 2016 IAAF World U20 Championships in Bydgoszcz, Poland with a 86.48 m (283.7 ft) throw to set a new world junior record and became the first Indian to hold the national senior record and world junior record simultaneously. Although his record throw was above the qualification standard for the 2016 Olympics, he failed to qualify as the cut-off date had already elapsed. In September 2016, he left the Netaji Subhas Institute to train at the SAI centre in Bangalore. In December 2016, he was formally inducted as a Junior Commissioned Officer in the Indian Army. He was offered a rank of Naib Subedar in the Rajputana Rifles. He subsequently received extended leave to continue his training. He won gold in the 2017 Asian Athletics Championships at Bhubaneshwar with a throw of 85.23 m (279.6 ft).
=== Asian and Commonwealth champion (2017–2020) ===
In the 2017 World Championships in August, Chopra finished 15th in the overall classification with a best throw of 82.26 m (269.9 ft). On 24 August, he suffered a groin injury during the Zürich Weltklasse. He sustained the injury during his third attempt of 83.39 m (273.6 ft) before he fouled his fourth attempt and skipped the last two. His first and best throw of 83.80 m (274.9 ft) gave him a seventh-place finish. He attributed his injury to a heavy schedule and the lack of a proper diet and rest. As a result of his injury, he withdrew from competition for the remainder of 2017. During recovery, he spent a month at the Joint Services Wing sports institute at Vijayanagar. In November 2017, he left for Offenburg in Germany to train with Werner Daniels, whom he had briefly worked with before the 2017 World Championships as his former coach Calvert had left India in May due to disputes over his contract. During his stay there, he focused on strength training and honed his technique with adjustments to his stance to keep his hand raised higher during throws to improve his range.
In the 2018 Commonwealth Games, Chopra registered a season-best effort of 86.47 m (283.7 ft) to win the gold medal. He became the first Indian to win the javelin throw at the Commonwealth Games. In May 2018, he bettered his national record at the Qatar Athletic Super Grand Prix with a throw of 87.43 m (286.8 ft). In August 2018, he made his debut at the Asian Games, and was the flag-bearer for India during the 2018 Asian Games Parade of Nations. On 27 August, he won the gold medal at the Games with a new Indian record throw of 88.06 m (288.9 ft). This was also India's first ever gold medal in the javelin throw at the Asian Games.
Chopra was the only track and field athlete that year to be recommended by the Athletics Federation of India (AFI) for the country's highest sports award, the Major Dhyanchand Khel Ratna. He was awarded the Arjuna Award in September 2018. The army rewarded him with an out-of-turn promotion to subedar in November. In preparation for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, he trained with German coach Uwe Hohn, South African biomechanics expert Klaus Bartonietz and physiotherapist Ishaan Marwaha. Hohn worked on refining Chopra's throwing technique, which he described as "wild".
=== Injury and comeback (2019–2020) ===
Chopra missed the 2019 World Championships in Doha due to injury. On 3 May 2019, he underwent surgery to remove bone spurs in his right elbow in Mumbai. After a period of recuperation and rehabilitative training in Patiala and Vijayanagar, he travelled to South Africa in November 2019 to train under Bartonietz. After a 16-month hiatus, he returned to international competition in January 2020. He registered a throw of 87.86 m (288.3 ft) in the Central North West Athletics League Meeting in Potchefstroom, South Africa. This helped him achieve the automatic qualification standard of 85 m (279 ft) and secure a place for the 2020 Olympics. He travelled to Turkey for training, but was forced to return to India in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Due to the pandemic and lockdown in India, Chopra spent the next year training at Patiala. In late 2020, the Athletics Federation of India and the Government of Odisha arranged a training camp at Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar, which he attended from December 2020 to February 2021. On 5 March 2021, he again bettered his own national record with a throw of 88.07 m (288.9 ft), which ranked him third-best internationally for the season. He applied to travel to Sweden for training, but faced difficulties due to the effects of the pandemic. After weeks of attempting to secure a visa, he was cleared to travel to Europe with his coach following the intervention of the Ministry of Youth Affairs and Sports and the Ministry of External Affairs. He flew to Paris on 5 June 2021 for a mandatory quarantine period before travelling to Portugal for the Meeting Cidade de Lisboa. He opened his international season of 2021 there with a throw of 83.18 m (272.9 ft), which earned him the gold medal. He remained in Lisbon until 19 June before travelling to Uppsala in Sweden for training.
In June 2021, Chopra competed at the Karlstad GP in Karlstad, Sweden, which he won with a sub-par throw of 80.96 m (265.6 ft). He attributed his reduced performance to a tendency to throw the javelin higher than he wanted to, along with having to use a different javelin as his own was unavailable. He won bronze at a subsequent meet in Kuortane, Finland with a throw of 86.79 m (284.7 ft). Following the Kuortane Games, he travelled to Lucerne to compete in the Spitzen Leichtathletik Luzern, but decided to withdraw due to fatigue. Later, he attempted to secure a visa for the Diamond League meeting at Gateshead on 13 July, but faced difficulties due to the pandemic and instead continued training in Uppsala.
=== Olympics, World and Diamond League champion (2021–2024) ===
On 4 August 2021, Chopra made his debut at the Olympics. He topped his qualifying group with a throw of 86.65 m (284.3 ft) and achieved an automatic entry to the final. In the final on 7 August, he won the gold medal with a throw of 87.58 m (287.3 ft) in his second attempt. He became the first Indian athlete to win a gold medal in athletics, and the first post-independence Indian Olympic medalist in athletics. He also became the second Indian to win an individual Olympic gold medal after Abhinav Bindra and the first Asian athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in javelin throw. He also became the youngest-ever Indian Olympic gold medalist in an individual event and the only individual to have won gold on his Olympic debut. His medal helped India register its best ever finish in the Olympic Games. He dedicated his win to sprinters Milkha Singh and P. T. Usha, both former Olympians from India. As a result of his performance, he reached the world number two ranking in the men's javelin throw.
In June 2022 at the Paavo Nurmi Games in Turku, Finland, he placed second with a new personal best of 89.30 m (293.0 ft) and registered another new national record. In the 2022 Diamond League, Chopra broke his own national record with a throw of 89.94 m (295.1 ft) during his second-place effort at the BAUHAUS-galan in Stockholm. In July 2022, he won the silver medal at the 2022 World Athletics Championships with a throw of 88.13 m (289.1 ft). This was India's second ever medal at the World Athletics Championships after long-jumper Anju Bobby George's bronze in 2003. On 26 August, he registered another first place at the Athletissima at Lausanne with a throw of 89.09 m (292.3 ft) and qualified for the Diamond League final at Weltklasse Zürich. On 8 September, he won the final with a throw of 88.44 m (290.2 ft) and became the first Indian to win the Diamond League in any event. In May 2023, he clinched the top spot in the Doha Diamond League with a throw of 88.67 m (290.9 ft). In the same month, he achieved the first position in the men's javelin throw rankings issued by World Athletics for the first time. In August 2023, he won the gold medal in 2023 World Athletics Championships with a throw of 88.17 m (289.3 ft). He became the first Asian to win gold in the javelin throw event at the World Championships. In October 2023, he won his second Asian Games gold medal in the 2022 Asian Games with a season-best throw of 88.88 m (291.6 ft).
=== Paris Olympics and Diamond League (2024) ===
Chopra qualified for the 2024 Paris Olympics by hitting the Olympic Qualifying Standard at the 2022 Asian Games. At the 2024 Doha Diamond League, he finished second with a throw of 88.36 m, just 2 cm short of Czech Republic's Jakub Vadlejch who topped the meet with a throw of 88.38m. He won gold at the Federation Cup with a throw of 82.27 m. He then participated at the 2024 Paavo Nurmi Games where he won the gold medal with a throw of 85.97 m.
Chopra then competed at the 2024 Paris Olympics. During the qualification round, he topped his group with a season-best throw of 89.34m. In the final, only his second attempt was a legitimate throw, but at 89.45m it was enough to win the silver medal. Following his gold at the 2020 Olympics, Chopra became the fifth individual multiple medallist for India and first to win a gold and silver combination. After the Olympics, he secured second place at the Lausanne meet, delivering a season-best throw of 89.49 meters. Chopra finished the season by finishing 2nd at the 2024 Diamond League.
=== 90m mark and NC Classic (2025–) ===
World Athletics announced a gold category javelin meet named Neeraj Chopra Classic, making it a key qualification event for the 2025 World Championships. At the Doha qualification meeting of the 2025 Diamond League, Chopra breached the long-awaited 90m mark by hitting 90.23 m. He topped the live results for the whole meet, till Julian Weber scored 91.06 m in his final throw, thus taking over the first position.
In May, Audi India announced Chopra as their brand ambassador. He then topped the Paris qualification meet of the 2025 Diamond League. His next appearance was at the Golden Spike Ostrava which he won. He proceeded to host and participate in Neeraj Chopra Classic. Chopra won the meet named after him. The event saw 15,000+ people in attendance at the Sree Kanteerava Stadium in Bengaluru. During the 2025 Diamond League final, he finished second, continuing his top two streak since 2021 and his podium finish streak since 2020.
== Coaching history ==
Chopra has trained under several coaches, one of the earliest being Jaiveer Singh who coached him from 2010 to 2011. Naseem Ahmed came next and remained his coach from 2011 to 2016. Kashinath Naik was Chopra's briefest coach and trained him in 2016. Gary Calvert took over the reins from 2016 to 2017. He was coached by Uwe Hohn from 2018 to 2021.
Chopra's coaching under Klaus Bartonietz, from 2021 to 2024, resulted in several wins, titles, and gold medals. Since 2025, he is being coached by Jan Železný.
== Performance record ==
=== Tournaments ===
=== Diamond League ===
=== Invitational meets ===
=== Seasonal bests ===
Source: World Athletics
== Army ranks ==
== Recognition and honours ==
== Awards and nominations ==
== See also ==
Athletics in India
Athletics Federation of India
Javelin throw at the Olympics
India at the Olympics
India at the 2020 Summer Olympics
Sports in Haryana
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Neeraj Chopra at World Athletics
Neeraj Chopra at Diamond League
Neeraj Chopra at Olympedia
Neeraj Chopra at Olympics.com
Neeraj Chopra at the Paris 2024 Summer Olympics (archived)
Neeraj Chopra at the Gold Coast 2018 Commonwealth Games (archived)
Neeraj Chopra on Facebook |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ci%C3%A9nega,_Boyac%C3%A1 | Ciénega, Boyacá | Ciénega (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈsjeneɣa]) is a municipality in the Márquez Province, part of Boyacá Department, Colombia. The urban centre of Ciénega is situated on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense at a distance of 27 kilometres (17 mi) from the department capital Tunja at an elevation of 2,460 metres (8,070 ft). The elevation ranges within the municipality from 2,200 metres (7,200 ft) to 3,400 metres (11,200 ft). The municipality borders Viracachá and Soracá in the north, Rondón in the east and south and Ramiriquí in the south and west.
== Etymology ==
The name Ciénega comes from Chibcha and means "Place of water".
== History ==
The area around Ciénega in the times before the Spanish conquest was part of the Muisca Confederation, a loose confederation of different rulers of the Muisca. Ciénega was ruled by the zaque based in Hunza. On his way to the legendary El Dorado, conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada passed through Ciénega.
Modern Ciénega was founded on October 22, 1818 by José Cayetano Vasquez, son of the owner of the main hacienda in the village.
== Economy ==
Main economical activities of Ciénega are livestock farming (66 %) and agriculture (31 %). Among the agricultural products cultivated are potatoes, maize, peas and arracacha, tree tomato and uchuva.
== Born in Ciénega ==
Jesús María Coronado Caro, bishop
Hector Páez, professional mountainbiker
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RuPaul#:~:text=He%20was%20raised%20in%20the,working%20at%20Atlanta's%20Plaza%20Theatre. | RuPaul | RuPaul Andre Charles (born November 17, 1960) is an American drag queen, television host, singer, producer, writer, and actor. He produces, hosts, and judges the reality competition series RuPaul's Drag Race and has received several accolades, including 14 Primetime Emmy Awards, three GLAAD Media Awards, a Critics' Choice Television Award, two Billboard Music Awards, a Tony Award, and a Guinness World Records title. He has been dubbed the "Queen of Drag" and is considered the most commercially successful drag queen in the United States, with Fortune saying that he is "easily the world's most famous drag queen." In 2017, RuPaul was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world.
Born and raised in San Diego, California, RuPaul studied performing arts in Atlanta, Georgia, before relocating to New York City, where he became a popular fixture on the LGBTQ nightclub scene. He achieved international fame as a drag queen with the release of his debut single, "Supermodel (You Better Work)" (1993). RuPaul was a spokesperson for MAC Cosmetics in 1994, raising money for the Mac AIDS Fund and becoming the first drag queen to land a major cosmetics campaign.
RuPaul's Drag Race was created in 2009 and has gone on to produce seventeen seasons in the United States. The show has also seen success internationally and there are several international variants of the show, including RuPaul's Drag Race UK (2019–present) and Canada's Drag Race (2020–present). There are also several spin-offs of the main show, such as RuPaul's Drag U (2010–2012), RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars, (2012–present), and RuPaul's Secret Celebrity Drag Race (2020–2022). His other television work includes The RuPaul Show (1996–1998), Skin Wars (2014–2016), Good Work (2015), Gay for Play Game Show Starring RuPaul (2016–2017), and RuPaul (2019). In 2018, RuPaul received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the television industry.
RuPaul has made appearances in films, including Crooklyn (1994), The Brady Bunch Movie (1995), and But I'm a Cheerleader (1999), as well as television series, including Girlboss and Broad City (both 2017). He created and starred in the Netflix original series AJ and the Queen (2020). As a recording artist, RuPaul has released fifteen studio albums. He has also published four books: Lettin' It All Hang Out (1995), Workin' It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style (2010), GuRu (2018), and The House of Hidden Meanings (2024).
== Early life ==
RuPaul was born in San Diego on November 17, 1960, the son of Ernestine "Toni" (née Fontenette) and Irving Andrew Charles. His parents were both from Louisiana. He was named by his mother; "Ru" came from roux, the French term for the base of gumbo and other creole stews and soups. According to DNA analysis by Finding Your Roots staff, his ancestry is 70% African and 30% European.
RuPaul was raised in a Catholic household and grew up poor in a "broken home" with an absent father and volatile mother. After his mother discovered his father was having an affair, she poured gasoline on his car and attempted to set the house on fire. He described this traumatic event as a "pivotal moment" which caused him to dissociate from his body and deeply impacted him. After his parents divorced in 1967, he and his three sisters lived with their mother. He attended Patrick Henry High School but dropped out in 10th grade. At 15, RuPaul and his sister Renetta moved to Atlanta, where they studied performing arts.
== Career ==
=== 1980–1995: Beginnings and Supermodel of the World ===
RuPaul struggled as a musician and filmmaker during the 1980s, working at Atlanta's Plaza Theatre. In 1982, he debuted on an Atlanta public access variety show called The American Music Show, and went on to appear on the show frequently. He also took part in underground cinema, helping create the low-budget film Star Booty and an album of the same name. In Atlanta he often performed at the Celebrity Club, managed by Larry Tee, as a bar dancer or with his band, Wee Wee Pole. RuPaul also performed as a backup singer to Glen Meadmore along with drag queen Vaginal Davis. His first prominent national exposure came in 1989, when he danced as an extra in the video for The B-52s' "Love Shack", and also appeared in Tom Rubnitz's video "Pickle Surprise".
In the early 1990s, RuPaul worked the Georgia club scene and was known by his full birth name. Initially participating in gender bender-style performances, he performed solo and in collaboration with other bands at several New York City nightclubs, most notably the Pyramid Club. He played opposite New York City drag performer Mona Foot (Nashom Benjamin) in the one-act science-fiction parody "My Pet Homo", written and directed by Jon Michael Johnson for Cooper Square Productions. He performed for many years at the annual Wigstock drag festival and appeared in the documentary Wigstock: The Movie. In the 1990s, RuPaul appeared on the UK Channel 4 series Manhattan Cable, a weekly series produced by World of Wonder and presented by American Laurie Pike about New York's public-access television system.
In 1993, RuPaul recorded the dance/house album Supermodel of the World. It was released through the rap label Tommy Boy, spawning the dance track hit "Supermodel (You Better Work)". The song peaked at 45 on the Billboard Hot 100. It charted on the UK Singles Chart, peaking on the top 40 at 39. The song found the most success on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart, where it peaked at 2. Radio airplay, heavy rotation of the music video on MTV, and television appearances on popular programs like The Arsenio Hall Show popularized the song. His next two singles/videos, "Back to My Roots" and "A Shade Shady (Now Prance)", both went to the top spot on the Billboard Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. His following release "House of Love" failed to place on any U.S. charts but peaked at 68 on the UK Singles Chart. In 1994, he released "Don't Go Breaking My Heart", a duet with Elton John.
RuPaul was signed to a modeling contract for MAC Cosmetics. Various billboards featured him in full drag, often with the text "I am the MAC girl". He also released his autobiography, Lettin' It All Hang Out. He promoted the book in part with a 1995 guest appearance on ABC's All My Children, in a storyline that put it on the set of Erica Kane's talk show "The Cutting Edge". The same year, he was featured in his first of two appearances in the Brady Bunch movies, in which he played Jan's female guidance counselor.
In 1994 he had a duet with Elton John who was of the superguests of the Sanremo Festival in Italy as superguests, one of the main festivals worldwide; the permance generated both positive and concerned reactions from the public.
=== 1996–2007: Foxy Lady and Red Hot ===
In 1996, he landed a talk show of his own on VH1, called The RuPaul Show interviewing celebrity guests and musical acts. Cher, Diana Ross, Nirvana, Duran Duran, Pat Benatar, Mary J. Blige, Bea Arthur, Dionne Warwick, Cyndi Lauper, Olivia Newton-John, Beenie Man, Pete Burns, Bow Wow Wow, and the Backstreet Boys were notable guests. His co-host was Michelle Visage with whom he also co-hosted on WKTU radio. On one episode, RuPaul featured guests Chi Chi LaRue and Tom Chase speaking about the gay porn industry.
Later in the year he released his second album, Foxy Lady, this time on the L.A.-based Rhino Records label. The album failed to chart on the Billboard 200. However, its first single "Snapshot" went to number four on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. It also enjoyed limited mainstream success, charting at 95 on the Billboard Hot 100, which was his second and final solo Hot 100 entry to date. The album's second single "A Little Bit of Love" was not as successful, peaking at 28 on the Hot Dance Music/Club Play chart. During this time, RuPaul hosted a morning radio show at WKTU radio in New York City and would serve as host until 1998.
In 1997, he released his third album, the Christmas-themed Ho Ho Ho. That year, RuPaul teamed with Martha Wash to remake the classic disco anthem, "It's Raining Men". The song was included on the 1998 compilation CD RuPaul's Go Go Box Classics. During this time, he appeared in Webex TV commercials and magazine ads. In 2002, he was featured on the Eurodance track "You're No Lady" alongside Brigitte Nielsen.
In 2004, RuPaul released his fourth album, Red Hot, on his own RuCo Inc. music label. It received dance radio and club play, but very little press coverage. RuPaul later noted, "I don't know what happened. It seemed I couldn't get press on my album unless I was willing to play into the role that the mainstream press has assigned to gay people, which is as servants of straight ideals." Red Hot's lead single "Looking Good, Feeling Gorgeous" peaked at number two on the dance chart. The second, "WorkOut", peaked at number five. The third and final single from the album "People Are People" a duet with Tom Trujillo, peaked at number 10. The album itself only charted on the Top Electronic Albums chart, where it hit number nine. In September, he was hired at WNEW.
On June 13, 2006, RuPaul released ReWorked, his first remix album. The only single released from the album was a re-recording of "Supermodel (You Better Work)", which reached number 21 on the U.S. dance chart. June 20, 2007, saw the release of Starrbooty: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack in the United States. The single "Call Me Starrbooty" was digitally released in 2007. The album contains new tracks as well as interludes with dialogue from the movie. The film was released on DVD in October 2007.
=== 2008–2013: RuPaul's Drag Race, Champion, and Glamazon ===
In mid-2008, RuPaul began producing RuPaul's Drag Race, a reality television game show which aired on Logo in February 2009. On the program drag queens compete to be selected by RuPaul and a panel of judges as "America's next drag superstar". The first season's winner was BeBe Zahara Benet, and first runner-up Nina Flowers was chosen by fans as "Miss Congeniality" through voting via the show's official website. To publicize the new show, RuPaul appeared on several other shows in 2008, including Project Runway, as guest judge, and on Paula's Party as a guest "chef".
In March 2009, RuPaul released the album Champion. The album spawned four singles "Cover Girl", "Jealous of My Boogie", "Devil Made Me Do It", and "Tranny Chaser". The album peaked at number 12 on the Billboard Dance/Electronic Albums as well as 26 on the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart. Logo's second annual NewNowNext Awards in 2009 were hosted by RuPaul. There he performed "Jealous of My Boogie (Gomi & RasJek Edit)". In March 2010, RuPaul released his second remix album, Drag Race, the album features remixes of songs from the 2009 album Champion.
In April 2011, coinciding with the finale of season 3 of RuPaul's Drag Race, RuPaul released his sixth studio album Glamazon, produced by Revolucian. The album charted on Billboard's Dance/Electronic Albums and the Billboard Top Heatseekers chart at 11 and 8 respectively. In July 2011, he released another remix EP entitled SuperGlam DQ which features remixes of tracks from Glamazon, remixes of the "Drag U Theme Song", and a new song, "Sexy Drag Queen". The second season of RuPaul's Drag U began in June 2011. In late 2011, RuPaul made appearances on The Rosie Show and The Chew, and also attended a Drag Race NY Premiere party at Patricia Field's store in New York. Season 4 of RuPaul's Drag Race premiered on Logo on January 30, 2012, with RuPaul returning as the main host and judge. In the fall of 2012, the spin-off RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars premiered and featured past contestants of the previous four seasons. Season 5 of RuPaul's Drag Race premiered on January 28, 2013. On April 30, 2013, he released "Lick It Lollipop" featuring Lady Bunny.
In fall of 2013, RuPaul joined forces with cosmetic manufacturers Colorevolution to launch his debut make-up line featuring ultra-rich pigment cosmetics and a beauty collection. Released alongside the line was a unisex perfume entitled "Glamazon". Talking to World of Wonder he said: "Glamazon is for women and men of all ages and preferences who share one thing in common: They are not afraid to be fierce. For me, glamour should be accessible to all, and I am committed to helping the world look and smell more beautiful." The line was exclusively sold on the Colorevolution website in various gift sets.
=== 2014–2016: Born Naked, Realness, Butch Queen, and television expansion ===
On January 28, 2014, RuPaul released RuPaul Presents The CoverGurlz, a collaborative album featuring new versions of RuPaul songs from 2009 to 2013. His seventh studio album, Born Naked, was released on February 24, 2014, to coincide with the premiere of the sixth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. Born Naked placed at number 4 on the US Billboard dance chart and 85 on the Billboard 200 chart. On April 9, 2014, RuPaul and Michelle Visage released the first episode of their podcast, RuPaul: What's the Tee? with Michelle Visage. In August, he joined the reality competition show Skin Wars acting as a judge.
On March 2, 2015, RuPaul released his eighth studio album, Realness. The release coincided with the premiere of the seventh season of RuPaul's Drag Race. In April, he launched and began hosting a new show, Good Work, a plastic surgery-themed talk show for E!. In October he released his second Christmas album, and ninth studio album, Slay Belles. The album contains ten original Christmas-themed songs and features collaborations with Michelle Visage, Siedah Garrett, Todrick Hall, and Big Freedia. The album charted at 21 on the US Billboard Dance chart.
In January 2016, it was announced RuPaul would present a new game show for Logo TV called Gay for Play Game Show Starring RuPaul which premiered on April 11, 2016, after RuPaul's Drag Race. In March 2016, he released his tenth album, Butch Queen, just prior to the premiere of the eighth season of RuPaul's Drag Race. A song from the album, "U Wear It Well" was featured in the teaser campaigns for the season and was released as its first single. The album charted at number 3 on the US Billboard Dance chart. "'Be Someone" featuring American singer Taylor Dayne was released as the album's second and final single. Additionally, Butch Queen: The Ru-Mixes was released.
In July 2016, it was announced that RuPaul was nominated for the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. He was presented the award at the September Creative Arts Emmy Awards Ceremony. 2016 also saw the release of the single "Read U Wrote U" that features rap parts by the RuPaul's Drag Race All Stars 2 finalists Roxxxy Andrews, Katya Zamolodchikova, Alaska Thunderfuck, and Detox Icunt with production by Ellis Miah.
=== 2017–present: Further album releases, Drag Race UK, AJ and the Queen, and further TV shows ===
On February 3, 2017, RuPaul released the album Remember Me: Essential, Vol. 1. It is a collection of new songs and remakes of RuPaul hits that feature new artists. Two singles were released from the album: "Rock It (To The Moon)", and an updated version of RuPaul's 1996 single "Snapshot" from Foxy Lady. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard Dance Albums Sales Chart in the United States and at number eleven on the UK Dance Albums Chart. On March 24, 2017, RuPaul released his eleventh studio album, American. On the same day, the ninth regular season of RuPaul's Drag Race debuted on basic cable channel VH1. It moved from the expanded cable channel Logo TV which aired all previous seasons of the show. The season 9 premiere featured singer Lady Gaga as its guest judge and was a success, with ratings of nearly 1,000,000 viewers, making it the series' most viewed episode.
On June 9, 2017, Essential, Vol. 2 was released. It was preceded by the single "Crying on the Dance Floor", a re-recording of the 2010 single "Main Event" from Champion. On March 16, 2018, RuPaul received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his contributions to the television industry. He was the first drag queen to be given the award. RuPaul released his third Christmas album in October 2018.
In June 2019, the daytime talk show RuPaul premiered. It was cancelled after a three-week test run. He also appeared in Taylor Swift's "You Need to Calm Down" music video. In late 2019, the first season of RuPaul's Drag Race UK was released on BBC3. It was renewed for a second season which was released in 2021. RuPaul also created and starred in the Netflix drama-comedy show AJ and the Queen, which was released on January 10, 2020. On March 6, 2020, Netflix announced that the series had been cancelled. RuPaul hosted Saturday Night Live on February 8, 2020. On May 11, RuPaul made an appearance on The Price Is Right at Night. He also made an appearance in the premiere episode of Canada's Drag Race.
In August 2021, RuPaul guest hosted two episodes of the talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He did voice work in Amphibia portraying the FBI agent Mr. X. He won the Tony Award for Best Musical in 2022 as a producer of the Broadway musical A Strange Loop. He also voices himself as the announcer on The Tiny Chef Show. He began hosting a revival of the game show Lingo for CBS in 2023, as well as Celebrity Lingo, a spinoff of the UK series of the same name on ITV.
HarperCollins published the RuPaul memoir The House of Hidden Meanings in March 2024.
== Other ventures ==
=== Podcasting ===
The podcast RuPaul: What's the Tee? With Michelle Visage debuted on April 6, 2014. Ru-Paul co-hosts with longtime friend and fellow RuPaul's Drag Race judge Michelle Visage. The weekly show features their thoughts on topics including behind-the-scenes of RuPaul's Drag Race, life advice, beauty tips, and conversations with featured guests from the entertainment world.
=== Audiobooks ===
In 2018, RuPaul was one of the actors who voiced the audiobook A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo.
=== Drag conventions ===
Launched through production company World of Wonder, RuPaul's DragCon LA is an annual drag-themed convention held in Los Angeles which started in 2015, followed by RuPaul's DragCon NYC. It began in 2017 in New York City; the public is able to meet with RuPaul, former RuPaul's Drag Race contestants, and other drag queens. The conventions feature performances, meet-and-greet booths, merchandise sales and panel discussions.
=== Activism ===
RuPaul has been an active supporter of voter registration, producing a public service announcement supporting National Voter Registration Day and urging everyone to register. As RuPaul said voter ID laws vary from state to state; the details of the voter ID required in each state are provided by HeadCount and VoteRiders. As one in five LGBTQ adults are not registered to vote, voter registration efforts have expanded recently. Several stars from RuPaul's Drag Race act as Ambassadors for Drag Out the Vote.
In March 2023, in response to the Tennessee Adult Entertainment Act, RuPaul, World of Wonder producers Randy Barbarto and Fenton Bailey, and MTV began a fund to fight anti-drag initiatives. The ACLU maintains the fund, which received donations from efforts at DragCon LA 2023, the "Drag Isn't Dangerous" livestream telethon, "Can't Hold us Down", "Born This Way", and "God Save the Queens", as well as a small donation from the Manhattan Association of Cabarets.
The Instagram post RuPaul made prior to the establishment of the fund called on followers to vote, saying, "Register to vote so we can get those stunt queens out of office." The video ends with the statement, "By the way, a social media post has never been as powerful as a registered vote."
== Impact ==
Lauren Herold of Mic.com deemed RuPaul "arguably the most commercially successful drag queen in America." Sami Main of Adweek credited him with creating wider exposure for drag queens from LGBTQ culture into mainstream society, thanks to his early-career chart success, and later, the successive climb in viewership of RuPaul's Drag Race. His talk show The RuPaul Show was the first-ever national talk show to have a drag queen as a host. Along with his partner Michelle Visage, he welcomed an array of high-profile guests such as Cher, Lil Kim, and Diana Ross over the show's 100-episode span. As well as having a variety of comedy skits, the show was noted for discussing topics such as black empowerment, female empowerment, misogyny, and liberal politics that were otherwise unheard of in 1990s television at the time. In 1999, RuPaul was awarded the Vito Russo Award at the GLAAD Media Awards for work in promoting equality in the LGBTQ community.
RuPaul has also been noted as having a large part in RuPaul's Drag Race's continuous television success. By pioneering queer representation on television, many believe RuPaul to have essentially revolutionised the portrayal of the LGBTQ+ community on screen. He first won an Emmy for his work on the show in 2016, and one year later the show garnered eight nominations, including Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Reality Competition Program for the first time in its 11-season run, and a second consecutive win for RuPaul in the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Reality-Competition Program. In 2017, he was included in the annual Time 100 list of the most influential people in the world. In 2019, Fortune noted RuPaul as "easily the world's most famous" drag queen.
=== Relationship with transgender community ===
RuPaul has been the subject of multiple controversies regarding his comments and actions towards the transgender community. According to Vox, he has a complicated relationship with this community, in part due to differing philosophies: through drag he seeks to mock gender and identity stereotypes, while in his view the trans community takes identity seriously. Nevertheless, RuPaul's Drag Race has featured a number of contestants who are trans women, including Kylie "Sonique" Love, Carmen Carrera, Jiggly Caliente, Monica Beverly Hillz, Kenya Michaels, and Gia Gunn, some of whom made their identity public while competing on the show. Later seasons of the show have included contestants who had already disclosed their trans identity prior to their season beginning. In 2017, Peppermint became the first contestant to compete throughout her season as an openly trans woman and in 2021 Gottmik was the first to compete as an openly trans man. Other non-conforming gender identities expressed by former contestants include both non-binary (Jinkx Monsoon, Aja, Valentina, Divina de Campo, Ginny Lemon, Violet Chachki, and Sasha Velour) and genderfluid (Courtney Act and Kelly Mantle) persons.
In 2014, trans activists and former contestants Carmen Carrera and Monica Beverly Hillz criticized the show's use of words such as tranny and shemale, including the main challenge announcement phrase up to season 6, "You've got she-mail", which they described as transphobic. That year's season also included a "Female or She-male" segment that required contestants to guess whether various photographs featured cisgender "biological women" or "psychological women" (drag queens), causing further criticism. RuPaul and the producers issued a statement promising "to help spread love, acceptance and understanding" and Logo TV removed the "You've got she-mail" phrase from subsequent broadcasts, replacing it instead with the phrase "She done already done had herses." RuPaul criticized those attempting to police his language in bad faith and noted that tranny referred to transvestites and drag queens, not just trans women.
In 2018, RuPaul gave an interview to The Guardian in which he stated that a post-transition trans woman would "probably not" be accepted onto the show, noting that at the time of competition Peppermint had not yet had breast implants. After facing criticism on social media and from former contestants for his remarks, RuPaul compared trans drag queens who had transitioned to athletes who had taken performance-enhancing drugs. He subsequently expressed regret for the hurt caused by his remarks, and that the only screening criteria for contestants were "charisma, uniqueness, nerve, and talent." Since RuPaul made these statements, multiple transgender contestants have competed and won on the show.
== Personal life ==
RuPaul met painter Georges LeBar in 1994 at the Limelight nightclub in New York City. They married in January 2017. They have an open marriage; RuPaul has said he would not want to "put restraints" on the person he loves. The two split their time between a home in Los Angeles and a 60,000-acre (24,000 ha) ranch in Wyoming. Environmentalists criticized them in 2020 after RuPaul revealed that they lease mineral rights and sell water to oil companies on their ranch, and allow fracking there. According to public maps, the ranch has at least 35 active wells. RuPaul previously held a climate-themed ball on his show to raise environmental awareness, leading to accusations of hypocrisy.
RuPaul publicly endorsed Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in the 2016 United States presidential election. He expressed dismay at Clinton's defeat by Republican nominee Donald Trump, saying, "The America that we have all fought so hard for, the narrative of love and peace and liberty and equality, it feels like it is dead." He has described doing drag as a "very, very political" act because it "challenges the status quo" by rejecting fixed identities: "Drag says 'I'm a shapeshifter, I do whatever the hell I want at any given time'."
RuPaul started smoking cannabis at age 10 or 11. Since 1999, he has been sober and has not had alcohol, drugs, or tobacco. In 2020, he found out while appearing on the TV show Finding Your Roots that he and New Jersey Senator Cory Booker are "DNA cousins." In a 2013 interview, RuPaul said, "I'm not religious, but I do have spiritual practices like yoga and meditation and I do pray."
== Discography ==
Studio albums
== Filmography ==
=== Film ===
=== Short films ===
=== Television ===
=== Music videos ===
== Awards and nominations ==
RuPaul has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for which he was inducted in 2018. In 2019 he became the first drag queen inducted into the California Hall of Fame. He has also won 14 Primetime Emmy Awards, including 8 for Outstanding Host for a Reality or Competition program. This makes him the most awarded in the category as well as the most-awarded person of color in Emmy history. His other notable accolades include a Tony Award, two Billboard Music Awards, four Canadian Screen Awards, ten Critics' Choice Real TV Awards, a Critics' Choice Award, four GLAAD Media Awards including the GLAAD Vito Russo Award in 1999, five Producers Guild of America Awards, and a Guinness World Records title.
In 2020, a species of Australian soldier fly was named Opaluma rupaul. The name was chosen in reference to the fly's "costume of shiny metallic rainbow colours." Other species described in the same article were named O. ednae (after fellow drag queen Dame Edna Everage) and O. fabulosa.
== Books ==
Lettin' It All Hang Out: An Autobiography. New York: Hyperion Books. June 1, 1995. ISBN 0-7868-6156-8. OCLC 31657240.
Workin' It! RuPaul's Guide to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Style. New York: It Books. January 1, 2010. ISBN 9780061985836. OCLC 435421683.
GuRu. New York: Dey Street Books. January 1, 2018. ISBN 9780751573831. OCLC 1076520397.
The House of Hidden Meanings: A Memoir. New York: Dey St. March 5, 2024. ISBN 9780063263901. OCLC 1388319009.
== See also ==
LGBTQ culture in New York City
List of LGBTQ people from New York City
List of number-one dance hits (United States)
List of artists who reached number one on the US Dance chart
NYC Pride March
== Explanatory notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
RuPaul at IMDb
RuPaul at The Interviews: An Oral History of Television |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_History_Museum#:~:text=The%20museum's%20origins%20date%20to,closet%20in%20a%20DEC%20lobby. | Computer History Museum | The Computer History Museum (CHM) is a computer museum in Mountain View, California. The museum presents stories and artifacts of Silicon Valley and the Information Age, and explores the computing revolution and its impact on society.
== History ==
The museum's origins date to 1968 when Gordon Bell began a quest for a historical collection and, at that same time, others were looking to preserve the Whirlwind computer. The resulting Museum Project had its first exhibit in 1975, located in a converted coat closet in a DEC lobby. In 1978, the museum, now The Digital Computer Museum (TDCM), moved to a larger DEC lobby in Marlborough, Massachusetts and opened to the public in September 1979. Maurice Wilkes presented the first lecture at TDCM in 1979 – the presentation of such lectures has continued to the present time.
TDCM incorporated as The Computer Museum (TCM) in 1982. In 1984, TCM moved to Boston, locating on Museum Wharf.
In 1996/1997, the TCM History Center (TCMHC) was established; a site at Moffett Field was provided by NASA (an old building that was previously the Naval Base furniture store) and a large number of artifacts were shipped there from TCM.
In 1999, TCMHC incorporated and TCM ceased operation, shipping its remaining artifacts to TCMHC in 2000. The name TCM had been retained by the Boston Museum of Science, so the name TCMHC was changed to Computer History Museum (CHM) in 2000.
In 2002, CHM opened its new building, previously occupied by Silicon Graphics, at 1401 N. Shoreline Blvd in Mountain View, California, to the public.
In 2009, CHM hosted the National Inventors Hall of Fame's annual induction ceremony, the venue significant as that year's fifteen inductees were all contributors to semiconductor technology and 2009 marked the golden jubilee of the integrated circuit.
The facility was later heavily renovated and underwent a two-year $19 million makeover before reopening in January 2011.
John Hollar, a former media executive, was appointed CEO in July 2008. Dan'l Lewin, a former technology executive, replaced Hollar as CEO in March 2018. CHM appointed former NASA Communications Leader Marc Etkind as its next President and Chief Executive Officer on February 19th, 2025.
== Public programs ==
The Computer History Museum hosts regular public programs (currently under the "CHM Live" banner) with notable leaders (past and present) from Silicon Valley and the global tech sector, including past speakers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Reid Hoffman, Elon Musk, and Eric Schmidt, as well as academics, historians, and others on the impact of technology. The Museum also produces special events marking key anniversaries, such as the 40th Anniversary of the Apple Macintosh and the 50th Anniversary of Ethernet, featuring panels reflecting on the history and impact of key computing technologies. Recordings of the Museum's past events are viewable on its YouTube channel.
The Museum also hosts TechFest events for families.
== Collections and exhibition space ==
The Computer History Museum claims to house the largest and most significant collection of computing artifacts in the world. This includes many rare or one-of-a-kind objects such as a Cray-1 supercomputer as well as a Cray-2, Cray-3, the Utah teapot, the 1969 Neiman Marcus Kitchen Computer, an Apple I, and an example of the first generation of Google's racks of custom-designed web servers. The collection comprises nearly 90,000 objects, photographs and films, as well as 4,000 ft (1,200 m) of cataloged documentation and several hundred gigabytes of software.
The CHM oral history program conducts video interviews around the history of computing, this includes computer systems, networking, data-processing, memory, and data-storage. There are over 1,000 interviews recorded as of 2021, including panel discussions on the origins of the IBM PC and the hard disk drive, and individual interviews with Joanna Hoffman, Steve Chen, Dame Stephanie Shirley, and Donald Knuth.
The museum's 25,000 sq ft (2,300 m2) exhibit "Revolution: The First 2000 Years of Computing", opened to the public on January 13, 2011. It covers the history of computing in 20 galleries, from the abacus to the Internet. The entire exhibition is also available online.On January 28, 2017, the Museum launched a 6,000 sq ft (560 m2) exhibit "Make Software: Change the World!" The exhibit covers how people's lives are transformed by software. Designed for middle schoolers and up, it features multimedia and touchscreen interactives, including a software lab where visitors can explore coding hands-on.
Other exhibits include a restoration of an historic PDP-1 minicomputer, two restored IBM 1401 computers, and a restored IBM Ramac 350 disk drive.
An operating difference engine designed by Charles Babbage in the 1840s and constructed by the Science Museum of London was on display until January 31, 2016. It had been on loan since 2008 from its owner, Nathan Myhrvold, a former Microsoft executive.
=== Software ===
The CHM is also home to an extensive collection of software, curated by Al Kossow, a former employee of Apple Computer whom the museum hired in 2006. Kossow is responsible for preservation and accession of software in the museum, as well as for developing CHM's software-themed exhibitions. Kossow was a contributor to the museum long before being hired full-time and is the proprietor of Bitsavers, a large online repository of historical computer manuals and archived software and firmware acquired from his own collection and through donations from his peers.
In 2010 the museum began with the collection of source code of important software, beginning with Apple's MacPaint 1.3, written in a combination of assembly language and Pascal and available as download for the public.
Many other accessions have followed over the years. APL programming language was received in 2012. Adobe donated the Photoshop 1.0.1 source code in 2013, and Postscript in 2022. Microsoft followed with the source code donation of SCP MS-DOS 1.25 and a mixture of Altos MS-DOS 2.11 and TeleVideo PC DOS 2.11 as well as Word for Windows 1.1a under their own license. On October 21, 2014, Xerox Alto's source code was released. On January 19, 2023, the Apple Lisa source code was released to the public.
=== Past exhibits ===
On June 23, 1990, the Walk-Through Computer exhibit opened to help visitors learn how computers work. The interactive exhibit included a desktop computer, a giant monitor, a 25-foot (7.6 m) keyboard, and a 40-inch (1,016 mm) diameter trackball (initially planned to be a "bumper-car sized mouse") used by visitors to control the World Traveler program. In the Software Theater, animation and hardware video is used alongside a video feed of the World Traveler Program to show how computer programs work. This exhibit was closed on August 5, 1995, and re-opened as the Walk-Through Computer 2000 on October 21, 1995, to include an updated monitor, 3D graphics, and more interactive features. One of these features allowed visitors to change the pits imprinted on a giant CD-ROM, and the changes are seen on a monitor.
In 2016, the museum had a Liquid Galaxy in the "Going Places: A History of Silicon Valley" exhibit. The exhibit had 20 preselected locations that visitors can fly to on the Liquid Galaxy. An exhibit on the history of autonomous vehicles, from torpedoes to self-driving cars was also on display.
== Fellows ==
The CHM Fellow Awards Program honors distinguished technology pioneers for their outstanding merits and significant contributions to the advancement of computing and the evolution of the digital age. The CHM Fellows are men and women 'whose ideas have changed the world [and] affected nearly every human alive today'. The first fellow was Rear Admiral Grace Hopper in 1987. The fellows program has grown to 100 members as of 2025. Fellow nominations are open to the public and are accepted year round.
== See also ==
Computer museums
History of computing
History of computer science
Living Computers: Museum + Labs
Vintage Computer Festival held annually at The Computer History Museum
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Bell, Gordon (April 4, 2011). Out of a Closet: The Early Years of the Computer [x]* Museum (PDF) (Technical report). Redmond, Washington: Microsoft Research. MSR-TR-2011-44. Archived from the original (PDF) on January 18, 2012. Retrieved June 22, 2023.
== External links ==
Official website
The Computer Museum Archive (predecessor museum in Boston, Massachusetts) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Odd_Fellows_Hall_(Eureka,_California)#:~:text=The%20Odd%20Fellows%20Hall%20in,style%20building%20built%20in%201883. | Odd Fellows Hall (Eureka, California) | The Odd Fellows Hall in Old Town Eureka, California, also known as the French Empire Mansard Building, is a Second Empire architecture style building built in 1883.
The building served historically as a department store, as a professional building, as a clubhouse, and as a meeting hall for Odd Fellows. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1978.
== See also ==
Odd Fellows Building (Red Bluff, California): Another lodge in northern California
National Register of Historic Places listings in Humboldt County, California
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dove_World_Outreach_Center_Quran-burning_controversy#2011_burning_of_the_Quran | Dove World Outreach Center Quran-burning controversy | In July 2010, Terry Jones, the pastor of the Dove World Outreach Center in Gainesville, Florida, United States, announced plans to burn 200 copies of the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks. The announcement attracted significant media attention and sparked international outrage, particularly throughout the Islamic world. Numerous world leaders urged Jones to cancel the event. His threat led to protests across the Middle East and Asia, resulting in at least 20 deaths. In early September 2010, Jones announced the event was cancelled and pledged not to burn the Quran.
Despite his earlier statement, on March 20, 2011, Jones held a "trial of the Quran" at his church in Gainesville. During the event, the Quran was declared "guilty" of crimes against humanity and was subsequently burned in the church sanctuary. The act triggered widespread protests in Afghanistan, including a violent attack in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, where demonstrators stormed a United Nations compound, killing at least 30 people, including seven UN staff members, and injuring more than 150 others. Jones disclaimed any responsibility. Norwegian, Swedish, Nepalese and Romanian nationals were among the UN workers killed. On April 4, 2011, two U.S. soldiers were killed by an Afghan police officer, an act that was attributed to outrage over the Quran burning. American news analysts criticized and blamed Hamid Karzai, President of Afghanistan, for drawing attention to the Quran burning.
== Terry Jones ==
Terry Jones was born in October 1951 in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. He attended college for two years, worked at a hotel, and joined the now defunct Maranatha Campus Ministries. He moved to Cologne, Germany, where in 1981, he founded a charismatic church, the Christian Community of Cologne (CGK).
Jones received an honorary degree from an unaccredited theology school in 1983, and began using the title "Doctor." He was fined for this misuse of a credential title by a German administrative court. By the late 2000s, the CGK grew to have a membership of approximately 800–1000. According to the German magazine, Der Spiegel, the congregation kicked Jones out in 2008 due to the "climate of fear and control" that he employed, which included elements of "brainwashing" and telling congregants to beat their children with rods. He was accused of improper use of church funds, and forcing congregants to labor for free. A leader of the Cologne church said Jones did not "project the biblical values and Christianity, but always made himself the center of everything." Others accused him of being violent and fanatical. Deutsche Presse-Agentur reported that church members said Jones ran the Cologne church like a cult, using psychological pressure.
Between 2001 and 2008, Jones served as the part-time pastor of the Gainesville, Florida church Dove World Outreach, frequently traveling back and forth between Germany and the United States. Jones assumed full-time duties at Dove World Outreach in 2008 after leaving the German church. By September 2010, Dove World was said to have 50 members, with about 30 members reportedly attending services.
In 2010, Jones published Islam Is of the Devil, a polemic that claims Islam promotes violence, and that Muslims want to impose sharia in the United States. After Jones announced the Quran burning, the German Evangelical Alliance denounced his theological statements and his craving for attention.
Following an invitation from the English Defence League, Jones considered attending a rally in Luton in the UK in February 2011 to share his views. The anti-fascist group Hope not Hate petitioned the Home Secretary to ban Jones from entering the country. In January 2011, Home Secretary Theresa May announced that Jones would be refused entry to the UK 'for the public good'.
Jones' actions have prompted a religious group to place a $1.2 million bounty on his head; Hezbollah, a Lebanese political party and militant group, has announced a $2 million bounty.
On April 22, 2011, Jones planned to visit the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan, to protest sharia, but was arrested, tried and jailed. Local authorities had required him either to post a $45,000 "peace bond" to cover Dearborn's cost if Jones was attacked by extremists or to go to trial. Jones contested that requirement, and the jury voted to require the posting of a $1 "peace bond", but Jones and his co-pastor Wayne Sapp continued to refuse to pay. They were held briefly in jail, while claiming violation of First Amendment rights. That night Jones was released by the court. On November 11, 2011, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Robert Ziolkowski vacated the "breach of peace" ruling against Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp on the grounds that they were denied due process. Both men's criminal records have since been expunged.
On the evening of April 22, 2012, soon after he was interviewed at WJBK, Jones' gun fired accidentally as he got into his car.
The city allowed him to protest on April 29, a week after the trial, in a designated "free speech zone" outside Dearborn City Hall. Muslim protesters lined Michigan Avenue across the street from City Hall. About an hour into the protest, the crowds broke the barricades and a police line. They rushed the street but were quickly contained by riot police crews. The crowd was throwing water bottles and shoes at supporters of Jones. Police worked to push the crowd back across Michigan Avenue. At least one arrest was made.
== 2010 threat to burn a Quran ==
In 2010, Jones announced plans to burn the Quran on the ninth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, which he dubbed "International Burn a Quran Day". A wide range of politicians and religious groups strongly condemned the planned Quran desecration event. Jones said he canceled the event and intended to go to New York to meet with the imam of Park51, Feisal Abdul Rauf. After saying he would never burn the scriptures, on March 20, 2011, Jones oversaw the burning of a Quran.
This prompted protests, including an attack in Afghanistan that resulted in the deaths of at least 14 people. In April 2011, Jones said he is considering a trial of Muhammad for "crimes against humanity".
=== Background ===
Dove World Outreach Center, where the Quran burning was to occur, is a small congregation in Gainesville, with approximately 50 members. The church, led by pastor Terry Jones and his wife, Sylvia, first gained media attention in the late 2000s (decade) for its anti-Islamic and anti-homosexual messages. In 2009, Dove World posted a sign on its lawn which stated in large red letters "Islam Is of the Devil". Several members of the church also sent their children to their first day of school in August 2009 wearing t-shirts with "Islam Is of the Devil" printed on the back.
The proposal to burn Qurans began with a series of Twitter messages on July 12, and a related discussion on the now-removed Facebook group "Islam Is of the Devil", named after Terry Jones' book. Jones invited Christians to burn the Muslim holy book to remember all 9/11 victims. It was to be held from 6 p.m. to 9 pm. The idea initially had little support and considerable opposition, but Religion News Service ran a story describing Jones' claim that he had received Qurans to burn. CAIR refused to respond, but other religious organizations did. On July 25, Jones posted a YouTube video in which he held up a Quran and said "This is the book that is responsible for 9/11. No, to me it looks like the religion of the devil" which garnered substantial media attention. On August 3, Gainesville mayor Craig Lowe asked the world's media to ignore Jones' church as a "tiny fringe group and an embarrassment to our community", but coverage continued to increase. In early August, Sunni scholars at al-Azhar University in Cairo issued a statement warning of "dangerous consequences" if Qurans were burned. U.S. President Obama condemned the plan saying it would endanger the lives of U.S. troops abroad. American Muslims responded by saying they would celebrate September 11, 2010, as 'love Jesus day' emphasizing the fact that Jesus is believed to be a messenger of God in Islam. Other groups asked people to celebrate Read the Quran Day as a means to international understanding.
=== Reactions ===
==== Local (Florida) ====
A Gainesville Interfaith Forum which was established in November 2009 in response to earlier anti-Islam activities of the church requested for the declaration of September 11 as "Interfaith Solidarity Day", a request that was honored by mayor Craig Lowe. The Forum scheduled a "Gathering for Peace, Understanding and Hope" at Trinity United Methodist Church on the day before the planned burning. Mayor Lowe referred to Dove World as a "tiny fringe group and an embarrassment to our community". Twenty local religious leaders gathered Thursday, September 2, 2010, to call for citizens to rally around Muslims "in a time when so much venom is directed toward them."
==== National ====
Shortly after the event was announced, the National Association of Evangelicals recommended that the event be canceled. The Southern Baptist convention also spoke out against it. The World Evangelical Alliance "asks Muslim neighbors to recognize that the plans announced by a Florida group to burn copies of the Quran on September 11 do not represent the vast majority of Christians." "It dishonors the memory of those who died in the 9/11 attacks and further perpetuates unacceptable violence." The event is broadly condemned by American religious leaders.
John Rankin, President of the Theological Education Institute in Connecticut, has started a "Yes to the Bible, No to the Burning of the Quran" effort. Also Jennifer Bryson is advocating Christian intra-faith dialogue and Christian rejection of "Burn a Quran Day".
Feisal Abdul Rauf, the cleric behind the move to build a Muslim community centre near "Ground Zero" (Park51) said that, should the burning of Qurans have gone ahead, it would have created a disaster in the Muslim world, strengthened the radicals, and enhanced the possibility of terrorist acts against America and American interests.
He also added that retracting the decision to build the mosque would send a wrong message that "moving it is that the headline in the Muslim world will be 'Islam is under attack in America'."
A group of American veterans of the Iraq War and the War in Afghanistan wrote an open letter to HuffPost calling on the American public to respect "the values we risked our lives to protect". "When citizens here participate in hateful rhetoric and intolerance toward Muslims, it leaves soldiers over there exposed." The letter concludes by asking "America, you gotta have our back."
U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said, "It's regrettable that a pastor in Gainesville, Florida with a church of no more than fifty people can make this outrageous and distressful, disgraceful plan and get, you know, the world's attention." She also said, "It doesn't in any way represent America or Americans or American government or American religious or political leadership," and she emphasized the hope of the U.S. Government that the church would not go through with their plans. U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates called Pastor Jones asking him not to go through with his Quran burning. The U.S. embassy in Kabul issued a statement condemning the plans. Robert Gibbs, White House Press Secretary, criticized the plans stating "any type of activity like that that puts our troops in harm's way would be a concern to this administration."
The commander of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus said, "It is precisely the kind of action the Taliban uses and could cause significant problems. Not just here, but everywhere in the world we are engaged with the Islamic community." On the same day hundreds of Afghans protested in Kabul against the planned Quran burning event, chanting "death to America" and throwing rocks at a passing military convoy. Military officials also expressed fears that the protests would spread to other cities. Military officers at the Pentagon consequently said they hoped the rare incursion into politics by a military commander would convince Pastor Jones to cancel his plans. The pastor responded to Petraeus' statement that, "We understand the General's concerns. We are sure that his concerns are legitimate. [Nonetheless] [w]e must send a clear message to the radical element of Islam. We will no longer be controlled and dominated by their fears and threats."
Republicans in Congress also criticized Jones and his plans. House Minority Leader John Boehner said: "Just because you have a right to do something in America does not mean it is the right thing to do." Former Alaska governor Sarah Palin also criticized Jones, calling his plans "insensitive and an unnecessary provocation," and Republican 2008 presidential nominee John McCain and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell both argued that the actions of Jones put American troops overseas at risk. President Barack Obama made a statement on ABC News regarding the event, stating that "what he is proposing to do is completely contrary to our values as Americans." He added that Terry Jones' plan to burn the Quran will put American soldiers at risk. One book distribution website, SacredBookSource.com, offered to give away 1,001 free Qurans and 1,000 free Bibles for every Quran Jones destroyed.
==== International ====
The German Evangelical Alliance formally dissociated itself from the proposed Quran burning, because of the widely circulated report that in his time in Cologne, Jones had been associated with the evangelical alliance.
The Al-Falluja web forum threatened a bloody war against America in response to the burning of the Quran.
Various other Muslims, such as Ahmadiyya have argued that the Dove World Outreach Center is not following the true teachings of Christianity of tolerance and love. They quote Jesus: "But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you..."(Gospel of Matthew 5:44–45). The Head of the Community, Mirza Masroor Ahmad, has stated that "Religious extremism, be it Christian extremism, Muslim extremism or any other kind, is never a true reflection of the religion".
On August 27, approximately 100 people protested in Indonesia outside the U.S. Embassy. Roni Ruslan of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which advocates Islamic law, said,
No one will be able to control this reaction.... We urge the U.S. government and Christian leaders to stop the crazy plan from this small sect. It's an insult to Islam and to 1.5 billion Muslims around the world.
On September 4, thousands of Indonesians, mostly Muslims, took part in events across the country organized by Hizbut Tahrir. Rokhmat Labib, chairman of the group, called the planned book burning a provocation and predicted that Muslims would fight back should it take place. Lahib said that Muslims must not stay silent when their faith is threatened.
The World Evangelical Alliance condemned the plans to burn the Quran.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement declaring that "A key tenet of our faith is to accord everyone the freedom to worship as they choose. It is regrettable that anyone would regard the burning of any scriptural text as a legitimate form of protest or disagreement."
Humanists International was also critical of the plans to burn the Quran.
On Friday, September 10 in the northern Afghan city of Fayzabad, thousands took part in a protest against the planned Quran-burning following Eid ul-Fitr prayers. Violent demonstrators threw stones at a German-controlled NATO base. Initial reports said troops inside opened fire, killing up to three people and injuring several others, but a local police official said that only local police, not the NATO troops, were involved in the shooting. According to the acting police chief of Badakhshan, the protesters broke down the first perimeter gate surrounding the base and beat Afghan security guards and police on duty with sticks. Before opening, fire police allegedly fired warning shots and were also fired upon from the direction of the demonstrators, said the police official. A local police chief talking to the BBC gave his estimates of the number of protesters to around 1,500 but said that the incident that led to the shooting was a separate one with 150 people participating. This official also said that private security guards were the ones who fired at the people who tried to force their way inside the base. NATO has launched an investigation into the incident. General Zahir Khan of the Kabul police described Quran-burning a thinly disguised pretext for anti-government rallies with the Taliban in attendance.
Protest rallies were held in several other Afghan provinces: Nimruz, Kunar, Nangarhar, Parwan, Baghlan, Kunduz, Balkh and Farah. The Afghan President Hamid Karzai also spoke out against the burning of Qurans saying, "By burning the Quran, they cannot harm it. The Quran is in the hearts and minds of one-and-a-half billion people. Insulting the Quran is an insult to nations." Protests continued throughout the next two days, with three protesters wounded on September 11 and four on September 12 as Afghan security forces shot into groups of protesters, some armed with sticks or throwing stones, to disperse them. Two died in hospital due to severe gunshot wounds. On September 11, protests continued in the country, when Afghan security forces fought back thousands of demonstrators. Four demonstrators were wounded by security forces; firing when they tried to storm several government buildings in Puli Alam, in Logar Province. They also hurled stones at such buildings as the department for women's affairs. In Badakhshan province, another thousand people protested three separate districts, though the police chief said it was peaceful.
The prominent Qatar based scholar, Yusuf al-Qaradawi despite condemning the desecration said,
Responding to an assault is not by carrying out another assault, as this is discouraged in Islam .... Moreover, we, as Muslims, are required to show respect to and believe in the divinely-revealed books and all preceding prophets. If a person insults Jesus (peace be upon him), I, as a Muslim, should feel annoyed by this and act in his defense. This is what happened upon the release of a film which attacked Jesus: Muslims living in the country where the film was shown reacted angrily in protest. We believe in and highly respect all prophets and messengers, including Moses and Jesus (peace be upon them all).... The noble Quran even goes further and forbids us from cursing the pagans' idols, saying: (And do not abuse those whom they call upon besides Allah, lest exceeding the limits they should abuse Allah out of ignorance.) (Al-An`am 6:108).
Small rallies were reported in Pakistan in Karachi and the central Pakistani city Multan with around 200 protesters. There were also protests in Indonesia, Gaza, and India, a non-Muslim majority country. On September 15, regarding reports that at least 20 deaths worldwide were connected to Quran desecration protests, Randall Terry responded that "Such logic is like saying that a woman who is abused by her boyfriend or husband is guilty of bringing violence on herself because she said or did something that irritated him."
Protests in Kashmir escalated over several days, as Quran demonstrations quickly turned into separatist protests against the Indian government in the Muslim-majority province. On September 13, protesters defied a military-imposed curfew, setting fire to a Christian missionary school and government buildings. At least 13 people were shot dead by police, and one policeman was killed by a thrown rock; at least 113 policemen and 45 protesters were wounded. On September 12, a church was burned and a curfew instituted in Punjab. Violence also spread into Poonch in the Jammu division, with three protesters shot by police. Protesters burned several government offices and vehicles. Police prevented the burning of a Christian school in Poonch, and another in Mendhar the next day, in clashes leaving four protesters killed, 19 wounded, but dozens of government offices, a police station, and eight vehicles were burned. As of September 16, the Hindustan Times placed the death toll at 90, blaming much of the resentment on the indefinite military curfew, the first in ten years to affect the entire Kashmir Valley.
In Somalia, the al-Qaeda–inspired group Al-Shabaab organized a protest rally against the Quran-burning attended by thousands.
The head of Iran's Islamic Culture and Relations Organization labeled the Quran burning proposal a "Zionist" insult. A group of Iranian students also protested outside the Swiss embassy in Tehran to protest the desecration of the Quran, and chanted slogans condemned the desecration on the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. The Iranian House of Cartoon invited international artists to an online exhibition to condemn the desecration of the Qurans on the theme of Devil against Holy Books, Devil against Human Nature and Terry Jones. More than 30 cartoons had been submitted from Iran, Turkey, Brazil, Ukraine and other countries since the event was announced on September 13. While there would be no prizes, the entries would be published at a later date. Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki called the proposal "heinous" at a joint press conference with his Malawian counterpart Etta Banda. He also added that "The stance of the Muslim world, including the Islamic Republic of Iran, is transparent: Condemnation of this heinous, insulting and sacrilegious act by whoever perpetuated it. We clearly see the hands of the Zionists behind all threats and provocative moves [aimed to strain relations] between the believers of various faiths. This is exactly the sort of extremist move that seeks to realize their objectives through creating religious discord."
Iran's ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, said he had filed a complaint with the body to "attract the international community's attention to Iran's stance and to warn against the serious repercussions of insulting the holy book of Muslims and hurting the religious feelings of more than one-fourth of the world's population." He also condemned the actions as "abhorrent." Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani censured the US for its apparent silence on the "outrageous act of desecrating the holy Quran, urging the Muslim world to take swift action against it." He added that the "silence of those who beat the drums for freedom and democracy on the blasphemous decision has drawn the ire of freedom-seeking humans and stirred international hatred of the U.S." He also said the desecration of the Quran would be a "brutal" act that shows "barbarism in the modern era." While he concluded that such measures would "undoubtedly hurt spiritual and religious feelings of millions of Muslims across the world as well as followers of all divine faiths," and warned American legislators they should expect a "harsh fate" if they do not act "wisely." The parliament's Presiding Board member, Mohammad Dehqan, said that "Whenever Zionists want to cover up their atrocities in Palestine, they try to trigger anti-Islamic sentiments across the United States and the West to deflect global public attention from their brutalities against Palestinians." He also criticised the "Zionists" for trying to paint a violent picture of Islam to discourage others from converting to Islam; he went on to urge Muslims around the world to "remain united to stop the recurrence of similar profane moves." The head of the National Security and Foreign Policy Commission of parliament, Alaeddin Boroujerdi, said the "U.S. police reluctance to react to such sacrilegious action indicates Washington's green light to such a heinous crime. The U.S. government should take serious action against the perpetrators of this provocative move and declare its stance on that regard." Grand Ayatollahs Hossein Noori Hamedani and Naser Makarem Shirazi favored the killing of Quran-burners, but that the permission of a religious judge was required.
In Iraq, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani cautioned people to show restraint labeling the act "expression of hatred of Islam."
==== Counter protests ====
A hacker with nickname "Iraq Resistance" posted a voice-altered video to YouTube published under the byname "iqziad", claiming to have released the "Here you have" computer worm to "demand respect for Islam", blaming Terry Jones, and saying "I can smash all of those infected, but I wouldn't". The worm, first discovered August 20, attacked organizations including NASA, Walt Disney, and the Florida Department of Transportation, and produced spam that rose to 10% of all email traffic on September 9.
In South Africa, on September 10, Johannesburg businessman Mohammed Vawda had announced his own intention to burn the Bible on September 11 in the Johannesburg CBD in response to DWOC's own announcement. However, an Islamic lawyers' association, Scholars of the Truth, quickly intervened by filing an injunction against Vawda in court on the basis of opposition against burning any religious texts, and Judge Sita Kolbe of the Gauteng Division granted the injunction, thus prohibiting Vawda's announced burning. Lawyer and Scholars of the Truth spokesperson Yasmin Omar, who spearheaded the injunction with her husband Zahir, stated that the judge's ruling established that "freedom of expression is not unlimited if one exercises freedom of expression that is harmful to others".
==== Governmental reactions ====
Canada. Prime Minister Stephen Harper, condemned the planned Quran-burning in unequivocal terms, and said, "My God and my Christ is a tolerant God, and that's what we want to see in this world".
Cuba. Former president Fidel Castro called the planned book burning "a huge media show". After Jones called off the event, Castro said, "It would be nice to know what the FBI agents who visited him said 'to persuade him.'"
France. Defence minister Hervé Morin said that the threatened Quran burning and a French ban on face coverings enacted shortly afterward did not put French or NATO troops at increased risk: "when you are at the maximum, you cannot go higher".
Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel said of the planned Florida event, "It is plainly disrespectful – even abhorrent. It's simply wrong."
Indonesia. President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono warned in a televised speech that the plans to burn the Quran threatened world peace.
Iran. Supreme Leader of Iran Ali Khamenei said "All Muslims hold the U.S. government and their politicians accountable. If the US government is sincere in its claims of not having been involved in this incident, it must mete out a befitting punishment to the main perpetrators of this serious crime". President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called the plan a "Zionist plot that is against the teachings of all divine prophets."
Lebanon. President Michel Suleiman denounced the plans adding that burning the Quran is a clear contradiction of the teachings of the three Abrahamic religions [Christianity, Islam and Judaism] and of dialogue among the three faiths."
Pakistan's government strongly condemned the plan. Pakistani Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told reporters "This is against the spirit of any religion, the government and the people of Pakistan, including Pakistani Christians, are outraged at this planned, shameful act by a self-proclaimed pastor."
Palestine. In Gaza, Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh called Terry Jones a "crazy priest who reflects a crazy Western attitude toward Islam and the Muslim nation."
United States. President Barack Obama said "I just want [Jones] to understand that this stunt that he is talking about pulling could greatly endanger our young men and women in uniform who are in Iraq, who are in Afghanistan." He also said that the planned event was being used as an al-Qaeda recruitment tool, and urged that the Quran burning be cancelled because it violated U.S. principles of religious tolerance. The president also expressed frustration that under the law, nothing could be done other than citing the church under a local ordinance for public burnings.
Vatican City. The Dicastery for Interreligious Dialogue issued a statement saying that the book burning would be "an outrageous and grave gesture".
Supranational bodies
NATO. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, NATO Secretary General, said that the church's plans would violate NATO's values and might have a negative impact on the security of its soldiers.
Organisation of the Islamic Conference expressed deep concern and alarm at the burnings.
United Nations. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said he was "deeply disturbed", adding that such a gesture would be intolerable by any religion.
==== Media reactions ====
Some in the media attributed the event to silly season and sensationalism.
James Poniewozik, of Time gave a few reasons for media coverage of the event: "tiny groups of fringe idiots" often get coverage, presumably because the vast majority of readers find them strange and different. The event also happens to coincide with a seeming American "Islamophobia" and concern over the "Ground Zero mosque;" he also added that "This is, unfortunately, one of those cases in which, by having become news, the story is now making legitimate news." Slate's (the title of his blog post on the controversy). "[Jones] gets to hold the country, or at least the part of the country that pays attention to such news, hostage, with reporters getting the secretary of state and our general in Afghanistan on the record to condemn this nobody. Instead of dying in obscurity, he'll die a has-been. Good work." ABC News' Chris Cuomo wrote that the "media gave life to this Florida burning ... and that was reckless." Roger Simon, a columnist for Politico responded to David Petraeus' remarks saying "The issue is not the images; it is the acts."
Both the Associated Press and Fox News stated their intention to ignore it.
Other media reactions
The conservative Powerline blog stated it was against the Quran burning, but also said that "what gives rise to this dilemma, of course, is the fanaticism of radical Muslims, who have, indeed, responded violently to real or perceived slights to their religion." John Hinderaker, a lawyer and freelance writer, argued that "Perversely, the crazier radical Muslims behave, the more it benefits them (those burning the Qurans). Today it is burning Qurans, but the broader objective is to outlaw, de facto, any criticism of Islam." Another conservative writer Michelle Malkin, echoed an article by Christopher Hitchens, when she bemoaned "the eternal flame of Muslim outrage. When everything from sneakers to stuffed animals to comics to frescos to beauty queens to fast-food packaging to undies serves as dry tinder for Allah's avengers, it's a grand farce to feign concern about the recruitment effect of a few burnt Qurans in the hands of a two-bit attention-seeker in Florida."
A Facebook page support the pastor's plan got more than 16,000 fans by eve of the event, while fans opposing the event numbered in the hundreds of thousands.
==== Actions against Dove World Outreach Center ====
The Gainesville fire department refused to grant the church a burning permit; regardless, the church planned to proceed with the event despite the potential fine. Following the July 2010 announcement of the Quran burning, the bank holding a $140,000 mortgage loan on the church property, demanded immediate repayment of the balance, and the property insurance was canceled. A lighted sign and an acrylic cross on the property were damaged by rocks. On September 8, 2010, Rackspace, the provider of web hosting service to the Dove World Outreach website, disconnected the site, citing a violation of their terms of use policy. A spokesman for Rackspace told news media that the shutdown was not "a constitutional issue," it was "a contract issue."
The city of Gainesville has said it would charge the church $200,000, representing the cost of a security presence by the police department, the Alachua County Sheriff's Office, and some city public works employees. The Alachua County Sheriff's Office estimated that it spent $100,000 on providing security to Jones, and specifically assigned 160 of the 242 deputies on duty September 11 to police activities related to the planned burning.
==== Death threats ====
Jones said that he hoped the event would not lead to violence. He said that he had been receiving death threats regularly since the event was announced. Evan Kohlmann of Flashpoint Global Partners, a firm that "tracks radical militant websites," said that a suicide bomber had threatened to drive a truck into the church and others had discussed setting the building on fire, though it was not known if the discussions were serious. The Wall Street Journal quoted an individual calling himself Abu Dujanah from a jihadist website, "Now, I wish to bomb myself in this church as revenge for the sake of Allah's talk... And here I register my name here that I want to be an intended martyr."
When death threats directed against Jones were mailed to The Gainesville Sun in a letter postmarked from Johnstown, Pa., the American Muslim Association of North America issued a statement signed by 15 imams including Ahmed Al Mehdawi of the Islamic Center of Gainesville condemning the death threats. During Jones' September 11 visit to New York, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that police plan to keep a "close tab on him" for his own safety.
In March 2013 the al-Qaeda English-language magazine Inspire published a poster stating "Wanted dead or alive for crimes against Islam" with a prominent image of Terry Jones.
==== Other Quran desecration incidents ====
Within hours of Jones' cancellation announcement on September 9, Westboro Baptist Church member Megan Roper announced via Twitter that the church would proceed with its own Quran-burning ceremony; Her mother said she was angry that the media had not covered WBC's 2008 Quran-burning similarly to its approach in 2010. Phelps announced his intention to "burn the Quran and the doomed American flag at noon on September 11", subsequently doing so without incident.
Duncan Philp of the Wyoming Tyranny Response Team obtained a permit to protest outside the Wyoming State Capitol from 11:00 to 13:00 on September 11. He expressed the intent to set a Quran on fire at noon, or, if the public burning was not permitted, to tear up the Quran and move the pieces in a garbage can to a private business to be burned. Members of the local Unitarian Universalist Church planned a counter-protest. Later the group described the exercise as a test of free speech and said they would take no action on state property.
In Pueblo West, Colorado, a Quran was bolted to a stop sign during the weekend of September 11–12.
In Nashville, Evangelical pastor Bob Old and another preacher burned a Quran with lighter fluid in a private yard. A group of protesters came to his house, but there were no confrontations. He decided not to post the burning to YouTube.
In lower Manhattan, protesters against the "Ground Zero mosque" took some actions against the Quran. The latter, who refused to identify himself, was reported to have been "escorted away to safety a few blocks away" by police after burning a few pages. He was subsequently recognized as a New Jersey transit worker, and was fired by the agency for violating a code of conduct, despite being off-duty while at a protest in New York. This in turn has drawn criticism from New Jersey state senator Ray Lesniak and the American Civil Liberties Union, which said a person employed in a non-policy related role cannot be fired for off-the-job political expression.
Also, in Texas, on the ninth anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, a group of protesters made up of Christians, Muslims, Buddhists and atheists gathered at Sam Houston Park to challenge the plan of evangelist David Grisham, director of a Christian activist group to burn the Quran. An activist named Isom took away the Quran from Grisham and he left the park.
Alex Stewart, a research lawyer in Brisbane, Australia, purportedly rolled "joints" using pages from the Quran and the Bible and smoked them in a YouTube video. The video was quickly removed from YouTube, but many copies have since been posted and related links. According to Michael Cope, president of the Queensland Council for Civil Liberties, "I don't think on the face of it that what he's done is an offence...nor do we think it should be," referring to the Queensland Anti-Discrimination Act. Stewart was placed on leave from Queensland University of Technology, where he worked, by its vice-chancellor Peter Coaldrake pending a review under the university's code of conduct. Coaldrake said, "The university is obviously extremely, extremely unhappy and disappointed that this sort of incident should occur... It may have occurred in the individual's private time or on a weekend – it doesn't matter... There is always, in the community, collateral damage to these sorts of things." Stewart was returned to his job on September 22 after he had "apologised unreservedly" for the nature of the incident.
With mainstream media sources pledging to limit coverage of Quran burning, individuals took to YouTube. A YouTube spokesperson indicated that they do not prescreen videos, and generally responded to complaints about the issue by placing warnings about offensive material. HuffPost questioned why the Quran-burning story was treated as major news, while many news outlets did not cover the prosecution of 12 soldiers for crimes including the premeditated murder of Afghan civilians, possibly for sport, and the keeping of body parts as trophies. Keith Richburg, a journalist for The Washington Post in Beijing, said that professional journalists "act as a filter on what information should be released or left out so that it does not hurt society", and warned that digital media allows the role of media as a gatekeeper to be undermined. American counterintelligence experts said that with no images of Quran burnings televised during the September 11 anniversary, that violent anti-American protests in Muslim countries would soon fizzle.
A Quran was found shot and burned in the driveway of the Annoor Mosque in Knoxville, Tennessee. Knoxville police and the FBI began investigating the incident as a possible civil rights violation, a threat, and a hate crime. A YouTube video posted by a user "MuslimKnoxvilleOrg" showing the burning of a Quran stuffed with bacon and doused with lighter fluid was also being investigated, though it was not immediately connected to the mosque. According to Knoxville FBI Special Agent Richard L. Lambert, "The fact that the burnt and shot Quran was placed on mosque property can be construed as a threat of force ... The issue comes down to determining what was the perpetrator's intent." Federal charges were considered, based on a 1968 law making it an offense "to use force to prevent anyone from carrying out their religious beliefs"; state charges were also considered under Tennessee civil rights law prohibiting intimidation, and misdemeanor offenses such as disorderly conduct were also explored.
In Michigan, a burned Quran was found in front of the Islamic Center of East Lansing. Local police and the FBI were called in to investigate. Dawud Walid, director of Michigan's Islamic council chapter said, "This is no different than someone painting a swastika on a synagogue or burning a cross on a black church." On September 21, the County Prosecutor said the man who turned himself in for the incident would not face charges because the act was not a crime under Michigan's criminal code.
On the north side of Chicago, Illinois, a burned Quran and a letter were found on the sidewalk outside the Muslim Community Center over the September 11–12 weekend, and were turned over to be investigated by Chicago police bomb and arson unit.
=== Cancellation (postponement) and aftermath ===
On September 9, Jones announced the cancellation of the event, and a plan to fly to New York to meet with the Imam of Park51, Feisal Abdul Rauf. In an interview on the morning of September 11, the day of the intended protest, he said, "We will definitely not burn the Quran...Not today, not ever." Despite the cancellation, visiting protesters from both sides attempted to reach the rally, but a heavy police presence dominated the area. A visitor from Atlanta who attempted to burn a Quran had his book and lighter seized by police.
The World Evangelical Alliance later contacted Jones, asking him to apologize for the planned Quran burning. In a public statement, he refused, saying, "We will not repent for standing up for the gospel", adding that Christian churches "have lost their guts to stand up for Christianity. But instead, they bow down to the political powers and the false doctrines of the nations."
As of October 22, 2010, Jones collected a new car which was offered as a reward to Jones in a "quirky radio" ad by a New Jersey Hyundai dealership owned by former New York Giants player, Brad Benson if Jones did not burn Qurans. Jones said he did not learn of the reward until several weeks after canceling the burning.
On January 19, 2011, it was announced that Jones had been banned from entering the United Kingdom by the British Home Secretary Theresa May. Jones had been invited to give a speech for a Right-Wing group England is Ours in Milton Keynes.
== 2011 burning of the Quran ==
On March 20, 2011, Dove World Outreach Center held a trial which they called "International Judge the Quran Day". Jones played the part of a "judge", wearing traditional robes. The Quran was placed on trial for six hours, charging it with responsibility for violence. At the end of the "trial" the jury found the Quran guilty of all charges and "sentenced" to burning. Pastor Wayne Sapp then "executed" the Quran by burning it.
Jones sought a permit in April 2011 to hold a rally at the Islamic Center of America in Dearborn, Michigan. A jury sided with prosecutors, ruling that Jones and Sapp would breach the peace. Judge Mark Somers set the bond for each man at $1, which they refused to pay. Somers remanded them to jail. Jones was barred from the area of the mosque for three years.
On November 11, 2011, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Robert Ziolkowski vacated the "breach of peace" ruling against Terry Jones and Wayne Sapp on the grounds that they were denied due process. Both men's criminal records have since been expunged.
=== Reactions ===
After a sermon on April 1 in the city's main mosque, angry demonstrators in Mazar-i-Sharif, Afghanistan, killed at least 12 people, including five Nepalese security guards and three other members of staff working for the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan (UNAMA). Jones denied responsibility. Pajhwok Afghan News reported that the dead included Norwegian, Romanian and Swedish nationals, two of them decapitated. BBC quoted police general, Abdul Rafu Taj, as saying that "according to the initial reports... none were beheaded", and that they were shot in the head. Up to 2,000 protesters took to the streets on April 2 in Kandahar, chanting anti-U.S. slogans. The protesters burned several vehicles and hurled stones at police who were trying to control the mob. They also torched a girls' high school and burned down a school bus in the centre of the city. Security forces killed nine protesters and injured 73. Smaller protests occurred in other cities.
The Gambian government has called for the arrest of Terry Jones. Ebrima O. Camara, the secretary general and head of the civil service, described the burning as "heinous" and asked for prosecution to proceed "as soon as possible".
An affiliate website of Iran's Revolution Guard Cyber Defense Command quoted a report by the newspaper Vatan-e Emrooz that claimed Iranian border patrols were burning copies of "smuggled" Bibles in Iran. On March 25, 2011, the Iranian Ambassador to the United Nations, Mohammad Khazaee, condemned the burning and called for Jones' prosecution.
In southern Lebanon, students protested peacefully with Shia sheikh Hassan al-Zayyat outside the Lebanese International University to construct the largest Quran on Earth, weighing 100 kg. Lebanese Shia militant group Hezbollah has put a $2.4 million bounty on the head of pastor Terry Jones, according to the FBI.
On March 22, 2011, Pakistanis protested in the Punjab Christian neighborhoods and burned tires in front of a church. On March 22, 2011, Amir Hamza, the leader of Pakistan's banned Islamic organization Lashkar-e-Taiba, issued a $2.2 million fatwa for anyone who kills pastor Terry Jones. On March 25, 2011, protests erupted in Pakistan, where the Jamiat-e-Ulema-e-Islam organized province-wide protests, including a road blockage and burnings of effigies and American flags in the province of Sindh. A man desecrated the Bible at the gates of Saint Anthony's Catholic Church in Lahore to "avenge" Jones' desecration of the Quran in Florida; he was arrested by Pakistani police. The President of the Pakistani Bishops' Conference, Lawrence Saldanha, who currently serves as the Metropolitan bishop of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Lahore, called for the arrest of Jones. Saldanha said Jones' burning of the Quran has caused scandal and fury in the Muslim world and the deaths of more than 20 people. Archbishop Saldanha said the U.S. government should detain Jones.
A South African Islamic organization called Scholars for Truth turned to the country's courts to prevent a fellow-Muslim from burning Bibles in retaliation to threats by Jones to burn the Quran.
United States president Barack Obama strongly condemned both the Quran burning, calling it an act of "extreme intolerance and bigotry", and the "outrageous" attacks by protesters, referring to them as "an affront to human decency and dignity". "No religion tolerates the slaughter and beheading of innocent people, and there is no justification for such a dishonorable and deplorable act." U.S. legislators, including Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, also condemned both the burning and the subsequent violence. Gen. David Petraeus said, "This was a surprise," and "That action was hateful; it was intolerant."
On April 4, 2011, two U.S. soldiers were shot and killed by an Afghan policeman in an attack that was attributed to his anger over the burning of the Quran. The attacker was later killed in a shootout with NATO troops. The attacker has been called a hero and a martyr by some of the local community, with his grave becoming an unofficial shrine, and local mosques being named after him. However, at least one local cleric has stated that the attack could not be justified on religious grounds.
== See also ==
2005 Quran desecration controversy
2008 Eucharist incident
2012 Afghanistan Quran burning protests
Book burning
Criticism of Islam
Freedom of speech in the United States
Islamophobia
== References ==
== External links ==
Muslim Community Organizes Vigils, Teach-Ins to Counter Planned Quran Burning – video report by Democracy Now!, September 8, 2010
Terry Jones
Stand Up America (Terry Jones' political group)
Braveheart Show's channel on YouTube (Terry Jones)
Appearances on C-SPAN
Terry Jones collected news and commentary at Al Jazeera English
Pastor Terry Jones collected news and commentary at The Guardian
Terry Jones (pastor) collected news and commentary at The New York Times |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Music_of_Kingdom_Hearts#Kingdom_Hearts_Original_Soundtrack | Music of Kingdom Hearts | The music of the Kingdom Hearts video game series was composed by Yoko Shimomura with orchestral music arranged by Kaoru Wada. The original soundtracks of the games have been released on three albums and a fourth compilation album. The soundtracks to the Kingdom Hearts games feature several musical pieces from both Square Enix and Disney works , including such pieces as "Mickey Mouse Club March" by Jimmie Dodd, "This Is Halloween" by Danny Elfman, and "One-Winged Angel" by Nobuo Uematsu. They also feature several vocal songs, the most notable being the four main theme songs: "Hikari", "Passion", "Chikai", and "Face My Fears." The two themes were written and performed by Japanese American pop star Hikaru Utada; in addition to Japanese, English versions of the first three songs were produced, titled "Simple and Clean", "Sanctuary", and "Don't Think Twice", respectively.
Although the majority of the music has been released only in Japan, the first soundtrack was released worldwide and tracks from the Kingdom Hearts series have been featured in Video Games Live at multiple venues. The music has overall been well received and several tracks have received particular praise. The two main themes were well received by both video game and music critics, and did well on Japan's Oricon Weekly Singles chart.
== Musical pieces ==
The Kingdom Hearts games feature music that ranges from dark to cheerful to sorrowful. Several musical pieces are included that have either met with a positive reception or were already well known – mostly from Disney films. Such pieces include "Mickey Mouse Club March" by Jimmie Dodd; "Winnie the Pooh" by Robert B. Sherman and Richard M. Sherman; "This Is Halloween" by Danny Elfman; "He's a Pirate" by Geoff Zanelli, Klaus Badelt, and Hans Zimmer; and "Beauty and the Beast" by Howard Ashman and Alan Menken. Other well-known tracks include "Night on Bald Mountain" (rendered "A Night on the Bare Mountain") by Modest Mussorgsky, and a remixed version of "One-Winged Angel" by Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu. Some Disney worlds in Kingdom Hearts feature corresponding music from their related Disney film. Original tracks include the title screen track, "Dearly Beloved", and the two theme songs, "Simple and Clean" and "Sanctuary". The soundtracks feature a mix of piano and orchestral pieces. The main themes differ from the other music in that they are pop songs. The series also features several vocal songs—the most notable being the two theme songs. Kingdom Hearts II includes more vocal songs in the Atlantica world, which is themed after The Little Mermaid and features rhythm-based minigames. Such vocal songs include "Part of Your World" and "Under the Sea", both by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman.
=== "Hikari" and "Simple and Clean" ===
"Hikari" (光; lit. "light") is the theme song to the Japanese release of Kingdom Hearts, the first game in the series as well as the Game Boy Advance sequel Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories and its remake Re:Chain of Memories, the PlayStation Portable prequel Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, as well as the theme to Kingdom Hearts coded and its DS remake Re:Coded. Its English counterpart, "Simple and Clean", is the theme song to the English release of the games as well as the Japanese re-release of the first game, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. Both songs were written and performed by Hikaru Utada. This marked the first time they had produced a song for a video game. Although the two songs share a similar melody and background music, the meaning of the songs' lyrics differ as "Simple and Clean" is not a literal translation of "Hikari". The single, "Hikari", was released in Japan on March 20, 2002 and proved to be very popular; it sold over 270,000 copies in a week. "Simple And Clean" (full version and PLANITb Remix) is included on Utada's single release of "Colors", which debuted on Japan's Oricon charts at number one and stayed on the charts for 19 weeks. It was later included as a bonus track on Utada's 2009 English-language album This Is the One. Both songs have a "PLANITb remix", which are house versions, and "Hikari" has a "Godson Mix". The different versions are used at various points in the game; the "Short Edit" version of the PLANITb remix is used for the opening sequence and the full version of the original song is used for the ending sequence.
=== "Passion" and "Sanctuary" ===
"Passion" is the theme song for the Japanese release of Kingdom Hearts II and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days. Its English counterpart, "Sanctuary", is the theme song for the English versions and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix. Like the first theme, Hikaru Utada wrote and performed both the Japanese and English versions, and there are two mixes. The "~opening version~" mix is played during the opening movies, and the "~after the battle~" version is played after defeating the final boss of the games. "Sanctuary" and "~after the battle~" were both used in Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days for DS. "Passion" was included in the Kingdom Hearts II Original Soundtrack and a CD single was released on December 14, 2005. "Sanctuary" was first previewed on MTV.com in early 2006. Both the "Opening" and "After the Battle" versions of "Sanctuary" were released in May 2009 as bonus tracks on Utada's second American album, This Is the One. The "After the Battle" versions of "Passion" and "Sanctuary" serve as the ending theme songs for the 3DS game Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance.
=== "Chikai" and "Don't Think Twice" ===
=== "Face My Fears" ===
== Creation and influence ==
Yoko Shimomura composed the music for the three main Kingdom Hearts games and their remakes. She began composing video game music in 1988, and joined Square in 1993, but left in 2002 to work freelance. In creating music, Shimomura gathers inspiration from different things outside of her daily routine, like traveling or when she is emotionally moved. She has a respect for solo and orchestral pieces, such as Piano Sonata No. 7 by Ludwig van Beethoven, Ballade No. 1 by Frédéric Chopin, and La Valse by Maurice Ravel. Shimomura was initially hesitant to handle the music for the first Kingdom Hearts; the mix of a Square-style story and Disney characters made it hard to imagine what the game would be like, which made it difficult to compose the music. Many of the musical pieces are arrangements of Disney themes, which Shimomura stated she enjoyed arranging. Shimomura felt a great deal of pressure working on such recognizable tunes, and made an effort to maintain the original mood and atmosphere of them while complying with the technical specifications of the PlayStation 2. For example, the original orchestrated arrangement of the song "This Is Halloween" from The Nightmare Before Christmas was impossible to reproduce on the PlayStation 2's sound system. To keep aspects of it intact, Shimomura used a trial and error method to arrange the piece.
In creating original music, Shimomura wanted to create compositions that would make players feel good while playing to accompany the action aspect of Kingdom Hearts. She played the game and looked over scripts and illustrations for inspiration. After coming up with ideas, she discussed them with director Tetsuya Nomura and the game planners. For the PlayStation 2 re-release of Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, she and her team spent much of their time working on the fight music; Shimomura wanted the different fight music to reflect different emotions such as happiness and sadness. To handle the large workload for Kingdom Hearts coded, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep, Shimomura composed the most prominent themes, while the rest was created by other composers. In retrospect, Shimomura has stated that the Kingdom Hearts series combined the scenes and music well, and she felt very honored her music has entered into people's hearts. She has also commented that she enjoyed working on the project, despite its hardships, and is proud of the work.
The two main theme songs were written and performed by Japanese American artist Hikaru Utada. They wrote two versions for each, one in Japanese and one in English; the latter is used for international releases of the games. "Hikari" and "Passion" are the Japanese version theme songs for Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts II respectively, while their English counterparts are called "Simple and Clean" and "Sanctuary". Utada was the only singer Nomura had in mind for the first Kingdom Hearts theme song. He considered Utada an iconic young singer whose music could break language and international barriers. Their involvement, along with the first song's Japanese title, was announced in January 2002. Utada's involvement with the sequel was announced in July 2005. Nomura chose not to have a different singer perform the second theme song because he believed fans associated Utada with Kingdom Hearts. Utada derived their inspiration from the worlds and characters in Kingdom Hearts; they also received written explanations of the stories from Nomura. Nomura stated that the vocals of the second theme tie in more closely with the game's story than "Hikari"/"Simple and Clean" did with Kingdom Hearts and Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. Conversely, Nomura commented that Utada's theme songs influenced several factors in creating the games.
== Releases ==
Aside from being featured in the Kingdom Hearts video games, the music has been released via a variety of methods. Soundtracks for the first and third game were released shortly after the games' release. These were followed by a compilation set which featured unreleased tracks from the series, as well as new and rearranged versions of tracks from the re-released versions of the games. The first soundtrack was released in Japan, United States and Europe. All other albums were released only in Japan. Though the two main themes were released as part of the game soundtracks, they were officially released as singles a week prior to the games' releases. Utada's 2009 album This Is the One features the theme songs "Simple And Clean" and "Sanctuary". Tracks from Kingdom Hearts series have also been played by Play! A Video Game Symphony at various venues in the United States and around the world. Arnie Roth arranged Kingdom Hearts pieces for the Symphonic Fantasies concerts in September 2009. Music from Kingdom Hearts is included in Yoko Shimomura's best works compilation album Drammatica.
=== Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack ===
Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack for the video game Kingdom Hearts. It was first released in Japan on March 27, 2002 by Toshiba-EMI, and later released in Europe on November 25, 2002 by Virgin Records and the United States on March 23, 2003 by Walt Disney Records. The soundtrack is a 2-CD set which contains most of music in the original version of the game along with two bonus tracks. The music was composed by Yoko Shimomura, with vocals done by Hikaru Utada for "Simple and Clean" and "Hikari". The orchestral music was arranged by Kaoru Wada and performed by the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra. Because Kingdom Hearts Final Mix was released after the soundtrack, additional tracks from it were not included.
The soundtrack has met with an overall positive reception. IGN listed the opening track for Kingdom Hearts, "Dearly Beloved", as number four on their top ten list of RPG title tracks. In their "Best of 2002" awards, Kingdom Hearts was nominated for the "Best Sound in a PlayStation 2 Game Editor's Choice Award" and was a runner up for "Best Sound in Game 2002
Reader's Choice Award". Allmusic rated the first soundtrack a 3 out of 5. GameSpy described the soundtrack as "pleasant, melodious, and most of all fitting for the various situations in which it plays" and complimented the English translation of "Simple And Clean".
Track listing
=== Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Additional Tracks ===
Kingdom Hearts Final Mix Additional Tracks is a separate CD that features new tracks from the re-release of the first game, Kingdom Hearts Final Mix. It was released in Japan on December 26, 2002, by Walt Disney Records.
=== Kingdom Hearts II Original Soundtrack ===
Kingdom Hearts II Original Soundtrack is the official soundtrack for Kingdom Hearts II video game. The album contains musical tracks from the game, composed and produced by Yoko Shimomura, with the main orchestral tracks arranged by Kaoru Wada and performed by the Tokyo Philharmonic Orchestra. Vocals were performed by Hikaru Utada for the theme song, "Passion". The soundtrack was released in Japan on January 25, 2006.
The soundtrack received positive remarks from critics. G4TV awarded Kingdom Hearts II "Best Soundtrack" at their 2006 G-Phoria awards show. GameSpy complimented the soundtrack but stated it was not as good as the first game's soundtrack. Game Informer called the musical score "unforgettable". GameSpot stated the "superb soundtrack" further enhanced the gaming experience and rated the sound a 9 out of 10.
Track listing
=== Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete ===
Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack Complete is a compilation album of the video game music from the three main games in the series, Kingdom Hearts, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, and Kingdom Hearts II. The boxset contains music composed and produced by Yoko Shimomura, with the main orchestral tracks arranged by Kaoru Wada. The album also features various unreleased tracks from the series, as well as new and rearranged versions of tracks from the two Final Mix releases and Re:Chain of Memories. The compilation boxset was released in Japan on March 28, 2007.
The collection has printed images on each disc and includes a deluxe booklet containing new illustrations designed by director and character designer Tetsuya Nomura and comments from Yoko Shimomura. A special CD carrying case featuring artwork of Sora and Roxas was released as a bonus. The soundtrack comprises nine discs with 229 tracks in total. Discs one and two contain unaltered tracks from the Kingdom Hearts Original Soundtrack while discs three to six contain lengthier and looped tracks from the Kingdom Hearts II Original Soundtrack. Discs seven and eight contain tracks from Kingdom Hearts Re:Chain of Memories while disc nine contains bonus tracks from Kingdom Hearts Final Mix and Kingdom Hearts II Final Mix.
Track listing
=== Piano Collections Kingdom Hearts ===
On May 27, 2009, Square Enix released a collection of Kingdom Hearts music arranged for the piano. The tracks are popular pieces chosen by members of Square Enix's music website. A mini concert was held on April 2, 2009 in Tokyo to preview the album, attendees of which were drawn from a lottery held on the Square Enix Members website. There, composer Yoko Shimomura described the album as consisting of easy listening piano solo arrangements. Tracks 5 through 8 are a sonata on the various themes of the series.
"The Other Promise" and "Roxas" are used for a cutscene of Kingdom Hearts Re:coded in Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX. The Piano Collections arrangement of "Dearly Beloved" also features in the title selection screen of Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.5 ReMIX, Kingdom Hearts HD 2.8 Final Chapter Prologue, and Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5+2.5 ReMIX.
=== Piano Collections Kingdom Hearts Field & Battle ===
Piano Collections Kingdom Hearts Field & Battle is the second compilation album of compositions from the Kingdom Hearts series arranged for solo piano by Sachiko Miyano and Natsumi Kameoka. Unlike the first album, which features mostly character themes and background music, this compilation features themes from battles and worlds. Square Enix announced it at the 2009 Tokyo Game Show, and released it in Japan on January 13, 2010.
=== Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep & 358/2 Days Original Soundtrack ===
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep & 358/2 Days Original Soundtrack is a three-disc album containing music from the games Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep and Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, as well as Kingdom Hearts Re:coded. Unlike previous soundtracks, this set features a collaboration between composers Yoko Shimomura, Takeharu Ishimoto, and Tsuyoshi Sekito, containing musical compositions from all three. It was released on February 2, 2011. Discs one and two contain music from Birth by Sleep, and disc three contains music from 358/2 Days (tracks 1 through 13), Re:coded (tracks 14 through 20), and Birth by Sleep: Final Mix (tracks 21 through 27). Tracks from 358/2 Days and Re:coded are in pure orchestrated form, and are not digitized as they are in the original game releases.
Track listing
=== Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Original Soundtrack ===
Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance Original Soundtrack is a three-disc album containing music from Kingdom Hearts 3D: Dream Drop Distance, released on April 18, 2012. Among the songs included are tracks from The World Ends with You, originally composed by Ishimoto, who remixed them for Dream Drop Distance. Orchestral arrangements were provided by Kaoru Wada.
Track listing
=== Kingdom Hearts 10th Anniversary Fan Selection: Melodies & Memories ===
Kingdom Hearts 10th Anniversary Fan Selection: Melodies & Memories is a 2-CD album made in commemoration of the series' 10th anniversary. The tracks included in the album were chosen by fans in the series' official website. It was released in Japan on September 19, 2012.
Track listing
=== Kingdom Hearts: III, II.8, Unchained χ & Unchained χ – Original Soundtrack ===
Track listing
== Reception ==
The music of Kingdom Hearts was overall well received. Greg Kasavin of GameSpot felt the background music was appropriate for each setting. However, he complained that the music loops were too short and repetitive. IGN reviewer David Smith was impressed by the production values that went into the music of Kingdom Hearts, namely the use of the New Japan Philharmonic Orchestra and arrangements of pieces such as "Night on Bald Mountain" and "Under the Sea". He also praised composer Yoko Shimomura's ability to maintain the atmosphere while keeping a "common thread of character running through the soundtrack". Daniel Kalabakov of SoundtrackCentral.com called Shimomura's orchestral composition "sophisticated", and stated that the score possesses unique qualities. He also stated that though the album is "excellent", he considered it one of Shimomura's weaker albums overall. In reviewing Shimomura's compilation album Drammatica, SoundtrackCentral.com reviewer Adam Corn considered the Kingdom Hearts tracks one of the highlights of the album.
Jim Cordeira of Gaming Age stated the music was one of the best aspects of the first game and the orchestrated soundtrack is better quality than the "midi-sounding" tunes of previous Final Fantasy games. GameSpy's Benjamin Turner had positive comments about the main theme, but found some worlds' background music weak. A second GameSpy reviewer, Gerald Villoria, complimented both PlayStation 2 game soundtracks, but stated Kingdom Hearts II's soundtrack was not as good as the first game's.
Several tracks garnered extra attention and their own positive reception. "Hikari" debuted at number one on the Oricon Weekly Singles chart in Japan. It stayed at number one for three weeks and stayed on the chart for thirteen weeks. "Hikari" sold more than 270,000 copies during its first week on sale, and by August 2002, it sold over 860,000 copies in Japan. In 2008, Guinness World Records listed it as the best-selling video game theme song in Japan. Kalabakov complimented Utada's singing and the instrumentation of "Hikari", but commented that he was not a fan of pop songs. Turner was impressed by the translation of "Hikari" into English, and felt Utada's vocals were a good addition to the opening and ending segments of the game. "Passion" debuted at number four on the Oricon Weekly Singles chart in Japan where it stayed on the chart for nine weeks. G4TV's Miguel Concepcion was particularly pleased by "Dearly Beloved", the track that plays during the title screen. IGN echoed the sentiment and listed it as number four in their top ten list of RPG title tracks. They commented that the track lifted the doubts they had about the game's potential. Kalabakov referred to it as a fitting "fairy tale-style" piece to the game's setting. He further stated that it was a simple piece that was "not short on emotion".
== References ==
== External links ==
Kingdom Hearts at MusicBrainz (list of releases)
Kingdom Hearts II OST at MusicBrainz (list of releases)
Yoko Shimomura discography at MusicBrainz |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mishari_bin_Rashid_Alafasy | Mishari bin Rashid Alafasy | Qari Mishary bin Rashid Alafasy (Arabic: مشاري بن راشد العفاسي) is a Kuwaiti qāriʾ (Quran reciter), imam, preacher, and nasheed artist. He studied at the College of the Holy Quran at the Islamic University of Madinah, where he specialized in the ten qira'at (canonical methods of Quranic recitation) and tafsir (Quranic exegesis).
In addition to his Qur’anic recitation, Alafasy has released several nasheed albums. While he recites performs in Arabic, he has also recorded nasheeds in other languages, including Japanese, Turkish, English and French.
Mishary bin Rashid Alafasy is today one of the most well recognized voices in Nashid and Quran recitations, with his own YouTube channel having 11.6 million subscribers. For instance, 2 of his recorded Nashids have amassed more than 200 million views on YouTube, with 1 recitation of Surah Baqarah amassing nearly 100 million views. Dozens of his Nashids and Quran recitations alike have at least 10 million views on YouTube. His voice is almost always available on any commonly used Quran listening apps.
== Awards and recognition ==
On October 25 2008, Alafasy was awarded the first Arab Creativity Oscar by the Arab Creativity Union in Egypt. The event was sponsored by the Secretary-General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa as a recognition of Alafasy's role in promoting Islamic principles and teachings.
In 2012, he was named the best Quran reciter by About.com magazine as part of the Readers' Choice Awards.
In June 2024, he received a diamond button for being the first Islamic channel to reach 10 million subscribers on YouTube.
== References ==
== External links ==
Nasheed From "Hearts Be Merciful Album"(2012)
Alafasy's Ramadan nasheed, August 2023
Recitation by Sheikh Mishary Rashed Al-afasy
Recitation Of Mishari
Alafasy Albums
Alafasy Recitations on Islamway
SunniPath Library – Quran Recitation by Mishary Rashed al-Efasy
Info of Sheikh Mishary Rashed Al-afasy |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulwama#:~:text=Pulwama%20(known%20as%20Panwangam%20in,in%20the%20disputed%20Kashmir%20region. | Pulwama | Pulwama (Urdu pronunciation: [pʊlʋɑːmɑː] ; Kashmiri pronunciation: [pulʋoːm] or [pulɡoːm]) is a town and notified area council in the Pulwama district of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir in the disputed Kashmir region. It is located approximately 25 kilometres (16 mi) south of the summer capital of the state, Srinagar.
== History ==
Pulwama was known as Panwangam in antiquity, and later as Pulgam.
== Geography ==
With its coordinates 33.8830554°N, 74.9208705° E it is situated at an altitude of 1,500 to 2,000 meters above mean sea level.
=== Climate ===
Average rainfall in the city is 505.3mm annually, with the highest recorded rainfall 772.30 mm in 1998. Temperatures reach as high as 37 °C (99 °F) and as low as −12 °C (10 °F).
== Economy ==
With 70 per cent of its population in Agriculture sector, Pulwama has a growing industrial sector. It has some prominent industries in, cement production, wood products, and food processing.
== Educational institutions ==
Govt Degree College, Pulwama
Islamic University of Science and Technology Awantipora
Govt Degree College (Women), Pulwama
Govt. GNM Nursing College Pulwama
== Greater Pulwama master plan ==
On 12 February 2021, the government of Jammu and Kashmir approved the constitution of a board for scrutinizing and evaluating objections, representations and suggestions by stakeholders concerning a draft master plan for Greater Pulwama 2020–2040.
== Smart Town ==
Numerous Projects for Smart Town are underway. list of Projects
1. Smart Clock Tower
2. Led Displays
3. New Footpaths
4. Parking Lots
5. Parks (Children Parks)
6. Segregated House Waste
7. Central Verges
8. High Mast Lights.
9. New Tricolour LED's
== Demographics ==
Per the 2011 Census of India, the city of Pulwama had a population of 18,440 people, with 10,070 males and 8,370 females. Children aged 6 and under numbered 3,167—making up approximately 17.17% of the total population. The female sex ratio of the city is 831, lower than the Jammu and Kashmir state average of 889. Additionally, the child female sex ratio is around 718; also lower than the state average of 862. The literacy rate of Pulwama is 91.18%, significantly higher than the state average of 67.16%. The city is situated in the Kashmir Valley, and the majority of its inhabitants are ethnic Kashmiris.
=== Religion ===
The majority of Pulwama's inhabitants are Muslims, comprising 94.59% of the total population, while Hindus comprise the second-largest religious minority at 4.63% of the total population. Other religious minorities in the city include Sikhs (0.34%), Christians (0.17%), Buddhists (0.02%) and Jains (0.01%); 0.24% of the population abstained from declaring their beliefs.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cr1TiKaL | Cr1TiKaL | Charles Christopher White Jr. (born August 2, 1994), also known as his pseudonyms Cr1TiKaL, MoistCr1TiKaL (pronounced "moist critical"), or penguinz0 (pronounced "penguin zee zero"), is an American YouTuber, streamer and actor. He is best known for his commentary videos and live streams covering internet culture and video games. His content is mostly characterized by his monotonous voice, white shirt, deadpan comedic style, and long hair, which has earned him the nickname of "Internet Jesus". In addition, White was the co-founder and co-owner of the esports organization Moist Esports, is currently the co-owner of Shopify Rebellion and is also a co-founder and member of the musical duo the Gentle Men.
As of July 2025, White's YouTube channel has received over 12 billion views and 17.5 million subscribers, averaging 151.4 million views per month on the platform; his Twitch channel has received over 5.7 million followers and over 59.32 million views.
== Early and personal life ==
Charles Christopher White Jr. was born on August 2, 1994, in Tampa, Florida. He attended Carrollwood Day School and was a member of the varsity basketball team. White attended the University of Tampa and graduated with a bachelor's degree in human sciences with a focus on exercise physiology.
== Internet career ==
=== 2006–2017: Early years and content evolution ===
White started making YouTube videos in 2006, when he most often uploaded videos discussing anime, as well as anime music videos and gaming music videos, to his old channels. He created his penguinz0 YouTube channel on May 7, 2007. During this time, he streamed live on Justin.tv from late 2009 to early 2010.
In 2013, White was cited by Tubefilter as panning YouTube's new comment system, which required a Google+ account to leave comments on videos. In early 2015, White began speaking about various topics, including internet drama. He drew attention from media outlets for his commentary videos, which were often of discourse about online platforms and considerably critical of YouTube's policies. In December 2016, White began co-hosting The Official Podcast with fellow Internet personalities Jackson Clarke, Andrew Wagenheim, and Kaya Orsan.
Media outlets sparsely referred to White's gameplay videos; his 2015 video on Ark: Survival Evolved was referenced by The Daily Star. The Daily Dot wrote that White is known for his "sardonic commentary." In February 2016, The Guardian included his video reaction to the Fine Brothers' React World controversy in their coverage of the situation. Kotaku referred to White's 2017 video demonstrating character customization in Mass Effect: Andromeda.
=== 2018–present: Twitch livestreaming and continued growth ===
White has continued to make content discussing events on online platforms and their communities. In January 2018, White addressed YouTube, which removed his video discussing Logan Paul's suicide forest controversy. By March 2018, White's YouTube channel had two million subscribers. In May, White's video featuring a pit of 5,400 balls, which he made for his husky Tetra, went viral; the Press Association interviewed him about the video and media outlets reported it. In 2018, White began livestreaming on Twitch. In March 2020; due to COVID-19 lockdown measures, he co-hosted an online Super Smash Bros. Ultimate tournament on his Twitch channel with fellow YouTuber Alpharad.
In late 2020, White's popularity grew due to his Twitch streams about chess and Among Us (during its 2020 popularity spike) with popular streamers such as Sykkuno, Pokimane, Nigahiga, Valkyrae, Trainwreckstv, and Disguised Toast. In June, White participated in the first PogChamps chess tournament, which Chess.com hosted. He won "one of the more anticipated games" in the tournament, beating fellow Twitch streamer xQc in six moves. According to Dot Esports, the game was one of the five "biggest moments in streaming from 2020" and the clip of White's victory became one of the most-viewed in Twitch history, gaining over 1.9 million views by December 24, 2020. White won the tournament's consolation bracket. In late October, White participated in U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Among Us live streams.
In November, White signed a contract with BroadbandTV Corp (BBTV) to become a content partner with the company. Also in November, White spoke in a YouTube video about an increase in Twitch's DMCA crackdowns. In December, White participated in a "Pokémon Week" event on Twitch in which several creators hosted streams in which they opened boxes of Pokémon cards. In January 2021, White began hosting a game show titled Hivemind with fellow streamer Ludwig Ahgren on Twitch.
On February 22, 2021, former YouTuber MaximilianMus deleted his YouTube channel after White labeled him "the worst YouTuber" in one of his videos. White was critical of Mus for maliciously raiding Twitch channels and claimed that Mus' audience had shared child pornography via Discord servers and his subreddit. In May of that year, Mus restored his channel and accused White of slander. In October 2021, White participated in a Nickelodeon All-Star Brawl charity tournament hosted by Alpharad and Coney of Panda Global.
On July 31, 2024, White announced that he would be stepping away from The Official Podcast and The Red Thread "to scale back his time spent on the internet", amid controversy regarding Orsan and arguments with streamer Sneako. On September 21, he was called to testify on the sixth day of the trial of Mitchell v. Jobst, a defamation lawsuit by Billy Mitchell against Karl Jobst for video essays covering allegations of Mitchell cheating his world records in Donkey Kong (1981) and Pac-Man (1980), of which White also voiced his belief in. White's January 2024 video on Mitchell, "He's A Cheater" — in which White started by "giving an apology" to Mitchell by farting into his microphone before reiterating certainty that Mitchell cheated — was presented into evidence to illustrate a "grapevine effect" of Jobst's videos on other YouTubers and their audience.
In February 2025, White released a video where he announced his apparent retirement and handed responsibility of his channel to singer T-Pain, with whom he had previously collaborated. After T-Pain stood in for him in a single video, White clarified that his retirement was merely a comedic act.
On October 20, 2025, White released a video paying tribute to his friend and chess teacher, Daniel Naroditsky, who had passed away the previous day.
== Other ventures ==
In 2019, White and Troy McKubre of the band Solstate started a musical duo named the Gentle Men. The duo started producing music with a string of singles released that same year. The Gentle Men released their debut album, The Evolution of Tears, in 2021, and a self-titled EP in 2023.
In 2019, White and his childhood friend Matt Philips a co-founded a multi-channel network called Double Helix Media, which would soon after merge with the management team of creator Gibi ASMR to form Human Media Group. Human Media Group reportedly had signed 150 creators in April 2022. Human Media Group would then merge with the management team of Tyler "JimmyHere" Collins in August 2022 to form Mana Talent Agency.
In July 2021, White announced the launch of a graphic novel series titled GODSLAP, which he wrote with author Stephanie Phillips and artist Ricardo Jaime, and was published by Meatier Productions. White expressed interest in the expansion of the series beyond comics, and hinted at an animated adaptation that was being produced.
In August 2021, White announced a new esports organization named Moist Esports. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate player Kolawole "Kola" Aideyan became the first player to join, and he won a tournament under the name "Moist Kola". In January 2025, White and Moist co-owner Ludwig Ahgren would become co-owners in Shopify Rebellion, with all Moist Esports rosters at the time following them.
On August 8, 2022, gaming organization One True King, along with White, announced the founding of technology company Starforge Systems, which focuses on building computers. The company was quickly met with backlash due to the high prices of their products, and shortly thereafter they decreased their prices by $100.
== Filmography ==
=== Films ===
=== Web ===
=== Anime ===
=== Podcasts ===
=== Video games ===
== Discography ==
=== The Gentle Men ===
Studio albums
EPs
Singles
=== Solo ===
Music videos
== Bibliography ==
=== Novels ===
Swan, Genghis (2017). The Man Who Forgot How to Poop. Chris Metzner. CreateSpace. ISBN 978-1977639738.
=== Comics ===
GodSlap (2022–present)
Plague Seeker (2023–present)
== Awards and nominations ==
== See also ==
List of YouTubers
List of most-followed Twitch channels
== References ==
== External links ==
Cr1TiKaL's channel on YouTube
Cr1TiKaL on Twitch
Cr1TiKaL at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melvin_Mooney_Distinguished_Technology_Award#:~:text=The%20Melvin%20Mooney%20Distinguished%20Technology%20Award%20is%20a%20professional%20award%20conferred%20by%20the%20ACS%20Rubber%20Division.%20Established%20in%201983%2C%20the%20award%20is%20named%20after%20Melvin%20Mooney%2C%20developer%20of%20the%20Mooney%20viscometer%20and%20of%20the%20Mooney%2DRivlin%20hyperelastic%20law. | Melvin Mooney Distinguished Technology Award | The Melvin Mooney Distinguished Technology Award is a professional award conferred by the ACS Rubber Division. Established in 1983, the award is named after Melvin Mooney, developer of the Mooney viscometer and of the Mooney-Rivlin hyperelastic law. The award consists of an engraved plaque and prize money. The medal honors individuals "who have exhibited exceptional technical competency by making significant and repeated contributions to rubber science and technology".
== Recipients ==
=== 1980s ===
1982 J. Roger Beatty - Senior Research Fellow at B. F. Goodrich known for development of rubber testing instruments and methods
1983 Aubert Y. Coran - Monsanto researcher responsible for invention of thermoplastic elastomer Geolast
1984 Eli M. Dannenberg - Cabot scientist known for contributions to surface chemistry of carbon black
1985 William M. Hess - Columbian Chemicals Company scientist known for contributions to characterization of carbon black dispersion in rubber
1986 Albert M. Gessler - ExxonMobil researcher known for development of elastomeric thermoplastics
1987 Avrom I. Medalia - Cabot scientist known for contributions to understanding electrical conductivity and dynamic properties of carbon black filled rubbers
1988 John G. Sommer - GenCorp scientist and author of popular texts on rubber technology
1989 Joginder Lal - Goodyear Polymer Research Manager and expert in the synthesis and mechanism of the formation of high polymers.
=== 1990s ===
1990 Gerard Kraus - Phillips Petroleum Scientist known for developing testing standard for carbon black surface area
1991 Charles S. Schollenberger - B. F. Goodrich chemist who invented Estane
1992 Robert W. Layer - B. F. Goodrich chemist noted for contributions to chemistry of imines
1993 John R. Dunn - Polysar synthetic rubber research chemist
1994 Noboru Tokita - Uniroyal and later Cabot scientist known for studying processing of elastomers
1995 Edward N. Kresge - Exxon Chief Polymer Scientist who developed tailored molecular weight density EPDM elastomers
1997 Russell A. Livigni - Gencorp scientist known for discovery and development of barium-based catalysts for the polymerization of butadiene and its copolymerization with styrene to give high trans rubbers with low vinyl content
1998 Henry Hsieh - Phillips Petroleum scientist known for contributions to polymerization chemistry
1999 Avraam I. Isayev - University of Akron Distinguished Professor of Polymer Science known for widely used texts on rheology and polymer molding technology, as well as for development of technology for ultrasonic devulcanization of tire rubber.
=== 2000s ===
2000 Joseph Kuczkowski - Goodyear chemist who elucidated mechanisms of antioxidant function, resulting in the commercialization of several new antioxidant systems
2002 C. Michael Roland - Naval Research Lab scientist recognized for blast and impact protection using elastomers, and for diverse contributions to elastomer science
2003 Walter H. Waddell - Exxon scientist recognized for his work on tire innerliner technology
2004 Oon Hock Yeoh - Freudenberg Scientist known for contributions to nonlinear elasticity and fracture mechanics
2005 Kenneth F. Castner - Senior Research and Development Associate at Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company known for his work in nickel catalyzed diene polymerization for the synthesis of high cis-polybutadiene
2006 Meng-Jaio Wang - Cabot scientist known for studies of carbon black
2007 Daniel L. Hertz Jr. - President of Seals Eastern and NASA consultant on the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster
2008 Robert P. Lattimer - Lubrizol Advanced Materials research and development technical fellow
2009 Frederick Ignatz-Hoover - Eastman technology fellow and 9th editor of Rubber Chemistry and Technology
=== 2010s ===
2010 William J. van Ooij - University of Cincinnati professor known for elucidating the mechanisms of brass-rubber adhesion in tires
2011 Periagaram S. Ravishankar - Exxon Senior Staff Engineer recognized for development of Vistalon EPDM elastomers
2012 Robert Schuster - former director of the German Institute for Rubber Technology (DIK) and popular lecturer on rubber technology
2014 Shingo Futamura - Materials scientist noted for his concept of the Deformation Index
2015 Alan H. Muhr - TARRC scientist noted for contributions to understanding the mechanics elastomer applications, including laminated rubber isolators, marine fenders, automotive mounts, and structural energy dissipation systems
2016 Dane Parker - Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company researcher known for developing a single-step process for converting Nitrile latex to HNBR latex
2017 David J. Lohse - ExxonMobil Materials Scientist known for contributions on thermodynamics of mixing, nanocomposites for controlling permeability, neutron scattering of polymers, rheology of polymers
2018 Joseph Padovan - University of Akron Distinguished Professor known for pioneering finite element procedures for analysis of rolling tires.
2019 Manfred Klüppel - German Institute for Rubber Technology department head of Material Concepts and Modeling group
=== 2020s ===
2020 Kenneth T. Gillen - Sandia National Labs researcher noted for contributions to service life prediction methods for elastomers
2021 Howard Colvin - Organic chemist and consultant to the tire and rubber industries noted for developments to rubber chemicals and polymers
2022 Anil K. Bhowmick - University of Houston professor known for contributions to polymer nanocomposites, thermoplastic elastomers, sustainability, adhesion, failure and degradation of rubbers and rubber technology
2023 Anke Blume - engineering technology professor at the University of Twente known for her contributions to silica and silane chemistry for rubber applications.
2024 Andrew V. Chapman - TARRC scientist noted for contributions to AFM microscopy of tire tread compounds.
2025 Sunny Jacob - ExxonMobil scientist known for leading the development of Thermoplastic vulcanizates products and processes.
== See also ==
International Rubber Science Hall of Fame: Another ACS award
Rubber Chemistry and Technology: An ACS journal
List of chemistry awards
Sparks-Thomas award
Charles Goodyear Medal
== References ==
== External links ==
The ACS Rubber Division
Oral histories of several medal winners
Chemical and Engineering News |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Rucklidge | Julia Rucklidge | Julia Rucklidge is a Canadian-born clinical psychologist who is the director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand. Her research has centered on mental health and nutrition.
== Biography ==
Rucklidge received her Bachelor of Science at McGill University in 1992. She went on to earn both her Masters of Science and PhD at the University of Calgary between 1995 and 1998. Rucklidge's PhD explored the psychological functioning of women identified in adulthood with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder.
Rucklidge emigrated to New Zealand in 2000 to take up a lecturer position at the University of Canterbury (Christchurch). She continued to work in clinical roles in addition to academic work, at the Canterbury District Health Board and The Charity Hospital (Christchurch). Rucklidge was appointed the Director of the Clinical Training Programme at University of Canterbury between 2001 and 2004 and again between 2014 and 2016.
Rucklidge's original academic work focused on psychological and neurocognitive functioning in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in both children and adults. She published widely in the area and is cited over 1000 times for this work. Today, Rucklidge is more widely known for her research on mental health and nutrition. She became interested in this area after she heard about some Canadian families who were using nutrients to treat their children with Bipolar Disorder.
Rucklidge is currently the director of Te Puna Toiora, the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab (University of Canterbury). Work from this research lab has explored the impact of nutritional interventions in Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder in children and adults, anxiety and stress in adults and children following a series of earthquakes, insomnia, premenstrual syndrome, depression, addictions and emotion dysregulation.
Ongoing work in the Mental Health and Nutrition Research Lab includes trials to explore the impact of nutritional interventions on maternal mental well-being, infant development and anxiety and depression.
== In the media ==
Rucklidge emphasises the importance of nutrition in mental health through her Facebook page, Twitter account and blog ‘Mad in America’. She has been featured in various New Zealand news articles and magazines.
Rucklidge created a free educational series for the public in collaboration with Professor Bonnie Kaplan and in 2014 presented a TEDx talk which has had over 5.1 million views as at October 2024. However, TED has flagged that Rucklidge's talk has fallen outside of TEDx's curatorial guidelines because it oversimplifies interpretations of legitimate studies
== Awards and professional achievements ==
In 2015, Rucklidge was the recipient of the Ballin Award, recognising significant contributions to the development and enhancement of clinical psychology in New Zealand. She was also named one of the most influential women in New Zealand in 2015, 2018 and 2021.
Rucklidge was awarded the Toronto French School Alumni of Distinction Award/Le prix de distinction des anciens élèves in 2017 and in 2018 she received a Braveheart Award recognising her courage, innovation and her effort to improve the lives of people in her community.
== Notable publications ==
Rucklidge, Julia J; Eggleston, Matthew J.F; Johnstone, Jeanette M; Darling, Kathryn; Frampton, Chris M (2018). "Vitamin-mineral treatment improves aggression and emotional regulation in children with ADHD: A fully blinded, randomized, placebo-controlled trial". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 59 (3): 232–246. doi:10.1111/jcpp.12817. PMC 7779340. PMID 28967099.
Popper, Charles; Kaplan, Bonnie J.; Rucklidge, Julia J. (2017). "Single and broad-spectrum micronutrient treatments in psychiatric practice". In Gerbarg, Patricia L.; Muskin, Philip R.; Brown, Richard P. (eds.). Complementary and Integrative Treatments in Psychiatric Practice. American Psychiatric Pub. pp. 75–101. ISBN 9781615370313.
Kaplan, Bonnie J; Rucklidge, Julia J; Romijn, Amy R; Dolph, Michael (2015). "A randomised trial of nutrient supplements to minimise psychological stress after a natural disaster". Psychiatry Research. 228 (3): 373–379. doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2015.05.080. PMID 26154816. S2CID 8579580.
Rucklidge, Julia J; Frampton, Chris M; Gorman, Brigette; Boggis, Anna (2018). "Vitamin–mineral treatment of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder in adults: Double-blind randomised placebo-controlled trial". British Journal of Psychiatry. 204 (4): 306–315. doi:10.1192/bjp.bp.113.132126. PMID 24482441.
Sarris, Jerome; Logan, Alan C; Akbaraly, Tasnime N; Amminger, G Paul; Balanzá-Martínez, Vicent; Freeman, Marlene P; Hibbeln, Joseph; Matsuoka, Yutaka; Mischoulon, David; Mizoue, Tetsuya; Nanri, Akiko; Nishi, Daisuke; Ramsey, Drew; Rucklidge, Julia J; Sanchez-Villegas, Almudena; Scholey, Andrew; Su, Kuan-Pin; Jacka, Felice N; International Society for Nutritional Psychiatry Research (2015). "Nutritional medicine as mainstream in psychiatry". The Lancet Psychiatry. 2 (3): 271–274. doi:10.1016/S2215-0366(14)00051-0. PMID 26359904.
Rucklidge, Julia J; Tannock, Rosemary (2002). "Neuropsychological profiles of adolescents with ADHD: Effects of reading difficulties and gender". Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 43 (8): 988–1003. doi:10.1111/1469-7610.00227. hdl:10092/554. PMID 12455921.
Rucklidge, Julia J; Tannock, Rosemary (2001). "Psychiatric, Psychosocial, and Cognitive Functioning of Female Adolescents with ADHD" (PDF). Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. 40 (5): 530–540. doi:10.1097/00004583-200105000-00012. hdl:10092/6292. PMID 11349697.
== General media articles ==
"Are micronutrients the answer to NZ's mental health crisis?"
"Julia Rucklidge: Natural Health Bill a bitter pill for nutrient sector"
"Food for thought: can nutrients nurture better mental health?"
"Supplements benefit mental health, With Julia Rucklidge"
== References ==
== External links ==
Publications by Julia Rucklidge at ResearchGate
Mental Health and Nutrition Research Group website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sher_Singh_Rana# | Sher Singh Rana | Pankaj Singh Pundir (born 17 May 1976), popularly known as Sher Singh Rana or S. Rana, is an Indian politician who was sentenced for the 2001 vendetta-related assassination of Indian dacoit-turned-parliamentarian Phoolan Devi. In August 2014, Rana was sentenced to life imprisonment and a fine of ₹100,000 (approximately US$1,600) for Devi's assassination, as well as charges of conspiracy, after a 10-year trial. He was released from jail in 2016 after the court granted him bail.
== Early life ==
Sher Singh Rana was born as Pankaj Singh Pundir in a Hindu Rajput family in Roorkee, Uttarakhand, India on 17 May 1976.
== Phoolan Devi assassination ==
Rana, along with two other men, murdered Phoolan Devi outside her home in New Delhi in July 2001. At the time of her assassination, Phoolan Devi was a sitting Member of Parliament in the 13th Lok Sabha. Rana claims he was motivated to take revenge upon her for her actions as a leader of a bandit gang that acted primarily against the higher castes in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Rana was arrested and confessed to the murder.
== Escape from jail and rearrest ==
Rana escaped from Tihar jail, a high-security prison facility in Delhi on 17 February 2004. He went to Moradabad and checked into a hotel. He then contacted relatives who sent him ₹1 lakh. From Ranchi he applied for a passport in the name of Sanjay Gupta.
During the two-month wait for the passport, he visited Gaya and Benaras. Rana then went to Kolkata, where he obtained a three-month Bangladesh visa. Rana claimed that he took a house for rent at Khulna and lived there, posing as Sanjay. After he fled to Bangladesh, he bought a satellite phone for ₹16,500 so that he could contact his relatives and friends without being tracked. Throughout his journey — from Moradabad to Ranchi, Kolkata, Bangladesh and Dubai and later to Afghanistan from where he is said to have brought back the ashes of the Rajput king Prithviraj Chauhan.
He received approximately ₹15,000 to ₹20,000 per month and visited Kolkata often to get his visa extended. At times, he did this in Dhaka.
On 25 April 2006, he was re-arrested from Kolkata by SIT, who tracked him down by his subscription to a Hindi newspaper, one of the few people in the Dharmatala area who did so.
== Release ==
A trial court in January 2012 allowed Sher Singh Rana, to file his nomination papers from Tihar to contest Uttar Pradesh assembly election. The Delhi High Court has granted bail to Sher Singh Rana and he was released on 24 October 2016.
== Aftermath ==
He married with Pratima Singh on 28 February 2018, who is the daughter of Pratap Singh. Some newspapers wrongly mentioned Pratap Singh as a former Member of Legislative Assembly from Madhya Pradesh. In Fact Rekha Yadav was the MLA from Malhara in 2008. Sher Singh married by taking a shagun of only a silver coin and refusing the dowry of 10 crore rupees worth property and 31 Lakh rupees cash. In the year 2019, he formed his own political party, Rashtravadi Janlok Party (RJP).
== References ==
== External links ==
The Phoolan Devi Murder |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reza_Aslan#Awards | Reza Aslan | Reza Aslan (Persian: رضا اصلان, IPA: [ˈɾezɒː æsˈlɒːn]; born May 3, 1972) is an Iranian-American scholar of sociology, writer, and television host. A convert to evangelical Christianity from Shia Islam as a youth, Aslan eventually reverted to Islam but continued to write about Christianity. He has written four books on religion: No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization, Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, God: A Human History and in 2022 An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville.
Aslan has worked for television, including a documentary series exploring world religions on CNN called Believer, and served as an executive producer on the HBO drama series The Leftovers. Aslan is a member of the American Academy of Religion and the International Qur'anic Studies Association. He is a professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside, and a board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
== Background ==
Aslan's family came to the United States from Tehran in 1979, fleeing the Iranian Revolution. He grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area. Aslan says that he "spent the 1980s pretending to be Mexican" due to the amount of discrimination faced by Iranian Americans. He attended Del Mar High School in San Jose, and graduated class of 1990. In the early 1990s, Aslan taught courses at De La Salle High School in Concord, California.
Aslan holds a B.A. in religious studies from Santa Clara University, a Master of Theological Studies (MTS) from Harvard Divinity School, a Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) in fiction writing from the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop, and a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Santa Barbara. His 2009 dissertation, "Global Jihadism as a Transnational Social Movement: A Theoretical Framework", discusses contemporary Muslim political activism.
In August 2000, while serving as the Truman Capote Fellow at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Aslan was a visiting faculty member in Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Iowa.
Aslan was the 2012–13 Wallerstein Distinguished Visiting Professor at the Drew University Center on Religion, Culture & Conflict.
An Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations from 2012 to 2013, he is also a member of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities, and the Pacific Council on International Policy. He has served as Legislative Assistant for the Friends Committee on National Legislation in Washington D.C., and was elected President of Harvard's Chapter of the World Conference of Religions for Peace. Aslan also serves on the board of directors of the Ploughshares Fund, which gives grants for peace and security issues, PEN Center USA, a writer's advocacy group, and he serves on the national advisory board of The Markaz (formerly the Levantine Cultural Center), a program to promote peace between Americans and the Arab/Muslim world. He also serves on the board of trustees for the Chicago Theological Seminary and is on the advisory board of the Yale Humanist Community.
=== Religious views ===
Aslan was born into a Twelver Shia Muslim family. He converted to evangelical Christianity at the age of 15, and converted back to Islam the summer before attending Harvard. Aslan completed his Harvard degree in 1999. In 2005, The Guardian called him "a Shia by persuasion". In a 2013 interview with WNYC host Brian Lehrer, Aslan said: "I'm definitely a Muslim and Sufism is the tradition within Islam that I most closely adhere to." In a 2013 article in The Washington Post, Aslan stated: "It's not [that] I think Islam is correct and Christianity is incorrect. It's that all religions are nothing more than a language made up of symbols and metaphors to help an individual explain faith." In 2014, in an interview with Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, Aslan described Islam as:
a man-made institution. It's a set of symbols and metaphors that provides a language for which to express what is inexpressible, and that is faith. It's symbols and metaphors that I prefer, but it's not more right or more wrong than any other symbols and metaphors. It's a language; that's all it is.
== Career ==
=== Writing ===
Aslan has published four books, edited two anthologies, and frequently writes for different media outlets.
==== Books ====
===== No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam =====
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam is a non-fiction book published in 2005. The book describes the history of Islam and argues for a liberal interpretation of the Islamic religion. It blames Western imperialism and self-serving misinterpretations of Islamic law by past scholars for the current controversies within Islam, challenging the "Clash of Civilizations" thesis.
===== How to Win a Cosmic War (a.k.a. Beyond Fundamentalism) =====
In 2009, Aslan published his second book, How to Win a Cosmic War: God, Globalization, and the End of Terror. The next year, it was re-released in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization. The book is both a study of the ideology fueling Al Qaeda, the Taliban and like-minded militants throughout the Muslim world, and an exploration of religious violence in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Aslan argues that the United States is fighting a similar war by infusing the war on terror with its religiously polarizing rhetoric. This war, he asserts, cannot be won.
Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against the West as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, is in precise "cosmic dualism" to Al Qaeda's jihad. Aslan distinguishes Islamism and Jihadism. Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan-Islamic, borderless "religious communalism". Aslan's prescription for winning the cosmic war is not to fight but to engage moderate Islamic political forces in the democratic process. "Throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished."
The New Yorker called Beyond Fundamentalism a "thoughtful analysis of America's War on Terror". The Washington Post added that it "offers a very persuasive argument for the best way to counter jihadism."
===== Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth =====
Aslan's book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth (2013) is an historical account of the life of Jesus, which analyzes the various religious perspectives on Jesus, as well as the creation of Christianity. In the book, Aslan argues that Jesus was a political, rebellious, and eschatological Jew whose proclamation of the coming kingdom of God was a call for regime change to end Roman hegemony over Roman Judea and end a corrupt and oppressive aristocratic priesthood.
===== God: A Human History =====
In this book, published by Random House in 2017, Aslan explains in an accessible scholarly style the history of religion and a theory of why and how humans started thinking about supernatural beings and eventually God.
===== An American Martyr in Persia: The Epic Life and Tragic Death of Howard Baskerville =====
On October 11, 2022, W. W. Norton & Company published Aslan's book about Howard Baskerville. Kirkus Reviews called it "an intriguing read that breathes life into a pivotal moment of Persian/Iranian history".
==== Other writing ====
Aslan has written articles for The Daily Beast as a contributing editor. He has also written for various newspapers and periodicals, including the Los Angeles Times, The New York Times and The Washington Post, Slate, The Boston Globe, The Guardian, The Nation, and The Christian Science Monitor.
=== Work as editor ===
Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, an anthology he edited and published, appeared in 2011. In collaboration with Words Without Borders, Aslan worked with a team of three regional editors and seventy-seven translators, amassing a collection of nearly 200 pieces originally written in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish, many presented in English for the first time.
Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities (2011) co-edited with Abraham's Vision founder Aaron J. Hahn Tapper, is a collection of essays exploring contemporary Jewish–Muslim relations in the United States and the distinct ways in which these two communities interact with one another in that context.
=== Business ventures ===
==== Aslan Media ====
Aslan founded Aslan Media, a media platform offering alternative coverage of the Middle East and its global diaspora communities.
==== BoomGen Studios ====
In 2006, Aslan partnered with Iranian American cinematographer and producer Mahyad Tousi to create BoomGen Studios, a studio and production company focused on bringing stories from and about the Middle East to American audiences. Projects that they consulted on include National Geographic's Amreeka; Disney's Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time and the Broadway adaptation of Aladdin; the Weinstein Company's Miral; Relativity Media's Desert Dancer; Fork Films' The Trials of Spring; Jon Stewart's directorial debut Rosewater; and 2014 Oscar-nominated documentary The Square.
===== Of Kings and Prophets =====
In January 2015, BoomGen announced that ABC picked up its biblical epic, Of Kings and Prophets, a dramatic retelling of the central story in the Hebrew Bible: the story of King David from shepherd to king. The series followed an ensemble of characters, including Saul and David, the successive Kings of Israel, their families, and their political rivals. Of Kings and Prophets was set in the Kingdom of Israel but filmed in Cape Town, South Africa. Aslan, Tousi, and Jason Reed served as executive producers on the show.
==== TV projects ====
===== The Leftovers =====
In 2015, Aslan joined the popular HBO series The Leftovers as a consulting producer for both its second and third seasons. In addition to helping craft the show's foundation, Aslan was integral to shaping protagonist Kevin Garvey's season two character arc.
===== Rough Draft =====
In March 2016, cable network Ovation premiered Rough Draft with Reza Aslan, a fast-paced and timely talk show featuring Aslan conversing with critically acclaimed authors and writers in film, TV, and journalism.
===== Believer =====
In 2015, Aslan began production on the "spiritual travel series" Believer, a documentary series that follows Aslan as he immerses himself and experiences various religious traditions internationally, focusing on sects considered fringe and disreputable by larger religions. The program, which Aslan compared to Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown was part of CNN's original programming lineup and premiered in March 2017.
The first episode focused on the Aghori sect of Hinduism. Aslan was accused of sensationalism and anti-Hinduism when Aslan ate part of a human brain while meeting Aghori sadhus. The United States India Political Action Committee said in a statement that "[w]ith multiple reports of hate-fueled attacks against people of Indian origin from across the U.S., the show characterizes Hinduism as cannibalistic, which is a bizarre way of looking at the third largest religion in the world." Vamsee Juluri, professor of media studies at the University of San Francisco, described the episode as "reckless, racist, and anti-immigrant", while Aseem Shukla of the Hindu American Foundation accused Aslan of being "poorly informed", circulating "common stereotypical misconceptions" about Hinduism and indulging in "religion porn" "to grab ratings", with the "most clichéd, spurious conflations of the Hindu religion with the caste system".
US Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard compared the show to "touring a zoo". The show has also been criticized for saying that Varanasi was called "the city of the dead", calling the immersion of ashes "dumping", presenting the Aghors as an exception in their struggle against the caste system, and claims he misunderstood the distinction between Varna and Jāti, and the notion of God in Hinduism. The organizations American Hindus Against Defamation (AHAD) and the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) have also both questioned why Aslan's show does not cover Islam, his own religion. Aslan said that he had planned to cover the Ashura festival in Pakistan but abandoned the plan because of insurance costs. He pledged to cover Islam if Believer had a second series. On June 9, 2017, CNN announced that it had "decided to not move forward with production" on Aslan's Believer series after his anti-Trump tweets were criticized because of vulgar language used shortly before June 9, 2017.
Aslan defended the episode in a Facebook post.
===== Allah in the Family =====
Aslan (along with Andrew Reich) wrote a sitcom pilot titled "Allah in the Family" based on his experiences as an Iranian immigrant growing up in Oklahoma. ABC bought the pilot but it has yet to go into production.
==== Remarks about President Trump ====
After the 2017 London Bridge attack, Aslan took to Twitter to call President Donald Trump "a piece of shit" and a "man-baby" for his response to the attack. On June 9, 2017, in response to his remarks, CNN decided to cut ties with Aslan and announced they would not move forward with season two of the Believer series. Aslan said of the cancellation, "I am not a journalist. I am a social commentator and scholar. And so I agree with CNN that it is best that we part ways."
=== Other media appearances ===
Aslan has made numerous appearances on TV and radio, including National Public Radio (NPR), Spirited Debate on Fox News, PBS, The Rachel Maddow Show, Meet the Press, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report, Anderson Cooper 360°, Hardball, Nightline, Real Time with Bill Maher, Fareed Zakaria GPS, and ABC Australia's Big Ideas.
==== 2013 Fox News interview ====
On July 26, 2013, Aslan was interviewed on Spirited Debate, a Fox News webcast by Chief Religion Correspondent Lauren Green about his book Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth. Green was "unsatisfied with Aslan's credentials," and she pressed Aslan, questioning why a Muslim would write about Jesus. Aslan answered, "Because it's my job as an academic. I am a professor of religion, including the New Testament. That's what I do for a living." The interview lasted about ten minutes and focused "on Aslan's background more than the actual contents of the book." The video clip of the interview went viral within days and the book, which was up to that point selling "steadily", appeared at the 4th place on The New York Times print hardcover best-seller list. By late July 2013, it was topping the U.S. best-seller list on Amazon.
Following Aslan's interview with Fox News, Elizabeth Castelli, professor of religion at Barnard College, Columbia University, reported a sense of outrage in academia, writing "Those of us in the academic field of religious studies, especially biblical scholars and historians of early Christianity, found the whole business deeply cringe-worthy. The Fox News interview was not just embarrassing but downright offensive. The anti-Muslim bias of Fox is well-documented and is bad enough, whatever the specific context. For scholars of religion, Green's conflation of the academic study of religion with personal religious identification is a familiar misunderstanding."
Despite Elizabeth Castelli's dismissal of Fox News for questioning Aslan as a religious scholar, as she acknowledged Aslan could claim as a scholar of "history-of-religions", she dismissed his claims of being a historian. She wrote "History of religions is ... a particular disciplinary approach... often associated in the United States with the University of Chicago and the University of California at Santa Barbara, where Aslan earned his PhD in sociology. To the extent that he did coursework in the UCSB Religious Studies department, he can certainly lay claim ... But his claims are more grandiose than that and are based on his repeated public statements that he speaks with authority as a historian. He has therefore reasonably opened himself to criticism." The Atlantic concurred with Prof. Castelli's acknowledgment of Aslan's religious credentials.
In The Washington Post, the journalist Manuel Roig-Franzia concurred with Prof. Castelli's critique of Aslan's historian credentials, noting that Aslan's university does not offer degrees in the history or the sociology of religion and writing that Aslan "boasts of academic laurels he does not have." However, he quoted Aslan's dissertation adviser, Mark Juergensmeyer, who acknowledged that their departments "don't have a degree in sociology of religions as such" but said that he "doesn't have a problem with Aslan's characterization of his doctorate, noting ... [Aslan] did most of his course work in religion" and his arrangement of getting Aslan out of the religious studies department into the sociology department "was undertaken to get Aslan out of time-consuming required language courses". The Philadelphia Inquirer also noted UCSB "is famous for its interdisciplinary program—students tailor their studies around a topic, not a department. They choose a department only for the diploma."
=== Academia ===
He is a professor of creative writing at University of California, Riverside and a board member of the National Iranian American Council (NIAC).
=== Professional membership ===
Aslan is a sitting member of the advisory board for the National Iranian American Council. In 2015 as a member of the group, he joined with 73 other "prominent International Relations and Middle East scholars" in signing a statement of support for the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, an international agreement regarding the Iranian nuclear program.
== Political analysis ==
=== Analysis of War on Terrorism ===
Aslan refers to Al Qaeda's jihad against the West as "a cosmic war", distinct from holy war, in which rival religious groups are engaged in an earthly battle for material goals. "A cosmic war is like a ritual drama in which participants act out on earth a battle they believe is actually taking place in the heavens." American rhetoric of "war on terrorism", Aslan says, opposes Al Qaeda's jihad within this very structure of "cosmic dualism". Aslan draws a distinction between Islamism and Jihadism. Islamists have legitimate goals and can be negotiated with, unlike Jihadists, who dream of an idealized past of a pan-Islamic, borderless "religious communalism". Aslan's prescription for winning the cosmic war is not to fight but to engage moderate Islamic political forces in the democratic process. "Throughout the Middle East, whenever moderate Islamist parties have been allowed to participate in the political process, popular support for more extremist groups has diminished."
=== Protection of religious freedom ===
Aslan has argued for religious freedom and protection for religious minorities throughout the Middle East. He has called for Iran to protect and stop the "horrific human rights abuses" against its Baháʼí community. Aslan has also said that the persecution and displacement of Middle Eastern Christian communities "is nothing less than a regional religious cleansing that will soon prove to be a historic disaster for Christians and Muslims alike."
=== Criticism of New Atheism ===
In a 2014 interview, Aslan criticized the "armchair atheism" of atheists like Sam Harris and Bill Maher who lack formal training in the study of religion, and who, in Aslan's opinion, are therefore unable to effectively comment on how it shapes human behavior. Aslan has also called Richard Dawkins a "buffoon, embarrassing himself every day." He contrasts New Atheists with the "philosophical atheism" of earlier thinkers who "were experts in religion, and so they were able to offer critiques of it that came from a place of knowledge, from a sophistication of education, of research."
On September 29, 2014, Antonia Blumberg in The Huffington Post stated that Aslan, on CNN, "criticized comedian Bill Maher for characterizing female genital mutilation as an 'Islamic problem,' in addition to making several other sweeping generalizations about the faith." Aslan was reported as saying "To say 'Muslim countries', as though Pakistan and Turkey are the same ... it's frankly, and I use this word seriously, stupid!" His criticism was not just of Maher but of how Muslims are portrayed in mainstream media. Prachi Gupta, in Salon, wrote that Aslan believed that the U.S. was partnering with Saudi Arabia while simultaneously condemning ISIS.
On October 8, 2014, The New York Times published an article by Aslan, "Bill Maher Isn't the Only One Who Misunderstands Religion". In it, Aslan wrote, "Bill Maher is right to condemn religious practices that violate fundamental human rights. Religious communities must do more to counter extremist interpretations of their faith. But failing to recognize that religion is embedded in culture—and making a blanket judgment about the world's second-largest religion—is simply bigotry."
In The New Republic, Eric Sasson took issue with Aslan's claim in the CNN interview that men and women are treated equally in Indonesia and Turkey due to the countries having elected female leaders, pointing out that the Human Rights Watch reported a "significant rollback" of women's rights in both countries. Sasson also challenged Aslan's claim that female genital mutilation is a problem only in central Africa, saying that it's also an issue in the predominantly Muslim country of Malaysia. The television and radio host David Pakman also cast doubt on some of Aslan's claims from the interview. Sam Harris criticized Aslan for blaming individuals rather than Islam as a whole for violence in the Muslim world, calling his approach "post-modernist nonsense."
== Personal life ==
Aslan and his ex-fiancée, journalist Amanda Fortini, ended their engagement in 2008. He married entrepreneur and author Jessica Jackley, a Christian, in 2011, forming an interfaith family. They have three sons. His aunt is the Iranian-American pop singer Leila Forouhar. Aslan is a fan of the professional football team the Las Vegas Raiders.
== Awards and honors ==
2014 Intersections Honoree, Intersections International
2013 Media Bridge-Builder Award, Tanenbaum Center for Interreligious Understanding
2013 Peter J. Gomes Memorial Honor, Harvard Divinity School
2012 East–West Media Award, The Levantine Center
== Publications ==
"The Struggle for Islam's Soul", in Will Marshall (ed.), With All Our Might: A Progressive Strategy for Defeating Jihadism and Defending Liberty, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2006.
"Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in the Age of Globalization", Penguin Random House, 2010.
"From Here to Mullahcracy", in Lila Azam Zanganeh (ed.), My Sister, Guard Your Veil; My Brother, Guard Your Eyes: Uncensored Iranian Voices, Beacon Press, 2006.
"Losing the War", in Gilbert H. Muller (ed.), The New World Reader, CUNY Press, 2010.
How to Win a Cosmic War, published in paperback as Beyond Fundamentalism: Confronting Religious Extremism in a Globalized Age, Random House, 2010.
Tablet & Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East (editor), W. W. Norton, 2011.
Muslims and Jews in America: Commonalities, Contentions, and Complexities (co-editor), Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, Random House, 2013.
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam, Delacorte Books for Young Readers, 2012.
God: A Human History, Random House, 2017.
A Kid's Book About Israel and Palestine, A Kids Co., 2024.
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Reza Aslan at IMDb
Appearances on C-SPAN |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_prime_ministers_of_Nepal | List of prime ministers of Nepal | The position of the Prime Minister of Nepal (Nepali: नेपालको प्रधानमन्त्री, romanized: Nepālko Pradhānmantrī) in modern form was called by different names at different times of Nepalese history. In the early reign of the Shah dynasty, the Mulkajis (Chief Kajis) or Chautariyas served as prime ministers in a council of 4 Chautariyas, 4 Kajis, and sundry officers. These Bharadars (officers) were drawn from high caste and politically influential families such as the Pande, Basnyat, and Thapa families. The nobility of Gorkha was mainly based from Chhetri families and they had a strong presence in civil administration affairs.
In 1804, a single authoritative position of Mukhtiyar was created by Rana Bahadur Shah which carried the executive powers of nation. Mukhtiyar held the position of head of the executive until the adoption of the title of Prime Minister in November 1843 by Mathabar Singh Thapa who became Mukhtiyar as well as Prime Minister and the Chief of the Nepalese Army. During the Rana dynasty, the position of prime minister was hereditary and the officeholder held additional titles – Maharaja of Lamjang and Kaski, Supreme Commander-in-Chief of Nepal and Grand Master of the Royal Orders of Nepal.
After the 1951 revolution, non-aristocratic citizens like Matrika Prasad Koirala held the position of prime minister still under the authority of the King of Nepal. The first general election was held in 1959 and Bishweshwar Prasad Koirala became the first elected prime minister of Nepal. However, he was deposed and imprisoned in the 1960 coup d'état by King Mahendra who went on to establish an oligarchic authoritative regime, the Panchayat system, and Nepal did not have a democratic government until 1990. After the Jana Andolan movement in 1990, the Kingdom of Nepal became a constitutional monarchy. However, this was interrupted with the 2005 coup d'état by King Gyanendra. After the Loktantra Andolan movement in 2006, the monarchy was abolished on 28 May 2008 by the 1st Constituent Assembly and the country was declared a federal parliamentary republic. The current constitution was adopted on 20 September 2015, and the first prime minister under this new constitution was KP Sharma Oli.
All prime ministers of Nepal between 1768 and 1950 were Chhetris with the exception of Ranga Nath Poudyal, being a Khas Brahmin. Of the 23 men who have been elected since Nepal attained democracy from the Rana dynasty in 1951, 15 have been Khas Brahmin, 3 Thakuri, 2 Newar Shresthas, 2 Chhetri, and 1 Sanyasi/Dasnami. The executive power allocation was fluctuating between Kajis and Chautariyas.
== Heads of government of the Kingdom of Nepal (1768–2008) ==
=== Before 1800s ===
=== Mulkajis and Mukhtiyars during the Shah expansion era (1803–1846) ===
=== Prime ministers during the Rana era (1846–1951) ===
=== Prime ministers during the Transition era (1951–1960) ===
=== Prime ministers during the partyless Panchayat era (1960–1990) ===
=== Prime ministers during the Constitutional monarchy (1990–2008) ===
== Prime ministers of the Federal Democratic Republic of Nepal (2008–present) ==
== Timeline ==
== See also ==
King of Nepal
President of Nepal
Prime Minister of Nepal
Government of Nepal
== References ==
=== Footnotes ===
=== Notes ===
=== Books ===
Acharya, Baburam (2012), Acharya, Shri Krishna (ed.), Janaral Bhimsen Thapa : Yinko Utthan Tatha Pattan (in Nepali), Kathmandu: Education Book House, p. 228, ISBN 9789937241748
Nepal, Gyanmani (2007), Nepal ko Mahabharat (in Nepali) (3rd ed.), Kathmandu: Sajha, p. 314, ISBN 9789993325857
Amatya, Shaphalya (June–November 1978), "The failure of Captain Knox's mission in Nepal" (PDF), Ancient Nepal (46–48), Kathmandu: 9–17, retrieved 11 January 2013
Pradhan, Kumar L. (2012), Thapa Politics in Nepal: With Special Reference to Bhim Sen Thapa, 1806–1839, New Delhi: Concept Publishing Company, p. 278, ISBN 9788180698132
Karmacharya, Ganga (2005), Queens in Nepalese Politics: an account of roles of Nepalese queens in state affairs, 1775–1846, Nepal: Educational Publishing House, ISBN 9789994633937
Pahari, Anup (1995), The Origins, Growth and Dissolution of Feudalism in Nepal: A Contribution to the Debate on Feudalism in Non-European Societies, vol. 4, University of Wisconsin—Madison
Raj, Prakash A. (1996), Brahmins of Nepal, Nabeen Publications, ISBN 9780785573661
Regmi, Mahesh Chandra (1971). Regmi Research Series (PDF). Vol. 03. Regmi Research Centre.
Regmi, Mahesh Chandra (1972). Regmi Research Series (PDF). Vol. 04. Regmi Research Centre.
Shaha, Rishikesh (1990), Modern Nepal 1769–1885, Riverdale Company, ISBN 0-913215-64-3
Shaha, Rishikesh (2001), An Introduction of Nepal, Kathmandu: Ratna Pustak Bhandar
D.R. Regmi (1975), Modern Nepal, vol. 1, Firma K.L. Mukhopadhyay, ISBN 0883864916
Wright, Daniel (1877), History of Nepal, Cambridge University Press
== External links ==
Office of the Prime Minister and Council of Ministers |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grant_Morrison | Grant Morrison | Grant Morrison (born 31 January 1960) is a Scottish comic book writer, screenwriter, and producer. Their work is known for its nonlinear narratives, humanist philosophy and countercultural leanings. Morrison has written extensively for the American comic book publisher DC Comics, penning lengthy runs on Animal Man, Doom Patrol, JLA, Action Comics, and Green Lantern as well as the graphic novels Arkham Asylum, JLA: Earth 2, and Wonder Woman: Earth One, the meta-series Seven Soldiers and The Multiversity, the mini-series DC One Million and Final Crisis, both of which served as centrepieces for the eponymous company-wide crossover storylines, and the maxi-series All-Star Superman. Morrison's best known DC work is the seven-year Batman storyline which started in the Batman ongoing series and continued through Final Crisis, Batman and Robin, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne and two volumes of Batman Incorporated. They also co-created the DC character Damian Wayne.
Morrison's creator-owned work, the bulk of which was published through DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, includes Flex Mentallo and We3 with Scottish artist Frank Quitely, Seaguy with artist Cameron Stewart, The Filth with Chris Weston, and the three-volume series The Invisibles. At Marvel, Morrison wrote a three-year run on New X-Men and created Marvel Boy for the publisher's Marvel Knights imprint.
Between 2016 and 2018, Morrison served as the editor-in-chief of the Heavy Metal magazine.
Morrison's work has drawn critical acclaim. They have won numerous awards, including Eisner, Harvey, and Inkpot awards. In 2012, Morrison was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) for services to film and literature.
== Early life ==
Grant Morrison was born in Glasgow, Scotland, in 1960. They were educated at Allan Glen's School where their first portfolio of art was rejected by their careers guidance teacher, who encouraged them to work in a bank. Their first published works were Gideon Stargrave strips for Near Myths in 1978 (when they were about 17), one of the first British alternative comics. Their work appeared in four of the five issues of Near Myths and they were suitably encouraged to find more comic work. This included a weekly comic strip, Captain Clyde, an unemployed superhero based in Glasgow, for The Govan Press, a local newspaper, plus various issues of DC Thomson's Starblazer, the science fiction counterpart to that company's Commando title.
== Career ==
=== 1980s ===
Morrison spent much of the early 1980s touring and recording with their band The Mixers, occasionally writing Starblazer for D.C. Thomson and contributing to various UK indie titles. In 1982, Morrison submitted a proposal involving the Justice League of America and Jack Kirby's New Gods entitled Second Coming to DC Comics, but it was not commissioned. After writing The Liberators for Dez Skinn's Warrior in 1985, Morrison started work for Marvel UK the following year. There they wrote comic strips for Doctor Who Magazine, the final one a collaboration with a then-teenage Bryan Hitch, as well as a run on the Zoids strip in Spider-Man and Zoids. 1986 also saw publication of Morrison's first of several two- or three-page Future Shocks for 2000 AD.
Morrison's first continuing serial began in 2000 AD in 1987, when they and Steve Yeowell created Zenith.
Morrison's work on Zenith brought them to the attention of DC Comics, who asked Morrison to work for them. They accepted Morrison's proposals for Animal Man, a little-known character from DC's past whose most notable recent appearance was a cameo in the Crisis on Infinite Earths limited series, and for a 48-page Batman one-shot that would eventually become Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth.
Animal Man put Morrison in line with the "British Invasion" of American comics, along with such writers as Neil Gaiman, Peter Milligan, Jamie Delano, and Alan Moore, who had launched the "invasion" with his work on Swamp Thing.
After impressing with Animal Man, Morrison was asked to take over Doom Patrol, starting their surreal take on the superhero genre with issue No. 19 in 1989. Morrison's Doom Patrol introduced concepts such as dadaism and the writings of Jorge Luis Borges into the first several issues. DC published Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on Serious Earth in 1989 as a 128-page graphic novel painted by Dave McKean. Comics historian Les Daniels observed in 1995 that "Arkham Asylum was an unprecedented success, selling 182,166 copies in hardcover and another 85,047 in paperback."
While working for DC Comics in America, Morrison kept contributing to British indie titles, writing St. Swithin's Day for Trident Comics. St. Swithin's Day's anti-Margaret Thatcher themes proved controversial, provoking a small tabloid press reaction and a complaint from Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) Teddy Taylor. The controversy continued with the publication of The New Adventures of Hitler in Scottish music and lifestyle magazine Cut in 1989, due to its use of Adolf Hitler as its lead character. The strip, unfinished when Cut folded, was reprinted and completed in Fleetway's 2000 AD spin-off title Crisis.
Two plays staged by Oxygen House at the Edinburgh Fringe had scripts by Morrison. Red King Rising (1989) concerned an imagined relationship between Lewis Carroll and Alice Liddell. The other, Depravity (1990) concerned the British occultist Aleister Crowley. The plays won between them a Fringe First Award, the Independent Theatre Award for 1989 and the Evening Standard Award for New Drama.
=== 1990s ===
Morrison returned to Batman with the "Gothic" story arc in issues 6–10 of the Batman title Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. The early 1990s saw Morrison revamping Kid Eternity for DC with artist Duncan Fegredo, and Dan Dare, with artist Rian Hughes. Morrison coloured Dare's bright future with Thatcherism in Fleetway's Revolver.
In 1991 Morrison wrote Bible John-A Forensic Meditation for Fleetway's Crisis, based on an analysis of possible motivations for the crimes of the serial killer Bible John. Covering similar themes to Alan Moore and Eddie Campbell's From Hell, the work utilised cut-up techniques, a Ouija board and collage rather than conventional panels to tell the story.
In 1993 Morrison, fellow Glaswegian comic writer Mark Millar and John Smith were asked to reinvigorate 2000 AD for an eight-week run called "The Summer Offensive". Morrison wrote Judge Dredd and Really and Truly, and co-wrote the controversial Big Dave with Millar.
DC Comics launched its Vertigo imprint in 1993, publishing several of Morrison's creator-owned projects, such as the steampunk mini-series Sebastian O and the graphic novel The Mystery Play. 1995 saw the release of Kill Your Boyfriend, with artist Philip Bond, originally published as a Vertigo Voices one-shot. In 1996 Morrison wrote Flex Mentallo, a Doom Patrol spin-off with art by Frank Quitely, and returned briefly to DC Universe superheroics with the short-lived Aztek, co-written with Mark Millar.
In 1996, Morrison was given the Justice League of America to revamp as JLA, a comic book that gathered the "Big Seven" superheroes of the DC universe into one team. This run was hugely popular and returned the title to best-selling status. Morrison wrote several issues of The Flash with Mark Millar, as well as DC's crossover event of 1998, the four-issue mini-series DC One Million, in addition to plotting many of the multiple crossovers.
With the three volumes of the creator-owned The Invisibles, Morrison started their largest and possibly most important work. The Invisibles combined political, pop- and sub-cultural references. Tapping into pre-millennial tension, the work was influenced by the writings of Robert Anton Wilson, Aleister Crowley and William Burroughs, and Morrison's practice of chaos magic in Thee Temple ov Psychick Youth. In 1998 Morrison published the prose piece "I'm A Policeman" in Sarah Champion's millennial short story collection Disco 2000; though no explicit connection to The Invisibles is made, there are strong thematic links between the two works. At DisinfoCon in 1999, Morrison said that much of the content in The Invisibles was information given to them by aliens that abducted them in Kathmandu, who told them to spread this information to the world via a comic book. They later clarified that the experience they labelled as the "Alien Abduction Experience in Kathmandu" had nothing to do with aliens or abduction, but that there was an experience that they had in Kathmandu that The Invisibles is an attempt to explain. The title was not a huge commercial hit to start with. (Morrison actually asked their readers to participate in a "wankathon" while concentrating on a magical symbol, or sigil, in an effort to boost sales). When the title was relaunched with volume two, the characters relocated to America. Volume three appeared with issue numbers counting down, signalling an intention to conclude the series with the turn of the new millennium in 2000. Due to the title shipping late, its final issue did not ship until April 2000.
The 1999 film The Matrix has numerous elements which have been attributed by critics to the influence of Morrison's The Invisibles. Morrison was immediately struck by the similarities to their own work upon first seeing the film.
=== 2000s ===
In 2000, Morrison's graphic novel JLA: Earth 2 was released with art by Frank Quitely. It was Morrison's last mainstream work for DC for a while, as they moved to Marvel Comics. While at Marvel, Morrison wrote the six-part Marvel Boy series, and Fantastic Four: 1234, their take on another major superhero team. In July 2001, they began writing the main X-Men title, renamed New X-Men for their run, with Quitely providing much of the art. Again, Morrison's revamping of a major superhero team proved to be a commercial success, with the title jumping to the No. 1 sales spot and established Morrison as the kind of creator whose name on a title would guarantee sales. Their penultimate arc "Planet X" depicted the villain Magneto infiltrating and defeating the X-Men in the guise of new character Xorn and developing an addiction to the power-enhancing drug "Kick".
In 2002, Morrison launched their next creator-owned project at Vertigo: The Filth, drawn by Chris Weston and Gary Erskine, a 13-part mini-series. That same year, Morrison sold the screenplay Sleepless Knights to DreamWorks with Guillermo del Toro attached to direct. Around the same time, Morrison was working on the script for the sequel to the Marvel Boy mini-series, but the project ultimately failed to materialize. In 2004, Vertigo published three Morrison mini-series. Seaguy, We3, and Vimanarama. Morrison returned to the JLA with the first story in a new anthology series, JLA Classified.
In 2005 Morrison wrote Seven Soldiers, which featured the Manhattan Guardian, Mister Miracle, Klarion the Witch Boy, Bulleteer, Frankenstein, Zatanna and Shining Knight. The series consists of seven interlinked four-issue mini-series with two "bookend" volumes – 30 issues in all. Dan DiDio, the editorial vice president of DC Comics, was impressed with Morrison's ideas for revitalising many of DC's redundant characters. Giving them the unofficial title of "revamp guy", DiDio asked them to assist in sorting out the DC Universe in the wake of the Infinite Crisis. Morrison was one of the writers on 52, a year-long weekly comic book series that started in May 2006 and concluded in May 2007.
Starting in November 2005, DC published All-Star Superman, a twelve-issue story arc by Morrison and Frank Quitely. Not so much a revamp or reboot of Superman, the series presents an out-of-continuity "iconic" Superman for new readers. All-Star Superman won the Eisner Award for Best New Series in 2006, the Best Continuing Series Eisner Award in 2007 and several Eagle Awards in the UK. It won three Harvey Awards in 2008 and the Eisner Award for Best Continuing Series in 2009. In the same year, Morrison and Quitely worked on pop star Robbie Williams' album Intensive Care, providing intricate Tarot card designs for the packaging and cover of the CD.
Morrison provided outline story and script work for two video games, Battlestar Galactica (2003) and Predator: Concrete Jungle (2005), both by Vivendi Universal. In 2006, New Line Cinema optioned We3 as a film project with Morrison attached as screenwriter. The following year, Morrison wrote the adaptation of the video game Area 51 home console game for Paramount in development with CFP Productions producing.
In 2006 Morrison was voted as the No. 2 favourite comic book writer of all time by Comic Book Resources. That same year, Morrison began writing Batman for DC with issue No. 655, reintroducing the character of Damian Wayne and signalling the beginning of a seven-year-long run on the character across multiple titles. They wrote relaunches of The Authority and Wildcats, with the art of Gene Ha and Jim Lee respectively, for DC's Wildstorm imprint. WildC.A.T.S. went on hiatus after one issue, The Authority was discontinued after two. The scheduling of The Authority conflicted with 52 and Morrison was unhappy with the reviews: "And then I saw the reviews on issue one and I just thought 'fuck this'.". It eventually concluded without Morrison's involvement in Keith Giffen's The Authority: The Lost Year.
At the 2007 San Diego Comic-Con, DC Comics announced that Morrison would write Final Crisis, a seven-issue mini-series slated to appear in 2008 with J. G. Jones handling the art. Morrison announced that 2008 would see publication of the follow-up to 2004's Seaguy called Seaguy 2: The Slaves of Mickey Eye, the second part of a planned three part series.
At the 2008 New York Comic Con, Morrison announced they would be working with Virgin Comics to produce "webisodes" (short animated stories) based on the Mahābhārata; it would not be a direct translation but, "Like the Beatles took Indian music and tried to make psychedelic sounds... I'm trying to convert Indian storytelling to a western style for people raised on movies, comics, and video games." In August 2009, Morrison and Frank Quitely launched the Batman and Robin series.
=== 2010s ===
Batman No. 700 (Aug. 2010) saw the return of Morrison to the title and a collaboration with an art team that consisted of Tony Daniel, Frank Quitely, Andy Kubert, and David Finch. The separate stories tied together to illustrate that the legacy of Batman is unending, and will survive into the future. At San Diego Comic-Con in 2010 it was announced that Grant Morrison would be leaving Batman and Robin with No. 16 and launching a new series entitled Batman Incorporated with revolving artists starting with Yanick Paquette. A more team-oriented Batman book inspired by the Batman: The Brave and the Bold animated series, Batman Incorporated builds on Morrison's work dating back to "Batman and Son" and Final Crisis, with Bruce Wayne creating an international Batman franchise all over the world. The series suffered from slow scheduling and was ended after eight issues while the DC Universe was rebooted in 2011; to bridge the gap a prestige book was released that featured two issues together along with a synopsis that recapped the story so far. In mid-2012, a second volume of the comic was launched with Chris Burnham on artwork, scheduled for 12 issues. Morrison left the Batman titles in 2013. They killed the Damian Wayne character in Batman Incorporated No. 8 (April 2013) and their final issue was No. 13 (Sept. 2013).
Morrison returned to creator-owned work in 2010 with the eight issue Vertigo series Joe the Barbarian, launched in January with artist Sean Murphy. Originally a six issue series, Morrison felt that the story would benefit from an extra two issues. The titular Joe is a diabetic young boy who begins to hallucinate a fantasy world populated with his toys and other fantasy characters when he stops taking his medication.
Following the closure of Virgin Comics, Dynamite Entertainment and Liquid Comics announced a partnership to publish a hardcover of illustrated scripts of Grant Morrison's Mahābhārata-based, animated project 18 Days with illustrations by artist Mukesh Singh, that was released in August 2010. They are the subject of a feature-length documentary titled Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. The documentary features extensive interviews with Morrison as well as a number of comic artists, editors and professionals they have worked closely with. Talking with Gods was produced by Sequart Organization and was released in 2010 at San Diego Comic-Con.
Another 2010 project was Bonnyroad, a science fiction television series pitched by Morrison to the BBC Morrison pitched with director Paul McGuigan and Stephen Fry.
In June 2011, as part of DC Comics' massive revamp of its entire superhero line, Morrison was announced as the writer on the new Action Comics No. 1, teaming with artist Rags Morales, marking Morrison's return to the Superman character after the end of All Star Superman.
In July 2011, Morrison's analysis of superheroes, Supergods: Our World in the Age of the Superhero, was published by Random House Spiegel & Grau in the United States and Jonathan Cape in the UK.
Morrison has written a screenplay for a film entitled Sinatoro. In 2011 they worked on the screenplay Dinosaurs vs Aliens for Sam Worthington's production company, Full Clip Production, and said they planned to work with them again on a screenplay based on the 2000 AD story "Rogue Trooper".
Morrison was appointed Member of the Order of the British Empire (MBE) in the 2012 Birthday Honours for services to film and literature.
In September 2012, Morrison published their first ever Image Comics creator-owned work: Happy! with Darick Robertson. In the same month, MorrisonCon was held at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino (Las Vegas). This small-scale convention, curated by Morrison, featured a number of comics industry guests, including Robert Kirkman, Darick Robertson, Jason Aaron, Jim Lee, Gerard Way, Jonathan Hickman, Frank Quitely, J. H. Williams III, and Chris Burnham.
In September 2014, as part of Legendary Comics' big foray into the industry, Morrison launched another key creator-owned book: Annihilator with Frazer Iving. A six-issue mini-series, Annihilator was informed by the writings of Thomas Ligotti, and other nihilistic philosophers, and played with the idea of the satanic archetype. A work of cosmic horror, it stars a monstrous Hollywood screenwriter named Ray Spass in his attempts to finish the script for the next tentpole blockbuster, while coming into contact with the character he's writing about: the diabolical Max Nomax, The Devil himself.
In February 2015, Morrison's second Image project ever launched in the creator-owned title Nameless, with frequent collaborator Chris Burnham. A tale of apocalyptic cosmic horror, Nameless sought to approach the genre from a new lens, with different influences, rather than lean to its iconic founder H.P Lovecraft, drawing on everything from the Tarot to The Qlippoth.
In November 2015, Morrison began their biggest creator-owned project of the decade, collaborating with BOOM! Studios for the very first time to do Klaus with Dan Mora and Ed Dukeshire.
Morrison's The Multiversity project for DC was published in 2014 and 2015. A metaseries of nine one-shots set in some of the 52 worlds in the DC Multiverse, it included the main Multiversity title which involves the return of President Calvin Ellis, the black Superman from Earth 23 originally seen in Action Comics vol. 2 No. 9, which was the framing for the whole series. Other issues include The Society of Super-Heroes a pulp version of the DC characters; The Just – set on a world of celebrity youngsters; Pax Americana, drawn by Frank Quitely, Thunder World – a Captain Marvel book; the Multiversity Guidebook; Mastermen – which includes a fascist version of the Justice League. and Ultra Comics.
In 2016, Morrison became editor-in-chief of the comics anthology Heavy Metal. Their involvement lasted until 2018. During the period, they penned such strips as Industria, The Rise and Fall of Empires, both with frequent collaborator and old friend Rian Hughes. Other strips included The Smile of the Absent Cat with artist Gerhard, as well as Mythopia, Beachhead, Option 3, Nihilophilia, Ten Sounds That Represent a Kind of Person: A Historical Parody, The House of Heart's Desire, and Beyond the Word and the Fool, with many others. Morrison also penned several editorials for the magazine during this period, whilst writing occasional prose stories for Ahoy Comics backup features.
In 2017, Morrison co-created the Syfy TV series Happy!, which starred Christopher Meloni and Patton Oswalt. It commenced its second season in 2019.
In November 2018, Morrison and artist Liam Sharp launched a new Green Lantern comic entitled The Green Lantern for DC Comics. Following the success of the first season of The Green Lantern, a second season was announced, to be published in 2020 but beforehand there was a Blackstars mini-series dealing with the ending of Season One, launched in November 2019.
=== 2020s ===
"Season Two" of Morrison's Green Lantern series with Liam Sharp began in 2020 and completed in March 2021 alongside the release of their third and final volume of the Wonder Woman: Earth One series.
Morrison co-created and worked as a writer and producer on the 2020 TV series Brave New World for the Peacock Streaming Service, having developed it for adaptation.
In early 2021, it was announced that a new comic called Proctor Valley Road would be released, developed by Morrison in partnership with NBCUniversal. NBCUniversal's UCP, a division of Universal Studio Group, will also adapt the series for television. The first issue was published by Boom! Studios in March 2021.
In March 2021 it was announced that Morrison would write a four-issue series entitled Superman and The Authority, illustrated by Mikel Janin, to be published by DC in late 2021.
In a 2022 newsletter, Morrison revealed they had pitched ideas for Series 8 of Doctor Who to series showrunner Steven Moffat. These included a story featuring a child version of the Doctor, as well as a new potential villain. None were commissioned, though the BBC offered to buy the rights to Morrison's villains. (The latter declined). Later that year, Morrison published Luda, their debut prose novel.
In May 2025, it was announced that Morrison would be penning the crossover one-shot Batman/Deadpool. The one-shot, illustrated by Dan Mora, would mark the first time Marvel and DC's characters would properly crossover with each other since JLA/Avengers. It is set to be published by DC on an undisclosed date that same year. It will be accompanied by another one-shot, published by Marvel, entitled Deadpool/Batman, written by Zeb Wells and illustrated by Greg Capullo.
== Personal life ==
In a 2011 interview, Morrison stated that they and their wife Kristan had no children. When asked if they regretted this, Morrison replied, "Slightly but I don't know. Every time I think of it I think of the reality of it. I really like kids and I get on with them and it's that aspect of it but I see people with actual kids. The trauma and the trouble. And if I'm worried that my cat is sick it's the thought of everyday worrying about a kid would be even more hellish."
Morrison is a believer and practitioner of chaos magic. They have claimed to have been abducted by aliens in 1994 in Kathmandu, having traveled there with the intent of being abducted.
Morrison uses singular they pronouns. In a 2020 interview with Mondo2000, Morrison mentioned that they "had been non-binary, cross-dressing, 'gender queer'", from the age of 10 years old but didn't have the vocabulary to describe how they felt at the time. Speaking later of the article, Morrison said that they hated being perceived as only recently coming out: "I'm 62 years old—I had my sexuality shit figured out a long time ago!" Morrison later said they rejected labels and that "I can't live in a box. I'm going to let down anyone who sticks a label on me. It will drop off quite naturally." They later wrote that though they do not use the label non-binary, they acknowledge that, depending on the definition, "perhaps the shoe fits after all". They also wrote that while they never requested to be referred to by they/them pronouns, they have come to prefer them. However, they do not mind being referred to with he/him pronouns.
== Appearances in media ==
Grant Morrison first appeared as a comics character in cameos in Animal Man Nos. 11 and 14. He made a full appearance at the end of issue No. 25 in 1990, and spent most of issue No. 26 in a lengthy conversation with the comic's title character. The character appeared the next year in Suicide Squad No. 58, written by John Ostrander, as a character named Writer who was one of several minor characters killed in one of the series' trademark suicide missions. Writer returned in the 2025 crossover comic Batman/Deadpool, written by Morrison, where the character encounters Batman, Deadpool and Morrison's own creations Damian Wayne and Cassandra Nova. He was depicted in an issue of Simpsons Comics, fighting with fellow X-Men writer Mark Millar.
In Morrison's 2005–2006 Seven Soldiers miniseries and its tie-ins, Morrison appears as the renegade member of eight "reality engineers" and transforms into Silver Age character Zor, then back into a character resembling Morrison in a magician's costume, though with dark hair and a beard. After the renegade's defeat, Morrison, wearing a DC Comics-logo tie clip, becomes the narrator for the final chapter. The miniseries Tales of the Unexpected features Morrison along with their 52 co-writers Geoff Johns, Greg Rucka and Mark Waid. In Darwyn Cooke's DC: The New Frontier, Morrison was the physical model for Captain Cold.
Morrison also appeared as themself in the ninth episode of the fourth season of Titans, titled "Dude, Where’s My Gar?"
== Adaptations of Morrison's work ==
== Awards ==
Inkpot Award
Order of the British Empire (MBE)
== Bibliography ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Disinformation: The Complete Series Disc 2: DisinfoCon. (1999) Speech by Grant Morrison. Distr. Ryko Distribution.
Morrison, Grant (2003) "Pop magic!" in Book of Lies, pp. 16–25 ISBN 0-9713942-7-X
Callahan, Timothy (2007) Grant Morrison: The Early Years. Masters of the Medium. Sequart Research & Literacy Organization. ISBN 978-0-615-21215-9
Meaney, Patrick (2009) Our Sentence is Up: Seeing the Invisibles. Sequart.com. ISBN 978-0-578-03233-7
Meaney, Patrick (2010) Grant Morrison: Talking with Gods. Documentary film.
Singer, Marc (2012) Grant Morrison: Combining the Worlds of Contemporary Comics Archived 5 September 2018 at the Wayback Machine. University Press of Mississippi. ISBN 978-1-61703-136-6
Greene, Darragh; Roddy, Kate (eds.) (2015) Grant Morrison and the Superhero Renaissance: Critical Essays. McFarland & Co. ISBN 978-0-7864-7810-1
Greene, Darragh (2020) "'Who Is That Knocking on Your Door?': Authorship, Print, and the Multimodal Comics of Grant Morrison in the Digital Age", in The Birth and Death of the Author, ed. by Andrew J. Power (London: Routledge), pp. 156–172 ISBN 9781138311169
== External links ==
Official website
Grant Morrison at Barney
Grant Morrison at the Comic Book DB (archived from the original)
Grant Morrison discography at Discogs
Grant Morrison at the Grand Comics Database
Grant Morrison at IMDb
Grant Morrison at Library of Congress, with 165 library catalogue records
Grant Morrison discography at MusicBrainz |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Codrington | Christopher Codrington | Lieutenant-Colonel Christopher Codrington (c. 1668 – 7 April 1710) was an English Army officer, planter and colonial administrator who served as governor of the Leeward Islands from 1699 to 1704. Born on Barbados into the planter class, he inherited one of the largest sugar plantations in the colony. Codrington travelled to Europe during the late-17th century and served in the Nine Years' War and War of the Spanish Succession, taking part in numerous engagements.
After dying in 1710, his will and testament established and endowed Codrington College with his estates in Barbados and Barbuda. Codrington's will also endowed the Codrington Library at All Souls College, Oxford with a gift of books and money. In November 2020, his name was removed from the library as a result of the George Floyd protests due to Codrington's ownership of slaves.
== Early life ==
Christopher Codrington was born in Barbados c. 1668, the eldest son of Christopher Codrington and his wife Gertrude. The Codrington Plantations were one of the largest in Barbados and the family was extremely wealthy. He had a younger brother, who suffered from mental disability. Codrington never married, although he had a natural mixed-race son, William, from a relationship with a Black woman named Mauldline Morange. William was left £500 in his father's will and became a plantation owner in the colony of Jamaica.
== Career ==
Later described by Edmund Burke as "by far ... the most distinguished ornament Barbados ever produced", Codrington was academically talented; educated in England, he studied at Christ Church, Oxford, and was elected to All Souls College in 1690. Part of an intellectual circle that included Charles Boyle and Joseph Addison, he became known as an avid book collector.
In 1693, he returned to the West Indies to take part in an unsuccessful attack on the French possession of Martinique, before serving in Flanders during the Nine Years' War. Having fought with distinction at Huy and Namur in 1695, William III gave him a commission as captain in the English Army's 1st Regiment of Foot Guards. This was often a largely honorary post, since only 16 of the nominal 24 companies were actually formed; under the practice known as double-ranking, Guards officers held a second, higher army position and Codrington ranked as a lieutenant colonel.
His father died shortly after the Peace of Ryswick ended the Nine Years War in 1697, and he was appointed Governor of the Leeward Islands in 1699. He became embroiled in a number of local disputes and accusations of abuse of power, which were investigated by Parliament. He was exonerated just before the War of the Spanish Succession began in 1702; after successfully retaking Saint Kitts from the French, he resigned after a failed attack on Guadeloupe in 1703, which severely damaged his health. His attempts to re-enter politics proved unsuccessful and he spent the rest of his life in retirement on his Barbadian estates.
== Legacies ==
After his death on 7 April 1710, Codrington's body was brought to England and buried on 19 June that year in All Souls Chapel; his will left £10,000 and £6,000 worth of books to endow the Christopher Codrington library in All Souls College, which includes his statue by Sir Henry Cheere. In January 2021, his name was removed from the library due to Codrington's ownership of slaves, and a plaque was placed outside commemorating the enslaved workers who were held on his plantations.
His other legacies included £1,500 for a monument to his father in Westminster Abbey, while the Codrington Plantations and part of Barbuda were left to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts to establish a college in Barbados. Delays caused by legal challenges meant that Codrington College was not completed until 1745, and was initially confined to white students. It remains an Anglican theological school and is now part of the University of the West Indies. The Codrington School, first established in 1917 before closing in the 1990s, was reopened in 2002 as an International Baccalaureate school.
The Codrington baronets retained ownership of Betty's Hope plantation in Antigua until 1944.
== See also ==
James Weatherhill, a pirate whom Codrington was accused of colluding with and assisting
== Citations ==
== Bibliography ==
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Codrington, Christopher" . Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 6 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 636.
"Codrington College". Codrington.org. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
Dalton, Charles (1896). English army lists and commission registers, 1661–1714, Volume IV. Eyre & Spottiswoode.
Mandelbrote, Scott (2020). "Codrington, Christopher (1668–1710)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/5795. (Subscription, Wikipedia Library access or UK public library membership required.)
Parker, Mathew (2011). The Sugar Barons; Family, Corruption, Empire and War. Windmill Books. ISBN 978-0099558453.
Shaw, Annie (6 January 2021). "Oxford University's All Souls College drops Christopher Codrington's name from its library". The Art Newspaper. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
Springman, Michael (2008). The Guards Brigade in the Crimea (2014 ed.). Pen and Sword. ISBN 978-1844156788.
"The Codrington School; International School of Barbados". The Codrington School. Retrieved 14 January 2021. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Day#:~:text=While%20playing%20in%20Marietta%2C%20at,Day%2C%20which%20sold%2020%2C000%20copies. | Third Day | Third Day is a Christian rock band formed in Marietta, Georgia in 1991. The band was founded by lead singer Mac Powell, guitarist Mark Lee (the only constant members) and Billy Wilkins. The band's name is a reference to the biblical accounts of the resurrection of Jesus on the third day following his crucifixion. The band was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on September 19, 2009. They have sold over 7 million albums in the United States and had 28 number one Christian album chart radio hits. Their fans are known as "Gomers" after a song on their second album about Gomer. Though they dissolved in 2018 following a farewell tour, they reunited in 2025 for a limited 30th anniversary tour to take place in 2026.
== History ==
=== Forming years and independent recordings (1991–1994) ===
In 1991, high-schoolers Mac Powell and Mark Lee formed Third Day as a Christian music group with pianist Billy Wilkins. At a 1992 event at Lee's Church, Third Day performed alongside a band called the Bullard Family Singers, which featured David Carr and Tai Anderson. Third Day invited Carr and Anderson to join them shortly after.
In 1993, the band started playing more frequently in the Atlanta region in order to make money to record an album. Wilkins left the group in order to pursue his teaching career. Third Day recorded at Furies Studios in Atlanta and with the production help of Carr, Long Time Forgotten was released in 1993, producing and selling 2,000 copies.
In 1994 the band brought on a second guitarist, August McCoy on electric guitar. That same year, the band's second album, Contagious, was self-financed for $3,000 and recorded at Furies Studios. 1,000 CDs and cassette copies of the demo were released. Later that year, August McCoy exited the band to go to college. Also, later that year, while playing in Marietta, at the Strand Theatre, the owners offered the band a contract to sign with new independent record label Gray Dot Records. The band released the album Third Day, which sold 20,000 copies. Shortly after, Reunion Records bought out their Gray Dot contract and signed the band to a multi-album deal.
=== Recording contract with Reunion Records (1995–1997) ===
In 1995, the band started looking for another second guitarist. After hearing Brad Avery play with singer Chris Carder, Avery was asked to audition. After playing Consuming Fire during the first rehearsal, Avery was officially asked to join the band.
Reunion Records released the now official version of Third Day, which has sold over 300,000 copies and was well received by critics. The album also yielded their only mainstream rock radio hit in the U.S., "Nothing at All", which peaked at No. 34 on the Billboard rock charts. Later in 1995, Christian music headliner Newsboys asked Third Day to open for them at five West Coast shows. The band also launched their own 65-city tour with All Star United and Seven Day Jesus opening for them.
In 1996, the band was nominated for a Dove Award in the category of New Artist of the Year and their video for Consuming Fire directed by Chris Metzler and Jeff Springer won a Billboard Music Award in the category of Best Christian Video. The video was shot on location in Bombay Beach, California and other places around the Salton Sea. This experience and discovering Leonard Knight's Salvation Mountain nearby later inspired the album artwork for the band's album Revelation.
In 1997, the band started working on their second album, Conspiracy No. 5. The album was produced by Sam Taylor, who had previously worked with King's X and other Christian bands. The album was nominated for a Grammy and won Dove Awards for Rock Album of the Year and Rock Song of the Year ("Alien"). The following year, the band toured around the United States, both alone and again opening for Newsboys. Also in 1998, the band recorded a cover of Michael W. Smith's "Agnus Dei" for his Dove Award-winning compilation project Exodus.
=== Mainstream and international success (1998–2006) ===
In 1998, the band started working on Time with Monroe Jones as the producer. Time was nominated for a Grammy Award and won another Dove Award for the band. Some of the songs that were recorded for possible inclusion in the album, but left out during production, are on the EP Southern Tracks. During the band's live shows they included a significant portion of worship music, prompting the band to release an album made up exclusively of worship songs. The subsequent album Offerings: A Worship Album took about a week to record. In 2000, to support both Time and Offerings, Third Day went on tour alongside Jennifer Knapp. Later in the same year, the band collaborated on the project City on a Hill: Songs of Worship and Praise with FFH, Caedmon's Call, SonicFlood, Jars of Clay, and others.
In 2001, the band played in Australia and New Zealand on the heels of the success of the Offerings album. While touring in the US, Third Day recorded a concert attended by 15,000 fans at the HiFi Buys Amphitheatre in Atlanta to be released as their first DVD, The Offerings Experience. That same year, the band won five Dove Awards as well as their first Grammy. They closed the year with the release of their fifth studio album, Come Together, which won two Dove Awards and a Grammy. The album was certified gold the next year, along with Time. The band appeared in the 2002 film Joshua, the movie version of the story of Joseph Girzone. The Third Day song My Hope is You was included in the Joshua soundtrack album. In 2003, the band released a follow-up to their hit worship CD Offerings entitled Offerings II: All I Have to Give.
In 2004, the band released their seventh album, Wire, and toured the States with tobyMac and Warren Barfield. In June of the same year, they traveled to Europe for a two-week tour. Upon returning the band recorded a concert at Louisville and released it as the live album, Live Wire. During the same year, they collaborated on the soundtrack for Mel Gibson's film, The Passion of the Christ, played at the Republican National Convention and were featured on 60 Minutes. In January 2007, the band played one night each in Melbourne, Brisbane, and Sydney, Australia.
The band's next album, Wherever You Are, debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 8. It also won the band their third Grammy Award.
=== Christmas and compilation albums (2006–2008) ===
The band recorded and released its first Christmas-themed album, Christmas Offerings, in 2006. In 2007, they released their first compilations of hits, Chronology.
On February 28, 2008, Third Day released a statement announcing Brad Avery's departure from the band after 13 years and over 1,000 concerts. According to the official press release, Avery left the band to pursue solo projects and Third Day would not replace him, continuing on as a quartet. Following Avery's departure, the band performed at the April 2008 Papal Youth Rally at St. Joseph's Seminary in Yonkers, N.Y.
=== Revelation and Live Revelations (2008–2010) ===
Supporting the July 29, 2008, release of their new album Revelation, the band appeared on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno where they performed the album's first single Call My Name and on November 20, 2008, they appeared on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson performing the album's title track. The song "This Is Who I Am" also appears in EA Sports NASCAR video game NASCAR 09, though the album was released over a month after the game. "Call My Name" hit No. 1 and was the fifth most-played song on R&R magazine's Christian CHR chart for 2008.
In April 2009, the band released a live version of the album Revelation under the title Live Revelations as a CD/DVD combination. Third Day was inducted into the Georgia Music Hall of Fame on September 19, 2009. In December 2009, Third Day was nominated for three Grammy Awards, with Live Revelations winning Best Rock or Rap Gospel Album, their fourth career Grammy, and receiving nominations for "Born Again" in the two categories Best Gospel Performance and Best Gospel Song. Live Revelations achieved Gold status in its month of release, becoming the band's eighth album to do so.
=== Move (2010) ===
Third Day was featured on Winter Jam 2010, touring alongside a variety of contemporary Christian groups including the Newsboys, Fireflight, and Tenth Avenue North. After releasing the single, "Lift Up Your Face" in July 2010, Third Day released their tenth studio album, Move, on October 19, 2010. On October 30 they finished the World Vision-sponsored tour Make a Difference Tour 2010 with TobyMac, Michael W. Smith, Jason Gray, and Max Lucado in Fayetteville, NC. The group's song "Follow Me There" from Move is featured as the theme song to the TLC Television show Sarah Palin's Alaska which debuted in 2010.
=== Miracle and Lead Us Back: Songs of Worship (2012–2017) ===
Third Day released Miracle on November 6, 2012. The band toured Miracle on the Miracle Tour with artists Colton Dixon and Josh Wilson as their opening acts, commencing on February 21, 2013, in Fairfax, Virginia and concluding on May 19, 2014, in Orlando.
Third Day released the worship album Lead Us Back: Songs of Worship on March 3, 2015. The album, produced by The Sound Kids (Jonny Macintosh and JT Daly) as a worship experience with Third Day at the center of a "friend choir", peaked at No. 20 on the Billboard 200, No. 1 on the Christian Albums chart, No. 5 on the Top Rock Albums chart and No. 13 on the Digital Albums chart. The album has had one single, "Soul on Fire", that spent 19 weeks on the Billboard charts, peaking at No. 2 on Hot Christian Songs and No. 3 on Christian Digital Songs. In 2015, bassist Tai Anderson announced he would take "a break from the upcoming touring season with Third Day" after serving with the band for 23 years.
=== Revival and farewell (2017–2018) ===
To celebrate their 25th anniversary, Third Day released their thirteenth and final album, Revival, on August 4, 2017, recorded at FAME Studios in Muscle Shoals, Alabama. The album saw the band go back to their roots, reuniting with producer Monroe Jones, who had worked with Third Day on six previous albums including Time, Offerings I and II, and Come Together.
On March 2, 2018, Third Day announced their farewell with 12 shows as a last chance to see them live. The farewell tour eventually expanded to 20 concerts. June 27, 2018, in Denver was the final show added.
=== Reunion and 30th Anniversary Tour (2025-present) ===
In June 2025, the band announced that they would reunite with the lineup of Powell, Lee, Carr, and Anderson to celebrate their 30th anniversary with a short tour to begin in spring 2026.
== Members ==
=== Current ===
Mac Powell – lead vocals, guitar, tambourine (1991–2018, 2025–present)
Mark Lee – guitar, backing vocals (1991–2018, 2025–present)
David Carr – drums, percussion (1992–2018, 2025–present)
Tai Anderson – bass, backing vocals (1992–2015, 2025–present)
=== Former members ===
Brad Avery – guitar (1995–2008)
Billy Wilkins – keyboards (1991–1994)
August McCoy – guitar (1991–1992)
=== Touring members ===
Geof Barkley – keyboards, backing vocals (1993)
Scotty Wilbanks – keyboards, backing vocals (2005–2017)
Jason Hoard – mandolin, banjo, guitar, backing vocals (2010–2012, 2017)
Brian Bunn – guitar, harmonica (2012–2016)
Tim Gibson – bass guitar (2015–2017)
Trevor Morgan – mandolin, banjo, guitar, backing vocals (2016)
Boone Daughdrill – drums (2017)
Timeline
== Discography ==
== Awards ==
As of 2020 the group has received 4 Grammy Awards and 25 Dove Awards.
=== American Music Awards ===
=== Grammy Awards ===
=== Gospel Music Awards ===
=== Billboard magazine best of the 2000s ===
No. 3 Christian Albums Artist of the Decade
No. 5 Christian Songs Artist of the Decade
No. 15 Christian Song of the Decade: "Cry Out to Jesus"
No. 27 Christian Song of the Decade: "Call My Name"
No. 39 Christian Song of the Decade: "You Are So Good to Me"
No. 43 Christian Song of the Decade: "Mountain of God"
No. 28 Christian Album of the Decade: "Wherever You Are"
No. 33 Christian Album of the Decade: "Come Together"
No. 37 Christian Album of the Decade: "Offerings: A Worship Album"
No. 39 Christian Album of the Decade: "Offerings II: All I Have to Give"
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Interview with Third Day at Premier.tv Archived January 6, 2008, at the Wayback Machine
Third Day discography at MusicBrainz
2018 Farewell Tour |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Shipman | Harold Shipman | Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004), was an English doctor in general practice and serial killer. He is considered to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history, with an estimated 250 victims over roughly 30 years. On 31 January 2000, Shipman was convicted of murdering 15 patients under his care. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order. On 13 January 2004, one day before his 58th birthday, Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire.
The Shipman Inquiry, a two-year-long investigation of all deaths certified by Shipman, chaired by Dame Janet Smith, examined Shipman's crimes. It revealed Shipman targeted vulnerable elderly people who trusted him as their doctor, killing them with either a fatal dose of drugs or prescribing an abnormal amount.
As of 2025 Shipman, who has been nicknamed "Dr. Death" and the "Angel of Death", is the only British doctor to have been convicted of murdering patients, although other doctors have been acquitted of similar crimes or convicted of lesser charges. Shipman's case has often been compared to that of doctor John Bodkin Adams; some nurses, such as Beverley Allitt, have also been convicted of murdering patients in their care.
== Early life and education ==
Harold Frederick Shipman was born on 14 January 1946 on the Bestwood Estate, a council estate in Nottingham, the second of three children. His father, also Harold Frederick Shipman (1914–1985), was a lorry driver; his mother was Vera (née Brittan; 1919–1963). His working-class parents were devout Methodists.
Shipman was particularly close to his mother, who died of lung cancer when he was aged 17. Her death came in a manner similar to what later became Shipman's own modus operandi: in the later stages of her disease, she had morphine administered at home by a doctor. Shipman witnessed his mother's pain subside, despite her terminal condition, until her death on 21 June 1963.
On 5 November 1966, Shipman married Primrose May Oxtoby; the couple had four children. Shipman studied medicine at Leeds School of Medicine, University of Leeds, graduating in 1970.
== Career ==
Shipman began working at Pontefract General Infirmary in Pontefract, West Riding of Yorkshire, and in 1974 took his first position as a general practitioner (GP) at the Abraham Ormerod Medical Centre in Todmorden. The following year, Shipman was caught forging prescriptions of pethidine for his own use. He was fined £600 (equivalent to £6,357 in 2023) and briefly attended a drug rehabilitation clinic in York. He worked as a GP at Donneybrook Medical Centre in Hyde, Greater Manchester, in 1977.
Shipman continued working as a GP in Hyde throughout the 1980s and established his own surgery at 21 Market Street in 1993, becoming a respected member of the community. In 1983, he was interviewed in an edition of the Granada Television current affairs documentary World in Action on how the mentally ill should be treated in the community. A year after his conviction on charges of murder, the interview was re-broadcast on Tonight with Trevor McDonald.
== Detection of murder ==
In March 1998, Linda Reynolds, a general practitioner at the Brooke Surgery in Hyde, expressed concerns to John Pollard, the coroner for the South Manchester District, about the high death rate among Shipman's patients. In particular, she was concerned about the large number of cremation forms for elderly women that he had asked to have countersigned. The Greater Manchester Police (GMP) were unable to find sufficient evidence to bring charges and closed the investigation on 17 April. The Shipman Inquiry later blamed the GMP for assigning inexperienced officers to the case. After the investigation was closed, Shipman killed three more people. A few months later, in August, taxi driver John Shaw told the police that he suspected Shipman of murdering 21 patients. Shaw became suspicious as many of the elderly customers he took to the hospital, while seemingly in good health, died in Shipman's care.
Shipman's last victim was Kathleen Grundy, a former mayoress of Hyde who was found dead at her home on 24 June 1998. He was the last person to see her alive; he later signed her death certificate, recording the cause of death as old age. Grundy's daughter, solicitor Angela Woodruff, became concerned when fellow solicitor Brian Burgess informed her that a will had been made, apparently by her mother, with doubts about its authenticity. The will excluded Woodruff and her children, but left £386,000 to Shipman. At Burgess' urging, Woodruff went to police, who began an investigation. Grundy's body was exhumed and found to contain traces of diamorphine (heroin), often used for pain control in terminal cancer patients. Shipman claimed that Grundy had been an addict and showed them comments he had written to that effect in his computerised medical journal; however, police examination of his computer showed that the entries were written after her death.
Shipman was arrested on 7 September 1998, and was found to own a Brother typewriter of the type used to make the forged will. Prescription for Murder, a 2000 book by journalists Brian Whittle and Jean Ritchie, suggested that Shipman forged the will either because he felt his life was out of control and wanted to be caught, or because he planned to retire at age 55 and leave the United Kingdom. Police investigated other deaths that Shipman had certified and investigated fifteen specimen cases. They discovered a pattern of his administering lethal doses of diamorphine, signing patients' death certificates and then falsifying medical records to indicate that they had been in poor health. In addition, an abnormally large number of the deaths occurred around the same time of day (when Shipman was on his afternoon visits) and in the doctor's presence.
In 2003, after Shipman had been convicted, a paper by statistician David Spiegelhalter and others found that Shipman's mortality rates had been broadly in line with national rates between 1988 and 1994, and started increasing in 1995. They suggested that statistical monitoring could have led to an alarm being raised at the end of 1996, although not before, when there had already been 67 excess deaths of Shipman's female patients aged over 65, before reaching 119 in 1998, when suspicions were first actually raised.
== Trial and imprisonment ==
Shipman's trial began at Preston Crown Court on 5 October 1999. He was charged with the murders of fifteen women by lethal injections of diamorphine, all between 1995 and 1998:
Shipman's legal representatives tried unsuccessfully to have the Grundy case tried separately from the others, as a motive was shown by the alleged forgery of Grundy's will.
On 31 January 2000, after six days of deliberation, the jury found Shipman guilty of 15 counts of murder and one count of forgery. Mr Justice Forbes subsequently sentenced Shipman to life imprisonment on all 15 counts of murder, with a recommendation that he be subject to a whole life tariff, to be served concurrently with a sentence of four years for forging Grundy's will. On 11 February, 11 days after his conviction, Shipman was struck off the medical register by the General Medical Council (GMC). Two years later, Home Secretary David Blunkett confirmed the judge's whole life tariff, just months before British government ministers lost their power to set minimum terms for prisoners. While authorities could have brought many additional charges, they concluded that a fair hearing would be impossible given the enormous publicity surrounding the original trial. Furthermore, the 15 life sentences already imposed rendered further litigation unnecessary. Shipman became friends with fellow serial killer Peter Moore while in prison.
Shipman denied his guilt, disputing the scientific evidence against him. He never made any public statements about his actions. Shipman's wife, Primrose, maintained that he was not guilty, even after his conviction.
Shipman is the only doctor in the history of British medicine found guilty of murdering his patients. John Bodkin Adams was charged in 1957 with murdering a patient, amid rumours he had killed dozens more over a 10-year period and "possibly provided the role model for Shipman"; he was acquitted and no further charges were pursued. A historian, Pamela Cullen, has argued that because of Adams's acquittal, there was no impetus to examine potential flaws in the British legal system until the Shipman case.
== Death ==
Shipman hanged himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield on 13 January 2004, the day before his 58th birthday. The Medico Legal Centre in Sheffield performed a post-mortem examination, and an inquest was opened.
Some of the victims' families said they felt "cheated", as Shipman's suicide meant they would never have the satisfaction of a confession, nor answers as to why he committed his crimes. Home Secretary David Blunkett admitted that celebration was tempting: "You wake up and you receive a call telling you Shipman has topped himself and you think, is it too early to open a bottle? And then you discover that everybody's very upset that he's done it."
Shipman's death divided national newspapers, with the Daily Mirror branding him a "cold coward" and condemning the Prison Service for allowing his suicide to occur. However, The Sun ran a celebratory front-page headline; "Ship Ship hooray!" The Independent called for the inquiry into Shipman's suicide to look more widely at the state of UK prisons as well as the welfare of inmates. In The Guardian, an article by General Sir David Ramsbotham, who had formerly served as Her Majesty's Chief Inspector of Prisons, suggested that whole-life sentencing be replaced by indefinite sentencing, for this would at least give prisoners the hope of eventual release and reduce the risk of their ending their own lives by suicide, as well as making their management easier for prison officials.
Shipman's motive for suicide was never established, though he reportedly told his probation officer that he was considering suicide to assure his wife's financial security after he was stripped of his National Health Service pension. Primrose Shipman received a full NHS pension that she would not have been entitled to if Shipman had lived past the age of 60. Additionally, there was evidence that Primrose, who had consistently protested Shipman's innocence despite the overwhelming evidence, had begun to suspect his guilt. Shipman refused to take part in courses which would have encouraged acknowledgement of his crimes, leading to a temporary removal of privileges, including the right to telephone his wife. During this period, according to Shipman's cellmate, he received a letter from Primrose exhorting him to "Tell me everything, no matter what." A 2005 inquiry found that Shipman's suicide "could not have been predicted or prevented", but that procedures should nonetheless be re-examined.
After Shipman's body was released to his family, it remained in Sheffield for more than a year. His widow was advised by police against burying her husband in case the grave was attacked; the body was eventually cremated at Hutcliffe Wood Crematorium, in the city, attended only by Shipman's widow and the couple's four children.
== Aftermath ==
In January 2001, Chris Gregg, a senior West Yorkshire Police detective, was selected to lead an investigation into 22 of the West Yorkshire deaths. Following this, The Shipman Inquiry, submitted in July 2002, concluded that he had killed at least 218 of his patients between 1975 and 1998, during which time he practised in Todmorden (1974–1975) and Hyde (1977–1998). Janet Smith, the judge who submitted the report, said that there were further deaths about which there was so little evidence that a conclusion on whether they were unlawful killings could not be reached. Most of his victims were elderly women in good health.
In her sixth and final report, issued on 24 January 2005, Smith reported that she believed that Shipman had killed three patients, and she had serious suspicions about four further deaths, including that of a four-year-old girl, during the early stage of his medical career at Pontefract General Infirmary. In total, 459 people died while under his care between 1971 and 1998, but it is uncertain how many of those were murder victims, as he was often the only doctor to certify a death. Smith's estimate of Shipman's total victim count over that 27-year period was 250.
The GMC charged six doctors who signed cremation forms for Shipman's victims with misconduct on the grounds that they should have noticed the pattern between Shipman's home visits and his patients' deaths; they were all found not guilty. In October 2005 the GMC found two doctors who worked at Tameside General Hospital in 1994 guilty of serious professional misconduct for failing to report their concerns and for giving misleading evidence to the Shipman inquiry. The Shipman Inquiry recommended changes to the structure of the GMC.
In 2005, it came to light that Shipman may have stolen jewellery from his victims. In 1998, police had seized over £10,000 worth of jewellery they found in his garage. In March 2005, when Primrose asked for its return, police wrote to the families of Shipman's victims asking them to identify the jewellery. Unidentified items were handed to the Assets Recovery Agency in May. The investigation ended in August. Authorities returned 66 pieces to Primrose and auctioned 33 pieces that she confirmed were not hers. Proceeds of the auction went to Tameside Victim Support. The only piece returned to a murdered patient's family was a platinum diamond ring, for which the family provided a photograph as proof of ownership.
A memorial garden to Shipman's victims, called the Garden of Tranquillity, opened in Hyde Park, Hyde, on 30 July 2005. As of early 2009, families of over 200 of the victims of Shipman were still seeking compensation for the loss of their relatives. In September 2009, letters Shipman wrote in prison to friends were to be sold at auction, but following complaints from victims' relatives and the media, the sale was withdrawn.
=== Shipman effect ===
The Shipman case, and a series of recommendations in the Shipman Inquiry report, led to changes to standard medical procedures in the UK (now referred to as the "Shipman effect"). Many doctors reported changes in their dispensing practices, and a reluctance to risk overprescribing pain medication may have led to under-prescribing. Death certification practices were altered as well.
The forms needed for a cremation in England and Wales have had their questions altered as a direct result of the Shipman case. For example, the person(s) organising the funeral must answer, "Do you know or suspect that the death of the person who has died was violent or unnatural? Do you consider that there should be any further examination of the remains of the person who has died?"
As of 1 December 2023, Shipman, also nicknamed "Dr. Death" and "The Angel of Death", is the only British doctor to have been convicted of murdering patients, although other doctors, such as Isyaka Mamman, have been acquitted of similar crimes or convicted of lesser charges and nurses such as Lucy Letby, Beverley Allitt, Colin Norris, Benjamin Geen and Victorino Chua have also been convicted of murdering patients in their care.
== In media ==
Harold and Fred (They Make Ladies Dead) was a cartoon strip in a 2001 issue of Viz comic, also featuring serial killer Fred West. Some relatives of Shipman's victims voiced anger at the cartoon.
Harold Shipman: Doctor Death, an ITV television dramatisation of the case, was broadcast in 2002; it starred James Bolam in the title role.
A documentary Harold Shipman: Doctor Death, with new witness testimony, was shown by ITV as part of its Crime & Punishment strand on 26 April 2018. The programme was criticised as offering "little new insight".
A play titled Beyond Belief – Scenes from the Shipman Inquiry, written by Dennis Woolf and directed by Chris Honer, was performed at the Library Theatre, Manchester, from 20 October to 22 November 2004. The script of the play comprised edited verbatim extracts from the Shipman Inquiry, spoken by actors playing the witnesses and lawyers at the inquiry. This provided a "stark narrative" that focused on personal tragedies.
A BBC drama-documentary, Harold Shipman, starring Ian Brooker in the title role was broadcast in April 2014.
The satirical artist Cold War Steve regularly features Shipman in his work.
The Shipman Files: A Very British Crime Story, a three-part documentary by Chris Wilson, was broadcast on BBC Two on three consecutive nights between 28 and 30 September 2020, and focussed on Shipman's victims and how he went undetected for so long.
Podcast episode "Catching a Killer Doctor" from the Cautionary Tales with Tim Harford podcast series features the story of Harold Shipman and how detection could have been made much earlier with good statistical models.
Shipman was mentioned in the 2022 Wakefield by-election when Conservative candidate Nadeem Ahmed highlighted his local connections, following Shipman's suicide in Wakefield prison, claiming that voters should "trust Tories like they do GPs after Harold Shipman".
In 2023, DeadHappy, a Leicester-based life insurance firm, was criticised for using an image of Shipman in one of its advertisements. The Advertising Standards Authority received more than 70 complaints about the advert.
In 2025, Shipman was referenced in the third episode of series 3 of The Traitors, a reality television game show where "faithful" contestants are tasked with finding and banishing the titular "Traitors". During the roundtable discussion, medical doctor Kasim Ahmed was accused of being a Traitor by fellow contestant Jake Brown, who claimed that it would "make sense" for Ahmed to "save lives during the day" while "murdering by night" within the narrative of the show. Ahmed then stated that he believed Brown was "basically calling [him] Harold Shipman". This moment caused Shipman to trend on social media.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Shipman Inquiry (archived)
BBC – The Shipman Murders
List of suspected murders
Harold Shipman's Clinical Practice 1974–1998
Caso abierto, Dr Death: The Shipman Case
Harold Shipman at IMDb |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massimo_Cacciari#:~:text=Massimo%20Cacciari%20(Italian%20pronunciation%3A%20%5B,and%20from%202005%20to%202010. | Massimo Cacciari | Massimo Cacciari (Italian pronunciation: [ˈmassimo katˈtʃaːri]; born 5 June 1944) is an Italian philosopher and politician who served as Mayor of Venice from 1993 to 2000 and from 2005 to 2010.
== Biography ==
Born in Venice, Cacciari graduated in philosophy from the University of Padua (1967), where he also received his doctorate, writing a thesis on Immanuel Kant's Critique of Judgment. In 1985, he became professor of Aesthetics at the Architecture Institute of Venice. In 2002, he founded the Department of Philosophy at the University of Vita-Salute San Raffaele in Milan, where he was appointed Dean of the Department in 2005. Cacciari has founded several philosophical reviews and published essays centered on the "negative thought" inspired by authors like Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
In the 1980s, Cacciari also worked with the Italian composer of avant-garde contemporary/classical music Luigi Nono. Nono, a political activist whose music represented a revolt against bourgeois cultural constructs, collaborated with Cacciari, who arranged the philosophical lyrics on such works of Nono's as Das Atmende Klarsein, Io, and the opera Prometeo.
After a brief affiliation with Potere Operaio, a radical left-wing worker's party, Cacciari joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI). In the 1970s he was responsible for industrial politics for the PCI Veneto section and, in 1976, he was elected to the Italian Chamber of Deputies, where he was a member of the Parliamentary commission for industry (1976–1983).
After the death of Enrico Berlinguer (1984), Cacciari left the Communist Party and switched to more moderate positions, although he never left the centre-left coalition. In 1993 he was elected mayor of Venice, a position he held until 2000. He was also put forth as the future national leader of the coalition, later named The Olive Tree, but his defeat in the 2000 election as governor of the Veneto region made this occasion wane. However, in a surprise move in 2005, Cacciari again ran for mayor of Venice, and was elected by a slight majority against former magistrate Felice Casson, the very magistrate who years earlier had famously indicted Mayor Cacciari for criminal negligence arising out of the 1996 fire at Venice's La Fenice opera house. Mayor Cacciari was later acquitted of all charges in that case.
== Thought ==
The volumes Icone della Legge (Icons of the Law) and The Necessary Angel (1986) dedicate few pages to the philosophy of the icon and the outcome of the thought of the Russian mystic Pavel Aleksandrovič Florensky. Cacciari affirms that angels in Christianity derive from the angelology of the ancient Babylonia.
Emanuele Severino, Gianni Vattimo, Massimo Cacciari and Umberto Galimberti have been described as "neopagan" philosophers insofar as they adhere to "a reading of Christianity as a historical moment of great importance for the West, but now outdated" (rather than in the vernacular sense of the term).
== Works with English translations ==
Architecture and Nihilism: On the Philosophy of Modern Architecture, Yale University Press, 1993
The Necessary Angel, State University of New York Press, 1994
Posthumous People: Vienna at the Turning Point, Stanford University Press, 1996
The Unpolitical. Essays on the Radical Critique of Political Reason, Yale University Press, 2009
Europe and Empire: On the Political Forms of Globalization, Fordham University Press, 2016
The Withholding Power. An Essay on Political Theology, Bloomsbury Academic, 2018
== Electoral history ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Interview with Massimo Cacciari: “‘I am many’, says Europe. We have to be capable of being many”, Barcelona Metropolis, 2010. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S._H._Raza#:~:text=Raza%20carefully%20crafted%20his%20career,with%20K.%20H.%20Ara%20and%20F.%20N. | S. H. Raza | Sayed Haider Raza (22 February 1922 – 23 July 2016) was an Indian painter who lived and worked in France for most of his career. Born on 22 February 1922 in Kakkaiya (District Mandla), Central Provinces, British India (present-day Madhya Pradesh), Raza moved to France in 1950, marrying the French artist Janine Mongillat in 1959. Following her death from cancer in 2002, Raza returned to India in 2010, where he would live until his death on 28 July 2016.
Having maintained strong ties with India throughout his career, Raza was an acclaimed for his art both there and in France. He was awarded the Padma Shri in 1981, Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Academi in 1984, Padma Bhushan in 2007, and Padma Vibhushan in 2013. He was conferred with the Commandeur de la Légion d'honneur (Legion of Honour) on 14 July 2015.
His seminal work Saurashtra sold for ₹16.42 crore ($3,486,965) at a Christie's auction in 2010.
== Early life and education ==
Sayed Haider Raza was born in Kakkaiya, Mandla district, Madhya Pradesh, to Sayed Mohammed Razi, the Deputy Forest Ranger of the district and Tahira Begum. It was here where he spent his early years, completed primary education, and took to drawing at the age of 12. He moved to Damoh (also in Madhya Pradesh) at 13; where he completed his high school education from Government High School, Damoh.
After high school, he studied further at the Nagpur School of Art, Nagpur (1939–43), followed by Sir J. J. School of Art, Mumbai (1943–47), before moving to France in October 1950 to study at the École Nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts (ENSB-A), Paris (1950-1953) on a Government of France scholarship. After his studies, he traveled across Europe, and continued to live and exhibit his work in Paris. He was later awarded the Prix de la critique in Paris in 1956, becoming the first non-French artist to receive the honor.
== Art career ==
=== Early career ===
Sayed Haider Raza, had his first solo show when he was 24 in 1946 at Bombay Art Society Salon, and was awarded the Silver Medal of the society.
His work evolved from painting expressionistic landscapes to abstract ones. From his fluent watercolours of landscapes and townscapes executed in the early 1940s, he moved toward a more expressive language, painting landscapes of the mind.
Raza carefully crafted his career to become an inspiration to two generations of artists. The year of 1947 proved to be a very important year for him. First, his mother died. Then, he co-founded the revolutionary Bombay Progressive Artists' Group (PAG) (1947–1956) along with K. H. Ara and F. N. Souza. This group set out to break free from the influences of European realism in Indian art and bring Indian inner vision (Antar gyan) into the art. The group had its first show in 1948. A revolutionary amount of art was created by the people in this group from 1940 to 1990. Raza's father died the same year his mother had died in Mandla. The majority of his four brothers and sister, migrated to Pakistan, after the partition of India. In the early years, the group continued its close rapport. Krishen Khanna speaks of the first exhibition Raza, Akbar Padamsee and F. N. Souza mounted together at the Gallery Cruz in Paris. "Souza and Padamsee painted in a quasi-modern fashion. Raza, however, made a throwback to the Mughal period, creating jewel-like watercolours, with the pigment rubbed in with a shell. He was vastly successful and acquired by important collectors."
Once in France, he continued to experiment with currents of Western Modernism, moving from Expressionist modes towards greater abstraction and eventually incorporating elements of Tantrism from Indian scriptures. Whereas his fellow contemporaries dealt with more figural subjects, Raza chose to focus on landscapes in the 1940s and 50s, inspired in part by a move to France. In 1956, he was awarded the prestigious Prix de la Critique, this was a monumental award to the art scene in India.
In 1962, he became a visiting lecturer at the University of California in Berkeley, USA. Raza was initially enamored of the bucolic countryside of rural France. Eglise is part of a series which captures the rolling terrain and quaint village architecture of this region. Showing a tumultuous church engulfed by an inky blue night sky, Raza uses gestural brushstrokes and a heavily impasto-ed application of paint, stylistic devices which hint at his later 1970s abstractions.
=== The "Bindu" and beyond ===
By the 1970s Raza had grown increasingly unhappy and restless with his own work and wanted to find a new direction and deeper authenticity in his work, and move away from what he called the 'plastic art'. His trips to India, especially to caves of Ajanta - Ellora, followed by those to Varanasi, Gujarat and Rajasthan, made him realize his role and study Indian culture more closely, the result was "Bindu", which signified his rebirth as a painter. The Bindu came forth in 1980, and took his work deeper and brought in, his new-found Indian vision and Indian ethnography. One of the reasons he attributes to the origin of the "Bindu", have been his elementary school teacher, who on finding him lacking adequate concentration, drew a dot on the blackboard and asked him to concentrate on it. The "Bindu" is related to Indian philosophy of being the point of all creation. The reason this interested Raza so much is because he was looking for new inspiration for his art and this created a new point of creation for himself.
After the introduction of "BUNDU" (a point or the source of energy), he added newer dimensions to his thematic oeuvre in the following decades, with the inclusion of themes around the Tribhuj (Triangle), which bolstered Indian concepts of space and time, as well as that of "prakriti-purusha" (the cosmic substance and the energy or the spirit respectively), his transformation from an expressionist to a master of abstraction and profundity, was complete. His multiple works of art with the bindu is what truly tied him to his Indian roots and culture. This art created a sense of pride for his culture. The bindu is now widely regarded as a trademark for Raza and he said in 2010 that "It's the centre of my life".
Raza abandoned the expressionistic landscape for a geometric abstraction and the "Bindu". Raza perceived the Bindu as the center of creation and existence progressing towards forms and color as well as energy, sound, space and time.
His work took another leap in 2000, when he began to express his increasingly deepened insights and thoughts on Indian spiritual, and created works around the Kundalini, Nagas, and the Mahabharat.
== Public contributions ==
For the promotion of art among Indian youth, he established the Raza Foundation in India which gives the Annual Raza Foundation Award to young artists in India.
The Raza Foundation in France, based in the artist village of Gorbio, runs the Estate of Sayed Haider Raza.
== Later years and death ==
In 2011, a few years after the death of his wife, S.H. Raza decided to move back from France to New Delhi, where he continued to work several hours a day up until his death on 22 July 2016, at the age of 94, in New Delhi. His last wish being laid to rest in his hometown Mandla beside his father's grave was fulfilled. He was buried in Mandla city's kabristan.
== Awards ==
1946: Silver Medal, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai
1948: Gold Medal, Bombay Art Society, Mumbai
1956: Prix de la critique, Paris
1981: Padma Shri; the Government of India
1984: Fellowship of the Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi
1992–1993: Kalidas Samman, Government of Madhya Pradesh
2004: Lalit Kala Ratna Puraskar, Lalit Kala Academy, New Delhi
2007: Padma Bhushan; the Government of India
2013: Padma Vibhushan; the Government of India
2013: one of the greatest living global Indian legends ... NDTV INDIA
2014: D. Litt (Honoris Causa), Indira Kala Sangit Vishwavidyalaya, Khairagarh, Chhattisgarh
2015: Commandeur de la Légion d’Honneur (the Legion of Honour); Republic of France
2015: D. Litt (Honoris Causa), Shiv Nadar University, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh
== Solo exhibitions ==
2016; Nirantar, Delhi, Mumbai and Kolkata
2015: Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, "Raza: Paintings"
2015: Akar Prakar, Kolkata, "Aarambh – Raza at 93"
2015: Art Musings, Mumbai, "Aarambh @ 93: Solo Show of SH Raza"
2014: Grosvenor Vadehra, London, "SH Raza – Pyaas"
2014: Sovereign FZE, Dubai, "Raza: Paysage, Select Works 1950s – 1970s"
2014: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, "SH Raza - Parikrama – Around Gandhi"
2013: Akar Prakar, Kolkata, "Shabd- bindu – A show of recent works by SH Raza & poetry by Ashok Vajpeyi"
2013: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, "Antardhwani"
2012: ICIA, The Art Trust, Mumbai, "SH Raza – Solo Show"
2012: Art Musings, Mumbai, "SH Raza: Vistaar"
2012: Grosvenor Gallery, London, "Bindu Vistaar"
2011: Vadehra Art Gallery & Lalit Kala Akademi, New Delhi, "SH Raza, Punaraagman"
2010: Flora Jansem Gallery, Raza Ceramiques, Paris
2010: Galerie Patrice Trigano, Paris, "Sayed Haider Raza, Œuvres 1950-2001"
2010: Akar Prakar Art Gallery, Kolkata, Ahmadabad, Jaipur, Delhi, INDIA in 2010
2010: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, "Recent Works – SH Raza"
2008: Art Alive Art Gallery, Delhi, India in 2008
Exhibition Magnificent Seven at Art Alive Gallery
2007: Ayran Art Gallery, Mumbai, New Delhi, Hong Kong, "SH Raza - Celebrating 85 Years of living Legend"
2007: RL Fine ARTS, New York, "SH Raza: Master of Colors – Selected Works"
2007: The Arts Trust at the ICIA, Mumbai, "SH Raza- Solo Show"
2007: National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi, "Swati – S.H. Raza"
2006: TAO Art Gallery, Mumbai, "Rang Ras – S.H. Raza"
2006: RL Fine Arts, New York, SH Raza: Selected Works
2006: Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, "Raza"
2006: Hong Kong, Aryan Art Gallery, "Raza: Metamorphosis"
2005: Aryan Art Gallery, New Delhi, "Raza – Recent Works"
2005: Saffronart & Berkeley Square Gallery, London & New York, "SH Raza: Summer 2005"
2004: Art Musings, Mumbai, "SH Raza"
2003: Berlin, The Fine Art Resource, "SH Raza: Paintings from 1996 to 2003"
2001: Delhi Art Gallery, New Delhi, "Mindscapes: The Sacred Search: a select collection of works from 1951- 2002 by Raza"
1999: Gallery 54, New York, "Raza"
1997: Roopankar Museum of Fine Arts, Bharat Bhavan, Bhopal
1997: Jehangir Art Gallery Mumbai
1997: National Gallery of Modern Art, New Delhi.
1997: Vadhera Art Gallery & Chemould Gallery, Bhopal, Mumbai & New Delhi, "Raza: Avartan 1991-1996"
1994: The Art Rental Corporate, Group Michael Ferrier, Échirolles, Grenoble
1992: Jehangir Nicholson Museum, National Centre for Performing Arts, Mumbai
1992: Courses Arts Lalouvesc, France
1991: Gallery Eterso, Cannes, "Bindu ou la quête de l'essentiel", 28 June – 17 August
1991: Palais de Carnolès, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Menton, "Raza: Rétrospective 1952-1991"
1991: Chemould Gallery, Bombay, "Raza Anthology 1980-1990"
1988: Chemould Gallery, Bombay; Koloritten Galleri, Stavanger, Norway
1987: The Head of the artist, Grenoble
1985: Galerie Pierre Parat, Paris
1984: Chemould Gallery, Bombay
1982: Gallery Loeb, Bern, Switzerland; Gallery JY Noblet, Grenoble
1980: Galleriet, Oslo
1976: Mumbai, Gallery Chemould at the Jehangir Art Gallery, Raza, 26 February – 1 March 1976.
1975: Sanremo, Galleria Matuzia, Raza, 4 – 31 October 1975.
1969: Paris, Galerie Lara Vincy, Raza: Peintures Recentes, 27 November 1969 – 5 January 1970.
1968: Bombay, Gallery Chemould, Raza, 15 – 27 April 1968.
1968: Toronto, Gallery Dresdnere, Raza – Recent Oil Paintings, 25 October – 9 November 1968.
1968: Cologne, Dom Galerie, Sayed Haider Raza, 26 March – 4 May 1968.
1967: Paris, Galerie Lara Vincy, 1967.
1966: Düsseldorf, Tecta Galerie, Raza – Paris: 25 Oil Paintings from 1962- 1966, 6 October – 10 November 1966.
1963 Cologne, Dom Galerie, Raza, June – July 1963.
1964: Paris, Galerie Lara Vincy, Raza: Peintures récentes, 18 November 1964 – 10 January 1965.
1962: Galerie Dresdnere, Montreal
1962: Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, Raza, 15 July 1962.
1961: Paris, Galerie Lara Vincy, Raza, 19 April- 18 May 1961.
1960: Montreal, Galerie Dresdnere, Autumn 1960.
1959: Montreal, Galerie Dresdnere, Raza: Peintures et Gouaches, 5th – 19th MAY 1959.
1958: Galerie Lara Vincy, Paris, "Raza - Prix de la Critique 1956. Peintures et gouaches" (April–May)
1956: Galerie Saint-Placide, Paris, "Raza"
1950: Charles Petrat's Institute of foreign Languages, Mumbai (September)
1950: The IFL International Centre, Bombay, "SH Raza: Farewell Exhibition of Paintings" (September)
1948: Exhibition Hall, New Delhi, "Raza: 100 paintings of Kashmir", organised by Rudolf Von Leyden, (September)
1947: Bombay Art Society, "Raza's Watercolour Landscapes", (November)
1946: First solo exhibition at the Bombay Art Society Salon
== Selected Biennales ==
1956: Venice Biennale, Italy.
1957: Biennale 57, Pavillon de Marsan, Paris, France.
1958: Bienal de São Paulo, Brazil.
1958: Biennale, Brussels, Belgium.
1958: Biennale of Young Contemporary Painters, Bruges, Belgium.
1958: Venice Biennale, Italy.
1961: Biennale of Tokyo, Japan.
1962: Salon Comparaisons, Paris, France.
1963: Biennale du Maroc, Rabat, Morocco.
1964: Biennale de Menton, France.
1966: Biennale de Menton, France.
1966: Salon Comparaisons, Paris.
1968: Biennale de Menton, France.
1972: Biennale de Menton, France.
1976: Biennale de Menton, France.
1978: Biennale de Menton, France.
1986: Bienal de la Habana, Havana,
== Further reading ==
S.H Raza, by Soufiane Bensabra, Les Éditions de la Différence, Paris, 2020
"Yet Again: Nine New Essays on Raza", by Ashok Vajpeyi, Mapin Publishing Pvt, Ahmedabad, India, 2015.
"SH Raza: The Journey of a Master", published by Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2014.
"Understanding Raza: Many Ways of Looking at a Master", Ashok Vajpeyi (ed.), Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2013.
"My Dear: Letters Between Sayed Haider Raza & Krishen Khanna", Ashok Vajpeyi, The Raza Correspondence, Vadehra Art Gallery, New Delhi, 2013.
"SH Raza: Vistaar", by Ranjit Hoskote, Ashok Vajpeyi, Yashodhara Dalmia and Avni Doshi, Afterimage Publishing, Mumbai, 2012.
"Mandalas", by Olivier Germain-Thomas, Art Alive Gallery, 2009 (originally published in French by Éditions Albin Michel, Paris, 2004)
Raza by Alain Bonfand, Les Éditions de la Différence, Paris, 2008. (French and English Edition. Lithographs Estampes - Éditions de La Différence edited by Éditions de la Différence, Paris)
A Life in Art: S.H. Raza, by Ashok Vajpeyi, Art Alive Masters Series Books, New Delhi, 2007
Raza: A Life in Art, by Ashok Vajpeyi, 2007, Art Alive Gallery, New Delhi. ISBN 978-81-901844-4-1.
Passion....Life and Art of Raza, by Sayed Haider Raza, Ashok Vajpeyi (Ed.). 2005, Rajkamal Books. ISBN 81-267-1040-3.
"Atma Ka Taap", by Rajkamal Prakashan, S.H. Raza et Ashok Vajpeyi, New Delhi, 2004.
"Raza. An Introduction to his Painting", by Michel Imbert, Rainbow Publishers, Noida, 2003.
"Raza: Text-Interview-Poetry, Ravi Kumar" by ashok Vajpeyi, New Delhi, 2002.
Bindu: Space and time in Raza's vision, by Geeti Sen. Media Transasia, 1997. ISBN 962-7024-06-6.
Jacques Lassaigne, "Raza", in Cimaise, n°79, Paris, January–February–March 1967
== References ==
== External links ==
The Raza Foundation
Profile on AstaGuru
Documentary produced by NDTV
Interview with Sansad TV (in Hindi) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Ali_Shah_Geelani#Honours_and_awards | Syed Ali Shah Geelani | Syed Ali Shah Geelani (29 September 1929 – 1 September 2021) was a separatist leader active in separatist insurgency of the Indian union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. A pro-Pakistan separatist, he is regarded as the father of the Kashmir resistance movement.
He was a member of Jamaat-e-Islami Kashmir since 1953, and was regarded as one of its most significant leaders. Geelani was also a three-time Member of the Legislative Assembly from the Sopore constituency, elected on a Jamaat-e-Islami ticket in 1972, 1977 and in 1987.
== Early life ==
Geelani was born in 1929 in a village called Zurimanz, in the Aloosa tehsil, in the Bandipora district of North Kashmir into a Syed family. He was the son of a landless labourer in the canals department. Geelani was educated partly in Sopore and the rest in Lahore. He studied in a madrasa attached to the Masjid Wazir Khan and later enrolled in the Oriental College. He completed Adib 'Alim, a course in Islamic theology.
== Career ==
Returning to Kashmir after studies in Lahore, Geelani became active in the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference. He was appointed the secretary of the party unit in Zurimanj. In 1946, during the Quit Kashmir movement of the National Conference, he came in contact with Maulana Sayeed Masoodi, the general secretary of the National Conference, who took a liking to him and made him a reporter to the party newspaper Akhbar-i-Khidmat.
Maulana Masoodi also sponsored further studies for Geelani, who completed an adib-i-fazil course in Urdu and other courses in Persian and English. After this, he took a job as a school teacher, first at Pathar Masjid and later at Rainawari in Srinagar. Here he came in contact with Saaduddin Tarabali, a follower of the Jamaat-e-Islami founder Maulana Abul A'la Maududi. Maududi advocated a hardline Islamist ideology, whereby Islam had to be the foundation of the entire political order. Geelani had borrowed a book of Maududi from the local book store, which made a deep impression upon him. He was to later say, Maududi had "beautifully.. expressed the feelings that lay deep down in my own heart". The National Conference headquarters, Mujahid Manzil, where Geelani apparently stayed, soon began to be seen as "a den of Pakistanis".
Geelani was soon moved out of Srinagar, and he came to work in the Intermediate College in Sopore. He stayed in this position for six years. During this time, he was reading the literature of Jamaat-e-Islami and conveying its contents to his students in lectures. He also addressed congregations in mosques. He had become a full-fledged member of Jamaat in 1952.
=== Electoral politics ===
Geelani entered into electoral politics ahead of the 1971 Indian general election. Geelani had claimed that the Jamaat-e-Islami wanted to use it as an opportunity to spread its ideology, keep the Kashmir issue in prominence and protect basic and fundamental rights of the people. Geelani contested as an independent candidate but lost to Syed Ahmed Aga, with the Jamaat alleging ballot-rigging.
He participated in the 1972 legislative assembly election from Sopore. He won from the seat in that year and again in the 1977 legislative assembly election. He was however defeated in the 1983 election due to the sympathy wave generated for the Jammu & Kashmir National Conference by the death of Sheikh Abdullah. Geelani also contested the 1977 Indian general election as an independent candidate due to the banning of Jamaat in 1975, but lost to Abdul Ahad Vakil.
In the 1987 legislative assembly election, Jamaat-e-Islami candidates including Geelani participated under a coalition of parties called the Muslim United Front (MUF). Geelani won the seat from Sopore, but was expelled from the MUF in 1988. Geelani resigned as an MLA in August 1989 due to alleged widespread ballot rigging in the 1987 election.
=== Separatist leader ===
Geelani was viewed as a key separatist leader in Kashmir. Omar Abdullah, former Chief Minister of Jammu and Kashmir, blamed Geelani for the rise in militancy and bloodshed in Kashmir, while his father and former Union Minister Farooq Abdullah urged Geelani to follow a path which would "save Kashmiri people from further destruction".
He was one of the founding members of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC), an alliance of Kashmiri social and political organisations who supported a referendum for Kashmir, in 1993 and was the initial choice for the position of its chairman. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq was however chosen instead due to the secular organisations forming majority of the alliance. Geelani became the chairman in 1998, and was replaced by Abdul Ghani Bhat on 20 July 2000.
He also criticised the Jammu and Kashmir People's Conference for fielding proxy candidates in the 2002 assembly election and sought its removal, threatening to launch his own party. In May 2003, the Jamaat-e-Islami removed him as its representative from the executive body of Hurriyat in order to counter hardliners in the organisation. In August 2003 it removed him from the position of head of its political bureau, appointing Ashraf Sehrai in his place.
The appointment of Mohammad Abbas Ansari as chairman of Hurriyat precipitated a crisis in the organisation and it split in September 2003. Geelani formed his own faction within the Hurriyat Conference, called the "All Parties Hurriyat Conference (G)", in September 2003 and was elected as its chairman for three years, replacing its interim chairman Masarat Alam Bhat. It consists of 24 parties. In 2006 he was re-elected for a term of three years despite expressing his desire to step down owing to ill health. In 2015, he was appointed as the lifetime chairman of the faction.
In February 2004, he sought to form his own party. The Jamaat-e-Islami prohibited him from doing so and suspended him. In response, he dropped the idea for launching the party and tried to take over the leadership of the organisation. Bowing to the pressure, the Jamaat readmitted him in August 2004 and allowed him to form his own party. In the same month he founded the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat and was elected as its chairman for three years in October 2004. He was re-elected to the position for three year-terms consecutively in 2007, 2010 and 2013. In 2017 he was given a year-long extension after the party failed to hold regular elections in 2016 due to the 2016–2017 Kashmir unrest.
Jammat-e-Islami removed Geelani from its advisory council in 2005. It later started distancing itself from him and stated that he did not represent them, but the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat. In April 2010 it temporarily expelled him from the organisation due to him defending the freedom of the author of his biography Qaid-e-Inqilab – Ek Tareekh, Ek Tehreek over making derogatory remarks against the party, but later restored him as a basic member (rukun).
Geelani had called for numerous general strikes or shutdowns, in response to the deaths of unnamed suspected militants, local militants and death of civilians in Kashmir.
Geelani had appealed to people of Kashmir to boycott the 2014 legislative assembly elections completely, not accepting the proposals for self-rule or autonomy that had been offered by the People's Democratic Party and the then ruling National Conference. Despite repeated boycott appeals, the elections had record voter turnout of more than 65%, which was the highest in 25 years of history of the state. After record voting percentage in Kashmir, Geelani, along with other separatists, were criticised by Indian media for misleading people of Kashmir and for not representing true sentiments of Kashmiri people.
Geelani received the invitation to participate in the annual meeting of the foreign ministers of member states of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) and the Kashmir Contact Group to be held in New York from 27 September 2015. After the killing of Burhan Muzaffar Wani and the unrest that followed it, to restore normalcy in Kashmir, Geelani sent a letter to United Nations listing six confidence-building measures.
In March 2018, Geelani announced his resignation as chairman of the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat citing ill health, being replaced with Ashraf Sehrai. However he remained the chairman of his faction of the All Parties Hurriyat Conference. In June 2020 he announced his resignation from the faction, accusing it of nepotism and corruption, in addition to misinterpreting his speeches and taking decisions without him. It however refused to accept his resignation and did not name a new chairman until after his death.
=== Sedition charge ===
On 29 November 2010, Geelani, along with writer Arundhati Roy, activist Varavara Rao and three others, was charged under "sections 124A (sedition), 153A (promoting enmity between classes), 153B (imputations, assertions prejudicial to national integration), 504 (insult intended to provoke breach of peace) and 505 (false statement, rumour circulated with intent to cause mutiny or offence against public peace...) to be read with Section 13 of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act of 1967". The charges, which carried a maximum sentence of life imprisonment, were the result of a self-titled seminar they gave in New Delhi, "Azadi-the Only Way" on 21 October, at which Geelani was heckled.
== Personal life ==
Geelani lived in Hyderpora, Srinagar. He had two sons; Nayeem and Naseem, and four daughters; Anisha, Farhat Jabeen, Zamshida, and Chamshida. Anisha and Farhat are Geelani's daughters from his second marriage. Nayeem and his wife are both doctors who used to live and practise medicine in Rawalpindi, Pakistan, but they returned to India in 2010. Geelani's younger son, Naseem works as a Senior scientist at Sher-e-Kashmir University of Agricultural Sciences and Technology in Srinagar. Geelani's grandson Izhaar is a crew member in a private airline in India. Geelani's daughter Farhat is a madani teacher in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and her husband is an engineer there. Geelani's other grandchildren are studying in leading schools of India. His cousin Ghulam Nabi Fai is presently in London. Ruwa Shah, daughter of Kashmiri separatist Altaf Ahmad Shah (SAS Geelani's son-in-law) is a journalist. She previously worked as a journalist in India with organisations including the Al Jazeera, IANS and The Indian Express.
=== Health issues, passport suspension and house arrest ===
Geelani's passport was seized in 1981 due to accusations of "anti-India" activities. With the exception of his Hajj pilgrimage in 2006, he has not been allowed to leave India. He was diagnosed with renal cancer, and advised treatment from abroad in the same year. On the then Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's intervention, the government returned Geelani's passport to his son. In 2007, his condition worsened, although in the early stages of the cancer, it was life-threatening and surgery was advised. Geelani was set to travel to either the UK or the United States. However, his visa request was rejected by the American government citing his violent approach in Kashmir conflict and he went to Mumbai for surgery. His supporters and family alleged that this was a "human rights violation".
On 6 March 2014, Geelani fell ill with a severe chest infection, shortly after returning to his home in Srinagar. He has been under house arrest for most of the time since 2010, and was put under house arrest again on his return. In May 2015, Geelani applied for passport to visit his daughter in Saudi Arabia. The Indian government withheld it citing technical reasons, including the fact that he deliberately failed to fill in the nationality column required in the application. On 21 July, the Government granted him a passport on humanitarian grounds, with a validity of nine months, after Geelani acknowledged his nationality as an Indian.
=== Rumours of Geelani's death ===
On 12 March 2014, rumors of Geelani's death -- spread by false or inaccurate edits to his Wikipedia article, "a particular Hindi news channel", and Facebook pages -- led the government of Kashmir to suspend internet and phone service, according to some sources. However, the then Chief Minister Omar Abdullah said that the failures had nothing to do with Geelani's health and were due to a snapped power line as well as an optical fibre cut due to heavy snowfall, which left most of the valley without power. The cuts in Internet service, hours after a statement by Hurriyat that Geelani would be flown to New Delhi for medical treatment, were blamed for spreading the rumours.
=== FEMA case ===
After the 2019 Pulwama attack, India took stronger action against pro-Pakistan separatists including Geelani. The Enforcement Directorate levied a penalty of ₹14.40 lakh and ordered confiscation of nearly ₹6.8 lakh in connection with a Foreign Exchange Management Act case against him for illegal possession of foreign exchange.
== Death ==
Geelani reportedly developed breathing complications and died on 1 September 2021 at his Hyderpora residence in Srinagar due to his prolonged illness.
His son Naseem alleged that police raided the house, took the body forcibly and buried it in a graveyard in his Hyderpora locality in the middle of the night. According to Naseem, no one from the close family was allowed to attend the burial, but they visited the grave next morning. Dilbag Singh, the Director General of Jammu and Kashmir Police, however denied the allegations.
Restrictions on travel and internet were imposed in Kashmir soon after Geelani's death. On 2 September 2021, FIR was registered against his family members under UAPA for clothing his body with a Pakistani flag and for allegedly raising “anti-national” slogans.
Kashmiri political leaders, as well as members of Government of Pakistan, condoled his death. Prime Minister Imran Khan ordered flags to be flown at half-mast to mourn his death.
== Honours and awards ==
On 14 August 2020, Pakistani President Arif Alvi conferred Nishan-e-Pakistan, Pakistan's highest civil award on Geelani to recognise his decades-long struggle for Kashmiris’ right to self-determination.
== Views ==
In February 2014, he said prisoners in Kashmir "are the victims of custodial violence and are harassed in Indian jails especially in Tihar Jail" after an incident where parents of Javaid Ahmad Khan, serving a life sentence, "had travelled thousands of kilometres and invested a lot of money to reach Delhi to meet their jailed son but were denied a meeting with him. "This is state terrorism", he said.
He is viewed as sympathetic to Jamat-e-Islami. His official residence was viewed as Jamat property before he donated it to the Milli Trust.
In November 2011, Geelani called for protests against the alleged "objectionable anti-Islamic" content on the social networking website Facebook, which he described as a "satanic audacity". His call triggered protests in various parts of the Kashmir Valley, leading to minor clashes between the protestors and the security forces.
Geelani condemned the killing of Osama bin Laden by the United States. After Bin Laden's death in May 2011, Geelani said that he would lead last rite prayers in absentia in Srinagar for the slain al-Qaeda leader. After holding prayers for Osama in congregation of thousands of Kashmiris, a European Union delegation snubbed Geelani by cancelling a scheduled meeting with him. He further supported 2001 Indian Parliament attack accused Afzal Guru and one of 2008 Mumbai Attacks masterminds and Lashkar-e-Taiba chief Hafiz Saeed.
=== Kashmir ===
Geelani said that while Pakistan supported "the indigenous struggle of the people of Jammu and Kashmir, morally, diplomatically and politically ... this does not mean Pakistan can take a decision on our behalf."
Geelani would only support a dialogue process aimed at resolving Kashmir issue in accordance with the wishes and aspirations of the people of the state. But he believed that dialogue between India and Pakistan starts under diplomatic compulsions, and it is nothing but just a time delaying tactics. He was of the opinion that Kashmiris are not enemies of India or hold any grudge against its inhabitants. We are desirous of a strong India and Pakistan and it is only possible when Kashmir issue is resolved to pave the way for peace, prosperity and development in the region.
He said, "Kashmir is not any border dispute between India and Pakistan which they can solve by bilateral understandings. It is the issue concerning future of 15 million people. The Hurriyat is not in principle against a dialogue process but without involvement of Kashmiri people, such a process has proved meaningless in the past. We don't have any expectations of it being fruitful in future too." He further stated, "India should immediately and unconditionally release political prisoners, and withdraw cases against youth, which are pending in the courts for the past 20 years."
=== Separatism and relations with Pakistan ===
Geelani has been repeatedly criticised by Indian authorities for inciting violence in the Kashmir Valley and working as offshoot of Pakistan. Geelani said openly that he was not Indian. "Travelling on the Indian passport is a compulsion of every Kashmiri as Kashmir is an Internationally accepted Disputed region between India and Pakistan" are his words when applying for Indian Passport. "We are Pakistani; Pakistan is ours", he said in a big gathering of his supporters.
While Geelani's personal opinion about Kashmir was that it merge with Pakistan, he was known for standing up to both the Indian and Pakistani governments, snubbing anyone (including former President of Pakistan Pervez Musharraf) who did not support the right to self-determination for Kashmir.
Sheikh Mustafa Kamal, a senior leader of Jammu & Kashmir National Conference and son of Sheikh Abdullah criticised Geelani for working on "dictations" given by Pakistan. He accused Geelani of being "a double agent" on "the payroll of Pakistan's ISI".
Pakistan also openly supported Geelani, the three-member delegation from Pakistan High Commission led by Abdul Basit met Geelani at his Malviya Nagar residence in March 2015. Pakistan High Commissioner Abdul Basit assured Geelani of complete support conveying that the country's stand on Kashmir remains unchanged despite regime change in New Delhi. Abdul Basit also invited Geelani for Pakistan Day function on 23 March. Pakistan High Commission in New Delhi, ritually invites pro-separatist leadership of Jammu and Kashmir. On 14 August, the Pakistani government awarded him its highest civilian award, the Nishan-e-Pakistan.
In the last few decades, Geelani refused any proposal from Governments of India and Pakistan and was consistent in his demand for the United Nations promised plebiscite of 1948.
== Works ==
=== Books ===
Some of his works include:
Rūdād-i qafas (transl. Story of jailhouse), 1993. Author's memoirs of his imprisonment.
Navā-yi ḥurriyyat (transl. Voice of Hurriyat), 1994. Collection of letters, columns and interviews on Kashmir issue.
Dīd o shunīd (transl. Acquaintance), 2005. Compilation based on answers to the various questions relating to Kashmir issue.
Bhārat ke istiʻmārī ḥarbe! : Kurālah Gunḍ se Jodhpūr tak! (transl. India's colonial wars: From Kralgund to Jodhpur), 2006. Autobiographical reminiscences with special reference to his struggle for the liberation of Kashmir.
Sadāʼe dard : majmuvʻah taqārīr (transl. Cry of pain: collection of speeches), 2006. Collection of speeches on Kashmir issue.
Millat-i maz̤lūm (transl. Nation of oppressed), 2006. Collection of articles and columns on various issues of Jammu and Kashmir with special reference to autonomy and independence movements of Kashmir.
Safar-i Maḥmūd z̲ikr-i maẓlūm (transl. Journey of the commendable account of the oppressed), 2007. Compilation based on answers to the various questions relating to Kashmir issue.
Maqtal se vāpsī : Rāncī jail ke shab o roz (transl. Back from the gallows: night and day in Ranchi jail), 2008. Autobiographical reminiscences.
Iqbāl rūḥ-i dīn kā shanāsā (transl. Acquaintance with Iqbal's spirit of religion), 2009. Study on the works of Muhammad Iqbal.
ʻĪdain (transl. Eids), 2011. Collection of sermons delivered on the occasion of Eid ul Fitr, Eid ul Adha, and Friday prayers.
Vullar kināre : āp bītī (transl. By the Wular: autobiography), 2012. Autobiography.
Qissa e Dard (transl. Account of pain)
Muqadma al-haq (transl. Trial of truth)
Tu baaki nahi (transl. You are no more)
Mera pyaar aur hai (transl. My love is something else)
Talkh haqayak (transl. Bitter truth)
Elaan-e jungbandi (transl. Declaration of armistice)
Hijrat aur shahadat (transl. Migration and martyrdom)
Qurbani (transl. Sacrifice)
Umeed-i bahar (transl. Hope of spring)
Payam-e aakhreen (transl. The final message)
=== Letters ===
A letter to V.P. Singh.
A letter to Chandra Shekhar.
Source:
=== Others ===
Vinoba Bhave se mulaqaat (transl. A meeting with Vinoba Bhave). Pamphlet, about a meeting with Indian social reformer Vinoba Bhave.
Aulaad-e Ibrahim (transl. Children of Abraham). Pamphlet.
Ek pahlu yeh bhi hai Kashmir ki tasvir ka (transl. Another aspect of Kashmir's affairs). Pamphlet.
Qaul-e-Faisal (transl. Final judgment)
11 September ke baad (transl. After 9/11)
Rasool-e rahmat aasir-i hazir main (transl. Prophet Muhammad in present times)
Iqbal apni paygam ki roshni mein (transl. Iqbal in light of his message)
Shayad ki utar jaaye tere dil mein meri baat (transl. Maybe you will understand me)
Wa'tasimu bihablillahi jamia (Surah Al Imran Quran 3:103)
Shahadat Gahe Ulfat (transl. Martyred in love)
Rahravani ishq (transl. Travelers of love)
Kunu Ansarullah (transl. Willing helpers of Allah)
Kar-i jahan be-sabaat (transl. Unstable world affairs)
Kargil
Source:
== See also ==
Insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir
All Parties Hurriyat Conference
Joint Resistance Leadership
Asiya Andrabi
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Garner, George (2013). "Chechnya and Kashmir: The Jihadist Evolution of Nationalism to Jihad and Beyond". Terrorism and Political Violence. 25 (3): 419–434. doi:10.1080/09546553.2012.664202. ISSN 0954-6553. S2CID 143798822.
Hakeem, Abdul (2014), Paradise on Fire: Syed Ali Geelani and the Struggle for Freedom in Kashmir, Markfield, Leicestershire, UK: Revival Publications, ISBN 978-0-9536768-6-6
Jamal, Arif (2009), Shadow War: The Untold Story of Jihad in Kashmir, Melville House, ISBN 978-1-933633-59-6
Sikand, Yoginder (July 2002), "The Emergence and Development of the Jama'at-i-Islami of Jammu and Kashmir (1940s-1990)", Modern Asian Studies, 36 (3): 705–751, doi:10.1017/s0026749x02003062, JSTOR 3876651, S2CID 145586329
Sikand, Yoginder (2–8 October 2010), "Jihad, Islam and Kashmir: Syed Ali Shah Geelani's Political Project", Economic and Political Weekly, 45 (40): 125–134, JSTOR 25742155 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cucaita | Cucaita | Cucaita is a municipality in the Central Boyacá Province, part of Boyacá Department, Colombia. The urban centre is situated on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense at a distance of 20 kilometres (12 mi) from the department capital Tunja. Cucaita borders Sora in the north, Tunja in the east and south and Samacá in the south and west.
== Etymology ==
The name Cucaita is derived from Chibcha and means either "Seminary enclosure" or "Shade of the farming fields".
== History ==
The area of Cucaita in the times before the Spanish conquest was inhabited by the Muisca, organised in their loose Muisca Confederation. Cucaita was ruled by the zaque of nearby Hunza.
Modern Cucaita was founded on August 12, 1556 by friar Juan de Los Barrios.
== Economy ==
Main economical activities of Cucaita are agriculture (predominantly onions and peas), livestock farming and minor carbon mining.
== Born in Cucaita ==
Rafael Antonio Niño, former professional cyclist
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== External links ==
(in Spanish) Colombian ministry of culture; Cucaita, 450 years old |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blessd | Blessd | Stiven Mesa Londoño (born 27 January 2000), known professionally as Blessd, is a Colombian rapper, singer and songwriter. Born in Itagüí, he has worked with well-known artists such as Maluma, Justin Quiles, and Myke Towers.
In October 2021, Blessd signed with Warner Music Latina and released his first studio album, Hecho en Medellín. His most popular song from the album, entitled "Medallo", has reached number 1 in Colombia and has over 100 million views on YouTube. In March 2022, he was nominated for three Heat Latin Music Awards, including Best New Artist, Best Artist – Andean Region and Best Collaboration for the song "Medallo".
== Life and career ==
=== Early life ===
Blessd was born in 2000 in Itagüí, a suburb of Medellín. His parents separated when he was young and he moved with his mother to live in Bogotá. In an interview with MoluscoTV, he describes his adolescence in Bogotá as difficult because he had a hard time communicating with his stepfather and was far away from the rest of his family. He began to spend a lot of time away from his home and got into many situations he describes as "dangerous". After a fight, he spent a short time in a detention center for minors. This experience made him want to change his path and he decided to return to Medellín.
When he returned to Medellín he lived with his maternal grandparents. Before leaving school to pursue his music career, he studied at the Institución Educativa Pedro Estrada.
=== Beginnings (2015–2021) ===
Blessd became interested in music due to the influence of his uncle who was a rapper. His uncle would play songs for him and help him practice freestyling. He began performing as a hobby when he was 15 and competed in rap battles in Bogotá. He was connected to music producer Lil Jay through a friend but did not have very much money. To pay for recording his songs, Blessd would start his day at 2:00 am helping his father and grandparents sell fruits and vegetables in the Central Mayorista de Antioquia in Itagüí. After working with his father in the morning he would go to school and sell candies to his classmates. After school, he would use the little money he made to record sections of his songs.
At first, Blessd was exclusively a rapper and his first songs were shared throughout Medellin using WhatsApp. To reach a wider audience, his producer Lil Jay convinced him to try out Reggaeton and put together some more romantic songs. One of those songs was "Una", which became his first song to go viral in Medellin. Because he did not have any money to shoot a video for "Una", Blessd convinced the owner of Megastore Tienda, a clothing store in Medellin, to invest in the song and help pay for the video. After a month and a half, "Una" became a hit on YouTube and got more than three million plays. After "Una" went viral in Medellin, Blessd began performing in schools and at small concerts. He left school to focus on performing and performed at over 500 schools across Antioquia.
Soon after, he met his manager, Dr. Velasquez, who signed him to the label JM World Music.
In October 2020, Blessd released the song "Viernes Social" with Puerto Rican artists Alexis, Yomo, Amaro and Xantos. The song became the number one song on the radio in Colombia and had more than one million plays in the first 24 hours. In November 2020, Blessd and fellow Colombian Ryan Castro released the song "Lejania". The song was successful not only in Medellin but across Colombia and in Costa Rica.
In January 2021, Blessd released the song "Imposible". After hearing about this song from his best friend, Blessd was contacted by Maluma about joining the song for a remix. He met Maluma for the first time when they filmed the video for "Imposible" Remix at Maluma's home. The remix was produced the Prodigiez, and came out in May 2021.
In the summer of 2021, Blessd released the song "Hace Tiempo". After just one month on YouTube, the song had over 10 million views. In July, he was named by YouTube as a part of their Foundry Class of 2021. In August, Blessd released the remix to his song "Dos Problemas" which featured Puerto Rican singer Javiielo and Venezuelan rappers Big Soto and Neutro Shorty.
=== Hecho en Medellín (2021–present) ===
In late 2021, Blessd released his first studio album titled Hecho en Medellín which has 10 songs including "Hace Tiempo", "Quien TV" and "Medallo". He completed his first tour in the United States with shows in New Jersey, Massachusetts and Florida. He also completed a tour in Europe where he sang for sold-out crowds in Madrid, Barcelona, Paris, Málaga and Bilbao. Blessd was one of the opening acts for fellow Colombian artist Karol G for her Bichota tour stop in their hometown of Medellín . He sang for the first time in many new cities outside of Colombia including Mexico City, Mexico, Caracas, Venezuela and Guayaquil, Ecuador.
In January 2022, Blessed was nominated for a Lo Nuestro Award in the category "Artista Revelación Masculino" and was highlighted by Billboard as one of 22 Latin "artists to watch" in 2022. Alongside fellow Colombian Ryan Castro, he released two new songs – "Niña de Mis Sueños" and "Quien TV" Remix. The two had not worked together for almost a year after the success of "Lejania" because of differences between Blessd and the record label Castro was signed to concerning the remix of "Lejania". On 14 February, MonitorLatino reported that "Quien TV" Remix had become the most popular song in Colombia and "Niña de Mis Sueños" was charting at number 6 in the country according to Billboard.
== Personal life ==
Blessd is a Catholic who learned about religion from his grandmother. He named himself Blessd because of the faith he has had since he was a young child. He has many tattoos of religious imagery such as Jesus and The Virgin Mary on his arm and a cross on the back of his neck. He also has the word "bendito", which means blessed, tattooed across his fingers. He is often photographed before his performances on his knees praying with his team.
When asked about his inspirations, Blessd credits American singer and rapper Arcángel and Venezuelan rapper Akapellah. He is also inspired by the Colombian artists he grew up listening to with his grandparents such as vallenato singer Diomedes Diaz and salsa singer Joe Arroyo.
For a few years, Blessd dated Colombian influencer Nicole Rivera, who is known on social media as La Suprema. She appears alongside him in the video for his song "Confia en Mi". He confirmed the end of their relationship in on 15 March 2022, via Twitter.
Blessd is a fan of football, he supports his hometown club Atlético Nacional as he has a tattoo of the club’s badge and at one point the club even incorporated his logo onto the club’s kits. Blessd is also a fan of F.C. Barcelona. In October 2024 he became part-owner of the Danish football club Vendsyssel FF. On 15 December 2024, Blessd released “Himno de la grandeza” (Hymn of greatness), a song that portrayed his love and respect for Atlético Nacional.
== Discography ==
=== Studio albums ===
=== Charting songs ===
=== Singles ===
=== Other charted songs ===
== Awards and nominations ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Blessd on Instagram |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mullvad#:~:text=Mullvad%20began%20supporting%20connections%20via%20the%20OpenVPN%20protocol%20in%202009. | Mullvad | Mullvad is a commercial VPN service based in Sweden. The name "Mullvad" is the word for "mole" in the Swedish language. Mullvad operates using the WireGuard and OpenVPN protocols. It also supports Shadowsocks as a bridge protocol for censorship circumvention. Mullvad's VPN client software is publicly available under the GPLv3, a free and open-source software license.
== History ==
Mullvad was launched in March 2009 by Amagicom AB in Göteborg, and it had begun by supporting connections via the OpenVPN protocol in 2009. Mullvad was an early adopter and supporter of the WireGuard protocol, announcing the availability of the new VPN protocol in March 2017 and making a "generous donation" supporting WireGuard development between July and December 2017.
In September 2018, the cybersecurity firm Cure53 performed a penetration test on Mullvad's macOS, Windows, and Linux applications. Seven issues were found which were addressed by Mullvad. Cure53 tested only the applications and supporting functions. No assessment was made on the Mullvad server-side and back end.
In October 2019, Mullvad partnered with Mozilla to utilize Mullvad's WireGuard servers for Mozilla VPN.
In April 2020, Mullvad partnered with Malwarebytes and provided WireGuard servers for their VPN service, Malwarebytes Privacy.
In May 2022, Mullvad started officially accepting Monero.
On 18 April 2023, Mullvad's head office in Gothenburg was visited by officers from the National Operations Department of the Swedish Police Authority who had a search warrant to seize computers being used by Mullvad containing customer data. Mullvad demonstrated that in accordance with their policies, no such data existed on their systems. After consulting with the prosecutor, the officers left without seizing any equipment or obtaining customer information. Mullvad had released a public statement in relation to this information in a blog post on their website two days later, also mentioning that it was their first time that their offices had been searched by authorities. In a letter sent to Mullvad nine days after the search, the Swedish Police Authority stated that they had conducted the search at the request of Germany for an ongoing investigation. The investigation involved a blackmail attack that targeted several institutions in the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania which revealed IP addresses that were traced back to Mullvad's VPN service.
On 29 May 2023, Mullvad announced that they would be removing support for port forwarding, effective on 1 July 2023. This was done due to the use of port forwarding for illegal activities, with this causing interference by law enforcement, Mullvad IP addresses getting blacklisted, and hosting providers canceling their services.
== Service ==
A TechRadar review noted in 2019 that "Mullvad's core service is powerful, up-to-date, and absolutely stuffed with high-end technologies". Complementing its use of the open-source OpenVPN and WireGuard protocols, Mullvad includes "industrial strength" encryption (employing AES-256 GCM methodology), 4096-bit RSA certificates with SHA-512 for server authentication, perfect forward secrecy, multiple layers of DNS leak protection, IPv6 leak-protection, and multiple "stealth options" to help bypass government or corporate VPN blocking.
Mullvad provides VPN client applications for computers running the Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems. As of April 2020, native iOS and Android Mullvad VPN clients using the WireGuard protocol are available. iOS and Android mobile operating system users can also configure and use built-in VPN clients or the OpenVPN or WireGuard apps to access Mullvad's service.
== Privacy ==
Providing personal information used to identify users such as email addresses and phone numbers is not required during Mullvad's registration process. Instead, a unique 16-digit account number is anonymously generated for each newly registered user, and this account number is used to log in to the Mullvad on other devices.
For anonymity purposes, Mullvad accepts the anonymous payment methods of cash and Monero. Payment for the service can also be made via bank wire-transfer, credit card, Bitcoin, Bitcoin Cash, PayPal, Swish, EPS Transfer, Bancontact, iDEAL, Przelewy24, and vouchers sold by multiple resellers. Payments made via cryptocurrency have a 10% discount. In June 2022, the service announced that it will no longer offer new recurring subscriptions, as this further reduces the amount of personal information that will have to be stored.
Mullvad does not log VPN users' IP addresses, the VPN IP address used, browsing-activity, bandwidth, connections, session duration, timestamps, and DNS-requests.
Mullvad has many privacy-focused features built into their VPN. Instances include multi-hop, which routes all traffic through an additional Mullvad server before it arrives at its destination, the ability to add a quantum-resistant key exchange to the encryption process, making all data encrypted resistant to quantum computer related attacks, and Defense against AI-guided Traffic Analysis (DAITA), which ensures all packets are the same size and also inserts random network traffic (significantly increasing bandwidth usage), though this is only enabled on select servers.
Mullvad has been actively campaigning against the EU's Regulation to Prevent and Combat Child Sexual Abuse (a.k.a. Chat Control), which would require service providers to scan all users' online communications, even encrypted services, arguing that it would make all methods of online communication viewable and thus not private and not anonymous.
== Reception ==
While Mullvad has been noted for "taking a strong approach to privacy and maintaining good connection speeds", the VPN client setup and interface has been noted as being more onerous and technical than most other VPN providers especially on some client platforms. However, a follow-up review by the same source in October 2018 notes, "Mullvad has a much improved, modern Windows client (and one for Mac, too)". A PC World review, also from October 2018, concludes, "With its commitment to privacy, anonymity (as close as you can realistically get online), and performance Mullvad remains our top recommendation for a VPN service".
In November 2018, TechRadar noted Mullvad VPN as one of five VPN providers to answer a set of questions for trustworthiness verification posed by the Center for Democracy and Technology. In March 2019, a TechRadar review noted slightly substandard speeds. However, a TechRadar review later that year, published on 11 June 2019, stated that Mullvad VPN "speeds are excellent". This is also supported by a 2024 CNET review that demonstrated 13.5% speed loss in March 2024 tests. While the latter review notes a shortcoming for mobile users in that Mullvad had not provided mobile VPN client apps, Mullvad apps for both Android and iOS are now available.
The non-profit Freedom of the Press Foundation, in their "Choosing a VPN" guide, lists Mullvad amongst the five VPNs that meet their recommended settings and features for VPN use as a tool for anonymizing online activity.
== Other products ==
=== Browser ===
On 3 April 2023, Mullvad Browser was released, developed by the Tor Project team and distributed by Mullvad. It has similar privacy and security settings levels to Tor Browser, with an exception being that it operates independently of the Tor network and is meant to be used with a VPN service instead, either Mullvad VPN or another trusted provider. Mullvad Browser has been programmed to minimize the risk of users being tracked and fingerprinted. It attempts to achieve this through several measures:
Private mode is enabled by default. This means that cookies are never saved between sessions.
It utilizes Firefox's "resist fingerprinting" feature.
First-party isolation is in place, in which cookies are placed in separate cookie jars so that trackers cannot connect to each other to build a profile of its user.
No collection of telemetry data.
=== Search engine ===
On 20 June 2023, Mullvad announced the Mullvad Leta search engine. Mullvad Leta uses the Google Search and Brave Search APIs as a proxy and caches each search for 30 days. When a user inputs a web query, the service checks if it has a cache of the search before making a call to the Google Search or Brave Search API. The service was initially only accessible to devices that had Mullvad VPN turned on, before being opened to the general public on 4 March 2025. Mullvad VPN announced on November 6, 2025, that Mullvad Leta would be shut down on November 27, 2025.
=== Public DNS ===
Mullvad also offers public DNS servers that offer DNS over HTTPS, DNS over TLS, and various content-blocking filters.
== See also ==
Comparison of virtual private network services
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Mullvad repositories on GitHub |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sons%C3%B3n | Sonsón | Sonsón is a municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. Sonsón is located in Eastern Antioquia. It is one of the seats of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Sonsón–Rionegro. Sonsón celebrates "Las Fiestas Del Maíz"- ('Festival of the Corn') during the month of August, being the most traditional, historical and representative festival in western Colombia. The population was estimated to be 33,598 in 2020.
== History ==
Founded on 4 August 1800 by Mr. José Joaquín Ruiz y Zapata, villager judge from the city of Arma de Rionegro, with seventy-seven people. Initially it was called San José de Ezpeleta de Sonsón in honor of the patron San José (Saint Joseph) and the viceroy Ezpeleta.
During the firsts decades of the 19th century, Sonsón became in the provider center of the colonization towards the Colombian west, being a very important financial and commercial hub in the Antioquian region, and also being for several years the second city of the Department.
The Municipality of Sonsón is located in the southeastern Antioquia, with 1,323 km² (510.81 sq mi), it occupies the 15th place in territory of the Department. It has all the climates from the paramo, until the warm weather in the Magdalena Medio. 105 veredas (hamlets) distributed in its 8 corregimientos (townships) which makes it diverse in crops, landscapes and culture.
Its economy is based in production of potato, corn, tomato, coffee, fig, milk, forge. In the zone of Magdalena Medio there is one cement plant and there's mining of marble in the corregimiento of La Danta.
== Economy ==
Sonsón's economy is largely dependent on agriculture. As agriculture played a vital role in Sonsón, many individuals migrated to the Caribbean and other islands (St. Croix, Haiti, and St. Lucia) during the slave trade to support economic growth. These individuals are well versed in farming, art, business, and politics.
== Roads ==
Sonsón is connected to Medellín by a road. It is also connected to the municipalities of Abejorral, La Unión and Aguadas (in the Department of Caldas)
This locality was also known by the development of the old Medellin - Bogotá motorway. Actually it's being paved to La Dorada (Caldas)
== Climate ==
The climate in the urban area of Sonsón is usually cold, with an average temperature of 14 °C (57.2 °F); but its 1,323 km² (510.81 sq mi) makes it diverse, because this is one of the few towns in Colombia with all the climates. Some townships as Alto de Sabanas or Los Medios have an average temperature of 24 °C (75.2 °F); the zone of Rioverdes have an average temperature of 27 °C (80.6 °F) and the zone of Sonsonian Magdalena Medio has an average temperature of 30 °C (86 °F).
Anyway, all the nights of the Sonsón's urban area has an average temperature of 11 °C (51.8 °F).
Sonsón has a clean air with very little pollution
== Museums ==
Sonsón is the town with more museums in Colombia. Some of them are:
Grandparent's House Museum.
Pablo Jaramillo Museum.
Museum of Religious Art.
Festival of Corn's Museum.
Sonsonian Press's Hall.
== Administrative divisions ==
The municipality is divided into 106 veredas, and 9 corregimientos.
== Sites of interest ==
Architecture many old houses from the 1800s
Waterfalls there are many, some of them 30 minutes away from town
Landscapes it has many, and most of them are rare and amazing
The most beautiful balcony in Antioquia, located at Main Square.
Paramo Zone.
Township of Alto de Sabanas, where you can see wonderful landscapes and eat figs.
== See also ==
Our Lady of Chiquinquirá Cathedral, Sonsón
== References ==
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Uvita | La Uvita | La Uvita is a town and municipality in the Northern Boyacá Province, part of the Colombian Department of Boyacá. The urban centre is located at an altitude of 2,700 metres (8,900 ft) in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes. La Uvita borders San Mateo in the north, El Cocuy and Chita in the east, Chita and Jericó in the south and Boavita in the west.
== Etymology ==
La Uvita is derived from Chibcha, meaning "meadow of the fertile farmlands".
== History ==
La Uvita was founded by Vicente Ferrer del Río de Loza on December 24, 1758, as a place for the colonial inhabitants of Boavita to flee the indigenous people in Boavita.
== Economy ==
Main economic activity of La Uvita is the manufacturing of cheese. It also serves as a touristic entry to the El Cocuy National Park.
== Climate ==
== Gallery ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harnaam_Kaur#:~:text=In%20March%202015%2C%20photographer%20Mr,over%2080%20individuals%20with%20beards. | Harnaam Kaur | Harnaam Kaur (born 29 November 1990) is a British social media personality, postpartum coach, life coach, and motivational speaker.
== Early life ==
Kaur was born in Slough, Berkshire on 29 November 1990 in what she describes as "a traditional Punjabi family". At the age of 12, Kaur was diagnosed with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), which is due to elevated androgens (male hormones) in females. One of the symptoms of PCOS is hirsutism, or the ability to grow excessive facial and body hair. Kaur is able to grow a full beard as a result of her condition. While Kaur initially attempted to remove her facial hair due to constant bullying, she has grown to embrace her unconventional appearance and has become a spokesperson for the body positivity movement. In an interview with Rock N Roll Bride, Kaur reflects on her decision to keep her beard: "I decided to keep my beard and step forward against society's expectations of what a woman should look like. Today I am not suicidal and I do not self-harm. Today I am happy living as a young beautiful bearded woman. I have realised that this body is mine, I own it, I do not have any other body to live in so I may as well love it unconditionally".
== Career ==
Kaur worked as a primary school teaching assistant at Khalsa Primary School before coming to media attention in 2014, when she started giving public interviews. After achieving fame, Kaur became a full-time public figure and freelance model and motivational speaker.
In March 2015, photographer Mr. Elbank included a photo of Kaur in his exhibit at Somerset House in London, which featured portraits of over 80 individuals with beards. In June 2015, Kaur modeled for Rock N Roll Bride and was photographed by Louisa Coulthurst of Urban Bridesmaid Photography. In November 2015, Kaur joined the "Eff Your Beauty Standards" campaign founded by Tess Holliday as a spokesperson and representative.
In March 2016, Kaur became the first woman with a beard to walk at London Fashion Week. She opened the show for designer Marianna Harutunian. She is signed to Wanted Models in Paris and continues to be featured in fashion spreads in both online and print magazines. In May 2016, the conceptual artist Annelies Hofmeyr featured Kaur in her project Trophy Wife Barbie, where Hofmeyr altered a Barbie doll to Kaur's likeness.
In July 2016, musician Aisha Mizra featured Kaur in the music video for her song "Fuck Me or Destroy Me".
In September 2016, Kaur was included in the Guinness World Records as the youngest woman in the world to have a full beard. Her record citation read: "Now with a beard measuring as long as six inches [15 cm] in places, she overcame years of bullying to take ownership of her appearance and achieve this record title at the age of 24 years 282 days".
In March 2017, Kaur was featured in the Teen Vogue article "Instagrammers Challenge Body and Facial Hair Stigma".
In August 2017, Kaur collaborated with the grooming company Captain Fawcett to create and design a beard oil elixir. Kaur models in the advertisement campaign for the beard oil.
=== Activism ===
In interviews and on social media, Kaur references the abuse and harassment she received as a teenager that led to her self-harm and attempted suicide. In 2017, Kaur contributed to panel discussions in the House of Parliament on topics relating to mental health, body image, cyberbullying, LGBTQIA+ and how social media, businesses, schools and the government can help with the development of positive body images.
Kaur uses her profiles on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube to contribute to numerous body-positive campaigns. She frequently posts content to promote awareness of body shaming, cyberbullying and mental illness. Kaur also aims to challenge gender stereotypes in media. She has said, "I don't think I believe in gender. I want to know who said a vagina is for a woman and a penis is for a man, or pink is for a girl and blue is for a boy. I am sitting here with a vagina and boobs – and a big beautiful beard".
== Personal life ==
While Kaur has referenced her conversion to Sikhism at age 16 as one of the reasons she stopped removing her facial hair, she now describes herself as spiritual rather than religious. Traditionally, Sikhism forbids the cutting of hair. She continues to wear her turban or other head coverings, which is a custom of the Khalsa tradition of Sikhism.
Kaur is originally from Slough, England. Her younger brother, Gurdeep Singh Cheema, created the film Happy Ending? The Dangers of Online Grooming to bring awareness to the issue of online child grooming by predators.
To promote self-love and acceptance, Kaur has stated that she has named her beard Sundri, which means beauty or beautiful, and refers to her beard as "she".
== See also ==
Polycystic ovary syndrome
Hirsutism
Bearded lady
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boeing%E2%80%93Saab_T-7_Red_Hawk | Boeing–Saab T-7 Red Hawk | The Boeing–Saab T-7 Red Hawk, initially known as the Boeing T-X (later Boeing–Saab T-X), is an American–Swedish transonic advanced jet trainer produced by Boeing with Saab. In September 2018, the United States Air Force (USAF) selected it for the T-X program to replace the Northrop T-38 Talon as the service's advanced jet trainer.
== Development ==
The USAF's Air Education and Training Command (AETC) began developing the requirements for a replacement for the supersonic Northrop T-38 Talon as early as 2003. Originally, the replacement trainer was expected to enter service around 2020. A fatigue failure of a T-38C killed its two-person crew in 2008, and the USAF advanced the target date of initial operational capability (IOC) to 2017. In the fiscal 2013 budget proposal, the USAF suggested delaying the initial operating capability to FY2020 with the contract award not expected before FY2016. Shrinking budgets and higher-priority modernization projects pushed the IOC of the T-X program winner to "fiscal year 2023 or 2024". Although the program was left out of the FY 2014 budget entirely, the service still viewed the trainer as a priority.
Boeing teamed up with Swedish aerospace firm Saab to compete for the T-7 program. On 13 September 2016, the team unveiled prototypes of the Boeing T-X, a single-engine advanced jet trainer with a twin tail, tandem seating, and retractable tricycle landing gear, powered with a General Electric F404 afterburning turbofan engine. The first T-X aircraft flew on 20 December 2016. The Boeing–Saab team submitted their entry after the Air Force opened the T-7 program to bids in December 2016.
In September 2018, Air Force officials announced that Boeing's design would be its new advanced jet trainer, under a program costing up to US$9.2 billion (~$11.3 billion in 2024) that would purchase 351 aircraft, 46 simulators, maintenance training and support. This contract has options for up to 475 airplanes in total. In 2018, Boeing recorded a $691-million (~$848 million in 2024) pre-tax charge during the third quarter, in part because of the T-X program.
In May 2019, Saab announced that it would open a U.S. manufacturing facility for the T-X in Indiana in the Purdue University-affiliated Discovery Park District in West Lafayette, Indiana.
In September 2019, the USAF named the aircraft the "T-7A Red Hawk" as a tribute to the Tuskegee Airmen, who painted their airplanes' tails bright red, and to the Curtiss P-40 Warhawk, the first aircraft flown in combat by the 99th Fighter Squadron, the U.S. Army Air Force's first black fighter squadron.
The aircraft entered the Engineering and Manufacturing Development (EMD) phase in February 2021. In April 2021, Saab Group delivered one aft section of T-7A aircraft to the Boeing St. Louis plant. In July 2021, Saab had delivered the second aft section to the Boeing St. Louis plant. Boeing spliced Saab's aft section with the front section, fins, wings and tail assembly to become a complete test aircraft for use in the EMD's flight test program. As of 2021, the plan was that on completion of the EMD phase, Saab's new facility in West Lafayette, Indiana was to serve as the manufacturing hub for the T-7A Red Hawk's aft section and sub-systems such as hydraulics, fuel systems and secondary power.
Saab has developed new software for the T-7 to help provide for cheaper and faster development. The T-7A employed digital engineering that went from development to the first test flight within 36 months. The T-7A has an advanced and digitized production line that takes only 30 minutes to splice the aft section with the wings. The digital build process allows technicians to build the aircraft with minimal tooling and drilling during the assembly process. The first T-7A was rolled out on 28 April 2022.
In May 2023, the Government Accountability Office released a report on the T-7 program detailing problems with the software and safety systems and other delays that saw the USAF delay the next production decision to February 2025. The report said that a schedule provided by Boeing in January 2023 was optimistic and dependent on favorable assumptions. Notwithstanding the delayed production decision, the report noted that Boeing still planned to start producing the first T-7s in early 2024.
In June 2023, the first flight of the T-7A aircraft was conducted from St. Louis Lambert International Airport, by Major Bryce Turner, a test pilot with the 416th Flight Test Squadron at Edwards Air Force Base, California, and Steve Schmidt, Boeing's chief T-7 test pilot.
On 21 September 2023, the first Red Hawk (tail number APT-2) was shipped to the US Air Force. It was deployed at Edwards Air Force Base for testing. Two additional units (APT-1 and APT-3) were delivered late 2023, with a fourth (APT-4) delayed into 2024. In total, five Red Hawks in engineering and manufacturing development configuration will be delivered for its test program. As of February 2024, assembly of the first production model was anticipated to begin in the second quarter of 2024.
== Design ==
The T-7's design allows for future missions to be added, such as the aggressor and light attack/fighter roles. In the training environment, it has been specifically designed for high-G and high-angle-of-attack maneuvers and night operations, with an emphasis on being easily maintained. The aircraft is equipped with a single GE F404 turbofan engine, but produces three times the total thrust of the T-38 twinjet.
== Operational history ==
=== Potential operators ===
Boeing aims to sell over 2,700 Red Hawks globally. In addition to the USAF, the company is also targeting Serbia as a possible replacement for its G-4s and J-22 trainer aircraft and Australia to replace 33 BAE Hawk Mk 127 Lead-in Fighter (LIF) jet trainers through the Royal Australian Air Force LIFT program.
The T-7B variant is one of the contenders for the United States Navy's Tactical Surrogate Aircraft program, with a possible sale of 64 aircraft. A navalised version is also a contender for the USN's Undergraduate Jet Training System program, with a minimum order of 145 aircraft to replace existing T-45 Goshawks. Procurement of the winner of the program is expected to occur as early as 2026.
The F/T-7X, a variant of the T-7, is one of the contenders for the USAF's Advanced Tactical Trainer program, with possible sales of 100 to 400 aircraft.
By November 2023, the USAF was actively considering the possibility of turning the T-7 into an armed combat aircraft. Conceptually dubbed the F-7, such a jet could provide roughly the same capability as a fourth-generation fighter which could maintain force numbers as F-16s are retired. Boeing intends to offer an armed version of the T-7 to replace aging Northrop F-5 and Dassault/Dornier Alpha Jet fleets around the world.
Boeing has pitched the T-7 to the Brazilian Air Force. The T-7 is also a contender to replace the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force's Kawasaki T-4, competing against the Aermacchi M-346 Block 20 and the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries T-X. A potential licensed variant of the T-7 for the JASDF has been dubbed the T-7AJ.
The UK in Fast Jet Trainer program intends to replace the ageing BAE Systems Hawk as it is unreliable and nearly obsolete. The contender must involve UK-based companies such as Boeing together with Saab and BAE Systems which offers T-7 as the contender for this program.
== Variants ==
BTX-1
Two prototypes were constructed for evaluation:
N381TX, the first prototype built and first T-7 to fly
N382TX, the second prototype used in testing
T-7A Red Hawk
Production aircraft for the USAF as the winner of the T-X program to replace the Northrop T-38 Talon. Designated eT-7A prior to delivery, identifying it as a digitally engineered aircraft.
T-7A Block 10
A variant proposed to the USAF with various avionics and safety upgrades.
T-7B
Variant proposed for the U.S. Navy's Tactical Surrogate Aircraft (TSA) program, with a possible sale of 64 aircraft.
T-7 UJTS
Proposed advanced jet trainer for the United States Navy Undergraduate Jet Training System (UJTS) competition to replace the Boeing T-45 Goshawk with a possible sale of 145 aircraft. The aircraft would not be carrier-capable.
T-7AJ
Proposed designation for a domestically produced variant of T-7 for the Japanese Air Self-Defense Force to replace the Kawasaki T-4 with a possible sale of 200 aircraft.
T-7 FJT
Proposed designation for the Royal Air Force Fast Jet Trainer (FJT) competition to replace the BAE Systems Hawk with a possible sale of 60 aircraft.
F/T-7X
Variant proposed for the USAF's Advanced Tactical Trainer program, with a possible 100 to 400 aircraft sale.
F-7
Light combat aircraft variant proposed for the USAF.
== Operators ==
United States
United States Air Force
412th Test Wing
416th Flight Test Squadron
== Specifications (T-7A) ==
Data from FlightGlobal, Air & Space Forces Magazine, Boeing and Key.AeroGeneral characteristics
Crew: 2: pilot and instructor/passenger
Length: 46 ft 11 in (14.30 m)
Wingspan: 30 ft 7 in (9.32 m)
Height: 13 ft 6 in (4.11 m)
Empty weight: 18,000 lb (8,165 kg)
Gross weight: 22,000 lb (9,979 kg)
Fuel capacity: 4,500 pounds (2,000 kg)
Powerplant: 1 × General Electric F404-GE-103 afterburning turbofan, 11,000 lbf (49 kN) thrust dry, 17,200 lbf (77 kN) with afterburner
Performance
Maximum speed: Mach 0.975
Range: 990 nmi (1,140 mi, 1,830 km)
Service ceiling: 50,000 ft (15,000 m)
g limits: 8 g
== See also ==
Aircraft of comparable role, configuration, and era
Aero L-39 Skyfox
AIDC T-5 Brave Eagle
Aeralis Advanced Jet Trainer
Alenia Aermacchi M-346 Master
Hongdu JL-10
KAI T-50 Golden Eagle
TAI Hürjet
Yakovlev Yak-130
== References ==
== External links ==
Boeing T-7A page
Saab T-7A page |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmiri_cinema | Kashmiri cinema | Kashmiri cinema is the Kashmiri language-based film industry in the Kashmir Valley of the India,- administered union territory of Jammu and Kashmir. The first Kashmiri feature film, Mainz Raat, was released in 1964. In 2023, Welcome to Kashmir, directed by Tariq Bhat, became the first Kashmiri-produced Bollywood film to release in Kashmiri cinemas.
== Kashmiri artists ==
Kashmir is a shooting destination for Bollywood films, and Kashmiri actors are well known in Bollywood. Some famous Kashmiri artists in films and television are:
Raaj Kumar
Zain Khan Durrani
Abrar Qazi
Sadia Khateeb
Jeevan
Kiran Kumar
Sanjay Suri
RJ Rafiq
Rahul Bhat
Hina Khan
Ayesha Jhulka, actress born in Srinagar
Sandeepa Dhar, actress born in Srinagar
Arjumman Mughal, actress from Nowshera, Jammu and Kashmir
Prerna Bhatt, actress born in Kashmir
Zaira Wasim, actress born in Srinagar
Katrina Kaif
Danish Renzu
Sunayana Kachroo
Sumit Raina
Aamir Bashir
Mir Sarwar
Anupam Kher
Mudasir Dar, Director, Writer, Producer
Vidhu Vinod Chopra, Director
Hussein Khan, Director Actor
Tariq Bhat, Director Welcome to Kashmir
Zameer Ashai
Shahid lateef
Bhasha Sumbli
Mohammad Yousuf Shahnaz, Director, Producer, Actor
Hakeem Javeed, Director, Producer, Writer, Actor
== 1960s to 1980s ==
The first Kashmiri feature film(Mainz Raat, directed by Jagjiram Pal) was released in 1964. In 1972, Shayar-e-Kashmir Mahjoor, a biography of Kashmiri poet Mahjoor, was released. Made in Urdu and Kashmiri, the film was a joint venture of the Department of Information of Jammu and Kashmir and Indian filmmaker Prabhat Mukherjee. Babaji (directed by Jyoti Sarup) followed for 39 years, but it was not screened in Kashmir. A 1989 film, Inqalaab, was not released due to the turbulent political situation at the time. Because of the 1989 insurgency, film production in Kashmir was halted, and an unofficial screening ban was imposed on Bollywood films.
== Cinema closures ==
Before the eruption of militancy in the 1990s, Srinagar alone had about 10 cinema halls: Firdaus, Shiraz, Khayam, Naaz, Neelam, Shah, Broadway, Regal, and Palladium. Cinemas in Kashmir, including nine in Srinagar, were closed due to the 1989 insurgency. In 1996, due to efforts by the National Conference government, the Broadway, Regal, and Neelam Cinemas showed Vidhu Vinod Chopra's Kareeb. After further attacks, cinemas in Kashmir were closed, and DVD film piracy flourished. Director Tariq Bhat worked hard to push cinema culture in Kashmir by organising movie screenings of his 2019 directorial debut film Zindagi Tumse followed by Welcome to Kashmir, the first Kashmiri-produced Bollywood film. In September 2022, a multiplex was opened in Srinagar.
== Television ==
Three television films have been produced in Kashmir: Rasool Mir (1974–75), directed by Bashir Badgami; Habba Khatoon (1977-1978), directed by Bashir Badgami; and Arnimaal (1982–83), directed by Siraj Qureshi.
== Documentaries ==
The first Kashmiri film shown at the Cannes Film Festival was Ezra Mir's 1952 documentary, Pamposh (Lotus). Inshallah, Kashmir is a 2012 documentary directed, produced, and written by Ashvin Kumar. Other notable documentaries are Papa 2 (2000) and Ocean of Tears (2012). In 2017, a documentary on the Pragaash Kashmiri girls band with a focus on Women's rights in Jammu and Kashmir was released.
== 21st century ==
Several films were made after 2000. However, only a few of them had a proper release in theaters/cinema halls through proper distribution. Harud, Kashmir Daily, and Half Widow are the only films in this list and were released on the platform of PVR. Harud was made under A Chasing Tales Production, starring Raza Naji and Kashmir Daily under Seven Two Creations and Safdar Arts and Half Widow under Renzu Films and Gaya Arts.
Aamir Bashir, Hussein Khan and Danish Renzu have directed them respectively.
Akh Daleel Loolech (Love Story) starring Mir Sarwar, it was the first Kashmiri digital feature film, premiered in India in 2006. Directed by Aarshad Mushtaq, the historical drama explored the Kashmiri people's social and political struggles during the 19th century. In 2012, Kashmir's first 35mm feature film Partav directed by Dilnawaz Muntazir was released. This movie, Valley of Saints, a romantic drama set near Dal Lake in Srinagar and directed by Musa Syeed, addressed environmental issues surrounding the lake. Qouluf, the ensorcelled 2014 was a Kashmiri language film that was screened in many film festivals, the film had Bashir Dada in the lead role, the film was directed by Ali Emran and produced by Yaqut Mushtaq, the film tries to follow the internal and the external journey of the protagonist.
Kashmir Daily, Mir Sarwar played the leading character in this film, he has also done several Bollywood films as well. Kashmir Daily is filmed in Hindi and Kashmiri and produced and directed by Hussein Khan, was scheduled for release in spring 2016 but ultimately released on 6 January 2018. Among few films which are ready is Bed No. 17 which is directed by Mir Sarwar and should release by the end of 2020
== Revival efforts ==
Obstacles to reviving the Kashmiri film industry are the lack of financial and government support. However, some people are making independent films few examples are Harud, Kashmir Daily and Half Widow and these three films are the only ones so far which have released. In 2014 Kashmiri filmmaker Ali Emran decided to shoot a film in Kashmir based on The Fountainhead. Emran's Kashmiri-language feature film Qouluf, which translates into "the ensorcelled", became the first Kashmiri film in decades to have a commercial release in the valley. Identity Card- Ek Lifeline (2014) by Kashmiri filmmaker Rahat Kazmi received three awards at the American International Film Festival. In November 2014, the film was released worldwide. According to the Prime Minister of India, reviving the Kashmiri film industry would provide jobs for Kashmiri youth. In May 2015, Salman Khan said during the filming of Bajrangi Bhaijaan which had some actors from Kashmir like Mir Sarwar, Bashir Bhawani etc. that Kashmiri cinemas should be re-opened. Imtiaz Ali praised the state government for encouraging filmmakers in the valley after Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed visited Mumbai to meet with Bollywood industry figures.
Inox Gold Class, a three-screen multiplex is situated adjacent to Srinagar's famous cinema hall of yesteryears called the Broadway cinema. This is the first multiplex in Kashmir and has been built by M/s Taksal Hospitality Pvt Ltd company in Shivpora in the Badami Bagh cantonment area of Srinagar which is owned by Vijay Dhar. It is here to mention that Mr. Dhar also runs Delhi Public School, Srinagar. The Inox Gold Multiplex was inaugurated by LG Manoj Sinha on 20 September 2022, later after the function the first film screened here to the journalists and selected audience was Laal Singh Chaddha. The cinema was thrown open for general public on 30 September, the films released were Vikram Vedha and Ponniyin Selvan:I.
Jadooz, the Chennai-based startup company which sets up mini theatres in rural pockets of India opened two mini theatres in Pulwama and Shopian in 2022. In 2023, Jadooz opened cinema halls in Handwara and Baramulla, with plans to open 3 more cinema halls in Bandipora, Ganderbal, and Kulgam in September 2023.
== Cinemas in Kashmir Valley ==
Kashmir currently only has one multiplex cinema:
INOX Multiplex Cinemas, Sonwar Srinagar.
Several other multipurpose cinema halls exist in Kashmir:
Jadooz Cinema: Shopian at Townhall Municipal Council Office, Shopian
Jadooz Cinema: Baramulla at Sherwani Hall, 684W+2M8, National Highway 1A, Near Axis Bank, Baramulla.
Jadooz Cinema: Handwara at Municipal Committee Handwara, Maqbool Abad Khanabal B, Near Chinar Park, Handwara
== Cinemas in Jammu Region ==
Jammu has several multiplexes and cinema halls:
MovieTime Cinemas in Palm Island Mall, Jammu.
PVR Cinemas, KC Jammu.
Wave Cinemas, Jammu.
Apsara Multiplex, Jammu
AMR Multiplex, Katra
Moonlight Cineplex, Kathua
Raj Theatre, Udhampur
== Kashmir film festivals ==
Kashmir World Film Festival (KWFF) is annual seven day Film festival held at Srinagar.
Verite Film Festival (Kashmir) is held at Awantipora.
== See also ==
Music of Kashmir
Kashmiri literature
Kus Bani Koshur Karorpaet
Sheen (film)
Dogri cinema
== References ==
== External links ==
Kashmir gets its first-ever multiplex in Srinagar Archived 20 September 2022 at the Wayback Machine,
Kashmir gets its first-ever multiplex in Srinagar, to be opened for public
Should cinemas theatres be reopened in Kashmir?
Altaf, Sana (23 November 2012). "Kashmir's film industry longs for life". Dawn. Retrieved 25 August 2016. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_Channel | Disney Channel | Disney Channel is an American pay television channel that serves as the flagship property of Disney Branded Television, a unit of the Disney Entertainment business segment of the Walt Disney Company.
Launched on April 18, 1983, under the name The Disney Channel as a premium channel on top of basic cable television systems, it originally showcased programming towards families due to availability of home television sets locally at the time. It dropped "The" from its name in 1997, thus getting rebranded as Disney Channel, with its programming shifting focus to target mainly children and adolescents ages 6–14. The channel showcases original first-run children's television series, theatrically released and original television films and other selected third-party programming.
As of November 2023, Disney Channel is available to approximately 70 million pay television households in the United States — down from its peak of 100 million households in 2011. The channel's international footprint, once encompassing 46 channels available in 33 languages, has also diminished in parts of Europe and most of the Asia-Pacific due to the launch of Disney+ and competition from streaming media and social media platforms.
== History ==
Disney Channel launched nationally as a premium channel at 7:00 a.m. Eastern Time on April 18, 1983, under the name The Disney Channel. The channel's development with help from its founding president Alan Wagner, and formally announced the launch of its family-oriented cable channel in early 1983. The channel – which initially maintained a 16-hour-per-day programming schedule from 7:00 a.m. to 11:00 p.m. Eastern and Pacific Time – would become available on cable providers in all 50 U.S. states by September 1983, and accrue a base of more than 611,000 subscribers by December of that year. In October 1983, the channel debuted its first made-for-cable movie, Tiger Town, which earned the channel a CableACE Award. The channel had reached profitability by January 1985, with its programming reaching 1.75 million subscribers by that point.
In September 1990, TCI's Montgomery, Alabama, system became the first cable provider to carry the channel as a basic cable service. Between 1991 and 1996, a steadily increasing number of cable providers began shifting The Disney Channel from a premium add-on offering to their basic tiers, either experimentally or on a full-time basis; however, Walt Disney Company executives denied any plans to convert the channel into an ad-supported basic service, stating that the premium-to-basic shifts on some providers was part of a five-year "hybrid" strategy that allowed providers to offer the channel in either manner. On April 6, 1997, the channel officially rebranded as Disney Channel, although occasionally marketed as "Disney" from 1997 to 2002.
== Programming ==
=== Movie library ===
Television films have also been produced for broadcast on Disney Channel since its launch under the banner of Disney Channel Premiere Films, with the first film released being Tiger Town in 1983, until October 1997, which is when they stopped using the "Premiere Films" label and renamed it the "Disney Channel Original Movies" (DCOM) thereafter. The first movie to be released under the Disney Channel Original Movie category was Under Wraps, a Halloween themed movie that aired for the first time on Disney Channel on October 25, 1997.
The most successful original film under the banner in terms of popularity and accolades is High School Musical 2, which debuted on August 17, 2007, to 17.2 million viewers and set a current longstanding record for the highest-rated television premiere in the history of the channel. Following High School Musical 2, the movie that had the second highest-rated Disney Channel Original Movie (DCOM) premiere was Wizards of Waverly Place: The Movie, followed by Camp Rock, Descendants 2, Princess Protection Program, Teen Beach Movie, and Jump In!. It also set a basic cable record for the single most-watched television program until December 3, 2007, when corporate sister channel, ESPN, surpassed it with the telecast of an NFL game between the New England Patriots and Baltimore Ravens on its Monday Night Football programme by 0.3 million viewers more (17.5 million viewers). The Cheetah Girls media franchise was also notably successful in terms of merchandise and sales for its concert tours and soundtrack albums. Its debut film from 2003, being the first Disney Channel original musical television film, premiered to over 84 million global viewers and its sequel premiered to 8.1 million American viewers and in the process became the most successful of the film series. An 86-date concert tour featuring the eponymous girl group was ranked as one of the top 10 concert tours of 2006, smashing the record at the Houston Rodeo previously set by Elvis Presley in 1973, selling out with 73,500 tickets in three minutes at one point.
In addition to its original television films, Disney Channel has rights to theatrically released feature films, with some film rights shared with sister network, Freeform. Alongside films released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures (mainly consisting of releases from Walt Disney Pictures, Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar), the channel also maintains rights to films from other studios. Some films released by Bagdasarian Productions (such as The Chipmunk Adventure and Alvin and the Chipmunks Meet Frankenstein) have also aired on Disney Channel, although most of them are not currently owned by any of the Walt Disney Company's divisions.
=== Programming blocks ===
==== Current ====
Disney Jr./Mickey Mornings – A weekday morning block of preschool programming from Disney Jr. It debuted on February 14, 2011, following the closure of Playhouse Disney; the current name and Mickey Mouse-hosted continuity segments were both launched in June 2020, replacing the previous "Disney Junior on Disney Channel" branding.
==== Former ====
Disney Night Time – As The Disney Channel as a premium channel from its launch until April 6, 1997, this block featured programming aimed at older parental audiences during the evening and overnight hours under the banner title "Disney Nighttime". The content seen in these blocks was devoid of sexual and violent content. Programming seen during Disney Nighttime included older feature films (similar to those seen at the time on American Movie Classics, and eventually Turner Classic Movies, with both Disney film titles and movies from other film studios mixed in), alongside original concert specials (featuring artists ranging from Rick Springfield to Jon Secada to Elton John), variety specials and documentaries.
The Magical World of Disney – used as a Sunday night umbrella for films and specials on The Disney Channel from September 23, 1990, to November 24, 1996, originally airing exclusively on Sunday evenings at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. From December 1, 1996, to 2001, The Magical World of Disney served as the overall branding for Disney Channel's nightly evening lineup of films starting at 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific.
The American Legacy – ran on Tuesday evenings at 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from January 7, 1992, to August 27, 1996. Originally launched in honor of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of the United States, the block featured films, documentaries and specials about the contributions, history and scenic wonders of the nation.
Toonin' Tuesday – Running from October 5, 1993, to August 27, 1996, "Toonin' Tuesday" was a weekly program block featuring various animated programs. Each Tuesday from 6:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific, "Toonin' Tuesday" featured primarily animated films and specials (though reruns of The Charlie Brown and Snoopy Show sometimes aired as part of the block). The block ended on August 27, 1996, due to changes to the channel's programming schedule.
Bonus! Thursday – From October 7, 1993, to August 29, 1996, The Disney Channel ran a weekly program block called "Bonus! Thursday" (or "Bonus!" for short), which ran each Thursday from 5:00 to 9:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The block featured programs aimed at teenagers, including series such as Kids Incorporated, The All-New Mickey Mouse Club, various Mickey Mouse Club serials (including Teen Angel and Match Point), and Eerie Indiana, followed by films and specials. The block ended on August 29, 1996, due to changes to the channel's programming schedule.
Totally Kids Only ("TKO") – an afternoon lineup of live-action and animated series introduced in 1992, which became the overall branding for the channel's daytime children's programs from 1995 to 1996.
Triple Feature Friday – ran each Friday starting at 5:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from October 8, 1993, to May 30, 1997, featured three separate films – sometimes regardless of each film's genre – that were tied to a specific subject
Disney Drive-In – ran each Saturday starting at 1:30 p.m. Eastern/Pacific from October 8, 1994, to August 31, 1996, featured Disney series such as Zorro, Texas John Slaughter and Spin and Marty, followed by Disney films and specials The block ended on August 31, 1996, due to changes in the channel's schedule.
Block Party – From October 2, 1995, to August 28, 1996, four animated series that previously aired in syndication on The Disney Afternoon (Darkwing Duck, TaleSpin, DuckTales and Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers) were rerun together on The Disney Channel as a two-hour programming block called "Block Party", which aired weekdays from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The "Block Party" branding was dropped on September 3, 1996, when Darkwing Duck was removed as the block's lead-in and Goof Troop was added to end the lineup. This unnamed block continued to air into 1997.
Magical World of Animals – an hour-long block of wildlife series aimed at children that ran from August 1997 to 1999. Promoted as an offshoot of the Magical World of Disney and airing Sunday evenings from 7:00 to 8:00 p.m. Eastern Time, the block consisted of two series: Going Wild with Jeff Corwin and Omba Mokomba.
Vault Disney – premiered in September 1997, five months after Disney Channel's first major rebrand, replacing the Disney Nighttime lineup. Originally airing only on Sunday nights from 9:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, Vault Disney expanded to seven nights a week in September 1998 (the Monday through Saturday editions of the block at this time aired from 11:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. Eastern/Pacific; the start time of the block as a whole was moved consistently to midnight daily in September 1999). The vintage programming featured during the late-night schedule changed to feature only Disney-produced television series and specials (such as Zorro, Spin and Marty, The Mickey Mouse Club and the Walt Disney anthology television series), along with older Disney television specials. Older Disney feature films also were part of the lineup from 1997 to 2000 but aired in a reduced capacity. The block also featured The Ink and Paint Club, an anthology series featuring Disney animated shorts, which became the only remaining program on the channel to feature these shorts by 1999, upon the removal of Quack Pack from the schedule. The channel discontinued the block in September 2002, in favor of running reruns of its original and acquired series during the late evening and overnight hours (which comparative to the adult-focused Vault Disney, are aimed at children and teenagers, an audience that is typically asleep during that time period).
Zoog Disney – launched in August 1998, a program block that originally aired only on weekend afternoons from 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Eastern/Pacific. The hosts for the block were "Zoogs", animated anthropomorphic robot/alien creature-hybrid characters with human voices (some of whom acted like teenagers). The block unified television and the Internet, allowing viewer comments and scores from players of ZoogDisney.com's online games to be aired on the channel during regular programming in a ticker format (which the channel continued to use after the block was discontinued, however, the ticker has been all but completely dropped from on-air usage as of May 2010). From June 2000 to August 2002, the afternoon and primetime lineups on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays were branded under the umbrella title "Zoog Weekendz". The Zoogs were redesigned with cel shading and given mature voices in 2000, though the remade Zoog characters were discontinued after less than a year; the entire Zoog Disney block was phased out by September 2002.
Disney Replay – "Disney Replay" was a block that premiered on April 17, 2013, featuring episodes of defunct Disney Channel Original Series that premiered between 2000 and 2007 (such as Lizzie McGuire, That's So Raven, The Suite Life of Zack & Cody and Hannah Montana). Airing Wednesday nights/early Thursday mornings (as a nod to the popular social media trend "Throwback Thursday"), originally from 12:00 to 1:00 a.m. Eastern and Pacific Time, the block expanded to six hours (running until 6:00 a.m. Eastern/Pacific) on August 14, 2014. Programs featured on Disney Replay were added to the WATCH Disney Channel service on August 16, 2014. The block was discontinued on April 28, 2016, and moved to Freeform with a new name: That's So Throwback.
Disney XD on Disney Channel – "Disney XD on Disney Channel" is the former branding of two blocks airing on Friday and Saturday nights; an animated block airing Fridays from 9:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m., showing series mainly exclusive to Disney XD such as Phineas and Ferb, Star vs. the Forces of Evil, Milo Murphy's Law, and DuckTales, and a live-action block airing Saturdays from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m., airing series such as MECH-X4 and Walk the Prank. It was discontinued as Disney XD's carriage became equivalent to that of Disney Channel.
=== Bumpers ===
In between regularly scheduled programming and advertisement breaks, Disney Channel features bumpers. The creator of the four note mnemonic introduced for the channel in 2002, was relatively unknown until being identified as Alex Lasarenko, who had also worked with Tonal Sounds and Elias Arts, by Youtube documentarian Defunctland in 2022.
=== Sports ===
For a period, ESPN's broadcasts of the Little League World Series baseball tournament frequently featured cross-promotion with music-related Disney Channel properties, with past editions having featured collaborations with High School Musical, the Jonas Brothers, Camp Rock, and Phineas and Ferb.
In March 2023, Disney Channel broadcast a live professional sporting event for the first time, carrying a youth-oriented alternate broadcast of a National Hockey League (NHL) game—known as the Big City Greens Classic—as part of ESPN's coverage of the league. The broadcast was themed around the Disney Channel animated series Big City Greens, visualizing data from the league's player and puck tracking system with 3D animated players.
== Related channels and programs ==
=== Current sister channels ===
==== Disney Jr. ====
Disney Jr. is a daily morning program block aimed at preschoolers, spiritually succeeding Playhouse Disney which launched on April 6, 1997, as part of Disney Channel's morning lineup. On May 26, 2010, Disney General Entertainment Content (at the time known as Disney-ABC Television Group) announced the expansion of the block in to a 24/7 cable and satellite channel which debuted on March 23, 2012 The channel would be commercial-free channel and compete with other preschooler-skewing cable channels such as the Nick Jr. Channel and Universal Kids (previously known as PBS Kids Sprout and then Sprout). The channel features programs from Disney Channel's existing preschool programming library and films/movies from the Walt Disney Pictures film library. On its launch, Disney Junior took over the channel space held by Soapnet – a Disney-owned cable channel featuring soap operas – due to that genre's decline in popularity on broadcast television and the growth of video on demand, online streaming and digital video recorders negating the need for a linear channel devoted to the soap opera genre. After a period during which cable providers unwilling to drop the network immediately retained it to prevent subscriber cancellations, Soapnet ceased all operations on December 31, 2013. The former Playhouse Disney block on Disney Channel rebranded as Disney Junior on February 14, 2011, along with the existing international channels; they had their names shortened to "Disney Jr." since June 1, 2024, although spelt/pronounced the same as before. Disney-ABC Television Group once planned to launch a Playhouse Disney-branded channel in the United States in 2001, however it never happened despite launching internationally.
==== Disney XD ====
Launched on February 13, 2009, as the successor to Toon Disney, Disney XD is a cable and satellite television channel which was originally aimed at young male audiences aged 6 to 14, but has since included girls in its programming. The channel showcases action and comedy programming from Disney Channel and the former Jetix block from Toon Disney, alongside some first-run original programming and off-network syndicated shows. Disney XD, unlike its sister channels Disney Channel and Disney Junior, operates as an ad-supported service, similar to its predecessor Toon Disney. The channel carries the same name as an unrelated mini-site and media player on Disney.com, which stood for Disney Xtreme Digital, though it is said that the "XD" in the channel's name does not have an actual meaning.
=== Former sister channels ===
Toon Disney – Launched on April 18, 1998, during the 15th anniversary celebration of the launch of sister network, Disney Channel, this channel was aimed at children and teenagers between the ages of 6 and 18. The network's main competitors at launch were Cartoon Network from Warner Bros. Discovery (a merged company of previous owner Time Warner/WarnerMedia (who absorbed Turner Broadcasting System, the company that launched the channel) and Discovery, Inc.) and Nickelodeon from Paramount Global (formerly the first and the second incarnations of Viacom and ViacomCBS). Toon Disney initially operated as a commercial-free service from its launch until September 1999 when, unlike Disney Channel, it became ad-supported. The channel carried a mix of reruns of animated productions from Disney Television Animation (formerly Walt Disney Television Animation) and Disney Channel, alongside some third-party programs from other distributors, animated films and original programming. In 2004, the channel introduced a nighttime program block aimed at children ages 7 to 14 called Jetix, which featured action-oriented animated and live-action series. During Toon Disney's first year on the air, Disney Channel ran a sampler block of Toon Disney's programming on Sunday nights for interested subscribers. The network's successor, Disney XD, which launched on February 13, 2009, is also a channel also aimed at children and features a broader array of programming, with a heavier emphasis on live-action programs.
Jetix launched as a programming block in the United States on Toon Disney on February 14, 2004, to compete with Cartoon Network's Toonami block, and in Europe in April 2004. By the end of 2004, Jetix started to completely replace global Fox Kids-branded channels, with the first of them being the French version in August 2004 and the last one being the German version in June 2005. The network's successor, Disney XD, launched on February 13, 2009, and features heavier emphasis on live-action programs.
Jetix Play was the sister channel to Jetix and owned by its dedicated company Jetix Europe that was broadcast in a small number of regions, such as Central and Eastern Europe and Middle East. The channel officially launched on January 1, 2005, and was available for 12 hours per day from 6 A.M. to 6 P.M. Jetix Play was aimed at a younger audience than the main Jetix channel and primarily showed archived programming from the catalogues of BVS Entertainment (previously known as Saban Entertainment) and Fox Kids Europe. Jetix Play was replaced with Playhouse Disney and later Disney Jr. in most regions by 2010.
Radio Disney was a radio network aimed towards music programming is oriented towards children, pre-teens and teenagers. Launched on November 18, 1996, the network focused mainly on current hit music and placed a heavy emphasis on talents who signed with Walt Disney Records and/or Hollywood Records, the two record labels of Disney Music Group. On December 3, 2020, the Walt Disney Company announced its closure in first quarter of 2021 during the company's restructuring activities. On April 14, 2021, its feeds ceased totally when its last remaining terrestrial station was changed to a simulcast of KSPN.
=== Other services ===
=== Production studios ===
==== Disney Television Animation ====
Also known by its trade name, "Disney Channel Animation", it is the television animation production studio division of the Walt Disney Studios and based in Glendale, California, providing original animated programming for the three main Disney-branded television channels.
==== It's a Laugh Productions ====
A live-action production studio based in Studio City, Los Angeles, California, that provides original sitcoms and comedy programs primary for Disney Channel. Despite being the prime production source of Disney Channel shows, many of its projects are still co-produced and financed by the Walt Disney Company.
==== Walt Disney EMEA Productions ====
Walt Disney EMEA Productions Limited is the network's European production studio located in London, England, which co-produces original programs within Europe alongside other companies.
==== Disney Original Documentary ====
Disney Original Documentary is a banner from Disney Branded Television for documentary-based programs broadcast on Disney Channel and released on Disney+ that launched on December 9, 2021.
== Media ==
=== Video games ===
In 2010, Disney Channel All Star Party was released for the Nintendo Wii. The four-player mascot party game, in which the stages resemble board games, features characters from Disney Channel programs such as Sonny with a Chance, Wizards of Waverly Place, and JONAS L.A. Several video games based on the Disney Channel animated series Phineas and Ferb were released by Disney Interactive Studios. The Disney Channel website also featured various Flash games incorporating characters from the channel's various program franchises, including Kim Possible and Hannah Montana.
== Marketing programs ==
In June 2012, the Walt Disney Company announced that it would stop advertising or promoting food or beverage products that do not meet strict nutritional guidelines. Disney Channel purportedly became the first media company to take such a stance on stopping the marketing of junk food products to kids. Due to its commercial-free format, such advertising appears only in the form of underwriter sponsorships during promotional breaks.
On July 1, 2012, Disney Channel began providing Descriptive Video Service audio in compliance with the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which required network owned-and-operated stations and affiliates in the 25 largest television markets as well as the five highest-rated cable and satellite channels (including Disney Channel) to offer audio descriptions for the blind. This is accompanied by an on-screen mark at the beginning of certain scheduled programming indicating to viewers that the service is available. Some episodes of Gravity Falls, Austin and Ally, Good Luck Charlie, and Phineas and Ferb show the AD))) mark and a 2-tone sound repeated 3 times at the beginning of the episode to give notice of the audio description track available through the SAP feed. Disney Junior displays the AD)) mark and the intended SAP track on newer episodes of Little Einsteins. (ABC positions this mark in the bottom-left corner of the screen.)
== International ==
Disney Channel has established presence in various regions across the Americas, most of Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, and Japan. Channel versions/feeds were also available or used to exist in Australia, New Zealand, Italy, the United Kingdom and Ireland, Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, South Korea, Taiwan, Turkey, Spain and Brazil, but ceased broadcast since the early 2020s, with most content moving to Disney+ or Disney+ Hotstar following their launches in those countries/regions.
On December 14, 2022, Disney ceased its distribution of programs in Russia in response to the ongoing Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Disney Channel also licenses its programming to air on certain other broadcast and cable channels outside the United States (formerly including Family Channel in Canada), regardless of whether or not a localized channel feed already exists in that country.
== Criticism ==
Some critics disapprove of the Disney Channel marketing strategy led by Anne Sweeney, president of the Disney Channel from 1996 to 2014. Under Sweeney, Disney Channel's programming was geared mainly towards preteen and teenage girls, with a decrease in animated programming. Criticism was also aimed at removing almost all Walt-era and pre-1990s material from the channel in 2002 with the removal of the late-night "Vault Disney" block devoted to this material, which used to make up the majority of the channel's programming since its inception in 1983. In 2008, Sweeney explained that Disney Channel, resulting from its multi-platform marketing strategy using television and music, would become "the major profit driver for the [Walt Disney] Company."
The channel has also pulled (and sometimes re-shot) episodes that have featured subject matter deemed inappropriate for its target audience, due either to humor or to timing of real-life events.
In November 2008, the episode "No Sugar, Sugar" (Hannah Montana), in which Mitchel Musso's character, Oliver Oken, is revealed to have Type 1 diabetes, was pulled before its broadcast, due to parent complaints about its portrayal of diabetics and sugar intake.
In December 2011, Disney Channel pulled episodes of two of its original series, due to complaints on Twitter from Demi Lovato about their portrayal of eating disorders. Pulled episodes included "Party It Up" (Shake It Up) and "Colbie Caillat" (So Random!).
In May 2013, Disney Channel pulled "Quitting Cold Koala" (Jessie) due to parental concerns over a scene in which a character's gluten-free diet leads to ridicule.
On June 13, 2023, the opening sequence of the series Primos, which premiered on the Disney Channel in July 2024, was released by Disney Branded Television, with a mixed reception to the sequence on social media, including from Latinos and Mexicans. Some viewers argued that the sequence had various negative stereotypes, complained about names of some characters, and claimed the Spanish pronunciation of some characters in the sequence was incorrect.
== See also ==
Disney Jr.
Disney XD
Radio Disney
Disney Cinemagic
Playhouse Disney
Toon Disney
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Grover, Ron (1991). The Disney Touch: How a Daring Management Team Revived an Entertainment Empire. Business One Irwin. ISBN 1-55623-385-X.
== External links ==
Official website (Redirects to DisneyNOW) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girlfriends_(American_TV_series)#:~:text=Toni's%20condo%20was%20located%20in,%2C%20Swedelson%2C%20McDonald%20and%20Lee. | Girlfriends (American TV series) | Girlfriends is an American sitcom television series created by Mara Brock Akil that premiered on UPN on September 11, 2000, where it aired for its first six seasons until May 8, 2006. On October 1, 2006, it moved to The CW, a new network formed by the merger of UPN and The WB, where it aired for two more seasons before being cancelled on February 11, 2008.
== Episodes ==
=== Broadcast history ===
The series debuted on UPN on Monday September 11, 2000. After airing for several years on the network at 9:00/8:00c on Mondays, The CW moved Girlfriends to Sundays at 8:00/7:00c. After this, the ratings plummeted. On October 9, 2006, Girlfriends, along with The CW's other African-American programs, moved back to Mondays. At this point, Girlfriends returned to its original time slot.
Due to the 2007–08 Writers Guild of America strike, the last episodes produced aired on February 11, 2008. The CW had announced plans to move the series to Sunday nights. However, it was later announced on February 13, 2008, that the series was cancelled after eight seasons and a proper series finale would not be produced. A representative from The CW stated that the network was going to cancel the series due to low ratings and that it would have been too expensive to re-enter production.
A retrospective episode was in development to conclude the series, but was later scrapped. The CW had offered the actors only half of their usual episodic salary to take part, and the actors collectively turned the offer down.
== Characters ==
=== Main ===
Joan Carol Clayton, Esq: (Tracee Ellis Ross) is considered the unofficial "den mother" of the group, as she frequently looks out for her friends, even at the expense of dealing with her own problems, which are plentiful throughout the series. Originally from Fresno, Joan owns a home in the Wilton Historic District. Joan met Toni when they were children and then met Lynn in college, and Maya is her assistant at the law firm. She has always had relationship problems and gave up her law career to pursue her dreams. She and Toni clash several times throughout the series, resulting to the end of their twenty three year old friendship. Major incidents involved Joan inadvertently revealing Toni's cheating to Greg, and Joan's jealousy of Toni's marriage to Todd, but their friendship officially ends by the end of Season 6 when Joan fails to appear for Toni's custody hearing. For much of Season 7, Joan mourned the loss of her friendship with Toni, eventually opting to resent and belittle her in front of the group. At the end of Season 7, she became engaged to Aaron Waters, whom she met while rehabilitating homes in New Orleans damaged by Hurricane Katrina; she moved into his home in West Adams while Aaron was deployed to Iraq and rented her house to Lynn.
Maya Denise Wilkes (née Wood): (Golden Brooks) is a former assistant to Joan and a housewife/author. Maya grew up in Compton and is married to her high school sweetheart, Darnell. They have one child, Jabari. Maya is the youngest and sassiest of the group, and is often at odds with Toni over her ego-driven lifestyle. She is a devoted wife and mother, and is frequently depicted with stronger religious and moral convictions. Maya is the most "working-class" member of the group, especially in earlier seasons. In the first few seasons Maya was more obviously "from the hood", with the associated stereotyped speech and mannerisms. However, as she becomes more successful in her career and interacts more extensively with the legal and publishing industries, she exhibits fewer stereotypes; while still obviously from a different social background as the rest of the group, she is no longer as caricatured. In the early seasons, Maya's marriage to Darnell imploded after she had an emotional affair with an acquaintance. Later, after she launches a career as a self-help author, they reunite. In Season 8, the couple endured a miscarriage and later explored the possibility of adopting a baby girl. Over the course of the series, Maya lived in South Central, Leimert Park, and finally bought her dream home with Darnell in Lancaster. At the end of Season 7, Maya and Darnell sell their home in Lancaster and move to West Adams.
Lynn Ann Searcy: (Persia White) was Joan and Toni's roommate at UCLA and lived with Joan for eight years before the series begins. Lynn holds five post-graduate degrees. Born in Virginia to a black father and a bipolar white mother from a wealthy family, Lynn was adopted by a white family in Seattle (her dad affectionately calls her "Noodle"). She did not embrace her black heritage until college. When Joan decides it is time for Lynn to move out of her home, Lynn reluctantly becomes more independent by taking on various, mostly menial jobs. She previously lived with Toni, William, Maya, and Sivad (temporarily); and shared a garage with then-boyfriend Vosco before moving into her own apartment (after becoming a property manager at the complex where Maya lived). She produces a documentary on the HIV/AIDS pandemic, focusing on African-American women. While Lynn is depicted as the most sexually adventurous one of the group (with frequent mentions of one-night stands, group sex, sex toys, and her infamous "Lynn Spin"), she also dates frequently. She is most attracted to artistic and spiritual men, and over the course of the series has relationships with a Jamaican immigrant, a poet, a pastor, and a musician named Finn (the recording artist Tricky). She was also briefly married to William. Her romantic involvement with Lenny (who was so similar to Lynn that the others labeled him as her "brother") was the catalyst for her to search for her biological father. After dating Finn, she discovers that music is her passion, and starts a band called Indigo Skye. Lynn is often considered the bohemian of the group, with her carefree nature and down-to-earth personality, and is a vegan. By Season 8, she had signed with "Dirty Girl" Records.
Antoinette "Toni" Marie Childs-Garrett: (Jill Marie Jones, Seasons 1–6) has been Joan's friend since they were eight-years-old, they attended elementary, high school, and college together. Toni grew up on poor on a farm with an alcoholic mother in Fresno, and has a twin brother, Antoine Childs whom Maya Wilkes had a brief fling with. Toni is considered the shallow and popular one of the girlfriends and is the self-proclaimed "cute one" of the group. During the first season Toni and Maya don't get along (she considered Maya to be a lower-class intruder), but ultimately embraced her friendship. Toni is a real-estate agent who eventually opens her own brokerage. She rekindles her romance with Greg Sparks (the "love of her life"), but he dumps her when he learns she cheated on him with Dr. Clay Spencer. Toni unexpectedly finds love with Todd Garrett, a white, Jewish plastic surgeon, whom she marries after a short courtship. After a rocky year-long marriage, the two separate after Todd moves to New York. Toni and Todd have a baby named Morgan. They fight over custody, but at the end of the 6th season work out their issues. Joan misses the custody hearing leading to the fight that ultimately ends Toni and Joan's friendship. Toni moves to New York City so Morgan can be closer to Todd, but has maintained her friendships with Maya and Lynn. Toni's condo was located in Larchmont Hancock Park, specifically the historic 450 El Royale building.
William Jerome Dent, Esq: (Reggie Hayes) is the girls' closest male friend. He is senior partner at Goldberg, Swedelson, McDonald and Lee. Hailing from Kansas City he is portrayed as somewhat of a "mama's boy", but possesses self-confidence and a dry sense of humor. (One episode focused on his distant and complicated relationship with his father, who is a perfectionist.) After being left at the wedding altar by the woman he loved and police officer, Yvonne Blackwell, he reluctantly resumes dating, including Donna, Kara, senior partner Sharon Upton Farley (played by Anne-Marie Johnson), and the at-times vicious Monica Charles Brooks (whom he ultimately marries). Fearing that Joan would beat him to the altar, he eloped with Lynn on a whim; though he quickly realized that he wanted to find true love and they ultimately divorce. He later realizes that Joan is the right woman for him, but after three months of courting, the two end their relationship. He became a sperm donor for his sister Linda and her same-sex partner, and regards the baby as his "nephew-son." He is also co-owner of the J-Spot restaurant with Joan. In later seasons, William forges a tight bond with Darnell, Maya's husband. During Season 7, he was working on his marriage with Monica. According to William's mother, his middle name is spelled with two "R"s, and a silent "W". Beginning in season 2, William owns a home in the Valley.
Darnell Leroy Wilkes: (Flex Alexander Season 1, and then Khalil Kain, Seasons 6–8, main; 2–5, recurring) is Maya's husband. He and Maya married at a young age and had their son, Jabari. Darnell was an airport baggage handler, before becoming a mechanic at a local car repair shop. For a while, he was a NASCAR pit crew mechanic. After Maya's affair with Stan Wright the two divorce. In earlier seasons, he felt threatened by Maya's friendship with Joan, Toni and Lynn; though he ultimately put his issues aside and became friends with them. After the divorce, he dated a woman named Lena (Chenoa Maxwell) whom Maya disliked because she still had feelings for Darnell. At Lena and Darnell's wedding Maya professed her love for Darnell. The two reconcile and begin living together again in Season 6. In the end of Season 7, Darnell accepts an offer to buy back his garage and get Maya and Jabari a new house in Los Angeles. After suffering a miscarriage, the couple considers adopting a baby girl.
Monica Charles Brooks-Dent: (Keesha Sharp, Seasons 7–8, main; 3–6, recurring) is William's wife. All four of the girlfriends (especially Lynn and Toni) hated her (Joan comes to see her vulnerable side and becomes her friend, and Toni moves to New York City at the end of the sixth season). In the seventh season, the girls slowly and later fully accept Monica as their friend as Monica does the same. Although engaged to William, the two date twice before; they meet at a bar the first time. Since the last time William proposes to her in Monaco, he has occasionally had doubts about ever doing so. Eventually William and Monica marry, but on their wedding day he has too much to drink and confesses that he has had and still has doubts about marrying her. Monica leaves William in Season 7, but returns shortly after the girlfriends go to Chicago to persuade her to get back together with William. On their visit, the girls discover that Monica, due to her father's dementia and her mother's power of attorney, has been cut off from her family fortune, so Joan offers Monica a job at the J-Spot. William is thrilled about Monica's return until she demands half of what he earned while they were married. They manage to slowly rebuild their relationship but constantly clash at the J-Spot. In the Season 7 finale, Monica and William get back together. By Season 8, Monica was pregnant and is seen spending more time with the other three girlfriends, particularly Joan.
=== Recurring ===
Jabari Darnell Wilkes: (Seasons 1–6 played by: Tanner Scott Richards, Season 7–8 played by: Kendré Berry) is Maya and Darnell's son. He was born when Maya was 16 years old. He was depicted to be a sweet innocent child but once he entered his teen years he seemed to be a little more dimwitted and rebellious.
Jeanette Wood: (played by Charmin Lee) is Maya's no-nonsense mother who won't hesitate to put a switch to her adult daughter. She babysat Jabari while he was younger, and also rented out her garage for Lynn and her then-boyfriend Vosco to live in after Joan kicked her out of her house. She initially took an instant dislike to Joan's "sadiddy" behavior towards Maya's style (also labeling Joan as "classist" and "egregious" as Maya does), but eventually grew to accept her. She and Maya also clash when she decides to sell her house to move to San Bernardino with her boyfriend Earl (Harry Lennix), whom Maya doesn't like. Jeanette was seen throughout Seasons 1–7.
Veretta Childs: (played by Jenifer Lewis) is Toni's loud and outspoken mother from Fresno whose high-spirited behavior and garish outfits often embarrass Toni. She suffered from alcoholism during Toni's formative years, which put a strain on their relationship. Veretta eventually sobered up. However, she briefly relapsed during Toni and Todd's engagement party - this was partially due to her guilt over her daughters Toni and Sherri not getting along. While she and Toni often clash, she supports her daughter. Veretta appears throughout Seasons 2-6.
Ronnie: (played by Lamont Johnson) is Maya's cousin and hair stylist. In the series he helped sell her semi-biographical book. He owns two beauty salons called Situations and Situations Deux. He is last seen at the ending of season 7 as Aaron proposed to Joan.
Peaches: (played by Shawn Harrison) Ronnie's boyfriend who is a hair stylist at Situations and had a short stint as Joan's assistant and temporary confidante after Maya goes to work as William's secretary after William becomes Senior Partner. Peaches is last seen at the ending of season 7 as Aaron proposes to Joan. Peaches also made a cameo in a season 2 episode of Eve.
Sherri Childs: (played by Yvette Nicole Brown) Toni's oldest sister whom she does not get along with due to Toni leaving the family due to their mother's alcoholism to go to school. They reconcile their relationship in the episode where Toni marries Todd. She, alongside Lynn, Maya and Melanie (Toni's other sister) were a part of her ceremony as her bridesmaids. She appears in two episodes in season 3.
Davis Hamilton: (played by Randy J. Goodwin) owner and operator of the girls' favorite restaurant/hangout spot, 847 (Season 1). He and Joan flirted with one another, and almost went away for a romantic weekend while both were involved with other people. However, during Season 4, in the aftermath of Joan's breakup with Brock, she runs into Davis at a movie theater. She learns that Davis had lost the restaurant and also ended his relationship with his fiancée. They talk about how they missed the opportunity to start a relationship, and ultimately decide to just remain friends.
Charles Swedelson: (played by Phil Reeves) the managing partner at Goldberg, Swedelson, McDonald and Lee who is also Joan's and William's supervisor. Though highly professional, he is known to have a roving eye for the ladies, and tends to use "hip-hop" and "urban" euphemisms towards Joan and William to appear more laid back and sociable. Mr. Swedelson was seen throughout the entire series run.
Yvonne Blackwell (pronounced Yuh Von): (played by Cee Cee Michaela) William's girlfriend, later fiancée in the first two seasons. Yvonne originally was a crazy police officer that William met on the internet and went on a date in the Season 1 episode, "Hip-Ocracy" but Yvonne and William start dating midway through the first season and later get engaged at the beginning of Season 2. Yvonne quits the police force after her life was put on the line and after William issued her an ultimatum. During Season 2, Yvonne and William have some issues in their relationship mainly because William bought a house unbeknownst to Yvonne. Later in the episode, "Willie or Won't He II: The Last Chapter?", Yvonne and William marry but she leaves William at the altar after confessing the many issues happening in their relationship.
Dr. Todd Garrett: (played by Jason Pace, seasons 3–6) A Jewish Beverly Hills Doctor that Toni later marries. He first appeared in the Season 3 episode "Secrets and Eyes"
==== Guest appearances ====
== Awards and nominations ==
== Spin-off ==
"The Game", a 2006 episode of Girlfriends, features guest star Tia Mowry as Joan's cousin Melanie Barnett, an aspiring medical student who wants to give up her future to follow her professional athlete boyfriend to San Diego. That episode was the launching pad for The Game, a spin-off series, which was canceled by The CW television network. In April 2010, BET announced that it would pick up the series, which aired new episodes until the August 5, 2015 series finale. When the fourth season of The Game premiered in 2011 it received 7.7 million viewers, which at the time of its airing, made the show the most watched sitcom premiere in cable television history. In November 2021, a revival spin-off of the series was picked up and released to Paramount+, serving as a direct sequel from the original series and was promoted as a refreshed series (rebooted and marketed as season 1) while also subsequently continuing the overall total seasons (chronicled as season 10). The new inception continues where it left off from the 2015 finale a few years later switching gears set in the new location of Las Vegas with the new protagonists of reprised characters, chronicling Tasha Mack and her struggles of being a woman of color sports agent; while her son Malik Wright learns to make important decisions in his sports career while quietly battling mental health issues and Brittany Pitts who is navigating her adult life taking on serious financial hardships and responsibilities becoming independent away from her Pro-Football dad's (Jason Pitts) image and inheritance. The revived series also introduces new characters to the storyline. The reboot has also garnered favorable and positive reviews from media outlets.
== Home media ==
== Soundtrack ==
=== Track listing ===
Erykah Badu – "Vibrate On" (4:14)
Jill Scott – "Golden" (3:52)
Angie Stone – "Wish I Didn't Miss You" (4:32)
Corinne Bailey Rae – "Put Your Records On" (3:35)
Algebra – "I Know" (3:57)
Amy Winehouse – "Stronger Than Me" (3:42)
Estelle – "All Comes Back to You" (3:22)
Chrisette Michele – "Girl Respect Yourself" (3:44)
Chaka Khan featuring Mary J. Blige – "Disrespectful" (4:46)
India.Arie – "I Am Not My Hair" (3:48)
Dre – "Soulmate" (4:22)
Persia White – "Choices" (2:47)
Lira – "Feel Good" (5:15)
== Streaming ==
The series is available to stream on The CW's free digital-only network, CW Seed. The entire series began streaming on Netflix on September 11, 2020 to commemorate the show's 20th anniversary.
== References ==
== General sources ==
"Girlfriends: Show Summary". TV.COM.
Ferguson, Douglas. "History of TV Prime Time". Personal Webpage, Department of Communication, College of Charleston.
== External links ==
Girlfriends site on HHE Paramount
Syndication info. on CBS TV Distribution site
Girlfriends at IMDb
Girlfriends at epguides.com |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Serra | Richard Serra | Richard Serra (November 2, 1938 – March 26, 2024) was an American artist known for his large-scale abstract sculptures made for site-specific landscape, urban, and architectural settings, and whose work has been primarily associated with postminimalism. Described as "one of his era's greatest sculptors", Serra became notable for emphasizing the material qualities of his works and exploration of the relationship between the viewer, the work, and the site.
Serra pursued English literature at the University of California, Berkeley, before shifting to visual art. He graduated with a B.A. in English literature from the University of California, Santa Barbara, in 1961, where he met influential muralists Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Supporting himself by working in steel mills, Serra's early exposure to industrial materials influenced his artistic trajectory. He continued his education at Yale University, earning a B.A. in art history and an M.F.A. degree in 1964. While in Paris on a Yale fellowship in 1964, he befriended composer Philip Glass and explored Constantin Brâncuși's studio, both of which had a strong influence on his work. His time in Europe also catalyzed his subsequent shift from painting to sculpture.
From the mid-1960s onward, particularly after his move to New York City in 1966, Serra worked to radicalize and extend the definition of sculpture beginning with his early experiments with rubber, neon, and lead, to his large-scale steel works. His early works in New York, such as To Lift from 1967 and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up from 1968, reflected his fascination with industrial materials and the physical properties of his chosen mediums. His large-scale works, both in urban and natural landscapes, have reshaped public interactions with art and, at times, were also a source of controversy, such as that caused by his Tilted Arc in Manhattan, New York in 1981. Serra was married to artist Nancy Graves between 1965 and 1970, and Clara Weyergraf between 1981 and his death in 2024.
== Early life and education ==
Serra was born in San Francisco on November 2, 1938, to Tony and Gladys Serra – the second of three sons. His father was Spanish from Mallorca and his mother Gladys (nee Fineberg) was the daughter of Russian Jewish immigrants from Odessa, USSR. From a young age, he was encouraged to draw by his mother and he carried a small notebook for his sketches. His mother would introduce her son as "Richard the artist." His father worked as a pipe fitter for a shipyard near San Francisco.
Serra recounted a memory of a visit to the shipyard to see a boat launch when he was four years old. He watched as the ship transformed from an enormous weight to a buoyant, floating structure and noted, "All the raw material that I needed is contained in the reserve of this memory." Serra's father, who was related to the Catalan architect Antoni Gaudí, later worked as a candy plant foreman.
Richard Serra studied English literature at the University of California, Berkeley in 1957 before transferring to the University of California, Santa Barbara and graduating in 1961 with a BA in English Literature. In Santa Barbara, Serra met the muralists, Rico Lebrun and Howard Warshaw. Both were in the Art Department and took Serra under their wing. During this period, Serra worked in steel mills to earn a living, as he did at various times from ages 16–25.
Serra studied painting at Yale University and graduated with both a BA in art history and an MFA degree in 1964. Fellow Yale alumni contemporaneous to Serra include Chuck Close, Rackstraw Downs, Nancy Graves, Brice Marden, and Robert Mangold. At Yale Serra met visiting artists from the New York School including Philip Guston, Robert Rauschenberg, Ad Reinhardt, and Frank Stella. Serra taught a color theory course during his last year at Yale and after graduating was asked to help proof Josef Albers's notable color theory book Interaction of Color.
In 1964, Serra was awarded a one-year traveling fellowship from Yale and went to Paris where he met the composer Philip Glass who became a collaborator and long-time friend. In Paris, Serra spent time sketching in Constantin Brâncuși's studio, partially reconstructed inside the Musée national d'Art moderne on the Avenue du Président Wilson, allowing Serra to study Brâncuși's work, later drawing his own sculptural conclusions. An exact replica of Brâncuși's studio is now located opposite the Centre Pompidou. Serra spent 1965 in Florence, Italy on a Fulbright Grant. In 1966 while still in Italy, Serra made a trip to the Prado Museum in Madrid, Spain and saw Diego Velázquez's painting Las Meninas. The artist realized he would not surpass the skill of that painting and decided to move away from painting.
While still in Europe, Serra began experimenting with nontraditional sculptural material. He had his first one-person exhibition "Animal Habitats" at Galleria Salita, Rome. Exhibited there were assemblages made with live and stuffed animals which would later be referenced as early work from the Arte Povera movement.
== Work ==
=== Early work ===
Serra returned from Europe moving to New York City in 1966. He continued his constructions using experimental materials including rubber, latex, fiberglass, neon, and lead. His Belt Pieces were made with strips of rubber and hung on the wall using gravity as a forming device. Serra combined neon with continuous strips of rubber in his sculpture Belts (1966–67) referencing the serial abstraction in Jackson Pollock's Mural (1963.) Around that time Serra wrote Verb List (1967) a list of transitive verbs (i.e. cast, roll, tear, prop, etc.) which he used as directives for his sculptures. To Lift (1967), and Thirty-Five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Splash Piece (1968), and Casting (1969), were some of the action-based works with origins in the verb list. Serra used lead in many of his constructs because of its adaptability. Lead is malleable enough to be rolled, folded, ripped, and melted. With To Lift (1967) Serra lifted a 10-foot (3 m) sheet of rubber off the ground making a free-standing form; with Thirty-five Feet of Lead Rolled Up (1968), Serra, with the help of Philip Glass, unrolled and rolled a sheet of lead as tightly as they could.
In 1968 Serra was included in the group exhibition "Nine at Castelli" at Castelli Warehouse in New York where he showed Prop (1968), Scatter Piece (1968), and made Splashing (1968) by throwing molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. In 1969 his piece Casting was included in the exhibition Anti-Illusion: Procedures/Materials at the Whitney Museum of American Art in . In Casting the artist again threw molten lead against the angle of the floor and wall. He then pulled the casting made from the hardened lead away from the wall and repeated the action of splashing and casting creating a series of free-standing forms.
"To prop" is another transitive verb from Serra's "Verb List" utilized by the artist for a series of assemblages of lead plates and poles dependent on leaning and gravity as a force to stay upright. His early Prop Pieces like Prop (1968) relied mainly on the wall as a support. Serra wanted to move away from the wall to remove what he thought was a pictorial convention. In 1969 he propped four lead plates up on the floor like a house of cards. The sculpture One Ton Prop: House of Cards (1969) weighed 1 ton and the four plates were self-supporting.
Another pivotal moment for Serra occurred in 1969 when he was commissioned by the artist Jasper Johns to make a Splash Piece in Johns's studio. While Serra heated the lead plates to splash against the wall, he took one of the larger plates and set it in the corner where it stood on its own. Serra's break into space followed shortly after with the sculpture Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1969–71). Serra wedged an 8 by 24-foot (2.4 × 7.3 m) plate of steel into a corner and divided the room into two equal spaces. The work invited the viewer to walk around the sculpture, shifting the viewer's perception of the room as they walked.
Serra first recognized the potential of working in large scale with his Skullcracker Series made during the exhibition, "Art and Technology," at LACMA (the Los Angeles County Museum of Art) in 1969. He spent ten weeks building a number of ephemeral stacked steel pieces at the Kaiser Steelyard. Using a crane to explore the principles of counterbalance and gravity, the stacks were as tall as 30 to 40 feet (9 to 12 m) high and weighed between 60 and 70 tons (54.4 and 63.5 t). They were knocked down by the steelworkers at the end of each day. The scale of the stacks allowed Serra to begin to think of his work outside the confines of gallery and museum spaces.
=== Landscape works ===
In 1970 Serra received a Guggenheim Fellowship and traveled to Japan. His first outdoor sculptures, To Encircle Base Plate (Hexagram) (1970) and Sugi Tree (1970), were both installed in Ueno Park in Tokyo as part of the Tokyo Biennale.
While in Japan, Serra spent most of his time studying the Zen gardens and temples of the Myoshin-ji in Kyoto. The layout of the gardens revealed the landscape as a total field that can only be experienced by walking. The gardens changed Serra's way of seeing space in relation to time. Upon returning to the United States he built his first site-specific outdoor work: To Encircle Base Plate Hexagram, Right Angles Inverted (1970). Here Serra embedded two semi-circular steel flanges, forming a ring 26 feet (7.9 m) in diameter, into the surface of 183rd Street in the Bronx. One semi-circle measured 1 inch (25.4 mm) wide and the second, 8 inches wide (203.2 mm). The work was visible from two perspectives: either when the viewer came directly upon it or from above on a stairway overlooking the street.
Throughout the 1970s Serra continued to make outdoor site-specific sculptures for urban areas and landscapes. Serra was interested in the topology of landscape and how one relates to it through movement, space, and time. His first landscape work was made in late 1970 when Serra was commissioned by the art patrons Joseph and Emily Rauh Pulitzer to build a sculpture on their property outside St. Louis, Missouri. Pulitzer Piece: Stepped Elevation (1970–71) was Serra's first large-scale landscape work. Three plates measuring 5 feet (1.5 m) high by 40 to 50 feet (12 to 15 m) long were placed across approximately 3 acres (12 140 m2). The placement of the plates was determined by the fall of the landscape. Each plate was impaled into the ground far enough until its rise was 5 feet (1.5 m). Serra's intention was for the plates to act as cuts in the landscape that function as surrogate horizons as viewers walked amongst them.
Shift (1970–1972), Serra's second endeavor in the landscape, was built in a field owned by the collector Roger Davidson in King City, Ontario. The sculpture is composed of six rectilinear concrete sections placed along the sloping landscape. In 2013 Shift was designated a Heritage Site under the Ontario Heritage Act. Shift, like Pulitzer Prizes pieces, was based on the elevational fall of the land over a given distance. The top edges of the plates function as a horizon being placed into specific elevational intervals as you walk the entire field.Serra's subsequent site-specific works in landscape continued to explore the topography of the land and how the sculpture relates to this topography by way of movement, meditation, and perception of the viewer. Among the most notable of the landscape works are Porten i Slugten (1983–1986) at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Denmark; Carnegie (1985) outside the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh; Afangar (Stations, Stops on the Road, To Stop and Look: Forward and Back, To Take It All In) (1990) on Videy Island, Iceland; Schunnemunk Fork (1991) in Storm King Art Center, New York; Snake Eyes and Box Cars (1993) in Sonoma County, California; Te Tuhirangi Contour (2000–2002) in Kaipara, New Zealand; and East-West/West-East (2014) in Qatar.
The sculpture Porten i Slugten (1983–1986) was commissioned for the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark. After walking the museum grounds, Serra chose a ravine that runs towards the Kattegat Sea as the site for his sculpture. The ravine was the only area on the grounds that had not been landscaped. Two plates were set at an angle to each other at the end of a sloping stretch of path which fronts the ravine. The plates function in their location like a gate that opens as the viewer walks down the path toward the sea. Seen from the center of a bridge, which crosses the ravine and leads to the museum, the two plates form a single plane as if the gate had closed. As you walk down from the museum to the ocean below, the plates appear to have a continuous swinging motion. In 1988 Serra was invited by the National Gallery of Iceland to build a work. Serra chose Videy Island as the site for Afangar (Stations, Stops on the Road, To Stop and Look: Forward and Back, To Take It All In) (1990). The sculpture consists of nine pairs of basalt columns (a material indigenous to Iceland) and is placed along the periphery of Vesturey in the western part of the country. All nine locations share the same elevations in that the stones of each pair are situated at an elevation of 9 and 10 meters, respectively. Each set of stones is level at the top. All stones at the higher elevation measure 3 meters; all stones at the lower elevation measure 4 meters. Because of the variance of topography, the stones in a set are sometimes closer together, sometimes further apart. The rise and fall of Videy Island and the surrounding landscape are seen against the fixed measure of the standing stones. The stones are visible along the horizon of the island and orient the viewer against the rise and fall of the surrounding landscape.
Te Tuhirangi Contour (2000–2002) is located on a vast open pasture on Gibbs Farm in Kaipara, New Zealand. The sculpture stands 20 feet (6 m) high and spans 844 feet (257 m) as one continuous contour that follows the rolling hills, expansion, and contraction of the landscape. The sculpture's elevation is perpendicular to the fall of the land.
East-West/West-East (2014), located on an east-west axis in the Brouq Nature Reserve in Qatar, was commissioned by Sheika al-Mayassa al-Thani of Qatar. It consists of four steel plates either 543⁄4 or 481⁄2 feet (16.7 or 14.8 m) high. The plates are placed at irregular intervals in a valley that runs between two gypsum plateaus. The plates are level with each other and the elevation of the adjacent plateaus. The work spans less than a kilometer and all plates are visible from either end.
=== Urban works ===
In the landscape, the sculptural elements draw the viewer's attention to the topology of the land as its walked. Serra's site-specific Urban sculptures focus the viewer's attention on the sculpture itself. Their locations often more accessible to the public than the landscape works, invite the viewer to walk inside, pass through and move around them. Because of the confines of Urban architecture, sculptures such as Sight Point (1972–1975) at the Stedelijk Museum, The Netherlands; Terminal (1977) in Bochum, Germany; T.W.U. (1980) at the Deichtorhallen, Hamburg, Germany; Fulcrum (1986–87), installed in Broadgate, London; Exchange (1996) outside the City of Luxembourg; or 7 (2011) on a pier in Doha, Qatar, reflect the verticality of their surrounding architecture. Outdoor sculptures like St. John's Rotary Arc (1980) temporarily installed outside the Holland Tunnel entrance in New York City; Tilted Arc (1981) installed and later removed from New York City's Federal Plaza; Clara-Clara (1983), temporarily installed at Tuileries, Place de la Concorde, Paris; Berlin Junction (1987) installed outside the Berlin Philharmonic; are all curved forms or arcs that open and close depending on the direction the viewer takes walking around them.
Sight Point (1972–1975) was Serra's first vertical Urban work and a continuation of the balance and counterbalance principles of his earlier work Prop. Sight Point stands outside the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the Netherlands, consisting of three vertical steel plates 10 feet (3 m) wide and 40 feet (12 m) high that lean in at an angle and forming a triangular space on the ground with three openings that can be walked through. Once inside the viewer can look up and see the sky framed by the triangular shape made by the leaning plates.
Another vertical sculpture, Terminal (1977), was conceived for "Documenta VI" in 1977. It was permanently installed on a traffic island between the street car tracks in front of a train station in Bochum, Germany. Serra chose the site because of its proximity to a high-traffic area. Exchange (1996), sited in a vehicular round-about on top of a highway tunnel, made of seven trapezoidal plates. The sculpture stands 60 feet (18 m) high and can be seen by drivers as they enter and leave the City of Luxembourg.
In 1980 Serra installed two sculptures, with the support of the Public Art Fund, in New York City. T.W.U. (1980) and St. John's Rotary Arc (1980) were each placed in areas where traffic and people converged. T.W.U, a vertical sculpture consisting of three vertical plates, each 36 feet (11 m) high, was installed at a subway entrance near West Broadway between Leonard and Franklin Streets. The sculpture is now permanently installed outside the Deichterhallen, Hamburg, Germany. St. John's Rotary Arc, one of Serra's earliest curved sculptures, was 12 feet (3.6 m) high and spanned 180 feet (55 m). From 1980 to 1988 the site-specific sculpture was installed on the rotary at the entrance and exit to the Holland Tunnel.
In 1981, a second site-specific curved sculpture Tilted Arc (1981) was installed in New York City's Federal Plaza. Commissioned by the U.S. General Services Administration's Art-in-Architecture Program following a rigorous selection process, the sculpture's arc spanned 120 feet (36 m) and 12 feet (3.6 m) high. The sculpture was a curve that tilted and leaned away from its base. It was anchored into the plaza at both ends so that the center of the sculpture was raised. Serra's intention for the sculpture was to draw pedestrians' attention to the sculpture as they crossed the plaza. Tilted Arc was met with resistance by workers in the Federal building. An eight-year campaign to remove the sculpture ensued and Tilted Arc was ultimately removed on March 15, 1989. In Serra's defense to preserve the sculpture he stated "To remove Tilted Arc, therefore, is to destroy it", advocating an art-for art's sake mantra of site-specific artworks. Following the hearing and GSA's decision, Serra responded that he would deny his authorship of Tilted Arc if it were relocated. and would consider it a "derivative work". The case of Tilted Arc continues to highlight the tension surrounding the nature of public art and its intended audience.
=== Gallery works ===
Serra's work has enjoyed numerous exhibitions in gallery and museum settings. His site-specific gallery installations are sometimes used to test ideas. Serra's first U.S. solo exhibition was at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York City in 1969. There he exhibited ten lead Prop Pieces, a Scatter Piece: Cutting Device: Base Plate Measure (1969), and a Splash Piece: Splashing with Four Molds (To Eva Hesse) (1969).
After his process-based works of the late 1960s and early 1970s, Serra began to solely use rolled or forged steel in his sculpture. Berlin Block (for Charlie Chaplin) (1977) was Serra's first forged sculpture. Made for the plaza outside the Neue Nationalgalerie in Berlin, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, the sculpture weighs 70 tons. His other forged sculptures include Elevation for Mies (1985–88) at Museum Haus Esters, Krefeld, Germany; Philibert et Marguerite (1985), in the Musee de Brou, Bourg-en-Bresse, France; Weight and Measure (1992), a temporary site-specific installation at the Tate Gallery, London; Santa Fe Depot (2004), in the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego; and Equal (2015) in the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Serra's most known series of sculptures using rolled steel plates are the Torqued Ellipses. In 1991 Serra visited Borromini's Church of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome and mistook the ovals of the dome and the floor to be offset from one another. He thought to make a sculpture in this torqued form. Serra constructed models of this perceived form in his studio by cutting two ellipse-shaped pieces of wood and nailing a dowel between them. He then turned the ellipses so they were at a right angle to one another and wrapped a sheet of lead around the form. After making a template from the models Serra worked with an engineer to fabricate the sculptures. In total there are seven Torqued Ellipses and four Double Torqued Ellipses (an ellipse inside of an ellipse) dated between 1996 and 2004. Each sculpture has a different degree or torque and measures up to 13 feet (3.9 m) high. The sculptures all have an opening so that they can be walked through and around. Three Torqued Ellipses are on permanent view at Dia Beacon, New York.
In 2005 "The Matter of Time", a commissioned installation, opened at the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao in Spain. Consisting of eight sculptures spanning a decade from 1994 to 2005, "The Matter of Time" highlights the evolution of Serra's sculptural forms. Serra chose to include five sculptures derived from the initial torqued ellipse: one single, one double ellipse, and three torqued spirals. The Torqued Spirals followed after the Double Torqued Ellipses when Serra decided to connect a double ellipses into one wound form that can be entered and walked through. The remaining sculptures in "The Matter of Time" are one closed (Blind Spot Reversed) and one open (Between the Torus and the Sphere) torus and spherical sculpture; and Snake: made of three parts, each comprising two identical conical sections inverted relative to each other and spanning 104 feet (31.7 m) overall. The sculptures are organized by Serra with intention. The direction which the viewer moves through the space creates a sensation of varying scale and proportion, and an awareness to the passing of time.
In 2008 Serra participated in Monumenta, an annual exhibition held in Paris's Grand Palais featuring a single artist. For Monumenta Serra installed a single sculpture, Promenade (2008), consisting of five plates, each 55 feet (16.8 m) tall and 13 feet (4 m) wide, placed 100 feet (30 m) apart from one another across the cavernous interior of the Grand Palais. Overall, the sculpture spanned 656 feet (200 m). The plates were not placed in a line but stood side to side off the Grand Palais's center axis. They tilted either left or right, leaned either toward or away from another, and the viewer as they strolled around them.
The sculpture Equal (2015), in the collection of The Museum of Modern Art, New York, consists of eight forged blocks. Each block measures 5 by 5 1⁄2 by 6 feet (1.5 × 1.7 × 1.8 m) and weighs 40 tons. The blocks are stacked in pairs and positioned on their longer or shorter sides so that each stack measures 11 feet (3.4 m) tall. When walking amongst the four stacks the viewer becomes aware of their own sense of weight, balance, and gravity in relation to the sculptures.
Four Rounds: Equal Weight, Unequal Measure (2017), consisting of four 82-ton (74 t) forged cylinders of varying dimensions is permanently installed at Glenstone in Potomac, Maryland. The sculpture is installed within a building designed by Thomas Phifer of Thomas Phifer and Partners, in collaboration with Serra to highlight the sculpture's mass within the confines of the building's interior.
=== Drawings ===
Drawing was integral to Serra's practice. He made drawings on large sheets of canvas or handmade paper. They include horizontal or vertical compositions; constructions of overlapping sheets; or line drawings. His drawings were primarily done in paintstick, lithographic crayon, or charcoal and are always black. Serra experiments with different techniques and tools to manipulate and apply the medium. He often pushes the conventions of drawing towards a tactile, phenomenological experience of movement, time, and space. The artist said that his drawing practice is involved with "repetition, knowing there's no possibility of repeating, knowing that it's going to yield something different each time".
After his break into space with sculptures like Strike: To Roberta and Rudy (1969–1971), Serra became interested in redefining architectural space with drawing as well. In 1974 Serra started to make his Installation Drawings—large-scale site-specific sheets of canvas completely covered in paintstick and stapled to the wall. The Installation Drawings cover the wall, or walls, of a given space. Shafrazi and Zadikians were two of Serra's first Installation Drawings. Both were exhibited at Leo Castelli Gallery, New York City in 1974 and measured approximately 10 1⁄2 feet (3.2 m) high and 18 feet (5.5 m) wide overall. Serra continued to make Installation Drawing throughout his career. Other notable drawing series include: Diptychs (1989); Dead Weight (1991–92); Weight and Measure (1993–94); Videy Afangar (1989–1991); Rounds (1996–97); out-of-rounds (1999–2000); Line Drawings (2000–2002); Solids (2008); Greenpoint Rounds (2009); Elevational Weights (2010); Rifts (2011–2018); Transparencies (2011–2013); Horizontal Reversals (2014) Rambles (2015–16); Composites (2016); Horizontals and Verticals (2016–17); and Orchard Street (2018).
National and international survey exhibitions of Serra's drawings have included Richard Serra: Tekeningen/Drawings 1971–1977 at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam in 1978; Richard Serra: Tekeningen/Drawings at the Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastrict in 1990; Richard Serra Drawing: A Retrospective at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and Menil Collection, Houston from 2011 to 2012; and Richard Serra: Drawings 2015–2017: Rambles, Composites, Rotterdam Verticals, Rotterdam Horizontals, Rifts at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 2017.
=== Prints ===
Serra began making prints in 1972. Working closely with Gemini G.E.L. in Los Angeles, he developed unconventional printing techniques. He made over 200 printed works and like his sculpture and drawing, his prints reflect an interest in process, scale, and experimentation with material.
His early lithographs starting in 1972 include the prints Circuit; Balance; Eight by Eight; or 183rd & Webster Avenue, each titled after a sculpture created around the same time. In 1981 Serra produced his first lithograph series comprising seven editions, titled: Sketch #1 through Sketch #7. That same year Serra begin to make larger-scale prints such as Malcolm X; Goslar, or The Moral Majority Sucks.
After pushing lithography to its limit, Serra began to work with silkscreen to produce a unique surface in his prints. He did so by first applying a layer of ink onto the paper. He then would apply a layer of paint stick through the second screen creating a saturated and textured surface.
Serra continued to work this his silkscreen technique, sometimes combining it with etching and aquatint. His print series include: Videy Afanger (1991); Hreppholer (1991); WM (1996); Rounds (1999); Venice Notebook (2001); Between the Torus and the Sphere (2006); Paths and Edges (2007); Level (2008); Junction (2010); Reversal (2015); Elevational Weight (2016); Equal (2018); and (?) (2019).
=== Films and video works ===
From 1968 to 1979 Serra made a collection of films and videos. Although he began working with sculpture and film at the same time, Serra recognized the different material capacities of each and did not extend sculptural problems into his films and videos. Serra collaborated with several artists including Joan Jonas, Nancy Holt, and Robert Fiore, on his films and videos. His first films, Hand Catching Lead (1968), Hands Scraping (1968) and Hand Tied (1968) involve a series of actions: a hand tries to catch falling lead; pairs of hands move lead shavings; and bound hands untie themselves.
A later film Railroad Turnbridge (1976) frames the surrounding landscape of the Willamette River in Portland, Oregon, as the bridge turns. Steelmill/Stahwerk (1979), made in collaboration with the art historian Clara Weyergraf is divided in two parts. The first part is made up of interviews of German steel factory workers about their work. The second part captures the forging of Serra's sculpture Berlin Block (for Charlie Chaplin).
Survey exhibitions and screenings of his films have been held at the Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland in 2017; Anthology Film Archives, New York, October 17–23, 2019; and Harvard Film Archive, January 27 – February 9, 2020. In 2019, Serra donated his entire film and video works to the Museum of Modern Art in Manhattan, New York.
== Exhibitions ==
Serra's first solo exhibition was in 1966 at Galleria Salita in Rome, Italy. His first solo exhibition in the U.S. was at the Leo Castelli Warehouse, New York in 1969. His first solo museum exhibition was held at the Pasadena Art Museum in Pasadena, California in 1970. The first retrospective of his work was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1986. A second retrospective was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York in 2007.
The first survey exhibition of his drawings was held at the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam in 1977 and traveled to the Kunsthalle Tübingen in 1978. A second retrospective of drawings was presented at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; and The Menil Collection, Houston from 2011 to 2012. An overview of the artist's work in film and video was on view at the Kunstmuseum Basel, in 2017.
Serra enjoyed solo exhibitions at the Staatliche Kunsthalle Baden-Baden, 1978; Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 1980; Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou, Paris, 1983–1984; Museum Haus Lange, Krefeld, 1985; The Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1986 and 2007; Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, Humlebæk, 1986; Westphalian State Museum of Art and Cultural History, Münster, 1987; Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus, Munich, 1987; Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1988; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, 1990; Kunsthaus Zürich, 1990; CAPC Musée d'Art Contemporain, Bordeaux, 1990; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Madrid, 1992; Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf, 1992; Dia Center for the Arts, New York, 1997; Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, 1998–1999; Centro de Arte Hélio Oiticica, Rio de Janeiro, 1997–1998; Trajan's Market, Rome, 1999–2000; Pulitzer Foundation for the Arts, St. Louis, 2003; National Archaeological Museum, Naples, 2004; and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, in 2017.
== Collections ==
Serra's work is included in many museums and public collections around the world. Selected museum collections which own his work include The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto; Art Institute of Chicago; Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht, The Netherlands; Centre Cultural Fundació La Caixa, Barcelona; Centre Georges Pompidou, Musée National d'Art Moderne, Paris; Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas; Dia Art Foundation, New York; Guggenheim Museum Bilbao and New York; Pérez Art Museum Miami, Florida; Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany; Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Moderna Museet, Stockholm; and Glenstone Museum, Potomac, Maryland.
Selected public collections which hold his work include City of Bochum, Germany; City of Chicago, Public Art Collection; City of Goslar, Germany; City of Hamburg, Germany; City of St. Louis, Missouri; City of Tokyo, Japan; City of Berlin, Germany; City of Paris, France; Collection City of Reykjavík, Iceland.
== Personal life ==
Serra moved to New York City in 1966. He bought a house in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in 1970 and spent summers working there. He and art historian Clara Weyergraf married in 1981. As of 2019, Serra maintained a home in Manhattan and studios in Nova Scotia and the North Fork of Long Island. His brother is noted San Francisco attorney Tony Serra.
Richard Serra died from pneumonia at his home in Orient, New York, on March 26, 2024, at the age of 85.
== Awards and honors ==
Serra is the recipient of many notable prizes and awards including the Fulbright Grant (1965–66); Guggenheim Fellowship (1970); République Française, Ministère de la Culture et de la Communication Chevalier de l'Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (1985 and 1991); Japan Arts Association, Tokyo Praemium Imperiale (1994); a Leone d'Oro for lifetime achievement, Venice Biennale, Italy (2001); American Academy of Arts and Letters (2001); Orden pour le Mérite für Wissenschaften und Künste, Federal Republic of Germany (2002); Orden de las Artes y las Letras de España, Spain (2008); The National Arts Award: Lifetime Achievement Award (bestowed by Americans for the Arts 2014); Hermitage Museum Foundation's Award for Lifetime Contributions to the World of Art (2014); Chevalier de l'Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur, Republic of France (2015); Landesmuseum Wiesbaden Alexej-von-Jawlensky-Preis (2017); and a J. Paul Getty Medal (2018).
== Writings and interviews ==
Gathered in the following three anthologies is a comprehensive collection of writings by, and interviews with, the artist:
Richard Serra: Writings/Interviews. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. August 15, 1994. ISBN 978-0-226-74880-1. OL 9651745M. Includes writings by the artist and interviews by Friedrich Teja Bach, Liza Béar, Patricia E. Bickers, Lizzie Borden, Lynne Cooke, Douglas Crimp, Peter Eisenman, Mark Francis, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, Annette Michelson, Robert C. Morgan, Alfred Pacquement, Brenda Richardson, Mark Rosenthal, Nicholas Serota, David Sylvester, and Clara Weyergraf
Richard Serra, Interviews, Etc., 1970–1980. Yonkers, New York: Hudson River Museum. 1980. OCLC 9946126. OL 4124913M. Written and compiled by Richard Serra in collaboration with Clara Weyergraf; includes interviews by Friedrich Teja Bach, Liza Béar, Lizzie Borden, Douglas Crimp, Bernard Lamarche-Vadel, and Clara Weyergraf
Richard Serra, Schriften, Interviews 1970–1989. Bern: Benteli Verlag. 1990. OCLC 950242621. German translation of the 1980 Hudson River Museum publication with additional contributions by Thomas Beller, Peter Eisenman, Philip Glass, Gerard Hovagymyan, Robert C. Morgan, Alfred Pacquement, Brenda Richardson, and Harald Szeemann
== Actor ==
Serra plays an architect who is a third level Mason in artist and filmmaker Matthew Barney's Cremaster 3 from the director's five-part Cremaster Cycle.
== Selected writing ==
All are solely by Richard Serra unless indicated otherwise.
"Play it Again, Sam," Arts Magazine 44, no. 4 (February 1970), pp. 24–27
"Verb List, 1967–68," First published in Avalanche [New York], no. 2 (Winter 1971), pp. 20–21
"Skullcracker Stacking Series," In Scott, Gail R., A Report on the Art & Technology Program of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art 1967–1971, pp. 299–300, Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1971
Jackson, Ward, and Richard Serra; "Richard Serra," Art Now: New York 3, no. 3 (September 1971), p. 4
Serra, Richard, "Statements," Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), p. 64
"On Frame, on Color-Aid," Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), p. 64
Jonas, Joan, and Richard Serra; "Paul Revere," Artforum 10, no. 1 (September 1971), pp. 65–67
Serra, Richard, and Rosalind Krauss; ed. "Shift." Arts Magazine 47, no. 6 (April 1973), pp. 49–55
Serra, Richard, and Clara Weyergraf; "St. John's Rotary Arc," Artforum 19, no. 1 (September 1980), pp. 52–55
"Notes from Sight Point Road," Originally published in Perspecta: The Yale Architectural Journal, no. 19 (1982), pp. 172–81
Edited and printed as "Extended Notes from Sight Point Road" in Richard Serra: Neuere Skulpturen in Europa 1977–1985 (Eine Auswahl)/Recent Sculpture in Europe 1977–1985 (Selected), pp. 11–15
"Letter from Richard Serra to President Ronald Reagan" [in Portuguese and English], Lo Spazio Umano [Portugal], no. 2 (April–July 1985), pp. 89–92, bilingual, Portuguese and English
"Serra Writes the President," Art & Artists 14, no. 3 (May–June 1985), special supplement, pp. 3, 22
"Notes on Drawing," First published in Güse, Ernst-Gerhard, ed. Richard Serra, pp. 66–68, New York: Rizzoli, 1988
"Weight," In Richard Serra: 10 Sculptures for the Van Abbe, pp. 10–12, Exh. cat. Stedelijk Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven, 1988, bilingual in Dutch and English
"'Tilted Arc'—A Precedent?" [letter to the editor], The New York Times, April 30, 1989, sec. 2, p. 5
"'Tilted Arc' Destroyed," Art in America 77, no. 5 (May 1989), pp. 34–47, cover
"Artists Have Rights to Their Works," The Des Moines Sunday Register, October 29, 1989, pp. 3C
"The Yale Lecture, January 1990," Kunst & Museumjournaal [Amsterdam: English edition] 1, no. 6 (1990), pp. 23–33
"Art and Censorship". Critical Inquiry. 17 (3): 574–581. April 1991. doi:10.1086/448597.
"Afangar Series," Open City, no. 2 (1993), pp. 101–7
"Donald Judd, 1928-1994" [eulogy. Parkett, nos. 40–41 (1994), pp. 176–79
"Basel, 18. January 1994/Basel, January 18, 1994," In Martin Schwander, ed., Richard Serra: Intersection Basel, pp. 72–79, Basel: Christoph Merian Verlag and Düsseldorf: Richter Verlag, 1996, ISBN 9783928762526. OCLC 37725722
"Notes on The Matter of Time," In Richard Serra: The Matter of Time, p. 141, Bilbao: Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, and Göttingen: Steidl Verlag, 2005, ISBN 9788495216434, OCLC 66529716
== References ==
== External links ==
Hand Catching Lead, 1968
One Ton Prop (House of Cards), 1969
Strike: To Roberta and Rudy, 1969–71
Railroad Turnbridge, 1976
Berlin Block (For Charlie Chaplin), 1977
Tilted Arc, 1981
Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses at Dia Beacon
The Matter of Time, 1994–2005
East-West/West-East, 2014
Equal, 2015 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C4%B1z%C4%B1la%C4%9Fa%C3%A7,_Ka%C5%9F | Kızılağaç, Kaş | Kızılağaç is a neighbourhood in the municipality and district of Kaş, Antalya Province, Turkey. Its population is 221 (2022).
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Bliss#Teaching | Philip Bliss | Philip Paul Bliss (9 July 1838 – 29 December 1876) was an American composer, conductor, writer of hymns and a bass-baritone Gospel singer. He wrote many well-known hymns, including "Hold the Fort" (1870), "Almost Persuaded" (1871); "Hallelujah, What a Saviour!" (1875); "Let the Lower Lights Be Burning"; "Wonderful Words of Life" (1875); and the tune for Horatio Spafford's "It Is Well with My Soul" (1876).
Bliss was a recognized friend of D. L. Moody, the famous Chicago preacher. Bliss died in the Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster on his way to one of Moody's meetings. An outspoken Abolitionist, he served as a Lieutenant during the American Civil War.
Bliss's house in Rome, Pennsylvania, is now operated as the Philip P. Bliss Gospel Songwriters Museum.
== Early life ==
P. P. Bliss was born in Hollywood, Clearfield County, Pennsylvania in a log cabin. His father was Mr. Isaac Bliss, who taught the family to pray daily, and his mother was Lydia Doolittle. He loved music and was allowed to develop his passion for singing. His sister was Mary Elizabeth Willson, a gospel singer, singer, composer and evangelist.
When he was a boy, Bliss's family moved to Kinsman, Ohio in 1844, and then returned to Pennsylvania in 1847, settling first in Espyville, Crawford County, and a year later in Tioga County. Bliss had little formal education and was taught by his mother, from the Bible.
At age 10, while selling vegetables to help support the family, Bliss first heard a piano. At age 11, he left home to make his own living. He worked in timber camps and sawmills. While working, he irregularly went to school to further his education.
== Teaching ==
At 17, Bliss finished his requirements to teach. The next year, in 1856, he became a schoolmaster at Hartsville, New York, and during the summer he worked on a farm.
In 1857, Bliss met J. G. Towner, who taught singing. Towner recognized Bliss's talent and gave him his first formal voice training. He also met William B. Bradbury, who persuaded him to become a music teacher. His first musical composition was sold for a flute. In 1858, he took up an appointment in Rome Academy, Pennsylvania.
In 1858, in Rome, Bliss met Lucy J. Young, whom he married on June 1, 1859. She came from a musical family and encouraged the development of his talent. She was a Presbyterian, and Bliss joined her Church.
At age 22, Bliss became an itinerant music teacher. On horseback, he went from community to community accompanied by a melodeon. In July 1860, the Normal Academy of Music was held in Geneseo, New York for the music community. Musicians of renown were administrating the six-week event. Bliss was excited about it, but when he realized that he could in no way afford the expense of the school, he was heartbroken. He knew it would be a great experience for him, but he had no money. When (Bliss' wife's) Grandma Allen noticed his sad demeanor she was full of sympathy. She asked him what it costs, he replied that it would "cost as much as thirty dollars". After telling him that thirty dollars "was a good deal of money", she told him of her old stocking into which she had been "dropping pieces of silver for a good many years.” She had Bliss count the amount of money in the stocking and realized it had more than the amount needed. "And Bliss spent six weeks of the heartiest study of his life at the Normal". Bliss was now recognized as an expert within his local area. He continued the itinerant teaching.
At this time he turned to composition. None of his songs were ever copyrighted.
== Evangelist ==
In 1864, the Blisses moved to Chicago. Bliss was then 26. He became known as a singer and teacher. He wrote a number of Gospel songs. Bliss was paid $100 for a concert tour which lasted only a fortnight. He was amazed so much money could be earned so quickly. The following week, he was drafted for service in the Union Army. Because the Civil War was almost over, his notice was canceled after a few weeks. The unit he served with was the 149th Pennsylvania Infantry.
Following this, Bliss went on another concert tour, but this failed. He was, however, offered a position at Root and Cady Musical Publishers, at a salary of $150 per month. Bliss worked with this company from 1865 until 1873. He conducted musical conventions, singing schools and concerts for his employers. He continued to compose hymns, which were often printed in his employer's books.
In 1869, Bliss formed an association with Dwight L. Moody. Moody and others urged him to give up his job and become a missionary singer. In 1874, Bliss decided he was called to full-time Christian evangelism. Bliss made significant amounts of money from royalties and gave them to charity and to support his evangelical endeavors.
Bliss wrote the gospel song "Hold the Fort" after hearing Major Daniel Webster Whittle narrate an experience in the American Civil War.
== Death ==
On 29 December 1876, the Pacific Express train on which Bliss and his wife were traveling approached Ashtabula, Ohio. When the train was nearly across the bridge it collapsed and the carriages fell into the ravine below. It was stated in many newspaper accounts of the time that Bliss escaped from the wreck, but the carriages caught fire and Bliss returned to try to extricate his wife. This account was only given by J.E. Burchell. As mentioned in the P.P. Bliss Memoirs, written in 1877 by D.W. Whittle this account by J.E. Burchell was only his conjecture. In fact, Mr. Whittle showed a picture of Bliss to all surviving passengers and no one recognized Mr. Bliss but only one lady who gave no account of seeing him during the accident. No trace of either Mr. Bliss or his wife, Lucy, was discovered. Ninety-two of the 159 passengers are believed to have died in what became known as the Ashtabula River Railroad Disaster.
The Blisses were survived by their two sons, George and Philip Paul, then aged four and one, respectively.
A monument to Bliss was erected in Rome, Pennsylvania.
Found in his trunk, which somehow survived the crash and fire, was a manuscript bearing the lyrics of the only well-known Bliss Gospel song for which he did not write a tune: "I Will Sing of My Redeemer." Soon thereafter, set to a tune specially written for it by James McGranahan, it became one of the first songs recorded by Thomas Edison.
== Works ==
According to the Philip P. Bliss Gospel Songwriters Museum, the books of songs by Bliss are as follows: The Charm (1871); The Song Tree, a collection of parlor and concert music (1872); The Sunshine for Sunday Schools (1873); The Joy for conventions and for church choir music (1873); and Gospel Songs for Gospel meetings and Sunday schools (1874). All of these books were copyrighted by John Church and Co.
In addition to these publications, in 1875, Bliss compiled, and in connection with Ira D. Sankey, edited Gospel Hymns and Sacred Songs. He brought many Methodist hymns in his suitcase with across the Atlantic. One of his most repeated by Bliss was "Man of Sorrows! What a name". In 1876, his last work was the preparation of the book known as Gospel Hymns No. 2, Sankey being associated with him as editor. These last two books are published by John Church and Co. and Biglow and Main jointly - the work of Mr. Bliss in them, under the copyright of John Church and Co. The gospel songs were popular fetching $30,000 shortly before his death.
Many of his pieces appear in the books of George F. Root and Horatio R. Palmer, and many were published in sheet music form. A large number of his popular pieces were published in The Prize, a book of Sunday school songs edited by Root in 1870.
Three of his hymns appear in the 1985 hymnbook of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints: Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy (#335) (also known as Let the Lower Lights Be Burning); More Holiness Give Me (#131); and Should You Feel Inclined to Censure (#235) (words by an anonymous writer put to the tune of "Brightly Beams Our Father's Mercy"). James McGranahan's tune for "I Will Sing of My Redeemer"—known simply as "My Redeemer" is also used, paired with the text of O My Father (#292).
== Connection to Titanic ==
Survivors of the RMS Titanic disaster, including Dr. Washington Dodge, reported that passengers in lifeboats sang the Bliss hymn "Pull for the Shore", some while rowing. During a 11 May 1912 luncheon talk at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco, just a few weeks after his family and he survived the sinking of the ocean liner, Dodge recounted:
"Watching the vessel closely, it was seen from time to time that this submergence forward was increasing. No one in our boat, however, had any idea that the ship was in any danger of sinking. In spite of the intense cold, a cheerful atmosphere pervaded those present, and they indulged from time to time in jesting and even singing 'Pull for (the) Shore' ..."
== Further reading ==
Ninde, Edward S.; The Story of the American Hymn, New York: Abingdon Press, 1921.
Wells, Amos R.; A Treasure of Hymns, Boston: United Society of Christian Endeavour, 1914
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Philip Paul Bliss at Wikimedia Commons
Works by or about Philip Bliss at the Internet Archive
Philip Bliss at Find a Grave
Spafford Hymn Manuscript Peace Like a River / It is Well with my Soul - as originally penned by Horatio Spafford
Christian Biography Resources
The Memoirs of PP Bliss
The Music of Philip Paul Bliss
Philip P. Bliss Gospel Songwriters Museum
Free scores Mutopia Project
Compositions by Philip Paul Bliss on IMSLP
Song victories of "The Bliss and Sankey hymns" page 139-156
Twilight alley : operetta for treble voices in two acts, 1919 publication, digitized by BYU on archive.org |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyac%C3%A1,_Boyac%C3%A1 | Boyacá, Boyacá | Boyacá is a town and municipality in the Márquez Province, part of the department of Boyacá, Colombia. It is located approximately 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) from the city of Tunja, the capital of the department. Boyacá limits Tunja and Soracá in the north, Jenesano in the south, Nuevo Colón and Ramiriquí in the west and Ventaquemada in the east.
== Etymology ==
The name of both the municipality and the department, Boyacá, comes from Chibcha and means "Region of the blankets" or "Enclosure of the cacique".
== History ==
Boyacá in the times before the Spanish conquest was ruled by the zaque of nearby Hunza, the ruler of the Muisca, who were organised in their loose Muisca Confederation.
Modern Boyacá was founded on August 8, 1537, by Spanish conquistador Gonzalo Jiménez de Quesada who was searching for the mythical El Dorado.
== Gallery ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
Senado de la República de Colombia (1989), Municipios colombianos. Bogotá: Pama Editores Ltda. ISBN 958-9077-02-1 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gliese_367_b#:~:text=The%20exoplanet%20takes%20just%207.7,shortest%20orbits%20of%20any%20planet.&text=Kristine%20Lam%2C%20et%20al.&text=As%20of%202022%2C%20Gliese%20367,massive%20after%20Proxima%20Centauri%20d. | Gliese 367 b | Gliese 367 b, formally named Tahay, is a sub-Earth exoplanet orbiting the red dwarf star Gliese 367 (GJ 367), 30.7 light-years (9.4 parsecs) from Earth in the constellation of Vela. The exoplanet takes just 7.7 hours to orbit its star, one of the shortest orbits of any planet.
As of 2025, Gliese 367 b is the smallest known exoplanet within 10 parsecs of the Solar System that has a measured radius, though Proxima Centauri d and the planets of Barnard's Star are less massive and could be smaller.
== Nomenclature ==
In August 2022, this planet and its host star were included among 20 systems to be named by the third NameExoWorlds project. The approved names, proposed by a team from Chile, were announced in June 2023. Gliese 367 b is named Tahay and its host star is named Añañuca, after names for the endemic Chilean wildflowers Calydorea xiphioides and Phycella cyrtanthoides. Calydorea xiphioides only blooms for between 7 and 8 hours each year, alluding to the planet's short orbital period of 7.7 hours.
== Properties ==
Due to its close orbit, the exoplanet gets bombarded with radiation over 500 times more than Earth receives from the Sun. Dayside temperatures on GJ 367b are around 1,728 K (1,455 °C; 2,651 °F).
Gliese 367 b is presumably tidally locked, and any atmosphere, if ever existed, would have boiled away due to the planet's extreme temperatures. Observations from JWST provide evidence that the planet indeed lacks an atmosphere, and that its albedo is low. The absence of day-night heat recirculation suggests significant volatile loss, shaping its current atmospheric and surface properties. GJ 367b's exceptional density raises intriguing hypotheses about its origin, from mantle evaporation to Mercury-like collisions. This discovery prompts broader inquiries into the habitability of small rocky planets orbiting M dwarfs and offers valuable insights into planetary formation and atmospheric dynamics across the cosmos.
The core of GJ 367b is likely composed of iron and nickel, making it similar to Mercury's core. The core of GJ 367b is extremely dense, making up about 91% of the planet's mass; the entire planet has a total density of 10.2±1.3 g/cm3, about twice that of Earth. The planet may have been stripped of the outer silicate layers, like Mercury and other iron planets, due to collisions or evaporation by the extreme stellar radiation.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salem_Prize | Salem Prize | The Salem Prize, in memory of Raphael Salem, is awarded each year to young researchers for outstanding contributions to the field of analysis. It is awarded by the School of Mathematics at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and was founded by the widow of Raphael Salem in his memory. The prize is considered highly prestigious and many Fields Medalists previously received it. The prize was 5000 French Francs in 1990.
== Past winners ==
(Note: a F symbol denotes mathematicians who later earned a Fields Medal).
== See also ==
List of mathematics awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brenda_Fassie | Brenda Fassie | Brenda Nokuzola Fassie (3 November 1964 – 9 May 2004) was a South African singer, songwriter, dancer and activist. Affectionately called MaBrrr by her fans, she is also known as the "Queen of African Pop" or the "Madonna of the Townships". Fassie was a legendary figure in South African music, celebrated for her powerful voice, captivating stage presence, and commitment to social justice, often called one of the most influential and greatest musicians on the African Continent. Despite her outrageous and controversial stage presence, her name, Nokuzola, means "quiet", "calm", or "peace".
== Biography ==
Fassie was born in Langa, Cape Town on 3 November 1964, the youngest of nine children. She was named after the American singer Brenda Lee. Her father died when she was only two years old; with the help of her mother, a pianist, she soon started earning money by singing for tourists.
When she was 16 years old in 1981, she received a visit by Hendrick "Koloi" Lebona. As a result, she left Cape Town for Soweto, Johannesburg, to seek her fortune as a singer. Fassie first joined the vocal group Joy (filling in for one of the members who was on maternity leave) and later became the lead singer for a township music group called Brenda and the Big Dudes. She had a son, Bongani, in 1985 by a fellow Big Dudes musician. She married Nhlanhla Mbambo in 1989, but the pair divorced in 1991. Around this time she became addicted to cocaine and her career suffered as a result.
With very outspoken views and frequent visits to the poorer townships of Johannesburg, as well as songs about life in the townships, Fassie enjoyed tremendous popularity. She also used her music to oppose the apartheid regime in South Africa. In 1990, she released the song "Black President" as a tribute to Nelson Mandela, a political prisoner and later the first Black president of South Africa. Known best for her songs "Weekend Special" and "Too Late for Mama", Fassie was dubbed "The Madonna of the Townships" by Time magazine in 2001. Fassie became embroiled in South Africa's first industry beef when she was savagely dissed by controversial rapper Senyaka in his 1993 song, "Ma-Gents".
In 1995, she was discovered in a hotel with the body of her female lover, Poppie Sihlahla, who had died of an apparent overdose. Fassie underwent rehabilitation and got her career back on track. However, she still had drug problems, and returned to drug rehabilitation clinics about 30 times in her life. From 1996 on she released several solo albums, including Now Is the Time (1996), Paparazzi (1997), Memeza (1998) and Nomakanjani (1999). Most of her albums became multi-platinum sellers in South Africa, of which Memeza was the best-selling album in South Africa in 1998.
== Death ==
On the morning of 26 April 2004, Fassie collapsed at her home in Buccleuch, Gauteng, and was admitted into a hospital in Sunninghill. The press were initially told that she had suffered cardiac arrest, but later reported that she had slipped into a coma as a result of an asthma attack. The post-mortem report revealed that Fassie had taken an overdose of cocaine on the night of her collapse, and this was the cause of her coma. She stopped breathing and suffered brain damage from lack of oxygen. Fassie was visited in the hospital by Nelson Mandela, Winnie Mandela, and Thabo Mbeki, and her condition was front-page news in South African papers. She died aged 39 on 9 May 2004 in hospital, without regaining consciousness, after her life support machines were turned off. Her family (including her son, Bongani Fassie, and her long-term partner) were at her side when she died.
== Recognition ==
Fassie won five South African Music Awards: Best Female Artist and Song of the Year in 1999, Best-Selling Release of the Decade and Best Song of the Decade in 2004, and Lifetime Achievement Award in 2005. She also won three Kora Awards: Most Promising Female Artist of Africa and Best Female Artist of Africa in 1996, and the Jury Special Award in 2001. She was voted 17th in the Top 100 Great South Africans.
Her son Bongani "Bongz" Fassie performed "I'm So Sorry", a song dedicated to his mother, on the soundtrack to the 2005 Academy Award-winning movie Tsotsi. In March 2006 a life-size bronze sculpture of Fassie by artist Angus Taylor was installed outside Bassline, a music venue in Johannesburg.
== Discography ==
Most of Fassie's records were issued by the EMI-owned CCP Records.
With The Big Dudes:
1983: Weekend Special
1984: Cool Spot (EP)
1984: Let's Stick Together
1984: Someone To Love (Maxi)
1985: Higher and Higher
1985: Touch Somebody (EP)
1986: No No Señor
Solo albums:
1987: Brenda
1987: Ag Shame Lovey(EP)
1988: Umuntu Ngumuntu Ngabantu(EP)
1989: Too Late for Mama
1990: Black President
1991: I Am Not a Bad Girl
1992: Yo Baby
1993: Mama(EP)
1994: Abantu Bayakhuluma
1995: Umuntu Uyashintsha
1996: Now Is the Time
1997: Paparazzi
1998: Memeza
1999: Nomakanjani
2000: Thola Amadlozi
2001: Mina Nawe :Ngohlala Ngi Nje
2002: Myekeleni
2003: Mali
2004: Gimme Some Volume
2004: Greatest Hits: The Queen of African Pop (1964–2004)
Fassie also contributed to Mandoza's album Tornado (2002), Miriam Makeba's album Sangoma (1988), and Harry Belafonte's anti-apartheid album Paradise in Gazankulu (1988). She sang on two of the soundtrack albums for Yizo Yizo (both released in 2004).
== See also ==
Afro-pop
Anti-apartheid music
== References ==
== External links ==
Brenda Fassie discography at Discogs
Afropop! An Illustrated Guide to Contemporary African Music by Sean Barlow & Banning Eyre. (Book Sales August 1995) ISBN 0-7858-0443-9, ISBN 978-0-7858-0443-7 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_cricket | Women's cricket | Women's cricket is the team sport of cricket when played by women. Its
rules are almost identical to those in the game played by men, the main change being the use of a smaller ball. Women's cricket is beginning to be played at professional level in 11 of the 12 full members of the International Cricket Council (ICC), and is played worldwide, especially in Commonwealth nations.
The first recorded cricket match between women was held in England on 26 July 1745. The game continued to be played socially by women until clubs for women were formed in the late 1800s. In 1926, the creation of the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) in England began the process of formalising the game and organising international matches. Like many women's sports, the further development of women's cricket was hampered by sexism and a lack of structural support.
Although women have historically played Test cricket and first class cricket, the focus of the women's game in the last 50 years has been mostly on limited overs cricket. The introduction of Twenty20 cricket (T20) in 2003 created more opportunities for the growth of the women's game. As well as competing against each other in tours, national teams also compete in several tournaments, including the Cricket World Cup and the T20 World Cup. Women's cricket has also been part of several multi-sport events.
In domestic cricket, many countries have T20 cricket and List A cricket competitions that are run either alongside or separately from men's competitions. Grass roots cricket is growing, especially in England and Australia, although many barriers still remain. Cricket boards often organise competitions that use new formats that are intended to appeal to women. Cricket for women with disabilities is also growing, especially in South Asia.
== History ==
Cricket has long been viewed as a gentleman's sport, traditionally reserved for men. In recent decades, women’s cricket has grown a lot and is now played in many countries around the world.The first recorded cricket match between women was reported in The Reading Mercury on 26 July 1745; the match was contested "between eleven maids of Bramley and eleven maids of Hambledon, all dressed in white". The first known women's cricket club the White Heather Club was formed in 1887 in Yorkshire. Three years later, a team known as the Original English Lady Cricketers toured England, reportedly making substantial profits before the manager absconded with the money.
In Australia, a women's cricket league was set up in 1894 and Port Elizabeth, South Africa, had a women's cricket team named the Pioneers Cricket Club. In Canada, a women's cricket team in Victoria played at Beacon Hill Park.
In India, cricket teams for women existed as early as the 1920s. Delhi Ladies Cricket Club beat the men's Marylebone Cricket Club in a half-day game on their 1926–27 tour of India, one of the only matches they lost on the tour. Because it was a women's team, the game is omitted from records of the tour. During the 1950s and 1960s, cricket was strongest in the urban centres Chennai, Mumbai, Delhi and Kolkata. The most-notable club in this period is Albees in Mumbai; many Albees players were female family members of prominent men's Test cricketers.
In 1958, the International Women's Cricket Council (IWCC) was formed to co-ordinate women's cricket around the world, taking over from the English Women's Cricket Association (WCA), which had been working in a de facto role since its creation 32 years earlier. In 2005, the IWCC was merged with the International Cricket Council (ICC) to form a unified body to manage and develop cricket.
== Laws and gameplay ==
=== Language ===
Much of the language of cricket is heavily gendered; terms such as maiden over, nightwatchman, and third man are not officially sanctioned but remain in colloquial use. In 2021, the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) amended the rulebook, the Laws of Cricket, to replace the term "batsman" with the term "batter" to better reflect the modern game. There was some derision in parts of the cricketing and wider press but others responded that the term "batter" had been in widespread use through much of the 18th and 19th centuries.
=== Rule modifications ===
In The Laws of Cricket, the only explicit difference between men's and women's cricket is the ball size. According to The Laws of Cricket:
Clause 4.6.1 Women’s cricketWeight: from 4.94 ounces/140 g to 5.31 ounces/151 gCircumference: from 8.25 in/21.0 cm to 8.88 in/22.5 cm.
For comparison, the ball in the men's game should weigh between 5.5 and 5.75 oz (156 and 163 g), and be between 8.81 and 9 in (224 and 229 mm) in circumference. Many tournaments and forms of cricket, however, have additional differences in rules between women's and men's games.
==== Test cricket ====
In the 2023 ICC rules, the main differences from the men's games are:
Three umpires are sufficient in many cases, and they may be appointed by the Home Board (i.e., the country hosting the game). This is to increase the number of women umpires at the highest level. In the men's game, all four umpires must be appointed by the ICC from their list of Elite Umpires.
Except for on the last day, play must continue until a minimum of 100 overs, or 17 overs per hour, have been completed. For the men's game, the minimum is 90 overs total or 15 per hour.
On the last day, 83 overs (17 overs per hour) must be completed. The men's game mandates 75 overs (15 per hour).
If play is delayed, e.g. because of rain, the minimum overs are reduced by one for each 3.52 minutes lost whereas in the men's game, the reduction is one over per four minutes of delay.
Follow-on can be enforced with a lead of 150 runs. In a men's Test, the lead needed for a follow-on is 200 runs.
Boundaries must not be "longer than 70 yards (64 metres), and no boundary should be shorter than 60 yards (54.86 metres) from the centre of the pitch". The boundaries in the men's game are larger with a minimum of 65 yards (59.43 metres) and a maximum of 90 yards (82.29 metres).
A fielder who is absent for more than eight minutes may be penalised no more than 110 minutes. The maximum time penalty in the men's game is 120 minutes.
==== One Day International cricket ====
According to the June 2023 ICC rules for One Day International (ODI) matches, the main differences are:
Umpires may be local, i.e., not from an impartial third country.
The innings break can be between 30 and 45 minutes whereas in the men's game, any interval may be no longer than 30 minutes. The two drinks breaks are only 60 minutes apart instead of 70 minutes in the men's game.
For a women's ODI, the game is expected to be two sessions of three hours and ten minutes with an over rate of 15.79 overs per hour. In the men's game, each session is expected to be three-and-a-half hours with an over rate of 14.28 per hour.
As in Test cricket, the boundaries must be between 60 yards (54.86 metres) and 70 yards (64 metres).
The same difference in penalty times for a fielder as in Test cricket.
The infield is set at 25.15 yards (23 metres), whereas it is 30 yards (27.43 meters) for men.
There's one powerplay that is identical to the men's first powerplay (10 overs with only 2 fielders in the outfield). After that, only four fielders are allowed in the outfield. Unlike the men's game, a women's ODI does not have a third powerplay with an additional fielder in the outfield. If the duration of the game is reduced, for example due to rain, the method of calculating the number of overs in the powerplay is slightly different between the two games.
==== Twenty20 International cricket ====
According to the June 2023 ICC rules, the main differences are:
As with Test and ODI cricket, umpires may be local (i.e. not from an impartial third country).
Intervals between innings are 15 minutes long compared to 20 minutes in a men's T20 match.
The expectation is each session of a match will be of 75 minutes with a minimum over rate of 16 overs per hour. In the men's game, an over rate of 14.11 per hour is expected and each session is of 85 minutes.
The boundaries are again set at between 60 yards (54.86 metres) and 70 yards (64 meters).
Penalty time for a fielder absent from the field of play for more than eight minutes is a maximum of 35 minutes and for the men it is 40 minutes.
The infield is set at 25.15 yards (23 metres) and is set at 30 yards (27.43 metres) for men.
For overs that are not part of the powerplay, four fielders are permitted in the outfield whereas men are permitted five fielders.
=== Clothing and equipment ===
Initially, like men, women played cricket in clothes that were similar to their everyday wear. With changes in womenswear in the late Victorian period, clothes for middle-and-upper-class women to undertake physical activity became more available. The Rational Dress Society had an outfit for cricket in its 1883 catalogue.
During the interwar period, women's sportswear became more available and the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) encountered something they named "the clothing problem". The debate about what women should wear when playing cricket was intense; a debate about it can be found in the minutes of every Annual General Meeting of the WCA from its foundation until its last AGM before World War II. There was tension between the needs of female players who wished to wear comfortable, practical clothing, and the need to appear as "respectable" women to the public and to the male establishment who owned the cricket grounds. There was also anxiety about women cross-dressing and the need to maintain gender roles while playing sport.
Photographs in the British press in the early 20th century often showed women playing cricket with bare legs and in bathing costumes but most played in more-practical clothing. Rules about women playing in white dresses and skirts were imposed on high-level women's cricket but in local games, it was common to play in flannels of any colour.
Following England's first tour of Australia and New Zealand, the England, Australia and New Zealand teams adopted the white divided skirts as part of their uniforms. England continued to play in skirts until 1997. Diving for the ball in a skirt risked injury and friction burns. The move to trousers eliminated this danger for women players, and the tan lines between the bottom of the skirts and the socks. The New Zealand team were given a sewing pattern and fabric, and were expected to make their uniforms or have them made.
According to the 2023 ICC rules, the rules on men's and women's attire in international cricket are identical. The only gender-specific clothing rule allows cricketers to wear hijab in ICC events provided it does not obscure any logos and names on the playing uniform. For Test matches, scarves must be black or white but for ODIs and T20s, they can be black or the same colour as the team cap but they cannot be white.
Appropriate equipment has long been an issue for women in cricket. Players have often had to use poorly fitting small men's or juniors equipment, which impeded performance. England wicket keeper Betty Snowball avoided this problem by having her gloves and pads custom made. Many women players prefer smaller, lighter bats. Labeling of equipment has been exclusionary; equipment for children has been labelled as "boys" but this has begun to change. Present and former cricketers, such as Lydia Greenway, Ellyse Perry and Heather Knight, have been involved with leading changes in the design of equipment for women. The brands Kookaburra, SM Cricket, Viking, Gray-Nicolls and JPGavan all now produce equipment intended for women. The brands NEXX and Lacuna Sports have been launched in the UK to provide clothing and equipment to women who play cricket.
== International cricket ==
Women's cricket has been played internationally since the inaugural women's Test match between England's and Australia's women's teams in December 1934. The following year, New Zealand joined them. in 2007 Netherlands became the tenth women's Test nation in their debut against South Africa. A total of 145 women's Test matches have been played.
Women's One Day Internationals (ODIs) were introduced in 1973 at the inaugural Women's Cricket World Cup. The 1,000th women's ODI took place in 2016. Australia has dominated the format, having claimed the World Cup six times and won 80% of their matches.
In 2004, a shorter-still format, the Twenty20 International (T20I) was introduced; matches are restricted to twenty overs per side. Initially, women's T20 cricket was played little at international level; four matches were played by the end of 2006. The following three years saw a rapid growth in women's T20 Internationals; six matches were played in 2007, ten in 2008 and thirty in 2009, which also saw the first ICC Women's World Twenty20. In April 2018, the ICC granted its members full women's T20 International status.
In November 2021, the ICC retrospectively applied first-class and List A status to women's cricket, aligning it with the men's game.
In July 2023, the ICC announced equal prize money will be available for ICC global events, meaning future Women's Cricket World Cup and Women's T20 World Cup competitions will have the same prizes for winners and runners up as male competitions.
=== International rankings ===
The ICC maintains rankings of the 13 teams with ODI status and all teams who play T20I matches. As of August 2023, Australia top both tables.
The ICC also maintains individual player rankings in ODI and T20I based on batting, bowling and all-round performance.
=== Series trophies ===
The men's game has a long history of perpetual trophies but there are two only in women's cricket: The Women's Ashes and The Rose Bowl.
In 1998, the Women's Cricket Association (WCA) created a set of Ashes to be contested by Australia and England. The Australia and England men's teams play for their own set of Ashes. In 2013, it changed from being a Test series to a series of ODIs, T20Is and a Test to better reflect the formats of cricket women regularly play.
The Rose Bowl is an ODI series played between Australia and New Zealand, and has been contested since the 1984–85 season, the most-recent being in 2020.
Before the start of the 2023–24 series, the Pakistan captain Nida Dar and South Africa captain Laura Wolvaardt revealed an as-yet-unnamed new trophy for their teams to contest.
=== Tournaments ===
==== Asia Cup ====
The Asia Cup began in 2004 as an ODI competition between members of the Asian Cricket Council (ACC). It initially ran every two years until 2008, then reformed in 2012 as a T20 tournament. The ACC intend to continue to run in it biannually, although on several occasions it has run every four years. The change to T20 cricket allowed the ACC to include more Associate nations in the tournament.
==== Cricket World Cup ====
The first ever Cricket World Cup was the Women's Cricket World Cup organised in 1973 by the WCA; it was based on an idea of cricketer Rachael Heyhoe Flint and businessman Jack Hayward. After the success of the Women's Cricket World Cup, the men's tournament took place two years later.
Seven teams competed in the inaugural tournament, which took place in England over five and a half weeks. Each ODI match was 60 overs and every team played each other in a round-robin league format. Subsequent tournaments were hampered by lack of funds for women's teams, meaning their scheduling was inconsistent for many years. The 1997 World Cup was the first to be played with 50 overs and a knock-out stage.
Since the inaugural tournament, there have been 12 World Cups with the 13th planned for 2025 in India.
==== European Cricket Championship ====
==== Kwibuka T20 Tournament ====
Originally called the "Kwibuka Cricket for Peace Women's T20 Tournament", the Kwibuka T20 Tournament is an annual T20 tournament that is played in Rwanda. It was founded in 2014 to mark the 20th anniversary of the Rwandan genocide and to promote peace through cricket. It is unusual among women's tournaments because there is no male equivalent. African nations including Botswana, Kenya, Namibia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda, and the hosts Rwanda compete in the tournament. The Brazilian and German teams have also taken part.
The word 'Kwibuka' means "to remember" in Kinyarwanda, the Rwandan national language, and is the title of annual commemorations of the genocide.
==== T20 World Cup ====
=== At multi-sport events ===
Following the introduction of T20 cricket, cricket has been included at several multi-sport events; the women's game is often added after the successful establishment of a men's tournament. As of August 2023, five different major games have held women's cricket medal events; a sixth – the African Games – is scheduled for early 2024 and a seventh – the Olympics – is scheduled for 2028.
==== African Games ====
The 2023 African Games in Accra, Ghana will mark the game's debut in the African Games.
==== Asian Games ====
Cricket made its debut at the 2010 Asian Games in Guangzhou, China, with men's and women's T20 cricket matches. It returned for the 2014 Asian Games Cricket was removed from the 2018 Asian Games to reduce the burden on the Indonesian organisers.
The 2022 Asian Games were delayed because of the COVID-19 pandemic but cricket returned when the Games were held in September 2023. Eight teams competed, including India who sent a team to the games for the first time and went home with their first gold medal.
==== Commonwealth Games ====
In August 2019, the Commonwealth Games Foundation announced the addition of women's cricket to the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The matches were held at Edgbaston, and included eight teams competing in a T20 format during July and August 2022. Only a women's tournament was part of the Games.
==== Olympic Games ====
Women's cricket has never been included in the Olympic Games. There was hope T20 cricket would be included in the 2028 Summer Olympic Games in Los Angeles. It was on the shortlist for inclusion but was not chosen for the 28-sport provisional list, making its inclusion unlikely. The ultimate decision was made in October 2023 at a meeting of the International Olympic Committee Executive board by the nod of inclusion of cricket in 2028.
With the 2032 Summer Olympics being hosted in Brisbane, Australia, the governing body Cricket Australia have also noted their intention to have the game included.
==== Pacific Games ====
Men's cricket has been part of the Pacific Games since 1979 and a women's competition was introduced for the 2015 Pacific Games in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. It appeared again at the 2019 Pacific Games but was dropped for the 2023 games.
==== South Asian Games ====
Women's cricket made its debut at the 2019 South Asian Games in Pokhara, Nepal, in the T20 format. The Maldives set one of the lowest scores in International Women's Cricket, all out for 8 runs.
==== Southeast Asian Games ====
Cricket made its debut at the 2017 Southeast Asian Games in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. It did not appear in another Southeast Asian Games until the 2023 Games.
Unusually among modern multi-sport events, the SEA Games do not keep to just the T20 format. For the 2017 tournament, women only played T20 but for the 2023 tournament they competed in 6s, T10, T20 and 50-over competitions and each had medals available.
== Domestic ==
The majority of high-level women's domestic cricket in ICC Full Member countries consists of 50-over and Twenty20 competitions.
=== Afghanistan ===
Since the 2021 Taliban offensive and the Fall of Kabul in 2021, cricket for women is in practice banned due to the Taliban's policies on women.
=== Australia ===
Eight state-based teams play 50-over cricket in the Women's National Cricket League, which has run since the 1996–97 season. Since the 2015–16 season, eight city-based franchises have played T20 cricket in the Women's Big Bash League.
=== Bangladesh ===
The Bangladesh Women's National Cricket League has been played variously as a 50-over and a Twenty20 competition.
=== England ===
Eight regional teams compete in the 50-over Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy and the Twenty20 Charlotte Edwards Cup, while eight city-based teams compete in The Hundred, a 100-ball cricket competition. The English counties play in the Women's Twenty20 Cup.
Previously, the English counties played in the Women's County Championship, while six semi-professional teams played in the Women's Cricket Super League.
To grow women's participation in the game, including those who have never played cricket, in 2017, the England and Wales Cricket Board created a format called softball cricket. It uses a modified scoring system, has 6-to-8 players per team and lasts just over an hour. It has a more-relaxed playing style than hardball cricket; for example underarm bowling is allowed and more-complicated rules such as leg before wicket are not included. Conventional cricket played by women is occasionally called "women's hardball cricket" to distinguish it from softball cricket.
=== India ===
Several domestic women's cricket competitions exist in India. State teams play for the 50-over Women's Senior One Day Trophy and the Women's Senior T20 Trophy, while composite teams play for the 50-over Senior Women's Challenger Trophy and the Women's Senior T20 Challenger Trophy. Domestic first-class women's cricket was last played in India in the form of the Senior Women's Cricket Inter Zonal Three Day Game, which ended after the 2017–18 season. The domestic red-ball game for women has been revived in the 2023-24 season with the Senior Women's Inter-Zonal Multi-Day Trophy. A total of six zonal teams competed in a knockout format.
In 2018, women's franchise cricket in India began with the Women's T20 Challenge, which began as a two-team competition. The following year, the competition was expanded to a three-team tournament. The Women's Premier League, a five-team franchise T20 competition, was created in 2023 to replace the T20 Challenge.
=== Ireland ===
The Women's Super Series in Ireland in contested by three teams. From 2021, the competition has been split into separate 50-over and Twenty20 sections.
=== New Zealand ===
Six regional-based teams compete in the 50-over Hallyburton Johnstone Shield, which has existed since the 1935–36 season, and the Twenty20 Super Smash, which began in the 2007–08 season.
=== Pakistan ===
The 50-over Pakistan Women's One Day Cup has run since the 2017–18 season while the PCB Women's Twenty20 Tournament began in the 2019–20 season. Previously, state and departmental teams competed in the National Women's Cricket Championship, the Women's Cricket Challenge Trophy and the Departmental T20 Women's Championship.
=== South Africa ===
Provincial teams play in the 50-over CSA Women's Provincial Programme, previously the CSA Women's Provincial One-Day Tournament, which has run since the 1995–96 season, and in the CSA Women's Provincial T20 Competition. which began during the 2012–13 season. Since 2019, composite teams have played in the Women's T20 Super League.
In August 2023, Cricket South Africa announced a new structure for domestic cricket. It will be composed of six teams that will have increased funding to professionally contract more players and hire full-time coaching staff.
=== Sri Lanka ===
The 50-over competition is the Sri Lanka Women's Division One Tournament. Several Twenty20 competitions have taken place, including the Super Provincial T20 Tournament and the Super 4 Twenty20 Competition.
=== West Indies ===
The nations that make up the West Indies have competed in the Women's Super50 Cup since 1975 and in the Women's Twenty20 Blaze since 2012.
In 2022, Cricket West Indies and the Caribbean Premier League jointly launched two women's competitions: a T10 cricket competition called The 6ixty and the Women's Caribbean Premier League, both with three teams that are aligned with men's sides. The 6ixty was partly inspired by the women's exhibition T10 matches that were played just before the 2019 Caribbean Premier League playoff matches.
=== Zimbabwe ===
The 50-over competition is the Fifty50 Challenge and the Twenty20 competition is the Women's T20 Cup, both of which are competed for by four teams that are aligned with men's sides.
== Disability cricket ==
=== Blind cricket ===
Women are known to have been playing blind cricket in Australia since at least the 1940s, when they competed with and against men.
England and Nepal have had women's international teams since at least November 2014, when Nepal beat England 3-0 in a three game series. In 2018, England toured the West Indies and won the series 4–1.
The first international series played in Pakistan was held in January and February 2019. The Pakistan Blind Cricket Council formed a national women's team in 2018 that played the Nepalese blind women's team in five T20 games. The Pakistani team were publicly supported by Sana Mir and other professional cricketers. Nepal won the series 4–0.
In 2019, the Cricket Association for the Blind in India created a blind cricket league for women consisting of teams from seven states. Odisha won the inaugural tournament, beating Karnataka 218/8 (20.0) to Karnataka's 131/8 (20.0). The 2020 and 2021 tournaments were cancelled because of the COVID-19 pandemic. It expanded to 14 states for the 2022 tournament, which was won by Karnataka. The 2023 tournament had 18 teams. Odisha regained the title.
India formed a national team in 2020 but had to cancel its intended 2021 tour of England because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Their first tour was in Nepal in April 2023. Nepal won that series 3–1.
The 2023 IBSA World Games in Birmingham, England, included cricket for the first time and India was the first country to announce it would be sending a team. England and Australia also sent teams to the Games; it was the Australian team's international debut. The Pakistani team was unable to participate due to lack of funds. India was the first team to reach the finals by winning their first three matches and won all four matches of their group games. Australia won the other place with a higher net run rate than England. India beat Australia in the final and were publicly praised by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
== Records ==
Cricket values records and statistics. Women's records have often been overlooked, especially when a women's record precedes or exceeds a men's record. For example, Belinda Clark made the first double century in ODI cricket in the 1997 World Cup, 13 years earlier than Sachin Tendulkar's 200* in 2010. Betty Wilson became the first player to score a century and take ten wickets in a Test match in 1958. Ian Botham did not achieve this until 1980.
=== Test cricket ===
Among Test nations, Australia holds the record for the most wins, having won 21 of their 77 Test matches.
The all-time-leading women's Test batter is Denise Annetts of Australia with a Test batting average 81.90. As of 2023, she is third behind Don Bradman's famous 99.94 and Saud Shakeel's current 87.50.
The player with the highest bowling average is Australian Betty Wilson with an average of 11.80. This puts her second to the 10.75 of George Lohmann.
=== ODI cricket ===
=== International T20 cricket ===
=== Other records ===
== See also ==
Lists of women Test cricketers
Lists of women One Day International cricketers
Lists of women Twenty20 International cricketers
ICC Women's Player Rankings
== Notes ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Amirkhanyan | Robert Amirkhanyan | Robert Babkeni Amirkhanyan (Armenian: Ռոբերտ Բաբկենի Ամիրխանյան; born November 16, 1939) is an Armenian composer and songwriter. He is a professor at the Yerevan State Conservatory. He wrote over 300 songs, vocal series, operettas.
== Career ==
In 1969 Amirkhanyan graduated from the Yerevan State Conservatory, class of Eduard Mirzoyan. From 1969 to 1972 Amirkhanyan was the musical editor of Armenian Radio. From 1991 to 2013, he served as the President of the Union of Composers of Armenia. He is an author of many popular Armenian songs ("Hayreni yerkir", "Hayi achker", "Ding-dong", "Arise!", "Arevot andzrev"), soundtracks of films, animation cartoons, operettas, as well as the first Armenian musical, entitled "The Oriental Dentist". He wrote music for 16 feature films and about 30 animated films. His songs were performed by Raisa Mkrtchyan, Muslim Magomayev, Larisa Mondrus. According to Mir TV, "in the Soviet Union, everyone knew him for his music". Amirkhanyan's "Variations for String Quartet" won the first prize in the Young Composers' Competition of the USSR in 1969. In 1973 Amirkhanyan's song "Where Are You Boys" won the "Best Song" award at the Berlin City World Youth Festival. In 1975 his composition "Autumn Melody" won the 3rd prize at the Sopot International Song Festival. In 2012, he was awarded the State Prize of the Republic of Armenia for his Yerevan Rhapsody. He is the author of a cantata-oratorio, orchestral, piano, choral and vocal music.
From 1999 to 2003 he was a member of the National Assembly of Armenia.
== Awards and prizes ==
Armenian Music Awards Lifetime Achievement Award (2002)
Honored Artist of Armenia (1984)
People's Artist of the Armenian SSR (1987)
Order of St. Mesrop Mashtots (1998)
Order of Honor (2017)
State Prize of the Republic of Armenia (2012)
Lenin Komsomol Prize (1980) for 1978–1979 song cycles
== Filmography ==
1968 – A Drop of Honey, animation
1970 – Heghnar's Spring
1971 – Pui-Pui Mouse, animation
1972 – Hayrik
1972 – The Men
1974 – Abu-Hasan's Slippers, animation
1976 – And Then You Will Come Back...
1976 – Blonde Plane
1980 – Panos the Clumsy, animation
1983 – Wow, a Talking Fish!, animation (a remix of the main motive became a hit in Russia in the 2000s)
1984 – In the Blue Sea, In the White Foam, animation
1986 – Death of the Mouse, animation
1994 – The Axe, animation
== Sources ==
== External links ==
Sunny Rain by Amirkhanyan
Biography |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fingerprint#Footprints, | Fingerprint | A fingerprint is an impression left by the friction ridges of a human finger. The recovery of partial fingerprints from a crime scene is an important method of forensic science. Moisture and grease on a finger result in fingerprints on surfaces such as glass or metal. Deliberate impressions of entire fingerprints can be obtained by ink or other substances transferred from the peaks of friction ridges on the skin to a smooth surface such as paper. Fingerprint records normally contain impressions from the pad on the last joint of fingers and thumbs, though fingerprint cards also typically record portions of lower joint areas of the fingers.
Human fingerprints are detailed, unique, difficult to alter, and durable over the life of an individual, making them suitable as long-term markers of human identity. They may be employed by police or other authorities to identify individuals who wish to conceal their identity, or to identify people who are incapacitated or dead and thus unable to identify themselves, as in the aftermath of a natural disaster.
Their use as evidence has been challenged by academics, judges and the media. There are no uniform standards for point-counting methods, and academics have argued that the error rate in matching fingerprints has not been adequately studied and that fingerprint evidence has no secure statistical foundation. Research has been conducted into whether experts can objectively focus on feature information in fingerprints without being misled by extraneous information, such as context.
== Biology ==
Fingerprints are impressions left on surfaces by the friction ridges on the finger of a human. The matching of two fingerprints is among the most widely used and most reliable biometric techniques. Fingerprint matching considers only the obvious features of a fingerprint.
The composition of fingerprints consists of water (95–99%), as well as organic and inorganic constituents. The organic component is made up of amino acids, proteins, glucose, lactase, urea, pyruvate, fatty acids and sterols. Inorganic ions such as chloride, sodium, potassium and iron are also present. Other contaminants such as oils found in cosmetics, drugs and their metabolites and food residues may be found in fingerprint residues.
A friction ridge is a raised portion of the epidermis on the digits (fingers and toes), the palm of the hand or the sole of the foot, consisting of one or more connected ridge units of friction ridge skin. These are sometimes known as "epidermal ridges" which are caused by the underlying interface between the dermal papillae of the dermis and the interpapillary (rete) pegs of the epidermis. These unique features are formed at around the 15th week of fetal development and remain until after death, when decomposition begins. During the development of the fetus, around the 13th week of a pregnancy, ledge-like formation is formed at the bottom of the epidermis beside the dermis. The cells along these ledges begin to rapidly proliferate. This rapid proliferation forms primary and secondary ridges. Both the primary and secondary ridges act as a template for the outer layer of the skin to form the friction ridges seen on the surface of the skin.
These epidermal ridges serve to amplify vibrations triggered, for example, when fingertips brush across an uneven surface, better transmitting the signals to sensory nerves involved in fine texture perception. Although it seems unlikely that fingerprints increase gripping surfaces in general, the ridges may assist in gripping rough surfaces and may improve surface contact in wet conditions.
== Genetics ==
Consensus within the scientific community suggests that the dermatoglyphic patterns on fingertips are hereditary. The fingerprint patterns between monozygotic twins have been shown to be very similar (though not identical), whereas dizygotic twins have considerably less similarity. Significant heritability has been identified for 12 dermatoglyphic characteristics. Current models of dermatoglyphic trait inheritance suggest Mendelian transmission with additional effects from either additive or dominant major genes.
Whereas genes determine the general characteristics of patterns and their type, the presence of environmental factors result in the slight differentiation of each fingerprint. However, the relative influences of genetic and environmental effects on fingerprint patterns are generally unclear. One study has suggested that roughly 5% of the total variability is due to small environmental effects, although this was only performed using total ridge count as a metric. Several models of finger ridge formation mechanisms that lead to the vast diversity of fingerprints have been proposed. One model suggests that a buckling instability in the basal cell layer of the fetal epidermis is responsible for developing epidermal ridges. Additionally, blood vessels and nerves may also serve a role in the formation of ridge configurations. Another model indicates that changes in amniotic fluid surrounding each developing finger within the uterus cause corresponding cells on each fingerprint to grow in different microenvironments. For a given individual, these various factors affect each finger differently, preventing two fingerprints from being identical while still retaining similar patterns.
It is important to note that the determination of fingerprint inheritance is made difficult by the vast diversity of phenotypes. Classification of a specific pattern is often subjective (lack of consensus on the most appropriate characteristic to measure quantitatively) which complicates analysis of dermatoglyphic patterns. Several modes of inheritance have been suggested and observed for various fingerprint patterns. Total fingerprint ridge count, a commonly used metric of fingerprint pattern size, has been suggested to have a polygenic mode of inheritance and is influenced by multiple additive genes. This hypothesis has been challenged by other research, however, which indicates that ridge counts on individual fingers are genetically independent and lack evidence to support the existence of additive genes influencing pattern formation. Another mode of fingerprint pattern inheritance suggests that the arch pattern on the thumb and on other fingers are inherited as an autosomal dominant trait. Further research on the arch pattern has suggested that a major gene or multifactorial inheritance is responsible for arch pattern heritability. A separate model for the development of the whorl pattern indicates that a single gene or group of linked genes contributes to its inheritance. Furthermore, inheritance of the whorl pattern does not appear to be symmetric in that the pattern is seemingly randomly distributed among the ten fingers of a given individual. In general, comparison of fingerprint patterns between left and right hands suggests an asymmetry in the effects of genes on fingerprint patterns, although this observation requires further analysis.
In addition to proposed models of inheritance, specific genes have been implicated as factors in fingertip pattern formation (their exact mechanism of influencing patterns is still under research). Multivariate linkage analysis of finger ridge counts on individual fingers revealed linkage to chromosome 5q14.1 specifically for the ring, index, and middle fingers. In mice, variants in the gene EVI1 (also called MECOM) were correlated with dermatoglyphic patterns. EVI1 expression in humans does not directly influence fingerprint patterns but does affect limb and digit formation which in turn may play a role in influencing fingerprint patterns. Genome-wide association studies found single nucleotide polymorphisms within the gene ADAMTS9-AS2 on 3p14.1, which appeared to have an influence on the whorl pattern on all digits. This gene encodes antisense RNA which may inhibit ADAMTS9, which is expressed in the skin. A model of how genetic variants of ADAMTS9-AS2 directly influence whorl development has not yet been proposed.
In February 2023, a study identified WNT, BMP and EDAR as signaling pathways regulating the formation of primary ridges on fingerprints, with the first two having an opposite relationship established by a Turing reaction-diffusion system.
== Classification systems ==
Before computerization, manual filing systems were used in large fingerprint repositories. A fingerprint classification system groups fingerprints according to their characteristics and therefore helps in the matching of a fingerprint against a large database of fingerprints. A query fingerprint that needs to be matched can therefore be compared with a subset of fingerprints in an existing database. Early classification systems were based on the general ridge patterns, including the presence or absence of circular patterns, of several or all fingers. This allowed the filing and retrieval of paper records in large collections based on friction ridge patterns alone. The most popular systems used the pattern class of each finger to form a numeric key to assist lookup in a filing system. Fingerprint classification systems included the Roscher System, the Juan Vucetich System and the Henry Classification System. The Roscher System was developed in Germany and implemented in both Germany and Japan. The Vucetich System was developed in Argentina and implemented throughout South America. The Henry Classification System was developed in India and implemented in most English-speaking countries.
In the Henry Classification System, there are three basic fingerprint patterns: loop, whorl, and arch, which constitute 60–65 percent, 30–35 percent, and 5 percent of all fingerprints respectively. There are also more complex classification systems that break down patterns even further, into plain arches or tented arches, and into loops that may be radial or ulnar, depending on the side of the hand toward which the tail points. Ulnar loops start on the pinky-side of the finger, the side closer to the ulna, the lower arm bone. Radial loops start on the thumb-side of the finger, the side closer to the radius. Whorls may also have sub-group classifications including plain whorls, accidental whorls, double loop whorls, peacock's eye, composite, and central pocket loop whorls.
The "primary classification number" in the Henry Classification System is a fraction whose numerator and denominator are whole numbers between 1 and 32 inclusive, thus classifying each set of ten fingerprints into one of 1024 groups. (To distinguish these groups, the fraction is not reduced by dividing out any common factors.) The fraction is determined by ten indicators, one for each finger, an indicator taking the value 1 when that finger has a whorl, and 0 otherwise. These indicators can be written
R
t
,
R
i
,
R
m
,
R
r
,
R
l
{\displaystyle R_{t},R_{i},R_{m},R_{r},R_{l}}
for the right hand and
L
t
,
L
i
,
L
m
,
L
r
,
L
l
{\displaystyle L_{t},L_{i},L_{m},L_{r},L_{l}}
for the left hand, where the subscripts are t for thumb, i for index finger, m for middle finger, r for ring finger and l for little finger. The formula for the fraction is then as follows:
16
R
i
+
8
R
r
+
4
L
t
+
2
L
m
+
1
L
l
+
1
16
R
t
+
8
R
m
+
4
R
l
+
2
L
i
+
1
L
r
+
1
.
{\displaystyle {16R_{i}+8R_{r}+4L_{t}+2L_{m}+1L_{l}+1 \over 16R_{t}+8R_{m}+4R_{l}+2L_{i}+1L_{r}+1}.}
For example, if only the right ring finger and the left index finger have whorls, then the set of fingerprints is classified into the "9/3" group:
16
(
0
)
+
8
(
1
)
+
4
(
0
)
+
2
(
0
)
+
1
(
0
)
+
1
16
(
0
)
+
8
(
0
)
+
4
(
0
)
+
2
(
1
)
+
1
(
0
)
+
1
=
9
3
.
{\displaystyle {16(0)+8(1)+4(0)+2(0)+1(0)+1 \over 16(0)+8(0)+4(0)+2(1)+1(0)+1}={9 \over 3}.}
Note that although 9/3 = 3/1, the "9/3" group is different from the "3/1" group, as the latter corresponds to having whorls only on the left middle finger.
== Fingerprint identification ==
Fingerprint identification, known as dactyloscopy, ridgeology, or hand print identification, is the process of comparing two instances of friction ridge skin impressions (see minutiae), from human fingers or toes, or even the palm of the hand or sole of the foot, to determine whether these impressions could have come from the same individual. The flexibility and the randomized formation of the friction ridges on skin means that no two finger or palm prints are ever exactly alike in every detail; even two impressions recorded immediately after each other from the same hand may be slightly different. Fingerprint identification, also referred to as individualization, involves an expert, or an expert computer system operating under threshold scoring rules, determining whether two friction ridge impressions are likely to have originated from the same finger or palm (or toe or sole).
In 2024, research using deep learning neural networks found contrary to "prevailing assumptions" that fingerprints from different fingers of the same person could be identified as belonging to that individual with 99.99% confidence. Further, features used in traditional methods were nonpredictive in such identification while ridge orientation, particularly near the center of the fingerprint center provided most information.
An intentional recording of friction ridges is usually made with black printer's ink rolled across a contrasting white background, typically a white card. Friction ridges can also be recorded digitally, usually on a glass plate, using a technique called live scan. A "latent print" is the chance recording of friction ridges deposited on the surface of an object or a wall. Latent prints are invisible to the naked eye, whereas "patent prints" or "plastic prints" are viewable with the unaided eye. Latent prints are often fragmentary and require the use of chemical methods, powder, or alternative light sources in order to be made clear. Sometimes an ordinary bright flashlight will make a latent print visible.
When friction ridges come into contact with a surface that will take a print, material that is on the friction ridges such as perspiration, oil, grease, ink, or blood, will be transferred to the surface. Factors which affect the quality of friction ridge impressions are numerous. Pliability of the skin, deposition pressure, slippage, the material from which the surface is made, the roughness of the surface, and the substance deposited are just some of the various factors which can cause a latent print to appear differently from any known recording of the same friction ridges. Indeed, the conditions surrounding every instance of friction ridge deposition are unique and never duplicated. For these reasons, fingerprint examiners are required to undergo extensive training. The scientific study of fingerprints is called dermatoglyphics or dactylography.
== Fingerprinting techniques ==
=== Exemplar ===
Exemplar prints, or known prints, is the name given to fingerprints deliberately collected from a subject, whether for purposes of enrollment in a system or when under arrest for a suspected criminal offense. During criminal arrests, a set of exemplar prints will normally include one print taken from each finger that has been rolled from one edge of the nail to the other, plain (or slap) impressions of each of the four fingers of each hand, and plain impressions of each thumb. Exemplar prints can be collected using live scan or by using ink on paper cards.
=== Latent ===
In forensic science, a partial fingerprint lifted from a surface is called a latent fingerprint. Moisture and grease on fingers result in latent fingerprints on surfaces such as glass. But because they are not clearly visible, their detection may require chemical development through powder dusting, the spraying of ninhydrin, iodine fuming, or soaking in silver nitrate. Depending on the surface or the material on which a latent fingerprint has been found, different methods of chemical development must be used. Forensic scientists use different techniques for porous surfaces, such as paper, and nonporous surfaces, such as glass, metal or plastic. Nonporous surfaces require the dusting process, where fine powder and a brush are used, followed by the application of transparent tape to lift the latent fingerprint off the surface.
While the police often describe all partial fingerprints found at a crime scene as latent prints, forensic scientists call partial fingerprints that are readily visible patent prints. Chocolate, toner, paint or ink on fingers will result in patent fingerprints. Latent fingerprints impressions that are found on soft material, such as soap, cement or plaster, are called plastic prints by forensic scientists.
== Capture and detection ==
=== Live scan devices ===
Fingerprint image acquisition is the most critical step in an automated fingerprint authentication system, as it determines the final fingerprint image quality, which has a drastic effect on the overall system performance. There are different types of fingerprint readers on the market, but the basic idea behind each is to measure the physical difference between ridges and valleys.
All the proposed methods can be grouped into two major families: solid-state fingerprint readers and optical fingerprint readers. The procedure for capturing a fingerprint using a sensor consists of rolling or touching with the finger onto a sensing area, which according to the physical principle in use (optical, ultrasonic, capacitive, or thermal – see § Fingerprint sensors) captures the difference between valleys and ridges. When a finger touches or rolls onto a surface, the elastic skin deforms. The quantity and direction of the pressure applied by the user, the skin conditions and the projection of an irregular 3D object (the finger) onto a 2D flat plane introduce distortions, noise, and inconsistencies in the captured fingerprint image. These problems result in inconsistent and non-uniform irregularities in the image. During each acquisition, therefore, the results of the imaging are different and uncontrollable. The representation of the same fingerprint changes every time the finger is placed on the sensor plate, increasing the complexity of any attempt to match fingerprints, impairing the system performance and consequently, limiting the widespread use of this biometric technology.
In order to overcome these problems, as of 2010, non-contact or touchless 3D fingerprint scanners have been developed. Acquiring detailed 3D information, 3D fingerprint scanners take a digital approach to the analog process of pressing or rolling the finger. By modelling the distance between neighboring points, the fingerprint can be imaged at a resolution high enough to record all the necessary detail.
=== Fingerprinting on cadavers ===
The human skin itself, which is a regenerating organ until death, and environmental factors such as lotions and cosmetics, pose challenges when fingerprinting a human. Following the death of a human, the skin dries and cools. Fingerprints of dead humans may be obtained during an autopsy.
The collection of fingerprints off of a cadaver can be done in varying ways and depends on the condition of the skin. In the case of cadaver in the later stages of decomposition with dried skin, analysts will boil the skin to recondition/rehydrate it, allowing for moisture to flow back into the skin and resulting in detail friction ridges. Another method that has been used in brushing a powder, such as baby powder over the tips of the fingers. The powder will embed itself into the furrows of the friction ridges, allowing the lifted ridges to be seen.
=== Latent fingerprint detection ===
In the 1930s, criminal investigators in the United States first discovered the existence of latent fingerprints on the surfaces of fabrics, most notably on the insides of gloves discarded by perpetrators.
Since the late nineteenth century, fingerprint identification methods have been used by police agencies around the world to identify suspected criminals as well as the victims of crime. The basis of the traditional fingerprinting technique is simple. The skin on the palmar surface of the hands and feet forms ridges, so-called papillary ridges, in patterns that are unique to each individual and which do not change over time. Even identical twins (who share their DNA) do not have identical fingerprints. The best way to render latent fingerprints visible, so that they can be photographed, can be complex and may depend, for example, on the type of surfaces on which they have been left. It is generally necessary to use a "developer", usually a powder or chemical reagent, to produce a high degree of visual contrast between the ridge patterns and the surface on which a fingerprint has been deposited.
Developing agents depend on the presence of organic materials or inorganic salts for their effectiveness, although the water deposited may also take a key role. Fingerprints are typically formed from the aqueous-based secretions of the eccrine glands of the fingers and palms with additional material from sebaceous glands primarily from the forehead. This latter contamination results from the common human behaviors of touching the face and hair. The resulting latent fingerprints consist usually of a substantial proportion of water with small traces of amino acids and chlorides mixed with a fatty, sebaceous component which contains a number of fatty acids and triglycerides. Detection of a small proportion of reactive organic substances such as urea and amino acids is far from easy.
Fingerprints at a crime scene may be detected by simple powders, or by chemicals applied in situ. More complex techniques, usually involving chemicals, can be applied in specialist laboratories to appropriate articles removed from a crime scene. With advances in these more sophisticated techniques, some of the more advanced crime scene investigation services from around the world were, as of 2010, reporting that 50% or more of the fingerprints recovered from a crime scene had been identified as a result of laboratory-based techniques.
== Forensic laboratories ==
Although there are hundreds of reported techniques for fingerprint detection, many of these are only of academic interest and there are only around 20 really effective methods which are currently in use in the more advanced fingerprint laboratories around the world.
Some of these techniques, such as ninhydrin, diazafluorenone and vacuum metal deposition, show great sensitivity and are used operationally. Some fingerprint reagents are specific, for example ninhydrin or diazafluorenone reacting with amino acids. Others such as ethyl cyanoacrylate polymerisation, work apparently by water-based catalysis and polymer growth. Vacuum metal deposition using gold and zinc has been shown to be non-specific, but can detect fat layers as thin as one molecule.
More mundane methods, such as the application of fine powders, work by adhesion to sebaceous deposits and possibly aqueous deposits in the case of fresh fingerprints. The aqueous component of a fingerprint, while initially sometimes making up over 90% of the weight of the fingerprint, can evaporate quite quickly and may have mostly gone after 24 hours. Following work on the use of argon ion lasers for fingerprint detection, a wide range of fluorescence techniques have been introduced, primarily for the enhancement of chemically developed fingerprints; the inherent fluorescence of some latent fingerprints may also be detected. Fingerprints can for example be visualized in 3D and without chemicals by the use of infrared lasers.
A comprehensive manual of the operational methods of fingerprint enhancement was last published by the UK Home Office Scientific Development Branch in 2013 and is used widely around the world.
A technique proposed in 2007 aims to identify an individual's ethnicity, sex, and dietary patterns.
== Limitations and implications in a forensic context ==
One of the main limitations of friction ridge impression evidence regarding the actual collection would be the surface environment, specifically talking about how porous the surface the impression is on. With non-porous surfaces, the residues of the impression will not be absorbed into the material of the surface, but could be smudged by another surface. With porous surfaces, the residues of the impression will be absorbed into the surface. With both resulting in either an impression of no value to examiners or the destruction of the friction ridge impressions.
In order for analysts to correctly positively identify friction ridge patterns and their features depends heavily on the clarity of the impression. Therefore, the analysis of friction ridges is limited by clarity.
In a court context, many have argued that friction ridge identification and ridgeology should be classified as opinion evidence and not as fact, therefore should be assessed as such. Many have said that friction ridge identification is only legally admissible today because during the time when it was added to the legal system, the admissibility standards were quite low. There are only a limited number of studies that have been conducted to help confirm the science behind this identification process.
== Crime scene investigations ==
The application of the new scanning Kelvin probe (SKP) fingerprinting technique, which makes no physical contact with the fingerprint and does not require the use of developers, has the potential to allow fingerprints to be recorded while still leaving intact material that could subsequently be subjected to DNA analysis. A forensically usable prototype was under development at Swansea University during 2010, in research that was generating significant interest from the British Home Office and a number of different police forces across the UK, as well as internationally. The hope is that this instrument could eventually be manufactured in sufficiently large numbers to be widely used by forensic teams worldwide.
== Detection of drug use ==
The secretions, skin oils and dead cells in a human fingerprint contain residues of various chemicals and their metabolites present in the body. These can be detected and used for forensic purposes. For example, the fingerprints of tobacco smokers contain traces of cotinine, a nicotine metabolite; they also contain traces of nicotine itself. Caution should be used, as its presence may be caused by mere contact of the finger with a tobacco product. By treating the fingerprint with gold nanoparticles with attached cotinine antibodies, and then subsequently with a fluorescent agent attached to cotinine antibodies, the fingerprint of a smoker becomes fluorescent; non-smokers' fingerprints stay dark. The same approach, as of 2010, is being tested for use in identifying heavy coffee drinkers, cannabis smokers, and users of various other drugs.
== Police force databases ==
Most American law enforcement agencies use Wavelet Scalar Quantization (WSQ), a wavelet-based system for efficient storage of compressed fingerprint images at 500 pixels per inch (ppi). WSQ was developed by the FBI, the Los Alamos National Lab, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). For fingerprints recorded at 1000 ppi spatial resolution, law enforcement (including the FBI) uses JPEG 2000 instead of WSQ.
== Validity ==
Fingerprints collected at a crime scene, or on items of evidence from a crime, have been used in forensic science to identify suspects, victims and other persons who touched a surface. Fingerprint identification emerged as an important system within police agencies in the late 19th century, when it replaced anthropometric measurements as a more reliable method for identifying persons having a prior record, often under a false name, in a criminal record repository. Fingerprinting has served all governments worldwide during the past 100 years or so to provide identification of criminals. Fingerprints are the fundamental tool in every police agency for the identification of people with a criminal history.
The validity of forensic fingerprint evidence has been challenged by academics, judges and the media. In the United States fingerprint examiners have not developed uniform standards for the identification of an individual based on matching fingerprints. In some countries where fingerprints are also used in criminal investigations, fingerprint examiners are required to match a number of identification points before a match is accepted. In England 16 identification points are required and in France 12, to match two fingerprints and identify an individual. Point-counting methods have been challenged by some fingerprint examiners because they focus solely on the location of particular characteristics in fingerprints that are to be matched. Fingerprint examiners may also uphold the one dissimilarity doctrine, which holds that if there is one dissimilarity between two fingerprints, the fingerprints are not from the same finger. Furthermore, academics have argued that the error rate in matching fingerprints has not been adequately studied and it has even been argued that fingerprint evidence has no secure statistical foundation. Research has been conducted into whether experts can objectively focus on feature information in fingerprints without being misled by extraneous information, such as context.
Fingerprints can theoretically be forged and planted at crime scenes.
== Professional certification ==
Fingerprinting was the basis upon which the first forensic professional organization was formed, the International Association for Identification (IAI), in 1915. The first professional certification program for forensic scientists was established in 1977, the IAI's Certified Latent Print Examiner program, which issued certificates to those meeting stringent criteria and had the power to revoke certification where an individual's performance warranted it. Other forensic disciplines have followed suit and established their own certification programs.
== History ==
=== Antiquity and the medieval period ===
Fingerprints have been found on ancient clay tablets, seals, and pottery. They have also been found on the walls of Egyptian tombs and on Minoan, Greek, and Chinese pottery. In ancient China officials authenticated government documents with their fingerprints. In about 200 BC, fingerprints were used to sign written contracts in Babylon. Fingerprints from 3D-scans of cuneiform tablets are extracted using the GigaMesh Software Framework.
With the advent of silk and paper in China, parties to a legal contract impressed their handprints on the document. Sometime before 851 CE, an Arab merchant in China, Abu Zayd Hasan, witnessed Chinese merchants using fingerprints to authenticate loans.
References from the age of the Babylonian king Hammurabi (reigned 1792–1750 BC) indicate that law officials would take the fingerprints of people who had been arrested. During China's Qin dynasty, records have shown that officials took hand prints and foot prints as well as fingerprints as evidence from a crime scene. In 650, the Chinese historian Kia Kung-Yen remarked that fingerprints could be used as a means of authentication. In his Jami al-Tawarikh (Universal History), the Iranian physician Rashid-al-Din Hamadani (1247–1318) refers to the Chinese practice of identifying people via their fingerprints, commenting: "Experience shows that no two individuals have fingers exactly alike."
Whether these examples indicate that ancient peoples realized that fingerprints could uniquely identify individuals has been debated, with some arguing these examples are no more meaningful than an illiterate's mark on a document or an accidental remnant akin to a potter's mark on their clay.
=== Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries ===
From the late 16th century onwards, European academics attempted to include fingerprints in scientific studies. But plausible conclusions could be established only from the mid-17th century onwards. In 1686, the professor of anatomy at the University of Bologna Marcello Malpighi identified ridges, spirals and loops in fingerprints left on surfaces. In 1788, a German anatomist Johann Christoph Andreas Mayer was the first European to conclude that fingerprints were unique to each individual.
=== 19th century ===
In 1823, Jan Evangelista Purkyně identified nine fingerprint patterns. The nine patterns include the tented arch, the loop, and the whorl, which in modern-day forensics are considered ridge details. In 1840, following the murder of Lord William Russell, a provincial doctor, Robert Blake Overton, wrote to Scotland Yard suggesting checking for fingerprints. In 1853, the German anatomist Georg von Meissner (1829–1905) studied friction ridges, and in 1858, Sir William James Herschel initiated fingerprinting in India. In 1877, he first instituted the use of fingerprints on contracts and deeds to prevent the repudiation of signatures in Hooghly near Kolkata and he registered government pensioners' fingerprints to prevent the collection of money by relatives after a pensioner's death.
In 1880, Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon in a Tokyo hospital, published his first paper on the usefulness of fingerprints for identification and proposed a method to record them with printing ink. Henry Faulds also suggested, based on his studies, that fingerprints are unique to a human. Returning to Great Britain in 1886, he offered the concept to the Metropolitan Police in London but it was dismissed at that time. Up until the early 1890s, police forces in the United States and on the European continent could not reliably identify criminals to track their criminal record. Francis Galton published a detailed statistical model of fingerprint analysis and identification in his 1892 book Finger Prints. He had calculated that the chance of a "false positive" (two different individuals having the same fingerprints) was about 1 in 64 billion. In 1892, Juan Vucetich, an Argentine chief police officer, created the first method of recording the fingerprints of individuals on file. In that same year, Francisca Rojas was found in a house with neck injuries, while her two sons were found dead with their throats cut. Rojas accused a neighbour, but despite brutal interrogation, this neighbour would not confess to the crimes. Inspector Álvarez, a colleague of Vucetich, went to the scene and found a bloody thumb mark on a door. When it was compared with Rojas' prints, it was found to be identical with her right thumb. She then confessed to the murder of her sons. This was the first known murder case to be solved using fingerprint analysis.
In Kolkata, a fingerprint Bureau was established in 1897, after the Council of the Governor General approved a committee report that fingerprints should be used for the classification of criminal records. The bureau employees Azizul Haque and Hem Chandra Bose have been credited with the primary development of a fingerprint classification system eventually named after their supervisor, Sir Edward Richard Henry.
=== 20th century ===
The French scientist Paul-Jean Coulier developed a method to transfer latent fingerprints on surfaces to paper using iodine fuming. It allowed the London Scotland Yard to start fingerprinting individuals and identify criminals using fingerprints in 1901. Soon after, American police departments adopted the same method and fingerprint identification became a standard practice in the United States. The Scheffer case of 1902 is the first case of the identification, arrest, and conviction of a murderer based upon fingerprint evidence. Alphonse Bertillon identified the thief and murderer Scheffer, who had previously been arrested and his fingerprints filed some months before, from the fingerprints found on a fractured glass showcase, after a theft in a dentist's apartment where the dentist's employee was found dead. It was able to be proved in court that the fingerprints had been made after the showcase was broken.
The identification of individuals through fingerprints for law enforcement has been considered essential in the United States since the beginning of the 20th century. Body identification using fingerprints has also been valuable in the aftermath of natural disasters and anthropogenic hazards. In the United States, the FBI manages a fingerprint identification system and database called the Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System (IAFIS), which currently holds the fingerprints and criminal records of over 51 million criminal record subjects and over 1.5 million civil (non-criminal) fingerprint records. OBIM, formerly U.S. VISIT, holds the largest repository of biometric identifiers in the U.S. government at over 260 million individual identities. When it was deployed in 2004, this repository, known as the Automated Biometric Identification System (IDENT), stored biometric data in the form of two-finger records. Between 2005 and 2009, the DHS transitioned to a ten-print record standard in order to establish interoperability with IAFIS.
In 1910, Edmond Locard established the first forensic lab in France. Criminals may wear gloves to avoid leaving fingerprints. However, the gloves themselves can leave prints that are as unique as human fingerprints. After collecting glove prints, law enforcement can match them to gloves that they have collected as evidence or to prints collected at other crime scenes. In many jurisdictions the act of wearing gloves itself while committing a crime can be prosecuted as an inchoate offense.
== Use of fingerprints in schools ==
The non-governmental organization (NGO) Privacy International in 2002 made the cautionary announcement that tens of thousands of UK school children were being fingerprinted by schools, often without the knowledge or consent of their parents. That same year, the supplier Micro Librarian Systems, which uses a technology similar to that used in US prisons and the German military, estimated that 350 schools throughout Britain were using such systems to replace library cards. By 2007, it was estimated that 3,500 schools were using such systems. Under the United Kingdom Data Protection Act, schools in the UK do not have to ask parental consent to allow such practices to take place. Parents opposed to fingerprinting may bring only individual complaints against schools. In response to a complaint which they are continuing to pursue, in 2010, the European Commission expressed 'significant concerns' over the proportionality and necessity of the practice and the lack of judicial redress, indicating that the practice may break the European Union data protection directive.
In March 2007, the UK government was considering fingerprinting all children aged 11 to 15 and adding the prints to a government database as part of a new passport and ID card scheme and disallowing opposition for privacy concerns. All fingerprints taken would be cross-checked against prints from 900,000 unsolved crimes. Shadow Home secretary David Davis called the plan "sinister". The Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman Nick Clegg criticised "the determination to build a surveillance state behind the backs of the British people". The UK's junior education minister Lord Adonis defended the use of fingerprints by schools, to track school attendance as well as access to school meals and libraries, and reassured the House of Lords that the children's fingerprints had been taken with the consent of the parents and would be destroyed once children left the school. An Early Day Motion which called on the UK Government to conduct a full and open consultation with stakeholders about the use of biometrics in schools, secured the support of 85 Members of Parliament (Early Day Motion 686). Following the establishment in the United Kingdom of a Conservative and Liberal Democratic coalition government in May 2010, the UK ID card scheme was scrapped.
Serious concerns about the security implications of using conventional biometric templates in schools have been raised by a number of leading IT security experts, one of whom has voiced the opinion that "it is absolutely premature to begin using 'conventional biometrics' in schools". The vendors of biometric systems claim that their products bring benefits to schools such as improved reading skills, decreased wait times in lunch lines and increased revenues. They do not cite independent research to support this view. One education specialist wrote in 2007: "I have not been able to find a single piece of published research which suggests that the use of biometrics in schools promotes healthy eating or improves reading skills amongst children... There is absolutely no evidence for such claims".
The Ottawa Police in Canada have advised parents who fear their children may be kidnapped to fingerprint their children.
== Absence or mutilation of fingerprints ==
A very rare medical condition, adermatoglyphia, is characterized by the absence of fingerprints. Affected persons have completely smooth fingertips, palms, toes and soles, but no other medical signs or symptoms. A 2011 study indicated that adermatoglyphia is caused by the improper expression of the protein SMARCAD1. The condition has been called immigration delay disease by the researchers describing it, because the congenital lack of fingerprints causes delays when affected persons attempt to prove their identity while traveling. Only five families with this condition had been described as of 2011.
People with Naegeli–Franceschetti–Jadassohn syndrome and dermatopathia pigmentosa reticularis, which are both forms of ectodermal dysplasia, also have no fingerprints. Both of these rare genetic syndromes produce other signs and symptoms as well, such as thin, brittle hair.
The anti-cancer medication capecitabine may cause the loss of fingerprints. Swelling of the fingers, such as that caused by bee stings, will in some cases cause the temporary disappearance of fingerprints, though they will return when the swelling recedes.
Since the elasticity of skin decreases with age, many senior citizens have fingerprints that are difficult to capture. The ridges get thicker; the height between the top of the ridge and the bottom of the furrow gets narrow, so there is less prominence.
Fingerprints can be erased permanently and this can potentially be used by criminals to reduce their chance of conviction. Erasure can be achieved in a variety of ways including simply burning the fingertips, using acids and advanced techniques such as plastic surgery. John Dillinger burned his fingers with acid, but prints taken during a previous arrest and upon death still exhibited almost complete relation to one another.
== Fingerprint verification ==
Fingerprints can be captured as graphical ridge and valley patterns. Because of their uniqueness and permanence, fingerprints emerged as the most widely used biometric identifier in the 2000s. Automated fingerprint verification systems were developed to meet the needs of law enforcement and their use became more widespread in civilian applications. Despite being deployed more widely, reliable automated fingerprint verification remained a challenge and was extensively researched in the context of pattern recognition and image processing. The uniqueness of a fingerprint can be established by the overall pattern of ridges and valleys, or the logical ridge discontinuities known as minutiae. In the 2000s, minutiae features were considered the most discriminating and reliable feature of a fingerprint. Therefore, the recognition of minutiae features became the most common basis for automated fingerprint verification. The most widely used minutiae features used for automated fingerprint verification were the ridge ending and the ridge bifurcation.
=== Patterns ===
The three basic patterns of fingerprint ridges are the arch, loop, and whorl:
Arch: The ridges enter from one side of the finger, rise in the center forming an arc, and then exit the other side of the finger.
Loop: The ridges enter from one side of a finger, form a curve, and then exit on that same side.
Whorl: Ridges form circularly around a central point on the finger.
Scientists have found that family members often share the same general fingerprint patterns, leading to the belief that these patterns are inherited.
=== Fingerprint features ===
Features of fingerprint ridges, called minutiae, include:
Ridge ending: The abrupt end of a ridge
Bifurcation: A single ridge dividing in two
Short or independent ridge: A ridge that commences, travels a short distance and then ends
Island or dot: A single small ridge inside a short ridge or ridge ending that is not connected to all other ridges
Lake or ridge enclosure: A single ridge that bifurcates and reunites shortly afterward to continue as a single ridge
Spur: A bifurcation with a short ridge branching off a longer ridge
Bridge or crossover: A short ridge that runs between two parallel ridges
Delta: A Y-shaped ridge meeting
Core: A circle in the ridge pattern
== Fingerprint sensors ==
A fingerprint sensor is an electronic device used to capture a digital image of the fingerprint pattern. The captured image is called a live scan. This live scan is digitally processed to create a biometric template (a collection of extracted features) which is stored and used for matching. Many technologies have been used including optical, capacitive, RF, thermal, piezoresistive, ultrasonic, piezoelectric, and MEMS.
Optical scanners take a visual image of the fingerprint using a digital camera.
Capacitive or CMOS scanners use capacitors and thus electric current to form an image of the fingerprint.
Ultrasound fingerprint scanners use high frequency sound waves to penetrate the epidermal (outer) layer of the skin.
Thermal scanners sense the temperature differences on the contact surface, in between fingerprint ridges and valleys.
=== Consumer electronics login authentication ===
Since 2000, electronic fingerprint readers have been introduced as consumer electronics security applications. Fingerprint scanners could be used for login authentication and the identification of computer users. However, some less sophisticated sensors have been discovered to be vulnerable to quite simple methods of deception, such as fake fingerprints cast in gels. In 2006, fingerprint sensors gained popularity in the laptop market. Built-in sensors in laptops, such as ThinkPad, VAIO, HP Pavilion and EliteBook laptops, and others also double as motion detectors for document scrolling, like the scroll wheel.
Two of the first smartphone manufacturers to integrate fingerprint recognition into their phones were Motorola with the Atrix 4G in 2011 and Apple with the iPhone 5S on September 10, 2013. One month after, HTC launched the One Max, which also included fingerprint recognition. In April 2014, Samsung released the Galaxy S5, which integrated a fingerprint sensor on the home button.
Following the release of the iPhone 5S model, a group of German hackers announced on September 21, 2013, that they had bypassed Apple's new Touch ID fingerprint sensor by photographing a fingerprint from a glass surface and using that captured image as verification. The spokesman for the group stated: "We hope that this finally puts to rest the illusions people have about fingerprint biometrics. It is plain stupid to use something that you can't change and that you leave everywhere every day as a security token." In September 2015, Apple included a new version of the fingerprint scanner in the iPhone home button with the iPhone 6S. The use of the Touch ID fingerprint scanner was optional and could be configured to unlock the screen or pay for mobile apps purchases. Since December 2015, cheaper smartphones with fingerprint recognition have been released, such as the $100 UMI Fair. Samsung introduced fingerprint sensors to its mid-range A series smartphones in 2014.
By 2017, Hewlett Packard, Asus, Huawei, Lenovo and Apple were using fingerprint readers in their laptops. Synaptics says the SecurePad sensor is now available for OEMs to start building into their laptops. In 2018, Synaptics revealed that their in-display fingerprint sensors would be featured on the new Vivo X21 UD smartphone. This was the first mass-produced fingerprint sensor to be integrated into the entire touchscreen display, rather than as a separate sensor.
== Algorithms ==
Matching algorithms are used to compare previously stored templates of fingerprints against candidate fingerprints for authentication purposes. In order to do this either the original image must be directly compared with the candidate image or certain features must be compared.
=== Pre-processing ===
Pre-processing enhances the quality of an image by filtering and removing extraneous noise. The minutiae-based algorithm is only effective with 8-bit gray scale fingerprint images. One reason for this is that an 8-bit gray fingerprint image is a fundamental base when converting the image to a 1-bit image with value 1 for ridges and value 0 for furrows. This process allows for enhanced edge detection so the fingerprint is revealed in high contrast, with the ridges highlighted in black and the furrows in white. To further optimize the input image's quality, two more steps are required: minutiae extraction and false minutiae removal. The minutiae extraction is carried out by applying a ridge-thinning algorithm that removes redundant pixels of ridges. As a result, the thinned ridges of the fingerprint image are marked with a unique ID to facilitate the conduction of further operations. After the minutiae extraction, the false minutiae removal is carried out. The lack of the amount of ink and the cross link among the ridges could cause false minutiae that led to inaccuracy in fingerprint recognition process.
=== Pattern-based (or image-based) algorithms ===
Pattern based algorithms compare the basic fingerprint patterns (arch, whorl, and loop) between a previously stored template and a candidate fingerprint. This requires that the images can be aligned in the same orientation. To do this, the algorithm finds a central point in the fingerprint image and centers on that. In a pattern-based algorithm, the template contains the type, size, and orientation of patterns within the aligned fingerprint image. The candidate fingerprint image is graphically compared with the template to determine the degree to which they match.
== In other species ==
Some other animals have evolved their own unique prints, especially those whose lifestyle involves climbing or grasping wet objects; these include many primates, such as gorillas and chimpanzees, Australian koalas, and aquatic mammal species such as the North American fisher. According to one study, even with an electron microscope, it can be quite difficult to distinguish between the fingerprints of a koala and a human.
== In fiction ==
=== Mark Twain ===
Mark Twain's memoir Life on the Mississippi (1883), notable mainly for its account of the author's time on the river, also recounts parts of his later life and includes tall tales and stories allegedly told to him. Among them is an involved, melodramatic account of a murder in which the killer is identified by a thumbprint. Twain's novel Pudd'nhead Wilson, published in 1893, includes a courtroom drama that turns on fingerprint identification.
=== Crime fiction ===
The use of fingerprints in crime fiction has, of course, kept pace with its use in real-life detection. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote a short story about his celebrated sleuth Sherlock Holmes which features a fingerprint: "The Norwood Builder" is a 1903 short story set in 1894 and involves the discovery of a bloody fingerprint which helps Holmes to expose the real criminal and free his client.
The British detective writer R. Austin Freeman's first Thorndyke novel The Red Thumb-Mark was published in 1907 and features a bloody fingerprint left on a piece of paper together with a parcel of diamonds inside a safe-box. These become the center of a medico-legal investigation led by Dr. Thorndyke, who defends the accused whose fingerprint matches that on the paper, after the diamonds are stolen.
=== Film and television ===
In the television series Bonanza (1959–1973), the Chinese character Hop Sing uses his knowledge of fingerprints to free Little Joe from a murder charge.
The 1997 movie Men in Black required Agent J to remove his ten fingerprints by putting his hands on a metal ball, an action deemed necessary by the MIB agency to remove the identity of its agents.
In the 2009 science fiction movie Cold Souls, a mule who smuggles souls wears latex fingerprints to frustrate airport security terminals. She can change her identity by simply changing her wig and latex fingerprints.
== See also ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Media related to Fingerprints at Wikimedia Commons
"Fingerprint". Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary. Merriam-Webster.
Interpol Fingerprint Research
Fingerprint research and evaluation at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Louis_Armstrong#:~:text=Armstrong%20lived%20with%20his%20mother,and%20bones%22%20and%20deliver%20coal. | Louis Armstrong | Louis Daniel Armstrong (August 4, 1901 – July 6, 1971), nicknamed "Satchmo", "Satch", and "Pops", was an American jazz and blues trumpeter and vocalist. He was among the most influential figures in jazz. His career spanned five decades and several eras in the history of jazz. Armstrong received numerous accolades including the Grammy Award for Best Male Vocal Performance for Hello, Dolly! in 1965, as well as a posthumous win for the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972. His influence crossed musical genres, with inductions into the DownBeat Jazz Hall of Fame, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and the National Rhythm & Blues Hall of Fame, among others.
Armstrong was born and raised in New Orleans. Coming to prominence in the 1920s as an inventive trumpet and cornet player, he was a foundational influence in jazz, shifting the focus of the music from collective improvisation to solo performance. Around 1922, Armstrong followed his mentor, Joe "King" Oliver, to Chicago to play in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band. Armstrong earned a reputation at "cutting contests", and his fame reached band leader Fletcher Henderson. Armstrong moved to New York City, where he became a featured and musically influential band soloist and recording artist. By the 1950s, Armstrong was an international musical icon, appearing regularly in radio and television broadcasts and on film. Apart from his music, he was also beloved as an entertainer, often joking with the audience and keeping a joyful public image at all times.
Armstrong's best known songs include "What a Wonderful World", "La Vie en Rose", "Hello, Dolly!", "On the Sunny Side of the Street", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "When You're Smiling" and "When the Saints Go Marching In". He collaborated with Ella Fitzgerald, producing three records together: Ella and Louis (1956), Ella and Louis Again (1957), and Porgy and Bess (1959). He also appeared in films such as A Rhapsody in Black and Blue (1932), Cabin in the Sky (1943), High Society (1956), Paris Blues (1961), A Man Called Adam (1966), and Hello, Dolly! (1969).
With his instantly recognizable, rich, gravelly voice, Armstrong was also an influential singer and skillful improviser. He was also skilled at scat singing. By the end of Armstrong's life, his influence had spread to popular music. He was one of the first popular African-American entertainers to "cross over" to wide popularity with white and international audiences. Armstrong rarely publicly discussed racial issues, sometimes to the dismay of fellow black Americans, but took a well-publicized stand for desegregation in the Little Rock crisis. He could access the upper echelons of American society at a time when this was difficult for black men.
== Early life ==
Armstrong is believed to have been born in New Orleans on August 4, 1901, but the date has been heavily debated. Armstrong himself often claimed he was born on July 4, 1900. His parents were Mary Estelle "Mayann" Albert and William Armstrong. Mary Albert was from Boutte, Louisiana and gave birth at home when she was about 16. Less than a year and a half later, they had a daughter, Beatrice "Mama Lucy" Armstrong (1903–1987), who Albert raised. William Armstrong abandoned the family shortly after that.
Louis Armstrong was raised by his grandmother until the age of five, when he was returned to his mother. Armstrong spent his youth in poverty in a rough neighborhood known as The Battlefield, on the southern section of Rampart Street. At the age of six, Armstrong started attending the Fisk School for Boys, a school that accepted black children in the racially segregated school system of New Orleans.
Armstrong lived with his mother and sister during this time and worked for the Karnoffskys, a family of Lithuanian Jews, at their home. Armstrong helped their sons Morris and Alex collect "rags and bones" and deliver coal. In 1969, while recovering from heart and kidney problems at Beth Israel Hospital in New York City, Armstrong wrote a memoir called Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, LA., the Year of 1907, describing his time working for the Karnoffsky family.
Armstrong writes about singing "Russian Lullaby" with the Karnoffsky family when their baby son David was put to bed and credits the family with teaching him to sing "from the heart." Curiously, Armstrong quotes lyrics for it that appear to be the same as the "Russian Lullaby", copyrighted by Irving Berlin in 1927, about 20 years after Armstrong remembered singing it as a child. Gary Zucker, Armstrong's doctor at Beth Israel hospital in 1969, shared Berlin's song lyrics with him, and Armstrong quoted them in the memoir. This inaccuracy may be because he wrote the memoir over 60 years after the events described. Regardless, the Karnoffskys treated Armstrong exceptionally well. Knowing he lived without a father, they fed and nurtured Armstrong.
In his memoir, Louis Armstrong + the Jewish Family in New Orleans, La., the Year of 1907, he described his discovery that this family was also subject to discrimination by "other white folks" who felt that they were better than Jews: "I was only seven years old but I could easily see the ungodly treatment that the white folks were handing the poor Jewish family whom I worked for." Armstrong wrote about what he learned from them: "how to live—real life and determination." His first musical performance may have been at the side of the Karnoffskys' junk wagon. Armstrong tried playing a tin horn to attract customers to distinguish them from other hawkers. Morris Karnoffsky gave Armstrong an advance toward purchasing a cornet from a pawn shop.
Later, as an adult, Armstrong wore a Star of David given to him by his Jewish manager, Joe Glaser, until the end of his life, in part in memory of this family who had raised him.
When Armstrong was 11, he dropped out of school. His mother moved into a one-room house on Perdido Street with Armstrong, Lucy, and her common-law husband, Tom Lee, next door to her brother Ike and his two sons. Armstrong joined a quartet of boys who sang in the streets for money. Cornetist Bunk Johnson said he taught the eleven-year-old to play by ear at Dago Tony's honky tonk. In his later years, Armstrong credited King Oliver. Armstrong said about his youth, "Every time I close my eyes blowing that trumpet of mine—I look right in the heart of good old New Orleans ... It has given me something to live for."
Borrowing his stepfather's gun without permission, Armstrong fired a blank into the air and was arrested on December 31, 1912. He spent the night at New Orleans Juvenile Court and was sentenced the next day to detention at the Colored Waif's [sic] Home. Life at the home was spartan. Mattresses were absent, and meals were often little more than bread and molasses. Captain Joseph Jones ran the home like a military camp and used corporal punishment.
Armstrong developed his cornet skills by playing in the band. Peter Davis, who frequently appeared at the home at the request of Captain Jones, became Armstrong's first teacher and chose him as the bandleader. With this band, the 13-year-old Armstrong attracted the attention of Kid Ory.
On June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. Armstrong lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrong's father never welcomed him, so Armstrong returned to his mother, Mary Albert. Armstrong had to share a bed in her small home with his mother and sister. His mother still lived in The Battlefield, leaving Armstrong open to old temptations, but he sought work as a musician.
Armstrong found a job at a dance hall owned by Henry Ponce, who had connections to organized crime. He met the six-foot tall drummer Black Benny, who became Armstrong's guide and bodyguard. Around the age of 15, he pimped for a prostitute named Nootsy. However, that relationship failed after she stabbed Armstrong in the shoulder, and his mother choked her nearly to death.
Armstrong briefly studied shipping management at the local community college but was forced to quit after being unable to afford the fees. While selling coal in Storyville, he heard spasm bands, groups that played music out of household objects. Armstrong listened to the early sounds of jazz from bands that played in brothels and dance halls, such as Pete Lala's, where King Oliver performed.
== Career ==
=== Riverboat education ===
Early in his career, Armstrong played in brass bands and riverboats in New Orleans, in the late 1910s. He traveled with the band of Fate Marable, which toured on the steamboat Sidney with the Streckfus Steamers line up and down the Mississippi River. Marable was proud of Armstrong's musical knowledge, and he insisted that Armstrong and other musicians in his band learn sight reading. Armstrong described his time with Marable as "going to the University" since it gave him a wider experience working with written arrangements. In 1918, Armstrong's mentor, King Oliver, decided to go north and resigned his position in Kid Ory's band; Armstrong replaced him. Armstrong also became the second trumpet for the Tuxedo Brass Band.
Throughout his riverboat experience, Armstrong's musicianship began to mature and expand. At age 20, he could read music. Armstrong became one of the first jazz musicians to be featured on extended trumpet solos, injecting his own personality and style. Armstrong also started singing in his performances.
=== Chicago period recordings ===
In 1922, Armstrong moved to Chicago at the invitation of King Oliver, although Armstrong would return to New Orleans periodically for the rest of his life. Playing second cornet to Oliver in Oliver's Creole Jazz Band in the black-only Lincoln Gardens on the South Side of Chicago, Armstrong could make enough money to quit his day jobs. Although race relations were poor, Chicago was booming. The city had jobs for blacks, who made good wages at factories, with some left for entertainment.
Oliver's band was among Chicago's most influential jazz bands in the early 1920s. Armstrong lived luxuriously in his apartment with his first private bath. Excited to be in Chicago, Armstrong began his career-long pastime of writing letters to friends in New Orleans. Armstrong could blow 200 high Cs in a row. As his reputation grew, Armstrong was challenged to cutting contests by other musicians.
Armstrong's first studio recordings were with Oliver for Gennett Records on April 5–6, 1923. They endured several hours on the train to remote Richmond, Indiana, and the band was paid little. The quality of the performances was affected by a lack of rehearsal, crude recording equipment, bad acoustics, and a cramped studio. These early recordings were true acoustic, the band playing directly into a large funnel connected directly to the needle making the groove in the master recording. The much improved Electrical recording system with a better dynamic range was not invented until 1926. Initially, because Armstrong's playing was so loud, Oliver could not be heard on the recording when he played next to Oliver. Armstrong had to stand 15 feet from Oliver in a far corner of the room to remedy this.
Lil Hardin, whom Armstrong would marry in 1924, urged Armstrong to seek more prominent billing and develop his style apart from the influence of Oliver. At her suggestion, Armstrong began playing classical music in church concerts to broaden his skills and dressing more stylishly to offset his girth. Her influence eventually undermined Armstrong's relationship with his mentor, especially concerning his salary and additional money that Oliver held back from Armstrong and other band members. Armstrong's mother, Mayann Albert, came to visit him in Chicago during the summer of 1923 after being told that Armstrong was "out of work, out of money, hungry, and sick"; Hardin located and decorated an apartment for her to live in while she stayed.
=== Fletcher Henderson Orchestra ===
Armstrong and Oliver parted amicably in 1924. Shortly afterward, Armstrong was invited to go to New York City to play with the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra, the top African-American band of the time. He switched to the trumpet to blend in better with the other musicians in his section. Armstrong's influence on Henderson's tenor sax soloist, Coleman Hawkins, can be judged by listening to the records made by the band during this period.
Armstrong adapted to Henderson's tightly controlled style, playing the trumpet and experimenting with the trombone. The other members were affected by Armstrong's emotional style. His act included singing and telling tales of New Orleans characters, especially preachers. The Henderson Orchestra played in prominent venues for white patrons only, including the Roseland Ballroom, with arrangements by Don Redman. Duke Ellington's orchestra went to Roseland to catch Armstrong's performances.
During this time, Armstrong recorded with Clarence Williams (a friend from New Orleans), the Williams Blue Five, Sidney Bechet, and blues singers Alberta Hunter, Ma Rainey, and Bessie Smith.
=== The Hot Five ===
In 1925, Armstrong returned to Chicago largely at the insistence of Lil, who wanted to expand his career and income. In publicity, much to his chagrin, she billed Armstrong as "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player." For a time, he was a member of the Lil Hardin Armstrong Band and worked for his wife. Armstrong formed Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and recorded the hits "Potato Head Blues" and "Muggles". The word "muggles" was a slang term for marijuana, something Armstrong often used during his life.
The Hot Five included Kid Ory (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Johnny St. Cyr (banjo), Lil Armstrong on piano, and usually no drummer. Over a 12-month period starting in November 1925, this quintet produced twenty-four records. Armstrong's band leading style was easygoing, as St. Cyr noted: "One felt so relaxed working with him, and he was very broad-minded ... always did his best to feature each individual."
Among the Hot Five and Seven records were "Cornet Chop Suey", "Struttin' With Some Barbecue", "Hotter Than That", and "Potato Head Blues", all featuring highly creative solos by Armstrong. According to Thomas Brothers, recordings such as "Struttin' with Some Barbeque" were so superb, "planned with density and variety, bluesyness, and showiness", that the arrangements were probably showcased at the Sunset Café. His recordings soon after with pianist Earl "Fatha" Hines, their famous 1928 "Weather Bird" duet and Armstrong's trumpet introduction to and solo in "West End Blues", remain some of the most influential improvisations in jazz history. Young trumpet players across the country bought these recordings and memorized his solos.
Armstrong was now free to develop his style as he wished, which included a heavy dose of effervescent jive, such as "Whip That Thing, Miss Lil" and "Mr. Johnny Dodds, Aw, Do That Clarinet, Boy!"
Armstrong also played with Erskine Tate's Little Symphony, mostly at the Vendome Theatre. They furnished music for silent movies and live shows, including jazz versions of classical music, such as "Madame Butterfly", which gave Armstrong experience with longer forms of music and with hosting before a large audience. He began scat singing (improvised vocal jazz using nonsensical words) and was among the first to record it on the Hot Five recording "Heebie Jeebies" in 1926. The recording was so popular that the group became the most famous jazz band in the United States, even though they had seldom performed live. Young musicians across the country, black or white, were turned on by Armstrong's new type of jazz.
After separating from Lil, Armstrong started to play at the Sunset Café for Al Capone's associate Joe Glaser in the Carroll Dickerson Orchestra, with Earl Hines on piano, which was renamed Louis Armstrong and his Stompers. However, Hines was the music director, and Glaser managed the orchestra. Hines and Armstrong became fast friends and successful collaborators. It was at the Sunset Café that Armstrong accompanied singer Adelaide Hall. During Hall's tenure at the venue, she experimented, developed, and expanded her scat singing with Armstrong's guidance and encouragement.
In the first half of 1927, Armstrong assembled his Hot Seven group, which added drummer Al "Baby" Dodds and tuba player Pete Briggs while preserving most of his original Hot Five lineup. John Thomas replaced Kid Ory on the trombone. Later that year, Armstrong organized a series of new Hot Five sessions, which resulted in nine more records. In the last half of 1928, he started recording with a new group: Zutty Singleton (drums), Earl Hines (piano), Jimmy Strong (clarinet), Fred Robinson (trombone), and Mancy Carr (banjo).
=== The Harlem Renaissance ===
Armstrong made a huge impact during the 1920s Harlem Renaissance. His music touched well-known writer Langston Hughes. Hughes admired Armstrong and acknowledged him as one of the most recognized musicians of the era. Hughes wrote many books that celebrated jazz and recognized Armstrong as one of the leaders of the Harlem Renaissance's newfound love of African-American culture. The sound of jazz, along with musicians such as Armstrong, helped shape Hughes as a writer. Just like the musicians, Hughes wrote his words with jazz.
Armstrong changed jazz during the Harlem Renaissance. As "The World's Greatest Trumpet Player" during this time, Armstrong cemented his legacy and continued a focus on his vocal career. His popularity brought together many black and white audiences.
=== Emerging as a vocalist ===
Armstrong returned to New York in 1929, where he played in the pit orchestra for the musical Hot Chocolates, an all-black revue written by Andy Razaf and pianist Fats Waller. Armstrong made a cameo appearance as a vocalist, regularly stealing the show with his rendition of "Ain't Misbehavin'." Armstrong's version of the song became his biggest-selling record yet.
Armstrong started to work at Connie's Inn in Harlem, chief rival to the Cotton Club, a venue for elaborately staged floor shows, and a front for gangster Dutch Schultz. Armstrong had considerable success with vocal recordings, including versions of songs composed by his old friend Hoagy Carmichael. His 1930s recordings took full advantage of the RCA ribbon microphone, introduced in 1931, which imparted warmth to vocals and became an intrinsic part of the "crooning" sound of artists like Bing Crosby. Armstrong's interpretation of Carmichael's "Stardust" became one of the most successful versions of this song ever recorded, showcasing Armstrong's unique vocal sound and style and his innovative approach to singing songs that were already standards.
Armstrong's radical re-working of Sidney Arodin and Carmichael's "Lazy River", recorded in 1931, encapsulated his groundbreaking approach to melody and phrasing. The song begins with a brief trumpet solo. Then, the main melody is introduced by sobbing horns, memorably punctuated by Armstrong's growling interjections at the end of each bar: "Yeah! ..."Uh-huh"..."Sure"..."Way down, way down." In the first verse, Armstrong ignores the notated melody and sings as if playing a trumpet solo, pitching most of the first line on a single note and using strongly syncopated phrasing. In the second stanza, he breaks into an almost entirely improvised melody, which then evolves into a classic passage of Armstrong's scat singing.
As with his trumpet playing, Armstrong's vocal innovations served as a foundation for jazz vocal interpretation. The uniquely gravelly coloration of his voice became an archetype that was endlessly imitated. Armstrong's scat singing was enriched by his matchless experience as a trumpet soloist. His resonant, velvety lower-register tone and bubbling cadences on sides such as "Lazy River" greatly influenced younger white singers such as Bing Crosby.
=== Work during hard times ===
The Great Depression of the early 1930s was especially hard on the jazz scene. After a long downward spiral, the Cotton Club closed in 1936, and many musicians stopped playing altogether as club dates evaporated. Bix Beiderbecke died, and Fletcher Henderson's band broke up. King Oliver made a few records but otherwise struggled. Sidney Bechet became a tailor, later moving to Paris, and Kid Ory returned to New Orleans and raised chickens.
Armstrong moved to Los Angeles in 1930 to seek new opportunities. He played at the New Cotton Club in Los Angeles with Lionel Hampton on drums. The band drew the Hollywood crowd, which could still afford a lavish nightlife, while radio broadcasts from the club connected with younger audiences at home. Bing Crosby and many other celebrities were regulars at the club. In 1931, Armstrong appeared in his first movie, Ex-Flame. He was also convicted of marijuana possession but received a suspended sentence.
Armstrong returned to Chicago in late 1931 and played in bands more in the Guy Lombardo vein, and he recorded more standards. When the mob insisted that he get out of town, Armstrong visited New Orleans, had a hero's welcome, and saw old friends. He sponsored a local baseball team called Armstrong's Secret Nine and had a cigar named after him. However, Armstrong was on the road again soon. After a tour across the country shadowed by the mob, he fled to Europe.
After returning to the United States, Armstrong undertook several exhausting tours. His agent, Johnny Collins's erratic behavior and his own spending ways left Armstrong short of cash. Breach of contract violations plagued him. Armstrong hired Joe Glaser as his new manager, a tough mob-connected wheeler-dealer who began straightening out his legal mess, mob troubles, and debts. Armstrong also began to experience problems with his fingers and lips, aggravated by his unorthodox playing style. As a result, Armstrong branched out, developing his vocal style and making his first theatrical appearances. Armstrong appeared in movies again, including Crosby's 1936 hit Pennies from Heaven. In 1937, Armstrong substituted for Rudy Vallee on the CBS radio network and became the first African American to host a sponsored national broadcast.
=== Reviving his career with the All-Stars ===
After spending many years on the road, Armstrong settled permanently in Queens, New York, in 1943 with his fourth wife, Lucille. Although subject to the vicissitudes of Tin Pan Alley and the gangster-ridden music business, as well as anti-black prejudice, Armstrong continued to develop his playing.
Bookings for big bands tapered off during the 1940s due to changes in public tastes. Ballrooms closed, and competition from other types of music, especially pop vocals, became more popular than big band music. Under such circumstances, it became impossible to finance a 16-piece touring band.
A widespread revival of interest in the 1940s in the traditional jazz of the 1920s made it possible for Armstrong to consider a return to the small-group musical style of his youth. Armstrong was featured as a guest artist with Lionel Hampton's band at the famed second Cavalcade of Jazz concert held at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles, produced by Leon Hefflin Sr., on October 12, 1946. Armstrong also led a highly successful small-group jazz concert at New York Town Hall on May 17, 1947, featuring him with trombonist/singer Jack Teagarden. During the concert, Armstrong and Teagarden performed a duet on Hoagy Carmichael's "Rockin' Chair" they then recorded for Okeh Records.
Armstrong's manager, Joe Glaser, changed the Armstrong big band on August 13, 1947, into a six-piece traditional jazz group featuring Armstrong with (initially) Teagarden, Earl Hines and other top swing and Dixieland musicians, most of whom were previously leaders of big bands. The new group was announced at the opening of Billy Berg's Supper Club.
This smaller group was called Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars and included at various times Earl "Fatha" Hines, Barney Bigard, Edmond Hall, Jack Teagarden, Trummy Young, Arvell Shaw, Billy Kyle, Marty Napoleon, Big Sid "Buddy" Catlett, Cozy Cole, Tyree Glenn, Barrett Deems, Mort Herbert, Joe Darensbourg, Eddie Shu, Joe Muranyi and percussionist Danny Barcelona.
On February 28, 1948, Suzy Delair sang the French song "C'est si bon" at the Hotel Negresco during the first Nice Jazz Festival. Armstrong was present and loved the song. On June 26, 1950, he recorded the American version of the song (English lyrics by Jerry Seelen) in New York City with Sy Oliver and his Orchestra. When it was released, the disc was a worldwide success, and the song was then performed by the greatest international singers.
Armstrong was the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of Time magazine on February 21, 1949. He and his All-Stars were featured at the ninth Cavalcade of Jazz concert also at Wrigley Field in Los Angeles produced by Leon Hefflin Sr. held on June 7, 1953, along with Shorty Rogers, Roy Brown, Don Tosti and His Mexican Jazzmen, Earl Bostic, and Nat "King" Cole.
Over 30 years, Armstrong played more than 300 performances a year, making many recordings and appearing in more than 30 films.
=== A jazz ambassador ===
By the 1950s, Armstrong was a widely beloved American icon and cultural ambassador who commanded an international fanbase. However, a growing generation gap became apparent between him and the young jazz musicians who emerged in the postwar era, such as Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, and Sonny Rollins. The postwar generation regarded their music as abstract art and considered Armstrong's vaudevillian style, half-musician and half-stage entertainer, outmoded and Uncle Tomism. "... he seemed a link to minstrelsy that we were ashamed of." Armstrong called bebop "Chinese music". While touring Australia in 1954, he was asked if he could play bebop. "'Bebop?' he husked. 'I just play music. Guys who invent terms like that are walking the streets with their instruments under their arms.'"
After finishing his contract with Decca Records, Armstrong went freelance and recorded for other labels. He continued an intense international touring schedule, but suffered a heart attack in 1959 while in Italy and had to rest.
In 1964, after more than two years without setting foot in a studio, Armstrong recorded his biggest-selling record, "Hello, Dolly!", a song by Jerry Herman, originally sung by Carol Channing. Armstrong's version remained on the Hot 100 for 22 weeks, longer than any other record produced that year, and went to No. 1, making him the oldest person to accomplish that feat at 62 years, nine months, and five days. Armstrong's hit dislodged The Beatles from the No. 1 position they had occupied for 14 consecutive weeks with three different songs.
Armstrong toured well into his 60s, even visiting part of the Communist Bloc in 1965. Armstrong also toured Africa, Europe, and Asia under the sponsorship of the US State Department with great success, earning the nickname "Ambassador Satch" and inspiring Dave Brubeck to compose his jazz musical The Real Ambassadors. His travels included performances in Egypt, Ghana and Nigeria.
By 1968, Armstrong was approaching 70, and his health was failing. His heart and kidney ailments forced him to stop touring, though he continued to record, including "What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong did not perform publicly in 1969 and spent most of the year recuperating at home. Meanwhile, his longtime manager, Joe Glaser, died. By the summer of 1970, Armstrong's doctors pronounced him fit enough to resume live performances. Armstrong embarked on another world tour, but a heart attack forced him to take a break for two months.
Armstrong made his last recorded trumpet performances on his 1968 album Disney Songs the Satchmo Way.
== Personal life ==
=== Pronunciation of name ===
The Louis Armstrong House Museum website states:
Judging from home recorded tapes now in our Museum Collections, Louis pronounced his own name as "Lewis." On his 1964 record "Hello, Dolly", he sings, "This is Lewis, Dolly", but in 1933, he made a record called "Laughin' Louie." Many broadcast announcers, fans, and acquaintances called him "Louie", and in a videotaped interview from 1983, Lucille Armstrong calls her late husband "Louie" as well. Musicians and close friends usually called him "Pops".
In a memoir written for Robert Goffin between 1943 and 1944, Armstrong stated, "All white folks call me Louie", suggesting that he himself did not, or that no whites addressed him by one of his nicknames such as Pops. That said, Armstrong was registered as "Lewie" for the 1920 U.S. census. On various live records, he is called "Louie" on stage, such as on the 1952 "Can Anyone Explain?" from the live album In Scandinavia vol.1. The same applies to his 1952 studio recording of the song "Chloe", where the choir in the background sings "Louie ... Louie", with Armstrong responding, "What was that? Somebody called my name?". "Lewie" is the French pronunciation of "Louis" and is commonly used in Louisiana.
=== Family ===
Armstrong was performing at the Brick House in Gretna, Louisiana when he met Daisy Parker, a local prostitute, and started an affair as a client. Armstrong returned to Gretna on several occasions to visit her. He found the courage to look for her home to see her away from work. There, Armstrong found out she had a common-law husband. Not long after that, Parker traveled to Armstrong's home on Perdido Street and they checked into Kid Green's hotel that evening. On the next day, March 19, 1919, Armstrong and Parker married at City Hall. They adopted a three-year-old boy, Clarence, whose mother, Armstrong's cousin Flora, had died soon after giving birth. Clarence Armstrong was mentally disabled as a result of a head injury at an early age. Armstrong spent the rest of his life taking care of him. His marriage to Parker ended when they separated in 1923.
On February 4, 1924, Armstrong married Lil Hardin Armstrong, King Oliver's pianist. She had divorced her first husband a few years earlier. Armstrong's second wife helped him develop his career, but they separated in 1931 and divorced in 1938. Armstrong then married Alpha Smith. His relationship with Alpha began while he was playing at the Vendome during the 1920s and continued long after. Armstrong's marriage to her lasted four years; they divorced in 1942. He then married Lucille Wilson, a singer at the Cotton Club in New York, in October 1942. They remained married until his death in 1971.
Armstrong's marriages produced no offspring. However, in December 2012, 57-year-old Sharon Preston-Folta claimed to be his daughter from a 1950s affair between Armstrong and Lucille "Sweets" Preston, a dancer at the Cotton Club. In a 1955 letter to his manager, Joe Glaser, Armstrong affirmed his belief that Preston's newborn baby was his daughter, and ordered Glaser to pay a monthly allowance of $400 ($5,869 in 2024 dollars) to mother and child.
=== Personality ===
Armstrong was colorful and charismatic. His autobiography vexed some biographers and historians because Armstrong had a habit of telling tales, particularly about his early childhood when he was less scrutinized, and his embellishments lack consistency.
In addition to being an entertainer, Armstrong was a leading personality. He was beloved by an American public that usually offered little access beyond their public celebrity to even the most significant black performers, and Armstrong was able to live a private life of access and privilege afforded to few other black Americans during that era.
Armstrong generally remained politically neutral, which sometimes alienated him from other black Americans who expected him to use his prominence within white America to become more outspoken during the civil rights movement. However, Armstrong criticized President Eisenhower for not acting forcefully on civil rights.
=== Health problems ===
The trumpet is notoriously hard on the lips, and Armstrong suffered from lip damage over most of his life. This was due to Armstrong's aggressive playing style and preference for narrow mouthpieces that would stay in place more easily but tended to dig into the soft flesh of his inner lip. During his 1930s European tour, Armstrong suffered an ulceration so severe that he had to stop playing entirely for a year. Eventually, Armstrong took to using salves and creams on his lips and also cutting off scar tissue with a razor blade. By the 1950s, Armstrong was an official spokesman for Ansatz-Creme Lip Salve.
During a backstage meeting with trombonist Marshall Brown in 1959, Armstrong was advised to see a doctor and receive proper treatment for his lips instead of relying on home remedies. However, Armstrong did not get around to that until his final years, by which point his health was failing, and the doctors considered surgery too risky.
In 1959, Armstrong was hospitalized for pneumonia while on tour in Italy. Doctors were concerned about his lungs and heart, but by the end of June, Armstrong rallied on.
=== Nicknames ===
The nicknames "Satchmo" and "Satch" are short for "Satchelmouth". The nickname origin is uncertain. The most common tale that biographers tell is the story of Armstrong as a young boy in New Orleans dancing for pennies. He scooped the coins off the street and stuck them into his mouth to prevent bigger children from stealing them. Someone dubbed Armstrong "satchel mouth" for his mouth acting as a satchel. Another tale is that because of his large mouth, Armstrong was nicknamed "satchel mouth", which was shortened to "Satchmo."
Early on, Armstrong was also known as "Dipper", short for "Dippermouth", a reference to the piece Dippermouth Blues and something of a riff on his unusual embouchure.
The nickname "Pops" came from Armstrong's own tendency to forget people's names and simply call them "Pops" instead. The nickname was turned on Armstrong himself. It was used as the title of a 2010 biography of Armstrong by Terry Teachout.
After a competition at the Savoy, he was crowned and nicknamed "King Menelik", after the Emperor of Ethiopia, for slaying "ofay jazz demons."
=== Race ===
Armstrong celebrated his heritage as a black man from a poor New Orleans neighborhood and tried to avoid what he called "putting on airs." Many younger black musicians criticized Armstrong for playing in front of segregated audiences and for not taking a stronger stand in the American civil rights movement. When Armstrong did speak out, it made national news. In 1957, journalism student Larry Lubenow scored a candid interview with Armstrong while the musician was performing in Grand Forks, North Dakota, shortly after the conflict over school desegregation in Little Rock, Arkansas. Armstrong denounced both Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus and President Dwight D. Eisenhower, saying the President had "no guts" and was "two-faced." Armstrong told his interviewer that he would cancel a planned tour of the Soviet Union on behalf of the State Department, saying, "The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell"; he could not represent his government abroad when it was in conflict with its own people. The FBI kept a file on Armstrong for his outspokenness about integration. Armstrong’s outburst drew both praise and backlash; figures like Jackie Robinson and Lena Horne publicly supported him, while a Mississippi radio station banned his records. His longtime road manager, Pierre Tallerie, attempted to walk back Armstrong’s comments to the press, prompting a sharp public rebuke from Armstrong, who nearly fired Tallerie and insisted on speaking for himself going forward.
=== Religion ===
When asked about his religion, Armstrong answered that he was raised a Baptist, always wore a Star of David, and was friends with the pope. Armstrong wore the Star of David in honor of the Karnoffsky family who took him in as a child and lent him money to buy his first cornet. Armstrong was baptized a Catholic in the Sacred Heart of Jesus Church in New Orleans, and he met Pope Pius XII and Pope Paul VI.
=== Personal habits ===
Armstrong was concerned with his health. Armstrong used laxatives to control his weight, a practice he advocated both to acquaintances and in the diet plans he published under the title Lose Weight the Satchmo Way. Armstrong's laxative of preference in his younger days was Pluto Water, but when he discovered the herbal remedy Swiss Kriss, he became an enthusiastic convert, extolling its virtues to anyone who would listen and passing out packets to everyone he encountered, including members of the British royal family.
Armstrong also appeared in humorous risqué cards that he had printed to send to friends. The cards bore a picture of Armstrong sitting on a toilet—as viewed through a keyhole—with the slogan "Satch says, 'Leave it all behind ya!'" The cards have sometimes been incorrectly described as ads for Swiss Kriss. In a live recording of "Baby, It's Cold Outside" with Velma Middleton, he changes the lyric from "Put another record on while I pour" to "Take some Swiss Kriss while I pour." Armstrong's laxative use began as a child when his mother would collect dandelions and peppergrass around the railroad tracks to give to her children for their health.
Armstrong was a heavy marijuana smoker for much of his life and spent nine days in jail in 1930 after being arrested outside a club for drug possession. Armstrong described marijuana as "a thousand times better than whiskey."
Armstrong's concern with his health and weight was balanced by his love of food, reflected in such songs as "Cheesecake", "Cornet Chop Suey", and "Struttin' with Some Barbecue", though the latter was written about a fine-looking companion, and not food. Armstrong kept a strong connection throughout his life to the cooking of New Orleans, always signing his letters, "Red beans and ricely yours ...".
A fan of Major League Baseball, Armstrong founded a team in New Orleans that was known as Raggedy Nine and transformed the team into his Armstrong's "Secret Nine Baseball."
=== Writings ===
Armstrong's gregariousness extended to writing. On the road, he wrote constantly, sharing favorite themes of his life with correspondents around the world. Armstrong avidly typed or wrote on whatever stationery was at hand, recording instant takes on music, sex, food, childhood memories, his heavy "medicinal" marijuana use, and even his bowel movements, which Armstrong gleefully described.
=== Social organizations ===
Louis Armstrong was not, as claimed, a Freemason. Although he has been cited as a Montgomery Lodge No. 18 (Prince Hall) member in New York, no such lodge ever existed. In his autobiography, Armstrong stated that he was a member of the Knights of Pythias of North America, South America, Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia, an African American non-Masonic fraternal organization. During the krewe's 1949 Mardi Gras parade, Armstrong presided as King of the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club, for which he was featured on the cover of Time magazine.
== Music ==
=== Horn playing and early jazz ===
In his early years, Armstrong was best known for his virtuosity with the cornet and trumpet. Along with his "clarinet-like figurations and high notes in his cornet solos", Armstrong was also known for his "intense rhythmic 'swing', a complex conception involving accented upbeats, upbeat to downbeat slurring, and complementary relations among rhythmic patterns. The most lauded recordings on which Armstrong plays trumpet include the Hot Five and Hot Seven sessions, as well as those of the Red Onion Jazz Babies. Armstrong's improvisations, while unconventionally sophisticated for that era, were also subtle and highly melodic. The solo that Armstrong plays during the song "Potato Head Blues" has long been considered his best solo of that series.
Prior to Armstrong, most collective ensembles playing in jazz, along with its occasional solos, simply varied the melodies of the songs. He was virtually the first to create significant variations based on the chord harmonies of the songs instead of merely on the melodies. This opened a rich field for creation and improvisation, and significantly changed the music into a soloist's art form.
Often, Armstrong re-composed pop tunes he played, simply with variations that made them more compelling to jazz listeners of the era. At the same time, Armstrong's oeuvre includes many original melodies, creative leaps, and relaxed or driving rhythms. His playing technique, honed by constant practice, extended the range, tone, and capabilities of the trumpet. In his records, Armstrong almost single-handedly created the role of the jazz soloist, taking what had been essentially a piece of collective folk music and turning it into an art form with tremendous possibilities for individual expression.
Armstrong was one of the first artists to use recordings of his performances to improve himself. Armstrong was an avid audiophile. He had a large collection of recordings, including reel-to-reel tapes, which he took on the road with him in a trunk during his later career. Armstrong enjoyed listening to his own recordings, and comparing his performances musically. In the den of his home, Armstrong had the latest audio equipment and would sometimes rehearse and record along with his older recordings or the radio.
=== Vocal popularity ===
As Armstrong's music progressed and popularity grew, his singing also became very important. Armstrong was not the first to record scat singing, but he was masterful at it and helped popularize it with the first recording on which he scatted, "Heebie Jeebies." At a recording session for Okeh Records, when the sheet music supposedly fell on the floor, and the music began before Armstrong could pick up the pages, he simply started singing nonsense syllables while Okeh President E.A. Fearn, who was at the session, kept telling him to continue. Armstrong did, thinking the track would be discarded, but that was the version that was pressed to disc, sold, and became an unexpected hit. Although the story was thought to be apocryphal, Armstrong himself confirmed it in at least one interview as well as in his memoirs. On a later recording, Armstrong also sang out "I done forgot the words" in the middle of recording "I'm A Ding Dong Daddy From Dumas."
Such records were hits, and scat singing became a major part of his performances. Long before this, Armstrong was playing around with his vocals, shortening and lengthening phrases, interjecting improvisations, and using his voice as creatively as his trumpet. Armstrong once told Cab Calloway that his scat style was derived "from the Jews rockin", an Orthodox Jewish style of chanting during prayer.
=== Composing ===
Armstrong was a gifted composer who wrote more than 50 songs, some of which have become jazz standards (e.g., "Gully Low Blues", "Potato Head Blues", and "Swing That Music").
=== Colleagues and followers ===
During his long career, Armstrong played and sang with some of the most important instrumentalists and vocalists of the time, including Bing Crosby, Duke Ellington, Fletcher Henderson, Earl Hines, Jimmie Rodgers, Bessie Smith, and Ella Fitzgerald. His influence upon Crosby is particularly important with regard to the subsequent development of popular music. Crosby admired and copied Armstrong, as is evident on many of his early recordings, notably "Just One More Chance" (1931). The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz describes Crosby's debt to Armstrong in precise detail, although it does not acknowledge Armstrong by name:
Crosby ... was important in introducing into the mainstream of popular singing an Afro-American concept of song as a lyrical extension of speech ... His techniques—easing the weight of the breath on the vocal cords, passing into a head voice at a low register, using forward production to aid distinct enunciation, singing on consonants (a practice of black singers), and making discreet use of appoggiaturas, mordents, and slurs to emphasize the text—were emulated by nearly all later popular singers.
Armstrong recorded two albums with Ella Fitzgerald, Ella and Louis and Ella and Louis Again, for Verve Records. The sessions featured the backing musicianship of the Oscar Peterson Trio with drummer Buddy Rich on the first album and Louie Bellson on the second. Norman Granz then had the vision for Ella and Louis to record Porgy and Bess.
Armstrong's two recordings for Columbia Records, Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1954) and Satch Plays Fats (all Fats Waller tunes) (1955), were both considered masterpieces, as well as moderately well selling. In 1961, the All-Stars participated in two albums, The Great Summit and The Great Reunion (now together as a single disc) with Duke Ellington. The albums feature many of Ellington's most famous compositions (as well as two exclusive cuts) with Duke sitting in on piano. Armstrong's participation in Dave Brubeck's high-concept jazz musical The Real Ambassadors (1963) was critically acclaimed and features "Summer Song", one of Armstrong's most popular vocal efforts.
In the week beginning May 9, 1964, Armstrong's recording of the song "Hello, Dolly!" went to number one. An album of the same title was quickly created around the song, and also shot to number one, knocking The Beatles off the top of the chart. The album sold very well for the rest of the year, quickly going "Gold" (500,000). His performance of "Hello, Dolly!" won for best male pop vocal performance at the 1964 Grammy Awards.
=== Hits and later career ===
Armstrong had 19 "Top Ten" records including "Stardust", "What a Wonderful World", "When The Saints Go Marching In", "Dream a Little Dream of Me", "Ain't Misbehavin'", "You Rascal You", and "Stompin' at the Savoy". "We Have All the Time in the World" was featured on the soundtrack of the James Bond film On Her Majesty's Secret Service, and enjoyed renewed popularity in the UK in 1994 when it was featured on a Guinness advertisement. It reached number 3 in the charts on being re-released.
In 1964, Armstrong knocked The Beatles off the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart with "Hello, Dolly!", which gave the 63-year-old performer a U.S. record as the oldest artist to have a number one song. His 1964 song "Bout Time" was later featured in the film Bewitched.
In February 1968, Armstrong appeared with Lara Saint Paul on the Italian RAI television channel, where he performed "Grassa e Bella", a track Armstrong sang in Italian for the Italian market and C.D.I. label.
In 1968, Armstrong scored one last popular hit in the UK with "What a Wonderful World", which topped the British charts for a month. Armstrong appeared on the October 28, 1970, Johnny Cash Show, where he sang Nat King Cole's hit "Ramblin' Rose" and joined Cash to re-create his performance backing Jimmie Rodgers on "Blue Yodel No. 9".
=== Stylistic range ===
Armstrong enjoyed many types of music, from blues to the arrangements of Guy Lombardo, to Latin American folksongs, to classical symphonies and opera. Armstrong incorporated influences from all these sources into his performances, sometimes to the bewilderment of fans who wanted him to stay in convenient narrow categories. Armstrong was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as an early influence. Some of his solos from the 1950s, such as the hard rocking version of "St. Louis Blues" from the WC Handy album, show that the influence went in both directions.
== Film, television, and radio ==
Armstrong appeared in more than a dozen Hollywood films, usually playing a bandleader or musician. His most familiar role was as the bandleader cum narrator in the 1956 musical High Society, starring Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly, Frank Sinatra, and Celeste Holm. Armstrong appears throughout the film, sings the title song, and performs the duet "Now You Has Jazz" with Crosby. In 1947, Armstrong played himself in the movie New Orleans opposite Billie Holiday, which chronicled the demise of the Storyville district and the ensuing exodus of musicians from New Orleans to Chicago. In the 1959 film The Five Pennies, Armstrong played himself, sang, and played several classic numbers. He performed a duet of "When the Saints Go Marching In" with Danny Kaye, during which Kaye impersonated Armstrong. He had a part in the film alongside James Stewart in The Glenn Miller Story.
In 1937, Armstrong was the first African American to host a nationally broadcast radio show. In 1969, he had a cameo role in Gene Kelly's film version of Hello, Dolly! as the bandleader Louis where he sang the title song with actress Barbra Streisand. Armstrong's solo recording of "Hello, Dolly!" is one of his most recognizable performances. Armstrong was heard on such radio programs as The Story of Swing (1937) and This Is Jazz (1947), and he also made television appearances, especially in the 1950s and 1960s, including appearances on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.
In 1949, Armstrong's life was dramatized by scriptwriter Richard Durham in the Chicago WMAQ radio series Destination Freedom.
Argentine writer Julio Cortázar, a self-described Armstrong admirer, asserted that a 1952 Louis Armstrong concert at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris played a significant role in inspiring him to create the fictional creatures called Cronopios that are the subject of a number of Cortázar's short stories. Cortázar once called Armstrong himself "Grandísimo Cronopio" (The Great Cronopio).
There is a pivotal scene in Stardust Memories (1980) in which Woody Allen is overwhelmed by a recording of Armstrong's "Stardust" and experiences a nostalgic epiphany.
In 2022, Armstrong was subject of the documentary film Louis Armstrong's Black & Blues.
== Death ==
Against his doctor's advice, Armstrong played a two-week engagement in March 1971 at the Waldorf-Astoria's Empire Room. At the end of it, he was hospitalized for a heart attack. Armstrong was released from the hospital in May and quickly resumed practicing his trumpet playing. Still hoping to get back on the road, Armstrong died of a heart attack in his sleep on July 6, 1971. Armstrong was residing in Corona, Queens, New York City, at the time of his death.
Armstrong was interred in Flushing Cemetery, Flushing, in Queens, New York City.
His honorary pallbearers included Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Pearl Bailey, Count Basie, Harry James, Frank Sinatra, Ed Sullivan, Earl Wilson, Benny Goodman, Alan King, Johnny Carson and David Frost. Peggy Lee sang "The Lord's Prayer" at the services while Al Hibbler sang "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen" and Fred Robbins, a long-time friend, gave the eulogy.
== Awards and honors ==
=== Grammy Awards ===
Armstrong was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1972 by the Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. This Special Merit Award is presented by vote of the Recording Academy's National Trustees to performers who, during their lifetimes, have made creative contributions of outstanding artistic significance to the recording field.
=== Grammy Hall of Fame ===
Recordings of Armstrong were inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame, which is a special Grammy award established in 1973 to honor recordings that are at least 25 years old and that have "qualitative or historical significance."
=== Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ===
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listed Armstrong's "West End Blues" on the list of 500 songs that shaped Rock and Roll.
=== Inductions and honors ===
In 1995, the U.S. Post Office issued a Louis Armstrong 32-cent commemorative postage stamp.
=== Film honors ===
In 1999, Armstrong was nominated for inclusion in the American Film Institute's 100 Years ... 100 Stars.
== Legacy ==
In 1950, Bing Crosby, the most successful vocalist of the first half of the 20th century, said, "He is the beginning and the end of music in America." Duke Ellington, DownBeat magazine in 1971, said, "If anybody was a master, it was Louis Armstrong. He was and will continue to be the embodiment of jazz." Though Armstrong is widely recognized as a pioneer of scat singing, Ethel Waters and others preceded his scatting on record in the 1920s according to Gary Giddins and others.
According to literary critic Harold Bloom, "The two great American contributions to the world's art, in the end, are Walt Whitman and, after him, Armstrong and jazz ... If I had to choose between the two, ultimately, I wouldn't. I would say that the genius of this nation at its best is indeed Walt Whitman and Louis Armstrong".
In 2023, Rolling Stone ranked Armstrong at No. 39 on their list of the 200 Greatest Singers of All Time.
In 1991, an asteroid was named 9179 Satchmo in Armstrong's honor. In the summer of 2001, in commemoration of the centennial of his birth, New Orleans's main airport was renamed Louis Armstrong New Orleans International Airport. The entrance to the airport's former terminal building houses a statue depicting Armstrong playing his cornet. In 2002, the Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven recordings (1925–1928) were preserved in the United States National Recording Registry, a registry of recordings selected yearly by the National Recording Preservation Board for preservation in the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congress. The US Open tennis tournament's former main stadium was named Louis Armstrong Stadium in honor of Armstrong who had lived a few blocks from the site.
Congo Square was a common gathering place for blacks in New Orleans for dancing and performing music. The park where Congo Square is located was later renamed Louis Armstrong Park. Dedicated in April 1980, the park includes a 12-foot (3.7 m) statue of Armstrong, trumpet in hand.
A Wonderful World, a musical based on his life story, had its world premiere run at Miami New Drama from December 4, 2021, to January 16, 2021, after mounting previews beginning March 5, 2020 and canceling opening night (March 14) due to COVID concerns. Mirroring Armstrong's musical journey, the show stars James Monroe Iglehart and makes "pre-Broadway" stops in New Orleans on October 1–8, 2023, and Chicago on October 11–29, 2023. The new musical charts the rise of Armstrong from the perspective of his four wives. It is conceived by Drama Desk Award winner and Tony Award nominee Christopher Renshaw and novelist Andrew Delaplaine, and directed by Renshaw, A Wonderful World features an original book by Aurin Squire. The show will debut on Broadway in 2024.
== The Louis Armstrong House Museum ==
The house where Armstrong lived for almost 28 years was declared a National Historic Landmark and opened to the public for guided tours in 2003. The Louis Armstrong House Museum, at 34–56 107th Street between 34th and 37th avenues in Corona, Queens, presents concerts and educational programs, operates as a historic house museum and makes materials in its archives of writings, books, recordings and memorabilia available to the public for research. The museum is administered by the Queens College, City University of New York, following the dictates of Lucille Armstrong's will and is operated by the nonprofit Louis Armstrong House Museum. The museum opened to the public on October 15, 2003. A new visitors center opened across the street from the Armstrong home in the summer of 2023. The Museum website also includes the digitized Armstrong Archives, searchable to the public 24 hours a day.
== Essential discography ==
The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings
The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935–1946) (Mosaic Records, 2009)
All Stars (Louis Armstrong's Town Hall Concert) (1947)
Struttin' (1947)
Satchmo Serenades (1950)
Satchmo at Pasadena (1951)
Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy (1955)
Louis Armstrong at the Crescendo, Vol. 1 (1955)
Satch Plays Fats (1955)
The Complete Ella Fitzgerald & Louis Armstrong on Verve – contains Ella and Louis, Ella and Louis Again, Porgy and Bess (1997)
Louis and the Angels (1957)
Louis and the Good Book (1958)
Satchmo In Style (1959)
Hello, Dolly! (1964)
== See also ==
Black and tan clubs
Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong collaborations
Little Satchmo, 2022 documentary film
== References ==
== Works cited ==
Armstrong, Louis (1954). Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans. ISBN 0306802767.
Bergreen, Laurence (1997). Louis Armstrong: An Extravagant Life. ISBN 0553067680.
Cogswell, Michael (2003). Armstrong: The Offstage Story. ISBN 1888054816.
Elie, Lolis Eric. A Letter from New Orleans. Originally printed in Gourmet. Reprinted in Best Food Writing 2006, ed. by Holly Hughes, Da Capo Press, 2006. ISBN 1569242879.
Teachout, Terry (2009). Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong. ISBN 978-0151010899.
== Further readings ==
Brothers, Thomas (2006). Louis Armstrong's New Orleans, New York, N.Y. W. W. Norton & Company
Brothers, Thomas (2014). Louis Armstrong: Master of Modernism. New York: W. W. Norton & Company
Giddins, Gary (1988). Satchmo: The Genius of Louis Armstrong. Da Capo Press
Jones, Max, and Chilton, John (1988). Louis: The Louis Armstrong Story, 1900–1971. Da Capo Press. ISBN 978-0306803246.
Riccardi, Ricky (2012). What a Wonderful World: The Magic of Louis Armstrong's Later Years. New York: Vintage. ISBN 9780307473295. OCLC 798285020.
—— (2020). Heart Full of Rhythm: The Big Band Years of Louis Armstrong. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780190914110. OCLC 1137836373.
—— (2025). Stomp off, Let's Go: The Early Years of Louis Armstrong. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780197614488. OCLC 1427941152.
Storb, Ilse (1999). Louis Armstrong: The Definitive Biography. ISBN 0820431036.
Willems, Jos (2006). All of Me: The Complete Discography of Louis Armstrong. Scarecrow Press. ISBN 978-0810857308.
== External links ==
Louis Armstrong House Museum
Louis Armstrong at IMDb
Louis Armstrong discography at Discogs
Louis Armstrong collected news and commentary at The New York Times |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Young_British_Artists#:~:text=In%201992%2C%20Charles%20Saatchi%20staged,Rachel%20Whiteread%20and%20Damien%20Hirst. | Young British Artists | The Young British Artists, or YBAs—also referred to as Brit artists and Britart—is a loose group of visual artists who first began to exhibit together in London in 1988. Many of the YBA artists graduated from the BA Fine Art course at Goldsmiths, in the late 1980s, whereas some from the group had trained at Royal College of Art.
The scene began around a series of artist-led exhibitions held in warehouses and factories, beginning in 1988 with the Damien Hirst-led Freeze and, in 1990, East Country Yard Show and Modern Medicine.
They are noted for "shock tactics", use of throwaway materials, wild living, and an attitude "both oppositional and entrepreneurial". They achieved considerable media coverage and dominated British art during the 1990s; internationally reviewed shows in the mid-1990s included Brilliant! and Sensation.
Many of the artists were initially supported and their works collected by Charles Saatchi. One notable exception is Angus Fairhurst. Leading artists of the group include Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin. Key works include Hirst's The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a shark preserved in formaldehyde in a vitrine, and Emin's My Bed, a dishevelled double bed surrounded by detritus.
== Origin ==
There is some disagreement as to the first use of the term "young British artists." Tate claims that it was Michael Corris in a footnote in Artforum, May 1992, Others claim that it was Saatchi who had already entitled his exhibition Young British Artists I in March 1992. The acronym "YBA" (or "yBa") was not coined until 1994. It has become a historic term, as most of the YBAs were born in the mid-1960s.
=== YBA artists ===
The core of the YBA group graduated from the Goldsmiths BA Fine Art degree course in the classes of 1987–90. Liam Gillick, Fiona Rae, Steve Park and Sarah Lucas, were graduates in the class of 1987. Ian Davenport, Michael Landy, Gary Hume, Anya Gallaccio, Lala Meredith-Vula, Henry Bond, Angela Bulloch, were graduates in the class of 1988; Damien Hirst, Angus Fairhurst, Mat Collishaw, Simon Patterson, and Abigail Lane, were graduates from the class of 1989; whilst Gillian Wearing, and Sam Taylor-Wood, were graduates from the class of 1990, and Jason Martin was graduated with the class of 1993. During the years 1987–1990, the teaching staff on the Goldsmiths BA Fine Art included Jon Thompson, Richard Wentworth, Michael Craig-Martin, Ian Jeffrey, Helen Chadwick, Mark Wallinger, Judith Cowan and Glen Baxter.
Gavin Turk and Mark Francis are also part of the YBA group of artists. Turk and Francis studied at Chelsea School of Art from 1986 to 1989, and at the Royal College of Art from 1989 to 1991. Turk and Francis exhibited work in the Saatchi Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy.
=== Freeze ===
A group of sixteen Goldsmiths students took part in a group exhibition of art, called Freeze, of which Damien Hirst became the main organiser; he was still in the second year of a BA in Fine Art.
Commercial galleries had shown a lack of interest in the project, and it was held in a cheap non-art space, a London Docklands admin block (usually referred to as a warehouse). The event resonated with the 'Acid house' warehouse rave scene prevalent at the time, but did not achieve any major press exposure. One of its effects was to set an example of artist-as-curator—in the mid-1990s artist-run exhibition spaces and galleries became a feature of the London arts scene.
=== Other shows ===
There was a less prominent predecessor organized by artist Angus Fairhurst, featuring himself, Damien Hirst, Abigail Lane, and Mat Collishaw in a small show called Progress by Degree at the Bloomsbury Gallery of the University of London (Institute of Education) shortly before Freeze.
In liaison with Hirst, Carl Freedman (who had been friends with him in Leeds before Hirst moved to London and was helping to make Hirst's vitrines) and Billee Sellman then curated two influential "warehouse" shows in 1990, Modern Medicine and Gambler, in a Bermondsey former factory they designated Building One. To stage Modern Medicine they raised £1,000 sponsorships from artworld figures including Charles Saatchi. Freedman has spoken openly about the self-fulfilling prophecy these sponsors helped to create, and also commented that not many people attended these early shows, including Freeze.
In 1990, Henry Bond and Sarah Lucas organised the East Country Yard Show in a disused warehouse in London Docklands which was installed over four floors and 16,000m2 of exhibition space. Writing in The Independent, art critic Andrew Graham-Dixon said:"Goldsmiths graduates are unembarrassed about promoting themselves and their work: some of the most striking exhibitions in London over the past few months—"The East Country Yard Show", or "Gambler", both staged in docklands—have been independently organized and funded by Goldsmiths graduates as showcases for their work. This has given them a reputation for pushiness, yet it should also be said that in terms of ambition, attention to display and sheer bravado there has been little to match such shows in the country's established contemporary art institutions. They were far superior, for instance, to any of the contemporary art shows that have been staged by the Liverpool Tate in its own multi-million-pound dockland site."
Established alternative spaces such as City Racing at the Oval in London and Milch gave many artists their first exposure. There was much embryonic activity in the Hoxton/Shoreditch area of East London focused on Joshua Compston's gallery. In 1991, the Serpentine Gallery presented a survey of this group of artists with the exhibition Broken English. In 1992, Charles Saatchi staged a series of exhibitions of Young British Art, the first show included works by Sarah Lucas, Rachel Whiteread and Damien Hirst.
A second wave of Young British Artists appeared in 1992–1993 through exhibitions such as New Contemporaries, New British Summertime and Minky Manky (curated by Carl Freedman). This included Douglas Gordon, Christine Borland, Fiona Banner, Tracey Emin, Tacita Dean, Georgina Starr and Jane and Louise Wilson. One exhibition which included several of the YBA artists was the 1995 quin-annual British Art Show.
== Revitalization of British art scene ==
The Young British Artists revitalised (and in some cases spawned) a whole new generation of contemporary commercial galleries such as Karsten Schubert, Sadie Coles, Victoria Miro, Maureen Paley's Interim Art, and Jay Jopling's White Cube. The spread of interest improved the market for contemporary British art magazines through increased advertising and circulation. Frieze launched in 1991 embraced the YBAs from the start while established publications such as Art Monthly, Art Review, Modern Painters and Contemporary Art were all re-launched with more focus on emerging British artists.
=== Charles Saatchi's involvement ===
One of the visitors to Freeze was Charles Saatchi, a major contemporary art collector and co-founder of Saatchi and Saatchi, the London advertising agency. Saatchi then visited Gambler in a green Rolls-Royce and, according to Freedman, stood open-mouthed with astonishment in front of (and then bought) Hirst's first major "animal" installation, A Thousand Years, consisting of a large glass case containing maggots and flies feeding off a rotting cow's head. (The installation was later a notable feature of the Sensation exhibition.)
Saatchi became not only Hirst's main collector, but also the main sponsor for other YBAs–a fact openly acknowledged by Gavin Turk. The contemporary art market in London had dramatically collapsed in mid-1990 due to a major economic recession, and many commercial contemporary galleries had gone out of business. Saatchi had until this time collected mostly American and German contemporary art, some by young artists, but most by already established ones.
His collection was publicly exhibited in a series of shows in a large converted paint factory building in St John's Wood, north London. Saatchi's Gallery inspired young artists to produce large concept artworks that would not fit in the usually small galleries in London at that time. Previous Saatchi Gallery shows had included such major figures as Warhol, Guston, Alex Katz, Serra, Kiefer, Polke, Richter and many more. In the early-1990s, Saatchi altered his focus to emerging British art.
Saatchi put on a series of shows called Young British Artists starting in 1992, when a noted exhibit was Damien Hirst's "shark" (The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living), which became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s, and the symbol of Britart worldwide. In addition to (and as a direct result of) Saatchi's patronage, the Young British Artists benefited from intense media coverage. This was augmented by controversy surrounding the annual Turner Prize, (one of Britain's few major awards for contemporary artists), which had several of the artists as nominees or winners. Channel 4 had become a sponsor of the competition, leading to television profiles of the artists in prime-time slots.
== Becoming the establishment ==
The consolidation of the artists' status began in 1995 with a large-scale group exhibition Brilliant! held at the Walker Art Center a respected art museum in Minneapolis, USA. The term "yBa" was already used in 1994 and later used by Simon Ford in a feature "Myth Making" in March 1996 in Art Monthly magazine.
Art dealer Jay Jopling began to represent YBAs Jake & Dinos Chapman, Tracey Emin, Marcus Harvey, Damien Hirst, Gary Hume, Marc Quinn, Gavin Turk and Sam Taylor-Wood, whom he married in 1998. Before Jopling, Karsten Schubert was the most important dealer of artists that were later called YBAs. Shortly after Freeze he exhibited Ian Davenport, Gary Hume, and Michael Landy in November 1988, who all exhibited in Freeze, in his gallery.
In 1997, the Royal Academy staged an exhibition of the private art collection of Charles Saatchi titled Sensation, which included many works by YBA artists.
The exhibition was actually a showing of Charles Saatchi's private collection of their work, and he owned the major pieces. The liaison was effected by the Academy's Norman Rosenthal, even though there was strong opposition from some of the Academicians, three of whom resigned. Controversy engendered in the media about the show, particularly over Marcus Harvey's work Myra, served to reinforce the YBAs' importance. When the show toured to New York there was further controversy caused by the inclusion of Chris Ofili's work The Holy Virgin Mary (1996).
== The YBAs since 1992 ==
In 1997, Gillian Wearing won the annual Turner Prize. In 1998, Chris Ofili won the annual Turner Prize.
In 1999, Tracey Emin was nominated for the Turner Prize. Her main exhibit, My Bed, consisting literally of her dishevelled, stained bed, surrounded by detritus including condoms, slippers and soiled underwear, created an immediate and lasting media impact and further heightened her prominence. The emergence at the same time of an anti-YBA group, The Stuckists, co-founded by her ex boyfriend, Billy Childish, gave another angle to media coverage.
In 2003, YBAs Jake and Dinos Chapman and Anya Gallaccio were nominated for the annual Turner Prize.
On 24 May 2004, a fire in a storage warehouse destroyed some works from the Saatchi collection, including the Chapman Brothers' Hell and Tracey Emin's "tent", Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995.
In 2008, YBA Angus Fairhurst died by suicide.
In the 2011 Birthday Honours List, Sam Taylor-Wood and Gillian Wearing were appointed to the Order of the British Empire by Queen Elizabeth II.
=== Elected Royal Academicians ===
Several of the YBAs have been elected as lifetime members of the Royal Academy of Arts in London (founded by George III in 1768); hence they are "Royal Academicians," and may use the letters "RA" after their name to indicate this.
Gary Hume elected 24 May 2001
Fiona Rae elected 28 May 2002
Tracey Emin elected 27 March 2007
Jenny Saville elected July 2007
Gillian Wearing elected 11 December 2007
Michael Landy elected 29 May 2008
Tacita Dean elected 9 December 2008
=== Doctorates ===
2004: Gillian Wearing - Honorary Doctorate from the University for the Creative Arts
2007: Henry Bond - Doctorate from the University of Gloucestershire
2007: Tracey Emin - Honorary Doctorates from the Royal College of Art and London Metropolitan University
2010: Fiona Banner - Honorary Doctorate from Kingston University
== Reaction ==
=== Positive ===
Richard Cork (at one time art critic of The Times) has been a staunch advocate of the artists, as has art writer Louisa Buck, and former Time Out art editor, Sarah Kent. Sir Nicholas Serota has validated the artists by the nomination of several of them for the Turner Prize and their inclusion in the Tate collection.
Maureen Paley said, "The thing that came out of the YBA generation was boldness, a belief that you can get away with anything."
Speaking in 2009, Iwona Blazwick, the director of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, said, "The YBA moment is definitely now dead, but anyone who thinks they were a cut-off point is wrong. They began something which has continued to grow ever since. It's not over."
=== Negative ===
In 1998, John Windsor in The Independent said that the work of the YBAs seemed tame compared with that of the "shock art" of the 1970s, including "kinky outrages" at the Nicholas Treadwell Gallery, amongst which were a "hanging, anatomically detailed leather straitjacket, complete with genitals", titled Pink Crucifixion, by Mandy Havers.
In 1999 the Stuckists art group was founded with an overt anti-YBA agenda. In 2002 Britart was heavily criticised by the leading conductor Sir Simon Rattle, who was, in return, accused of having a poor understanding of conceptual and visual art.
Playwright Tom Stoppard made a public denunciation, and Brian Sewell (art critic of the Evening Standard) was consistently hostile, as was David Lee, the editor of Jackdaw.
Rolf Harris, the television presenter and artist, singled out Tracey Emin's My Bed as the kind of installation that put people off art. "I don't see how getting out of bed and leaving the bed unmade and putting it on show and saying that's worth, I don't know £31,000 ... I don't believe it, I think it's a con."
For James Heartfield, "The 1990s art boom encouraged sloppiness. The Young British Artists preferred the inspired gesture to patient work. They added public outrage to their palettes, only to find that it faded very quickly."
Members of the group are parodied in a regular cartoon strip by Birch, titled "Young British Artists", in the British satirical magazine Private Eye. The scene is also parodied in Jilly Cooper's 2002 bonkbuster Pandora.
=== Feminism within the YBAs ===
Female artists were distinctly a minority amongst the male dominated environment of the Young British Artists. Individuals such as Sarah Lucas, Jenny Saville and Rachel Whiteread have varied levels of neglect within their media portrayals, as well as incomparable in notoriety to male YBA peers such as Hirst.
The University of Sussex's Art Society Journal describes how feminists in the 1980s influenced the female members of the Young British Artists' artwork through the strategy of subverting feminine stereotypes. Other discourse around female YBA work include a discussion of Rachel Whiteread's sculpture practice. Whiteread has been said to disrupt the 'clear' concept of women making 'female work'. Her work Nine Tables attempts to exist within a third space, where the forms can't be physically gendered, but still viewed as a feminine objects. Daniel Ogilivie has expressed how Judith Butler's concept of which "…the mere act of 'doing', of casting the object, that expresses the gender and it is not any anthropomorphic association in the artwork itself," creates the feminine within Whiteread's work.
With the prevalence of feminist ideology in society and the contemporary art, critics have argued that female artists like Jenny Saville in the 1990s investigated the contrived idea of 'feminity' made by the Patriarchal Structure. While attending art school in Cincinnati, Saville's feminist passion was conceived through a realisation of gender within art history. In her own words, she discovered that, "I'd always wondered why there had been no women artists in history. I found there had been – but not reported. I realized I'd been affected by male ideas, going through a male-dominated art college". Now consciously aware of institutional patriarchy, Saville began to paint female nudes that were not idealised. Rather than continue the recognised historical male view of female bodies, Saville created depictions of natural women with genuine flaws. Pubic hair trailing up stomachs and around thighs, discoloured skin and areas of excess flesh. Deconstructing the feminine body, Saville has stated that, "I'm not trying to teach, just make people discuss, look at how women have been made by man. What is beauty? Beauty is usually the male image of the female body. My women are beautiful in their individuality."
== Artists exhibited in Freeze ==
Steven Adamson
Angela Bulloch
Mat Collishaw
Ian Davenport
Angus Fairhurst
Anya Gallaccio
Damien Hirst
Gary Hume
Michael Landy
Abigail Lane
Sarah Lucas
Lala Meredith-Vula
Richard Patterson
Stephen Park
Fiona Rae
Simon Patterson
== Artists exhibited in Brilliant! ==
Henry Bond
Glenn Brown
Jake and Dinos Chapman
Adam Chodzko
Mat Collishaw
Tracey Emin
Angus Fairhurst
Anya Gallaccio
Liam Gillick
Damien Hirst
Gary Hume
Michael Landy
Abigail Lane
Sarah Lucas
Chris Ofili
Steven Pippin
Alessandro Raho
Georgina Starr
Sam Taylor-Wood
Gillian Wearing
Rachel Whiteread
== Other YBAs ==
Fiona Banner
Christine Borland
Tacita Dean
Douglas Gordon
Marcus Harvey
David Leapman
Jason Martin
Marc Quinn
Gavin Turk
Jane and Louise Wilson
Jenny Saville
== References ==
== External links ==
Letter from London: Sensation, contemporaneous review of the exhibition
Artisan autour de moi
Flashing Emin,Critical Analysis of "Spectacular" Contemporary Arts by Kubilay Akman
The British Avant-Garde: A Philosophical Analysis, Deborah Fitzgerald, Furman University |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erika_Fuchs | Erika Fuchs | Erika Fuchs, née Petri (7 December 1906 – 22 April 2005), was a German translator. She is largely known in Germany for her major involvement in the localization process of American Disney comics, especially Carl Barks' stories about Duckburg and its inhabitants, as well the effects on the German language as a whole caused thereby.
Both her grammatical innovations and adaptation of classical literary features into modern pop-cultural works have been recognized as positive contributions to contemporary used language and to the image of comics as media in Germany, having played a major part in delegitimizing public perception of said comics as low-quality pulp fiction. Fuchs' widely quoted translations have further been described standing in the tradition of great German-language light poetry such as the works of Heinrich Heine, Wilhelm Busch, and Kurt Tucholsky. She has been emblematically quoted as saying "You can't be educated enough to translate comic books", reflecting her high standards for localization work.
== Life ==
Johanne Theodolinde Erika Petri was born on 7 December 1906 in Rostock as the second of six children of electrical engineer August Petri and his wife Auguste. Erika spent most of her childhood and youth in Belgard, a small rural town in Pomerania, where her father became director of the newly-built electric power plant in 1911. In 1922, Erika Petri became the first girl ever to be admitted to the town's boys' Gymnasium, passing her Abitur exam there in 1926. She went on to study art history in Lausanne, Munich and London and graduated with a doctorate in 1931. Her dissertation titled "Johann Michael Feuchtmayr: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte des deutschen Rokoko" ("A contribution to the history of German Rococo)" was marked magna cum laude. It appeared in print only in 1935. In 1932, Erika Petri married engineer, industrialist and inventor Günter Fuchs (1907-1984). From 1933 to 1984, the couple lived in Schwarzenbach an der Saale, a small industrial town in Upper Franconia. They had two sons, Thomas and Nikolaus.
Following World War II, Erika Fuchs worked as a translator for the German edition of Reader's Digest, as well as for German literary magazine 'Story', published by Rowohlt Verlag since 1946. In 1951, she became chief editor of Disney's newly-formed German Micky Maus magazine, where she continued to work until her retirement in 1988.
After the death of her husband in 1984, Erika Fuchs moved to Munich, where she died on 22 April 2005.
== Work ==
Many of her creations as translator of Carl Barks comics entered or reentered German in contemporary use. The phrase "Dem Ingeniör ist nichts zu schwör" ("nothing is too hard for an engineer"), but with the vowels (umlauts) at the end of "Ingenieur" and "schwer" altered to make them rhyme was often attributed to Fuchs, as she had made it Gyro Gearloose's catchphrase. However, it was originally based on a song written by Heinrich Seidel. A somewhat more clumsy version of the phrase was the first verse of "Seidels Ingenieurlied" ("The Engineer's Song") and had been used by fraternities at technical universities for the German equivalent of The Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer. Fuchs had heard it from her husband, who was an engineer himself.
An example of Fuchs' many allusions to classical German literature may be found in her translation of Barks's 1956 story "Three Un-Ducks" (INDUCKS story code W WDC 184-01), where Huey, Dewey, and Louie speak the oath "Wir wollen sein ein einig Volk von Brüdern, in keiner Not uns waschen und Gefahr" ("We Shall be a United People of Brethren, Never to Wash in Danger nor Distress"), thereby parodying Friedrich Schiller's version of the Rütlischwur from his 1804 play William Tell.
Her use of verbs shortened to their stems as interjections— not only to imitate sounds (onomatopoeia), such as schluck, stöhn, knarr, klimper (gulp, groan, creak, chink/jingle), but also to represent soundless events grübel, staun, zitter (ponder, goggle, tremble) — popularized the verb form. While the official technical term for this remains Inflektiv, the term Erikativ, a tongue-in-cheek reference to Fuchs' first name, made to resemble similar grammatical terms such as Infinitiv (infinitive), Indikativ (indicative mood) or Akkusativ (accusative case), has seen more use. The form itself was commonly used as a form of emoting in Internet forums and chatrooms well into the 2010s, with users seeking to simulate aspects of face-to-face communication by employing Inflektive of off-screen activities enclosed in asterisks (e.g. *lach*, *weglauf*, *zwinker*).
== Honors and legacy ==
In 2001, Erika Fuchs was awarded the Heimito von Doderer Prize for Literature for her work on Disney comics. Until her death at age 98, Erika Fuchs was an honorary member of the "D.O.N.A.L.D." ("Deutsche Organisation nichtkommerzieller Anhänger des lauteren Donaldismus" or the "German Organization of Non-commercial Devotees of the true Donaldism"). Some members of the organisation (Patrick Bahners and Andreas Platthaus) occasionally included hidden references to Fuchs' works in the headlines of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.
In 1991, painter Gottfried Helnwein set a portrait of Fuchs among his work Die 48 bedeutendsten Frauen des Jahrhunderts (48 Most Important Women of the Century). The work is now to be found at Museum Ludwig in Cologne.
A comic museum in her hometown of Schwarzenbach an der Saale, named after Erika Fuchs, saw its opening on 1 August 2015.
== References ==
This article is based on a translation of the corresponding article from the German Wikipedia, retrieved May 6, 2005, and corrected March 3, 2024.
== Further reading ==
Bohn, Klaus (1996). Das Erika-Fuchs-Buch. Disneys Übersetzerin von Donald Duck und Mickey Maus: Ein modernes Mosaik (in German). Lüneburg: Dreidreizehn. ISBN 3-929746-10-7.
Horst, Ernst (2010). Nur keine Sentimentalitäten: Wie Dr. Erika Fuchs Entenhausen nach Deutschland verlegte (in German). Munich: Blessing Verlag. ISBN 978-3-89667-406-7.
Meloni, Ilaria (2013). Erika Fuchs' Übertragung der Comicserie Micky Maus (in German). Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag. ISBN 978-3-487-15038-3.
== External links ==
(in German) D.O.N.A.L.D, in German
Heimito von Doderer Prize 2001 |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hopfield_network#:~:text=Hopfield%20networks%20were%20first%20described,by%20John%20Hopfield%20in%201982. | Hopfield network | A Hopfield network (or associative memory) is a form of recurrent neural network, or a spin glass system, that can serve as a content-addressable memory. The Hopfield network, named for John Hopfield, consists of a single layer of neurons, where each neuron is connected to every other neuron except itself. These connections are bidirectional and symmetric, meaning the weight of the connection from neuron i to neuron j is the same as the weight from neuron j to neuron i. Patterns are associatively recalled by fixing certain inputs, and dynamically evolve the network to minimize an energy function, towards local energy minimum states that correspond to stored patterns. Patterns are associatively learned (or "stored") by a Hebbian learning algorithm.
One of the key features of Hopfield networks is their ability to recover complete patterns from partial or noisy inputs, making them robust in the face of incomplete or corrupted data. Their connection to statistical mechanics, recurrent networks, and human cognitive psychology has led to their application in various fields, including physics, psychology, neuroscience, and machine learning theory and practice.
== History ==
One origin of associative memory is human cognitive psychology, specifically the associative memory. Frank Rosenblatt studied "close-loop cross-coupled perceptrons", which are 3-layered perceptron networks whose middle layer contains recurrent connections that change by a Hebbian learning rule.
Another model of associative memory is where the output does not loop back to the input. W. K. Taylor proposed such a model trained by Hebbian learning in 1956. Karl Steinbuch, who wanted to understand learning, and was inspired by watching his children learn, published the Lernmatrix in 1961. It was translated to English in 1963. Similar research was done with the correlogram of D. J. Willshaw et al. in 1969. Teuvo Kohonen trained an associative memory by gradient descent in 1974.
Another origin of associative memory was statistical mechanics. The Ising model was published in 1920s as a model of magnetism, however it studied the thermal equilibrium, which does not change with time. Roy J. Glauber in 1963 studied the Ising model evolving in time, as a process towards thermal equilibrium (Glauber dynamics), adding in the component of time.
The second component to be added was adaptation to stimulus. This component has been added independently by different sources, including Rosenblatt (1960), Kaoru Nakano (1971), and Shun'ichi Amari (1972). They proposed to modify the weights of an Ising model by Hebbian learning rule as a model of associative memory. The same idea was published by William A. Little in 1974, who was acknowledged by Hopfield in his 1982 paper.
See Carpenter (1989) and Cowan (1990) for a technical description of some of these early works in associative memory.
The Sherrington–Kirkpatrick model of spin glass, published in 1975, is the Hopfield network with random initialization. Sherrington and Kirkpatrick found that it is highly likely for the energy function of the SK model to have many local minima. In the 1982 paper, Hopfield applied this recently developed theory to study the Hopfield network with binary activation functions. In a 1984 paper he extended this to continuous activation functions. It became a standard model for the study of neural networks through statistical mechanics.
A major advance in memory storage capacity was developed by Dimitry Krotov and Hopfield in 2016 through a change in network dynamics and energy function. This idea was further extended by Demircigil and collaborators in 2017. The continuous dynamics of large memory capacity models was developed in a series of papers between 2016 and 2020. Large memory storage capacity Hopfield Networks are now called Dense Associative Memories or modern Hopfield networks.
In 2024, John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics for their foundational contributions to machine learning, such as the Hopfield network.
== Structure ==
The units in Hopfield nets are binary threshold units, i.e. the units only take on two different values for their states, and the value is determined by whether or not the unit's input exceeds its threshold
U
i
{\displaystyle U_{i}}
. Discrete Hopfield nets describe relationships between binary (firing or not-firing) neurons
1
,
2
,
…
,
i
,
j
,
…
,
N
{\displaystyle 1,2,\ldots ,i,j,\ldots ,N}
. At a certain time, the state of the neural net is described by a vector
V
{\displaystyle V}
, which records which neurons are firing in a binary word of
N
{\displaystyle N}
bits.
The interactions
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
between neurons have units that usually take on values of 1 or −1, and this convention will be used throughout this article. However, other literature might use units that take values of 0 and 1. These interactions are "learned" via Hebb's law of association, such that, for a certain state
V
s
{\displaystyle V^{s}}
and distinct nodes
i
,
j
{\displaystyle i,j}
w
i
j
=
V
i
s
V
j
s
{\displaystyle w_{ij}=V_{i}^{s}V_{j}^{s}}
but
w
i
i
=
0
{\displaystyle w_{ii}=0}
.
(Note that the Hebbian learning rule takes the form
w
i
j
=
(
2
V
i
s
−
1
)
(
2
V
j
s
−
1
)
{\displaystyle w_{ij}=(2V_{i}^{s}-1)(2V_{j}^{s}-1)}
when the units assume values in
{
0
,
1
}
{\displaystyle \{0,1\}}
.)
Once the network is trained,
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
no longer evolve. If a new state of neurons
V
s
′
{\displaystyle V^{s'}}
is introduced to the neural network, the net acts on neurons such that
V
i
s
′
→
1
{\displaystyle V_{i}^{s'}\rightarrow 1}
if
∑
j
w
i
j
V
j
s
′
≥
U
i
{\displaystyle \sum _{j}w_{ij}V_{j}^{s'}\geq U_{i}}
V
i
s
′
→
−
1
{\displaystyle V_{i}^{s'}\rightarrow -1}
if
∑
j
w
i
j
V
j
s
′
<
U
i
{\displaystyle \sum _{j}w_{ij}V_{j}^{s'}<U_{i}}
where
U
i
{\displaystyle U_{i}}
is the threshold value of the i'th neuron (often taken to be 0). In this way, Hopfield networks have the ability to "remember" states stored in the interaction matrix, because if a new state
V
s
′
{\displaystyle V^{s'}}
is subjected to the interaction matrix, each neuron will change until it matches the original state
V
s
{\displaystyle V^{s}}
(see the Updates section below).
The connections in a Hopfield net typically have the following restrictions:
w
i
i
=
0
,
∀
i
{\displaystyle w_{ii}=0,\forall i}
(no unit has a connection with itself)
w
i
j
=
w
j
i
,
∀
i
,
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}=w_{ji},\forall i,j}
(connections are symmetric)
The constraint that weights are symmetric guarantees that the energy function decreases monotonically while following the activation rules. A network with asymmetric weights may exhibit some periodic or chaotic behaviour; however, Hopfield found that this behavior is confined to relatively small parts of the phase space and does not impair the network's ability to act as a content-addressable associative memory system.
Hopfield also modeled neural nets for continuous values, in which the electric output of each neuron is not binary but some value between 0 and 1. He found that this type of network was also able to store and reproduce memorized states.
Notice that every pair of units i and j in a Hopfield network has a connection that is described by the connectivity weight
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
. In this sense, the Hopfield network can be formally described as a complete undirected graph
G
=
⟨
V
,
f
⟩
{\displaystyle G=\langle V,f\rangle }
, where
V
{\displaystyle V}
is a set of McCulloch–Pitts neurons and
f
:
V
2
→
R
{\displaystyle f:V^{2}\rightarrow \mathbb {R} }
is a function that links pairs of units to a real value, the connectivity weight.
== Updating ==
Updating one unit (node in the graph simulating the artificial neuron) in the Hopfield network is performed using the following rule:
s
i
←
{
+
1
if
∑
j
w
i
j
s
j
≥
θ
i
,
−
1
otherwise.
{\displaystyle s_{i}\leftarrow \left\{{\begin{array}{ll}+1&{\text{if }}\sum _{j}{w_{ij}s_{j}}\geq \theta _{i},\\-1&{\text{otherwise.}}\end{array}}\right.}
where:
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
is the strength of the connection weight from unit j to unit i (the weight of the connection).
s
i
{\displaystyle s_{i}}
is the state of unit i.
θ
i
{\displaystyle \theta _{i}}
is the threshold of unit i.
Updates in the Hopfield network can be performed in two different ways:
Asynchronous: Only one unit is updated at a time. This unit can be picked at random, or a pre-defined order can be imposed from the very beginning.
Synchronous: All units are updated at the same time. This requires a central clock to the system in order to maintain synchronization. This method is viewed by some as less realistic, based on an absence of observed global clock influencing analogous biological or physical systems of interest.
=== Neurons "attract or repel each other" in state space ===
The weight between two units has a powerful impact upon the values of the neurons. Consider the connection weight
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
between two neurons i and j. If
w
i
j
>
0
{\displaystyle w_{ij}>0}
, the updating rule implies that:
when
s
j
=
1
{\displaystyle s_{j}=1}
, the contribution of j in the weighted sum is positive. Thus,
s
i
{\displaystyle s_{i}}
is pulled by j towards its value
s
i
=
1
{\displaystyle s_{i}=1}
when
s
j
=
−
1
{\displaystyle s_{j}=-1}
, the contribution of j in the weighted sum is negative. Then again,
s
i
{\displaystyle s_{i}}
is pushed by j towards its value
s
i
=
−
1
{\displaystyle s_{i}=-1}
Thus, the values of neurons i and j will converge if the weight between them is positive. Similarly, they will diverge if the weight is negative.
== Convergence properties of discrete and continuous Hopfield networks ==
Bruck in his paper in 1990 studied discrete Hopfield networks and proved a generalized convergence theorem that is based on the connection between the network's dynamics and cuts in the associated graph. This generalization covered both asynchronous as well as synchronous dynamics and presented elementary proofs based on greedy algorithms for max-cut in graphs. A subsequent paper further investigated the behavior of any neuron in both discrete-time and continuous-time Hopfield networks when the corresponding energy function is minimized during an optimization process. Bruck showed that neuron j changes its state if and only if it further decreases the following biased pseudo-cut. The discrete Hopfield network minimizes the following biased pseudo-cut for the synaptic weight matrix of the Hopfield net.
J
p
s
e
u
d
o
−
c
u
t
(
k
)
=
∑
i
∈
C
1
(
k
)
∑
j
∈
C
2
(
k
)
w
i
j
+
∑
j
∈
C
1
(
k
)
θ
j
{\displaystyle J_{pseudo-cut}(k)=\sum _{i\in C_{1}(k)}\sum _{j\in C_{2}(k)}w_{ij}+\sum _{j\in C_{1}(k)}{\theta _{j}}}
where
C
1
(
k
)
{\displaystyle C_{1}(k)}
and
C
2
(
k
)
{\displaystyle C_{2}(k)}
represents the set of neurons which are −1 and +1, respectively, at time
k
{\displaystyle k}
. For further details, see the recent paper.
The discrete-time Hopfield Network always minimizes exactly the following pseudo-cut
U
(
k
)
=
∑
i
=
1
N
∑
j
=
1
N
w
i
j
(
s
i
(
k
)
−
s
j
(
k
)
)
2
+
2
∑
j
=
1
N
θ
j
s
j
(
k
)
{\displaystyle U(k)=\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}(s_{i}(k)-s_{j}(k))^{2}+2\sum _{j=1}^{N}\theta _{j}s_{j}(k)}
The continuous-time Hopfield network always minimizes an upper bound to the following weighted cut
V
(
t
)
=
∑
i
=
1
N
∑
j
=
1
N
w
i
j
(
f
(
s
i
(
t
)
)
−
f
(
s
j
(
t
)
)
2
+
2
∑
j
=
1
N
θ
j
f
(
s
j
(
t
)
)
{\displaystyle V(t)=\sum _{i=1}^{N}\sum _{j=1}^{N}w_{ij}(f(s_{i}(t))-f(s_{j}(t))^{2}+2\sum _{j=1}^{N}\theta _{j}f(s_{j}(t))}
where
f
(
⋅
)
{\displaystyle f(\cdot )}
is a zero-centered sigmoid function.
The complex Hopfield network, on the other hand, generally tends to minimize the so-called shadow-cut of the complex weight matrix of the net.
== Energy ==
Hopfield nets have a scalar value associated with each state of the network, referred to as the "energy", E, of the network, where:
E
=
−
1
2
∑
i
,
j
w
i
j
s
i
s
j
−
∑
i
θ
i
s
i
{\displaystyle E=-{\frac {1}{2}}\sum _{i,j}w_{ij}s_{i}s_{j}-\sum _{i}\theta _{i}s_{i}}
This quantity is called "energy" because it either decreases or stays the same upon network units being updated. Furthermore, under repeated updating the network will eventually converge to a state which is a local minimum in the energy function (which is considered to be a Lyapunov function). Thus, if a state is a local minimum in the energy function it is a stable state for the network. Note that this energy function belongs to a general class of models in physics under the name of Ising models; these in turn are a special case of Markov networks, since the associated probability measure, the Gibbs measure, has the Markov property.
== Hopfield network in optimization ==
Hopfield and Tank presented the Hopfield network application in solving the classical traveling-salesman problem in 1985. Since then, the Hopfield network has been widely used for optimization. The idea of using the Hopfield network in optimization problems is straightforward: If a constrained/unconstrained cost function can be written in the form of the Hopfield energy function E, then there exists a Hopfield network whose equilibrium points represent solutions to the constrained/unconstrained optimization problem. Minimizing the Hopfield energy function both minimizes the objective function and satisfies the constraints also as the constraints are "embedded" into the synaptic weights of the network. Although including the optimization constraints into the synaptic weights in the best possible way is a challenging task, many difficult optimization problems with constraints in different disciplines have been converted to the Hopfield energy function: Associative memory systems, Analog-to-Digital conversion, job-shop scheduling problem, quadratic assignment and other related NP-complete problems, channel allocation problem in wireless networks, mobile ad-hoc network routing problem, image restoration, system identification, combinatorial optimization, etc., just to name a few. However, while it is possible to convert hard optimization problems to Hopfield energy functions, it does not guarantee convergence to a solution (even in exponential time).
== Initialization and running ==
Initialization of the Hopfield networks is done by setting the values of the units to the desired start pattern. Repeated updates are then performed until the network converges to an attractor pattern. Convergence is generally assured, as Hopfield proved that the attractors of this nonlinear dynamical system are stable, not periodic or chaotic as in some other systems. Therefore, in the context of Hopfield networks, an attractor pattern is a final stable state, a pattern that cannot change any value within it under updating.
== Training ==
Training a Hopfield net involves lowering the energy of states that the net should "remember". This allows the net to serve as a content addressable memory system, that is to say, the network will converge to a "remembered" state if it is given only part of the state. The net can be used to recover from a distorted input to the trained state that is most similar to that input. This is called associative memory because it recovers memories on the basis of similarity. For example, if we train a Hopfield net with five units so that the state (1, −1, 1, −1, 1) is an energy minimum, and we give the network the state (1, −1, −1, −1, 1) it will converge to (1, −1, 1, −1, 1). Thus, the network is properly trained when the energy of states which the network should remember are local minima. Note that, in contrast to Perceptron training, the thresholds of the neurons are never updated.
=== Learning rules ===
There are various different learning rules that can be used to store information in the memory of the Hopfield network. It is desirable for a learning rule to have both of the following two properties:
Local: A learning rule is local if each weight is updated using information available to neurons on either side of the connection that is associated with that particular weight.
Incremental: New patterns can be learned without using information from the old patterns that have been also used for training. That is, when a new pattern is used for training, the new values for the weights only depend on the old values and on the new pattern.
These properties are desirable, since a learning rule satisfying them is more biologically plausible. For example, since the human brain is always learning new concepts, one can reason that human learning is incremental. A learning system that was not incremental would generally be trained only once, with a huge batch of training data.
=== Hebbian learning rule for Hopfield networks ===
Hebbian theory was introduced by Donald Hebb in 1949 in order to explain "associative learning", in which simultaneous activation of neuron cells leads to pronounced increases in synaptic strength between those cells. It is often summarized as "Neurons that fire together wire together. Neurons that fire out of sync fail to link".
The Hebbian rule is both local and incremental. For the Hopfield networks, it is implemented in the following manner when learning
n
{\displaystyle n}
binary patterns:
w
i
j
=
1
n
∑
μ
=
1
n
ϵ
i
μ
ϵ
j
μ
{\displaystyle w_{ij}={\frac {1}{n}}\sum _{\mu =1}^{n}\epsilon _{i}^{\mu }\epsilon _{j}^{\mu }}
where
ϵ
i
μ
{\displaystyle \epsilon _{i}^{\mu }}
represents bit i from pattern
μ
{\displaystyle \mu }
.
If the bits corresponding to neurons i and j are equal in pattern
μ
{\displaystyle \mu }
, then the product
ϵ
i
μ
ϵ
j
μ
{\displaystyle \epsilon _{i}^{\mu }\epsilon _{j}^{\mu }}
will be positive. This would, in turn, have a positive effect on the weight
w
i
j
{\displaystyle w_{ij}}
and the values of i and j will tend to become equal. The opposite happens if the bits corresponding to neurons i and j are different.
=== Storkey learning rule ===
This rule was introduced by Amos Storkey in 1997 and is both local and incremental. Storkey also showed that a Hopfield network trained using this rule has a greater capacity than a corresponding network trained using the Hebbian rule. The weight matrix of an attractor neural network is said to follow the Storkey learning rule if it obeys:
w
i
j
ν
=
w
i
j
ν
−
1
+
1
n
ϵ
i
ν
ϵ
j
ν
−
1
n
ϵ
i
ν
h
j
i
ν
−
1
n
ϵ
j
ν
h
i
j
ν
{\displaystyle w_{ij}^{\nu }=w_{ij}^{\nu -1}+{\frac {1}{n}}\epsilon _{i}^{\nu }\epsilon _{j}^{\nu }-{\frac {1}{n}}\epsilon _{i}^{\nu }h_{ji}^{\nu }-{\frac {1}{n}}\epsilon _{j}^{\nu }h_{ij}^{\nu }}
where
h
i
j
ν
=
∑
k
=
1
:
i
≠
k
≠
j
n
w
i
k
ν
−
1
ϵ
k
ν
{\displaystyle h_{ij}^{\nu }=\sum _{k=1~:~i\neq k\neq j}^{n}w_{ik}^{\nu -1}\epsilon _{k}^{\nu }}
is a form of local field at neuron i.
This learning rule is local, since the synapses take into account only neurons at their sides. The rule makes use of more information from the patterns and weights than the generalized Hebbian rule, due to the effect of the local field.
== Spurious patterns ==
Patterns that the network uses for training (called retrieval states) become attractors of the system. Repeated updates would eventually lead to convergence to one of the retrieval states. However, sometimes the network will converge to spurious patterns (different from the training patterns). In fact, the number of spurious patterns can be exponential in the number of stored patterns, even if the stored patterns are orthogonal. The energy in these spurious patterns is also a local minimum. For each stored pattern x, the negation -x is also a spurious pattern.
A spurious state can also be a linear combination of an odd number of retrieval states. For example, when using 3 patterns
μ
1
,
μ
2
,
μ
3
{\displaystyle \mu _{1},\mu _{2},\mu _{3}}
, one can get the following spurious state:
ϵ
i
m
i
x
=
±
sgn
(
±
ϵ
i
μ
1
±
ϵ
i
μ
2
±
ϵ
i
μ
3
)
{\displaystyle \epsilon _{i}^{\rm {mix}}=\pm \operatorname {sgn}(\pm \epsilon _{i}^{\mu _{1}}\pm \epsilon _{i}^{\mu _{2}}\pm \epsilon _{i}^{\mu _{3}})}
Spurious patterns that have an even number of states cannot exist, since they might sum up to zero
== Capacity ==
The Network capacity of the Hopfield network model is determined by neuron amounts and connections within a given network. Therefore, the number of memories that are able to be stored is dependent on neurons and connections. Furthermore, it was shown that the recall accuracy between vectors and nodes was 0.138 (approximately 138 vectors can be recalled from storage for every 1000 nodes) (Hertz et al., 1991). Therefore, it is evident that many mistakes will occur if one tries to store a large number of vectors. When the Hopfield model does not recall the right pattern, it is possible that an intrusion has taken place, since semantically related items tend to confuse the individual, and recollection of the wrong pattern occurs. Therefore, the Hopfield network model is shown to confuse one stored item with that of another upon retrieval. Perfect recalls and high capacity, >0.14, can be loaded in the network by Storkey learning method; ETAM, ETAM experiments also in. Ulterior models inspired by the Hopfield network were later devised to raise the storage limit and reduce the retrieval error rate, with some being capable of one-shot learning.
The storage capacity can be given as
C
≅
n
2
log
2
n
{\displaystyle C\cong {\frac {n}{2\log _{2}n}}}
where
n
{\displaystyle n}
is the number of neurons in the net.
== Human memory ==
The Hopfield network is a model for human associative learning and recall. It accounts for associative memory through the incorporation of memory vectors. Memory vectors can be slightly used, and this would spark the retrieval of the most similar vector in the network. However, we will find out that due to this process, intrusions can occur. In associative memory for the Hopfield network, there are two types of operations: auto-association and hetero-association. The first being when a vector is associated with itself, and the latter being when two different vectors are associated in storage. Furthermore, both types of operations are possible to store within a single memory matrix, but only if that given representation matrix is not one or the other of the operations, but rather the combination (auto-associative and hetero-associative) of the two.
Hopfield's network model utilizes the same learning rule as Hebb's (1949) learning rule, which characterised learning as being a result of the strengthening of the weights in cases of neuronal activity.
Rizzuto and Kahana (2001) were able to show that the neural network model can account for repetition on recall accuracy by incorporating a probabilistic-learning algorithm. During the retrieval process, no learning occurs. As a result, the weights of the network remain fixed, showing that the model is able to switch from a learning stage to a recall stage. By adding contextual drift they were able to show the rapid forgetting that occurs in a Hopfield model during a cued-recall task. The entire network contributes to the change in the activation of any single node.
McCulloch and Pitts' (1943) dynamical rule, which describes the behavior of neurons, does so in a way that shows how the activations of multiple neurons map onto the activation of a new neuron's firing rate, and how the weights of the neurons strengthen the synaptic connections between the new activated neuron (and those that activated it). Hopfield would use McCulloch–Pitts's dynamical rule in order to show how retrieval is possible in the Hopfield network. However, Hopfield would do so in a repetitious fashion. Hopfield would use a nonlinear activation function, instead of using a linear function. This would therefore create the Hopfield dynamical rule and with this, Hopfield was able to show that with the nonlinear activation function, the dynamical rule will always modify the values of the state vector in the direction of one of the stored patterns.
== Dense associative memory or modern Hopfield network ==
Hopfield networks are recurrent neural networks with dynamical trajectories converging to fixed point attractor states and described by an energy function. The state of each model neuron
i
{\textstyle i}
is defined by a time-dependent variable
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
, which can be chosen to be either discrete or continuous. A complete model describes the mathematics of how the future state of activity of each neuron depends on the known present or previous activity of all the neurons.
In the original Hopfield model of associative memory, the variables were binary, and the dynamics were described by a one-at-a-time update of the state of the neurons. An energy function quadratic in the
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
was defined, and the dynamics consisted of changing the activity of each single neuron
i
{\displaystyle i}
only if doing so would lower the total energy of the system. This same idea was extended to the case of
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
being a continuous variable representing the output of neuron
i
{\displaystyle i}
, and
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
being a monotonic function of an input current. The dynamics became expressed as a set of first-order differential equations for which the "energy" of the system always decreased. The energy in the continuous case has one term which is quadratic in the
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
(as in the binary model), and a second term which depends on the gain function (neuron's activation function). While having many desirable properties of associative memory, both of these classical systems suffer from a small memory storage capacity, which scales linearly with the number of input features. In contrast, by increasing the number of parameters in the model so that there are not just pair-wise but also higher-order interactions between the neurons, one can increase the memory storage capacity.
Dense Associative Memories (also known as the modern Hopfield networks) are generalizations of the classical Hopfield Networks that break the linear scaling relationship between the number of input features and the number of stored memories. This is achieved by introducing stronger non-linearities (either in the energy function or neurons' activation functions) leading to super-linear (even an exponential) memory storage capacity as a function of the number of feature neurons, in effect increasing the order of interactions between the neurons. The network still requires a sufficient number of hidden neurons.
The key theoretical idea behind dense associative memory networks is to use an energy function and an update rule that is more sharply peaked around the stored memories in the space of neuron's configurations compared to the classical model, as demonstrated when the higher-order interactions and subsequent energy landscapes are explicitly modelled.
=== Discrete variables ===
A simple example of the modern Hopfield network can be written in terms of binary variables
V
i
{\displaystyle V_{i}}
that represent the active
V
i
=
+
1
{\displaystyle V_{i}=+1}
and inactive
V
i
=
−
1
{\displaystyle V_{i}=-1}
state of the model neuron
i
{\displaystyle i}
.
E
=
−
∑
μ
=
1
N
mem
F
(
∑
i
=
1
N
f
ξ
μ
i
V
i
)
{\displaystyle E=-\sum \limits _{\mu =1}^{N_{\text{mem}}}F{\Big (}\sum \limits _{i=1}^{N_{f}}\xi _{\mu i}V_{i}{\Big )}}
In this formula the weights
ξ
μ
i
{\textstyle \xi _{\mu i}}
represent the matrix of memory vectors (index
μ
=
1...
N
mem
{\displaystyle \mu =1...N_{\text{mem}}}
enumerates different memories, and index
i
=
1...
N
f
{\displaystyle i=1...N_{f}}
enumerates the content of each memory corresponding to the
i
{\displaystyle i}
-th feature neuron), and the function
F
(
x
)
{\displaystyle F(x)}
is a rapidly growing non-linear function. The update rule for individual neurons (in the asynchronous case) can be written in the following form
V
i
(
t
+
1
)
=
S
i
g
n
[
∑
μ
=
1
N
mem
(
F
(
ξ
μ
i
+
∑
j
≠
i
ξ
μ
j
V
j
(
t
)
)
−
F
(
−
ξ
μ
i
+
∑
j
≠
i
ξ
μ
j
V
j
(
t
)
)
)
]
{\displaystyle V_{i}^{(t+1)}=Sign{\bigg [}\sum \limits _{\mu =1}^{N_{\text{mem}}}{\bigg (}F{\Big (}\xi _{\mu i}+\sum \limits _{j\neq i}\xi _{\mu j}V_{j}^{(t)}{\Big )}-F{\Big (}-\xi _{\mu i}+\sum \limits _{j\neq i}\xi _{\mu j}V_{j}^{(t)}{\Big )}{\bigg )}{\bigg ]}}
which states that in order to calculate the updated state of the
i
{\textstyle i}
-th neuron the network compares two energies: the energy of the network with the
i
{\displaystyle i}
-th neuron in the ON state and the energy of the network with the
i
{\displaystyle i}
-th neuron in the OFF state, given the states of the remaining neuron. The updated state of the
i
{\displaystyle i}
-th neuron selects the state that has the lowest of the two energies.
In the limiting case when the non-linear energy function is quadratic
F
(
x
)
=
x
2
{\displaystyle F(x)=x^{2}}
these equations reduce to the familiar energy function and the update rule for the classical binary Hopfield Network.
The memory storage capacity of these networks can be calculated for random binary patterns. For the power energy function
F
(
x
)
=
x
n
{\displaystyle F(x)=x^{n}}
the maximal number of memories that can be stored and retrieved from this network without errors is given by
N
mem
m
a
x
≈
1
2
(
2
n
−
3
)
!
!
N
f
n
−
1
ln
(
N
f
)
{\displaystyle N_{\text{mem}}^{max}\approx {\frac {1}{2(2n-3)!!}}{\frac {N_{f}^{n-1}}{\ln(N_{f})}}}
For an exponential energy function
F
(
x
)
=
e
x
{\textstyle F(x)=e^{x}}
the memory storage capacity is exponential in the number of feature neurons
N
mem
m
a
x
≈
2
N
f
/
2
{\displaystyle N_{\text{mem}}^{max}\approx 2^{N_{f}/2}}
=== Continuous variables ===
Modern Hopfield networks or dense associative memories can be best understood in continuous variables and continuous time. Consider the network architecture, shown in Fig.1, and the equations for neuron's states evolutionwhere the currents of the feature neurons are denoted by
x
i
{\textstyle x_{i}}
, and the currents of the memory neurons are denoted by
h
μ
{\displaystyle h_{\mu }}
(
h
{\displaystyle h}
stands for hidden neurons). There are no synaptic connections among the feature neurons or the memory neurons. A matrix
ξ
μ
i
{\displaystyle \xi _{\mu i}}
denotes the strength of synapses from a feature neuron
i
{\displaystyle i}
to the memory neuron
μ
{\displaystyle \mu }
. The synapses are assumed to be symmetric, so that the same value characterizes a different physical synapse from the memory neuron
μ
{\displaystyle \mu }
to the feature neuron
i
{\displaystyle i}
. The outputs of the memory neurons and the feature neurons are denoted by
f
μ
{\displaystyle f_{\mu }}
and
g
i
{\displaystyle g_{i}}
, which are non-linear functions of the corresponding currents. In general these outputs can depend on the currents of all the neurons in that layer so that
f
μ
=
f
(
{
h
μ
}
)
{\displaystyle f_{\mu }=f(\{h_{\mu }\})}
and
g
i
=
g
(
{
x
i
}
)
{\textstyle g_{i}=g(\{x_{i}\})}
. It is convenient to define these activation functions as derivatives of the Lagrangian functions for the two groups of neuronsThis way the specific form of the equations for neuron's states is completely defined once the Lagrangian functions are specified. Finally, the time constants for the two groups of neurons are denoted by
τ
f
{\displaystyle \tau _{f}}
and
τ
h
{\displaystyle \tau _{h}}
,
I
i
{\displaystyle I_{i}}
is the input current to the network that can be driven by the presented data.
General systems of non-linear differential equations can have many complicated behaviors that can depend on the choice of the non-linearities and the initial conditions. For Hopfield Networks, however, this is not the case - the dynamical trajectories always converge to a fixed point attractor state. This property is achieved because these equations are specifically engineered so that they have an underlying energy function The terms grouped into square brackets represent a Legendre transform of the Lagrangian function with respect to the states of the neurons. If the Hessian matrices of the Lagrangian functions are positive semi-definite, the energy function is guaranteed to decrease on the dynamical trajectory This property makes it possible to prove that the system of dynamical equations describing temporal evolution of neurons' activities will eventually reach a fixed point attractor state.
In certain situations one can assume that the dynamics of hidden neurons equilibrates at a much faster time scale compared to the feature neurons,
τ
h
≪
τ
f
{\textstyle \tau _{h}\ll \tau _{f}}
. In this case the steady state solution of the second equation in the system (1) can be used to express the currents of the hidden units through the outputs of the feature neurons. This makes it possible to reduce the general theory (1) to an effective theory for feature neurons only. The resulting effective update rules and the energies for various common choices of the Lagrangian functions are shown in Fig.2. In the case of log-sum-exponential Lagrangian function the update rule (if applied once) for the states of the feature neurons is the attention mechanism commonly used in many modern AI systems (see Ref. for the derivation of this result from the continuous time formulation).
=== Relationship to classical Hopfield network with continuous variables ===
Classical formulation of continuous Hopfield Networks can be understood as a special limiting case of the modern Hopfield networks with one hidden layer. Continuous Hopfield Networks for neurons with graded response are typically described by the dynamical equations and the energy function where
V
i
=
g
(
x
i
)
{\textstyle V_{i}=g(x_{i})}
, and
g
−
1
(
z
)
{\displaystyle g^{-1}(z)}
is the inverse of the activation function
g
(
x
)
{\displaystyle g(x)}
. This model is a special limit of the class of models that is called models A, with the following choice of the Lagrangian functions that, according to the definition (2), leads to the activation functions If we integrate out the hidden neurons the system of equations (1) reduces to the equations on the feature neurons (5) with
T
i
j
=
∑
μ
=
1
N
h
ξ
μ
i
ξ
μ
j
{\displaystyle T_{ij}=\sum \limits _{\mu =1}^{N_{h}}\xi _{\mu i}\xi _{\mu j}}
, and the general expression for the energy (3) reduces to the effective energy While the first two terms in equation (6) are the same as those in equation (9), the third terms look superficially different. In equation (9) it is a Legendre transform of the Lagrangian for the feature neurons, while in (6) the third term is an integral of the inverse activation function. Nevertheless, these two expressions are in fact equivalent, since the derivatives of a function and its Legendre transform are inverse functions of each other. The easiest way to see that these two terms are equal explicitly is to differentiate each one with respect to
x
i
{\displaystyle x_{i}}
. The results of these differentiations for both expressions are equal to
x
i
g
(
x
i
)
′
{\displaystyle x_{i}g(x_{i})'}
. Thus, the two expressions are equal up to an additive constant. This completes the proof that the classical Hopfield Network with continuous states is a special limiting case of the modern Hopfield network (1) with energy (3).
=== General formulation of the modern Hopfield network ===
Biological neural networks have a large degree of heterogeneity in terms of different cell types. This section describes a mathematical model of a fully connected modern Hopfield network assuming the extreme degree of heterogeneity: every single neuron is different. Specifically, an energy function and the corresponding dynamical equations are described assuming that each neuron has its own activation function and kinetic time scale. The network is assumed to be fully connected, so that every neuron is connected to every other neuron using a symmetric matrix of weights
W
I
J
{\displaystyle W_{IJ}}
, indices
I
{\displaystyle I}
and
J
{\displaystyle J}
enumerate different neurons in the network, see Fig.3. The easiest way to mathematically formulate this problem is to define the architecture through a Lagrangian function
L
(
{
x
I
}
)
{\displaystyle L(\{x_{I}\})}
that depends on the activities of all the neurons in the network. The activation function for each neuron is defined as a partial derivative of the Lagrangian with respect to that neuron's activity From the biological perspective one can think about
g
I
{\displaystyle g_{I}}
as an axonal output of the neuron
I
{\displaystyle I}
. In the simplest case, when the Lagrangian is additive for different neurons, this definition results in the activation that is a non-linear function of that neuron's activity. For non-additive Lagrangians this activation function can depend on the activities of a group of neurons. For instance, it can contain contrastive (softmax) or divisive normalization. The dynamical equations describing temporal evolution of a given neuron are given by This equation belongs to the class of models called firing rate models in neuroscience. Each neuron
I
{\displaystyle I}
collects the axonal outputs
g
J
{\displaystyle g_{J}}
from all the neurons, weights them with the synaptic coefficients
W
I
J
{\displaystyle W_{IJ}}
and produces its own time-dependent activity
x
I
{\displaystyle x_{I}}
. The temporal evolution has a time constant
τ
I
{\displaystyle \tau _{I}}
, which in general can be different for every neuron. This network has a global energy function where the first two terms represent the Legendre transform of the Lagrangian function with respect to the neurons' currents
x
I
{\displaystyle x_{I}}
. The temporal derivative of this energy function can be computed on the dynamical trajectories leading to (see for details) The last inequality sign holds provided that the matrix
M
I
K
{\displaystyle M_{IK}}
(or its symmetric part) is positive semi-definite. If, in addition to this, the energy function is bounded from below the non-linear dynamical equations are guaranteed to converge to a fixed point attractor state. The advantage of formulating this network in terms of the Lagrangian functions is that it makes it possible to easily experiment with different choices of the activation functions and different architectural arrangements of neurons. For all those flexible choices the conditions of convergence are determined by the properties of the matrix
M
I
J
{\displaystyle M_{IJ}}
and the existence of the lower bound on the energy function.
=== Hierarchical associative memory network ===
The neurons can be organized in layers so that every neuron in a given layer has the same activation function and the same dynamic time scale. If we assume that there are no horizontal connections between the neurons within the layer (lateral connections) and there are no skip-layer connections, the general fully connected network (11), (12) reduces to the architecture shown in Fig.4. It has
N
layer
{\displaystyle N_{\text{layer}}}
layers of recurrently connected neurons with the states described by continuous variables
x
i
A
{\displaystyle x_{i}^{A}}
and the activation functions
g
i
A
{\displaystyle g_{i}^{A}}
, index
A
{\displaystyle A}
enumerates the layers of the network, and index
i
{\displaystyle i}
enumerates individual neurons in that layer. The activation functions can depend on the activities of all the neurons in the layer. Every layer can have a different number of neurons
N
A
{\displaystyle N_{A}}
. These neurons are recurrently connected with the neurons in the preceding and the subsequent layers. The matrices of weights that connect neurons in layers
A
{\displaystyle A}
and
B
{\displaystyle B}
are denoted by
ξ
i
j
(
A
,
B
)
{\displaystyle \xi _{ij}^{(A,B)}}
(the order of the upper indices for weights is the same as the order of the lower indices, in the example above this means that the index
i
{\displaystyle i}
enumerates neurons in the layer
A
{\displaystyle A}
, and index
j
{\displaystyle j}
enumerates neurons in the layer
B
{\displaystyle B}
). The feedforward weights and the feedback weights are equal. The dynamical equations for the neurons' states can be written as with boundary conditions The main difference between these equations and those from the conventional feedforward networks is the presence of the second term, which is responsible for the feedback from higher layers. These top-down signals help neurons in lower layers to decide on their response to the presented stimuli. Following the general recipe it is convenient to introduce a Lagrangian function
L
A
(
{
x
i
A
}
)
{\displaystyle L^{A}(\{x_{i}^{A}\})}
for the
A
{\displaystyle A}
-th hidden layer, which depends on the activities of all the neurons in that layer. The activation functions in that layer can be defined as partial derivatives of the Lagrangian With these definitions the energy (Lyapunov) function is given by If the Lagrangian functions, or equivalently the activation functions, are chosen in such a way that the Hessians for each layer are positive semi-definite and the overall energy is bounded from below, this system is guaranteed to converge to a fixed point attractor state. The temporal derivative of this energy function is given by Thus, the hierarchical layered network is indeed an attractor network with the global energy function. This network is described by a hierarchical set of synaptic weights that can be learned for each specific problem.
== See also ==
Associative memory (disambiguation)
Autoassociative memory
Boltzmann machine – like a Hopfield net but uses annealed Gibbs sampling instead of gradient descent
Dynamical systems model of cognition
Ising model
Hebbian theory
== References ==
== External links ==
Rojas, Raul (12 July 1996). "13. The Hopfield model" (PDF). Neural Networks – A Systematic Introduction. Springer. ISBN 978-3-540-60505-8.
Hopfield Network Javascript
The Travelling Salesman Problem Archived 2015-05-30 at the Wayback Machine – Hopfield Neural Network JAVA Applet
Hopfield, John (2007). "Hopfield network". Scholarpedia. 2 (5): 1977. Bibcode:2007SchpJ...2.1977H. doi:10.4249/scholarpedia.1977.
"Don't Forget About Associative Memories". The Gradient. November 7, 2020. Retrieved September 27, 2024. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glipa_acutimaculata | Glipa acutimaculata | Glipa acutimaculata is a species of beetle in the genus Glipa. It was described in 2000.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isadora_Duncan | Isadora Duncan | Angela Isadora Duncan (May 26, 1877, or May 27, 1878 – September 14, 1927) was an American-born dancer and choreographer, who was a pioneer of modern contemporary dance and performed to great acclaim throughout Europe and the United States. Born and raised in California, she lived and danced in Western Europe, the U.S., and Soviet Russia from the age of 22. She died when her scarf became entangled in the wheel and axle of the car in which she was travelling in Nice, France.
== Early life ==
Angela Isadora Duncan was born in San Francisco, the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922). Her brothers were Augustin Duncan and Raymond Duncan; her sister, Elizabeth Duncan, was also a dancer. Soon after Isadora's birth, her father was investigated and charged following the collapse of the family’s bank, which coincided with a larger reorganization of San Francisco’s finances, a period of crushing reversals and closing of silver mines. Although the jury voted for his acquittal, Isadora's mother (angered over his infidelities as well as the financial scandal) divorced him, and from then on the family struggled with poverty. Joseph Duncan, along with his third wife and their daughter, died in 1898 when the British passenger steamer SS Mohegan ran aground off the coast of Cornwall.
After her parents' divorce, Isadora's mother moved with her family to Oakland, California, where she worked as a seamstress and piano teacher. Isadora attended school from the ages of six to ten, but she dropped out, having found it constricting. She and her three siblings earned money by teaching dance to local children.
In 1896, Duncan became part of Augustin Daly's theater company in New York, but she soon became disillusioned with the form and craved a different environment with less of a hierarchy.
== Work ==
Duncan's novel approach to dance had been evident since the classes she had taught as a teenager, where she "followed [her] fantasy and improvised, teaching any pretty thing that came into [her] head". A desire to travel brought her to Chicago, where she auditioned for many theater companies, finally finding a place in Augustin Daly's company. This took her to New York City where her unique vision of dance clashed with the popular pantomimes of theater companies. While in New York, Duncan also took some classes with Marie Bonfanti but was quickly disappointed by ballet routine.
Feeling unhappy and unappreciated in America, Duncan moved to London in 1898. She performed in the drawing rooms of the wealthy, taking inspiration from the Greek vases and bas-reliefs in the British Museum. The earnings from these engagements enabled her to rent a studio, allowing her to develop her work and create larger performances for the stage. From London, she traveled to Paris, where she was inspired by the Louvre and the Exposition Universelle of 1900 and danced in the salons of Marguerite de Saint-Marceaux and Princesse Edmond de Polignac. In France, as elsewhere, Duncan delighted her audience.
In 1902, Loie Fuller invited Duncan to tour with her. This took Duncan all over Europe as she created new works using her innovative technique, which emphasized natural movement in contrast to the rigidity of traditional ballet. She spent most of the rest of her life touring Europe and the Americas in this fashion. Despite mixed reaction from critics, Duncan became quite popular for her distinctive style and inspired many visual artists, such as Antoine Bourdelle, Dame Laura Knight, Auguste Rodin, Arnold Rönnebeck, André Dunoyer de Segonzac, and Abraham Walkowitz, to create works based on her.
In 1910, Duncan met the occultist Aleister Crowley at a party, an episode recounted by Crowley in his Confessions. He refers to Duncan as "Lavinia King", and used the same invented name for her in his 1929 novel Moonchild (written in 1917). Crowley wrote of Duncan that she "has this gift of gesture in a very high degree. Let the reader study her dancing, if possible in private than in public, and learn the superb 'unconsciousness' – which is magical consciousness – with which she suits the action to the melody." Crowley was, in fact, more attracted to Duncan's bohemian companion Mary Dempsey (a.k.a. Mary D'Este or Desti), with whom he had an affair. Desti had come to Paris in 1901 where she soon met Duncan, and the two became inseparable. Desti, who also appeared in Moonchild (as "Lisa la Giuffria") and became a member of Crowley's occult order, later wrote a memoir of her experiences with Duncan.
In 1911, the French fashion designer Paul Poiret rented a mansion – Pavillon du Butard in La Celle-Saint-Cloud – and threw lavish parties, including one of the more famous grandes fêtes, La fête de Bacchus on June 20, 1912, re-creating the Bacchanalia hosted by Louis XIV at Versailles. Isadora Duncan, wearing a Greek evening gown designed by Poiret, danced on tables among 300 guests; 900 bottles of champagne were consumed until the first light of day.
=== Opening schools of dance ===
Duncan disliked the commercial aspects of public performance, such as touring and contracts, because she felt they distracted her from her real mission, namely the creation of beauty and the education of the young. To achieve her mission, she opened schools to teach young girls her philosophy of dance. The first was established in 1904 in Grunewald, Berlin, Germany. This institution was in existence for three years and was the birthplace of the "Isadorables" (Anna, Maria-Theresa, Irma, (Gretel), Lisa, and Erika), Duncan optimistically dreamed her school would train “thousands of young dancing maidens” in non-professional community dance. It was a boarding school that in addition to a regular education, also taught dance but the students were not expected or even encouraged to be professional dancers. Duncan did not legally adopt all six girls as is commonly believed. Nevertheless, three of them (Irma, Anna and Lisa) would use the Duncan surname for the rest of their lives. After about a decade in Berlin, Duncan established a school in Paris that soon closed because of the outbreak of World War I.
In 1914, Duncan moved to the United States and transferred her school there. A townhouse on Gramercy Park in New York was provided for its use, and its studio was nearby, on the northeast corner of 23rd Street and Fourth Avenue (now Park Avenue South). Otto Kahn, the head of Kuhn, Loeb & Co., gave Duncan use of the very modern Century Theatre at West 60th Street and Central Park West for her performances and productions, which included a staging of Oedipus Rex that involved almost all of Duncan's extended entourage and friends. During her time in New York, Duncan posed for studies by the photographer Arnold Genthe.
Duncan had planned to leave the United States in 1915 aboard the RMS Lusitania on its ill-fated voyage, but historians believe her financial situation at the time drove her to choose a more modest crossing. In 1921, Duncan's leftist sympathies took her to the Soviet Union, where she founded a school in Moscow. However, the Soviet government's failure to follow through on promises to support her work caused her to return in 1924 to the West and leave the school to her protégée and adopted daughter, German-born Irma Doretta Henrietta Erih-Grimm Duncan (1897—1977). In 1924, Duncan composed a dance routine called Varshavianka to the tune of the Polish revolutionary song known in English as Whirlwinds of Danger.
== Philosophy and technique ==
Breaking with convention, Duncan imagined she had traced dance to its roots as a sacred art. She developed from this notion a style of free and natural movements inspired by the classical Greek arts, folk dances, social dances, nature, and natural forces, as well as an approach to the new American athleticism which included skipping, running, jumping, leaping, and tossing. Duncan wrote of American dancing: "let them come forth with great strides, leaps and bounds, with lifted forehead and far-spread arms, to dance." Her focus on natural movement emphasized steps, such as skipping, outside of codified ballet technique.
Duncan also cited the sea as an early inspiration for her movement, and she believed movement originated from the solar plexus. Duncan placed an emphasis on "evolutionary" dance motion, insisting that each movement was born from the one that preceded it, that each movement gave rise to the next, and so on in organic succession. It is this philosophy and new dance technique that garnered Duncan the title of the creator of modern dance.
Duncan's philosophy of dance moved away from rigid ballet technique and towards what she perceived as natural movement. She said that in order to restore dance to a high art form instead of merely entertainment, she strove to connect emotions and movement: "I spent long days and nights in the studio seeking that dance which might be the divine expression of the human spirit through the medium of the body's movement." She believed dance was meant to encircle all that life had to offer—joy and sadness. Duncan took inspiration from ancient Greece and combined it with a passion for freedom of movement. This is exemplified in her revolutionary costume of a white Greek tunic and bare feet. Inspired by Greek forms, her tunics also allowed a freedom of movement that corseted ballet costumes and pointe shoes did not. Costumes were not the only inspiration Duncan took from Greece: she was also inspired by ancient Greek art, and utilized some of its forms in her movement (as shown on photos).
== Personal life ==
=== Children ===
Duncan bore three children, all out of wedlock. Deirdre Beatrice was born September 24, 1906. Her father was theatre designer Gordon Craig. Patrick Augustus was born May 1, 1910, fathered by Paris Singer, one of the many sons of sewing machine magnate Isaac Singer. Deirdre and Patrick both died by drowning in 1913; while out on a car ride with their nanny, the automobile accidentally went into the River Seine. Following this tragedy, Duncan spent several months on the Greek island of Corfu with her brother and sister, then several weeks at the Viareggio seaside resort in Italy with actress Eleonora Duse.
In her autobiography, Duncan relates that in her deep despair over the deaths of her children, she begged a young Italian stranger, the sculptor Romano Romanelli, to sleep with her because she was desperate for another child. She gave birth to a son on August 13, 1914, but he died shortly after birth.
=== Relationships ===
When Duncan stayed at the Viareggio seaside resort with Eleonora Duse, Duse had just left a relationship with the rebellious and epicene young feminist Lina Poletti. This fueled speculation as to the nature of Duncan and Duse's relationship, but there has never been any indication that the two were involved romantically.
Duncan was loving by nature and was close to her mother, siblings and all of her male and female friends. Later on, in 1921, after the end of the Russian Revolution, Duncan moved to Moscow, where she met the poet Sergei Yesenin, who was eighteen years her junior. On May 2, 1922, they officially married, and Duncan took Soviet citizenship. After that Yesenin accompanied her on a tour of Europe and the United States. However, the marriage was brief as they grew apart while getting to know each other. In May 1923, Yesenin returned to Moscow. Two years later he was found dead in an apparent suicide.
Duncan also had a relationship with the poet and playwright Mercedes de Acosta, as documented in numerous revealing letters they wrote to each other. In one, Duncan wrote, "Mercedes, lead me with your little strong hands and I will follow you – to the top of a mountain. To the end of the world. Wherever you wish."
However, the claim of a purported relationship made after Duncan’s death by de Acosta (a controversial figure for her alleged relations) is in dispute. Friends and relatives of Duncan believed her claim is false based on forged letters and done for publicity’s sake. In addition, Lily Dikovskaya, one of Duncan’s students from her Moscow School, wrote in In Isadora’s Steps that Duncan “was focused on higher things”.
=== Later years ===
By the late 1920s, Duncan, in her late 40s, was depressed by the deaths of her three young children. She spent her final years financially struggling, moving between Paris and the Mediterranean, running up debts at hotels. Her autobiography My Life was published in 1927 shortly after her death. The Australian composer Percy Grainger called it a "life-enriching masterpiece."
In his book Isadora, An Intimate Portrait, Sewell Stokes, who met Duncan in the last years of her life, described her extravagant waywardness. In a reminiscent sketch, Zelda Fitzgerald wrote how she and her husband, author F. Scott Fitzgerald, sat in a Paris cafe watching a somewhat drunken Duncan. He would speak of how memorable it was, but all that Zelda recalled was that while all eyes were watching Duncan, she was able to steal the salt and pepper shakers from the table.
== Death ==
On September 14, 1927, in Nice, France, Duncan was a passenger in an Amilcar CGSS automobile owned by Benoît Falchetto, a French-Italian mechanic. She wore a long, flowing, hand-painted silk scarf, created by the Russian-born artist Roman Chatov, a gift from her friend Mary Desti, the mother of American filmmaker Preston Sturges. Desti, who saw Duncan off, had asked her to wear a cape in the open-air vehicle because of the cold weather, but she would agree to wear only the scarf. As they departed, she reportedly said to Desti and some companions, "Adieu, mes amis. Je vais à la gloire! " ("Farewell, my friends. I go to glory!"); but according to the American novelist Glenway Wescott, Desti later told him that Duncan's actual parting words were, "Je vais à l'amour" ("I am off to love"). Desti considered this embarrassing, as it suggested that she and Falchetto were going to her hotel for a tryst.
Her silk scarf, draped around her neck, became entangled in the wheel well around the open-spoked wheels and rear axle, pulling her from the open car and breaking her neck. Desti said she called out to warn Duncan about the scarf almost immediately after the car left. Desti took Duncan to the hospital, where she was pronounced dead.
As The New York Times noted in its obituary, Duncan "met a tragic death at Nice on the Riviera". "According to dispatches from Nice, Duncan was hurled in an extraordinary manner from an open automobile in which she was riding and instantly killed by the force of her fall to the stone pavement." Other sources noted that she was almost decapitated by the sudden tightening of the scarf around her neck. The accident gave rise to Gertrude Stein's remark that "affectations can be dangerous". At the time of her death, Duncan was a Soviet citizen. Her will was the first of a Soviet citizen to undergo probate in the U.S.
Duncan was cremated, and her ashes were placed next to those of her children in the columbarium at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. On the headstone of her grave is inscribed École du Ballet de l'Opéra de Paris ("Ballet School of the Opera of Paris").
== Works ==
Duncan, Isadora (1927) "My Life" New York City: Boni & Liveright OCLC 738636
Project Gutenberg Canada #941 HTML HTML zipped Text Text zipped EPUB
My Life at Faded Page (Canada) : text, HTML, EPUB, .mobi, PDF, HTML .zip
Duncan, Isadora; Cheney, Sheldon (ed.) The Art of the Dance. New York: Theater Arts, 1928. ISBN 0-87830-005-8
Works by Isadora Duncan at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by Isadora Duncan at Open Library
== Legacy ==
Duncan is known as "The Mother of Dance". While her schools in Europe did not last long, Duncan's work had an impact on the art and her style is still danced based upon the instruction of Maria-Theresa Duncan, Anna Duncan, and Irma Duncan, three of her six pupils. Through her sister, Elizabeth, Duncan's approach was adopted by Jarmila Jeřábková from Prague where her legacy persists. By 1913 she was already being celebrated. When the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées was built, Duncan's likeness was carved in its bas-relief over the entrance by sculptor Antoine Bourdelle and included in painted murals of the nine muses by Maurice Denis in the auditorium. In 1987, she was inducted into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame.
Anna, Lisa, Theresa and Irma, pupils of Isadora Duncan's first school, carried on the aesthetic and pedagogical principles of Isadora's work in New York and Paris. Choreographer and dancer Julia Levien was also instrumental in furthering Duncan's work through the formation of the Duncan Dance Guild in the 1950s and the establishment of the Duncan Centenary Company in 1977.
Another means by which Duncan's dance techniques were carried forth was in the formation of the Isadora Duncan Heritage Society, by Mignon Garland, who had been taught dance by two of Duncan's key students. Garland was such a fan that she later lived in a building erected at the same site and address as Duncan, attached a commemorative plaque near the entrance, which is still there as of 2016. Garland also succeeded in having San Francisco rename an alley on the same block from Adelaide Place to Isadora Duncan Lane.
In medicine, the Isadora Duncan Syndrome refers to injury or death consequent to entanglement of neckwear with a wheel or other machinery.
== Photo gallery ==
== In popular culture ==
Duncan has attracted literary and artistic attention from the 1920s to the present, in novels, film, ballet, theatre, music, and poetry.
In literature, Duncan is portrayed in:
Aleister Crowley's Moonchild (as 'Lavinia King'), published in 1923.
Upton Sinclair's World's End (1940) and Between Two Worlds (1941), the first two novels in his Pulitzer Prize winning Lanny Budd series.
Amelia Gray's novel Isadora (2017).
A Series of Unfortunate Events, in which two characters are named after her, Isadora Quagmire and Duncan Quagmire.
The poem Fever 103 by Sylvia Plath, in which the speaker alludes to Isadora's scarves.
Among the films and television shows featuring Duncan are:
In 1965, a youthful Isadora Duncan was portrayed by Kathy Garver in the television show Death Valley Days.
The 1966 BBC biopic by Kenneth Russell, Isadora Duncan, the Biggest Dancer in the World, which was introduced by Duncan's biographer, Sewell Stokes, Duncan was played by Vivian Pickles.
The 1968 film Isadora, nominated for the Palme d'Or at Cannes, stars Vanessa Redgrave as Duncan. The film was based in part of Duncan's autobiography. Redgrave was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance as Duncan.
In 1976, Saturday Night Live parodied Isadora Duncan in a Great Moments in Herstory sketch during Season 1, Episode 15. Hosted by Jill Clayburgh, the skit featured Clayburgh as Duncan and Gilda Radner in a comedic retelling of the dancer’s tragic demise, exaggerating the absurdity of her fatal scarf accident.
Archival footage of Duncan was used in the 1985 popular documentary That's Dancing!.
A 1989 documentary, Isadora Duncan: Movement from the Soul, was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize at the 1989 Sundance Film Festival.
In 2016, Lily-Rose Depp portrayed Duncan in The Dancer, a French biographical musical drama of dancer Loie Fuller.
In the 2025 animated dramatic comedy Long Story Short the dog belonging to Shira and Kendra is named the Undeniable Isadora Duncan
Ballets based on Duncan include:
In 1976 Frederick Ashton created a short ballet entitled Five Brahms Waltzes in the Manner of Isadora Duncan on Lynn Seymour, in which "Ashton fused Duncan's style with an imprint of his own"; Marie Rambert claimed after seeing it that it was exactly as she remembered Duncan dancing.
In 1981, she was the subject of a ballet, Isadora, written and choreographed by the Royal Ballet's Kenneth MacMillan, and performed at Covent Garden.
On the theatre stage, Duncan is portrayed in:
A 1991 stage play When She Danced by Martin Sherman about Duncan's later years, won the Evening Standard Award for Vanessa Redgrave as Best Actress.
Duncan is featured in music in:
Celia Cruz recorded a track titled Isadora Duncan with the Fania All-Stars for the album Cross Over released in 1979.
Rock musician Vic Chesnutt included a song about Duncan on his debut album Little.
The Magnetic Fields song "Jeremy" on their second album The Wayward Bus refers to Duncan and her "impossibly long white scarves."
Post-hardcore band Burden of a Day's 2009 album Oneonethousand features a track titled "Isadora Duncan". The lyrics include references to a letter Duncan wrote to poet Mercedes de Acosta and her reported last words of "Je vais à l'amour."
== See also ==
Dancer in a Café—Painting by Jean Metzinger
Isidora, sometimes spelled Isadora
List of barefooters
List of dancers
Women in dance
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Bibliography ==
De Fina, Pamela. Maria Theresa: Divine Being, Guided by a Higher Order. Pittsburgh: Dorrance, 2003. ISBN 0-8059-4960-7
About Duncan's adopted daughter; Pamela De Fina, student and protégée of Maria Theresa Duncan from 1979 to 1987 in New York City, received original choreography, which is held at the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center.
Duncan, Anna. Anna Duncan: In the footsteps of Isadora. Stockholm: Dansmuseet, 1995. ISBN 91-630-3782-3
Duncan, Doralee; Pratl, Carol and Splatt, Cynthia (eds.) Life Into Art. Isadora Duncan and Her World. Foreword by Agnes de Mille. Text by Cynthia Splatt. Hardcover. 199 pages. W. W. Norton & Company, 1993. ISBN 0-393-03507-7
Duncan, Irma. The Technique of Isadora Duncan. Illustrated. Photographs by Hans V. Briesex. Posed by Isadora, Irma and the Duncan pupils. Austria: Karl Piller, 1937. ISBN 0-87127-028-5
Kurth, Peter. Isadora: A Sensational Life. Little Brown, 2001. ISBN 0-316-50726-1
Levien, Julia. Duncan Dance: A Guide for Young People Ages Six to Sixteen. Illustrated. Dance Horizons, 1994. ISBN 0-87127-198-2
Peter, Frank-Manuel (ed.) Isadora & Elizabeth Duncan in Germany. Cologne: Wienand Verlag, 2000. ISBN 3-87909-645-7
Savinio, Alberto. Isadora Duncan, in Narrate, uomini, la vostra storia. Bompiani,1942, Adelphi, 1984.
Schanke, Robert That Furious Lesbian: The Story of Mercedes de Acosta. Carbondale, Ill: Southern Illinois Press, 2003.
Stokes, Sewell. Isadora, an Intimate Portrait. New York: Brentanno's Ltd, 1928.
Sturges, Preston; Sturges, Sandy (adapt. & ed.) (1991), Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges, Boston: Faber & Faber, ISBN 0-571-16425-0
== Further reading ==
Daly, Ann. Done into Dance: Isadora Duncan in America. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995.
"Atlas F1 historical research forum about the Amilcar debate". The AUTOSPORT Forums. 2002-07-21. Archived from the original on 2016-03-03. Retrieved 2007-07-02.
== External links ==
Media related to Isadora Duncan at Wikimedia Commons
Quotations related to Isadora Duncan at Wikiquote
Archival collections
"Images related to Isadora Duncan". NYPL Digital Gallery.
Isadora Duncan Library of Congress image galleries
Finding Aid for the Howard Holtzman Collection on Isadora Duncan ca. 1878–1990 (Collection 1729) UCLA Library Special Collections, Los Angeles, California.
Digitized manuscripts from the Howard Holtzman Collection on Isadora Duncan, ca 1878–1990 (Collection 1729) hosted by the UCLA Digital Library.
Guide to the Isadora Duncan Dance Programs and Ephemera. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Guide to the Mary Desti Collection on Isadora Duncan, 1901–1930. Special Collections and Archives, The UC Irvine Libraries, Irvine, California.
Isadora Duncan pandect – by Alkis Raftis, Dora Stratou Dance Theater
Organizations
Isadora Duncan International Institute, Inc.
Isadora Duncan Archive - by Duncan practitioners.
Isadora Duncan International Symposium Archived 2019-06-03 at the Wayback Machine
Isadora Duncan Dance Foundation, Inc.
Isadora Duncan Heritage Society Japan Archived 2012-03-19 at the Wayback Machine
isadoraNOW Foundation
Dances By Isadora, Inc.
Dance Visions NY, Inc.
Other
Isadora Duncan biographer's page, Peter Kurth
1921 passport photo (flickr.com)
Isadora Duncan: Dancing with Russians Archived 2014-02-19 at the Wayback Machine
Isadora Duncan (bio) - Diablo Dance Theatre
"Isadora Duncan's Birthplace". Waymarking.com., 501 Taylor, San Francisco |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_House,_Jersey | Government House, Jersey | Government House is the official residence of the lieutenant governor of Jersey. The building is situated in the parish of St Saviour in Jersey. It is also used for ceremonial functions, receptions and meetings with visiting foreign dignitaries and heads of state. It is also the official residence of the Duke of Normandy (currently King Charles III) as head of state when staying in Jersey.
== History of Government House ==
=== Previous Government Houses ===
The current building is at least the fifth official residence of governors and lieutenant governors of Jersey. Early governors or their lieutenants resided at Mont Orgueil and later at Elizabeth Castle, although the latter's status as a tidal island meant that for convenience accommodation in the town of Saint Helier was sought. Colonel Magnus Kempenfelt is known to have resided in a house belonging to a man named Le Geyt in 1727. At the time of the Battle of Jersey in 1781, Major Moise Corbet resided at Le Manoir de la Motte, where he was apprehended by the French invaders. Around 1800, under General Andrew Gordon, a house adjacent to the Royal Square was acquired, described in 1809 as a "large, substantial and commodious stone mansion with appropriate offices, pleasure and kitchen gardens". Under General Sir George Don, the house was enlarged by the addition of offices for the conduct of public business, but Major-General Sir Colin Halkett was petitioning the British Government in 1821 to agree the exchange of this town centre property on the grounds that the house needed expensive repairs, was prone to flooding from Le Grand Douet, the adjacent brook, and that "the rooms are ill calculated for public entertainment".
=== The current Government House ===
In 1803, the rector of St Saviour's Church, Rev. Philip Le Breton, bought the land on which the current Government House is situated and built a family home. This was bought by the ship owner François Janvrin in 1814 who demolished the house and built a small two-storey villa, naming the house Belmont. He brought mahogany from South America in his ships which enabled the use of this wood throughout the interior, including the main staircase, which remains a notable feature of the house. In 1822, Major-General Sir Colin Halkett, lieutenant governor, transacted the exchange of the old Government House in Saint Helier and Le Pré au Roi in Saint Clement for the Belmont property and additional land. It has been the official residence of all the lieutenant governors of Jersey ever since.
Major-General (later promoted Lt.-General) Halkett had written that the lieutenant governor "would at Belmont possess the desirable opportunity of seeing together, without apparent partiality, such of the inhabitants, and strangers, as naturally expected to be invited to Government House". But his ADC John Le Couteur criticised the property and wrote that "the masonry... is shamefully done". The guardhouse was built at this time at a cost of £215, but the house was regarded as unprepossessing.
Projects to add a third storey were entertained, but not carried out until the second half of the 19th century. Further improvements were carried out, including the addition of a porte-cochère.
The drive was formerly part of La Ruette du Sacrement, leading to Saint Saviour's Church. This lane was purchased in 1810, and replaced as a thoroughfare by the new military road (St Saviour's Hill – Jèrriais: Lé Mont du Gouvèrneux, the Governor's hill). From the formal lawns next to the house, the 12-acre grounds descend from the house in a valley setting, and include an ornamental lake and fountain created in 2009 that can be seen from the road. Commemorative trees and monuments are situated around the grounds. The lieutenant-governor's flag is flown from a flagpole in the grounds when he is in the Island.
During the German occupation of the Channel Islands during the Second World War, the house was used as the residence of Generalleutnant Rudolf Graf von Schmettow, the German commandant of the Channel Islands.
The 1989 issue of a £50 Jersey banknote showed an image of Government House on the reverse.
== See also ==
Government House – elsewhere in the Commonwealth or British Overseas Territories
Government Houses of the British Empire and Commonwealth
== References ==
== External links ==
History of Government House from the Office of the Lieutenant Governor |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ministry_of_Culture_and_Equality | Ministry of Culture and Equality | The Royal Norwegian Ministry of Culture and Equality (Norwegian: Det kongelige kultur- og likestillingsdepartement; short name Kultur- og likestillingsdepartementet) is responsible for cultural policy, regulations and other matters related to the media and sports, and equality and non-discrimination. The ministry was established in 1982, as the Ministry of Cultural and Science. Until then, the Ministry of Church and Education Affairs had had the overriding responsibility for cultural affairs in Norway. It is led by the Minister of Culture and Equality Lubna Jaffery (Labour) since June 2023. The Secretary-General of the ministry is Kristin Berge. The ministry reports to the Storting.
== History ==
The Ministry of Churches and Education, which was also responsible for culture, was founded in 1818. Finally, in 1982, an independent Ministry of Culture was established under the name of Kultur- og vitenskapsdepartementet (Ministry of Culture and Science). Another restructuring of responsibilities in 1990 led to the formation of a Ministry of Churches and Culture (Kirke- og kulturdepartementet) and a Ministry of Education and Research (Utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet). In 1991 responsibility for the churches was handed over again from the Ministry of Culture to the now renamed Ministry for Churches, Education and Research (Kirke-, utdannings- og forskningsdepartementet). In 2002, the Ministry of Culture received the subject area again and was given the name Kultur- og kirkedepartementet.
The ministry was called Kulturdepartementet from 2010 until the end of 2021. In 2019, responsibility for equality was transferred from the Ministry of Children and Family to the Ministry of Culture. On 1 January 2022 the ministry was renamed Kultur- og likestillingsdepartementet (Ministry of Culture and Equality).
== Organisation ==
The ministry is led by the Minister of Culture and Equality Lubna Jaffery, who represents the Labour Party. The Secretary-General of the ministry is Kristin Berge. Even Aleksander Hagen is the state secretary and Mari Hansen Ingleson is the political adviser.
=== Departments ===
The ministry is divided into six departments and an information unit.
Department of Civil Society and Sports
Department of Cultural Heritage
Department of Media and the Arts
Department for Equality, Non-discrimination and International Affairs
Department of Administrative Affairs
The Communication Unit
== See also ==
Minister of Culture and Equality
Politics of Norway
== References ==
== External links ==
Official web site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basilica_of_Our_Lady_of_Mercy_(Yarumal)#19th_century | Basilica of Our Lady of Mercy (Yarumal) | The Basilica of Our Lady of Mercy (Spanish: Basílica Menor de Nuestra Señora de la Merced) is a minor basilica in Yarumal, Colombia. It belongs to the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos and is the seat of the parish of the same name. The basilica is devoted to the Virgin Mary, and the patron saint is the Virgin of Mercy. It is the titular church of Saint Aloysius Gonzaga.
It was designed and built in the Renaissance Revival style as a larger replacement for Yarumal's first church. Begun in 1866, the construction project suffered from multiple difficulties including its enormous cost, the civil wars in the late nineteenth century, its partial collapse in 1890, and an earthquake in 1938. These delayed completion of the church until 1944, at which point it was consecrated. During construction, the Chapel of Saint Aloysius (formerly the cemetery chapel) was made a parish church.
The basilica is rectangular, divided longitudinally into three parts. The main façade is made up of two domed towers joined by the central nave. It is home to several works of art, notably Nuestra Señora de la Merced, a 1798 painting of the Virgin of Mercy that is considered to be miraculous.
In 1998, the Municipal Council of Yarumal declared the basilica and the Chapel of Saint Aloysius a cultural and architectural landmark of the municipality. On 12 August 1999, Pope John Paul II granted the church the title of minor basilica. Since 2000, the church has been home to the remains of the poet Epifanio Mejía, the author of the Himno Antioqueño.
== History ==
The basilica's construction suffered many setbacks. The devastation of the Colombian civil wars in the late nineteenth century, the large scale of the project and its high cost, the partial collapse of a part of the structure in 1890, and an earthquake in 1938 all caused construction to last more than eighty years.
=== 19th century ===
Yarumal, originally named Saint Luis of Góngora, was founded in 1787. From the beginning it had a straw chapel, where the priests from Santa Rosa de Osos held religious ceremonies that were sporadically attended by the new population. In 1790, the parish of Saint Luis of Góngora was established (now the parish of Our Lady of Mercy).
By 1850, it was obvious that a larger church needed to be built, as the town had 3,000 inhabitants and the old building was too small. On 20 December 1860, Father Julián Palacio gathered the townspeople in the square, informed them of this need, and urged them to provide all the help they could. He then formed the first committee to begin work on the church.
In a meeting held on 15 January 1861, Father Julián Palacio suggested that they begin work on the church in April of the same year. In the same meeting, he authorised the first purchase of boards for the rammed earth walls so that they would be dry when they went into use.
As it was a large project, people soon began to offer their services to work on the church. On 5 February 1861, Gregorio Álvarez offered his services as bricklayer and director of the work for two reals and three pesos a day. On the sixth of this month, Father Julián Palacio planted the first stone and began to raise funds.
Meanwhile, a request was filed for the bishop from the Diocese of Antioquia to authorize construction. On 2 March 1861, the townspeople received a message back, providing the license for the new church. The bishop urged the committee to be as organized as possible so that construction would proceed smoothly, and so the board drafted seven chapters of regulations.
The work was financed by alms, collections, mandatory contributions, raffles, bazaars, and the sale of farms that some benefactors had donated to the Church.
On 4 July 1865, Santos Sánchez offered his services to direct the architecture and masonry work for five pesos a day, but was not approved. On this same date, a meeting was scheduled with Policarpo Rivera to make an offer to buy land with the intention of establishing a factory to supply tiles for construction. Rivera donated this land for free, as well as the rights to build a shed and use the mud, with the only condition that the land be returned when construction was finished. Around this same time, the committee hired work from some Lime kilns in the Sepultura villages.
On 25 August of the same year, José María Zapata Muñoz was hired to direct the architecture and masonry work, at a rate of four pesos a day, with the agreement that he would also provide paintings and statues. Four years later he was joined by Floro Hernández, and on 18 July 1869, by Francisco Arroyave and Francisco Puerta.
On 2 April 1866, demolition of the old church was begun by Gregorio Álvarez. The land beneath the former church belonged to the parish and was adjacent to land belonging to the municipality, located north of Bolivar Square (today Epifanio Mejía park). Neither area had precisely defined limits. Much later, both parties came to an agreement to demarcate the properties.
On the same day the former church was demolished, Father Julián Palacio sent an official letter to the judicial vicar, Valerio Antonio Jiménez, which explained the need to demolish the former church in order to build the new one, and requested permission to build the Chapel of Our Lady of Carmen (now known as the Chapel of Saint Aloysius). The license for this arrived from Marinilla on 17 April 1866.
On 1 July 1866, the Julián Palacio sent a request to the Ecclesiastical Government, explaining that as the former church had been demolished, the cemetery chapel needed to be expanded. Initially the former cemetery lot was to be sold to finance the new cemetery, but the villagers were enthusiastic to expand the chapel, and proposed that the money be used to buy the land in front of the chapel to form a small square. The application was approved by Monsignor Valerio Antonio Jiménez.
On 14 February 1868, Pope Pius IX ordered the seat of the Diocese of Antioquia, which had operated there since 1828, to be moved to Medellín under the new name Diocese of Medellín and Antioquia. The parish of Yarumal remained under its ecclesiastical jurisdiction.
With the chapel expanded and remodeled, Julián Palacio requested and was approved by Bishop José Joaquín Isaza Ruíz to bless the chapel where Mass was being held, since the main church was not yet finished.
On 4 February 1873, the Diocese of Antioquia was restored, and the parish of Yarumal was returned to its jurisdiction. The seat in Medellín returned to simply being called the Diocese of Medellín.
In 1876, construction was forced to a halt by the political–religious civil war from 1876 to 1877. On 1 September 1881, the board decided to restart the work on the church. They contacted architect José María Zapata to begin on 1 December, and hired Manuel Antonio Misas to provide six thousand bricks for 38 pesos. However, Misas and the board had their differences, and the agreement was canceled, with the board paying a fine of 24 pesos to avoid legal action.
José María Zapata arrived in Yarumal from Medellín in the first week of December 1881 to take charge of the project, fulfilling his agreement with the board and with Father Aldemar Palacio (priest from 26 September 1875 to 5 August 1895).
In June 1884, priest Uladislao Ortiz and Marco A. Mejía, sent the board a letter in which they requested approval to begin building the right tower of the church, without affecting the work being carried out within. They were approved to give 3,000 pesos, which was the approximate cost of the tower.
This date marked the beginning of many problems, with construction constantly starting and stopping for reasons including more unrest, lack of finances, and the urgency of building a bridge over the Nechí River to join Medellín and the neighbouring villages.
On 18 June 1889, when one of the sacristies was already finished, Bishop Jesús María Rodríguez authorised the priest to celebrate Mass and administer the Sacrament of Penance in the church while it was under construction. During the pastoral visit on 17 August of the same year he ordered work to resume. He also approved the oratory, and allowed religious functions to continue while construction concluded.
On 25 January 1890, the work was again stopped, this time because senior officer Ricardo Pérez and architect Zapata retired without prior notice. Several days later, José María Zapata Muñoz resigned as the director of construction, and on 6 February of the same year the portico and the dome of the temple collapsed while under construction. In a meeting on 15 February, the board accepted Zapata's resignation. They believed the collapse was possibly due to two causes: structural issues with the design, or to the interruptions in work contributing to unsteadiness in the construction.
This misfortune was not received well by the community, who blamed those in charge of the project. Following these complaints, the board called a public meeting on 17 February 1890 in which all members resigned, leaving the public free to elect new and more able members. The village people responded to this by urging the board not resign, after which the members decided to retain their positions. The board met two days later to evaluate the situation and find an architect to examine the construction, determine what needed to be demolished, and be placed in charge of the work. Zapata never returned to Yarumal.
The frame of the church was designed by Victoriano Palacio, and reviewed on 21 May 1894 by Tomás Vásquez, who found it satisfactory. However, because of the earlier collapse, the board resolved to have the project examined by an engineer. Until it was approved, all carpentry was to remain suspended. In the meantime, they focused on work on the tower. Heliodoro Medina was the authorized to find said engineer, and he hired Heliodoro Ochoa to review the project. On 10 August 1894, a well-attended meeting was held. The engineer recommended not building the portico because of his concerns regarding its stability. The board and townspeople agreed that the portico not be built, and hired Ochoa to design the front face of the building.
Ochoa later suggested that the rear of the church be roofed in wood, instead of the original stone dome. This proposal was approved by majority vote. After this, Ochoa examined the previous construction and found the carpentry and masonry work to be stable.
But not all news was positive. On 21 February 1895, the work was once again stopped due to lack of funds and difficulties collecting them. The only ones who continued to work—although at half speed—were the masons, with goal of storing the materials until work was restarted. On the same date, all members of the board were asked to resign. Beginning on 4 August 1895, the work on the temple remained practically paralysed. Funds had run out, and left with no alternative, the board ordered the church be condemned on 12 October 1895.
After seeing the state of the building, Father Ildefonso Tirado began to hold religious ceremonies in the new church on 11 May 1899 to try to encourage the population to donate. The Thousand Days War, one of Colombia's bloodiest civil wars, began that year.
=== 20th century ===
The 20th century seemed to begin with better luck. In February 1900, they began to build wooden grilles for the stained glass windows of the church. On 27 December of the same year, the Board authorised Díaz to begin work on the bell tower. On 15 February 1901, construction began on the wooden side doors; work on the main door did not begin until 20 July 1903. On 20 May 1901, the Daughters of María congregation installed the altar of the Immaculate Conception that they had commissioned with the board's approval in 1898. Heliodoro Ochoa was brought back to Yarumal from Medellín to continue his work, and along with Juan Nepomuceno Gómez, worked on to create the latches for the bell tower and buildings. On 22 July 1901, Victoriano Palacio was chosen to direct the tiling of the church.
The works were again stalled until July 1903, when they were once again resumed due to the Bishop of Antioquia, Manuel Antonio López de Mesa, visiting nearby. By this time, Victoriano Palacio had been commissioned to install the altar, work on the moulding around the door in the chancel, create two holy water fonts, and build the bell tower. However, the bishop realized that they had resumed construction only because he was there, and he was hurt to learn that work on the church had otherwise been paralysed. He blamed this in part on the war, but placed some of the blame on the board members. As a result, he decided to remove all members of the board and appoint an entirely new board. He also was quick to recognise that Yarumal needed two churches due to its population and importance, and ordered the newly established board to not only focus on work on the new church, but also on maintenance of the cemetery chapel.
The dome, according to Ochoa's calculations, needed a total of 210 large planks and 700 small ones, as well as 12 hundredweights of copper and 2 of tin. On 22 November the board approved the proposal from José María Hoyos to install a temporary altar with the image of Saint Joseph in one of the side naves.
On 6 January 1906, it was discussed and agreed upon that the tiling of the building would be started. In this same meeting, Carlos Mejía Vargas, backed by other doctors, said that due to health concerns, all religious ceremonies should be moved to the chapel in the old cemetery, and the priest agreed.
In June 1908 the effects of the cheap materials became evident. As one of the towers began to suffer from structural problems, Ochoa was called upon. He responded from Medellín with some advice to repair the tower: primarily, to reinforce it with wood. Ochoa arrived in Yarumal on 24 December and visited the construction site of the church with the full board. The Board followed all the recommendations, except those suggesting the bells be taken down, believing that the changes that had been made in the tower provided sufficient support.
On 21 April 1914, priest Leónidas Lopera Roldán ordered construction to begin on the atrium under the direction of José López and Jesús María Saldarriaga, and with designs by Joaquín Pinillos. The following year, Roldán commissioned the altar, which for many years served as the main altar, from craftsmen in Carvajal.
On 5 February 1917, Pope Benedict XV issued the papal bull Quod catholicae, which created the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos, splitting the former territory of the Diocese of Antioquia. After this, the Yarumal parish became a part of the new episcopal seat.
In the night of 4 February 1938, an earthquake caused serious damage to the church. The walls were damaged, the foundation of the main arch in the central nave settled, and cracks formed in the apse. Father Gerardo Martínez Madrigal immediately requested technical advice from architects and engineers, who visited to inspect and undertake photographic studies. The evaluations produced very different results. Some suggested that they reinforce the walls with strips of iron, others suggested they should demolish the severely damaged portions and build a new concrete arch supported by new columns. The pastor chose to make the repairs suggested by Jesús Mejía, which involved rebuilding damaged portions brick by brick.
When repairs were finished, Bishop Miguel Ángel Builes consecrated the Church of Our Lady of Mercy on 11 February 1944.
In 1947, Father Francisco Gallego Pérez purchased by the first organ for the church, a Hammond organ for 7,000 pesos. It was delivered on 16 July, and was blessed on 14 September.
Efraím Jiménez, the priest from 9 March 1953 to 24 March 1968, hired Raúl Bohórquez to decorate the towers of the temple with nickel silver. Jiménez also obtained the current marble altar, which was consecrated on 7 June 1955 by Builes. He also bought the current church organ from Walcker Orgelbau of Ludwigsburg, Germany for 102,000 pesos. The Hammond organ was sold for 25,000 pesos to the Chapel of the Theological Seminary of Santa Rosa de Osos.
Meanwhile, the cemetery chapel began to deteriorate; in 1992 Father Luis Enrique Restrepo Muñoz established a board to work to restore it as a historical site.
On 23 November 1998, the municipal council of Yarumal declared the Church of Our Lady of Mercy, along with the Chapel of Saint Luis, to be architectural landmarks. On 12 August 1999, under the leadership of Father Gilberto Melguizo Yepes, the temple was given the title of Lower Basilica. The consecration was performed in a ceremony chaired by the bishop of Santa Rosa de Osos, Jairo Jaramillo Monsalve.
Yepes also ordered the replacement of a church lamp that had fallen, and obtained the stained glass windows, three new bells, a new baptismal font, and the picture of Blessed Mariano of Jesús Euse Hoyos. He restored marble tiles in the temple, which were in terrible condition. Additionally, in an initiative by Yepes and the Municipal Council of Culture, in August 2000 the remains of poet Epifanio Mejía were moved from the San Pedro Cemetery in Medellín to the Basilica. The gravestone was designed by Martín Villegas Alzate of Yarumal.
== Urban context ==
The basilica is located on the north side of the Epifanio Mejía Park in "The Centre" neighbourhood. This park is filled with historical and cultural symbols, and is the primary location for religious and civic activities. It was previously called Bolívar Square in memory of Simón Bolívar, but it was renamed after the renowned poet and the composer of the Himno Antioqueño, Epifanio Mejía, whose remains rest in the church.
Yarumal has three urban parishes: Our Lady of Mercy, La Inmaculada, and El Carmen. It is also home to four rural parishes: Cedeño, Ochalí, El Cedro, and Llanos de Cuivá. The primary part of Yarumal contains few buildings taller than five stories, so the church is the dominant structure in the skyline, and is an easily identifiable landmark. Standing out next to the basilica is the Rosenda Torres School, a building designed by Belgian architect Agustín Goovaerts, as well as the municipal palace and some other architecturally striking buildings.
== Building characteristics ==
The basilica was built in the Renaissance Revival style, a historicist style primarily developed in the 19th and 20th centuries intended to recall the architecture of the past.
The building has a rectangular floor plan, with clearly defined spaces. It has three longitudinal naves (the main, and the two lateral), which are crossed by a transept that projects somewhat from the sides but does not form a cruciform. The intersection of the transept and the central nave forms the crossing on which the dome rests.
=== Exterior ===
The layout and composition of the interior of the church is clearly identifiable from the outside of the building. Only the main façade and the eastern side are visible from public areas, as the rectory is in the rear of the church and on the western side is the School of Rosenda Torres, but none of these buildings surpasses the church in height.
The main façade directly faces Park of Epifanio Mejía. It is totally symmetrical, made up of two domed towers joined by a section that frames the central nave. It has three entrances, the central and two on the sides, each one coinciding with a nave.
From the side, the tower is visible, followed by the long sides of the naves (with the lateral naves lower in height than the central one), then the transept wall at the same height as the central nave. On top of the transept is the dome, and after that the walls continue. This façade has an entry that allows direct access to the rightmost nave.
The roof of the church is tiled in clay. The roofs on the central nave and transept are gabled, whereas the lateral naves have roofs with a single slope.
=== Interior ===
At the beginning of the church, which are before or in the beginning sections of the naves, there are two areas under the towers, as well as the area beneath the choir loft. These three areas are separated by walls, and are not designed as is usual in churches, where the towers of the façade are in line with the lateral naves. In area below the choir loft there are four paintings of the Stations of the Cross, and in the areas under the towers there are two more such paintings.
The central nave is considerably wider taller, and is separated laterally, between the choir loft and the sotacoro and the transept, by two arcades on each side, composed of a series of seven pillars each, which are joined by semicircular arches. Said pillars have square bases and are made up of a base, the shaft, and a capital with a cornice on which the arches are supported.
On these arches, in the high part of the central nave, there is a wide and solely decorative entablature. Beside this on each side there are two series of six windows, aligned with the axes of the arches, that allow light into the room. The central nave has a dropped ceiling to hide ceiling structure, on which hang three enormous and striking glass lamps.
The transept area is square, and each side is equally wide as the central nave. In each corner there is a large pillar, which support by means of arches the raised dome with eight windows.
The lateral naves are almost the same length as the central nave. In the external walls they have two series of six windows, each one separated by a decorative cornice. The lower series is of larger and has artistic stained glass. In each side wall there are four paintings of the Stations of the Cross and two wooden confessionals.
In the area south of the side wall there is a door to the church. In the left side wall, also south, the church is attached to the chapel of the Fallen Christ, which then joins at the north with the corridor of ossuaries and at the south with the stairs to the towers and to the high chorus. The lateral naves also have a dropped ceiling to hide the structure, on which hang two glass lamps.
The transept, or transverse nave, projects a bit to the sides though not so much as to form the shape of a Latin cross. It opens in the east–west direction, and has the same width and height of the central nave. The transept comes before the main area of the church, which is highlighted by a marble railing and three tall steps. In addition to this, the area of the transept beside the presbytery there are four other steps, emphasizing the altar area within the church.
In each of the eastern and western walls of the transept, are niches that contain pictures and several windows to provide light. The baptismal font is found in the western section of the transept, and in front of this in the north wall is what seems to have once been an entry, but has been converted into a larger niche that houses a high relief of the baptism of Jesus, and above this is a Chi Rho, a monogram of the name of Christ.
The main areas of the church are the presbytery and the chapel of the reserve altar. Said chapel is located in the end of the right nave. It is a rectangular room, four steps above, which served for much time as the main altar. The presbytery is elevated above the rest of the temple by seven steps; it makes up the main area of the central nave and has a vaulted apse covering it. Inside the presbytery are the altar in a half baldachin, the table of the sacrifice, the seat of the priest, and the ambon, all in marble.
=== Materials and structure ===
Much of the basilica is built in solid brick, and only some sections of the side walls are built in rammed earth. Both materials are plastered as much on the outside as inside, and the plastering of the outside bricks is characterized by the simulation of blocks of different sizes.
The bricks were attached with lime mortar, a type of mortar formed of calcium oxide, sand, and water. It dries into a hard substance, but with lower resistance and impermeability than cement. This material was used in the church instead of cement mortar in the beginning of the construction, although when the towers were rebuilt after the earthquake in 1938, cement was used to attach the bricks, as it had become a material that was used in construction in Colombia.
Structurally the façades work like load-bearing walls that transmit all the weight to the foundation, and those in turn to the ground. The walls measure on average of 80 cm in thickness, and the square-based pillars of the naves are 100 cm on each side. The foundation was made in stone supported with brick.
The roof of the temple is made of a wooden structure covered with clay tiles. The cylinder of the main dome is built in brick; the rest is a wooden structure covered in copper plates. The tower domes also are built with a wooden structure covered in copper plates, but these plates appear silver on the outside.
The tiling of the presbytery and of the reserve altar, in other words the walls of the church, is in multicoloured marble. Its design is similar to that of the Church of Nuestra Señora del Rosario, with marble inlays combined with drawings of fleurs-de-lis, except the terraces which in the basilica are made of white marble. The paving of the naves is done with coloured cement (also known as hydraulic tile), which has striking forms and colours. This type of tiling was very common between the beginning and middle of the 20th century.
In the period of time when Gilberto Melguizo Yepes was the parish priest, the marble tiling was restored, as it had settled and sunk. To stabilise it, affected parts were injected with grout. Afterwards the paving was polished, giving it back all his splendour.
== Elements ==
The basilica has several elements that stand out, whether for their design, function, material, or historical value.
=== Picture of the Virgin of Mercy ===
The veneration of the Virgin of Mercy in Yarumal dates back to when the municipality was founded. According to the records of the approval of the establishment of San Luis de Góngora, issued from Medellín on 21 December 1787 by Visitor Juan Antonio Mon y Velarde from the Province of Antioquia, the colonists were devoted to the Virgin of Mercy, and proclaimed it the patron saint and protector.
This text hints that the inhabitants of San Luis de Góngora (today Yarumal) already had some ardour for the Virgin of Mercy, and that they knew of her because of where they were from.
When she was declared the patron saint, the need was evident from the moment the municipality was founded to acquire a picture of her for the early church. Therefore, Nicolás Valencia, a native trader from Rionegro and wealthy colonist along with the secretary of the village mayor judge Francisco Leonín of Estrada, commissioned a painting, which appears to be from a Quiteño painter. Said image was completed in 1789 and donated to the parish.
In 1790, the picture of the Virgin of Mercy was solemnly installed by the Priest of Santa Rosa de Osos, Nicolás Francisco Agudelos, when he visited the chapel of the emerging San Luis of Góngora. On 27 January 1792 the bishop of Popayán, Ángel Velarde y Bustamante, visited Yarumal and confirmed Virgin of Mercy as the patron saint.
In 1915, when Father Leónidas Lopera inaugurated the wooden altar, he retired its ancient frame, and without separating the canvas from its frame, put the image in the upper niche of the altar.
It remained in this condition until 1930, when Father Julio Ortega undertook the cost to buy a new frame and, for the first time, protective glass.
Gerardo Martínez Madrigal was the one who, before the Second Marian Congress in 1942, ensured that the painting of the Virgin of Mercy had a hammered silver frame, manufactured in Santa Fe de Antioquia. He also acquired a shield, filigree brooch, and gold crown, made by Carlos Herrera also in Santa Fe de Antioquia. This cost only 950 pesos for the labour, as the necessary materials were donated by parishioners who gave their jewelry for this purpose.
In total, the work cost 2,000 pesos. The three gold parts weigh a total of 108 grams. The crown contains 24 gemstones and three pearls. There was also great interest in adding shoes and a golden belt Virgin shod and belt of gold. The ore required for this was given to the goldsmith, but no more was heard from him after this.
Priest Martínez was consecrated as bishop of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Garzón in Huila. On 28 August 1942, his successor Father Francisco Galician Pérez removed the painting from its original frame for the first time, with the intention of photographing the picture and transferring it to the new silver frame. It was a great surprised when discovered on the reverse of the painting was the caption: "True portrait of the miraculous image of Our Lady of Mercy, redeemer of captives. A gift of Nicolás Valencia. Year 1789, a Hail Mary by the painter". This confirmed that Valencia was the one who commissioned the image.
In the Second Marian Congress in Yarumal, on 23 September 1942, in the atrium of the chapel of San Francisco, the bishop of Santa Rosa de Osos, Miguel Ángel Builes, blessed the jewels (crown, shield and gold brooch) that were then fixed to the canvas. The picture of the Virgin of Mercy was carried solemnly to the parish church and placed in the niche of honour, in the wooden altar from 1915. To protect the jewels, 3 millimetres (0.12 in) glass was installed, costing 70 pesos.
The 11.5 kilograms of silver that make up the frame was donated by the women of Yarumal. In the top part, it shows shield of the Virgin of Mercy, and in the bottom, in gold, "The parish of Yarumal of its exalted patron saint in the Second Marian Congress".
In 1987 during the bicentennial of the foundation of Yarumal, the painting was canonically crowned by the Diocese of Santa Rosa de Osos, and also received the title of "Perpetual Mayor of Yarumal". In 1998, in an initiative by Monsignor Gilberto Melguizo Yepes, a belt and gold sceptre were placed on the image.
There are other versions or legends of the origin of the painting that are false, as they have inconsistencies and lack historical sources. One of the most widespread versions tells that traveler from Medellín arrived in Yarumal offering for sale the canvas of the Virgin of Mercy. Not able to sell it, he left it with the "Contento" inn (where today the Seminary of the Missions of Yarumal is located) and never returned for it, so the parish took it under their protection. This legend is contrary to the historical facts, as the painting is mentioned in the documents from the first ecclesiastical visits as being in the early church of San Luis de Góngora. Furthermore, this version is inconsistent with the caption on the reverse of the picture.
=== Altar ===
The first altar built for the church was the one donated by the congregation of the Salesian Sisters of Don Bosco, for the veneration of the Immaculate Conception. The church board authorised this association with the other congregation in 1898, and ordered its construction. It was installed on 20 May 1901.
In 1915, Priest Leónidas Lopera commissioned an altar from the cabinetmakers in Carvajal, which for a long time served as the primary altar. The chapel of the patron saint was so small that it was necessary to place the picture outside of the niche so that it could be seen by all. Some time afterwards, it was decided to build a new altar in marble for the Marian year of 1954.
To decide which company would create the altar, the church requested bids from several marble masons in Medellín, Italy, and Bogotá. Franco Lucarini, a mason from the Marmolería Italiana de U. Luisi Eredi in Medellín, was chosen to build the altar.
On 19 February 1954, having seen and analysed the project plans, the church signed the agreement to commission the altar. On 10 June extended the contract to include the tiling of the presbytery, and the tiling and the stairs of the side chapel, for 25,300 pesos.
The idea was that both the altar and the tiling would be unveiled between 15 and 20 September 1954, during the Marian Congress in Yarumal. Later, a representative from the mason company informed Father Jiménez that there were problems fulfilling the contract, as Italy was paralysed by a series of strikes. He responded that they would cause great damage to the parish if they did not finish, or at least exhaust all options to avoid delaying the inauguration.
Unfortunately they could not meet the deadline, as part of the work was sent from Italy via steamboat on 19 September 1954. The trip lasted roughly 25 days, and it took 10 days to pass customs and arrive in Yarumal. The rest of the work was also sent by sea, with the last part leaving on 15 December.
It took 18 trips to transport 184 boxes weighing a total of 100,820 kilograms from Cartagena to Yarumal. The price of the transport from the coast to Yarumal was 9,997.01 pesos.
On 1 February 1955 they began the work to assemble and place the altar. Manuel Rave Ángel and his son Gilberto were hired to do the work for 16,000 pesos. They were considered to be the ideal people for the job, as they were the ones who had placed the marble altar from Santa Rosa de Osos in 1936.
When they began work, they removed the altar stone from the altar that had been consecrated in 1944, along with the relics of the saints Teódulo, Martial, Modestina and Amanda, to be placed in the altar stone of the new altar when it was consecrated. These were stored in a metal box, protected with the episcopal seal of Miguel Ángel Builes, who transferred them to the custody to the parish priest.
On 7 February 1955 construction began on the foundation of the altar, made of metre-thick concrete. Lifting the 8 three-tonne columns began on 19 February, and was finished on the 26th.
On 2 March they installed the capitals on the eight columns, the 17th the entablature that joined the capitals, and the five medallions that symbolise the four evangelists and the titular saint Aloysius Gonzaga. On 31 March the cross was placed atop the altar.
On 19 April the altar rails were completed. On 21 April, the altar of the Blessed Saint was ready, with a Venetian mosaic of Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper. On the 28th the shrine was finished, and on the 30th the painting of the Virgin of Mercy was set in the niche.
The altar was consecrated on 8 June 1955. The bishop Builes, accompanied by the clergy, the Seminar of Missions, and the priest Efraím Jiménez, celebrated the mass of consecration. During the two-hour ceremony, the relics of saints Teódulo, Martial, Modestina, and Amanda were placed in the altar stone.
On 10 April 1955, Antonio Boroughs Rendón of Medellín was contracted for 1,600, to build an indirect lighting system. The church also purchased a red rug for more splendour. On 24 August of the same year they removed the wooden altar in the reserve chapel to replace it with the altar made in 1915. This transfer was done by Eugenio Salazar over the period between 26 August and 3 September, although the altar table was not moved as the found that it had deteriorated.
After the liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council, the Catholic Church ended the tradition of celebrating mass with the priest facing away from the congregation. Because of this, priest Roberto Arroyave Vélez needed to get the current "Altar of the Sacrifice" also made of marble, consecrated by Bishop Ordóñez, which happened on 18 September 1970.
=== Characteristics of the marble altar ===
The body of the altar is 12 metres (39 ft) high, 7 metres (23 ft) wide at the base, weighs 70 tonnes (77 short tons), and cost $23,000 dollars. It features 8 monolithic columns, placed in two semicircular rows. Each is 6 metres (20 ft) and 55 centimetres (22 in) in diameter. The columns are Corinthean, fitting with the general architectural style of the church.
The semicircular entablature rests on the capitals, made up of the architrave, frieze, and cornices. On its east side is a semi-dome decorated with high relief ornaments. In the centre is a shield with the initials "I.H.S.", a monogram of the name of Jesus Christ. The dome is topped with a cross. At the bottom of the semi-dome are five medallions representing the titular saint of the parish, Aloysius Gonzaga, and the Four Evangelists. These medallions are placed on a background of Venetian mosaic.
The half dome and columns form a sort of canopy which shelters the altar, church tabernacle, a shrine for the Virgin of Mercy made of green marble and topped by a monogram and a ducal crown, and the throne of the saint which is also decorated and enclosed in frames. In the far part of the altar is a reproduction of the Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper in Venetian mosaic.
=== Organ ===
The interest in purchasing a musical instrument to accompany the religious celebrations traces back to 1880, when Father Aldemar Palacio received on 3 June a letter from Jesús María Rodríguez, Provisor of the Bishop of Antioquia. The letter said that it was necessary for all the churches in the diocese to have a musical instrument, and as such ordered that an organ be purchased. However, due to the economic difficulties caused by the construction of the church, the purchase was postponed.
On 11 October 1900, the Presbyter Emigdio A. Palacio informed the Board of the Works on the Church of the need to purchase a musical instrument. The Board of Manufacture resolved unanimously to contribute 1,000 with the cost of the organ quantity of until 1,500 pesos, that they would provide once the instrument was purchased.
In 1947, the Presbyter Francisco Galician Pérez purchased a Hammond organ for 7,000 pesos, which was unveiled on 16 July by the teacher Cabral. It was blessed by the parish priest on 14 September.
The current pipe organ was obtained by the priest Efraím Jiménez from Oskar Binder & Cia. Ltda. of the city of Bogotá, which was the exclusive Colombian representative for E.F. Walcker of Ludwigsburg, Germany. The company was founded in 1785 and had experience in building this type of organs for tropical climates. To provide a quote, a delegate from the firm moved to Yarumal to study the style and acoustics of the church, for which he suggested a pipe organ with 17 registrations, or 1020 pipes in total. It was valued at 102,000 pesos to be paid over three years. Father Jiménez requested permission to approve the contract from Bishop Miguel Ángel Builes, who allowed it and congratulated to the priest for his initiative.
On 19 February 1961 the agreement was signed by the Presbyter Jiménez, Benedicto Soto Mejía (the chief of building), and by Oskar Binder (the delegate from the organ seller).
The pipe organ, weighing four tonnes, was sent from Bogotá by way of Sonsón on 6 March 1963. It arrived in Yarumal three days later, and it was put in the basilica through the "Door of the Pardon". Its installation began on 11 March, overseen by Oskar Binder, and it debuted on 19 March, the Day of Saint Joseph. The instrument was blessed from the pulpit by Bishop Builes before beginning the liturgy on Sunday 24 March.
The Hammond organ was sold to the Chapel of the Conciliar Seminary of Santa Rosa de Osos for 25,000 pesos.
The E.F. Walcker organ is composed of 17 stops spread among two manual keyboards, each with 61 keys, and a keyboard played with the feet to produce low bass notes. All the keyboards are in a console, which is separated and put in front of the organ with sight of the altar. These keyboards control 1,020 pipes of varied length and calibre. The organ is an orchestra in and of itself, with instruments like trumpets, bombards, oboes, clarinets, flutes and human voices. It is made of varnished and sealed mahogany. The organ works with an electrical fan and a 14-volt dynamo providing continuous current to the motor. Of the 32 organs in Antioquia, the basilica's is the eighth largest in area and volume.
=== Stations of the Cross ===
Some of the first representations of the passion and death of Jesus Christ in the church of Our Lady of Mercy were the 50 x 60 cm oil paintings. They were obtained by Bárbara Palacio of Mejía, aunt of Father Benedicto Soto, and donated to the parish, which in turn donated them to the chapel of the Pontifical Seminar of Missions where they still remain. This painting was canonically erected by J. Buenaventura Marín on 7 October 1903, with the priest and vicar Emigdio Palacio bearing witness.
The current paintings in the parish church that show the Stations of the Cross were made in 1945 and 1946 when Francisco Galician Pérez commissioned Mariela Ochoa U. of Medellín to provide 14 oil paintings. The images were copied from a collection of illustrations brought by Father Gallego from Germany. Each painting cost one hundred pesos.
=== Stained glass ===
The church began with simple stained glass windows. Monsignor Melguizo Yepes decided to obtain some artistic stained glass windows to adorn the building. They were commissioned from an artist from Cali and made from cathedral glass.
There are 11 in total with different figures and drawings, and they cover the lower series of windows in the external walls, between the transept and the towers. The rest of the windows continue to have the simple stained glass.
In the western wall facing the Rosenda Torres school are five stained glass windows. From north to south, they depict Jesus with his apostles; Saint Francis Xavier, patron of missions; Pope John Paul II, who beatified Father Mariano and granted the church the title of lower basilica; Mariano de Jesús Euse Hoyos, blessed by the Catholic Church, who was born in and coadjutor of Yarumal; and Saint Joseph.
In the wall of the eastern nave which faces the street, there are six stained glass windows. From north to south they depict Baby Jesus and the Holy Family; the Good Shepherd; the birth of Jesus Christ; the Trinity; the part of the gubernatorial decree that declares the Virgin of Mercy to be the perpetual mayor of Yarumal; and a replica of the Quiteño painting of the Virgin of Mercy.
=== Crystal chandeliers ===
The central nave features four large crystal chandeliers, 3.2 metres (10 ft) high and 2.3 metres (7.5 ft) wide which were purchased and installed between 1959 and 1960 by Presbyter Efraím Jiménez, following a demonstration by a delegate from the lamp seller.
Initially, two crystal chandeliers where ordered and installed as a trial. The first of the two was installed permanently on 23 October 1959.
The idea, finalised that same year, was to place two further chandeliers in the central nave, and that for Easter of 1960, additional smaller ones be installed in the presbytery, reserve altar, side naves, and in the main arches underneath the basilica's dome. A total of thirteen crystal chandeliers were ordered from the French glassware firm Baccarat, at a total cost of 60,000 pesos. The final chandelier was installed on 11 February 1960.
=== Clock ===
On 2 December 1882, while the church was still under construction, José María Díaz donated the first clock for the temple. It was originally installed in the tower above the "Door of the Pardon", as this was the first tower that was built. In 1920 was moved to the circular area between the windows on the central door.
It remained in place until 24 May 1966, when it was replaced by the new four-faced clock from Vitoria, Spain. The clock was solemnly blessed by the Bishop Miguel Ángel Builes the day before its installation, during the celebration of the evening mass. The thought at that time was to place the old clock in the cemetery of Carmen.
The clock rings every fifteen minutes, with its own bells for such purpose. The mechanism of the clock automatically sounds the bells by pulling ropes which in turn move hammers to strike the bell.
=== Bells ===
The old bells of the temple were in terrible shape, as they had cracks reduced their volume. Monsignor Melguizo Yepes arranged the purchase of some new bells, and removed the damaged bells from the right tower and sent them to the Tristancho workshops where they were melted to manufacture new bells. The Tristancho are a family of bellmakers with a long history in Colombia, as they are a dynasty that has made bells for 250 years.
The bells were made using the lost mould technique, as the mould for the bell is used only once and breaks. Therefore, the two bells are not identical. The manufacture of a bell takes two months of work and is totally artesanal. It begins with the preparation of the mould, which is made from three types of clay mixed with horse manure. A frame is built from bamboo, and clay is applied in layers until dry. This operation is repeated several times. Subsequently, the interior and exterior of the mould is machined into the shape of the bell, and sheep tallow is applied to release the mould. Afterwards, a countermould is applied and heated to absorb the tallow so the mould and countermould can be removed. The mould and the countermould are burned, leaving a void that will fill with molten melted.
The foundry process is done in mud ovens where only dry firewood is used for fuel. The copper and the tin are melted at temperatures of 1,200 degrees Celsius. The bell is made in a single piece and in an instant, as it only takes three seconds to fill a mould for a 300 kilogram bell. After the foundry, it is left to cool for two days, then polished by hand.
The three bells are large and made in bronze, and cost 7,500,000 pesos. They were unveiled by Melguizo during the patron saint celebrations in 1997, and were baptised from highest to lowest with the names of the Lady of Mercy, Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, and Benedicto, weighing 500, 310, and 300 kilograms respectively. They are used to announce religious activities, operated manually from the lower part of the tower with ropes that move clappers that hang inside each bell.
=== Baptismal font ===
The church of Our Lady of Mercy has had four baptismal fonts. The first is found in what is currently the chapel the first found in the place that at present is the chapel of the Fallen Christ, formerly the baptistry, which had for decoration a picture of the Holy Trinity. The second baptismal font was built by Gallego Pérez, placed further back and equidistant between the chapel of the Fallen Christ and the chapel of Our Lady of Perpetual Help.
The third baptismal font was located in the head of the church in the left nave. It was obtained under an initiative of Father Roberto Arroyave, who in 1975 hired its construction from bogotana (a type of sandstone) with the signature "Enchapes Sacatín" for 80,000 pesos.
The fourth and current baptismal font is situated in the same place as the third, and was acquired by Gilberto Melguizo Yepes. It is built from marble from the bottom up, and features a staggered octagonal base, followed by a square pillar that holds octagonal basin that holds the water.
=== Holy water fonts ===
The two fonts of holy water were purchased by Father Ernesto Acosta Arteaga in 1945 from the Marmolería Artistica of Hermenegildo Bibolotti. They are made of marble and are 160 centimetres (63 in) height. Each has a base, column, and basin to hold the water, and in the middle of this basin is a statue of an angel.
=== Candelabras ===
In 1924 the Presbyteries Rafael and José Manuel Yepes Carvajal donated to the church 12 enormous French candelabras (1.5 metres (4.9 ft) in height) that were used in the eucharistic vigils from 1 June to 16 July, finishing with the celebration of the Virgin of Carmen. The Presbytery Luis Enrique Restrepo Muñoz restored them during his first five years of service. Currently they remain for a large part of the year at the foot of the main altar.
=== Pulpit ===
The basilica had a pulpit made by the Carvajales Martínez men. It was finished with imitation marble and with four allegorical applications of the evangelists. It was demolished on 25 January 1971. The rosettes are preserved in the Traditional Museum of Monsignor Juan N. Rueda.
== Art ==
Before the Second Vatican Council the church of Our Lady of Mercy, as was usual, had a large variety of art. As a result of the provisions from the council, these were removed on 18 July 1967.
Between the works that were removed are: the paintings of the Holy Family, the Sacred Heart, the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Saint Joseph, Saint John Eudes, Saint Roch, Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, Saint Tarcisius, Our Lady of Mount Carmel, the Infant Jesus of Prague, the Infent Jesus of the Small Flock, the ancient Quiteño painting of the Virgin of Our Lady of Sorrows and the Child Mary. Some remained for a time before being removed, the patron saint Our Lady of Mercy, the titular Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, Our Lady of Perpetual Help, the three pictures of the Ordeal, the Our Lady of Fátima, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Antonio, the embrace of Saint Francis of Assisi, Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, the Fallen Christ, and the divine countenance.
Some images were still under determination for whether they would be kept or removed: the ones of the Virgin of Carmen, one of the Immaculate Conception (by Bartolomé Esteban Murillo), Christ the King, and the pictures of the Stations of Christ. The final location of the pictures of the Stations of Christ would depend on the considerations of the parish priest and of Bishop Félix María Torres Parra; finally they were placed on 14 August 1967, and work on decorating the church was about to finish.
The pictures that are currently found in the church are: the Immaculate Conception, the Virgin of Carmen, Saint Francis of Assisi embracing Christ on the cross, the Sacred Heart of Jesus, Saint Joseph, and the Blessed Mariano de Jesús Euse Hoyos. All of these images are located in the transept. The painting of the Fallen Christ is located in the chapel, and in the reserve altar are the paintings of Mary Help of Christians, Salvator Mundi, and six angels.
=== The Fallen Christ ===
The early church of Yarumal had the image of the Christ on the Column, which is referenced in the 1845 inventory, but today information on the painting and its whereabouts are unknown. As the church lacked an image representing a scene from the Passion of Christ, in 1935 Bishop Miguel Ángel Builes ordered the rector to commission an image of the Fallen Christ to be put in the church where it could be revered by the parishioners.
In compliance with this request, Presbyter Gerardo Martínez Madrigal began work to make suitable the chapel at the side of the presbytery and on 10 September 1938 made the final payment to Misael Osorio. The statue of the Fallen Christ was carved by Constantino Carvajal in 1935 for 400 pesos. The corresponding urn is the work of Francisco Gómez Estrada, who manufactured it for 100 pesos.
In 1935, this image was inaugurated on the days in that they celebrated the Eucharistic Congress and the patron saints. Currently the image of the Fallen Christ is located in a chapel at the foot of the temple, previously the baptistry, which is next to the left nave.
=== Dormition of the Mother of God ===
Fernando Ramírez and his wife Elena Rivera, originally from Sopetrán, had obtained in the late 19th century a Barcelonan picture of the Dormition of the Mother of God.
One their children expressed the wish that when his sister Carmen Ramírez Rivera of Botero died, the image become property of the parish. She died on 22 March 1955, and in compliance with his will, Germán Ceballos Ramírez delivered the picture to the parish.
The Assumption of Mary symbolises the elevation of the body and soul of María to heaven. This belief traces back to the period of the apostles, but it was only on 1 November 1950 that this was established as dogma by Pope Pius XII.
=== The Infant Mary ===
This image arrived in Yarumal on 6 January 1963. It was carved by Josué Giraldo Mejía, and it represents three invocations of the Virgin Mary: one of the Infant Mary, one of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and the one of Our Lady of the Rosary. The sculpture features blue clothing, without a mantle, and a rosary hung on her hands. It is topped by a garland of pink roses that symbolise the joyful mysteries; it carries another crown of red roses around her heart to represent the painful mysteries; and a third crown of yellow roses surrounds her feet to represent the glorious mysteries.
=== Altar crucifix ===
In the night of the 8 to 9 January 1958 there was a fire in the altar stone, and its extinction resulted in the crucifix being destroyed. A new one was donated by Antonio Hoyos Mejía. The cross was prepared in Yarumal by the cabinetmaker Alfonso Areiza Medina for 20 pesos, and on said cross artist David Pérez of Medellín created a sculpture of Christ for 300 pesos. The work was delivered on Holy Thursday of 3 April of the same year, and unveiled on Good Friday for public veneration during the liturgical celebration that afternoon. Christ is depicted carrying the three powers of gold that belonged to the Divine Boy Jesus of Prague, donated by Mercedes Ramírez Rivera. The cross has a characteristic glow generated by the copper encasement, made by the order of the rector Roberto Arroyave. The glow was made to imitate of the image of the Lord of the Miracles, which is a crucifix located in the Basilica of San Pedro of the Miracles.
== Services ==
In the basilica, three daily masses are celebrated Monday to Saturday. On Sundays there are eight masses. The schedules sometimes change based on celebrations of the patron saint, Holy Week, Christmas, or the Catholic calendar.
== Notes ==
== Citations ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmie_Johnson#Racing_career | Jimmie Johnson | Jimmie Kenneth Johnson (born September 17, 1975) is an American professional stock car racing driver and team owner. He competes part-time in the NASCAR Cup Series, driving the No. 84 Toyota Camry XSE for Legacy Motor Club. Johnson has won seven Cup championships, including five consecutive titles, tying him with Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the most all-time. He is widely considered one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history.
Johnson was born in El Cajon, California and began racing motorcycles at the age of four. After graduating from Granite Hills High School, he competed in off-road series. He raced in Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG), Short-course Off-road Drivers Association (SODA), and SCORE International, winning rookie of the year in each series. In 1998, Johnson and his team, Herzog Motorsports, began stock car racing. He moved to the national American Speed Association (ASA) series for late model touring cars and won another rookie of the year title. In 2000, he switched to the NASCAR Busch Series (now Xfinity Series).
Johnson's talent was noticed by Hendrick Motorsports driver Jeff Gordon, who convinced owner Rick Hendrick to sign him in the Winston Cup Series full-time for 2002, with Gordon as a part-owner of his car. After finishing fifth in the points in his first full season, he was second in 2003 and 2004 and fifth in 2005. Johnson won his first Cup Series championship in 2006 and with further wins in 2007, 2008, 2009, and 2010, he became the first and only driver in NASCAR history to win five consecutive championships. Johnson finished sixth in the points standings in the 2011 season and third in 2012 before winning his sixth championship in 2013. In 2016, Johnson won his seventh championship, tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the most Cup Series championships of all time. Johnson is also a two-time winner of the Daytona 500, winning in 2006 and 2013. Between 2002 and 2017, Johnson recorded seven championships, 83 career race wins, 222 top fives, 341 top tens, and 35 pole positions. From 2021 to 2022, Johnson competed in the IndyCar Series for Chip Ganassi Racing, and has competed occasionally in sports car racing throughout his career.
== Racing career ==
=== Beginnings ===
==== Off-road racing ====
Johnson started racing motorcycles in 1980 when he was four. Three years later, he won the 60cc class championship, despite injuring his knee. Afterward, he moved to the Mickey Thompson Entertainment Group (MTEG) Stadium Racing Series, where he won several more awards. In 1993, Johnson was given the opportunity to drive for Herb Fishel. He refused the deal and continued racing buggies and trucks in off-road stadium and desert races. He also reported for ESPN in the Short-course Off-road Drivers Association (SODA). Three years later, Johnson drove for Herzog Motorsports in the off-road truck series in 1996. By 1997, Johnson had progressed to SODA's Class 8; Class 8 is short-course off-road racing's class of two-wheel-drive Trophy Trucks which generate about 800 horsepower. He battled Scott Taylor and Brendan Gaughan for the championship. That year, Johnson won both races at Lake Geneva Raceway's first race weekend in May. He also won the season's third event at Antigo before finishing second to Gaughan at Antigo's second race. Johnson returned to Lake Geneva in July, winning the Saturday race and finishing second on the following day. Taylor ended up winning the championship with Gaughan second and Johnson third.
In SCORE, Johnson won races and had a few memorable finishes, like that in the 1995 Baja 1000, after leading over 900 miles, he fell asleep behind the wheel and woke up to find himself going off course. His Trophy Truck, Butch (the paint scheme of which was used for a throwback for Johnson's 48 car in the 2019 Southern 500, and the car that was used by Larry Ragland in wins such as the 1991 Baja 1000), was wrecked.
During his time in the SODA, SCORE, and MTEG series, Johnson accumulated over 25 wins, 100 top-three finishes, six championships, and received Rookie of the Year honors in all three leagues.
==== ASA and Busch Series ====
In 1997, Johnson began racing on asphalt ovals when he ran three races in the American Speed Association (ASA), making his debut at Hawkeye Downs Speedway. Driving for Herzog Motorsports' stock car program, he won the ASA Pat Schauer Memorial Rookie title in 1998. One year later, he had two wins and finished third in the standings. Johnson finished second in the two races at Fairgrounds Speedway he participated in over those two years.
Johnson made his NASCAR Busch Series (now NASCAR Xfinity Series) debut at the 1998 Indianapolis Raceway Park event, where he finished 25th for ST Motorsports. He continued his limited slate in 1999 with Herzog Motorsports before moving to a full-time schedule in 2000. At Watkins Glen International, he had a spectacularly hard accident on lap 46 when his brakes failed entering the first turn. He had to swerve quickly to the right to avoid the No. 86 of Dennis Demers, but went into the grass on the inside of turn one, then went back across the track, caught some air on the gravel trap before finally crashing head-on into the Styrofoam barriers at the far end of the turn while still more than 150+ MPH. He eventually climbed out of the car unscathed and raised his fists in the air like he had won the race. Johnson noted he was "so happy to be alive and OK. The next couple of days I was really sore." Otherwise, in a rather uneventful season which featured one DNQ at Daytona and six top-tens, he finished tenth in the point standings.
In 2001, Johnson recorded one win at Chicagoland Speedway, and finished eighth in the point standings; his win at Chicagoland was his only win throughout his career at the track. During the year, he joined Hendrick Motorsports for a four-race schedule in the Winston Cup Series, making his series debut in the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. The opportunity was made available when he connected with Hendrick driver Jeff Gordon during the 2000 Busch season; with Herzog facing shutdown due to sponsorship issues, Johnson approached Gordon and was informed of the team's intention to field a fourth car for him.
Johnson formally moved to Hendrick in 2002, driving the No. 48 Lowe's-sponsored Chevrolet.
=== NASCAR Cup Series ===
==== 2002–2005 ====
Johnson began racing full-time in the Winston Cup Series during the 2002 season. He earned his first career pole position for the Daytona 500, becoming the third rookie to do so (the first were Loy Allen Jr. in 1994 and Mike Skinner in 1997). In his thirteenth career start, Johnson scored his first career win in the NAPA Auto Parts 500 at Auto Club Speedway. Johnson became the first rookie driver to lead the point standings and to win twice at the same track during a season, by sweeping both races at Dover. In the Coca-Cola 600, Johnson led 263 laps before he got a penalty for overshooting his pit box. He earned four pole positions and three wins (tying the rookie record set by Tony Stewart in 1999; later surpassed by Shane van Gisbergen, who won four times in 2025), as well as six top-fives and 21 top-tenfinishes. He finished fifth in the final point standings. However, despite the strong season, Ryan Newman won rookie of the year honors over Johnson, partially due to Newman having 22 Top 10's compared to Johnson's 21.
In 2003, Johnson finished ninth on the all-time list for consecutive weeks ranked in the top ten in points with 69. He won three races (Coca-Cola 600 at Charlotte and both New Hampshire races), two poles (at Kansas Speedway and Pocono Raceway), fourteen top-fives, and twenty top-ten finishes, including a second-place finish at Rockingham after leading 78 laps. He also was able to win the All-Star race for the first time, as well as finishing second in the final standings, ninety points behind Matt Kenseth and 207 ahead of his future teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr.
In 2004, Johnson started slowly at Rockingham Speedway and Las Vegas Motor Speedway with results of 41st and sixteenth, after a top-ten finish in the Daytona 500. However, he quickly was able to rebound, winning the Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 at Darlington Raceway. Subsequent victories in the Coca-Cola 600, the Pocono 500, and the Pennsylvania 500 came in the middle of the season, seeing Johnson sweep the Pocono races. However, finishes of 37th and 32nd at Talladega Superspeedway and Kansas moved him toward the bottom of the point standings. Afterward, he was able to win the UAW-GM Quality 500 at Lowe's Motor Speedway. The second victory of the 2004 Chase for the Nextel Cup, at the Subway 500 at Martinsville on October 24, 2004, was marred by tragedy. Owner Rick Hendrick's son Ricky, twin nieces, brother, and chief engine builder Randy Dorton, as well as Joe Turner, Scott Lathram, were killed in an airplane crash en route to the race. All eight passengers and both pilots died in the incident, and Johnson was told after the completion of the race. Johnson had a total of eight wins, twenty top-fives, and 23 top-ten finishes. At the end of the season, Johnson finished second in the point standings.
In 2005, Johnson won at Las Vegas, Lowe's Motor Speedway, Dover International Speedway, and then again at Lowe's. In total, Johnson had four consecutive wins at his sponsor's (Lowe's) sponsored track in Charlotte, North Carolina. He won the Coca-Cola 600 that year, which broke the record for the most yellow flags in a Cup Series race, by beating Bobby Labonte by .027 seconds. Johnson had a chance to win the championship coming into the November 20 season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, but finished fifth in points after crashing at the midway point of the event with a tire problem. He scored thirteen top-fives, 22 top-ten finishes, and one pole position.
==== 2006–2010: Championship streak ====
===== 2006 =====
In 2006, Johnson began the season by winning the Daytona 500. The Daytona 500 also marked his first race with Earl Barban as the spotter, who won five championships with Johnson and the No. 48 team. He finished second in the next race at California Speedway and won the UAW-DaimlerChrysler 400 at Las Vegas by passing Matt Kenseth on the last lap. Johnson won his third race of the season in the Aaron's 499 at Talladega, followed by two more victories at Indianapolis and Martinsville. One highlight of the season was when he saved the car from slamming into the wall when he spun out during qualifications at the first Dover race. Throughout the season, he became the only modern era driver to win at least three races in each of his first five seasons. He started the chase with unfortunate mishaps in the first four races; a DNF at New Hampshire, a pitting mistake at Dover, a penalty at Kansas (he led the most laps in the race), and, while trying to make a pass for first at Talladega, getting clipped and spinning out. He and the team kept their hopes up and rallied with five straight Top 2 finishes including a win at Martinsville to come back from eighth in the points standings to take the championship. At the end of the season, he recorded one pole, thirteen top-fives, 24 top-tens, and his first championship title (this was also the first in his NASCAR career). In December, Johnson won the 2006 Driver of the Year Award.
===== 2007 =====
During the 2007 season, Johnson continued on a streak and recorded ten wins, four poles, twenty top-fives, and again 24 top-ten finishes. Those ten wins included sweeping both races at Richmond, Atlanta, and Martinsville. He also won at Las Vegas, Auto Club, Texas, and Phoenix. Afterward, he won his second consecutive championship title and was named the 2007 Driver of the Year. Johnson also had the best average finish in the Chase with 5.0. At the end of the season, he had a total of 33 career wins, placing him eighteenth on the all-time wins list.
In December 2007, Johnson commenced a program of exercise sessions and a run schedule supervised by John Sitaras, in order to balance his strength. Sitaras' initial assessment found that half of his body was much tighter, having acclimated to offsetting the g-force load from turning left while driving. In two years, Johnson's body fat percentage dropped from 20% to 8% (visible also in the change of the shape of his face), while his strength and stamina greatly improved. Johnson later became the first racing driver to be named Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year (in 2009).
===== 2008 =====
After the 2008 season, Johnson became the second driver to win three consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships, the first being Cale Yarborough. During the season, he won seven races (including a sweep at Phoenix), a career-high of six poles, fifteen top-fives, and 22 top-tens. In five of those seven wins, he started from the pole. He became the only driver to record three wins in each of their first seven seasons. It was also during this year that Johnson raced in his first-ever NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race, the O'Reilly 200 at Bristol, where he led 28 laps before spinning out on lap 101. That weekend was the first time he had ever sat in a racing truck. In the Chase for the Championship, he recorded fourteen wins, eight more than any other driver. One of those included Phoenix, in which he won on low fuel and high tire wear after crew chief Chad Knaus decided to stay out late in the race. He was also named the 2008 Driver of the Year and won an ESPY as the Best Driver. After the season, he also moved to third on the active winners' list.
===== 2009 =====
In the 2009 season, Johnson recorded his fourth consecutive championship, becoming the only driver to win four back-to-back season titles. Throughout this season, he won seven races (including a third consecutive Checker Auto Parts 500 and both Dover races), four poles, sixteen top-fives, and 24 top-ten finishes. Johnson now became the only driver to win at least three races in each of his first eight seasons, as well as the only driver to qualify for the Chase for the Championship every year since 2004. During the season, he moved up one spot to second on the active winners' list and went to thirteenth on the all-time wins list. After the season concluded, he won an ESPY for the second consecutive year and won the Driver of the Year award for the third time, tying Jeff Gordon, Mario Andretti, and Darrell Waltrip as the only three-time drivers to win the award.
===== 2010 =====
During 2010, Johnson won his fifth consecutive championship, becoming the third driver to make up points to win the title since 1975. During the season, he scored two poles, seventeen top-fives, 23 top-tens, and six wins. He also remained the only driver to qualify for the Chase every year since its inception in 2004. He became the twelfth driver to win 50+ NASCAR races when he won at Bristol in March and went up to tenth on the all-time wins list. His wins in 2010 included Auto Club, Las Vegas, where he passed Jeff Gordon with sixteen laps to go for the lead, Bristol, Sonoma, his first and only road course win, New Hampshire, and Dover. At New Hampshire, with eight laps remaining, Kurt Busch, who was running second, bumped Johnson to become the leader, but Johnson returned the favor a couple of laps later to lead the final two laps. Johnson said, "Kurt knocked me out of the way. At that point, I thought, I don't care if I win or finish. I'm going to run into him one way or the other ... I tried once and moved him. (I thought) I've got to hit him harder. The second time I did and moved him out of the way."
Johnson was also named Driver of the Year for the fourth time in his career, joining Gordon as the only drivers to win the award that many times. Johnson had been fighting for the championship with Denny Hamlin all season, but eventually passed him in points in the season finale at Homestead.
Johnson also won Tony Stewart's charity race, the Prelude to the Dream, his first victory on a dirt oval.
==== 2011 ====
In 2011, Johnson began the season with a fourth-place finish in the Budweiser Shootout, after starting from the 23rd position. One week later in the 2011 Daytona 500, he started 23rd, but finished 27th after being involved in a crash on lap 29. During the Subway Fresh Fit 500, he managed a third-place finish. Following a sixteenth-place finish after the Kobalt Tools 400, he collected two consecutive top-five finishes.
Statistically, Johnson's 2011 season was one of his worst performances to date, even though he finished sixth in the points. He only won two races during the season. The first was the Aaron's 499 at Talladega Superspeedway, where Johnson started on the outside pole and tandem-drafted with Dale Earnhardt Jr. for the entire race. On the last lap, with Johnson in front, he and Earnhardt Jr. were in fifth and sixth off of turn 4, behind two other pairs of cars – their Hendrick teammates Jeff Gordon and Mark Martin, and the Richard Childress drafting pair of Clint Bowyer and Kevin Harvick. In the tri-oval, Earnhardt Jr. gave Johnson enough of a push to nip Bowyer at the finish line by 0.002 seconds. This was the closest recorded finish in Talladega history and tied the 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400 for closest margin of victory in NASCAR history. After finishing in the first 15 positions in the next four races, Johnson failed to finish the Coca-Cola 600 after his engine failed. Three weeks later, in the Heluva Good! Sour Cream Dips 400, Johnson spun off turn two, flattening multiple tires, and breaking the sway bar which prompted him to a finish of 27th. During the Toyota/Save Mart 350, Johnson finished seventh after starting 12th on the grid. The finish moved Johnson to third in the Drivers' standings.
After returning to Daytona International Speedway for the Coke Zero 400, Johnson and Earnhardt Jr. ran together for most of the race, like at Talladega, until Johnson pitted under a caution flag. Johnson fell down the grid and was involved in a last-lap accident, prompting him to finish twentieth. During the next two races, Johnson finished third and fifth in the Quaker State 400 and the Lenox Industrial Tools 301. Two weeks later, Johnson found himself finishing nineteenth during the Brickyard 400 after coming to pit road with thirty laps remaining in the event. Johnson finished fourth in the Good Sam RV Insurance 500, after bumping Kurt Busch on the final lap. In the next race, Johnson finished tenth. Johnson finished in the top five in the following three races. During the last race of the regular season, the Wonderful Pistachios 400, Johnson finished in the 31st position. While at Chicagoland Speedway for the GEICO 400, Johnson finished tenth. Afterward, Johnson finished eighteenth in the Sylvania 300, then second in the AAA 400. One week later, Johnson recorded his second victory of the season in the Hollywood Casino 400. During the Bank of America 500, Johnson was involved in a crash and finished 34th. In the following race, Johnson finished second. For the next two races, Johnson finished fourteenth in each and finished 32nd in the Ford 400 to finish sixth in the Driver's championship standings.
The third NASCAR Championship for Tony Stewart marked the first time since 2005 (coincidentally, Stewart's second) that someone other than Johnson was the champion.
==== 2012 ====
Johnson began the 2012 season with a 14th-place finish in the Budweiser Shootout after crashing on lap 74. During the Daytona 500, Johnson was involved in a crash on lap two when he turned into the wall after contact from Elliott Sadler, then was t-boned by David Ragan, also collecting Danica Patrick, Kurt Busch and Trevor Bayne. Damage to the car was severe, prompting him to retire and finish 42nd. Afterward, he finished fourth and second in the Subway Fresh Fit 500 and Kobalt Tools 400. While at Bristol Motor Speedway for the Food City 500, Johnson finished in the ninth position, moving him up to 11th in the Drivers' Standings. Next, Johnson finished tenth in the Auto Club 400, despite having an oil leak, but the rain saved Johnson from a low finish. He went on to finish twelfth in the spring event at Martinsville after being involved in a crash on the first green-white-checker attempt. In the following event, the Samsung Mobile 500, Johnson finished second after leading much of the race before he was passed by Greg Biffle. Afterward, he recorded a third-place finish in the STP 400 at Kansas on April 22, 2012, and a sixth-place finish in the Capital City 400 at Richmond one week later. On May 6, 2012, Johnson started nnieteenth in the Aaron's 499 at Talladega, but finished 35th after suffering a broken oil pump belt on lap 62.
Johnson won his first race of the season one week later in the Bojangles' Southern 500 at Darlington. The win was also Rick Hendrick's 200th NASCAR Cup Series win. A week later, he matched Gordon and Dale Earnhardt with three wins in the NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race after winning the 2012 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race. Next, in the Coca-Cola 600, Johnson finished eleventh in the race after a penalty on lap 354. After the Coca-Cola 600, Johnson went on to win his second race of the season in the FedEx 400. In the Pocono 400, he recorded a fourth-place finish after starting 24th on the grid. During the next two races, Johnson placed fifth, moving him to fourth in the standings. Afterward, Johnson finished sixth after winning his first pole position of the season in the Quaker State 400. However, in the Coke Zero 400, Johnson finished 36th after retiring from a crash on lap 124. After finishing seventh during the Lenox Industrial Tools 301, Johnson recorded his third victory of the season and his fourth career win at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway, tying Jeff Gordon for what was the record for the most wins in the Brickyard 400.
At Michigan, Johnson was leading late in the race with six laps to go when his engine blew up, giving the race to Greg Biffle.
After making the NASCAR Chase for the Championship, Johnson secured three straight top-five finishes in the GEICO 400, Sylvania 300 and AAA 400. Following a seventeenth place finish in Good Sam Roadside Assistance 500, Johnson recorded four top-ten finishes, including two consecutive wins from the pole position at Martinsville and Texas, which was his sixtieth win in the series, to take a seven-point lead over Brad Keselowski. Johnson was able to hold off Keselowski's hard racing, which even prompted Tony Stewart to say that he was driving with a "death wish". At Phoenix, Johnson blew a right front tire, which caused him to collide into the wall and finish in the 32nd position. He was racing for the win and the championship the following week at Homestead, but his chances of winning the championship were over after he had a pit road penalty and had a gear failure and he finished 36th in that race, and finished third in the Drivers Championship behind Keselowski and Bowyer.
==== 2013: Return to championship form ====
In 2013, Johnson began his season with a fourteenth place finish in the 2013 Sprint Unlimited when he crashed on lap 14 along with Kyle Busch, Kurt Busch, Mark Martin, Jeff Gordon, and Denny Hamlin. Afterward, he placed fourth in the first Budweiser Duel, resulting in a ninth-place starting position in the 2013 Daytona 500. In the Daytona 500, Johnson started well, assuming the lead from Jeff Gordon on lap 32 and leading a handful of laps before falling back to the middle of the pack. Over the last few laps, Johnson was racing alongside Brad Keselowski for the lead until a caution came out for debris. Johnson took advantage of leading on the last restart. With five laps to go, Johnson led a lane with Greg Biffle and Danica Patrick. He then held off a last-lap charge from Dale Earnhardt Jr. and Mark Martin to win his second Daytona 500. This was Johnson's first Daytona 500 win with Knaus, as he won the 2006 race with Darian Grubb as Knaus was serving a five-race suspension. It was also the first time since his 2006 win that he finished better than 27th in the Daytona 500, after a streak of six years where he had never finished better than 27th because of crashes and mechanical failures.
The following week at Phoenix, Johnson started inside the top ten and finished second behind Carl Edwards. He followed this with a sixth-place finish at Las Vegas. At Bristol, he was running on the lead lap until a late-race spin forced him back to a 22nd-place finish. At Fontana, he struggled for most of the race, racing near the back of the pack, but salvaged a twelfth-place finish. Johnson won his first pole position of the season at Martinsville and had the dominant car, leading 346 of 500 laps on the way to his eighth Martinsville race win. Johnson also assumed the point lead, which he held for the remainder of the regular season. Johnson's consistency was enough that there were points in the summer where he was more than a full two-race wins' worth of points ahead of Carl Edwards or Clint Bowyer. Afterward, Johnson finished sixth at Texas. At Kansas, he led nine laps and finished third behind Matt Kenseth and Kasey Kahne. Johnson finished 12th the following week at Richmond, allowing him to build even further on his point lead. At Talladega, he was the only driver besides Matt Kenseth to lead double-digit laps (sixteen) and finished in fifth place. A fourth-place finish the following week at Darlington allowed Johnson to further solidify his point lead over Edwards.
In the 2013 NASCAR Sprint All-Star Race, Johnson won his record fourth All-Star race after a fast pit stop allowed him to start the final ten-lap sprint in second, and later passed Kasey Kahne for the victory. One week later, Johnson finished 22nd after spinning sideways late in the race. At Dover, Johnson led 143 laps but finished 17th when he jumped Juan Pablo Montoya on the last restart, causing NASCAR to issue him a penalty. He was able to redeem himself for this mistake the following week at Pocono by earning the pole position, leading the most laps, and winning his third race of the season, which increased his point lead to 51 points over Edwards. This also snapped a nine-year winless streak for Johnson at Pocono since sweeping both of the track's 2004 NASCAR Cup Series races. At the Quicken Loans 400 at Michigan, Johnson closed in on Greg Biffle for the lead with less than 10 laps left, but suffered a flat tire with less than five laps to go. Johnson finished the race in 28th, his worst finish of the season to that point. Johnson then finished ninth at Sonoma. At Kentucky, Johnson started third. He had the dominant car of the race, leading 182 of 267 laps. However, on a restart on lap 246, Johnson was slow to get up to speed and was subsequently touched and spun by Joey Logano, costing Johnson a shot at the win and giving the race to Matt Kenseth. Johnson was able to charge through the field after the caution and restart to salvage a ninth-place finish.
Returning to Daytona for the Coke Zero 400, Johnson led 94 laps and held off Tony Stewart and Kevin Harvick on a green-white-checker finish to win his fourth race of the year. In winning the race, Johnson became the first driver since Bobby Allison in 1982 to sweep both Daytona races in a season. This was a significant improvement in Johnson's runs on the restrictor plate tracks, as he had been crashed out of the running at both Daytona races in 2012, had an engine failure early while leading at Talladega in the spring and was part of a crash on the last lap in the fall. Also, he was one of only three drivers to sweep the top ten, the other two drivers being Ryan Newman and Dale Earnhardt Jr.
At New Hampshire for the Camping World RV Sales 301, Johnson qualified second, but failed post-qualifying inspection after his car was found to be too low, and started the race in 43rd, the first time in his career he started dead last. In the race, Johnson passed seven cars in the first four laps and reached the Top 20 by lap 50, while reaching the top ten by lap 165; Johnson finished sixth. He almost won the pole position at Indianapolis but was bumped to second by Ryan Newman. Johnson led the most laps and almost won, but a slow final pit stop cost him the race to Newman. The following week at Pocono, Johnson won another pole position, setting another track qualifying record. He led 43 of the first 80 laps before he cut a right-front tire that knocked a spark plug loose and affected the handling of the car. Johnson's pit crew worked hard to repair the car, fixing the plug on the last pit stop, and managing to salvage a thirteenth-place finish after racing near the back of the pack for most of the race.
Returning to Michigan, Johnson qualified third but crashed in happy hour, forcing him to a backup car and a 43rd starting spot. After running up to the lead through pit stop strategy, Johnson lost an engine on lap 55, relegating him to a 40th-place finish. This was followed by a streak of three poor finishes of 36th at Bristol, 28th at Atlanta, and 40th at Richmond due to crashes and mechanical failures.
Johnson started the Chase seeded in second place. He started the Chase with a fifth-place finish at Chicago, followed by a fourth-place finish at New Hampshire. At Dover, Johnson led 243 laps and held off Dale Earnhardt Jr. over the last 25 laps to win his eighth race at the track, also redeeming himself for the restart line violation that had cost him a shot at winning the June race.
Johnson spent the next several races chasing Matt Kenseth for the points lead, eventually gaining it at Talladega, though losing it when he and Kenseth tied for the points lead at Martinsville. Returning to Texas, Johnson had the dominant car, leading 255 laps to his sixth win of the season. The following weekend at Phoenix, Johnson avoided trouble in tight racing on two separate occasions (a near scrape in turn 4 on the first lap, and later a near spin after contact with Carl Edwards in turn 1) to escape with a third-place finish. He also capitalized on Kenseth's suffering from a poorly-handling car. With Kenseth finishing 23rd, Johnson took a 28-point lead to the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway. In the finale, Johnson raced conservatively to a ninth-place finish to secure his sixth title. He closed out the season with six wins, three poles, sixteen top-fives, and 24 top-tens, with an average finish of 9.8 and an average start of 10.7.
==== 2014 ====
Statistically, 2014 was one of Johnson's worst seasons to date. He started the season on an up-and-down note but went winless through the first eleven races of the 2014 season (his best finish was second at Martinsville). Skepticism began to arise, as he had never gone more than twelve races into a season without a win, and hadn't gone that long since the first few years of his Cup career. However, Johnson won the Coca-Cola 600, his first win in the race since 2005. Afterward, he went on to win at Dover the following week, making it the thirteenth time he had back-to-back wins.
A few weeks later, Johnson recorded his first win at Michigan, after several years of being deprived of a shot at victory as a result of running out of gas or blowing an engine. However, he didn't keep up with the momentum. After finishing in the top ten at Sonoma and Kentucky, Johnson was collected in an early wreck in the Coke Zero 400, finishing 42nd. Johnson's streak of misfortune continued the next several weeks, finishing 42nd for the second week in a row at New Hampshire. This was followed up by an inconsistent run at Indy (fourteenth), and poor showings resulting from accidents at Pocono (39th) and Watkins Glen (28th). Despite the poor finishes, Johnson qualified fourth for the Chase.
In the Chase, Johnson finished twelfth at Chicagoland, fifth at New Hampshire, and third at Dover to advance to the Contender Round. However, trouble struck when he finished 40th and seventeenth in the next two races.
At Talladega, Johnson started second and led a high of 84 laps. However, a 24th-place finish kept him from advancing to the Eliminator Round. At Martinsville, Johnson started seventh but finished 39th after being involved in a crash early in the race. Returning to Texas, Johnson dominated and held off Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick (and Jeff Gordon, who cut a tire on contact with Brad Keselowski late in the race which led to a post-race brawl) to score his third straight win in the fall Texas race, and also ended an eighteen-race winless streak. At Phoenix, he struggled for most of the day and finished 38th after blowing a tire and crashing out. At the season finale at Homestead, Johnson finished ninth and closed out finishing eleventh in points. This marked the first time in Johnson's NASCAR Cup career that he had finished outside of the top ten in the final points.
==== 2015 ====
Johnson began his season with a win in the Budweiser Duel. He started the season by finishing fifth in the Daytona 500 for the second year in a row. The following week, he won the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500 at Atlanta.
At Las Vegas, Johnson crashed twice into the outside wall, leaving him with a 41st-place finish. He rebounded with an eleventh-place finish in Phoenix and a ninth-place finish at California, his first top-ten there in two years. At Martinsville, he struggled to a 35th-place finish. However, his momentum returned at Texas when he held off Kevin Harvick and Dale Earnhardt Jr. to win. At Bristol, he avoided tight trouble early in the race and came home second to polesitter Matt Kenseth. At Richmond, he finished third. These finishes moved him back up to fourth in the standings. At Talladega, Johnson started fifth and led fifty laps, only to finish second to Earnhardt Jr.
At Kansas, Johnson gambled by staying out on the last round of pit stops and held off Harvick and Earnhardt again to win his third race at Kansas and of the season. In winning, he established a Cup record of 23 wins on 1.5-mile tracks, taking what was both his 200th top-five and his 300th top-ten finish. At Charlotte, he spun out on two occasions. The first time was early in the race while running 16th coming out of turn 4, but he was lucky to avoid hitting anything. He wasn't so lucky on the second spin late in the race; while running fifth, he spun out again at the same place, and hit the wall in pit road, causing some nose damage. Those spin-outs left him with a 40th-place finish. He rebounded the following week with a win at Dover, and also became one of four drivers to have won ten or more races at one track. This gave him a total of 74 career wins, two fewer than Dale Earnhardt's 76.
At Pocono, Johnson cut a tire on lap 88 but did not take major damage. He was able to work his way through the field to finish in third place. He finished nineteenth at Michigan after the race was called for rain on lap 138. At Sonoma, Johnson led the most laps at 45 laps, but a late-race caution caused by Casey Mears' broken wheel axle cost him, and he was passed by Kyle Busch with five laps to go and slipped back to sixth place.
Returning to Daytona, Johnson started 12th and led 35 laps before finishing second to Dale Earnhardt Jr., in a repeat of the Talladega race. At Kentucky, Johnson started sixth and ran inside the top-ten for most of the night, finishing ninth. At the second stop in Pocono, Johnson, along with two of his Hendrick teammates, Jeff Gordon and Dale Earnhardt Jr., took advantage of several cars running out of fuel to finish in the top six (Gordon finished third, Dale Jr. took fourth, and Johnson grabbed sixth). At Watkins Glen, despite suffering two penalties (lap 3: Overshooting the entrance to the inner loop, and caution No. 1 (lap 26–28): Speeding through pit road), Johnson rallied to finish tenth. He wasn't so lucky at Michigan, as late in the race, he got loose and spun in turn 3, and damaged the splitter on his car, resulting in a 39th-place finish (ten laps down). He rebounded at Bristol by finishing fourth, but had bad luck once more at Darlington. He spun out on lap 134 in turn 4, bringing out the seventh caution, and was never a real threat. He ended up nineteenth. He was able to recover a bit for a ninth-place finish at Richmond and started first in the Chase in a three-way tie between him, Kyle Busch, and Matt Kenseth.
Johnson opened up the Chase in a rough way. At Chicagoland, he blew a left front tire early in the race but was able to charge through the field to salvage an eleventh-place finish. He was also the subject of controversy when he made contact with Kevin Harvick on a three-wide pass that led to Harvick cutting a left rear tire, leaving Harvick with a 42nd place finish.
At Loudon, Johnson finished sixth after blowing a tire in the third position. At Dover, his Chase hopes came to an end when his car broke a driveline, leading him to finish 36 laps down in 41st place. At the fall race at Texas, Johnson won, passing Brad Keselowski with four laps to go. This marked his fourth consecutive win in the fall race, and third consecutive win on that track, having also won the spring race. That victory also marked the 75th of his NASCAR Cup Series career, putting him one race win short of tying Dale Earnhardt's career wins. Also in the process, he snapped a twenty-race winless streak.
Johnson finished fifth at Phoenix, and for the third year in a row, he finished ninth at Homestead. Also in the process, he edged out Ryan Newman by one point to finish tenth in the final standings. With the retirement of his teammate and mentor, Jeff Gordon, Johnson assumed the active wins record with 75.
==== 2016: The seventh title ====
Johnson began the 2016 season with a sixteenth-place finish at the Daytona 500. In the next race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, he won his first race of the season and the 76th of his career, tying Dale Earnhardt for seventh on the all-time wins list. Johnson finished third and eleventh in the next two events of the season at Las Vegas and Phoenix. His second victory of the season came in the fifth race, the Auto Club 400, where Johnson passed Harvick in an overtime finish. It was also the first time since 2011 that he finished in the top-five at the Auto Club Speedway. In the STP 500 at Martinsville Speedway, Johnson recorded a ninth-place finish after moving through the field after qualifying 24th. One week later, Johnson finished fourth in the Duck Commander 500 at Texas Motor Speedway despite suffering minor damage during a thirteen-car accident that occurred within fifty laps of the finish.
In the Food City 500 at Bristol, Johnson finished 23rd after making an unscheduled pit stop due to a loose lug nut on lap 300. At Richmond, he led 44 laps early in the race and finished third. At Talladega, Johnson was spun by Paul Menard and got involved in a multi-car accident with 28 laps to go, finishing 22nd. Johnson's streak of misfortune continued through the next several months, crashing out at Dover, Pocono, Daytona, Kentucky and at Watkins Glen, where he finished last for the first time in his career. His Top 10 finishes during the period came only in the Coca-Cola 600 and Brickyard 400, where he finished third in both races. Johnson finished seventh and sixth at Bristol and Michigan the following two weeks, but finished 33rd at Darlington after he spun out of turn 4. Johnson then finished 11th at Richmond. He qualified eighth for the Chase.
Johnson began the Chase for the Championship by leading a race-high 118 laps at Chicagoland, but received a speeding penalty during a green flag pit stop late in the race, and ultimately finished 12th. Johnson finished eighth the following week at Loudon. At Dover, Johnson led 90 laps but once again received a pit road penalty with 105 laps to go, costing him a win. He charged through the field and finished seventh (1st car a lap down) and moved to the "Round of 12" of the Chase.
At Charlotte, Johnson led a race-high 155 laps and won the Bank of America 500, claiming his eighth win at the track and the third win of the season, also snapping his 24-race winless streak. This marked Johnson's first appearance in the "Round of 8" under the current Chase system. He then finished 4th at Kansas and 23rd at Talladega. At Martinsville, Denny Hamlin aggressively made contact with Johnson on lap 198 and had a tire rub to cause a caution, but was able to stay on the lead lap. Later, during a caution on lap 362, he lost fuel pressure but was able to get the car refired and stayed on the lead lap again. After the restart, he took the lead from Hamlin and led the final 92 laps to win the Goody's Fast Relief 500. This locked him into the Championship 4 for the final race at Homestead. Johnson finished eleventh in the rain-shortened race at Texas, and 38th at Phoenix after being penalized a lap for passing the pace car coming down to pit road and being involved in a wreck on a restart.
Johnson claimed his seventh championship by winning at Homestead on November 20. After losing his starting spot due to a pre-race inspection fault, Johnson started at the rear of the field. He progressed through the field, cracking the Top 10 quickly, but remained stagnant around fifth-place for a majority of the race. On a restart with ten laps to go, Carl Edwards came across the nose of Joey Logano, hit the inside wall, and triggered a massive wreck, ending Edwards' championship hopes. Johnson avoided the accident and was put in a position to win the title. On the final restart, he passed Kyle Larson, winning the race and his seventh championship, tying Richard Petty and Dale Earnhardt for the most all-time championships.
==== 2017: Final NASCAR wins ====
Johnson came into 2017 as the defending NASCAR Cup Series champion. The start of the season didn't go as smoothly as the end of last season, however. Through the first six races of the season, Johnson only scored one top-ten finish. He then rebounded with back-to-back wins at the 2017 O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 in Texas (started from the rear of the field) and the 2017 Food City 500 at Bristol, his first win at The Last Great Coliseum since 2010. This would be the fourteenth and final time he won back-to-back races in his career. The following week, Johnson would finish just outside the Top 10 at Richmond, after colliding with teammate Dale Earnhardt Jr late in the event, leading to an eventual flat tire and spin for the driver of the No. 88.
Johnson scored his third win of the season at Dover in June after passing Kyle Larson on an overtime restart, which ended under caution with a multicar incident behind the two leaders. This was Johnson's record-holding 11th win at Dover and 83rd career victory, tying him with NASCAR Hall of Famer, Cale Yarborough. This would eventually be Johnson's final NASCAR Cup Series win.
The rest of the season didn't go smoothly for Johnson. In the week following his Dover triumph, during the Axalta presents the Pocono 400, Johnson's brakes failed into turn 1 at a speed of over 200 MPH, resulting in a tremendous impact with the outside SAFER barrier. Similarly, directly behind Johnson, fellow competitor Jamie McMurray also experienced a brake failure and impacted the wall hard, igniting a large vehicle fire. Both Johnson and McMurray were uninjured in the accident.
Johnson suffered a big slump during the summer part of the season, failing to earn a top-five finish and only netting three top-ten finishes. During that stretch, in the 2017 Brickyard 400 on a late race restart, Johnson's Lowes-sponsored Chevrolet started billowing smoke while running in third place. Heading into turn 3, the two race leaders, Brad Keselowski and Kasey Kahne, battled one another, allowing Johnson to close in and make a three-wide move to the inside. Without much space into the corner, and with the obvious mechanical failure, the car broke sideways and impacted the outside retaining wall hard. The following week, Johnson had another run-in with teammate Kasey Kahne, resulting in a second consecutive DNF; his third in the last four races. Regardless, Johnson (from his wins earlier in the season) was able to qualify for the playoffs.
Entering the 2017 NASCAR Cup Series Playoffs, the defending champion was still one of the favorites to win the title, despite his results over the summer stretch. After earning his first top-five finish (third) since his Dover victory, fittingly in the fall Dover event, he advanced through the opening round and into the Round of 12. Johnson scored a seventh-place finish at Charlotte to open the second round, but the following week was involved in "The Big One" at Talladega. He was scored with a 24th-place result after his car was disqualified for violating the NASCAR Damaged Vehicle Policy, in which his crew worked on the car during the red flag. In the elimination race at Kansas Speedway, Johnson entered with a seven-point advantage. After having two separate spins, he drove his way through a large multicar accident off turn 2, involving Playoff drivers Matt Kenseth and Jamie McMurray, and rebounded with an eleventh-place finish. Assisted by fellow Playoff contenders finding trouble, Johnson qualified into the Round of 8, by just nine points.
Unfortunately, Johnson's performance slipped in the third round. He finished twelfth at Martinsville, but was followed by a disappointing 27th-place result at Texas. Entering the final race in the round at Phoenix, Johnson was 51 points behind the Playoff cutoff, and in a near must-win situation. However, on lap 148, Johnson's hopes at an eighth championship ended when he blew a tire in turn three, and hit the outside wall hard, ending his day and eliminating him from the Playoffs. Johnson finished tenth in the final standings, his fifteenth and final top-ten finish in the points standings.
==== 2018: Final season with Knaus and Lowe's ====
Johnson's Speedweeks did not go smoothly, wrecking in each of his three races. At the Advance Auto Parts Clash, he was wrecked on the last lap by Kyle Larson; this was the seventh year in a row he failed to finish the Clash. Johnson qualified third for the 2018 Daytona 500 but had to go to a backup car after wrecking in his Duel. On lap 59 of the Daytona 500, he got caught up in a wreck started by Ryan Blaney, and Ricky Stenhouse Jr., which also involved his teammate William Byron, Erik Jones, Daniel Suárez, Trevor Bayne, and Ty Dillon and ended up 38th. Since then, Johnson struggled throughout the 2018 season with only two top-fives and eight top-ten finishes by the time he barely made the Playoffs for the fifteenth season in a row. Johnson's only great run of the season came at the Charlotte Roval race where he ran in the top-ten for most of the day and battled Martin Truex Jr. for the win on the final lap, but he locked his brakes on turn 17 and spun out of control, taking Truex out with him in the process while Blaney passed them to win the race. Johnson finished eighth, and as a result of a three-way tie with zero points, he was eliminated in the Round of 16. Johnson scored only one more top-ten finish afterward and wound up a then career-worst fourteenth in the final point standings since running full-time in 2002, winless for the first time in his career, along with equaling a career-low eleven top-ten finishes for the second season in a row.
Johnson notably gave teammate and friend Chase Elliott a push to the front stretch when his car ran out of fuel when being congratulated by the rest of the drivers after recording his first career win, at Watkins Glen.
On March 14, 2018, Lowe's announced it would no longer sponsor the No. 48 car after the 2018 season; Ally Financial assumed primary sponsorship of the team in 2019 on a two-year deal. Johnson and his long-time crew chief Knaus parted ways at the end of the season, ending a seventeen-year partnership, the longest in NASCAR history. Johnson was paired with JR Motorsports crew chief Kevin Meendering in the 2019 season.
==== 2019 ====
The 2019 season started on a positive note for Johnson, as he won the 2019 Advance Auto Parts Clash after contact between him and Paul Menard sent Menard spinning while battling for the lead and triggering "The Big One" on lap 55 right before the rain arrived. It was also the first race with new sponsor Ally Financial and crew chief Meendering. He followed it up by finishing eighth in the first duel race. In the Daytona 500, Johnson ran up front most of the race, but when he came to pit road with around 40 to go, B. J. McLeod and Cody Ware's cars spun behind him and hit him in the left rear. The contact ripped off the left rear quarter-panel. He recovered to finish ninth after being two laps down. In the next race at Atlanta Motor Speedway, Jimmie finished 24th, two laps down. He followed up by finishing nineteenth. He followed up that performance with a ninth-place finish. On March 29 in O'Reilly Auto Parts 500 qualifying at Texas, Johnson got his first pole since 2016 at Texas and scored his first Top 5 finish since the 2018 Coca-Cola 600 two days later. At the Coca-Cola 600, Johnson ran well and ended up finishing eighth. At Chicagoland Speedway, Johnson started fourth and took the lead on lap seven from Austin Dillon. He went on to finish fourth, followed by a third-place finish at the rain-shortened Coke Zero Sugar 400 a week later, his best finishes of the season.
On July 29, 2019, following a string of disappointing finishes during the season, Hendrick Motorsports announced that race engineer Cliff Daniels would replace Meendering as the crew chief of the No. 48. At Watkins Glen, Johnson finished nineteenth after being spun out by Ryan Blaney, leading to an argument between the two after the race. The animosity between them lasted until Michigan a week later.
In September 2019, Johnson missed the playoffs cut for the first time in his NASCAR career after finishing 35th in the Brickyard 400 due to contact with Kurt Busch and William Byron that sent his car crashing hard into the wall.
Johnson scored four more top-ten finishes in the playoffs and wound up finishing a career-worst eighteenth place in the final standings, going winless for the second straight season. Many crashes throughout the season brought down his otherwise promising year.
On October 4, 2019, Ally extended its sponsorship of the No. 48 for three more years through the 2023 season.
==== 2020: Final full-time season ====
On November 20, 2019, Johnson announced that the 2020 Cup season would be his last full-time season of racing, although he did not rule out a part-time schedule after that. The 2020 season started with the Daytona 500 qualifying, he finished fourth for a second year in a row. Later that day, he entered the 2020 Busch Clash as the defending champion. He started sixteenth and finished eleventh after a tire spun on the first restart in overtime. Next race was the 2020 Bluegreen Vacations Duels. He started and finished second behind team-mate William Byron in Duel 2. In his last Daytona 500, he started sixth and finished 35th after Kyle Busch and Brad Keselowski triggered "The Big One". Next week in Las Vegas, he finished first in the final practice. He started eighteenth and finished fifth in the race. At his home track Auto Club, he qualified second, losing the pole position to Clint Bowyer by 0.007 seconds. In the race, his wife and children waved the green flag at the start of the race. There was a four-wide salute before the race to honor him. For most of the event, he was in the top ten and led ten laps; he finished seventh.
In The Real Heroes 400 at Darlington, the first race back after the delay forced by the COVID-19 pandemic, Johnson was leading in the final lap of the first stage when he lost control of his car and crashed after contact with Chris Buescher who was a lap down at the time. It marked his 100th race in a row without a win. A few days later in the Toyota 500 at the same track, Johnson bounced back with an eighth-place finish in the same track. At the Coca-Cola 600, he qualified second, losing the pole position to Kurt Busch by 0.009 seconds. Johnson finished second in the 600 but was disqualified after his car failed post-race technical inspection. He bounced back with an 11th-place run in Charlotte's next race Alsco Uniforms 500.
Johnson enjoyed a pair of top-ten finishes at Bristol and Atlanta. At Martinsville, he overcame a start at 21st and finished third in the first stage, and scored his first stage win of the year and the third of his career in the second segment, but dropped back in the third stage and finished tenth. He fell back early due to car issues at Homestead, but ended with a strong run to make his way to the top twenty and finish sixteenth. The following week at Talladega, Johnson spearheaded a pre-race ceremony in support of Bubba Wallace after it was falsely reported a noose was in his garage; before the race, Johnson texted his peers that he intended to stand with Wallace during the national anthem, with the drivers also pushing his car to the front of pit road. In the race, Johnson was on the verge of taking the lead with three laps remaining before being spun by Harvick.
On July 3, 2020, two days before the Brickyard 400 at Indianapolis, Johnson announced he had tested positive for the coronavirus, forcing him to miss the race and Justin Allgaier to take over the No. 48. This snapped a 663-race streak in which Johnson started a Cup event. Johnson was cleared to return to racing on July 8, 2020, after testing negative twice, and he received a waiver that allowed him to remain playoff eligible should he qualify. His first race back was the Quaker State 400 at Kentucky, a track at which he had never won before. With 23 laps to go, he was coming off of the fastest three laps of the race and a strong run from ninth to third before taking the inside on a restart and being nipped by Brad Keselowski in the left rear, spinning out. He finished the race in eighteenth. The next week at Texas, Johnson was again one of the fastest cars, putting up a top-ten lap before getting loose and hitting the wall in stage 2. On top of that, his crew committed a penalty for too many crew members over the wall. He finished 26th and only two points above the playoff cutoff in the standings. Johnson's misfortunes continued at Kansas when he was collected in a third-stage crash while running in the top ten, followed by a first-stage spin at New Hampshire while fighting for a top-five spot.
Prior to the Go Bowling 235 at the Daytona road course, the No. 48 team changed the Ally paint scheme from black to white, which Johnson branded as a "rAlly" livery in an effort to "reset" his luck. Johnson, who had experience at the road course via the 24 Hours of Daytona, finished fourth in a run that he described as "what we needed".
The final three races of the regular season saw Johnson battling with Byron and Matt DiBenedetto for the final playoff spots. Entering the doubleheader at Johnson's strongest track, Dover, Johnson was 25 points behind his teammate. He finished seventh and third in the two races while Byron was 28th and fourth, which placed Johnson below Byron by four points with one race before the playoffs, and nine points behind DiBenedetto. The final race, the Coke Zero Sugar 400 at Daytona, began with a strong first stage for Johnson as he finished fifth, ahead of Byron and DiBenedetto. The second stage saw him pit early to avoid having to save fuel, and he took advantage of the drivers pitting later in the stage, for another fifth-place finish. Although the three bubble drivers avoided a late wreck in the final stage, Johnson was collected in "The Big One" with two laps remaining. Although his team was able to salvage the car to meet the minimum speed and finish 17th, DiBenedetto beat him for the last playoff seed by six points. In his post-race interview, Johnson lamented his misfortunes during the year including the Coca-Cola 600 disqualification and the positive COVID-19 test; he drew praise from fans for his humility when he congratulated Knaus, who moved to Byron's team, and expressed his gratitude to Hendrick Motorsports for his career.
In the first playoff race, the Cook Out Southern 500 at Darlington, despite being out of the playoffs, Johnson ran in the top five for most of the night in a throwback scheme that combined those of Dale Earnhardt and Richard Petty, to honor the two other seven-time champions. His teammates at Hendrick Motorsports also drove in throwback schemes to honor him in his last year.
During the fall Texas race, Johnson would gain publicity by running a special scheme created by designer Noah Sweet, otherwise known as Lefty or Lefty Designs. Sweet, four months earlier in June, had created a mock Jimmie Johnson scheme adorned with pride flag colors, which had led to an excess of harassment towards Sweet and led him to take a temporary break from social media. During his break, encouragement came from most in the NASCAR community (with the hashtag #WeLoveLefty created and spread), including Johnson himself. In a few weeks, Ally president Andreas Brimmer and Jimmie Johnson would tell Sweet on a video call that he would have his chance to get his design on Johnson's car. Sweet, whose favorite driver throughout his life had been Johnson, said, "I'm going to remember it for the rest of my life. I am." The car eventually ran in the 2020 Autotrader EchoPark Automotive 500, finishing 36th due to engine issues.
Johnson's only top-ten of the playoffs came in his final start with a fifth-place finish in the Season Finale 500 at Phoenix; he was the highest-finishing driver of those not in the Championship Round. After the race, he congratulated teammate Elliott on his maiden championship and performed a Polish victory lap.
He ended his final season with ten top-ten finishes, the lowest of his career.
==== 2023: Legacy Motor Club co-owner, part-time return ====
On November 4, 2022, Johnson purchased an ownership stake in Petty GMS Motorsports. In addition, he announced his return to the Cup Series on a part-time basis in 2023, starting with an attempt to make the 2023 Daytona 500.
On January 11, 2023, the team was rebranded under the name Legacy Motor Club, with Johnson announced to be running the No. 84. On February 14, 2023, Johnson made the Daytona 500 entry field by scoring the fastest lap among the non-chartered teams. Johnson finished 31st after being involved in an overtime crash. Johnson would then make a start at the COTA race in March, where he finished 38th after wrecking out on lap one. Johnson's next start would come at the 2023 Coca-Cola 600 in May. He finished 37th after spinning out twice and only completing 115 laps. On June 26, 2023, Johnson's in-laws were involved in a possible murder-suicide at their house in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Johnson was on the original entry list for the Chicago street course race, yet on June 27, 2023, Legacy Motor Club announced they would withdraw his entry from the race due to the tragedy.
Johnson started his 2024 part-time season with a 28th-place finish at the 2024 Daytona 500. He also raced at Texas (29th), Dover (28th), Kansas (38th), Charlotte (29th), and Indianapolis (33rd). On July 26, Legacy Motor Club released crew chief Jason Burdett and several members of the No. 84 team.
On January 27, 2025, Johnson was named majority owner of Legacy Motor Club, with Knighthead Capital Management purchasing a minority stake and former co-owner Maury Gallagher stepping back into an ambassador role. At the 2025 Daytona 500, Johnson finished third, his highest finish at the race since winning in 2013, his highest finish in the Next Gen cars; his previous best was 26th at the 2024 season finale at Phoenix; and his highest finish since the 2020 Drydene 311 doubleheader at Dover.
=== IndyCar Series ===
In 2020, Johnson participated in a test with IndyCar Series team Chip Ganassi Racing. He initially had a test scheduled in March with Arrow McLaren SP at Barber Motorsports Park before it was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a second attempt with Chip Ganassi Racing on the Indianapolis road course in July was postponed when he tested positive for the virus. The CGR test finally took place on July 28, 2020, it was overseen by CGR owner Chip Ganassi and five-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon (who is, along with Johnson, considered to be one of the best in their respective series) to discuss the car. Johnson said that driving an IndyCar was a "childhood dream" of his.
On September 9, 2020, Johnson announced that he would join Chip Ganassi Racing on a part-time basis in 2021 and 2022 to drive the road and street courses on the IndyCar circuit. The deal left open the possibility of running select NASCAR Cup Series events in conjunction, as Ganassi fielded two cars in NASCAR and could've added a part-time car for Johnson, staying under the four-car maximum for Cup teams. However, in 2021, Ganassi's NASCAR operations were sold to Justin Marks and absorbed into the Trackhouse Racing Team the following year. Johnson refused to run the ovals due to safety concerns of racing open-wheel cars on them but after both driving the cars and watching teammate Tony Kanaan run on ovals, he ultimately agreed to run an oval test at Texas to prep himself for the Indianapolis 500.
Throughout the year, Johnson largely struggled in IndyCar, frequently running at the back of the field and struggling with spins and accidents.
On December 15, 2021, Johnson announced that he would contest the full 2022 IndyCar schedule driving the No. 48 car for Chip Ganassi Racing. During his first oval race in the series, the XPEL 375 at Texas, Johnson finished a then career-best sixth. Johnson made his Indianapolis 500 debut later in the year. Johnson led two laps and, despite a late race crash, was elected Rookie of the Year for the race. Johnson proceeded to collect his first career IndyCar top-five in his first ever trip to Iowa Speedway at the Hy-Vee Salute to Farmers 300 presented by Google on July 24, 2022. On September 26, 2022, Johnson announced that he would be stepping back from racing full-time.
=== Other racing ===
Johnson first raced in the Race of Champions in Europe in 2002. He was eliminated in the first runoff by then world rally champion Marcus Grönholm of Finland, but he and Jeff Gordon and Colin Edwards racing as Team USA won the teams' championship. He returned to the event two years later but lost the quarter finals 0–2 to Mattias Ekström of Sweden, who was DTM German Touring Car champion that year. Johnson entered the 2006 Race of Champions but did not start due to an injury received just days before the race. He still attended the event to cheer for teammate Travis Pastrana. In the 2007 event, Johnson was eliminated before the quarter-finals by Formula One driver Sébastien Bourdais of France.
In 2004, Johnson started racing in Grand-Am with the 24 Hours of Daytona, where he finished eighth. He also entered the event one year later, which his team, Howard-Boss Motorsports, finished second. Two years later, he entered two events, which were both held at Daytona International Speedway. During the races, his team finished 9th and 19th. In 2008, Johnson moved to Bob Stallings Racing with Alex Gurney and Jon Fogarty to race in the 2008 Rolex 24 at Daytona, where the team finished second. One year later, he returned with GAINSCO/Bob Stallings Racing for his fifth Rolex 24 appearance. During the race, his team finished seventh. He returned to the team in 2010 to race in the Rolex 24 and Sahlen's Six Hours of the Glen. During the Rolex 24 at Daytona his team finished 21st, while at Watkins Glen the team finished sixth. He returned to the Rolex 24, in 2011 where his team finished fifteenth.
Johnson returned to the race in 2021, driving an Ally Financial-sponsored No. 48 Cadillac DPi-V.R for Action Express Racing alongside Simon Pagenaud, Kamui Kobayashi, and Mike Rockenfeller. He finished second for a third time in his career. Alongside Pagenaud and Kobayashi, he will participate in all IMSA Michelin Endurance Cup races for 2021, which include Sebring, Watkins Glen, and Road Atlanta. At Sebring, his team finished third, but they were moved to the rear of DPi classification for violating drive time rules after Pagenaud was found to have driven more than the maximum four hours within a six-hour time period. The team finished 28th in overall ranking.
On November 26, 2018, Johnson participated in a motorsports cultural exchange with two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso at Bahrain International Circuit, where both drivers compared their respective race cars.
== Personal life ==
Johnson was born on September 17, 1975 in El Cajon, California, the son of Catherine Ellen "Cathy" (née Dunnill) and Gary Ernest Johnson. He has two younger brothers, Jarit and Jessie. Both have made professional off-road racing starts in the TORC: The Off-Road Championship. Johnson attended Granite Hills High School, while he raced motorcycles during the weekends. He was a varsity water polo player, diver, and swimmer, and graduated in 1993. The number 48 is retired from all sports teams uniforms at his school and Johnson was inducted into the school's Athletic Hall of Fame. Johnson lives in Charlotte, North Carolina like many other NASCAR drivers. He is married to Chandra Janway. They have two daughters.
Johnson is a triathlete, regularly participating in triathlons and long-distance running; the Jimmie Johnson Foundation's Wellness Challenge also hosts triathlons. In 2019, he competed in the Boston Marathon, finishing with a time of 3:09:07 and 4,155th overall (3,746th among males and 641st in the Male 40–44 class).
Johnson was close friends with NASCAR competitor Blaise Alexander. Following Alexander's death during a racing incident at Charlotte in 2001, which prompted NASCAR as a sanctioning body to require the use of the HANS device by every driver in its top three series, Johnson's car has had a flame decal with Alexander's initials inside of it at every race. In 2004, following the plane crash that killed the son of Rick Hendrick, Ricky, along with nine others, the tail number of the Hendrick plane that crashed was added alongside Alexander's initials.
=== The Jimmie Johnson Foundation ===
The Jimmie Johnson Foundation was launched by Johnson and his wife, Chandra, in 2006. The foundation helps children, families, and communities in need. In 2007, Johnson opened Jimmie Johnson's Victory Lanes in Randleman, North Carolina, which is a four-lane bowling alley for campers at Pattie and Kyle Petty's Victory Junction Gang Camp. The foundation supports several charities, including Habitat for Humanity, Hendrick Marrow Program, Make-A-Wish Foundation, and Victory Junction. Every year, it holds a golf tournament in San Diego, which raises money for K-12 public education. Since the beginning, the tournament has raised a total of $8 million to help fund several projects. During 2009 and 2010, the foundation awarded $1.5 million for the Education Champions Grants program. The money is given to public schools in California, Oklahoma, and North Carolina. It helps fund basic needs, such as technology, outdoor classrooms, playground construction, and reading programs. The foundation has also assisted the American Red Cross with disaster relief efforts.
In 2014, Johnson joined the Ban Bossy campaign, as a spokesperson advocating leadership in young girls.
== Legacy ==
For his successes, Johnson is often regarded as one of the greatest drivers in NASCAR history. Other drivers and teammates have also lauded Johnson for his leadership and helpfulness, including younger drivers Corey LaJoie (for whom Johnson advocated to get a seat in a Cup car), Chase Elliott, William Byron, Bubba Wallace, Alex Bowman, and Ryan Blaney as well as veterans including Brad Keselowski, Kevin Harvick, Jeff Gordon, and more.
=== Awards and honors ===
In 2000, People recognized Johnson as one of their "Men in the Fast Lane".
Johnson has won the Driver of the Year Award five times (2006, 2007, 2009, 2010, 2013). In 2009, he became the first racing driver to win the Associated Press Male Athlete of the Year Award in the United States.
Johnson was ranked No. 1 on Forbes.com's list of "Most Influential Athletes" for two consecutive years (2011, 2012).
In 2018, Johnson received the fourth-annual Byrnsie Award, named after the late Fox NASCAR broadcaster Steve Byrnes, during FS1's RaceDay prior to the running of the Toyota/Save Mart 350 at Sonoma Raceway.
=== Records and milestones ===
At the time of his retirement, Johnson's 83 career points-paying victories made him the winningest active NASCAR driver, in sixth place among the all-time Cup Series winners; he is also ranked third among those who have competed during the sport's modern era (1972–present). He is tied in first with Dale Earnhardt Sr. and Richard Petty for most NASCAR Cup Series championships, with 7. He also has the most consecutive NASCAR Cup Series championships with 5.
Johnson is the all-time winningest Cup Series driver at the following tracks:
Auto Club Speedway (6)
Charlotte Motor Speedway (8)
Dover International Speedway (11)
Las Vegas Motor Speedway (4)
Texas Motor Speedway (7)
Johnson won a Cup Series race at every track on the 2020 schedule except at Chicagoland Speedway (where he won his first NASCAR race, in the Busch Series), Kentucky Speedway, Watkins Glen International, The Roval at Charlotte Motor Speedway, and the Daytona International Speedway Road Course.
Up until 2019, Johnson was the only driver to have qualified for the NASCAR Cup Series playoffs every single year since its inception in 2004. He also holds the record for the most consecutive and total playoff appearances, with 15.
=== Soccer ===
On January 11, 2022, Johnson announced Charlotte FC's first ever MLS draft pick, and the first overall draft pick of the 2022 MLS SuperDraft, when Charlotte drafted Ben Bender out of the University of Maryland, College Park.
== In popular culture ==
=== Film and television appearances ===
Johnson appeared as a moonshine runner along with Ryan Newman in the opening scene of the 2004 NASCAR 3D: The IMAX Experience.
Johnson made an appearance as himself in the 2005 film Herbie: Fully Loaded, commenting on Herbie's sunroof as unusual for a stock car to have, and his car is also briefly seen from Herbie's POV.
Johnson starred in an episode of the television series Las Vegas in 2005.
Johnson starred in an episode of the HBO reality television series 24/7, titled "Jimmie Johnson: Race to Daytona". Cameras followed him from January 2010 to the 52nd Daytona 500 held on February 14, 2010.
In 2012, Johnson was featured in a NASCAR segment of Top Gear along with NASCAR drivers Jeff Gordon, Juan Pablo Montoya, and Kyle Petty.
Johnson appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon three times between 2014, 2016, and 2022. In the seventh episode of 2014, Johnson and Fallon raced motorized beer coolers. In the forty-eighth episode of 2016, Johnson joined Fallon and fellow championship 4 NASCAR drivers Carl Edwards, Joey Logano, and Kyle Busch in a game of Mario Kart. In the one hundred forty-fourth episode of 2022, Johnson and his daughter joined Fallon to promote the running of the 106th Running of the Indianapolis 500
Johnson appeared on The Ellen DeGeneres Show during its tenth season in 2013. Fresh off his second Daytona 500 victory, Johnson challenged host Ellen DeGeneres to a go-kart race.
On November 19, 2013, Johnson became the first professional athlete to co-host ESPN's flagship news show, SportsCenter.
In 2015, Johnson appeared on the series Repeat After Me and voiced a lobster named Jimmie on the animated kids show Bubble Guppies.
In 2016, Johnson appeared in Blaze and the Monster Machines with fellow NASCAR drivers Chase Elliott, Kasey Kahne, and Danica Patrick.
In 2016, Johnson appeared in a cutaway gag for season two, episode seven of Superstore
On November 30, 2021, Johnson appeared on CBS Mornings to promote the Jimmie Johnson Foundation’s charity campaign with the American Legion.
In 2022, Johnson appeared alongside fellow NASCAR driver Clint Bowyer in season one, episode 3 of Barmageddon. The episode saw the two face off under the show’s format.
=== Magazines ===
Johnson has appeared on the cover of several magazines, including NASCAR Illustrated; Sports Illustrated; Men's Fitness, and Success.
=== Music video ===
Johnson makes a cameo appearance as a pilot in the music video for The Avett Brothers' "Ain't No Man", the lead single from the album True Sadness (2016).
=== Video games ===
Johnson's Cup ride, the No. 48 Lowe's Chevrolet, is featured on the covers of NASCAR Racing 2003 Season alongside Kevin Harvick and NASCAR The Game: 2011.
Johnson and Hendrick Motorsports teammate Jeff Gordon are featured on the cover of NASCAR 06: Total Team Control, highlighting Team Control, the main addition of the game.
Johnson is also one of the six cover drivers of NASCAR Kart Racing.
Johnson's No. 48 Chevrolet Impala is one of the twelve playable NASCAR Sprint Cup Series stock cars in the 2010 racing video game Gran Turismo 5. His 2011 car was later added to the game in the Spec II update of the game, with his 2013 car also being featured in the 2013 sequel Gran Turismo 6.
Johnson is featured in the 2011 racing video game Jimmie Johnson's Anything with an Engine.
Johnson's No. 48 is also playable in Forza Motorsport 6, via the NASCAR expansion pack. The expansion features twenty-four paint schemes from the 2016 Sprint Cup Series season, including Johnson's No. 48 Lowe's SS. Johnson, along with Chase Elliott and Kyle Busch, provide commentary in the expansion as the "voices of motorsport". Johnson and Elliott also had roles in developing the expansion.
Johnson, along with teammates Chase Elliott, Alex Bowman, and William Byron, were featured on the cover of NASCAR Heat 3.
Johnson was also featured in Ally Racer, a mobile game created to honor his final season by Ally Financial.
== Motorsports career results ==
== See also ==
List of Daytona 500 pole position winners
List of Daytona 500 winners
== References ==
=== Citations ===
=== Further reading ===
== External links ==
Official website
The Jimmie Johnson Foundation
Official profile at Legacy Motor Club
Jimmie Johnson driver statistics at Racing-Reference |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basanti_Dulal_Nagchaudhuri#:~:text=Nagchaudhuri%20was%20married%20to%20Dipali,John's%20College%2C%20Agra. | Basanti Dulal Nagchaudhuri | Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri (6 September 1917 – 25 June 2006) was an Indian Nuclear scientist and academic, and Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence, Government of India. He is known as one of the pioneers of nuclear physics in India. While serving as the Director General (chairman) to the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO), he played influential role in Pokhran-I (Smiling Buddha), India's first successful Nuclear bomb test on 18 May 1974. This historic achievement made India the sixth nation in the world to become a nuclear superpower, after the United States of America, Soviet Union (now Russia), England, France, and China. He also initiated the first feasibility studies on India's ballistic missile program.
In the early 1970s, as the Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence and chair of the Cabinet Committee on Science and Technology, Basanti Dulal Nagchaudhuri played an influential role in Smiling Buddha, India's first nuclear test. He also initiated the first feasibility studies on India's ballistic missile program. Later, he also served as a member of the Planning Commission and as Vice Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University.
== Early life ==
Basanti Dulal Nag Chaudhuri hailed from a Bengali Hindu family of Narayanganj, Dhaka, Bengal Presidency, British India (present-day Bangladesh). During the partition of India in 1947 and the ensuing communal violence in East Bengal (now Bangladesh) of Pakistan, his family moved to West Bengal, India.
His father became a professor of English at the Banaras Hindu University, now Indian Institute of Technology (Banaras Hindu University) Varanasi (IIT-BHU).
He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the Banaras Hindu University. He obtained a Master's degree from Allahabad University. In Allahabad, he met influential lawyer Parmeshwar Narayan Haksar as well as renowned Indian physicist, Meghnad Saha. He became close to Saha and joined his research group. In July 1938, when Saha moved to the Rajabazar Science College campus of University of Calcutta, Nagchaudhuri moved with him.
Through Saha, he came in contact with Ernest Lawrence and with the latter's support he moved to the University of California, Berkeley at the end of 1938 to work on his doctorate in Nuclear Physics. His thesis advisor was Ernest Lawrence. Nagchaudhuri completed his doctorate in 1941 and returned to India.
After the partition of India in 1947 and the ensuing violence against Hindus in Dhaka, his family moved to India. His father took a position as a professor in the Department of English at the Banaras Hindu University.
Nagchaudhuri was married to Dipali Nag née Talukdar, daughter of a professor at St. John's College, Agra. Dipali Nag was a well-known classical vocalist. They had one son.
== Professional work ==
=== Academics and research ===
After completing his doctorate in 1941, Nagchaudhuri returned to the Rajabazar Science College, University of Calcutta to join Saha's research group. In 1949, when the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP) was established, Nagchaudhuri was affiliated with research at the institute, while continuing to teach at Science College, Calcutta University. After Saha's retirement in 1952, he was named Director of the SINP.
Nagchaudhuri's research focused on nuclear isomers, induced radioactivity, Cherenkov radiation and nonthermal plasma. During his doctorate at Berkeley, he had worked with the pioneers of the cyclotron. Before returning to India in 1941, with support from Saha and funding from the Tatas, Nagchaudhuri had arranged for shipment of parts for a cyclotron magnet to the Calcutta University. However, ship carrying the second consignment of parts for the cyclotron was sunk by the Japanese. The team under the leadership of Saha and later under Nagchaudhuri took on the task of building the remaining parts themselves. Problems with the vacuum pumps continued to afflict the project. The demountable oscillators also proved difficult to build. It was only in 1954, after a visit from Emilio Segre to the laboratory, that the cyclotron started to function. Nagchaudhuri is thus credited with building the first cyclotron in India.
In 1953, he succeeded Meghnad Saha as the Palit Professor of Physics at Calcutta University, a post which he held until 1959. He was a visiting professor at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1961-62 and nominated as a Lincoln Lecturer.
=== Government ===
Being well-connected to the political elite of West Bengal through his relationship with B.C. Roy and with P.N. Haksar, Nagchaudhuri was nominated to serve as the Chairman of the Cabinet Committee of Science & Technology from 1969 to 1972. During this period, he also served as the Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defence (MoD). He became a Member of the Planning Commission in 1970. From 1970 to 1974, he served as the Scientific Advisor to the DRDO.
Given his background in nuclear physics, and in his roles as the chair of the cabinet committee and as scientific advisor to the DRDO, he was closely involved in the policy discussion about India's nuclear test. In October 1972, then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi gave the go-ahead for the Smiling Buddha test. Nagchaudhuri was a member of the steering committee for the test preparations. It was in the scientific laboratories of the DRDO, headed by Nagchaudhuri, that the explosive lenses for the test were fabricated. The test was successfully conducted in May 1974.
In 1970, he was also tasked by Indira Gandhi to prepare a classified feasibility study for building long-range ballistic missiles. Based on Nagchaudhuri's recommendation, Project Valiant was initiated in 1972 to build a liquid-fuelled intermediate range ballistic missile. Another initiative, Project Devil, was initiated at the Defense Research & Development Laboratory (DRDL) to produce short-range surface-to-air missiles. While both projects were terminated in 1974 due to conflicts within DRDL and resulting lack of progress, they laid the foundation for the successful Integrated Guided Missile Development Program in the early 1980s.
In 1970-71, Nagchaudhuri also chaired a committee that examined India's maritime security issues. The committee made several key recommendations about the requirement to patrol India's vast coastline, set up a registry of offshore fishing vessels in order to identify illegal activity, and establish a capable and well-equipped force to intercept vessels engaged in illegal activities. The recommendations of the committee formed the foundation of the subsequent Rustamji Committee in 1974, that led to the establishment of the Indian Coast Guard.
=== Later work ===
From 1 July 1974 to 1 January 1979, he served as the Vice Chancellor of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU). From 1975 to 1977, he served as the Chairman of the National Committee on Environmental Planning and Coordination.
He also served on the Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi.
== Affiliations ==
Nagchaudhuri served on numerous Indian and international scientific councils. From 1976 to 1984, he served a Member of the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics. From 1980 to 1982, he also served on the Research Advisory Council of the National Physical Laboratory. He also served as a member and vice-chair of the Board of Governors of the East-West Center.
He also served on the boards of various Indian public sector companies. These included Bharat Dynamics Limited, Bharat Electronics Limited and Hindustan Aeronautics Limited.
Nag Chaudhuri maintained an active interest in Hindustani Classical Music and Bengali literature and culture.
=== Awards ===
Nagchaudhuri was elected a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy in 1964. He was awarded the Padma Vibhushan in 1975. He also received honorary doctorates from Andhra University and the Kanpur University.
== Death ==
Nagchaudhuri died of a cerebral infarction on 25 June 2006. He was survived by his wife, Dipali Nag, his son and his family.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shohidul_Islam#:~:text=Shohidul%20Islam%20(born%205%20January,cricket%20team%20in%20November%202021. | Shohidul Islam | Shohidul Islam (born 5 January 1995) is a Bangladeshi cricketer who plays for Dhaka Metropolis. He made his international debut for the Bangladesh cricket team in November 2021. In July 2022, he was suspended from playing in any form of cricket for ten months, backdated to 28 May 2022, due to a doping violation.
== Domestic career ==
He made his Twenty20 (T20) debut on 21 November 2016 playing for Chittagong Vikings in the 2016–17 Bangladesh Premier League. In November 2018, bowling for Central Zone in the 2018–19 Bangladesh Cricket League, he took his maiden five-wicket haul in first-class cricket. He was the leading wicket-taker for Central Zone in the tournament, with eighteen dismissals in four matches. In August 2019, he was one of 35 cricketers named in a training camp ahead of Bangladesh's 2019–20 season. In November 2019, he was selected to play for the Khulna Tigers in the 2019–20 Bangladesh Premier League.
In March 2021, in the opening round of the 2020–21 National Cricket League, he scored his maiden century in first-class cricket, with 106 runs for Dhaka Metropolis.
== International career ==
In April 2021, he was named in Bangladesh's preliminary Test squad for their away series against Sri Lanka. In May 2021, Shohidul was named in Bangladesh's preliminary One Day International (ODI) squad for their home series against Sri Lanka.
In November 2021, he was named in Bangladesh's Twenty20 International (T20I) squad for their series against Pakistan. He made his T20I debut on 22 November 2021, for Bangladesh against Pakistan. Later the same month, he was added to Bangladesh's Test squad, also for their series against Pakistan. He was also named in Bangladesh's Test squad for their series against New Zealand. In March 2022, he was named in Bangladesh's Test squad for their series against South Africa. In May 2022, he was again named in Bangladesh's Test squad, this time for their series against the West Indies.
== See also ==
List of Dhaka Metropolis cricketers
== References ==
== External links ==
Shohidul Islam at ESPNcricinfo |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Boston_Red_Sox_managers | List of Boston Red Sox managers | The Boston Red Sox are a professional baseball team based in Boston, Massachusetts. The Red Sox are members of the American League (AL) East Division in Major League Baseball (MLB). They have competed since 1901, initially as the Boston Americans (1901–1907), and under their current name since 1908. Since 1912, the Red Sox have played their home games at Fenway Park. In baseball, the head coach of a team is called the manager, or more formally, the field manager. There have been 48 different managers in franchise history; the current manager is Alex Cora, who previously managed the team during the 2018 and 2019 seasons and was re-hired by the team on November 6, 2020.
Jimmy Collins was the first manager of the franchise, managing from 1901 to 1906. Among all Red Sox managers, Joe Cronin managed the most regular season games (2,007) and registered the most regular season wins (1,071), while Terry Francona managed the most playoff games (45) and registered the most playoff wins (28). The most World Series championships won by a Red Sox manager is two, accomplished by Bill Carrigan (1915 and 1916) and Francona (2004 and 2007). John McNamara and Jimy Williams are the only two Red Sox managers to win the AL Manager of the Year Award, in 1986 and 1999, respectively.
== Key ==
== Managers ==
The below table summarizes the franchise's managerial records since 1901, its inaugural season in the American League. Note that the number of games managed (GM) may exceed the sum of wins and losses, due to tie games that were later replayed; for example, Jimmy Collins had a regular season managerial record of 455–376, which sums to 831, 11 less than the 842 total regular season games that he managed.
Statistics updated through the 2024 season.
† One game of the 1912 World Series ended in a tie and was replayed.
== Notes ==
== Sources ==
"Red Sox All-time Managers". MLB.com. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2008-07-31.
"Red Sox Year-By-Year Results". MLB.com. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2008-07-31.
"Red Sox Postseason Results". MLB.com. Archived from the original on 2011-09-27. Retrieved 2008-07-31.
"Baseball Hall of Fame Alphabetical List". Baseball Almanac. Archived from the original on 2021-03-08. Retrieved 2020-11-07.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eremiaphila_cycloptera | Eremiaphila cycloptera | Eremiaphila cycloptera is a species of praying mantis native to Saudi Arabia.
== See also ==
List of mantis genera and species
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miriam_A._Ferguson#:~:text=A%20common%20campaign%20slogan%20was,primary%2C%20Ferguson%20defeated%20George%20C. | Miriam A. Ferguson | Miriam Amanda "Ma" Ferguson (née Wallace; June 13, 1875 – June 25, 1961) was an American politician who served two non-consecutive terms as the governor of Texas: from 1925 to 1927, and from 1933 to 1935. She was the first female governor of Texas, and the second woman elected to the governorship of any U.S. state to assume office, after Nellie Tayloe Ross of Wyoming.
== Early life ==
Miriam Amanda Wallace Ferguson was born in Bell County, Texas. She studied at Salado College and Baylor Female College. When she was 24, she married James Edward Ferguson, a lawyer, at her father's farm near Belton in Bell County, Texas.
Her nickname, "Ma", came from her initials, "M. A.", and the fact that her husband was known as "Pa" Ferguson. They had two daughters: Ouida Wallace Ferguson and Dorrace Watt Ferguson.
== Early political career ==
Her husband served as Governor of Texas from 1915 to 1917. During his second term, he was investigated by State Attorney General Dan Moody (who would, incidentally, succeed her as Governor in 1927 after her first term) for actions that had been taken against the University of Texas. The Texas State Senate impeached him, convicted him on ten charges, and prohibited him from holding state office in Texas again.
== 1924 election and first term ==
After her husband's impeachment and conviction, Ma Ferguson ran in the primary for the Democratic nomination for governor and was successful, openly supported by her husband, whom she said she would consult for advice. She ran for office in the 1924 general election.
During her campaign, she said that voters would get "two governors for the price of one". Her speeches at rallies consisted of introducing him and letting him take the platform. A common campaign slogan was, "Me for Ma, and I Ain't Got a Durned Thing Against Pa." Patricia Bernstein of the Houston Chronicle stated "There was never a question in anyone's mind as to who was really running things when Ma was governor."
After her victory in the Democratic primary, Ferguson defeated George C. Butte, a prominent lawyer and University of Texas dean who emerged as the strongest Republican gubernatorial nominee in Texas since Reconstruction. Due to the widespread corruption of her husband's term, resulting in his impeachment, thousands of voters crossed party lines in the general election to vote for the Republican candidate. Republicans usually took between 11,000 and 30,000 votes for governor, but Butte won nearly 300,000 votes, many of them from women and suffragists. It was still primarily a Democratic state, and Ferguson received 422,563 votes (58.9 percent) to Butte's 294,920 (41.1 percent). Butte had been supported in the general election by former governor William P. Hobby, who had succeeded James Ferguson in 1917 and won a full term in 1918.
In 1924, Ma Ferguson became the first elected female chief executive of Texas. She was the second elected female state governor in the United States to assume office, and the first to be elected in a general election. Nellie Tayloe Ross had been sworn in as governor of Wyoming to finish the unexpired term of her late husband two weeks before Ferguson's inauguration, though Ross and Ferguson won their respective elections on the same day. Ferguson's campaign manager was Homer T. Brannon of Fort Worth, Texas.
In 1926, state attorney general Dan Moody, who had investigated her husband for embezzlement and recovered $1 million for Texas citizens, ran against her in a run-off election. He defeated her to become the next and then-youngest governor of Texas. Suffragist activism provided a major contribution to her defeat, as these women rallied behind Moody and campaigned for him.
== 1932 election and second term ==
Ferguson ran again in 1932. She narrowly won the Democratic nomination over incumbent Ross S. Sterling, then soundly defeated Republican Orville Bullington in the general election, 521,395 (61.6 percent) to 322,589 (38.1 percent). It was a year of Democratic successes as Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected as President of the United States. Bullington was a cousin of the first wife of John G. Tower, future U.S. Senator from Texas. He fared more strongly than most Texas Republican candidates did in that period, but did not match Butte's 1924 showing against Ferguson.
Ferguson's second term as governor was less controversial than her first. It was rumored that state highway contracts went only to companies that advertised in the Fergusons' newspaper, the Ferguson Forum. A House committee investigated the rumors, but no charges were ever filed. The Great Depression forced both the federal and state governments to cut down on personnel and funding of their organizations, and the Texas Rangers were no exception. The number of commissioned officers in the law-enforcement agency was reduced to 45, and the only means of transportation afforded to Rangers were free railroad passes, or using their personal horses. The situation worsened for the Rangers when they entangled themselves in politics in 1932 by publicly supporting Governor Ross Sterling in his re-election campaign over "Ma" Ferguson. Immediately after taking office in January 1933, she proceeded to discharge all serving Rangers. The force also saw its salaries and funds slashed by the Texas Legislature, and their numbers reduced further to 32 men. The result was that Texas became a safe hideout for the many Depression-era gangsters escaping from the law, such as Bonnie and Clyde, George "Machine Gun" Kelly, Pretty Boy Floyd and Raymond Hamilton. The hasty appointment of many unqualified Rangers to stop the increasing criminality proved ineffective.
The general disorganization of law enforcement in the state convinced the members of the Legislature that a thorough revision of the public security system was in order, and with that purpose it hired the services of a consulting firm from Chicago. The resulting report yielded many worrying conclusions, but the basic underlying facts were simple: the criminality levels in Texas were extremely high, and the state's means to fight them were underfunded, undermanned, loose, disorganized and obsolete. The consultants' recommendation, besides increasing funding, was to introduce a whole reorganization of state security agencies; especially, to merge the Rangers with the Texas Highway Patrol under a new agency called the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS). After deliberating, the Legislature agreed with the suggestion. The resolution that created the new state law enforcement agency was passed in 1935 under the next governor of Texas, James V. Allred, and with an initial budget of $450,000, the DPS became operational on August 10.
In October 1933, Ferguson signed into law Texas House Bill 194, which was instrumental in establishing the University of Houston as a four-year institution.
== Views and policies ==
"Fergusonism", as the Fergusons' brand of populism was called, remains a controversial subject in Texas. As governor, she tackled some of the tougher issues of the day. Though a teetotaler like her husband, she aligned herself with the "wets" in the battle over prohibition. She opposed the Ku Klux Klan, which was on the decline after 1925 because of a national murder and sex scandal by its president, D. C. Stephenson.
Ferguson has been described as a fiscal conservative but also pushed for a state sales tax and corporate income tax. She is often credited with a quote allegedly referring to bilingualism in Texas schools: "If English was good enough for Jesus Christ, it ought to be good enough for the children of Texas." Variations of this statement have been dated to 1881, and were often used to ridicule the claimed backwardness of various unnamed Christians. Ferguson did not originate the quote.
Ferguson issued almost 4,000 pardons during her two nonconsecutive terms in office, many of them to free persons who had been convicted of violating prohibition laws. In 1930, between Ferguson's terms, the Secretary of State of Texas Jane Y. McCallum published a pamphlet criticizing the former governor's numerous pardons of prisoners. Though never proven, rumors persisted that pardons were available in exchange for cash payments to the governor's husband. In 1936, voters passed an amendment to the state constitution stripping the governor of the power to issue pardons and granting that power to a politically independent Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles (see Capital punishment in Texas).
A number of labor laws were also passed during Ferguson's two terms as governor.
In a 1932 speech, Ferguson's husband James E. Ferguson defended the record of "Fergusonism;" listing reforms such as child labor and workmen's compensation laws, aid for rural education, a free textbook law, and laws regulating the working hours of women. Miriam Ferguson herself defended “Fergusonism;” citing liberal measures such as a semi-monthly pay day law, an eight-hour law, the establishment of an Industrial Accident Board, and the creation of Lower Colorado and Brazos River Authorities.
== Post-governorship ==
Except for an unsuccessful bid to replace Governor W. Lee "Pappy" O'Daniel in 1940, the Fergusons remained retired from political life after 1935. In the 1940 campaign, Ma Ferguson trailed O'Daniel's principal rival, Ernest O. Thompson of Amarillo, who was Texas Railroad Commissioner.
Her husband, James, died of a stroke in 1944. Miriam Ferguson died from congestive heart failure in 1961 at the age of 86. She was buried in the Texas State Cemetery in Austin.
== See also ==
List of female governors in the United States
List of the first women holders of political offices in the United States
== Notes ==
== Further reading ==
Luthin, Reinhard H. (1954). "Ch. 7: Mr. and Mrs. Ferguson: 'Pa' & 'Ma' of the Lone Star State". American Demagogues: Twentieth Century. Beacon Press. pp. 153–181. ASIN B0007DN37C. LCCN 54-8426. OCLC 1098334.
== External links ==
Miriam Ferguson from the Handbook of Texas Online |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/454_Mathesis#:~:text=Mathesis%20(minor%20planet%20designation%3A%20454,Schwassmann%20on%20March%2028%2C%201900. | 454 Mathesis | 454 Mathesis is a main-belt asteroid that was discovered by German astronomer Friedrich Karl Arnold Schwassmann on March 28, 1900. Its provisional name was 1900 FC.
Photometric observations of this asteroid at the Altimira Observatory in 2004 gave a light curve with a period of 8.37784 ± 0.00003 hours and a brightness variation of 0.32 in magnitude. This differs from periods of 7.075 hours reported in 1994 and 7.745 hours in 1998.
== References ==
== External links ==
454 Mathesis at AstDyS-2, Asteroids—Dynamic Site
Ephemeris · Observation prediction · Orbital info · Proper elements · Observational info
454 Mathesis at the JPL Small-Body Database |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Baptist_Convention | Southern Baptist Convention | The Southern Baptist Convention (SBC), alternatively the Great Commission Baptists (GCB), is a Christian denomination based in the United States. It is the world's largest Baptist organization, the largest Protestant, and the second-largest Christian body in the United States. The SBC is a cooperation of fully autonomous, independent churches with commonly held essential beliefs that pool some resources for missions.
Churches affiliated with the denomination are evangelical in doctrine and practice, emphasizing the significance of the individual conversion experience. This conversion is then affirmed by the person being completely immersed in water for a believer's baptism. Baptism is believed to be separate from salvation and is a public and symbolic expression of faith, burial of previous life, and resurrection to new life; it is not a requirement for salvation. The denomination has a male pastorate, often citing 1 Timothy 2:12 as the reason it does not ordain women. All affiliated churches deny the legitimacy of same-sex marriage, saying that marriage can only be between a man and a woman, and also that all sexual relations should occur only within the confines of marriage. Other specific beliefs based on biblical interpretation vary by congregational polity, often to balance local church autonomy.
In 1845, the Southern Baptists separated from the Triennial Convention to uphold the institution of slavery, as American society divided over slavery preceding the American Civil War. In 1995, the denomination apologized for racial positions in its history, and at present, the Southern Baptist Convention is racially diverse, with one in four congregations having a nonwhite majority. Since the 1940s, it has spread across the United States, with tens of thousands of affiliated churches and 41 affiliated state conventions. Beginning in the late 1970s, a conservative movement began to take control of the organization, and it succeeded in taking control of the SBC leadership by the 1990s.
Self-reported membership peaked in 2006 at roughly 16 million. Membership has contracted by an estimated 13.6% since that year, with 2020 marking the 14th year of continuous decline. Mean organization-wide weekly attendance dropped about 27% between 2006 and 2020. The Convention reported increased participation and a slowing of the rate of overall membership decline in 2024, with 12,722,266 members reported.
== Name ==
The official name is the Southern Baptist Convention. The word Southern in "Southern Baptist Convention" stems from its 1845 organization in Augusta, Georgia, by white Baptists in the Southern United States who supported continuing the institution of slavery and split from the northern Baptists (known today as the American Baptist Churches USA), who did not support funding evangelists engaging in slavery in the Southern United States.
In 2012, the organization adopted the descriptor Great Commission Baptists after the election of its first African American president. Additionally, in 2020, some leaders of the Southern Baptists wanted to change its name to "Great Commission Baptists" to distance itself from its white supremacist foundation, and because it is no longer a specifically Southern church. Several churches affiliated with the denomination have also begun to identify as "Great Commission Baptists".
== History ==
=== Colonial era ===
Most early Baptists in the British colonies came from England in the 17th century, after conflict with the Church of England for their dissenting religious views. In 1638, Roger Williams founded the first Baptist church in British America at the Providence Plantations, the first permanent European American settlement also founded by Williams in Rhode Island. The oldest Baptist church in the South, First Baptist Church of Charleston, South Carolina, was organized in 1682 under the leadership of William Screven. A Baptist church was formed in Virginia in 1715 through the preaching of Robert Norden and another in North Carolina in 1727 through the ministry of Paul Palmer.
The Baptists adhered to a congregationalist polity. They operated independently of the state-established Anglican churches in the Southern United States at a time when states prohibited non-Anglicans from holding political office. By 1740, about eight Baptist churches existed in the colonies of Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, with an estimated 300 to 400 members. New members, both black and white, were converted chiefly by Baptist preachers who traveled throughout the Southern United States during the 18th and 19th centuries, in the eras of the First and Second Great Awakenings.
Black churches were founded in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia before the American Revolution. Some black congregations kept their independence even after whites tried to exercise more authority after Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831.
=== American Revolution period ===
Before the American Revolution, Baptist and Methodist evangelicals in the Southern United States promoted the view of the common person's equality before God, which embraced enslaved people and free blacks. They challenged the hierarchies of class and race and urged planters to abolish slavery. They welcomed enslaved people as Baptists and accepted them as preachers.
During this time, there was a sharp division between the austerity of the plain-living Baptists, attracted initially from yeomen and common planters, and the opulence of the Anglican planters—the enslaving elite who controlled local and colonial government in what had become an enslaved society by the late 18th century. The gentry interpreted Baptist church discipline as political radicalism, but it served to ameliorate disorder. The Baptists intensely monitored each other's moral conduct, watching especially for sexual transgressions, cursing, and excessive drinking; they expelled members who would not reform.
In Virginia and most southern colonies before the American Revolution, the Church of England was the established church and supported by general taxes, as it was in England. It opposed the rapid spread of Baptists in the Southern United States. Particularly, Virginia prosecuted many Baptist preachers for "disturbing the peace" by preaching without licenses from the Anglican Church. Patrick Henry and James Madison defended Baptist preachers before the American Revolution in cases considered significant in the history of religious freedom. In 1779, Thomas Jefferson wrote the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, enacted in 1786 by the Virginia General Assembly. Madison later applied his ideas and those of the Virginia document related to religious freedom during the Constitutional Convention, when he ensured that delegates incorporated them into the United States Constitution.
The struggle for religious tolerance erupted during the American Revolution, as the Baptists worked to disestablish the Anglican churches in the South. The Baptists protested vigorously; the resulting social disorder resulted chiefly from the ruling gentry's disregard for public needs. The vitality of the religious opposition made the conflict between "evangelical" and "gentry" styles bitter. Scholarship suggests that the evangelical movement's strength determined its ability to mobilize power outside the conventional authority structure.
=== National unification and regional division ===
In 1814, leaders such as Luther Rice helped Baptists unify nationally under what became known informally as the Triennial Convention (because it met every three years) based in Philadelphia. It allowed them to join their resources to support missions abroad. The Home Mission Society, affiliated with the Triennial Convention, was established in 1832 to support missions in U.S. frontier territories. By the mid-19th century, there were many social, cultural, economic, and political differences among business owners of the North, farmers of the West, and planters of the South. The most divisive conflict was primarily over the issue of slavery and, secondarily, over missions.
==== Divisions over slavery ====
The issues surrounding slavery dominated the 19th century in the United States. This created tension between Baptists in northern and southern U.S. states over the issue of manumission. In the two decades after the American Revolution during the Second Great Awakening, northern Baptist preachers, as well as the Quakers and Methodists, increasingly argued that enslavers must free the people they enslaved. Although most Baptists in the 19th century south were yeomen farmers and common planters, the Baptists also began to attract major planters among their membership. Many southern ministers interpreted the Bible as supporting slavery and encouraged paternalistic practices by enslavers. They preached to enslaved people to accept their places and obey their enslavers and welcomed enslaved people and free blacks as members; whites controlled the churches' leadership and usually segregated church seating. From the early 19th century, many Baptist preachers in the Southern United States also argued in favor of preserving the right of ministers to be enslavers.
Black congregations were sometimes the largest in their regions. For instance, by 1821, Gillfield Baptist in Petersburg, Virginia, had the largest congregation within the Portsmouth Association. At 441 members, it was more than twice as large as the next-biggest church. Before Nat Turner's Rebellion of 1831, Gillfield had a black preacher. Afterward, the state legislature insisted that white men oversee black congregations. Gillfield could not call a black preacher until after the American Civil War and emancipation. After Turner's rebellion, whites worked to exert more control over black congregations and passed laws requiring white ministers to lead or be present at religious meetings. Many enslaved people evaded these restrictions.
The Triennial Convention and the Home Mission Society adopted a kind of neutrality concerning slavery, neither condoning nor condemning it. During the "Georgia Test Case" of 1844, the Georgia State Convention proposed the appointment of the enslaver Elder James E. Reeve as a missionary. The Foreign Mission Board refused to approve his appointment, recognizing the case as a challenge and not wanting to violate their neutrality on slavery. They said that slavery should not be a factor in deliberations about missionary appointments.
In 1844, University of Alabama president Basil Manly Sr., a prominent preacher and major planter who enslaved 40 people, drafted the "Alabama Resolutions" and presented them to the Triennial Convention. They included the demand that enslavers be eligible for denominational offices to which the Southern associations contributed financially. They were not adopted. Many Baptists in Georgia decided to test the claimed neutrality by recommending an enslaver to the Home Mission Society as a missionary. The Home Mission Society's board refused to appoint him, noting that missionaries were not allowed to take servants with them (so he clearly could not enslave people) and that they would not make a decision that appeared to endorse slavery. Many southern Baptists considered this an infringement of their right to determine candidates. From the perspective of many southerners, the northern position that "slaveholding brethren were less than followers of Jesus" effectively obligated enslavers to secede from the Triennial Convention. This difference came to a head in 1845 when representatives of the northern states refused to appoint missionaries whose families enslaved people. To continue in the work of missions, many southern Baptists separated and founded the Southern Baptist Convention.
==== Missions and organization ====
A secondary issue that disturbed the Southerners was the perception that the American Baptist Home Mission Society did not appoint a proportionate number of missionaries to the South. This was likely a result of the society's not appointing enslavers as missionaries. Baptists in the North preferred a loosely structured society of individuals who paid annual dues, with each society usually focused on a single ministry.
Baptists in Southern churches preferred a more centralized organization of churches patterned after their associations, with a variety of ministries brought under the direction of one denominational organization. The increasing tensions and the discontent of Baptists from the Southern United States over national criticism of slavery and issues over missions led to their withdrawal from national Baptist organizations.
The Southern Baptists met at the First Baptist Church of Augusta in May 1845. At this meeting, they created a new convention—the Southern Baptist Convention. They elected William Bullein Johnson (1782–1862) as its first president. He had served as president of the Triennial Convention in 1841, though he initially attempted to avoid a schism.
=== Formation and separation of black Baptists ===
African Americans had gathered in their own churches early on, in 1774 in Petersburg, Virginia, and in Savannah, Georgia, in 1788. Some established churches after 1800 on the frontier, such as the First African Baptist Church of Lexington, Kentucky. In 1824, the Elkhorn Association of Kentucky, which was white-dominated, accepted it. By 1850, First African had 1,820 members, the largest of any Baptist church in the state, black or white. In 1861, it had 2,223 members.
Southern whites generally required black churches to have white ministers and trustees. In churches with mixed congregations, seating was segregated, with blacks out of sight, often in a balcony. White preaching often emphasized Biblical stipulations that enslaved people should accept their places and try to behave well toward their enslavers. After the American Civil War, another split occurred when most freedmen set up independent black congregations, regional associations, and state and national conventions. Black people wanted to practice Christianity independently of white supervision. They interpreted the Bible as offering hope for deliverance and saw their exodus out of enslavement as comparable to the Exodus, with abolitionist John Brown as their Moses. They quickly left white-dominated churches and associations and set up separate state Baptist conventions. In 1866, black Baptists of the Southern and Western United States combined to form the Consolidated American Baptist Convention. In 1895, they merged three national conventions to create the National Baptist Convention, USA. With more than eight million members, it is today the largest African American religious organization and second in size to the Southern Baptists.
Free black people in the North founded churches and denominations in the early 19th century independent of white-dominated organizations. In the Reconstruction era, missionaries, both black and white, from several northern denominations worked in the South; they quickly attracted tens and hundreds of thousands of new members from among the millions of freedmen. The African Methodist Episcopal Church attracted more new members than any other denomination. White Southern Baptist churches lost black members to the new denominations, as well as to independent congregations which freedmen organized.
During the civil rights movement, many Southern Baptist pastors and members of their congregations rejected racial integration and accepted white supremacy, further alienating African Americans. According to historian and former Southern Baptist Wayne Flynt, "The [Southern Baptist] church was the last bastion of segregation." SBC did not integrate seminary classrooms until 1951.
In 1995, the convention voted to adopt a resolution in which it renounced its racist roots and apologized for its past defense of slavery, segregation, and white supremacy. This marked the denomination's first formal acknowledgment that racism had played a profound role in both its early and modern history.
=== Increasing diversity and policy changes ===
By the early 21st century, the number of ethnically diverse congregations was increasing among the Southern Baptists. In 2008, almost 20% of the congregations were majority African American, Asian, Hispanic, or Latino. SBC cooperating churches had an estimated one million African American members. It has passed a series of resolutions recommending including more black members and appointing more African American leaders. At its 2012 annual meeting, it elected Pastor Fred Luter of the Franklin Avenue Baptist Church as its first African American president. He had earned respect by showing leadership skills in building a large congregation in New Orleans.
The SBC's increasingly national scope inspired some members to suggest a name change. In 2005, some members made proposals at the SBC Annual Meeting to change the name to the more national-sounding "North American Baptist Convention" or "Scriptural Baptist Convention" (to retain the SBC initials). These proposals were defeated.
The messengers of the 2012 annual meeting in New Orleans voted to adopt the descriptor "Great Commission Baptists". The legal name remained "Southern Baptist Convention", but affiliated churches and convention entities could voluntarily use the descriptor.
Almost a year after the Charleston church shooting, the denomination approved a resolution that called upon member churches and families to stop flying the Confederate flag.
The church approved a resolution, "On Refugee Ministry", encouraging member churches and families to welcome refugees coming to the United States. In the same convention, Russell Moore of the Southern Baptist Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission quickly responded to a pastor who asked why a member should support the right of Muslims living in the U.S. to build mosques. Moore replied, "Sometimes we have to deal with questions that are really complicated... this isn't one of them." Moore said that religious freedom must be for all religions.
From February to June 2016, the denomination collaborated with the National Baptist Convention, USA, on racial reconciliation. SBC-GCB and NBC presidents Ronnie Floyd and Jerry Young assembled ten pastors from each convention in 2015, discussing race relations; in 2016, Baptist Press and The New York Times revealed tension among National Baptists debating any collaboration with Southern Baptists, quoting NBC President Young:
I've never said this to Dr. Floyd, but I've had fellows in my own denomination who called me and said: "What are you doing? I mean, are you not aware of the history?" And I say, obviously I'm aware. They bring up the issue about slavery and that becomes a reason, they say, that we ought not to be involved with the Southern Baptists. Where from my vantage point, that's reverse racism. I do understand the history, and I understand the pain of the past...But what I'm also quite clear about is, if the Gospel does anything at all, the Gospel demands that we not only preach but practice reconciliation.
After an initial resolution denouncing the alt-right movement failed to make it to the convention floor, the denomination officially denounced the alt-right movement at the 2017 convention. On November 5, 2017, a mass shooting took place at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs. It was the deadliest shooting to occur at any affiliated church in its history and, in modern history, at an American place of worship.
In 2020, the denomination canceled its convention due to COVID-19 concerns and eventually rescheduled for June 2021.
In a Washington Post story dated September 15, 2020, Greear said some Southern Baptist Convention leaders wanted to change the official name of the church to "Great Commission Baptists" (GCB), to distance the church from its support of slavery and because it is no longer just a Southern church. Since then, several leaders and churches have begun adopting the alternative descriptor for their churches.
=== Sexual abuse scandal ===
In 2018, investigations showed that the SBC suppressed reports of sexual abuse and protected over 700 accused ministers and church workers. In 2022, a report indicated church leaders had stonewalled and disparaged clergy sex abuse survivors for nearly two decades; reform efforts had been met with criticism or dismissal from other organization leaders; and known abusers had been allowed to keep their positions without informing their local churches. On August 12, 2022, the denomination announced that it was facing a federal investigation into the scandal.
On February 10, 2019, a joint investigation by the Houston Chronicle and the San Antonio Express found that there had been over 700 victims of sexual abuse by nearly 400 Southern Baptist church leaders, pastors, and volunteers over the previous 20 years.
In 2018, the Houston Chronicle verified details of hundreds of accounts of abuse. It examined federal and state court databases, prison records, and official documents from more than 20 states and researched sex offender registries nationwide. The Chronicle compiled a list of records and information (current as of June 2019) listing church pastors, leaders, employees, and volunteers who have pleaded guilty to or were convicted of sex crimes.
On June 12, 2019, during their annual meeting, convention messengers, who assembled that year in Birmingham, Alabama, approved a resolution condemning sex abuse and establishing a special committee to investigate sex abuse, which will make it easier for the convention to excommunicate churches. The Reverend J. D. Greear, president of the convention and pastor of The Summit Church in Durham, North Carolina, called the move a "defining moment". Ronnie Floyd, president of the convention's executive committee, echoed Greear's remarks, calling the vote "a very, very significant moment in the history of the Southern Baptist Convention".
In June 2021, letters from former policy director Russell D. Moore to convention leadership were leaked. In the letters, Moore described how the convention had mishandled claims of sexual abuse.
On May 22, 2022, Guidepost Solutions, an independent firm contracted by the organization's executive committee, released a report detailing that church leaders had stonewalled and disparaged clergy sex abuse survivors for nearly two decades. It was then the most extensive investigation undertaken in the convention's history, with $4 million reportedly spent by the organization to fund the inquiry. The report also found that known abusers were allowed to keep their positions without informing their church or congregation. The report alleged that while the convention had elected a president, J. D. Greear, in 2018 who made addressing sexual abuse a central part of his agenda, nearly all efforts at reform had been met with criticism and dismissal by other organization leaders.
On June 14, 2022, the denomination voted "to create a way to track pastors and other church workers credibly accused of sex abuse and launch a new task force to oversee further reforms" after a consultant exposed that "Southern Baptist leaders mishandled abuse cases and stonewalled victims for years". The new task force will operate for one year, with the option to continue longer.
On August 12, 2022, the organization announced that it was facing a federal investigation into the sex abuse scandal. As revelations of sexual abuse and lawsuits continued to emerge in 2023, the SBC's Abuse Reform Implementation Task Force announced continued development of the database of sexual offenders.
== Doctrine ==
The Baptist Faith and Message (BF&M) represents the general theological perspective of the denomination's churches. The convention first drafted the BF&M in 1925 as a revision of the 1833 New Hampshire Confession of Faith. The convention revised the BF&M significantly in 1963, amended it in 1998 to add one new section on the family, and revised it again in 2000. The 1998 and 2000 changes were the subject of much controversy, particularly regarding the role of women in the church.
The BF&M is not a creed, such as the Nicene Creed. Members are not required to adhere to it, and churches and state conventions belonging to the global body are not required to use it as their statement of faith or doctrine, though many do in lieu of creating their own statement. Nevertheless, key leaders, faculty in denomination-owned seminaries, and missionaries who apply to serve through the various missionary agencies must affirm that their practices, doctrine, and preaching are consistent with the BF&M.
In 2012, a LifeWay Research survey of the denomination's pastors found that 30% of churches identified with the labels Calvinist or Reformed, while 30% identified with the labels Arminian or Wesleyan. LifeWay Research President Ed Stetzer said, "historically, many Baptists have considered themselves neither Calvinist nor Arminian, but holding a unique theological approach not framed well by either category". The survey also found that 60% of its pastors were concerned about Calvinism's impact within the convention. Nathan Finn writes that the debate over Calvinism has "periodically reignited with increasing intensity" and that non-Calvinists "seem to be especially concerned with the influence of Founders Ministries" while Calvinists "seem to be particularly concerned with the influence of revivalism and Keswick theology."
Historically, the denomination has not considered glossolalia or other Charismatic beliefs to be in accordance with Scriptural teaching, though the BF&M does not mention the subject. In 2015, the International Mission Board lifted a ban on glossolalia for its missionaries while reaffirming that it should not be taught as normative.
The convention brings together fundamentalist and moderate churches.
=== Position statements ===
In addition to the BF&M, the denomination has also issued position statements affirming the autonomy of the local church; identifying the Cooperative Program of missions as integral to the denomination; that statements of belief are revisable in light of Scripture, though the Bible is the final word; honoring the indigenous principle in missions without compromising doctrine or its identity for missional opportunities; that laypersons have the same right as ordained ministers to communicate with God, interpret Scripture, and minister in Christ's name; that "At the moment of conception, a new being enters the universe, a human being, a being created in God's image", who as such should be protected regardless of the circumstances of the conception; that God's plan for marriage and sexual intimacy is a lifetime relationship of one man and one woman, rejecting homosexuality; understanding the Bible to forbid any form of extramarital sexual relations; affirming the accountability of each person before God; and that women are not eligible to serve as pastors.
In 2022, it passed a resolution against prosperity theology, which it considers a heretical distortion of the message of the Bible.
==== Abortion ====
The position of many Southern Baptists on abortion has changed significantly over time, evolving from acceptance under certain circumstances to firm opposition.
In 1971, the SBC passed a resolution urging a loosening of U.S. abortion laws, stating:Be it further resolved, that we call upon Southern Baptists to work for legislation that will allow the possibility of abortion under such conditions as rape, incest, clear evidence of severe fetal deformity, and carefully ascertained evidence of the likelihood of damage to the emotional, mental, and physical health of the mother.In 1973, a "poll conducted by the Baptist Standard news journal found that 90 percent of Texas Baptists believed their state's abortion laws were too restrictive".
During this era, a majority of Southern Baptists, including a few conservatives within the denomination, supported a moderate expansion of abortion rights, seeing it as a matter of religious liberty, what they saw as a lack of biblical condemnation, and belief in non-intrusive government. Southern Baptists' and evangelicals' initial reaction to Roe v. Wade decision was one of support or indifference; they overwhelmingly viewed anti-abortion movements as a sectarian and Catholic concern. By the mid-1970s, this began to change, as a movement that sought to change Southern Baptists' opinions on abortion began to incline them against it substantially. Over that period, the SBC changed in other ways as well. Today, the SBC strongly opposes abortion.
==== Gender-based roles ====
Officially, the denomination subscribes to the complementarian view of gender roles. Beginning in the early 1970s, as a reaction to their perceptions of various "women's liberation movements", the church, along with several other historically conservative Baptist groups, began to assert its view of the propriety and primacy of what it deemed "traditional gender roles" as a body. In 1973, at the annual meeting of the Southern Baptist Convention, delegates passed a resolution that read in part: "Man was not made for woman, but the woman for the man. Woman is the glory of man. Woman would not have existed without man." In 1998, the convention appended a male leadership understanding of marriage to the 1963 version of the Baptist Faith and Message, with an official amendment: Article XVIII, "The Family". In 2000, it revised the document to reflect support for a male-only pastorate with no mention of the office of deacon.
In 1984, when it had about 250 women pastors, the Convention adopted a resolution affirming the exclusion of women from pastoral leadership.
Since 1987, various local associations and regional conventions have considered churches that have authorized the pastoral ministry of women to not be in friendly cooperation (or "disfellowshipped") without the intervention of the national convention on the subject.
By explicitly defining the pastoral office as the exclusive domain of males, the 2000 BF&M provision became the Southern Baptist's first-ever official position against women pastors. As individual churches affiliated with the organization are autonomous, churches cannot be forced to adopt a male-only pastorate.
Some churches that have installed women as their pastors have been disfellowshipped from membership in their local associations; a smaller number have been disfellowshipped from their affiliated state conventions. In February 2023, the Executive Committee for the first time deemed five churches that had appointed women pastors to not be in friendly cooperation. In June 2023, when two churches requested a review of the decision, 88% of the church representatives at the annual convention voted to uphold the decision. American Reformer magazine estimated the convention would have 1,844 female pastors in 2023.
The crystallization of the church's positions on gender roles and restrictions on women's participation in the pastorate contributed to the decision by members now belonging to the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, which broke from the convention in 1991. Another denomination that broke off, the Alliance of Baptists, also accepts women's ordination.
The 2000 BF&M prescribes a husband-headship authority structure, closely following a complementarian reading of Paul the Apostle's exhortations in Ephesians 5:21–33:
Article XVIII. The Family. The husband and wife are of equal worth before God, since both are created in God's image. The marriage relationship models the way God relates to his people. A husband is to love his wife as Christ loved the church. He has the God-given responsibility to provide for, to protect, and to lead his family. A wife is to submit herself graciously to the servant leadership of her husband even as the church willingly submits to the headship of Christ. She, being in the image of God as is her husband and thus equal to him, has the God-given responsibility to respect her husband and to serve as his helper in managing the household and nurturing the next generation.
=== Ordinances ===
Southern/Great Commission Baptists observe two ordinances: the Lord's Supper and believer's baptism (also known as credo-baptism, from the Latin for "I believe"). Furthermore, they hold the historic Baptist belief that immersion is the only valid mode of baptism. The Baptist Faith and Message describes baptism as a symbolic act of obedience and a testimony of the believer's faith in Jesus Christ to other people. The BF&M also notes that baptism is a precondition to congregational church membership.
The BF&M holds to memorialism, the belief that the Lord's Supper is a symbolic act of obedience in which believers commemorate the death of Christ and look forward to his Second Coming. Individual churches are free to practice either open or closed communion (due to the convention's belief in congregational polity and the autonomy of the local church), but most practice open communion. For the same reason, the frequency of observance of the Lord's Supper varies from church to church. Churches commonly observe it quarterly, but some churches offer it monthly; a small minority offer it weekly. Because the organization has traditionally opposed alcoholic beverage consumption by members, grape juice is used instead of wine.
=== Worship ===
Most members observe a low church form of worship, which is less formal and uses no stated liturgy. The form of the worship services generally depends on whether the congregation uses a traditional or a contemporary service, or a mix of both—the main differences concerning music and the response to the sermon.
In both types of services, there will be a prayer at the opening of the service, before the sermon, and at closing. Offerings are taken, which may be around the middle of the service or at the end (with the increased popularity of electronic financial systems, some churches operate kiosks allowing givers the opportunity to do so online or through a phone app or website link). Responsive Scripture readings are uncommon but may be done on a special occasion.
In a traditional service, the music typically features hymns accompanied by a piano or organ (churches have generally phased out the latter due to a shift in worship preferences) and sometimes with a special featured soloist or choir. Smaller churches typically let anyone participate in the choir regardless of actual singing ability; larger churches will limit participation to those who have successfully tried out for a role. After the sermon, an invitation to respond (sometimes termed an altar call) might be given; people may respond during the invitation by receiving Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and beginning Christian discipleship, seeking baptism or requesting to join the congregation, or entering into vocational ministry or making some other publicly stated decision. Churches may schedule baptisms on specific weekends, or (especially in buildings with built-in baptisteries) be readily available for anyone desiring baptism.
In a contemporary service, the music generally features modern songs led by a praise team or similarly named group with featured singers. Choirs are not as common. An altar call may or may not be given at the end; if not, interested persons are directed to seek out people in the lobby who can address any questions. Baptismal services are usually scheduled as specific and special events. Also, church membership is usually done periodically by attending specific classes about the church's history, beliefs, what it seeks to accomplish, and what is expected of a prospective member. Controversially, churches may ask a member to sign a "membership covenant", a document with the prospective member's promise to perform certain tasks (regular church attendance at main services and small groups, regular giving—sometimes even requiring tithing, and service within the church). Such covenants are highly controversial: among other things, such a covenant may not permit a member to withdraw from membership to avoid church discipline voluntarily, or, in some cases, the member cannot leave at all (even when not under discipline) without the approval of church leadership. A Dallas/Fort Worth church was forced to apologize to a member who attempted to do so for failing to request permission to annul her marriage after her husband admitted to viewing child pornography.
== Statistics ==
=== Membership ===
According to a 2024 census published by the convention, it had 46,876 churches, 4.3 million weekly worshippers, and 12,722,266 members.
The global convention has more than 1,161 local associations, 41 state conventions, and fellowships covering all 50 states and territories of the United States. The five U.S. states with the highest rates of membership are Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee. Texas has the largest number of members, with an estimated 2.75 million. Within Texas, these are divided among the more traditionalist Southern Baptists of Texas Convention and more moderate, diversified Baptist General Convention of Texas; the Baptist General Convention of Texas, or the Texas Baptists, are also more financially and organizationally autonomous from the primary convention in contrast to most state conventions.
Southern/Great Commission Baptists support thousands of missionaries in the United States and worldwide through the Cooperative Program.
=== Trends ===
Data from church sources and independent surveys indicate that since 1990 membership of Southern Baptist churches has declined as a proportion of the American population. Historically, the convention grew throughout its history until 2007, when membership decreased by a net figure of nearly 40,000 members. The total membership, of about 16.2 million, was flat over the same period, falling by 38,482 or 0.2%. An important indicator of the denomination's health is new baptisms, which have decreased yearly for seven of the last eight years. As of 2008, they had reached their lowest levels since 1987. Membership continued to decline from 2008 to 2012. The convention's statistical summary of 2014 recorded a loss of 236,467 members, their biggest one-year decline since 1881. In 2018, membership fell below 15 million for the first time since 1989 and reached its lowest level for over 30 years.
This decline in membership and baptisms has prompted some SBC researchers to describe the convention as a "denomination in decline". In 2008, former SBC president Frank Page suggested that if current conditions continue, half of all the convention's churches will close their doors permanently by 2030. A 2004 survey of SBC churches supported that assessment, finding that the membership of 70% of SBC churches is declining or has plateaued.
The decline in membership was discussed at the June 2008 Annual Convention. Curt Watke, a former researcher for the organization, noted four reasons for the decline of the church based on his research: the increase in immigration by non-European groups, decline in growth among predominantly European American (white) churches, the aging of the current membership, and a decrease in the proportion of younger generations participating in any church life. Some believe Baptists have not worked sufficiently to attract minorities.
On the other hand, the state conventions of Mississippi and Texas report an increasing proportion of minority members. In 1990, 5% of congregations were non-white. In 2012, the proportion of congregations of other ethnic groups (African American, Latino, and Asian) had increased to 20%. Sixty percent of the minority congregations were in Texas, particularly in the suburbs of Houston and Dallas. In 2020, an estimated 22.3% of affiliated churches were non-white.
The decline in SBC-GCB membership may be more pronounced than these statistics indicate because Baptist churches are not required to remove inactive members from their rolls, likely leading to greatly inflated membership numbers. In addition, hundreds of large, moderate congregations have shifted their primary allegiance to other Baptist groups, such as the American Baptist Churches USA, the Alliance of Baptists, or the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, but have continued to remain on the convention's books. Their members are thus counted in the convention's totals, although these churches no longer participate in the annual convention meetings or make more than the minimum financial contributions.
Groups have sometimes withdrawn from the convention because of its conservative trends. On November 6, 2000, the Baptist General Convention of Texas voted to cut its contributions to Southern Baptist seminaries and reallocate more than $5 million to three theological seminaries that members believed were more moderate. These included the Hispanic Baptist Theological School in San Antonio, Baylor University's George W. Truett Theological Seminary in Waco, and Hardin–Simmons University's Logsdon School of Theology in Abilene. Since the controversies of the 1980s, the convention has established more than 20 theological or divinity programs directed toward moderate and progressive Baptists in the Southeastern United States. In addition to Texas, the convention established schools in Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, and Alabama in the 1990s. These include the Baptist Theological Seminary in Richmond, McAfee School of Theology of Mercer University in Atlanta, Wake Forest, Gardner Webb and Campbell Divinity schools in North Carolina, and Beeson Divinity School at Samford University. These schools contributed to the flat and declining enrollment at seminaries operating in the same region of the United States. Texas and Virginia have the largest state conventions identified as moderate in theological approach.
On June 4, 2020, the organization reported a drop in membership—the 13th consecutive year that membership declined. Total membership in the church fell almost 2% to 14,525,579 from 2018 to 2019. In 2022, the church lost another 457,371 members (the largest drop in over a century) to 13,223,122, a similar level as the late 1970s.
== Organization ==
The denomination has four levels of organization: the local congregation, the local association, the state convention, and the national convention. There are 41 affiliated state conventions or fellowships.
The national and state conventions and local associations are cooperative associations by which churches can voluntarily pool resources to support missionary and other work. Because of the basic Baptist principle of the autonomy of the local church and the congregationalist polity of the denomination, neither the national convention nor the state conventions or local associations has any administrative or ecclesiastical control over local churches; such a group may disfellowship a local congregation over an issue, but may not terminate its leadership or members or force its closure. The national convention has no authority over state conventions or local associations, nor do state conventions have authority over local associations. Furthermore, no individual congregation has any authority over any other congregation; a church may oversee another congregation voluntarily as a mission work, but another congregation has the right to become an independent congregation at any time.
Article IV. Authority: While independent and sovereign in its own sphere, the Convention does not claim and will never attempt to exercise any authority over any other Baptist body, whether church, auxiliary organizations, associations, or convention.
The national convention maintains a central administrative organization in Nashville, Tennessee. Its executive committee exercises authority and control over seminaries and other institutions owned by the national convention.
The national convention had around 10,000 ethnic churches as of 2008. Commitment to the autonomy of local churches was the primary force behind its executive committee's rejection of a proposal to create a convention-wide database of clergy accused of sexual crimes against congregants or other minors in order to stop the "recurring tide" of clergy sexual abuse within affiliated congregations. A 2009 study by Lifeway Christian Resources, the convention's research and publishing arm, revealed that one in eight background checks for potential volunteer or church workers revealed a history of crime that could have prevented them from working.
The denominational statement of faith, the Baptist Faith and Message, is not binding on churches or members due to the autonomy of the local church (though national convention employees and missionaries must agree to its views as a condition of employment or missionary support). Politically and culturally, Southern/Great Commission Baptists tend to be conservative. Most oppose homosexual activity and abortion.
=== Pastor and deacon ===
Generally, Baptists recognize only two scriptural offices: pastor-teacher and deacon. The convention passed a resolution in the early 1980s officially restricting offices requiring ordination to men. According to the Baptist Faith and Message, the office of pastor is limited to men based on New Testament scriptures.
=== Annual meeting ===
The annual meeting (held in June over two days) consists of delegates (called "messengers") from cooperating churches. The messengers confer, determine the convention's programs, policies, and budget, and elect the officers and committees. Each cooperating church is allowed up to two messengers regardless of the amount given to convention entities and may have more depending on the amount of contributions (in dollars or percent of the church's budget), but the maximum number of messengers permitted from any church is 12.
== Missions and affiliated organizations ==
=== Cooperative Program ===
The Cooperative Program (CP) is the organization's unified funds collection and distribution program for the support of regional, national, and international ministries; contributions from affiliated congregations fund the CP.
In the fiscal year ending September 30, 2008, the local congregations of the denomination reported gift receipts of $11.1 billion. From this they sent $548 million, approximately five percent, to their state Baptist conventions through the CP. Of this amount, the state Baptist conventions retained $344 million for their work. State conventions sent $204 million to the national CP budget to support denomination-wide ministries.
=== Mission agencies ===
The denomination was organized in 1845 to create a mission board to support the sending of Baptist missionaries. The North American Mission Board, or NAMB, (founded as the Domestic Mission Board, and later the Home Mission Board) in Alpharetta, Georgia serves missionaries involved in evangelism and church planting in the U.S. and Canada, while the International Mission Board, or IMB, (originally the Foreign Mission Board) in Richmond, Virginia, sponsors missionaries to the rest of the world.
Baptist Men is the mission organization for men in the convention's churches and is under the North American Mission Board.
The Woman's Missionary Union, founded in 1888, is an auxiliary to the national convention, which helps facilitate two large annual missions offerings: the Annie Armstrong Easter Offering (for North American missions) and the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering (for international missions).
=== Send Relief ===
Among the more visible organizations within the North American Mission Board is Southern Baptist Disaster Relief. In 1967, a small group of Texas Southern Baptist volunteers helped victims of Hurricane Beulah by serving hot food cooked on small "buddy burners". In 2005, volunteers responded to 166 named disasters, prepared 17,124,738 meals, repaired 7,246 homes, and removed debris from 13,986 yards. Southern Baptist Disaster Relief provides many different types: food, water, child care, communication, showers, laundry, repairs, rebuilding, or other essential tangible items that contribute to the resumption of life following the crisis—and the message of the Gospel. All assistance is provided to individuals and communities free of charge. SBC DR volunteer kitchens prepare much of the food distributed by the Red Cross in major disasters.
=== Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools ===
The SBC has various primary and secondary schools affiliated with the Southern Baptist Association of Christian Schools.
=== Universities and colleges ===
The SBC has several affiliated universities.
=== Seminaries ===
The national convention directly supports six theological seminaries devoted to ministry preparation.
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky (1859, originally in Greenville, South Carolina)
Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Fort Worth, Texas (1908, originally part of Baylor University in Waco, Texas).
New Orleans Baptist Theological Seminary, New Orleans, Louisiana (1916, originally New Orleans Baptist Bible Institute)
Gateway Seminary, Ontario, California (1944, initially in Oakland, California, and formerly called Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary)
Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary, Wake Forest, North Carolina (1950)
Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, Kansas City, Missouri (1957)
=== Other organizations ===
Other notable organizations under the national convention include Baptist Press, the nation's largest Christian news service, established by the convention in 1946; Baptist Collegiate Network, the college-level organization operating campus and international missions typically known as the Baptist Student Union and Baptist Collegiate Ministries; GuideStone Financial Resources (formerly called the Annuity Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, and founded in 1918 as the Relief Board of the Southern Baptist Convention), which provides insurance, retirement, and investment services to churches, ministers, and employees of affiliated churches and agencies (it does not limit its services to member churches and members); LifeWay Christian Resources, founded as the Baptist Sunday School Board in 1891, one of the nation's largest Christian publishing houses, which previously operated the "LifeWay Christian Stores" (formerly "Baptist Book Stores") until closing physical stores in 2019; Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission (formerly known as the Christian Life Commission of the SBC), dedicated to addressing social and moral concerns and their implications on public policy issues from city hall to Congress and the courts; and the Southern Baptist Historical Library and Archives, in Nashville, Tennessee, the official depository for the denomination's archives and a research center for the study of Baptists worldwide. The SBHLA website includes digital resources.
== Controversies ==
From its establishment to the present day, the organization has experienced several periods of major internal controversy.
=== Landmark controversy ===
In the 1850s–1860s, a group of young activists called for a return to certain early practices, or what they called Landmarkism. Other leaders disagreed with their assertions, and the Baptist congregations became split on the issues. Eventually, the disagreements led to the formation of Gospel Missions and the American Baptist Association (1924), as well as many unaffiliated independent churches. One historian called the related James Robinson Graves—Robert Boyte Crawford Howell controversy (1858–60) the greatest to affect the denomination before that of the late 20th century involving the fundamentalist-moderate break.
=== Whitsitt controversy ===
In the Whitsitt controversy of 1896–99, William H. Whitsitt, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, suggested that contrary to earlier thought, English Baptists did not begin to baptize by immersion until 1641, when some Anabaptists, as they were then called, began to practice immersion. This went against the idea of immersion, which was the practice of the earliest Baptists, as some Landmarkists contended.
=== American Civil War ===
During the 19th and most of the 20th century, the organization, reflecting Southern attitudes toward politics, supported white supremacy, racial segregation, the Confederacy, and the Lost Cause. The organization also denounced interracial marriage as an "abomination", citing the Bible. Beginning in the late 1970s, a conservative movement began to take control of the organization. By the 1990s, this movement succeeded in taking control of the SBC leadership. In 1995, it officially denounced racism and its white supremacist history. In the 21st century, after the election of its first black president, the SBC adopted the "Great Commission Baptists" descriptor, which gained prominent use among several churches that wished to sever themselves from its white supremacist history and controversies. By 2008, almost 20% of SBC congregations were majority African American, Asian, Hispanic, or Latino, reflecting the denomination's increased racial diversity. SBC-cooperating churches had an estimated one million African American members. By 2018, the denomination had passed resolutions that recommended gaining more black members and appointing more African American leaders.
=== Moderates–conservatives controversy ===
The Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence (c. 1970–2000) was an intense struggle for control of the national convention's resources and ideological direction.
In July 1961, Professor Ralph Elliott at Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Kansas City published The Message of Genesis, a book rejecting biblical inerrancy. In the 1970s, other convention seminary professors came under suspicion of liberal Christianity.
In response to these events, a group of pastors led by Judge Paul Pressler and Pastor Paige Patterson campaigned at conferences in churches for a more conservative direction in Convention policies. This group's candidate, Adrian Rogers, was elected Convention president at the 1979 annual meeting. After the election, the organization's new leaders replaced all Southern Baptist agency leaders with people who said they were more conservative. Its initiators called it a "Southern Baptist Convention conservative resurgence", while its moderate opponents called it a "fundamentalist takeover".
Russell H. Dilday, president of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary from 1978 to 1994, said the resurgence fragmented Southern Baptist fellowship and was "far more serious than [a controversy]", calling it as "a self-destructive, contentious, one-sided feud that at times took on combative characteristics". Since 1979, Southern Baptists had become polarized into two major groups: moderates and conservatives. Reflecting the conservative majority votes of messengers at the 1979 annual meeting of the SBC, the new national organization officers replaced all leaders of Southern Baptist agencies with presumably more conservative people (often dubbed "fundamentalist" by dissenters).
In 1984, this group was heavily involved in passing a resolution excluding women from pastoral leadership.
In 1987, a group of churches criticized the fundamentalists for controlling the leadership and founded the Alliance of Baptists. A group of moderate churches criticized the denomination for the same reasons, as well as opposition to women's ministry, and founded the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship in 1991.
In 2019, after the scandals of sexual abuse accusations involving the deacon Paul Pressler and sexual abuse cover-ups involving former president Paige Patterson, the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary removed the stained-glass windows from the MacGorman Chapel opened in 2011 depicting them as actors of a "conservative resurgence".
=== Marriage ===
Since 1976, the Convention has adopted 22 resolutions supporting only marriage between a man and a woman and opposing same-sex marriage.
Since 1992, the national convention has "disfellowshipped" various churches that support LGBTQ inclusion. In 2018, the District of Columbia Baptist Convention was disfellowshipped for this reason.
On June 10, 2025, at the annual meeting in Dallas, the convention voted overwhelmingly in favor of working to overturn the legal right to same-sex marriage. It was the first time the SBC had asked representatives of its member churches to do this. The same resolution opposed "transgender ideology". The resolution, "On Restoring Moral Clarity through God's Design for Gender, Marriage, and the Family", was written by Andrew T. Walker, an ethicist at a Kentucky seminary.
=== Critical race theory ===
By November 2020, the six convention seminary presidents called critical race theory "unbiblical". They emphasized the importance of not turning to secular ideas to confront racism. Four African American churches left the SBC over the leadership's charged statement on the issue.
== See also ==
List of Baptist denominations
List of Southern Baptist Convention affiliated people
List of the largest Protestant denominations
Evangelicalism in the United States
Southern Baptist Convention Presidents
Christian views on slavery
Christianity in the United States
Religion in the United States
== Notes ==
== References ==
=== Footnotes ===
=== Bibliography ===
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhuvaneshwar_Prasad_Sinha | Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha | Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha [Title: Sinha] of Shahabad (now Bhojpur), Bengal Presidency (1 February 1899 – 12 November 1986) was the 6th Chief Justice of India (1 October 1959 – 31 January 1964). He also served as the president of the Bharat Scouts and Guides from April 1965 to February 1967.
Sinha served as the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India from 1 October 1959 to 31 January 1964. Over the course of his Supreme Court tenure, Sinha authored 137 judgments and sat on 684 benches.
== Life ==
Sinha was born and brought up in a prominent Rajput family of Rajwada Gajiyapur Estate, Arrah (present Bhojpur) District. His grandson B. P. Singh is a former judge of the Supreme Court of India.
A deeply religious man, following his retirement, Sinha led a quiet life mostly devoted to spiritual pursuits, though he did accept a number of private arbitration cases. Becoming blind in his later years, he died in 1986.
== Career ==
He was educated at the Arrah Zilla School, Patna College and Patna Law College.
Sinha topped the list of candidates at the B.A. (Hons) in 1919 and M.A in 1921 at the Patna University. He was a Vakil in the Patna High Court from 1922 to 1927. Later he became an advocate in 1927 and also got the position of Lecturer at the Govt. Law College, Patna, both of which he remained till 1935. He also was a member of the Senate of the Faculty of Law and of the Board of Examiners in Law, Patna Univ. He became the member of the Court of the Benaras Hindu University where he was a Government Pleader from 1935 to 1939. He was Srimati Radhika Sinha Gold Medalist for standing first in History.
He became an Assistant Govt. Advocate in 1940 and the Judge of Patna High Court on 19 January 1943. He was elevated to the position of the Chief Justice of Nagpur High Court in 1951 and eventually to the Judge of Supreme Court in December 1954 at which he remained till 30 September 1959.
He finally became the Chief Justice of India in 1959 and remained so till 1964 and then he retired.
== Published works ==
Reminiscences and Reflections of a Chief Justice ISBN 81-7018-253-0, 1985, 1st ed.
== References ==
Supreme Court of India, Biographies |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Band_of_Joy_(album) | Band of Joy (album) | Band of Joy is English rock singer Robert Plant's ninth solo album and the first with his new backing group, the Band of Joy. It was released on 13 September 2010 in the UK and 14 September in the US.
== Background ==
In addition to the song "Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down", which is the opening theme for the Starz television series Boss, the credits of BBC One's Luther for an episode aired on 16 July 2013 and the season two finale of the Syfy series Defiance, the album is notable for the song "Monkey". The song, originally by the band Low, is slowed down to a grinding, spooky gothic rock tempo and mood that is different from Low's version. It is arguably the least similar to other tracks on the album (except for "Satan"), which for the most part carry folk rock or progressive rock moods. Although it is not a staple at Plant's live performances, there have been instances where he has performed it.
The album debuted at #5 on the Billboard 200 chart and at #3 on the UK Albums Chart. The first single released from the album was "Angel Dance".
== Track listing ==
== Personnel ==
Robert Plant – vocals, backing vocals (1, 2, 3, 5, 11), arrangements (9, 11, 12)
Band of Joy
Darrell Scott – accordion, acoustic guitars, mandolin, octave mandolin, banjos, pedal steel guitar, lap steel guitar, backing vocals (1–4, 6, 7, 10, 11)
Buddy Miller – electric guitars, baritone guitar, mando-guitar, 6-string bass, backing vocals (2, 3, 6), arrangements (9, 11, 12)
Byron House – bass
Marco Giovino – drums, percussion, backing vocals (3)
Bekka Bramlett – backing vocals (1, 2)
Patty Griffin – vocals, backing vocals (2–5, 8, 10, 11)
=== Production ===
Buddy Miller – producer
Robert Plant – producer, sleeve design
Mike Poole – recording, mixing, editing, reconstructions
Gordon Hammond – assistant engineer
Tim Mitchell – recording assistant
Ted Wheeler – studio assistant
Jim DeMain – mastering at Yes Master (Nashville, Tennessee)
Alex McCollough – mastering assistant
Richard Evans – character audition, compilation and assembly
Michael Wilson – photography
Bill Curbishley – management
Nicola Powell – management
== Critical reaction ==
Band of Joy was received positively. Metacritic's aggregate score for the album is 80 out of 100, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Rolling Stone, while only giving the album a three-and-a-half-star review, ranked it #8 on its list of the 30 Best Albums of 2010. Q Magazine in its January 2011 edition ranked Band of Joy as the second best album of 2010, stating that, "free from having to imitate his 20-year-old self in Zeppelin, the sexagenarian sings to his strengths here, with Miller and Griffin his not-so secret weapons on an album that pinwheels between gentlemanly country-blues ("Cindy, I'll Marry You Some Day"), spooky lo-fi ("Silver Rider") and charming '60s pop ("You Can't Buy My Love")."
== Awards ==
The album was nominated for two Grammy Awards, including Best Americana Album and the song "Silver Rider" for Best Solo Rock Vocal Performance. Frontman and vocalist Robert Plant was nominated for best British Male Solo Artist at the Brit Awards 2011.
== Charts ==
=== Weekly charts ===
=== Year-end charts ===
== Certifications ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haile_Gebrselassie#:~:text=He%20started%20the%20race%20at,record%2C%20while%20Haile%20finished%20third.&text=In%202005%2C%20Haile%20went%20undefeated%20in%20all%20of%20his%20road%20races. | Haile Gebrselassie | Haile Gebrselassie (Amharic: ኀይሌ ገብረ ሥላሴ, romanized: Haylē Gebre Silassē; born 18 April 1973) is an Ethiopian former long-distance track, road running athlete, and businessman. He won two Olympic gold medals and four World Championship titles over the 10,000 metres. Haile triumphed in the Berlin Marathon four times consecutively and also had three straight wins at the Dubai Marathon. He also earned four world titles indoors and was the 2001 World Half Marathon Champion. He is considered to be one of the greatest long distance runners of all time.
Haile had major competition wins at distances between 1,500 metres and the marathon, moving from outdoor, indoor and cross country running to road running in the latter part of his career. He broke 61 Ethiopian national records, ranging from 800 metres to the marathon, set 27 world records, and is regarded as one of the greatest long distance runners in history. He won the 2008 Berlin Marathon with a world record time of 2:03:59, breaking his own world record by 27 seconds. The record stood for three years. Haile's 10,000 m Masters age group world record remains unchallenged since 2008. Due to his various achievements on track & road running events, many called him as the "Emperor of the Distance Running". Beyond his athletic achievements, he is a successful businessman, contributing to the development of his home country.
Haile was cited as one of the top 100 most influential Africans by New African in 2011. During the Hachalu Hundessa riots in 2020, Oromo mobs targeted the businesses and properties of non-Oromos. Haile's hotels and resort were burned and 400 employees lost their jobs. In 2021, in the midst of the Tigray War, he pledged to join the fighting against the Tigray People's Liberation Front.
== Athletics career ==
=== Early career ===
Haile was born one of ten children in Asella, Ethiopia. As a child growing up on a farm, he used to run ten kilometres to school every morning, and the same distance back every evening. This led to a distinctive running posture, with his left arm crooked as if he was still holding his school books. Gebrselassie's mother died from cancer when he was six.
In 1992, Haile gained international recognition in Seoul, South Korea, when he won the 5000-metre and 10,000-metre races at the 1992 World Junior Championships and a silver medal in the junior race at the World Cross Country Championships held in Boston, the United States.
The following year, in 1993, Haile won the first of what would eventually be four consecutive world championships titles in the men's 10,000 metres at the 1993, 1995, 1997, and 1999 World Championships. His win in 1993 was however his most infamous as he accidentally stepped on the heel of Moses Tanui's shoe at the bell, causing it to fly off his foot. After the contact, with just one shoe, an angered Tanui moved out to a 10-meter lead, only to have Haile run him down on the final straight. Also at the 1993 World Championships he ran in the 5,000-metre race to finish a close second behind Ismael Kirui of Kenya. In 1994 he won a bronze medal at the IAAF World Cross Country Championships. Later that year he set his first world record by running 12:56.96 in the 5,000 metres, breaking Saïd Aouita's record by almost two seconds.
In 1995, Haile ran the 10,000 metres in 26:43.53 in Hengelo, the Netherlands, lowering the world record by nine seconds. That same summer, in Zürich, Switzerland, Haile ran the 5000 metres in 12:44.39, taking 10.91 seconds off the world record 12:55.30 (established by Kenya's Moses Kiptanui earlier in the year). Later that summer he won the 10k world championship with his final 200m being run in 25 seconds. This world record at the Weltklasse meet in Zürich was voted "Performance of the Year" for 1995 by Track & Field News magazine. At the same Weltklasse meet in Zürich in 1996, an exhausted Haile, suffering from blisters obtained on the hard track in Atlanta (where he had won the Olympic 10,000 metres gold), had no answer to the 58-second lap of Daniel Komen with five laps to go as Komen went on to win and just miss Haile's record, finishing in 12:45.09. In 1997, Haile turned the tables on Komen at the same meet. Coming off his third 10K world championship gold medal, Haile beat Komen in another Zürich classic on 13 August 1997, covering the final 200 metres in 26.8 seconds to break his 5000 metres world record with a time of 12:41.86. Komen, in turn, took Haile's record only nine days later when Komen ran a 12:39.74 performance in Belgium.
=== Middle career ===
The next year, 1998, saw Haile lowering the indoor world records for 2000 and 3000 metres, enjoying success outdoors by taking back both the 5000 and 10,000 metres world records, as well as earning a share in the Golden League jackpot for winning all of his races in the Golden League series that summer. In June 1998 in Hengelo, Netherlands, Haile set a 10,000 metres world record 26:22.75, breaking Paul Tergat's world record 26:27.85, running evenly paced 13:11/13:11 5K splits.
Just 13 days later, Haile took on the 5000 metres mark of Komen in Helsinki, Finland. Croatian pacemaker Branko Zorko took the pace out slowly, hitting 1000 metres in 2:33.91 and dropping out at the mile. Million Wolde and Assefa Mezgebu led Haile through 2000 metres in 5:05.62. His pacemakers could not maintain the pace, though, and Haile was left alone for a problematic solo effort six laps out. Hitting 3000 metres in 7:38.93, even the British commentators announcing the race counted him out. With four laps to go (8:40.00), Haile needed a sub-4-minute final 1,600 metres for the record. With one lap to go and in great pain, Haile took off, recording a final lap of 56.77 seconds and a final 1,600 metres of 3:59.36 (= 4:00.96-mile) to race to a 12:39.36 world record.
In 1999, Haile starred as himself in the movie Endurance. The film chronicled his quest to win Olympic gold in the 10,000 metres in Atlanta. On the track, he won 1500/3000 metres double at the World Indoor Track Championships, defended his Outdoor World Track Championships 10,000 metres title, and remained undefeated in all his races (which ranged from 1500 up to 10,000 metres).
In 2000, Haile again won all of his races, ranking first in the world in both the 5000 and 10,000 metres. At the 2000 Sydney Olympics, he became the third man in history to successfully defend an Olympic 10,000 metres title (after Emil Zátopek and Lasse Virén). The narrow Olympic victory over Kenya's Paul Tergat came down to a blistering final kick, with Tergat's 26.3-second last 200 metres being topped by Haile's even faster 25.4. The winning margin of victory was only 0.09 seconds, closer than the winning margin in the men's 100-metre dash final.
On 26 August 2001, he ran his first half marathon (16 wins out of 20) and won in 1:04:34. Also in 2001, Haile won the IAAF World half Marathon Championships and the bronze medal in the 10,000 metres at the 2001 World Championships in Athletics. In the same year, he conceptualized the Great Ethiopian Run with Peter Middlebrook, which was latterly supported by Brendan Foster, British runner Richard Nerurkar the British ambassador to Ethiopia Myles Wickstead.
On 30 August 2003, Haile topped the polls when elected as a member of the IAAF Athletes Commission. Also in 2003, at the World Championships in Paris, Haile was involved in one of the most remarkable 10,000 metres races of all time while gaining a silver medal behind countryman Kenenisa Bekele. The last half of the 10,000 metres final at the championships was completed in a staggering 12:57.24 (12:57.2 for Bekele and 12:58.8 for Haile). According to the IAAF, "Not only was this split the fastest closing 5000 metres in the championships 10,000m (the previous record was 13:12.12, recorded in Atlanta), but it was also the fastest 5000 metres in a global championship surpassing the 12:58.13 Salah Hissou recorded when he won the 5,000m in Sevilla'99." (This remark remained true until a week later when the World Athletic Championships 5000 metres medalists (including Bekele) all ran faster than the second 5000 metres split in the previous week's 10,000 metres.) "The difference between the closing 5000 metres splits (12:57.24) and the 5000 metres World record (12:39.36) was 17.98 seconds, which is a record. The previous best of 18.4 seconds (13:31.4 for the closing 5000 metres when the World Record was 13:13.0) was recorded in the 1976 Olympics."
In the 2004 Athens Olympics, Haile sought to become the first man in history to win three straight Olympic gold medals in the 10,000 metres. He was unable to do so due to an injury; however, he finished fifth in a race won by his compatriot Kenenisa Bekele, who had broken both of Haile's major track world records, the 5000 metres and the 10,000 metres records. Shortly before the Athens games, Haile was unable to train for three weeks due to inflammation of his Achilles tendon. The injury was severe enough that he would not have competed otherwise but did so because of significant pressure from his country. This loss in the final period of training likely cost him a medal.
=== Later career ===
Since leaving the track after the 2004 Olympics, Haile has focused on road racing and the marathon. His adult marathons to date include London 2002 (3rd place), Amsterdam 2005 (1st place), London 2006 (9th place), Berlin 2006 (1st place), Fukuoka 2006 (1st place), London 2007 (DNF), Berlin 2007 (1st place and World Record), Dubai 2008 (1st place), Berlin 2008 (1st place and another World Record), Dubai 2009 (1st place) Berlin 2009 (1st place), Dubai 2010 (1st place), and NYC 2010 (DNF).
In 2002, Haile made his debut at the marathon at the London Marathon. He started the race at a very fast pace, within world record time. He was unable to hold it, however, as world record holders Khalid Khannouchi and Paul Tergat both eventually passed him. Khannouchi broke his world record, while Haile finished third.
In 2005, Haile went undefeated in all of his road races. This included a British all-comers' record in the 10K in Manchester (27:25), a win at the Amsterdam Marathon in the fastest marathon time in the world for 2006 (2:06:20), and a new world best for 10 miles in Tilburg Ten Miles race, The Netherlands (44:24). (His unofficial split of 41:22 at the 15K mark was 7 seconds faster than the official world best.)
Haile started 2006 positively on 15 January by setting his first world record on American soil. He ran the half marathon of the Rock 'n' Roll Arizona Marathon to beat Samuel Wanjiru 2005 record for the distance by a full 21 seconds with a time of 58 minutes and 55 seconds. During the race he passed the 20 km mark in 55:48, breaking also Paul Tergat's record for this distance which had stood since 1998. That year also marked another victory for Haile as he shattered the 25 km world road record (albeit in non-IAAF ratified fashion) by 68 seconds in a time of 1:11.37. The race was organized where Haile and six other runners would run 5 kilometres and then cross the starting line of the 20-K Alphen race in Alphen aan den Rijn of the Netherlands.
On 23 April 2006, he finished ninth in the London Marathon with a time of 2:09:05 (the race was won by Kenyan Felix Limo, who clocked 2:06:39). Haile referred to the ninth-place finish as "the worst race of my career". However, on 24 September he came back with a win in the Berlin Marathon in the fastest time of the year, 2:05:56. His time in Berlin made him only the fifth man in history to run under 2:06 for the marathon. This was followed by a win in the Fukuoka Marathon in Japan at 2:06:52.
In London on 22 April 2007, Haile challenged the 2006 London Marathon winner Felix Limo, 2005 London Marathon winner Martin Lel, 2004 Athens gold medalist Stefano Baldini, 2006 New York Marathon winner Marílson Gomes dos Santos, and the then marathon world record holder Paul Tergat in what organizers anticipated would be an exciting race. However Haile dropped out at the 18-mile (29 km) stage complaining of a stitch and inability to breathe, which turned out to be an allergic reaction to the pollen in the air. This left the 2005 winner Martin Lel to come home in the first place.
One month later, Haile made a surprise return to the track for the first of two stadium races that summer. In the first, he ran a 26:52.81 finishing fifth in a very competitive 10,000 metres race in Hengelo, The Netherlands. It was the first time a man over 30 ran the 10,000 m in less than 27 minutes. Then, on 27 June 2007, Haile launched an attack upon the world record for the one hour run, in Ostrava, Czech Republic. This record attempt was successful as Haile passed the hour mark at 21,285 metres (13 miles 397 yards), eclipsing the previous best of 21,101 metres, set by Mexican Arturo Barrios in La Flèche, France, on 30 March 1991. Furthermore, Haile covered 50 laps (20,000 m) in 56:25.98, another world best, well within the previous 56:55.6 also set by Barrios in 1991. These were his 23rd and 24th world records.
Haile made his running debut in New York City when he won the New York City Half Marathon on 5 August 2007, in 59:24, breaking the previous course record by two minutes. His win in the Lisbon Half Marathon (59:15) in March 2008 gave him a perfect record of 9–0 in winning all of his half marathons. He lost his first half marathon in Den Haag (14 March 2009), when he was beaten by Sammy Kitwara (59:47 for Kitwara, 59:50 for Haile).
On 30 September 2007, Haile won the Berlin Marathon in 2:04:26 (4:44.8 per mile), setting the world record and shaving 29 seconds off Paul Tergat's record, set on the same course in 2003. His victory further energized the celebrations of the Ethiopian Millennium (unique to the Ethiopian calendar), which began on 12 September 2007.
Before the 2008 Dubai Marathon, his manager suggested that Haile would be able to run a sub 2:04 time for a new world record. While Haile agreed that a sub 2:04 was possible, he stated that the conditions would need to be perfect for such a time. The event was held on 18 January 2008 and was won by Haile in a time of 2:04:53, making it the second-fastest marathon in history. However the early pace had been too fast and he was unable to continue at that speed, resulting in a time 27 seconds short of his world record.
At the Hengelo FBK-Games on 24 May, Haile ran 26:51.20 for the 10,000 metres to finish a close second behind countryman Sileshi Sihine's 26:50.53. This is the Master 35–39 age group world record. His nine career sub-27-minute 10,000-meter performances are more than any other athlete except for Kenenisa Bekele, who also has nine.
Because of Beijing's air pollution levels, Haile decided to withdraw from the marathon at the 2008 Beijing Olympics. He suffers from asthma and said that running in such conditions might be harmful to his health. Haile later admitted that he regretted the decision as the Beijing air was cleaner than expected. He did, however, run the 10,000 metres on 17 August, finishing sixth with a time of 27:06.68. The gold medal went to his countryman and then world record holder, Kenenisa Bekele with a 27:01:17 Olympic record winning time. The following month, on 28 September 2008, he defended his Berlin Marathon title, averaging 2:56.5 per kilometer (4:43.7 per mile) for a time of 2:03:59, breaking his own world record by 27 seconds.
Haile won the Dubai Marathon on 16 January 2009 but fell short of breaking his own world record that he had set four months earlier on the flat course. He finished in 2:05:29, well ahead of countryman Deressa Chimsa. In September of that year, he won the Berlin Marathon for the fourth consecutive time. He attempted to break the world record he had set the previous year but, despite a quick start, warm conditions saw him finish in 2:06:08, two minutes away from his best mark. He did, however, pass the 30-kilometer point in 1:27:49, which was a new world record for a road 30K.
In 2010, he tried to attack his world record for the third consecutive time at the Dubai Marathon 2010. Although he won the race with a time of 2:06:09, he failed to break his 18-month world record. In a post-race interview, Haile revealed that he had suffered back pain, requiring intensive pre-race physiotherapy, resulting from having slept in a bad position. His problems continued at the NYC Half Marathon, where he pulled up mid-race visibly uncomfortable in his running. He had an easy victory in the inaugural edition of the 10K de Madrid in April. He scored his third victory at the Great Manchester Run the following month, although he missed out on Micah Kogo's course record. He followed this with his first win at the Great North Run in September, finishing the half marathon in a time of 59:33 minutes.
He is also mentor and ambassador for the G4S 4teen, a programme supporting 14 young athletes.
=== Retirement ===
On 7 November, after dropping out of the 2010 New York City Marathon with an inflamed knee, Haile announced his retirement. Days later, he posted to his Twitter account that he was reconsidering his decision and wanted to run in the 2012 London Olympics. Haile had stated previously that after retiring he would like to enter politics, with scepticism from the public about his knowledge on politics and the unfamiliar culture of celebrities holding public office in Ethiopia. However he won his first race back in a 10k road race in Angola with a new course record of 28:05 and beat countryman Deriba Merga and the Kenyan Josphat Menjo who had run the fastest 10000m of that year.
Haile missed the 2011 Tokyo Marathon due to an injury, but won the half marathon at the Vienna City Marathon on 17 April 2011. About a month later Haile easily won the Great Manchester Run in England for the fourth time, finishing in 28:10. On 26 September he suffered a double setback when he dropped out of the Berlin Marathon (again suffering from respiratory difficulties of exercise-induced asthma) and saw his world records for 30 kilometres and the marathon broken by the man with whom he had been duelling, Patrick Makau. Haile was absent from the press conference later that day, but his manager Jos Hermens announced that while it was "the end of an era of record-breaking for Haile, it's not the end of his career". He returned to his winning ways at the Birmingham half marathon with a new course record and followed that up with a win at the Zevenheuvelenloop in November, taking his third career victory at the Dutch 15K race.
In 2012, Haile ran in the Tokyo Marathon and, after surging to the lead and putting a gap on the field with 6 km to go, faded and finished in 4th, in a time of 2:08:17. However, he bounced back to win the Vienna Half Marathon in 1:00:52, catching Paula Radcliffe who was given a 7:52-minute head-start. He was not selected for the Olympic marathon team, but after winning the Great Manchester Run with a fast time of 27:39, beating marathon world record holder Patrick Makau, world marathon leader Ayele Abshero and Olympic marathon medallist Tsegay Kebede, by a distance of over 100 metres, he decided to aim for a place in the 10,000 m race. He attempted to earn an Olympic spot at the Fanny Blankers-Koen Games in Hengelo, the stadium in which he had broken four world records. However, in extremely hot weather he finished seventh with a time of 27:20.39, sixth amongst Ethiopians, and did not qualify for the 2012 Summer Olympics. However, he did appear at the opening ceremony as one of the eight flagbearers who brought the Olympic flag into the stadium. Another outing at the Fukuoka Marathon, however, saw him enter as the favourite but drop out at 32 km.
On 14 April 2013, Haile won the open field of the Vienna City half marathon with a time of 01:01.14. He set his first over-40 world record with a time of 46:59 for 10 miles in Switzerland, on 15 September 2013. He took 3rd overall in the 2013 BUPA Great North Run, 32 seconds behind the winner Kenenisa Bekele and 31 seconds behind the reigning Olympic and world champion Mo Farah.
Haile has announced his retirement from competitive running after finishing 16th in the Great Manchester Run on Sunday 10 May 2015. It brings to an end a 25-year career in which he claimed two Olympic gold medals, eight World Championship victories and set 27 world records. "I'm retiring from competitive running, not from running. You cannot stop running, this is my life," he told BBC Sport.
Currently, Haile is the former president of the Ethiopian Athletics Federation, has been selling Hyundai cars in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, since 2009, and cooperates with Hyundai for the Marathon Motors Engineering factory there which started assembling the electric Hyundai Ioniq in July 2020. He has become a small-lot coffee farmer in Ethiopia. His coffees can be found under his estate name, Haile Estate, such as the Sun Dried Ethiopian Haile Estate Coffee, which is distributed by Starbucks Reserve.
== Business career ==
Haile Gebrselassie ventured into an entrepreneurship career in 1995, investing earnings from his sporting achievements that led to establishing companies. Until recent years, he has had 600 staff and offices every day. In 2010, Haile opened Haile Resorts in Lake Hawassa, and the resort quickly expanded to include destinations in Amhara, Oromia, Southern Nations, Nationalities, and People's Region. He recently inaugurated the Grand Haile Resort in Addis Ababa headquartered in Lam Beret. Haile has a dealership for Hyundai cars in Ethiopia and started assembling Hyundai electric cars in 2020.
Haile owned Marathon Motors, a vehicle business that also assembles Hyundai cars, and which recently rolled off the first electric car from its assembly plant. Haile owned several businesses and is involved in real estate projects and owns four hotels, a coffee plantation. In 2015, there was estimated 1,000 employees and reached 3,000 employees across his investments in Ethiopia and beyond. Haile currently received 30 million birr revenue from various businesses.
Haile Gebrselassie is an ambassador for the German charity organisation "Menschen für Menschen", which is committed to the development of his home country of Ethiopia.
== Achievements ==
=== International competitions ===
=== Marathon performances ===
=== Track and field circuit ===
== World records and best performances ==
== Personal bests ==
== Filmography ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Haile Gebrselassie at World Athletics
Marathon World Record – Berlin 2008 – EthioTube Video
Spikes Hero profile on www.spikesmag.com
Gebrselassie approaching Record for Running Records
Pacing splits and analysis of Haile marathon world record
Berlin 2008: Haile runs 2:03:59 – race report and analysis of pacing |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ackermann%E2%80%93Teubner_Memorial_Award | Ackermann–Teubner Memorial Award | The Alfred Ackermann–Teubner Memorial Award for the Promotion of Mathematical Sciences recognized work in mathematical analysis. It was established in 1912 by engineer Alfred Ackermann-Teubner and was an endowment of the University of Leipzig.
It was awarded 14 times between 1914 and 1941. Subsequent awards were to be made every other year until a surplus of 60,000 marks was accumulated within the endowment, at which time, the prize was to be awarded annually. The subjects included:
History, philosophy, teaching
Mathematics, especially arithmetic and algebra
Mechanics
Mathematical physics
Mathematics, especially analysis
Astronomy and theory of errors
Mathematics, especially geometry
Applied mathematics, especially geodesy and geophysics.
== Honorees ==
The fifteen honorees between 1914 and 1941 are:
1914: Felix Klein
1916: Ernst Zermelo, prize of 1,000 marks
1918: Ludwig Prandtl
1920: Gustav Mie
1922: Paul Koebe
1924: Arnold Kohlschütter
1926: Wilhelm Blaschke
1928: Albert Defant
1930: Johannes Tropfke
1932: Emmy Noether and Emil Artin, co-honorees
1934: Erich Trefftz(de)
1937: Pascual Jordan
1938: Erich Hecke
1941: Paul ten Bruggencate
== Jurists ==
In 1937, Constantin Carathéodory and Erhard Schmidt were invited to jury the award. Along with Wilhelm Blaschke, Carathéodory was invited again in 1944 by the German Union of Mathematicians.
== See also ==
List of mathematics awards
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loris_Fortuna | Loris Fortuna | Loris Fortuna (22 January 1924 – 5 December 1985) was an Italian left-wing politician.
== Biography ==
Born in Breno, province of Brescia, he was a partisan during World War II, and initially joined the Italian Communist Party (PCI), leaving it in 1956, and crossing the floor to the Italian Socialist Party (PSI), after the anti-Soviet revolts in Hungary were suppressed by the Soviet Red Army. His first ran in elections in 1963; two years later, he promoted, as first signer, the law on divorce, but he then decided not to submit it to the examination on Parliament.
In 1970, however, Fortuna decided to finally present his proposal of law, together with liberal colleague Antonio Baslini, gaining support from the PCI, the PSI, the PSDI, the PSIUP, the PRI and the PLI, but opposed by the Christian Democratic Party. The Radical Party and the left-leaning Lega Italiana per il Divorzio (LID) supported the law outside Parliament. The law, which legalized and regulated divorce in Italy, was then approved on 1 December 1970. This law is known as "Fortuna–Baslini law".
In 1974, The Christian Democrats tried to repeal it via a national referendum, but failed, with 59.3% of Italians favourable to maintain the law on divorce. During the referendum campaign, Fortuna bound up with Radical leader Marco Pannella, and then joined his party, but continuing to be member of the Socialist Party. The support by the leftist parties, most notably the PCI, was instrumental in preserving the Divorce Law.
Subsequently, Fortuna was a strong supporter and promoter also for the law on abortion, which was depenalized in 1978 and survived to another referendum in 1981. He died in Rome, soon after having asked Bettino Craxi for an electoral alliance between the PSI and the Radicals.
In 2005, the name of Loris Fortuna came back to national political scene, following the formation of the Rose in the Fist, an electoral alliance including Radicals and Socialists, and openly based on the principles of José Luis Zapatero, Tony Blair and Fortuna himself.
== Electoral history ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_III_of_Aragon | Peter III of Aragon | Peter III of Aragon (In Aragonese, Pero; in Catalan, Pere; in Italian, Pietro; c. 1239 – 11 November 1285) was King of Aragon, King of Valencia (as Peter I), and Count of Barcelona (as Peter II) from 1276 to his death. At the invitation of some rebels, he conquered the Kingdom of Sicily and became King of Sicily (as Peter I) in 1282, pressing the claim of his wife, Constance II of Sicily, uniting the kingdom to the crown.
== Youth and succession ==
Peter was the eldest son of James I of Aragon and his second wife Violant of Hungary. On 13 June 1262, Peter married Constance II of Sicily, daughter and heiress of Manfred of Sicily. During his youth and early adulthood, Peter gained a great deal of military experience in his father's wars of the Reconquista against the Moors.
In June 1275, Peter besieged, captured, and executed his rebellious half-brother Fernando Sánchez de Castro at Pomar de Cinca.
On his father's death in 1276, the lands of the Crown of Aragon were divided amongst his two sons. The Kingdom of Aragon, the Kingdom of Valencia and the Principality of Catalonia went to Peter III as being the eldest son; while the Kingdom of Majorca and the Catalan counties beyond the Pyrenees went to the second son, who became James II of Majorca.
Peter and Constance were crowned in Zaragoza in November 1276 by the archbishop of Tarragona.
== Early rebellions ==
Peter's first act as king was to complete the pacification of his Valencian territory, an action which had been underway before his father's death.
However, a revolt soon broke out in the Principality of Catalonia, led by the viscount of Cardona and abetted by Roger-Bernard III of Foix, Arnold Roger I of Pallars Sobirà, and Ermengol X of Urgell. The rebels had developed a hatred for Peter as a result of the severity of his dealings with them during the reign of his father. Now they opposed him for not summoning the Catalan Courts, and confirming its privileges after his ascension to the throne.
At the same time, a succession crisis continued in the County of Urgell. When Àlvar of Urgell died in 1268, the families of his two wives, Constance, a daughter of Pere de Montcada of Bearn, and Cecilia, a daughter of Roger-Bernard II of Foix, began a long fight over the inheritance of his county. Meanwhile, a good portion of the county had been repossessed by Peter's father, James I, and was thus inherited by Peter in 1276. In 1278, Ermengol X, Àlvar's eldest son, succeeded in recovering most of his lost patrimony and came to an agreement with Peter whereby he recognised the latter as his suzerain.
In 1280, Peter defeated the stewing rebellion led by Roger-Bernard III after besieging the rebels in Balaguer for a month. Most of the rebel leaders were imprisoned in Lleida until 1281, while Roger-Bernard was imprisoned until 1284.
== Wars abroad ==
=== Tunisia ===
When Muhammad I al-Mustansir, the Hafsid Emir of Tunisia who had put himself under James I of Aragon, died in 1277, Tunisia threw off the yoke of Aragonese suzerainty. Peter first sent an expedition to Tunis in 1280 under Conrad de Llansa designed to re-establish his suzerainty. In 1281, he himself prepared to lead a fleet of 140 ships with 15,000 men to invade Tunisia on behalf of the governor of Constantine. The fleet landed at Alcoyll in 1282. It was these Aragonese troops that received a Sicilian embassy after the Vespers of 30 March asking Peter to take their throne from Charles I of Anjou.
=== War of the Sicilian Vespers ===
In 1266, Charles I of Naples, with the approval of Pope Clement IV, invaded the Kingdom of Sicily, governed by the house of Hohenstaufen, which was the house of Peter's wife, Constance II of Sicily, daughter of Manfred of Sicily and rightful heir to the throne of Sicily after the deaths of her father and cousin Conradin fighting against Charles's invading forces. This made Peter the heir of Manfred of Sicily in right of his wife.
The Italian physician John of Procida acted on behalf of Peter in Sicily. John had fled to Aragon after Charles' success at the Battle of Tagliacozzo. John travelled to Sicily to stir up the discontents in favour of Peter and thence to Constantinople to procure the support of Michael VIII Palaiologos. Michael refused to aid the Aragonese king without papal approval, and so John voyaged to Rome and there gained the consent of Pope Nicholas III, who feared the ascent of Charles in the Mezzogiorno. John then returned to Barcelona but the Pope died, to be replaced by Pope Martin IV, a Frenchman and a staunch ally of Charles and the Anjou dynasty. This set the stage for the upcoming conflict.
Constance thus claimed to her father's throne, supported by her husband, but the claim was fruitless, as Charles was supported by the Papacy and his power remained stronger. The election of a new Pope Nicholas III in 1277 gave the King of Aragon a glimpse of hope, but Nicholas died in 1280 and a pro-French Pope Martin IV dissipated hopes.
Peter nevertheless had begun making strategic alliances with his neighbouring monarchs. Peter made his brother James II of Majorca sign the treaty of Perpignan in 1279, in which he recognized the Kingdom of Majorca as a feudal kingdom of Peter III (making the Crown of Aragon an indissoluble unity). Peter pressed his advantage and by February 1283 had taken most of the Calabrian coastline. Charles, perhaps feeling desperate, sent letters to Peter demanding they resolve the conflict by personal combat. Peter accepted and Charles returned to France to arrange the duel. Both kings chose six knights to settle on places and dates, and a duel was scheduled for 1 June at Bordeaux. A hundred knights would accompany each side and Edward I of England would adjudge the contest; the English king, heeding the pope, however, refused to take part. Peter left John of Procida in charge of Sicily and returned via his own kingdom to Bordeaux, which he entered in disguise to evade a suspected French ambush. Needless to say, no combat ever took place and Peter returned to find a very turbulent Aragon.
He also had a long-lasting friendly relationship with the Kingdom of Castile, establishing a strong alliance between realms by signing the treaties of Campillo and Ágreda in 1281 with Alfonso X of Castile and infant Sancho.
With the Kingdom of Portugal, Peter established a marital alliance by which his eldest daughter Elizabeth of Aragon married Denis I of Portugal. Peter also made alliance with the Kingdom of England, engaging his heir Alfonso III with Eleanor of England, daughter of Edward I of England. Despite all these alliances, Peter kept his bad relationship with the Kingdom of France.
On 30 March 1282 there was a popular uprising in the Kingdom of Sicily called the Sicilian Vespers, against the government of Charles I of Anjou. The noble sicilian rebels asked for Peter for help and offered him the crown as they considered his wife Constance their rightful Queen, and after receiving an embassy from the people of Palermo at Alcoy, Peter landed at Trapani on 30 August 1282. He was proclaimed King in Palermo on 4 September. Charles was forced to flee across the Straits of Messina and be content with his Kingdom of Naples. Pope Martin IV excommunicated both Peter and Michael VIII Palaiologos for providing Peter with 60,000 gold pieces to invade Sicily.
Catalan ground troops were commanded by Guillem Galceran de Cartellà, and were formed by the famous and feared almogavars, crossbowmen, and lancers. Peter's powerful fleet was commanded by Roger of Lauria, and constantly repelled Angevin attacks to the island. Roger de Lauria defeated the French forces at the Battle of Malta, and at the Gulf of Naples in 1284, where Charles of Salerno, son of Charles I, was made prisoner.
The conquest of Sicily was financed by Jewish contributions and taxes charged to the aljamas. The infant Alfonso demanded them an allowance of 200,000 sous in 1282. The aljamas from the Kingdom of Valencia gave 25,000 sous, the Aragonese 75,000 and 100,000 were charged to the Catalan aljamas. The Kingdom of Sicily was to be a tenaciously pursued inheritance for the Aragonese royal house and its heirs for the next five centuries.
== Later domestic unrest ==
Peter was dealing with domestic unrest at the time when the French were preparing an invasion of Aragon. He took Albarracín from the rebellious noble Juan Núñez de Lara, he renewed the alliance with Sancho IV of Castile, and he attacked Tudela in an attempt to prevent Philip I of Navarre from invading on that front. Peter held meetings of the cortes at Tarragona and Zaragoza in 1283. He was forced to grant the Privilegio General to the newly formed Union of Aragon.
Also in 1283, Peter's brother James II of Majorca joined the French and recognised their suzerainty over Montpellier. This gave the French free passage into Catalonia through Roussillon as well as access to the Balearic Islands. In October, Peter began preparing the defences of Catalonia. In 1284, Pope Martin IV granted the Kingdom of Aragon to Charles, Count of Valois, another son of the French king and great-nephew of Charles I of Anjou. Papal sanction was given to a war to conquer Aragon on behalf of Charles of Valois.
== Aragonese Crusade ==
In 1284, the first French armies under Philip and Charles entered Roussillon. They included 16,000 cavalry, 17,000 crossbowmen, and 100,000 infantry, along with 100 ships in south French ports. Though the French had James's support, the local populace rose against them. The city of Elne was valiantly defended by the so-called "bastard of Roussillon", the illegitimate son of Nuño Sánchez, late count of Roussillon. Eventually he was overcome and the cathedral was burnt; the royal forces progressed.
In 1285, Philip entrenched himself before Girona in an attempt to besiege it. The resistance was strong, but the city was taken. Charles was crowned there, but without an actual crown. The French soon experienced a reversal, however, at the hands of Roger de Lauria, back from the Italian theatre of the drawn-out conflict. The French fleet was defeated and destroyed at the Battle of Les Formigues on 4 September 1285. In addition, the French camp was hit hard by an epidemic of dysentery.
The King of France himself was afflicted. The King of Navarre, the heir apparent to the French throne, opened negotiations with Peter for free passage for the royal family through the Pyrenees. But the troops were not offered such passage and were decimated at the Battle of the Col de Panissars. Philip III of France died in October at Perpignan, the capital of James II of Majorca (who had fled in fear after being confronted by Peter), and was buried in Narbonne. James was declared a vassal of Peter.
== Troubadour works ==
Peter matched his father in patronage of the arts and literature, but unlike him he was a lover of verse, not prose. He favoured the troubadours, having himself created two sirventesos. The first is in the form of an exchange between himself and Peironet, a troubadour. The second is part of a compilation of five compositions from Peter himself, Bernat d'Auriac, Pere Salvatge, Roger-Bernard III of Foix, and an anonymous contributor.
As well the wars with Philip III of France and James II of Majorca furnished material for new sirventesos and during this period the sirventes was converted into a convenient tool of political propaganda in which each side could, directly or allegorically, present its case and procure sympathy propitious to its cause.
== Death and legacy ==
Peter died from unknown causes at Vilafranca del Penedès in November 1285, just one month after Philip III of France, and was buried in the Monastery of Santes Creus. His deathbed absolution occurred after he declared that his conquests had been in the name of his familial claims and never against the claims of the church. His remains are entombed in a porphyry sarcophagus at the monastery.
Peter made his final testament on 2 November 1285. In it he instructed his successor to return the kingdom of Sicily to the pope and to release all Angevin prisoners of war. Although the will was copied into the royal register, it was ignored by his successors. Peter's eldest son, Alfonso III, inherited Aragon while Sicily went to his second son, James II. His third son, Frederick, later succeeded James as king of Sicily. Peter did not provide for his illegitimate youngest son and namesake, Peter. This Peter left Spain for Portugal with his half-sister Elizabeth.
In the Divine Comedy, (Purgatory, Canto VII) Dante Alighieri sees Peter "singing in accord" with his former rival, Charles I of Anjou, outside the gates of Purgatory.
== Children ==
Peter and Constance II of Sicily had:
Alfonso III of Aragon ((1265-11-04)4 November 1265 – (1291-06-18)18 June 1291)
James II of Aragon ((1267-08-10)10 August 1267 – (1327-11-02)2 November 1327)
Elizabeth, Queen of Portugal (c. 1271 – (1336-07-04)4 July 1336). Married Denis of Portugal
Frederick III of Sicily ((1272-12-13)13 December 1272 – (1337-06-25)25 June 1337)
Yolande, Duchess of Calabria (c. 1273 – (1302-08-00)August 1302). Married Robert of Naples
Peter of Aragon (c. 1275 – (1296-08-25)25 August 1296). Married Guillemette of Béarn, daughter of Gaston VII, Viscount of Béarn.
Peter had a relationship with Ines Zapata between 1275-1280 and had the following children:
Fernando of Aragon.
Sancho of Aragon.
Pedro of Aragon. Married in Portugal with Constança Mendes da Silva.
Teresa of Aragon.
Additionally, he had 3 illegitimate children with Maria Nicolau before marrying Constance of Sicily:
Jaime Perez of Aragon (d. 1285).
Juan Perez of Aragon.
Beatriz of Aragon (d. 1316).
== References ==
== Bibliography == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metformin#History | Metformin | Metformin, sold under the brand name Glucophage, among others, is the main first-line medication for the treatment of type 2 diabetes, particularly in people who are overweight. It is also used in the treatment of polycystic ovary syndrome, and is sometimes used as an off-label adjunct to lessen the risk of metabolic syndrome in people who take antipsychotic medication. It has been shown to inhibit inflammation, and is not associated with weight gain. Metformin is taken by mouth.
Metformin is generally well tolerated. Common adverse effects include diarrhea, nausea, and abdominal pain. It has a small risk of causing low blood sugar. High blood lactic acid level (acidosis) is a concern if the medication is used in overly large doses or prescribed in people with severe kidney problems.
Metformin is a biguanide anti-hyperglycemic agent. It works by decreasing glucose production in the liver, increasing the insulin sensitivity of body tissues, and increasing GDF15 secretion, which reduces appetite and caloric intake.
Metformin was first described in the scientific literature in 1922 by Emil Werner and James Bell. French physician Jean Sterne began the study in humans in the 1950s. It was introduced as a medication in France in 1957. It is on the World Health Organization's List of Essential Medicines. It is available as a generic medication. In 2023, it was the second most commonly prescribed medication in the United States, with more than 85 million prescriptions. In Australia, it was one of the top 10 most prescribed medications between 2017 and 2023.
== Medical uses ==
Metformin is used to lower blood glucose in those with type 2 diabetes. It has also been used to help with metabolic abnormalities in polycystic ovary syndrome, and as a second-line agent for infertility in those with polycystic ovary syndrome.
=== Type 2 diabetes ===
The American Diabetes Association and the American College of Physicians both recommend metformin as a first-line agent to treat type 2 diabetes. It is as effective as repaglinide and more effective than all other oral drugs for type 2 diabetes.
==== Efficacy ====
Treatment guidelines for major professional associations, including the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, the European Society for Cardiology, and the American Diabetes Association, describe evidence for the cardiovascular benefits of metformin as equivocal. A 2020 Cochrane systematic review did not find enough evidence of reduction of cardiovascular mortality, non-fatal myocardial infarction or non-fatal stroke when comparing metformin monotherapy to other glucose-lowering drugs, behavior change interventions, placebo or no intervention.
The use of metformin reduces body weight in people with type 2 diabetes in contrast to sulfonylureas, which are associated with weight gain. Some evidence shows that metformin is associated with weight loss in obesity in the absence of diabetes. Metformin has a lower risk of hypoglycemia than the sulfonylureas, although hypoglycemia has uncommonly occurred during intense exercise, calorie deficit, or when used with other agents to lower blood glucose. Metformin modestly reduces low density lipoprotein and triglyceride levels.
In individuals with prediabetes, a 2019 systematic review comparing the effects of metformin with other interventions in the reduction of risk of developing type 2 diabetes found moderate-quality evidence that metformin reduced the risk of developing type 2 diabetes when compared to diet and exercise or a placebo. However, when comparing metformin to intensive diet or exercise, moderate-quality evidence was found that metformin did not reduce risk of developing type 2 diabetes and very low-quality evidence was found that adding metformin to intensive diet or exercise did not show any advantage or disadvantage in reducing risk of type 2 diabetes when compared to intensive exercise and diet alone. The same review also found one suitable trial comparing the effects of metformin and sulfonylurea in reducing the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in prediabetic individuals, however, this trial did not report any patient-relevant outcomes.
=== Polycystic ovary syndrome ===
In those with polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS), tentative evidence shows that metformin use increases the rate of live births. This includes those who have not been able to get pregnant with clomiphene. Metformin does not appear to change the risk of miscarriage. A number of other benefits have also been found both during pregnancy and in nonpregnant women with PCOS. In an updated Cochrane review on metformin versus placebo/no treatment before or during IVF/ICSI in women with PCOS no conclusive evidence of improved live birth rates was found. In long GnRH-agonist protocols there was uncertainty in the evidence of improved live birth rates but there could be increases in clinical pregnancy rate. In short GnRH-antagonist protocols metformin may reduce live birth rates with uncertainty on its effect on clinical pregnancy rate. Metformin may result in a reduction of OHSS but could come with a greater frequency of side effects. There was uncertainty as to metformin's impact on miscarriage. The evidence does not support general use during pregnancy for improving maternal and infant outcomes in obese women.
The United Kingdom's National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence recommended in 2004 that women with PCOS and a body mass index above 25 be given metformin for anovulation and infertility when other therapies fail to produce results. UK and international clinical practice guidelines do not recommend metformin as a first-line treatment or do not recommend it at all, except for women with glucose intolerance. The guidelines suggest clomiphene as the first medication option and emphasize lifestyle modification independently from medical treatment. Metformin treatment decreases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes in women with PCOS who exhibited impaired glucose tolerance at baseline.
In Poland, metformin is listed as an approved and reimbursed treatment for PCOS.
=== Diabetes and pregnancy ===
A total review of metformin use during pregnancy compared to insulin alone found good short-term safety for both the mother and baby, but safety in the longer term is unclear. Several observational studies and randomized controlled trials found metformin to be as effective and safe as insulin for the management of gestational diabetes. Nonetheless, several concerns have been raised and evidence on the long-term safety of metformin for both mother and child is lacking. Compared with insulin, women with gestational diabetes treated with metformin gain less weight and are less likely to develop pre-eclampsia during pregnancy. Babies born to women treated with metformin have less visceral fat, and this may make them less prone to insulin resistance in later life. The use of metformin for gestational diabetes resulted in smaller babies compared to treatment with insulin. However, despite initially lower birth weight, children exposed to metformin during pregnancy had accelerated growth after birth, and were heavier by mid-childhood than those exposed to insulin during pregnancy. This pattern of initial low birth weight followed by catch-up growth that surpasses comparative children has been associated with long-term cardiometabolic disease.
A systematic review and meta-analysis of metformin, published in 2024, found that it is safe and effective in managing gestational diabetes or diabetes in pregnancy with no adverse impact on the mother or the child after eleven years of childbirth.
=== Weight change ===
Metformin use is typically associated with weight loss. It appears to be safe and effective in counteracting the weight gain caused by the antipsychotic medications olanzapine and clozapine. Although modest reversal of clozapine-associated weight gain is found with metformin, primary prevention of weight gain is more valuable.
=== Use with insulin ===
Metformin may reduce the insulin requirement in type 1 diabetes, albeit with an increased risk of hypoglycemia.
== Contraindications ==
Metformin is contraindicated in people with:
Severe renal impairment (estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) below 30 mL/min/1.73 m2)
Known hypersensitivity to metformin
Acute or chronic metabolic acidosis, including diabetic ketoacidosis (from uncontrolled diabetes), with or without coma
== Adverse effects ==
The most common adverse effect of metformin is gastrointestinal irritation, including diarrhea, cramps, nausea, vomiting, and increased flatulence. Metformin is more commonly associated with gastrointestinal adverse effects than most other antidiabetic medications. The most serious potential adverse effect of metformin is lactic acidosis; this complication is rare, and seems to be related to impaired liver or kidney function. Metformin is not approved for use in those with severe kidney disease, but may still be used at lower doses in those with kidney problems.
=== Gastrointestinal ===
Gastrointestinal upset can cause severe discomfort; it is most common when metformin is first administered, or when the dose is increased. The discomfort can often be avoided by beginning at a low dose (1.0 to 1.7 g/day) and increasing the dose gradually, but even with low doses, 5% of people may be unable to tolerate metformin. Use of slow or extended-release preparations may improve tolerability.
Long-term use of metformin has been associated with increased homocysteine levels and malabsorption of vitamin B12. Higher doses and prolonged use are associated with increased incidence of vitamin B12 deficiency, and some researchers recommend screening or prevention strategies.
==== Vitamin B12 ====
Metformin treatment has been associated with reductions in vitamin B12 in certain people. Left untreated, vitamin B12 deficiencies can lead to serious health problems including neurological problems and anemia. Although more research is needed to understand the mechanisms of this association, it is suggested that people who take metformin monitor their vitamin B12 levels and if low, begin supplementation. In most cases of deficiencies if the person's deficiency can be corrected with exogenous administration of vitamin B12, they can continue their metformin treatment.
=== Lactic acidosis ===
Lactic acidosis rarely occurs with metformin exposure during routine medical care. Rates of metformin-associated lactic acidosis are about nine per 100,000 persons/year, which is similar to the background rate of lactic acidosis in the general population. A systematic review concluded no data exists to definitively link metformin to lactic acidosis.
Metformin is generally safe in people with mild to moderate chronic kidney disease, with a proportional reduction of metformin dose according to severity of estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) and with periodic assessment of kidney function, (e.g., periodic plasma creatinine measurement). The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommends avoiding the use of metformin in more severe chronic kidney disease, below the eGFR cutoff of 30 mL/minute/1.73 m2. Lactate uptake by the liver is diminished with metformin use because lactate is a substrate for hepatic gluconeogenesis, a process that metformin inhibits. In healthy individuals, this slight excess is cleared by other mechanisms (including uptake by unimpaired kidneys), and no significant elevation in blood levels of lactate occurs. Given severely impaired kidney function, clearance of metformin and lactate is reduced, increasing levels of both, and possibly causing lactic acid buildup. Because metformin decreases liver uptake of lactate, any condition that may precipitate lactic acidosis is a contraindication. Common causes include alcoholism (due to depletion of NAD+ stores), heart failure, and respiratory disease (due to inadequate tissue oxygenation); the most common cause is kidney disease.
Metformin-associated lactate production may also take place in the large intestine, which could potentially contribute to lactic acidosis in those with risk factors. The clinical significance of this is unknown, though, and the risk of metformin-associated lactic acidosis is most commonly attributed to decreased hepatic uptake rather than increased intestinal production.
=== Overdose ===
The most common symptoms following an overdose include vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, tachycardia, drowsiness, and rarely, hypoglycemia or hyperglycemia. Treatment of metformin overdose is generally supportive, as no specific antidote is known. Extracorporeal treatments are recommended in severe overdoses. Due to metformin's low molecular weight and lack of plasma protein binding, these techniques have the benefit of removing metformin from the blood plasma, preventing further lactate overproduction.
Metformin may be quantified in blood, plasma, or serum to monitor therapy, confirm a diagnosis of poisoning, or assist in a forensic death investigation. Blood or plasma metformin concentrations are usually in a range of 1–4 mg/L in persons receiving therapeutic doses, 40–120 mg/L in victims of acute overdosage, and 80–200 mg/L in fatalities. Chromatographic techniques are commonly employed.
The risk of metformin-associated lactic acidosis is also increased by a massive overdose of metformin, although even quite large doses are often not fatal.
=== Interactions ===
The H2-receptor antagonist cimetidine causes an increase in the plasma concentration of metformin by reducing clearance of metformin by the kidneys; both metformin and cimetidine are cleared from the body by tubular secretion, and both, particularly the cationic (positively charged) form of cimetidine, may compete for the same transport mechanism. A small double-blind, randomized study found the antibiotic cephalexin to also increase metformin concentrations by a similar mechanism; theoretically, other cationic medications may produce the same effect.
Metformin also interacts with anticholinergic medications, due to their effect on gastric motility. Anticholinergic drugs reduce gastric motility, prolonging the time drugs spend in the gastrointestinal tract. This impairment may lead to more metformin being absorbed than without the presence of an anticholinergic drug, thereby increasing the concentration of metformin in the plasma and increasing the risk for adverse effects.
== Pharmacology ==
=== Mechanism of action ===
The molecular mechanism of metformin is not completely understood. Multiple potential mechanisms of action have been proposed: inhibition of the mitochondrial respiratory chain (complex I), activation of AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), inhibition of glucagon-induced elevation of cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP) with reduced activation of protein kinase A (PKA), complex IV–mediated inhibition of the GPD2 variant of mitochondrial glycerol-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (thereby reducing the contribution of glycerol to hepatic gluconeogenesis), and an effect on gut microbiota.
Metformin exerts an anorexiant effect in most people, decreasing caloric intake. Metformin decreases gluconeogenesis (glucose production) in the liver. Metformin inhibits basal secretion from the pituitary gland of growth hormone, adrenocorticotropic hormone, follicle stimulating hormone, and expression of proopiomelanocortin, which in part accounts for its insulin-sensitizing effect with multiple actions on tissues including the liver, skeletal muscle, endothelium, adipose tissue, and the ovaries. The average person with type 2 diabetes has three times the normal rate of gluconeogenesis; metformin treatment reduces this by over one-third.
Activation of AMPK was required for metformin's inhibitory effect on liver glucose production. AMPK is an enzyme that plays an important role in insulin signaling, whole-body energy balance, and the metabolism of glucose and fats. AMPK activation is required for an increase in the expression of small heterodimer partner, which in turn inhibited the expression of the hepatic gluconeogenic genes phosphoenolpyruvate carboxykinase and glucose 6-phosphatase. Metformin is frequently used in research along with AICA ribonucleotide as an AMPK agonist. The mechanism by which biguanides increase the activity of AMPK remains uncertain: metformin increases the concentration of cytosolic adenosine monophosphate (AMP) (as opposed to a change in total AMP or total AMP/adenosine triphosphate) which could activate AMPK allosterically at high levels; a newer theory involves binding to PEN-2. Metformin inhibits cyclic AMP production, blocking the action of glucagon, and thereby reducing fasting glucose levels. Metformin also induces a profound shift in the faecal microbial community profile in diabetic mice, and this may contribute to its mode of action possibly through an effect on glucagon-like peptide-1 secretion.
In addition to suppressing hepatic glucose production, metformin increases insulin sensitivity, enhances peripheral glucose uptake (by inducing the phosphorylation of GLUT4 enhancer factor), decreases insulin-induced suppression of fatty acid oxidation, and decreases the absorption of glucose from the gastrointestinal tract. Increased peripheral use of glucose may be due to improved insulin binding to insulin receptors. The increase in insulin binding after metformin treatment has also been demonstrated in patients with type 2 diabetes.
AMPK probably also plays a role in increased peripheral insulin sensitivity, as metformin administration increases AMPK activity in skeletal muscle. AMPK is known to cause GLUT4 deployment to the plasma membrane, resulting in insulin-independent glucose uptake. Some metabolic actions of metformin do appear to occur by AMPK-independent mechanisms, however, AMPK likely has a modest overall effect and its activity is not likely to directly decrease gluconeogenesis in the liver.
Metformin has indirect antiandrogenic effects in women with insulin resistance, such as those with PCOS, due to its beneficial effects on insulin sensitivity. It may reduce testosterone levels in such women by as much as 50%. A Cochrane review, though, found that metformin was only slightly effective for decreasing androgen levels in women with PCOS.
Metformin also has significant effects on the gut microbiome, such as its effect on increasing agmatine production by gut bacteria, but the relative importance of this mechanism compared to other mechanisms is uncertain.
Due to its effect on GLUT4 and AMPK, metformin has been described as an exercise mimetic.
=== Pharmacokinetics ===
Metformin has an oral bioavailability of 50–60% under fasting conditions, and is absorbed slowly. Peak plasma concentrations (Cmax) are reached within 1–3 hours of taking immediate-release metformin and 4–8 hours with extended-release formulations. The plasma protein binding of metformin is negligible, as reflected by its very high apparent volume of distribution (300–1000 L after a single dose). Steady state is usually reached in 1–2 days.
Metformin has acid dissociation constant values (pKa) of 2.8 and 11.5, so it exists very largely as the hydrophilic cationic species at physiological pH values. The metformin pKa values make it a stronger base than most other basic medications with less than 0.01% nonionized in blood. Furthermore, the lipid solubility of the nonionized species is slight as shown by its low logP value (log(10) of the distribution coefficient of the nonionized form between octanol and water) of −1.43. These chemical parameters indicate low lipophilicity and, consequently, rapid passive diffusion of metformin through cell membranes is unlikely. As a result of its low lipid solubility, it requires the transporter SLC22A1 for it to enter cells. The logP of metformin is less than that of phenformin (−0.84) because two methyl substituents on metformin impart lesser lipophilicity than the larger phenylethyl side chain in phenformin. More lipophilic derivatives of metformin are presently under investigation to produce prodrugs with superior oral absorption than metformin.
Metformin is not metabolized. It is cleared from the body by tubular secretion and excreted unchanged in the urine; it is undetectable in blood plasma within 24 hours of a single oral dose. The average elimination half-life in plasma is 6.2 hours. Metformin is distributed to (and appears to accumulate in) red blood cells, with a much longer elimination half-life: 17.6 hours (reported as ranging from 18.5 to 31.5 hours in a single-dose study of nondiabetics).
Some evidence indicates that liver concentrations of metformin in humans may be two to three times higher than plasma concentrations, due to portal vein absorption and first-pass uptake by the liver in oral administration.
== Chemistry ==
Metformin hydrochloride (1,1-dimethylbiguanide hydrochloride) is freely soluble in water, slightly soluble in ethanol, but almost insoluble in acetone, ether, or chloroform. The pKa of metformin is 12.4. The usual synthesis of metformin, originally described in 1922, involves the one-pot reaction of dimethylamine hydrochloride and 2-cyanoguanidine over heat.
According to the procedure described in the 1975 Aron patent, and the Pharmaceutical Manufacturing Encyclopedia, equimolar amounts of dimethylamine and 2-cyanoguanidine are dissolved in toluene with cooling to make a concentrated solution, and an equimolar amount of hydrogen chloride is slowly added. The mixture begins to boil on its own, and after cooling, metformin hydrochloride precipitates with a 96% yield. Excess addition of hydrogen chloride results in the formation of the more soluble metformin dichloride salt, a recently reported impurity.
=== Impurities ===
In December 2019, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it learned that some metformin medicines manufactured outside the United States might contain a nitrosamine impurity called N-nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA), classified as a probable human carcinogen, at low levels. Health Canada announced that it was assessing NDMA levels in metformin. The European Medicines Agency provided an update on NDMA in metformin.
In February 2020, the FDA found NDMA levels in some tested metformin samples that did not exceed the acceptable daily intake.
In February 2020, Health Canada announced a recall of Apotex immediate-release metformin, followed in March by recalls of Ranbaxy metformin and in March by Jamp metformin.
In May 2020, the FDA asked five companies to voluntarily recall their sustained-release metformin products. The five companies were not named, but they were revealed to be Amneal Pharmaceuticals, Actavis Pharma, Apotex Corp, Lupin Pharma, and Marksans Pharma Limited in a letter sent to Valisure, the pharmacy that had first alerted the FDA to this contaminant in metformin via a Citizen Petition.
In June 2020, the FDA posted its laboratory results showing NDMA amounts in metformin products it tested. It found NDMA in certain lots of ER metformin and is recommending companies recall lots with levels of NDMA above the acceptable intake limit of 96 nanograms per day. The FDA is also collaborating with international regulators to share testing results for metformin.
In July 2020, Lupin Pharmaceuticals pulled all lots (batches) of metformin after discovering unacceptably high levels of NDMA in tested samples.
In August 2020, Bayshore Pharmaceuticals recalled two lots of tablets.
The FDA issued revised guidelines about nitrosamine impurities in September 2024.
== History ==
The biguanide class of antidiabetic medications, which also includes the withdrawn agents phenformin and buformin, originates from the plant Goat's rue (Galega officinalis) also known as Galega, French lilac, Italian fitch, Spanish sainfoin, Pestilenzkraut, or Professor-weed. (The plant should not be confused with plants in the genus Tephrosia which are highly toxic and sometimes also called Goat's rue.) Galega officinalis has been used in folk medicine for several centuries. G. officinalis itself does not contain biguanide medications which are chemically synthesized compounds composed of two guanidine molecules and designed to be less toxic than the plant-derived parent compounds guanidine and galegine (isoamylene guanidine).
Metformin was first described in the scientific literature in 1922, by Emil Werner and James Bell, as a product in the synthesis of N,N-dimethylguanidine. In 1929, Slotta and Tschesche discovered its sugar-lowering action in rabbits, finding it the most potent biguanide analog they studied. This result was ignored, as other guanidine analogs such as the synthalins, took over and were themselves soon overshadowed by insulin.
Interest in metformin resumed at the end of the 1940s. In 1950, metformin, unlike some other similar compounds, was found not to decrease blood pressure and heart rate in animals. That year, Filipino physician Eusebio Y. Garcia used metformin (he named it Fluamine) to treat influenza; he noted the medication "lowered the blood sugar to minimum physiological limit" and was not toxic. Garcia believed metformin to have bacteriostatic, antiviral, antimalarial, antipyretic, and analgesic actions. In a series of articles in 1954, Polish pharmacologist Janusz Supniewski was unable to confirm most of these effects, including lowered blood sugar. Instead, he observed antiviral effects in humans.
French diabetologist Jean Sterne studied the antihyperglycemic properties of galegine, an alkaloid isolated from G. officinalis, which is related in structure to metformin, and had seen brief use as an antidiabetic before the synthalins were developed. Later, working at Laboratoires Aron in Paris, he was prompted by Garcia's report to reinvestigate the blood sugar-lowering activity of metformin and several biguanide analogs. Sterne was the first to try metformin on humans for the treatment of diabetes; he coined the name "Glucophage" (glucose eater) for the medication and published his results in 1957.
It was introduced as a medication in France in 1957. Metformin became available in the British National Formulary in 1958. It was sold in the UK by a small Aron subsidiary called Rona.
Broad interest in metformin was not rekindled until the withdrawal of the other biguanides in the 1970s. Metformin was approved in Canada in 1972, but did not receive approval by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for type 2 diabetes until 1994. Produced under license by Bristol-Myers Squibb, Glucophage was the first branded formulation of metformin to be marketed in the U.S., beginning on 3 March 1995. Generic formulations are available in several countries.
The US FDA granted the application for metformin orphan drug designation. The European Medicines Agency granted orphan drug status to metformin.
== Society and culture ==
=== Environmental impact ===
Metformin and its major transformation product guanylurea are present in wastewater treatment plant effluents and regularly detected in surface waters. Guanylurea concentrations above 200 μg/L have been measured in the German river Erpe, which are amongst the highest reported for pharmaceutical transformation products in aquatic environments.
=== Formulations ===
Metformin is the British Approved Name (BAN), the United States Adopted Name (USAN), and the International Nonproprietary Name (INN). It is sold under several brand names. Common brand names include Glucophage, Riomet, Fortamet, and Glumetza in the US. In other areas of the world, there is also Obimet, Gluformin, Dianben, Diabex, Diaformin, Metsol, Siofor, Metfogamma and Glifor. There are several formulations of metformin available on the market, and all but the liquid form have generic equivalents.
==== Combination with other medications ====
When used for type 2 diabetes, metformin is often prescribed in combination with other medications. Several medications are available as fixed-dose combinations, with the potential to reduce pill burden, decrease cost, and simplify administration.
===== Thiazolidinediones (glitazones) =====
====== Rosiglitazone ======
A combination of metformin and rosiglitazone was released in 2002, and sold as Avandamet by GlaxoSmithKline, or as a generic medication. Formulations are 500/1, 500/2, 500/4, 1000/2, and 1000 mg/4 mg of metformin/rosiglitazone.
In 2009, it was the most popular metformin combination.
In 2005, the stock of Avandamet was removed from the market, after inspections showed the factory where it was produced was violating good manufacturing practices. The medication pair continued to be prescribed separately, and Avandamet was again available by the end of that year. A generic formulation of metformin/rosiglitazone from Teva received tentative approval from the FDA and reached the market in early 2012.
However, following a meta-analysis in 2007, that linked the medication's use to an increased risk of heart attack, concerns were raised over the safety of medicines containing rosiglitazone. In September 2010, the European Medicines Agency recommended that the medication be suspended from the European market because the benefits of rosiglitazone no longer outweighed the risks.
It was withdrawn from the market in the UK and India in 2010, and in New Zealand and South Africa in 2011. From November 2011 until November 2013 the FDA did not allow rosiglitazone or metformin/rosiglitazone to be sold without a prescription; moreover, makers were required to notify patients of the risks associated with its use, and the drug had to be purchased by mail order through specified pharmacies.
In November 2013, the FDA lifted its earlier restrictions on rosiglitazone after reviewing the results of the 2009 RECORD clinical trial (a six-year, open-label randomized control trial), which failed to show elevated risk of heart attack or death associated with the medication.
====== Pioglitazone ======
The combination of metformin and pioglitazone (Actoplus Met, Piomet, Politor, Glubrava) is available in the US and the European Union.
===== DPP-4 inhibitors =====
Dipeptidyl peptidase-4 inhibitors inhibit dipeptidyl peptidase-4 and thus reduce glucagon and blood glucose levels.
DPP-4 inhibitors combined with metformin include a sitagliptin/metformin combination (Janumet), a saxagliptin/metformin combination (Kombiglyze XR, Komboglyze), and an alogliptin/metformin combination (Kazano, Vipdomet).
Linagliptin combined with metformin hydrochloride is sold under the brand name Jentadueto. As of August 2021, linagliptin/metformin is available as a generic medicine in the US.
===== SGLT2 inhibitors =====
There are combinations of metformin with the SGLT2 inhibitors dapagliflozin, empagliflozin, and canagliflozin.
===== Sulfonylureas =====
Sulfonylureas act by increasing insulin release from the beta cells in the pancreas.
A 2019 systematic review suggested that there is limited evidence if the combined use of metformin with sulfonylurea compared to the combination of metformin plus another glucose-lowering intervention, provides benefit or harm in mortality, severe adverse events, macrovascular and microvascular complications. Combined metformin and sulfonylurea therapy did appear to lead to a higher risk of hypoglycemia.
Metformin is available combined with the sulfonylureas glipizide (Metaglip) and glibenclamide (US: glyburide) (Glucovance). Generic formulations of metformin/glipizide and metformin/glibenclamide are available (the latter is more popular).
===== Meglitinide =====
Meglitinides are similar to sulfonylureas, as they bind to beta cells in the pancreas, but differ by the site of binding to the intended receptor and the drugs' affinities to the receptor. As a result, they have a shorter duration of action compared to sulfonylureas and require higher blood glucose levels to begin to secrete insulin. Both meglitinides, known as nateglinide and repanglinide, are sold in formulations combined with metformin. A repaglinide/metformin combination is sold as Prandimet, or as its generic equivalent.
===== Triple combination =====
The combination of metformin with dapagliflozin and saxagliptin is available in the United States as Qternmet XR.
The combination of metformin with pioglitazone and glibenclamide is available in India as Accuglim-MP, Adglim MP, and Alnamet-GP; and in the Philippines as Tri-Senza.
The combination of metformin with pioglitazone and lipoic acid is available in Turkey as Pional.
== Research ==
Metformin is a pleiotropic drug, with extensive off-target activity beyond its antidiabetic effect. Much of this has been attributed to its action on AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK), although other mechanisms have been proposed. Metformin has been studied for its effects on multiple other conditions, including:
Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease
Premature puberty
Cancer
Cardiovascular disease in people with diabetes
Aging
=== Aging and life extension ===
Metformin is under investigation that it may be an agent that delays aging; it may increase longevity in some animal models (e.g., C. elegans and crickets). This effect may be mediated by insulin and carbohydrate regulation, similar to its effects on diabetes. Whether metformin may help extend life, even in otherwise healthy people, remains unknown; a 2021 review of the literature found it is likely to improve healthspan, i.e., the number of years spent in good health, rather than lifespan overall.
A 2017 review found that people with diabetes who were taking metformin had lower all-cause mortality. They also had reduced cancer and cardiovascular disease compared with those on other therapies. In people without diabetes, metformin does not appear to reduce the risk of cancer and cardiovascular disease.
=== Cancer ===
The potential anti-cancer effects of metformin are believed to be mediated through multiple pathways, particularly involving AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) activation and IGF-1R modulation. Research has focused particularly on stomach cancer, with evidence of protective impact (reducing the risk of cancer) and improving survival rates among patients in whom cancer has already developed. Despite promising findings, evidence is still preliminary and there is no consensus on its preventive and therapeutic role.
=== COVID-19 ===
A study found a benefit using metformin to reduce the occurrence of long COVID.
It is unclear if there is a reduced risk of death using metformin to treat people with COVID-19.
=== Neurological and neurodegenerative disorders ===
There has been extensive research into the potential neuroprotective effects of metformin in developmental and neurodegenerative diseases, including Alzheimer's disease and other dementias, Parkinson's disease, Huntington's disease, certain types of epilepsy, and fragile X syndrome, with mixed results.
Preliminary studies have examined whether metformin can reduce the risk of Alzheimer's disease and whether there is a correlation between type 2 diabetes and the risk of Alzheimer's disease.
While metformin may reduce body weight in persons with fragile X syndrome, whether it improves neurological or psychiatric symptoms is uncertain.
=== Derivatives ===
A derivative HL156A, also known as IM156, is a potential new drug for medical use.
== References ==
== Further reading ==
== External links ==
"Nitrosamine impurities in medications: Guidance". Health Canada. May 2024.
"Nitrosamine impurities". European Medicines Agency (EMA). October 2019. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raylene_Keightley#:~:text=Raylene%20May%20Keightley%20(born%2019,High%20Court%20of%20South%20Africa. | Raylene Keightley | Raylene May Keightley (born 19 November 1961) is a South African judge of the Supreme Court of Appeal. She was appointed to the bench in the Gauteng High Court in January 2016 after a career as a legal academic and practising lawyer. She was admitted as an attorney in 1986 and as an advocate in 2006.
Born in the Eastern Cape, Keightley began her career at the University of Cape Town and University of the Witwatersrand, where she taught law between 1988 and 1999. Thereafter she spent seven years at the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the National Prosecuting Authority. From 2006 to 2015, she practised law at the Johannesburg Bar, with a stint as the director of the Centre for Applied Legal Studies between 2008 and 2011. She was appointed to the bench by President Jacob Zuma in 2016 and was elevated to the Supreme Court by President Cyril Ramaphosa in 2024.
== Early life and education ==
Keightley was born on 19 November 1961 in Kokstad in the former Cape Province. She matriculated at Umtata High School in Mthatha and went on to the University of Natal, where she completed a BA and LLB in 1984. Between 1987 and 1988, she completed an LLM at the University of Cambridge, winning Gonville and Caius College's Sir William McNair Prize for the best LLM student.
== Legal and academic career ==
From 1985 to 1986, between her LLB and her LLM, Keightley was a candidate attorney at the firm of Balsillie, Watermeyer and Cawood in Cape Town; she was admitted as an attorney in 1986. Upon her return to South Africa from Cambridge in 1988, she joined the law faculty at the University of Cape Town, where she taught until 1995, first as a lecturer and then, from 1991, as a senior lecturer. In 1996, she moved to Johannesburg, becoming a senior lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand's School of Law. She was promoted to professor in 1999 and also served as an assistant dean in that year.
Thereafter, however, Keightley returned to legal practice. Between 1999 and 2001, she was senior state advocate in the Asset Forfeiture Unit of the National Prosecuting Authority. In 2001, she was admitted as an advocate of the High Court of South Africa and was promoted to the position of deputy director of Public Prosecutions in the Asset Forfeiture Unit. She left that job in 2003 to become the unit's regional head in Johannesburg.
In July 2006, Keightley left the National Prosecuting Authority to serve her pupillage at the Johannesburg Bar. Between 2006 and 2015, she was a practising advocate at the bar, first at the Island Group of Advocates and then at Thulamela Chambers. At the same time, from 2008 to 2011, she returned to the University of the Witwatersrand to serve as the director of the university's Centre for Applied Legal Studies. She also served on several occasions as an acting judge in the Gauteng Division of the High Court; she served on the bench, both in Johannesburg and in Pretoria, for four periods between October 2013 and August 2015.
== Gauteng High Court: 2015–2024 ==
In October 2015, the Judicial Service Commission shortlisted and interviewed Keightley for one of six permanent vacancies in the Gauteng High Court. The commission recommended her for appointment after the interviews were held, and in December, President Jacob Zuma confirmed her appointment with effect from 1 January 2016.
The following year, in October 2017, Keightley handed down a landmark ruling on the unconstitutionality of corporal punishment by parents, finding that neither religious defences nor the common-law defence of "reasonable chastisement" sufficed to overrule the best interests of the child and justify corporal punishment. Her ruling was upheld by the Constitutional Court in September 2019 in Freedom of Religion South Africa v Minister of Justice and Constitutional Development. Other notable rulings by Keightley include a July 2019 ruling which prohibited the application of set-off to credit agreements under the National Credit Act, as well as an October 2022 ruling which reinstated Mpho Phalatse as the Mayor of Johannesburg following an unconstitutional vote of no confidence.
Keightley was an acting judge in the Supreme Court of Appeal for two terms between July 2023 and March 2024. During that time, the court heard an appeal of an Equality Court decision which found that it was not hate speech for the Economic Freedom Fighters to sing 'Dubul' ibhunu’ (“Kill the Boer”). Ahead of the appeal, the appellant, political lobby group AfriForum, lodged a formal request that Keightley should recuse herself from the matter. According to AfriForum, Keightley had "demonstrated bias" against it in 2018, when Keightley, presiding in a previous unrelated High Court dispute, said that AfriForum was “barking up the wrong tree” and even suggested to counsel that “next time you in front of me with [AfriForum] you might to wish to apply for my recusal”.The application for recusal was refused.
== Supreme Court of Appeal: 2024–present ==
In May 2024, the Judicial Service Commission recommended Keightley for permanent elevation to the Supreme Court of Appeal. After her appointment was confirmed by President Cyril Ramaphosa, she joined the bench on 1 July 2024.
== Personal life ==
Keightley is married to prominent advocate and former acting justice of the Constitutional Court, Alan Dodson SC, with whom she has three sons.
== References ==
== External links ==
Raylene May Keightley at Supreme Court of Appeal
R. M. Keightley at Judges Matter
Interview with Womanity |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kashmir_Valley#:~:text=The%20Kashmir%20Valley%2C%20also%20known,region%20in%20Indian%2Dadministered%20Kashmir. | Kashmir Valley | The Kashmir Valley, also known as the Vale of Kashmir, is an intermontane valley in the northern part of Indian-administered Jammu and Kashmir. The valley is surrounded by the ranges of the Himalayas, bounded on the southwest by the Pir Panjal Range and on the northeast by the Greater Himalayan Range. It is approximately 135 km (84 mi) long and 32 km (20 mi) wide, and drained by the Jhelum River. It falls entirely within the Kashmir Division of Jammu and Kashmir.
== Geography ==
The Kashmir Valley lies between latitude 33° and 35°N, and longitude 73° and 76°E. The valley is 100 km (62 mi) wide and covers 15,520.3 km2 (5,992.4 sq mi) in area. It is bounded by sub-ranges of the Western Himalayas: the Great Himalayas bound it in the northeast and separate it from the Tibetan Plateau, whereas the Pir Panjal Range in the Lesser Himalayas bounds it on the west and the south, and separates it from the Punjab Plain. The valley has an average elevation of 1,850 metres (6,070 ft) above sea-level, but the surrounding Pir Panjal range has an average elevation of 10,000 feet (3,000 m). The Jhelum River is the major river which acts a drainage for whole Kashmir Valley, before exiting the Kashmir Valley through Uri gorge the Jhelum River falls into Wular Lake second largest freshwater lake in Asia. Before entering Wular Lake Srinagar city and Sonawari lies on its banks and after leaving Wular Lake Sopore and Baramulla towns lies on its banks. It originates at Verinag; and then fed by a large number of glacier fed rivers and streams Lidder, Sind and Doodh Ganga rivers are its major tributaries. Unlike other areas of Kashmir region, the Kashmir Valley is densely populated owing to the availability of a large expanse of fertile flat land.
== Climate ==
The Kashmir Valley has a moderate climate, which is largely defined by its geographic location, with the towering Karakoram Range in the north, Pir Panjal Range in the south and west, and Zanskar Range in the east. It can be generally described as cool in the spring and autumn, mild in the summer and cold in the winter. As a large valley with significant differences in geo-location among various districts, the weather is often cooler in the hilly areas compared to the flat lower parts.
Summer is usually mild and fairly dry, but relative humidity is generally high and the nights are cool. Precipitation occurs throughout the year and no month is particularly dry. The hottest month is July (mean minimum temperature 16 °C, mean maximum temperature 32 °C) and the coldest are December–January (mean minimum temperature −15 °C, mean maximum temperature 0 °C).
The Kashmir Valley enjoys a moderate climate but weather conditions are unpredictable. The record high temperature is 37.8 °C and the record low is −18 °C. On 5 and 6 January 2012, after years of relatively little snow, a wave of heavy snow and low temperatures (winter storm) shocked the valley covering it in a thick layer of snow and ice.
The Valley has seen an increase in relative humidity and annual precipitation in the last few years. This is most likely because of the commercial afforestation projects which also include expanding parks and green cover.
== Notes ==
== See also ==
Kashmir Division, the administrative division of India covering the Kashmir Valley.
== References ==
== External links ==
Kashmir Division Administration
Kashmir Divisional Commissioner
Kashmir Valley travel guide from Wikivoyage
Vale of Kashmir
Khan, Asma (26 April 2018). "A Tryst of the Heart and History along the Karakoram Highway". Greater Kashmir. Retrieved 9 August 2019. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Photography_Awards#2019 | International Photography Awards | The International Photography Awards are a group of awards for professional, non-professional and student photographers on a global scale which are awarded annually at the Lucie Awards gala. The winners of the main categories are invited to attend the gala to compete for the main award of International Photographer of the Year, receiving a Lucie statue and a cash prize of $10,000.
== History ==
The International Photography Awards were created by Hossein Farmani as part of the mission of the Lucie Foundation. They were initially presented in December 2003 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California, at the Lucie Awards gala produced by Golden Globe nominee, Michelle Burstin.
In addition to honoring photographers, the Lucie Awards also showcase the finalists and winners of the International Photography Awards (Lucie Foundation's sister-effort) annual photography competition, presenting over $15,000 in cash prizes and two distinct titles: The International Photographer of the Year (given to a professional) and the Discovery of the Year (awarded to a non-professional).
In 2012, the Moving Image Photographer of the Year category was added, where six finalists competed to receive a Lucie statue and $2,500.
== Annual ceremonies and honorees ==
=== 2025 ===
Pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Jonathan Knowles
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Piotr Zbierski
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Romain Thiery
Book Photographer Of the Year – Autori Multipli
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Abdelrahman Alkahlout
Event Photographer Of the Year – Savadmon Avalachamveettil
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Julia Fullerton-Batten
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Sho Otani
People Photographer Of the Year – Natasha Pszenicki
Special Photographer Of the Year – Pedro Luis Ajuriaguerra Saiz
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Todd Antony
Non-pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Natalie Vorontsoff
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Yehor Lemzyakoff
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Mohammad Awadh
Book Photographer Of the Year – Markus Naarttijarvi
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Sebastian Piorek
Event Photographer Of the Year – Yu Ling Ho
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Marie Sueur
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Ilene Meyers
People Photographer Of the Year – Ilona Schong
Special Photographer Of the Year – Monia Marchionni
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Kohei Kawashima
=== 2024 ===
International Photographer of the Year – Charles Niell Jr. Chaz
Discovery of the Year – Malgorzata Fober
Pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Tom Franks
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Drew Gardner
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Gleici Rufatto
Book Photographer Of the Year – Sebastian Copeland
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Mustafa Hassona
Event Photographer Of the Year – Charles Niell Jr. Chaz
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Paul Szimák
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Benjamin Yavar
People Photographer Of the Year – Maryam Firuzi
Special Photographer Of the Year – Dale May
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Peter Muller
Non-pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Andrea Paolini Merlo
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Blake Burton
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Kiyoshi Karimizu
Book Photographer Of the Year – Yuji Haikal
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Jakub Laichter
Event Photographer Of the Year – Mark Fromson
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – César Guardia Alemañi
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Malgorzata Fober
People Photographer Of the Year – Renee Barron
Special Photographer Of the Year – Yukihito Ono
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Markus Naarttijarvi
=== 2023 ===
Pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Thomas Broening
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Edgar Martins
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Gang Wang
Book Photographer Of the Year – 93 photojournalists
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Wolfgang Schwan
Event Photographer Of the Year – Nabil West
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Julia Fullerton-Batten
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Barbara and Maciej Noskowski
People Photographer Of the Year – Allison Hunter
Special Photographer Of the Year – Horst Kistner
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Finn O’Hara
Non-pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Yuliy Vasilev
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Daniela Balestrin
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Steffen Reichardt
Book Photographer Of the Year – Jan Schölzel
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Or Adar
Event Photographer Of the Year – Thamarong Wanarithikul
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Bevil Templeton-Smith
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Claudia Gaupp
People Photographer Of the Year – Carlo Marrazza
Special Photographer Of the Year – Daniil Kobizskiy
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Tony Law
=== 2022 ===
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Jodie Mann
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Lukasz Spychala
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Ramin Barzegar
Book Photographer Of the Year – Ed Kashi
Deeper Perspective Photographer Of the Year – Paula Bronstein
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Juan Carlos
Event Photographer Of the Year – Alessandro Iasevoli
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Nils Riedweg
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Lars Beusker
People Photographer Of the Year – Aaron Anderson
Special Photographer Of the Year – Martin Stranka
Sports Photographer Of the Year – James Lightbown
Still in Motion / Video Photographer Of the Year – Sandro Miller
=== 2021 ===
Pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – John Huet
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Angélique Boissière
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Julia Anna Gospodarou
Book Photographer Of the Year – Delphine Blast
Deeper Perspective Photographer Of the Year – Bob Newman
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Mel D. Cole
Event Photographer Of the Year – Chong Kok Yew
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Mikael Owunna
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Liselotte Schuppers
People Photographer Of the Year – Art Streiber
Special Photographer Of the Year – Howard Schatz
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Andre Magarao
Still in Motion / Video Photographer Of the Year – Shilpa Narayanan
Nature and Astrophotography Of the Year – Gary W. Lopez
Non-pro
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Antonio Coelho
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Chris Round
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – César Cedano
Book Photographer Of the Year – Sue Park
Deeper Perspective Photographer Of the Year – Joanna Borowiee
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Sharwar Hussain
Event Photographer Of the Year – Brian Wotring
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Jiale Liu
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Javier Rupérez
People Photographer Of the Year – Elisa Miller
Special Photographer Of the Year – Bernd Schirmer
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Masatoshi Ujihara
Still in Motion / Video Photographer Of the Year – Aitor del Arco
=== 2020 ===
International Photographer of the Year – Julia Fullerton-Batten
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Mike Dodd
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Paulius Makauskas
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Jesus M.Chamizo
Book Photographer Of the Year – Sebastian Copeland
Deeper Perspective Photographer Of the Year – Nicolo Filippo Rosso
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Kiran Ridley
Event Photographer Of the Year – Katja Ogrin
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – Chloe Meynier
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Ari Rex
Nature and Astrophotography Of the Year – Gary W. Lopez
People Photographer Of the Year – Brian Hodges
Special Photographer Of the Year – Sawyer Russel
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Howard Schatz
Still in Motion / Video Photographer Of the Year – Iwona Podlasinska
=== 2019 ===
The 18th Annual Lucie Awards were postponed and will be rescheduled.
International Photographer of the Year – Mustafa Hassona
Discovery of the Year – Mikkel Hørlyck
Advertising Photographer Of the Year – Jonathan Knowles
Analog / Film Photographer Of the Year – Snezhana Von Büdingen
Architecture Photographer Of the Year – Evgeny Stetsko
Book Photographer Of the Year – Joey L.
Deeper Perspective Photographer Of the Year – K. M. Asad
Editorial / Press Photographer Of the Year – Mustafa Hassona
Event Photographer Of the Year – Sandro Miller
Fine Art Photographer Of the Year – David Knox
Nature Photographer Of the Year – Tom Putt
People Photographer Of the Year – Evgeny Stetsko
Special Photographer Of the Year – James Ritchie
Sports Photographer Of the Year – Kohei Ueno
Still in Motion / Video Photographer Of the Year – Jean Bérard
=== 2018 ===
The 2018 awards ceremony was held at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City on October 28, 2018.
International Photographer of the Year – Tawny Chatmon
Discovery of the Year – Mohammad Rakibul Hasan
First Place winners in different categories were:
Special – James Rushforth
Advertising, Sandro Miller
Book, Randal Ford
Architecture, Stephan Zirwes
Sports, Divyakant Solanki
Moving image, Emily Kassie
Deeper Perspective, Barry Salzman
People, Tawny Chatmon
Editorial, Rasmus Flindt Pedersen
Event, Mia Collis
Fine Art, Rodd Owen
Nature, Melissa Cormican
=== 2017 ===
The 2017 edition of the Lucie Awards was held at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City on October 29, 2017.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year– Lebohang Kganye
International Photographer of the Year – Alex Telfer
Discovery of the Year – Mariano Belmar
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Giles Clarke
=== 2016 ===
The Lucie Awards in 2016, was held on October 23 at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year -Lily Gilboy
International Photographer of the Year – Marinka Masséus
Discovery of the Year – David Nam Lip LEE
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Andrea Star Reese
=== 2015 ===
For the third year, the 2015 Awards ceremony was held at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City on October 27, 2015.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year – Kerry Payne Stailey
International Photographer of the Year – Maxim Dondyuk
Discovery of the Year – Ville Kansanen
Deeper Perspective of the Year – David Jay
Honorable Mention(s) of the Year – Haider Ali (haidertonight)
=== 2014 ===
The Lucie Awards ceremony in 2014 was held at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City on November 22.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year – Yannick Wegner
International Photographer of the Year – Sandro Miller
Discovery of the Year – Vyacheslav Mishchenko
Deeper Perspective of the Year – K M Asad
=== 2013 ===
The 2013 awards ceremony was held at the Zankel Hall at Carnegie Hall, in New York City on October 27, 2013.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year – Carson Davis Brown
International Photographer of the Year – Brooks Kraft
Discovery of the Year – Carlotta Cardana
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Ebrahim Noroozi
=== 2012 ===
The 2012 awards ceremony returned to its root, being held at the International Ballroom at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, the site of the first awards ceremony, in Los Angeles on October 8, 2012.
Moving Image Photographer of the Year – Mark Bramley
International Photographer of the Year – Alinka Echeverría
Discovery of the Year – Viktoria Sorochinski
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Fernando Moleres
=== 2011 ===
The 2011 awards ceremony was held at the Rose Theater, Jazz at the Lincoln Center in New York City on October 24, 2011.
International Photographer of the Year – Majid Saeedi
Discovery of the Year – Anna di Prospero
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Daniel Beltrá
=== 2010 ===
The 2010 awards ceremony was held at the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City on October 27, 2010.
International Photographer of the Year – Jim Krantz
Discovery of the Year – Kristina Kostadinova
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Rodney Rascona
=== 2009 ===
The 2009 awards ceremony was held at the Alice Tully Hall at the Lincoln Center in New York City on October 19, 2009.
International Photographer of the Year – Nadav Kander
Discovery of the Year – Elliott Wilcox
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Rachel Papo
=== 2008 ===
The 2008 awards ceremony was held at the Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center in New York City on October 30, 2008.
International Photographer of the Year – Brent Stirton
Discovery of the Year – John Delaney
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Justin Maxon
=== 2007 ===
The 2007 awards ceremony was held at the Avery Fisher Hall in the Lincoln Center in New York City on October 15, 2007.
International Photographer of the Year – Massimo Mastrorillo
Discovery of the Year – Larry Louie
Deeper Perspective of the Year – Charlie Crane
=== 2006 ===
The 2006 awards ceremony was held at the American Airlines Theater in New York City on October 30, 2006.
International Photographer of the Year – Gerd Ludwig
Discovery of the Year – Ghada Khunji
=== 2005 ===
The 2005 awards ceremony was held at the American Airlines Theater in New York City on October 17, 2005.
International Photographer of the Year – Jim Fiscus
Discovery of the Year – Carol Watson
=== 2004 ===
The 2004 awards ceremony changed location and time of year, held at the American Airlines Theater in New York City on October 18, 2004.
International Photographer of the Year – Timothy White
Discovery of the Year – Marrigje De Maar
=== 2003 ===
The 2003 awards ceremony was the first, held at the International Ballroom of the Beverly Hilton Hotel in Los Angeles, California on December 7, 2003.
International Photographer of the Year – Chris Frazer Smith
Discovery of the Year – Robert Vizzini
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blind_Guardian#Formation_as_Lucifer's_Heritage_(1984%E2%80%931987) | Blind Guardian | Blind Guardian is a German power metal band formed in 1984 in Krefeld, West Germany. They are often credited as one of the seminal and most influential bands in the power metal and speed metal subgenres. Nine musicians have been part of the band's lineup throughout its history, which currently includes singer Hansi Kürsch, guitarists André Olbrich and Marcus Siepen, and, since 2005, drummer Frederik Ehmke.
Blind Guardian is a key player in the German heavy metal scene that emerged in the mid-1980s. The band was formed in 1984 as Lucifer's Heritage by Kürsch (who also played bass at the time), Olbrich, fellow guitarist Markus Dörk, and drummer Thomas Stauch. Dörk and Stauch left the following year and were replaced by Christof Theißen and Hans-Peter Frey, respectively, who also departed before the year ended. In 1987, Siepen joined the group, and Stauch returned; this lineup, which lasted 18 years, led the band to change their name to Blind Guardian and release their debut album, Battalions of Fear, in 1988. They have since released ten more studio albums, as well as an orchestral album released under the name Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra.
Through their discography, Blind Guardian has established themselves as a notable and successful band and as pioneers of the power metal movement. In 1996, Kürsch ceased to act as the band's bassist to focus on vocals, with various session musicians filling in, primarily Oliver Holzwarth. However, in 2005, Stauch left the band, expressing disapproval of Blind Guardian's shift toward a more complex progressive sound with heavy backing vocals, and was replaced by Ehmke.
Most of Blind Guardian's albums have been well received by fans and critics alike: Somewhere Far Beyond (1992), Imaginations from the Other Side (1995), and Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998) are particularly regarded as influential works. The music is primarily composed by Kürsch and Olbrich together, while the lyrics, penned by Kürsch, draw inspiration from the works of fantasy authors such as J. R. R. Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, Stephen King, George R. R. Martin, and Robert Jordan, as well as traditional legends and epics. Over the years, a theme has developed that personifies the band members as traveling storytellers, leading fans to refer to them as "The Bards". Blind Guardian has been described in one article as one of the "big four" bands of power metal, alongside Helloween, Sabaton, and DragonForce.
== History ==
=== Formation as Lucifer's Heritage (1984–1987) ===
Blind Guardian was formed in 1984 in Krefeld, West Germany, by Hansi Kürsch (vocals, bass) and André Olbrich (guitar) under the name Lucifer's Heritage, alongside Markus Dörk (guitar) and Thomen Stauch (drums). The band briefly expanded into a quintet with the addition of a second lead vocalist, Thomas Kelleners. However, after three months, Kelleners left the band by mutual agreement. Lucifer's Heritage released two demos in 1985 and 1986, despite undergoing chaotic lineup changes: Dörk and Stauch were replaced by Christof Theißen and Hans-Peter Frey, respectively. Finally, in 1987, Marcus Siepen joined, and Stauch returned to form the lineup that would remain consistent for the next 18 years.
=== Name Change and Rise to Success (1988–1996) ===
After Lucifer's Heritage signed a contract with No Remorse Records, the band changed their name to Blind Guardian to avoid any speculation regarding Satanism. In their biography, the band noted that they also wanted to distance themselves from the black metal movement, as their demos had been placed alongside black metal albums in local record shops. The new name was inspired by the Fates Warning album Awaken the Guardian. They released their debut album, Battalions of Fear, in 1988, which was essentially a speed metal album heavily influenced by Helloween. These two German bands had close ties, and Helloween founder Kai Hansen made a guest appearance on Blind Guardian's second LP, Follow the Blind (1989), where the band revealed some thrash metal influences. Their third LP, Tales from the Twilight World (1990), showcased a much more melodic and "epic" sound, incorporating elements of choir and classical music.
Blind Guardian signed with Virgin Records in 1991 and released their fourth studio album, Somewhere Far Beyond, in 1992, followed by the live album Tokyo Tales in 1993. In 1994, Flemming Rasmussen, the former producer for Metallica, began working with the band, producing their fifth studio album, Imaginations from the Other Side, released in 1995, as well as The Forgotten Tales, an album that featured a mix of covers and original material, released in 1996.
=== Later Years and Departure of Thomen Stauch (1997–2009) ===
In 1998, Blind Guardian released their epic album Nightfall in Middle-Earth. Described by Allmusic's Vincent Jeffries as "complete with anthemic choruses, spoken word storylines, and plenty of bombastic power metal punctuating every dramatic turn", he stated that "Nightfall in Middle-Earth is perhaps Blind Guardian's most triumphant" work. A concept album based on J. R. R. Tolkien's The Silmarillion, the music on Nightfall demonstrated some folk rock influence while also featuring heavy use of Queen-style layered backing vocals. Following the release of Nightfall, bass duties were taken over by session member Oliver Holzwarth, allowing Hansi to focus entirely on vocals. This album also marked the last time Blind Guardian worked with producer Flemming Rasmussen.
Four years later, the band released A Night at the Opera, named after the Queen album. On this album, the band's sound largely departed from their original speed metal influences, instead embracing power and progressive metal with over-the-top orchestral backing and consistent vocal and guitar layering throughout. While not a true concept album, many of the lyrics explored common themes of religion and the relationships between human and divine powers. This was followed by a live album in 2003 and a DVD, Imaginations Through the Looking Glass, in 2004, which was the last recorded Blind Guardian material featuring Thomen Stauch on drums. He departed from the band due to musical differences and was replaced by Frederik Ehmke. The first album with Ehmke was A Twist in the Myth, released in 2006.
Blind Guardian contributed to the soundtrack for the In the Name of the King: A Dungeon Siege Tale fantasy film directed by Uwe Boll, which was released in 2008. The band also recorded a theme song for Sacred 2: Fallen Angel, a role-playing video game and the sequel to Sacred.
=== At the Edge of Time and Beyond the Red Mirror (2010–2017) ===
"A Voice in the Dark" was the next single from Blind Guardian, released on 25 June 2010. Following this, the album At the Edge of Time was released on 30 July 2010. To promote the album, the band embarked on "The Sacred Worlds and Songs Divine Tour 2010", with opening acts including Enforcer and Steelwing for European dates, while Holy Grail and Seven Kingdoms opened for the U.S. shows. The band also announced they would perform at Wacken Open Air in 2011.
On 21 July 2011, Hansi Kürsch revealed on Blind Guardian's official website that they were working on an orchestral album. On 1 September 2011, Oliver Holzwarth joined Rhapsody of Fire as a full-time member after 13 years as Blind Guardian's session bassist.
On 27 January 2012, Blind Guardian released a compilation album titled Memories of a Time to Come, featuring re-recorded and remixed songs from their entire discography. Almost exactly one year later, on 28 January 2013, they released a box set titled A Traveler's Guide to Space and Time, which included all of the band's studio, live, and compilation albums from 1988 to 2004, along with some previously unreleased material.
On 11 July 2012, Hansi posted on the band's official website that they would cease touring after their performance at the Rockharz festival in Ballenstedt, which occurred two days later. In his announcement, he mentioned the desire to focus on a new record before returning to the road by 2014. He also expressed a wish to perform songs they had never played live before their next tour.
In October 2013, Blind Guardian was announced as the headliner for the Out & Loud Festival in Geiselwind on 31 May 2014. On 18 October 2013, Hansi shared an update via the official website, stating he expected the new record to be fully produced by May 2014. He confirmed that the album was progressing well and mentioned nine new songs by name: Irish Hill (later titled Grand Parade), Encrypted Time, Prophecies, Holy Grail, Winter's Coming, The Throne, The Ocean, and Outcast, along with two others with uncertain titles, Song 9 and Midtempo Song.
The tenth Blind Guardian album, titled Beyond the Red Mirror, was released on 30 January 2015. The first single, "Twilight of the Gods", was released on 5 December 2014. On 28 January 2015, two days before the release of Beyond the Red Mirror, Blind Guardian announced Barend Courbois as their new session/live bassist on their official Facebook page.
The band recorded live shows during the 2015 European leg of the Beyond the Red Mirror tour for a new live album, Live Beyond the Spheres, which was released on 7 July 2017.
=== Legacy of the Dark Lands and The God Machine (2017–2023) ===
When asked in July 2017 about the next Blind Guardian studio album, Kürsch stated, "We haven't done too much songwriting for the next regular Blind Guardian album, but still, we've made some steps at least, and I can sense a strong change in comparison to what we did on the last album. There's one song called 'Architect of Doom,' which is a truly heavy track. Very powerful. Very thrashy at points. And there's another song called 'American Goth,' which is kind of what you would expect from Blind Guardian, but the way we maintained the drums and the orchestra—this song features orchestral elements—makes it feel distinctly different. I'm pretty sure that you will notice a significant change when you listen to these two albums, and from that point of view, yes, Live Beyond the Spheres is the end of an era." He also mentioned that they were working on an orchestral album, which was originally scheduled to be finished and released in 2016, but was now due for release in 2019, followed by a "heavy album" slated for release in 2020.
The band's long-awaited orchestral album, Legacy of the Dark Lands, was released on 1 November 2019, after Olbrich and Kürsch had conceived and written the project since 1996. It features only Kürsch as a performer, along with the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra, and is credited to the "Blind Guardian Twilight Orchestra" rather than the band's regular name.
In November 2021, it was announced that a new single, "Deliver Us from Evil", would be released on 3 December 2021, and that the band's forthcoming twelfth album would be released in September 2022. Kürsch told Nuclear Blast, "We know that the gap between now and the album release in late 2022 is painfully long. Neither we nor our label could defy the current worldwide economic crisis. A long story short: There is no one to blame for this situation... Talking about anticipation, even though 'Violent Shadows' and 'Deliver Us From Evil' are indisputably fantastic tracks, rest assured: We won't let you wait another ten months with only two songs. I promise you, you will always be blown away—cheers to the digital era and its endless possibilities. Oh, and the album title. There is one, but I won't tell you yet. This would be giving away far too much right now."
In July 2022, Jon Van Stratum replaced Barend Courbois as a session member. Despite persistent belief among some fans that he became a permanent member, Hansi Kürsch confirmed that he is only a live session member.
In May 2022, the title of the band's twelfth album was announced as The God Machine, along with a release date of 2 September 2022.
=== Upcoming 13th studio album (2024–present) ===
In a February 2024 interview with Australia's Subculture Entertainment, Kürsch revealed that Blind Guardian will commence "real songwriting" for their thirteenth studio album in 2025. When asked that same month if there would be "a shorter turnaround time" for the album, following a seven-year gap between Beyond the Red Mirror and The God Machine, Kürsch reiterated that the band will "keep [their] focus on regular songwriting" after their upcoming tour. Regarding a possible release date, he stated, "I don't know—I would be very surprised to find out that there's no new Blind Guardian album before '27, which is an accomplishment already, but I'm hoping for either late '25 or '26."
== Musical style ==
Blind Guardian is most commonly classified as power metal. The band's first two albums, Battalions of Fear and Follow the Blind, were more in the style of speed metal compared to their subsequent works. Beginning with their third album, Tales from the Twilight World, Blind Guardian gradually started to write more intricate compositions, placing less emphasis on speed. By the time of their sixth album, Nightfall in Middle Earth, Hansi Kürsch ceased playing bass to concentrate solely on vocals. At this juncture, the band began to incorporate substantial orchestral arrangements and utilized the technique of overdubbing, heavily influenced by the English rock band Queen.
Blind Guardian's music features the staccato guitars and double bass drumming characteristic of power metal, along with the use of overdubs and numerous backing vocals to create a rich and dense sound. This proved significant on all albums after the first two, but most particularly on A Night at the Opera.
Another defining feature of Blind Guardian's music is the frequent use of folk tunes and instruments, especially in power ballads such as "Lord of the Rings", "The Bard's Song", "A Past and Future Secret", "Skalds and Shadows", and "Curse My Name", among others.
=== Influences ===
The band was initially inspired by their fellow countrymen Helloween, and in its early releases, it also displayed influences from Iron Maiden and Metallica. According to guitarist Marcus Siepen, during the songwriting for Follow the Blind, they also listened to Bay Area thrash metal bands, such as Testament and Forbidden, resulting in a somewhat heavier sound.
Starting with their third album, Tales from the Twilight World, and continuing through Somewhere Far Beyond and Imaginations from the Other Side, Blind Guardian gradually incorporated more influences from progressive and classical music. Queen had a significant impact, particularly concerning the choir arrangements and harmonies, an effect most notable on A Night at the Opera.
Singer Hansi Kürsch expressed the band's attraction to 1970s progressive rock, citing early Genesis, Gentle Giant, and ELP as key influences. However, regarding the genre, he sees more direct influences in progressive metal bands, particularly Fates Warning, Queensrÿche, and Savatage. The folkloric influences on Nightfall in Middle-Earth primarily stem from British rock band Jethro Tull.
== Side projects ==
Along with Jon Schaffer, the leader and founder of Iced Earth, Kürsch was a member of Demons & Wizards, where he served as the lead singer until its disbandment in early 2021 due to Schaffer's involvement in the January 6 U.S. Capitol attack.
Frederik Ehmke was a founding member of the band Sinbreed, in which Marcus Siepen was initially a session member. Later, in 2012, Marcus became a full member of the band.
Following the tsunami that struck Japan on 11 March 2011, Blind Guardian collaborated with their former record company, EMI Music, to auction an exclusive studio session for two at the Twilight Hall Studio in Grefrath, Germany, for charity. All proceeds were donated to tsunami relief efforts. The auction concluded on 22 April 2011 with a final bid of £1,171.00.
== Band members ==
=== Timeline ===
== Discography ==
Battalions of Fear (1988)
Follow the Blind (1989)
Tales from the Twilight World (1990)
Somewhere Far Beyond (1992)
Imaginations from the Other Side (1995)
Nightfall in Middle-Earth (1998)
A Night at the Opera (2002)
A Twist in the Myth (2006)
At the Edge of Time (2010)
Beyond the Red Mirror (2015)
Legacy of the Dark Lands (2019)
The God Machine (2022)
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Blind Guardian at AllMusic
Blind Guardian discography at MusicBrainz |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University,_East_Bay | California State University, East Bay | California State University, East Bay (Cal State East Bay, CSU East Bay, or CSUEB) is a public university in Hayward, California. The university is part of the California State University system and offers 136 undergraduate and 60 post-baccalaureate areas of study. Founded in 1957, California State University, East Bay had a student body of approximately 11,544 as of Spring 2025. As of Fall 2024, it had 760 faculty. The university's largest and oldest college campus is located in Hayward, with additional centers in the nearby cities of Oakland and Concord.
== History ==
The university was established as State College for Alameda County (Alameda State College), with its primary mission to serve the higher education needs of both Alameda County and Contra Costa County. Its construction was part of the California Master Plan for Higher Education as proposed by Clark Kerr and the original site for the school was Pleasanton, California. The campus was moved to Hayward before plans were finalized due to the efforts of State Assembly member Carlos Bee and other boosters from the Hayward community, including S.E. Bond Jr, and E. Guy Warren, namesake of Warren Hall. At the time of its opening in 1959, classes were first held on the campus of Sunset High School and then Hayward High School. With the addition of the school, higher education in the San Francisco Bay Area became more accessible. To the south was San Jose State College (now San Jose State University) serving the South Bay counties. To the west was San Francisco State College (now San Francisco State University) serving San Francisco and San Mateo Counties. To the north is Sonoma State University, serving Marin, Napa and Sonoma counties. Chabot College, a part of the California Community College system, opened nearby in Hayward in 1961.
The university has undergone numerous transitions in its history, making name changes accordingly. In 1961, the school was moved to its present location in the Hayward Hills and renamed Alameda County State College. In 1963, the name was changed to California State College at Hayward. The school was granted university status in 1972, changing its name to California State University, Hayward. In 2005, the university implemented a new, broader mission to serve the eastern San Francisco Bay Area and adopted the name California State University, East Bay. The proposal to rename the campus to California State University, East Bay was approved by the California State University Board of Trustees on January 26, 2005.
=== Presidents ===
Cathy Sandeen, an Oakland native and alumnus of two other California State University institutions: Humboldt State University (B.S. in Speech Pathology summa cum laude) and San Francisco State University (M.A. in Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts), became the sixth president of CSU East Bay on January 4, 2021, following the announcement of her appointment to the position by the Board of Trustees on October, 29, 2020. She previously served as chancellor of the University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA). Prior to her time at UAA, Sandeen served as chancellor of the University of Wisconsin Colleges and University of Wisconsin-Extension from 2014 to 2018. In that role, she served as leader and chief administrator and was responsible for the academic, financial and administrative activities of two statewide higher education institutions.
== Campus ==
The school's main campus is located in Hayward, California on a plateau east of the Hayward fault that overlooks the southeast part of the city. CSUEB also has a branch in Concord, California in Contra Costa County, and a professional development center in Oakland.
For 40 years, Warren Hall was CSUEB's signature building; the building was visible from cities throughout the San Francisco Bay Area and served as a landmark for Hayward and the surrounding Eastern San Francisco Bay Area. Warren Hall was rated the least earthquake-safe building in the California State University system by the CSU Seismic Review Board. In January 2013 the CSU Board of Trustees authorized $50 million to demolish the former administrative building and replace it with a new structure. Warren Hall was demolished by implosion on August 17, 2013. Construction for the new 67,000 square foot-building began in November 2013, and doors opened in December 2015 on the completed structure.
California State University, East Bay is also known for its Solar Energy Project. Solar panels were installed on four campus rooftops and are used to generate supplemental power during peak periods and is one of the largest photovoltaic systems in Northern California.
On April 8, 2010, the California Public Utilities Commission approved a fuel cell project of Pacific Gas and Electric Company (PG&E) allowing Cal State East Bay's Hayward campus to become one of the first college campuses in Northern California to have a fuel cell. Once installed, the waste heat generated by the fuel cell will be converted into hot water to be used in campus buildings.
Since 2004, the Pioneer Amphitheatre on campus has been home of the KBLX Stone Soul Picnic, a day-long festival of R&B, soul and Urban Adult Contemporary music. Featured performers have included Ronald Isley, The Whispers, Teena Marie, Rick James, and The O'Jays. California State University, East Bay's Associated Student Incorporated also hosts concerts with artists like Lupe Fiasco and Goapele.
In 2005, Cal State East Bay began to build three new facilities: the Wayne and Gladys Valley Business and Technology Center (VBT), the Pioneer Heights student housing expansion and the University Union annex. The 67,000-square-foot (6,200 m2) VBT center was dedicated in February 2007, making it the first new academic building on the Hayward Campus in more than 30 years. The building houses programs in business, technology management, engineering, multimedia, science, and online degree programs. An expansion to Pioneer Heights was dedicated in fall 2008. Student housing was able to accommodate more than 450 new residents and offer a 16,000-square-foot (1,500 m2) dining commons. An annex to the existing University Union opened in January 2007.
The campus is home to the C. E. Smith Museum of Anthropology, created in 1975. The museum, open to the public, has rotating exhibits, and archives including records of 18 Bay Area archaeological sites.
== Academics ==
The university is best known for its College of Business and Economics; a strong Education Department, where a large percentage of California teachers receive their certification; and the thriving Music Department where the California State University, East Bay Jazz Ensemble, directed by Dave Eshelman (retired June 2007), holds annual performances in Yoshi's at Jack London Square in Oakland and frequently tours Europe and parts of South America. The Biotechnology Program developed at California State University, East Bay affords the university a status as the center of research and development in the Life sciences, Bioinformatics and technologies for the Eastern San Francisco Bay Area.
California State University, East Bay also participates in the Internet2 project, a collaboration led by over 200 U.S. universities, private industries, and governments to develop advanced network technologies for research and higher education in the 21st century.
California State University, East Bay offers 48 undergraduate degree programs and 34 Master's degree programs in addition to its teaching credential program. The university also has a doctoral program in Educational Leadership (Ed.D.) held in cooperation with the University of California, Berkeley, San Francisco State University and San José State University. The most popular undergraduate majors are: Business administration, Psychology, Health science, Kinesiology, Criminal justice, Biological sciences, Sociology, Computer science, Human development, Fine art.
The five most popular majors for 2019 graduates.
Business Administration and Management, General at 21%
Health Professions and Related Programs at 16%
Social Sciences at 10%
Psychology, General at 10%
Family and Consumer Economics and Related Services, Other at 6%
The academic departments of the university are organized into four colleges. Two of these are Liberal Arts colleges,
College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences (CLASS)
College of Science
and two of these are vocational colleges:
College of Business and Economics
College of Education and Allied Studies (CEAS)
First year students are put into Freshman Learning Communities which help students to:
earn higher GPAs
develop superior writing and communication skills
graduate reliably in four years.
=== Rankings ===
== Student life ==
The university's Department of Communications publishes a weekly newspaper called The Pioneer, its name referring to the school mascot, Pioneer Pete. The paper is staffed by faculty and students. East Bay is a diverse state university as indicated by the annual headcount report. As of fall 2018 CSU East Bay has the largest enrollment percentage of Filipino Americans, the second largest enrollment percentage of Pacific Islanders, African Americans and non-residents in the Cal State system.
=== Associated Students Incorporated ===
Associated Students Incorporated (ASI) is a student-run and student-owned organization that represents the student body at California State University, East Bay. Elected by the California State University, East Bay student body, the 15-member ASI Board of Directors is the governing body of Associated Students, Inc. The Board makes policy and oversees the fiscal responsibility of ASI. Additionally, the Board assists the university in planning, implementing, and evaluating campus programs, events, and curriculum. ASI currently has four departments: ASI Presents, ASI Business Office, Student Government, and the Early Childhood Education Center. In 2007 the university administration did not allow ASI to hold a student referendum on increasing student fees to fund a recreation and wellness center. It substituted 'alternative consultation'. In 2008, the administration again did not allow ASI to hold a referendum on increasing student fees to fund athletic scholarship for a move to Division II sports. Again, it substituted 'alternative consultation'.
=== Greek letter organizations ===
There are several fraternities and sororities on campus.
== Athletics ==
The Cal State–East Bay (CSUEB) athletic teams are called the Pioneers. The university is a member of the Division II level of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA), primarily competing in the California Collegiate Athletic Association (CCAA) for most of their sports since the 2009–10 academic year; while its women's water polo teams compete in the Western Water Polo Association (WWPA). The Pioneers previously competed in the California Pacific Conference (Cal Pac) of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA) from 1998–99 to 2008–09.
CSUEB competes in 15 intercollegiate varsity sports: Men's sports include baseball, basketball, cross country, golf, soccer and track & field (indoor and outdoor); while women's sports include basketball, cross country, golf, soccer, softball, swimming, track & field (indoor and outdoor), volleyball and water polo.
=== Mascot ===
The mascot of the university is the Pioneer. At the inception of the athletic program in 1961 the student body chose an astronaut as the mascot.
=== Water polo ===
The NCAA Women's Water Polo Championship of Effective Division I sports is open to members of all three NCAA divisions and Only East Bay and CSU Monterey Bay from the CCAA participate in the Western Water Polo Association.
=== Soccer ===
In 1988 the women's soccer team won the NCAA Division II Women's Soccer Championship. The Pioneers of CSU East Bay has earned 2 NCAA team championships at the Division II level.
== Notable people ==
== External links ==
Official website
Athletics website
== Notes ==
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Takehisa_Kosugi | Takehisa Kosugi | Takehisa Kosugi (小杉 武久, Kosugi Takehisa; March 24, 1938 – October 12, 2018) was a Japanese composer, violinist and artist associated with the Fluxus movement.
== Early life ==
Kosugi was born in Tokyo in 1938, and studied musicology at the Tokyo University of the Arts, graduating in 1962.
=== Early musical influences ===
Kosugi first became drawn to music listening to his father play harmonica and listening to violin recordings of Mischa Elman and Joseph Szigeti while as a child in post-war Japan. His later influences as a university student included the 1950s musical experimentation occurring in Europe and the US.
He was also influenced by jazz, citing Charlie Parker’s "spontaneity and freedom." Simultaneously, traditional Japanese music and Noh theater informed his music education, particularly the concept in Noh of "ma" which denotes the empty spaces between sounds. In 1963, he assisted on the soundtrack for the Japanese animation television show Tetsuwan Atomu, or, Astro Boy.
== Musical career ==
=== Group Ongaku ===
He started Tokyo-based seven-member ensemble Group Ongaku with his first improvisation partner Shuku Mizuno, which was active from 1958 to 1962. The group explored the limits of music by using the noises of ordinary objects and eschewing conscientiousness of the other members’ sound. Their first concert was the "Concert of Improvisational Music and Sound Object" at the Sōgetsu Art Center on September 15, 1961. His 1960s career with Group Ongaku is extensively covered in the 32-page essay "Experimental Japan," which appears in the book Japrocksampler (Bloomsbury, 2007), written by author/musician/occultist Julian Cope.
While in Japan Kosugi also worked with butoh dance originator Tatsumi Hijikata and the radical Japanese artist group Hi-Red Center. Along with Natsuyuki Nakanishi and Jiro Takamatsu of Hi-Red Center and the sculptor Hiroshi Kobatake, Kosugi participated in "Kuroku fuchidorareta bars no nureta kushami" (Wet Sneeze of a Black-lined Rose), a 1962 theater even organized by the radical leftist group Hanzaisha Domei (League of Criminals). Kosugi also performed in the Yomiyuri Independent Exhibition in 1962 and 1963, its final iteration.
=== Fluxus ===
Kosugi is probably best known for the experimental music that he created from 1960 until 1975. Kosugi's primary instrument was the violin, which he sent through various echo chambers and effects to create a bizarre, jolting music quite at odds with the drones of other more well-known Fluxus affiliated artists, such as Tony Conrad, John Cale, and Henry Flynt.
Kosugi's involvement with the Fluxus artists began through the introduction of the composer Toshi Ichiyanagi. Ichiyanagi, who had studied in New York with Fluxus progenitor John Cage, had noticed the performance of Group Ongaku at their 1961 Sōgetsu Art Center performance and subsequently invited them to perform with him at the same venue two months later. Ichiyanagi subsequently introduced the group to the "event scores" of George Brecht and sent recordings of Kosugi and his peers to George Maciunas, the founder of the Fluxus group. Maciunas began to sell the "complete works of Kosugi" for two dollars in 1963 and would go on to include him in many more Fluxus editions.
Kosugi's involvement with Fluxus saw many score and event like works. The works, however, were not conceived of events and may not have been written down by the artist. In 1963, Kosugi composed for Fluxus 1 a musical piece called Theatre Music in the form of a rectangle of cardstock that bore the trace of a spiral of moving feet. This was paired with the instructions: "Keep walking intently". Other works from this period include "Anima 1" (1961, alternatively "event for long string"), which appears to have been performed by Alison Knowles and Ben Vautier in 1964 as the 359 Canal street loft that Maciunas had made the Fluxus headquarters. The work prompted the performer to "Roll up a long chord," in response to which Vautier wound string around a seated Knowles and entangled her with the audience. This contrasts with Kosugi's own performances of the piece in which he "wound string around his entire body." In 1965, he moved to New York City where he collaborated with Fluxus affiliates including Nam June Paik and Charlotte Moorman. One collaborative work was "Instrumental Music" in which Kosugi attempted to cut out the silhouette of Moorman projected onto a screen by a spotlight. This work, among other, were performed at the "Music Expanded" program devised by Kosugi, Moorman and Paik at Town Hall in Manhattan in 1967.
=== Later career ===
Moving back to Japan in 1967, Kosugi continued his experimentation in collectivist creativity. Prompted by the idea to "stay in Taj Mahal for 24 hours and return" as a kind of event score, in 1969 Kosugi formed another improvisational group, the Taj Mahal Travellers. This itinerant group travelled in a Volkswagen van from the Netherlands to India, stopping in the UK, Italy, Germany, Scandinavia and Iran staging outdoor performances and happenings. Their albums include July 15, 1971 (CBS/Sony) and 1-August, 1974 (Columbia Records). Cope's Japrocksampler features a detailed 12-page biography of the Taj Mahal Travellers, the music of which Cope describes as being "reminiscent of the creaking rigging of the un-manned Mary Celeste".
During the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kosugi had other means of facilitating improvisational experimentation with others as well. In addition to conducting a workshop during this time, Kosugi would bring his violin with him to cafes and bars in order to be prepared for any opportunity to improvise with strangers. During this time, Kosugi also developed his practice making innovative sound installations that anticipated the genre of "sound art."
After the Taj Mahal Travellers disbanded in 1975, Kosugi moved back to the United States and in 1977 he was invited to be a resident musician/composer along with David Tudor at the Merce Cunningham Dance Company. Here, he worked with John Cage and Merce Cunningham, both of whom he had worked with in 1964 when they first visited Japan. Beginning in 1995, Kosugi served as music director for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, a position he held from 1995 to 2012 when the company closed. In 1999, Kosugi worked with Sonic Youth on their album SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century. Responding to Kosugi's death in 2018, Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth wrote on Twitter, "The times spent playing music with you will never fade. You are and were the real deal." Other notable musical collaborators include David Tudor, Peter Kowald, and saxophonist Steve Lacy.
Kosugi received grants from The JDR 3rd Fund in 1966 and 1977. He also received a DAAD fellowship grant to reside in West Berlin in 1981. In 1975, Kosugi released the solo album Catch-wave (CBS/Sony), which has been reissued multiple times on both CD and vinyl. Kosugi received a John Cage Award for Music from Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts in 1994. Venues at which Kosugi has performed include Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Albert Hall, The Getty Center, Miami Subtropics Experimental Music and Sound Arts Festival, Kushiro Art Museum, Lincoln Center Festival, and Biennale d'Art Contemporaine de Lyon. Venues that have exhibited Kosugi's sound installations include Raven Row, Deutzer Brücke, the Mori Art Museum, the Venice Biennale, and the Aichi Prefectural Museum of Art. In 2015, the Whitney Museum of American Art opened a performance retrospective of Kosugi's work titled, "Takehisa Kosugi: Music Expanded" referencing the 1967 Town Hall event. The retrospective was curated by Jay Sanders. 2015 also saw the first major solo exhibition of Kosugi's work, titled "SPACINGS," at Ikon Gallery.
== Death ==
Kosugi died October 12, 2018, in Ashiya, Japan from esophageal cancer. At the time of his death, Kosugi was survived by his longtime partner and manager, Takako Okamoto, and three brothers.
== Works ==
Anima 1 (1961)
Micro 1 (1961)
Organic Music (1962)
Anima 2 (1962)
Chironomy 1 (1962)
Ear Drum Event (1962)
South No. 1 (1962)
Theater Music (1963)
Malika 5 (1963)
To W (1964)
South No. 2 (1964)
Anima 7 (1964)
South No. 3 (1965)
Tender Music (1965)
Film & Film No. 4 (1965)
Instrumental Music (1965)
Piano (1966)
Music G (1966)
Eclipse (1967)
Catch-Wave (1967)
South No. 5 (1971)
Catch-Wave '71 (1971)
Piano-Wave-Mix (1972)
Heterodyne (1972)
Wave Code #e-1 (1974)
Numbers/Tones (1976)
S. E. Wave/E. W. Song (1976)
South No. 8 (1979)
Interspersion (1979)
Untitled Piece (1980)
Interspection for 54 Sounds (1980)
Cycles (1981)
Cycles for 7 Sounds (1981)
The Fly (1982)
Walking (1983)
Intersection (1983)
Spacings (1984)
Melodies (1984)
Assemblage (1986)
+- (1987)
75 Letters and Improvisation (1987)
Rhapsody (1987)
Loops No. 1, No. 2 (1988)
Spectra (1989)
Violin Improvisations CD (1989)
Module (1990)
Parabola (w/ Fast Forward) (1990)
Streams (1991)
Modulation (1991)
Islands (1991)
Reflections (1992)
Metal Interspersion (1992)
Transfigurations (1993)
Streams (1993)
Zoom (1993)
Streams No. 2 (1994)
Imitated Summer (1996)
Illuminated Summer (1996)
Tetrafeed (1997)
Wave Code A-Z (1997)
== Festival performances ==
Festival d'Automne (Paris, 1978, 1979)
The Festival at La Sainte-Baume (1978, 1979, 1980)
The Holland Festival (1979)
Opening Concert (Rome, 1980)
Workshop Freie Musik (Berlin, 1984)
Pro Musica Nova (Bremen, 1984)
Almeida International Festival of Contemporary Music (London, 1986)
Welt Musik Tage `87 (Cologne, 1987)
Experimentelle Musik (München, 1986, 1988)
Inventionen (Berlin, 1986, 1989, 1992)
Biennale d'art contemporain (Lyon, 1993)
== Sound installations ==
Für Augen und Ohren (Berlin, 1980)
Ecouter par les yeux (Paris, 1980)
Soundings at Purchase (New York, 1981)
New Music America Festival (Washington, 1983)
Im Toten Winken (Hamburg, 1984)
Klanginstallationen (Bremen, 1987)
Kunst als Grenzbeschreitung: John Cage und die Moderne (München, 1991)
Iventionen (Berlin, 1992)
Musik Tage (Donaueschingen, 1993)
== References ==
== External links ==
Takehisa Kosugi - List of Works
Takehisa Kosugi biography from Lovely Music site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domenico_Morichini | Domenico Morichini | Domenico Lino Morichini (23 September 1773 – 19 November 1836) was an Italian physician and chemist. He was the first to identify fluorine in teeth, first in a fossilized elephant tooth and then in human teeth. He also reported the magnetisation of steel by light rays which stimulated experimental approaches.
== Life and work ==
Morichini was born in Civita d'Antino, L'Aquila, to farmer Anselmo and Domitilla Moratti. Educated in Sora and later Rome, he received a medical degree in 1792 and became physician, working at the hospital of Santo Spirito. He worked on public health and gave lectures on chemistry at the University of Rome. He promoted Lavoisier's ideas on combustion and oxygen rather than follow the older phlogiston theory. He rose in power in the new Roman Republic of 1798. The republic fell in 1799 and he was readmitted by Pope Pius VII as professor at the University of Sapienza where he served until 1833. In 1802 he examined fossil teeth of and elephant and demonstrated the presence of fluorine by chemical analysis. He was able to produce Hydrogen Fluoride which corroded glass and then reacted it with lime to produce Calcium Fluoride which he recognized as identical in properties to fluorspar.
In 1812 Morichini claimed that iron was magnetized by ultraviolet solar rays. This caught the attention of many including Ampere and Faraday. Several people repeated the experiment, some confirmed it including Humphry Davy (who was a patient of Morichini in 1828), Georges Cuvier, Andreas von Baumgartner and Mary Somerville, while others questioned the findings.
Morichini fell ill shortly after his retirement, suffered from a stroke, and died in Rome. His wife Cecilia Calidi (married 1804) and seven children survived him, one of whom was Cardinal Carlo_Luigi_Morichini.
== References ==
== External links ==
Vita del cavalier prof. Domenico Morichini (Biography in Italian by Alessandro Marchetti) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuldeep_Singh_Sengar#:~:text=Political%20career,-Sengar%20started%20his&text=It%20was%20the%20first%20time,33%25%20of%20the%20votes). | Kuldeep Singh Sengar | Kuldeep Singh Sengar is an Indian politician and former member of Legislative Assembly belonging to the Bhartiya Janta Party from Unnao district, Uttar Pradesh who has been convicted of rape, murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy and criminal intimidation. He was the main defendant in the Unnao rape case and was booked under the POCSO Act. He was also accused of killing three people, including the victim's father in police custody and later her aunts by a conspired truck accident. A Delhi District and Sessions Court upheld an investigation conducted by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) that had ruled out any foul play in the Unnao rape survivor's accident in 2019.
== Political career ==
Sengar started his political career with Indian National Congress (INC) in the early 1990s. In 2002, he was a Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) candidate, winning the election from Unnao with 24% of the votes. It was the first time BSP won that seat. After being expelled from BSP due to alleged anti-party activities, he joined Samajwadi party and won a seat from Bangermau in 2007 (28% of the votes) and Bhagwant Nagar in 2012 (33% of the votes). In 2015, Kuldeep Singh's wife Sangeeta Singh won the election of District Panchayat chief as an Independent against Samajwadi Party after which the party had estrangement with him and started seeing him as a rebel. He joined Bharatiya Janata Party in 2017 to contest the elections. He won the election from Bangermau, a seat BJP has never won before, with 43% of the votes polled. He had held this seat earlier under Samajwadi Party (2007–2012). He has won 4 legislative elections from Unnao region on three different party tickets and has won every time.
== Rape, attempted murder, murder charge, arrest, expulsion ==
=== Rape charges ===
Sengar raped a 16-year-old teen in Unnao, who approached him asking for a job on 4 June 2017. On 13 April 2018, he was taken in by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) for questioning. Allahabad High Court took suo moto cognizance of the case and ordered his immediate arrest by the CBI. First Information Reports (FIR) were lodged and Sengar was kept in judicial custody for a week. The CBI corroborated the victim's charge of rape. He was booked under 4 sections of the Indian Penal Code and Protection of Children from Sexual Offences. In December 2019, he was convicted of kidnapping and raping a minor.
=== Murder and attempt to murder charges ===
On 28 July 2019, two of the victim's aunts were killed, and the victim and her lawyer critically injured, when a truck rammed the car they were travelling in. Sengar has been booked for murder, attempt to murder, criminal conspiracy, and criminal intimidation. The police FIR lists 10 persons including Sengar's brother Manoj Singh Sengar, Sashi Singh and his aides.
=== Expulsion from BJP ===
Sengar was suspended from the BJP political party following the rape. In a statement, the State BJP president Swatantra Dev Singh said "Sengar was suspended by the party earlier and there is no change in his status. There is no change in the position of the party and the government, which is standing with the victim of the Unnao (rape) case." The demand for his expulsion from the ruling BJP grew, led by Congress Party leader Priyanka Gandhi and later joined in by other opposition party leaders.
In August 2019, after facing massive public and political outrage, the state and the Centre led BJP government finally expelled him from the party. The suspension and later expulsion did not automatically disqualify him as a legislator. He is not a part of any legislative committee.
Kuldeep Singh Family Introduction
If we talk about Kuldeep Singh Sengar's family, his wife's name is Sangeeta Singh Sengar. Who has been the District Panchayat President of Unnao. They have two daughters. While Kuldeep Singh Sengar's political legacy is being handled by his nephew Antranjay Singh 'Goldy Raja'.
== Previous criminal activities ==
Disobedience to order duly promulgated by public servant (IPC Section-188).
Assault or criminal force to deter public servant from discharge of his duty (IPC Section-353): Police Station- Hasanganj Dist. Unnao, U.P.
== Electoral history ==
Kuldeep Singh Sengar has been elected 4 times as MLA.
== See also ==
Unnao rape case
Kathua rape case
2019 Hyderabad gang rape
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Mathematical_Olympiad | International Mathematical Olympiad | The International Mathematical Olympiad (IMO) is a mathematical olympiad for pre-university students, and is the oldest of the International Science Olympiads. It is widely regarded as the most prestigious mathematical competition in the world. The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. It has since been held annually, except in 1980. More than 100 countries participate. Each country sends a team of up to six students, plus one team leader, one deputy leader, and observers.
Awards are given to approximately the top-scoring 50% of the individual contestants. Teams are not officially recognized—all scores are given only to individual contestants, but team scoring is unofficially compared more than individual scores.
== Question type ==
The content ranges from extremely difficult algebra and pre-calculus problems to problems in branches of mathematics not conventionally covered in secondary or high school and often not at university level either, such as projective and complex geometry, functional equations, combinatorics, and well-grounded number theory, of which extensive knowledge of theorems is required. Calculus, though allowed in solutions, is never required, as there is a principle that anyone with a basic understanding of mathematics should understand the problems, even if the solutions require a great deal more knowledge. Supporters of this principle claim that it allows more universality and creates an incentive to find elegant, deceptively simple-looking problems that nevertheless require a certain level of ingenuity, oftentimes a great deal of ingenuity, to net all points for a given IMO problem.
== Selection process ==
The selection process differs by country, but it often consists of a series of tests that admit fewer students at each test. Contestants must be under the age of 20 and must not be registered at any tertiary institution. Subject to these conditions, an individual may participate any number of times in the IMO.
== History ==
The first IMO was held in Romania in 1959. Since then it has been held every year (except in 1980, when it was cancelled due to internal strife in Mongolia). It was initially founded for eastern European member countries of the Warsaw Pact, under the USSR bloc of influence, but later other countries participated as well. Because of this eastern origin, the IMOs were first hosted only in eastern European countries, and gradually spread to other nations.
Sources differ about the cities hosting some of the early IMOs. This may be partly because leaders and students are generally housed at different locations, and partly because after the competition the students were sometimes based in multiple cities for the rest of the IMO. The exact dates cited may also differ, because of leaders arriving before the students, and at more recent IMOs the IMO Advisory Board arriving before the leaders.
Several students, such as Lisa Sauermann, Peter Scholze, Reid W. Barton, Nicușor Dan (notably elected President of Romania in 2025) and Ciprian Manolescu have performed exceptionally well in the IMO, winning multiple gold medals. Others, such as Terence Tao, Artur Avila, Grigori Perelman, Ngô Bảo Châu, Peter Scholze and Maryam Mirzakhani have gone on to become notable mathematicians. Several former participants have won awards such as the Fields Medal.
Shortly after the 2016 International Mathematical Olympiad in Hong Kong, North Korean child prodigy Ri Jong-yol made his way to the South Korean consulate general, where he sought refuge for two months. Chinese authorities eventually allowed him to leave Hong Kong on a flight to Seoul. He legally changed his name to Lee Jung-ho (이정호) after receiving South Korean citizenship. This is the only case of its kind in the IMO's history.
== Scoring and format ==
The competition consists of 6 problems. The competition is held over two consecutive days with 3 problems each; each day, the contestants have four-and-a-half hours to solve three problems. Each problem is worth 7 points for a maximum total score of 42 points. Calculators are banned. Protractors were banned relatively recently. Unlike other science olympiads, the IMO has no official syllabus and does not cover any university-level topics. The problems chosen are from various areas of secondary school mathematics, broadly classifiable as geometry, number theory, algebra, and combinatorics. They require no knowledge of higher mathematics such as calculus and analysis, and solutions are often elementary. However, they are usually disguised so as to make the solutions difficult. The problems given in the IMO are largely designed to require creativity and the ability to solve problems quickly. Thus, the prominently featured problems are algebraic inequalities, complex numbers, and construction-oriented geometrical problems, though in recent years, the latter has not been as popular as before because of the algorithmic use of theorems like Muirhead's inequality, and complex/analytic bashing to solve problems.
Each participating country, other than the host country, may submit suggested problems to a problem selection committee provided by the host country, which reduces the submitted problems to a shortlist. The team leaders arrive at the IMO a few days in advance of the contestants and form the IMO jury, which is responsible for all the formal decisions relating to the contest, starting with selecting the six problems from the shortlist. The jury aims to order the problems so that the order in increasing difficulty is Q1, Q4, Q2, Q5, Q3, and Q6, where the first day problems Q1, Q2, and Q3 are in increasing difficulty, and the second day problems Q4, Q5, and Q6 are in increasing difficulty. The team leaders of all countries are given the problems in advance of the contestants, and thus, are kept strictly separated and observed.
Each country's marks are agreed between that country's leader and deputy leader, and coordinators provided by the host country (the leader of the team whose country submitted the problem in the case of the marks of the host country), subject to the decisions of the chief coordinator and, ultimately, a jury if any disputes cannot be resolved.
== Selection process ==
The selection process for the IMO varies greatly by country. In some countries, especially those in East Asia, the selection process involves several tests of a difficulty comparable to the IMO itself. The Chinese contestants go through a camp. In others, such as the United States, possible participants go through a series of easier standalone competitions that gradually increase in difficulty. In the United States, the tests include the American Mathematics Competitions, the American Invitational Mathematics Examination, and the United States of America Junior Mathematical Olympiad/United States of America Mathematical Olympiad, each of which is a competition in its own right. For high scorers in the final competition for the team selection, there also is a summer camp, like that of China.
In countries of the former Soviet Union and other eastern European countries, a team has in the past been chosen several years beforehand, and they are given special training specifically for the event. However, such methods have been discontinued in some countries.
== Awards ==
The participants are ranked based on their individual scores. Medals are awarded to the highest ranked participants; slightly fewer than half of them receive a medal. The cutoffs (minimum scores required to receive a gold, silver, or bronze medal respectively) are then chosen so that the numbers of gold, silver and bronze medals awarded are approximately in the ratios 1:2:3. Participants who do not win a medal but who score 7 points on at least one problem receive an honorable mention.
Special prizes may be awarded for solutions of outstanding elegance or involving good generalisations of a problem. This last happened in 1995 (Nikolay Nikolov, Bulgaria) and 2005 (Iurie Boreico), but was more frequent up to the early 1980s. The special prize in 2005 was awarded to Iurie Boreico, a student from Moldova, for his solution to Problem 3, a three-variable inequality.
The rule that at most half the contestants win a medal is sometimes broken if it would cause the total number of medals to deviate too much from half the number of contestants. This last happened in 2010 (when the choice was to give either 226 (43.71%) or 266 (51.45%) of the 517 contestants (excluding the 6 from North Korea — see below) a medal), 2012 (when the choice was to give either 226 (41.24%) or 277 (50.55%) of the 548 contestants a medal), and 2013, when the choice was to give either 249 (47.16%) or 278 (52.65%) of the 528 contestants a medal. In these cases, slightly more than half the contestants were awarded a medal.
== Penalties and bans ==
North Korea was disqualified twice for cheating, once at the 32nd IMO in 1991 and again at the 51st IMO in 2010. However, the incident in 2010 was controversial. There have been other cases of cheating where contestants received penalties, although these cases were not officially disclosed. (For instance, at the 34th IMO in 1993, a contestant was disqualified for bringing a pocket book of formulas, and two contestants were awarded zero points on second day's paper for bringing calculators.)
Russia has been banned from participating in the Olympiad since 2022 as a response to its invasion of Ukraine. Nonetheless, a limited number of students (specifically, 6) are allowed to take part in the competition and receive awards, but only remotely and with their results being excluded from the unofficial team ranking. Slightly more than a half of the IMO 2021 Jury members (59 out of 107) voted in support of the sanction proposed by the IMO Board in an online voting in March 2022.
In May 2025, a letter signed by over 700 mathematicians, amongst whom are Fields medalists and a former Israeli IMO contestant, has called on the IMO Board to suspend the membership of Israel in the 2025 IMO for its war crimes in Gaza in the same way as the Board did to Russia. The letter cites as one of the reasons that the Palestinian IMO team members were blocked by the Israeli authorities from leaving the country for the 2024 IMO. The president of the IMO Board has refused to act, claiming that the Jury may decide during the 2025 IMO. The letter, however, accuses him of preventing the Jury from discussing the issue during the 2024 IMO by invoking a newly-added obscure regulation.
== Summary ==
== Notable achievements ==
=== National ===
The following nations have achieved the highest team score in the respective competition:
China, 25 times: in 1989, 1990, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1997, 1999 (joint), 2000–2002, 2004–2006, 2008–2011, 2013, 2014, 2019 (joint), 2020–2023, 2025;
Russia (including Soviet Union), 16 times: in 1963–1967, 1972–1974, 1976, 1979, 1984, 1986 (joint), 1988, 1991, 1999 (joint), 2007;
United States, 9 times: in 1977, 1981, 1986 (joint), 1994, 2015, 2016, 2018, 2019 (joint), 2024;
Hungary, 6 times: in 1961, 1962, 1969–1971, 1975;
Romania, 5 times: in 1959, 1978, 1985, 1987, 1996;
West Germany, twice: in 1982 and 1983;
South Korea, twice: in 2012 and 2017;
Bulgaria, once: in 2003;
Iran, once: in 1998;
East Germany, once: in 1968.
The following nations have achieved an all-members-gold IMO with a full team:
China, 16 times: in 1992, 1993, 1997, 2000–2002, 2004, 2006, 2009–2011, 2019, 2021–2023, 2025.
United States, 4 times: in 1994, 2011, 2016, and 2019.
South Korea, 3 times: in 2012, 2017, and 2019.
Russia, twice: in 2002 and 2008.
Bulgaria, once: in 2003.
The only countries to have their entire team score perfectly in the IMO were the United States in 1994, China in 2022, and Luxembourg, whose 1-member team had a perfect score in 1981. The US's success earned a mention in TIME Magazine. Hungary won IMO 1975 in an unorthodox way when none of the eight team members received a gold medal (five silver, three bronze). The second-place team, East Germany, also did not have a single gold medal winner (four silver, four bronze).
The current ten countries with the best all-time results are as follows:
=== Individual ===
Several individuals have consistently scored highly and/or earned medals on the IMO: Zhuo Qun Song (Canada) is the most highly decorated participant with five gold medals (including one perfect score in 2015) and one bronze medal. Reid Barton (United States) was the first participant to win a gold medal four times (1998–2001). Barton is also one of only eight four-time Putnam Fellows (2001–04). Christian Reiher (Germany), Lisa Sauermann (Germany), Teodor von Burg (Serbia), Nipun Pitimanaaree (Thailand) and Luke Robitaille (United States) are the only other participants to have won four gold medals (2000–03, 2008–11, 2009–12, 2010–13, 2011–14, and 2019–22 respectively); Reiher also received a bronze medal (1999), Sauermann a silver medal (2007), von Burg a silver medal (2008) and a bronze medal (2007), and Pitimanaaree a silver medal (2009). Wolfgang Burmeister (East Germany), Martin Härterich (West Germany), Iurie Boreico (Moldova), and Lim Jeck (Singapore) are the only other participants besides Reiher, Sauermann, von Burg, and Pitimanaaree to win five medals with at least three of them gold. Ciprian Manolescu (Romania) managed to write a perfect paper (42 points) for gold medal more times than anybody else in the history of the competition, doing it all three times he participated in the IMO (1995, 1996, 1997). Manolescu is also a three-time Putnam Fellow (1997, 1998, 2000). Eugenia Malinnikova (Soviet Union) is the highest-scoring female contestant in IMO history. She has 3 gold medals in IMO 1989 (41 points), IMO 1990 (42) and IMO 1991 (42), missing only 1 point in 1989 to precede Manolescu's achievement.
Terence Tao (Australia) participated in IMO 1986, 1987 and 1988, winning bronze, silver and gold medals respectively. He won a gold medal when he just turned thirteen in IMO 1988, becoming the youngest person to receive a gold medal (Zhuo Qun Song of Canada also won a gold medal at age 13, in 2011, though he was older than Tao). Tao also holds the distinction of being the youngest medalist with his 1986 bronze medal, followed by 2009 bronze medalist Raúl Chávez Sarmiento (Peru), at the age of 10 and 11 respectively. Representing the United States, Noam Elkies won a gold medal with a perfect paper at the age of 14 in 1981. Both Elkies and Tao could have participated in the IMO multiple times following their success, but entered university and therefore became ineligible.
== Gender gap and the launch of European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad ==
Over the years, since its inception to present, the IMO has attracted far more male contestants than female contestants. During the period 2000–2021, there were only 1,102 female contestants (9.2%) out of a total of 11,950 contestants. The gap is even more significant in terms of IMO gold medallists; from 1959 to 2021, there were 43 female (3.3%) and 1295 male gold medal winners.
This gender gap in participation and in performance at the IMO level led to the establishment of the European Girls' Mathematical Olympiad (EGMO).
== Media coverage ==
A documentary, "Hard Problems: The Road To The World's Toughest Math Contest" was made about the United States 2006 IMO team.
A BBC documentary titled Beautiful Young Minds aired July 2007 about the IMO.
A BBC fictional film titled X+Y released in September 2014 tells the story of an autistic boy who took part in the Olympiad.
A book named Countdown by Steve Olson tells the story of the United States team's success in the 2001 Olympiad.
== See also ==
List of International Mathematical Olympiads
International Mathematics Competition for University Students (IMC)
International Science Olympiad
List of mathematics competitions
Pan-African Mathematics Olympiads
Junior Science Talent Search Examination
Art of Problem Solving
Mathcounts
== Notes ==
== Citations ==
== References ==
Xu, Jiagu (2012). Lecture Notes on Mathematical Olympiad Courses, For Senior Section. World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4368-94-0.
Xiong, Bin; Lee, Peng Yee (2013). Mathematical Olympiad in China (2009-2010). World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4390-21-7.
Xu, Jiagu (2009). Lecture Notes on Mathematical Olympiad Courses, For Junior Section. World Scientific Publishing. ISBN 978-981-4293-53-2.
Olson, Steve (2004). Count Down. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 0-618-25141-3.
Verhoeff, Tom (August 2002). The 43rd International Mathematical Olympiad: A Reflective Report on IMO 2002 (PDF). Computing Science Report, Vol. 2, No. 11. Faculty of Mathematics and Computing Science, Eindhoven University of Technology.
Djukić, Dušan (2006). The IMO Compendium: A Collection of Problems Suggested for the International Olympiads, 1959–2004. Springer. ISBN 978-0-387-24299-6.
Lord, Mary (23 July 2001). "Michael Jordans of math - U.S. Student whizzes stun the cipher world". U.S. News & World Report. 131 (3): 26.
Saul, Mark (2003). "Mathematics in a Small Place: Notes on the Mathematics of Romania and Bulgaria" (PDF). Notices of the American Mathematical Society. 50: 561–565.
Vakil, Ravi (1997). A Mathematical Mosaic: Patterns & Problem Solving. Brendan Kelly Publishing. p. 288. ISBN 978-1-895997-28-6.
Liu, Andy (1998). Chinese Mathematics Competitions and Olympiads. AMT Publishing. ISBN 1-876420-00-6.
== External links ==
Official IMO web site
Archive to the IMO 1959–2003 problems and solutions
Old central IMO web site |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Circle_(American_TV_series)_season_2 | The Circle (American TV series) season 2 | The second season of the American reality competition streaming series The Circle began on April 14, 2021, on Netflix, and concluded on May 5, 2021. The season was announced in March 2020 when Netflix renewed The Circle for a second and third season. Michelle Buteau returned as host.
Like the previous season, players compete against each other to become the most popular, but do not actually meet their competitors. Instead, they communicate through a specially designed app and are able to portray themselves in any way they choose.
On May 5, 2021, the season was won by DeLeesa St. Agathe, who had played the game as her husband, Trevor, and won the US$100,000 prize that came along with it. Chloe Veitch was the runner-up and won the Fan Favorite award and US$10,000.
== Format ==
The contestants, or "Players", move into the same apartment building. However, the contestants do not meet face-to-face during the course of the competition, as they each live in their own individual apartment. They communicate solely using their profiles on a specially designed social media app that gives them the ability to portray themselves in any way they choose. Players can thus opt to present themselves as a completely different personality to the other players, a tactic otherwise known as catfishing.
Throughout the series, the contestants "Rate" one another from first to last place. At the end of the ratings, their average ratings are revealed to one another from lowest to highest. Normally, the two highest-rated players become "Influencers", while the remaining players will be at risk of being "Blocked" by the Influencers. However, occasionally there may be a twist to the blocking process – varying from the lowest rating players being instantly blocked, the identity of the Influencers being a secret, or multiple players being blocked at one time. Blocked players are eliminated from the game, but are given the opportunity to meet one player still in the game in-person. A video message is shown to the remaining players to reveal if they were real or fake the day after.
During the finale, the contestants rate each other one final time, where the highest rated player wins the game and US$100,000. Also, fans of The Circle are able to vote for their favorite player. The player that receives the most votes is known as the Fan Favorite and receives US$10,000.
== Players ==
The first eight players taking part in the season were revealed on April 5, 2021, with additional players being revealed during the run of the show.
=== Other appearances ===
==== Too Hot to Handle ====
Chloe Veitch starred on season 1 of Too Hot to Handle.
==== Perfect Match ====
Savannah Palacio and Mitchell Eason appeared on the first season of Perfect Match. Palacio was eliminated in Episode Four. Eason was eliminated in Episode Nine.
==== Floor is Lava ====
Jack Atkins, Savannah Palacio, and Courtney Revolution starred on Floor Is Lava.
==== Netflix's Reality Games ====
Courtney Revolution and DeLeesa St. Agathe starred on Netflix’s Reality Games and were two of the four players representing team "The Circle".
==== America's Next Top Model ====
Bryant Wood has appeared on season 22 of America's Next Top Model.
== Episodes ==
== Results and elimination ==
Color key
The contestant was blocked.
The contestant was an influencer.
The contestant was immune from being blocked.
The player was at risk of being blocked following a twist
This player was blocked, but returned under a different profile
=== Notes ===
^Note 1 : In Episode 1, before deciding who to block, Terilisha and Savannah had a chance to save a player each. Terilisha chose to save Jack "Emily", while Savannah chose to save Deleesa "Trevor".
^Note 2 : At the end of Episode 4, Savannah visited Courtney, viewing him as having the most potential to win. This indirectly gave Courtney secret access to the Inner Circle following Savannah's departure.
^Note 3 : As a part of the Joker Twist, Courtney was able to automatically pick an Influencer in the Inner Circle. Courtney chose to make River an Influencer.
^Note 4 : In this round, there were no influencers. Instead, the two lowest rated players would be blocked. Jack "Emily", placing 8th, and Lisa "Lance", placing 7th were respectively blocked from The Circle. Following the blocking, Jack and Lisa continued in the game together as new player John.
^Note 5 : In Episode 12, the ratings were not published. Instead, the highest-rated player automatically became the "Superinfluencer," who could make the sole decision on whom to block.
^Note 6 : In Episode 13, the players made their final ratings.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_Claudius_(TV_series) | I, Claudius (TV series) | I, Claudius (stylised as I·CLAVDIVS) is a 1976 BBC Television adaptation of Robert Graves' 1934 novel I, Claudius and its 1935 sequel Claudius the God. Written by Jack Pulman, it stars Derek Jacobi as Claudius, with Siân Phillips, Brian Blessed, George Baker, Margaret Tyzack, John Hurt, Patricia Quinn, Ian Ogilvy, Kevin McNally, Patrick Stewart and John Rhys-Davies. The series covers the history of the early Roman Empire, told from the perspective of the elderly Emperor Claudius, who narrates the series.
Among many other productions and adaptations, Graves' Claudius novels have also been adapted for a BBC Radio 4 broadcast (2010) and for the stage (1972).
== Plot summary and episodes ==
I, Claudius follows the history of the early Roman Empire, narrated by the elderly Roman Emperor Claudius, from the year 24 BC to his death in AD 54. The series opens with Augustus, the first Emperor of Rome, attempting to find an heir, and his wife, Livia, plotting to elevate her son Tiberius to this position. An expert poisoner, Livia uses the covert assassination and betrayal of her rivals to achieve her aims, beginning with the death in 22 BC of Marcellus. The plotting, double-crossing and murder continue for many decades, through the reign of Tiberius, the political conspiracy of his Praetorian Prefect Sejanus and the depraved rule of the lunatic emperor Caligula, culminating in the accidental rise to power of his uncle Claudius. Claudius' enlightened reign is marred by the betrayals of his adulterous wife Messalina and his boyhood friend Herod Agrippa. Eventually, Claudius comes to accept the inevitability of his assassination and consents to marrying his scheming niece, Agrippina the Younger, clearing the way for the ascent of his mad stepson, Nero, whose disastrous reign Claudius vainly hopes will bring about the restoration of the Roman Republic.
== Cast ==
note: episodes are the American cut not the original British cut - the difference is the first, double length, episode, A Touch of Murder, is spit into 2, normal length episodes, A Touch of Murder & Family Matters, meaning that every subsequent episode number is 1 higher in the American cut than the British cut, so the total number of episodes is 13 in the American cut and 12 in the British cut.
== Production ==
The series was produced by Joan Sullivan and Martin Lisemore, and directed by Herbert Wise. Production was delayed because of complex negotiations between the BBC and the copyright holders of Alexander Korda's aborted 1937 film version. This did, however, give the scriptwriter Jack Pulman more time to fine-tune his script.
The series was shot on videotape in the studios at BBC Television Centre, for artistic rather than budgetary reasons. I, Claudius was made at a relatively low cost of £60,000 for an hour of broadcast material (£545,000 in 2023), in a series that had a total running time of 650 minutes.
As alluded to in the 2002 documentary I, Claudius: A Television Epic, the original version of episode 8, "Zeus, by Jove!", included a closing shot after Caligula has cut the fetus from Drusilla's womb, which was considered very shocking. It was therefore re-edited several times, even on the day of its premiere, by order of Bill Slater, then head of Serials Department. After initial broadcast and a rerun two days later, the scene was edited again, so that the episode is now "somewhat attenuated". The "slightly nastier version" of the episode's closing (a scene that used "makeup on her belly") was allegedly shown twice in 1976, but is now lost since the BBC no longer has a copy of it. Pulman noted that the original script for the episode ended with "a long shot showing the butchered woman hanging on a chariot".
The 2002 documentary, which features extensive interviews with all the principal cast members, revealed many previously unknown facts about the casting and development of the series, among them being:
Derek Jacobi was well down the list of those considered to play Claudius. Among those considered for or offered the part before him were American film star Charlton Heston and British actor-comedian Ronnie Barker. Jacobi explained that he secured the role only after another prominent (unnamed) British actor who had taken the part proved to be unsuitable, and had to be replaced at short notice.
Brian Blessed originally auditioned for the role of Tiberius, but was eventually persuaded to play Augustus instead. He recounted some of director Herbert Wise's key pieces of advice on how to play Augustus: Wise told Blessed that he should "be as you are – full of flannel", and that he should always play Augustus as an ordinary person, because the reactions of those around him would make him the Emperor.
John Hurt said that he declined the role of Caligula when it was first offered to him. Because of the time-span of the production, the fact that Derek Jacobi would be the only actor to appear in every episode, and the subsequent commitments of the other actors, it was decided that rather than the customary "wrap party" at the end of the series, there would be a special pre-production party instead, to give the entire cast and crew the chance to meet. Hurt explained that series director Herbert Wise deliberately invited him to attend the party, hoping he would reconsider, and that he was so impressed on meeting the cast and crew that he immediately reversed his decision and took the part.
Siân Phillips has spoken about her initial struggle to perform the character of Livia, because she focused more on making the character sympathetic and justifying her motives than playing her as straightforwardly evil. "I wasn't achieving anything much... I knew it, and they knew it. They would stand there and look faintly worried." Eventually Herbert Wise told her not to be afraid of playing her camp, saying to "Just be evil. The more evil you are, the funnier it is, and the more terrifying it is."
=== Music ===
Wilfred Josephs wrote the title music. David Wulstan and the Clerkes of Oxenford ensemble provided the (diegetic) music for most episodes.
== Home media ==
Most VHS and DVD versions of the TV series include the BBC documentary The Epic That Never Was (1965), about the unfinished 1937 Korda film version of the first book, featuring interviews with key production staff and actors, as well as most of the surviving recorded material. The 2002 UK DVD edition also contains a documentary on the series, I, Claudius – a Television Epic, as well as some alternative and deleted scenes. The US DVD release was updated on 2 December 2008 with superior audio and video to the 2000 US DVD version, but it was met with hostile reviews from some customers, citing that some parts were either cut or censored from the original version, and no subtitles or closed captioning were included.
On 27 March 2012, a 35th anniversary edition was released. It includes all 13 episodes (uncut except for the lost footage in "Zeus, by Jove!") on four discs, with SDH subtitles and one disc of bonus features.
== Awards and reception ==
=== United Kingdom ===
The initial reception of the show in the UK was negative. However, the series went on to become a huge success with audiences. During its original airing in 1976, the BBC estimated that I, Claudius had an average audience of 2.5 million viewers per episode, based on rating surveys. Among other awards, the series won three BAFTAs in 1977: Derek Jacobi, Best Actor (TV); Siân Phillips, Best Actress (TV); Tim Harvey, Best Design (TV). Director Herbert Wise won Outstanding Contribution Award at BAFTAs in 1978. In a list of the 100 Greatest British Television Programmes drawn up by the British Film Institute in 2000, voted for by industry professionals, I, Claudius placed 12th.
=== United States ===
The series was subsequently broadcast in the United States as part of PBS's Masterpiece Theatre series, where it received critical acclaim. Tim Harvey won a 1978 Emmy for Outstanding Art Direction. The producers and director received Emmy nominations.
On Rotten Tomatoes, the series has a rating of 100% based on 24 critic reviews. The website's consensus reads: "Marrying a trove of terrific actors at their peak with a masterful script that draws from irresistibly juicy source material, I, Claudius transcends its paltry production values to become a gold standard for historical dramas."
== Legacy ==
I, Claudius is frequently cited as one of the best British television shows and one of the best shows in history. In 2007, it was listed as one of Time magazine's "100 Best TV Shows of All-TIME", and placed at #9 on BBC America's poll of the 10 best British dramas of all time. In 2016, it was ranked #8 out of 11 on The Daily Telegraph's list of groundbreaking British TV moments.
Modern critics are unanimous in their praise for the quality of the screenplay and the actors' performances, particularly those of Siân Phillips and Derek Jacobi. The Daily Telegraph opined that the "...lust for power, devious plotting and mesmerising machinations" displayed in the show foreshadowed later series like The Sopranos, Game of Thrones, and House of Cards. The creators of the hit 1980s soap opera, Dynasty, acknowledged that they were seeking to make a modern-day version of I, Claudius. Jace Lacob of The Daily Beast compared the character of Livia Soprano to the character of the same name in I, Claudius, saying that "... there is a whiff of familiarity about his Livia, as though the ghost of Phillips' ancient Roman empress had echoed through millennia to rain chaos upon yet another dynastic clan."
In 2012, Mary McNamara of the Los Angeles Times credited I, Claudius with transforming the quality of television drama:
With its complex characters and multi-toned narrative, not to mention the high quality of writing, performance and direction, I, Claudius established a timeline that would eventually include the rise of HBO and all its cable competitors. This in turn expanded the palette and quality of network drama and, most recently, persuaded AMC executives to begin original programming.
However, criticism is sometimes levelled at the series over its relatively primitive production quality compared to modern TV drama, with Charlotte Higgins of The Guardian writing that "it's hard to suppress a giggle in the opening scene at Derek Jacobi's make-up and stringy wig."
== See also ==
Claudius
Julio-Claudian dynasty
== References ==
== External links ==
I, Claudius at BBC Online
I, Claudius at IMDb
I, Claudius Project (concentrates on the BBC production)
Encyclopedia of Television Archived 5 January 2008 at the Wayback Machine
British Film Institute Screen Online (TV series) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palazzo_della_Cancelleria | Palazzo della Cancelleria | The Palazzo della Cancelleria (Palace of the Chancellery, referring to the former Apostolic Chancery of the Pope) is a Renaissance palace in Rome, Italy, situated between the present Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and the Campo de' Fiori, in the rione of Parione. It was built 1489–1513 by Baccio Pontelli and Antonio da Sangallo the Elder as a palace for Raffaele Cardinal Riario, Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church, and is regarded as the earliest Renaissance palace in Rome.
The Palazzo houses the institutions of justice of the Roman Curia, is an extraterritorial property of the Holy See, and is designated as a World Heritage Site.
== History ==
The Cancelleria was built for Raffaele Cardinal Riario who held the post of Camerlengo of the Holy Roman Church to his powerful uncle, Pope Sixtus IV. The rumor was that the funds came from a single night's winnings at gaming.
In 1517, the newly completed Palazzo was seized by Pope Leo X, who suspected Cardinal Riario of plotting to assassinate him. He gifted the palace to his cousin, Cardinal Giulio de Medici (the future Pope Clement VII). Since Cardinal Giulio was the Vice-Chancellor of the Church, the palace became known as the Palazzo della Cancelleria thereafter, and was generally referred to just as the "Cancelleria".
From 1753 the vice chancellor was the Jacobite pretender to the thrones of England, Scotland, France, and Ireland, Henry Benedict Stuart, Cardinal Duke of York, the Jacobite Henry IX and I of England, Scotland, and Ireland. During the late 17th century Christina, former Queen of Sweden, resided here.
During the Roman Republic of 1849 the parliament briefly sat here.
In 2015, it was the residence of retired, and now deceased, Bernard Cardinal Law, Archbishop of Boston, United States.
== Architecture ==
The Palazzo della Cancelleria was the first palazzo in Rome to be erected from the ground up in the new Renaissance style. Its long facade engulfs the small Basilica di San Lorenzo in Damaso, the Cardinal's titular church, that is to its right, with the palatial front continuing straight across it. The entrance to the Basilica is on the right side of the facade. The 5th-century basilica (its interior has been rebuilt) sits, like the Basilica di San Clemente among others, on a pagan Roman mithraeum. Excavations beneath the cortile from 1988 to 1991 revealed the 4th- and 5th-century foundations of the grand Basilica di San Lorenzo in Damaso, founded by Pope Damasus I, and one of the most important early churches of Rome. A cemetery in use from the 8th century until shortly before the construction of the Palazzo was also identified.
The facade, with its rhythm of flat doubled pilasters between the arch-headed windows, is Florentine in conception, comparable to Leone Battista Alberti's Palazzo Rucellai. The overall pattern of drafted masonry, cut with smooth surfaces and grooves around the edges, is ancient Roman in origin.
The bone-colored travertine of the Palazzo was spolia from the nearby ancient ruins of the Theatre of Pompey, for Rome was a field of ruins, built for a city of over one million that then housed a mere 30,000. The 44 Egyptian granite columns of the inner courtyard are from the porticoes of the theatre's upper covered seating, however they were originally taken from the theatre to build the old Basilica di San Lorenzo in Damaso. It is more probable that the form of the courtyard is derived from that of the Palazzo Ducale in Urbino, because the individuals involved in the early planning of the Palazzo had come from Urbino.
== Art ==
The largest reception room, the Salone d'Onore on the piano nobile, has vast murals in fresco that Giorgio Vasari completed in a mere 100 days in 1547. The room is therefore named the Sala dei Cento Giorni ("Room of 100 Days"). He boasted of this accomplishment to Michelangelo, who responded "Si vede" ("It shows").
They were commissioned by Cardinal Alessandro Farnese, the grandson of Pope Paul III, who was Vice-Chancellor of the church for over fifty years. The reign of Paul III is glorified in rather absurd Mannerist style, though the frescos make an impressive ensemble.
The Cancelleria Reliefs are two significant if incomplete 1st-century AD reliefs that were discovered buried at the site when the palazzo was being built. They are now in the Vatican Museums. They were apparently carved to glorify the Emperor Domitian (r. 81-96), then partly recarved to feature Nerva after his accession.
== Music ==
In the palazzo a small private theatre was installed by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, and in the later 17th century the Palazzo became a center of musical performance in Rome.
At the time when Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni lived there as vice-chancellor, the Palazzo della Cancelleria became an important center of the musical life of Rome. Between 1694 and 1705 several oratories by Alessandro Scarlatti and various cantatas for Christmas were performed here for the first time. In 1709 Ottoboni also had a theater built on a project by the architect Filippo Juvarra, which was removed after his death (February 28, 1740). It was in this theater that at least one gathering of the Accademia degli Arcadi was held on the occasion of Christmas 1712 to celebrate the child Jesus.
== References ==
== External links ==
Palazzo della Cancelleria Apostolica
The Vatican: spirit and art of Christian Rome, a book from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries (fully available online as PDF), which contains material on the Palazzo (p. 370-4)
Media related to Palazzo della Cancelleria (Rome) at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/San_Roque,_Antioquia | San Roque, Antioquia | San Roque is a town and municipality in the Colombian department of Antioquia. Part of the subregion of Northeastern Antioquia, it is located 1,475 m (4,839 ft) above sea level. The municipality was founded by Francisco Martinez de Ospina on the 8 February 1880. The town is located between the Nare River and the Nus River. The town was created due to the presence of gold in the areas around the town. The town is located 121 km north of Medellín. The people of this town celebrate most of the traditional festivals that are celebrated in Colombia.
== History ==
San Roque became a municipality in the year 1884. In 1911 the Antioquia Railway is built, traveling near the town and bringing some economy to the area. San Roque was known as a mining center at this time. The past history is what attracts the modern day tourists, and San Roque is often called "The Land of Cordiality" because the natives are so friendly.
== Climate ==
San Roque has a tropical rainforest climate (Af). It has very heavy rainfall year round.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp#:~:text=In%20March%202021%2C%20WhatsApp%20started,Brazil%20and%20Indonesia%2C%20then%20worldwide. | WhatsApp | WhatsApp (officially WhatsApp Messenger), owned by Meta Platforms, is an American social media, instant messaging (IM), and Voice over IP (VoIP) service accessible via desktop and mobile app. It allows users to send text messages, voice messages, and video messages, make voice and video calls, and share images, documents, user locations, and other content. The service requires a cellular mobile telephone number to register. WhatsApp was launched in May 2009. In January 2018, WhatsApp released a standalone business app called WhatsApp Business which can communicate with the standard WhatsApp client. As of May 2025, the service had 3 billion monthly active users, making it the most used messenger app. The name of the app is meant to sound like "what's up".
The service was created by WhatsApp Inc. of Mountain View, California, which was acquired by Facebook in February 2014 for approximately US$19.3 billion. It became the world's most popular messaging application in 2015, with 900 million users, and had more than 2 billion active users worldwide in February 2020. WhatsApp Business had approximately 200 million monthly users in 2023. By 2016, it had become the primary means of Internet communication in regions including the Americas, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of Europe and Africa.
== History ==
=== 2009–2014 ===
WhatsApp was founded by Brian Acton and Jan Koum, former employees of Yahoo! Koum incorporated WhatsApp Inc. in California on February 24, 2009. A month earlier, after Koum purchased an iPhone, he and Acton decided to create an app for the App Store. The idea started off as an app that would display statuses in a phone's Contacts menu, showing if a person was at work or on a call.
Their discussions often took place at the home of Koum's Russian friend Alex Fishman in West San Jose. They realized that to take the idea further, they would need an iPhone developer. Fishman visited RentACoder.com, found Russian developer Igor Solomennikov, and introduced him to Koum.
Koum named the app WhatsApp to sound like "what's up" and it was published on the Apple App Store and BlackBerry App World in May and June 2009 respectively. However, when early versions of WhatsApp kept crashing, Koum considered giving up and looking for a new job. Acton encouraged him to wait for a "few more months".
In June 2009, when the app had been downloaded by only a handful of Fishman's Russian-speaking friends, Apple launched push technology, allowing users to be pinged even when not using the app. Koum updated WhatsApp so that everyone in the user's network would be notified when a user's status changed. This new facility, to Koum's surprise, was used by users to ping "each other with jokey custom statuses like, 'I woke up late' or 'I'm on my way.'" Fishman said, "At some point it sort of became instant messaging".
WhatsApp 2.0, released for iPhone in August 2009, featured a purpose-designed messaging component; the number of active users suddenly increased to 250,000.
Although Acton was working on another startup idea, he decided to join the company. In October 2009, Acton persuaded five former friends at Yahoo! to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and Acton became a co-founder and was given a stake. He officially joined WhatsApp on November 1. Koum then hired a friend in Los Angeles, Chris Peiffer, to develop a BlackBerry version, which arrived two months later. Subsequently, WhatsApp for Symbian OS was added in May 2010, and for Android OS in August 2010. In 2010 Google made multiple acquisition offers for WhatsApp, which were all declined.
To cover the cost of sending verification texts to users, WhatsApp was changed from a free service to a paid one. In December 2009, the ability to send photos was added to the iOS version. By early 2011, WhatsApp was one of the top 20 apps in the U.S. Apple App Store.
In April 2011, Sequoia Capital invested about $8 million for more than 15% of the company, after months of negotiation by Sequoia partner Jim Goetz.
By February 2013, WhatsApp had about 200 million active users and 50 staff members. Sequoia invested another $50 million at a $1.5 billion valuation. Some time in 2013 WhatsApp acquired Santa Clara–based startup SkyMobius, the developers of Vtok, a video and voice calling app.
As of December 2013, the service had 400 million monthly active users. That year, the company had $148 million in expenses and a net loss of $138 million.
=== 2014–2015 ===
On February 19, 2014, one year after the venture capital financing round at a $1.5 billion valuation, Facebook, Inc. (now Meta Platforms) agreed to acquire the company for US$19 billion, its largest acquisition to date. At the time, it was the largest acquisition of a venture-capital-backed company in history. Sequoia Capital received an approximate 5,000% return on its initial investment. Facebook paid $4 billion in cash, $12 billion in Facebook shares, and an additional $3 billion in restricted stock units granted to WhatsApp's founders Koum and Acton. Employee stock was scheduled to vest over four years subsequent to closing. Days after the announcement, WhatsApp users experienced a loss of service, leading to anger across social media.
The acquisition was influenced by the data provided by Onavo, Facebook's research app for monitoring competitors and trending usage of social activities on mobile phones, as well as startups that were performing "unusually well".
The acquisition caused many users to try, or move to, other message services. Telegram claimed that it acquired 8 million new users, and Line, 2 million.
At a keynote presentation at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in February 2014, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that Facebook's acquisition of WhatsApp was closely related to the Internet.org vision. A TechCrunch article said about Zuckerberg's vision:The idea, he said, is to develop a group of basic internet services that would be free of charge to use – "a 911 for the internet". These could be a social networking service like Facebook, a messaging service, maybe search and other things like weather. Providing a bundle of these free of charge to users will work like a gateway drug of sorts – users who may be able to afford data services and phones these days just don't see the point of why they would pay for those data services. This would give them some context for why they are important, and that will lead them to pay for more services like this – or so the hope goes.
Three days after announcing the Facebook purchase, Koum said they were working to introduce voice calls. He also said that new mobile phones would be sold in Germany with the WhatsApp brand, and that their ultimate goal was to be on all smartphones.
In August 2014, WhatsApp was the most popular messaging app in the world, with more than 600 million users. By early January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly users and over 30 billion messages every day. In April 2015, Forbes predicted that between 2012 and 2018, the telecommunications industry would lose $386 billion because of "over-the-top" services like WhatsApp and Skype. That month, WhatsApp had over 800 million users. By September 2015, it had grown to 900 million; and by February 2016, one billion.
On November 30, 2015, the Android WhatsApp client made links to Telegram unclickable and not copyable. Multiple sources confirmed that it was intentional, not a bug, and that it had been implemented when the Android source code that recognized Telegram URLs had been identified. (The word "telegram" appeared in WhatsApp's code.) Some considered it an anti-competitive measure; WhatsApp offered no explanation.
=== 2016–2019 ===
On January 18, 2016, WhatsApp's co-founder Jan Koum announced that it would no longer charge users a $1 annual subscription fee, in an effort to remove a barrier faced by users without payment cards. He also said that the app would not display any third-party ads, and that it would have new features such as the ability to communicate with businesses.
On May 18, 2017, the European Commission announced that it was fining Facebook €110 million for "providing misleading information about WhatsApp takeover" in 2014. The Commission said that in 2014 when Facebook acquired the messaging app, it "falsely claimed it was technically impossible to automatically combine user information from Facebook and WhatsApp." However, in the summer of 2016, WhatsApp had begun sharing user information with its parent company, allowing information such as phone numbers to be used for targeted Facebook advertisements. Facebook acknowledged the breach, but said the errors in their 2014 filings were "not intentional".
In September 2017, WhatsApp's co-founder Brian Acton left the company to start a nonprofit group, later revealed as the Signal Foundation, which developed the WhatsApp competitor Signal. He explained his reasons for leaving in an interview with Forbes a year later. WhatsApp also announced a forthcoming business platform to enable companies to provide customer service at scale, and airlines KLM and Aeroméxico announced their participation in the testing. Both airlines had previously launched customer services on the Facebook Messenger platform.
In January 2018, WhatsApp launched WhatsApp Business for small business use.
In April 2018, WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum announced he would be leaving the company. By leaving before November 2018, due to concerns about privacy, advertising, and monetization by Facebook, Acton and Koum were initially believed to have given up $1.3 billion in unvested stock options, however, it was later reported that Koum retained $450M worth of options via a "rest and vest" program. Facebook later announced that Koum's replacement would be Chris Daniels.
On November 25, 2019, WhatsApp announced an investment of $250,000 through a partnership with Startup India to provide 500 startups with Facebook ad credits of $500 each.
In December 2019, WhatsApp announced that a new update would lock out any Apple users who had not updated to iOS 9 or higher and Samsung, Huawei, Sony and Google users who had not updated to version 4.0 by February 1, 2020. The company also reported that Windows Phone operating systems would no longer be supported after December 31, 2019. WhatsApp was announced to be the 3rd most downloaded mobile phone app of the decade 2010–2019.
=== Since 2020 ===
In March 2020, WhatsApp partnered with the World Health Organization and UNICEF to provide messaging hotlines for people to get information on the COVID-19 pandemic. In the same month, WhatsApp began testing a feature to help users find out more information and context about information they receive to help combat misinformation.
In January 2021, WhatsApp announced a controversial new privacy policy allowing WhatsApp to share data with its parent company, Facebook. This led many users to delete WhatsApp and instead use services such as Signal and Telegram. However, the WhatsApp privacy policy does not apply in the EU, since it violates the principles of GDPR. Facing criticism, WhatsApp postponed the update to May 15, 2021, and had no plans to limit functionality of users, nor nag users who did not approve the new terms.
The 2021 Facebook outage affected other platforms owned by Facebook, such as Instagram and WhatsApp.
In May 2022, WhatsApp launched its Cloud API services (now known as WhatsApp Business Platform) for larger businesses requiring features beyond the WhatsApp Business App. The Cloud API enables businesses to integrate WhatsApp with other software, have a central WhatsApp account for multiple users and implement advanced automation.
In August 2022, WhatsApp launched an integration with JioMart, available only to users in India. Local users can text special numbers in the app to launch an in-app shopping process, where they can order groceries.
In March 2024, Meta announced that WhatsApp would let third-party messaging services enable interoperability with WhatsApp, a requirement of the EU's Digital Markets Act (DMA). This allows users to send messages between other messaging apps and WhatsApp while maintaining end-to-end encryption.
== Features ==
=== Presence ===
On February 24, 2017, WhatsApp launched a new Status feature similar to Snapchat and Facebook stories. WhatsApp has rolled out a feature called 'Voice Status Updates', which allows users to record voice notes and share them as their status on the app.
WhatsApp has the facility to hide users' online status ("Last Seen"). In December 2021, WhatsApp changed the default setting from "everyone" to only people in the user's contacts or who have been conversed with ("nobody" is also an option). In 2022, WhatsApp added the ability for users to turn off their online status.
=== General texting ===
In October 2018, the "Swipe to Reply" option was added to the Android beta version, 16 months after it was introduced for iOS.
In early 2020, WhatsApp launched its "dark mode" for iPhone and Android devices – a new design consisting of a darker palette.
In October 2020, WhatsApp rolled out a feature allowing users to mute both individuals and group chats forever. The mute options are "8 hours", "1 week", and "Always". The "Always" option replaced the "1 year" option that was originally part of the settings.
In May 2023, WhatsApp allowed users to edit messages, aligning itself with competitors such as Telegram and Signal which already offered this feature. According to the company, messages could be edited within a 15-minute window after being sent. Edited messages were tagged as "edited" to inform recipients that the content had been modified. Text formatting options like code blocks, quote blocks, and bulleted lists also became available for the first time.
In October 2024, WhatsApp expanded their chat filter feature, adding the ability for users to create custom lists that contain specific chats of their choice.
=== Voice and video calling and notes ===
In August 2013, WhatsApp added voice messages to their apps, giving users a way to send short audio recordings directly in their chats.
Voice calls between two accounts were added to the app in March and April 2015. By June 2016, the company's blog reported more than 100 million voice calls per day were being placed on WhatsApp.
In November 2016, video calls between two accounts were introduced.
Later in September 2018, WhatsApp introduced group audio and video call features.
In July 2023, video messages were added to WhatsApp. Similar to voice messages, this feature allows users to record and send short videos directly in a chat. This lets users share videos of themselves more quickly, and without adding anything to their device's gallery. Currently, video messages are limited to 60 seconds.
In November 2023, WhatsApp added a "voice chat" feature for groups with more than 32 members. Unlike their 32-person group calls, starting a voice chat does not call all group members directly; they instead receive a notification to join the voice chat.
In December 2023, WhatsApp's "View Once" feature expanded to include voice messages. Voice messages sent this way are deleted after the recipient listens to them the first time.
In June 2024, improvements were made to voice and video calls, allowing up to 32 participants in video calls, adding audio to screen sharing, and introducing a new codec to increase call reliability.
In November 2024, the ability to transcribe voice messages was added, allowing users to read out what was said in a voice message, rather than listening to the audio.
In December 2024, WhatsApp introduced several new video calling features, including the ability to select specific participants from a group to make a call, rather than calling all group members. Visual effects also became available, adding visual filters to a user's video feed.
=== File sharing ===
In November 2010, a slate of improvements for the iOS version of WhatsApp were released, including the ability to search for messages in your chat history, trimming long videos to a sendable size, the ability to cancel media messages as they upload or download, and previewing photos before sending them. In March 2012, WhatsApp improved its location-sharing function, allowing users to share not only their location, but also the location of places, such as restaurants or hotels.
In July 2017, WhatsApp added support for file uploads of all file types, with a limit of 100 MB. Previously between March 2016 and May 2017, only limited file types categorised as images (JPG, PNG, GIF), videos (MP4, AVI), and documents (CSV, DOC/DOCX, PDF, PPT/PPTX, RTF, TXT, XLS/XLSX), were allowed to be shared for file attachments.
In July 2021, WhatsApp announced forthcoming support for sending uncompressed images and videos in 3 options: Auto, Best Quality and Data Saver.
In May 2022, the file upload limit was raised from 100 MB to 2 GB, and the maximum group size increased to 512 members.
=== Security and encryption ===
On November 10, 2016, WhatsApp launched a beta version of two-factor authentication for Android users, which allowed them to use their email addresses for further protection. Also in November 2016, Facebook ceased collecting WhatsApp data for advertising in Europe.
In October 2019, WhatsApp officially launched a new fingerprint app-locking feature for Android users.
In July 2021, WhatsApp announced forthcoming support for end-to-end encryption for backups stored in Facebook's cloud.
In August 2021, WhatsApp launched a feature that allows chat history to be transferred between mobile operating systems. This was implemented only on Samsung phones, with plans to expand to Android and iOS "soon".
In October 2023 they also introduced passkey support, where a user can verify their login with on-device biometrics, rather than SMS. In November 2023, WhatsApp also began rolling out support for sending login codes to a linked email address, rather than via SMS. In a later update on November 30, WhatsApp added a Secret Code feature, which allows those who use locked chats to enter a unique password that hides those chats from view when unlocking the app.
=== Linked and multi-device support ===
In January 2015, WhatsApp launched a web client that allowed users to scan a QR code with their mobile app, mirroring their chats to their browser. The web client was not standalone, and required the user's phone to stay on and connected to the internet. It was also not available for iOS users on launch, due to limitations from Apple. Since then, linked devices support has expanded and more information is written in the Platform Support part of this article.
In July 2021 the company was also testing multi-device support, allowing computer users to run WhatsApp without an active phone session.
In April 2023, the app rolled out a feature that would allow account access across multiple phones, in a shift that would make it more like competitors. Messages would still be end-to-end encrypted. WhatsApp officially rolled out the Companion mode for Android users, allowing linking up to five Android phones to a single account. Now, the feature is also made available to iOS users, allowing them to link up to four iPhones.
In October 2023, support for logging in to multiple (meaning two) accounts was added, allowing users to switch between different WhatsApp accounts in the same app.
=== Stickers and avatars ===
On October 25, 2018, WhatsApp announced support for Stickers. Unlike other platforms, WhatsApp requires third-party apps to add Stickers to WhatsApp.
In March 2021, WhatsApp started rolling out support for third-party animated stickers, initially in Iran, Brazil and Indonesia, then worldwide.
In December 2022, WhatsApp launched 3D digital avatars. Users are able to use an avatar as their profile picture or use it for stickers during instant messaging, similar to those offered by Bitmoji or Memoji.
=== Communities and Channels ===
In April 2022, WhatsApp announced undated plans to roll out a Communities feature allowing several group chats to exist in a shared space, getting unified notifications and opening up smaller discussion groups. The company also announced plans to implement reactions, the ability for administrators to delete messages in groups and voice calls up to 32 participants.
In June 2023, a feature called WhatsApp Channels was launched which allows content creators, public figures and organizations to send newsletter-like broadcasts to large numbers of users. Unlike messages in groups or private chats, channels are not end-to-end encrypted. Channels were initially only available to users in Colombia and Singapore, then later Egypt, Chile, Malaysia, Morocco, Ukraine, Kenya and Peru before becoming widely available in September 2023.
=== Artificial intelligence ===
In April 2024, an AI-powered "Smart Assistant" became widely available in WhatsApp, allowing users to ask it questions or have it complete tasks such as generating images. The assistant is based on the LLaMa 3 model, and is also available on other Meta platforms like Facebook and Instagram. WhatsApp also introduced chat filters, allowing users to sort their chats by All, Unread or Groups.
In September 2024, WhatsApp expanded support for Meta AI, allowing users to send text and photos to Meta AI to ask questions, identify objects, translate text or edit pictures.
In December 2024, WhatsApp introduced a reverse image search feature, allowing users to verify image authenticity directly within the app using Google Search.
=== About ===
In November 2025, WhatsApp announced that they would update their About feature, which allows users to add a short message to explain what they are doing. By default, it is set to disappear in 24 hours, but it can be set for a longer amount of time and can be restricted for viewing by other contacts in the Settings menu. According to WhatsApp, this update was made for the incoming Christmas period for users to inform their contacts on their activities during the holidays. Prior to the update, the feature was "largely hidden within the apps menus" and difficult to find, with the reason for updating being that WhatsApp wanted the feature to be used more often. Engadget called the revamped feature "WhatsApp’s version of an AIM away message" and likened it to Instagram's and Facebook's Notes.
== Platform support ==
Currently, WhatsApp's principal platforms, which are fully supported, are devices supporting mobile telephony running Android, and iPhones. As of 2025, the software requires at least Android version 5.0 or iOS version 15.1 respectively. This table details platform support history.
=== Linked devices ===
Linked devices are secondary devices running the WhatsApp messenger software. They link to and sync with WhatsApp actively running on a supported primary phone. Up to four linked devices can be added per user account. Linked devices automatically log out after 14 days of inactivity on the primary phone. Linked devices allow the service to be used on multiple other platforms like desktop computers and smartwatches (e.g. WhatsApp Web, Facebook Portal), but also on other smartphones (called companions).
Originally it was required for the primary phone to keep an online connection to WhatsApp for linked devices to work, but now WhatsApp can run on linked devices without such requirement. This ability (named multi-device support) began testing in July 2021 and rolled out to all users in April 2023.
==== WhatsApp Web ====
WhatsApp was officially made available for PCs through a web client, under the name WhatsApp Web, released on January 21, 2015. WhatsApp Web is accessed through web.whatsapp.com and access is granted after the user scans their personal QR code through their mobile WhatsApp client. The desktop version was first only available to Android, BlackBerry, and Windows Phone users. Later on, it also added support for iOS, Nokia Series 40, and Nokia S60 (Symbian).
Previously the WhatsApp user's handset had to be connected to the Internet for the browser application to function but as of an update in October 2021 (and integrated by default in WhatsApp as of April 2022) that is no longer the case. When this multi-device feature was first introduced to Android and iOS users, it could only show messages for the last three months on the Web version, because the Web version was syncing with the phone. Since the complete roll out of this feature, users cannot check old messages before this period on the Web version anymore.
There are similar unofficial WhatsApp solutions for macOS, such as the open-source ChitChat, previously known as WhatsMac.
==== Windows and Mac ====
On May 10, 2016, the messenger was introduced for both Microsoft Windows and macOS operating systems. Support for video and voice calls from desktop clients was later added. Similar to the WhatsApp Web format, the app, which synchronises with a user's mobile device, is available for download on the website. It supported operating systems Windows 8 and OS X 10.10 and higher.
In 2023, WhatsApp replaced the Electron-based apps with native versions for their respective platforms. The Windows version is based on UWP while the Mac version is a port of the iOS version using Catalyst technology.
In July 2025, WhatsApp stopped developing the Windows UWP-based app due to poor support and deprecation of the UWP framework by Microsoft. WhatsApp for Windows transitioned over to the Microsoft Edge WebView2 framework, marking a return to utilising a web-based framework (just like Electron previously) instead of a native framework. The WebView2-based app has been criticised for its sluggish performance, high RAM usage, and requirement to keep the app running in the background to receive push notifications, compared to the previous native version.
==== iPad ====
WhatsApp has been officially supported for iPads and its iPadOS since May 27, 2025. Similarly to WhatsApp for web, Windows, Mac, and smartwatches, the iPad is a type of linked device that connects and syncs to WhatsApp running on a smartphone.
==== Smartwatches ====
WhatsApp added support for Android Wear (now called Wear OS) in 2014.
== Technical ==
WhatsApp uses a customized version of the open standard Extensible messaging and presence protocol (XMPP). A 2019 document released by the DOJ confirms this by naming "FunXMPP" as the protocol used by WhatsApp. The document was part of a lawsuit by WhatsApp and Meta against the NSO Group for their Pegasus malware. Upon installation, it creates a user account using the user's phone number as the username (Jabber ID: [phone number]@s.whatsapp.net).
WhatsApp automatically compares all the phone numbers from the device's address book with its central database of WhatsApp users to automatically add contacts to the user's WhatsApp contact list. Previously the Android and Nokia Series 40 versions used an MD5-hashed, reversed-version of the phone's IMEI as a password, while the iOS version used the phone's Wi-Fi MAC address instead of the IMEI. A 2012 update implemented generation of a random password on the server side. Alternatively a user can also contact any other WhatsApp user through the URL https://api.whatsapp.com/send/?phone=[phone number] where [phone number] is the number of the contact including the country code.
Some devices using dual SIMs may not be compatible with WhatsApp, though there are unofficial workarounds to install the app.
In February 2015, WhatsApp implemented voice calling, which helped WhatsApp to attract a different segment of the user population. WhatsApp's voice codec is Opus, which uses the modified discrete cosine transform (MDCT) and linear predictive coding (LPC) audio compression algorithms. WhatsApp uses Opus at 8–16 kHz sampling rates. On November 14, 2016, WhatsApp added video calling for users using Android, iPhone, and Windows Phone devices.
In November 2017, WhatsApp implemented a feature giving users seven minutes to delete messages sent by mistake.
Multimedia messages are sent by uploading the image, audio or video to be sent to an HTTP server and then sending a link to the content along with its Base64 encoded thumbnail, if applicable.
WhatsApp uses a "store and forward" mechanism for exchanging messages between two users. When a user sends a message, it is stored on a WhatsApp server, which tries to forward it to the addressee, and repeatedly requests acknowledgement of receipt. When the message is acknowledged, the server deletes it; if undelivered after 30 days, it is also deleted.
=== End-to-end encryption ===
On November 18, 2014, Open Whisper Systems announced a partnership with WhatsApp to provide end-to-end encryption by incorporating the encryption protocol used in Signal into each WhatsApp client platform. Open Whisper Systems said that they had already incorporated the protocol into the latest WhatsApp client for Android, and that support for other clients, group/media messages, and key verification would be coming soon after. WhatsApp confirmed the partnership to reporters, but there was no announcement or documentation about the encryption feature on the official website, and further requests for comment were declined. In April 2015, German magazine Heise security used ARP spoofing to confirm that the protocol had been implemented for Android-to-Android messages, and that WhatsApp messages from or to iPhones running iOS were still not end-to-end encrypted. They expressed the concern that regular WhatsApp users still could not tell the difference between end-to-end encrypted messages and regular messages.
On April 5, 2016, WhatsApp and Open Whisper Systems announced that they had finished adding end-to-end encryption to "every form of communication" on WhatsApp, and that users could now verify each other's keys. Users were also given the option to enable a trust on first use mechanism to be notified if a correspondent's key changes. According to a white paper that was released along with the announcement, WhatsApp messages are encrypted with the Signal Protocol. WhatsApp calls are encrypted with SRTP, and all client-server communications are "layered within a separate encrypted channel".
On October 14, 2021, WhatsApp rolled out end-to-end encryption for backups on Android and iOS. The feature has to be turned on by the user and provides the option to encrypt the backup either with a password or a 64-digit encryption key.
The application can store encrypted copies of the chat messages onto the SD card, but chat messages are also stored unencrypted in the SQLite database file "msgstore.db".
WhatsApp uses the Sender Keys protocol.
=== WhatsApp Payments ===
WhatsApp Payments (marketed as WhatsApp Pay) is a peer-to-peer money transfer feature. The service became generally available in India and Brazil, and in Singapore for WhatsApp Business transactions only.
==== India ====
In July 2017, WhatsApp received permission from the National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) to enter into partnership with multiple Indian banks, for transactions over Unified Payments Interface (UPI), which relies on mobile phone numbers to make account-to-account transfers. In November 2020, UPI payments via WhatsApp were initially restricted to 20 million users, and to 100 million users in April 2022, and became generally available to everyone in August 2022.
=== Facebook/WhatsApp cryptocurrency project, 2019–2022 ===
On February 28, 2019, The New York Times reported that Facebook was "hoping to succeed where Bitcoin failed" by developing an in-house cryptocurrency that would be incorporated into WhatsApp. The project reportedly involved more than 50 engineers under the direction of former PayPal president David A. Marcus. This "Facebook coin" would reportedly be a stablecoin pegged to the value of a basket of different foreign currencies.
In June 2019, Facebook said that the project would be named Libra, and that a digital wallet named "Calibra" was to be integrated into Facebook and WhatsApp. After financial regulators in many regions raised concerns, Facebook stated that the currency, renamed Diem since December 2020, would require a government-issued ID for verification, and the wallet app would have fraud protection. Calibra was rebranded to Novi in May 2020.
Meta (formerly Facebook) ended its Novi project on September 1, 2022.
== Controversies and criticism ==
=== Misinformation ===
WhatsApp has repeatedly imposed limits on message forwarding in response to the spread of misinformation in countries including India and Australia. The measure, first introduced in 2018 to combat spam, was expanded and remained active in 2021. WhatsApp stated that the forwarding limits had helped to curb the spread of misinformation regarding COVID-19.
==== Murders in India ====
In India, WhatsApp encouraged people to report messages that were fraudulent or incited violence after lynch mobs in India murdered innocent people because of malicious WhatsApp messages falsely accusing the victims of intending to abduct children. There were a series of incidents between 2017 and 2020, after which WhatsApp announced changes for Indian users of the platform that labels forwarded messages as such.
==== 2018 elections in Brazil ====
In an investigation on the use of social media in politics, it was found that WhatsApp was being abused for the spread of fake news in the 2018 presidential elections in Brazil. It was reported that US$3 million was spent in illegal concealed contributions related to this practice.
Researchers and journalists called on WhatsApp's parent company, Facebook, to adopt measures similar to those adopted in India and restrict the spread of hoaxes and fake news.
=== Security and privacy ===
WhatsApp was initially criticized for its lack of encryption, sending information as plaintext. Encryption was first added in May 2012. End-to-end encryption was only fully implemented in April 2016 after a two-year process. As of September 2021, it is known that WhatsApp makes extensive use of outside contractors and artificial intelligence systems to examine certain user messages, images and videos (those that have been flagged by users as possibly abusive); and turns over to law enforcement metadata including critical account and location information.
In 2016, WhatsApp was widely praised for the addition of end-to-end encryption and earned a 6 out of 7 points on the Electronic Frontier Foundation's "Secure Messaging Scorecard". WhatsApp was criticized by security researchers and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for using backups that are not covered by end-to-end encryption and allow messages to be accessed by third-parties.
In May 2019, a security vulnerability in WhatsApp was found and fixed that allowed a remote person to install spyware by making a call which did not need to be answered.
In September 2019, WhatsApp was criticized for its implementation of a 'delete for everyone' feature. iOS users can elect to save media to their camera roll automatically. When a user deletes media for everyone, WhatsApp does not delete images saved in the iOS camera roll and so those users are able to keep the images. WhatsApp released a statement saying that "the feature is working properly", and that images stored in the camera roll cannot be deleted due to Apple's security layers.
In November 2019, WhatsApp released a new privacy feature that let users decide who can add them to groups.
In December 2019, WhatsApp confirmed a security flaw that would allow hackers to use a malicious GIF image file to gain access to the recipient's data. When the recipient opened the gallery within WhatsApp, even if not sending the malicious image, the hack is triggered and the device and its contents become vulnerable. The flaw was patched and users were encouraged to update WhatsApp.
On December 17, 2019, WhatsApp fixed a security flaw that allowed cyber attackers to repeatedly crash the messaging application for all members of group chat, which could only be fixed by forcing the complete uninstall and reinstall of the app. The bug was discovered by Check Point in August 2019 and reported to WhatsApp. It was fixed in version 2.19.246 onwards.
For security purposes, since February 1, 2020, WhatsApp has been made unavailable on smartphones using legacy operating systems like Android 2.3.7 or older and iPhone iOS 8 or older that are no longer updated by their providers.
In April 2020, the NSO Group held its governmental clients accountable for the allegation of human rights abuses by WhatsApp. In its revelation via documents received from court, the group claimed that the lawsuit brought against the company by WhatsApp threatened to infringe on its clients' "national security and foreign policy concerns". However, the company did not reveal names of the end users, which according to a research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
On December 16, 2020, a claim that WhatsApp gave Google access to private messages was included in the anti-trust case against the latter. As the complaint was heavily redacted due to being an ongoing case, it did not disclose whether this was alleged tampering with the app's end-to-end encryption, or Google accessing user backups.
In January 2021, WhatsApp announced an updated privacy policy which stated that WhatsApp would share user data with Facebook and its "family of companies" beginning February 2021. Previously, users could opt-out of such data sharing, but the new policy removed this option. The new privacy policy would not apply within the EU, as it is illegal under the GDPR. Facebook and WhatsApp were widely criticized for this move. The enforcement of the privacy policy was postponed from February 8 to May 15, 2021, WhatsApp announced they had no plans to limit the functionality of the app for those who did not approve the new terms.
On October 15, 2021, WhatsApp announced that it would begin offering an end-to-end encryption service for chat backups, meaning no third party (including both WhatsApp and the cloud storage vendor) would have access to a user's information. This new encryption feature added an additional layer of protection to chat backups stored either on Apple iCloud or Google Drive.
On November 29, 2021, an FBI document was uncovered by Rolling Stone, revealing that WhatsApp responds to warrants and subpoenas from law enforcement within minutes, providing user metadata to the authorities. The metadata includes the user's contact information and address book.
In January 2022, an unsealed surveillance application revealed that WhatsApp started tracking seven users from China and Macau in November 2021, based on a request from US DEA investigators. The app collected data on who the users contacted and how often, and when and how they were using the app. This is reportedly not an isolated occurrence, as federal agencies can use the Electronic Communications Privacy Act to covertly track users without submitting any probable cause or linking a user's number to their identity.
At the beginning of 2022, it was revealed that San Diego–based startup Boldend had developed tools to hack WhatsApp's encryption, gaining access to user data, at some point since the startup's inception in 2017. The vulnerability was reportedly patched in January 2021. Boldend is financed, in part, by Peter Thiel, a notable investor in Facebook.
In September 2022, a critical security issue in WhatsApp's Android video call feature was reported. An integer overflow bug allowed a malicious user to take full control of the victim's application once a video call between two WhatsApp users was established. The issue was patched on the day it was officially reported.
In 2025, WhatsApp alerted 90 journalists and other members of civil society that they had been targeted by spyware used by the Israeli technology company Paragon Solutions.In April 2025, a group of Austrian researchers were able to extract 3.5 billion users' phone numbers by being able to make a hundred million contact discovery requests an hour, a flaw that exposed previous warnings from researchers in 2017 were not addressed. The researchers notified, Meta (who updated the enumeration problem in October), and deleted their copy of the phone numbers.
==== UK institutions ====
As of 2023, WhatsApp is widely used by government institutions in the UK, although such use is viewed as problematical since it hinders the public, including journalists, from obtaining accurate government records when making freedom of information requests.
The information commissioner has said that the use of WhatsApp posed risks to transparency since members of Parliament, government ministers, and officials who wished to avoid scrutiny might use WhatsApp despite there being official channels. Transparency campaigners have challenged the practice in court.
Notably, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the UK government routinely used WhatsApp to make decisions on managing the crisis, including on personal rather than government-issued devices. When the official inquiry into the pandemic began seeking evidence in May 2023, this presented issues for its ability to gather the material it sought. A personal device of the former Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had been compromised by a security breach, and it was claimed that it could not be switched on to recover messages. Further, the Cabinet Office had claimed that since many messages were not relevant to the inquiry, it only needed to hand over material it had
selected as being relevant. The High Court, in a judicial review sought by the Cabinet Office, declared that all documents sought by the inquiry were to be handed over unredacted.
In 2018, it was reported that around 500,000 National Health Service (NHS) staff used WhatsApp and other instant messaging systems at work and around 29,000 had faced disciplinary action for doing so. Higher usage was reported by frontline clinical staff to keep up with care needs, even though NHS trust policies do not permit their use.
==== Mods and fake versions ====
In March 2019, WhatsApp released a guide for users who had installed unofficial modified versions of WhatsApp and warned that it may ban those using unofficial clients.
==== WhatsApp snooping scandal ====
In May 2019, WhatsApp was attacked by hackers who installed spyware on a number of victims' smartphones. The hack, allegedly developed by Israeli surveillance technology firm NSO Group, injected malware onto WhatsApp users' phones via a remote-exploit bug in the app's Voice over IP calling functions. A Wired report noted the attack was able to inject malware via calls to the targeted phone, even if the user did not answer the call.
In October 2019, WhatsApp filed a lawsuit against NSO Group in a San Francisco court, claiming that the alleged cyberattack violated US laws including the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA). According to WhatsApp, the exploit "targeted at least 100 human-rights defenders, journalists and other members of civil society" among a total of 1,400 users in 20 countries.
In April 2020, the NSO Group held its governmental clients accountable for the allegation of human rights abuses by WhatsApp. In its revelation via documents received via court, the group claimed that the lawsuit brought against the company by WhatsApp threatened to infringe on its clients' "national security and foreign policy concerns". However, the company did not reveal the names of the end users, which according to research by Citizen Lab include, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kazakhstan, Morocco, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates.
In July 2020, a US federal judge ruled that the lawsuit against NSO group could proceed. NSO Group filed a motion to have the lawsuit dismissed, but the judge denied all of its arguments.
==== Jeff Bezos phone hack ====
In January 2020, a digital forensic analysis revealed that the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos received an encrypted message on WhatsApp from the official account of Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. The message reportedly contained a malicious file, the receipt of which resulted in Bezos' phone being hacked. The United Nations' special rapporteur David Kaye and Agnes Callamard later confirmed that Jeff Bezos' phone was hacked through WhatsApp, as he was one of the targets of Saudi's hit list of individuals close to The Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi.
==== FBI ====
In 2021, an FBI document obtained through a Freedom of Information request by Property of the People, Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, revealed that WhatsApp and iMessage are vulnerable to law-enforcement real-time searches.
==== Tek Fog ====
In January 2022, an investigation by The Wire claimed that BJP, an Indian political party, allegedly used an app called Tek Fog which was capable of hacking inactive WhatsApp accounts en masse to mass message their contacts with propaganda. According to the report, a whistleblower with app access was able to hack a test WhatsApp account controlled by reporters "within minutes." It was later determined that staff of their Meta investigative team had been duped by false information; The Wire fired the staff member involved and issued a formal apology to its readers.
=== Terrorism ===
In December 2015, it was reported that terrorist organization ISIS had been using WhatsApp to plot the November 2015 Paris attacks. According to The Independent, ISIS also uses WhatsApp to traffic sex slaves.
In March 2017, British Home Secretary Amber Rudd said encryption capabilities of messaging tools like WhatsApp are unacceptable, as news reported that Khalid Masood used the application several minutes before perpetrating the 2017 Westminster attack. Rudd publicly called for police and intelligence agencies to be given access to WhatsApp and other encrypted messaging services to prevent future terror attacks.
In April 2017, the perpetrator of the Stockholm truck attack reportedly used WhatsApp to exchange messages with an ISIS supporter shortly before and after the incident. The messages involved discussing how to make an explosive device and a confession to the attack.
In April 2017, nearly 300 WhatsApp groups with about 250 members each were reportedly being used to mobilize stone-pelters in Jammu and Kashmir to disrupt security forces' operations at encounter sites. According to police, 90% of these groups were closed down after police contacted their admins. Further, after a six-month probe which involved the infiltration of 79 WhatsApp groups, the National Investigation Agency reported that out of about 6386 members and admins of these groups, about 1000 were residents of Pakistan and gulf nations. Further, for their help in negating anti-terror operations, the Indian stone pelters were getting funded through barter trade from Pakistan and other indirect means.
In May 2022, the FBI stated that an ISIS sympathizer, who was plotting to assassinate George W. Bush, was arrested based on his WhatsApp data. According to the arrest warrant for the suspect, his WhatsApp account was placed under surveillance.
=== Scams and malware ===
There are numerous ongoing scams on WhatsApp that let hackers spread viruses or malware. In May 2016, some WhatsApp users were reported to have been tricked into downloading a third-party application called WhatsApp Gold, which was part of a scam that infected the users' phones with malware. A message that promises to allow access to their WhatsApp friends' conversations, or their contact lists, has become the most popular hit against anyone who uses the application in Brazil. Clicking on the message actually sends paid text messages. Since December 2016, more than 1.5 million people have clicked and lost money.
Another application called GB WhatsApp is considered malicious by cybersecurity firm Symantec because it usually performs some unauthorized operations on end-user devices.
=== Bans ===
==== China ====
WhatsApp is owned by Meta, whose main social media service Facebook has been blocked in China since 2009. In September 2017, security researchers reported to The New York Times that the WhatsApp service had been completely blocked in China. On April 19, 2024, Apple removed WhatsApp from the App Store in China, citing government orders that stemmed from national security concerns.
==== Iran ====
On May 9, 2014, the government of Iran announced that it had proposed to block the access to WhatsApp service to Iranian residents. "The reason for this is the assumption of WhatsApp by the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who is an American Zionist", said Abdolsamad Khorramabadi, head of the country's Committee on Internet Crimes. Subsequently, Iranian president Hassan Rouhani issued an order to the Ministry of ICT to stop filtering WhatsApp. It was blocked permanently until Meta answers September 2022.
==== Turkey ====
Turkey temporarily banned WhatsApp in 2016, following the assassination of the Russian ambassador to Turkey.
==== Brazil ====
On March 1, 2016, Diego Dzodan, Facebook's vice-president for Latin America was arrested in Brazil for not cooperating with an investigation in which WhatsApp conversations were requested. On March 2, 2016, at dawn the next day, Dzodan was released because the Court of Appeal held that the arrest was disproportionate and unreasonable.
On May 2, 2016, mobile providers in Brazil were ordered to block WhatsApp for 72 hours for the service's second failure to cooperate with criminal court orders. Once again, the block was lifted following an appeal, after less than 24 hours.
Brazil's Central Bank issued an order to payment card companies Visa and Mastercard on June 23, 2020, to stop working with WhatsApp on its new electronic payment system. A statement from the Bank asserted the decision to block the Facebook-owned company's latest offering was taken to "preserve an adequate competitive environment" in the mobile payments space and to ensure "functioning of a payment system that's interchangeable, fast, secure, transparent, open and cheap."
==== Uganda ====
The government of Uganda banned WhatsApp and Facebook, along with other social media platforms, to enforce a tax on the use of social media. Users are to be charged USh.200/= per day to access these services according to the new law set by parliament.
==== United Arab Emirates (UAE) ====
The United Arab Emirates banned WhatsApp video chat and VoIP call applications in as early as 2013 due to what is often reported as an effort to protect the commercial interests of their home grown nationally owned telecom providers (du and Etisalat). Their app ToTok has received press suggesting it is able to spy on users.
==== Cuba ====
In July 2021, the Cuban government blocked access to several social media platforms, including WhatsApp, to curb the spread of information during the anti-government protests.
==== Switzerland ====
In December 2021, the Swiss army banned the use of WhatsApp and several other non-Swiss encrypted messaging services by army personnel. The ban was prompted by concerns of US authorities potentially accessing user data for such apps because of the CLOUD Act. The army recommended that all army personnel use Threema instead, as the service is based in Switzerland.
==== Zambia ====
In August 2021, the digital rights organization Access Now reported that WhatsApp along with several other social media apps was being blocked in Zambia for the duration of the general election. The organization reported a massive drop-off in traffic for the blocked services, though the country's government made no official statements about the block.
==== Saudi Arabia ====
The Saudi Central Bank (SAMA) has prohibited local banks from using instant messaging applications like WhatsApp for customer communication. This decision aims to enhance data security and protect customer information.
==== Russia ====
28 November 2025 Russia threatens full ban on WhatsApp.
==== Third-party clients ====
In mid-2013, WhatsApp Inc. filed for the DMCA takedown of the discussion thread on the XDA Developers forums about the then popular third-party client "WhatsApp Plus".
In 2015, some third-party WhatsApp clients that were reverse-engineering the WhatsApp mobile app, received a cease and desist to stop activities that were violating WhatsApp legal terms. As a result, users of third-party WhatsApp clients were also banned.
== WhatsApp Business ==
WhatsApp launched two business-oriented apps in January 2018, separated by the intended userbase:
A WhatsApp Business app for small companies
An Enterprise Solution known as WhatsApp Business Platform for bigger companies with global customer bases, such as airlines, e-commerce retailers and banks, who would be able to offer customer service and conversational commerce (e-commerce) via WhatsApp chat, using live agents or chatbots (as far back as 2015, companies like Meteordesk had provided unofficial solutions for enterprises to attend to large numbers of users, but these were shut down by WhatsApp)
This solution was originally available as on-premise only, but in 2022, WhatsApp Cloud API became available. The on-premise API has been deprecated and will be fully sunset on October 23, 2025.
As WhatsApp API does not have a frontend interface, businesses need to subscribe through one of Meta's approved Business Solution Providers. Examples of these include respond.io, Gupshup, Trengo, Wati and Manychat.
In October 2020, Facebook announced the introduction of pricing tiers for services offered via the WhatsApp Business API, charged on a per-conversation basis. On July 1, 2025, a new pricing tier system came into effect which charges per-message rather than per-conversation.
== User statistics ==
WhatsApp handled ten billion messages per day in August 2012, growing from two billion in April 2012, and one billion the previous October. On June 13, 2013, WhatsApp announced that they had reached their new daily record by processing 27 billion messages. According to the Financial Times, WhatsApp "has done to SMS on mobile phones what Skype did to international calling on landlines".
By April 22, 2014, WhatsApp had over 500 million monthly active users, 700 million photos and 100 million videos were being shared daily, and the messaging system was handling more than 10 billion messages each day.
On August 24, 2014, Koum announced on his Twitter account that WhatsApp had over 600 million active users worldwide. At that point WhatsApp was adding about 25 million new users every month, or 833,000 active users per day.
In May 2017, it was reported that WhatsApp users spend over 340 million minutes on video calls each day on the app. This is the equivalent of roughly 646 years of video calls per day.
By February 2017, WhatsApp had over 1.2 billion users globally, reaching 1.5 billion monthly active users by the end of 2017.
In January 2020, WhatsApp reached over 5 billion installs on Google Play Store making it only the second non-Google app to achieve this milestone.
In February 2020, WhatsApp had over 2 billion users globally.
In May 2025, Meta reported WhatsApp had over 3 billion monthly active users globally.
=== Specific markets ===
India is by far WhatsApp's largest market in terms of total number of users. In May 2014, WhatsApp crossed 50 million monthly active users in India, which is also its largest country by the number of monthly active users, then 70 million in October 2014, making users in India 10% of WhatsApp's total user base. In February 2017, WhatsApp reached 200 million monthly active users in India.
Israel is one of WhatsApp's strongest markets in terms of ubiquitous usage. According to Globes, already by 2013 the application was installed on 92% of all smartphones, with 86% of users reporting daily use.
In July 2024, WhatsApp reached 100 million users in the United States.
=== Competition ===
WhatsApp competes with messaging services including iMessage (estimated 1.3 billion active users), WeChat (1.26 billion active users), Telegram (900 million users), Viber (260 million active users), LINE (217 million active users), KakaoTalk (57 million active users), and Signal (70 million active users). Both Telegram and Signal in particular were reported to get registration spikes during WhatsApp outages and controversies.
WhatsApp has increasingly drawn its innovation from competing services, such as a Telegram-inspired web version and features for groups. In 2016, WhatsApp was accused of copying features from a then-unreleased version of iMessage.
== See also ==
Comparison of cross-platform instant messaging clients
Comparison of user features of messaging platforms
Comparison of VoIP software – Voice over IP software comparison
Criticism of Facebook
Instagram – Social media platform owned by Meta
List of most-downloaded Google Play applications
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website
Media related to WhatsApp at Wikimedia Commons |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meaning_of_Life_(album) | Meaning of Life (album) | Meaning of Life is the eighth studio album by American pop singer Kelly Clarkson. It was released on October 27, 2017, by Atlantic Records. Executive produced by Clarkson and Craig Kallman, the album is her debut release for the label after completing her recording contract and leaving previous label, RCA Records, which she had signed after winning the first season of American Idol. Weary of the structure of the previous record deal where she was strictly limited to releasing pop music, Clarkson wanted to pursue a different genre—soul and R&B music, which she had previously wanted to make and had only finally found the opportunity to do so after being signed by Kallman to the label.
Meaning of Life is Clarkson's second foray into soul and R&B music, after the lead single to her debut album "Miss Independent", departing from the predominant pop and pop rock sound established from her previous studio releases and returning to her multi-genre performances on American Idol. Inspired by the music of the 1990s and prominent singers Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, En Vogue and Bonnie Raitt, Clarkson wanted the album to evoke a music similar to the early works of those artists—with the overall goal of emoting a "soulful" spirit. To achieve this, Clarkson commissioned several collaborators—from previous associates Jesse Shatkin, Greg Kurstin, Mozella and Jason Halbert, to new project partners The Monarch, Mick Schultz, Harlœ and James Morrison. The album's tracks share a cohesive theme of interpersonal connections in life, centered on the subjects of love and living the moment.
Meaning of Life received a generally positive response from music critics, who commended Clarkson's newfound confidence and the cohesiveness of the album. Commercially, the record became her eighth consecutive studio album to debut in the top three of the Billboard 200 chart. Three singles were released to promote the album: "Love So Soft", "I Don't Think About You", and "Heat", the first and last of which topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs chart. Meaning of Life received two Grammy Award nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Love So Soft" at the 60th and 61st ceremony. Its supporting concert tour of the same name visited various arenas throughout the United States between January and March 2019.
== Background ==
After releasing her seventh studio album, Piece by Piece (2015), along with its companion remix album in 2016, Kelly Clarkson had completed the terms of her recording contract with RCA Records and 19 Recordings which she had signed as a prize after winning the inaugural season of American Idol in 2002. As opposed to the previous contract structure where 19 held the phonographic rights to the master recordings, RCA executives Peter Edge and Tom Corson revealed their intentions to sign Clarkson directly to the label without 19's involvement. Their renewal offer would include a three-album deal with a US$1 million advance per album, in contrast to the six-album limit from the previous contract with a US$500,000 incentive per record. Corson also admitted that her relationship with Sony Music executive Clive Davis might prove to be a nuance to the offer.
Despite remarking that her relationship with Edge and Corson on the label had proved to be successful, Clarkson had second thoughts about renewing the contract, which she recalled as an "arranged marriage". As a result, her management met with Warner Music Nashville executive John Esposito, who brokered a meeting with Atlantic Records executives Craig Kallman and Julie Greenwald, who in turn offered her a long-term worldwide deal with a larger creative freedom. On June 24, 2016, Warner Music Group announced that Clarkson had signed a long-term worldwide recording contract with Atlantic and would immediately work on a soul and R&B album set to be released the following year. The move to Atlantic also reunited her with Pete Ganbarg, who had previously did A&R work for her fourth studio album All I Ever Wanted (2009). Later that year, Kallman and Ganbarg, who was producing A&R work on a mixtape inspired by the Broadway musical Hamilton, invited Clarkson to record the musical number "It's Quiet Uptown" for the mixtape, making it her debut appearance on an Atlantic record.
== Recording and production ==
Three of Clarkson's producers from Piece by Piece were confirmed to return for Meaning of Life: Greg Kurstin, Jason Halbert, and Jesse Shatkin, whereas first-time collaborators include The Monarch, Nick Ruth, and Mick Schultz. Deviating from the predominant pop rock sound of her previous releases, Clarkson wanted to approach a different genre—soul and R&B music. She revealed that she had previously wanted to record this type of songs but had never found an opportunity to do so, but has found out that Kallman was "dying to make this record" with her and has counted on his full support. She said the new material was reminiscent of the songs she had performed during her tenure on American Idol, and remarked that the album was a "new and fresh thing" for her and made her feel like a "brand new artist again". Recording sessions began after Clarkson's pregnancy in 2016 and continued until 2017.
To avoid making material similar to that of Stronger (2011), Clarkson met with various songwriters and showcased several soulful tracks to them to demonstrate the album's direction. She remarked that her meeting with various writing camps, discussing what kind of songs she wanted from them and rejecting songs that didn't fit the direction of the album was a "different process" for her. Clarkson said that she "wrote a bit", finding inspiration for a song's lyrics in the novel Big Little Lies, but her family life had hindered opportunities for her to contribute more to the writing. Several songwriters such as Ali Tamposi, Mozella, Harlœ, Sebastian Kole, Diztortion, Warren "Oak" Felder have all confirmed to have submitted material to Clarkson in Nashville.
Clarkson and Kallman ultimately executive produced the entire album, with the latter handling the A&R himself. It marked the first time in ten years Clarkson was credited as an executive producer. She described him as "instrumental" in steering the record, but also allowed her to explore the soulful side of her voice that she once displayed on American Idol and in live concerts. She remarked that he helped her understand what an executive producer credit on an album really meant, saying that he would often push the producers who are used to working with other executives in making radio-friendly hits, but that it sometimes tears the spirit and soul out of it. Both invited several performers to play on the album—Kallman personally invited the soul band Earth, Wind & Fire to perform at the recording sessions for the album's two tracks, while Clarkson requested her touring backup singers—Jessi Collins, Nicole Hurst, and Bridget Sarai, to be given a more prominent feature by accompanying her lead vocals, deviating from the usual practice of recording her own background vocals in her previous albums.
== Composition ==
=== Theme and influences ===
Meaning of Life has a cohesive theme—connection. Lyrical contents of each of the album's tracks center on "love and living, rooted in the past and living in the moment". When asked about what is the "meaning of life" to her, Clarkson remarked that "life is about connection." Clarkson also illustrated the album's logo as a circle to emphasize on life's connection and to indicate that no one is in the middle of it. She added, "This album is not great because of Kelly Clarkson," Kelly admits. "It's great because of all the musicians, all of the singers that are highlighted, all of the engineers, the producers. There are a lot of people that make up an album, and we really wanted to highlight those people." Musically, Clarkson was mainly inspired by the music of the 1990s, along with the early works of vocalists Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, En Vogue and Bonnie Raitt, whose soulful catalogs have inspired a young Clarkson to sing in high school and later embark on a music career. Franklin became the starting point for inspiration, with Clarkson asking, "What if Aretha was born now and made a record today?" as a guiding principle. In turn, Kallman made sure that the record wouldn't sound old, saying that "it's just not nostalgic and a retro experience" but described it as a "modern experience infused with the best of those records we call standards". Critics described Meaning of Life as a mixture of soulful R&B pop; While some designated it as a "soulful pop"/"pop-soul" album, others illustrated it as a soul and R&B record. Raissa Bruner of Time saw its tracks as "soulful anthems mixed with rollicking empowerment pop", while Josh Bell of the Washington Blade characterized it as "more soulful and R&B-influenced than Clarkson's prior work, although it's still very much a pop album."
Meaning of Life is promulgated by Atlantic as the album she was destined to make with the label, a "sensual" pop record and her first documented soul and R&B album; while Clarkson personally described it as the album she had wanted to make since junior high but also a "grown-ass woman's record", explaining that the lyrical content found on the album may not be suitable for her younger self to make. She remarked, "This is a record you make when you've lived (sic)." Unlike her previous releases where she had co-written much of the material, she felt compelled to only pen a few, saying that taking an active role in writing the songs would have taken an expense on her family life. Clarkson then commissioned material that showcases her current state of mind—such as dealing with the rewards and complications that come with connecting with someone emotionally, mentally, physically in a marriage; as well as a mature woman feeling completely comfortable in her own skin after years of withering sexist criticism about her appearance. To discuss these concepts, she invited several collaborators, including Harlœ, whose conversations with Clarkson were used to create some of the album's lyrical content.
=== Song analysis ===
The album opens with "A Minute (Intro)" as the introductory track. Written and produced by The Monarch with writing input from Jim McCormick and Katie Pearlman, the song is a minute-long anthem for self-care, and was primarily made for Clarkson, whose hectic family and work life have made it hard for her to take a break for a minute for herself. Shatkin, Mozella and Priscilla Renea co-wrote and co-produced the second track "Love So Soft", which is dubbed as a tribute to classic R&B while still sounding contemporary. The Monarch and Mick Schultz produced the third song "Heat", and co-wrote it with Harlœ and Michael Pollack. Clarkson described the song as discussing on giving 100% commitment to one another and as reminiscent of her relationship with her husband. The fourth song and the titular track, "Meaning of Life", was written by British singer James Morrison with Ilsey Juber and Shatkin, who handled its production. Morrison and Shatkin originally presented the song to Clarkson for Piece by Piece, but she felt its theme was unsuitable for the album at the time. She later took a hold on the song and used it as a base point for the other producers in making material for the follow-up album. The fifth, "Move You", was written by Nick Ruth, Amy Kuney, and Molly Kate Kestner. Produced by Ruth, Kuney built the song's framework to bridge the gap between religious and secular music. Clarkson co-wrote the sixth track "Whole Lotta Woman" with Jussifer, Novawav duo Denisia Andrews & Brittany Coney, Fade Majah, and Shatkin. Produced by the latter four, the song is an empowerment anthem for women using metaphors from American Southern culture, primarily with Texan women, whom Clarkson is considered one of. Select members of Earth, Wind & Fire, led by Verdine White, prominently played throughout the number.
Schultz and Harlœ co-wrote and produced the seventh track "Medicine" as a tribute to the '90s with inspiration from Carey's song "Emotions" (1991). The follow-up track "Cruel" was written by The Monarch, Harlœ and Pat Linehan, and was produced by Jason Halbert, which sings of commanding respect from a partner. The Monarch and Shatkin produced the ninth song "Didn't I", which was written by the Davidsons, Audra Mae, and Pearlman. In the song, she bellows at a man for forsaking her after committing herself to him. Based on her experience in witnessing failed relationships of some of her loved ones and asking about a retrospective about it, Clarkson co-wrote the succeeding track "Would You Call that Love" with Greg Kurstin, who produced it. The eleventh song "I Don't Think About You" was written by Harlœ, Michael Pollack, and The Monarch, who handled its production. Requested by Clarkson to write a ballad that showcases her vocals, Harlœ based the song from her past relationship. Ruth, Kuney, and Kestner wrote the twelfth track "Slow Dance", a sultry number which is about a woman demanding a man to take things slowly, instead of falling victim to his advances. Clarkson, Shatkin, and Mozella co-wrote both the album's final two tracks—the penultimate, "Don't You Pretend", is about demanding a man to be honest about his true feelings; and the concluding number "Go High", an anthem which was inspired by former U.S. First Lady Michelle Obama's speech at the 2016 Democratic National Convention.
== Release and promotion ==
Meaning of Life was released by Atlantic and its parent label Warner Music Group on October 27, 2017. Originally scheduled to be released in June 2017, the release date was pushed back to the year's fall season. Chris Ruff, Atlantic's senior marketing manager, remarked that the album's roll-out strategy would first be driven towards selling physical copies, which would be followed by a promotional campaign with streaming platforms in the following year. The album's lead single "Love So Soft" was released digitally alongside "Move You" on September 7, 2017. "Love So Soft" peaked within the top fifty of the Billboard Hot 100 chart and topped the Billboard Dance Club Songs ranking. A week before the album's release, its titular song "Meaning of Life" was issued as a promotional single on October 19, 2017. "I Don't Think About You" was released as the follow-up single on February 9, 2018, followed by "Heat" as the third single on July 27, 2018. Clarkson announced plans to do a worldwide tour to support the album following the conclusion of the fourteenth season of The Voice, where she was then currently participating as a coach. On September 14, 2018, she announced the Meaning of Life Tour, which visited selected U.S. cities from January to March 2019.
To promote the album, Clarkson embarked on several intimate concerts in North America. On September 6, 2017, Kallman, Greenwald and Warner Music CEO of Recorded Music Max Lousada jointly presented Clarkson's performance of the album's six selections at the Rainbow Room in New York City. She also filmed a "Nashville Sessions" series at the War Memorial Auditorium in Nashville, with selected performances being eventually released online. On September 28, 2017, she taped an iHeartRadio Secret Session in Toronto, which was broadcast as a radio special the following month. On its release date, Clarkson performed several songs from the album at an album release party hosted by iHeartRadio in Los Angeles. The event was also aired live in simulcast on various iHeartRadio radio stations. In November 2017, she performed on two album release events in New York City—one was hosted by astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson at YouTube Space and the other at the Gramercy Theatre hosted and tape-broadcast by Sirius XM. American chain store Cracker Barrel also sponsored a "Rocking and Stockings" content series to promote the album during the 2017 holiday season, featuring selected performances by Clarkson.
Clarkson performed numerous selections from Meaning of Life in various televised events. She premiered "Love So Soft" on The Today Show a day after its release date and has performed it on programs such as America's Got Talent, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Graham Norton Show, The Late Late Show with James Corden, The Voice of Germany, the 2017 We Day, the 2017 Invictus Games, and the 2017 American Music Awards. She also performed the titular track on Strictly Come Dancing; "I Don't Think About You" on The Ellen DeGeneres Show; "Move You", "I Don't Think About You", and "Didn't I" on The Today Show; "Heat" on The Today Show and the Opening Ceremony of the 2018 US Open; "Whole Lotta Woman" on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, The Late Late Show with James Corden (during Carpool Karaoke), and the 2018 Billboard Music Awards; "I Don't Think About You" and "Didn't I" on Late Night with Seth Meyers; and, "Medicine" and "I Don't Think About You" on The Voice.
== Critical reception ==
Meaning of Life received a generally positive response from music critics. Consensus from reviews compiled by Gold Derby reveal that the "intimate, R&B-drenched album is full of confidence," describing its emphasis on soul as "euphorically liberated". On the review aggregator site Metacritic, which assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received an average score of 73, based on eight reviews, indicating "generally favorable reviews". AllMusic's senior editor Stephen Thomas Erlewine gave the album a four-star rating, calling it one of her most satisfying albums and commending Clarkson for sounding "assured here in a way that differs from her earliest records". Leah Greenblatt of Entertainment Weekly gave it a "B+" rating. Deeming the album as feeling cohesive and self-assured, she considered that it doesn't seem especially interested in reaching the heights of Clarkson's early hit records but "swings low and sweet — a refreshingly real dispatch from an artist expressing exactly what she feels in this moment." Writing for Time, Bruner wrote that the album "finds her as fans prefer: a confident artist with a sense of humor and sass to spare." Shaun Kitchener of the Daily Express rated the album five stars, writing that Clarkson was "in her absolute element" on it, and the album was a "peppier, more playful alternative to Adele's 25".
Glenn Gamboa of Newsday gave Meaning of Life a four-star rating. Praising it as the best album of Clarkson's career, he wrote that it presented a "chance to declare her ambitions and deliver on them" for her "most cohesive album yet". The Boston Globe correspondent Isaac Feldberg commented that Clarkson "has perhaps never sounded as confident or comfortable as she does" on the album, and that she "channels her delight at [her] newfound freedom into songs that, while signaling a new stage in her career, appear to flow directly from both her heart and soul." Mike Nied of Idolator shared a similar sentiment, saying that "returning to her roots had truly opened a wealth of opportunities" for Clarkson. Craig Jenkins of Vulture described the album as "a simmering pot of warm grooves and powerful vocals, a career pivot to the music that Clarkson ought to have been allowed to make right out of the gate." Reviewing for The Observer, Michael Cragg rated the album four stars, comparing its sound to Meghan Trainor and Mariah Carey and crediting its "big, syrupy" ballads for "accentuating Clarkson's undeniably powerful voice, creating a comfort zone that feels genuine."
Some of the critics were also ambivalent on the album: The Guardian's Hannah Davis gave the record a three-star rating, writing that the album had "lots of filler" and notably evoked the records of Christina Aguilera and Trainor, but its "strong, '90s diva-ish mood suits Clarkson's belting vocal style, as she ushers in a more soulful phase with class." Reviewing the album for Spin, Katherine St. Asaph noted that much of it feels "dated, studiously attempting to recreate an era Clarkson's long since transcended", and despite praising her vocal showcase, she was puzzled that after "to hear an album that sounds so much like contractual winner's filler" almost 15 years after winning the competition.
=== Accolades and honors ===
Meaning of Life has received nominations for Best Pop Vocal Album at the 61st Grammy Awards and Best Pop Solo Performance for "Love So Soft" at the 60th ceremony. Both nominations earned Clarkson the distinction of being the most-nominated artist in both categories' history, sharing the Best Pop Vocal Album record with Justin Timberlake. In the midst of promoting the album, Clarkson was also honored at various award-giving programs, including the Powerhouse Award at the 2017 Billboard Women in Music event, Icon Award at the 2018 Radio Disney Music Awards, and a Hall of Fame induction at the 2017 Nickelodeon HALO Awards.
=== Year-end lists ===
Meaning of Life was included on several publications' year-end lists:
== Commercial performance ==
Meaning of Life debuted on the Billboard 200 chart in the United States at number two with 79,000 album-equivalent units, which account 68,000 copies in traditional album sales. The album's chart debut on the Billboard 200 earned Clarkson her eighth consecutive top three studio album as well her third record to debut at the second spot. Meaning of Life also debuted at the top of the Billboard Digital Albums chart and became her first entry on the Billboard Vinyl Albums chart. Overseas, the album entered the top ten of the Billboard Canadian Albums chart and the Australian ARIA Albums Chart. It also attained a top twenty debut on the Official UK Albums Chart, the Irish IRMA Artist Albums Chart, and the Swiss Hitparade chart; and a top forty entry on the national charts of Austria, Germany, and the Netherlands. The album received a RIAA Gold certification in 2021, selling 500,000 equivalent units in the US.
== Track listing ==
Notes
^[a] signifies a vocal producer
^[b] signifies an additional producer
== Personnel ==
Credits adapted from the album's liner notes.
Recorded, engineered, mixed and mastered at
Personnel
== Charts ==
== Certifications ==
== Release history ==
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Further reading ==
Kornhaber, Spencer (October 27, 2017). "Kelly Clarkson's Retro, Uplifting Dream of Unity". The Atlantic. Emerson Collective. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
Berk, Nancy (November 30, 2017). "Kelly Clarkson Does't Sugarcoat Struggle and Says Meaning of Life Is Her Best Album to Date". Parade. AMG. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
Marine, Brooke (January 28, 2018). "How Kelly Clarkson Finally Released the Album She's Wanted to Make Since Junior High". W. Condé Nast. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
Ikeler, Jason (March 1, 2018). "Kelly Clarkson on How a Stranger's Advice Inspired Her Career in Music". Cosmopolitan. Hearst. Retrieved March 3, 2018.
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endometriosis#:~:text=A%202019%20genome%2Dwide%20association%20study%20(GWAS)%20review%20enumerated%2036%20genes%20with%20mutations%20associated%20with%20endometriosis%20development | Endometriosis | Endometriosis is a disease in which tissue similar to the lining of the uterus grows elsewhere in the body. The tissue most often grows on or around the ovaries and fallopian tubes, on the outside surface of the uterus, or the tissues surrounding the uterus and the ovaries. It can also appear on the bowel, or bladder, or, rarely, on the lungs and skin.
Symptoms vary widely between individuals. Some have no symptoms, while for others it can be a debilitating disease. Common symptoms include pelvic pain, heavy and painful periods, pain with bowel movements, painful urination, pain during sexual intercourse, and infertility. Beyond physical symptoms, endometriosis can affect a person's mental health and social life.
Diagnosis is usually based on symptoms and medical imaging; however, a definitive diagnosis is made through laparoscopy (keyhole surgery). Other causes of similar symptoms include adenomyosis, uterine fibroids, irritable bowel syndrome, and interstitial cystitis. Endometriosis is often misdiagnosed and many patients report being incorrectly told their symptoms are trivial or normal. On average, it takes 5–12 years from the start of symptoms to receive a diagnosis.
Worldwide, around 10% of the female population of reproductive age (190 million women) are affected by endometriosis. Asian women are more likely than White women to be diagnosed with endometriosis. The exact cause of endometriosis is not known. Possible causes include backwards menstrual period flow, genetic factors, hormones, and problems with the immune system.
While there is no cure for endometriosis, several treatments may improve symptoms. This includes pain medication, hormonal treatments or surgery. The recommended pain medication is usually a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), such as naproxen. Taking the birth control pill continuously or using a hormonal IUD (coil) is another first-line treatment. Other types of hormonal treatment can be tried if the pill or IUD are not effective. Surgical removal of endometriosis may be used to treat those whose symptoms are not manageable with other treatments, or to treat infertility.
== Subtypes ==
Endometriosis can be subdivided into four categories:
Superficial peritoneal endometriosis
Small spots of endometriosis grow on the surface layer that covers the organs inside the abdomen or pelvis (the peritoneum)
Deep infiltrating endometriosis
Lesions grow into the tissue beneath the lining of the pelvis or into the muscle layers of pelvic organs like the bowel, bladder, or ureter
Endometriomas (ovarian)
Cysts that grow in the ovaries.
Extrapelvic endometriosis
Lesions outside of the pelvic region, such as in the lungs or diaphragm
Endometriosis most commonly affects the ovaries, the fallopian tubes between the ovaries and the uterus, the outer surface of the uterus and the tissues that hold the uterus in place. Less common pelvic sites are the rectum, bladder, bowel, vulva, vagina and cervix. Endometriomas appear dark brown, giving rise to the name "chocolate cysts", and are filled with old menstrual blood among other material. When lesions grow more than 5 mm beneath the peritoneal surface, they are classified as deep infiltrating endometriosis. It can infiltrate the muscles around organs. Deep endometriosis often appears as nodules, and can include fibrosis and adhesions.
Rarely, endometriosis appears on the lungs (thoracic endometriosis), brain, and skin. Diaphragmatic endometriosis forms almost always on the right hemidiaphragm, and may cause the cyclic pain of the right shoulder or neck during a menstrual period. Scar endometriosis can rarely form on the abdominal wall as a complication of surgery, most often following a ceasarean section or other pelvic surgery.
== Signs and symptoms ==
Endometriosis is often associated with pain and infertility. Some women with endometriosis do not have any symptoms, while for others the pain is life-altering. The amount of pain relates poorly to the anatomical extent of endometriosis. Those with 'minimal' endometriosis may have significant pain, while those with 'severe' endometriosis might have few symptoms.
The most frequent symptom of endometriosis is pelvic pain, which includes:
Painful periods (dysmenorrhea) in 60% to 75% of people with endometriosis. Severe period pain may interfere with daily activities.
Heavy menstrual bleeding.
Chronic pelvic pain that can interfere with school, work and social activities
Painful sexual intercourse (dyspareunia)
Painful urination or bowel movements, especially during periods.
Women with endometriosis are about twice as likely to experience infertility compared to other women. Between 16% and 40% of women with endometriosis experience difficulty conceiving. In those going through assisted reproductive treatment, endometriosis is found in about 30% to 50% of women. The World Health Organization estimates that endometriosis is the ultimate cause of female infertility in 4.8% of cases.
Endometriosis can involve symptoms like constipation, diarrhea, nausea, bloating, rectal or abdominal pain. This is sometimes caused by endometriosis on the bowels, but often due to co-occuring irritable bowel syndrome. People with endometriosis often experience fatigue, which is linked to insomnia, depression and anxiety.
Thoracic endometriosis occurs when endometrium-like tissue implants in the lungs or pleura around the lungs. It is rare. When it occurs in the lungs, common signs and symptoms are blood discharge from the lungs during menstruation and nodules which become bigger during menstruation. When it is found in the pleura, symptoms may be a collapsed lung during or outside of menstruation and bleeding into the pleural space. Further symptoms are a cyclical cough and cyclical shoulder pain. Most often, the endometriosis is found in the right lung. Blood in urine may point to endometriosis in the bladder or in the ureter. Sciatic endometriosis is a rare form in which endometrial tissue involves the sciatic nerve, causing cyclic nerve pain in the leg.
=== Complications ===
Endometriosis may be associated with complications during pregnancy. Women with endometriosis have a three-fold increased risk of a placenta previa, in which the placenta partially or completely covers the cervical opening. Preterm delivery was almost 50% more likely. Other complications are stillbirth, gestational hypertension, pre-eclampsia, and placental abruption.
Cardiovascular disease is also associated with endometriosis, in particular in those who have had a surgical removal of the uterus (hysterectomy) and ovaries. Cohort studies have found associations with strokes, heart attacks (myocardial infarction), high blood pressure and arrhythmia. Endometriosis increases the risk of developing ovarian and thyroid cancers compared to women without the condition, and slightly increases the risk of breast cancer.
Depression and anxiety are more common in endometriosis compared to healthy controls, but occur at the same rate as with other chronic pain conditions. It is unclear how much this is caused by shared underlying mechanisms, the impact of severe symptoms, stigma, the related diagnostic delays or the ineffectiveness of treatment.
== Risk factors ==
=== Genetics ===
Inheritance is significant but not the sole risk factor for endometriosis. Studies attribute 50% of the risk to genetics, the other 50% to environmental factors. Overall, 42 different loci (regions on a chromosome) have been associated with endometriosis risk. The genes linked to endometriosis risk help control cancer-related processes, sex-hormone signals, womb development, molecules related to inflammation and adhesions, and the growth of new blood vessels.
There is significant overlap between the genetic basis of endometriosis, other pain conditions and inflammationary conditions. For instance, endometriosis shares a genetic underpinning with migraine and neck, shoulder and back pain. Among inflammatory conditions, it shares variants with asthma and osteoarthritis.
=== Reproductive and environmental factors ===
Girls whose menstrual outflow is obstructed are at risk of developing endometriosis. This could be because of an imperforate hymen (a birth defect where the vagina is completely blocked), or a double uterus with a blocked hemivagina. Other risk factors are having a first period before age 12, a menstrual cycle of fewer than 28 days, a low BMI, and not having had children.
Little is known about environmental risk factors. Night work and red meat consumption seems to raise risk, as does exposure to some classes of environmental pollutants. The most studied of these are endocrine disruptors—chemicals that interfere with hormones, such as estrogen. They include dioxins, phthalates, bisphenol A and polychlorinated biphenyl. Based on epidemiological and experimental data, it is possible exposure to some of them increases the risk of endometriosis.
=== Autoimmune and autoinflammatory conditions ===
Endometriosis patients show a significantly increased risk of autoimmune, autoinflammatory, and mixed-pattern psoriatic diseases, with two studies in 2025 pointing to the connection. One of the studies suggested that the chances of receiving a diagnosis of at least one of the autoimmune conditions for those with endometriosis was around twice that of a control cohort. The linked conditions include rheumatoid arthritis, multiple sclerosis, coeliac disease, osteoarthritis, and psoriasis. This reinforces the view that there is a genetic correlation between endometriosis and osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and multiple sclerosis (MS), and a potential causal link to rheumatoid arthritis. The work suggests a shared biological basis between endometriosis on one side, and autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases, on the other. This suggests that certain autoimmune treatment pathways could be repurposed to provided alternative therapy options for those with endometriosis.
== Mechanism ==
Endometriosis is an inflammatory disease dependent on estrogen. The lesions promote local inflammation and immune system dysregulation. They also trigger the formation of adhesions (fibrous bands that form between tissues and organs) and fibrosis (excess connective tissue from healing). It is not well understood how endometriosis causes infertility and pain.
=== Formation ===
==== Origin of endometriosis cells ====
The main theories for the formation of the endometrium-like tissue outside the womb are backward flow of menstrual blood, metastasis via the lymphatic or the circulatory system and local transformation of peritoneal cells into endometrial-like cells (coelomic metaplasia).
During menstruation, some menstrual blood, tissue, and fluid can flow backward through the fallopian tubes into the pelvic area (the peritoneal cavity). This backward flow (called retrograde menstruation) is thought to be the main reason why endometriosis develops inside the pelvic cavity. However, this explanation alone is not enough, because almost all women have some backward flow of menstrual fluid, but only some of them develop endometriosis.
Evidence supporting the theory comes from retrospective epidemiological studies and DNA analysis. Furthermore, only animals with a menstrual cycle such as rhesus monkeys and baboons develop endometriosis. In contrast, animals like rodents and non-human primates with an estrous cycle in which the endometrium is reabsorbed rather than shed do not develop the disease.
Endometriosis has been diagnosed in people who have never experienced menstruation including men, female fetuses, and prepubescent girls. One explanation for endometriosis in girls before puberty is coelomic metaplasia: the theory that certain cells in the peritoneum may undergo metaplasia (transformation) into endometrium-like cells. Müllerian remnants, cells that normally disappear during male embryonic development, may explain rare cases of endometriosis in men. Metastasis via the lymphatic or the circulatory system may explain endometriosis outside of the pelvic region.
Stem cells may contribute to the formation of endometriosis. Stems cells in the basal layer of the endometrium play a role in renewing the tissue after menstruation. In women with endometriosis, more tissue is shed from this layer during menstruation, allowing more stem cells to flow back into the periteneum with retrograde menstruation, and form lesions. Stem cells from bone marrow may drive the further growth of lesions, and also explain the establishment of endometriosis outside of the pelvic region.
==== Other factors ====
Most women with retrograde menstruation do not develop endometriosis, so other factors are needed to explain the formation. For endometriosis to develop, as is done by some cancerous tumors, its cells must evade the immune system, attach to a surface, and promote the formation of new blood vessels. Endometriotic lesions differ in their biochemistry, hormonal response, immunology, and inflammatory response compared to the endometrium.
Estrogen is needed for the growth of endometriosis lesions. This is produced both by lesions locally and in other parts of the body. Progesterone resistance in lesions make them less responsive to the hormone, and allows the lesions to grow outside of the womb.
Immune dysfunction could be involved in the disease in various ways: it may lead to a decrease in clearance of endometrial cells outside the womb, a local inflammatory environment may make it more likely that the cells attach to a surface, and may reduce programmed cell death (apoptosis).
Angiogenesis, the formation of new blood vessels, plays a key role in the maintenance of endometriotic lesions. Gene expression around angiogenesis expressed in the endometrium of women with endometriosis are different from those without. In addition, cells in the periteneum of women with endometriosis release more growth factors that stimulate angiogenesis.
=== Pain ===
There are multiple causes of pain. Endometriosis involves the formation of new blood vessels and nerves in a process known as neuroangiogenesis. The inflammation and fibrosis around the lesions gives rise to nociceptive pain. Neuropathic pain can arise from damage to nerves. In rare cases, endometriosis can infiltrate or compress nerves, and damage to nerves might also occur due to surgery. Estrogens can increase communication between immune cells and nerves in lesions, which may contribute to further pain. Finally, there may be systemic (body-wide) inflammation, involving white blood cells. This can lead to nociplastic pain, which amplifies pain signals and reduces pain inhibition. Nociplastic pain also cause poor sleep, memory problems and fatigue.
=== Infertility ===
The infertility associated with endometriosis likely has multiple causes. Inflammation and hormonal dysfunction explain some instances. The ovarian reserve, the amount of viable egg cells in the ovaries, is typically lower in those with endometriosis. In particular, endometriomas may reduce ovarian reserve in affected ovaries. There is contradictory evidence on whether endometriosis causes reduced ovulation. Anatomical distortions, for instance from adhesions, can explain further instances of infertility, and in severe cases, sperm or egg cells may be fully blocked. Pain during sex may lead couples to avoid it, leading to fewer opportunities for natural conception.
== Diagnosis ==
A health history and a physical examination can lead the health care practitioner to suspect endometriosis. Symptoms in combination with ultrasound or MRI imaging can lead to a presumed diagnosis of endometriosis. The gold standard for definite diagnosis is via surgery and a biopsy, but there is a shift away from requiring surgical confirmation before starting treatment to prevent delays.
Diagnosis takes an average of five to twelve years from the onset of symptoms. This diagnostic delay has remained persistent. On average, it takes between one and four years before women seek medical help, which might be explained by the normalisation of symptoms, the lack of awareness, and lack of access to healthcare. It then takes up to nine years to get a diagnosis. This delay might be explained by a normalisation of symptoms, lack of expertise and tools, and general inefficiencies in healthcare.
Endometriosis can be classified into four different stages. The American Society of Reproductive Medicine's scale, revised in 1996, gives higher scores to deep, thick lesions or intrusions on the ovaries and dense, enveloping adhesions on the ovaries or fallopian tubes.
=== Physical examination ===
A trauma-informed framework is recommended for a physical examination, where the health practitioner validates pain and fosters trust. The examination focuses on assessing both general symptoms and those linked to deep endometriosis or endometriosis outside the pelvis. Risk factors are also reviewed. The physical examination can include an abdominal exam, a single digit exam of the vagina and pelvic floor, a bimanual exam and examination with a speculum.
=== Ultrasound ===
Vaginal ultrasound can be used to diagnose endometriosis or to localize an endometrioma before surgery. This can be used to identify the spread of disease in individuals with well-established clinical suspicion of endometriosis. Vaginal ultrasound is inexpensive, easily accessible, has no contraindications, and requires no preparation. By extending the ultrasound assessment into the posterior and anterior pelvic compartments, a sonographer can evaluate structural mobility and look for deep infiltrating endometriotic nodules. Better sonographic detection of deep infiltrating endometriosis could reduce the number of diagnostic laparoscopies, as well as guide disease management and enhance patient quality of life.
Ultrasounds cannot be used to exclude a diagnosis of endometriosis. If a transvaginal ultrasound is not suitable or declined, an alternative is an ultrasound via the lower abdomen.
=== Magnetic resonance imaging ===
MRI is another means of detecting lesions in a non-invasive manner. MRI is not widely used due to its cost and limited availability. It can reliably detect endometriomas and deep infiltrating endemetriosis. It is sometimes used for planning surgery, for instance if an ultrasound is unclear, or for diagnosis if a transvaginal ultrasound is not appropriate or is declined. The field of view is larger in an MRI compared to an ultrasound, which allows a larger part of the bowel to be assessed.
=== Laparoscopy ===
Laparoscopy (keyhole surgery) is a surgical procedure where a camera is used to look inside the abdominal cavity. Laparoscopy with a biopsy is the most accurate way to diagnose endometriosis. It can be used when endometriosis is suspected, but not visible via medical imaging. An alternative after negative imaging is to try out treatment and give a presumed diagnosis if that improves symptoms ('empirical treatment').
Surgery for diagnosis also allows for surgical treatment of endometriosis at the same time. In nearly 40% of cases, no cause for pelvic pain is discovered during laparoscopy.
The lesions of superficial endometriosis often appear dark blue or black. In the earlier stages of disease, they may be white, red or yellow-brown. Ovarian cysts are typically dark brown. Adhesions are made up of fibrous scar tissue. Deep endometriosis looks like multiple distinct nodules.
A biopsy may be negative even when endometriosis is present, particularly in younger women. As such, it cannot be used to exclude a diagnosis of endometriosis. For confirmation, biopsy samples should show at least two of the following features:
Endometrial type stroma
Endometrial epithelium with glands
Evidence of chronic hemorrhage, such as hemosiderin deposits
=== Stages ===
There are three staging or classification systems commonly used. Fertility is assessed with the Endometriosis Fertility Index (EFI). Endometriosis can be classified as stage I–IV by the revised American Society of Reproductive Medicine (rASRM) staging system. The stages range from minimal (stage I) to severe (stage IV). The scale uses a point system that assesses lesions and adhesions during surgery. The ENZIAN system focuses more on deep endometriosis compared to rASRM. The rASRM and ENZIAN systems correlate poorly with how much pain women have.
The American Association of Gynecologic Laparoscopists (AAGL) endometriosis staging system, introduced in 2021, was designed to correlate well with complexity of surgery. Like rASRM, it divides endometriosis into four stages.
=== Differential diagnosis ===
Various conditions exhibit similar symptoms to endometriosis. Adenomyosis, the growth of endometrium-like tissue in the muscles of the uterus, is one example. It sometimes shows characteristics on an MRI that can distinguish it from endometriosis. Interstitial cystitis is mainly characterized by painful urination, but also cause more diffuse pain. It can be distinguished from endometriosis with a cystoscopy, which shows pinpoint hemorrhages in interstitial cystitis. Irritable bowel syndrome can sometimes be distinguished from endometriosis via the presence of diarrhea or constipation, and can be diagnosed in the absence of endometriosis via imaging or surgery. Other conditions with overlapping symptoms are uterine fibroids, cervical stenosis and pelvic floor myofascial pain.
== Prevention ==
According to the World Health Organization, there is no known way to prevent endometriosis. There are associations between some risk factors and endometriosis: women with endometriosis tend to consume more red meat, trans fats, alcohol and caffeine. Physical activity does not seem to prevent endometriosis, but can lessen pain. It is unclear whether these links are causative.
== Management ==
While there is no cure for endometriosis, there are treatments for pain and endometriosis-associated infertility. Pain can be treated with hormones, painkillers, or, in severe cases, surgery. The goal of management is to provide pain relief, to restrict the progression of the process, and to restore or preserve fertility where needed.
Treatment with medication for pain management can be initiated based on the presence of symptoms, examination, and ultrasound findings that rule out other potential causes. The UK National Institute for Health and Care Excellence recommends starting initial medication for those with suspected endometriosis, at the same time as referral for investigations such as ultrasound.
In general, the diagnosis of endometriosis is confirmed during surgery, at which time removal can be performed. Further steps depend on circumstances: someone without infertility can manage symptoms with pain medication and hormonal medication that suppresses the natural cycle, while an infertile individual may be treated expectantly after surgery, with fertility medication, or with in vitro fertilization (IVF).
=== Hormonal medications ===
Progestin-only hormonal suppression (progestogen) is a first-line therapy. It come in different forms and includes the hormonal coil (intrauterine device), the oral dienogest, an injection of medroxyprogesterone acetate every three months or an implant under the skin. Dienogest, which may better than injections, is not available on its own in the US. Oral progestins likely reduce overall pain and period pain compared to placebo, and may also help with pelvic pain. It is unclear how well they work compared to other hormonal therapies.
Combined estrogren-progestin birth control pills are another first-line treatment. The recommendation is to use the pills continuously to stop periods. A 2018 Cochrane systematic review found that there is insufficient evidence to make a judgement on the effectiveness of the combined oral contraceptive pill compared with placebo or other medical treatment for managing pain associated with endometriosis partly because of lack of included studies for data analysis (only two for COCP vs placebo).
Gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) modulators are second-line treatments: These drugs include GnRH agonists such as leuprorelin, and GnRH antagonists such as elagolix and decrease estrogen levels. GnRH agonists mimic the effects of menopause, and seem more effective than placebo or oral progestin at reducing pain. They come with side effects of hot flashes and decreased bone density. GnRHs can be prescribed with hormonal 'add-back' therapy or with calcium-regulating agents to reduce the amount of bone loss.
Aromatase inhibitors are third-line treatments and block estrogen production throughout the body. Examples of aromatase inhibitors include anastrozole and letrozole. Common side effects are hot flashes, night sweats and functional cysts. In premenopausal women, these should be taken with other hormones (such as the combined pill) to prevent ovarian stimulation and to prevent menopause symptoms. They can be a option for post-menopausal women who still have endometriosis symptoms, as their action is not limited to suppressing estrogen from ovaries. Evidence is limited.
Progesterone receptor modulators like mifepristone and gestrinone have the potential (based on only one randomized controlled trial each) to be used as a treatment to manage pain caused by endometriosis.
=== Pain medication ===
NSAIDs like naproxen are anti-inflammatory medications commonly used for endometriosis pain. Evidence for their effectiveness is limited, with only one small study conducted. NSAIDs can have side effects, predominantly gastrointestinal, but they are generally safe to try.
=== Surgery ===
Clinical guidelines recommend surgery when medical treatment does not work sufficiently, has unacceptable side effects or is contraindicated. Large endometriomas can only effectively be treated with surgery. Surgery is also recommended when deep endometriosis causes problems in the bowels or urinary tract, such as obstruction. It is unclear what the effect of surgery is for pain relief in cases of superficial periteneal endometriosis.
Laparoscopy (keyhole surgery) is the standard surgical approach. Treatment consists of the removal of endometriosis and the restoration of pelvic anatomy via the division of adhesions. The removal takes place via excision (cutting out) or electrosurgery (coagulation or ablation/vaporisation). With laparoscopic surgery, small instruments are inserted through incisions to remove the endometriosis tissue and adhesions. After surgery, people can usually return home the same day.
Two literature reviews have compared excision to ablation. A 2017 literature review found that excision improved some outcomes over ablation for endometriosis in general. A 2021 literature review on minimal to mild endometriosis found no difference. For deep endometriosis, excision is the standard therapy, as ablation does not allow the surgeon to see if all endometriosis is removed. In the United States, some specialists trained in excision for endometriosis do not accept health insurance because insurance companies do not reimburse the higher costs of this procedure over ablation.
Endometriomas are usually excised (removed completely). Compared to drainage and coagulation of the cyst, excision makes it less likely the cysts and pain symptoms come back. However, excision may damage fertility, as it can affect the ovarian reserve, the amount of egg cells that can be fertilized.
For deep endometriosis, surgery improves quality of life and pain symptoms. However, the procedure can be complicated, especially if the lesions are in or near the bowel, ureter of the urinary system or the chest, and requires a interdisciplinary surgical team in those cases. For instance, for rectovaginal endometriosis, 7% of surgeries had complications. Sometimes, a part of the bowel or bladder is removed.
For women who still have significant pain after hormonal treatment and other surgery, and do not want to become pregnant, a hysterectomy (removal of the womb) can be offered. This is done in combination with removal of endometriosis lesions. Removal of the womb may be beneficial if the uterus itself is affected by adenomyosis. When the ovaries are removed too, women will experience early menopause and may need hormone replacement therapy. Removal of the ovaries comes with cardiovascular, metabolic and mental health risks.
==== Recurrence and postoperative hormonal suppression ====
In an analysis with a medium follow-up of 24 months pain after surgery recurred in about 16% of women. Endometriosis recurrence following surgery is estimated as 21.5% at 2 years and 40–50% at 5 years. Hormonal therapy before surgery has little effect on recurrence, but treatment afterwards reduces the risk. At a median follow-up of 18 months, endometriosis recurred in 26% of women without postoperative hormonal suppression, compared with 10% of women who received it. The risk of recurrence is higher in younger women and in those with a less aggressive surgery.
=== Comparison of interventions ===
A 2021 meta-analysis found that GnRH analogs and combined hormonal contraceptives were the best treatment for reducing dyspareunia and menstrual and non-menstrual pelvic pain. A 2018 Swedish systematic review found several studies but a general lack of scientific evidence for most treatments. There was only one study of sufficient quality and relevance comparing the effect of surgery and non-surgery. Cohort studies indicate that surgery is effective in decreasing pain. Most complications occurred in cases of low intestinal anastomosis, while the risk of fistula occurred in cases of combined abdominal or vaginal surgery, and urinary tract problems were common in intestinal surgery. The evidence was found to be insufficient regarding surgical intervention.
=== Treatment of infertility ===
Infertility can be treated with assistive reproductive technology (ART) such as in vitro fertilization (IVF) or surgery. IVF procedures are effective in improving fertility in many individuals with endometriosis. IVF is increasingly recommended over surgery for older women or for those where there might be multiple reasons why they struggle to conceive. It does not increase recurrence of endometriosis. The Endometriosis Fertility Index can help guide decisions on treatment of infertility. Surgery is typically not recommended before starting ART.
In terms of surgery, endometriomas can be cut out (a cystectomy), or drained and destroyed (ablation). The ablation technique may be better able to preserve the number of remaining viable eggs (the ovarian reserve), compared to cutting out the endometrioma. On the other hand, cutting out the endometrioma may help more with pain. Surgery likely also helps with infertility in the case of superficial peritoneal endometriosis. Receiving hormonal suppression therapy after surgery might be help with endometriosis recurrence and pregnancy. but evidence for pregnancy outcomes is mixed and the both NICE and the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology recommend against hormonal suppression to improve fertility.
== Prognosis ==
Endometriosis is often a long-term condition, with symptoms typically emerging during adolescence and easing after menopause. For some women, pain persists after menopause. Treatments, whether medical or surgical, can alleviate symptoms but do not provide a definitive cure. The disease does not always worsen over time; in repeat surgeries, endometriosis became worse in 29%, improved in 42% and stayed the same in 29%.
The likelihood of symptoms returning after surgery is highly variable, with studies reporting recurrence rates anywhere between 6% and 67%. For some, endometriosis becomes associated with persistent, complex pain, possibly linked to changes in the nervous system, as part of a constellation of chronic pain disorders.
== Epidemiology ==
Endometriosis is commonly reported to affect approximately 10% of women of reproductive age. Worldwide, an estimated 176–190 million girls and women are affected, with around 22 million having a diagnosis confirmed surgically as of 2021. It is diffucult to determine an exact prevalence, given the large delays in diagnosis and the need for a surgical confirmation for a definite diagnosis. The prevalence depends on the population studied and the way endometriosis is diagnosed (imaging, surgery). Of women with pelvic pain undergoing laparoscopy, 28% are diagnosed with endometriosis. Of those with infertility undergoing laparoscopy, 25% are diagnosed.
It is most diagnosed when women are in their 30s, but symptoms typically start in early 20s or in adolescence. People can develop endometriosis symptoms before their first period and in menopause too. Ethnic differences in endometriosis have been observed. The condition is more common in women of East Asian and Southeast Asian descent than in White women.
== History ==
The earliest references to what is now known as endometriosis might be from Ancient Egypt, nearly 4,000 years ago. In Ancient Greece, the Hippocratic Corpus outlines symptoms similar to endometriosis, including uterine ulcers, adhesions, and infertility. Dioscorides, a prominent physician of the time, described 'strangulation of the uterus', associated with pelvic pain and sometimes leading to collapse. He regarded menstrual pain as organic. Women with dysmenorrhea were encouraged to marry and have children at a young age.
During the Middle Ages, there was a shift into believing that women with pelvic pain were mad, immoral, imagining the pain, or simply misbehaving. The symptoms of inexplicable chronic pelvic pain were often attributed to imagined madness, female weakness, promiscuity, or hysteria.
Endometriosis proper was first defined between the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th. Some attribute the first description to Carl von Rokitansky in 1860, even though some authors consider it more likely he was describing malignent tissue. Around 1896, Thomas Cullen and others described endometriosis and adenomyosis under the single name adenomyomas. Between 1903 and 1920, Cullen showed that the tissue in adenomyomas was endometrial. John A. Sampson gave endometriosis its name. He studied the pathogenesis of the disease and formulated the theory of retrograde menstruation as a cause of endometriosis.
One early recommendation to prevent and treat endometriosis was pregnancy. For older women, another approach was surgery, involving oophorectomy (removal of the ovaries) and hysterectomy (removal of the uterus). In the 1940s, the only available hormonal therapies for endometriosis were high-dose testosterone and high-dose estrogen therapy. Success of high-dose estrogen therapy with diethylstilbestrol for endometriosis was first reported by Karnaky in 1948, but was associated with severe risks upon withdrawal.
Pseudopregnancy (high-dose estrogen–progestogen therapy) for endometriosis was first described by Kistner and Andrews in the late 1950s, and become widely employed. Danazol, was first described for endometriosis in 1971. It was used for some 40 years, but had masculising side effects, including weight gain, excessive hair growth and breast atrophy. In the 1980s, GnRH agonists gained prominence for the treatment of endometriosis and by the 1990s had become the most widely used therapy. Oral GnRH antagonists such as elagolix were introduced for the treatment of endometriosis in 2018.
== Society and culture ==
=== Economic burden ===
The economic burden of endometriosis is widespread and multifaceted. Endometriosis is a chronic disease that has direct and indirect costs, which include loss of work days, direct costs of treatment, symptom management, and treatment of other associated conditions such as depression or chronic pain. One factor that seems to be associated with especially high costs is the delay between the onset of symptoms and diagnosis.
Costs vary greatly between countries. Two factors that contribute to the economic burden include healthcare costs and losses in productivity. A Swedish study of 400 endometriosis patients found "Absence from work was reported by 32% of the women, while 36% reported reduced time at work because of endometriosis". An additional cross sectional study with Puerto Rican women, "found that endometriosis-related and coexisting symptoms disrupted all aspects of women's daily lives, including physical limitations that affected doing household chores and paid employment. The majority of women (85%) experienced a decrease in the quality of their work; 20% reported being unable to work because of pain, and over two-thirds of the sample continued to work despite their pain." A study published in the UK in 2025 found that after women received a diagnosis of endometriosis in an English NHS hospital their earnings were on average £56 per month less in the four to five years after diagnosis than they were in the two years before. There was also a reduction in the proportion of women in employment.
=== Medical culture ===
There are many barriers that those affected face in receiving a diagnosis and treatment for endometriosis. Some of these include outdated standards for laparoscopic evaluation, stigma about discussing menstruation and sex, lack of understanding of the disease, primary-care physicians' lack of knowledge, and assumptions about typical menstrual pain. On average, those later diagnosed with endometriosis waited 2.3 years after the onset of symptoms before seeking treatment, and nearly three-quarters of women receive a misdiagnosis before endometriosis. Self-help groups say practitioners delay making the diagnosis, often because they do not consider it a possibility. There is a typical delay of 7–12 years from symptom onset in affected individuals to professional diagnosis. There is a general lack of knowledge about endometriosis among primary care physicians. Half of the general health care providers surveyed in a 2013 study could not name three symptoms of endometriosis. Healthcare providers are also likely to dismiss described symptoms as normal menstruation. Younger patients may also feel uncomfortable discussing symptoms with a physician.
=== Race and ethnicity ===
Race and ethnicity may impact how endometriosis affects one's life. Endometriosis is less thoroughly studied among Black people, and the research that has been done is outdated.
Cultural differences among ethnic groups also contribute to attitudes toward and treatment of endometriosis, especially in Hispanic or Latino communities. A study done in Puerto Rico in 2020 found that health care and interactions with friends and family related to discussing endometriosis were affected by stigma. The most common finding was a referral to those expressing pain related to endometriosis as "changuería" or "changas", terms used in Puerto Rico to describe pointless whining and complaining, often directed at children.
=== Stigma ===
The existing stigma surrounding women's health, specifically endometriosis, can lead to patients not seeking diagnoses, lower quality of healthcare, increased barriers to care and treatment, and negative reception from members of society. Additionally, menstrual stigma significantly contributes to the broader issue of endometriosis stigma, creating an interconnected challenge that extends beyond reproductive health.
Widespread awareness campaigns, developments, and implementations aimed at multilevel anti-stigma organizational and structural changes, as well as more qualitative studies of the endometriosis stigma, help to overcome the harm of the phenomenon.
== Research directions ==
A priority area of research is the search for endometriosis biomarkers, which can help with earlier diagnoses. Studies have examined potential biomarkers such as microRNAs, glycoproteins, and immune markers in blood, menstrual and urine samples, but none have shown the high accurarcy needed for clinical use yet. CA-125, a tumor marker, has been studied extensively. It is elevated in endometriosis, but also in many other conditions, and cannot be used on its own. MicroRNAs might be most promosing, but the high diversity in expression makes them a challenging target.
Medical management of endometriosis is typically based on hormonal therapy, but these treatments can produce undesirable side effects, driving the search for alternatives. Emerging strategies target endometriosis as an inflammatory, metabolic, or pain disorder. Anti-inflammatory approaches include anakinra, a drug used in rheumatoid arthritis. Pain-focused treatments under investigation include cannabinoid extracts, migraine medications, and therapies directed at affected nerves. Additionally, the cancer drug dichloroacetic acid is being explored for its potential metabolic effects in endometriosis.
== Further reading ==
Clark L (22 September 2025). "A deeper understanding of endometriosis is suggesting new treatments". New Scientist (3562). London. ISSN 0262-4079. Archived from the original on 27 September 2025. Retrieved 29 September 2025.
Wilson M (28 March 2025). ""Endometriosis Stole My Life": What It's Really Like to Live With the Condition". Glamour. Retrieved 6 December 2025.
Fearn H (21 January 2024). "'Gaslit by doctors': UK women with endometriosis told it is 'all in their head'". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 6 December 2025.
== References ==
=== Cited sources ===
Solnik MJ, Sanders A (2025). BMJ Best Practice: Endometriosis. BMJ Publishing Group.
NICE (11 November 2024). Recommendations | Endometriosis: diagnosis and management | Guidance | NICE. National Institute for Health and Care Excellence. Retrieved 28 October 2025.
ESHRE (2022). Endometriosis: Guideline of European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology. European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology.
World Health Organization (2025). Guideline for the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of infertility. Geneva. ISBN 978-92-4-011577-4.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
This article incorporates text in the public domain as a Swedish government "utterance" by URL§9
== External links == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vincent_Boury | Vincent Boury | Vincent Boury (born 21 June 1969 in Colmar) is a French table tennis player.
He represented France at the 2008 Summer Paralympics, in class 2, and beat fellow French competitor Stéphane Molliens to win gold.
He had previously won a silver medal at the 1996 Summer Paralympics, and a bronze at the 2000 Games. He has also been vice-world champion in 1998, 2002 and 2006, and won the team event at the 2002 World Cup.
Boury works as a security engineer.
== References ==
== External links ==
Vincent Boury at the International Paralympic Committee
Vincent Boury at Équipe de France (in French)
Vincent Boury at France Paralympique (in French) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peder_Munk | Peder Munk | Peder Munk of Estvadgård (1534–1623), was a Danish navigator, politician, and ambassador, who was in charge of the fleet carrying Anne of Denmark to Scotland. The events of the voyage led to witch trials and executions in Denmark and Scotland.
== Career ==
Peder Munk was the son of Ludvig Munk (d. 1537) and Kirstin Pedersdatte Lykke. He was born at Lønborggård, Lønborg, Ringkøbing, Denmark, on 22 April 1534. Peder's younger brother Ludvig Munk was also a sailor and a soldier, whose daughter Kirsten Munk married Christian IV of Denmark in 1615.
Peder Munk's main estate from 1566 was Estvadgård in Skive Kommune.
In 1575, Peder Munk was made Admiral of Denmark, the Admiral of the Realm or 'Rigsadmiral'; in 1588, he was made one of the council, the Rigsraadet of regents for Christian IV. Peder Munk is said to have provided a miniature warship for the young king in a Jutland lake.
On 20 August 1589, Peder Munk and others accepted an agreement at Helsingør over the rule of the islands Orkney from the Scottish ambassador George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal, as part of the marriage arrangements of James VI of Scotland and Anne of Denmark, a sister of Christian IV.
== Mission to Scotland ==
In August 1589, the Danish council decided that Peder Munk, Breide Rantzau, Dr Paul Knibbe, and Niels Krag would accompany Anne of Denmark, the bride of James VI, to Scotland. Peder sailed on 5 September with Henrik Knudsen Gyldenstierne, admiral of the fleet, and 18 ships. Munk and Henrik Gildenstern sailed with a Danish fleet including the Gideon, Josaphad or Josafat their flagship, Samson, Joshua, Dragon, Raphael, St Michael, Gabriel, Little Sertoun (Lille Fortuna), Mouse, Rose, the Falcon of Birren, the Blue Lion, the Blue Dove (Blaa Due) and the White Dove (Hvide Due).
=== Winter in Norway ===
There were two accidents on the ships at Copenhagen involving exploding cannons. The fleet was delayed by adverse and contrary winds. They first stopped at a safe haven in Norway, "Gamel Sellohe", where the leaking Gideon was repaired, then at Flekkerøy. The Samson, St Michael, and the Joshua returned to Copenhagen.
In Scotland, James waited for his bride at Seton Palace in East Lothian. He worked up his feelings into a sonnet, A complaint against the contrary wyndes that hindered the Queene to com to Scotland from Denmarke. A ferry boat on the Forth collided with another vessel in a storm drowning all its passengers, including Jane Kennedy who was to join the queen's household. There was an inquiry and trial about this incident, but later in 1590 this disaster and the accidents of the royal voyages were attributed to witchcraft.
James VI sent the Scottish diplomat William Stewart with John Skene and Peter Young to Anna in Norway. They sailed from Flekkerøy to Copenhagen and told Henrik Ramel (Ramelius) of the predicament facing the Danish fleet. At Helsingør, Jørgen Rosenkrantz and Christoffer Valkendorf asked for the Regent's and Council's advice, and wrote to Anna of Denmark asking if she would return to Denmark, but they realised the Scottish envoys and George Keith, 5th Earl Marischal wanted her to continue her journey or stay at Oslo. Meanwhile, Steen Bille, William Stewart, and Andrew Sinclair brought Anna's letters in French from Flekkerøy to Edinburgh on 10 October, describing the delay and four or five failed attempts to cross the North Sea, and saying she would stay in Norway. James VI decided to sail to Norway and escort her back to Denmark.
=== Scotland and the queen's dower lands ===
James VI and Anne of Denmark returned to Scotland on 1 May 1590 with the remainder of the Danish fleet. Munk, Breide Rantzau, and Steen Brahe came as ambassadors. On their arrival at Leith, James VI presented the skipper of Munk's ship, the pilots, trumpeters, violers and kettle drummers with forty gold rose noble coins, accounted from his dowry. Peder Munk was given a jewel.
Before Anne's coronation in Edinburgh, Peder Munk travelled to view and take formal possession of the lands which James VI had given Anne of Denmark as a "morning gift". This gift was confirmed by the presentation of a special charter with the royal seal and the seals of representatives of the Parliament of Scotland and the Scottish burgh towns. Munk went first to Rossend Castle the home of Sir Robert Melville, and stayed at Wemyss Castle. On 12 May they visited Falkland Palace, then his party stayed the night with the Earl of Morton at the Newhouse of Lochleven Castle. Next, on 13 May, they went to Dunfermline Palace and then after a night at Niddry Castle, on 14 May, Linlithgow Palace. At each palace, the lawyer John Skene read out the details of the property, then Munk was given a handful of earth and stone, the traditional Scottish ceremony of transferring ownership or "sasine".
Back in Edinburgh, on 17 May, the day of the queen's coronation, Munk, Steen Brahe, and Breide Rantzau walked with Anne of Denmark down the aisle of Holyrood Abbey on her left side, and the English ambassador Sir Robert Bowes walked on the right. They were followed by Bowes's wife Eleanor Musgrove, the Countess of Mar, Margaret Douglas, Countess of Bothwell, and Jean Kennedy Countess of Orkney who carried the train of the queen's gown and cloak.
On 18 May, Munk and Lord Hamilton escorted Anne of Denmark into St Giles during the ceremony of her entry into the town. The town of Edinburgh held a banquet a few days later for the Danish envoys and the king and queen. It was held in the house of the master of the mint, Thomas Aitchisoun, at the foot of Todrick's Wynd. The organiser was John MacMorran who had the room hung with tapestry, hired musicians, and arranged a guard of honour carrying halberds. The goldsmith Thomas Foulis provided gold chains as diplomatic gifts for Munk and the other Danish envoys.
=== Witch trials ===
After his return to Denmark, Peder Munk became involved in litigation with Christoffer Valkendorff, treasurer and governor or Stadtholder of Copenhagen, about equipping the fleet and defective ships in October 1589. Some women were accused of witchcraft in the Copenhagen witch trials, raising storms or sabotaging the ships intended to carry Anne to Scotland. Anna Koldings and others were executed for gathering in Karen Vævers's house to infest the keels of the ships with little devils, Pil-Hesteskou and Smuk (Arrow-Horseshoe and Pretty), smuggled onto the ships in barrels.
News of the arrest of five or six women in Copenhagen reached Edinburgh by 23 July 1590. The English ambassador Robert Bowes wrote, "It is advertised from Denmark, that the Admiral there has caused five or six witches to be taken in Copenhagen, upon suspicion that by their witchcraft they had stayed the Queen of Scots voyage into Scotland, and sought to have stayed likewise the King's return."
In October 1590, the Danish diplomat Dr Paul Knibbe or Knibius wrote to Daniel Rogers in London that Peder Munk's fleet had been threatened by witches led by Margrete the wife of Jakob Skiber, consul in Copenhagen. Munk accompanied the accused couple to their trial and sentencing. Margrete was burnt and the possessions of Jakob were confiscated.
In Scotland, several people were accused of trying to sink the royal ships by magic in the North Berwick witch trials. The "articles of dittay" indicting Agnes Sampson of witchcraft include raising winds to prevent the queen sailing to Scotland. The safe delivery of James VI and Anne of Denmark from the "conspiracy of witches" was celebrated at the baptism of their son Prince Henry at Stirling Castle in August 1594.
=== Scotland in August 1591 ===
The "Admiral of Denmark" is said to have returned to Scotland as ambassador in August 1591 with a train of 200 followers. He spoke to James VI about the disagreements between Anne of Denmark and the Chancellor John Maitland of Thirlestane.
== Marshal of Denmark ==
On 29 July 1590, Munk was with Christian IV and his mother Sophie of Mecklenburg-Güstrow in the palace of Koldinghus at Kolding. They entertained the Scottish ambassadors John Skene and William Stewart. At dinner the ambassadors were seated at one table with the king, Munk, Peder Gyldenstierne, Steen Brahe, Hak Holgersen Ulfstand, Henrik Below, and Breide Rantzau, which was a special honour for the diplomats.
From 1596 to 1608, he was Marshal of the Realm or Rigsmarsk, the commander of Danish armed forces, in succession to Hak Holgersen Ulfstand (1535-1594).
He married Karen Skeel (d. 1601) in 1566, a daughter of Albert Skeel and Kirsten Sandberg. Their heraldry, dated 1568, is represented in a carving at Borre kirke, on the island of Møn.
On 29 July 1604, he married Sophie Pedersdatter Brahe (1580-1638), a daughter of Peder Jensson Brahe (d. 1610) and Margarete Albretsdatter Gøye (d. 1594).
Peder Munk came to England in the retinue of Christian IV and King James gave him a gift of gilt plate on 11 August 1606.
From 1589, Munk owned the manor at Sæbygård at Volstrup Sogn. The house had been built for the previous owners by Hercules (or Claus) Midow. In 1621 Munk sold Estvadgård to Johan Rantzau.
Peder Munk died in 1623 at Sødringholm, Udbyhøj, a manor that he had bought in 1592, and was buried on 31 March at Volstrup Church.
His widow Sophie Brahe sold Sødringholm to Gert Rantzau (1558-1627) in 1625 and made her home at Sæbygård, where she had the east wing rebuilt. Their daughter, Kirsten Munk (1608-1624), and Sophie were also buried at Volstrup.
Munk had a house in Copenhagen in the Admiralgade. In 1607, Anna Busch Walker, who claimed to be a prophet, made an illustrated manuscript and presented it to Anne of Denmark. She wrote that she was the daughter of George Busch, born in Copenhagen, upon the Holm in "Peter Munckss" house, now "ritsch amirall" in Denmark. The Holm, Holmen, or Bremerholm was a former island reclaimed to make a naval base.
== References ==
== External links ==
'Munk, Peder', SSNE database, S. Murdoch & A. Grosjean, University of St Andrews.
Steffen Heiberg: 'Peder Munk' i Dansk Biografisk Leksikon, 3. udg., Gyldendal 1979-84.
'Peder Munk', Slaegten Reventlow, Genealogy with mapping.
Herregaardsmuseet Saebygaard, Norjyllands Kystmuseum.
P. A. Munch, 'Prindsesse Annas, Giftermaal med Kong Jacob d. 6te af Skotland', Norske Samlinger, 1 (1852), pp. 450-512. |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axitinib#:~:text=DrugBank-,DB06626,-ChemSpider | Axitinib | Axitinib, sold under the brand name Inlyta, is a small molecule tyrosine kinase inhibitor developed by Pfizer. It has been shown to significantly inhibit growth of breast cancer in animal (xenograft) models and has shown partial responses in clinical trials with renal cell carcinoma (RCC) and several other tumour types.
It was approved to treat renal cell carcinoma by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after showing a modest increase in progression-free survival, though there have been reports of fatal adverse effects.
== Medical uses ==
=== Renal cell carcinoma ===
It has received approval for use as a treatment for renal cell carcinoma from the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (January 2012), the European Medicines Agency (EMA) (September 2012), the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) (September 2012) and the Australian Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) (July 2012).
== Clinical trials ==
A Phase II clinical trial showed good response in combination chemotherapy with gemcitabine for advanced pancreatic cancer. However, Pfizer reported on 30 January 2009, that Phase III clinical trials of the drug when used in combination with gemcitabine showed no evidence of improved survival rates over treatments using gemcitabine alone for advanced pancreatic cancer and halted the trial.
In 2010, a Phase III trial for previously treated metastatic renal cell carcinoma (mRCC) showed significantly extended progression-free survival when compared to sorafenib. In December 2011, the Oncologic Drugs Advisory Committee (ODAC) voted unanimously to recommend that US FDA approve axitinib for the second-line treatment of patients with advanced renal cell carcinoma (RCC), based on the results of the Phase III trial comparing axitinib and sorafenib.
It has also been studied in combination with the ALK1 inhibitor dalantercept.
A study published in 2015 showed that axitinib effectively inhibits a mutated gene (BCR-ABL1[T315I]) that is common in chronic myeloid leukemias and adult acute lymphoblastic leukemias which have become resistant to other tyrosine kinase inhibitors like imatinib. This is one of the first examples of a new indication for an existing drug being discovered by screening known drugs using a patient's own cells.
== Adverse effects ==
Diarrhea, hypertension, fatigue, decreased appetite, nausea, dysphonia, hand-foot syndrome, weight decreased, vomiting, asthenia, and constipation are the most common side effects occurring in more than 20% of patients.
== Interactions ==
Coadministration with strong CYP3A4/CYP3A5 inhibitors and inducers should be avoided where possible as they may increase or reduce plasma exposure of axitinib, respectively.
== Mechanism of action ==
Its primary mechanism of action is thought to be vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 1–3, c-KIT and PDGFR inhibition, this, in turn, enables it to inhibit angiogenesis (the formation of new blood vessels by tumours).
It was also proposed that it might act by inducing autophagy, as some other tyrosine kinase inhibitors, like sorafenib.
It has also been shown to bind (in a different conformation from the VEGF binding) to the BCR-ABL fusion protein, specifically inhibiting the drug-resistant T315I mutant isoform.
== Pharmacokinetics ==
== Society and culture ==
=== Legal status ===
In July 2024, the Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use of the European Medicines Agency adopted a positive opinion, recommending the granting of a marketing authorization for the medicinal product Axitinib Accord, intended for the treatment of adults with renal cell carcinoma. The applicant for this medicinal product is Accord Healthcare S.L.U.
=== Economics ===
Pfizer reported revenue of US$1.036 billion for Inlyta in 2023.
=== Brand names ===
In the European Union, it is sold under the brand name Inlyta.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Ferry | Jules Ferry | Jules François Camille Ferry (French: [ʒyl fɛʁi]; 5 April 1832 – 17 March 1893) was a French statesman and republican philosopher. He was one of the leaders of the Moderate Republicans and served as Prime Minister of France from 1880 to 1881 and 1883 to 1885. He was a promoter of laicism and colonial expansion. Under the Third Republic, Ferry made primary education free and compulsory through several new laws. However, he was forced to resign following the Sino-French War in 1885 due to his unpopularity and public opinion against the war.
== Biography ==
=== Early life and family ===
Ferry was born in France, in the Vosges department, to Charles-Édouard Ferry, a lawyer from a family that had established itself in Saint-Dié as bellmakers, and Adélaïde Jamelet. His paternal grandfather, François-Joseph Ferry, was mayor of Saint-Dié through the Consulate and the First Empire. He studied law, and was called to the bar at Paris in 1854, but soon went into politics, contributing to various newspapers, particularly to Le Temps. He attacked the Second French Empire with great violence, directing his opposition especially against Baron Haussmann, prefect of the Seine department. A series of his articles in Le Temps was later republished as The Fantastic Tales of Haussmann (1868).
=== Political rise ===
Elected republican deputy for Paris in 1869, he protested against the declaration of war with Germany, and on 6 September 1870 was appointed prefect of the Seine by the Government of National Defense.
In this position, he had the difficult task of administering Paris during the siege, and after the Paris Commune was obliged to resign (5 June 1871). From 1872 to 1873 he was sent by Adolphe Thiers as minister to Athens, but returned to the chamber as deputy for the Vosges, and became one of the leaders of the Opportunist Republicans. When the first republican ministry was formed under W. H. Waddington on 4 February 1879, he was one of its members, and continued in the ministry until 30 March 1885, except for two short interruptions (from 10 November 1881 to 30 January 1882, and from 29 July 1882 to 21 February 1883), first as minister of education and then as minister of foreign affairs. A leader of the Opportunist Republicans faction, he was twice premier (1880–1881 and 1883–1885). He was an active Freemason initiated on 8 July 1875, in "La Clémente Amitiée" lodge in Paris the same day as Émile Littré. He became a member of the "Alsace-Lorraine" Lodge founded in Paris in 1782.
=== School reforms ===
Two important works are associated with his administration: the non-clerical organization of public education, and the major colonial expansion of France.
Ferry believed the path to a modernized and prosperous France lay in the triumph of reason over religion. School reforms were a key part of his plan.
Following the republican program, he proposed to destroy the influence of the clergy in universities and found his own system of republican schooling. He reorganized the committee of public education (law of 27 February 1880) and proposed a regulation for the conferring of university degrees, which, though rejected, aroused violent polemics because the 7th article took away from the unauthorized religious orders the right to teach. He finally succeeded in passing his eponymous laws of 16 June 1881 and 28 March 1882, which made primary education in France free, non-clerical (laïque) and mandatory. In higher education, the number of professors called the "Republic's black hussars" (French: hussards noirs de la République) because of their Republican support, doubled under his ministry.
=== Colonial expansion ===
After the military defeat of France by Prussia in 1870, Ferry formed the idea of acquiring a great colonial empire, principally for the sake of economic exploitation. In 1882, as Minister of Public Instruction, he decided to create a mission to explore the Regency of Tunisia. The expedition was headed by the botanist Ernest Cosson and included the botanist Napoléon Doumet-Adanson and other naturalists. In 1884 a geological section under Georges Rolland was added to the Tunisian Scientific Exploration Mission. Rolland was assisted by Philippe Thomas from 1885 and by Georges Le Mesle in 1887.
In a speech on the colonial empire before the Chamber of Deputies on 28 March 1884, he declared that "it is a right for the superior races, because they have a duty. They have the duty to civilize the inferior races." Ferry directed the negotiations which led to the establishment of a French protectorate in Tunis (1881), prepared the treaty of 17 December 1885 for the occupation of Madagascar; directed the exploration of the Congo and of the Niger region; and above all, he organized the conquest of Annam and Tonkin in what became Indochina.
The last of these endeavors led to a war with Qing dynasty China, which had a claim of suzerainty over the two provinces. The excitement caused in Paris by the sudden retreat of the French troops from Lạng Sơn during this war led to the Tonkin Affair: his violent denunciation by Clemenceau and other radicals, and his downfall on 30 March 1885. Although the treaty of peace with the Chinese Empire (9 June 1885), in which the Qing dynasty ceded suzerainty of Annam and Tonkin to France, was the work of his ministry, he would never again serve as premier.
The desire for a monarchy was strong in France in the early years of the Third Republic – Henri, Count of Chambord having made a bid early in its history. A committed republican, Ferry undertook a wide-scale "purge" by dismissing many known monarchists from top positions in the magistrature, army, and civil and diplomatic service.
In the 1890s he visited Algeria and provided a critical report. He predicted that Algeria could not escape a conflict between Indigènes and Europeans:
He was interested in providing education to the Indigènes, while the settlers were skeptical about this topic.
He was given a poor image of the settlers because they did not want to pay taxes.
He also noted that the Indigène was contributing to the Communes de plein exercice without profiting of it.
He considered the settlers were poorly chosen, and that they were too numerous
He was in favor of the self-government of Algeria but considered the settler were not enough educated to do so
He considered that the Muslims did not want French citizenship, Military service, French mandatory schools, civil French law.
He considered that the Muslims wanted fewer taxes, taxes more used for their needs, the authority of the cadis, Muslim city councilors involvement in Mayor election
He also considered that the Land laws were a failure.
=== Agreements with Germany ===
The key to understanding Ferry's unique position in Third Republic history is that until his political critic Georges Clemenceau became Prime Minister twice in the 20th century, Ferry had the longest tenure as Prime Minister under that regime. He also played with political dynamite that eventually destroyed his success. Ferry (like his 20th-century equivalent Joseph Caillaux) believed in not confronting Wilhelmine Germany by threats of a future war of revenge. Most French politicians in the middle and right saw it as a sacred duty to one day lead France again against Germany to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, and avenge the awful defeat of 1870. But Ferry realized that Germany was too powerful, and it made more sense to cooperate with Otto von Bismarck and avoid trouble. A sensible policy – but hardly popular.
Bismarck was constantly nervous about the situation with France. Although he had despised the ineptness of the French under Napoleon III and the government of Adolphe Thiers and Jules Favre, he had not planned for all the demands he presented to the French in 1870. He only wished to temporarily cripple France by the billion-franc reparation, but suddenly he was confronted by the demands of Marshals Albrecht von Roon and Helmut von Moltke (backed by Emperor Wilhelm I) to annex the two French provinces as further payment. Bismarck, for all his abilities regarding the manipulation of events, could not afford to anger the Prussian military. He got the two provinces, but he realized it would eventually have severe future repercussions.
Bismarck was able to ignore the French for most of the 1870s and early 1880s, but as he found problems with his three erstwhile allies (Austria, Russia, and Italy), he realized France might one day take advantage of this (as it did with Russia in 1894). When Ferry came up with a radically different approach to the situation and offered an olive branch, Bismarck reciprocated. A Franco-German friendship would alleviate problems of siding with either Austria or Russia, or Austria and Italy. Bismarck approved of the colonial expansion that France pursued under Ferry. He only had some problems with local German imperialists who were critical that Germany lacked colonies, so he found a few in the 1880s, making certain he did not confront French interests. But he also suggested Franco-German cooperation on the imperial front against the British Empire, thus hoping to create a wedge between the two Western European great powers. It did, as a result, leading to a major race for influence across Africa that nearly culminated in war in the next decade, at Fashoda in the Sudan in 1898. But by then both Bismarck and Ferry were dead, and the rapprochement policy died when Ferry lost office. As for Fashoda, while it was a confrontation, it led to Britain and France eventually discussing their rival colonial goals, and agreeing to support each other's sphere of influence – the first step to the Entente Cordiale between the countries in 1904.
=== Later life ===
Ferry remained an influential member of the moderate republican party, and directed the opposition to General Boulanger. After the resignation of Jules Grévy (2 December 1887), he was a candidate for the presidency of the republic, but the radicals refused to support him, and he withdrew in favor of Sadi Carnot.
On 10 December 1887, a man named Aubertin attempted to assassinate Jules Ferry, who would later die on 17 March 1893 from complications attributed to this wound. The Chamber of Deputies gave him a state funeral.
== Ferry's 1st Ministry, 23 September 1880 – 14 November 1881 ==
Jules Ferry – President of the Council and Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
Jules Barthélemy-Saint-Hilaire – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Jean Joseph Farre – Minister of War
Ernest Constans – Minister of the Interior and Worship
Pierre Magnin – Minister of Finance
Jules Cazot – Minister of Justice
Georges Charles Cloué – Minister of Marine and Colonies
Sadi Carnot – Minister of Public Works
Adolphe Cochery – Minister of Posts and Telegraphs
Pierre Tirard – Minister of Agriculture and Commerce
== Ferry's 2nd Ministry, 21 February 1883 – 6 April 1885 ==
Jules Ferry – President of the Council and Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts
Paul-Armand Challemel-Lacour – Minister of Foreign Affairs
Jean Thibaudin – Minister of War
Pierre Waldeck-Rousseau – Minister of the Interior
Pierre Tirard – Minister of Finance
Félix Martin-Feuillée – Minister of Justice and Worship
Charles Brun – Minister of Marine and Colonies
Jules Méline – Minister of Agriculture
David Raynal – Minister of Public Works
Adolphe Cochery – Minister of Posts and Telegraphs
Anne Charles Hérisson – Minister of Commerce
Changes
9 August 1883 – Alexandre Louis François Peyron succeeds Charles Brun as Minister of Marine and Colonies
9 October 1883 – Jean-Baptiste Campenon succeeds Thibaudin as Minister of War.
20 November 1883 – Jules Ferry succeeds Challemel-Lacour as Minister of Foreign Affairs. Armand Fallières succeeds Ferry as Minister of Public Instruction and Fine Arts.
14 October 1884 – Maurice Rouvier succeeds Hérisson as Minister of Commerce
3 January 1885 – Jules Louis Lewal succeeds Campenon as Minister of War.
== See also ==
Jules Ferry laws
Opportunist Republicans
Vergonha
Nursery Schools of France
== Notes ==
== References ==
== Related articles ==
Normal schools in France
== External links ==
Lettre aux Instituteurs, Jules Ferry, November 1883, online and analyzed on BibNum Archived 20 May 2015 at the Wayback Machine (for English version, click 'Télécharger')
Newspaper clippings about Jules Ferry in the 20th Century Press Archives of the ZBW |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Valentine_(film)# | Shirley Valentine (film) | Shirley Valentine is a 1989 English romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lewis Gilbert. The screenplay by Willy Russell is based on his 1986 one-character play of the same title, which follows middle-aged Shirley Valentine in an unexpected discovery of herself and the rekindling of her childhood dreams and youthful love of life.
Pauline Collins reprises the title role as middle-aged housewife Shirley, which she had previously played in the stage production in London's West End and on Broadway, and Tom Conti plays Costas Dimitriades, the owner of a Greek tavern with whom she has a holiday romance.
== Plot ==
Shirley Valentine is a bored 42-year-old working class Liverpudlian housewife whose life and initially enriching marriage has settled into a narrow and unsatisfying rut, leaving few genuine friends and her childhood dreams unaccomplished, and she feels as if her husband and children treat her more like a servant. When her flamboyant friend Jane wins a trip for two to Greece, Shirley uncharacteristically puts herself first and accepts Jane's invitation.
Shirley feels considerable self-doubt and ultimately only goes because of unexpected encouragement from her neighbour Gillian, who drops her air of superiority to reveal her respect and emotional support of Shirley's plans, and former school enemy Marjorie Majors, who admits she had, in fact, been envious of Shirley's rebellious role at school, and had become a high-class prostitute rather than a prestigious air hostess.
Upon arrival, Jane immediately abandons Shirley for a holiday romance with a fellow passenger from their flight, leaving Shirley to set out on her own. She begins to see her fellow holidaymakers through new eyes, as she genuinely enjoys Greece while they want British food and stereotypical entertainment. She remains contentedly alone until she meets Costas Dimitriades, the owner of a nearby tavern, who helps her fulfil a dream of drinking wine by the seashore in the country where the grapes were grown and later invites her to travel around the nearby islands for a day on his brother's boat. Costas promises not to try to seduce her while bolstering her self-confidence in her attractiveness.
As Shirley prepares for the trip, Jane returns and begs for forgiveness for abandoning her; Jane is then stunned to find that Shirley has made plans on her own and will be going out with Costas imminently. Enjoying the day out, Shirley decides to swim in the sea; lacking a swimsuit, she swims naked instead, with Costas joining her in the water. She realises that she does not want Costas to keep his promise. They kiss and, later on the boat, have very intense sex.
On her return, Jane believes Shirley has fallen in love with Costas, but Shirley reveals to the audience that she has fallen in love with the idea of living. She spends more time with Costas, and at the airport, she turns back and walks to Costas's tavern to find him attempting to seduce another tourist the same way. Costas is shocked to see Shirley after her departure, but she says she wants a job and is not upset at catching him in the act.
Initially angry and confused at her departure, Shirley's husband, Joe, waits for her return with a large armful of flowers. He is shocked and embarrassed to find Shirley chose to stay and is not on the plane, and repeatedly calls her, pleading and arguing for her to return, saying that it is her place and she is embarrassing him, or telling her that her actions result from a midlife crisis or menopause.
Shirley becomes more content with her new life. She also succeeds greatly with narrow-minded holidaymakers who want the same food as in Britain. Finally, their son tells Joe to go and get her instead of just phoning. Receiving a telegram about Joe's arrival, Costas makes excuses and leaves for the day, while Shirley is unperturbed. Joe walks from the airport. Shirley, wearing sunglasses and feeling like a different person, is sipping wine by the sea at sunset. Joe does not recognise her and walks past until she calls him back. The film ends with the two drinking wine by the sea.
== Cast ==
Pauline Collins as Shirley Bradshaw
Tom Conti as Costas Dimitriades
Julia McKenzie as Gillian
Alison Steadman as Jane
Joanna Lumley as Marjorie Majors
Sylvia Syms as Headmistress
Bernard Hill as Joe Bradshaw
George Costigan as Dougie
Anna Keaveney as Jeanette
Tracie Bennett as Millandra Bradshaw
Ken Sharrock as Sydney
Karen Craig as Thelma
Gareth Jefferson as Brian Bradshaw
Marc Zuber as Renos
Gillian Kearney as young Shirley
Catharine Duncan as young Marjorie
Cardew Robinson as Londoner
Honora Burke as Londoner's wife
== Production ==
=== Filming ===
The film was shot on location in Liverpool, Twickenham, Oxford Circus, Bloomsbury, and St Pancras railway station in England, and on the island of Mykonos in Greece.
=== Music ===
The film's theme song, "The Girl Who Used to Be Me", was written by Marvin Hamlisch and Alan and Marilyn Bergman and performed by Patti Austin.
== Release ==
The film opened the Montreal World Film Festival at the Théâtre Maisonneuve on 24 August 1989. Unlike most openers of the festival in French-speaking Quebec, it was shown without French subtitles. The film opened in the United States and Canada on 30 August, in London on 13 October and in the UK on 27 October 1989.
=== Critical reception ===
Joe Brown of The Washington Post called the film "an uncommonly warm, relaxed little movie . . . without a cloying artificially sweetened aftertaste." He continued, "The story's a bit of romantic whimsy, but it affords a great many comfortable and comforting laughs, and may even serve as a wake-up call for some." Variety called the film "uneven but generally delightful" and Pauline Collins "irresistible." On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds a rating of 72% from 18 reviews.
Radio Times rated the film four out of five stars and added, "Lewis Gilbert manages to retain the best of Willy Russell's theatrical devices while opening out the action to embrace a big-screen atmosphere. The supporting cast, particularly Bernard Hill as Collins's Neanderthal husband, is equally convincing, with only the hammy Conti (glistening teeth and appalling accent) striking a momentary false note." Among reviewers who found the film banal and hollow, Caryn James, of The New York Times observed, "By adding all the characters and settings that Shirley only talks about on stage, the film reveals the weakness of Mr. Russell's script as surely as if a magician's clumsy assistant had pointed a finger at a secret trapdoor. Ms. Collins brings as much energy and warmth to the role as ever, but on screen the strength of her performance is shattered by being chopped into tiny, disconnected bits."
Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times likewise rated the film one star, calling it "a realistic drama of appalling banality." He added, "There were moments during the movie when I cringed at the manipulative dialogue as the heroine recited warmed-over philosophy and inane one-liners when she should have been allowed to speak for herself. . . . Many of the sentiments in this film seem recycled directly from greeting cards . . . If there is a shred of plausibility in the film, it comes from Bernard Hill's performance as Shirley Valentine's husband. He isn't a bad bloke, just a tired and indifferent one, and when he follows his wife to Greece at the end of the film, there are a few moments so truthful that they show up the artifice of the rest."
=== Box office ===
In the UK, after opening nationwide, it was number one for three consecutive weeks and was the highest-grossing independent British film of the year, with a gross of £11.5 million. The film grossed $6.1 million in the United States and Canada. Worldwide, it grossed $38 million.
=== Awards and nominations ===
== References ==
== External links ==
Shirley Valentine at IMDb
Shirley Valentine at Rotten Tomatoes
Shirley Valentine at Box Office Mojo |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statue_of_Unity#:~:text=The%20Gujarat%20state%20government%20had,the%20construction%20of%20the%20statue. | Statue of Unity | The Statue of Unity is the world's tallest statue, with a height of 182 metres (597 feet), located in Narmada valley, near Kevadia in the state of Gujarat, India. It depicts Indian politician and independence activist Sardar Patel (1875–1950), who was the first deputy prime minister and home minister of independent India. Patel played a significant role in the political integration of India. The statue is on the Narmada River in the Kevadiya colony, facing the Sardar Sarovar Dam, 100 kilometres (62 miles) southeast of the city of Vadodara.
The project was first announced in 2010 by Narendra Modi, then Chief Minister of Gujarat, and construction started in October 2013 by Indian company Larsen & Toubro, with a total construction cost of ₹27 billion (US$422 million). It was designed by Indian sculptor Ram V. Sutar and was inaugurated by Modi, then Prime Minister of India, on 31 October 2018, on what would have been Patel's 143rd birthday.
== History ==
Then chief minister of Gujarat, Narendra Modi announced the project on 7 October 2013 to mark the beginning of his tenth year as the chief minister of the state.
A society named Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel Rashtriya Ekta Trust (SVPRET) was formed under the chairmanship of the Chief Minister of Gujarat, to execute the project.
The Statue of Unity Movement was started in 2013 to collect the iron needed for the statue by asking farmers to donate their used farming instruments. By 2016, a total of 135 metric tonnes of scrap iron had been collected and about 109 tonnes of it was used to make the foundation of the statue after processing. A marathon titled Run For Unity was held on 15 December 2013 in Surat and Vadodara in support of the project.
== Design and construction ==
=== Design ===
After studying statues of Patel across the country a team of historians, artists, and academics chose a design submitted by the Indian sculptor Ram V. Sutar. The Statue of Unity is a larger version of a statue of the leader installed at Ahmedabad International Airport. Three models of the design measuring 0.91 metres (3 ft), 5.5 metres (18 ft), and 9.1 metres (30 ft) were initially created. Once the design of the largest model was approved, a detailed 3D scan was produced which formed the basis for the bronze cladding cast in a foundry in China.
The design showing Patel's dhoti-clad legs and sandalled feet make the statue narrower at the base with a slenderness ratio that varies between 16 and 19, significantly higher than most tall buildings with ratios between 8 and 14. This presents a challenge to the stability which was addressed in part through the use of two 250-tonne tuned mass dampers. The statue is built to withstand winds of up to 180 kilometres per hour (110 mph) and earthquakes measuring 6.5 on the Richter scale which are at a depth of 10 km and within a radius of 12 km of the statue.
The total height of the structure is 240 m (790 ft), with a base of 58 m (190 ft) and the statue measuring 182 m (597 ft). The height of 182 metres was specifically chosen to match the number of seats in the Gujarat Legislative Assembly.
=== Funding ===
The Statue of Unity was built by a Public-Private Partnership, with most of the money coming from the Government of Gujarat. The Gujarat state government had allotted ₹500 crore (equivalent to ₹755 crore or US$89 million in 2023) for the project in its budget from 2012 to 2015. In the 2014–15 Union Budget, ₹200 crore (equivalent to ₹320 crore or US$38 million in 2023) was allocated for the construction of the statue. Funds were also contributed by Public Sector Undertakings under the Corporate Social Responsibility scheme.
=== Construction ===
A consortium comprising Turner Construction, Michael Graves and Associates and the Meinhardt Group supervised the project. The project took 57 months to complete – 15 months for planning, 40 months for construction and 2 months for handing over by the consortium. The total cost of the project was estimated to be about ₹2,063 crore (equivalent to ₹33 billion or US$390 million in 2023) by the Government. The tender bids for the first phase were invited in October 2013 and were closed in November 2013.
Narendra Modi, then serving as the Chief Minister of Gujarat, laid the statue's foundation stone on 31 October 2013, the 138th anniversary of Patel's birth.
Indian infrastructure company Larsen & Toubro won the contract on 27 October 2014 for its lowest bid of ₹2,989 crore (equivalent to ₹48 billion or US$560 million in 2023) for the design, construction and maintenance of the statue. L&T commenced the construction on 31 October 2014. In the first phase of the project, ₹1,347 crore was earmarked for the main statue, ₹235 crore for the exhibition hall and convention centre, ₹83 crore for the bridge connecting the memorial to the mainland and ₹657 crore for the maintenance of the structure for a duration of 15 years after its completion. The Sadhu Bet hillock was flattened from 70 metres to 55 metres to lay the foundation of the statue.
L&T employed over 3000 workers and 250 engineers in the statue's construction. The core of the statue used 210,000 cubic metres (7,400,000 cu ft) of cement and concrete, 6,500 tonnes of structural steel, and 18,500 tonnes of reinforced steel. The outer façade is made up of 1,700 tonnes of bronze plates and 1,850 tonnes of bronze cladding which in turn consists of 565 macro and 6000 micro panels. The bronze panels were cast in Jiangxi Tongqing Metal Handicrafts Co. Ltd (the TQ Art foundry) in China as facilities large enough for such casting were unavailable in India. The bronze panels were transported over sea and then by road to a workshop near the construction site where they were assembled.
Local tribals belonging to the Tadvi tribe opposed the land acquisition for the development of tourism infrastructure around the statue. Around 300 activists were arrested ahead of unveiling of the statue. People of Kevadia, Kothi, Waghodia, Limbdi, Navagam, and Gora villages opposed the construction of the statue and demanded the restitution of the land rights over 375 hectares (927 acres) of land acquired earlier for the dam as well as for the formation of a new Garudeshwar subdistrict. They also opposed the formation of the Kevadia Area Development Authority (KADA) and the construction of the Garudeshwar weir-cum-causeway project. The government of Gujarat accepted most of their demands.
Construction of the monument was completed in mid-October 2018; and the inaugural ceremony was held on 31 October 2018 (143rd birth anniversary of Vallabhbhai Patel), and was presided over by Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The statue has been described as a tribute to Indian engineering skills.
== Features ==
The Statue of Unity is the world's tallest statue at 182 metres (597 ft). It rises 54 metres (177 ft) higher than the previous record holder, the Spring Temple Buddha in China's Henan province. The previous tallest statue in India was the 41 m (135 ft) tall statue of Lord Hanuman at the Paritala Anjaneya Temple near Vijayawada in the state of Andhra Pradesh. The statue can be seen within a 7 km (4.3 mi) radius.
The monument is constructed on a river island named Sadhu Bet, 3.2 km (2.0 mi) away from and facing the Narmada Dam downstream. The statue and its surroundings occupy more than 2 hectares (4.9 acres), and are surrounded by a 12 km (7.5 mi) long artificial lake formed by the Garudeshwar weir downstream on the Narmada river.
The statue is divided into five zones, of which only three are accessible to the public. From its base to the level of Patel's shins is the first zone which has three levels and includes the exhibition area, mezzanine and roof. The first zone also contains a memorial garden and a museum. The second zone reaches up to Patel's thighs, while the third extends up to the viewing gallery at a height of 153 metres. The fourth zone is the maintenance area while the final zone comprises the head and shoulders of the statue.
The museum in the first zone catalogues Patel's life and contributions. An adjoining audio-visual gallery provides a 15-minute-long presentation on Patel and also describes the tribal culture of the state. The concrete towers which form the statue's legs contain two elevators each. Each lift can carry 26 people at a time to the viewing gallery in just over 30 seconds. The gallery is located at a height of 153 metres (502 ft) and can hold up to 200 people.
== Tourism ==
Over 128,000 tourists visited the statue in the first eleven days of its opening to the public on 1 November 2018. It has been included in the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation's '8 Wonders of SCO' list. In its first year of operation, the Statue of Unity attracted 2,900,000 visitors and collected ₹82 crore (US$11.64 million) in ticket revenue. By 15 March 2021, 5 million tourists visited the venue. It was visited by 10 million people by November 2022. In five years since opening, the statue attracted over 15 million cumulative visitors.
== Gallery ==
== See also ==
Shiv Smarak
Statue of Ram, Ayodhya
List of tallest statues
== Notes ==
== References ==
== External links ==
Official website |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrado_Gabriele | Corrado Gabriele | Corrado Gabriele (born November 1966, Napoli) is an Italian politician. He was a member of the European Parliament from May 8, 2006, when he took up a seat vacated after the 2006 Italian general election, until June 19 in the same year. He represented the Communist Refoundation Party within the European United Left–Nordic Green Left parliamentary group.
== External links ==
Personal website (in Italian) |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Randolph | David Randolph | David Randolph (December 21, 1914 – May 12, 2010) was an American conductor, music educator and radio host. He is best known as the music director from 1965 through 2010 of the St. Cecilia Chorus (known now as The Cecilia Chorus of New York) and as the host of Music for the Connoisseur, later known as The David Randolph Concerts, a WNYC classical music radio program nationally syndicated in the United States.
The author and neurologist Oliver Sacks wrote of him: His passion for the every aspect of the music was evident. He often gave historical glosses on a particular instrument or musical theme, and he never omitted to say that Handel drew much of his most beloved “religious” music from the bawdy Italian love songs of his time. There was no such thing as “religious” music, Randolph felt, any more than there was “military” music or “love” music; there was only music put to different uses, in different contexts. This was a point which he brought out with great eloquence in his beautiful book, This Is Music: A Guide to the Pleasure of Listening, and he would often mention it before a performance of his annual Christmas Oratorio or the great Passions he conducted at Easter. He would mention it, too, when conducting his favorite Requiem Masses by Brahms, Verdi, or Berlioz—all of whom, he would remind the audience, were atheists (as he himself was). The religious imagination, he felt, was a most precious part of the human spirit, but he was convinced that it did not require particular religious beliefs, or indeed any religious belief.
== Biography ==
David Randolph was born David Rosenberg in Manhattan on December 21, 1914 to Morris Rosenberg and Elsie Goodman. He changed his surname to Randolph after graduating from high school.
== Links ==
As part of its regular efforts to document living treasures of the New York performing arts community, the Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of the New York Public Library recorded a 100-minute video oral history interview with the 95-year David Randolph (in conversation with Gerald Greland) on March 25, 2010, which would turn out to be his final interview before he succumbed to illness. The Library's Rodgers and Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound houses a collection of sound recordings of Mr. Randolph with the St. Cecilia Chorus; and the Library also contains an archive of his papers.
== References == |
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancelled_expressways_in_Toronto | Cancelled expressways in Toronto | The cancelled expressways in Toronto were a planned series of municipal expressways in Toronto, Ontario, Canada that were only partially built or cancelled due to public opposition. Metropolitan Toronto's system of superhighways or freeways were intended to spur or handle growth in the suburbs while also connecting to the downtown core, in conjunction with the province's developing 400-Series Highways which would connect to municipalities outside of Metro. However these expressways were opposed by citizens within the city of Toronto downtown core, citing the demolition of homes and park lands, air pollution, noise and the high cost of construction. The Spadina Expressway, planned since the 1940s, was cancelled in 1971 after being only partially constructed. After the Spadina cancellation, other expressway plans, intended to create a 'ring' around the central core, were abandoned.
== History ==
By the 1940s, urban development extended past the city of Toronto's borders. It was recognized within the planning department of the city that population growth would take place and that the farmlands outside of the city's border would be developed. In 1943, the City of Toronto Planning Board developed a plan for the area within a nine-mile radius of Yonge Street and Queen Street. It included a network of superhighways:
Lakeshore Expressway (which was implemented as the Gardiner Expressway), from QEW-427 interchange along the waterfront east to Scarborough's eastern border,
Spadina Expressway
North along Coxwell Avenue to today's Don Valley and 401 interchange,
Toronto By-Pass (this comprised the highway stretches of today's Highway 427 from the QEW to 401 and Highway 401 from Highway 427 to Pickering)
From 427-QEW interchange, along Bloor Street east to meet Don Valley, then east along Gerrard to meet Lakeshore at Victoria Park
An unnamed highway which started at the foot of today's Don Valley, then north-west to Eglinton, then west along Eglinton to the vicinity of Pearson airport.
Source: Sewell (2009)
=== Metro forms ===
With the creation of Metropolitan Toronto (Metro) in 1953, a new level of government was created with the authority to build what was necessary to facilitate the growth expected within the Metro area. Metro would build the infrastructure, such as sewers, sewage treatment plants, public transit, highways and arterial roads, leaving local roads and land use planning to the individual governments. Based on the 1940s plans, Metro planned to build an extensive network of highways that crisscrossed the city. While Metro would pay 100% of the cost of most infrastructure, Ontario paid 50% of the cost of road projects.
While the provincial government would plan and build highways crossing Metro and highways to connect to municipalities outside of Metro, Metro would focus on roads serving the downtown core and connecting the downtown core to the growing suburbs. The plan was centred on a number of major routes, notably the "Toronto-Barrie Highway" (Highway 400) on the north-west of Toronto, and the Queen Elizabeth Way on the southwest side. The province was already deep in the planning process for what would become Highway 400 along the northern reaches of the city, in what was then farmland far from the city core. To connect these highways, which ended at the city limits for the most part, with the downtown core, Metro would be responsible for continuing construction into the city.
=== Beginning of construction ===
Construction of the network started with what was then known as the Lakeshore Expressway, which would connect the QEW from its terminus at the Humber River with the downtown core. The initial western section opened in 1958, continuing eastward as an elevated highway to York Street in the city core in 1962, and further to the Don River by 1964. During construction the Lakeshore was renamed the Gardiner Expressway, after the first chair of Metropolitan Toronto and major supporter of the expressway plans, Fred Gardiner. A second expressway, the Don Valley Parkway, opened between Bloor Street and Eglinton Avenue in 1961, and continued to develop north and south until it connected to Highway 401 in the north and the Gardiner Expressway in the south.
These plans were only the beginning of an even larger network that was first proposed in 1959 and fully developed by 1966 when it became the official plan. In 1959, Metro developed the concept of 'rings' of expressways around the central core. The inner ring included the Crosstown east-west along Davenport connecting to the Don Valley in the east and the Highway 400 extension to the west, the Highway 400 extension down Christie and Grace Streets from Davenport, connecting to the Gardiner near Fort York just west of the downtown core, and the Gardiner and Don Valley Expressways. The outer ring is composed of Highway 401 along the north, Highway 427 on the west, the Gardiner on the south and the Scarborough to the east, connecting the Gardiner Expressway in the downtown core with Highway 401 in the far eastern reaches of the city. Other links included the Richview, a shorter at-grade expressway connecting the western end of the Crosstown at the Highway 400 extension with Highway 27 further west, and eventually connecting to the proposed Ontario Highway 403 and the Spadina Expressway which ran north–south and connected the middle of Highway 401 with the downtown core, ending on Spadina Avenue near the University of Toronto.
By 1962, the Spadina Expressway project was approved and construction proceeded in 1963 from Wilson Avenue south to Lawrence Avenue. At first, Metro approved only the construction from Lawrence to Wilson. However, the province would not give funds for its construction unless Metro approved the whole route, which was done. During construction, priority was given to access to the new Yorkdale Shopping Centre, which opened in 1964. Drivers could drive from Lawrence Avenue north along a paved section of the expressway north to Yorkdale. The interchange to Highway 401 would be completed later. In 1961, one link in the inner ring, the Crosstown, was cancelled by Metro Council, although carried forward by Metro planning officials. Toronto and Metro proposed alternate routes for Highway 400, with Toronto favouring a route along the railway lines.
Metro developed its official transportation plan, starting in 1964 by evaluating three concepts, a road-oriented plan, a transit-oriented plan, and a mixed plan, referred to as the 'balanced system'. The road-oriented system omitted the Spadina subway and included all of the expressways. The mixed system did not omit any roads but did omit a Queen Street subway. The transit-oriented plan included Eglinton Avenue and Queen Street subways, extending the Spadina north to Vaughan, and extending the Bloor-Danforth line east into Scarborough. It also included express bus routes along the expressways and commuter rail. The inner ring of highways was not included.
A – Distances were direct routes between points, not distances along road alignments
B – costs were estimated by Nowlan at $16 million per actual mile ($26 million per km) (the base routes were 197 mi (317 km) of expressway)
Sources:
Metro Toronto Planning Board, The Metropolitan Transportation Plan, 1964.
Nowlan and Nowlan (1970), pg. 42
The balanced plan, expected to be implemented by 1980, was estimated to cost $1 billion to construct. The expressway component (Crosstown, Spadina and Gardiner and Don Valley extensions) was estimated to cost $210 million.
The mixed system, although it was the most expensive, was approved by Metro Council in December 1966. The official plan now included the Crosstown again, although it was not approved for construction. Toronto still rejected the Crosstown, and the Ontario government rewrote the Toronto city official plan to accept that it might be built. Construction of the Crosstown was not expected until the 1970s. After completion of the Spadina south to Lawrence, approval was then given to proceed south to Eglinton, and start the process of expropriating homes and park lands for its construction, although without an interchange for the Crosstown.
=== Problems and protests ===
The construction plans became a point of growing protests in the late 1960s. The route of the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway had run mostly through industrial areas, parkland, or generally unused areas and had not generated much public concern during early construction. This changed as the Gardiner Expressway approached the downtown area, which resulted in the demolishing of long-established neighbourhoods. The planned expressways would require the same throughout the city and, with the exception of the northern ends of the roads, generally ran through well-settled areas. In particular, the Spadina Expressway ran through the Forest Hill, The Annex, Harbord Village, Kensington Market and Chinatown neighbourhoods, while the Crosstown would present a below-grade barrier on The Annex's northern border. The Crosstown would run beside Rosedale on its eastern end, displacing a forested ravine.
A new resident to The Annex, Jane Jacobs, had been instrumental in blocking the Lower Manhattan Expressway in New York City before moving to Canada in 1969. According to Jacobs, it was the construction of expressways into major American cities that led to an exodus of the middle class, and the death of once-vibrant downtown cores. With David and Nadine Nowlan, they formed the "Stop Spadina And Save Our City" group, which grew to become a major rallying point for anti-expressway feeling in the city. By the late 1960s, the Spadina Expressway had become a "hot" topic politically.
To add to the problems, by 1969 construction of the Spadina Expressway had just reached Eglinton Avenue (although paved only to Lawrence Avenue), less than half its planned route, but had already spent almost all of its $79 million budget. Metro Toronto had to return to the Ontario Municipal Board for additional loans, which were provided in a two-to-one decision. Stop Spadina appealed, and construction was halted pending the outcome. In 1971 Premier John Robarts retired and handed the Premiership to William Davis, who agreed to hear an appeal of the Municipal Board's decision.
=== Cancellation of Spadina Expressway ===
On June 3, 1971, Davis rose in the Provincial Legislature and stated:
If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway would be a good place to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop. It is our determination to opt for the latter.
Davis agreed to continue funding for the construction of the Toronto Transit Commission (TTC) subway line (now part of Line 1 Yonge–University) that was part of the original project plans, and later, in 1972, agreed to complete the unfinished portion of the Expressway between Eglinton and Lawrence. The debate on whether or not to continue the Expressway further south from Eglinton continued throughout the 1970s.
=== Aftermath ===
The cancellation of the Spadina Expressway heralded the end of expressway construction in Toronto. Work on the other expressways in the system was simply abandoned. Highway 400 initially stopped at Jane Street where the province left it, although the route was later extended to Weston Road as Black Creek Drive (scaled down to a four lane at-grade expressway, instead of a six lane freeway). The western terminus of the Richview forms the oversized interchange between Highways 401 and 427 and Eglinton Avenue near Pearson Airport. Highway 403 was built but instead now connects further west to Highway 401, at another major interchange which also connects to Highway 410. Both ends of the Scarborough Expressway were built, in the east as a large interchange that quickly turns into a much smaller exchange with Kingston Road, and in the downtown core as a several-kilometre extension of the Gardiner past the Don Valley Parkway to Leslie Street.
Lands acquired for the proposed Scarborough and Richview Expressways remained in municipal government ownership for another twenty years after the shelving of the proposals. Much of the land remains in public ownership today, though future uses have not yet been determined.
In 2001, the Gardiner East extension was demolished between the Don Valley Parkway and Leslie Street, and there were plans to remove the connection to the Don Valley Parkway entirely, as of 2021 the Gardiner's connection with the Don Valley Parkway is being realigned.
=== Ongoing political debate ===
In the subsequent decades, the Peel Region and York Region suburbs of Toronto have expanded greatly in population and industrial development. The availability of land for development and pro-development municipal governments has led to extensive residential and industrial development. An extensive highway network has been developed of Highways 403, 407, 410, 427 and 404 within those suburbs, and all these freeways remain in the provincial inventory at the present.
In comparison, Metro Toronto has not built any new expressways since the cancellation of the Spadina, with new expressways instead constructed by the province with some later being downloaded to municipal control. The province's planned routing for the Belfield Expressway was revised so that it would not cross through Malton towards Brampton but instead terminate at Toronto International Airport; the province also expropriated the right-of-way and opened the freeway as Highway 409. The segment of Highway 404 in Metro Toronto was originally intended as a northern extension of the Don Valley Parkway between Sheppard Ave and Steeles Ave, while the province would continue it into York Region, although the province ending up assuming that entire project within Metro. Highway 400 initially stopped at Jane Street where the province left it, although the route was later extended to Weston Road as Black Creek Drive (scaled down to a four lane at-grade expressway, instead of a six lane freeway) and transferred from the province to Metro Toronto upon completion in 1982. Highway 2A and a section of QEW (the segment east of Highway 427, re-designated as part of the Gardiner) were downloaded to municipal control in 1997, causing local politicians to criticize these transfers as a financial burden on Toronto.
As an alternative to road construction, the city and province have made efforts to expand TTC services and the GO Transit commuter train service. Although TTC ridership declined in the 1980s and 1990s, it has recently begun to reverse the trend. In 2008, a new record for ridership was set, indicating a growing demand for alternatives to private vehicles for personal transportation. Since the expressways reached capacity in the 1970s, commuting has been handled by increased transit, to the point that only 10% of commuters use the Gardiner Expressway to get downtown, according to 2006 figures.
Highway advocates, notably frequent political candidate Abel Van Wyk, believe in the necessity of the expressways to meet high demand from suburban growth and automobile traffic between suburbs and the downtown core. Those advocates also believe in the necessity of new expressways to reduce the traffic congestion of the existing expressways. Opposing groups, including residents of the core, are opposed to expansion because of the air pollution, noise and health effects associated with expressways. These impact the standard of living in urban areas and hinder urban growth. Transit advocates point to the higher capacity of a transit line compared to an expressway as better use of government resources. Cycling advocates promote cycling routes as an alternative for commuting and recreation.
Special interest groups have formed to advocate for expressway construction in Toronto. A Scarborough-based citizen group called the Citizens' Transportation Alliance of Greater Toronto advocates for a restart of expressway construction in Toronto. The group proposes the construction of one new expressway to the northwest of Toronto, most likely an expansion of Black Creek Drive, and one expressway to the east through Scarborough, along a hydro corridor or an expansion of Kingston Road. The group also supports filling in the 'missing links' of the arterial road grid. Based upon the group's proposal, a prominent association of automobile owners, the Canadian Automobile Association, published a plan in 2004 of expansion within the City borders to address the congestion. This included the building of a new Scarborough Expressway through a route over Lake Ontario, new expressways and arterial roads and the building of the Richview Expressway. It was quickly dismissed by members of Toronto City Council.
The City of Toronto government, along with the Government of Ontario, is focused instead on transit alternatives. The City aims to reduce the need for highways through improvements and additions to the current transit network, as described in the Transit City plan. In April 2009, the province announced that several initiatives of the Transit City plan, including an east–west Eglinton Light Rail line connecting to the airport, would proceed on accelerated construction schedules. The Line 1 subway was extended north to Vaughan and the Eglinton Crosstown LRT line is under construction. It is proposed that Line 1 be extended north to Richmond Hill, Line 2 east to Scarborough City Centre, Line 5 west to Toronto Pearson International Airport and a new line, the Ontario Line, is proposed to serve the core and neighbourhoods in the former North York and East York districts.
Other plans debated during municipal elections have included the development of new toll highways and/or expansion of current expressways through the conversion to tolls. However, Toll highways have been seen as political poison, and no politician has made them a part of any election campaign.
== Crosstown Expressway ==
The Crosstown Expressway was a planned east–west expressway through central Toronto. Although it was consistently opposed by the City of Toronto Council, it remained in the Metro Toronto plan until it was cancelled in the aftermath of the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway. In 1964, it was estimated to cost $80 million to build.
The Crosstown was first proposed in the 1940s, and became part of the City of Toronto Official Plan in 1949. The 1949 plan included the Crosstown as the 'north-west arm' of the Don Valley Roadway "system". The highway would have connected to the Ontario Highway 400 at Old Weston Road and St. Clair Avenue. From there it would have proceeded south-easterly between Davenport Road and Dupont Street, before entering the Rosedale Ravine to connect with the main Don Valley roadway south of the Bloor Street Viaduct in the approximate location of today's Rosedale Valley Road and Bayview Avenue intersection. It was estimated to cost $15 million to construct, part of a $179 million plan of development.
As part of the 1959 plan of Metropolitan Toronto, the Expressway would have connected the Highway 400 extension, along an east–west route in the vicinity of Christie Street and Dupont Street, east to the Don Valley Parkway. Highway 400 would have continued south to the Gardiner Expressway. North of Spadina Road, the Spadina Expressway would have connected via an interchange. The expressway would continue east along a CN/CP railway corridor north of Dupont Street to Mount Pleasant Road. East of Mount Pleasant Road, the expressway would have cut through the neighbourhood of Rosedale to connect with the Don Valley Parkway. This section would have been built through ravine parklands.
The Crosstown expressway was rejected by Metro Council in December 1961. Almost immediately afterwards, transportation officials lobbied Toronto and Metro Toronto to resurrect the project. In May 1962, Toronto Public Works Commissioner Douglas Ford proposed the construction of the Crosstown, along with an extensive one-way street plan for downtown Toronto. Ford proposed this on the basis that it would be needed to absorb the traffic of the Spadina Expressway and eliminate the need for extensive road widening. He also suggested that the one-way system would preserve residential amenities and encourage development. Ford further stated that it would be folly to terminate the Spadina at other than a controlled-access expressway. Metro Planning Commissioner Murray Jones estimated that 40,000 vehicles would move daily between the Highway 400 extension and the Don Valley Parkway. Metro Traffic Director Samuel Cass suggested that the Crosstown plan would make it unnecessary for heavy traffic to use residential streets in the Rosedale and Moore Park neighbourhoods.
In 1964, Metro Planning Commissioner Eli Comay proposed the extension of Bay Street north of Davenport, to connect with a future Crosstown. Comay publicly criticized the City of Toronto for allowing an apartment development at Davenport and Hillsboro Avenue, in the path of his proposed Bay Street extension. Toronto Controller and future Toronto mayor William Dennison accused Comay of setting Metro policy by himself, as the Crosstown had been rejected. Toronto Board of Control voted to reject Comay and allowed the development to proceed.
Metro Council instructed planners to cease working on the Crosstown proposal twice. Metro Chairman William Allen quipped: "The only way to get the Crosstown out of my mind is to leave the country." The Crosstown reappeared in the 1965 transportation plan developed by Metro's Planning and Transportation Departments and was then approved by Metro Council. The City of Toronto's official plan had no Crosstown Expressway, and the Ontario Minister of Municipal Affairs rejected and rewrote that section of the city's plan to conform with the Metro official plan. The City of Toronto remained consistently opposed to the Crosstown.
=== Interchange with Don Valley Parkway ===
While land was obtained, the expressway was not built, although a short connecting road built to connect the Don Valley Parkway to the Bayview Avenue Extension and Bloor Street would likely have been integrated into the project. When the first section of the Don Valley was opened from Bloor Street to Eglinton Avenue, the roadway was the southern terminus, and is still used as an on/off ramp for the Parkway. Sections of the Parkway south of the road, and north of Eglinton Avenue were opened later. The unnamed roadway is a four-lane arterial road with interchanges at either end. The interchange with the Don Valley is named the 'Chester Hill' interchange.
== East Metro Freeway ==
The East Metro Freeway was a proposed north–south expressway to begin at Highway 401 and east of Morningside Avenue and roughly follow the edge of the Rouge River valley to Highway 407 which itself was under planning at that time. In phase 2, beyond Highway 407, the proposed route was between the Ninth Line and the York-Durham Line in Markham, leading to Stouffville. It was a last priority for the province and construction was not planned to have begun until the Scarborough Expressway was completed. It was not an extension of the Scarborough Expressway as the Scarborough's western terminus would have been 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) west of East Metro's southern terminus.
After the cancellation of the Spadina Expressway, the Scarborough Expressway was put on hold and went into review. Toronto, Metro Toronto, and Ontario had four choices left. Choices two, three, and four included the East Metro Freeway. Choice two was selected. This choice didn't have the Scarborough Expressway. With the Scarborough gone, the East Metro route was less necessary. It also encountered serious opposition from Rouge River naturalist groups. The proposal was officially dropped from planning documents on June 1, 1994.
Part of the route of Donald Cousens Parkway follows the proposed route of the East Metro Freeway namely from 14th Avenue to 16th Avenue, but this arterial road lies entirely within Markham now whereas Metro plans were to terminate in Stouffville.
Markham continues to seek an arterial road connection south to Highway 401. Toronto has not corresponded by rerouting Morningside Road to meet the southern end of Ninth Line at Steeles Avenue. The current plan is to extend Morningside Avenue from McNicoll Avenue to end at Steeles Avenue just east of Tapscott Road using a private right of way and then widening (six lanes) of Steeles from just east of Markham Road to Ninth Line. New traffic lights and wider roadway should eliminate the bottleneck along Steeles to Ninth Line. The direct connection is not possible as it would need to cut across Cedar Brae Golf Club and build on lands close to Rouge River.
== Richview Expressway ==
The Richview Expressway was named after the Richview Sideroad, a separate roadway which is today Eglinton Avenue through Etobicoke. It was only partially completed due to concerns of low use and opposition from local residents. Even though the Richview Expressway was never built, it did result in the provision of a wide right-of-way along the Eglinton Avenue corridor (after the Humber River was bridged and the Richview Sideroad designated as part of Eglinton) from Black Creek Drive to Highway 427. The present interchange of Highway 401 and Highway 427 includes several high-speed flyover ramps to and from Eglinton Avenue, which were originally meant for the Richview Expressway.
The Richview Expressway has also been known as the Hamilton Expressway since the original routing for Highway 403 (a highway route for Torontonians to travel to Hamilton) was planned to terminate at the present site of the interchange between Highway 401 and Highway 427. If the original routing of Highway 403 had been carried out, then Metro's Richview Expressway would have been considered a municipal extension of Highway 403. However, the province realigned Highway 403 to turn north and meet Highway 401 at a new junction, which was also designed to accommodate the new Highway 410 to Brampton, while Highway 401 was widened to a collector-express system between Highway 403 to Highway 427. A portion of the right of way (through Mississauga) between Highway 403 and the Richview Expressway was later used for an arterial called Eastgate Parkway which only runs a short distance before curving north and terminating at Eglinton Avenue just west of Mississauga's boundary with Etobicoke, while the rest of the corridor for the Richview remained unbuilt.
Lands allocated for the Richview Expressway were sold off. There are several apartment buildings built on the old right-of-way. The wide right-of-way was revisited in the 2014 Toronto municipal election when John Tory's SmartTrack plan proposed heavy rail within the corridor and challenger Olivia Chow pointed out the existence of the buildings. Tory was elected, but the heavy rail proposal was dropped in 2016 in favour of extending the Eglinton Crosstown LRT project west to the city limits bordering Mississauga.
=== Exit list ===
Although the expressway was never completed, the plans had on/off ramps for:
== Scarborough Expressway ==
The Scarborough Expressway (Gardiner Expressway Eastern Extension) was intended to connect the Gardiner Expressway to Highway 401 at the eastern boundary of Toronto, and one segment was built before public opposition stopped the project. Traffic entering Toronto from the east would have travelled directly downtown, as well as serving the south-east area of Toronto. Instead, that traffic is combined with traffic entering from the north along the Don Valley Parkway, where traffic volume significantly exceeds capacity on a daily basis. This has spurred various road advocates to propose new routes to keep the idea alive.
The highway was first conceived as part of planning studies in the 1940s, and detailed planning for the new freeway began in 1967. Construction was expected to begin after completion of the Spadina Expressway. Early plans had the road travelling beside the CN route in the southern parts of the then Borough of Scarborough, but later plans were to have the highway continue as an eastern extension of the Gardiner Expressway along the shores of Lake Ontario running along the base of the Scarborough Bluffs, connecting with Highway 401 by incorporating the existing Ontario Highway 2A, a short stub freeway segment that was part of the original 401 alignment.
The original 1967 proposal would have seen 1,200 homes demolished for the expressway. After fierce opposition to this plan, the City of Toronto redesigned the route in 1973. It was moved entirely to within the Lakeshore East CN/GO railway corridor, commencing from the Don Valley Parkway/Gardiner Expressway interchange and would be depressed in a deep ditch. The number of homes to be demolished was reduced to 706. However, this did not pacify east Toronto residents who continued to fight the plan. The City shelved the expressway in 1974.
Property along the road had been bought by Metro Toronto and some infrastructure (namely overpass to accommodate roadway with railway tracks in the centre) was built. However, Metro faced opposition from the residents of the City of Toronto, which caused the road to be severed from the Gardiner Expressway. The fiercest opposition came from eastern Toronto, so this section was deleted. Only a route within Scarborough remained proposed. However, it would have come to an abrupt end at Victoria Park Avenue at the Toronto/Scarborough boundary, potentially flooding east end neighbourhoods with traffic. Local residents continued to fight the plan and appeared before the Ontario Municipal Board to oppose Metro every time it tried to purchase more land for the route. Metro Toronto and Scarborough continued to push for the expressway, renamed as the "Scarborough Transportation Corridor". Along with this corridor, parts of Eglinton Avenue East were considered as a potential arterial highway to relieve Highway 401.
Until the early 1990s, Metro and Scarborough both continued to keep the Scarborough Expressway plan alive, but by 1994 the focus on expressways was no longer a planning priority. By 1996, Metro began to plan for the demolition of the eastern end of the Gardiner Expressway, thus effectively ending the Scarborough Expressway/Scarborough Transportation Corridor. The intended connection to the Gardiner Expressway, between the Don River and Leslie Street, was demolished in 2001 leaving an offramp from the Gardiner Expressway to Carlaw Avenue. In 2021 this offramp to Carlaw was removed to allow for realignment of the ramps between the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Expressway. All that remains of the Scarborough Expressway are concrete pillars that once carried the elevated expressway to Leslie Street.
Much of the land acquired for the expressway route across Scarborough remains vacant, however, the City of Toronto has carried out studies on what to do with the lands. Ideas include local streets, housing projects and public parkland. Bridges along the CN/GO corridor were generally built with room to place two-lanes of road on either side of the railway, these are empty today and allow for future rail upgrades.
In the early 2000s, much of the land east of Manse Road in Scarborough was sold by the post amalgamation City of Toronto for other purposes. The parcel between Kingston Road and Lawrence Avenue was developed into homes, as was a portion of the land south of the railway and east of Poplar Road. A police station, Toronto Police 43 Division, was constructed on a parcel on the south side of Lawrence Avenue.
== Spadina Expressway ==
The Spadina Expressway was a proposed freeway to run from north of Highway 401 into the downtown of Toronto via the Cedarvale and Nordheimer ravines and Spadina Road. It was only partially built before being cancelled in 1971 by the Ontario government due to public opposition. The completed section is known today as Allen Road.
== References ==
=== Notes ===
=== Bibliography ===
Nowlan, David; Nowlan, Nadine (1970). The Bad Trip: The Untold Story of the Spadina Expressway. Toronto, Ontario: new press/ House of Anansi. ISBN 0-88770-005-5.
Sewell, John (2009). The Shape of the Suburbs: Understanding Toronto's Sprawl. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press. ISBN 9780802098849.
== External links ==
The Expressways of Toronto (Built and Unbuilt)
The Gardiner Expressway East Comes Down |
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