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Cyclic redundancy check
A cyclic redundancy check (CRC) is an error-detecting code commonly used in digital networks and storage devices to detect accidental changes to raw data. Blocks of data entering these systems get a short "check value" attached, based on the remainder of a polynomial division of their contents. On retrieval, the calculation is repeated and, in the event the check values do not match, corrective action can be taken against data corruption. CRCs can be used for error correction (see bitfilters).
CRCs are so called because the "check" (data verification) value is a "redundancy" (it expands the message without adding information) and the algorithm is based on "cyclic" codes. CRCs are popular because they are simple to implement in binary hardware, easy to analyze mathematically, and particularly good at detecting common errors caused by noise in transmission channels. Because the check value has a fixed length, the function that generates it is occasionally used as a hash function.
The CRC was invented by W. Wesley Peterson in 1961; the 32-bit CRC function, used in Ethernet and many other standards, is the work of several researchers and was published in 1975.
CRCs are based on the theory of cyclic error-correcting codes. The use of systematic cyclic codes, which encode messages by adding a fixed-length check value, for the purpose of error detection in communication networks, was first proposed by W. Wesley Peterson in 1961.
Cyclic codes are not only simple to implement but have the benefit of being particularly well suited for the detection of burst errors: contiguous sequences of erroneous data symbols in messages. This is important because burst errors are common transmission errors in many communication channels, including magnetic and optical storage devices. Typically an "n"-bit CRC applied to a data block of arbitrary length will detect any single error burst not longer than "n" bits, and the fraction of all longer error bursts that it will detect is .
Specification of a CRC code requires definition of a so-called generator polynomial. This polynomial becomes the divisor in a polynomial long division, which takes the message as the dividend and in which the quotient is discarded and the remainder becomes the result. The important caveat is that the polynomial coefficients are calculated according to the arithmetic of a finite field, so the addition operation can always be performed bitwise-parallel (there is no carry between digits).
In practice, all commonly used CRCs employ the Galois field of two elements, GF(2). The two elements are usually called 0 and 1, comfortably matching computer architecture.
A CRC is called an "n"-bit CRC when its check value is "n" bits long. For a given "n", multiple CRCs are possible, each with a different polynomial. Such a polynomial has highest degree "n", which means it has terms. In other words, the polynomial has a length of ; its encoding requires bits. Note that most polynomial specifications either drop the MSB or LSB, since they are always 1. The CRC and associated polynomial typically have a name of the form CRC-"n"-XXX as in the table below.
The simplest error-detection system, the parity bit, is in fact a 1-bit CRC: it uses the generator polynomial (two terms), and has the name CRC-1.
A CRC-enabled device calculates a short, fixed-length binary sequence, known as the "check value" or "CRC", for each block of data to be sent or stored and appends it to the data, forming a "codeword".
When a codeword is received or read, the device either compares its check value with one freshly calculated from the data block, or equivalently, performs a CRC on the whole codeword and compares the resulting check value with an expected "residue" constant.
If the CRC values do not match, then the block contains a data error.
The device may take corrective action, such as rereading the block or requesting that it be sent again. Otherwise, the data is assumed to be error-free (though, with some small probability, it may contain undetected errors; this is inherent in the nature of error-checking).
CRCs are specifically designed to protect against common types of errors on communication channels, where they can provide quick and reasonable assurance of the integrity of messages delivered. However, they are not suitable for protecting against intentional alteration of data.
Firstly, as there is no authentication, an attacker can edit a message and recompute the CRC without the substitution being detected. When stored alongside the data, CRCs and cryptographic hash functions by themselves do not protect against "intentional" modification of data. Any application that requires protection against such attacks must use cryptographic authentication mechanisms, such as message authentication codes or digital signatures (which are commonly based on cryptographic hash functions).
Secondly, unlike cryptographic hash functions, CRC is an easily reversible function, which makes it unsuitable for use in digital signatures.
Thirdly, CRC is a linear function with a property that
as a result, even if the CRC is encrypted with a stream cipher that uses XOR as its combining operation (or mode of block cipher which effectively turns it into a stream cipher, such as OFB or CFB), both the message and the associated CRC can be manipulated without knowledge of the encryption key; this was one of the well-known design flaws of the Wired Equivalent Privacy (WEP) protocol.
To compute an "n"-bit binary CRC, line the bits representing the input in a row, and position the ()-bit pattern representing the CRC's divisor (called a "polynomial") underneath the left-hand end of the row.
In this example, we shall encode 14 bits of message with a 3-bit CRC, with a polynomial . The polynomial is written in binary as the coefficients; a 3rd-degree polynomial has 4 coefficients (). In this case, the coefficients are 1, 0, 1 and 1. The result of the calculation is 3 bits long.
Start with the message to be encoded:
11010011101100
This is first padded with zeros corresponding to the bit length "n" of the CRC. This is done so that the resulting code word is in systematic form. Here is the first calculation for computing a 3-bit CRC:
11010011101100 000
The algorithm acts on the bits directly above the divisor in each step. The result for that iteration is the bitwise XOR of the polynomial divisor with the bits above it. The bits not above the divisor are simply copied directly below for that step. The divisor is then shifted one bit to the right, and the process is repeated until the divisor reaches the right-hand end of the input row. Here is the entire calculation:
11010011101100 000
Since the leftmost divisor bit zeroed every input bit it touched, when this process ends the only bits in the input row that can be nonzero are the n bits at the right-hand end of the row. These "n" bits are the remainder of the division step, and will also be the value of the CRC function (unless the chosen CRC specification calls for some postprocessing).
The validity of a received message can easily be verified by performing the above calculation again, this time with the check value added instead of zeroes. The remainder should equal zero if there are no detectable errors.
11010011101100 100
The following Python code outlines a function which will return the initial CRC remainder for a chosen input and polynomial, with either 1 or 0 as the initial padding. Note that this code works with string inputs rather than raw numbers:
def crc_remainder(input_bitstring, polynomial_bitstring, initial_filler):
def crc_check(input_bitstring, polynomial_bitstring, check_value):
»> crc_check('11010011101100','1011','100')
True
»> crc_remainder('11010011101100','1011','0')
'100'
This is a practical algorithm for the CRC-32 variant of CRC. The CRCTable is a memoization of a calculation that would have to be repeated for each byte of the message ().
Mathematical analysis of this division-like process reveals how to select a divisor that guarantees good error-detection properties. In this analysis, the digits of the bit strings are taken as the coefficients of a polynomial in some variable "x"—coefficients that are elements of the finite field GF(2), instead of more familiar numbers. The set of binary polynomials is a mathematical ring.
The selection of the generator polynomial is the most important part of implementing the CRC algorithm. The polynomial must be chosen to maximize the error-detecting capabilities while minimizing overall collision probabilities.
The most important attribute of the polynomial is its length (largest degree(exponent) +1 of any one term in the polynomial), because of its direct influence on the length of the computed check value.
The most commonly used polynomial lengths are:
A CRC is called an "n"-bit CRC when its check value is "n"-bits. For a given "n", multiple CRCs are possible, each with a different polynomial. Such a polynomial has highest degree "n", and hence terms (the polynomial has a length of ). The remainder has length "n". The CRC has a name of the form CRC-"n"-XXX.
The design of the CRC polynomial depends on the maximum total length of the block to be protected (data + CRC bits), the desired error protection features, and the type of resources for implementing the CRC, as well as the desired performance. A common misconception is that the "best" CRC polynomials are derived from either irreducible polynomials or irreducible polynomials times the factor , which adds to the code the ability to detect all errors affecting an odd number of bits. In reality, all the factors described above should enter into the selection of the polynomial and may lead to a reducible polynomial. However, choosing a reducible polynomial will result in a certain proportion of missed errors, due to the quotient ring having zero divisors.
The advantage of choosing a primitive polynomial as the generator for a CRC code is that the resulting code has maximal total block length in the sense that all 1-bit errors within that block length have different remainders (also called syndromes) and therefore, since the remainder is a linear function of the block, the code can detect all 2-bit errors within that block length. If formula_2 is the degree of the primitive generator polynomial, then the maximal total block length is formula_3, and the associated code is able to detect any single-bit or double-bit errors. We can improve this situation. If we use the generator polynomial formula_4, where formula_5 is a primitive polynomial of degree formula_6, then the maximal total block length is formula_7, and the code is able to detect single, double, triple and any odd number of errors.
A polynomial formula_8 that admits other factorizations may be chosen then so as to balance the maximal total blocklength with a desired error detection power. The BCH codes are a powerful class of such polynomials. They subsume the two examples above. Regardless of the reducibility properties of a generator polynomial of degree "r", if it includes the "+1" term, the code will be able to detect error patterns that are confined to a window of "r" contiguous bits. These patterns are called "error bursts".
The concept of the CRC as an error-detecting code gets complicated when an implementer or standards committee uses it to design a practical system. Here are some of the complications:
These complications mean that there are three common ways to express a polynomial as an integer: the first two, which are mirror images in binary, are the constants found in code; the third is the number found in Koopman's papers. "In each case, one term is omitted." So the polynomial formula_10 may be transcribed as:
In the table below they are shown as:
CRCs in proprietary protocols might be obfuscated by using a non-trivial initial value and a final XOR, but these techniques do not add cryptographic strength to the algorithm and can be reverse engineered using straightforward methods.
Numerous varieties of cyclic redundancy checks have been incorporated into technical standards. By no means does one algorithm, or one of each degree, suit every purpose; Koopman and Chakravarty recommend selecting a polynomial according to the application requirements and the expected distribution of message lengths. The number of distinct CRCs in use has confused developers, a situation which authors have sought to address. There are three polynomials reported for CRC-12, twenty-two conflicting definitions of CRC-16, and seven of CRC-32.
The polynomials commonly applied are not the most efficient ones possible. Since 1993, Koopman, Castagnoli and others have surveyed the space of polynomials between 3 and 64 bits in size, finding examples that have much better performance (in terms of Hamming distance for a given message size) than the polynomials of earlier protocols, and publishing the best of these with the aim of improving the error detection capacity of future standards. In particular, iSCSI and SCTP have adopted one of the findings of this research, the CRC-32C (Castagnoli) polynomial.
The design of the 32-bit polynomial most commonly used by standards bodies, CRC-32-IEEE, was the result of a joint effort for the Rome Laboratory and the Air Force Electronic Systems Division by Joseph Hammond, James Brown and Shyan-Shiang Liu of the Georgia Institute of Technology and Kenneth Brayer of the Mitre Corporation. The earliest known appearances of the 32-bit polynomial were in their 1975 publications: Technical Report 2956 by Brayer for Mitre, published in January and released for public dissemination through DTIC in August, and Hammond, Brown and Liu's report for the Rome Laboratory, published in May. Both reports contained contributions from the other team. During December 1975, Brayer and Hammond presented their work in a paper at the IEEE National Telecommunications Conference: the IEEE CRC-32 polynomial is the generating polynomial of a Hamming code and was selected for its error detection performance. Even so, the Castagnoli CRC-32C polynomial used in iSCSI or SCTP matches its performance on messages from 58 bits to 131 kbits, and outperforms it in several size ranges including the two most common sizes of Internet packet. The ITU-T G.hn standard also uses CRC-32C to detect errors in the payload (although it uses CRC-16-CCITT for PHY headers).
CRC32C computation is implemented in hardware as an operation () of SSE4.2 instruction set, first introduced in Intel processors' Nehalem microarchitecture. CRC32C operations are also defined in AArch64.
The table below lists only the polynomials of the various algorithms in use. Variations of a particular protocol can impose pre-inversion, post-inversion and reversed bit ordering as described above. For example, the CRC32 used in Gzip and Bzip2 use the same polynomial, but Gzip employs reversed bit ordering, while Bzip2 does not.
Note that even parity polynomials in GF(2) with degree greater than 1 are never primitive. Even parity polynomial marked as primitive in this table represent a primitive polynomial multiplied by formula_14. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38838 |
Palatinate (region)
The Palatinate (; Palatine German: "Palz"), historically also Rhenish Palatinate (), is a region in southwestern Germany. It occupies roughly the southernmost quarter of the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate ("Rheinland-Pfalz"), covering an area of with about 1.4 million inhabitants. Its residents are known as Palatines.
The Palatinate borders Saarland in the west, historically also comprising the state's Saarpfalz District. In the northwest, the Hunsrück mountain range forms the border with the Rhineland region. The eastern border with Hesse and the Baden region runs along the Upper Rhine river, while the left bank, with Mainz and Worms as well as the Selz basin around Alzey, belong to the Rhenish Hesse region. In the south, the German-French border separates the Palatinate from Alsace.
One-third of the region is covered by the Palatinate Forest ("Pfälzerwald"), including the Palatinate Forest Nature Park popular with hikers. With about , it is Germany's largest contiguous forested area, and is part of the Franco-German Palatinate Forest-North Vosges Biosphere Reserve.
The western and northern part of the Palatinate is densely forested and mountainous. Its highest mountain is the Donnersberg with a height of , situated in the North Palatine Uplands near Kirchheimbolanden. Most of the major Palatinate towns (Ludwigshafen, Speyer, Landau, Frankenthal, Neustadt) lie in the lower eastern part of the Upper Rhine Plain down to the River Rhine. Here the German Wine Route ("Deutsche Weinstraße") passes through the
Palatinate wine region. It is one of the greatest wine-producing regions in Germany, and in the last two decades has become well known for its numerous prizewinning white and reds of highest quality produced by a number of talented young winemakers.
Major rivers include the Upper Rhine tributaries Lauter, Queich and Speyerbach, as well as Schwarzbach and Glan in the west.
Historically the Electoral Palatinate and several other territories were part of the Palatinate, but today belong to other German territories.
The Palatinate is divided into four non-administrative sub-regions, comprising the following rural districts and independent towns and cities:
Like most of Europe, the Palatinate is part of the oceanic climate zone influenced by the Atlantic, with an average annual temperature of about 10 degrees Celsius. Wet air from the prevailing westerly and southwesterly winds leads to precipitation in the Mittelgebirge ranges, while it warms up on its way further down to the Rhine Valley.
Formerly a Celtic region, this area was conquered by the Roman Empire under Emperor Augustus in about 12 BCE, whereafter it was part of the Germania Superior province. During the decay of the Empire, Alamanni tribes settled here; their territory was conquered by Francia under King Clovis I about 496. From 511 onwards the area belonged to the eastern part of Frankish Austrasia, that—as Rhenish Franconia—became part of East Francia according to the 843 Treaty of Verdun.
From the Middle Ages until 1792, the Palatinate was divided into 45 secular and ecclesiastical territories, some of which were very small. The largest and most important of these was the Electorate of the Palatinate ("Kurpfalz"), a number of Franconian territories on both sides of the Rhine formerly held by the Counts palatine ("Pfalzgrafen") of Lotharingia. By the late 12th century, the Count palatine had achieved the status of a Prince-elector ("Kurfürst"), becoming one of the seven higher nobles with the privilege of electing the Emperor, as confirmed by the Golden Bull of 1356. In 1214 the Bavarian House of Wittelsbach was enfeoffed with these estates, which they ruled until 1918, together with the collateral branch of Palatinate-Zweibrücken from 1410. They lost control with the reunification with Bavaria under Elector Charles Theodore in 1777.
The major ecclesiastical territory in the region was the Bishopric of Speyer. The Imperial city of Landau joined the Alsacien Décapole in 1521 to preserve its status. Nevertheless, it was seized by France after the Thirty Years' War.
Other larger regional entities included the Duchy of Zweibrücken and the Prince-Bishopric of Speyer. The Prince-Bishopric held possessions on both sides of the Rhine. For centuries, the Electoral Palatinate and Bavaria maintained dynastic links because both were ruled by members of the Wittelsbach family.
In 1794 the Left Bank of the Rhine, including the Palatinate, was occupied by French revolutionary troops. As a result of the Treaty of Campo Formio (1797), the First French Republic annexed the region. In 1798 they introduced a new administrative system with the establishment of departments. Basically, the area of the Palatinate became the Département of Mont Tonnerre, laying the cornerstone of its regional identity today. Minor parts of today's region belonged to the neighbouring departments of Sarre and Bas-Rhin. The French further subdivided the department into cantons, mayoralties and municipalities, and introduced their legal system (Napoleonic Code) and the metric system.
Following the defeat of Napoleon at the Battle of Leipzig in 1813, and the capture of the Left Bank of the Rhine by the Allies in January 1814; from 2 February 1814, the region was initially under the provisional authority of the "General Government of the Middle Rhine", but, from 16 June of the same year, it was placed under the administration of the "Imperial-Royal ("k.k.") Austrian and Royal Bavarian Joint Land Administration Commission" ("k. k. östreichischen und k. bairischen gemeinschaftliche Landes-Administrations-Kommission").
In the main treaty agreed at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, and dated 9 June 1815, Article 51 stated that ("inter alia"), on the Left Bank of the Rhine the former French "departements" of the Sarre and Mont Tonnerre, except where set forth in the same treaty, were to fall "with full sovereignty" and ownership rights within the overlordship of His Majesty the Emperor of Austria ("Herrschaft Sr. Maj. des Kaisers von Oesterreich"). Initially, however, joint Austro-Bavarian administration was retained.
On 14 April 1816 a treaty was signed between Austria and Bavaria, in which the various territorial changes were agreed on. According to Article 2 of the treaty, Emperor Francis I of Austria ceded various regions to King Maximilian I of Bavaria. These included, in addition to various regions east of the Rhine, the following regions west of the Rhine:
These changes took effect on 1 May 1816.
In accordance with the prevailing Bavarian administrative structure, the region became one of eight Bavarian districts ("Kreise"). From 1808, Bavaria embarked on the administrative reorganisation of its territory, creating districts which, as in France, were named after the main local rivers. Thus the new district along the Rhine was given the name Rheinkreis (i.e. the Rhine district), with Speyer as its capital. Of the former French administrative structure, the subdivision of the district into arrondissements, cantons, mayoralties, and municipalities was, in large measure, retained. The Bavarian government also preserved the French legal system (Code Napoléon), giving the Palatinate a distinct legal status within the Bavarian kingdom.
At the next lower level, the three former French arrondissements were continued as "Kreisdirektion" ("Circle", i.e. district, "direction") Frankenthal, Kaiserslautern, and Zweibrücken. "Kreisdirektion" Landau was, however, a new creation. In 1818 the cantons were merged into 12 administrative districts called "Landkommissariat". In 1862 these were designated individually as "Bezirksamt". In 1939 each one became a "Landkreis" (rural district).
As his first provincial governor, King Maximilian selected the Privy Councillor ("Hofrat") Franz Xaver von Zwack, whose name gave rise to the popular Palatine nickname for Bavarians, "Zwockel".
In 1832 the "Rheinkreis" became the focal point of liberal movements. The Hambach Festival, a large gathering near Neustadt an der Weinstraße, proved fertile ground for what came to be considered a milestone in German history.
In 1835, King Ludwig I of Bavaria's romantic outlook gave rise to the adoption of new names for the administrative districts of Bavaria by a system of historical allusion. As such, the Rheinkreis officially became the Pfalz (Palatinate). The historic Electorate of the Palatinate was on both sides of the Rhine with Heidelberg and Mannheim as its capitals on the eastern side, whereas the new "Palatinate" established in 1815/16 was solely on the left bank of the Rhine. It included territories that were never part of the historical Palatinate (e.g., territories of the former Bishopric of Speyer, the imperial city of Speyer or Kirchheimbolanden, which had formerly belonged to the Weilburg branch of Nassau). To avoid confusion of the new Palatinate and the former one (and with the Upper Palatinate), the name Rhenish Palatinate ("Rheinpfalz") became common and is still used today, but was never made its official name. Another term, that of Rhenish Bavaria ("Rheinbayern"), though used occasionally, never gained great currency, but can, nonetheless, be found sometimes on older maps.
The Bavarian Royal Family tried to encourage Palatine unity with Bavaria by erecting a royal palace in Edenkoben, and through the restoration of Speyer Cathedral under the direct supervision of King Ludwig I himself. The new town of Ludwigshafen was named after the king. Despite these attempts, the Palatinate's representatives to the Bavarian Parliament always prided themselves on the claim that they came from a more progressive region. Indeed, they tried to promote their liberalism, which the French had introduced to the Palatinate, to the whole Bavarian kingdom. German historian Heiner Haan described the special status accorded the Palatinate within Bavaria as being one of a "Hauptstaat" (main state, i.e. Bavaria) with a "Nebenstaat" (alongside state, i.e. the Palatinate).
In May/June 1849, after the failed revolution of 1848, and as part of the Imperial Constitution campaign, separatist elements wanted the district to secede from Bavaria and establish its own "Palatine Republic". A separatist uprising was suppressed by Prussian military intervention. The Palatinate's union with Bavaria persisted after it became part of the German Empire in 1871, and, indeed, after the Wittelsbach dynasty was deposed, and Bavaria became a free state of the Weimar Republic in 1918.
In 1910 the town of Landau was declared independent from the Bezirksamt.
After World War I, French troops occupied the Palatinate under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1920 the western Bezirksämter of Sankt Ingbert and Homburg ("Saarpfalz") were separated from the Bavarian Palatinate, and became part of the newly established Saarland which, according to the peace treaty, was governed by the League of Nations. That same year, seven more towns were declared independent from the Bezirksämter: Speyer, Ludwigshafen, Frankenthal, Neustadt an der Weinstraße, Kaiserslautern, Pirmasens, and Zweibrücken. They remain independent to this day.
Between 1919 and 1923, during the occupation, there were French-backed attempts at separating the Palatinate from Bavaria and the Empire. On 1 June 1919, Eberhard Haaß, founder of the “Free Palatine Association” (1918), proclaimed the “Palatine Republic”, but failed to occupy the government building in Speyer.
On 23 November 1923, Franz Josef Heinz proclaimed the "Government of the Autonomous Palatinate in the Association of the Rhenish Republic" at Speyer, after gaining control of the towns of Kaiserslautern, Neustadt, and Landau, and after the capitulation of the Palatine government. In the following days, several more towns fell into his group's hands. The Bavarian government reacted sharply. It organised a squad under the command of Edgar Julius Jung. On 9 January 1924, Heinz was assassinated while dining at the Wittelsbacher Hof in Speyer. Other leading members of the separatist movement were killed on 12 February, in a shooting in Pirmasens. By then, a treaty between Bavaria and the Inter-Allied Rhineland High Commission (the supreme council of the Allied occupation forces) of January 1924 recognised the status quo and guaranteed that the Palatinate would remain a part of Bavaria, thereby putting an end to separatist attempts.
Under Nazi rule, from 1933 to 1945, the Palatinate officially remained part of Bavaria, but was otherwise totally reorganised–it was merged with the Saarland into the Gau Westmark, with headquarters in Saarbrücken.
The union with Bavaria was finally dissolved following the reorganisation of German states during the Allied occupation of Germany after World War II. While Bavaria itself was part of the U.S. occupation zone, the Palatinate was occupied by French forces. The French reorganised their occupation zone by founding new states, so that in 1947 the Palatinate was combined with Rhenish Hesse ("Rheinhessen"), the former parts of the People's State of Hesse left of the Rhine, and the southern part of the Prussian Rhine Province, to form the German federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The Palatinate formed the administrative district ("Regierungsbezirk") Pfalz.
This reorganisation came with smaller losses of former district territory to the Saarland, especially in the area of Sankt Wendel. As part of the 1969 administrative reform, some minor border changes were made in the north. The Diocese of Speyer and the Evangelical Church of the Palatinate still exist today largely based on the historic boundaries of the old Bavarian district of "die Pfalz".
The Pfalz was initially one of five districts in Rhineland-Palatinate; however in 1968 the district was merged with the neighbouring district of Rheinhessen to form the district of Rheinhessen-Pfalz. On 1 January 2000, all administrative districts of Rheinland-Pfalz were dissolved.
The Pennsylvania Dutch language spoken by the Amish in the United States is derived primarily from the Palatine German language which many Mennonite refugees brought to Pennsylvania in the years 1717 to 1732. The only existing Pennsylvania German newspaper, "Hiwwe wie Driwwe", was founded 1996 in the village of Ober-Olm, which is located close to Mainz, the state capital (and is published bi-annually as a cooperation project with Kutztown University). In the same village one can find the headquarters of the German-Pennsylvanian Association.
Many more Palatines emigrated in the course of the 19th century, and the great majority of them to North America, so that in the US temporarily "Palatine" was a common designation for German Americans. Johann Heinrich Heinz (1811-1891), the father of Henry John Heinz who founded the H. J. Heinz Company in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, emigrated from Kallstadt, Palatinate, to the United States in 1840. Friedrich Trump, the grandfather of Donald Trump, was also born in Kallstadt and emigrated to New York City in 1885. He later married Elisabeth Christ, a former neighbor's daughter from Kallstadt.
Arguably the most famous dish in Palatinate is the saumagen, literally "sow's stomach", a dish that consists of a thick, crispy-fried casing (sow stomach) stuffed with a mixture of pork, potatoes, and seasonings. Other traditional meat dishes of the region include bratwurst, Palatinate liverwurst, a blood pudding sausage called "grieweworscht" ("griewe" are speck (bacon) cubes, so lit. "sausage with bacon bits"), "lewwerknedel" (Leberknödel) (or "lewwerknepp", liver dumplings), and "fleeschknepp" (Fleischknödel: meat dumplings). Sauerkraut is the typical side dish in all seasons, but especially in winter, as are mashed potatoes and brown gravy. Also eaten are dampfnudels, which can be served with either sweet sauces or side dishes (such as wine, vanilla sauce or canned fruit such as plums, prunes, or pears) or with savory side dishes (such as potato soup, vegetable soup, goulash, or pepper pork). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38849 |
Finglas
Finglas (; ) is a northwestern outer suburb of Dublin, Ireland. It lies close to Junction 5 of the M50 motorway, and the N2 road. Nearby suburbs include Glasnevin and Ballymun; Dublin Airport is 7 km to the north. Finglas lies mainly in the postal district of Dublin 11.
Finglas is the core of a civil parish in the barony of Castleknock.
The name Finglas (), meaning "clear streamlet", is derived from the Finglas River.
The centre of Finglas lies on a rise overlooking the valley of the River Tolka, at an altitude of 59m. Flowing from the north is the stream, the Finglas River, for which it is named, forming in turn from branches from the townlands of Grange and Kildonan to the north. After meeting a tributary, the St. Margaret's Road Stream, the Finglas flows through the village centre in culvert, and along the eastern side of Finglas Road, joining the Tolka at Finglas Bridge. To the west of the village centre rises the Finglaswood Stream, which joins the River Tolka via an "Integrated Constructed Wetland" near a small civic golf course.
Finglas was originally the site of an Early Christian abbey, the origin of which has been associated, from early times, with the name of St. Cainnech, or Canice, the patron of Kilkenny, said to have founded it in 560 A.D. The Nethercross from the first abbey can be seen today in the old graveyard. Several primary schools and churches in the area have been named after Canice. According to an ancient legend, the ground on which Finglas stands had been sanctified by St. Patrick, who is said to have uttered a prophecy that a great town would arise at the ford of hurdles in the vale beneath. St. Canice is said to have been born at Glengiven near Derry. The Finglas or Finglass family, who were prominent in the legal profession and in politics in the sixteenth century, took their name from the district.
Finglas is a civil parish in the barony of Castleknock.
In 1649 the Duke of Ormonde used Finglas as a staging post for his army before launching an unsuccessful Siege of Dublin.
Following the Battle of the Boyne in 1690, Finglas was used as a camp for four days by William of Orange en route to Dublin city. While there he issued the Declaration of Finglas, offering a pardon for many of James II's defeated supporters.
In 1932, Ireland's first commercial airport was set up at Kildonan in Finglas. It was the site for the first Irish commercial aircraft, a Desoutter Mark II aircraft "EI-AAD", and the first commercial air taxi service, the Iona National Air Taxis and Flying School.
In the 1950s Finglas was developed with extensive housing estates, to re-house many north inner-city Dublin residents. Many of these housing estates particularly in Finglas West were named after prominent Irish republicans from early 20th century Irish history including Barry, Casement, Plunkett, Mellows, McKee, Clune and Clancy.
In the village centre are a range of shops, including one of the first-established Superquinn stores (since rebranded as SuperValu), banking facilities, pubs and restaurants. To the north are several light industrial estates.
Charlestown Shopping Centre and Clearwater Shopping Centre, are located outside the village core, to the north and south of Finglas respectively.
Finglas is home to one of Dublin's four Road Safety Authority Driving Testing Centres, which is located in Jamestown Business Park.
The Finglas Maypole Arts Festival was launched in 2019. In its first year, the festival committee was part of a steering group that got the first blue plaque in Finglas – to honour the uileann piper Séamus Ennis.
There are 13 primary and national schools in the Finglas area, and 6 secondary schools. Coláiste Íde College of Further Education is located in Finglas West and offers third level courses.
The Rugby Union club Unidare RFC and the GAA club Erins Isle are based in the area. Soccer clubs include Tolka Rovers F.C., Valley Park United, WFTA Football Club, Willows FC and Finglas Celtic FC and Beneavin F.C.
Finglas is served by a number of bus routes operated by Dublin Bus and Go-Ahead Ireland. These include the 9, 17A, 40, 40B, 40D, 40E, 83, 83A,140 & 220. The main route serving the area is the number 40 which runs between Charlestown Shopping Centre and Liffey Valley via Dublin city centre. A new route, the 40E, was also introduced from Tyrellstown to provide a direct link to the extended Luas Green Line in Broombridge. Other routes serving the area include the 17A which runs between Kilbarrack to Blanchardstown, the 140 which runs to Rathmines via the city centre and the 83 which runs to Kimmage via Glasnevin and the city centre. It is also served by the 88N Nitelink service. Two Bus Éireann routes also serve Finglas, passing along the main Finglas Road, including the 103 from Duleek/Kilmoon Cross/Ashbourne to the city centre.
Finglas is in the jurisdiction of Dublin City Council, and for local elections Finglas is split, with the west and south in the Cabra-Finglas local electoral area and the east in Ballymun local electoral area.
Finglas is part of the Dublin North-West constituency for elections to Dáil Éireann.
Finglas has been the home of a number of public figures including:
And in sport: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38851 |
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar (21 October 1805) was a naval engagement fought by the British Royal Navy against the combined fleets of the French and Spanish Navies during the War of the Third Coalition (August–December 1805) of the Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815).
As part of an overall French plan to combine all French and allied fleets to take control of the English Channel and thus enable Napoleon's Grande Armée to invade England, French and Spanish fleets under French Admiral Villeneuve sailed from the port of Cádiz in the south of Spain on 18 October 1805. They encountered the British fleet under Admiral Lord Nelson, recently assembled to meet this threat, in the Atlantic Ocean along the southwest coast of Spain, off Cape Trafalgar, near the town of Los Caños de Meca. Villeneuve was uncertain about engaging the British, and the Franco-Spanish fleet failed to fully organize. In contrast, Nelson was decisive, organizing the British fleet into two columns sailing straight into the enemy to pierce its wavering lines.
In a particularly fierce battle, 27 British ships of the line fought 33 French and Spanish ships of the line. Although the lead ships of the British columns were heavily battered, with Nelson's flagship nearly disabled, the greater experience and training of the Royal Navy overcame the greater numbers of the French and Spanish navies. The Franco-Spanish fleet lost 22 ships; the British lost none. During the battle, Nelson was shot by a French musketeer, and he died shortly before the battle ended. Villeneuve was captured along with his flagship "Bucentaure". He later attended Nelson's funeral while a captive on parole in Britain. Admiral Federico Gravina, the senior Spanish flag officer, escaped capture with the remnant of the fleet. He died five months later from the wounds he had sustained during the battle.
The victory confirmed the naval supremacy Britain had established during the course of the eighteenth century, and it was achieved in part through Nelson's departure from the prevailing naval tactical orthodoxy of the day. Conventional battle practice at the time was for opposing fleets to engage each other in single parallel lines, in order to facilitate signalling and disengagement and to maximize fields of fire and target areas. Nelson instead arranged his ships into columns sailing perpendicularly into the enemy fleet's line.
In 1805, the First French Empire, under Napoleon Bonaparte, was the dominant military land power on the European continent, while the British Royal Navy controlled the seas. During the course of the war, the British imposed a naval blockade on France, which affected trade and kept the French from fully mobilising their naval resources. Despite several successful evasions of the blockade by the French navy, it failed to inflict a major defeat upon the British, who were able to attack French interests at home and abroad with relative ease.
When the Third Coalition declared war on France, after the short-lived Peace of Amiens, Napoleon renewed his determination to invade Britain. To do so, he needed to ensure that the Royal Navy would be unable to disrupt the invasion flotilla, which would require control of the English Channel.
The main French fleets were at Brest in Brittany and at Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. Other ports on the French Atlantic coast harboured smaller squadrons. France and Spain were allied, so the Spanish fleet based in Cádiz and Ferrol was also available.
The British possessed an experienced and well-trained corps of naval officers. By contrast, some of the best officers in the French navy had either been executed or had left the service during the early part of the French Revolution.
Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve had taken command of the French Mediterranean fleet following the death of Latouche Treville. There had been more competent officers, but they had either been employed elsewhere or had fallen from Napoleon's favour. Villeneuve had shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm for facing Nelson and the Royal Navy after the French defeat at the Battle of the Nile in 1798.
Napoleon's naval plan in 1805 was for the French and Spanish fleets in the Mediterranean and Cádiz to break through the blockade and join forces in the Caribbean. They would then return, assist the fleet in Brest to emerge from the blockade, and together clear the English Channel of Royal Navy ships, ensuring a safe passage for the invasion barges.
Early in 1805, Vice Admiral Lord Nelson commanded the British fleet blockading Toulon. Unlike William Cornwallis, who maintained a close blockade off Brest with the Channel Fleet, Nelson adopted a loose blockade in the hope of luring the French out for a major battle. However, Villeneuve's fleet successfully evaded Nelson's when the British were blown off station by storms. Nelson commenced a search of the Mediterranean, erroneously supposing that the French intended to make for Egypt. However, Villeneuve took his fleet through the Strait of Gibraltar, rendezvoused with the Spanish fleet, and sailed as planned for the Caribbean. Once Nelson realised that the French had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, he set off in pursuit.
Villeneuve returned from the Caribbean to Europe, intending to break the blockade at Brest, but after two of his Spanish ships were captured during the Battle of Cape Finisterre by a squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder, Villeneuve abandoned this plan and sailed back to Ferrol in northern Spain. There he received orders from Napoleon to return to Brest according to the main plan.
Napoleon's invasion plans for Britain depended on having a sufficiently large number of ships of the line before Boulogne in France. This would require Villeneuve's force of 33 ships to join Vice-Admiral Ganteaume's force of 21 ships at Brest, along with a squadron of five ships under Captain Allemand, which would have given him a combined force of 59 ships of the line.
When Villeneuve set sail from Ferrol on 10 August, he was under orders from Napoleon to sail northward toward Brest. Instead, he worried that the British were observing his manoeuvres, so on 11 August, he sailed southward towards Cádiz on the southwestern coast of Spain. With no sign of Villeneuve's fleet, on 25 August, the three French army corps' invasion force near Boulogne broke camp and marched into Germany, where it was later engaged. This ended the immediate threat of invasion.
The same month, Admiral Lord Nelson returned home to Britain after two years of duty at sea. He remained ashore for 25 days and was warmly received by his countrymen. Word reached Britain on 2 September about the combined French and Spanish fleet in Cádiz harbour. Nelson had to wait until 15 September before his ship, HMS "Victory", was ready to sail.
On 15 August, Cornwallis decided to detach 20 ships of the line from the fleet guarding the English Channel and to have them sail southward to engage the enemy forces in Spain. This left the Channel drastically reduced of large vessels, with only 11 ships of the line present. This detached force formed the nucleus of the British fleet that would fight at Trafalgar. This fleet, under the command of Vice-Admiral Calder, reached Cádiz on 15 September. Nelson joined the fleet on 28 September to take command.
The British fleet used frigates (faster, but too fragile for the line of battle), to keep a constant watch on the harbour, while the main force remained out of sight, approximately 50 miles (80 km) west of the shore. Nelson's hope was to lure the combined Franco-Spanish force out and engage it in a decisive battle. The force watching the harbour was led by Captain Blackwood, commanding HMS "Euryalus". His squadron of seven ships comprised five frigates, a schooner, and a brig.
At this point, Nelson's fleet badly needed provisioning. On 2 October, five ships of the line, HMS "Queen", "Canopus", "Spencer", "Zealous", "Tigre", and the frigate HMS "Endymion" were dispatched to Gibraltar under Rear-Admiral Sir Thomas Louis for supplies.
These ships were later diverted for convoy duty in the Mediterranean, although Nelson had expected them to return. Other British ships continued to arrive, and by 15 October the fleet was up to full strength for the battle. Nelson also lost Calder's flagship, the 98-gun "Prince of Wales", which he sent home as Calder had been recalled by the Admiralty to face a court martial for his apparent lack of aggression during the engagement off Cape Finisterre on 22 July.
Meanwhile, Villeneuve's fleet in Cádiz was also suffering from a serious supply shortage that could not be easily rectified by the cash-poor French. The blockade maintained by the British fleet had made it difficult for the Franco-Spanish allies to obtain stores, and their ships were ill-equipped. Villeneuve's ships were also more than two thousand men short of the force needed to sail. These were not the only problems faced by the Franco-Spanish fleet. The main French ships of the line had been kept in harbour for years by the British blockade with only brief sorties. The French crews included few experienced sailors, and, as most of the crew had to be taught the elements of seamanship on the few occasions when they got to sea, gunnery was neglected. The hasty voyage across the Atlantic and back used up vital supplies. Villeneuve's supply situation began to improve in October, but news of Nelson's arrival made Villeneuve reluctant to leave port. Indeed, his captains had held a vote on the matter and decided to stay in harbour.
On 16 September, Napoleon gave orders for the French and Spanish ships at Cádiz to put to sea at the first favourable opportunity, join with seven Spanish ships of the line then at Cartagena, go to Naples and land the soldiers they carried to reinforce his troops there, then fight decisively if they met a numerically inferior British fleet.
On 21 October, Admiral Nelson had 27 ships of the line under his command. Nelson's flagship, HMS "Victory", captained by Thomas Masterman Hardy, was one of three 100-gun first rates in his fleet. He also had four 98-gun second rates and 20 third rates. One of the third rates was an 80-gun vessel, and 16 were 74-gun vessels. The remaining three were 64-gun ships, which were being phased out of the Royal Navy at the time of the battle. Nelson also had four frigates of 38 or 36 guns, a 12-gun schooner and a 10-gun cutter.
Against Nelson, Vice-Admiral Villeneuve, sailing on his flagship "Bucentaure", fielded 33 ships of the line, including some of the largest in the world at the time. The Spanish contributed four first-rates to the fleet. Three of these ships, one at 130 guns ("Santisima Trinidad") and two at 112 guns ("Príncipe de Asturias", "Santa Ana"), were much larger than anything under Nelson's command. The fourth first-rate carried 100 guns. The fleet had six 80-gun third-rates, (four French and two Spanish), and one Spanish 64-gun third-rate. The remaining 22 third-rates were 74-gun vessels, of which 14 were French and eight Spanish. In total, the Spanish contributed 15 ships of the line and the French 18. The fleet also included five 40-gun frigates and two 18-gun brigs, all French.
The prevailing tactical orthodoxy at the time involved manoeuvring to approach the enemy fleet in a single line of battle and then engaging broadside in parallel lines. In previous times, fleets had usually engaged in a mixed mêlée of chaotic one-on-one battles. One reason for the development of the line of battle system was to facilitate control of the fleet: if all the ships were in line, signalling in battle became possible. The line also allowed either side to disengage by breaking away in formation; if the attacker chose to continue, their line would be broken as well. This often led to inconclusive battles, or allowed the losing side to minimise its losses; but Nelson wanted a conclusive action, giving his well-trained crews a chance to fight ship to ship.
Nelson's solution to the problem was to cut the opposing line in three. Approaching in two columns, sailing perpendicular to the enemy's line, one towards the centre of the opposing line and one towards the trailing end, his ships would surround the middle third, and force them to fight to the end. Nelson hoped specifically to cut the line just in front of the French flagship, "Bucentaure"; the isolated ships in front of the break would not be able to see the flagship's signals, which he hoped would take them out of combat while they re-formed. This echoed the tactics used by Admiral Duncan at the Battle of Camperdown and Admiral Jervis at the Battle of Cape St Vincent, both in 1797.
The plan had three principal advantages. First, the British fleet would close with the Franco-Spanish as quickly as possible, preventing their escape. Second, it would quickly bring on a mêlée and frantic battle by breaking the Franco-Spanish line and inducing a series of individual ship-to-ship actions, in which the British were likely to prevail. Nelson knew that the superior seamanship, faster gunnery and better morale of his crews were great advantages. Third, it would bring a decisive concentration on the rear of the Franco-Spanish fleet. The ships in the van of the enemy fleet would have to turn back to support the rear, which would take a long time. Additionally, once the Franco-Spanish line had been broken, their ships would be relatively defenceless against powerful broadsides from the British fleet, and it would take them a long time to reposition to return fire.
The main drawback of attacking head-on was that as the leading British ships approached, the Franco-Spanish Combined Fleet would be able to direct raking broadside fire at their bows, to which they would be unable to reply. To lessen the time the fleet was exposed to this danger, Nelson had his ships make all available sail (including stunsails), yet another departure from the norm. He was also well aware that French and Spanish gunners were ill-trained and would have difficulty firing accurately from a moving gun platform. The Combined Fleet was sailing across a heavy swell, causing the ships to roll heavily and exacerbating the problem. Nelson's plan was indeed a gamble, but a carefully calculated one.
During the period of blockade off the coast of Spain in October, Nelson instructed his captains, over two dinners aboard "Victory", on his plan for the approaching battle. The order of sailing, in which the fleet was arranged when the enemy was first sighted, was to be the order of the ensuing action so that no time would be wasted in forming two lines. The first, led by his second-in-command Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, was to sail into the rear of the enemy line, while the other, led by Nelson, was to sail into the centre and vanguard. In preparation for the battle, Nelson ordered the ships of his fleet to be painted in a distinctive yellow and black pattern (later known as the Nelson Chequer) that would make them easy to distinguish from their opponents.
Nelson was careful to point out that something had to be left to chance. Nothing is sure in a sea battle, so he left his captains free from all hampering rules by telling them that "No captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy." In short, circumstances would dictate the execution, subject to the guiding rule that the enemy's rear was to be cut off and superior force concentrated on that part of the enemy's line.
Admiral Villeneuve himself expressed his belief that Nelson would use some sort of unorthodox attack, presciently speculating that Nelson would drive right at his line. But his long game of cat and mouse with Nelson had worn him down, and he was suffering from a loss of nerve. Fearing that his inexperienced officers would be unable to maintain formation in more than one group, he chose to keep the single line that became Nelson's target.
The Combined Fleet of French and Spanish warships anchored in Cádiz under the leadership of Admiral Villeneuve was in disarray. On 16 September 1805 Villeneuve received orders from Napoleon to sail the Combined Fleet from Cádiz to Naples. At first, Villeneuve was optimistic about returning to the Mediterranean, but soon had second thoughts. A war council was held aboard his flagship, "Bucentaure", on 8 October. While some of the French captains wished to obey Napoleon's orders, the Spanish captains and other French officers, including Villeneuve, thought it best to remain in Cádiz. Villeneuve changed his mind yet again on 18 October 1805, ordering the Combined Fleet to sail immediately even though there were only very light winds.
The sudden change was prompted by a letter Villeneuve had received on 18 October, informing him that Vice-Admiral François Rosily had arrived in Madrid with orders to take command of the Combined Fleet. Stung by the prospect of being disgraced before the fleet, Villeneuve resolved to go to sea before his successor could reach Cádiz. At the same time, he received intelligence that a detachment of six British ships (Admiral Louis' squadron), had docked at Gibraltar, thus weakening the British fleet. This was used as the pretext for sudden change.
The weather, however, suddenly turned calm following a week of gales. This slowed the progress of the fleet leaving the harbour, giving the British plenty of warning. Villeneuve had drawn up plans to form a force of four squadrons, each containing both French and Spanish ships. Following their earlier vote on 8 October to stay put, some captains were reluctant to leave Cádiz, and as a result they failed to follow Villeneuve's orders closely and the fleet straggled out of the harbour in no particular formation.
It took most of 20 October for Villeneuve to get his fleet organised; it eventually set sail in three columns for the Straits of Gibraltar to the southeast. That same evening, "Achille" spotted a force of 18 British ships of the line in pursuit. The fleet began to prepare for battle and during the night, they were ordered into a single line. The following day, Nelson's fleet of 27 ships of the line and four frigates was spotted in pursuit from the northwest with the wind behind it. Villeneuve again ordered his fleet into three columns, but soon changed his mind and restored a single line. The result was a sprawling, uneven formation.
At 5:40 a.m. on 21 October, the British were about 21 miles (34 km) to the northwest of Cape Trafalgar, with the Franco-Spanish fleet between the British and the Cape. About 6 a.m., Nelson gave the order to prepare for battle. At 8 a.m., the British frigate "Euryalus", which had been keeping watch on the Combined Fleet overnight, observed the British fleet still "forming the lines" in which it would attack.
At 8 a.m., Villeneuve ordered the fleet to "wear together" (turn about) and return to Cádiz. This reversed the order of the allied line, placing the rear division under Rear-Admiral Pierre Dumanoir le Pelley in the vanguard. The wind became contrary at this point, often shifting direction. The very light wind rendered manoeuvring virtually impossible for all but the most expert seamen. The inexperienced crews had difficulty with the changing conditions, and it took nearly an hour and a half for Villeneuve's order to be completed. The French and Spanish fleet now formed an uneven, angular crescent, with the slower ships generally to leeward and closer to the shore.
By 11 a.m. Nelson's entire fleet was visible to Villeneuve, drawn up in two parallel columns. The two fleets would be within range of each other within an hour. Villeneuve was concerned at this point about forming up a line, as his ships were unevenly spaced in an irregular formation drawn out nearly five miles (8 km) long as Nelson's fleet approached.
As the British drew closer, they could see that the enemy was not sailing in a tight order, but in irregular groups. Nelson could not immediately make out the French flagship as the French and Spanish were not flying command pennants.
Nelson was outnumbered and outgunned, the enemy totalling nearly 30,000 men and 2,568 guns to his 17,000 men and 2,148 guns. The Franco-Spanish fleet also had six more ships of the line, and so could more readily combine their fire. There was no way for some of Nelson's ships to avoid being "doubled on" or even "trebled on".
As the two fleets drew closer, anxiety began to build among officers and sailors; one British sailor described the approach thus: "During this momentous preparation, the human mind had ample time for meditation, for it was evident that the fate of England rested on this battle".
The battle progressed largely according to Nelson's plan. At 11:45, Nelson sent the famous flag signal, "England expects that every man will do his duty".
The term "England" was widely used at the time to refer to the United Kingdom; the British fleet included significant contingents from Ireland, Scotland, and Wales. Unlike the photographic depiction (right), this signal would have been shown on the mizzen mast only and would have required 12 lifts.
As the battle opened, the French and Spanish were in a ragged curved line headed north. As planned, the British fleet was approaching the Franco-Spanish line in two columns. Leading the northern, windward column in "Victory" was Nelson, while Collingwood in the 100-gun "Royal Sovereign" led the second, leeward, column. The two British columns approached from the west at nearly a right angle to the allied line. Nelson led his column into a feint toward the van of the Franco-Spanish fleet and then abruptly turned toward the actual point of attack. Collingwood altered the course of his column slightly so that the two lines converged at this line of attack.
Just before his column engaged the allied forces, Collingwood said to his officers: "Now, gentlemen, let us do something today which the world may talk of hereafter." Because the winds were very light during the battle, all the ships were moving extremely slowly, and the foremost British ships were under heavy fire from several of the allied ships for almost an hour before their own guns could bear.
At noon, Villeneuve sent the signal "engage the enemy", and "Fougueux" fired her first trial shot at "Royal Sovereign". "Royal Sovereign" had all sails out and, having recently had her bottom cleaned, outran the rest of the British fleet. As she approached the allied line, she came under fire from "Fougueux", "Indomptable", "San Justo", and "San Leandro", before breaking the line just astern of Admiral Alava's flagship "Santa Ana", into which she fired a devastating double-shotted raking broadside.
The second ship in the British lee column, "Belleisle", was engaged by "L'Aigle", "Achille", "Neptune", and "Fougueux"; she was soon completely dismasted, unable to manoeuvre and largely unable to fight, as her sails blinded her batteries, but kept flying her flag for 45 minutes until the following British ships came to her rescue.
For 40 minutes, "Victory" was under fire from "Héros", "Santísima Trinidad", "Redoutable", and "Neptune"; although many shots went astray, others killed and wounded a number of her crew and shot her wheel away, so that she had to be steered from her tiller belowdecks, all before she could respond. At 12:45, "Victory" cut the enemy line between Villeneuve's flagship "Bucentaure" and "Redoutable"; she came close to "Bucentaure", firing a devastating raking broadside through "Bucentaure"'s stern which killed and wounded many on her gundecks. Villeneuve thought that boarding would take place, and with the Eagle of his ship in hand, told his men, "I will throw it onto the enemy ship and we will take it back there!" However "Victory" engaged the 74-gun "Redoutable"; "Bucentaure" was left to the next three ships of the British windward column: "Temeraire", "Conqueror", and .
A general mêlée ensued. "Victory" locked masts with the French "Redoutable," whose crew, including a strong infantry corps (with three captains and four lieutenants), gathered for an attempt to board and seize "Victory". A musket bullet fired from the mizzentop of "Redoutable" struck Nelson in the left shoulder, passed through his spine at the sixth and seventh thoracic vertebrae, and lodged two inches below his right scapula in the muscles of his back. Nelson exclaimed, "They finally succeeded, I am dead." He was carried below decks.
"Victory"'s gunners were called on deck to fight boarders, and she ceased firing. The gunners were forced back below decks by French grenades. As the French were preparing to board "Victory", "Temeraire", the second ship in the British windward column, approached from the starboard bow of "Redoutable" and fired on the exposed French crew with a carronade, causing many casualties.
At 13:55, the French Captain Lucas of "Redoutable", with 99 fit men out of 643 and severely wounded himself, surrendered. The French "Bucentaure" was isolated by "Victory" and "Temeraire", and then engaged by HMS "Neptune", , and "Conqueror"; similarly, "Santísima Trinidad" was isolated and overwhelmed, surrendering after three hours.
As more and more British ships entered the battle, the ships of the allied centre and rear were gradually overwhelmed. The allied van, after long remaining quiescent, made a futile demonstration and then sailed away. The British took 22 vessels of the Franco-Spanish fleet and lost none. Among the captured French ships were "L'Aigle", "Algésiras", , "Bucentaure", "Fougueux", "Intrépide", "Redoutable", and "Swiftsure". The Spanish ships taken were "Argonauta", "Bahama", "Monarca", "Neptuno", "San Agustín", "San Ildefonso", "San Juan Nepomuceno", "Santísima Trinidad", and "Santa Ana". Of these, "Redoutable" sank, and "Santísima Trinidad" and "Argonauta" were scuttled by the British. "Achille" exploded, "Intrépide" and "San Augustín" burned, and "L'Aigle", "Berwick", "Fougueux", and "Monarca" were wrecked in a gale following the battle.
As Nelson lay dying, he ordered the fleet to anchor, as a storm was predicted. However, when the storm blew up, many of the severely damaged ships sank or ran aground on the shoals. A few of them were recaptured, some by the French and Spanish prisoners overcoming the small prize crews, others by ships sallying from Cádiz. Surgeon William Beatty heard Nelson murmur, "Thank God I have done my duty"; when he returned, Nelson's voice had faded, and his pulse was very weak. He looked up as Beatty took his pulse, then closed his eyes. Nelson's chaplain, Alexander Scott, who remained by Nelson as he died, recorded his last words as "God and my country." It has been suggested by Nelson historian Craig Cabell that Nelson was actually reciting his own prayer as he fell into his death coma, as the words 'God' and 'my country' are closely linked therein. Nelson died at half-past four, three hours after being hit.
Towards the end of the battle, and with the combined fleet being overwhelmed, the still relatively un-engaged portion of the van under Rear-Admiral Dumanoir Le Pelley tried to come to the assistance of the collapsing centre. After failing to fight his way through, he decided to break off the engagement, and led four French ships, his flagship the 80-gun "Formidable", the 74-gun ships "Scipion", "Duguay Trouin" and "Mont Blanc" away from the fighting. He headed at first for the Straits of Gibraltar, intending to carry out Villeneuve's original orders and make for Toulon. On 22 October he changed his mind, remembering a powerful British squadron under Rear-Admiral Thomas Louis was patrolling the straits, and headed north, hoping to reach one of the French Atlantic ports. With a storm gathering in strength off the Spanish coast, he sailed westwards to clear Cape St Vincent, prior to heading north-west, swinging eastwards across the Bay of Biscay, and aiming to reach the French port at Rochefort. These four ships remained at large until their encounter with and attempt to chase a British frigate brought them in range of a British squadron under Sir Richard Strachan, which captured them all on 4 November 1805 at the Battle of Cape Ortegal.
Only eleven ships escaped to Cádiz, and, of those, only five were considered seaworthy. The seriously wounded Admiral Gravina passed command of the remainder of the fleet over to Commodore Julien Cosmao on 23 October. From shore, the allied commanders could see an opportunity for a rescue mission. Cosmao claimed in his report that the rescue plan was entirely his idea, but Vice-Admiral Escano recorded a meeting of Spanish and French commodores at which a planned rescue was discussed and agreed upon. Enrique MacDonell and Cosmao were of equal rank and both raised commodore's pennants before hoisting anchor. Both sets of mariners were determined to make an attempt to recapture some of the prizes. Cosmao ordered the rigging of his ship, the 74-gun "Pluton", to be repaired and reinforced her crew (which had been depleted by casualties from the battle), with sailors from the French frigate "Hermione". Taking advantage of a favourable northwesterly wind, "Pluton", the 80-gun "Neptune" and "Indomptable", the Spanish 100-gun "Rayo" and 74-gun "San Francisco de Asís", together with five French frigates and two brigs, sailed out of the harbour towards the British.
Soon after leaving port, the wind shifted to west-southwest, raising a heavy sea with the result that most of the British prizes broke their tow ropes, and drifting far to leeward, were only partially resecured. The combined squadron came in sight at noon, causing Collingwood to summon his most battle-ready ships to meet the threat. In doing so, he ordered them to cast off towing their prizes. He had formed a defensive line of ten ships by three o'clock in the afternoon and approached the Franco-Spanish squadron, covering the remainder of their prizes which stood out to sea. The Franco-Spanish squadron, numerically inferior, chose not to approach within gunshot and then declined to attack. Collingwood also chose not to seek action, and in the confusion of the powerful storm, the French frigates managed to retake two Spanish ships of the line which had been cast off by their British captors, the 112-gun "Santa Ana" and 80-gun "Neptuno", taking them in tow and making for Cádiz. On being taken in tow, the Spanish crews rose up against their British prize crews, putting them to work as prisoners.
Despite this initial success the Franco-Spanish force, hampered by battle damage, struggled in the heavy seas. "Neptuno" was eventually wrecked off Rota in the gale, while "Santa Ana" reached port. The French 80-gun ship "Indomptable" was wrecked on the 24th or 25th off the town of Rota on the northwest point of the bay of Cádiz. At the time "Indomptable" had 1,200 men on board, but no more than 100 were saved. "San Francisco de Asís" was driven ashore in Cádiz Bay, near Fort Santa-Catalina, although her crew was saved. "Rayo", an old three-decker with more than 50 years of service, anchored off Sanlúcar, a few leagues to the northwest of Rota. There, she lost her masts, already damaged in the battle. Heartened by the approach of the squadron, the French crew of the former flagship "Bucentaure" also rose up and retook the ship from the British prize crew but she was wrecked later on 23 October. "Aigle" escaped from the British ship HMS "Defiance", but was wrecked off the Port of Santa María on 23 October; while the French prisoners on "Berwick" cut the tow cables, but caused her to founder off Sanlúcar on 22 October. The crew of "Algésiras" rose up and managed to sail into Cádiz.
Observing that some of the leewardmost of the prizes were escaping towards the Spanish coast, "Leviathan" asked for and was granted permission by Collingwood to try to retrieve the prizes and bring them to anchor. "Leviathan" chased "Monarca", but on 24 October she came across "Rayo", dismasted but still flying Spanish colours, at anchor off the shoals of Sanlúcar. At this point the 74-gun HMS "Donegal", en route from Gibraltar under Captain Pulteney Malcolm, was seen approaching from the south on the larboard tack with a moderate breeze from northwest-by-north and steered directly for the Spanish three-decker. At about ten o'clock, just as "Monarca" had got within little more than a mile of "Rayo", "Leviathan" fired a warning shot wide of "Monarca", to oblige her to drop anchor. The shot fell between "Monarca" and "Rayo". The latter, conceiving that it was probably intended for her, hauled down her colours, and was taken by HMS "Donegal", who anchored alongside and took off the prisoners. "Leviathan" resumed her pursuit of "Monarca", eventually catching up and forcing her to surrender. On boarding her, her British captors found that she was in a sinking state, and so removed the British prize crew, and nearly all of her original Spanish crew members. The nearly empty "Monarca" parted her cable and was wrecked during the night. Despite the efforts of her British prize crew, "Rayo" was driven onshore on 26 October and wrecked, with the loss of 25 men. The remainder of the prize crew were made prisoners by the Spanish.
In the aftermath of the storm, Collingwood wrote:
On balance, the allied counter-attack achieved little. In forcing the British to suspend their repairs to defend themselves, it influenced Collingwood's decision to sink or set fire to the most damaged of his remaining prizes. Cosmao retook two Spanish ships of the line, but it cost him one French and two Spanish vessels to do so. Fearing their loss, the British burnt or sank "Santisima Trinidad", "Argonauta", "San Antonio" and "Intrepide". Only four of the British prizes, the French "Swiftsure" and the Spanish "Bahama", "San Ildefonso" and "San Juan Nepomuceno" survived to be taken to Britain. After the end of the battle and storm only nine ships of the line were left in Cádiz.
Spanish military garrisons and civilians set out to rescue survivors from the numerous shipwrecks scattered along the Andalusian coast. British prize crews were captured and given good treatment. On 27 October, Collingwood offered the governor of Cádiz to put his Spanish wounded prisoners ashore and set them free. The governor and Gravina offered in exchange to release their British prisoners, who boarded the British fleet. The French would later join this humanitarian agreement.
The disparity in losses has been attributed by some historians less to Nelson's daring tactics than to the difference in fighting readiness of the two fleets. Nelson's fleet was made up of ships of the line which had spent a considerable amount of sea time during the months of blockades of French ports, whilst the French fleet had generally been at anchor in port. However, Villeneuve's fleet had just spent months at sea crossing the Atlantic twice, which supports the proposition that the main difference between the two fleets' combat effectiveness was the morale of the leaders. The daring tactics employed by Nelson were to ensure a strategically decisive result. The results vindicated his naval judgement.
When Rosily arrived in Cádiz, he found only five French ships, rather than the 18 he was expecting. The surviving ships remained bottled up in Cádiz until 1808 when Napoleon invaded Spain. The French ships were then seized by the Spanish forces and put into service against France.
HMS "Victory" made her way to Gibraltar for repairs, carrying Nelson's body. She put into Rosia Bay, Gibraltar and after emergency repairs were carried out, returned to Britain. Many of the injured crew were taken ashore at Gibraltar and treated in the Naval Hospital. Men who subsequently died from injuries sustained at the battle are buried in or near the Trafalgar Cemetery, at the south end of Main Street, Gibraltar.
One Royal Marine officer was killed on board "Victory"; Captain Charles Adair. Royal Marine Lieutenant Lewis Buckle Reeve was seriously wounded and lay next to Nelson.
The battle took place the day after the Battle of Ulm, and Napoleon did not hear about it for weeks—the Grande Armée had left Boulogne to fight Britain's allies before they could combine their armies. He had tight control over the Paris media and kept the defeat a closely guarded secret for over a month, at which point newspapers proclaimed it to have been a tremendous victory. In a counter-propaganda move, a fabricated text declaring the battle a "spectacular victory" for the French and Spanish was published in "Herald" and attributed to "Le Moniteur Universel".
Vice-Admiral Villeneuve was taken prisoner aboard his flagship and taken back to Britain. After his parole in 1806, he returned to France, where he was found dead in his inn room during a stop on the way to Paris, with six stab wounds in the chest from a dining knife. It was officially recorded that he had committed suicide.
Despite the British victory over the Franco-Spanish navies, Trafalgar had negligible impact on the remainder of the War of the Third Coalition. Less than two months later, Napoleon decisively defeated the Third Coalition at the Battle of Austerlitz, knocking Austria out of the war and forcing the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire. Although Trafalgar meant France could no longer challenge Britain at sea, Napoleon proceeded to establish the Continental System in an attempt to deny Britain trade with the continent. The Napoleonic Wars continued for another ten years after Trafalgar.
Nelson's body was preserved in a barrel of brandy for the trip home to a hero's funeral.
Following the battle, the Royal Navy was never again seriously challenged by the French fleet in a large-scale engagement. Napoleon had already abandoned his plans of invasion before the battle and they were never revived. The battle did not mean, however, that the French naval challenge to Britain was over. First, as the French control over the continent expanded, Britain had to take active steps with the Battle of Copenhagen in 1807 and elsewhere in 1808 to prevent the ships of smaller European navies from falling into French hands. This effort was largely successful, but did not end the French threat as Napoleon instituted a large-scale shipbuilding programme that had produced a fleet of 80 ships of the line at the time of his fall from power in 1814, with more under construction. In comparison, Britain had 99 ships of the line in active commission in 1814, and this was close to the maximum that could be supported. Given a few more years, the French could have realised their plans to commission 150 ships of the line and again challenge the Royal Navy, compensating for the inferiority of their crews with sheer numbers. For almost 10 years after Trafalgar, the Royal Navy maintained a close blockade of French bases and anxiously observed the growth of the French fleet. In the end, Napoleon's Empire was destroyed by land before his ambitious naval buildup could be completed.
The Royal Navy proceeded to dominate the sea until the Second World War. Although the victory at Trafalgar was typically given as the reason at the time, modern historical analyses suggest that relative economic strength was an important underlying cause of British naval mastery.
Nelson became – and remains – Britain's greatest naval war hero, and an inspiration to the Royal Navy, yet his unorthodox tactics were seldom emulated by later generations. The first monument to be erected in Britain to commemorate Nelson may be that raised on Glasgow Green in 1806, albeit possibly preceded by a monument at Taynuilt, near Oban in Scotland dated 1805, both also commemorating the many Scots crew and captains at the battle. The "Nelson Monument" on Glasgow Green was designed by David Hamilton and paid for by public subscription. Around the base are the names of his major victories: Aboukir (1798), Copenhagen (1801) and Trafalgar (1805). The Nelson Monument overlooking Portsmouth was built in 1807–08 with money subscribed by sailors and marines who served at Trafalgar. In 1808, Nelson's Pillar was erected by leading members of the Anglo-Irish aristocracy in Dublin to commemorate Nelson and his achievements (between 10% and 20% of the sailors at Trafalgar had been from Ireland), and remained until it was destroyed in a bombing by "Old IRA" members in 1966. Nelson's Monument in Edinburgh was built between 1807 and 1815 in the form of an upturned telescope, and in 1853 a time ball was added which still drops at noon GMT to give a time signal to ships in Leith and the Firth of Forth. In summer this coincides with the "one o'clock gun" being fired. The Britannia Monument in Great Yarmouth was raised by 1819. Nelson's Column, Montreal began public subscriptions soon after news of the victory at Trafalgar arrived; the column was completed in the autumn of 1809 and still stands in Place Jacques Cartier. The statue of Lord Nelson in Bridgetown, Barbados, in what was also once known as Trafalgar Square, was erected in 1813.
London's Trafalgar Square was named in honour of Nelson's victory; at the centre of the square there is the Nelson's Column, with a statue of Nelson on top. It was finished in 1843.
In 1905, there were events up and down the country to commemorate the centenary, although none were attended by any member of the Royal Family, apparently to avoid upsetting the French, with whom the United Kingdom had recently entered the "Entente cordiale". King Edward VII did support the "Nelson Centenary Memorial Fund" of the British and Foreign Sailors Society, which sold Trafalgar centenary souvenirs marked with the Royal cypher. A gala was held on 21 October at the Royal Albert Hall in aid of the fund, which included a specially commissioned film by Alfred John West entitled "Our Navy". The event ended with "God Save the King" and "La Marseillaise" The first performance of Sir Henry Wood's "Fantasia on British Sea Songs" occurred on the same day at a special Promenade Concert.
In 2005 a series of events around the UK, part of the "Sea Britain" theme, marked the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar. The 200th anniversary of the battle was also commemorated on six occasions in Portsmouth during June and July, at St Paul's Cathedral (where Nelson is entombed), in Trafalgar Square in London in October ("T Square 200"), and across the UK.
On 28 June, the Queen was involved in the largest Fleet Review in modern times in the Solent, in which 167 ships from 35 nations took part. The Queen inspected the international fleet from the Antarctic patrol ship HMS "Endurance". The fleet included six aircraft carriers (modern capital ships): "Charles De Gaulle", "Illustrious", "Invincible", "Ocean", "Príncipe de Asturias" and "Saipan". In the evening a symbolic re-enactment of the battle was staged with fireworks and various small ships playing parts in the battle.
Lieutenant John Lapenotière's historic voyage in HMS "Pickle" bringing the news of the victory from the fleet to Falmouth and thence by post chaise to the Admiralty in London was commemorated by the inauguration of The Trafalgar Way and further highlighted by the New Trafalgar Dispatch celebrations from July to September in which an actor played the part of Lapenotière and re-enacted parts of the historic journey.
On the actual anniversary day, 21 October, naval manoeuvres were conducted in Trafalgar Bay near Cádiz involving a combined fleet from Britain, Spain, and France. Many descendants of people present at the battle, including members of Nelson's family, were at the ceremony.
Attribution: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38855 |
National Botanic Gardens (Ireland)
The National Botanic Gardens (Irish: "Garraithe Náisiúnta na Lus") is a botanical garden, located in Glasnevin, 5 km north-west of Dublin city centre, Ireland. The 19.5 hectares are situated between Glasnevin Cemetery and the River Tolka where it forms part of the river's floodplain.
The gardens were founded in 1795 by the Dublin Society (later the Royal Dublin Society) and are today in State ownership through the Office of Public Works. They hold approximately 20,000 living plants and many millions of dried plant specimens. There are several architecturally notable greenhouses. Today the Glasnevin site is the headquarters of the National Botanic Gardens of Ireland which has a satellite garden and arboretum at Kilmacurragh in County Wicklow.
The gardens participate in national and international initiatives for biodiversity conservation and sustainable development. The Director, Dr. Matthew Jebb, is also Chairman of PlantNetwork: The Plant Collections Network of Britain and Ireland. It is Ireland's seventh most visited attraction, and the second most visited free attraction.
The poet Thomas Tickell owned a house and small estate in Glasnevin and, in 1795, they were sold to the Irish Parliament and given to the Royal Dublin Society for them to establish Ireland's first botanic gardens. A double line of yew trees, known as "Addison's Walk" survives from this period. The original function of the gardens was to advance knowledge of plants for agricultural, medicinal and dyeing purposes. The gardens were the first location in Ireland where the infection responsible for the 1845–1847 potato famine was identified. Throughout the famine, research to stop the infection was undertaken at the gardens.
Walter Wade and John Underwood, the first Director and Superintendent respectively, executed the layout of the gardens, but, when Wade died in 1825, they declined for some years. From 1834, Director Ninian Nivan brought new life into the gardens, performing some redesign. This programme of change and development continued with the following Directors into the late 1960s.
The gardens were placed into government care in 1877.
In the winter of 1948/9 Ludwig Wittgenstein lived and worked in Ireland. He frequently came to the Palm House to sit and write. There is a plaque commemorating him on the steps he sat on.
As well as being a tourist destination and an amenity for nearby residents, the gardens, admission to which is free, also serve as a centre for horticultural research and training, including the breeding of many prized orchids.
The soil at Glasnevin is strongly alkaline (in horticultural terms) and this restricts the cultivation of calcifuge plants such as rhododendrons to specially prepared areas. Nonetheless, the gardens display a range of outdoor "habitats" such as a rockery, herbaceous border, rose garden, bog garden and arboretum. A vegetable garden has also been established.
The National Herbarium is also housed at the National Botanic Gardens. The museum collection contains some 20,000 samples of plant products, including fruits, seeds, wood, fibres, plant extracts and artefacts, collected over the garden's two-hundred-year history. The gardens contain noted and historically important collections of orchids. The newly restored Palm House houses many tropical and subtropical plants.
In 2002, a new multistorey complex was built; it includes a cafe and a large lecture theatre.
The gardens are also responsible for the arboretum at Kilmacurragh, County Wicklow, a centre noted for its conifers and calcifuges. This is located some south of Dublin.
A gateway into Glasnevin Cemetery adjacent to the gardens was reopened in recent years.
The gardens include some glasshouses of architectural importance, such as the Palm House and the Curvilinear Range.
The Great Palm House is situated in the southern parts of the gardens, and is connected to the cactus house on its west side, and the orchid house on its east side. The main building measures 65 feet in height, 100 feet in length and 80 feet in width.
The Palm House was originally built in 1862 to accommodate the ever increasing collection of plants from tropical areas that demanded more and more protected growing conditions. The construction was overseen by David Moore,the curator of the gardens at the time. The original structure was built of wood, and was unstable, leading to it being blown down by heavy gales in 1883, twenty one years later. Richard Turner, the great Dublin ironmaster, had already supplied an iron house to Belfast Gardens and he persuaded the Royal Dublin Society that such a house would be a better investment than a wooden house, and by 1883 construction had begun on a stronger iron structure. Fabrication of the structure took place in Paisley, Scotland, and shipped to Ireland in sections.
By the early 2000s, the Palm House had fallen into a state of disrepair. After more than 100 years, the wrought iron, cast iron and timber construction had seriously deteriorated. Prior to its restoration a large number of panes of glass were breaking each year due to the corrosion and instability of the structure. As part of the restoration the house was completely dismantled into more than 7,000 parts, tagged for repair and restoration off-site. 20 meter tall cast iron columns within the Great Palm House had seriously degraded and were replaced by new cast iron columns created in moulds of the originals. To protect the structure from further corrosion, new modern paint technology was used to develop long-term protection for the Palm House, providing protection from the perpetually tropical internal climate. For Health and Safety reasons, overhead glass was laminated and vertical panes toughened, and specialised form of mastic was used to fix the panes, replacing original linseed oil putty that had contributed to the decay of the building over the century. The Palm House was reopened in 2004 after a lengthy replanting programme following the restoration process.
The Curvilinear Range was completed in 1848 by Richard Turner, and was extended in the late 1860s. This structure, has also been restored (using some surplus contemporary structural ironwork from Kew Gardens) and this work attracted the Europa Nostra award for excellence in conservation architecture.
There is also a third range of glasshouses: the Aquatic House, the Fern House and the original Cactus House. These structures were closed off in the early 2000s, and are currently undergoing restoration. As these glasshouses were specialised in the plants they housed, many specimens such as the Giant Amazonian Water Lily have not been grown in the gardens since the closure of the structures.
Building on the training and education legacy of the gardens, the Teagasc College of Amenity Horticulture is located in the gardens. It runs full- and part time courses training students for the amenity horticulture industry. Training is run in association with the Office of Public Works (OPW), Dublin local authority parks departments, and the Golfing Union of Ireland.
The Director is the chief officer of the Gardens, with a residence provided on site. Directors have included: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38856 |
Lever
A lever ( or ) is a simple machine consisting of a beam or rigid rod pivoted at a fixed hinge, or fulcrum. A lever is a rigid body capable of rotating on a point on itself. On the basis of the locations of fulcrum, load and effort, the lever is divided into three types. Also a leverage is a mechanical advantage gained in a mechanical system. It is one of the six simple machines identified by Renaissance scientists. A lever amplifies an input force to provide a greater output force, which is said to provide leverage. The ratio of the output force to the input force is the mechanical advantage of the lever. As such, the lever is a mechanical advantage device, trading off force against movement.
The word "lever" entered English about 1300 from Old French, in which the word was "levier". This sprang from the stem of the verb "lever", meaning "to raise". The verb, in turn, goes back to the Latin "levare", itself from the adjective "levis", meaning "light" (as in "not heavy"). The word's primary origin is the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) stem "legwh-", meaning "light", "easy" or "nimble", among other things. The PIE stem also gave rise to the English word "light".
The earliest evidence of the lever mechanism dates back to the ancient Near East circa 5000 BC, when it was first used in a simple balance scale. In ancient Egypt circa 4400 BC, a foot pedal was used for the earliest horizontal frame loom. In Mesopotamia (modern Iraq) circa 3000 BC, the shadouf, a crane-like device that uses a lever mechanism, was invented. In ancient Egypt technology, workmen used the lever to move and uplift obelisks weighing more than 100 tons. This is evident from the recesses in the large blocks and the handling bosses which could not be used for any purpose other than for levers.
The earliest remaining writings regarding levers date from the 3rd century BCE and were provided by Archimedes. He stated, 'Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.'
A lever is a beam connected to ground by a hinge, or pivot, called a fulcrum. The ideal lever does not dissipate or store energy, which means there is no friction in the hinge or bending in the beam. In this case, the power into the lever equals the power out, and the ratio of output to input force is given by the ratio of the distances from the fulcrum to the points of application of these forces. This is known as the "law of the lever."
The mechanical advantage of a lever can be determined by considering the balance of moments or torque, "T", about the fulcrum. If the distance traveled is greater, then the output force is lessened.
where F1 is the input force to the lever and F2 is the output force. The distances "a" and "b" are the perpendicular distances between the forces and the fulcrum.
Since the moments of torque must be balanced, formula_3 . So, formula_4.
The mechanical advantage of the lever is the ratio of output force to input force,
This relationship shows that the mechanical advantage can be computed from ratio of the distances from the fulcrum to where the input and output forces are applied to the lever, assuming no losses due to friction, flexibility or wear. This remains true even though the "horizontal" distance (perpendicular to the pull of gravity) of both "a" and "b" change (diminish) as the lever changes to any position away from the horizontal.
Levers are classified by the relative positions of the fulcrum, effort and resistance (or load). It is common to call the input force "the effort" and the output force "the load" or "the resistance." This allows the identification of three classes of levers by the relative locations of the fulcrum, the resistance and the effort:
These cases are described by the mnemonic "fre 123" where the "f" fulcrum is between "r" and "e" for the 1st class lever, the "r" resistance is between "f" and "e" for the 2nd class lever, and the "e" effort is between "f" and "r" for the 3rd class lever.
A compound lever comprises several levers acting in series: the resistance from one lever in a system of levers acts as effort for the next, and thus the applied force is transferred from one lever to the next. Examples of compound levers include scales, nail clippers and piano keys.
The lever is a movable bar that pivots on a fulcrum attached to a fixed point. The lever operates by applying forces at different distances from the fulcrum, or a pivot.
Assuming the lever does not dissipate or store energy, the power into the lever must equal the power out of the lever. As the lever rotates around the fulcrum, points farther from this pivot move faster than points closer to the pivot. Therefore, a force applied to a point farther from the pivot must be less than the force located at a point closer in, because power is the product of force and velocity.
If "a" and "b" are distances from the fulcrum to points "A" and "B" and the force "FA" applied to "A" is the input and the force "FB" applied at "B" is the output, the ratio of the velocities of points "A" and "B" is given by "a/b", so we have the ratio of the output force to the input force, or mechanical advantage, is given by
This is the "law of the lever", which was proven by Archimedes using geometric reasoning. It shows that if the distance "a" from the fulcrum to where the input force is applied (point "A") is greater than the distance "b" from fulcrum to where the output force is applied (point "B"), then the lever amplifies the input force. On the other hand, if the distance "a" from the fulcrum to the input force is less than the distance "b" from the fulcrum to the output force, then the lever reduces the input force.
The use of velocity in the static analysis of a lever is an application of the principle of virtual work.
A lever is modeled as a rigid bar connected to a ground frame by a hinged joint called a fulcrum. The lever is operated by applying an input force F"A" at a point "A" located by the coordinate vector r"A" on the bar. The lever then exerts an output force F"B" at the point "B" located by r"B". The rotation of the lever about the fulcrum "P" is defined by the rotation angle "θ" in radians.
Let the coordinate vector of the point "P" that defines the fulcrum be r"P", and introduce the lengths
which are the distances from the fulcrum to the input point "A" and to the output point "B", respectively.
Now introduce the unit vectors e"A" and e"B" from the fulcrum to the point "A" and "B", so
The velocity of the points "A" and "B" are obtained as
where e"A"⊥ and e"B"⊥ are unit vectors perpendicular to e"A" and e"B", respectively.
The angle "θ" is the generalized coordinate that defines the configuration of the lever, and the generalized force associated with this coordinate is given by
where "F""A" and "F""B" are components of the forces that are perpendicular to the radial segments "PA" and "PB". The principle of virtual work states that at equilibrium the generalized force is zero, that is
Thus, the ratio of the output force "F""B" to the input force "F""A" is obtained as
which is the mechanical advantage of the lever.
This equation shows that if the distance "a" from the fulcrum to the point "A" where the input force is applied is greater than the distance "b" from fulcrum to the point "B" where the output force is applied, then the lever amplifies the input force. If the opposite is true that the distance from the fulcrum to the input point "A" is less than from the fulcrum to the output point "B", then the lever reduces the magnitude of the input force. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38857 |
Zwinger (Dresden)
The Zwinger (, ) is a palatial complex with gardens in Dresden, Germany. Designed by architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann, it is one of the most important buildings of the Baroque period in Germany. Along with the Frauenkirche, the Zwinger is the most famous architectural monument of Dresden.
The name Zwinger goes back to the name used in the Middle Ages for a fortress part between the outer and inner fortress walls, even though the kennel no longer had a function corresponding to the name at the start of construction.
The kennel was built in 1709 as an orangery and garden as well as a representative festival area. Its richly decorated pavilions and the galleries lined with balustrades, figures and vases testify to the splendor during the reign of Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony. In the original conception of the elector, the kennel was the forecourt of a new castle provided that the place should take up to the Elbe; Therefore, the kennel remained undeveloped on the Elbe side (provisionally closed with a wall). The plans for a new castle were abandoned after the death of Augustus the Strong, and with the departure from the Baroque period, the Zwinger initially lost importance. It was only over a century later that the architect Gottfried Semper completed it with the Semper Gallery towards the Elbe.
The Sempergalerie, opened in 1855, was one of the most important German museum projects of the 19th century and made it possible to expand the use of the Zwinger as a museum complex, which had grown under the influence of time since the 18th century. The Bombing of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 hit the kennel extensively and led to extensive destruction. Since the reconstruction in the 1950s and 1960s, the "Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister" (Old Masters Picture Gallery), the Dresden Porcelain Collection ("Dresdener Porzellansammlung") and the "Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon" (Royal Cabinet of Mathematical and Physical Instruments). The original intended use as an orangery, garden and as a representative festival area has taken a back seat; the latter continues to be cultivated with the performance of music and theater events.
The Zwinger covers an area on the northwestern edge of the "Innere Altstadt" ("inner old town") that is part of the historic heart of Dresden. It is located in the immediate vicinity of other famous sights, including Dresden Castle and the Semperoper. The Zwinger is bounded by "Sophienstraße" in the southeast, "Postplatz" in the south, "Ostra-Allee" in the southwest, the "Am Zwingerteich" road in the northwest and Theatre Square ("Theaterplatz") in the east. Nearby buildings include the Dresden State Theatre to the southwest, the "Haus am Zwinger" to the south, the Taschenbergpalais hotel to the southeast, the west wing of the palace with its Green Vault to the east, the "Altstädtische Hauptwache" to the northeast, the Semper Opera to the north and the former royal stables to the northwest. Within view lie the Catholic Court Church and the Italian Village in Theatre Square, the "Wilsdruffer Kubus" on "Postplatz" and the Duchess Garden with the remnants of the former orangery building in the west. The terraced banks of the Elbe river are located 200 metres northeast of the Zwinger.
The name "Zwinger" goes back to the common medieval German term for that part of a fortification between the outer and inner defensive walls, or "outer ward". Archaeological evidence indicates that the construction of the first city wall took place in the last quarter of the 12th century. A documentary entry as "civitas" in 1216 points to the existence of an enclosed Dresden Fortification at that time.
In 1427, during the Hussite Wars, work began on strengthening the city's defences and they were enhanced by a second – outer – wall. These improvements began near the "Wildruffer Tor" gate. Step by step the old moat had to be filled in and moved. The area between the two walls was generally referred to as the "Zwinger" and, in the vicinity of the castle, was utilised by the royal court at Dresden for garden purposes. The location of the so-called "Zwingergarten" from that period is only imprecisely known to be between the fortifications on the western side of the city. Its extent varied in places as a result of subsequent improvements to the fortifications and is depicted differently on the various maps.
This royal "Zwingergarten", a garden used to supply the court, still fulfilled one of its functions, as indicated by the name, as a narrow defensive area between the outer and inner defensive walls. This was no longer the case when work on the present-day Zwinger palace began in the early 18th century, nevertheless the name was transferred to the new building. Admittedly the southwestern parts of the building of the baroque Dresden Zwinger including the "Kronentor" gate stand on parts of the outer curtain wall that are still visible today; but there is no longer any trace of the inner wall.
Up until well into the 16th century, the area of today's kennel complex was still outside the city fortifications . From 1569, the master builder Rochus Quirin Graf von Lynar , who came from the region around Florence , had major elaborations and new buildings carried out on the fortifications west of the old castle for the Elector August . The master builder carried out part of the work until 1572. It turned out that it is advantageous to move the Weißeritz arm, which flows into the Elbe and touches the site . Thereupon Lynar renewed his plans until 1573 and proposed river bed work and the construction of an additional oneBastion before. The Luna bastion was built to the west of the castle . The later Zwinger building in the Baroque style was located on the site. Lynar transferred the management of the necessary field work to the master witness Paul Buchner and the witness manager Andreas Hesse. The wooden model he created in 1574 later came into the collections of the Green Vault
The first steps in a kennel garden undertook elector Moritz when he such a system modeled after the Prague Castle Gardens caused by its Hofgärtner Nicolaus Fuchs 1549th The elector, together with his wife Anna, is considered the founder of Saxon horticulture. His knowledge of horticulture is documented, among other things, in his decree "... to improve the soil in the kennel and tree garden to create the mud and the good soil from the lake at the Jacob Hospital in the gardens of the last building (meaning the Dresden fortifications)." [5]
Moritz 'successor, the electors Christian I and Christian II , promoted the development of the gardens on the ramparts and had new paths and beds with stone enclosures created in the kennel garden. [6] The court's great sympathy for horticulture under the reign of Elector Johann Georg II promoted the cultivation of various types of fruit. A chronicler of the time noted: "... also in the so-called Zwinger garden, located behind the electoral residentz castle within the fortification, to find many varieties of Feygen trees, some of which hold a complete man's weight on the trunk, which give wonderful and superfluous fruits ".
Until well into the 16th century, the area of the present-day Zwinger complex was still outside the city fortifications. Close by ran an old stretch of the Weißeritz river that no longer exists, which emptied into the Elbe by the Old Castle. In 1569, major work began on redevelopment and new buildings by the fortifications west of the castle based on plans by master builder, Rochus Quirin, Count of Lynar, who came from Florence. The embankments needed in the area of the river confluence proved to be a major challenge. In spring 1570 the Weißeritz caused severe flood damage at an embankment, which hampered the building project for a short time. Then, in 1572, the rebuilding work by the fortifications came to a temporary halt.
The reign of Elector Friedrich August I (Augustus the Strong) is associated with an intensive structural development of the city of Dresden. At the beginning of his reign in 1694, the Dresden buildings were characterized by wooden architecture. Already the Cavalier tour he had previously undertaken through Europe from 1687 to 1689 left many impressions and encouraged him to shape his city with a new architectural image in such a way that it corresponded to the great models in France and Italy. In this way, he particularly relied on the artistic and planning influence of French and Italian experts. One of his main achievements is the change in the cityscape through representative stone buildings and generously planned gardens. The castle fire of 1701 strengthened his efforts to expand the residence and the city, which at that time had 30,000 inhabitants . Friedrich August I paid great attention to the kennel project through the experience he had gained during his travels.
Concrete initial considerations led as early as 1701 to a plan called the "first project", which provided for a new castle with gardens and courtyards. The old orangery or kennel garden seemed out of date and no longer suited to needs. Impressions that he collected as a child at the courtly "comedy games", in which he appeared as a gardener's servant, could have had a certain influence on the elector's inclinations. [8] The oldest preserved plan comes from the court architect Marcus Conrad Dietzeand bears the title “Ground and elevator plan from the castle to Dresden, is from Sr. Kgl. Your Majesty and Churfürstl. Relief of Saxony invented and arranged himself and was made by dero Architekten Dietzen in 1703 ”. It contains an architecturally designed pleasure garden on an old bastion ("to the sharp corner") of the former fortification. [9] The art historian Gurlitt describes the intentions of the electors in the area of this old bastion as a "system of a court of honor" with the possibility to use for celebrations. [10]
The building history of the baroque kennel began in 1709 when, on behalf of Augustus the Strong, a semicircular fairground flanked by wooden buildings was built to the west of the palace, in the area of today's Theaterplatz. This impressive but weather-resistant wooden structure remained until 1714 and anticipated the function of the later kennel. [11]
Work on the arch galleries, the nymph pool and the wing of the building that later became the Mathematical-Physical Salon began in 1711. The state architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann and the sculptor Balthasar Permoser were commissioned with this demanding project . Other experienced specialists in sculpture worked under Permoser, such as Johann Benjamin Thomae , Paul Heermann , Johann Christian Kirchner , Johann Matthäus Oberschall and Johann Joachim Kretzschmar from Zittau. [12]
Pöppelmann visited various European cities in preparation for and during the execution of the kennel construction in order to include project-related incentives and comparative impressions with his own architectural studies. In 1710 he traveled to Rome and Naples via Prague , Vienna and Florence at the expense of his client . The Elector decreed on January 4, 1710, "... that the master builder Pöppelmann should go to Vienna and Rome afterwards to see the current style of building both at palaces and gardens, ...". In Prague he studied the bold baroque buildings of Christoph Dientzenhofer ( St. Nikolaus on the Lesser Town and theAbbey church in Breunau). [13]
In 1715 Pöppelmann went to France for the purpose of current architectural studies. In addition to the Palace and Park of Versailles, he visited numerous other destinations, including the Saint-Cloud Palace park with the water features by André Le Nôtre . He had also created the Versailles Park and, as the chief garden architect of Louis XIV, was a specialist authority in the contemporary art of horticulture. Pöppelmann's impressions in the pleasure park of Marly-le-Roi had a not insignificant influence on the expansion plans of the Dresden Zwinger because the architect Jules Hardouin-Mansarthad built an extensive complex of water features there. Pöppelmann's return journey was via the Netherlands (Rotterdam, Delft, Leiden, Haarlem and Amsterdam). At Apeldoorn he visited Het Loo Castle , which has long wings and pavilion-like corner buildings. The kennel shows similar structures. [14]
The planning of the wall pavilion is said to have been completed in 1715; construction started a year later. In 1717 the Elector wanted the work to be speeded up because his son's wedding was approaching. Great efforts have been made to complete what is probably the most demanding area of kennel construction. [15] In 1719, the construction work reached a preliminary conclusion on the kennel. The festivities scheduled for this year on the occasion of the wedding of the elector's son Friedrich August II with Maria Josepha of Austria required a festival area. The new building was prepared for this and the unfinished areas were covered with temporary cladding and decorations. The Electoral Court celebrated this on September 15, 1719 Festival of the four elements in the kennel. [16] Further expansion was still going on until the 1728th
The first pavilions and galleries on the wall side served as an orangery. Then the wings of the south side were built, and in 1722 the buildings on the east side. The north side remained undeveloped because the elector planned the expansion with a second courtyard and the connection to a new castle. To close this unfinished page, an arcade-like backdrop wall was created in the summer of 1722 as an interim solution. The plans for the new castle were never sufficient for the king, Pöppelmann's designs became more and more limited, in the end it was to be a series of no less than seven spacious castle courtyards, of which the kennel itself would only have been the forecourt of one of the side axes; accordingly, the most magnificent residence in Central Europe should have been built here. The lack of money, which always caused the king to postpone the start of construction, was not only due to the complications in the Great Northern War and in the constitutional structure with the participation rights of the provinces , but also in the focus that August the Strong attached to the costly court festivals, which for him were not primarily distraction, but allegorical performances for the nobility and the people, which underlined his claim to rule , the integrated and disciplined [17] (see also: Flowering of Art, Culture and Courtly Pleasures ) . The kennel still announces the shine of these days.
To design the area enclosed by the buildings and to maintain the courtyard, Elector Friedrich August I had green areas with exotic plants and orange trees laid out on the 204 by 116 meter area. Sculptors, including Balthasar Permoser, created sculptures to beautify the buildings. In 1728, the complex made of Elbe sandstone with its carillon pavilion and arch gallery was provisionally completed.
Because the baroque kennel did not offer sufficient space for the horticultural maintenance work and this economic area was not compatible with the representative purpose, the elector had a large orangery built in the electoral garden in 1728, which was later followed by a second structure. The gardening care and breeding work could be done there. The buildings also served as a wintering place for the large number of sensitive plants.
Since invoices from the construction period have only survived occasionally, the construction costs of the kennel can only be estimated. Hermann Heckmann considers an amount of 900,000 thalers to 1726 realistic. [19]
Augustus the Strong, King of Poland and Elector of Saxony, returned from a grand tour through France and Italy in 1687–89, just at the moment that Louis XIV moved his court to Versailles. On his return to Dresden, having arranged his election as King of Poland (1697), he wanted something similarly spectacular for himself. The fortifications were no longer needed and provided readily available space for his plans. The original plans, as developed by his court architect Matthäus Daniel Pöppelmann before 1711, covered the space of the present complex of palace and garden, and also included as gardens the space down to the Elbe river, upon which the Semperoper and its square were built in the nineteenth century.
The Zwinger was designed by Pöppelmann and constructed in stages from 1710 to 1728. Sculpture was provided by Balthasar Permoser. The Zwinger was formally inaugurated in 1719, on the occasion of the electoral prince Frederick August’s marriage to the daughter of the Habsburg emperor, the Archduchess Maria Josepha. At the time, the outer shells of the buildings had already been erected and, with their pavilions and arcaded galleries, formed a striking backdrop to the event. It was not until the completion of their interiors in 1728, however, that they could serve their intended functions as exhibition galleries and library halls.
The death of Augustus in 1733 put a halt to the construction because the funds were needed elsewhere. The palace area was left open towards the Semperoper square (Theatre Square) and the river. Later the plans were changed to a smaller scale, and in 1847–1855 the area was closed by the construction of the gallery wing now separating the Zwinger from the Theatre Square. The architect of this building, later named Semper Gallery, was Gottfried Semper, who also designed the opera house.
The building was mostly destroyed by the carpet bombing raids of 13–15 February 1945. The art collection had been previously evacuated, however. Reconstruction, supported by the Soviet military administration, began in 1945; parts of the restored complex were opened to the public in 1951. By 1963 the Zwinger had largely been restored to its pre-war state. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38860 |
Sikorsky HH-60 Pave Hawk
The Sikorsky MH-60G/HH-60G Pave Hawk is a twin-turboshaft engine helicopter in service with the United States Air Force. It is a derivative of the UH-60 Black Hawk and incorporates the US Air Force PAVE electronic systems program. The HH-60/MH-60 is a member of the Sikorsky S-70 family.
The MH-60G Pave Hawk's primary mission is insertion and recovery of special operations personnel, while the HH-60G Pave Hawk's core mission is recovery of personnel under hostile conditions, including combat search and rescue. Both versions conduct day or night operations into hostile environments. Because of its versatility, the HH-60G may also perform peacetime operations such as civil search and rescue, emergency aeromedical evacuation (MEDEVAC), disaster relief, international aid and counter-drug activities.
In 1981, the U.S. Air Force chose the UH-60A Black Hawk to replace its HH-3E Jolly Green Giant helicopters. After acquiring some UH-60s, the Air Force began upgrading each with an air refueling probe and additional fuel tanks in the cabin. The machine guns were changed from 7.62 mm (0.308 in) M60s to .50 caliber (12.7 mm) XM218s. These helicopters were referred to as "Credible Hawks" and entered service in 1987.
Afterwards, the Credible Hawks and new UH-60As were upgraded and designated MH-60G Pave Hawk. These upgrades were to be done in a two-step process. However, funding allowed only 16 Credible Hawks to receive the second step equipment. These helicopters were allocated to special operations use. The remaining 82 Credible Hawks received the first step upgrade equipment and were used for combat search and rescue. In 1991, these search and rescue Pave Hawks were redesignated HH-60G.
The Pave Hawk is a highly modified version of the Sikorsky UH-60 Black Hawk. It features an upgraded communications and navigation suite that includes an integrated inertial navigation/global positioning/Doppler navigation systems, satellite communications, secure voice, and Have Quick communications. The term PAVE stands for Precision Avionics Vectoring Equipment.
All HH-60Gs have an automatic flight control system, night vision goggles lighting and forward looking infrared system that greatly enhances night low-level operations. Additionally, some Pave Hawks have color weather radar and an engine/rotor blade anti-ice system that gives the HH-60G an all-weather capability. Pave Hawk mission equipment includes a retractable in-flight refueling probe, internal auxiliary fuel tanks, two crew-served (or pilot-controlled) 7.62 mm miniguns or .50-caliber machine guns and an 8,000 pound (3,600 kg) capacity cargo hook. To improve air transportability and shipboard operations, all HH-60Gs have folding rotor blades.
Pave Hawk combat enhancements include a radar warning receiver, infrared jammer and a flare/chaff countermeasure dispensing system. HH-60G rescue equipment includes a hoist capable of lifting a 600-pound (270 kg) load from a hover height of 200 feet (60 m), and a personnel locating system. A number of Pave Hawks are equipped with an over-the-horizon tactical data receiver that is capable of receiving near real-time mission update information.
In 1999, the USAF identified a need for a helicopter with improved range, speed, and cabin space. An options analysis was completed in 2002 and funding for 141 aircraft under the "personnel recovery vehicle" program began in 2004. In 2005, it was renamed "CSAR-X", meaning combat search and rescue. Sikorsky entered the HH-92 Superhawk, Lockheed Martin entered the VH-71 Kestrel, and Boeing entered the HH-47 Chinook. The HH-47 won the competition in November 2006, but the award was cancelled after successful protests from both rival competitors. A Request for Proposals (RFP) was reissued in 2007, but protested again before proposals were received, leading to a second cancellation. In March 2010, the USAF announced a recapitalization plan to return its 99-aircraft inventory to 112 airframes, incrementally replacing aging HH-60Gs; a secondary plan to replace 13 attrition HH-60s, seven of which were lost in combat since 2001, was also initiated. The USAF deferred secondary combat search and rescue requirements calling for a larger helicopter. A UH-60M-based version was offered as a replacement.
On 22 October 2012, the USAF issued an RFP for up to 112 "Combat Rescue Helicopter"s (CRH) to replace the HH-60G with the primary mission of personnel recovery from hostile territory; other missions include civil search and rescue, disaster relief, casualty and medical evacuation. It had to have a combat radius of , a payload of 1,500 lb (680 kg), and space for up to four stretchers. The AgustaWestland AW101 was one entrant. By December 2012, competitors AgustaWestland, EADS, Boeing, and Bell Helicopter had withdrawn amid claims that the RFP favored Sikorsky and did not reward rival aircraft's capabilities. The USAF argued that the competition was not written to favor Sikorsky, and that the terms were clear as to the capabilities they wanted and could afford. Sikorsky was the only bidder remaining, with subcontractor Lockheed Martin supplying mission equipment and the electronic survivability suite. Sikorsky and the USAF extensively evaluated the proposed CRH-60, a variant of the MH-60 special operations helicopter; the CRH-60 differed from the MH-60 by its greater payload and cabin capacity, wider rotor blades, and better hover capability.
In September 2013, the initial USAF FY 2015 budget proposal would have cancelled the CRH program due to sequestration budget cuts, instead retaining the HH-60 fleet. Congress allocated over $300 million to the program in FY 2014, with $430 million to be moved from other areas through FY 2019 to finance it. On 26 June 2014, the USAF awarded Sikorsky and Lockheed Martin a $1.3 billion contract for the first four aircraft, with 112 total to be procured for a total of up to $7.9 billion. Five more are to be delivered by 2020 and the order is to be completed by 2029. On 24 November 2014, the Air Force officially designated the UH-60M-derived CRH the HH-60W. It first flew on 17 May 2019. In February 2020, the HH-60W was named the "Jolly Green II" by the USAF.
As of 2015, the U.S. Air Force HH-60G Pave Hawk is operated by the Air Combat Command (ACC), U.S. Air Forces in Europe (USAFE), Pacific Air Forces (PACAF), Air Education and Training Command (AETC), the Air Force Reserve Command (AFRC) and the Air National Guard (ANG). A number of HH-60Gs are also operated by the Air Force Material Command (AFMC) for flight test purposes.
During Operation Desert Storm, Pave Hawks provided combat search and rescue coverage for coalition Air Forces in western Iraq, Saudi Arabia, coastal Kuwait and the Persian Gulf. They also provided emergency evacuation coverage for U.S. Navy sea, air and land (SEAL) teams penetrating the Kuwaiti coast before the invasion.
All MH-60Gs were subsequently divested by Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC) in 1991. At that time, most MH-60Gs were redesignated as HH-60Gs and transferred to Air Combat Command (ACC) and ACC-gained Air Force Reserve Command and Air National Guard units.
During Operation Allied Force, the Pave Hawk provided continuous combat search and rescue coverage for NATO air forces, and successfully recovered two U.S. Air Force pilots who were isolated behind enemy lines.
In March 2000, three Pave Hawks deployed to Hoedspruit Air Force Base in South Africa, to support international flood relief operations in Mozambique. The HH-60Gs flew 240 missions in 17 days and delivered more than 160 tons of humanitarian relief supplies.
Air Force Pave Hawks from the Pacific theater also took part in a massive humanitarian relief effort in early 2005 in Sri Lanka to help victims of the tsunami. In the fall of 2005, Pave Hawks from various Air Force commands participated in rescue operations of Hurricane Katrina survivors, rescuing thousands of stranded people.
Pave Hawks have regularly operated during Operation Iraqi Freedom, Operation New Dawn, and continue to be operated in Operation Enduring Freedom, supporting Army and Marine Corps ground combat operations and standby search and rescue support for U.S. and Coalition fixed-wing combat aircraft supporting those ground operations.
On 15 March 2018, a CSAR HH-60G crashed near the Iraqi city of al-Qa'im killing all seven on board. The Air Force is investigating the crash. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38861 |
Motorola 68010
The Motorola MC68010 processor is a 16/32-bit microprocessor from Motorola, released in 1982 as the successor to the Motorola 68000. It fixes several small flaws in the 68000, and adds a few features.
The 68010 was pin-compatible with the 68000, but was not 100% software compatible. Some of the differences were:
Additionally, the 68010 had a "loop mode" which accelerates loops consisting of only two instructions, such as a MOVE and a DBRA. It acts like a tiny special-case instruction cache.
In practice, the overall speed gain over a 68000 at the same frequency was less than 10%.
The 68010 could be used with the 68451 MMU. However, aspects of its design, such as its 1 clock memory access penalty, made this configuration unpopular. Some vendors used their own MMU designs, such as Sun Microsystems in their Sun-2 workstation.
The 68010 was never as popular as the 68000. However, due to the 68010's small speed boost over the 68000 and its support for virtual memory, it can be found in a number of smaller Unix systems, both with the 68451 MMU (for example in the Torch Triple X), and with a custom MMU (such as the Sun-2 Workstation, AT&T UNIX PC, the NCR Tower XP and early HP 9000s like the Model 300 and 310) and various research machines. Most other vendors stayed with the 68000 until the 68020 was introduced. Some owners of Amiga and Atari ST computers and Sega Genesis game consoles replaced their system's 68000 CPU with a 68010 to gain a small speed boost. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38863 |
Bill of Rights 1689
The Bill of Rights 1689, also known as the Bill of Rights 1688, is a landmark Act in the constitutional law of England that sets out certain basic civil rights and clarifies who would be next to inherit the Crown. It received the Royal Assent on 16 December 1689 and is a restatement in statutory form of the Declaration of Right presented by the Convention Parliament to William III and Mary II in February 1689, inviting them to become joint sovereigns of England. The Bill of Rights lays down limits on the powers of the monarch and sets out the rights of Parliament, including the requirement for regular parliaments, free elections, and freedom of speech in Parliament. It sets out certain rights of individuals including the prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment and reestablished the right of Protestants to have arms for their defence within the rule of law. It also includes no right of taxation without Parliament’s agreement. Furthermore, the Bill of Rights described and condemned several misdeeds of James II of England.
These ideas reflected those of the political philosopher John Locke and they quickly became popular in England. It also sets out – or, in the view of its drafters, restates – certain constitutional requirements of the Crown to seek the consent of the people, as represented in Parliament.
In the United Kingdom, the Bill of Rights is further accompanied by Magna Carta, the Petition of Right, the Habeas Corpus Act 1679 and the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949 as some of the basic documents of the uncodified British constitution. A separate but similar document, the Claim of Right Act 1689, applies in Scotland. The Bill of Rights 1689 was one of the models for the United States Bill of Rights of 1789, the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the European Convention on Human Rights of 1950.
Along with the Act of Settlement 1701, the Bill of Rights is still in effect in all Commonwealth realms. Following the Perth Agreement in 2011, legislation amending both of them came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015.
During the 17th century, there was renewed interest in Magna Carta. The Parliament of England passed the Petition of Right in 1628 which established certain liberties for subjects. The English Civil War (1642–1651) was fought between the King and an oligarchic but elected Parliament, during which the notion of long-term political parties took form with the New Model Army Grandee and humble, leveller-influenced figures debating a new constitution in the Putney Debates of 1647. Parliament was largely cowered to the executive during the Protectorate (1653–1659) and most of the twenty-five years of Charles II's English Restoration from 1660. However, it, with the advantage of the growth in printed pamphlets and support of the City of London, was able to temper some of the executive excess, intrigue and largesse of the government, especially the Cabal ministry who signed a Secret Treaty of Dover that allied England to France in a prospective war against oft-allies the Netherlands. It had already passed the Habeas Corpus Act in 1679, which strengthened the convention that forbade detention lacking sufficient cause or evidence.
Objecting to the policies of King James II of England (James VII of Scotland and James II of Ireland), a group of English Parliamentarians invited the Dutch stadtholder William III of Orange-Nassau (William of Orange) to overthrow the King. William's successful invasion with a Dutch fleet and army led to James fleeing to France. In December 1688, peers of the realm appointed William as provisional governor. It was widely acknowledged that such action was constitutional, if the monarch were incapacitated, and they summoned an assembly of many members of parliament. This assembly called for an English Convention Parliament to be elected, which convened on 22 January 1689.
The proposal to draw up a statement of rights and liberties and James's violation of them was first made on 29 January 1689 in the House of Commons, with members arguing that the House "cannot answer it to the nation or Prince of Orange till we declare what are the rights invaded" and that William "cannot take it ill if we make conditions to secure ourselves for the future" in order to "do justice to those who sent us hither". On 2 February a committee specially convened reported to the Commons 23 Heads of Grievances, which the Commons approved and added some of their own. However, on 4 February the Commons decided to instruct the committee to differentiate between "such of the general heads, as are introductory of new laws, from those that are declaratory of ancient rights". On 7 February the Commons approved this revised Declaration of Right, and on 8 February instructed the committee to put into a single text the Declaration (with the heads which were "introductory of new laws" removed), the resolution of 28 January and the Lords' proposal for a revised oath of allegiance. It passed the Commons without division.
On 13 February the clerk of the House of Lords read the Declaration of Right, and the Marquess of Halifax, in the name of all the estates of the realm, asked William and Mary to accept the throne. William replied for his wife and himself: "We thankfully accept what you have offered us". They then went in procession to the great gate at Whitehall. The Garter King at Arms proclaimed them King and Queen of England, France, and Ireland, whereupon they adjourned to the Chapel Royal, with the Bishop of London preaching the sermon. They were crowned on 11 April, swearing an oath to uphold the laws made by Parliament. The Coronation Oath Act 1688 had provided a new coronation oath, whereby the monarchs were to "solemnly promise and swear to govern the people of this kingdom of England, and the dominions thereunto belonging, according to the statutes in parliament agreed on, and the laws and customs of the same". They were also to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel, and the Protestant Reformed faith established by law. This replaced an oath which had deferred more to the monarch. The previous oath required the monarch to rule based on "the laws and customs ... granted by the Kings of England".
The Declaration of Right was enacted in an Act of Parliament, the Bill of Rights 1689, which received the Royal Assent in December 1689. The Act asserted "certain ancient rights and liberties" by declaring that:
The Act declared James's flight from England following the Glorious Revolution to be an abdication of the throne. It listed twelve of James's policies by which James designed to "endeavour to subvert and extirpate the protestant religion, and the laws and liberties of this kingdom". These were:
In a prelude to the Act of Settlement to come twelve years later, the Bill of Rights barred Roman Catholics from the throne of England as "it hath been found by experience that it is inconsistent with the safety and welfare of this Protestant kingdom to be governed by a papist prince"; thus William III and Mary II were named as the successors of James II and that the throne would pass from them first to Mary's heirs, then to her sister, Princess Anne of Denmark and her heirs (and, thereafter, to any heirs of William by a later marriage).
The Bill of Rights was later supplemented by the Act of Settlement 1701 (which was agreed to by the Parliament of Scotland as part of the Treaty of Union). The Act of Settlement altered the line of succession to the throne laid out in the Bill of Rights. However, both the Bill of Rights and the Claim of Right contributed a great deal to the establishment of the concept of parliamentary sovereignty and the curtailment of the powers of the monarch. These have been held to have established the constitutional monarchy, and (along with the penal laws) settled much of the political and religious turmoil that had convulsed Scotland, England and Ireland in the 17th century.
The Bill of Rights (1689) reinforced the Petition of Right (1628) and the Habeas Corpus Act (1679) by codifying certain rights and liberties. Described by William Blackstone as "Fundamental Laws of England", the rights expressed in these Acts became associated with the idea of the rights of Englishmen. The Bill of Rights directly influenced the 1776 Virginia Declaration of Rights, which in turn influenced the Declaration of Independence.
Although not a comprehensive statement of civil and political liberties, the Bill of Rights stands as one of the landmark documents in the development of civil liberties in the United Kingdom and a model for later, more general, statements of rights; these include the United States Bill of Rights, the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen, the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the European Convention on Human Rights. For example, as with the Bill of Rights 1689, the US Constitution prohibits excessive bail and "cruel and unusual punishment". Similarly, "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" is banned under Article 5 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and Article 3 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
The Bill of Rights remains in statute and continues to be cited in legal proceedings in the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms, particularly Article 9 on parliamentary freedom of speech. Following the Perth Agreement in 2011, legislation amending the Bill of Rights and the Act of Settlement 1701 came into effect across the Commonwealth realms on 26 March 2015 which changed the laws of succession to the British throne.
Part of the Bill of Rights remains in statute in the Republic of Ireland.
The Bill of Rights applies in England and Wales; it was enacted in the Kingdom of England which at the time included Wales. Scotland has its own legislation, the Claim of Right Act 1689, passed before the Act of Union between England and Scotland. There are doubts as to whether, or to what extent, the Bill of Rights applies in Northern Ireland, reflecting earlier doubts as regards Ireland.
Natural justice, the right to a fair trial, is in constitutional law held to temper unfair exploitation of parliamentary privilege. On 21 July 1995 a libel case, "Neil Hamilton, MP v The Guardian", collapsed as the High Court ruled that the Bill of Rights' total bar on bringing into question anything said or done in the House, prevented "The Guardian" from obtaining a fair hearing. Mr Hamilton could otherwise have carte blanche to allege any background or meaning to his words, and no contradicting direct evidence, inference, extra submission or cross-examination of his words could take place due to the tight strictures of the Bill of Rights. Equally the highest court decided that absent a 1996 statutory provision, the Bill of Rights's entrenched Parliamentary Privilege would have prevented a fair trial but to Mr Hamilton in the 2001 defamation action of "Hamilton v Al-Fayed" which went through the two tiers of appeal to like effect. Section 13 of the Defamation Act 1996 was then enacted and permits MPs to waive their parliamentary privilege and thus cite and have examined their own speeches if relevant to litigation.
Following the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum in 2016, the Bill of Rights was cited by the Supreme Court in the "Miller" case, in which the court ruled that triggering EU exit must first be authorised by an act of Parliament. It was cited again by the Supreme Court in its 2019 ruling that the prorogation of parliament was unlawful. The Court disagreed with the Government's assertion that prorogation could not be questioned under the Bill of Rights 1689 as a "proceeding of Parliament"; it ruled that the opposite assertion, that prorogation was imposed upon and not debatable by Parliament, and could bring protected parliamentary activity under the Bill of Rights to an end unlawfully.
The Bill of Rights is incorporated into Australian law. The ninth article, regarding parliamentary freedom of speech, is actively used.
In Canada, the Bill of Rights remains in statute, although it has been largely superseded by domestic constitutional legislation. The ninth article on parliamentary freedom of speech remains in active use.
The Bill of Rights is part of the laws of New Zealand. The Act was invoked in the 1976 case of "Fitzgerald v Muldoon and Others", which centred on the purporting of newly appointed Prime Minister Robert Muldoon that he would advise the Governor-General to abolish a superannuation scheme established by the New Zealand Superannuation Act, 1974, without new legislation. Muldoon felt that the dissolution would be immediate and he would later introduce a bill in parliament to retroactively make the abolition legal. This claim was challenged in court and the Chief Justice declared that Muldoon's actions were illegal as they had violated Article 1 of the Bill of Rights, which provides "that the pretended power of dispensing with laws or the execution of laws by regal authority ... is illegal."
The application of the Bill of Rights to the Kingdom of Ireland was uncertain. While the English Parliament sometimes passed acts relating to Ireland, the Irish Patriot Party regarded this as illegitimate, and others felt that English acts only extended to Ireland when explicitly stated to do so, which was not the case for the Bill of Rights. The Crown of Ireland Act 1542 meant the Bill's changes to the royal succession extended to Ireland. Bills modelled on the Bill of Rights were introduced in the Parliament of Ireland in 1695 and 1697 but not enacted. After the Acts of Union 1800, provisions relating to the rights of Parliament implicitly extended to Ireland, but provisions relating to the rights of the individual were a grey area. Some jurists regarded the bill not as positive law but as declaratory of the common law, and as such applicable to Ireland.
The 1922 Constitution of the Irish Free State and 1937 Constitution of Ireland carry over laws in force in the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to the extent they were not repugnant to those constitutions. The Bill of Rights was not referred to in subsequent Irish legislation until the Statute Law Revision Act 2007, which retained it, changed its short title to "Bill of Rights 1688" and repealed most of section 1 (the preamble) as being religiously discriminatory:
The Houses of the Oireachtas (Inquiries, Privileges and Procedures) Act 2013 repealed Article 9 on "freedom of speech and debates or proceedings in Parliament" as part of a consolidation of the law on parliamentary privilege.
Two special designs of commemorative two pound coins were issued in the United Kingdom in 1989 to celebrate the tercentenary of the Glorious Revolution. One referred to the Bill of Rights and the other to the Claim of Right. Both depict the Royal Cypher of William and Mary and the mace of the House of Commons, one also shows a representation of the St Edward's Crown and the other the Crown of Scotland.
In May 2011, the Bill of Rights was inscribed in UNESCO's UK Memory of the World Register recognizing that:
As part of the Parliament in the Making programme, the Bill of Rights was on display at the Houses of Parliament in February 2015 and at the British Library from March to September 2015. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38867 |
Flax
Flax (Linum usitatissimum), also known as common flax or linseed, is a member of the genus "Linum" in the family Linaceae. It is a food and fiber crop cultivated in cooler regions of the world. Textiles made from flax are known in Western countries as linen, and are traditionally used for bed sheets, underclothes, and table linen. Its oil is known as linseed oil. In addition to referring to the plant itself, the word "flax" may refer to the unspun fibers of the flax plant. The plant species is known only as a cultivated plant, and appears to have been domesticated just once from the wild species "Linum bienne", called pale flax. The plants called "flax" in New Zealand are, by contrast, members of the genus "Phormium".
Several other species in the genus "Linum" are similar in appearance to "L. usitatissimum", cultivated flax, including some that have similar blue flowers, and others with white, yellow, or red flowers. Some of these are perennial plants, unlike "L. usitatissimum", which is an annual plant.
Cultivated flax plants grow to tall, with slender stems. The leaves are glaucous green, slender lanceolate, 20–40 mm long, and 3 mm broad.
The flowers are pure pale blue, 15–25 mm in diameter, with five petals. The fruit is a round, dry capsule 5–9 mm in diameter, containing several glossy brown seeds shaped like an apple pip, 4–7 mm long.
The earliest evidence of humans using wild flax as a textile comes from the present-day Republic of Georgia, where spun, dyed, and knotted wild flax fibers found in Dzudzuana Cave date to the Upper Paleolithic, 30,000 years ago. Humans first domesticated flax in the Fertile Crescent region. Evidence exists of a domesticated oilseed flax with increased seed-size by 9,000 years ago from Tell Ramad in Syria. Use of the crop steadily spread, reaching as far as Switzerland and Germany by 5,000 years ago. In China and India, domesticated flax was cultivated at least 5,000 years ago.
Flax was cultivated extensively in ancient Egypt, where the temple walls had paintings of flowering flax, and mummies were embalmed using linen. Egyptian priests wore only linen, as flax was considered a symbol of purity. Phoenicians traded Egyptian linen throughout the Mediterranean and the Romans used it for their sails. As the Roman Empire declined, so did flax production. But with laws designed to publicize the hygiene of linen textiles and the health of linseed oil, Charlemagne revived the crop in the eighth century CE. Eventually, Flanders became the major center of the European linen industry in the Middle Ages. In North America, colonists introduced flax, and it flourished there, but by the early 20th century, cheap cotton and rising farm wages had caused production of flax to become concentrated in northern Russia, which came to provide 90% of the world's output. Since then, flax has lost its importance as a commercial crop, due to the easy availability of more durable fibres.
Flax is grown for its seeds, which can be ground into a meal or turned into linseed oil, a product used as a nutritional supplement and as an ingredient in many wood-finishing products. Flax is also grown as an ornamental plant in gardens. Moreover, flax fibers are used to make linen. The specific epithet, "usitatissimum," means "most useful".
Flax fibers taken from the stem of the plant are two to three times as strong as cotton fibers. Additionally, flax fibers are naturally smooth and straight. Europe and North America both depended on flax for plant-based cloth until the 19th century, when cotton overtook flax as the most common plant for making rag-based paper. Flax is grown on the Canadian prairies for linseed oil, which is used as a drying oil in paints and varnishes and in products such as linoleum and printing inks.
Linseed meal, the by-product of producing linseed oil from flax seeds, is used as livestock fodder.
Flaxseeds occur in two basic varieties/colors: brown or yellow (golden linseeds). Most types of these basic varieties have similar nutritional characteristics and equal numbers of short-chain omega-3 fatty acids. An exception is a type of yellow flax called solin (trade name "Linola"), which has a completely different oil profile and is very low in omega-3s (alpha-linolenic acid (ALA), specifically).
Flaxseeds produce a vegetable oil known as flaxseed oil or linseed oil, which is one of the oldest commercial oils. It is an edible oil obtained by expeller pressing and sometimes followed by solvent extraction. Solvent-processed flaxseed oil has been used for many centuries as a drying oil in painting and varnishing.
Although brown flaxseed varieties may be consumed as readily as the yellow ones, and have been for thousands of years, its better-known uses are in paints, for fiber, and for cattle feed.
A 100-gram portion of ground flaxseed supplies about , 41 g of fat, 28 g of fiber, and 20 g of protein. Whole flaxseeds are chemically stable, but ground flaxseed meal, because of oxidation, may go rancid when left exposed to air at room temperature in as little as one week. Refrigeration and storage in sealed containers will keep ground flaxseed meal for a longer period before it turns rancid. Under conditions similar to those found in commercial bakeries, trained sensory panelists could not detect differences between bread made with freshly ground flaxseed and bread made with flaxseed that had been milled four months earlier and stored at room temperature. If packed immediately without exposure to air and light, milled flaxseed is stable against excessive oxidation when stored for nine months at room temperature, and under warehouse conditions, for 20 months at ambient temperatures.
Three phenolic glucosides — secoisolariciresinol diglucoside, p-coumaric acid glucoside, and ferulic acid glucoside — are present in commercial breads containing flaxseed.
After crushing the seeds to extract linseed oil, the resultant linseed meal is a protein-rich feed for ruminants, rabbits, and fish. It is also often used as feed for swine and poultry, and has also been used in horse concentrate and dog food. The high omega-3 fatty acid (ALA) content of linseed meal "softens" milk, eggs or meat, which means it causes a higher unsaturated fat content and thus lowers its storage time. The high omega-3 content also has a further disadvantage, because this fatty acid oxidises and goes rancid quickly, which shortens the storage time. Linola was developed in Australia and introduced in the 1990s with less omega-3, specifically to serve as fodder. Another disadvantage of the meal and seed is that it contains a vitamin B6 (pyridoxine) antagonist, and may require this vitamin be supplemented, especially in chickens, and furthermore linseeds contain 2-7% of mucilage (fibre), which may be beneficial in humans and cattle, but cannot be digested by non-ruminants and can be detrimental to young animals, unless possibly treated with enzymes.
Linseed meal is added to cattle feed as a protein supplement. It can only be added at low percentages due to the high fat content, which is unhealthy for ruminants. Compared to oilseed meal from crucifers it measures as having lower nutrient values, however, good results are obtained in cattle, perhaps due to the mucilage, which may aid in slowing digestion and thus allowing more time to absorb nutrients. One study found that feeding flax seeds may increase omega-3 content in beef, while another found no differences. It might also act as a substitute to tallow in increasing marbling. In the US, flax-based feed for ruminants is often somewhat more expensive than other feeds on a nutrient basis. Sheep feeding on low quality forage are able to eat a large amount of linseed meal, up to 40% in one test, with positive consequences. It has been fed as supplement to water buffaloes in India, and provided a better diet than forage alone, but not as good as when substituted with soy meal. It is considered an inferior protein supplement for swine because of its fibre, the vitamin antagonist, the high omega-3 content and its low lysine content, and can only be used in small amounts in the feed. Although it may increase the omega-3 content in eggs and meat, it is also an inferior and potentially toxic feed for poultry, although it can be used in small amounts. The meal is an adequate and traditional source of protein for rabbits at 8-10%. Its use in fish feeds is limited.
Raw, immature linseeds contain an amount of cyanogenic compounds and can be dangerous for monogastric animals such as horses or rabbits. Boiling removes the danger. This is not an issue in meal cake due to the processing temperature during oil extraction.
Flax straw left over from the harvesting of oilseed is not very nutritious; it is tough and indigestible, and is not recommended to use as ruminant fodder, although it may be used as bedding or baled as windbreaks.
Flax fiber is extracted from the bast beneath the surface of the stem of the flax plant. Flax fiber is soft, lustrous, and flexible; bundles of fiber have the appearance of blonde hair, hence the description "flaxen" hair. It is stronger than cotton fiber, but less elastic.
The use of flax fibers dates back tens of thousands of years; linen, a refined textile made from flax fibers, was worn widely by Sumerian priests more than 4,000 years ago. Industrial-scale flax fiber processing existed in antiquity. A Bronze Age factory dedicated to flax processing was discovered in Euonymeia, Greece.
The best grades are used for fabrics such as damasks, lace, and sheeting. Coarser grades are used for the manufacturing of twine and rope, and historically, for canvas and webbing equipment. Flax fiber is a raw material used in the high-quality paper industry for the use of printed banknotes, laboratory paper (blotting and filter), rolling paper for cigarettes, and tea bags.
Flax mills for spinning flaxen yarn were invented by John Kendrew and Thomas Porthouse of Darlington, England, in 1787. New methods of processing flax have led to renewed interest in the use of flax as an industrial fiber.
In a 100-gram serving, flaxseed contains high levels (> 19% of the Daily Value, DV) of protein, dietary fiber, several B vitamins, and dietary minerals. Ten grams of flaxseed contains one gram of water-soluble fiber (which lowers blood cholesterol) and three grams of insoluble fiber (which helps prevent constipation). Flax contains hundreds of times more lignans than other plant foods. Flaxseeds are especially rich in thiamine, magnesium, potassium, and phosphorus (DVs above 90%).
As a percentage of total fat, flaxseeds contain 54% omega-3 fatty acids (mostly ALA), 18% omega-9 fatty acids (oleic acid), and 6% omega-6 fatty acids (linoleic acid); the seeds contain 9% saturated fat, including 5% as palmitic acid. Flaxseed oil contains 53% 18:3 omega-3 fatty acids (mostly ALA) and 13% 18:2 omega-6 fatty acids.
One study of research published between 1990 and 2008 showed that consuming flaxseed or its derivatives may reduce total and LDL-cholesterol in the blood, with greater benefits in women and those with high cholesterol.
A meta-analysis has shown that consumption of more than 30 g of flaxseed daily for more than 12 weeks reduced body weight, body mass index (BMI), and waist circumference for persons with a BMI greater than 27. Another meta-analysis has shown that consumption of flaxseed for more than 12 weeks produced small reductions in systolic blood pressure and diastolic blood pressure. Flaxseed supplementation showed a small reduction in c-reactive protein (a marker of inflammation) only in persons with a BMI greater than 30.
Flaxseed and its oil have repeatedly been demonstrated to be nontoxic and are generally recognized as safe for human consumption. Like many common foods, flax contains small amounts of cyanogenic glycoside, which is nontoxic when consumed in typical amounts, but may be toxic when consumed in large quantities as with staple foods such as cassava. Typical concentrations (for example, 0.48% in a sample of defatted dehusked flaxseed meal) can be removed by special processing.
The soils most suitable for flax, besides the alluvial kind, are deep loams containing a large proportion of organic matter. Flax is often found growing just above the waterline in cranberry bogs. Heavy clays are unsuitable, as are soils of a gravelly or dry sandy nature. Farming flax requires few fertilizers or pesticides. Within eight weeks of sowing, the plant can reach in height, reaching within 50 days.
In 2018, world production of flax (linseed) was 3.2 million tonnes, led by Kazakhstan with 29% of the total. Other major producers were Canada, Russia, and China (table).
Flax is harvested for fiber production after about 100 days, or a month after the plants flower and two weeks after the seed capsules form. The bases of the plants begin to turn yellow. If the plants are still green, the seed will not be useful, and the fiber will be underdeveloped. The fiber degrades once the plants turn brown.
Flax grown for seed is allowed to mature until the seed capsules are yellow and just starting to split; it is then harvested in various ways. A combine harvester may either cut only the heads of the plants, or the whole plant. These are then dried to extract the seed. The amount of weeds in the straw affects its marketability, and this, coupled with market prices, determines whether the farmer chooses to harvest the flax straw. If the flax straw is not harvested, typically, it is burned, since the stalks are quite tough and decompose slowly ("i.e.", not in a single season). Formed into windrows from the harvesting process, the straw often clogs up tillage and planting equipment. Flax straw that is not of sufficient quality for fiber uses can be baled to build shelters for farm animals, or sold as biofuel, or removed from the field in the spring.
Two ways are used to harvest flax fiber, one involving mechanized equipment (combines), and a second method, more manual and targeting maximum fiber length.
Flax for fiber production is usually harvested by a specialized flax harvester. Usually built on the same machine base as a combine, but instead of the cutting head it has a flax puller. The flax plant turned over and is gripped by rubber belts roughly 20–25 cm (8-10") above ground, to avoid getting grasses and weeds in the flax. The rubber belts then pull the whole plant out of the ground with the roots so the whole length of the plant fiber can be used. The plants then pass over the machine and is placed on the field crosswise to the harvesters direction of travel. The plants are left in the field for field retting.
The mature plant can also be cut with mowing equipment, similar to hay harvesting, and raked into windrows. When dried sufficiently, a combine then harvests the seeds similar to wheat or oat harvesting .
The plant is pulled up with the roots (not cut), so as to increase the fiber length. After this, the flax is allowed to dry, the seeds are removed, and it is then retted. Dependent upon climatic conditions, characteristics of the sown flax and fields, the flax remains on the ground between two weeks and two months for retting. As a result of alternating rain and the sun, an enzymatic action degrades the pectins which bind fibers to the straw. The farmers turn over the straw during retting to evenly rett the stalks. When the straw is retted and sufficiently dry, it is rolled up. It is then stored by farmers before extracting the fibers.
Threshing is the process of removing the seeds from the rest of the plant. Separating the usable flax fibers from other components requires pulling the stems through a hackle and/or beating the plants to break them.
Flax processing is divided into two parts: the first part is generally done by the farmer, to bring the flax fiber into a fit state for general or common purposes. This can be performed by three machines: one for threshing out the seed, one for breaking and separating the straw (stem) from the fiber, and one for further separating the broken straw and matter from the fiber.
The second part of the process brings the flax into a state for the very finest purposes, such as lace, cambric, damask, and very fine linen. This second part is performed by a refining machine.
Before the flax fibers can be spun into linen, they must be separated from the rest of the stalk. The first step in this process is retting, which is the process of rotting away the inner stalk, leaving the outer parts intact. At this point, straw, or coarse outer stem (cortex and epidermis), is still remaining. To remove this, the flax is "broken", the straw is broken up into small, short bits, while the actual fiber is left unharmed. Scutching scrapes the outer straw from the fiber. The stems are then pulled through "hackles", which act like combs to remove the straw and some shorter fibers out of the long fiber.
Several methods are used for retting flax. It can be retted in a pond, stream, field, or tank. When the retting is complete, the bundles of flax feel soft and slimy, and quite a few fibers are standing out from the stalks. When wrapped around a finger, the inner woody part springs away from the fibers. Pond retting is the fastest. It consists of placing the flax in a pool of water which will not evaporate. It generally takes place in a shallow pool which will warm up dramatically in the sun; the process may take from a few days to a few weeks. Pond-retted flax is traditionally considered of lower quality, possibly because the product can become dirty, and is easily over-retted, damaging the fiber. This form of retting also produces quite an odor. Stream retting is similar to pool retting, but the flax is submerged in bundles in a stream or river. This generally takes two or three weeks longer than pond retting, but the end product is less likely to be dirty, does not smell as bad, and because the water is cooler, is less likely to be over-retted. Both pond and stream retting were traditionally used less because they pollute the waters used for the process.
In field retting, the flax is laid out in a large field, and dew is allowed to collect on it. This process normally takes a month or more, but is generally considered to provide the highest quality flax fibers, and it produces the least pollution.
Retting can also be done in a plastic trash can or any type of water-tight container of wood, concrete, earthenware, or plastic. Metal containers will not work, as an acid is produced when retting, and it would corrode the metal. If the water temperature is kept at , the retting process under these conditions takes 4 or 5 days. If the water is any colder, it takes longer. Scum collects at the top, and an odor is given off the same as in pond retting. 'Enzymatic' retting of flax has been researched as a technique to engineer fibers with specific properties.
Dressing the flax is the process of removing the straw from the fibers. Dressing consists of three steps: breaking, scutching, and heckling. The breaking breaks up the straw. Some of the straw is scraped from the fibers in the scutching process, and finally, the fiber is pulled through heckles to remove the last bits of straw.
In September 2009, Canadian flax exports reportedly had been contaminated by a deregistered genetically modified cultivar called 'Triffid' that had food and feed safety approval in Canada and the U.S., however, Canadian growers and the Flax Council of Canada raised concerns about the marketability of this cultivar in Europe where a zero tolerance policy exists regarding unapproved genetically modified organisms. Subsequently, deregistered in 2010 and never grown commercially in Canada or the U.S., 'Triffid' stores were destroyed, but future exports and further tests at the University of Saskatchewan proved that 'Triffid' persisted among flax crops, possibly affecting future crops. Canadian flaxseed cultivars were reconstituted with 'Triffid'-free seed used to plant the 2014 crop. Laboratories are certified to test for the presence of 'Triffid' at a level of one seed in 10,000.
Flax is the emblem of Northern Ireland and displayed by the Northern Ireland Assembly. In a coronet, it appeared on the reverse of the British one-pound coin to represent Northern Ireland on coins minted in 1986, 1991, and 2014. Flax also represents Northern Ireland on the badge of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and on various logos associated with it.
Common flax is the national flower of Belarus.
In early versions of the Sleeping Beauty tale, such as "Sun, Moon, and Talia" by Giambattista Basile, the princess pricks her finger, not on a spindle, but on a sliver of flax, which later is sucked out by her children conceived as she sleeps. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38869 |
Greyhound racing
Greyhound racing is an organized, competitive sport in which greyhounds are raced around a track. There are two forms of greyhound racing, track racing (normally around an oval track) and coursing. Track racing uses an artificial lure (now based on a windsock) that travels ahead of the dogs on a rail until the greyhounds cross the finish line. As with horse racing, greyhound races often allow the public to bet on the outcome.
In many countries greyhound racing is purely amateur and solely for enjoyment. In other countries, particularly Australia, the Republic of Ireland, Macau, Mexico, Spain, the United Kingdom and the United States, greyhound racing is part of the gambling industry and similar to horse racing.
Animal rights and animal welfare groups are critical of the welfare of greyhounds in the commercial racing industry. A greyhound adoption movement spearheaded by kennel owners has arisen to assist retired racing dogs in finding homes as pets, with an estimated adoption rate of over 95% in the US.
Modern greyhound racing has its origins in coursing. The first recorded attempt at racing greyhounds on a straight track was made beside the Welsh Harp reservoir, Hendon, England, in 1876, but this experiment did not develop. The industry emerged in its recognizable modern form, featuring circular or oval tracks, with the invention of the mechanical, or artificial, hare in 1912 by an American, Owen Patrick Smith. O.P. Smith had altruistic aims for the industry to stop the killing of the jack rabbits and see "greyhound racing as we see horse racing". In 1919, Smith opened the first professional dog-racing track with stands in Emeryville, California. The Emeryville arena was torn down in February 1920 to make way for the construction of a modern racetrack using the mechanical lure, described in the press as the "automatic rabbit." The first race at the new park was on Saturday, May 29, 1920.
The certificates system led the way to parimutuel betting, as quarry and on-course gambling, in the United States during the 1930s.
The oval track and mechanical hare were introduced to Britain, in 1926, by another American, Charles Munn, in association with Major Lyne-Dixson, a Canadian, who was a key figure in coursing. Finding other supporters proved rather difficult, however, and with the General Strike of 1926 looming, the two men scoured the country in an attempt to find others who would join them. Eventually they met Brigadier-General Critchley, who introduced them to Sir William Gentle. Between them they raised £22,000, and like the American 'International Greyhound Racing Association' (or the I.G.R.A.), they launched the Greyhound Racing Association holding the first British meeting at Manchester's Belle Vue Stadium. The industry was successful in cities and towns throughout the UK – by the end of 1927, there were forty tracks operating.
Middle-class reformers were outraged, and the working-class delighted, with the emergence in the late-1920s of Greyhound racing as an entertaining new sport and betting opportunity. At first it seemed modern, glamorous, and American, but the middle class lost interest when working-class audiences took over. The working class appreciated the nearby urban locations of the tracks and the evening times of the meetings. Betting has always been a key ingredient of greyhound racing, both through on-course bookmakers and the totalisator, first introduced in 1930. Like horse racing, it is popular to bet on the greyhound races as a form of parimutuel betting.
Greyhound racing enjoyed its highest UK attendances just after the Second World War—for example, attendances during 1946 were estimated to be around 75 million based on an annual totalisator turnover of £196,431,430. The industry experienced a decline beginning in the early 1960s, after the 1960 UK Betting and Gaming Act permitted off-course cash betting. Sponsorship, limited television coverage, and the later abolition of on-course betting tax have partially offset this decline.
Commercial greyhound racing is characterized by several criteria (varying depending on country) and can include legalized gambling, the existence of a regulatory structure, the physical presence of racetracks, whether the host state or subdivision shares in any gambling proceeds, fees charged by host locations, the use of professional racing kennels, the number of dogs participating in races, the existence of an official racing code, and membership in a greyhound racing federation or trade association.
In addition to the eight countries where commercial greyhound racing exists, in at least twenty-one countries dog racing occurs, but has not yet reached a commercial stage.
The medical care of a racing greyhound is primarily the responsibility of the trainer while in training. All tracks in the United Kingdom have to have a veterinary surgeon and veterinary room facilities on site during racing. The greyhounds require annual vaccination against distemper, infectious canine hepatitis, parvovirus, leptospirosis, and a vaccination to minimize outbreaks of diseases such as kennel cough. All greyhounds in the UK must pass a pre-race veterinary inspection before being allowed to take part in that race.
The racing industry (in several countries) actively works to prevent the spread of doping cases. Attempts are being made to recover urine samples from all greyhounds in a race, not just the winners. Greyhounds from which samples cannot be obtained for a certain number of consecutive races are subject to being ruled off the track in some countries. Violators are subject to criminal penalties and loss of their racing licenses by state gaming commissions and a permanent ban from the National Greyhound Association. The trainer of the greyhound is at all times the "absolute insurer" of the condition of the animal. The trainer is responsible for any positive test regardless of how the banned substance has entered the greyhound's system.
Generally, a greyhound's career will end between the ages of four and six – after the dog can no longer race, or possibly when it is no longer competitive. The best dogs are kept for breeding and there are industry-associated adoption groups and rescue groups that work to obtain retired racing greyhounds and place them as pets. In the United Kingdom, the Greyhound Board of Great Britain (GBGB) have introduced measures to locate where racing greyhounds reside after they have retired from racing and as from 2017 records have been available to the public. There have been isolated cases of controversy, such as greyhounds sold to research labs during 2013.
Several organizations, such as British Greyhounds Retired Database, Greyhound Rescue West of England, Birmingham Greyhound Protection, GAGAH, Adopt-a-Greyhound and Greyhound Pets of America, and the Retired Greyhound Trust try to ensure that as many of the dogs as possible are adopted. Some of these groups also advocate better treatment of the dogs while at the track and/or the end of racing for profit. In recent years the racing industry has made significant progress in establishing programs for the adoption of retired racers. In addition to actively cooperating with private adoption groups throughout the country, many race tracks have established their own adoption programs at various tracks.
Greyhounds Australasia was formed in 1937 (as the Australian and New Zealand Greyhound Association) and consists of governing bodies in Australian states and New Zealand, which regulate greyhound welfare and living conditions. Most racing authorities in Australia have organized and funded Greyhound Adoption arms, which house dozens of greyhounds a month, as well as partly supporting private volunteer organisations.
Each Australian state and territory has a governing greyhound racing body. In recent years racing in New South Wales has been subject to scrutinisation that led to a bill being passed through the government of the state New South Wales in 2016, banning greyhound racing from the middle of 2017 but the ban was reversed in late 2016, albeit with several new restrictions on the industry.
Greyhound racing is a popular industry in Ireland with the majority of tracks falling under the control of the Irish Greyhound Board (IGB) which is a commercial semi-state body and reports to the Department of Agriculture, Food and the Marine. The vast majority of greyhounds racing in the UK are imported from Irish breeders (estimated 90%).
In the greyhound industry Northern Irish tracks are considered to be in the category of Irish greyhound racing and the results are published by the IGB. They do not come under the control of the Greyhound Board of Great Britain.
An independent 2014 review of the Irish Greyhound Board criticized the body's corporate governance, its handling of animal welfare issues, and poor financial performance which has been somewhat addressed with a new 'Strategic Plan 2018-2022'.
Racing in New Zealand is governed by the New Zealand Racing Board (NZRB) in accordance with the Racing Act 2003. totalisator betting was not allowed until 1981.
There are eleven racing clubs in New Zealand who are directly responsible for the management of racetracks. Around 700 dogs are bred each year for racing, and around 200–300 are imported from Australia. Following concern over the welfare of racing greyhounds the Greyhound Racing Association initiated an Independent Welfare Review during 2013. The review found no issues into the care of greyhounds in racing but found issues with population management (greyhounds not making the track and greyhounds after retirement). In 2017 a second report was commissioned, this time by the New Zealand Racing Board, led by former High Court Judge Rodney Hansen who made 20 recommendations to further advance the welfare of greyhounds. On Dec 20 2017, the New Zealand government's Minister for Racing Hon Winston Peters, said the reports findings were "disturbing and deeply disappointing", and "simply unacceptable". In December 2018 the New Zealand government considered a second petition from Aaron Cross and 129 others seeking a prohibition on racing. The government requested that the greyhound racing industry continued to implement the Hansen recommendations and invited the NZGRA to update them on their progress.
Greyhound racing in South Africa is solely an amateur pursuit. The South African Amateur Greyhound Union (SAAGU) organises events that do not contravene the Freestate Provincial Ordinance which restricts spectators from attending events. Racing has been banned by the government since 1946 following rigged gambling. Greyhounds are therefore kept with their owners and not trainers.
Greyhound racing is a popular industry in Great Britain with attendances at around 3.2 million at over 5,750 meetings in 2007. As of 2020, there are 21 registered stadiums regulated by the Greyhound Board of Great Britain and accredited by UKAS. There are an additional four independent tracks in Britain. They all use a parimutuel betting tote system and on-course betting.
On 24 July 1926, the first oval track greyhound race took place at Belle Vue Stadium. This marked the first modern greyhound race in Great Britain. Greyhound racing as a whole in the UK peaked in 1946, but has been in decline since the opening of betting shops in 1961, despite a small revival of popularity in the late 1980s.
In the United States, greyhound racing is governed by state or local law. Greyhound care is regulated by the National Association of State of Racing Commissions and the American Greyhound Council (AGC). The AGC is jointly run by the National Greyhound Association.
The states of Alabama, Arkansas, Iowa, Texas and West Virginia have active racing industries. Fifteen states without live racing allow simulcast betting on greyhound races in other states. Between 2001 and 2011, the total amount gambled on greyhound racing nationwide declined by 67%. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38871 |
Bessarabia
Bessarabia (; ; ; , "Bessarabiya"; ; ", Bessarabiya"; , "Besarabiya") is a historical region in Eastern Europe, bounded by the Dniester river on the east and the Prut river on the west. About two thirds of Bessarabia lies within modern-day Moldova, with the Ukrainian Budjak region covering the southern coastal region and part of the Ukrainian Chernivtsi Oblast covering a small area in the north.
In the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War (1806–1812), and the ensuing Peace of Bucharest, the eastern parts of the Principality of Moldavia, an Ottoman vassal, along with some areas formerly under direct Ottoman rule, were ceded to Imperial Russia. The acquisition was among the Empire's last territorial acquisitions in Europe. The newly acquired territories were organised as the Governorate of Bessarabia, adopting a name previously used for the southern plains between the Dniester and the Danube rivers. Following the Crimean War, in 1856, the southern areas of Bessarabia were returned to Moldavian rule; Russian rule was restored over the whole of the region in 1878, when Romania, the result of Moldavia's union with Wallachia, was pressured into exchanging those territories for the Dobruja.
In 1917, in the wake of the Russian Revolution, the area constituted itself as the Moldavian Democratic Republic, an autonomous republic part of a proposed federative Russian state. Bolshevik agitation in late 1917 and early 1918 resulted in the intervention of the Romanian Army, ostensibly to pacify the region. Soon after, the parliamentary assembly declared independence, and then union with the Kingdom of Romania. The legality of these acts was however disputed, most prominently by the Soviet Union, which regarded the area as a territory occupied by Romania.
In 1940, after securing the assent of Nazi Germany through the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Union pressured Romania, under threat of war, into withdrawing from Bessarabia, allowing the Red Army to annex the region. The area was formally integrated into the Soviet Union: the core joined parts of the Moldavian ASSR to form the Moldavian SSR, while territories inhabited by Slavic majorities in the north and the south of Bessarabia were transferred to the Ukrainian SSR. Axis-aligned Romania recaptured the region in 1941 with the success of Operation München during the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, but lost it in 1944 as the tide of war changed. In 1947, the Soviet-Romanian border along the Prut was internationally recognised by the Paris Treaty that ended World War II.
During the process of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldavian and Ukrainian SSRs proclaimed their independence in 1991, becoming the modern states of Moldova and Ukraine, while preserving the existing partition of Bessarabia. Following a short war in the early 1990s, the Pridnestrovian Moldavian Republic was proclaimed in the Transnistria, extending its authority also over the municipality of Bender on the right bank of Dniester river. Part of the Gagauz-inhabited areas in the southern Bessarabia was organised in 1994 as an autonomous region within Moldova.
According to the traditional explanation, the name Bessarabia ("Basarabia" in Romanian) derives from the Wallachian Basarab dynasty, who allegedly ruled over the southern part of the area in the 14th century. Some scholars question this, however, claiming that:
According to Dimitrie Cantemir, the name Bessarabia originally applied only to the part of the territory south of the Upper Trajanic Wall, i.e. an area only slightly bigger than present-day Budjak.
The region is bounded by the Dniester to the north and east, the Prut to the west, and the lower River Danube and Black Sea to the south. It has an area of . The area is mostly hilly plains and flat steppes. It is very fertile and has lignite deposits and stone quarries. People living in the area grow sugar beet, sunflower, wheat, maize, tobacco, wine grapes, and fruit. They raise sheep and cattle. The main industry in the region is agricultural processing.
The main cities are Chișinău (former capital of Bessarabia Governorate, now capital of Moldova), and Izmail and Bilhorod-Dnistrovs'kyi (historically called Cetatea Albă and Akkerman; both now within Ukraine). Other towns of administrative or historical importance include: Khotyn, Reni, and Kilia (all now in Ukraine); and Lipcani, Briceni, Soroca, Bălți, Orhei, Ungheni, Bender/Tighina, and Cahul (all now in Moldova).
In the late 14th century, the newly established Principality of Moldavia encompassed what later became known as Bessarabia. Afterwards, this territory was directly or indirectly, partly or wholly controlled by: the Ottoman Empire (as suzerain of Moldavia, with direct rule only in Budjak and Khotin), Russian Empire, Romania, the USSR. Since 1991, most of the territory forms the core of Moldova, with smaller parts in Ukraine.
The territory of Bessarabia has been inhabited by people for thousands of years. Cucuteni–Trypillia culture flourished between the 6th and 3rd millennium BC.
In Antiquity the region was inhabited by Thracians, as well as for shorter periods by Cimmerians, Scythians, Sarmatians, and Celts, specifically by tribes such as the Costoboci, Carpi, Britogali, Tyragetae, and Bastarnae. In the 6th century BC, Greek settlers established the colony of Tyras along the Black Sea coast and traded with the locals. Celts also settled in the southern parts of Bessarabia, their main city being Aliobrix.
The first polity that is believed to have included the whole of Bessarabia was the Dacian polity of Burebista in the 1st century BC. After his death, the polity was divided into smaller pieces, and the central parts were unified in the Dacian kingdom of Decebalus in the 1st century AD. This kingdom was defeated by the Roman Empire in 106. Southern Bessarabia was included in the empire even before that, in 57 AD, as part of the Roman province Moesia Inferior, but it was secured only when the Dacian Kingdom was defeated in 106. The Romans built defensive earthen walls in Southern Bessarabia (e.g. Lower Trajan Wall) to defend the Scythia Minor province against invasions. Except for the Black Sea shore in the south, Bessarabia remained outside direct Roman control; the myriad of tribes there are called by modern historians Free Dacians. The 2nd to the 5th centuries also saw the development of the Chernyakhov culture.
In 270, the Roman authorities began to withdraw their forces south of the Danube, especially from the Roman Dacia, due to the invading Goths and Carpi. The Goths, a Germanic tribe, poured into the Roman Empire from the lower Dniepr River, through the southern part of Bessarabia (Budjak steppe), which due to its geographic position and characteristics (mainly steppe), was swept by various nomadic tribes for many centuries. In 378, the area was overrun by the Huns.
From the 3rd century until the 11th century, the region was invaded numerous times in turn by different tribes: Goths, Huns, Avars, Bulgars, Magyars, Pechenegs, Cumans and Mongols. The territory of Bessarabia was encompassed in dozens of ephemeral kingdoms which were disbanded when another wave of migrants arrived. Those centuries were characterized by a terrible state of insecurity and mass movement of these tribes. The period was later known as the ""Dark Ages"" of Europe, or Age of migrations.
In 561, the Avars captured Bessarabia and executed the local ruler Mesamer. Following the Avars, Slavs started to arrive in the region and establish settlements. Then, in 582, Onogur Bulgars settled in southeastern Bessarabia and northern Dobruja, from which they moved to Moesia Inferior (allegedly under pressure from the Khazars), and formed the nascent region of "Bulgaria". With the rise of the Khazars' state in the east, the invasions began to diminish and it was possible to create larger states. According to some opinions, the southern part of Bessarabia remained under the influence of the First Bulgarian Empire until the end of the 9th century.
Between the 8th and 10th centuries, the southern part of Bessarabia was inhabited by people from the Balkan-Danubian culture (the culture of the First Bulgarian Empire). Between the 9th and 13th centuries, Bessarabia is mentioned in Slav chronicles as part of "Bolohoveni" (north) and "Brodnici" (south) voivodeships, believed to be Vlach principalities of the early Middle Ages.
The last large scale invasions were those of the Mongols of 1241, 1290, and 1343. Sehr al-Jedid (near Orhei), an important settlement of the Golden Horde, dates from this period. They led to a retreat of a big part of the population to the mountainous areas in Eastern Carpathians and to Transylvania. The population east of Prut became especially low at the time of the Tatar invasions.
In the Late Middle Age, chronicles mention a Tigheci "republic", predating the establishment of the Principality of Moldavia, situated near the modern town of Cahul in the southwest of Bessarabia, preserving its autonomy even during the later Principality even into the 18th century. Genovese merchants rebuilt or established a number of forts along Dniester (notably Moncastro) and Danube (including Kyliya/Chilia-Licostomo).
After the 1360s the region was gradually included in the principality of Moldavia, which by 1392 established control over the fortresses of Akkerman and Chilia, its eastern border becoming the River Dniester. Based on the name of the region, some authors consider that in the latter part of the 14th century the southern part of the region was under the rule of Wallachia (the ruling dynasty of Wallachia during that period was called Basarab). In the 15th century, the entire region was a part of the principality of Moldavia. Stephen the Great ruled between 1457 and 1504, a period of nearly 50 years during which he won 32 battles defending his country against virtually all his neighbours (mainly the Ottomans and the Tatars, but also the Hungarians and the Poles), while losing only two. During this period, after each victory, he raised a monastery or a church close to the battlefield honoring Christianity. Many of these battlefields and churches, as well as old fortresses, are situated in Bessarabia (mainly along Dniester).
In 1484, the Turks invaded and captured Chilia and Cetatea Albă (Akkerman in Turkish), and annexed the shoreline southern part of Bessarabia, which was then divided into two sanjaks (districts) of the Ottoman Empire. In 1538, the Ottomans annexed more Bessarabian land in the south as far as Tighina, while the central and northern Bessarabia remained part of the Principality of Moldavia (which became a vassal of the Ottoman Empire). Between 1711 and 1812, the Russian Empire occupied the region five times during its wars against Ottoman and Austrian Empires.
By the Treaty of Bucharest of May 28, 1812—concluding the Russo-Turkish War, 1806-1812—the Ottoman Empire ceded the land between the Pruth and the Dniester, including both Moldavian and Turkish territories, to the Russian Empire. That entire region was then called "Bessarabia".
In 1814, the first German settlers arrived and mainly settled in the southern parts and Bessarabian Bulgarians began settling in the region too, founding towns such as Bolhrad. Between 1812 and 1846, the Bulgarian and Gagauz population migrated to the Russian Empire via the River Danube, after living many years under oppressive Ottoman rule, and settled in southern Bessarabia. Turkic-speaking tribes of the Nogai horde also inhabited the Budjak Region (in Turkish Bucak) of southern Bessarabia from the 16th to 18th centuries, but were totally driven out prior to 1812.
Administratively, Bessarabia became an "oblast" of the Russian Empire in 1818, and a "guberniya" in 1873.
By the Treaty of Adrianople that concluded the Russo-Turkish War of 1828-1829 the entire Danube Delta was added to the Bessarabian oblast. According to Vasile Stoica, emissary of the Romanian government to the United States, in 1834 Romanian language was banned from schools and government facilities, despite 80% of the population speaking the language. This would eventually lead to the banning of Romanian in churches, media and books. According to the same author, those who protested the banning of Romanian could be sent to Siberia.
At the end of the Crimean War, in 1856, by the Treaty of Paris, Southern Bessarabia (organised as the Cahul and Ismail counties, with the Bolgrad county split from the latter in 1864) was returned to Moldavia, causing the Russian Empire to lose access to the Danube river.
In 1859, Moldavia and Wallachia united to form the Romanian United Principalities (Romania), which included the southern part of Bessarabia.
The railway Chișinău-Iași was opened on June 1, 1875 in preparation for the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878) and the Eiffel Bridge was opened on , just three days before the outbreak of the war. The Romanian War of Independence was fought in 1877–78, with the help of the Russian Empire as an ally. Northern Dobruja was awarded to Romania for its role in the 1877–78 Russo-Turkish War, and as compensation for the transfer of the Southern Bessarabia.
The Kishinev pogrom took place in the capital of Bessarabia on April 6, 1903 after local newspapers published articles inciting the public to act against Jews; 47 or 49 Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded and 700 houses destroyed. The anti-Semitic newspaper Бессарабец (Bessarabetz, meaning "Bessarabian"), published by Pavel Krushevan, insinuated that a Russian boy was killed by local Jews. Another newspaper, Свет (Lat. Svet, meaning "World" or Russian for "Light"), used the age-old blood libel against the Jews (alleging that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzos).
After the 1905 Russian Revolution, a Romanian nationalist movement started to develop in Bessarabia. In the chaos brought by the Russian revolution of October 1917, a National Council (Sfatul Țării) was established in Bessarabia, with 120 members elected from Bessarabia by some political and professional organizations and 10 elected from Transnistria (the left bank of Dniester where Moldovans and Romanians accounted for less than a third and the majority of the population was Ukrainian. See Demographics of Transdniestria).
The "Rumcherod" Committee (Central Executive Committee of the Soviets of Romanian Front, Black Sea Fleet and Odessa Military District) proclaimed itself the supreme power in Bessarabia.
On the pretext of securing supply lines against raids by Bolsheviks and armed bandits, members of the Moldavian legislative council Sfatul Țării and the Entente Powers requested military assistance from Romania, and the Romanian Army crossed the republic's border on ; following several skirmishes with Moldovan and Bolshevik troops, the occupation of the whole region was completed in early March. The occupation of Bessarabia by the Romanians was not universally welcomed, and the members of the Bessarabian government denied that the Romanian troops had ever been invited to occupy the republic.
After Ukraine issued its Fourth Universal, breaking ties with Bolshevik Russia and proclaiming a sovereign Ukrainian state, Sfatul Țării declared Bessarabia's independence on January 24, 1918, as the Moldavian Democratic Republic.
On March 5 [O.S. 20 February] 1918, in a secret agreement signed along the Treaty of Buftea, the German Empire allowed Romania to annex Bessarabia in exchange for free passage of German troops toward Ukraine. The county councils of Bălți, Soroca and Orhei were the earliest to ask for unification of the Moldavian Democratic Republic with the Kingdom of Romania, and on April 9 [O.S. March 27] 1918, in the presence of the Romanian Army, Sfatul Țării voted in favour of the union, with the following conditions:
86 deputies voted in support, three voted against and 36 abstained. The Romanian prime-minister at the time, Alexandru Marghiloman, would later admit that the union was decided in Bucharest and Iași, the seats of the Romanian government.
The first condition, the agrarian reform, was debated and approved in November 1918. Sfatul Țării also decided to remove the other conditions and made unification with Romania unconditional. The legality of this vote was considered highly debatable, since the meeting had not been publicly announced, there was no quorum (only 44 of the 125 members took part in it, mostly Moldavian conservatives), and then Sfatul Țării voted for its self-dissolution, preventing the protests of the Moldavians and minorities members who had not participated in the parliamentary session from being taken into account.
In the autumn of 1919, elections for the Romanian Constituent Assembly were held in Bessarabia; 90 deputies and 35 senators were chosen. On December 20, 1919, these men voted, along with the representatives of Romania's other regions, to ratify the unification acts that had been approved by Sfatul Țării and the National Congresses in Transylvania and Bukovina.
The union was recognized by France, United Kingdom, Italy, and Japan in the Treaty of Paris of 1920, which however never came into force, because Japan did not ratify it. The United States refused to sign the treaty on the grounds that Russia was not represented at the Conference. The US also considered Bessarabia a territory under Romanian occupation, rather than Romanian territory, despite existing political and economic relations between the US and Romania. Soviet Russia (and later, the USSR) did not recognize the union, and by 1924, after its demands for a regional plebiscite were declined by Romania for the second time, declared Bessarabia to be Soviet territory under foreign occupation. On all Soviet maps, Bessarabia was highlighted as territory not belonging to Romania.
A Provisional Workers' & Peasants' Government of Bessarabia was founded on May 5, 1919, in exile at Odessa, by the Bolsheviks.
On May 11, 1919, the Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed as an autonomous part of Russian SFSR, but was abolished by the military forces of Poland and France in September 1919 (see Polish–Soviet War). After the victory of Bolshevist Russia in the Russian Civil War, the Ukrainian SSR was created in 1922, and in 1924 the Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was established on a strip of Ukrainian land on the west bank of Dniester where Moldovans and Romanians accounted for less than a third and the relative majority of population was Ukrainian. (See Demographics of Moldovan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic).
How the history of interwar Bessarabia is treated mostly depends on the historiographical approach of the writer.
Romanian historiography, for the most part, consistently sought to demonstrate the legitimacy of the regime established after the Union of Bessarabia with Romania. During the interwar period, Romanian historians countered Soviet historians' description of it as establishment of an "occupation regime". The agrarian reform, considered as one of the most radical in Europe (an idea also supported by Western historians), was appreciated as having a positive role, emphasizing the national emancipation of the Romanian peasantry, while the modernization of agriculture was presented as a complex phenomenon. Particular attention was paid to the unification of administrative legislation, norms, and principles of administrative law, as well as their application in Romanian practice.
During the Communist period, Romanian historians initially treated the reforms applied after World War I mainly from social class perspectives. Starting with the 1960s, the first studies that mentioned the existence of a "Bessarabian historical problem" appeared. From the second half of the 1970s, studies on the agrarian reform considered that while this led to a "natural and rational distribution of agricultural property", it also led to fragmentation of agricultural land. This made the practice of intensive agriculture difficult, since peasants had reduced opportunity to purchase agricultural equipment. Towards the end of the Communist period, the two interwar concepts of development and modernization
were re-embraced.
After the fall of Communism, Romanian historiography focused mainly on issues related to the general and specific context of Bessarabia after the Union, the state's efforts for social-political and economic integration, and cultural development of Bessarabia. The internal and external factors that determined the specifics of the province's integration into the Romanian common framework are also of interest. The lasting effects of Russian domination and the destabilizing role of Soviet Russia (USSR) are considered essential factors that led to the disruption of the administration, while the difficult and non-uniform character of the integration was also generated by the non-uniform character of the development of the provinces until 1918, of a different degree of their adaptability to the new conditions. The modernization interwar period is also seen as a third phase of a continuous process, begun in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and brutally interrupted by the establishment of Communism. In this context, some authors consider the comparative studies of the interwar and post-Communist periods in different fields as particularly current.
Soviet history regarding the changes that took place in interwar Bessarabia expressed total denial of any reform, and also rejected any modernization and progress. The transformations that took place on different levels of the Bessarabian society at that time were treated from a social class and/or ethno-political positions; as Svetlana Suveică remarks, "the writings from the Soviet period, directly determined by the interference of politics in historical science, alternated the ideas regarding the "Moldovan" nation and the national identity, with severe condemnations of the Romanian interwar period". In Suveică's opinion, the conception of Soviet historiography was based on distorted facts that would serve as "indisputable arguments" for the establishment of an illegal "occupation" regime. According to Wim P. van Meurs "the legitimation of the political regime has been the main function of (the Soviet) historiography and such a legitimation has ussualy been based on a number of historical myths". The discussion of the social-economic and politico-administrative situation in the region was also closely related to the Romanian-Soviet conflictual relations of the 1960s and 1970s, during which both communist countries treated the Bessarabian problem for political purposes.
The presence of the ideological factor in writing the history of Bessarabia was manifested itself not only at the central level, but also at the level of the historiography of Soviet Moldavia. It was not until the second half of the '80s that the Moldovan historiography raised the issue of the Soviet political and ideological pressures.
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the Moldovan historiography, largely marked by the public identity discourse, deals with the problems of the interwar Bessarabian history, depending of the context. On the one hand, the supporters of the idea of Moldovan statehood reject the option of modernization and progress of Bessarabia after the Union with Romania while, on the other hand, the historians who, starting from the idea of the Romanian character of Bessarabia, and based on new sources documentation, "contribute to the in-depth knowledge of the integrating and modernizing processes that marked the history of the (Bessarabian) land in the interwar period". This ongoing controversy highlights the two antagonistic geopolitical tendencies present in the contemporary Moldovan historiography: the pro-East current versus the pro-West current.
The Western historiography analyzed the modernization of Bessarabia in a general Romanian context in relation to the previous Russian period, as well as the uneven and not so fast modernization process, determined by both internal and external factors.
According to Vladimir Solonar and Vladimir Bruter, Bessarabia under Romanian rule experienced low population growth due to high mortality (highest in Romania and one of the highest in Europe) as well as emigration; Bessarabia was also characterized by economic stagnation and high unemployment. Access to social services declined after the abolition of the zemstvos in the early 1920s, as these had previously provided local autonomy in managing education and public health. In the late 1930s, Bessarabian population had among the highest incidences of several major infectious diseases, as well as some of the highest mortality rates from these diseases.
According to Dan Dungaciu, the only European modernization process of Bessarabia was carried out during the Romanian interwar period, despite the all unfavorable domestic and international conditions (post-war recession, actions backed by the Soviet Union, Great Depression). Gheorghe Duca considers that, in terms of science, economy, art, political and social life, Bessarabia made considerable progress in the interwar period.
Nicolae Enciu appreciates that, through the political, social-economic and cultural modernization, the interwar period meant a progress of the Romanian society, with beneficial effects in all its historical regions. At the same time, the interwar period also experienced failures, being too short to be able to produce radical transformations, in order to reduce the economic and social polarization.
According to Wim P. van Meurs, after 1918 Bessarabia remained for a long time in a state of emergency, under a military administration, due to border incidents and agitation among the peasantry and the minorities. Strict censorship was imposed in order to restrain Bolshevik propaganda. Three major revolts or Soviet raids took place in the province during the first decade of Romanian rule. In January 1919, local peasants, with support from across the Dniester, rebelled against the Romanian army in the area of Hotin. A similar uprising took place later that year in Tighina. While in the first case Soviet participation is not documented, the later was probably a Soviet raid, though van Meurs indicates it was most likely a local initiative not coordinated with the central government in Moscow. The longest-lasting rebellion took place for several weeks in 1924 in the area of Tatarbunar, when the local population was instigated by agitators from the Soviet Union and proclaimed a Bessarabian Soviet Republic. In all cases, the rebellions were brutally suppressed by the Romanian army, which at times fielded artillery against the rebels.
According to Anatol Petrencu, during the most of the Romanian period, Bessarabia benefited by democracy, with a multiparty and a modern electoral system, based on the 1923 Constitution and laws. In November 1919, Romania elected the first post-war parliament based on the proportional representation of the mandates according to the number of the population. As of mid 1919, the population of Bessarabia was estimated at around 2 million. With a voter turnout of 72.2%, the Bessarabians elected and sent to the Romanian Parliament 90 deputies and 37 senators.
According to Charles King, in Romania "the budding democracy [...] was soon crushed beneath the weight of corruption, court intrigues, and right-wing reaction". The same author notes that corrupt and heavy-handed Romanian administrators were especially prevalent in the region, and the Siguranța, the Romanian secret police, conducted extensive surveillance among the minorities and regarded Transnistrian refugees and Bessarabian students as potential Bolshevik agents. This resulted in "a sense among locals that Bessarabia had been occupied by Romania rather than united with". Russians in particular were regarded as "Bolsheviks in disguise", with their churches and libraries closed down or Romanianized.
At the beginning of World War I, around 80% of the population worked in agriculture. While the "Sfatul Țării" envisioned distributing land freely to the peasants, Romanian pressure resulted in a significant modification of the plans, bringing the reform more in line with similar ones taking place in the Old Kingdom and Transylvania. While more radical than elsewhere, as it provided lower payments, lower limits for land exempt from expropriation and larger plots, the Romanian land reform also reverted some of the ad-hoc land distribution that had taken place during the Russian Revolution, raising discontent among the peasantry. Thus, of the 1.5 million dessiatin (40% of the agricultural land) held by the large landowners in 1917, more than one third (38.6%) was distributed to peasants, another third was restored to its previous owners, while the rest became state property and was to a large degree later awarded to officers of the Romanian army, officials and clergy. A significant number of plots were awarded to Romanians immigrants from Wallachia and Western Moldavia, while Romanian offices who married Bessarabian women were eligible to receive 100 hectares. Though the reform set the lot at 6 hectares, more than two thirds of the peasant households received less than 5 hectares each, and, as of 1931, 367.8 thousand peasant families were still landless. The average surface for peasant household further dropped after the land reform due to land division among heirs.
According to Alla Skvortsova, while the reform stimulated the development of commodity farming in the countryside and expanded the market for industrial products, it failed to produce the expected results. The peasants had to pay for the land they received during the following 20 years, there was little to no state support provided for them to acquire technical equipment required for the development of successful farms and credit was only accessible to the more prosperous among them and therefore insignificant overall. The region also lacked qualified specialists and lagged behind in infrastructure, as the government had few resources and other priorities. The main factors which impeded the creation of a prosperous peasant class were the payments for land redemption, peasant debts and taxes, lack of access to the traditional Russian market, difficulties to break into the Romanian and European agricultural market and frequent droughts (1921, 1924, 1925, 1927-28 and 1935). Wine making, one of the mainstays of local economy, was particularly affected by the external policy of the Romanian state: the most favoured nation status awarded to France brought inexpensive French wine to the market, access to the Soviet market was blocked, while exports to the traditional markets in Poland were hindered by the trade war started in 1926.
According to Alla Skvortsova, the peasant situation was further aggravated by the Great Depression, with prices for agricultural products dropping catastrophically and not recovering until the end of the decade. While only 2.8% of the national agricultural credit was directed by the National Bank of Romania towards Bessarabia in 1936, by 1940 70% of the peasants were in debt to the large landowners and moneylenders. In order to pay debts, many of the poorer peasants had to sell their livestock an even their land. Failure to pay the redemption payments for 2.5 years also resulted in the land reverting to state property; thus, by 1938, in the district of Soroca only a quarter of the peasant households had retained their allotment. By 1939 farms of up to 5 hectares throughout the region had lost a seventh of their land, while farms with more than 10 hectares had increased their land by 26%. According to a study of the new Soviet administration, in June 1940 7.3% of the peasant households in the Bessarabian regions of the Moldavian SSR were completely landless, 38.15% had up to 3 hectares (an average of 1.7 hectares per lot) and 22.4% had 3 to 5 hectares (an average of 2.6 hectares per one household), i.e. more than two-thirds of the peasant households were farm laborers and poor peasants. Better off was the middle peasantry, which owned 5 to 10 hectares, and constituted 22.73% of peasant farms. The rest, constituting 9.4% of the farms, owned more than 10 hectares each, but held under their control 36% of peasant land, i.e. more than all small farms taken together. The 818 large landowners held an average of 100 hectares each, while institutional owners (the state, churches and monasteries) held another 59 thousand hectares. About 54% of peasant households had no livestock, about two thirds had no horse, a little more than a sixth had one horse each, and only 13.2% had two or more working horses. In the whole of Bessarabian region of the Moldavian SSR there were at the beginning of Soviet administration only 219 obsolete tractors, mostly owned by larger farms and used primarily as threshing engines. With little serviceable equestrian equipment, tillage, sowing and harvesting of all crops were mostly carried out manually. Throughout the interwar era, Bessarabia witnessed several negative phenomena: further social stratification in the countryside, deepening poverty, lowering yields, worsening the structure of crops grown, reducing the total agricultural production. The number of cattle fell by 26% between 1926 and 1938, the number of sheep by 5%, the number of pigs by 14%. Average grain yield also decreased from 1920/1925 to 1935/1939 from 850 kg per hectare to 800 kg. The area used in wine-making grew by 15,000 hectares between 1930 and 1938, however wine quality dropped, as slightly over 80% of the vineyards were planted with lower quality grape varieties. According to V.I. Tsaranov, adding to the lack of land, small plots, poor crop yields, unemployment was also high among rural residents, with around 550 thousand recorded in June 1940.
According to Alla Skvortsova, the Romanian government, either directly or through the banking system, encouraged the development of industry in the areas of prewar Romania while hindering the process in new territories. As a consequence, even Bessarabian entrepreneurs preferred to invest their capital in those areas instead of using it within the region. Local industry faced fierce competition from larger Romanian companies, which had access to preferential rail tariffs, limited credit to local entrepreneurs and flooded the local market with cheaper industrial goods produced in Romania or imported from abroad. Nevertheless, some new small-scale industrial enterprises were established in the 1920s, using primarily local raw materials and producing for the local market. The total engine power rose from 7.8 thousand hp in 1925 to 12.2 thousand in 1929. Although the number of industrial enterprises more than doubled after 1918, small semi-handicraft production prevailed, seldomly using hired labor: in 1930 there were an average of only 2.4 employees per enterprise. During the 22 years of Romanian rule, only one large enterprise was built in Bessarabia: the Bălți sugar plant.
According to Alla Skvortsova, not all new enterprises survived for long, and the Great Depression had a particularly strong impact on the region, many of the companies going bankrupt or closing in 1929–1933. Governmental policy, influenced by the banking system and the industrial cartels, prevented a rebound, the industry of the "Old Kingdom" again receiving preferential treatment. The main factors that affected the development of Bessarabia in the 1930s were severe credit restrictions, increases in transport tariffs and customs restrictions and special tax policies. Tax burden was notably high, with enterprises required to fully provide the assigned tax agent with housing, heating, lighting and office space. Bessarabia was reduced mostly to a supplier of raw materials and a market for industrial goods of Romanian or foreign origin. By the end of the 1930s, the only industrial sectors that managed to rebound were the food and woodworking industries, the rest witnessing either stagnation or a decrease compared to pre-depression levels. However, most industrial facilities in the food industry worked significantly below their installed capacity even in prosperous years such as 1937. Several large factories, such as the Basarabeasca, Cetatea Albă, Florești and Tighina, railway workshops, the Cetatea Albă and Chișinău textile and knitwear factories and the Cetatea Albă canning factory and distillery were dismantled and relocated to the "Old Kingdom" by 1938. Between 1929 and 1937, fixed capital in the industry dropped by 10%, and the number of industrial workers in Bessarabia dropped from 5,400 in 1925 to 3,500 in 1937, while their overall number in Romania had increased by almost 27% during the same period. Between 1926 and 1937 the share of the food industry in the total production of large manufacturing industries increased from 77.1% to 92.4%, with sharp decreases observed in sectors with higher added value, such as the metalworking, textile and leather processing industries. Even so, the food industry failed to fulfill local needs, while most industries heavily relied on manual labor and primitive technologies. Electricity production in Chișinău, Bessarabia's center and Romania's second largest city, recorded in 1925 at 4.47 million kWh, only increased by 6.7% during the following decade, lagging far behind other Romanian cities: 572.3% in Galați, 238.2% in Bucharest, and over 101% in Iași. By the end of the 1930, only one in seven Bessarabians had access to electricity, compared to one in four among general Romanian population.
The Romanian administration carried out a large number of projects aimed at improving the infrastructure of the province, in order to introduce European gauge and reorient it towards Romania. The total length of the railway lines in Bessarabia increased only by 78 km (from 1140 in 1918 to 1218 in 1940). Local businessmen remained dissatisfied with the pace of the construction of new railways (the Chișinău-Căinari was the only one built anew) and the closure of a number of lines. Road infrastructure was also improved, as new highways and bridges over the Prut were built, while part of the existing roads were repaired and paved, increasing the length of highways from 150 to 754 km. However, most other roads remained impassable during rainy periods. Shipping on the Dniester was closed, and was never established on the Prut. In the 1930s, new airports were built, telephone lines were laid out, and radio transmitters were installed; nevertheless, the region still lagged behind Transylvania and the "Old Kingdom".
According to Alla Skvortsova, overall, the share of Bessarabian enterprises in the Romanian industry fell between 1919 and 1937 from 9% to 5.7%, while the number of enterprises employing at least 20 employees dropping from 262 to 196. The share of investments in Bessarabian industry also fell from 0.3% in 1923 to 0.1% in 1936. Sociologist T. Al. Ştirbu observed, commenting on the Romanian government's apparent long-term economical plans that "Bessarabia can only be considered as a reserve of labor and cheap bread for the industry of the rest of the country". In a 1938 review, the Bessarabian Federation of Chambers of Commerce noted that "the decline in industrial production in Bessarabia hinders the rational processing of local raw materials, thereby turning our province into a colony for industry in the rest of the country". According to V.I. Tsaranov, throughout the period, industrial workers in the region faced long working hours (up to fourteen per day), lack of proper safety measures, unsanitary conditions, the perspective of unemployment and a general decrease in the standard of living: the real wage of a Chișinău worker dropped 60% between 1913 and 1937.
In 1919, Bessarabia became the Romanian region with the highest illiteracy rate. Although the Romanian/Moldovan population was the largest, no Romanian language school operated in Bessarabia before 1918. As a result, among them, only 10.5% of men and 1.77% of women were literate. By 1930, although Bessarabia continued to be the region with the most illiterate people in Romania, the number of literates doubled, to 38,1% of the total population. In the 1920-1938 period, the number of primary schools increased from 1,747 to 2,718, and the number of students from 136,172 to 346,747. In 1940, there were also 24 gymnasiums and middle schools, as well as 26 high schools. Despite the large number of minorities (over 870,000 Russians, Ukrainians and Jews), education in minority languages was curtailed: private schools were allowed to function after 1925 only if instruction was in Romanian and, by 1938, there were no state-
sponsored Russian or Ukrainian schools and only one each in private hands. In 1939, after the German and Soviet attacks on Poland, the government reverted on its earlier policy and decided to reintroduce minority language classes in state schools and allow a greater degree of cultural expression for the Slavic minorities, in an effort to improve its image among the local population.
Also, in the interwar period, the foundations were laid for the first higher education institutions in Bessarabia. In 1926, the Faculty of Theology was established in Chișinău, followed by the National Conservatory in 1928, and the Faculty of Agricultural Sciences in 1933. The two faculties were sections of the University of Iași, in pre-war Romania.
The Soviet Union did not recognize the incorporation of Bessarabia into Romania and throughout the entire interwar period engaged in attempts to undermine Romania and diplomatic disputes with the government in Bucharest over this territory. The Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact was signed on August 23, 1939. By Article 4 of the secret Annex to the Treaty, Bessarabia fell within the Soviet interest zone.
In spring of 1940, Western Europe was overrun by Nazi Germany. With world attention focused on those events, on June 26, 1940, the USSR issued a 24-hour ultimatum to Romania, demanding immediate cession of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina under threat of war. Romania was given four days to evacuate its troops and officials. The two provinces had an area of , and were inhabited by about 3.75 million people, half of them Romanians, according to official Romanian sources. Two days later, Romania yielded and began evacuation. During the evacuation, from June 28 to July 3, groups of local Communists and Soviet sympathizers attacked the retreating forces, and civilians who chose to leave. Many members of the minorities (Jews, ethnic Ukrainians and others) joined in these attacks. The Romanian Army was also attacked by the Soviet Army, which entered Bessarabia before the Romanian administration finished retreating. The casualties reported by the Romanian Army during those seven days consisted of 356 officers and 42,876 soldiers dead or missing.
On August 2, the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic was established on most of the territory of Bessarabia, merged with the western parts of the former Moldavian ASSR. Bessarabia was divided between the Moldavian SSR (65% of the territory and 80% of the population) and the Ukrainian SSR. Bessarabia's northern and southern districts (now Budjak and parts of the Chernivtsi oblast) were allotted to Ukraine, while some territories (4,000 km2) on the left (eastern) bank of Dniester (present Transnistria), previously part of Ukraine, were allotted to Moldavia. Following the Soviet takeover, many Bessarabians, who were accused of supporting the deposed Romanian administration, were executed or deported to Siberia and Kazakhstan.
Between September and November 1940, the ethnic Germans of Bessarabia were offered resettlement to Germany, following a German-Soviet agreement. Fearing Soviet oppression, almost all Germans (93,000) agreed. Most of them were resettled to the newly annexed Polish territories.
On June 22, 1941 the Axis invasion of the Soviet Union commenced with Operation Barbarossa. Between June 22 and July 26, 1941, Romanian troops with the help of Wehrmacht recovered Bessarabia and northern Bukovina. The Soviets employed scorched earth tactics during their forced retreat from Bessarabia, destroying the infrastructure and transporting movable goods to Russia by railway. At the end of July, after a year of Soviet rule, the region was once again under Romanian control.
As the military operation was still in progress, there were cases of Romanian troops "taking revenge" on Jews in Bessarabia, in the form of pogroms on civilians and murder of Jewish POWs, resulting in several thousand dead. The supposed cause for murdering Jews was that in 1940 some Jews welcomed the Soviet takeover as liberation. At the same time the notorious SS Einsatzgruppe D, operating in the area of the German 11th Army, committed summary executions of Jews under the pretext that they were spies, saboteurs, Communists, or under no pretext whatsoever.
The political solution of the "Jewish Question" was apparently seen by the Romanian dictator Marshal Ion Antonescu more in expulsion rather than extermination. That portion of the Jewish population of Bessarabia and Bukovina which did not flee before the retreat of the Soviet troops (147,000) was initially gathered into ghettos or Nazi concentration camps, and then deported during 1941–1942 in death marches into Romanian-occupied Transnistria, where the "Final Solution" was applied.
After three years of relative peace, the German-Soviet front returned in 1944 to the land border on the Dniester. On August 20, 1944, a c. 3,400,000-strong Red Army began a major summer offensive codenamed Jassy-Kishinev Operation. The Soviet armies overran Bessarabia in a two-pronged offensive within five days. In pocket battles at Chișinău and Sărata the German 6th Army of c. 650,000 men, newly reformed after the Battle of Stalingrad, was obliterated. Simultaneously with the success of the Russian attack, Romania broke the military alliance with the Axis and changed sides. On August 23, 1944, Marshal Ion Antonescu was arrested by King Michael, and later handed over to the Soviets.
The Soviet Union regained the region in 1944, and the Red Army occupied Romania. By 1947, the Soviets had imposed a communist government in Bucharest, which was friendly and obedient towards Moscow. The Soviet occupation of Romania lasted until 1958. The Romanian communist regime did not openly raise the matter of Bessarabia or Northern Bukovina in its diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union. At least 100,000 people died in a post-war famine in Moldavia.
Between 1969 and 1971, a clandestine National Patriotic Front was established by several young intellectuals in Chișinău, totaling over 100 members, vowing to fight for the establishment of a Moldavian Democratic Republic, its secession from the Soviet Union and union with Romania.
In December 1971, following an informative note from Ion Stănescu, the President of the Council of State Security of the Romanian Socialist Republic, to Yuri Andropov, the chief of KGB, three of the leaders of the National Patriotic Front, Alexandru Usatiuc-Bulgar, Gheorghe Ghimpu and Valeriu Graur, as well as a fourth person, Alexandru Soltoianu, the leader of a similar clandestine movement in northern Bukovina (Bucovina), were arrested and later sentenced to long prison terms.
With the weakening of the Soviet Union, in February 1988, the first non-sanctioned demonstrations were held in Chișinău. At first pro-Perestroika, they soon turned anti-government and demanded official status for the Romanian (Moldavian) language instead of the Russian language. On August 31, 1989, following a 600,000-strong demonstration in Chișinău four days earlier, Romanian (Moldavian) became the official language of the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic. However, this was not implemented for many years. In 1990, the first free elections were held for Parliament, with the opposition Popular Front winning them. A government led by Mircea Druc, one of the leaders of the Popular Front, was formed. The Moldavian SSR became SSR Moldova, and later the Republic of Moldova. The Republic of Moldova became independent on August 31, 1991; it took over unchanged the boundaries of the Moldavian SSR.
According to Bessarabian historian Ștefan Ciobanu and Moldovan philologist Viorica Răileanu, in 1810, the Romanian (Moldavian) population was approximately 95%. During the 19th century, as a result of the Russian policy of colonization and Russification, the Romanian population decreased to (depending on data sources) 47.6% (in 1897), 52% or 75% for 1900 (Krusevan), 53.9% (1907), 70% (1912, Laskov), or 65–67% (1918, J. Kaba).
The Russian Census of 1817, which recorded 96,526 families and 482,630 inhabitants, did not register ethnic data except for recent refugees (primarily Bulgarians) and certain ethno-social categories (Jews, Armenians and Greeks). Official records indicated 3,826 Jewish families (4.2%), 1,200 Lipovan families (1.5%), 640 Greek families (0.7%), 530 Armenian families (0.6%), 482 Bulgarian and Gagauz families (0.5%). In the 20th century, Romanian historian Ion Nistor extrapolated the number of Romanians at 83,848 families (86%) and Ruthenians at 6,000 families (6.5%). The estimate was based on the assumption that Ruthenes constituted up to a third of the population of the Khotin county, and the rest of the recorded population was exclusively Moldavian or Romanian. An alternative estimate for the same year indicates 76.4% Romanians, 8.7% Ukrainians, 5.1% Bulgarians and Gaguzes, 4.5% Jews and 2% Russians. An 1818 statistic of three counties in southern Bessarabia (Akkerman, Izmail and Bender) that had witnessed strong emigration of the Muslim population and immigration from other regions, including Ottoman lands south of the Danube, recorded a total population of 113,835. There are conflicting figures regarding the national distribution (first figure cited by Poștarencu, second by Ungureanu): 48.64/37% Moldavians, 7.07/8.9% Russians, 15.65/17.9% Ukrainians, 17.02/21.5% Bulgarians and 11.62/14.7% others. Still in 1818, statistics for the Khotin county in northern Bessarabia indicated 47.5% Moldavians and 42.6% Ukrainians.
The Moldovan historian Ion Gumenai records the population of Bessarabia in 1828 as 517,135, and states that 376,910 were Romanians (72.88%), 52,000 Ruthenians (10.05%), 30,929 Jews (5.9%), 8,846 Germans (1.71%), 7,947 Russians (1.53%), 5,974 Lipovans (1.15%), 2,384 Poles (0.46%), 2,000 Greeks (0.38%), 2,000 Armenians (0.38%), and 27,445 (5.3%) settlers in the south of Bessarabia.
The first statistic to record ethnic groups throughout Bessarabia was an incomplete administrative census made in 1843–1844 at the request of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The following proportions were recorded, in a total of 692,777 inhabitants: 59.4% Moldavians, 17.2% Ukrainians, 9.3% Bulgarians, 7.1% Jews and 2.2% Russians. In the case of some urban centres, figures were not reported for all ethnic groups. Furthermore, the size of the total populations differs from other official reports of the same period, which put the population of Bessarabia at 774,492 or 793,103.
Church records gathered around 1850–1855 put the total population at 841,523, with the following composition: 51.4% Moldavians, 4.2% Russians, 21.3% Ukrainians, 10% Bulgarians, 7.2% Jews and 5.7% others. On the other hand, official data for 1855 record a total population of 980,031, excluding the population on the territory under the authority of the Special Administration of the town of Izmail.
According to Ion Nistor, the population of Bessarabia in 1856 was composed of 736,000 Romanians (74%), 119,000 Ukrainians (12%), 79,000 Jews (8%), 47,000 Bulgarians and Gagauz (5%), 24,000 Germans (2.4%), 11,000 Romani (1.1%), 6,000 Russians (0.6%), adding to a total of 990,274 inhabitants. Historian Constantin Ungureanu provides significantly different figures for the same year: 676,100 Romanians (68.2%), 126,000 Ukrainians (12.7%), 78,800 Jews (7.9%), 48,200 Bulgarians and Gaguz (4.9%), 24,200 (2.4%) Germans and 20,000 Russians (2%) for a total of 991,900.
Russian data, 1889 (Total: 1,628,867 inhabitants)
The Russian census in 1897 had a total of 1,935,412 inhabitants. By language:
Some scholars, however, believed in regard to the 1897 census that "[...] the census enumerator generally has instructions to count everyone who understands the state language as being of that nationality, no matter what his everyday speech may be". Thus a number of Moldavians (Romanians) might have been registered as Russians.
According to N. Durnovo, the population of Bessarabia in 1900 was (1,935,000 inhabitants):
"Notes:" 1 The two counties were merged.
Romanian Census, 1930 (Total: 2,864,662 inhabitants)
"Notes:" 1 Includes Lipovans. 2 Poles, Armenians, Albanians, Greeks, Gypsies etc. and non-declared
The data of the Romanian census of 1939 was not completely processed before the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia. However, estimates had the total population rise to approximately 3.2 million.
In the 1979 Soviet census for the Moldavian SSR (including Transnistria; northern and southern Bessarabia, now both part of Ukraine, were not included): 63.9% identified themselves as Moldovans and 0.04% as Romanians. For the Soviet census of 1989 (conducted in the Moldavian SSR), 64.5% declared themselves as Moldovans and 0.06% Romanians. In the Moldovan census of 2014 (not including Transnistria), 75% declared themselves Moldovans and 7% Romanians. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38872 |
Raoult's law
Raoult's law ( law) is a law of thermodynamics established by French chemist François-Marie Raoult in 1887. It states that the partial pressure of each component of an ideal mixture of "liquids" is equal to the vapour pressure of the pure component multiplied by its mole fraction in the mixture. In consequence, the relative lowering of vapour pressure of a dilute solution of nonvolatile solute is equal to the mole fraction of solute in the solution.
Mathematically, Raoult's law for a single component in an ideal solution is stated as
where formula_2 is the partial pressure of the component formula_3 in the gaseous mixture (above the solution), formula_4 is the equilibrium vapor pressure of the pure component formula_3, and formula_6 is the mole fraction of the component formula_3 in the mixture (in the solution).
Where two volatile liquids A and B are mixed with each other to form a solution, the vapour phase consists of both components of the solution. Once the components in the solution have reached equilibrium, the total vapor pressure of the solution can be determined by combining Raoult's law with Dalton's law of partial pressures to give
If a non-volatile solute (zero vapor pressure, does not evaporate) is dissolved into a solvent to form an ideal solution, the vapor pressure of the final solution will be lower than that of the solvent. The decrease in vapor pressure is directly proportional to the mole fraction of solute in an ideal solution;
Raoult's law is a phenomenological law that assumes ideal behavior based on the simple microscopic assumption that intermolecular forces between unlike molecules are equal to those between similar molecules: the conditions of an ideal solution. This is analogous to the ideal gas law, which is a limiting law valid when the interactive forces between molecules approach zero, for example as the concentration approaches zero. Raoult's law is instead valid if the physical properties of the components are identical. The more similar the components are, the more their behavior approaches that described by Raoult's law. For example, if the two components differ only in isotopic content, then Raoult's law is essentially exact.
Comparing measured vapor pressures to predicted values from Raoult's law provides information about the true relative strength of intermolecular forces. If the vapor pressure is less than predicted (a negative deviation), fewer molecules of each component than expected have left the solution in the presence of the other component, indicating that the forces between unlike molecules are stronger. The converse is true for positive deviations.
For a solution of two liquids A and B, Raoult's law predicts that if no other gases are present, then the total vapor pressure formula_11 above the solution is equal to the weighted sum of the "pure" vapor pressures formula_12 and formula_13 of the two components. Thus the total pressure above the solution of A and B would be
Since the sum of the mole fractions is equal to one,
This is a linear function of the mole fraction formula_16, as shown in the graph.
Raoult's law was originally discovered as an idealised experimental law. Using Raoult's law as the definition of an ideal solution, it is possible to deduce that the chemical potential of each component of the liquid is given by
where formula_18 is the chemical potential of component "i" in the pure state.
This equation for the chemical potential may then be used to derive other thermodynamic properties of an ideal solution (see Ideal solution).
However, a more fundamental thermodynamic definition of an ideal solution is one in which the chemical potential of each component is given by the above formula. Assuming also that the vapor mixture acts as an ideal gas, it is then possible to re-derive Raoult's law as follows.
If the system is at equilibrium, then the chemical potential of the component "i" must be the same in the liquid solution and in the vapor above it. That is,
Assuming the liquid is an ideal solution and using the formula for the chemical potential of a gas gives
where formula_21 is the fugacity of the vapor of formula_3, and formula_23 indicates the reference state.
The corresponding equation for pure formula_3 in equilibrium with its (pure) vapor is
where formula_26 indicates the pure component.
Subtracting the equations gives
which re-arranges to
The fugacities can be replaced by simple pressures if the vapor of the solution behaves ideally, i.e.
which is Raoult's law.
An ideal solution would follow Raoult's law, but ideal solutions are extremely rare. Interactions between gas molecules are typically quite small, especially if the vapor pressures are low. However, the interactions in a liquid are very strong. For a solution to be ideal, the interactions between unlike molecules must be of the same magnitude as those between like molecules. This approximation is only true when the different species are almost chemically identical. One can see that from considering the Gibbs free energy change of mixing:
This is always negative, so mixing is spontaneous. However the expression is, apart from a factor −"T", equal to the entropy of mixing. This leaves no room at all for an enthalpy effect and implies that formula_31 must be equal to zero, and this can only be true if the interactions "U" between the molecules are indifferent.
It can be shown using the Gibbs–Duhem equation that if Raoult's law holds over the entire concentration range "x" = 0–1 in a binary solution then, for the second component, the same must also hold.
If deviations from the ideal are not too large, Raoult's law is still valid in a narrow concentration range when approaching "x" = 1 for the majority phase (the "solvent"). The solute also shows a linear limiting law, but with a different coefficient. This law is known as Henry's law.
The presence of these limited linear regimes has been experimentally verified in a great number of cases. In a perfectly ideal system, where ideal liquid and ideal vapor are assumed, a very useful equation emerges if Raoult's law is combined with Dalton's Law:
where formula_6 is the mole fraction of component formula_3 in the "solution", and formula_35 is its mole fraction in the "gas phase". This equation shows that, for an ideal solution where each pure component has a different vapor pressure, the gas phase is enriched in the component with the higher pure vapor pressure, and the solution is enriched in the component with the lower pure vapor pressure. This phenomenon is the basis for distillation.
In elementary applications, Raoult's law is generally valid when the liquid phase is either nearly pure or a mixture of similar substances. Raoult's law may be adapted to non-ideal solutions by incorporating two factors that account for the interactions between molecules of different substances. The first factor is a correction for gas non-ideality, or deviations from the ideal-gas law. It is called the fugacity coefficient (formula_36). The second, the activity coefficient formula_37, is a correction for interactions in the liquid phase between the different molecules.
This modified or extended Raoult's law is then written as
Many pairs of liquids are present in which there is no uniformity of attractive forces, i.e., the adhesive and cohesive forces of attraction are not uniform between the two liquids, so that they deviate from the Raoult's law applied only to ideal solutions.
If the vapor pressure of a mixture is lower than expected from Raoult's law, there is said to be a "negative deviation".
Negative deviations from Raoult's law arise when the forces between the particles in the mixture are stronger than the mean of the forces between the particles in the pure liquids. This is evidence that the "adhesive" forces between different components are stronger than the average "cohesive forces" between like components. In consequence each component is retained in the liquid phase by attractive forces that are stronger than in the pure liquid so that its partial vapor pressure is lower.
For example, the system of chloroform (CHCl3) and acetone (CH3COCH3) has a negative deviation from Raoult's law, indicating an attractive interaction between the two components that has been described as a hydrogen bond.
The system hydrochloric acid – water has a large enough negative deviation to form a minimum in the vapor pressure curve known as a (negative) azeotrope, corresponding to a mixture that evaporates without change of composition. When these two components are mixed, the reaction is exothermic as ion-dipole intermolecular forces of attraction are formed between the resulting ions (H3O+ and Cl–) and the polar water molecules so that Δ"H"mix is negative.
When the cohesive forces between like molecules are greater than the adhesive forces between dissimilar molecules, the dissimilarities of polarity leads both components to escape solution more easily. Therefore, the vapor pressure is greater than expected from the Raoult's law, showing positive deviation. If the deviation is large, then the vapor pressure curve shows a maximum at a particular composition and form a positive azeotrope. Some mixtures in which this happens are (1) benzene and methanol, (2) carbon disulfide and acetone, and (3) chloroform and ethanol. When these pairs of components are mixed, the process is endothermic reaction as weaker intermolecular forces are formed so that Δmix"H" is positive.
The expression of the law for this case includes the van 't Hoff factor which is also known as correction factor for solutions
Chapter 24, D. A. McQuarrie, J. D. Simon "Physical Chemistry: A Molecular Approach". University Science Books. (1997)
E. B. Smith "Basic Chemical Thermodynamics". Clarendon Press. Oxford (1993) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38873 |
Riccardo Patrese
Riccardo Gabriele Patrese (born 17 April 1954) is an Italian former racing driver, who raced in Formula One from to . For 19 years, he held the record for the most Grand Prix starts.
He became the first Formula One driver to achieve 200 Grand Prix starts when he appeared at the 1990 British Grand Prix, and the first to achieve 250 starts at the 1993 German Grand Prix. Patrese entered 257 Formula One World Championship Grands Prix and started 256 races making him the seventh most experienced F1 driver in history, after Rubens Barrichello, Michael Schumacher, Jenson Button, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Räikkönen and Felipe Massa. He was runner-up in the 1992 Formula One season and third in 1989 and 1991. He won six Formula One races, with a record gap of over six years between two of these – the 1983 South African Grand Prix and 1990 San Marino Grand Prix.
Patrese also competed at the World Sportscar Championship for the Lancia factory team, finishing runner-up in 1982 and collecting eight wins.
Born in Padua, Veneto, Patrese started driving karts at age 9. Growing up near the Italian Alps, he was also selected for the Italian national ski team as a teenager, and was in addition a competitive swimmer. In 1974, he won the Karting World Championship at the Estoril circuit, finishing ahead of second-placed teammate and fellow future F1 driver Eddie Cheever. He received an offer to drive in Formula Italia the following year, finishing second in the championship to another future F1 racer, Bruno Giacomelli. In 1976, he moved up to Formula 3, winning both the Italian and European Formula 3 championships. The following year he moved to Formula 2 before making his Formula One debut midway through the year.
He made his debut at the 1977 Monaco Grand Prix with the Shadow racing team sponsored by Italian businessman Franco Ambrosio, replacing Renzo Zorzi. He took his first point at the Japanese Grand Prix later that year. Later that year team-leader Jackie Oliver and sponsor Ambrosio left Shadow to form the Arrows team. Patrese and Shadow teammate Alan Jones both received offers from the Williams team for 1978: whilst Jones joined Williams, Patrese linked up with Arrows, alongside Rolf Stommelen. Shadow subsequently took Arrows to court, arguing that Arrows had stolen the design of the Shadow DN9 that Arrows and were essentially running a DN9 under a different name. The court agreed, forcing Arrows to design and construct a totally new car, the Arrows A1, which became the first of the Arrows F1 bloodline.
In 1978 Patrese very nearly won Arrows' second race, the South African Grand Prix, until engine failure forced him to retire 15 laps from the end. He subsequently took second at the Swedish Grand Prix behind Niki Lauda's Brabham BT46B "fan car", in its only appearance before being withdrawn. However, his driving style was perceived by some established drivers, such as Ronnie Peterson and James Hunt, as being over-aggressive. Later that year, at the Italian Grand Prix, Patrese's reputation for aggressive driving was blamed for a first lap major incident. In part, one of the causes suggested was a premature start by the Monza race director, leading to cars at the rear of the field catching up to those in the midfield that had been fully stopped when the green signal was given. This being said, Patrese, Peterson, and 8 others were involved in a 10-car pile-up before turn one, causing a stoppage of the race. Peterson, whose injuries from the chain reaction wreck were not in and of themselves life-threatening, died from an embolism the day after the Grand Prix.
By the next race, the United States Grand Prix, five top drivers - Hunt, Lauda, Mario Andretti, Emerson Fittipaldi and Jody Scheckter - declared that unless Patrese was banned from the race that they would withdraw. The race organizers agreed to this: although Patrese later stated that he obtained a ruling from a local judge in Watkins Glen stating that the ban was a violation of his right to work, Arrows decided to withdraw his entry due to pressure from the organizers and the FIA. He returned to competition at the following race, the Canadian Grand Prix, where he finished fourth.
For years after the crash which caused Peterson's death, Hunt (along with other drivers) blamed Patrese for starting the accident, and viewers of Hunt's commentaries of Formula One races from 1980 to 1993 on BBC Television were regularly treated to bitter diatribes against Patrese when the Italian appeared on screen. Hunt believed that it was Patrese's muscling past that caused the McLaren driven by Hunt and the Lotus driven by Peterson to touch, but Patrese argued that he was already well ahead of the pair before the accident took place. Patrese, together with race director Gianni Restilli, stood trial in Italian criminal court on manslaughter charges for Peterson's death. Both were cleared of wrongdoing on 28 October 1981.
Two of Patrese's most notable performances during his Arrows years were at the United States Grand Prix West in Long Beach, where he finished second in 1980 and took pole position in the following year: he led the latter race before being forced to retire by a blocked fuel filter.
In 1982 Patrese moved to Brabham and gained his maiden win at that year's Monaco Grand Prix in rather sensational circumstances. Patrese took the lead when Alain Prost crashed out, only to spin in dampening conditions on the next lap. This left him third behind Didier Pironi and Andrea de Cesaris, who both stopped on the final lap – Pironi with an electrical fault and de Cesaris out of fuel. Later that season he also led the Austrian Grand Prix but retired due to an engine failure. Patrese finished the season tenth, just ahead of his teammate Nelson Piquet. 1983 proved to be a more difficult season. Patrese crashed out late in the race while leading at San Marino - to the cheers of the "tifosi", as his shunt meant that he handed the race win to Ferrari driver Patrick Tambay. - He also took pole on home ground at the Italian Grand Prix, before his engine blew up in the early stages of the race: in a 2010 interview he said he suspected that his engine had been left in its qualifying trim, rendering it extremely powerful but fragile, as he had not been offered a new contract for the following year, and had been reluctant to sacrifice his chances of winning his home Grand Prix for teammate Nelson Piquet, who was fighting for the World Championship. Despite scoring a second win at the South African Grand Prix, Patrese only finished ninth while Piquet claimed his second Drivers' Championship title. It would be seven years before he made another visit to the top step of the podium.
A move to Alfa Romeo in delivered two lacklustre seasons resulting in eight world championship points and a single visit to the podium at the 1984 Italian Grand Prix. Patrese and teammate, American Eddie Cheever, were hampered by cars with Alfa Romeo 890T V8 turbo engines that proved too thirsty for the amount of fuel they were allowed to carry (220 litres). Often both drivers drove good races to be in the points, only to run out of fuel two or three laps from the finish dropping them out of the points. Indeed, Patrese's 3rd place at Monza in 1984 (to date the final podium finish for Alfa Romeo in F1) came at the expense of Cheever who was robbed of a podium finish when his car ran out of fuel 6 laps from the finish.
The pair were also hampered by their cars. 's Alfa Romeo 184T proved fast in qualifying, but fuel restrictions saw them well off the pace in most races. The 1985 car, the 185T proved to be even less competitive to the point that halfway through the season the team replaced it with an updated version of the 184T (dubbed the 184TB). Although the updated car did prove faster, results were not forthcoming. In an interview in 2000, Patrese described the 185T as "the worst car I ever drove".
At the 1985 Monaco Grand Prix, Patrese's former teammate Nelson Piquet began his 14th lap and was attempting to lap Patrese as they crossed the start/finish line. The cars made contact, and Patrese went into a spin while Piquet lost his suspension. Patrese then bounced off the wall and back into Piquet, and both drivers were out of the race.
In 1986 Patrese returned to Brabham alongside fellow Italian Elio de Angelis, but by now the team was a spent force and would never again take a driver to victory in a grand prix. Two more winless seasons followed despite the team's BMW engine being considered at the time to be the most powerful on the grid. Despite the trials of uncompetitive machinery, Patrese never publicly criticised the team and earned respect throughout the sport for his professionalism.
Toward the end of the 1987 season, Patrese was given the chance to revitalise what seemed to be a declining career when the Williams driver Nigel Mansell was injured whilst qualifying for the Japanese Grand Prix. With the help of Brabham owner and Formula One boss Bernie Ecclestone, Patrese tested the Williams FW11B at Imola, where he set a time that was half a second quicker than Ayrton Senna's pole at that year's San Marino Grand Prix, and was drafted in to replace Mansell for the season's finale in Australia.
Patrese had already been signed by Williams management to be Nelson Piquet's replacement for the season as the 1987 and triple World Champion was off to Lotus to replace Ayrton Senna who had signed with McLaren (Honda were staying with Lotus for 1988 but Williams had lost their Honda engines to McLaren). However, 1988 saw Williams struggling with an uncompetitive car powered by non-turbocharged Judd V8 engines. Patrese and Mansell were also hampered in the first half of the season by the Williams FW12's reactive suspension not working properly. It wasn't until the British Grand Prix at Silverstone that Williams dumped the reactive suspension for a more conventional one and the FW12's became competitive.
At the 1988 Spanish Grand Prix, Patrese was fined US$10,000 for 'brake testing' the Tyrrell of F1 rookie Julian Bailey during qualifying which caused the Tyrrell 017 to launch its front wheels in the air when Bailey ran into the back of the Williams. One unnamed driver allegedly said of the incident ""They should fine him his bloody retainer. There are enough accidental shunts in this business without someone deliberately causing one"".
It was not until and the arrival of the V10 Renault engines that Patrese and his new teammate Thierry Boutsen were able to challenge for race wins. In his record-breaking 176th Grands Prix, Patrese led the first race of the year in Brazil (the first time he led a Grand Prix since 1983) including setting a new lap record of the Autódromo Internacional Nelson Piquet before stopping with an engine failure. In what would prove to be his best season since 1983, he achieved an impressive 3rd place in the Drivers' Championship, taking no wins but securing 6 podium finishes, including 4 second places, as well as claiming pole position in Hungary, a race he confidently led under constant pressure from reigning World Champion Ayrton Senna in his McLaren-Honda V10 until lap 54 when a holed radiator forced his retirement.
In , Patrese finally won his third Grand Prix at the 1990 San Marino Grand Prix, though the competitiveness of the Renault powered FW13B with what many felt were two "number two" drivers waned in the second half of the year as McLaren, Ferrari and later Benetton with their Ford V8 engines took the ascendancy and he finished the Drivers' Championship in 7th place.
In Nigel Mansell returned to Williams after two seasons with Ferrari and, together with Patrese, the team became genuine contenders for both the Drivers' and Constructors' Championships. Two wins in Mexico and Portugal gave Patrese his most competitive F1 season thus far and a respectable third place behind Championship contenders Mansell and Senna. In addition he took four pole positions across the season. Patrese also out qualified Mansell at every race until the halfway point of the season at Silverstone for the British Grand Prix, and provided much support for the Englishman's title chase at races such as Italy and Portugal.
Williams dominated F1 in and Patrese continued to deliver in his role of second driver to Nigel Mansell, moving out of the way for Mansell while leading comfortably at that year's French Grand Prix. Again Patrese handled the delicate situation about team orders diplomatically, repeatedly offering a "No comment" to questions about the team orders that had been imposed on him at the red flag period of the French race. Patrese took a single win at the Japanese Grand Prix and had eight other podium finishes, including six second-place results. After his retirement Patrese stated that Mansell had the edge over him that season because of Mansell's greater upper body strength, as the car's steering was heavy due to the amount of downforce it generated combined with the absence of power steering, whilst Patrese's skill in low speed corners was negated by the car's traction control system.
With Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Nigel Mansell all desperately trying to sign for Williams, Patrese's position looked to be under threat and he signed for the Benetton team before the end of the year. His teammate for would be young German driver Michael Schumacher. Ironically, only Prost was able to agree terms with Williams for 1993 (Mansell went on to race in the American-based Champ Car series while Prost had a clause in his contract, signed in early 1992, that prevented Senna from being his teammate). This would have left a seat free for Patrese had he remained with the team. Although Williams offered Patrese the opportunity to stay with the team after Mansell announced his retirement from F1 at the Italian Grand Prix, he felt he could not go back on his word to Benetton. The number two seat at Williams went to the team's test driver Damon Hill, the son of the and World Champion Graham Hill.
While Williams continued to dominate F1 in 1993, Patrese found it difficult to get along with team manager Flavio Briatore, sensing that the team's concentration was on his new teammate Michael Schumacher. Patrese would also describe the Benetton B193 with its Ford HBA8 V8 as a step down in quality compared to the much more sophisticated Williams cars he had been driving for the previous five years. After scoring 56 points and finishing 2nd in the World Championship in 1992, Patrese scored 20 points to finish 5th in 1993 with a best finish of 2nd in Hungary in what was to prove to be his final season in Formula One. Before the end of the season Briatore informed Patrese that he was "free to seek an alternate drive". Ligier made Patrese an offer for 1994 but seeing as a further step down in his career, he decided against it.
As most top teams already had drivers signed for 1994, Patrese opted for retirement and brought what was then the longest F1 career in history to a conclusion. Patrese was invited to rejoin Williams in 1994 to fill the seat of Ayrton Senna after his fatal accident at Imola, but ultimately decided against returning to Formula One. In the second half of 1996, as thanks for his years of service to Williams, the team invited Patrese to test their latest car, the FW18, at Silverstone, with the Italian reportedly setting a time that would have placed him on the second row of the grid for that year's British Grand Prix.
After this, Patrese competed in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1997. He drove a Nissan R390 GT1 for the Nissan factory team; the car was third fastest in qualifying but was forced to retire with gearbox problems. After retiring from racing, he took up show jumping, following in the footsteps of his daughters who have competed in the sport internationally. He won an Italian national amateur title before retiring from equestrianism in 2014. Outside of competition, he is a keen collector of model railways, in particular those manufactured by Märklin.
In 2005 he returned to racing in the inaugural season of the Grand Prix Masters formula for retired F1 drivers. He finished third behind his former teammate Nigel Mansell and Emerson Fittipaldi in the sole 2005 race at Kyalami, South Africa. His 2006 season was less successful with a 10th-place finish at Losail in Qatar and a 6th at Silverstone.
Patrese's record of 257 Grand Prix entries, set in a period when a typical F1 season was limited to 16 races, stood for 15 years, surviving the Schumacher era when Michael Schumacher retired on 250 race entries. Rubens Barrichello finally surpassed Patrese's total, recording his 258th Grand Prix entry at the 2008 Turkish Grand Prix. As part of the "handover", Patrese tested a Honda RA107 at Jerez on 9 September (Barrichello was driving for Honda at the time). Schumacher subsequently came out of retirement and became the second driver to surpass Patrese's former record.
In July 2018 it was announced that Patrese would come out of retirement to compete at the Spa 24 Hours that month, competing in the pro-am category in a JAS Motorsport-run Honda NSX GT3 with Loic Depailler (the son of former F1 driver Patrick Depailler), Bertrand Baguette and Esteban Guerrieri.
Driver did not finish the Grand Prix, but was classified as he completed over 90% of the race distance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38875 |
Panettone
Panettone (pronounced ; ) is an Italian type of sweet bread originally from Milan (in the local Milanese dialect it is called , ), usually prepared and enjoyed for Christmas and New Year in Western, Southern, and Southeastern Europe as well as in Latin America, Eritrea, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States and Canada.
It has a cupola shape, which extends from a cylindrical base and is usually about 12–15 cm high for a panettone weighing 1 kg. Other bases may be used, such as an octagon, or a frustum with a star section shape more common to pandoro. It is made during a long process that involves curing the dough, which is acidic, similar to sourdough. The proofing process alone takes several days, giving the cake its distinctive fluffy characteristics. It contains candied orange, citron, and lemon zest, as well as raisins, which are added dry and not soaked. Many other variations are available such as plain or with chocolate. It is served in wedge shapes, vertically cut, accompanied with sweet hot beverages or a sweet wine, such as Asti or Moscato d'Asti. In some regions of Italy, it is served with "crema di mascarpone", a cream made from mascarpone, eggs, sometimes dried or candied fruits, and typically a sweet liqueur such as amaretto; if mascarpone cheese is unavailable, zabaione is sometimes used as a substitute.
Efforts are under way to obtain Protected Designation of Origin and Denominazione di origine controllata status for this product, but these have not yet been successful. Former Italian Agriculture Minister Paolo De Castro was known to be looking at ways to protect genuine Italian cakes from growing competition in South America, and exploring whether action could be taken at the World Trade Organization.
In Italy, panettone comes with an often varied history, but one that invariably states that its birthplace was Milan. The word "panettone" derives from the Italian word "panetto", a small loaf cake. The augmentative Italian suffix "-one" changes the meaning to "large cake".
The origins of this cake appear to be ancient, dating back to the Roman Empire, when ancient Romans sweetened a type of leavened cake with honey.
Throughout the ages, this "tall, leavened fruitcake" makes cameo appearances in the arts: It is shown in a sixteenth-century painting by Pieter Brueghel the Elder and is possibly mentioned in a contemporary recipe book written by Italian Bartolomeo Scappi, personal chef to popes and emperors during the time of Charles V. The first recorded association of panettone with Christmas can be found in the Italian writings of 18th century illuminist Pietro Verri. He refers to it as ""Pan de Ton"" ("luxury bread").
Though the etymology of the word 'panettone' is rather mundane, three more complex and fanciful folk etymologies have arisen. It is also thought that one of the ecclesiastical brothers, Fr. Antonio, who always wore the proper hat, was fond of this "pane". The ecclesiastical hat Pane Tone was later adopted as the shape, which gave rise to Panettone. This derivation received credence and acceptability at the turn of the century, and is likely to be the forerunner of the more recent Christmas cake. Gianrian Carli in "Il Caffè" makes passing reference to panettone in 1850 in discussion with Pietro Verri and alludes to a clerical hat.
One theory suggests that the word derives from the Milanese, "pan del ton", meaning "cake of luxury".
In the early 20th century, two enterprising Milanese bakers began to produce panettone in large quantities for the rest of Italy. In 1919, Angelo Motta started producing his eponymous brand of cakes. It was also Motta who revolutionised the traditional panettone by giving it its tall domed shape by making the dough rise three times, for almost 20 hours, before cooking, giving it its now-familiar light texture. The recipe was adapted shortly after by another baker, Gioacchino Alemagna, around 1925, who also gave his name to a popular brand that still exists today. The stiff competition between the two that then ensued led to industrial production of the cake. Nestlé took over the brands together in the late 1990s, but Bauli, an Italian bakery company based in Verona, has acquired Motta and Alemagna from Nestlé.
By the end of World War II, panettone was cheap enough for anyone and soon became the country's leading Christmas sweet. Lombard immigrants to Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay, Venezuela and Brazil also brought their love of panettone, and panettone is enjoyed for Christmas with hot cocoa or liquor during the holiday season, which became a mainstream tradition in those countries. In some places, it replaces the king cake.
Panettone is widely available in South America, including in Argentina, Brazil, Chile (see: Pan de Pascua), Ecuador, Colombia, Uruguay, Venezuela, Bolivia, Paraguay and Peru. It is known in Spanish as "panetón" or "pan dulce", and as "panetone" in Brazilian Portuguese. Peru's Antonio D'Onofrio, son of immigrants hailing from Caserta, Italy, spawned his own brand using a modified form of the Alemagna formula (e.g., candied papaya is used instead of candied citron and lemon, as these fruits are not available in Peru), which he licensed along with the packaging style. This brand is now also owned by Nestlé and exported throughout South America. Panettone is popular within Italian communities in the U.S., Canada, Australia, and the UK.
Italian food manufacturing companies and bakeries produce 117 million panettone and pandoro cakes every Christmas, collectively worth 579 million euros. There is an event held in Milan since 2013 that awards the Best Traditional Panettone of Italy. In 2016, the prize was awarded to Giuseppe Zippo, from Salento. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38879 |
Via Monte Napoleone
Via Monte Napoleone, also spelled Via Montenapoleone, is an upscale shopping street in Milan, Italy, and Europe's most expensive street (2018). It is famous for its ready-to-wear fashion and jewelry shops, and for being the most important street of the Milan fashion district known as the "Quadrilatero della moda", where many well-known fashion designers have high-end boutiques. The most exclusive Italian shoemakers maintain boutiques on this street.
In 2009, architect Fabio Novembre designed a months-long art installation, titled "Per fare un albero", ‘To make a tree’ in conjunction with the city of Milan's Department of Design, Events and Fashion and Fiat — featuring 20 full-size fiberglass planter replicas of the company's 500C cabriolet along Via Monte Napoleone.
In 2002, the Street Association started a media project including the Radio and the Portal, in order to relaunch the Made in Italy brand. Sponsored by the Department of Fashion, Tourism and Major Events of the Municipality of Milan, Italy Fashion System, and Assomoda, today it is the first instrument of revival and information on Made in Italy worldwide.
The street traces the Roman city walls erected by Emperor Maximian. In 1783, a financial institution known as the Monte Camerale di Santa Teresa opened there in Palazzo Marliani, with the function of managing the public debt. In 1786 the street itself was named after the "monte". The bank was closed in 1796 but re-opened in 1804, when Milan was capital of the Napoleonic Italian Republic, as the Monte Napoleone: from this the street derived its current name. During the first part of the 19th century the street was almost entirely rebuilt in the Neoclassical manner with palaces inhabited by the highest of the aristocracy. Notable buildings from this period are the Palazzo Melzi di Cusano, the Palazzo Gavazzi, the Casa Carcassola Grandi, and the Palazzetto Taverna. The much earlier Palazzo Marliani however, regarded as one of the finest houses to survive from the era of the Sforza, was preserved until its destruction during the Allied bombing campaign of 1943.
After World War II, Via Monte Napoleone became one of the leading streets in international fashion, somewhat equivalent to Paris' Rue du Faubourg-Saint-Honoré, Rome's Via Condotti, London's Bond Street and Oxford Street, Los Angeles' Rodeo Drive, Florence's Via de' Tornabuoni, Berlin's Kurfürstendamm and New York's Fifth Avenue.
Caffè Cova, founded in 1817 and one of the city's oldest cafés and confectioners, relocated to Via Monte Napoleone in 1950 from its original premises next to the Teatro alla Scala. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38880 |
Palermo
Palermo ( , ; , ; , from ) is a city of southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Metropolitan City of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old. Palermo is located in the northwest of the island of Sicily, right by the Gulf of Palermo in the Tyrrhenian Sea.
The city was founded in 734 BC by the Phoenicians as Ziz. Palermo then became a possession of Carthage. Two Greek colonies were established, known collectively as Panormos or "All-Port"; the Carthaginians used this name on their coins after the 5th centuryBC. As Panormus, the town became part of the Roman Republic and Empire for over a thousand years. From 831 to 1072 the city was under Arab rule during the Emirate of Sicily when the city first became a capital. The Arabs shifted the Greek name into "Balarm" (), the root for Palermo's present-day name. Following the Norman reconquest, Palermo became the capital of a new kingdom (from 1130 to 1816), the Kingdom of Sicily and the capital of the Holy Roman Empire under Emperor Frederick II and King Conrad IV.
The population of Palermo urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 855,285, while its metropolitan area is the fifth most populated in Italy with around 1.2 million people. In the central area, the city has a population of around 676,000 people. The inhabitants are known as Palermitani or, poetically, "panormiti". The languages spoken by its inhabitants are the Italian language and the Palermitano dialect of the Sicilian language.
Palermo is Sicily's cultural, economic and tourism capital. It is a city rich in history, culture, art, music and food. Numerous tourists are attracted to the city for its good Mediterranean weather, its renowned gastronomy and restaurants, its Romanesque, Gothic, Baroque and Art Nouveau churches, palaces and buildings, and its nightlife and music. Palermo is the main Sicilian industrial and commercial center: the main industrial sectors include tourism, services, commerce and agriculture. Palermo currently has an international airport, and a significant underground economy.
In fact, for cultural, artistic and economic reasons, Palermo was one of the largest cities in the Mediterranean and is now among the top tourist destinations in both Italy and Europe. It is the main seat of the UNESCO World Heritage Site "Arab-Norman Palermo and the Cathedral Churches of Cefalù and Monreale". The city is also going through careful redevelopment, preparing to become one of the major cities of the Euro-Mediterranean area.
Roman Catholicism is highly important in Palermitan culture. The Patron Saint of Palermo is Santa Rosalia whose Feast Day is celebrated on 15 July. The area attracts significant numbers of tourists each year and is widely known for its colourful fruit, vegetable and fish markets at the heart of Palermo, known as "Vucciria", "Ballarò" and "Capo".
Palermo lies in a basin, formed by the Papireto, Kemonia and Oreto rivers. The basin was named the "Conca d'Oro" (the Golden Basin) by the Arabs in the 9th century. The city is surrounded by a mountain range which is named after the city itself. These mountains face the Tyrrhenian Sea. Palermo is home to a natural port and offers excellent views to the sea, especially from Monte Pellegrino.
Palermo experiences a hot-summer subtropical Mediterranean climate (Köppen climate classification: "Csa") with moderate seasonality. Summers are very long, hot and dry due to the domination of subtropical high pressure system, while winters are mild and changeable, with rainy weather due to the polar front. Temperatures in autumn and spring are typically warm. Palermo is one of the warmest cities in Europe (mainly due to its warm nights), with an average annual air temperature of ; it is one of the warmest cities in Italy. It receives approximately 2,530 hours of sunshine per year. Snow is a rare occurrence having snowed about a dozen times since 1945. Since the 1940s to nowadays there have been at least five times when considerable snowfall has occurred. In 1949 and in 1956, when the minimum temperature went down to , the city was blanketed by some centimetres of snow. Snowfalls also occurred in 1981, 1986, 1999 and 2014. The average annual temperature of the sea is above ; from in February to in August. In the period from November to May, the average sea temperature exceeds and in the period from June to October, the average sea temperature exceeds .
Palermo is surrounded by mountains, which form a cirque around the city. Some districts of the city are divided by the mountains themselves. Historically, it was relatively difficult to reach the inner part of Sicily from the city because of the mounts. The tallest peak of the range is La Pizzuta, about high. However, historically, the most important mount is Monte Pellegrino, which is geographically separated from the rest of the range by a plain. The mount lies right in front of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Monte Pellegrino's cliff was described in the 19th century by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, as "the most beautiful promontory in the world", in his essay "Italian Journey".
Today both the Papireto river and the Kemonia are covered up by buildings. However, the shape of the former watercourses can still be recognised today, because the streets that were built on them follow their shapes. Today the only waterway not drained yet is the Oreto river that divides the downtown of the city from the western uptown and the industrial districts. In the basins there were, though, many seasonal torrents that helped formed swampy plains, reclaimed during history; a good example of which can be found in the borough of Mondello.
Shown above are the thirty five quarters of Palermo: these thirty five neighbourhoods or "quartiere" as they are known, are further divided into eight governmental community boards.
Palermo has a large architectural heritage and is notable for its many Norman buildings.
Palermo has at least two rings of city walls, many pieces of which still survive. The first ring surrounded the ancient core of the Phoenician city – the so-called Palaeopolis (in the area east of Porta Nuova) and the Neapolis. Via Vittorio Emanuele was the main road east–west through this early walled city. The eastern edge of the walled city was on Via Roma and the ancient port in the vicinity of Piazza Marina. The wall circuit was approximately Porto Nuovo, Corso Alberti, Piazza Peranni, Via Isodoro, Via Candela, Via Venezia, Via Roma, Piazza Paninni, Via Biscottari, Via Del Bastione, Palazzo dei Normanni and back to Porto Nuovo.
In the medieval period the walled city was expanded. Via Vittorio Emanuele continued to be the main road east–west through the walled city. The west gate was still Porta Nuova, the walls continued to Corso Alberti, to Piazza Vittorio Emanuele Orlando where it turned east along Via Volturno to Piazza Verdi and along the line of Via Cavour. At this northeast corner there was a defence, Castello a Mare, to protect the port at La Cala. A huge chain was used to block La Cala with the other end at Santa Maria della Catena (St Mary of the Chain). The sea-side wall was along the western side of Foro Italico Umberto. The wall turns west along the northern side of Via Abramo Lincoln, continues along Corso Tukory. The wall turns north approximately on Via Benedetto, to Palazzo dei Normanni and back to Porta Nuova.
Several gates in the city wall survive. Images of the wall can be seen here.
Up until the beginning of 20th century there were hundreds of small opera theatres known as "magazzeni" in the city of Palermo.
The cathedral has a heliometer (solar observatory) dating to 1690, one of a number built in Italy in the 17th and 18th centuries. The device itself is quite simple: a tiny hole in one of the minor domes acts as pinhole camera, projecting an image of the sun onto the floor at solar noon (12:00 in winter, 13:00 in summer). There is a bronze line, "la Meridiana", on the floor, running precisely north–south. The ends of the line mark the positions as at the summer and winter solstices; signs of the zodiac show the various other dates throughout the year.
The purpose of the instrument was to standardise the measurement of time and the calendar. The convention in Sicily had been that the (24‑hour) day was measured from the moment of dawn, which of course meant that no two locations had the same time and, more importantly, did not have the same time as in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. It was also important to know when the vernal equinox occurred, to provide the correct date for Easter.
The Orto botanico di Palermo (Palermo Botanical Garden), founded in 1785, is the largest in Italy with a surface of .
One site of interest is the Capuchin Catacombs, with many mummified corpses in varying degrees of preservation.
Close to the city is the Monte Pellegrino, offering a panorama of the city, its surrounding mountains and the sea.
Another good panoramic viewpoint is the promontory of Monte Gallo (), near Mondello Beach.
Moreton Bay fig of >30 m girth and of 32m height can be found on the Piazza Marina. This Ficus macrophylla is most probably the thickest tree in Europe.
UNESCO World Heritage Sites include the Palazzo Reale with the Cappella Palatina, the Chiesa di San Giovanni degli Eremiti, the Chiesa di Santa Maria dell’Ammiraglio, the Chiesa di San Cataldo, the Cattedrale di Palermo, the Palazzo della Zisa and the . This makes Italy the country with the most UNESCO world heritage sites, and Sicily the region hosting the most within Italy.
In 2010, there were 1.2 million people living in the greater Palermo area, 655,875 of which resided in the City boundaries, of whom 47.4% were male and 52.6% were female. People under age 15 totalled 15.6% compared to pensioners who composed 17.2% of the population. This compares with the Italian average of 14.1% people under 15 years and 20.2% pensioners. The average age of a Palermo resident is 40.4 compared to the Italian average of 42.8. In the ten years between 2001 and 2010, the population of Palermo declined by 4.5%, while the population of Italy, as a whole, grew by 6.0%. The reason for Palermo's decline is a population flight to the suburbs, and to Northern Italy. The current birth rate of Palermo is 10.2 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.3 births.
, 97.79% of the population was of Italian descent. The largest immigrant group came from South Asia (mostly from Bangladesh and Sri Lanka): 0.80%, other European countries (mostly from Albania, Romania, Serbia, North Macedonia and Ukraine): 0.3%, and North Africa (mostly from Tunisia): 0.28%.
Evidence of human settlement in the area now known as Palermo goes back to at least the Mesolithic period, perhaps around 8000 BC, where a group of cave drawings at nearby Addaura from that period have been found. The original inhabitants were Sicani people who, according to Thucydides, arrived from the Iberian Peninsula (perhaps Catalonia).
In 734 BC the Phoenicians, maritime traders from northern Canaan, built a small settlement on the natural harbor of Palermo, which became known as Ziz (, ). It became one of the three main Phoenician colonies of Sicily, along with Motya and Soluntum. However, the remains of the Phoenician presence in the city are few and mostly preserved in the very populated center of the downtown area, making any excavation efforts costly and logistically difficult. The site chosen by the Phoenicians made it easy to connect the port to the mountains with a straight road that today has become Corso Calatifimi. This road helped the Phoenicians in trading with the populations that lived beyond the mountains that surround the gulf.
The first settlement is known as "Paleapolis" (), meaning "Old City", in order to distinguish it from a second settlement built during the 5th century BC, called "Neapolis" () or "New City". Neapolis was erected towards the east and along with it, monumental walls around the whole settlement were built to prevent attacks from foreign threats. Some part of this structure can still be seen in the Cassaro district. This district was named after the walls themselves; the word Cassaro deriving from the Arab "al-qaṣr" (castle, stronghold, see also alcázar). Along the walls there were few doors to access and exit the city, suggesting that trade even toward the inner part of the island occurred frequently. Moreover, according to some studies, it may be possible that there were some walls that divided the old city from the new one too. The colony developed around a central street (decumanus), cut perpendicularly by minor streets. This street today has become Corso Vittorio Emanuele.
Carthage was Palermo's major trading partner under the Phoenicians and the city enjoyed a prolonged peace during this period. Palermo came into contact with the Ancient Greeks between the 6th and the 5th centuries BC which preceded the Sicilian Wars, a conflict fought between the Greeks of Syracuse and the Phoenicians of Carthage for control over the island of Sicily. During this war the Greeks named the settlement Pánormos (), meaning "all port" due to its large anchorage, from which the present name of the city developed. The Phoenicians began using the Greek name on the city's coinage from the 5th centuryBC. It was from Palermo that Hamilcar I's fleet (which was defeated at the Battle of Himera) was launched. In 409 BC the city was looted by Hermocrates of Syracuse. The Sicilian Wars ended in 265 BC when Carthage and Syracuse stopped warring and united in order to stop the Romans from gaining full control of the island during the First Punic War. In 276 BC, during the Pyrrhic War, Panormos briefly became a Greek colony after being conquered by Pyrrhus of Epirus, but returned to Phoenician Carthage in 275 BC. In 254 BC Panormos was besieged and conquered by the Romans in the first battle of Panormus (the Latin name). Carthage attempted to reconquer Panormus in 251 BC but failed.
As the Roman Empire was falling apart, Palermo fell under the control of several Germanic tribes. The first were the Vandals in 440 AD under the rule of their king Geiseric. The Vandals had occupied all the Roman provinces in North Africa by 455 establishing themselves as a significant force. They acquired Corsica, Sardinia and Sicily shortly afterwards. However, they soon lost these newly acquired possessions to the Ostrogoths. The Ostrogothic conquest under Theodoric the Great began in 488; Theodoric supported Roman culture and government unlike the Germanic Goths. The Gothic War took place between the Ostrogoths and the Eastern Roman Empire, also known as the Byzantine Empire. Sicily was the first part of Italy to be taken under control of General Belisarius who was commissioned by Eastern Emperor. Justinian I solidified his rule in the following years.
The Arabs took control of the island in 904, and the Emirate of Sicily was established. Muslim rule on the island lasted for about 120 years . Palermo ("Bal'harm" during Arab rule) displaced Syracuse as the capital of Sicily. It was said to have then begun to compete with Córdoba and Cairo in terms of importance and splendor. For more than a hundred years Palermo was the capital of a flourishing emirate. The Arabs also introduced many agricultural crops which remain a mainstay of Sicilian cuisine.
After dynastic quarrels however, there was a Norman conquest in 1072. Normans conquered Palermo after a long siege. Indeed, the feat proved difficult because the Normans had never besieged such a populous city with such powerful walls. After 5 months siege, Normans built numerous stairs and war machines and finnally conquered the city. The family who returned the city to Christianity were called the Hautevilles, including Robert Guiscard and his army, who is regarded as a hero by the natives. It was under his nephew Roger II of Sicily that Norman holdings in Sicily and the southern part of the Italian Peninsula were promoted from the County of Sicily into the Kingdom of Sicily. The kingdom's capital was Palermo, with the King's Court held at the Palazzo dei Normanni. Much construction was undertaken during this period, such as the building of Palermo Cathedral. The Kingdom of Sicily became one of the wealthiest states in Europe.
Sicily fell under the control of the Holy Roman Empire in 1194. Palermo was the preferred city of the Emperor Frederick II. Muslims of Palermo emigrated or were expelled during Holy Roman rule. After an interval of Angevin rule (1266–1282), Sicily came under control of the Aragon and Barcelona dynasties. By 1330, Palermo's population had declined to 51,000.
From 1479 until 1713 Palermo was ruled by the Kingdom of Spain, and again between 1717 and 1718. Palermo was also under Savoy control between 1713 and 1717 and 1718–1720 as a result of the Treaty of Utrecht. It was ruled by Austria between 1720 and 1734.
After the Treaty of Utrecht (1713), Sicily was handed over to the House of Savoy, but by 1734 it was in Bourbon possession. Charles III chose Palermo for his coronation as King of Sicily. Charles had new houses built for the growing population, while trade and industry grew as well. However, Palermo had become just another provincial city as the Royal Court resided in Naples. Charles' son Ferdinand, though disliked by the population, took refuge in Palermo after the French Revolution in 1798. His son Alberto died on the way to Palermo and is buried in the city.
When the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was founded, the original capital city was Palermo (1816) but a year later moved to Naples.
From 1820 to 1848 Sicily was shaken by upheavals, which culminated on 12 January 1848, with a popular insurrection, the first one in Europe that year, led by Giuseppe La Masa. A parliament and constitution were proclaimed. The first president was Ruggero Settimo. The Bourbons reconquered Palermo in 1849, and remained under their rule until the time of Giuseppe Garibaldi. The general entered Palermo with his troops (the “Thousands”) on 27 May 1860. After the plebiscite later that year Palermo, along with the rest of Sicily, became part of the new Kingdom of Italy (1861).
The majority of Sicilians preferred independence to the Savoy kingdom; in 1866, Palermo became the seat of a week-long popular rebellion, which was finally crushed after Martial law was declared. The Italian government blamed anarchists and the Church, specifically the Archbishop of Palermo, for the rebellion and began enacting anti-Sicilian and anti-clerical policies. A new cultural, economic and industrial growth was spurred by several families, like the Florio, the Ducrot, the Rutelli, the Sandron, the Whitaker, the Utveggio, and others. In the early twentieth century, Palermo expanded outside the old city walls, mostly to the north along the new boulevards "Via Roma", "Via Dante", "Via Notarbartolo", and "Viale della Libertà". These roads would soon boast a huge number of villas in the Art Nouveau style. Many of these were designed by the architect Ernesto Basile. The Grand Hotel , designed by Ernesto Basile for the Florio family, is a good example of Palermitan Art Nouveau. The huge Teatro Massimo was designed in the same period by Giovan Battista Filippo Basile, Ernesto's father, and built by the Rutelli & Machì building firm of the industrial and old Rutelli Italian family in Palermo, and was opened in 1897.
During the Second World War, Palermo was heavily bombed by the Allied air forces in 1942 and 1943, until its capture during the Allied invasion of Sicily on 22 July 1943. The harbour (main objective of the air attacks) and the surrounding quarters were effectively destroyed, as was a considerable part of the city, with heavy civilian casualties. When American troops entered Palermo in 1943 they were greeted with "a thunderous welcome by what seemed the entire population demonstrating their feelings about Facsist rule." The two captured Italian generals claimed that they were happy because in their view "the Sicilians were not human beings but animals". Anti-sicilian prejudice was part of the fascist regime's world view, being promoted by pro-fascist newspapers, particularly in the north of Italy.
In 1946 the city was declared the seat of the Regional Parliament, as capital of a Special Status Region (1947) whose seat is in the Palazzo dei Normanni.
A theme in the city's modern age has been the struggle against the Mafia, Red Brigades and outlaws such as Salvatore Giuliano, who controlled the neighbouring area of Montelepre. The Italian state effectively has had to share control of the territory, economically and administratively, with the Mafia.
The so-called "Sack of Palermo" was one of the dramatic consequences of this problem. The term is used to indicate the speculative building practices that resulted in the destruction of a great number of historical buildings and green areas, filling the city with poor buildings, mainly between the 1950s and the 1980s. The reduced importance of agriculture in the Sicilian economy has led to a massive migration to the cities, especially Palermo, which swelled in size, leading to rapid expansion towards the north. The regulatory plans for expansion was largely ignored in the boom. New parts of town appeared almost out of nowhere, but without parks, schools, public buildings, proper roads and the other amenities that characterise a modern city.
The Cosa Nostra has traditionally been the most powerful group in Palermo. A CNN article in July 2019 indicated that Sicilian Mafia activity in Palermo was particularly notorious in one area: the town of Passo Rigano. "According to Italian police, the mafia not only engages in extortion there, but also has a large role in the town's legal economy -- with its involvement in business such as wholesale food supplies, online betting and gambling." The police investigation at the time also confirmed strong links between the Palermo area mafia and American organized crime, particularly the Gambino crime family. According to La Repubblica, "Off they go, through the streets of Passo di Rigano, Boccadifalco, Torretta and at the same time, Brooklyn, Staten Island, New Jersey. Because from Sicily to the US, the old mafia has returned".
The patron saint of Palermo is Saint Rosalia, who is widely revered.
On 14 July, people in Palermo celebrate the annual "Festino", the most important religious event of the year. The Festino is a procession which goes through the main street of Palermo to commemorate the miracle attributed to Saint Rosalia who, it is believed, freed the city from the Black Death in 1624. Her remains were discovered in a cave on Monte Pellegrino, and her remains were carried around the city three times, banishing the plague. There is a sanctuary marking the spot where her remains were found which can be reached via a scenic bus ride from the city.
Before 1624 Palermo had four patron saints, one for each of the four major parts of the city. They were Saint Agatha, Saint Christina, Saint Nympha and Saint Olivia.
Saint Lucy is also honoured with a peculiar celebration, during which the inhabitants of Palermo do not eat anything made with flour, but boil wheat in its natural state and use it to prepare a special dish called cuccìa. This commemorates the saving of the city from famine due to a miracle attributed to Saint Lucy; A ship full of grain mysteriously arrived in the city's harbour and the hungry population wasted no time in making flour but ate the grain as it arrived.
Saint Benedict the Moor is the heavenly protector of the city of Palermo.
The ancient patron of the city was the Genius of Palermo, genius loci and numen protector of the place, that became the laic patron of the modern Palermo.
Palermo hosts a professional football team, Società Sportiva Dilettantistica Palermo, commonly referred to as simply Palermo, who currently compete in Serie D, having been excluded from Serie B after the 2018–2019 season.
After the bankruptcy occurred in the summer of 2019, a new club was formed by the company Hera Hora Srl.
The Targa Florio was an open road endurance car race held near Palermo. Founded in 1906, it used to be one of the oldest sports car racing events until it was discontinued in 1977 due to safety concerns but has since run as a rallying event. Palermo was home to the grand depart of the 2008 Giro d'Italia. The initial stage was a TTT (Team Time Trial).
The Internazionali Femminili di Palermo is an annual ladies professional tennis event held in the city, which is part of the WTA Tour.
Being Sicily's administrative capital, Palermo is a centre for much of the region's finance, tourism and commerce. The city currently hosts an international airport, and Palermo's economic growth over the years has brought the opening of many new businesses. The economy mainly relies on tourism and services, but also has commerce, shipbuilding and agriculture. The city, however, still has high unemployment levels, high corruption and a significant black market empire (Palermo being the home of the Sicilian Mafia).
Palermo has a local railway called the Palermo metropolitan railway service.
Palermo's public bus system is operated by AMAT which covers a net area of . About 90 different routes reach every part of the city.
Palermo has a public tram system finalized in 2015 and operated by AMAT. There are 4 lines:
The local coach company, AST, with its coaches totalling 35 lines, links Palermo to all of the main cities in Sicily.
The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Palermo, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 63 min. 14.% of public transit riders, ride for more than 2 hours every day. The average amount of time people wait at a stop or station for public transit is 23 min, while 48% of riders wait for over 20 minutes on average every day. The average distance people usually ride in a single trip with public transit is 4.4 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.
Palermo is a key intersection on the Sicilian road network, being the junction between the eastern A19 motorway to Trapani, the southeastern A29 to airport and Mazara del Vallo and the southwestern A19 to Catania and A20 to Messina. Palermo is one of the main cities on European route E90. The three main national roads starting from Palermo are the SS113, SS121, SS186 and the SS624.
Palermo International Airport, known as Falcone-Borsellino Airport (formerly Punta Raisi Airport), is located west of Palermo. It is dedicated to Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino, two anti-mafia judges killed by the mafia in the early 1990s.
The airport's rail facility, known as Punta Raisi railway station, can be reached from Palermo Centrale, Palermo Notarbartolo and Palermo Francia railway stations.
Palermo-Boccadifalco Airport is the second airport of the city.
The port of Palermo, founded by the Phoenicians over 2,700 years ago, is, together with the port of Messina, the main port of Sicily. From here ferries link Palermo to Cagliari, Genoa, Livorno, Naples, Tunis and other cities and carry a total of almost 2 million passengers annually. It is also an important port for cruise ships. Traffic includes also almost of cargo and 80,000 TEUs yearly. The port also has links to minor Sicilian islands such as Ustica and the Aeolian Islands (via Cefalù in summer). Inside the Port of Palermo there is a section known as "tourist marina" for sailing yachts and catamarans.
The main railway station of Palermo is Palermo Centrale which links to the other cities of Sicily, including Agrigento, Trapani and Catania, and through Messina and the strait to the rest of Italy. The railways also connect to the Palermo airport with departures every thirty minutes.
The local university is the University of Palermo, the island's second oldest university. It was officially founded in 1806, although historical records indicate that medicine and law have been taught there since the late 15th century. The Orto botanico di Palermo (Palermo botanical gardens) is home to the university's Department of Botany and is also open to visitors.
Palermo is twinned with:
In Robert Roswell Palmer and Joel Colton's majestic text-book for University education in the subject of history, A History of the Modern World Palermo is used to exemplify the south of Europe in context of the 1848 Revolutions, and Copenhagen for the opposite cardinal direction: ""...from Copenhagen to Palermo and from Paris to Budapest."" In this manner, Palermo is twinned to Copenhagen and reversed.
People awarded the honorary citizenship of Palermo are:
"See also: " | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38881 |
Georgy Zhukov
Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov (; 1 December 1896 – 18 June 1974) was a Soviet general and Marshal of the Soviet Union. He also served as Chief of the General Staff, Minister of Defence, and was a member of the Presidium of the Communist Party (later Politburo). During the Second World War, Zhukov oversaw some of the Red Army's most decisive victories.
Born to a poor peasant family from central Russia, Zhukov was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army and fought in the First World War. He served in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War. Gradually rising through the ranks, by 1939 Zhukov was given command of an army group and won a decisive battle over Japanese forces at Khalkhin Gol, for which he won the first of his four Hero of the Soviet Union awards. In February 1941, Zhukov was appointed as chief of the Red Army's General Staff.
Following the German invasion of the Soviet Union, Zhukov lost his position as chief of the general staff. Subsequently, he organized the defense of Leningrad, Moscow, and Stalingrad. He participated in planning several major offensives, including the Battle of Kursk and Operation Bagration. In 1945, Zhukov commanded the 1st Belorussian Front; he took part in the Vistula–Oder Offensive and the Battle of Berlin, which resulted in the defeat of Nazi Germany, and the end of the war in Europe. In recognition of Zhukov's role in the war, he was chosen to accept the German Instrument of Surrender.
After the war, Zhukov's success and popularity caused Joseph Stalin to see him as a potential threat. Stalin stripped him of his positions and relegated him to military commands of little strategic significance. After Stalin's death in 1953, Zhukov supported Nikita Khrushchev's bid for Soviet leadership. In 1955, he was appointed as Defence Minister and made a member of the Presidium. In 1957 Zhukov lost favour again and was forced to retire. He never returned to a position of influence and died in 1974.
Zhukov was born into a poverty-stricken peasant family of Russian ethnicity in Strelkovka, Maloyaroslavsky, Kaluga Governorate in western Russia. His father Konstantin, who had been orphaned at age two and then adopted by Anuska Zhukova, was a cobbler. His mother Ustin'ya was a peasant laborer. Zhukov was said to resemble his mother, and he believed he inherited his physical strength from her; Ustin'ya was reportedly able to accomplish demanding tasks such as carrying 200-pound sacks of grain over long distances. In an era when most members of Russia's poor and working classes completed only two years of schooling, Zhukov completed the three year primary education course at his hometown school. He was then apprenticed to his mother's brother Mikhail as a furrier in Moscow.
While working for his uncle, Zhukov supplemented his education by reading with his cousin Alexander on a wide range of topics, including the Russian language, German language, science, geography, and mathematics. In addition, he enrolled in a night school, where he completed courses as the work in his uncle's shop permitted. He completed his apprenticeship in 1914 and established his own business, which included three young employees under his leadership.
In 1915, Zhukov was conscripted into the Imperial Russian Army, where he served in the 10th Dragoon Novgorod Regiment. During World War I, Zhukov was awarded the Cross of St. George twice, and promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officer for his bravery in battle.
He joined the Bolshevik Party after the 1917 October Revolution; in party circles his background of poverty became a significant asset. After recovering from a serious case of typhus, he fought in the Russian Civil War, serving with the 1st Cavalry Army, among other formations. He received the Order of the Red Banner for his part in subduing the Tambov Rebellion in 1921.
At the end of May 1923, Zhukov became a commander of the 39th Cavalry Regiment. In 1924, he entered the Higher School of Cavalry, from which he graduated the next year, returning afterward to command the same regiment. He attended the Frunze Military Academy beginning in 1929, and graduated in 1930.
In May 1930, Zhukov became commander of the 2nd Cavalry Brigade of the 7th Cavalry Division. In February 1931, he was appointed as the Assistant Inspector of Cavalry for the Red Army.
In May 1933, Zhukov was appointed commander of the 4th Cavalry Division. In 1937, he became commander of first the 3rd Cavalry Corps, and later the 6th Cavalry Corps. In 1938, he became deputy cavalry commander of the Belorussian Military District.
In 1938, Zhukov was directed to command the First Soviet Mongolian Army Group, and saw action against Japan's Kwantung Army on the border between the Mongolian People's Republic and the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo. The Soviet–Japanese Border Wars lasted from 1938 to 1939. What began as a border skirmish rapidly escalated into a full-scale war, with the Japanese pushing forward with an estimated 80,000 troops, 180 tanks and 450 aircraft.
These events led to the strategically decisive battle of Khalkhin Gol. Zhukov requested major reinforcements, and on 20 August 1939, his Soviet offensive commenced. After a massive artillery barrage, nearly 500 BT-5 and BT-7 tanks advanced, supported by over 500 fighters and bombers. This was the Soviet Air Force's first fighter-bomber operation.
The offensive first appeared to be a typical conventional frontal attack. However, two tank brigades were initially held back and then ordered to advance around on both flanks, supported by motorized artillery, infantry, and other tanks. This daring and successful manoeuvre encircled the Japanese 6th Army and captured the enemy's vulnerable rear supply areas. By 31 August, the Japanese had been cleared from the disputed border, leaving the Soviets clearly victorious.
This campaign had significance beyond the immediate tactical and local outcome. Zhukov demonstrated and tested the techniques later used against the Germans in the Eastern Front of the Second World War. His innovations included the deployment of underwater bridges, and improving the cohesion and battle-effectiveness of inexperienced units by adding a few experienced, battle-hardened troops to bolster morale and overall training.
Evaluation of the problems inherent in the performance of the BT tanks led to the replacement of their fire-prone petrol (gasoline) engines with diesel engines. This battle provided valuable practical knowledge that was essential to the Soviet success in development of the T-34 medium tank used in World War II. After this campaign, veterans were transferred to untested units, to better spread the benefits of their battle experience.
For his victory, Zhukov was declared a Hero of the Soviet Union. However, the campaign—and especially Zhukov's pioneering use of tanks—remained little known outside the Soviet Union. Zhukov considered Khalkhin Gol to be invaluable preparation for conducting operations during the Second World War. In 1940, Zhukov became an army general.
In the fall of 1940, Zhukov started preparing plans for the military exercise concerning the defence of the Western border of the Soviet Union. It had been pushed further to the west after the Soviet Union annexed eastern Poland and the Baltic republics. In his memoirs, Zhukov reports that in this exercise, he commanded the Western or Blue forces—the supposed invasion troops—and his opponent was Colonel General Dmitry Pavlov, the commander of the Eastern or Red forces –the supposed Soviet troops. He noted that Blue had 60 divisions, while Red had 50 divisions. Zhukov describes the exercise as being similar to events that later took place during the German invasion.
Russian historian Bobylev noted that the details of the exercises were reported differently by the various participants who published memoirs. He said that there were two exercises; one from 2 to 6 January 1941, for the North-West direction; another from 8 to 11 January, for the South-West direction. During the first, Western forces attacked Eastern forces on 15 July, but the Eastern forces counterattacked and, by 1 August, reached the original border.
At the time, the Eastern forces had a numerical advantage: 51 infantry division against 41; 8,811 tanks against 3,512 – with the exception of anti-tank guns. Bobylev describes how by the end of the exercise, the Eastern forces did not manage to surround and destroy the Western forces. In their turn, the Western forces threatened to surround the Eastern forces. The same historian reported that the second game was won by the Easterners, meaning that on the whole, both games were won by the side commanded by Zhukov. However, he noted that the games had a serious disadvantage since they did not consider an initial attack by Western forces, but only an attack by Eastern forces from the initial border.
According to Marshal Aleksandr Vasilevsky, the war-game defeat of Pavlov's Red Troops against Zhukov was not widely known. The victory of Zhukov's Red Troops was widely publicized, which created a popular illusion of easy success for a preemptive offensive. On 1 February 1941, Zhukov became chief of the Red Army's General Staff.
From 2 February 1941, as the chief of the general staff, and Deputy Minister of Defense, Zhukov was said to take part in drawing up the "Strategic plan for deployment of the forces of the Soviet Union in the event of war with Germany and its allies." The plan was completed no later than 15 May 1941, according to a dated document found in the Soviet archives after they were declassified in the 1990s. Some researchers, such as Victor Suvorov, have theorized that on 14 May, Soviet People's Commissar of Defense Semyon Timoshenko and General Zhukov presented these plans to Stalin for a preemptive attack against Germany through Southern Poland.
Soviet forces would occupy the Vistula Border and continue to Katowice or even Berlin—should the main German armies retreat—or the Baltic coast, should German forces not retreat and be forced to protect Poland and East Prussia. The attacking Soviets were supposed to reach Siedlce, Deblin, and then capture Warsaw before penetrating toward the southwest and imposing final defeat at Lublin.
Historians do not have the original documents that could verify the existence of such a plan, and there is no evidence that Stalin accepted it. In a transcript of an interview on 26 May 1965, Zhukov said that Stalin did not approve the plan. But Zhukov did not clarify whether execution was attempted. , no other approved plan for a Soviet attack had been found.
David Glantz and Jonathan House, American scholars of the Red Army, argue that "the Soviet Union was not ready for war in June 1941, nor did it intend, as some have contended, to launch a preventative war." Gerhard Weinberg, a scholar of Nazi foreign policy, supports their view, arguing that Adolf Hitler's decision to launch "Operation Barbarossa" was not because of a sense of urgent foreboding, but rather from a "purposeful determination" and he had started his planning for the invasion well in advance of the summer of 1941
On 22 June 1941, Germany launched Operation Barbarossa, an invasion of the Soviet Union. On the same day, Zhukov responded by signing the "Directive of Peoples' Commissariat of Defence No. 3", which ordered an all-out counteroffensive by Red Army forces. He commanded the troops to "encircle and destroy [the] enemy grouping near Suwałki and to seize the Suwałki region by the evening of 24 June" and "to encircle and destroy the enemy grouping invading in [the] Vladimir-Volynia and Brody direction" and even "to seize the Lublin region by the evening of 24 June".
Despite numerical superiority, this manoeuvre failed and disorganized Red Army units were destroyed by the Wehrmacht. Zhukov subsequently claimed that he was forced to sign the document by Joseph Stalin, despite the reservations that he raised. This document was supposedly written by Aleksandr Vasilevsky.
On 29 July, Zhukov was removed from his post of chief of the general staff. In his memoirs he gives his suggested abandoning of Kiev to avoid an encirclement as a reason for it. On the next day the decision was made official and he was appointed the commander of the Reserve Front. There he oversaw the Yelnya Offensive. On 10 September, Zhukov was made the commander of the Leningrad Front. There he oversaw the defence of the city.
On 6 October, Zhukov was appointed the representative of Stavka for the Reserve and Western Fronts. On 10 October, those fronts were merged into the Western Front under Zhukov's command. This front then participated in the Battle of Moscow and several Battles of Rzhev.
In late August 1942, Zhukov was made deputy commander in chief and sent to the southwestern front to take charge of the defence of Stalingrad. He and Vasilevsky later planned the Stalingrad counteroffensive. In November, Zhukov was sent to coordinate the Western Front and the Kalinin Front during Operation Mars. In January 1943, he—together with Kliment Voroshilov—coordinated the actions of the Leningrad and Volkhov Fronts and the Baltic Fleet in Operation Iskra. On January 18, 1943, Zhukov was promoted to Marshal of the Soviet Union.
Zhukov was a Stavka coordinator at the battle of Kursk in July 1943. According to his memoirs, he played a central role in the planning of the battle and the hugely successful offensive that followed. Commander of the Central Front Konstantin Rokossovsky, said, however, that the planning and decisions for the Battle of Kursk were made without Zhukov, that he only arrived just before the battle, made no decisions and left soon afterwards, and that Zhukov exaggerated his role.
A sense of the nature of the beginning of Rokossovsky's famous World War II rivalry with Zhukov can be gathered from reading Rokossovsky's comments in an official report on Zhukov's character:
Has a strong will. Decisive and firm. Often demonstrates initiative and skillfully applies it. Disciplined. Demanding and persistent in his demands. A somewhat ungracious and not sufficiently sympathetic person. Rather stubborn. Painfully proud. In professional terms well trained. Broadly experienced as a military leader... Absolutely cannot be used in staff or teaching jobs because constitutionally he hates them.
From 12 February 1944, Zhukov coordinated the actions of the 1st Ukrainian and 2nd Ukrainian Fronts. On 1 March, Zhukov was appointed the commander of the 1st Ukrainian Front until early May following the ambush of Nikolai Vatutin, its commander, by Ukrainian Insurgent Army near Ostroh. During the Soviet offensive Operation Bagration, Zhukov coordinated the 1st Belorussian and 2nd Belorussian Fronts, later the 1st Ukrainian Front as well. On 23 August, Zhukov was sent to the 3rd Ukrainian Front to prepare for the advance into Bulgaria.
On 16 November, he became commander of the 1st Belorussian Front which took part in the Vistula–Oder Offensive and the battle of Berlin. He called on his troops to "remember our brothers and sisters, our mothers and fathers, our wives and children tortured to death by [the] Germans ... We shall exact a brutal revenge for everything." More than 20 million Soviet soldiers and civilians died as a result of the war. In a reprise of atrocities committed by German soldiers against Soviet civilians in the eastward advance into Soviet territory during Operation Barbarossa, the westward march by Soviet forces was marked by brutality towards German civilians, which included looting, burning and rapes.
Zhukov was chosen to personally accept the German Instrument of Surrender in Berlin.
After the German capitulation, Zhukov became the first commander of the Soviet occupation zone. On 10 June 1945, Zhukov returned to Moscow to prepare for the Moscow Victory Parade of 1945. On 24 June, Stalin appointed him commander in chief of the parade. After the ceremony, on the night of 24 June, Zhukov went to Berlin to resume his command.
In May 1945, Zhukov signed three resolutions to improve living standards in the Soviet occupation zone:
Zhukov requested the Soviet government to transport urgently to Berlin 96,000 tons of grain, 60,000 tons of potatoes, 50,000 cattle, and thousands of tons of other foodstuffs, such as sugar and animal fat. He issued strict orders that his subordinates were to "hate Nazism but respect the German people," and to make all possible efforts to restore and maintain a stable living standard for the German population.
From 16 July to 2 August, Zhukov participated in the Potsdam Conference with the fellow representatives of the Allied governments. As one of the four commanders of the Allied occupational forces, Zhukov established good relationships with his new colleagues, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, and Marshal Jean de Lattre, and the four frequently exchanged views about such matters as the sentencing, trials, and judgments of war criminals, geopolitical relationships between the Allied states, and how to defeat the Japanese and rebuild Germany.
Eisenhower seemed to be especially satisfied with, and respectful of, his relationship with Zhukov. Eisenhower's successor, General Lucius D. Clay, also praised the Zhukov–Eisenhower friendship, and commented: "The Soviet–America relationship should have developed well if Eisenhower and Zhukov had continued to work together." Zhukov and Eisenhower went on to tour the Soviet Union together in the immediate aftermath of the victory over Germany. During this tour Eisenhower introduced Zhukov to Coca-Cola. As Coca-Cola was regarded in the Soviet Union as a symbol of American imperialism, Zhukov was apparently reluctant to be photographed or reported as consuming such a product. Zhukov asked if the beverage could be made clear to resemble vodka. A European subsidiary of the Coca-Cola Export Corporation delivered an initial 50 cases of White Coke to Marshal Zhukov.
Zhukov was not only the supreme military commander of the Soviet occupation zone, but became its military governor on 10 June 1945. A war hero, hugely popular with the military, Zhukov was viewed by Stalin as a potential threat to his leadership. He replaced Zhukov with Vasily Sokolovsky on 10 April 1946. After an unpleasant session of the main military council—in which Zhukov was bitterly attacked and accused of political unreliability and hostility to the Party Central Committee—he was stripped of his position as commander in chief of the Soviet Army.
He was assigned command of the Odessa Military District, far from Moscow and lacking in strategic significance and troops. He arrived there on 13 June. Zhukov suffered a heart attack in January 1948, spending a month in hospital. In February 1948, he was given another secondary posting, this time command of the Urals Military District. Tsouras described the move from Odessa to the Urals as a relegation from a "second-rate" to a "fifth-rate" assignment.
Throughout this time, security chief Lavrentiy Beria was apparently trying to topple Zhukov. Two of Zhukov's subordinates, Marshal of Aviation Alexander Novikov and Lieutenant-General Konstantin Telegin, were arrested and tortured in Lefortovo Prison at the end of 1945. Novikov was forced by Beria into a "confession" which implicated Zhukov in a conspiracy. In a conference, all generals except GRU director Filipp Golikov defended Zhukov against accusation of misspending of war booty and exaggeration of Germany's strength. During this time, Zhukov was accused of Bonapartism.
In 1946, seven rail carriages with furniture that Zhukov was taking to the Soviet Union from Germany were impounded. In 1948, his apartments and house in Moscow were searched and many valuables looted from Germany were found. In his investigation Beria concluded that Zhukov had in his possession 17 golden rings, three gemstones, the faces of 15 golden necklaces, more than of cloth, 323 pieces of fur, 44 carpets taken from German palaces, 55 paintings and 20 guns." Zhukov admitted in a memorandum to Zhdanov: "I felt very guilty. I shouldn't have collected those useless junks and put them into some warehouse, assuming nobody needs them any more. I swear as a Bolshevik that I would avoid such errors and follies thereafter. Surely I still and will wholeheartedly serve the Motherland, the Party, and the Great Comrade Stalin."
When learning of Zhukov's "misfortunes"—and despite not understanding all the problems—Eisenhower expressed his sympathy for his "comrade-in-arms." In February 1953, Stalin relieved Zhukov of his post as Commander of the Urals Military District, recalling Zhukov to Moscow. It was thought Zhukov's expertise was needed in the Korean War; however, in practice, Zhukov received no orders from Stalin after arriving in Moscow. On 5 March 1953, at 09:50, Stalin died of a stroke. Following Stalin's passing, Zhukov's life entered a new phase.
During the war, Zhukov was one of only a few people who understood Stalin's personality. As the chief of staff and deputy supreme commander, Zhukov had hundreds of meetings with Stalin, both private and during Stavka conferences. Consequently, Zhukov understood Stalin's personality and methods well. According to Zhukov, Stalin was a strong and secretive person, but he was also hot-tempered and skeptical. Zhukov was able to gauge Stalin's mood: for example, when Stalin drew deeply on his tobacco pipe, it was a sign of a good mood. Conversely, if Stalin failed to light his pipe once it was out of tobacco, it was a sign of imminent rage. His outstanding knowledge of Stalin's personality was an asset that allowed him to deal with Stalin's outbursts in a way other Soviet generals could not.
Both Zhukov and Stalin were hot-tempered, and both made concessions necessary to sustain their relationship. While Zhukov viewed his relationship with Stalin as one of a subordinate–senior, Stalin was in awe and possibly jealous of Zhukov. Both were military commanders, but Stalin's experience was limited to a previous generation of non-mechanized warfare. By contrast, Zhukov was highly influential in the development of contemporary combined operations of highly mechanized armies. The differences in their outlooks were the cause of many tempestuous disagreements between the two of them at Stavka meetings. Nonetheless, Zhukov was less competent than Stalin as a politician, highlighted by Zhukov's many failures in politics. Stalin's unwillingness to value Zhukov beyond the marshal's military talents was one of the reasons why Zhukov was recalled from Berlin.
Significant to their relationships as well was Zhukov's bluntness towards his superior. Stalin was dismissive of the fawning of many of his entourage and openly criticized it. Many people around Stalin—including Beria, Yezhov, and Mekhlis—felt obliged to flatter Stalin to remain on his good side. Zhukov remained obstinate and argumentative, and did not hesitate to publicly contradict Stalin to the point of risking his career and life. Their heated argument about whether to abandon Kiev due to the Germans' rapid advance in summer of 1941 was typical of Zhukov's approach. Zhukov's ability to remain skeptical and unwavering at giving into pressure did garner him the respect of Stalin.
After Stalin's death, Zhukov returned to favour, becoming Deputy Defence Minister in 1953. He then had an opportunity to avenge himself on Beria. With Stalin's sudden death, the Soviet Union fell into a leadership crisis. Georgy Malenkov temporarily became First Secretary. Malenkov and his allies attempted to purge Stalin's influence and personality cult; however, Malenkov himself did not have the courage to do this alone. Moreover, Lavrentiy Beria remained dangerous. The politicians sought reinforcement from the powerful and prestigious military men. In this matter, Nikita Khrushchev chose Zhukov because the two had forged a good relationship, and, in addition, during World War II, Zhukov had twice saved Khrushchev from false accusations.
On 26 June 1953, a special meeting of the Soviet Politburo was held by Malenkov. Beria came to the meeting with an uneasy feeling because it was called hastily—indeed, Zhukov had ordered General Kirill Moskalenko to secretly prepare a special force and permitted the force to use two of Zhukov's and Bulganin's special cars (which had black glass) in order to safely infiltrate the Kremlin. Zhukov also ordered him to replace the MVD Guard with the guard of the Moscow Military District. In this meeting, Khrushchev, Malenkov and their allies denounced "the imperialist element Beria" for his "anti-Party", "anti-socialist" activities, "sowing division", and "acting as a spy of England," together with many other crimes.
Finally, Khrushchev suggested expelling Beria from the Communist Party and bringing him before a military court. Immediately, the prepared special force rushed in. Zhukov himself went up to Beria and shouted: "Hands up! Follow me," Beria replied, in a panic, "Oh Comrades, what's the matter? Just sit down." Zhukov shouted again, "Shut up, you are not the commander here! Comrades, arrest this traitor!" Moskalenko's special forces obeyed.
Zhukov was a member of the military tribunal during the Beria trial, which was headed by Marshal Ivan Konev. On 18 December 1953, the Military Court sentenced Beria to death. During the burial of Beria, Konev commented: "The day this man was born deserves to be damned!" Then Zhukov said: "I considered it as my duty to contribute my little part in this matter."
When Nikolai Bulganin became premier in 1955, he appointed Zhukov as Defence Minister. Zhukov participated in many political activities. He successfully opposed the re-establishment of the Commissar system, because the Party and political leaders were not professional military, and thus the highest power should fall to the army commanders. Until 1955, Zhukov had both sent and received letters from Eisenhower. Both leaders agreed that the two superpowers should coexist peacefully. In July 1955, Zhukov—together with Khrushchev, Bulganin, Vyacheslav Molotov and Andrei Gromyko—participated in a Summit Conference at Geneva after the USSR signed the Austrian State Treaty and withdrew its army from the country.
Zhukov followed orders from the then-Prime Minister Georgy Malenkov and Communist Party leader Khrushchev during the invasion of Hungary following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. Along with the majority of members of the Presidium, he urged Khrushchev to send troops to support the Hungarian authorities and to secure the Austrian border. Zhukov and most of the Presidium were not, however, eager to see a full-scale intervention in Hungary. Zhukov even recommended the withdrawal of Soviet troops when it seemed that they might have to take extreme measures to suppress the revolution.
The mood in the Presidium changed again when Hungary's new Prime Minister, Imre Nagy, began to talk about Hungarian withdrawal from the Warsaw Pact. That led the Soviets to attack the revolutionaries and to replace Nagy with János Kádár. In the same years, when the UK, France, and Israel invaded Egypt during the Suez crisis, Zhukov expressed support for Egypt's right of self-defence. In October 1957, Zhukov visited Yugoslavia and Albania aboard the "Kuibyshev", attempting to repair the Tito–Stalin split of 1948. During the voyage, "Kuibyshev" encountered units of the U.S. Sixth Fleet and "passing honours" were exchanged between the vessels.
On his 60th birthday, in 1956, Zhukov received his fourth Hero of the Soviet Union title – making him the first person to receive the honor four times. The only other four time recipient was Leonid Brezhnev. He became the highest-ranking military professional who was also a member of the Presidium of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. He further became a symbol of national strength. Zhukov's prestige was even higher than the police and security agencies of the USSR, and thus rekindled concerns among political leaders.
Going even further than Khrushchev, Zhukov demanded that the political agencies in the Red Army report to him before the Party. He demanded an official condemnation of Stalin's crimes during the Great Purge. He also supported the political vindication and rehabilitation for Mikhail Tukhachevsky, Grigoriy Shtern, Vasily Blyukher, Alexander Yegorov and many others. In response his opponents accused him of being a Reformist and Bonapartist. Such enviousness and hostility proved to be the key factor that led to his later downfall.
The relationship between Zhukov and Khrushchev reached its peak during the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1956. After becoming the First Secretary of the Party, Khrushchev moved against Stalin's legacy and criticised his personality cult in a speech, "On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences." To complete such startling acts, Khrushchev needed the approval—or at least the acquiescence—of the military, headed by Minister of Defense Zhukov.
At the plenary session of Central Committee of CPSU held in June 1957 Zhukov supported Khrushchev against the "Anti-Party Group", that had a majority in the Presidium and voted to replace Khrushchev as First Secretary with Bulganin. At that plenum, Zhukov stated: "The Army is against this resolution and not even a tank will leave its position without my order!"
In the same session the "Anti-Party Group" was condemned and Zhukov was made a member of Presidium. But, in that same year, he was removed from the Presidium of the Party's Central Committee and the Ministry of Defense, entering forced retirement at age 62. These things happened behind his back, when he was on a trip to Albania at the invitation of General Colonel Beqir Balluku. The same issue of the "Krasnaya Zvezda" that announced Zhukov's return also reported that he had been relieved of his duties. According to many researchers, Soviet politicians—including Khrushchev himself—had a deep-seated fear of "powerful people."
After being forced out of the government, Zhukov stayed away from politics. Many people—including former subordinates—frequently paid him visits, joined him on hunting excursions, and waxed nostalgic. In September 1959, while visiting the United States, Khrushchev told President Eisenhower that the retired Marshal Zhukov "liked fishing." Zhukov was actually a keen aquarist. In response, Eisenhower sent Zhukov a set of fishing tackle. Zhukov respected this gift so much that he is said to have exclusively used Eisenhower's fishing tackle for the remainder of his life.
After Khrushchev was deposed in October 1964, Brezhnev restored Zhukov to favour—though not to power—in a move to use Zhukov's popularity to strengthen his political position. Zhukov's name was put in the public eye yet again when Brezhnev lionised Zhukov in a speech commemorating the Great Patriotic War. On 9 May 1965, Zhukov was invited to sit on the tribune of the Lenin Mausoleum and given the honour of reviewing the parade of military forces in Red Square.
Zhukov had begun writing his memoirs, "Memories and Recollections", in 1958. He now worked intensively on them, which together with steadily deteriorating health, served to worsen his heart disease. In December 1967, Zhukov had a serious stroke. He was hospitalised until June 1968, and continued to receive medical and rehabilitative treatment at home under the care of his second wife, Galina Semyonova, a former officer in the Medical Corps. The stroke left him paralysed on his left side, his speech became slurred and he could only walk with assistance.
His memoirs were published in 1969 and became a best-seller. Within several months of the date of publication of his memoirs, Zhukov had received more than 10,000 letters from readers that offered comments, expressed gratitude, gave advice, or lavished praise. Supposedly, the Communist Party invited Zhukov to participate in the 24th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in 1971, but the invitation was rescinded.
On 18 June 1974, Zhukov died after another stroke. Contrary to Zhukov's last will for an Orthodox Christian burial, and despite the requests of the family to the country's top leadership, his body was cremated and his ashes were buried at the Kremlin Wall Necropolis alongside fellow generals and marshals of the Soviet Union.
In 1995, a large statue of Zhukov was erected in front of the State Historical Museum, depicting him on a horse. In 1996, on the 100th anniversary of Zhukov's birth, a "panikhida" Orthodox memorial service was conducted at his grave, the first such service in the history of the Kremlin Wall Necropolis.
The first monument to Georgy Zhukov was erected in Mongolia, in memory of the Battle of Khalkin Gol. After the dissolution of the Soviet Union, this monument was one of the few that did not suffer from anti-Soviet backlash in former Communist states. There is a statue of Zhukov on horseback as he appeared at the 1945 victory parade on Manezhnaya Square at the entrance of the Kremlin in Moscow. Another statue of Zhukov in Moscow is located on Prospekt Marshala Zhukova. A statue of Zhukov is located in the town of Irbit, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. Other statues of Zhukov are found in Omsk, Irkutsk and Yekaterinburg.
A minor planet, 2132 Zhukov, discovered in 1975, by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Chernykh, is named in his honor. In 1996, Russia adopted the Order of Zhukov and the Zhukov Medal to commemorate the 100th anniversary of his birthday.
Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky's poem "On the Death of Zhukov" ("Na smert' Zhukova", 1974) is regarded by critics as one of the best poems on the war written by an author of the post-war generation. The poem is a stylization of "The Bullfinch", Derzhavin's elegy on the death of Generalissimo Suvorov in 1800. Brodsky draws a parallel between the careers of these two famous commanders. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn re-interpreted Zhukov's memoirs in the short story "Times of Crisis".
In his book of recollections, Zhukov was critical of the role the Soviet leadership played during the war. The first edition of was published during Brezhnev's premiership only on the conditions that criticism of Stalin was removed, and that Zhukov add a (fictional) episode of a visit to Leonid Brezhnev, "politruk" on the Southern Front, to consult on military strategy.
In 1989, parts of previously unpublished chapters from Zhukov's memoir were published by Pravda, which his daughter said had been hidden in a safe until they could be published. The excerpts included criticism of the 1937–1939 purges for annihilating "[M]any thousands of outstanding party workers" and stated that Stalin had played no role in directing the war effort, although he often issued orders devised by the general staff as if they were his own.
Appraisals of Zhukov's career vary. For example, historian Konstantin Zaleski claimed that Zhukov exaggerated his own role in World War II. Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky said that the planning and decisions for the battle of Kursk were made without Zhukov, that he only arrived just before the battle, made no decisions and left soon after.
Zhukov also received many positive comments, mostly from his Army companions, from the modern Russian Army, and from his Allied contemporaries. General of the Army Eisenhower stated that, because of Zhukov's achievements fighting the Nazis, the United Nations owed him much more than any other military leader in the world. "The war in Europe ended with victory and nobody could have done that better than Marshal Zhukov – we owed him that credit. He is a modest person, and so we can't undervalue his position in our mind. When we can come back to our Motherland, there must be another type of Order in Russia, an Order named after Zhukov, which is awarded to everybody who can learn the bravery, the far vision, and the decisiveness of this soldier."
Marshal of the Soviet Union Aleksandr Vasilevsky commented that Zhukov is one of the most outstanding and brilliant military commanders of the Soviet military forces. Major General Sir Francis de Guingand, chief of staff of Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, described Zhukov as a friendly person. John Gunther, who met Zhukov many times after the war, said that Zhukov was more friendly and honest than any of the other Soviet leaders.
John Eisenhower—son of Dwight Eisenhower—claimed that Zhukov was really ebullient and was a friend of his. Albert Axell in his work "Marshal Zhukov, the one who beat Hitler" claimed that Zhukov is a military genius like Alexander the Great and Napoleon. Axell also commented that Zhukov is a loyal communist and a patriot. At the end of his work about Zhukov, Otto Chaney concluded: "But Zhukov belongs to all of us. In the darkest period of World War II his fortitude and determination eventually triumphed. For Russians and people everywhere he remains an enduring symbol of victory on the battlefield."
Zhukov was the recipient of many decorations. Most notably he was awarded the Hero of the Soviet Union four times. Aside from Zhukov, only Leonid Brezhnev was a four-time recipient (the latter's were self-awarded).
Zhukov was one of only three recipients to receive the Order of Victory twice. He was also awarded high honors from many other countries. A partial listing is presented below. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38888 |
Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor
Sigismund of Luxembourg (15 February 1368 – 9 December 1437) was prince-elector of Brandenburg from 1378 until 1388 and from 1411 until 1415, king of Hungary and Croatia from 1387, king of Germany from 1411, king of Bohemia from 1419, king of Italy from 1431, and Holy Roman emperor from 1433 until 1437, and the last male member of the House of Luxembourg.
Sigismund was born in Nuremberg, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV and Elizabeth of Pomerania. He married Queen Mary of Hungary in 1385 and was crowned King of Hungary soon after. He fought to restore and maintain authority to the throne. Mary died in 1395, leaving Sigismund the sole ruler of Hungary.
In 1396, Sigismund led the Crusade of Nicopolis, but was decisively defeated by the Ottoman Empire. Afterwards, he founded the Order of the Dragon to fight the Turks and secured the thrones of Croatia, Germany and Bohemia. Sigismund was one of the driving forces behind the Council of Constance (1414–1418) that ended the Papal Schism, but which also led to the Hussite Wars that dominated the later period of his life. In 1433, Sigismund was crowned Holy Roman Emperor and ruled until his death in 1437.
Born in Nuremberg, Sigismund was the son of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV, and of his fourth wife, Elizabeth of Pomerania, who was the granddaughter of King Casimir III of Poland and the great-granddaughter of the Grand Duke of Lithuania, Gediminas. He was named after Saint Sigismund of Burgundy, the favourite saint of Sigismund's father. From Sigismund's childhood he was nicknamed the "ginger fox" ("liška ryšavá") in the Crown of Bohemia, on account of his hair colour.
King Louis the Great of Hungary and Poland always had a good and close relationship with Emperor Charles IV, and Sigismund was betrothed to Louis' eldest daughter, Mary, in 1374, when he was six years old. Upon his father's death in 1378, young Sigismund became Margrave of Brandenburg and was sent to the Hungarian court, where he soon learnt the Hungarian language and way of life, and became entirely devoted to his adopted country. King Louis named him as his heir and appointed him his successor as King of Hungary.
In 1381, the then 13-year-old Sigismund was sent to Kraków by his eldest half-brother and guardian Wenceslaus, King of Germany and Bohemia, to learn Polish and to become acquainted with the land and its people. King Wenceslaus also gave him Neumark to facilitate communication between Brandenburg and Poland.
The disagreement between Polish landlords of Lesser Poland on one side and landlords of Greater Poland on the other, regarding the choice of the future King of Poland, finally ended in choosing the Lithuanian side. The support of the lords of Greater Poland was however not enough to give Prince Sigismund the Polish crown. Instead, the landlords of Lesser Poland gave it to Mary's younger sister Jadwiga I of Poland, who married Jogaila of Lithuania.
On the death of her father in 1382, his betrothed, Mary, became queen of Hungary and Sigismund married her in 1385 in Zólyom (today Zvolen). The next year, he was accepted as Mary's future co-ruler by the Treaty of Győr. However, Mary was captured, together with her mother, Elizabeth of Bosnia, who had acted as regent, in 1387 by the rebellious House of Horvat, Bishop Paul Horvat of Mačva, his brother John Horvat and younger brother Ladislav. Sigismund's mother-in-law was strangled, while Mary was liberated.
Having secured the support of the nobility, Sigismund was crowned King of Hungary at Székesfehérvár on 31 March 1387. Having raised money by pledging Brandenburg to his cousin Jobst, margrave of Moravia (1388), he was engaged for the next nine years in a ceaseless struggle for the possession of this unstable throne. The central power was finally weakened to such an extent that only Sigismund's alliance with the powerful Czillei-Garai League could ensure his position on the throne. It was not for entirely selfless reasons that one of the leagues of barons helped him to power: Sigismund had to pay for the support of the lords by transferring a sizeable part of the royal properties. (For some years, the baron's council governed the country in the name of the Holy Crown). The restoration of the authority of the central administration took decades of work. The bulk of the nation headed by the House of Garai was with him; but in the southern provinces between the Sava and the Drava, the Horvathys with the support of King Tvrtko I of Bosnia, Mary's maternal uncle, proclaimed as their king Ladislaus, king of Naples, son of the murdered Charles II of Hungary. Not until 1395 did Nicholas II Garay succeed in suppressing them. Mary died heavily pregnant in 1395.
To ease the pressure from Hungarian nobles, Sigismund tried to employ foreign advisors, which was not popular, and he had to promise not to give land and nominations to anyone other than Hungarian nobles. However, this was not applied to Stibor of Stiboricz, who was Sigismund's closest friend and advisor. On a number of occasions, Sigismund was imprisoned by nobles, but with help of the armies of Garai and Stibor of Stiboricz, he would regain power.
In 1396, Sigismund led the combined armies of Christendom against the Turks, who had taken advantage of the temporary helplessness of Hungary to extend their dominion to the banks of the Danube. This crusade, preached by Pope Boniface IX, was very popular in Hungary. The nobles flocked in their thousands to the royal standard, and were reinforced by volunteers from nearly every part of Europe. The most important contingent being that of the French led by John the Fearless, son of Philip II, Duke of Burgundy. Sigismund set out with 90,000 men and a flotilla of 70 galleys. After capturing Vidin, he camped with his Hungarian armies before the fortress of Nicopolis. Sultan Bayezid I raised the siege of Constantinople and, at the head of 140,000 men, completely defeated the Christian forces in the Battle of Nicopolis fought between the 25 and 28 September 1396. Sigismund returned by sea and through the realm of Zeta, where he ordained a local Montenegrin lord Đurađ II with the islands of Hvar and Korčula for resistance against the Turks; the islands were returned to Sigismund after Đurađ's death in April 1403.
The disaster at Nicopolis angered several Hungarian lords, leading to instability in the kingdom. Deprived of his authority in Hungary, Sigismund then turned his attention to securing the succession in Germany and Bohemia, and was recognized by his childless half-brother Wenceslaus IV as Vicar-General of the whole Empire. However, he was unable to support Wenceslaus when he was deposed in 1400, and Rupert of Germany, Elector Palatine, was elected German king in his stead.
On his return to Hungary in 1401, Sigismund was imprisoned once and deposed twice. In 1401, Sigismund helped an uprising against Wenceslaus IV, during the course of which the Bohemian king was taken prisoner, and Sigismund ruled Bohemia for nineteen months. He released Wenceslaus in 1403. In the meantime, a group of Hungarian noblemen swore loyalty to the last Anjou monarch, Ladislaus of Naples, putting their hands on the relic of Saint Ladislas of Hungary in Nagyvárad (today Oradea). Ladislaus was the son of the murdered Charles II of Hungary, and thus a distant relative of the long dead King Louis I of Hungary. Ladislaus captured Zara (today Zadar) in 1403, but soon stopped any military advance. This struggle in turn led to a war with the Republic of Venice, as Ladislaus had sold the Dalmatian cities to the Venetians for 100,000 ducats before leaving for his own land. In the following years Sigismund acted indirectly to thwart Ladislaus' attempts to conquer central Italy, by allying with the Italian cities resisting him and by applying diplomatic pressure on him.
Due to his frequent absences attending to business in the other countries over which he ruled, he was obliged to consult Diets in Hungary with more frequency than his predecessors and institute the office of Palatine as chief administrator while he was away.
In 1404, Sigismund introduced the "Placetum Regium". According to this decree, Papal bulls could not be pronounced in Hungary without the consent of the king.
During his long reign, the royal castle of Buda became probably the largest Gothic palace of the late Middle Ages.
In about 1406, Sigismund married Mary's cousin Barbara of Celje, daughter of Count Hermann II of Celje. Hermann's mother Katarina Kotromanić (of the House of Kotromanic) and Mary's mother Queen Elizabeta (Elisabeth of Bosnia) were sisters, or cousins who were adoptive sisters. Tvrtko I was their first cousin and adopted brother, and perhaps even became heir apparent to Queen Mary. Tvrtko may have been murdered in 1391 on Sigismund's order.
Sigismund managed to establish control in Slavonia. He did not hesitate to use violent methods (see Bloody Sabor of Križevci), but from the river Sava to the south his control was weak. Sigismund personally led an army of almost 50,000 "crusaders" against the Bosnians, culminating with the Battle of Dobor in 1408, a massacre of about 200 noble families.
Threatened by Ottoman expansion, king Sigismund managed to strengthen the security of southern Hungarian borders by entering into a defensive alliance with despot Stefan Lazarević of Serbia. In 1403, Hungarian possessions in northwestern regions of Serbia (city of Belgrade and the Banate of Macsó), were given to despot Stefan, who pledged his allegiance to king Sigismund, remaining kings loyal vassal until death in 1427. Stefan's successor George Branković of Serbia also pledged his allegiance to Sigismund, returning Belgrade to the king. By maintaining close relations with Serbian rulers, Sigismund succeeded in securing southern borders of his realm.
Sigismund founded his personal order of knights, the Order of the Dragon, after the victory at Dobor. The main goal of the order was fighting the Ottoman Empire. Members of the order were mostly his political allies and supporters. The main members of the order were Sigismund's close allies Nicholas II Garay, Hermann II of Celje, Stibor of Stiboricz, and Pippo Spano. The most important European monarchs became members of the order. He encouraged international trade by abolishing internal duties, regulating tariffs on foreign goods and standardizing weights and measures throughout the country.
After the death of King Rupert of Germany in 1410, Sigismund – ignoring the claims of his half-brother Wenceslaus – was elected as successor by three of the electors on 10 September 1410, but he was opposed by his cousin Jobst of Moravia, who had been elected by four electors in a different election on 1 October. Jobst's death 18 January 1411 removed this conflict and Sigismund was again elected king on 21 July 1411. His coronation was deferred until 8 November 1414, when it took place at Aachen.
On a number of occasions, and in 1410 in particular, Sigismund allied himself with the Teutonic Knights against Władysław II of Poland. In return for 300.000 ducats he would attack Poland from the south after the truce on St. John's Day, 24 June expired. Sigismund ordered his most loyal friend Stibor of Stiboricz to set up the attack on Poland. Stibor of Stiboricz was of Polish origin and from the main line of the powerful Clan of Ostoja that had also been against choosing Jagiello as King of Poland. With the support of Sigismund, Stibor become one of the most influential men in late medieval Europe, holding titles as Duke of Transylvania and owning about 25% of modern-day Slovakia, including 31 castles of which 15 were situated around the 406 km long Váh river with surrounding land that was given to him by Sigismund. In the diplomatic struggle to prevent war between Poland-Lithuania, which was supported by the Muscovites, and the Teutonic Knights, Sigismund used Stibor's fine diplomacy to gain financially. The Polish side appointed several negotiators and most of them were also from the Clan of Ostoja, distant relations of the Stibors. However, those "family meetings" could not prevent the war and an alliance of twenty-two western states formed an army against Poland in the Battle of Grunwald in July 1410. Stibor attacked then Nowy Sącz and burned it to the ground, but after that he returned with his army back to the Beckov Castle. After the Polish-Lithuanian victory in the Battle of Grunwald, the Teutonic knights had to pay a huge sum of silver to Poland as reparation and again, through diplomacy of his friend Stibor, Sigismund was able to borrow all this silver from King Władysław II of Poland on good conditions. In the light of facts about the diplomatic work of Stibor and the Clan of Ostoja that was following the politics of King Sigismund, one can question whether Sigismund actually joined the anti-Polish alliance.
From 1412 to 1423, Sigismund campaigned against the Venetians in Italy. The king took advantage of the difficulties of Antipope John XXIII to obtain a promise that a council should be called in Constance in 1414 to settle the Western Schism. He took a leading part in the deliberations of this assembly, and during the sittings made a journey to France, England and Burgundy in a vain attempt to secure the abdication of the three rival popes. The council ended in 1418, solving the Schism and — of great consequence to Sigismund's future career — having the Czech religious reformer, Jan Hus, burned at the stake for heresy in July 1415. The complicity of Sigismund in the death of Hus is a matter of controversy. He had granted him a safe-conduct and protested against his imprisonment; and Hus was burned during Sigismund's absence.
When at one point during the council a cardinal corrected Sigismund's Latin, Sigismund replied "Ego sum rex Romanus et super grammaticam" ("I am king of the Romans and above grammar").
Thomas Carlyle nicknamed Sigismund "Super Grammaticam".
An alliance with England against France, and a failed attempt, owing to the hostility of the princes, to secure peace in Germany by a league of the towns, were his main acts during these years. Also, Sigismund granted control of the Margraviate of Brandenburg (which he had received back after Jobst's death) to Frederick I of Hohenzollern, burgrave of Nuremberg (1415). This step made the Hohenzollern family one of the most important in Germany.
Sigismund began to shift his alliance from France to England after the French defeat at the Battle of Agincourt. The Treaty of Canterbury (August 15, 1416) culminated diplomatic efforts between Henry V of England and Sigismund and resulted in a defensive and offensive alliance against France. This, in turn, led the way to the resolution of the papal schism.
In 1419, the death of Wenceslaus IV left Sigismund titular King of Bohemia, but he had to wait for seventeen years before the Czech Estates would acknowledge him. Although the two dignities of King of the Romans and King of Bohemia added considerably to his importance, and indeed made him the nominal temporal head of Christendom, they conferred no increase of power and financially embarrassed him. It was only as King of Hungary that he had succeeded in establishing his authority and in doing anything for the order and good government of the land. Entrusting the government of Bohemia to Sofia of Bavaria, the widow of Wenceslaus, he hastened into Hungary.
The Bohemians, who distrusted him as the betrayer of Hus, were soon in arms; and the flame was fanned when Sigismund declared his intention of prosecuting the war against heretics. Three campaigns against the Hussites ended in disaster although the army of his most loyal ally Stibor of Stiboricz and later his son Stibor of Beckov could hold the Hussite side away from the borders of the Kingdom. The Turks were again attacking Hungary. The king, unable to obtain support from the German princes, was powerless in Bohemia. His attempts at the diet of Nuremberg in 1422 to raise a mercenary army were foiled by the resistance of the towns; and in 1424 the electors, among whom was Sigismund's former ally, Frederick I of Hohenzollern, sought to strengthen their own authority at the expense of the king. Although the scheme failed, the danger to Germany from the Hussites led to the Union of Bingen, which virtually deprived Sigismund of the leadership of the war and the headship of Germany.
In 1428, Sigismund led another campaign against the Turks, but again with few results. In 1431, he went to Milan where on 25 November he received the Iron Crown as King of Italy; after which he remained for some time at Siena, negotiating for his coronation as emperor and for the recognition of the Council of Basel by Pope Eugenius IV. He was crowned emperor in Rome on 31 May 1433, and after obtaining his demands from the Pope returned to Bohemia, where he was recognized as king in 1436, though his power was little more than nominal. Shortly after he was crowned, Pope Eugenius began attempts to create a new anti-Ottoman alliance. This was sparked by an Albanian revolt against the Ottomans, which had begun in 1432. In 1435, Sigismund sent Fruzhin, a Bulgarian nobleman, to negotiate an alliance with the Albanians. He also sent Daud, a pretender to the Ottoman throne, in early 1436. However, following the defeat of the rebels in 1436, plans for an anti-Ottoman alliance ended.
Sigismund died on 9 December 1437 at Znojmo (), Moravia (now Czech Republic), and as ordered in life, he was buried at Nagyvárad, Hungary (today Oradea, Romania), next to the tomb of the king Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, who was the ideal of the perfect monarch, warrior and Christian for that time and was deeply venerated by Sigismund. By his second wife, Barbara of Celje, he left an only daughter, Elisabeth of Luxembourg, who was married to Albert V, duke of Austria (later German king as Albert II) whom Sigismund named as his successor. As he left no sons, his line of the House of Luxembourg became extinct on his death.
Sigismund married twice but had little luck in securing the succession to his crowns. Each of his two marriages resulted in the birth of one child. His first-born child, probably a son, was born prematurely as a result of a horse riding accident suffered by Queen Mary of Hungary when she was well advanced in pregnancy. Mother and child both died shortly after the birth in the hills of Buda on 17 May 1395. This caused a deep succession crisis because Sigismund ruled over Hungary by right of his wife, and although he managed to keep his power, the crisis lasted until his second marriage to Barbara of Celje. Barbara's only child, born in the purple on 7 October 1409, probably in the castle of Visegrád, was Elisabeth of Luxembourg, the future queen consort of Hungary, Germany, and Bohemia. Queen Barbara was unable to give birth to any further issue. Elisabeth of Bohemia was thus the only surviving legitimate offspring of Sigismund.
Sigismund was known to speak fluent Hungarian, wore Hungarian-style royal clothes, and even grew his beard in the Hungarian fashion. He also spent huge amounts of money during his reign to rebuild the Gothic castles of Buda and Visegrád in the Kingdom of Hungary, ordering the transportation of materials from Austria and Bohemia.
His many affairs with women led to the birth of several legends, as the one that existed decades later during the reign of the King Matthias Corvinus of Hungary. According to this, John Hunyadi was Sigismund's illegitimate son. Sigismund gave a ring to the boy's mother when he was born, but one day in the forest a raven stole it from her, and the ring was only recovered after the bird was hunted down. It is said that this incident inspired the coat of arms of the Hunyadis, and later also appeared in the coat of arms of Matthias "Corvinus".
Sigismund adopted the Hungarian reverence for Saint Ladislaus I of Hungary, who was considered to be an ideal Christian knight at that time. He went on pilgrimage several times to his tomb in Nagyvárad. Before Sigismund died, in Znaim, Moravia, he ordered to be buried next to the king saint.
The Reformatio Sigismundi appeared in connection with efforts to reform the Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Emperor Sigismund (1410–1437). It was presented in 1439 at the Council of Basel, published by an anonymous author, and referred to the injustice of the German rulers. It included a vision of Sigismund's about the appearance of a priest-king, Frederick, as well as plans for a wide reform of the monarchy and emperorship and the German empire.
"Sigismund, by the grace of God elected Holy Roman Emperor, forever August, King in Germany, of Hungary, Bohemia, Italy, Dalmatia, Croatia, Rama, Serbia, Galicia, Lodomeria, Cumania and Bulgaria; Duke of Silesia and Luxembourg; Margrave of Moravia, Lusatia and Brandenburg." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38889 |
Natural science
Natural science is a branch of science concerned with the description, prediction, and understanding of natural phenomena, based on empirical evidence from observation and experimentation. Mechanisms such as peer review and repeatability of findings are used to try to ensure the validity of scientific advances.
Natural science can be divided into two main branches: life science (or biological science) and physical science. Physical science is subdivided into branches, including physics, chemistry, astronomy and Earth science. These branches of natural science may be further divided into more specialized branches (also known as fields). As empirical sciences, natural sciences use tools from the formal sciences, such as mathematics and logic, converting information about nature into measurements which can be explained as clear statements of the "laws of nature".
Modern natural science succeeded more classical approaches to natural philosophy, usually traced to ancient Greece. Galileo, Descartes, Bacon, and Newton debated the benefits of using approaches which were more mathematical and more experimental in a methodical way. Still, philosophical perspectives, conjectures, and presuppositions, often overlooked, remain necessary in natural science. Systematic data collection, including discovery science, succeeded natural history, which emerged in the 16th century by describing and classifying plants, animals, minerals, and so on. Today, "natural history" suggests observational descriptions aimed at popular audiences.
Philosophers of science have suggested a number of criteria, including Karl Popper's controversial falsifiability criterion, to help them differentiate scientific endeavors from non-scientific ones. Validity, accuracy, and quality control, such as peer review and repeatability of findings, are amongst the most respected criteria in today's global scientific community.
This field encompasses a diverse set of disciplines that examines phenomena related to living organisms. The scale of study can range from sub-component biophysics up to complex ecologies. Biology is concerned with the characteristics, classification and behaviors of organisms, as well as how species were formed and their interactions with each other and the environment.
The biological fields of botany, zoology, and medicine date back to early periods of civilization, while microbiology was introduced in the 17th century with the invention of the microscope. However, it was not until the 19th century that biology became a unified science. Once scientists discovered commonalities between all living things, it was decided they were best studied as a whole.
Some key developments in biology were the discovery of genetics; evolution through natural selection; the germ theory of disease and the application of the techniques of chemistry and physics at the level of the cell or organic molecule.
Modern biology is divided into subdisciplines by the type of organism and by the scale being studied. Molecular biology is the study of the fundamental chemistry of life, while cellular biology is the examination of the cell; the basic building block of all life. At a higher level, anatomy and physiology look at the internal structures, and their functions, of an organism, while ecology looks at how various organisms interrelate.
Earth science (also known as geoscience), is an all-embracing term for the sciences related to the planet Earth, including geology, geophysics, geochemistry, climatology, glaciology, hydrology, meteorology, and oceanography.
Although mining and precious stones have been human interests throughout the history of civilization, the development of the related sciences of economic geology and mineralogy did not occur until the 18th century. The study of the earth, particularly palaeontology, blossomed in the 19th century. The growth of other disciplines, such as geophysics, in the 20th century, led to the development of the theory of plate tectonics in the 1960s, which has had a similar effect on the Earth sciences as the theory of evolution had on biology. Earth sciences today are closely linked to petroleum and mineral resources, climate research and to environmental assessment and remediation.
Although sometimes considered in conjunction with the earth sciences, due to the independent development of its concepts, techniques and practices and also the fact of it having a wide range of sub-disciplines under its wing, atmospheric science is also considered a separate branch of natural science. This field studies the characteristics of different layers of the atmosphere from ground level to the edge of the time. The timescale of the study also varies from days to centuries. Sometimes the field also includes the study of climatic patterns on planets other than earth.
The serious study of oceans began in the early to mid-20th century. As a field of natural science, it is relatively young but stand-alone programs offer specializations in the subject. Though some controversies remain as to the categorization of the field under earth sciences, interdisciplinary sciences or as a separate field in its own right, most modern workers in the field agree that it has matured to a state that it has its own paradigms and practices. As such a big family of related studies spanning every aspect of the oceans is now classified under this field.
Constituting the scientific study of matter at the atomic and molecular scale, chemistry deals primarily with collections of atoms, such as gases, molecules, crystals, and metals. The composition, statistical properties, transformations and reactions of these materials are studied. Chemistry also involves understanding the properties and interactions of individual atoms and molecules for use in larger-scale applications.
Most chemical processes can be studied directly in a laboratory, using a series of (often well-tested) techniques for manipulating materials, as well as an understanding of the underlying processes. Chemistry is often called "the central science" because of its role in connecting the other natural sciences.
Early experiments in chemistry had their roots in the system of Alchemy, a set of beliefs combining mysticism with physical experiments. The science of chemistry began to develop with the work of Robert Boyle, the discoverer of gas, and Antoine Lavoisier, who developed the theory of the Conservation of mass.
The discovery of the chemical elements and atomic theory began to systematize this science, and researchers developed a fundamental understanding of states of matter, ions, chemical bonds and chemical reactions. The success of this science led to a complementary chemical industry that now plays a significant role in the world economy.
Physics embodies the study of the fundamental constituents of the universe, the forces and interactions they exert on one another, and the results produced by these interactions. In general, physics is regarded as the fundamental science, because all other natural sciences use and obey the principles and laws set down by the field. Physics relies heavily on mathematics as the logical framework for formulation and quantification of principles.
The study of the principles of the universe has a long history and largely derives from direct observation and experimentation. The formulation of theories about the governing laws of the universe has been central to the study of physics from very early on, with philosophy gradually yielding to systematic, quantitative experimental testing and observation as the source of verification. Key historical developments in physics include Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation and classical mechanics, an understanding of electricity and its relation to magnetism, Einstein's theories of special and general relativity, the development of thermodynamics, and the quantum mechanical model of atomic and subatomic physics.
The field of physics is extremely broad, and can include such diverse studies as quantum mechanics and theoretical physics, applied physics and optics. Modern physics is becoming increasingly specialized, where researchers tend to focus on a particular area rather than being "universalists" like Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein and Lev Landau, who worked in multiple areas.
This discipline is the science of celestial objects and phenomena that originate outside the Earth's atmosphere. It is concerned with the evolution, physics, chemistry, meteorology, and motion of celestial objects, as well as the formation and development of the universe.
Astronomy includes the examination, study and modeling of stars, planets, comets, galaxies and the cosmos. Most of the information used by astronomers is gathered by remote observation, although some laboratory reproduction of celestial phenomena has been performed (such as the molecular chemistry of the interstellar medium).
While the origins of the study of celestial features and phenomena can be traced back to antiquity, the scientific methodology of this field began to develop in the middle of the 17th century. A key factor was Galileo's introduction of the telescope to examine the night sky in more detail.
The mathematical treatment of astronomy began with Newton's development of celestial mechanics and the laws of gravitation, although it was triggered by earlier work of astronomers such as Kepler. By the 19th century, astronomy had developed into a formal science, with the introduction of instruments such as the spectroscope and photography, along with much-improved telescopes and the creation of professional observatories.
The distinctions between the natural science disciplines are not always sharp, and they share a number of cross-discipline fields. Physics plays a significant role in the other natural sciences, as represented by astrophysics, geophysics, chemical physics and biophysics. Likewise chemistry is represented by such fields as biochemistry, chemical biology, geochemistry and astrochemistry.
A particular example of a scientific discipline that draws upon multiple natural sciences is environmental science. This field studies the interactions of physical, chemical, geological, and biological components of the environment, with particular regard to the effect of human activities and the impact on biodiversity and sustainability. This science also draws upon expertise from other fields such as economics, law, and social sciences.
A comparable discipline is oceanography, as it draws upon a similar breadth of scientific disciplines. Oceanography is sub-categorized into more specialized cross-disciplines, such as physical oceanography and marine biology. As the marine ecosystem is very large and diverse, marine biology is further divided into many subfields, including specializations in particular species.
There is also a subset of cross-disciplinary fields which, by the nature of the problems that they address, have strong currents that run counter to
specialization. Put another way: In some fields of integrative application, specialists in more than one field are a key part of the most dialog. Such integrative fields, for example, include nanoscience, astrobiology, and complex system informatics.
Materials science is a relatively new, interdisciplinary field which deals with the study of matter and its properties; as well as the discovery and design of new materials. Originally developed through the field of metallurgy, the study of the properties of materials and solids has now expanded into all materials. The field covers the chemistry, physics and engineering applications of materials including metals, ceramics, artificial polymers, and many others. The core of the field deals with relating structure of material with it properties.
It is at the forefront of research in science and engineering. It is an important part of forensic engineering (the investigation of materials, products, structures or components that fail or do not operate or function as intended, causing personal injury or damage to property) and failure analysis, the latter being the key to understanding, for example, the cause of various aviation accidents. Many of the most pressing scientific problems that are faced today are due to the limitations of the materials that are available and, as a result, breakthroughs in this field are likely to have a significant impact on the future of technology.
The basis of materials science involves studying the structure of materials, and relating them to their properties. Once a materials scientist knows about this structure-property correlation, they can then go on to study the relative performance of a material in a certain application. The major determinants of the structure of a material and thus of its properties are its constituent chemical elements and the way in which it has been processed into its final form. These characteristics, taken together and related through the laws of thermodynamics and kinetics, govern a material's microstructure, and thus its properties.
Some scholars trace the origins of natural science as far back as pre-literate human societies, where understanding the natural world was necessary for survival. People observed and built up knowledge about the behavior of animals and the usefulness of plants as food and medicine, which was passed down from generation to generation. These primitive understandings gave way to more formalized inquiry around 3500 to 3000 BC in the Mesopotamian and Ancient Egyptian cultures, which produced the first known written evidence of natural philosophy, the precursor of natural science. While the writings show an interest in astronomy, mathematics and other aspects of the physical world, the ultimate aim of inquiry about nature's workings was in all cases religious or mythological, not scientific.
A tradition of scientific inquiry also emerged in Ancient China, where Taoist alchemists and philosophers experimented with elixirs to extend life and cure ailments. They focused on the yin and yang, or contrasting elements in nature; the yin was associated with femininity and coldness, while yang was associated with masculinity and warmth. The five phases – fire, earth, metal, wood and water – described a cycle of transformations in nature. Water turned into wood, which turned into fire when it burned. The ashes left by fire were earth. Using these principles, Chinese philosophers and doctors explored human anatomy, characterizing organs as predominantly yin or yang and understood the relationship between the pulse, the heart and the flow of blood in the body centuries before it became accepted in the West.
Little evidence survives of how Ancient Indian cultures around the Indus River understood nature, but some of their perspectives may be reflected in the Vedas, a set of sacred Hindu texts. They reveal a conception of the universe as ever-expanding and constantly being recycled and reformed. Surgeons in the Ayurvedic tradition saw health and illness as a combination of three humors: wind, bile and phlegm. A healthy life was the result of a balance among these humors. In Ayurvedic thought, the body consisted of five elements: earth, water, fire, wind and empty space. Ayurvedic surgeons performed complex surgeries and developed a detailed understanding of human anatomy.
Pre-Socratic philosophers in Ancient Greek culture brought natural philosophy a step closer to direct inquiry about cause and effect in nature between 600 and 400 BC, although an element of magic and mythology remained. Natural phenomena such as earthquakes and eclipses were explained increasingly in the context of nature itself instead of being attributed to angry gods. Thales of Miletus, an early philosopher who lived from 625 to 546 BC, explained earthquakes by theorizing that the world floated on water and that water was the fundamental element in nature. In the 5th century BC, Leucippus was an early exponent of atomism, the idea that the world is made up of fundamental indivisible particles. Pythagoras applied Greek innovations in mathematics to astronomy, and suggested that the earth was spherical.
Later Socratic and Platonic thought focused on ethics, morals and art and did not attempt an investigation of the physical world; Plato criticized pre-Socratic thinkers as materialists and anti-religionists. Aristotle, however, a student of Plato who lived from 384 to 322 BC, paid closer attention to the natural world in his philosophy. In his "History of Animals", he described the inner workings of 110 species, including the stingray, catfish and bee. He investigated chick embryos by breaking open eggs and observing them at various stages of development. Aristotle's works were influential through the 16th century, and he is considered to be the father of biology for his pioneering work in that science. He also presented philosophies about physics, nature and astronomy using inductive reasoning in his works "Physics" and "Meteorology".
While Aristotle considered natural philosophy more seriously than his predecessors, he approached it as a theoretical branch of science. Still, inspired by his work, Ancient Roman philosophers of the early 1st century AD, including Lucretius, Seneca and Pliny the Elder, wrote treatises that dealt with the rules of the natural world in varying degrees of depth. Many Ancient Roman Neoplatonists of the 3rd to the 6th centuries also adapted Aristotle's teachings on the physical world to a philosophy that emphasized spiritualism. Early medieval philosophers including Macrobius, Calcidius and Martianus Capella also examined the physical world, largely from a cosmological and cosmographical perspective, putting forth theories on the arrangement of celestial bodies and the heavens, which were posited as being composed of aether.
Aristotle's works on natural philosophy continued to be translated and studied amid the rise of the Byzantine Empire and Abbasid Caliphate.
In the Byzantine Empire John Philoponus, an Alexandrian Aristotelian commentator and Christian theologian, was the first who questioned Aristotle's teaching of physics. Unlike Aristotle who based his physics on verbal argument, Philoponus instead relied on observation, and argued for observation rather than resorting into verbal argument. He introduced the theory of impetus. John Philoponus' criticism of Aristotelian principles of physics served as inspiration for Galileo Galilei during the Scientific Revolution.
A revival in mathematics and science took place during the time of the Abbasid Caliphate from the 9th century onward, when Muslim scholars expanded upon Greek and Indian natural philosophy. The words "alcohol", "algebra" and "zenith" all have Arabic roots.
Aristotle's works and other Greek natural philosophy did not reach the West until about the middle of the 12th century, when works were translated from Greek and Arabic into Latin. The development of European civilization later in the Middle Ages brought with it further advances in natural philosophy. European inventions such as the horseshoe, horse collar and crop rotation allowed for rapid population growth, eventually giving way to urbanization and the foundation of schools connected to monasteries and cathedrals in modern-day France and England. Aided by the schools, an approach to Christian theology developed that sought to answer questions about nature and other subjects using logic. This approach, however, was seen by some detractors as heresy. By the 12th century, Western European scholars and philosophers came into contact with a body of knowledge of which they had previously been ignorant: a large corpus of works in Greek and Arabic that were preserved by Islamic scholars. Through translation into Latin, Western Europe was introduced to Aristotle and his natural philosophy. These works were taught at new universities in Paris and Oxford by the early 13th century, although the practice was frowned upon by the Catholic church. A 1210 decree from the Synod of Paris ordered that "no lectures are to be held in Paris either publicly or privately using Aristotle's books on natural philosophy or the commentaries, and we forbid all this under pain of excommunication."
In the late Middle Ages, Spanish philosopher Dominicus Gundissalinus translated a treatise by the earlier Persian scholar Al-Farabi called "On the Sciences" into Latin, calling the study of the mechanics of nature "scientia naturalis", or natural science. Gundissalinus also proposed his own classification of the natural sciences in his 1150 work "On the Division of Philosophy". This was the first detailed classification of the sciences based on Greek and Arab philosophy to reach Western Europe. Gundissalinus defined natural science as "the science considering only things unabstracted and with motion," as opposed to mathematics and sciences that rely on mathematics. Following Al-Farabi, he then separated the sciences into eight parts, including physics, cosmology, meteorology, minerals science and plant and animal science.
Later philosophers made their own classifications of the natural sciences. Robert Kilwardby wrote "On the Order of the Sciences" in the 13th century that classed medicine as a mechanical science, along with agriculture, hunting and theater while defining natural science as the science that deals with bodies in motion. Roger Bacon, an English friar and philosopher, wrote that natural science dealt with "a principle of motion and rest, as in the parts of the elements of fire, air, earth and water, and in all inanimate things made from them." These sciences also covered plants, animals and celestial bodies. Later in the 13th century, a Catholic priest and theologian Thomas Aquinas defined natural science as dealing with "mobile beings" and "things which depend on a matter not only for their existence but also for their definition." There was wide agreement among scholars in medieval times that natural science was about bodies in motion, although there was division about the inclusion of fields including medicine, music and perspective. Philosophers pondered questions including the existence of a vacuum, whether motion could produce heat, the colors of rainbows, the motion of the earth, whether elemental chemicals exist and wherein the atmosphere rain is formed.
In the centuries up through the end of the Middle Ages, natural science was often mingled with philosophies about magic and the occult. Natural philosophy appeared in a wide range of forms, from treatises to encyclopedias to commentaries on Aristotle. The interaction between natural philosophy and Christianity was complex during this period; some early theologians, including Tatian and Eusebius, considered natural philosophy an outcropping of pagan Greek science and were suspicious of it. Although some later Christian philosophers, including Aquinas, came to see natural science as a means of interpreting scripture, this suspicion persisted until the 12th and 13th centuries. The Condemnation of 1277, which forbade setting philosophy on a level equal with theology and the debate of religious constructs in a scientific context, showed the persistence with which Catholic leaders resisted the development of natural philosophy even from a theological perspective. Aquinas and Albertus Magnus, another Catholic theologian of the era, sought to distance theology from science in their works. "I don't see what one's interpretation of Aristotle has to do with the teaching of the faith," he wrote in 1271.
By the 16th and 17th centuries, natural philosophy underwent an evolution beyond commentary on Aristotle as more early Greek philosophy was uncovered and translated. The invention of the printing press in the 15th century, the invention of the microscope and telescope, and the Protestant Reformation fundamentally altered the social context in which scientific inquiry evolved in the West. Christopher Columbus's discovery of a new world changed perceptions about the physical makeup of the world, while observations by Copernicus, Tyco Brahe and Galileo brought a more accurate picture of the solar system as heliocentric and proved many of Aristotle's theories about the heavenly bodies false. A number of 17th-century philosophers, including Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Francis Bacon made a break from the past by rejecting Aristotle and his medieval followers outright, calling their approach to natural philosophy as superficial.
The titles of Galileo's work "Two New Sciences" and Johannes Kepler's "New Astronomy" underscored the atmosphere of change that took hold in the 17th century as Aristotle was dismissed in favor of novel methods of inquiry into the natural world. Bacon was instrumental in popularizing this change; he argued that people should use the arts and sciences to gain dominion over nature. To achieve this, he wrote that "human life [must] be endowed with new discoveries and powers." He defined natural philosophy as "the knowledge of Causes and secret motions of things; and enlarging the bounds of Human Empire, to the effecting of all things possible." Bacon proposed scientific inquiry supported by the state and fed by the collaborative research of scientists, a vision that was unprecedented in its scope, ambition and form at the time. Natural philosophers came to view nature increasingly as a mechanism that could be taken apart and understood, much like a complex clock. Natural philosophers including Isaac Newton, Evangelista Torricelli and Francesco Redi conducted experiments focusing on the flow of water, measuring atmospheric pressure using a barometer and disproving spontaneous generation. Scientific societies and scientific journals emerged and were spread widely through the printing press, touching off the scientific revolution. Newton in 1687 published his "The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy", or "Principia Mathematica", which set the groundwork for physical laws that remained current until the 19th century.
Some modern scholars, including Andrew Cunningham, Perry Williams and Floris Cohen, argue that natural philosophy is not properly called a science, and that genuine scientific inquiry began only with the scientific revolution. According to Cohen, "the emancipation of science from an overarching entity called 'natural philosophy' is one defining characteristic of the Scientific Revolution." Other historians of science, including Edward Grant, contend that the scientific revolution that blossomed in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries occurred when principles learned in the exact sciences of optics, mechanics and astronomy began to be applied to questions raised by natural philosophy. Grant argues that Newton attempted to expose the mathematical basis of nature – the immutable rules it obeyed – and in doing so joined natural philosophy and mathematics for the first time, producing an early work of modern physics.
The scientific revolution, which began to take hold in the 17th century, represented a sharp break from Aristotelian modes of inquiry. One of its principal advances was the use of the scientific method to investigate nature. Data was collected and repeatable measurements made in experiments. Scientists then formed hypotheses to explain the results of these experiments. The hypothesis was then tested using the principle of falsifiability to prove or disprove its accuracy. The natural sciences continued to be called natural philosophy, but the adoption of the scientific method took science beyond the realm of philosophical conjecture and introduced a more structured way of examining nature.
Newton, an English mathematician, and physicist, was the seminal figure in the scientific revolution. Drawing on advances made in astronomy by Copernicus, Brahe, and Kepler, Newton derived the universal law of gravitation and laws of motion. These laws applied both on earth and in outer space, uniting two spheres of the physical world previously thought to function independently of each other, according to separate physical rules. Newton, for example, showed that the tides were caused by the gravitational pull of the moon. Another of Newton's advances was to make mathematics a powerful explanatory tool for natural phenomena. While natural philosophers had long used mathematics as a means of measurement and analysis, its principles were not used as a means of understanding cause and effect in nature until Newton.
In the 18th century and 19th century, scientists including Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Alessandro Volta, and Michael Faraday built upon Newtonian mechanics by exploring electromagnetism, or the interplay of forces with positive and negative charges on electrically charged particles. Faraday proposed that forces in nature operated in "fields" that filled space. The idea of fields contrasted with the Newtonian construct of gravitation as simply "action at a distance", or the attraction of objects with nothing in the space between them to intervene. James Clerk Maxwell in the 19th century unified these discoveries in a coherent theory of electrodynamics. Using mathematical equations and experimentation, Maxwell discovered that space was filled with charged particles that could act upon themselves and each other and that they were a medium for the transmission of charged waves.
Significant advances in chemistry also took place during the scientific revolution. Antoine Lavoisier, a French chemist, refuted the phlogiston theory, which posited that things burned by releasing "phlogiston" into the air. Joseph Priestley had discovered oxygen in the 18th century, but Lavoisier discovered that combustion was the result of oxidation. He also constructed a table of 33 elements and invented modern chemical nomenclature. Formal biological science remained in its infancy in the 18th century, when the focus lay upon the classification and categorization of natural life. This growth in natural history was led by Carl Linnaeus, whose 1735 taxonomy of the natural world is still in use. Linnaeus in the 1750s introduced scientific names for all his species.
By the 19th century, the study of science had come into the purview of professionals and institutions. In so doing, it gradually acquired the more modern name of "natural science." The term "scientist" was coined by William Whewell in an 1834 review of Mary Somerville's "On the Connexion of the Sciences". But the word did not enter general use until nearly the end of the same century.
According to a famous 1923 textbook "Thermodynamics and the Free Energy of Chemical Substances" by the American chemist Gilbert N. Lewis and the American physical chemist Merle Randall, the natural sciences contain three great branches:
Aside from the logical and mathematical sciences, there are three great branches of "natural science" which stand apart by reason of the variety of far reaching deductions drawn from a small number of primary postulates — they are mechanics, electrodynamics, and thermodynamics.
Today, natural sciences are more commonly divided into life sciences, such as botany and zoology; and physical sciences, which include physics, chemistry, astronomy, and Earth sciences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38890 |
Chat room
The term chat room, or chatroom, is primarily used to describe any form of synchronous conferencing, occasionally even asynchronous conferencing. The term can thus mean any technology ranging from real-time online chat and online interaction with strangers (e.g., online forums) to fully immersive graphical social environments.
The primary use of a chat room is to share information via text with a group of other users. Generally
speaking, the ability to converse with multiple people in the same conversation differentiates chat rooms from instant messaging programs, which are more typically designed for one-to-one communication. The users in a particular chat room are generally connected via a shared internet or other similar connection, and chat rooms exist catering for a wide range of subjects. New technology has enabled the use of file sharing and webcams to be included in some programs. This would be considered a chat room.
The first chat system was used by the U.S. Government in 1971. It was developed by Murray Turoff, a young PhD graduate from Berkeley, and its first use was during President Nixon's wage-price freeze under Project Delphi. The system was called EMISARI and would allow 10 regional offices to link together in a real-time online chat known as the party line. It was in use up until 1986. The first public online chat system was called Talkomatic, created by Doug Brown and David R. Woolley in 1973 on the PLATO System at the University of Illinois. It offered several channels, each of which could accommodate up to five people, with messages appearing on all users' screens character-by-character as they were typed. Talkomatic was very popular among PLATO users into the mid-1980s. In 2014 Brown and Woolley released a web-based version of Talkomatic.
The first dedicated online chat service that was widely available to the public was the CompuServe CB Simulator in 1980, created by CompuServe executive Alexander "Sandy" Trevor in Columbus, Ohio. Chat rooms gained mainstream popularity with AOL.
Jarkko Oikarinen created Internet Relay Chat (IRC) in 1988. Many peer-to-peer clients have chat rooms, e.g. Ares Galaxy, eMule, Filetopia, Retroshare, Vuze, WASTE, WinMX, etc.
Visual chat rooms add graphics to the chat experience, in either 2D or 3D (employing virtual reality technology). These are characterized by using a graphic representation of the user, an avatar (virtual elements such as games (in particular massively multiplayer online games) and educational material most often developed by individual site owners, who in general are simply more advanced users of the systems. The most popular environments, such as The Palace, also allow users to create or "build" their own spaces. Some of the most popular 3D chat experiences are IMVU and "Second Life" (though they extend far beyond just chat). Many such implementations generate profit by selling virtual goods to users at a high margin.
Some online chat rooms also incorporate audio and video communications, so that users may actually see and hear each other.
Games are also often played in chat rooms. These are typically implemented by an external process such as an IRC bot joining the room to conduct the game. Trivia question & answer games are most prevalent. A historic example is "Hunt the Wumpus". Chatroom-based implementations of the party game "Mafia" also exist. A similar but more complex style of text-based gaming are MUDs, in which players interact within a textual, interactive fiction–like environment.
Chat rooms, particularly those intended for children, usually have rules that they require users to follow. The rules are generally posted before entry, either on a web page or an MOTD-type banner in the case of IRC and other text-based chat systems. Rules usually do not allow users to use offensive/rude language, or to promote hate, violence, and other negative issues. Many also disallow impersonating another user. Chat rooms often do not allow advertising or "flooding", which is continually filling the screen with repetitive text. Typing with caps lock on is usually considered shouting (suggesting anger) and is discouraged. Offenders of these rules can be "kicked" (temporarily ejected from the room, but allowed back in) or banned completely either on a temporary or permanent basis.
Sometimes chat room venues are moderated either by limiting who is allowed to speak (not common), by having comments be approved by moderators (often presented as asking questions of a guest or celebrity), or by having moderation volunteers patrol the venue watching for disruptive or otherwise undesirable behavior. Yet, most commonly used chat rooms are not moderated and users may chat freely with the other occupants of the room. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38892 |
Border Gateway Protocol
Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) is a standardized exterior gateway protocol designed to exchange routing and reachability information among autonomous systems (AS) on the Internet. BGP is classified as a path-vector routing protocol, and it makes routing decisions based on paths, network policies, or rule-sets configured by a network administrator.
BGP may be used for routing within an autonomous system. In this application it is referred to as Interior Border Gateway Protocol, Internal BGP, or iBGP. In contrast, the Internet application of the protocol may be referred to as Exterior Border Gateway Protocol, External BGP, or eBGP.
The Border Gateway Protocol has been in use on the Internet since 1994. The current version of BGP is version 4 (BGP4), which was published as RFC 4271 in 2006, after progressing through 20 drafts from documents based on RFC 1771 version 4. RFC 4271 corrected errors, clarified ambiguities and updated the specification with common industry practices. The major enhancement was the support for Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and use of route aggregation to decrease the size of routing tables.
IPv6 BGP was first defined in RFC 1883 in 1995, and it was improved to RFC 2283 in 1998. The new RFC allows BGP4 to carry a wide range of IPv4 and IPv6 "address families". It is also called the Multiprotocol Extensions which is Multiprotocol BGP (MP-BGP).
Ideally, even if impractical, all possible links would connect to one another, like spokes in a bicycle tire. BGP, "the most scalable of all routing protocols," provides a workaround and ways to measure how effectively it is configured.
BGP neighbors, called peers, are established by manual configuration among routers to create a TCP session on port 179. A BGP speaker sends 19-byte keep-alive messages every 60 seconds to maintain the connection. Among routing protocols, BGP is unique in using TCP as its transport protocol.
When BGP runs between two peers in the same autonomous system (AS), it is referred to as "Internal BGP" ("i-BGP" or "Interior Border Gateway Protocol"). When it runs between different autonomous systems, it is called "External BGP" ("eBGP" or "Exterior Border Gateway Protocol"). Routers on the boundary of one AS exchanging information with another AS are called "border" or "edge routers" or simply "eBGP peers" and are typically connected directly, while "i-BGP peers" can be interconnected through other intermediate routers. Other deployment topologies are also possible, such as running eBGP peering inside a VPN tunnel, allowing two remote sites to exchange routing information in a secure and isolated manner. The main difference between iBGP and eBGP peering is in the way routes that were received from one peer are propagated to other peers. For instance, new routes learned from an eBGP peer are typically redistributed to all iBGP peers as well as all other eBGP peers (if "transit" mode is enabled on the router). However, if new routes are learned on an iBGP peering, then they are re-advertised only to all eBGP peers. These route-propagation rules effectively require that all iBGP peers inside an AS are interconnected in a full mesh.
How routes are propagated can be controlled in detail via the "route-maps" mechanism. This mechanism consists of a set of rules. Each rule describes, for routes matching some given criteria, what action should be taken. The action could be to drop the route, or it could be to modify some attributes of the route before inserting it in the routing table.
During the peering handshake, when OPEN messages are exchanged, BGP speakers can negotiate optional capabilities of the session, including multiprotocol extensions and various recovery modes. If the multiprotocol extensions to BGP are negotiated at the time of creation, the BGP speaker can prefix the Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI) it advertises with an address family prefix. These families include the IPv4 (default), IPv6, IPv4/IPv6 Virtual Private Networks and multicast BGP. Increasingly, BGP is used as a generalized signaling protocol to carry information about routes that may not be part of the global Internet, such as VPNs.
In order to make decisions in its operations with peers, a BGP peer uses a simple finite state machine (FSM) that consists of six states: Idle; Connect; Active; OpenSent; OpenConfirm; and Established. For each peer-to-peer session, a BGP implementation maintains a state variable that tracks which of these six states the session is in. The BGP defines the messages that each peer should exchange in order to change the session from one state to another. The first state is the "Idle" state. In the "Idle" state, BGP initializes all resources, refuses all inbound BGP connection attempts and initiates a TCP connection to the peer. The second state is "Connect". In the "Connect" state, the router waits for the TCP connection to complete and transitions to the "OpenSent" state if successful. If unsuccessful, it starts the ConnectRetry timer and transitions to the "Active" state upon expiration. In the "Active" state, the router resets the ConnectRetry timer to zero and returns to the "Connect" state. In the "OpenSent" state, the router sends an Open message and waits for one in return in order to transition to the "OpenConfirm" state. Keepalive messages are exchanged and, upon successful receipt, the router is placed into the "Established" state. In the "Established" state, the router can send/receive: Keepalive; Update; and Notification messages to/from its peer.
In the simplest arrangement, all routers within a single AS and participating in BGP routing must be configured in a full mesh: each router must be configured as peer to every other router. This causes scaling problems, since the number of required connections grows quadratically with the number of routers involved. To alleviate the problem, BGP implements two options: route reflectors (RFC 4456) and BGP confederations (RFC 5065). The following discussion of basic UPDATE processing assumes a full iBGP mesh.
A given BGP router may accept Network Layer Reachability Information (NLRI) UPDATEs from multiple neighbors and advertise NLRI to the same, or a different set, of neighbors. Conceptually, BGP maintains its own "master" routing table, called the Local Routing Information Base ("Loc-RIB"), separate from the main routing table of the router. For each neighbor, the BGP process maintains a conceptual Adjacent Routing Information Base, Incoming ("Adj-RIB-In") containing the NLRI received from the neighbor, and a conceptual "Adj-RIB-Out" (Outgoing) for NLRI to be sent to the neighbor.
"Conceptual", in the preceding paragraph, means that the physical storage and structure of these various tables are decided by the implementer of the BGP code. Their structure is not visible to other BGP routers, although they usually can be interrogated with management commands on the local router. It is quite common, for example, to store the two Adj-RIBs and the Loc-RIB together in the same data structure, with additional information attached to the RIB entries. The additional information tells the BGP process such things as whether individual entries belong in the Adj-RIBs for specific neighbors, whether the peer-neighbor route selection process made received policies eligible for the Loc-RIB, and whether Loc-RIB entries are eligible to be submitted to the local router's routing table management process.
By "eligible to be submitted", BGP will submit the routes that it considers best to the main routing table process. Depending on the implementation of that process, the BGP route is not necessarily selected. For example, a directly connected prefix, learned from the router's own hardware, is usually most preferred. As long as that directly connected route's interface is active, the BGP route to the destination will not be put into the routing table. Once the interface goes down, and there are no more preferred routes, the Loc-RIB route would be installed in the main routing table.
Until recently, it was a common mistake to say "BGP carries policies". BGP actually carried the information with which rules inside BGP-speaking routers could make policy decisions. Some of the information carried that is explicitly intended to be used in policy decisions are communities and multi-exit discriminators (MED).
The BGP standard specifies a number of decision factors, more than the ones that are used by any other common routing process, for selecting NLRI to go into the Loc-RIB. The first decision point for evaluating NLRI is that its next-hop attribute must be reachable (or resolvable). Another way of saying the next-hop must be reachable is that there must be an active route, already in the main routing table of the router, to the prefix in which the next-hop address is reachable.
Next, for each neighbor, the BGP process applies various standard and implementation-dependent criteria to decide which routes conceptually should go into the Adj-RIB-In. The neighbor could send several possible routes to a destination, but the first level of preference is at the neighbor level. Only one route to each destination will be installed in the conceptual Adj-RIB-In. This process will also delete, from the Adj-RIB-In, any routes that are withdrawn by the neighbor.
Whenever a conceptual Adj-RIB-In changes, the main BGP process decides if any of the neighbor's new routes are preferred to routes already in the Loc-RIB. If so, it replaces them. If a given route is withdrawn by a neighbor, and there is no other route to that destination, the route is removed from the Loc-RIB, and no longer sent, by BGP, to the main routing table manager. If the router does not have a route to that destination from any non-BGP source, the withdrawn route will be removed from the main routing table.
After verifying that the next hop is reachable, if the route comes from an internal (i.e. iBGP) peer, the first rule to apply, according to the standard, is to examine the LOCAL_PREFERENCE attribute. If there are several iBGP routes from the neighbor, the one with the highest LOCAL_PREFERENCE is selected unless there are several routes with the same LOCAL_PREFERENCE. In the latter case the route selection process moves to the next tie breaker. While LOCAL_PREFERENCE is the first rule in the standard, once reachability of the NEXT_HOP is verified, Cisco and several other vendors first consider a decision factor called WEIGHT which is local to the router (i.e. not transmitted by BGP). The route with the highest WEIGHT is preferred.
The LOCAL_PREFERENCE, WEIGHT, and other criteria can be manipulated by local configuration and software capabilities. Such manipulation is outside the scope of the standard but is commonly used. For example, the COMMUNITY attribute (see below) is not directly used by the BGP selection process. The BGP neighbor process however can have a rule to set LOCAL_PREFERENCE or another factor based on a manually programmed rule to set the attribute if the COMMUNITY value matches some pattern matching criterion. If the route was learned from an external peer the per-neighbor BGP process computes a LOCAL_PREFERENCE value from local policy rules and then compares the LOCAL_PREFERENCE of all routes from the neighbor.
At the per-neighbor level ignoring implementation-specific policy modifiers the order of tie breaking rules is:
"Before the most recent edition of the BGP standard, if an UPDATE had no MULTI_EXIT_DISC value, several implementations created a MED with the highest possible value. The current standard however specifies that missing MEDs are to be treated as the lowest possible value. Since the current rule may cause different behavior than the vendor interpretations, BGP implementations that used the nonstandard default value have a configuration feature that allows the old or standard rule to be selected."
Once candidate routes are received from neighbors, the Loc-RIB software applies additional tie-breakers to routes to the same destination.
"If there is more than one route still tied at this point, several BGP implementations offer a configurable option to load-share among the routes, accepting all (or all up to some number)."
BGP communities are attribute tags that can be applied to incoming or outgoing prefixes to achieve some common goal (RFC 1997). While it is common to say that BGP allows an administrator to set policies on how prefixes are handled by ISPs, this is generally not possible, strictly speaking. For instance, BGP natively has no concept to allow one AS to tell another AS to restrict advertisement of a prefix to only North American peering customers. Instead, an ISP generally publishes a list of well-known or proprietary communities with a description for each one, which essentially becomes an agreement of how prefixes are to be treated. RFC 1997 also defines three well-known communities that have global significance; NO_EXPORT, NO_ADVERTISE and NO_EXPORT_SUBCONFED. RFC 7611 defines ACCEPT_OWN. Examples of common communities include local preference adjustments, geographic or peer type restrictions, DoS avoidance (black holing), and AS prepending options. An ISP might state that any routes received from customers with community XXX:500 will be advertised to all peers (default) while community XXX:501 will restrict advertisement to North America. The customer simply adjusts their configuration to include the correct community or communities for each route, and the ISP is responsible for controlling who the prefix is advertised to. The end user has no technical ability to enforce correct actions being taken by the ISP, though problems in this area are generally rare and accidental.
It is a common tactic for end customers to use BGP communities (usually ASN:70,80,90,100) to control the local preference the ISP assigns to advertised routes instead of using MED (the effect is similar). The community attribute is transitive, but communities applied by the customer very rarely become propagated outside the next-hop AS. Not all ISPs give out their communities to the public, while some other do.
The BGP Extended Community Attribute was added in 2006, in order to extend the range of such attributes and to provide a community attribute structuring by means of a type field. The extended format consists of one or two octets for the type field followed by seven or six octets for the respective community attribute content. The definition of this Extended Community Attribute is documented in RFC 4360. The IANA administers the registry for BGP Extended Communities Types. The Extended Communities Attribute itself is a transitive optional BGP attribute. However, a bit in the type field within the attribute decides whether the encoded extended community is of a transitive or non-transitive nature. The IANA registry therefore provides different number ranges for the attribute types. Due to the extended attribute range, its usage can be manifold. RFC 4360 exemplarly defines the "Two-Octet AS Specific Extended Community", the "IPv4 Address Specific Extended Community", the "Opaque Extended Community", the "Route Target Community", and the "Route Origin Community". A number of BGP QoS drafts also use this Extended Community Attribute structure for inter-domain QoS signalling.
Note: since RFC 7153, extended communities are compatible with 32 bits ASNs.
With the introduction of 32 bits AS numbers, some issues were immediately obvious with the community attribute that only defines a 16 bits ASN field, which prevents the matching between this field and the real ASN value. It is the reason why RFC 8092 and RFC 8195 introduce a Large Community attribute of 12 bytes, divided in three field of 4 bytes each (AS:function:parameter).
MEDs, defined in the main BGP standard, were originally intended to show to another neighbor AS the advertising AS's preference as to which of several links are preferred for inbound traffic. Another application of MEDs is to advertise the value, typically based on delay, of multiple AS that have presence at an IXP, that they impose to send traffic to some destination.
The following is the BGP version 4 message header format:
An autonomous system with internal BGP (iBGP) must have all of its iBGP peers connect to each other in a full mesh (where everyone speaks to everyone directly). This full-mesh configuration requires that each router maintain a session to every other router. In large networks, this number of sessions may degrade performance of routers, due to either a lack of memory, or high CPU process requirements.
Route reflectors reduce the number of connections required in an AS. A single router (or two for redundancy) can be made a route reflector: other routers in the AS need only be configured as peers to them. A route reflector offers an alternative to the logical full-mesh requirement of internal border gateway protocol (IBGP). A RR acts as a for IBGP sessions. The purpose of the RR is concentration. Multiple BGP routers can peer with a central point, the RR – acting as a route reflector server – rather than peer with every other router in a full mesh. All the other IBGP routers become route reflector clients.
This approach, similar to OSPF's DR/BDR feature, provides large networks with added IBGP scalability. In a fully meshed IBGP network of 10 routers, 90 individual CLI statements (spread throughout all routers in the topology) are needed just to define the remote-AS of each peer: this quickly becomes a headache to administer. A RR topology could cut these 90 statements down to 18, offering a viable solution for the larger networks administered by ISPs.
A route reflector is a single point of failure, therefore at least a second route reflector may be configured in order to provide redundancy. As it is an additional peer for the other 10 routers, it comes with the additional statement count to double that minus 2 of the single Route Reflector setup. An additional 11*2-2=20 statements in this case due to adding the additional Router. Additionally, in a BGP multipath Environment this also can benefit by adding local switching/Routing throughput if the RRs are acting as traditional Routers instead of just a dedicated Route Reflector Server role.
RR servers propagate routes inside the AS based on the following rules:
RR and its clients form a "Cluster". The "Cluster-ID" is then attached to every route advertised by RR to its client or nonclient peers. Cluster-ID is a cumulative, non-transitive BGP attribute and every RR MUST prepend the local CLUSTER_ID to the CLUSTER_LIST in order to avoid routing loops.
Route reflectors and confederations both reduce the number of iBGP peers to each router and thus reduce processing overhead. Route reflectors are a pure performance-enhancing technique, while confederations also can be used to implement more fine-grained policy.
Confederations are sets of autonomous systems. In common practice, only one of the confederation AS numbers is seen by the Internet as a whole. Confederations are used in very large networks where a large AS can be configured to encompass smaller more manageable internal ASs.
The confederated AS is composed of multiple ASs. Each confederated AS alone has iBGP fully meshed and has connections to other ASs inside the confederation. Even though these ASs have eBGP peers to ASs within the confederation, the ASs exchange routing as if they used iBGP. In this way, the confederation preserves next hop, metric, and local preference information. To the outside world, the confederation appears to be a single AS. With this solution, iBGP transit AS problems can be resolved as iBGP requires a full mesh between all BGP routers: large number of TCP sessions and unnecessary duplication of routing traffic.
Confederations can be used in conjunction with route reflectors. Both confederations and route reflectors can be subject to persistent oscillation unless specific design rules, affecting both BGP and the interior routing protocol, are followed.
However, these alternatives can introduce problems of their own, including the following:
Additionally, route reflectors and BGP confederations were not designed to ease BGP router configuration. Nevertheless, these are common tools for experienced BGP network architects. These tools may be combined, for example, as a hierarchy of route reflectors.
The routing tables managed by a BGP implementation are adjusted continually to reflect actual changes in the network, such as links breaking and being restored or routers going down and coming back up. In the network as a whole it is normal for these changes to happen almost continuously, but for any particular router or link, changes are supposed to be relatively infrequent. If a router is misconfigured or mismanaged then it may get into a rapid cycle between down and up states. This pattern of repeated withdrawal and re-announcement known as route flapping can cause excessive activity in all the other routers that know about the broken link, as the same route is continually injected and withdrawn from the routing tables. The BGP design is such that delivery of traffic may not function while routes are being updated. On the Internet, a BGP routing change may cause outages for several minutes.
A feature known as "route flap damping" (RFC 2439) is built into many BGP implementations in an attempt to mitigate the effects of route flapping. Without damping, the excessive activity can cause a heavy processing load on routers, which may in turn delay updates on other routes, and so affect overall routing stability. With damping, a route's flapping is exponentially decayed. At the first instance when a route becomes unavailable and quickly reappears, damping does not take effect, so as to maintain the normal fail-over times of BGP. At the second occurrence, BGP shuns that prefix for a certain length of time; subsequent occurrences are timed out exponentially. After the abnormalities have ceased and a suitable length of time has passed for the offending route, prefixes can be reinstated and its slate wiped clean. Damping can also mitigate denial of service attacks; damping timings are highly customizable.
It is also suggested in RFC 2439 (under "Design Choices -> Stability Sensitive Suppression of Route Advertisement") that route flap damping is a feature more desirable if implemented to Exterior Border Gateway Protocol Sessions (eBGP sessions or simply called exterior peers) and not on Interior Border Gateway Protocol Sessions (iBGP sessions or simply called internal peers); With this approach when a route flaps inside an autonomous system, it is not propagated to the external ASs flapping a route to an eBGP will have a chain of flapping for the particular route throughout the backbone. This method also successfully avoids the overhead of route flap damping for iBGP sessions.
However, subsequent research has shown that flap damping can actually lengthen convergence times in some cases, and can cause interruptions in connectivity even when links are not flapping. Moreover, as backbone links and router processors have become faster, some network architects have suggested that flap damping may not be as important as it used to be, since changes to the routing table can be handled much faster by routers. This has led the RIPE Routing Working Group to write that "with the current implementations of BGP flap damping, the application of flap damping in ISP networks is NOT recommended. ... If flap damping is implemented, the ISP operating that network will cause side-effects to their customers and the Internet users of their customers' content and services ... . These side-effects would quite likely be worse than the impact caused by simply not running flap damping at all." Improving stability without the problems of flap damping is the subject of current research.
One of the largest problems faced by BGP, and indeed the Internet infrastructure as a whole, is the growth of the Internet routing table. If the global routing table grows to the point where some older, less capable routers cannot cope with the memory requirements or the CPU load of maintaining the table, these routers will cease to be effective gateways between the parts of the Internet they connect. In addition, and perhaps even more importantly, larger routing tables take longer to stabilize (see above) after a major connectivity change, leaving network service unreliable, or even unavailable, in the interim.
Until late 2001, the global routing table was growing exponentially, threatening an eventual widespread breakdown of connectivity. In an attempt to prevent this, ISPs cooperated in keeping the global routing table as small as possible, by using Classless Inter-Domain Routing (CIDR) and route aggregation. While this slowed the growth of the routing table to a linear process for several years, with the expanded demand for multihoming by end user networks the growth was once again superlinear by the middle of 2004.
A Y2K-like overflow triggered in 2014 for those models that were not appropriately updated.
While a full IPv4 BGP table (512k day) is in excess of 512,000 prefixes, many older routers have a limit of 512k (512,000–524,288) routing table entries. On August 12, 2014, outages resulting from full tables hit eBay, LastPass and Microsoft Azure among others. A number of Cisco routers commonly in use have TCAM, a form of high-speed content-addressable memory, for storing BGP advertised routes. On impacted routers, the TCAM is default allocated to 512k entries for IPv4 routes, and 512k entries for IPv6 routes. While the reported number of IPv6 advertised routes was only about 20k, the number of advertised IPv4 routes reached the default limit, causing a spillover effect as routers attempted to compensate for the issue by using slow software routing (as opposed to fast hardware routing via TCAM). The main method for dealing with this issue involves operators changing the TCAM allocation to allow more IPv4 entries, by reallocating some of the TCAM reserved for IPv6 routes. This requires a reboot on most routers. The 512k problem was predicted in advance by a number of IT professionals.
The actual allocations which pushed the number of routes above 512k was the announcement of about 15,000 new routes in short order, starting at 07:48 UTC. Almost all of these routes were to Verizon Autonomous Systems 701 and 705, created as a result of deaggregation of larger blocks, introducing thousands of new routes, and making the routing table reach 515,000 entries. The new routes appear to have been reaggregated within 5 minutes, but instability across the Internet apparently continued for a number of hours. Even if Verizon had not caused the routing table to exceed 512k entries in the short spike, it would have happened soon anyway through natural growth.
Route summarization is often used to improve aggregation of the BGP global routing table, thereby reducing the necessary table size in routers of an AS. Consider AS1 has been allocated the big address space of , this would be counted as one route in the table, but due to customer requirement or traffic engineering purposes, AS1 wants to announce smaller, more specific routes of , , and . The prefix does not have any hosts so AS1 does not announce a specific route . This all counts as AS1 announcing four routes.
AS2 will see the four routes from AS1 (, , , and ) and it is up to the routing policy of AS2 to decide whether or not to take a copy of the four routes or, as overlaps all the other specific routes, to just store the summary, .
If AS2 wants to send data to prefix , it will be sent to the routers of AS1 on route . At AS1's router, it will either be dropped or a destination unreachable ICMP message will be sent back, depending on the configuration of AS1's routers.
If AS1 later decides to drop the route , leaving , , and , AS1 will drop the number of routes it announces to three. AS2 will see the three routes, and depending on the routing policy of AS2, it will store a copy of the three routes, or aggregate the prefix's and to , thereby reducing the number of routes AS2 stores to only two: and .
If AS2 wants to send data to prefix , it will be dropped or a destination unreachable ICMP message will be sent back at the routers of AS2 (not AS1 as before), because would not be in the routing table.
The RFC 1771 ("A Border Gateway Protocol 4 (BGP-4)") planned the coding of AS numbers on 16 bits, for 64510 possible public AS, since ASN 64512 to 65534 were reserved for private use (0 and 65535 being forbidden). In 2011, only 15000 AS numbers were still available, and projections were envisioning a complete depletion of available AS numbers in September 2013.
RFC 6793 extends AS coding from 16 to 32 bits (keeping the 16 bits AS range 0 to 65535, and its reserved AS numbers), which now allows up to 4 billion available AS. An additional private AS range is also defined in RFC 6996 (from 4200000000 to 4294967294, 4294967295 being forbidden by RFC 7300).
To allow the traversal of router groups not able to manage those new ASNs, the new attribute OT AS4_PATH is used.
32 bits ASN assignments started in 2007.
Another factor causing this growth of the routing table is the need for load balancing of multi-homed networks. It is not a trivial task to balance the inbound traffic to a multi-homed network across its multiple inbound paths, due to limitation of the BGP route selection process. For a multi-homed network, if it announces the same network blocks across all of its BGP peers, the result may be that one or several of its inbound links become congested while the other links remain under-utilized, because external networks all picked that set of congested paths as optimal. Like most other routing protocols, BGP does not detect congestion.
To work around this problem, BGP administrators of that multihomed network may divide a large contiguous IP address block into smaller blocks and tweak the route announcement to make different blocks look optimal on different paths, so that external networks will choose a different path to reach different blocks of that multi-homed network. Such cases will increase the number of routes as seen on the global BGP table.
One method growing in popularity to address the load balancing issue is to deploy BGP/LISP (Locator/Identifier Separation Protocol) gateways within an Internet exchange point to allow ingress traffic engineering across multiple links. This technique does not increase the number of routes seen on the global BGP table.
By design, routers running BGP accept advertised routes from other BGP routers by default. This allows for automatic and decentralized routing of traffic across the Internet, but it also leaves the Internet potentially vulnerable to accidental or malicious disruption, known as BGP hijacking. Due to the extent to which BGP is embedded in the core systems of the Internet, and the number of different networks operated by many different organizations which collectively make up the Internet, correcting this vulnerability (such as by introducing the use of cryptographic keys to verify the identity of BGP routers) is a technically and economically challenging problem.
An extension to BGP is the use of multipathing this typically requires identical MED, weight, origin, and AS-path although some implementations provide the ability to relax the AS-path checking to only expect an equal path length rather than the actual AS numbers in the path being expected to match too. This can then be extended further with features like Cisco's dmzlink-bw which enables a ratio of traffic sharing based on bandwidth values configured on individual links.
Multiprotocol Extensions for BGP (MBGP), sometimes referred to as Multiprotocol BGP or Multicast BGP and defined in IETF RFC 4760, is an extension to (BGP) that allows different types of addresses (known as address families) to be distributed in parallel. Whereas standard BGP supports only IPv4 unicast addresses, Multiprotocol BGP supports IPv4 and IPv6 addresses and it supports unicast and multicast variants of each. Multiprotocol BGP allows information about the topology of IP multicast-capable routers to be exchanged separately from the topology of normal IPv4 unicast routers. Thus, it allows a multicast routing topology different from the unicast routing topology. Although MBGP enables the exchange of inter-domain multicast routing information, other protocols such as the Protocol Independent Multicast family are needed to build trees and forward multicast traffic.
Multiprotocol BGP is also widely deployed in case of MPLS L3 VPN, to exchange VPN labels learned for the routes from the customer sites over the MPLS network, in order to distinguish between different customer sites when the traffic from the other customer sites comes to the Provider Edge router (PE router) for routing.
BGP4 is standard for Internet routing and required of most Internet service providers (ISPs) to establish routing between one another. Very large private IP networks use BGP internally. An example is the joining of a number of large Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) networks, when OSPF by itself does not scale to the size required. Another reason to use BGP is multihoming a network for better redundancy, either to multiple access points of a single ISP or to multiple ISPs.
Routers, especially small ones intended for Small Office/Home Office (SOHO) use, may not include BGP software. Some SOHO routers simply are not capable of running BGP / using BGP routing tables of any size. Other commercial routers may need a specific software executable image that contains BGP, or a license that enables it. Open source packages that run BGP include GNU Zebra, Quagga, OpenBGPD, BIRD, XORP, and Vyatta. Devices marketed as Layer 3 switches are less likely to support BGP than devices marketed as routers, but high-end Layer 3 Switches usually can run BGP.
Products marketed as switches may or may not have a size limitation on BGP tables, such as 20,000 routes, far smaller than a full Internet table plus internal routes. These devices, however, may be perfectly reasonable and useful when used for BGP routing of some smaller part of the network, such as a confederation-AS representing one of several smaller enterprises that are linked, by a BGP backbone of backbones, or a small enterprise that announces routes to an ISP but only accepts a default route and perhaps a small number of aggregated routes.
A BGP router used only for a network with a single point of entry to the Internet may have a much smaller routing table size (and hence RAM and CPU requirement) than a multihomed network. Even simple multihoming can have modest routing table size. See RFC 4098 for vendor-independent performance parameters for single BGP router convergence in the control plane. The actual amount of memory required in a BGP router depends on the amount of BGP information exchanged with other BGP speakers and the way in which the particular router stores BGP information. The router may have to keep more than one copy of a route, so it can manage different policies for route advertising and acceptance to a specific neighboring AS. The term view is often used for these different policy relationships on a running router.
If one router implementation takes more memory per route than another implementation, this may be a legitimate design choice, trading processing speed against memory. A full IPv4 BGP table is in excess of 590,000 prefixes. Large ISPs may add another 50% for internal and customer routes. Again depending on implementation, separate tables may be kept for each view of a different peer AS.
Notable free and open source implementations of BGP include:
Systems for testing BGP conformance, load or stress performance come from vendors such as: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38893 |
Abolitionism
Abolitionism, or the abolitionist movement, was the movement to end slavery. This term can be used both formally and informally. In Western Europe and the Americas, abolitionism was a historic movement that sought to end the Atlantic slave trade and set slaves free.
King Charles I of Spain, usually known as Emperor Charles V, was following the example of Louis X of France, who had abolished slavery within the Kingdom of France in 1315. He passed a law which would have abolished colonial slavery in 1542, although this law was not passed in the largest colonial states, and it was not enforced as a result. In the late 17th century, the Roman Catholic Church officially condemned the slave trade in response to a plea by Lourenço da Silva de Mendouça, and it was also vehemently condemned by Pope Gregory XVI in 1839. The abolitionist movement only started in the late 18th century, however, when English and American Quakers began to question the morality of slavery. James Oglethorpe was among the first to articulate the Enlightenment case against slavery, banning it in the Province of Georgia on humanitarian grounds, and arguing against it in Parliament, and eventually encouraging his friends Granville Sharp and Hannah More to vigorously pursue the cause. Soon after his death in 1785, Sharp and More united with William Wilberforce and others in forming the Clapham Sect.
The Somersett Case in 1772, in which a fugitive slave was freed with the judgement that slavery did not exist under English common law, helped launch the British movement to abolish slavery. Though anti-slavery sentiments were widespread by the late 18th century, the colonies and emerging nations that used slave labor continued to do so: Dutch, French, British, Spanish and Portuguese territories in the West Indies, South America, and the Southern United States. After the American Revolution established the United States, northern states, beginning with Pennsylvania in 1780, passed legislation during the next two decades abolishing slavery, sometimes by gradual emancipation. Massachusetts ratified a constitution that declared all men equal; freedom suits challenging slavery based on this principle brought an end to slavery in the state. Vermont, which existed as an unrecognized state from 1777 to 1791, abolished adult slavery in 1777. In other states, such as Virginia, similar declarations of rights were interpreted by the courts as not applicable to Africans and African Americans. During the following decades, the abolitionist movement grew in northern states, and Congress regulated the expansion of slavery in new states admitted to the union.
In 1787 the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade was formed in London. Revolutionary France abolished slavery throughout its empire in 1794, although it was restored in 1802 by Napoleon as part of a program to ensure sovereignty over its colonies. Haiti (then Saint-Domingue) formally declared independence from France in 1804 and became the first sovereign nation in the Western Hemisphere to unconditionally abolish slavery in the modern era. The northern states in the U.S. all abolished slavery by 1804. The United Kingdom (then including Ireland) and the United States outlawed the international slave trade in 1807, after which Britain led efforts to block slave ships. Britain abolished slavery throughout its empire by the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (with the notable exception of India), the French colonies re-abolished it in 1848 and the U.S. abolished slavery in 1865 with the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In Eastern Europe, groups organized to abolish the enslavement of the Roma in Wallachia and Moldavia, and to emancipate the serfs in Russia. Slavery was declared illegal in 1948 under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Mauritania was the last country to abolish slavery, with a presidential decree in 1981. Today, child and adult slavery and forced labour are illegal in almost all countries, as well as being against international law, but human trafficking for labour and for sexual bondage continues to affect tens of millions of adults and children.
In 1315, Louis X, king of France, published a decree proclaiming that "France signifies freedom" and that any slave setting foot on the French ground should be freed. This prompted subsequent governments to circumscribe slavery in the overseas colonies.
Some cases of African slaves freed by setting foot on the French soil were recorded such as this example of a Norman slave merchant who tried to sell slaves in Bordeaux in 1571. He was arrested and his slaves were freed according to a declaration of the Parlement of Guyenne which stated that slavery was intolerable in France. Born into slavery in Saint Domingue, Thomas-Alexandre Dumas became free when his father brought him to France in 1776.
As in other New World colonies, the French relied on the Atlantic slave trade for labour for their sugar cane plantations in their Caribbean colonies; the French West Indies. In addition, French colonists in "Louisiane" in North America held slaves, particularly in the South around New Orleans, where they established sugarcane plantations.
Louis XIV's "Code Noir" regulated the slave trade and institution in the colonies. It gave unparalleled rights to slaves. It included the right to marry, gather publicly, or take Sundays off. Although the "Code Noir" authorized and codified cruel corporal punishment against slaves under certain conditions, it forbade slave owners to torture them or to separate families. It also demanded enslaved Africans receive instruction in the Catholic faith, implying that Africans were human beings endowed with a soul, a fact French law did not admit until then. It resulted in a far higher percentage of blacks being free in 1830 (13.2% in Louisiana compared to 0.8% in Mississippi). They were on average exceptionally literate, with a significant number of them owning businesses, properties, and even slaves. Other free people of colour, such as Julien Raimond, spoke out against slavery.
The "Code Noir" also forbade interracial marriages, but it was often ignored in French colonial society and the mulattoes became an intermediate caste between whites and blacks, while in the British colonies mulattoes and blacks were considered equal and discriminated against equally.
During the Age of Enlightenment, many philosophers wrote pamphlets against slavery and its moral and economical justifications, including Montesquieu in "The Spirit of the Laws" (1748) and Denis Diderot in the "Encyclopédie". In 1788, Jacques Pierre Brissot founded the Society of the Friends of the Blacks ("Société des Amis des Noirs") to work for the abolition of slavery. After the Revolution, on 4 April 1792, France granted free people of colour full citizenship.
The slave revolt, in the largest Caribbean French colony of Saint-Domingue in 1791, was the beginning of what became the Haitian Revolution led by formerly enslaved people like Georges Biassou, Toussaint L'Ouverture, and Jean-Jacques Dessalines. The rebellion swept through the north of the colony, and with it came freedom to thousands of enslaved blacks, but also violence and death. In 1793, French Civil Commissioners in St. Domingue and abolitionists, Léger-Félicité Sonthonax and Étienne Polverel, issued the first emancipation proclamation of the modern world (Decree of 16 Pluviôse An II). The Convention sent them to safeguard the allegiance of the population to revolutionary France. The proclamation resulted in crucial military strategy as it gradually brought most of the black troops into the French fold and kept the colony under the French flag for most of the conflict. The connection with France lasted until blacks and free people of colour formed L'armée indigène in 1802 to resist Napoleon's Expédition de Saint-Domingue. Victory over the French in the decisive Battle of Vertières finally led to independence and the creation of present Haiti in 1804.
The Convention, the first elected Assembly of the First Republic (1792–1804), on 4 February 1794, under the leadership of Maximilien Robespierre, abolished slavery in law in France and its colonies. Abbé Grégoire and the Society of the Friends of the Blacks were part of the abolitionist movement, which had laid important groundwork in building anti-slavery sentiment in the metropole. The first article of the law stated that "Slavery was abolished" in the French colonies, while the second article stated that "slave-owners would be indemnified" with financial compensation for the value of their slaves. The French constitution passed in 1795 included in the declaration of the Rights of Man that slavery was abolished.
During the French Revolutionary Wars, French slave-owners massively joined the counter-revolution and, through the Whitehall Accord, they threatened to move the French Caribbean colonies under British control, as Great Britain still allowed slavery. Fearing secession from these islands, successfully lobbied by planters and concerned about revenues from the West Indies, and influenced by the slaveholder family of his wife, Napoleon Bonaparte decided to re-establish slavery after becoming First Consul. He promulgated the law of 20 May 1802 and sent military governors and troops to the colonies to impose it. On 10 May 1802, Colonel Delgrès launched a rebellion in Guadeloupe against Napoleon's representative, General Richepanse. The rebellion was repressed, and slavery was re-established. The news of this event sparked another wave of rebellion in Saint-Domingue. Although from 1802, Napoleon sent more than 20,000 troops to the island, two-thirds died mostly due to yellow fever. He withdrew the remaining 7,000 troops and slaves achieved an independent republic they called Haïti in 1804. Seeing the failure of the Saint-Domingue expedition, in 1803 Napoleon decided to sell the Louisiana Territory to the United States. The French governments initially refused to recognize Haiti. It forced the nation to pay a substantial amount of reparations (which it could ill afford) for losses during the revolution and did not recognize its government until 1825.
France was a signatory to the first multilateral treaty for the suppression of the slave trade, the Treaty for the Suppression of the African Slave Trade (1841), but the king, Louis Philippe I, declined to ratify it.
On 27 April 1848, under the Second Republic (1848–52), the decree-law of Schœlcher abolished slavery in the remaining colonies. The state bought the slaves from the "colons" (white colonists; "Békés" in Creole), and then freed them.
At about the same time, France started colonizing Africa and gained possession of much of West Africa by 1900. In 1905, the French abolished slavery in most of French West Africa. The French also attempted to abolish Tuareg slavery following the Kaocen Revolt. In the region of the Sahel, slavery has however long persisted.
Passed on 10 May 2001, the Taubira law officially acknowledges slavery and the Atlantic Slave Trade as a crime against humanity. 10 May was chosen as the day dedicated to recognition of the crime of slavery.
The last known form of enforced servitude of adults (villeinage) had disappeared in England by the beginning of the 17th century. In 1569 a court considered the case of Cartwright, who had bought a slave from Russia. The court ruled English law could not recognize slavery, as it was never established officially. This ruling was overshadowed by later developments; It was upheld in 1700 by the Lord Chief Justice John Holt when he ruled that a slave became free as soon as he arrived in England. During the English Civil Wars of the mid-seventeenth century, sectarian radicals challenged slavery and other threats to personal freedom. Their ideas influenced many antislavery thinkers in the eighteenth century.
In addition to English colonists importing slaves to the North American colonies, by the 18th century, traders began to import slaves from Africa, India and East Asia (where they were trading) to London and Edinburgh to work as personal servants. Men who migrated to the North American colonies often took their East Indian slaves or servants with them, as East Indians have been documented in colonial records.
Some of the first freedom suits, court cases in the British Isles to challenge the legality of slavery, took place in Scotland in 1755 and 1769. The cases were "Montgomery v. Sheddan" (1755) and "Spens v. Dalrymple" (1769). Each of the slaves had been baptized in Scotland and challenged the legality of slavery. They set the precedent of legal procedure in British courts that would later lead to successful outcomes for the plaintiffs. In these cases, deaths of the plaintiff and defendant, respectively, brought an end before court decisions.
African slaves were not bought or sold in London but were brought by masters from other areas. Together with people from other nations, especially non-Christian, Africans were considered foreigners, not able to be English subjects. At the time, England had no naturalization procedure. The African slaves' legal status was unclear until 1772 and Somersett's Case, when the fugitive slave James Somersett forced a decision by the courts. Somersett had escaped, and his master, Charles Steuart, had him captured and imprisoned on board a ship, intending to ship him to Jamaica to be resold into slavery. While in London, Somersett had been baptized; three godparents issued a writ of "habeas corpus". As a result, Lord Mansfield, Chief Justice of the Court of the King's Bench, had to judge whether Somersett's abduction was lawful or not under English Common Law. No legislation had ever been passed to establish slavery in England. The case received national attention, and five advocates supported the action on behalf of Somersett.
In his judgement of 22 June 1772, Mansfield declared:
The state of slavery is of such a nature that it is incapable of being introduced on any reasons, moral or political, but only by positive law, which preserves its force long after the reasons, occasions, and time itself from whence it was created, is erased from memory. It is so odious, that nothing can be suffered to support it, but positive law. Whatever inconveniences, therefore, may follow from a decision, I cannot say this case is allowed or approved by the law of England; and therefore the black must be discharged.
Although the exact legal implications of the judgement are unclear when analysed by lawyers, the judgement was generally taken at the time to have determined that slavery did not exist under English common law and was thus prohibited in England. The decision did not apply to the British overseas territories; by then, for example, the American colonies had established slavery by positive laws. Somersett's case became a significant part of the common law of slavery in the English-speaking world and it helped launch the movement to abolish slavery.
After reading about Somersett's Case, Joseph Knight, an enslaved African who had been purchased by his master John Wedderburn in Jamaica and brought to Scotland, left him. Married and with a child, he filed a freedom suit, on the grounds that he could not be held as a slave in Great Britain. In the case of "Knight v. Wedderburn" (1778), Wedderburn said that Knight owed him "perpetual servitude". The Court of Session of Scotland ruled against him, saying that chattel slavery was not recognized under the law of Scotland, and slaves could seek court protection to leave a master or avoid being forcibly removed from Scotland to be returned to slavery in the colonies.
But at the same time, legally mandated, hereditary slavery of Scots persons in Scotland had existed from 1606 and continued until 1799, when colliers and salters were emancipated by an act of the Parliament of Great Britain (39 Geo.III. c. 56). Skilled workers, they were restricted to a place and could be sold with the works. A prior law enacted in 1775 (15 Geo. III. c. 28) was intended to end what the act referred to as "a state of slavery and bondage," but that was ineffective, necessitating the 1799 act.
In the 1776 book "The Wealth of Nations", Adam Smith argued for the abolition of slavery on economic grounds. Smith pointed out that slavery incurred security, housing, and food costs that the use of free labor would not, and opined that free workers would be more productive because they would have personal economic incentives to work harder. The death rate (and thus repurchase cost) of slaves was also high, and people are less productive when not allowed to choose the type of work they prefer, are illiterate, and are forced to live and work in miserable and unhealthy conditions. The free labor markets and international free trade that Smith preferred would also result in different prices and allocations that Smith believed would be more efficient and productive for consumers.
Prior to the American Revolution, there were significant initiatives in the American colonies that led to the abolitionist movement. Benjamin Kent was the lawyer who took on most of the cases of slaves suing their masters for personal illegal enslavement. He was the first lawyer to successfully establish a slave's freedom. In addition, Brigadier General Samuel Birch created the Book of Negroes, to establish which slaves were free after the war.
In 1783, an anti-slavery movement began among the British public to end slavery throughout the British Empire. In 1785, the English poet William Cowper wrote:
After the formation of the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade in 1787, William Wilberforce led the cause of abolition through the parliamentary campaign. Thomas Clarkson became the group's most prominent researcher, gathering vast amounts of data on the trade. One aspect of abolitionism during this period was the effective use of images such as the famous Josiah Wedgwood "Am I Not A Man and a Brother?" anti-slavery medallion of 1787. Clarkson described the medallion as "promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom". The Slave Trade Act was passed by the British Parliament on 25 March 1807, making the slave trade illegal throughout the British Empire. Britain used its influence to coerce other countries to agree to treaties to end their slave trade and allow the Royal Navy to seize their slave ships. Britain enforced the abolition of the trade because the act made trading slaves within British territories illegal. However, the act repealed the Amelioration Act 1798 which attempted to improve conditions for slaves. The end of the slave trade did not end slavery as a whole. Slavery was still a common practice.
In the 1820s, the abolitionist movement revived to campaign against the institution of slavery itself. In 1823 the first Anti-Slavery Society was founded. Many of its members had previously campaigned against the slave trade. On 28 August 1833, the Slavery Abolition Act was given Royal Assent, which paved the way for the abolition of slavery throughout the British Empire, which was substantially achieved in 1838. In 1839, the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was formed by Joseph Sturge, which attempted to outlaw slavery worldwide and also to pressure the government to help enforce the suppression of the slave trade by declaring slave traders to be pirates. The world's oldest international human rights organization, it continues today as Anti-Slavery International. Thomas Clarkson was the key speaker at the World Anti-Slavery Convention it held in London in 1840. In 1846 Clarkson was host to Frederick Douglass, a prominent African-American abolitionist, on his first visit to England. At risk after passage in the US of the Fugitive Slave Law of 1850, Douglass became legally free in England when British friends raised the money and purchased his freedom from his American owner.
In the principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia, the government held slavery of the Roma (often referred to as Gypsies) as legal at the beginning of the 19th century. The progressive pro-European and anti-Ottoman movement, which gradually gained power in the two principalities, also worked to abolish that slavery. Between 1843 and 1855, the principalities emancipated all of the 250,000 enslaved Roma people.
Ahmad I ibn Mustafa, Bey (leader) of Tunis, started measures to abolish slavery in Tunisia in 1841. Then, slavery was completely abolished in 1846.
Bartolomé de las Casas was a 16th-century Spanish Dominican priest, the first resident Bishop of Chiapas (Central America, today Mexico). As a settler in the New World he witnessed and opposed the poor treatment and virtual slavery of the Native Americans by the Spanish colonists, under the encomienda system. He advocated before King Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor on behalf of rights for the natives.
Las Casas for 20 years worked to get African slaves imported to replace natives; African slavery was everywhere and no one talked of ridding the New World of it, though France had abolished slavery in France itself and there was talk in other countries about doing the same. In fact, from a purely economic point of view Africans were better slaves, stronger and healthier, because the "Middle Passage" had selected for these traits. However, Las Casas had a late change of heart, and became an advocate for the Africans in the colonies.
His book, "A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies", contributed to Spanish passage of colonial legislation known as the New Laws of 1542, which abolished native slavery for the first time in European colonial history. It ultimately led to the Valladolid debate, the first European debate about the rights of colonized people.
During the early 19th century, slavery expanded rapidly in Brazil, Cuba, and the United States, while at the same time the new republics of mainland Spanish America became committed to the gradual abolition of slavery. During the Spanish American wars for independence (1810–1826), slavery was abolished in most of Latin America, though it continued until 1873 in Puerto Rico, 1886 in Cuba, and 1888 in Brazil (where it was abolished by the "Lei Áurea", the "Golden Law"). Chile declared freedom of wombs in 1811, followed by the United Provinces of the River Plate in 1813, Colombia and Venezuela in 1821, but without abolishing slavery completely. While Chile abolished slavery in 1823, Argentina did so with the signing of the Argentine Constitution of 1853. Peru abolished slavery in 1854. Colombia abolished slavery in 1851. Slavery was abolished in Uruguay during the "Guerra Grande", by both the government of Fructuoso Rivera and the government in exile of Manuel Oribe.
Throughout the growth of slavery in the American South, Nova Scotia became a destination for black refugees leaving Southern Colonies and United States via the Underground Railroad. While many blacks who arrived in Nova Scotia during the American Revolution were free, others were not. Black slaves also arrived in Nova Scotia as the property of White American Loyalists. In 1772, prior to the American Revolution, Britain outlawed the slave trade in the British Isles followed by the Knight v. Wedderburn decision in Scotland in 1778. This decision, in turn, influenced the colony of Nova Scotia. In 1788, abolitionist James Drummond MacGregor from Pictou published the first anti-slavery literature in Canada and began purchasing slaves' freedom and chastising his colleagues in the Presbyterian church who owned slaves. In 1790 John Burbidge freed his slaves. Led by Richard John Uniacke, in 1787, 1789 and again on 11 January 1808, the Nova Scotian legislature refused to legalize slavery. Two chief justices, Thomas Andrew Lumisden Strange (1790–1796) and Sampson Salter Blowers (1797–1832) were instrumental in freeing slaves from their owners in Nova Scotia. They were held in high regard in the colony. By the end of the War of 1812 and the arrival of the Black Refugees, there were few slaves left in Nova Scotia. The Slave Trade Act outlawed the slave trade in the British Empire in 1807 and the Slavery Abolition Act of 1833 outlawed slavery all together.
With slaves escaping to New York and New England, legislation for gradual emancipation was passed in Upper Canada (1793) and Lower Canada (1803). In Upper Canada the Assembly ruled that no slaves could be imported; slaves already in the province would remain enslaved until death, no new slaves could be brought into Upper Canada, and children born to female slaves would be slaves but must be freed at the age of 25. Under the auspices of John Graves Simcoe, the Act Against Slavery of 1793 was legislated, and was the first legislation passed opposing slavery in the British Empire. In practice however, some slaves continued to live in bondage until abolished in the entire British Empire in the 1830s.
The historian James M. McPherson defines an abolitionist "as one who before the Civil War had agitated for the immediate, unconditional, and total abolition of slavery in the United States". He does not include antislavery activists such as Abraham Lincoln or the Republican Party, which called for the gradual ending of slavery.
The first attempts to end slavery in the British/American colonies came from Thomas Jefferson and some of his contemporaries. Despite the fact that Jefferson was a lifelong slaveholder, he included strong anti-slavery language in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but other delegates took it out. Benjamin Franklin, also a slaveholder for much of his life, became a leading member of the Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery, the first recognized organization for abolitionists in the United States. Following the American Revolutionary War, Northern states abolished slavery, beginning with the 1777 Constitution of Vermont, followed by Pennsylvania's gradual emancipation act in 1780. Other states with more of an economic interest in slaves, such as New York and New Jersey, also passed gradual emancipation laws, and by 1804, all the Northern states had abolished it, although this did not mean that existing slaves were freed. Some had to work without wages as "indentured servants" for two more decades, although they could no longer be sold.
Also in the post-Revolutionary years, individual slaveholders, especially in the Upper South, manumitted slaves, sometimes in their wills. (In the Deep South manumission was made difficult; in South Carolina every manumission required legislative approval, and the freed slaves had to leave the state immediately.) Many noted that they had been moved by the revolutionary ideals of the equality of men. The number of free blacks as a proportion of the black population increased from less than one percent to nearly ten percent from 1790 to 1810 in the Upper South as a result of these actions.
As President, on 2 March 1807, Jefferson signed the Act Prohibiting Importation of Slaves and it took effect in 1808, which was the earliest allowed under the Constitution. In 1820 he privately supported the Missouri Compromise, believing it would help to end slavery. He left the anti-slavery struggle to younger men after that.
In the 1850s in the fifteen states constituting the American South, slavery was legally established. While it was fading away in the cities as well as in the border states, it remained strong in plantation areas that grew cotton for export, or sugar, tobacco, or hemp. According to the 1860 United States Census, the slave population in the United States had grown to four million. American abolitionism was based in the North, although there were anti-abolitionist riots in several cities. In the South abolitionism was illegal, and abolitionist publications, like The Liberator, could not be sent to Southern post offices. Amos Dresser, a white alumnus of Lane Theological Seminary, was publicly whipped in Nashville, Tennessee for possessing abolitionist publications.
Abolitionism in the United States became a popular expression of moralism, operating in tandem with other social reform efforts, such as the temperance movement, and much more problematically, the women's suffrage movement.
The white abolitionist movement in the North was led by social reformers, especially William Lloyd Garrison, founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; writers such as John Greenleaf Whittier and Harriet Beecher Stowe. Black activists included former slaves such as Frederick Douglass; and free blacks such as the brothers Charles Henry Langston and John Mercer Langston, who helped found the Ohio Anti-Slavery Society. Some abolitionists said that slavery was criminal and a sin; they also criticized slave owners of using black women as concubines and taking sexual advantage of them.
The Republican Party wanted to achieve the gradual extinction of slavery by market forces, because its members believed that free labor was superior to slave labor. Southern leaders said that the Republican policy of blocking the expansion of slavery into the West made them second-class citizens, and they also said it challenged their autonomy. With the 1860 presidential victory of Abraham Lincoln, seven Deep South states whose economy was based on cotton and slavery decided to secede and form a new nation. The American Civil War broke out in April 1861 with the firing on Fort Sumter in South Carolina. When Lincoln called for troops to suppress the rebellion, four more slave states seceded. Meanwhile, four slave states (Maryland, Missouri, Delaware, and Kentucky) chose to remain in the Union.
On 16 April 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the District of Columbia Compensated Emancipation Act, abolishing slavery in Washington D. C. Meanwhile, the Union suddenly found themselves dealing with a steady stream of escaped slaves from the South rushing to Union lines. In response, Congress passed the Confiscation Acts, which essentially declared escaped slaves from the South to be confiscated war property, and thus did not have to returned to their masters in the Confederacy. Although the initial act did not mention emancipation, the second Confiscation act, passed on July 17, 1862, stated that escaped or liberated slaves belonging to anyone who participated in or supported the rebellion "shall be deemed captives of war, and shall be forever free of their servitude, and not again held as slaves." Later on, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was an executive order of the U.S. government issued on 1 January 1863, changing the legal status of 3 million slaves in designated areas of the Confederacy from "slave" to "free". Slaves were legally freed by the Proclamation and became actually free by escaping to federal lines, or by advances of federal troops. Many served the federal army as teamsters, cooks, laundresses, and laborers, as well as scouts, spies, and guides. Confederate General Robert Lee once said "The chief source of information to the enemy is through our negroes." Plantation owners, realizing the emancipation would destroy their economic system, sometimes moved their slaves as far as possible out of reach of the Union army. By "Juneteenth" (19 June 1865, in Texas), the Union Army controlled all of the Confederacy and liberated all its slaves. The owners were never compensated, nor were freed slaves compensated by former owners.
The border states were exempt from the Emancipation Proclamation, but they too (except Delaware) began their own emancipation programmes. When the Union Army entered Confederate areas, thousands of slaves escaped to freedom behind Union Army lines, and in 1863 many men started serving as the United States Colored Troops.
As the war dragged on, both the federal government and Union states continued to take measures against slavery. In June 1864, the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850, which required free states to aid in returning escaped slaves to slave states, was repealed. The state of Maryland abolished slavery on 13 October 1864. Missouri abolished slavery on 11 January 1865. West Virginia, which had been admitted to the Union in 1863 as a slave state, but on the condition of gradual emancipation, fully abolished slavery on 3 February 1865. The 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution took effect in December 1865, 7 months after the end of the war, and finally ended slavery throughout the United States. It also abolished slavery among the Indian tribes, including the Alaska tribes that became part of the U.S. in 1867.
White and Black opponents of slavery, who played a considerable role in the movement. This list includes some escaped slaves, who were traditionally called abolitionists.
In societies with large proportions of the population working in conditions of slavery or serfdom, stroke-of-the-pen laws declaring abolition can have thorough-going social, economic and political consequences. Issues of compensation/redemption, land-redistribution and citizenship can prove intractable. For example:
Emancipation proved arguably less disruptive in areas such as Prussia or Sweden.
People in modern times have commemorated abolitionist movements and the abolition of slavery in different ways around the world. The United Nations General Assembly declared 2004 the International Year to Commemorate the Struggle against Slavery and its Abolition. This proclamation marked the bicentenary of the proclamation of the first modern slavery-free state, Haiti. Numerous exhibitions, events and research programmes became associated with the initiative.
2007 witnessed major exhibitions in British museums and galleries to mark the anniversary of the 1807 abolition act – 1807 Commemorated 2008 marked the 201st anniversary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade in the British Empire. It also marked the 175th anniversary of the abolition of slavery in the British Empire.
The Faculty of Law at the University of Ottawa held a major international conference entitled, "Routes to Freedom: Reflections on the Bicentenary of the Abolition of the Slave Trade", from 14 to 16 March 2008.
On 10 December 1948, the General Assembly of the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Article 4 states:
No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Although outlawed in most countries, slavery is nonetheless practised secretly in many parts of the world. Enslavement still takes place in the United States, Europe, and Latin America, as well as parts of Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia. There are an estimated 27 million victims of slavery worldwide. In Mauritania alone, estimates are that up to 600,000 men, women and children, or 20% of the population, are enslaved. Many of them are used as bonded labour.
Modern-day abolitionists have emerged over the last several years, as awareness of slavery around the world has grown, with groups such as Anti-Slavery International, the American Anti-Slavery Group, International Justice Mission, and Free the Slaves working to rid the world of slavery.
In the United States, The Action Group to End Human Trafficking and Modern-Day Slavery is a coalition of NGOs, foundations and corporations working to develop a policy agenda for abolishing slavery and human trafficking. Since 1997, the United States Department of Justice has, through work with the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, prosecuted six individuals in Florida on charges of slavery in the agricultural industry. These prosecutions have led to freedom for over 1000 enslaved workers in the tomato and orange fields of South Florida. This is only one example of the contemporary fight against slavery worldwide. Slavery exists most widely in agricultural labour, apparel and sex industries, and service jobs in some regions.
In 2000, the United States passed the Victims of Trafficking and Violence Protection Act (TVPA) "to combat trafficking in persons, especially into the sex trade, slavery, and involuntary servitude." The TVPA also "created new law enforcement tools to strengthen the prosecution and punishment of traffickers, making human trafficking a Federal crime with severe penalties."
In 2014, for the first time in history major Anglican, Catholic, and Orthodox Christian leaders, as well as Jewish, Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist leaders, met to sign a shared commitment against modern-day slavery; the declaration they signed calls for the elimination of slavery and human trafficking by the year 2020. The signatories were: Pope Francis, Mātā Amṛtānandamayī (also known as Amma), Bhikkhuni Thich Nu Chân Không (representing Zen Master Thích Nhất Hạnh), Datuk K. Sri Dhammaratana, Chief High Priest of Malaysia, Rabbi and rector of the Seminario Rabínico Latinoamericano in Buenos Aires, Dr. Abraham Skorka, Rabbi Dr. David Rosen, Dr. Abbas Abdalla Abbas Soliman, Undersecretary of State of Al Azhar Alsharif (representing Mohamed Ahmed El-Tayeb, Grand Imam of Al-Azhar), Grand Ayatollah Mohammad Taqi al-Modarresi, Sheikh Naziyah Razzaq Jaafar, Special advisor of Grand Ayatollah (representing Grand Ayatollah Sheikh Basheer Hussain al Najafi), Sheikh Omar Abboud, Justin Welby, Archbishop of Canterbury, and Metropolitan Emmanuel of France (representing Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew.)
The United States Department of State publishes the annual Trafficking in Persons Report, identifying countries as either Tier 1, Tier 2, Tier 2 Watch List or Tier 3, depending upon three factors: "(1) The extent to which the country is a country of origin, transit, or destination for severe forms of trafficking; (2) The extent to which the government of the country does not comply with the TVPA's minimum standards including, in particular, the extent of the government's trafficking-related corruption; and (3) The resources and capabilities of the government to address and eliminate severe forms of trafficking in persons." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38894 |
Charles IV, Holy Roman Emperor
Charles IV (, , ; 14 May 1316 – 29 November 1378), born Wenceslaus, was the first King of Bohemia to become Holy Roman Emperor. He was a member of the House of Luxembourg from his father's side and the Czech House of Přemyslid from his mother's side; he emphasized the latter due to his lifelong affinity for the Czech side of his inheritance, and also because his direct ancestors in the Přemyslid line included two saints.
He was the eldest son and heir of King John of Bohemia, who died at the Battle of Crécy on 26 August 1346. His mother, Elizabeth of Bohemia, was the sister of King Wenceslas III, the last of the male Přemysl rulers of Bohemia. Charles inherited the County of Luxembourg from his father and was elected king of the Kingdom of Bohemia. On 2 September 1347, Charles was crowned King of Bohemia.
On 11 July 1346, the prince-electors chose him as King of the Romans ("rex Romanorum") in opposition to Emperor Louis IV. Charles was crowned on 26 November 1346 in Bonn. After his opponent died, he was re-elected in 1349 and crowned King of the Romans. In 1355, he was crowned King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor. With his coronation as King of Burgundy in 1365, he became the personal ruler of all the kingdoms of the Holy Roman Empire.
Charles IV was born to King John of the Luxembourg dynasty and Queen Elizabeth of Bohemia of the Czech Premyslid Dynasty in Prague. He was originally named Wenceslaus ("Václav"), the name of his maternal grandfather, King Wenceslaus II. He chose the name Charles at his confirmation in honor of his uncle, King Charles IV of France, at whose court he was resident for seven years.
He received French education and was literate and fluent in five languages: Latin, Czech, German, French, and Italian. In 1331, he gained some experience of warfare in Italy with his father. At the beginning of 1333, Charles went to Lucca (Tuscany) to consolidate his rule there. In an effort to defend the city, Charles founded the nearby fortress and the town of Montecarlo (Charles' Mountain). From 1333, he administered the lands of the Bohemian Crown due to his father's frequent absence and deteriorating eyesight. In 1334, Charles was named Margrave of Moravia, the traditional title for heirs to the throne. Two years later, he assumed the government of Tyrol on behalf of his brother, John Henry, and was soon actively involved in a struggle for the possession of this county.
On 11 July 1346, in consequence of an alliance between his father and Pope Clement VI, relentless enemy of the emperor Louis IV, Charles was elected as Roman king in opposition to Louis by some of the prince-electors at Rhens. As he had previously promised to be subservient to Clement, he made extensive concessions to the pope in 1347. Confirming the papacy in the possession of vast territories, he promised to annul the acts of Louis against Clement, to take no part in Italian affairs, and to defend and protect the church.
Charles IV was in a very weak position in Germany. Owing to the terms of his election, he was derisively referred to as a "Priests' King" ("Pfaffenkönig"). Many bishops and nearly all of the Imperial cities remained loyal to Louis the Bavarian. Worse still, Charles backed the wrong side in the Hundred Years' War, losing his father and many of his best knights at the Battle of Crécy in August 1346, with Charles himself escaping from the field wounded.
Civil war in Germany was prevented, however, when Louis IV died on 11 October 1347, after suffering a stroke during a bear hunt. In January 1349, House of Wittelsbach partisans attempted to secure the election of Günther von Schwarzburg as king, but he attracted few supporters and was defeated by Charles at the siege of Eltville in May. Thereafter, Charles faced no direct threat to his claim to the Imperial throne.
Charles initially worked to secure his power base. Bohemia had remained untouched by the plague. Prague became his capital, and he rebuilt the city on the model of Paris, establishing the New Town ("Nové Město"). In 1348, he founded the Charles University in Prague, which was later named after him and was the first university in Central Europe. This served as a training ground for bureaucrats and lawyers. Soon Prague emerged as the intellectual and cultural center of Central Europe.
Having made good use of the difficulties of his opponents, Charles was again elected in Frankfurt on 17 June 1349 and re-crowned at Aachen on 25 July 1349. He was soon the undisputed ruler of the Empire. Gifts or promises had won the support of the Rhenish and Swabian towns; a marriage alliance secured the friendship of the Habsburgs; and an alliance with Rudolf II of Bavaria, Count Palatine of the Rhine, was obtained when Charles, who had become a widower in 1348, married Rudolph's daughter Anna. The empire he ruled from Prague expanded and his subjects lived in peace and prosperity.
In 1350, the king was visited at Prague by the Roman tribune Cola di Rienzo, who urged him to go to Italy, where the poet Petrarch and the citizens of Florence also implored his presence. Turning a deaf ear to these entreaties, Charles kept Cola in prison for a year, and then handed him as a prisoner to Clement at Avignon.
Outside Prague, Charles attempted to expand the Bohemian crown lands, using his imperial authority to acquire fiefs in Silesia, the Upper Palatinate, and Franconia. The latter regions comprised "New Bohemia", a string of possessions intended to link Bohemia with the Luxemburg territories in the Rhineland. The Bohemian estates, however, were not willing to support Charles in these ventures. When Charles sought to codify Bohemian law in the Maiestas Carolina of 1355, he met with sharp resistance. After that point, Charles found it expedient to scale back his efforts at centralization.
In 1354, Charles crossed the Alps without an army, received the Lombard crown in St. Ambrose Basilica, Milan, on 5 January 1355, and was crowned emperor at Rome by a cardinal in April of the same year. His sole object appears to have been to obtain the Imperial crown in peace, in accordance with a promise previously made to Pope Clement. He only remained in the city for a few hours, in spite of the expressed wishes of the Roman people. Having virtually abandoned all the Imperial rights in Italy, the emperor re-crossed the Alps, pursued by the scornful words of Petrarch, but laden with considerable wealth. On his return, Charles was occupied with the administration of the Empire, then just recovering from the Black Death, and in 1356, he promulgated the famous Golden Bull to regulate the election of the king.
Having given Moravia to one brother, John Henry, and erected the county of Luxembourg into a duchy for another, Wenceslaus, he was unremitting in his efforts to secure other territories as compensation and to strengthen the Bohemian monarchy. To this end he purchased part of the upper Palatinate of the Rhine in 1353, and in 1367 annexed Lower Lusatia to Bohemia and bought numerous estates in various parts of Germany. On the death of Meinhard, Duke of Upper Bavaria and Count of Tyrol, in 1363, Upper Bavaria was claimed by the sons of the emperor Louis IV, and Tyrol by Rudolf IV, Duke of Austria. Both claims were admitted by Charles on the understanding that if these families died out both territories should pass to the House of Luxembourg. At about the same time, he was promised the succession to the Margravate of Brandenburg, which he actually obtained for his son Wenceslaus in 1373.
Casimir III of Poland and Louis I of Hungary entered a conspiracy against Charles and managed to persuade Otto V of Bavaria to join. After the repeal of the estate contract by margrave Otto, in early July 1371, Charles IV declared hostilities and invaded Margraviate of Brandenburg; after two years of conflict, in 1373 Brandenburg became part of the Czech lands. This was when he gave the order to measure his new territory, its villages, people, and income. This was recorded in the , which was finished in 1375. Many villages were mentioned for the first time in this book, so it can provide information on how old they are. He also gained a considerable portion of Silesian territory, partly by inheritance through his third wife, Anna von Schweidnitz, daughter of Henry II, Duke of Świdnica and Catherine of Hungary. In 1365, Charles visited Pope Urban V at Avignon and undertook to escort him to Rome; on the same occasion he was crowned King of Burgundy at Arles.
His second journey to Italy took place in 1368 when he had a meeting with Pope Urban V at Viterbo, was besieged in his palace at Siena, and left the country before the end of 1369. During his later years, the emperor took little part in German affairs beyond securing the election of his son Wenceslaus as king of the Romans in 1376, and negotiating a peace between the Swabian League of Cities and some nobles in 1378. After dividing his lands between his three sons and his nephews, he died in November 1378 at Prague, where he was buried, and where a statue was erected to his memory in 1848.
Charles IV suffered from gout (metabolic arthritis), a painful disease quite common in that time.
The reign of Charles IV was characterized by a transformation in the nature of the Empire and is remembered as the Golden Age of Bohemia. He promulgated the Golden Bull of 1356 whereby the succession to the imperial title was laid down, which held for the next four centuries.
He also organized the states of the empire into peace-keeping confederations. In these, the Imperial cities figured prominently. The Swabian Landfriede confederation of 1370 was made up almost entirely of Imperial Cities. At the same time, the leagues were organized and led by the crown and its agents. As with the electors, the cities that served in these leagues were given privileges to aid in their efforts to keep the peace.
He assured his dominance over the eastern borders of the Empire through succession treaties with the Habsburgs and the purchase of Brandenburg. He also claimed imperial lordship over the crusader states of Prussia and Livonia.
Prague became the capital of the Holy Roman Empire during the reign of Charles IV. The name of the royal founder and patron remains on many monuments and institutions, for example Charles University, Charles Bridge, Charles Square. High Gothic Prague Castle and part of the cathedral of Saint Vitus by Peter Parler were also built under his patronage. Finally, the first flowering of manuscript painting in Prague dates from Charles' reign. In the present Czech Republic, he is still regarded as "Pater Patriae" (father of the country or "otec vlasti"), a title first coined by Adalbertus Ranconis de Ericinio at his funeral.
Charles also had strong ties to Nuremberg, staying within its city walls 52 times and thereby strengthening its reputation amongst German cities. Charles was the patron of the Nuremberg Frauenkirche, built between 1352 and 1362 (the architect was likely Peter Parler), where the imperial court worshipped during its stays in Nuremberg.
Charles' imperial policy was focused on the dynastic sphere and abandoned the lofty ideal of the Empire as a universal monarchy of Christendom. In 1353, he granted the Duchy of Luxembourg to his half-brother, Wenceslaus. He concentrated his energies chiefly on the economic and intellectual development of Bohemia, where he founded the university in 1348 and encouraged the early humanists. He corresponded with Petrarch and invited him to visit the royal residence in Prague, whilst the Italian hoped – to no avail – to see Charles move his residence to Rome and reawaken tradition of the Roman Empire.
Charles' sister Bona married the eldest son of Philip VI of France, the future John II of France, in 1335. Thus, Charles was the maternal uncle of Charles V of France, who solicited his relative's advice at Metz in 1356 during the Parisian Revolt. This family connection was celebrated publicly when Charles made a solemn visit to his nephew in 1378, just months before his death. A detailed account of the occasion, enriched by many splendid miniatures, can be found in Charles V's copy of the "Grandes Chroniques de France".
Charles was married four times. His first wife was Blanche of Valois (1316–1348), daughter of Charles, Count of Valois, and a half-sister of Philip VI of France. They had three children:
He secondly married Anna of Bavaria, (1329–1353), daughter of Rudolf II, Duke of Bavaria; they had one son:
His third wife was Anna von Schweidnitz, (1339–1362), daughter of Henry II, Duke of Świdnica and Katharina of Anjou (daughter of Charles I Robert, King of Hungary), by whom he had three children:
His fourth wife was Elizabeth of Pomerania, (1345 or 1347 – 1393), daughter of Duke Bogislaw V, Duke of Pomerania and Elisabeth of Poland, daughter of Casimir III of Poland. They had six children:
Castles built or established by Charles IV.
Other places named after Charles:
[aged 62] | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38895 |
Innamorati
"Gli Innamorati" (, meaning "The Lovers") were stock characters within the theatre style known as commedia dell'arte, which appeared in 16th century Italy. In the plays, everything revolved around the Lovers in some regard. These dramatic and posh characters were present within "commedia" plays for the sole purpose of being in love with one another, and moreover, with themselves. These characters move elegantly and smoothly, and their young faces are unmasked unlike other commedia dell'arte characters. Despite facing many obstacles, the Lovers were always united by the end.
The name "Innamorati" is the Italian word for "Lovers".
The dramatists of the Italian Renaissance borrowed ideas from early Roman playwrights, such as Plautus and Terence, whom the theater style known as "commedia erudita" was inspired by. The "lovers" are the first actor, first actress, second actor and second actress.
The comedy of the Lovers is that they are ridiculous and over the top about everything, but they are completely sincere in their emotions. The main function of the Lovers within the play is to be in love; and in doing so, they come upon obstacles that keep them from pursuing their relationship. These obstacles stemmed from varied causes. For instance, the financial or personal interests of a lover's parent may have prevented the lovers' relationship from progressing. The pair always involves other commedia characters, such as Zanni characters, to try to figure out how they can be together. This is necessary, because due to their conceited stupidity, and lack of experience with the all of the mysteries of love, and the sensations and emotions that come with it, they cannot figure it out on their own.
The Lovers tend to be overly dramatic in whatever emotion they express. Separation from their lover leads them to strongly lament and moan their state, although, once they finally meet, they are at a loss of words. In order to express what they truly want to say, they always need the help of a servant to act as a go-between. The Lovers often act in a childlike and immature way. When not getting their way, they become completely devastated, they pout, and even cry and whine if things do not go according to their wishes. Very selfish and self-centered, the Lovers are in their own worlds where they are each the most important subjects. Along with loving themselves, they are in love with the very idea of love and what it pertains to.
The Lovers are always young in age, possessing courteousness and gallantry. They are very educated, but lack life experiences that would have prepared them for the real world. They are very attractive and elegant in their appearance overall.
The women's dresses were of the finest silks and they wear showy jewelry characteristic of Renaissance style. The males wear soldier-like attire, while both sexes wear extravagant wigs and also change clothes numerous times throughout the length of the production. The costumes of the lovers were the fashion of the day, and the extravagance of the Lovers costumes often represented the status of the Commedia dell'arte company.
The Lovers never wear the masks, which is characteristic of most of the other stock characters in the "commedia dell'arte". They do, however, wear a large amount of makeup and apply beauty marks to their faces.
Their speech is very eloquent Tuscan, as they are of high social status. When Commedia dell'Arte is played in England the lovers often speak in Received Pronunciation They are well-read in poetry and often recite it at length from memory, and even tend to sing quite often. Their language is full of flamboyant and lofty rhetoric so that most of what they say is not taken too seriously, by either the audience or the other characters. Although their dramatics were laughable, their struggle as a romantic couple added a cultural layer to the show, adding tone of seriousness to the show.
The Innamorati do everything perfectly and strive for perfection. Their movements are elegant and are not to be aimed towards parody. They occasionally do courtly dances using two dance movements called "pas", and "swivel".
The posture that the Lovers take on is that of strong pride. They point their toes while standing and puff up their chests. Overall, they lack contact with the ground and seem to float across the ground rather than take steps. Their hand movements and gestures are also very characteristic of the buoyant movements that their feet take on. The physicality of the Lovers should not be done in a way that makes fun of them.
Following that, they do love each other, but are more consumed with the idea of being in love. They never outwardly communicate with their lover even when they are in close contact, due to nerves, and, therefore, never really outwardly express affection toward their beloved. The Lovers commonly fight or bicker. Despite the bitter interactions, the Lovers mostly reconcile their differences by the end of the play and end up happily together and/or married. The Lovers are usually the children of either Dottore or Pantalone.
The Lovers are aware of the audience's presence. They use the audience as a means to show themselves off and also to express their plight at not being able to obtain their love. In other ways, they may also call on an audience member for help or advice, or even flirt with someone who is watching from their T.V.
The Lovers use Usite (exits) and Chiusette (endings) sometimes when entering and exiting. These are rhyming couplets that are said before exiting and entering a scene.
Since the Lovers are stock characters, the names of both the male and female lovers are used over and over again: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38897 |
Slapstick
Slapstick is a style of humor involving exaggerated physical activity that exceeds the boundaries of normal physical comedy. Slapstick may involve both intentional violence and violence by mishap, often resulting from inept use of props such as saws and ladders.
The term arises from a device developed for use in the broad, physical comedy style known as "commedia dell'arte" in 16th-century Italy. The "slap stick" consists of two thin slats of wood, which make a "slap" when striking another actor, with little force needed to make a loud—and comical—sound. The physical slap stick remains a key component of the plot in the traditional and popular Punch and Judy puppet show.
The name "slapstick" originates from the Italian "Batacchio" or "Bataccio" – called the "slap stick" in English – a club-like object composed of two wooden slats used in "commedia dell'arte". When struck, the Batacchio produces a loud smacking noise, though it is only a little force that is transferred from the object to the person being struck. Actors may thus hit one another repeatedly with great audible effect while causing no damage and only very minor, if any, pain. Along with the inflatable bladder (of which the whoopee cushion is a modern variant), it was among the earliest special effects.
Slapstick comedy's history is measured in centuries. Shakespeare incorporated many chase scenes and beatings into his comedies, such as in his play "The Comedy of Errors". In early 19th-century England, pantomime acquired its present form which includes slapstick comedy, while comedy routines also featured heavily in British music hall theatre which became popular in the 1850s.
In Punch and Judy shows, which first appeared in England on 9 May 1662, a large slapstick is wielded by Punch against the other characters.
British comedians who honed their skills at pantomime and music hall sketches include Charlie Chaplin, Stan Laurel, George Formby and Dan Leno. The influential English music hall comedian and theatre impresario Fred Karno developed a form of sketch comedy without dialogue in the 1890s, and Chaplin and Laurel were among the young comedians who worked for him as part of "Fred Karno's Army". Chaplin's fifteen-year music hall career inspired the comedy in all his later film work, especially as pantomimicry. In a biography of Karno, Laurel stated: "Fred Karno didn't teach Charlie [Chaplin] and me all we know about comedy. He just taught us most of it". American film producer Hal Roach described Karno as "not only a genius, he is the man who originated slapstick comedy. We in Hollywood owe much to him."
Building on its later popularity in the 19th and early 20th-century ethnic routines of the American vaudeville house, the style was explored extensively during the "golden era" of black and white, silent movies directed by figures Mack Sennett and Hal Roach and featuring such notables as Charlie Chaplin, Mabel Normand, Laurel and Hardy, the Marx Brothers and the Keystone Cops. Silent slapstick comedy was also popular in early French films and included films by Max Linder, Charles Prince, and Sarah Duhamel.
Slapstick also became a common element in animated cartoons starting in the 1930; examples include Disney's "Goofy" shorts, Walter Lantz's Woody Woodpecker and The Beary Family, MGM's "Tom and Jerry", the unrelated Tom and Jerry cartoons of Van Beuren Studios, Warner Bros. "Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies", MGM's "Barney Bear", and Tex Avery's "Screwy Squirrel".
Slapstick was later used in Japanese Tokusatsu TV "Kamen Rider Drive" and in the United States used in the two 1960s TV series, "Gilligan's Island", and "Batman".
Slapstick continues to maintain a presence in modern comedy that draws upon its lineage, running in film from Buster Keaton and Louis de Funès to Jerry Lewis and Mel Brooks to the television series "Jackass" and comedy movies by the Farrelly Brothers, and in live performance from Weber and Fields to Jackie Gleason to Rowan Atkinson. In England, slapstick was a main element of the Monty Python comedy troupe and in television series such as "Fawlty Towers" and "The Benny Hill Show". Slapstick has remained a popular art form to the present day including "The Simpsons". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38898 |
Mattachine Society
The Mattachine Society (), founded in 1950, was one of the earliest LGBT (gay rights) organizations in the United States, probably second only to Chicago's Society for Human Rights. Communist and labor activist Harry Hay formed the group with a collection of male friends in Los Angeles to protect and improve the rights of gay men. Branches formed in other cities and by 1961 the Society had splintered into regional groups.
At the beginning of gay rights protest, news on Cuban prison work camps for homosexuals inspired Mattachine Society to organize protests at the United Nations and the White House, in 1965.
Harry Hay conceived the idea of a gay activist group in 1948. After signing a petition for Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry A. Wallace, Hay spoke with other gay men at a party about forming a gay support organization for him called "Bachelors for Wallace". Encouraged by the response he received, Hay wrote the organizing principles that night, a document he referred to as "The Call". However, the men who had been interested at the party were less than enthusiastic the following morning. Over the next two years, Hay refined his idea, finally conceiving of an "international ... fraternal order" to serve as "a service and welfare organization devoted to the protection and improvement of Society's Androgynous Minority". He planned to call this organization "Bachelors Anonymous" and envisioned it serving a similar function and purpose as Alcoholics Anonymous. Hay met Rudi Gernreich in July 1950. The two became partners, and Hay showed Gernreich The Call. Gernreich, declaring the document "the most dangerous thing [he had] ever read", became an enthusiastic financial supporter of the venture, although he did not lend his name to it (going instead by the initial "R"). Finally on November 11, 1950, Hay, along with Gernreich and friends Dale Jennings and partners Bob Hull and Chuck Rowland, held the first meeting of the Mattachine Society in Los Angeles, under the name Society of Fools. James Gruber and Konrad Stevens joined the Society in April 1951 and they are generally considered to be original members. Also that month the group changed its name to "Mattachine Society", a name suggested by Gruber and chosen by Hay, after Medieval French secret societies of masked men who, through their anonymity, were empowered to criticize ruling monarchs with impunity.
As Hay became more involved in his Mattachine work, he correspondingly became more concerned that his orientation would negatively affect the Communist Party, which like most other organizations at the time was anti-homosexual and did not allow gay people to be members. Hay himself approached party leaders and recommended his own expulsion. The party decided to expel him as a "security risk", but declared him a "Lifelong Friend of the People" in recognition of his previous work for the party.
Mattachine was originally organized in similar structure to the Communist Party, with cells, oaths of secrecy and five different levels of membership, each of which required greater levels of involvement and commitment. As the organization grew, the levels were expected to subdivide into new cells, creating both the potential for horizontal and vertical growth. The founding members constituted the so-called "Fifth Order" and from the outset remained anonymous.
Mattachine's membership grew slowly at first but received a major boost in February 1952 when founder Jennings was arrested in a Los Angeles park and charged with lewd behavior. Often, men in Jennings' situation would simply plead guilty to the charge and hope to quietly rebuild their lives. Jennings and the rest of the Fifth Order saw the charges as a means to address the issue of police entrapment of homosexual men. The group began publicizing the case (under the name "Citizens Committee to Outlaw Entrapment") and the publicity it generated brought in financial support and volunteers. Jennings admitted during his trial to being a homosexual but insisted he was not guilty of the specific charge. The jury deadlocked and Mattachine declared victory.
The Mattachine Society was named by Harry Hay at the suggestion of James Gruber, inspired by a French medieval and renaissance masque group he had studied while preparing a course on the history of popular music for a workers' education project. In a 1976 interview with Jonathan Ned Katz, Hay was asked the origin of the name Mattachine. He mentioned the medieval-Renaissance French "Sociétés Joyeuses":
This French group was named in turn after Mattaccino (or the Anglicized Mattachino), a character in Italian theater. Mattaccino was a kind of court jester, who would speak the truth to the king when nobody else would. The "mattachin" (from Arabic "mutawajjihin"—"mask-wearers") were originally Moorish (Hispano-Arab) sword-dancers who wore elaborate, colorful costumes and masks.
The Mattachine Society used so-called harlequin diamonds as their emblem. The design consisted of four diamonds arranged in a pattern to form a larger diamond.
Most of the Mattachine founders were communists. As the Red Scare progressed, the association with communism concerned some members as well as supporters and Hay, a dedicated member of the CPUSA for 15 years, stepped down as the Society's leader. Others were similarly ousted, and the leadership structure became influenced less by communism, replaced by a moderate ideology similar to that espoused by the liberal reformist civil rights organizations that existed for African Americans. Although Hay claimed "never to have even heard" of the earlier gay liberation struggle in Germany—by the people around Adolf Brand, Magnus Hirschfeld and the Austrian-Hungarian Leontine Sagan—he is known to have talked about it with German émigrés in America, including the Austrian-born Rudi Gernreich.
The Mattachine Society existed as a single national organization headquartered first in Los Angeles and then, beginning around 1956, in San Francisco. Outside of Los Angeles and San Francisco, chapters were established in New York; Washington, D.C.; Chicago; and other locales. Due to internal disagreements, the national organization disbanded in 1961. The San Francisco national chapter retained the name "Mattachine Society", while the New York chapter became "Mattachine Society of New York, Inc" and was commonly known by its acronym MSNY. Other independent groups using the name Mattachine were formed in Washington, D.C. (Mattachine Society of Washington, 1961), in Chicago (Mattachine Midwest, 1965), and in Buffalo (Mattachine Society of the Niagara Frontier, 1970). In 1963 Congressman John Dowdy introduced a bill which resulted in congressional hearings to revoke the license for solicitation of funds of the Mattachine Society of Washington; the license was not revoked.
A largely amicable split within the national Society in 1952 resulted in a new organization called ONE, Inc. ONE admitted women and, together with Mattachine, provided vital help to the Daughters of Bilitis in the launching of that group's magazine, "The Ladder", in 1956. The Daughters of Bilitis were the counterpart lesbian organization to the Mattachine Society, and the two organizations worked together on some campaigns, although their approaches to visibility in the mass media differed considerably.
The Janus Society grew out of lesbian and gay activists meeting regularly, beginning in 1961, in hopes of forming a Mattachine Society chapter. The group was not officially recognized as such a chapter, however, and so instead named itself the Janus Society of Delaware Valley. In 1964 they renamed themselves the Janus Society of America due to their increasing national visibility.
In January 1962 East Coast Homophile Organizations (ECHO) was established, with its formative membership including the Mattachine Society chapters in New York and Washington D.C., the Janus Society, and the Daughters of Bilitis chapter in New York. ECHO was meant to facilitate cooperation between homophile organizations and outside administrations.
On the eve of January 1, 1965, several homophile organizations in San Francisco, California - including Mattachine, the Daughters of Bilitis, the Council on Religion and the Homosexual, and the Society for Individual Rights - held a fund-raising ball for their mutual benefit at California Hall on Polk Street. San Francisco police had agreed not to interfere; however, on the evening of the ball, the police surrounded California and focused numerous kleig lights on its entrance. As each of the 600 plus persons entering the ball approached the entrance, the police took their photographs. Police vans were parked in plain view near the entrance to the ball. Evander Smith, a (gay) lawyer for the groups organizing the ball, and gay lawyer Herb Donaldson tried to stop the police from conducting the fourth "inspection" of the evening; both were arrested, along with two heterosexual lawyers - Elliott Leighton and Nancy May - who were supporting the rights of the participants to gather at the ball. But twenty-five of the most prominent lawyers in San Francisco joined the defense team for the four lawyers, and the judge directed the jury to find the four not-guilty before the defense had even had a chance to begin their argumentation when the case came to court. This event has been called "San Francisco's Stonewall" by some historians; the participation of such prominent litigators in the defense of Smith, Donaldson and the other two lawyers marked a turning point in gay rights on the West Coast of the United States.
The primary goals of the society were to
Following the Jennings trial, the group expanded rapidly, with founders estimating membership in California by May 1953 at over 2,000 with as many as 100 people joining a typical discussion group. Membership diversified, with more women and people from a broader political spectrum becoming involved. With that growth came concern about the radical left slant of the organization. In particular, Hal Call and others out of San Francisco along with Ken Burns from Los Angeles wanted Mattachine to amend its constitution to clarify its opposition to so-called "subversive elements" and to affirm that members were loyal to the United States and its laws (which declared homosexuality illegal). In an effort to preserve their vision of the organization, the Fifth Order members revealed their identities and resigned their leadership positions at Mattachine's May 1953 convention. With the founders gone, Call, Burns and other like-minded individuals stepped into the leadership void, and Mattachine officially adopted non-confrontation as an organizational policy. Some historians argue that these changes reduced the effectiveness of this newly organized Mattachine and led to a precipitous drop in membership and participation. Other historians contend that the Mattachine Society between 1953 and 1966 was enormously effective as it published a magazine, developed relationships with allies in the fight for homosexual equality, and influenced public opinion on the topic too.
During the 1960s, the various unaffiliated Mattachine Societies, especially the Mattachine Society in San Francisco and MSNY, were among the foremost gay rights groups in the United States, but beginning in the middle 1960s and, especially, following the Stonewall riots of 1969, they began increasingly to be seen as too traditional, and not willing enough to be confrontational. Like the divide that occurred within the Civil Rights Movement, the late 1960s and the 1970s brought a new generation of activists, many of whom felt that the gay rights movement needed to endorse a larger and more radical agenda to address other forms of oppression, the Vietnam War, and the sexual revolution. Several unaffiliated entities that went under the name Mattachine eventually lost support or fell prey to internal division.
In the "Quantum Leap" comic book titled "Up Against a Stonewall" (1992), the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis are mentioned as two groups campaigning for LGBT rights prior to the Stonewall riots.
The 1995 film "Stonewall" included members of the Mattachine Society of New York among its characters. Mattachine members are seen leafleting, attending meetings and participating in the Annual Reminder picket in Philadelphia. However, the film sets the Reminder earlier in the summer than it really was, predating the June 28 Stonewall riots.
In 2002 Mattachine Midwest was inducted into the Chicago Gay and Lesbian Hall of Fame.
In 2009 the Mattachine Society and its founders became the subjects of the play "The Temperamentals" by Jon Marans. After workshop performances in 2009, the play opened Off-Broadway at New World Stages in early 2010. "The Temperamentals" received a Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble Cast. Michael Urie, who originated the role of Rudi Gernreich, received a Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Actor.
A new Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C. was formed in 2011 and is dedicated to original archival research of LGBT political history.
"The Playboy Club", a 2011 television series on NBC, includes a lesbian Playboy Bunny in a lavender marriage with a gay man. The two are members of the Chicago Mattachine chapter.
The Mattachine Steps, also known as the Cove Avenue stairway, is an outdoor staircase in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, dedicated to the Mattachine Society in 2012 in memory of its founder Harry Hay.
In 2015, a gay bar called Bar Mattachine opened in downtown Los Angeles.
Season 1, episode 7 of the podcast “Making Gay History” is about Mattachine co-founder Chuck Rowland, and season 4 episode 3 of that podcast is about Mattachine co-founder Harry Hay.
Julius’ bar holds a monthly party called "Mattachine" honoring the early gay rights pioneers.
Notes
Citations
Bibliography
Further reading | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38899 |
Scenario
In the performing arts, a scenario (, ; from Italian: "that which is pinned to the scenery", ) is a synoptical collage of an event or series of actions and events. In the "commedia dell'arte" it was an outline of entrances, exits, and action describing the plot of a play, and was literally pinned to the back of the scenery. It is also known as "canovaccio" or "that which is pinned to the canvas" of which the scenery was constructed.
Surviving scenarios from the Renaissance contain little other than character names, brief descriptions of action, and references to specific lazzi with no further explanation. It is believed that a scenario formed the basis for a fully improvisational performance, though it is also likely that they were simple reminders of the plot for those members of the cast who were literate. Modern commedia troupes most often make use of a script with varying degrees of additional improvisation.
In the creation of an opera or ballet, a scenario is often developed initially to indicate how the original source, if any, is to be adapted and to summarize the aspects of character, staging, plot, etc. that can be expanded later in a fully developed libretto, or script. This sketch can be helpful in "pitching" the idea to a prospective producer, director or composer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38900 |
Brown
Brown is a composite color. In the CMYK color model used in printing or painting, brown is made by combining red, black, and yellow, or red, yellow, and blue. In the RGB color model used to project colors onto television screens and computer monitors, brown is made by combining red and green, in specific proportions. In painting, brown is generally made by adding black to orange.
The brown color is seen widely in nature, in wood, soil, human hair color, eye color and skin pigmentation. Brown is the color of dark wood or rich soil. According to public opinion surveys in Europe and the United States, brown is the least favorite color of the public; the color is most often associated with plainness, the rustic and poverty.
The term is from Old English "brún", in origin for any dusky or dark shade of color. The first recorded use of "brown" as a color name in English was in 1000.
The Common Germanic adjective "*brûnoz, *brûnâ" meant both dark colors and a glistening or shining quality, whence "burnish". The current meaning developed in Middle English from the 14th century.
Words for the color brown around the world often come from foods or beverages; in the eastern Mediterranean, the word for brown often comes from the color of coffee: in Turkish, the word for brown is ; in Greek, . In Southeast Asia, the color name often comes from chocolate: in Malay; in Filipino. In Japan, the word means the color of tea.
Brown has been used in art since prehistoric times. Paintings using umber, a natural clay pigment composed of iron oxide and manganese oxide, have been dated to 40,000 BC. Paintings of brown horses and other animals have been found on the walls of the Lascaux cave dating back about 17,300 years. The female figures in ancient Egyptian tomb paintings have brown skin, painted with umber. Light tan was often used on painted Greek amphorae and vases, either as a background for black figures, or the reverse.
The Ancient Greeks and Romans produced a fine reddish-brown ink, of a color called sepia, made from the ink of a variety of cuttlefish. This ink was used by Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and other artists during the Renaissance, and by artists up until the present time.
In Ancient Rome, brown clothing was associated with the lower classes or barbarians. The term for the plebeians, or urban poor, was "pullati", which meant literally "those dressed in brown".
In the Middle Ages brown robes were worn by monks of the Franciscan order, as a sign of their humility and poverty. Each social class was expected to wear a color suitable to their station; and grey and brown were the colors of the poor. Russet was a coarse homespun cloth made of wool and dyed with woad and madder to give it a subdued grey or brown shade. By the statute of 1363, poor English people were required to wear russet. The medieval poem "Piers Plowman" describes the virtuous Christian:
In the Middle Ages dark brown pigments were rarely used in art; painters and book illuminators artists of that period preferred bright, distinct colors such as red, blue and green, rather than dark colors. The umbers were not widely used in Europe before the end of the fifteenth century; The Renaissance painter and writer Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) described them as being rather new in his time.
Artists began using far greater use of browns when oil painting arrived in the late fifteenth century. During the Renaissance, artists generally used four different browns; raw umber, the dark brown clay mined from the earth around Umbria, in Italy; raw sienna, a reddish-brown earth mined near Siena, in Tuscany; burnt umber, the Umbrian clay heated until it turned a darker shade, and burnt sienna, heated until it turned a dark reddish brown. In Northern Europe, Jan van Eyck featured rich earth browns in his portraits to set off the brighter colors.
The 17th and 18th century saw the greatest use of brown. Caravaggio and Rembrandt Van Rijn used browns to create chiaroscuro effects, where the subject appeared out of the darkness. Rembrandt also added umber to the ground layers of his paintings because it promoted faster drying. Rembrandt also began to use new brown pigment, called Cassel earth or Cologne earth. This was a natural earth color composed of over ninety percent organic matter, such as soil and peat. It was used by Rubens and Anthony van Dyck, and later became commonly known as Van Dyck brown.
Brown was generally hated by the French impressionists, who preferred bright, pure colors. The exception among French 19th-century artists was Paul Gauguin, who created luminous brown portraits of the people and landscapes of French Polynesia.
In the late 20th century, brown became a common symbol in western culture for simple, inexpensive, natural and healthy. Bag lunches were carried in plain brown paper bags; packages were wrapped in plain brown paper. Brown bread and brown sugar were viewed as more natural and healthy than white bread and white sugar.
Brown is a composite color, made by combining red, yellow and black.. It can be thought of as dark orange, but it can also be made in other ways. In the RGB color model, which uses red, green and blue light in various combinations to make all the colors on computer and television screens, it is made by mixing red and green light.
In terms of the visible spectrum, "brown" refers to long wavelength hues, yellow, orange, or red, in combination with low luminance or saturation.
Since "brown" may cover a wide range of the visible spectrum, composite adjectives are used such as red brown, yellowish brown, dark brown or light brown.
As a color of low intensity, brown is a tertiary color: a mix of the three subtractive primary colors is brown if the cyan content is low. Brown exists as a color perception only in the presence of a brighter color contrast. Yellow, orange, red, or rose objects are still perceived as such if the general illumination level is low, despite reflecting the same amount of red or orange light as a brown object would in normal lighting conditions.
In humans, brown eyes result from a relatively high concentration of melanin in the stroma of the iris, which causes light of both shorter and longer wavelengths to be absorbed and in many parts of the world, it is nearly the only iris color present. Dark pigment of brown eyes is most common in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia, West Asia, Oceania, Africa, Americas, etc. as well as parts of Eastern Europe and Southern Europe. The majority of people in the world overall have dark brown eyes. Light or medium-pigmented brown eyes are common in Europe, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Northern India, as well as some parts of the Middle East. (See eye color).
Brown is the second most common color of human hair, after black. It is caused by higher levels of the natural dark pigment eumelanin, and lower levels of the pale pigment pheomelanin. Brown eumelanin is more common among Europeans, while black eumelanin is more often found in the hair on non-Europeans. A small amount of black eumelanin, in the absence of other pigments, results in grey hair. A small amount of brown eumelanin in the absence of other pigments results in blond hair.
A majority of people in the world have skin that is a shade of brown, from a very light honey brown or a golden brown, to a copper or bronze color, to a coffee color or a dark chocolate brown. Skin color and race are not the same; many people classified as "white" or "black" actually have skin that is a shade of brown. Brown skin is caused by melanin, a natural pigment which is produced within the skin in cells called melanocytes. Skin pigmentation in humans evolved to primarily regulate the amount of ultraviolet radiation penetrating the skin, controlling its biochemical effects.
Natural skin color can darken as a result of tanning due to exposure to sunlight. The leading theory is that skin color adapts to intense sunlight irradiation to provide partial protection against the ultraviolet fraction that produces damage and thus mutations in the DNA of the skin cells. There is a correlation between the geographic distribution of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) and the distribution of indigenous skin pigmentation around the world. Darker-skinned populations are found in the regions with the most ultraviolet, closer to the equator, while lighter skinned populations live closer to the poles, with less UVR, though immigration has changed these patterns.
While "white "and" black" are commonly used to describe racial groups, "brown" is rarely used, because it crosses all racial lines.
In Brazil, the Portuguese word "pardo", which can mean different shades of brown, is used to refer to multiracial people. The Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) asks people to identify themselves as "branco" (white), "pardo" (brown), "negro" (black), or "amarelo" (yellow). In 2008 43.8 percent of the population identified themselves as pardo. (See Human skin color)
The thin top layer of the Earth's crust on land is largely made up of soil colored different shades of brown. Good soil is composed of about forty-five percent minerals, twenty-five percent water, twenty-five percent air, and five percent organic material, living and dead. Half the color of soil comes from minerals it contains; soils containing iron turn yellowish or reddish as the iron oxidizes. Manganese, nitrogen and sulfur turn brownish or blackish as they decay naturally.
Rich and fertile soils tend to be darker in color; the deeper brown color of fertile soil comes from the decomposing of the organic matter. Dead leaves and roots become black or brown as they decay. Poorer soils are usually paler brown in color, and contain less water or organic matter.
A large number of mammals and predatory birds have a brown coloration. This sometimes changes seasonally, and sometimes remains the same year-round. This color is likely related to camouflage, since the backdrop of some environments, such as the forest floor, is often brown, and especially in the spring and summertime when animals like the snowshoe hare get brown fur.
Surveys in Europe and the United States showed that brown was the least popular color among respondents. It was the favorite color of only one percent of respondents, ranked below white and pink, and the least-favorite color of twenty-percent of people, even less popular than pink, gray and violet.
Brown has been a popular color for military uniforms since the late 18th century, largely because of its wide availability and low visibility. When the Continental Army was established in 1775 at the outbreak of the American Revolution, the first Continental Congress declared that the official uniform color would be brown, but this was not popular with many militias, whose officers were already wearing blue. In 1778 the Congress asked George Washington to design a new uniform, and in 1779 Washington made the official color of all uniforms blue and buff.
In 1846 the Indian soldiers of the Corps of Guides in British India began to wear a yellowish shade of tan, which became known as khaki from the Urdu word for dust-colored, taken from an earlier Persian word for soil. The color made an excellent natural camouflage, and was adopted by the British Army for their Abyssian Campaign in 1867–1868, and later in the Boer War. It was adopted by the United States Army during the Spanish–American War (1896), and afterwards by the United States Navy and United States Marine Corps.
In the 1920s, brown became the uniform color of the Nazi Party in Germany. The Nazi paramilitary organization the "Sturmabteilung" (SA) wore brown uniforms and were known as the brownshirts. The color brown was used to represent the Nazi vote on maps of electoral districts in Germany. If someone voted for the Nazis, they were said to be "voting brown". The national headquarters of the Nazi party, in Munich, was called the "Brown House". The Nazi seizure of power in 1933 was called the "Brown Revolution". At Adolf Hitler's Obersalzberg home, the Berghof, he slept in a "bed which was usually covered by a brown quilt embroidered with a huge swastika.
The swastika also appeared on Hitler's brown satin pajamas, embroidered in black against a red background on the pocket. He had a matching brown silk robe." Brown had originally been chosen as a Party color largely for convenience; large numbers of war-surplus brown uniforms from Germany's former colonial forces in Africa were cheaply available in the 1920s. It also suited the working-class and military images that the Party wished to convey.
From the 1930s onwards, the Party's brown uniforms were mass-produced by German clothing firms such as Hugo Boss.
The color brown is said to represent ruggedness when used in advertising." " is the color of the United Parcel Service (UPS) delivery company with their trademark brown trucks and uniforms; it was earlier the color of Pullman rail cars of the Pullman Company, and was adopted by UPS both because brown is easy to keep clean, and due to favorable associations of luxury that Pullman brown evoked. UPS has filed two trademarks on the color brown to prevent other shipping companies (and possibly other companies in general) from using the color if it creates "market confusion". In its advertising, UPS refers to itself as "Brown" ("What can Brown do for you?"). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38902 |
Proserpina
Proserpina ( , ) or Proserpine ( ) is an ancient Roman goddess whose cult, myths and mysteries were combined from those of Libera, an early Roman goddess of wine, and the Greek Persephone and Demeter, goddesses of grain and agriculture. The originally Roman goddess Libera was daughter of the agricultural goddess Ceres and wife to Liber, god of wine and freedom. In 204 BC, a new "Greek-style" cult to Ceres and Proserpina as "Mother and Maiden" was imported from southern Italy, along with Greek priestesses to serve it, and was installed in Libera and Ceres' temple on Rome's Aventine Hill. The new cult and its priesthood were actively promoted by Rome's religious authorities as morally desirable for respectable Roman women, and may have partly subsumed the temple's older, native cult to Ceres, Liber and Libera; but the new rites seem to have functioned alongside the old, rather than replaced them.
Just as Persephone was thought to be a daughter of Demeter, Romans made Proserpina a daughter of Demeter's Roman equivalent, Ceres. Like Persephone, Proserpina is associated with the underworld realm and its ruler; and along with her mother Ceres, with the springtime growth of crops and the cycle of life, death and rebirth or renewal. Her name is a Latinisation of "Persephone", perhaps influenced by the Latin "proserpere" ("to emerge, to creep forth"), with respect to the growing of grain. Her core myths – her forcible abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother's search for her and her eventual but temporary restoration to the world above – are the subject of works in Roman and later art and literature. In particular, Proserpina's seizure by the god of the Underworld – usually described as the Rape of Proserpina, or of Persephone – has offered dramatic subject matter for Renaissance and later sculptors and painters.
In early Roman religion, Libera was the female equivalent of Liber ('the free one'). She was originally an Italic goddess; at some time during Rome's Regal or very early Republican eras, she was paired with Liber, also known as Liber Pater ('the free father'), Roman god of wine, male fertility, and a guardian of plebeian freedoms. She enters Roman history as part of a Triadic cult alongside Ceres and Liber, in a temple established on the Aventine Hill around 493 BC. The location and context of this early cult mark her association with Rome's commoner-citizens, or plebs; she might have been offered cult on March 17 as part of Liber's festival, Liberalia, or at some time during the seven days of Cerealia (mid- to late April); in the latter festival, she would have been subordinate to Ceres. Otherwise, her relationship to her Aventine cult partners is uncertain; she has no known native mythology.
Libera was officially identified with Proserpina in 205 BC, when she acquired a Romanised form of the Greek mystery rites and their attendant mythology. In the late Republican era, Cicero described Liber and Libera as Ceres' children. At around the same time, possibly in the context of popular or religious drama, Hyginus equated her with Greek Ariadne, as bride to Liber's Greek equivalent, Dionysus. The older and newer forms of her cult and rites, and their diverse associations, persisted well into the late Imperial era. St. Augustine (AD 354 – 430) observed that Libera is concerned with female fertility, as Liber is with male fertility.
Proserpina was officially introduced to Rome around 205 BCE, along with the "ritus graecia cereris" (a Greek form of cult dedicated to her mother Ceres), as part of Rome's general religious recruitment of deities as allies against Carthage, towards the end of the Second Punic War. The cult originated in southern Italy (part of Magna Graecia) and was probably based on the women-only Greek Thesmophoria, a mystery cult to Demeter and Persephone as "Mother and Maiden". It arrived along with its Greek priestesses, who were granted Roman citizenship so that they could pray to the gods "with a foreign and external knowledge, but with a domestic and civil intention". The new cult was installed in the already ancient Temple of Ceres, Liber and Libera, Rome's Aventine patrons of the plebs; from the end of the 3rd century BC, Demeter's temple at Enna, in Sicily, was acknowledged as Ceres' oldest, most authoritative cult centre, and Libera was recognised as Proserpina, Roman equivalent to Demeter's daughter Persephone. Their joint cult recalls Demeter's search for Persephone, after the latter's rape and abduction into the underworld by Hades (or Pluto). At the Aventine, the new cult took its place alongside the old. It made no reference to Liber, whose open and gender-mixed cult continued to play a central role in plebeian culture, as a patron and protector of plebeian rights, freedoms and values. The exclusively female initiates and priestesses of the new "Greek-style" mysteries of Ceres and Proserpina were expected to uphold Rome's traditional, patrician-dominated social hierarchy and traditional morality. Unmarried girls should emulate the chastity of Proserpina, the maiden; married women should seek to emulate Ceres, the devoted and fruitful Mother. Their rites were intended to secure a good harvest, and increase the fertility of those who partook in the mysteries.
A Temple of Proserpina was located in a suburb of Melite, in modern Mtarfa, Malta. The temple's ruins were quarried between the 17th and 18th centuries, and only a few fragments survive.
The best-known myth surrounding Proserpina is of her abduction by the god of the Underworld, her mother Ceres' frantic search for her, and her eventual but temporary restitution to the world above. In Latin literature, several versions are known, all similar in most respects to the myths of Greek Persephone's abduction by the King of the underworld, named variously in Greek sources as Hades or Pluto. "Hades" can mean both the hidden Underworld and its king ('the hidden one'), who in early Greek versions of the myth is a dark, unsympathetic figure; Persephone is "Kore" ('the maiden'), taken against her will; in the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, her captor is known as Pluto; they form a divine couple who rule the underworld together, and receive Eleusinian initiates into some form of better afterlife. Renamed thus, the king of the underworld is distanced from his consort's violent abduction. In the early 1st century CE, Ovid gives two poetic versions of the myth in Latin: one in Book 5 of his "Metamorphoses" (Book 5) and another in Book 4 of his "Fasti". An early 5th century Latin version of the same myth is Claudian's "De raptu Proserpinae"; in most cases, these Latin works identify Proserpina's underworld abductor and later consort by the Roman god of the underworld's traditional Latin name, Dis.
Venus, in order to bring love to Pluto, sent her son Amor (also known as Cupid) to hit Pluto with one of his arrows. Proserpina was in Sicily, at the Pergusa Lake near Enna, where she was playing with some nymphs and collecting flowers, when Pluto came out from the volcano Etna with four black horses named Orphnaeus, Aethon, Nycteus and Alastor. He abducted her in order to marry her and live with her in the underworld of which he was the ruler.
Her mother Ceres, also known as Demeter, the goddess of agriculture or of the Earth, went looking for her across all of the world, and all in vain. She was unable to find anything but a small belt floating upon a little lake made from the tears of the nymphs. In her desperation, Ceres angrily stopped the growth of fruits and vegetables, bestowing a malediction on Sicily. Ceres refused to return to Mount Olympus and started walking the Earth, creating a desert with each step.
Worried, Jupiter sent Mercury to order Pluto (Jupiter's brother) to free Proserpina. Pluto obeyed, but before letting her go he made her eat six pomegranate seeds, because those who have eaten the food of the dead could not return to the world of the living. This meant that she would have to live six months of each year with him, and stay the rest with her mother. This story was undoubtedly meant to illustrate the changing of the seasons: when Ceres welcomes her daughter back in the spring the earth blossoms, and when Proserpina must be returned to her husband it withers.
In another version of the story, Proserpina ate only four pomegranate seeds, and she did so of her own accord. When Jupiter ordered her return, Pluto struck a deal with Jupiter, saying that since she had stolen his pomegranate seeds, she must stay with him four months of the year in return. For this reason, in spring when Ceres receives her daughter back, the crops blossom, and in summer they flourish.
In the autumn Ceres changes the leaves to shades of brown and orange (her favorite colors) as a gift to Proserpina before she has to return to the underworld. During the time that Proserpina resides with Pluto, the world goes through winter, a time when the earth is barren.
The most extensive myth of Proserpina in Latin is Claudian's (4th century CE). It is closely connected with that of Orpheus and Eurydice. In Virgil's Georgics, Orpheus' beloved wife, Eurydice, died from a snake-bite; Proserpina allowed Orpheus into Hades without losing his life; charmed by his music, she allowed him to lead his wife back to the land of the living, as long as he did not look back during the journey. But Orpheus could not resist a backward glance, so Eurydice was forever lost to him.
Proserpina's figure inspired many artistic compositions, eminently in sculpture (Bernini, see "The Rape of Proserpina (Bernini)" ) in painting (D.G.Rossetti, a fresco by Pomarancio, J.Heintz, Rubens, A. Dürer, Dell'Abbate, Parrish) and in literature (Goethe's "Proserpina" and Swinburne's "Hymn to Proserpine" and "The Garden of Proserpine") The statue of the Rape of Prosepina by Pluto that stands in the Great Garden of Dresden, Germany is also referred to as "Time Ravages Beauty". Kate McGarrigle's song about the legend was one of the last things she wrote prior to her death, and received its only performance at her last concert at Royal Albert Hall in December 2009.
26 Proserpina is a Main belt asteroid in diameter, which was discovered by Robert Luther in 1853. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38908 |
Juan García Esquivel
Juan García Esquivel (January 20, 1918 – January 3, 2002), often simply known as Esquivel!, was a Mexican band leader, pianist, and composer for television and films. He is recognized today as one of the foremost exponents of a sophisticated style of largely instrumental music that combines elements of lounge music and jazz with Latin flavors. Esquivel is sometimes called "The King of Space Age Pop" and "The Busby Berkeley of Cocktail Music", and is considered one of the foremost exponents of a style of late 1950s-early 1960s quirky instrumental pop that became known (in retrospect) as "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music".
He was born in 1918, in Tampico, Tamaulipas, and his family moved to Mexico City in 1928 where he became a self-taught musician from an early age. In interviews, Esquivel's family members have stated that the young boy started playing piano when he was around 6 years old, to the amazement of older musicians who would gather around him in disbelief and to his own delight exhibiting his musical gifts. They have also stated that Esquivel continued to eschew formal musical training as he grew older, preferring to learn from books and by listening to and playing music instead.
Esquivel is considered the king of a style of late 1950s-early 1960s quirky instrumental pop known today as lounge music. Esquivel's musical style was highly idiosyncratic, and although elements sound like his contemporaries, many stylistic traits distinguished his music and made it instantly recognizable, including exotic percussion, wordless vocals, virtuoso piano runs, and exaggerated dynamic shifts. He used many jazz-like elements; however, other than his piano solos, there is no improvisation, and the works are tightly, meticulously arranged by Esquivel himself, who considered himself a perfectionist as a composer, performer, and recording artist.
His orchestration tended toward the very lush, employing novel instrumental combinations, such as Chinese bells, mariachi bands, whistling, and numerous percussion instruments, blended with orchestra, mixed chorus, and his own heavily-ornamented piano style. The chorus was often called upon to sing only nonsense syllables, most famously "zu-zu" and "pow!" A survey of Esquivel's recordings reveals a fondness for glissando, sometimes on a half-valved trumpet, sometimes on a kettle drum, but most frequently on pitched percussion instruments and steel guitars.
Esquivel's use of stereo recording was legendary, occasionally featuring two bands recording simultaneously in separate studios, such as on his album "Latin-Esque" (1962), with the song "Mucha Muchacha" that makes particularly mind-bending use of the separation, with the chorus and brass rapidly alternating stereo sides.
He arranged many traditional Mexican songs like "Bésame Mucho", "La Bamba", "El Manisero" (Cuban/Mexican) and "La Bikina"; covered Brazilian songs like "Aquarela do Brasil" (also known simply as "Brazil") by Ary Barroso, "Surfboard" and "Agua de Beber" by Tom Jobim, and composed spicy lounge-like novelties such as "Mini Skirt", "Yeyo", "Latin-Esque", "Mucha Muchacha" and "Whatchamacallit". He was commissioned to compose the music of a Mexican children's TV show "Odisea Burbujas".
His concerts featured elaborate light shows years before such effects became popular in live music. He performed in Las Vegas on several occasions, often as the opening act for Frank Sinatra. He frequently performed at the Stardust casino lounge circa 1964.
Several compilations of Esquivel's music were issued starting with "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music" in 1994. The apparent success of these releases led to reissues of several of Esquivel's albums. The first reissues were compiled by Irwin Chusid, who also produced the first CD reissues of Raymond Scott and The Langley Schools Music Project.
The last recording on which Esquivel worked was "Merry Xmas from the Space-Age Bachelor Pad" in 1996, for which he did a voiceover on a track by the band Combustible Edison. This album also included several obscure tracks from his past sessions. The last CD released during his lifetime, "See It In Sound", was actually recorded in 1960, but was not released at the time because the record company believed it would not be commercially successful. When released in 1998, it exhibited very unusual and introspective stylings absent from his other works, including a version of "Brazil", played as a musical soundscape of a man bar-hopping where the band plays different renditions of "Brazil" at each bar.
Esquivel also worked as composer for Revue Productions/Universal Television. There he scored the TV western series "The Tall Man," and co-wrote, with Stanley Wilson, the Revue/Universal TV logo fanfare.
Esquivel's recording of "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" was used in episode two of "Better Call Saul".
His recording of his composition "Mucha Muchacha" was used in the films "Confessions of a Dangerous Mind", "The Big Lebowski", "The Notorious Bettie Page", "Stuart Saves His Family", "Nacho Libre" and "Beavis and Butt-Head Do America".
His recording of his composition "Whatchamacallit" was used in the 2002 film "Secretary".
"Mini Skirt" was used as the opening theme for the BBC documentary series "Louis Theroux's Weird Weekends" and "When Louis Met...".
Kronos Quartet recorded a string quartet arrangement of Esquivel's song "Mini Skirt" for their album "Nuevo".
(CD releases)
(Related releases featuring Esquivel's music) | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38910 |
Kronborg
Kronborg is a castle and stronghold in the town of Helsingør, Denmark. Immortalized as Elsinore in William Shakespeare's play "Hamlet", Kronborg is one of the most important Renaissance castles in Northern Europe and has been added to UNESCO's World Heritage Sites list (2000).
The castle is situated on the extreme northeastern tip of the island of Zealand at the narrowest point of the Øresund, the sound between present Denmark and the provinces of present Sweden that were also Danish at the time the castle was built. In this part, the sound is only wide, hence the strategic importance of maintaining a coastal fortification at this location commanding one of the few outlets of the Baltic Sea.
The castle's story dates back to a stronghold, "Krogen", built by King Eric VII in the 1420s. Along with the fortress Kärnan, Helsingborg on the opposite coast of Øresund, it controlled the entranceway to the Baltic Sea. From 1574 to 1585, King Frederick II had the medieval fortress radically transformed into a magnificent Renaissance castle. The main architects were the Flemings Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and Anthonis van Obbergen, whereas the sculptural work was coordinated by Gert van Groningen.
In 1629, a fire destroyed much of the castle, but King Christian IV subsequently had it rebuilt. The castle also has a church within its walls. In 1658, Kronborg was besieged and captured by the Swedes who took many of its valuable art treasures as war booty. In 1785 the castle ceased to be a royal residence and was converted into barracks for the Army. The Army left the castle in 1923, and after a thorough renovation it was opened to the public.
The castle's story dates back to a fortress, "Krogen" (lit. "the Hook"), built in the 1420s by the Danish king, Eric of Pomerania. The king insisted on the payment of sound dues by all ships wishing to enter or leave the Baltic Sea passing through the Sound; to help enforce his demands, he built a powerful fortress at the narrowest point in the Sound. At the time, the Kingdom of Denmark extended across both sides of the Sound, and on the eastern shore the Helsingborg Castle had been in existence since the Middle Ages. With the two castles and guard ships it was possible to control all navigation through the Sound.
The castle was built on "Ørekrog", a sandy tongue of land stretching into the sea from the coast of Zealand towards the coast of Scania. The castle consisted of a square curtain wall with a number of stone buildings inside. The stone building in the northeastern corner contained the king's residence. The building in the southwestern corner contained a large arched banquet hall. The building in the southeastern corner possibly served as the chapel. Large portions of the walls of Krogen are contained within the present-day Kronborg Castle.
King Christian III had the corners of the curtain wall supplemented with bastions in 1558-1559.
As a consequence of developments in the military technique of the era and the improved striking power of the artillery, it became clear that it was necessary to modernize the fortifications of Krogen. After the conclusion of the Northern Seven Years' War in 1570, King Frederick II initiated an extension of the advanced bastions to relieve the medieval curtain wall. The main architect was the Flemish architect Hans Hendrik van Paesschen and the fortification works were completed in 1577. After this, the castle acquired its current name of "Kronborg" (lit. "Crown Castle").
The castle itself was rebuilt from 1574 to 1585, with the separated buildings of Krogen being extended to three coherent wings. The north wing was equipped with chambers for the king, queen and her ladies-in-waiting as well as for the chancellery. In the south wing, the medieval building in the southeast corner was refitted as a modern chapel with the vaulted windows facing the chapel being retained. Frederick was a keen patron of theatre and players performed at the castle when he held court there in 1579.
Initially, the castle was reconstructed only to a height of two storeys. In 1578, however, the Flemish architect Anthonis van Obbergen was engaged as new master builder and work was undertaken to make Kronborg even larger and more magnificent. The sculptural work was coordinated by Gert van Groningen. As a sign of the new ambitions, the south wing was heightened by one storey and a new, gigantic ball room placed over the chapel. Soon after the west and north wings were also heightened by one storey. Finally, the east wing was also heightened with a passageway, "The Queen's Gallery", allowing the Queen comfortable passage from her chambers in the north wing to the ball room in the south wing. The exterior walls were clad with sandstone from Scania, and the new castle was given a roof with copper sheeting.
James VI of Scotland stayed in the castle in 1590 after his marriage to Anne of Denmark. James VI gave 2,000 Danish dalers to the officers and servants in the castle.
In 1629, a moment's carelessness by two workmen caused much of the castle to go up in flames in the night between the 24 and 25 September. Only the Chapel was spared by the strength of its arches. King Christian IV put great efforts into restoring the castle. Already in 1631, the work was underway, led by the architect Hans van Steenwinckel the Younger. By 1639, the exterior — which in keeping with the king's wish was reconstructed without major changes — was once again magnificent, but the interior never fully regained its former glory. Furthermore, certain modernizations were made, and portals, chimneypieces, ceiling paintings and other decorations were renewed in Baroque style.
During the Dano-Swedish War of 1658–60, Kronborg was besieged, attacked and conquered by a Swedish army commanded by Carl Gustaf Wrangel. During the Swedish occupation, the queen of Sweden, Hedvig Eleonora of Holstein-Gottorp and the Swedish king's sister Maria Eufrosyne of Pfalz lived at Kronborg, where they were visited by Charles X of Sweden during the campaign and entertained the foreign ambassadors.
As a result of the Swedish occupation, Kronborg was deprived of many of its most precious art works, including the richly decorated fountain in the castle courtyard, Frederick II's canopy and a number of the large ceiling paintings commissioned by Christian IV for the ballroom.
The Swedish conquest of Kronborg in 1658 demonstrated that the castle was far from impregnable. Afterwards, the defences were strengthened significantly. From 1688-90, an advanced line of defence was added called the Crownwork. Shortly afterwards, a new series of ramparts were built around it. After their completion, Kronborg was considered the strongest fortress in Europe.
From 1739 until the 1900s, Kronborg was used as a prison. The inmates were guarded by the soldiers billeted in the castle. The convicts had been sentenced to work on the castle's fortifications. The convicts were divided into two categories: those with minor sentences were categorised as "honest" and were allowed to work outside the castle walls; those serving sentences for violence, murder, arson or the like were categorised as "dishonest" and had to serve the full sentence doing hard physical labour inside the castle ramparts. Otherwise, they served their time under the same conditions: they all had to wear chains and spend nights in cold and damp dungeons. From January 17, 1772 to April 30, 1772, Kronborg was the place of imprisonment of Queen Caroline Mathilde, sister of King George III, following the scandal of her affair with Johann Friedrich Struensee.
As Kronborg's importance as a royal castle diminished, the armed forces came to play a greater role. From 1785 to 1922, the castle was completely under military administration. During this period, a number of renovations were completed.
The captain of every ship sailing through the strait had to state the value of ship's cargo. Money that had to be paid to the King of Denmark was then calculated depending on the value of the cargo. The king had the right to buy the cargo for the price the ship's captain stated. This policy prevented captains from stating prices that were too low. The Royal Danish Army left the castle in 1923, and after a thorough renovation it was opened to the public in 1938.
Kronborg Castle is located on the extreme northeastern tip of the island of Zealand, to the northeast of the historic centre of the town of Helsingør. It is situated at an elevation of 12 meters, on a small foreland jutting out into the narrowest point of the Øresund, the sound between the Danish island of Zealand and the Swedish province of Scania, that was also Danish until 1658. The approach from the town is to the east, with a series of moats and gates protecting the route from the town to the castle itself.
The royal apartments are located on the first floor of the north wing. The apartments were originally furnished by Frederick II around 1576, but after the fire in 1629, Christian IV had the apartments refurnished and richly decorated with ceiling paintings, stone portals and chimneypieces. The original floors were tiled in black and white which were replaced with wooden floorboards in 1760-61, and the walls were clad in gilt-leather. Today the chambers are furnished with Netherlandish furniture from the 17th century.
The King's Chamber has a bay window, located right above the castle's main portal, from which the king could keep an eye on guests arriving at the castle, whereas the Queen's Chamber has access to a vaulted tower chamber overlooking the Flag Bastion.
Measuring 62 x 12 metres, the Ballroom was the largest hall in Northern Europe when it was completed in 1582. The walls are hung with a series of large paintings which were originally made from 1618 to 1631 for the Great Hall of Rosenborg Castle in Copenhagen. The paintings in the Ballroom include: "Children off to School" by Francis Cleyn, "Feminine Pursuits" by Reinhold Timm, "Riding at the Ring" by Reinhold Timm, "A Boys School" by Francis Cleyn, "A Wedding in a Church" by Francis Cleyn, "An Academy for Noblemen" by Reinhold Timm, "A Banquet" (1622) by .
The present floor and the fireplaces are from the rebuilding in 1924-38.
The walls of the Little Hall are furnished with seven tapestries originally from a series of forty tapestries portraying one hundred Danish kings. The masterpieces include "" (1376-1387) and "Tapestry depicting Knud VI" (1182-1202). The tapestries were commissioned by Frederick II around 1580. Seven more tapestries are at the National Museum of Denmark, while the rest have been lost.
The chapel is located in the ground floor of the south wing and was inaugurated in 1582. In 1785, as the castle was being fitted for use as army barracks, the chapel was fitted out as a gymnasium and fencing hall and the furniture stored away. The chapel was refurnished with the original furniture in 1838 and reinaugurated in 1843.
Kronborg is known to many as "Elsinore," the setting of William Shakespeare's famous tragedy "Hamlet, Prince of Denmark", though "Elsinore" is actually the anglicized name of the surrounding town of Helsingør. "Hamlet" was performed in the castle for the first time to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of William Shakespeare, with a cast consisting of soldiers from the castle garrison. The stage was in the telegraph tower in the southwest corner of the castle.
The play has since been performed several times in the courtyard and at various locations on the fortifications. Later performers to play Hamlet at the castle included Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud, Christopher Plummer, Derek Jacobi, David Tennant, and in 2009 Jude Law. In 2017, Hamletscenen presented a production of William Shakespeare's Hamlet at Kronborg castle, directed by Lars Romann Engel; the role of Hamlet was played by Cyron Melville and Ophelia by Natalie Madueño; music for the production was composed by Mike Sheridan.
According to a legend linked to Arthurian myth, a Danish king known as Ogier the Dane (Danish: "Holger Danske"), was taken to Avalon by Morgan le Fay. He returned to rescue France from danger, then traveled to Kronborg castle, where he sleeps until he is needed to save his homeland. His beard has grown to extend along the ground. A statue of the sleeping Ogier has been placed in the castle.
Kulturhavn Kronborg is an initiative of 2013 to offer a variety of culture experiences to residents and visitors to Helsingør. Kulturhavn Kronborg is a joint initiative by Kronborg Castle, Danish Maritime Museum, Kulturværftet and Helsingør harbour.
The cast setting of the televised holiday series "Jul på Kronborg" (), which featured both Hamlet and Holger the Dane. 'Elsinore Beer' is named for the castle and shown in the beer label logo in the 1983 comedy Strange Brew, starring Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38927 |
Jupiter
Jupiter is the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest in the Solar System. It is a gas giant with a mass one-thousandth that of the Sun, but two-and-a-half times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined. Jupiter is one of the brightest objects visible to the naked eye in the night sky, and has been known to ancient civilizations since before recorded history. It is named after the Roman god Jupiter. When viewed from Earth, Jupiter can be bright enough for its reflected light to cast shadows, and is on average the third-brightest natural object in the night sky after the Moon and Venus.
Jupiter is primarily composed of hydrogen with a quarter of its mass being helium, though helium comprises only about a tenth of the number of molecules. It may also have a rocky core of heavier elements, but like the other giant planets, Jupiter lacks a well-defined solid surface. Because of its rapid rotation, the planet's shape is that of an oblate spheroid (it has a slight but noticeable bulge around the equator). The outer atmosphere is visibly segregated into several bands at different latitudes, resulting in turbulence and storms along their interacting boundaries. A prominent result is the Great Red Spot, a giant storm that is known to have existed since at least the 17th century when it was first seen by telescope. Surrounding Jupiter is a faint planetary ring system and a powerful magnetosphere. Jupiter has 79 known moons, including the four large Galilean moons discovered by Galileo Galilei in 1610. Ganymede, the largest of these, has a diameter greater than that of the planet Mercury.
"Pioneer 10 was" the first spacecraft to visit Jupiter, making its closest approach to the planet on December 4, 1973; "Pioneer 10" identified plasma in Jupiter's magnetic field and also found that Jupiter's magnetic tail was nearly 800 million kilometers long, covering the entire distance to Saturn. Jupiter has been explored on a number of occasions by robotic spacecraft, beginning with the "Pioneer" and "Voyager" flyby missions from 1973 to 1979, and later by the "Galileo" orbiter, which arrived at Jupiter in 1995. In late February 2007, Jupiter was visited by the "New Horizons" probe, which used Jupiter's gravity to increase its speed and bend its trajectory en route to Pluto. The latest probe to visit the planet is "Juno", which entered into orbit around Jupiter on July 4, 2016. Future targets for exploration in the Jupiter system include the probable ice-covered liquid ocean of its moon Europa.
Astronomers have discovered planetary systems with multiple planets. Regularly these systems include a few planets with masses several times greater than Earth's (super-Earths), orbiting closer to their star than Mercury is to the Sun, and sometimes also Jupiter-mass gas giants close to their star. Earth and its neighbor planets may have formed from fragments of planets after collisions with Jupiter destroyed those super-Earths near the Sun. As Jupiter came toward the inner Solar System, in what theorists call the grand tack hypothesis, gravitational tugs and pulls occurred causing a series of collisions between the super-Earths as their orbits began to overlap. Researchers from Lund University found that Jupiter's migration went on for around 700,000 years, in a period approximately 2–3 million years after the celestial body started its life as an ice asteroid far from the sun. The journey inwards in the solar system followed a spiraling course in which Jupiter continued to circle around the sun, albeit in an increasingly tight path. The reason behind the actual migration relates to gravitational forces from the surrounding gases in the solar system. Jupiter moving out of the inner Solar System would have allowed the formation of inner planets, including Earth.
However, the formation timescales of terrestrial planets resulting from the grand tack hypothesis appear inconsistent with the measured terrestrial composition.
Moreover, the likelihood that the grand tack actually occurred in the solar nebula is quite low.
Jupiter is composed primarily of gaseous and liquid matter. It is the largest planet in the Solar System. It has a diameter of at its equator. The average density of Jupiter, 1.326 g/cm3, is the second highest of the giant planets, but lower than those of the four terrestrial planets.
Jupiter's upper atmosphere is about 88–92% hydrogen and 8–12% helium by percent volume of gas molecules. A helium atom has about four times as much mass as a hydrogen atom, so the composition changes when described as the proportion of mass contributed by different atoms. Thus, Jupiter's atmosphere is approximately 75% hydrogen and 24% helium by mass, with the remaining one percent of the mass consisting of other elements. The atmosphere contains trace amounts of methane, water vapor, ammonia, and silicon-based compounds. There are also traces of carbon, ethane, hydrogen sulfide, neon, oxygen, phosphine, and sulfur. The outermost layer of the atmosphere contains crystals of frozen ammonia. Through infrared and ultraviolet measurements, trace amounts of benzene and other hydrocarbons have also been found. The interior contains denser materials—by mass it is roughly 71% hydrogen, 24% helium, and 5% other elements.
The atmospheric proportions of hydrogen and helium are close to the theoretical composition of the primordial solar nebula. Neon in the upper atmosphere only consists of 20 parts per million by mass, which is about a tenth as abundant as in the Sun. Helium is also depleted to about 80% of the Sun's helium composition. This depletion is a result of precipitation of these elements into the interior of the planet.
Based on spectroscopy, Saturn is thought to be similar in composition to Jupiter, but the other giant planets Uranus and Neptune have relatively less hydrogen and helium and relatively more ices and are thus now termed ice giants.
Jupiter's mass is 2.5 times that of all the other planets in the Solar System combined—this is so massive that its barycenter with the Sun lies above the Sun's surface at 1.068 solar radii from the Sun's center. Jupiter is much larger than Earth and considerably less dense: its volume is that of about 1,321 Earths, but it is only 318 times as massive. Jupiter's radius is about 1/10 the radius of the Sun, and its mass is 0.001 times the mass of the Sun, so the densities of the two bodies are similar. A "Jupiter mass" ( or ) is often used as a unit to describe masses of other objects, particularly extrasolar planets and brown dwarfs. So, for example, the extrasolar planet HD 209458 b has a mass of , while Kappa Andromedae b has a mass of .
Theoretical models indicate that if Jupiter had much more mass than it does at present, it would shrink. For small changes in mass, the radius would not change appreciably, and above about (1.6 Jupiter masses) the interior would become so much more compressed under the increased pressure that its volume would "decrease" despite the increasing amount of matter. As a result, Jupiter is thought to have about as large a diameter as a planet of its composition and evolutionary history can achieve. The process of further shrinkage with increasing mass would continue until appreciable stellar ignition was achieved, as in high-mass brown dwarfs having around 50 Jupiter masses.
Although Jupiter would need to be about 75 times as massive to fuse hydrogen and become a star, the smallest red dwarf is only about 30 percent larger in radius than Jupiter. Despite this, Jupiter still radiates more heat than it receives from the Sun; the amount of heat produced inside it is similar to the total solar radiation it receives. This additional heat is generated by the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism through contraction. This process causes Jupiter to shrink by about 2 cm each year. When it was first formed, Jupiter was much hotter and was about twice its current diameter.
Jupiter was expected to either consist of a dense core, a surrounding layer of liquid metallic hydrogen (with some helium) extending outward to about 78% of the radius of the planet, and an outer atmosphere consisting predominantly of molecular hydrogen, or perhaps to have no core at all, consisting instead of denser and denser fluid (predominantly molecular and metallic hydrogen) all the way to the center, depending on whether the planet accreted first as a solid body or collapsed directly from the gaseous protoplanetary disk. However, the "Juno" mission, which arrived in July 2016, found that Jupiter has a very diffuse core, mixed into the mantle. A possible cause is an impact from a planet of about ten Earth masses a few million years after Jupiter's formation, which would have disrupted an originally solid Jovian core.
Above the layer of metallic hydrogen lies a transparent interior atmosphere of hydrogen. At this depth, the pressure and temperature are above hydrogen's critical pressure of 1.2858 MPa and critical temperature of only 32.938 K. In this state, there are no distinct liquid and gas phases—hydrogen is said to be in a supercritical fluid state. It is convenient to treat hydrogen as gas extending downward from the cloud layer to a depth of about 1,000 km, and as liquid in deeper layers. Physically, there is no clear boundary—the gas smoothly becomes hotter and denser as one descends. Rain-like droplets of helium and neon precipitate downward through the lower atmosphere, depleting the abundance of these elements in the upper atmosphere. Rainfalls of extraterrestrial diamonds have been suggested to occur, as well as on Saturn and the ice giants Uranus and Neptune.
The temperature and pressure inside Jupiter increase steadily inward, due to the Kelvin–Helmholtz mechanism. At the pressure level of 10 bars (1 MPa), the temperature is around . At the phase transition region where hydrogen—heated beyond its critical point—becomes metallic, it is calculated the temperature is and the pressure is 200 GPa. The temperature at the core boundary is estimated to be and the interior pressure is roughly 3,000–4,500 GPa.
Jupiter has the largest planetary atmosphere in the Solar System, spanning over in altitude. Because Jupiter has no surface, the base of its atmosphere is usually considered to be the point at which atmospheric pressure is equal to .
Jupiter is perpetually covered with clouds composed of ammonia crystals and possibly ammonium hydrosulfide. The clouds are located in the tropopause and are arranged into bands of different latitudes, known as tropical regions. These are sub-divided into lighter-hued "zones" and darker "belts". The interactions of these conflicting circulation patterns cause storms and turbulence. Wind speeds of 100 m/s (360 km/h) are common in zonal jets. The zones have been observed to vary in width, color and intensity from year to year, but they have remained sufficiently stable for scientists to give them identifying designations.
The cloud layer is only about deep, and consists of at least two decks of clouds: a thick lower deck and a thin clearer region. There may also be a thin layer of water clouds underlying the ammonia layer. Supporting the idea of water clouds are the flashes of lightning detected in the atmosphere of Jupiter. These electrical discharges can be up to a thousand times as powerful as lightning on Earth. The water clouds are assumed to generate thunderstorms in the same way as terrestrial thunderstorms, driven by the heat rising from the interior.
The orange and brown coloration in the clouds of Jupiter are caused by upwelling compounds that change color when they are exposed to ultraviolet light from the Sun. The exact makeup remains uncertain, but the substances are thought to be phosphorus, sulfur or possibly hydrocarbons. These colorful compounds, known as chromophores, mix with the warmer, lower deck of clouds. The zones are formed when rising convection cells form crystallizing ammonia that masks out these lower clouds from view.
Jupiter's low axial tilt means that the poles constantly receive less solar radiation than at the planet's equatorial region. Convection within the interior of the planet transports more energy to the poles, balancing out the temperatures at the cloud layer.
The best known feature of Jupiter is the Great Red Spot, a persistent anticyclonic storm that is larger than Earth, located 22° south of the equator. It is known to have been in existence since at least 1831, and possibly since 1665. Images by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown as many as two "red spots" adjacent to the Great Red Spot. The storm is large enough to be visible through Earth-based telescopes with an aperture of 12 cm or larger. The oval object rotates counterclockwise, with a period of about six days. The maximum altitude of this storm is about above the surrounding cloudtops.
The Great Red Spot is large enough to accommodate Earth within its boundaries. Mathematical models suggest that the storm is stable and may be a permanent feature of the planet. However, it has significantly decreased in size since its discovery. Initial observations in the late 1800s showed it to be approximately across. By the time of the "Voyager" flybys in 1979, the storm had a length of and a width of approximately . "Hubble" observations in 1995 showed it had decreased in size again to , and observations in 2009 showed the size to be . , the storm was measured at approximately , and is decreasing in length by about per year.
Storms such as this are common within the turbulent atmospheres of giant planets. Jupiter also has white ovals and brown ovals, which are lesser unnamed storms. White ovals tend to consist of relatively cool clouds within the upper atmosphere. Brown ovals are warmer and located within the "normal cloud layer". Such storms can last as little as a few hours or stretch on for centuries.
Even before Voyager proved that the feature was a storm, there was strong evidence that the spot could not be associated with any deeper feature on the planet's surface, as the Spot rotates differentially with respect to the rest of the atmosphere, sometimes faster and sometimes more slowly.
In 2000, an atmospheric feature formed in the southern hemisphere that is similar in appearance to the Great Red Spot, but smaller. This was created when several smaller, white oval-shaped storms merged to form a single feature—these three smaller white ovals were first observed in 1938. The merged feature was named Oval BA, and has been nicknamed Red Spot Junior. It has since increased in intensity and changed color from white to red.
In April 2017, scientists reported the discovery of a "Great Cold Spot" in Jupiter's thermosphere at its north pole that is across, wide, and cooler than surrounding material. The feature was discovered by researchers at the Very Large Telescope in Chile, who then searched archived data from the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility between 1995 and 2000. They found that, while the Spot changes size, shape and intensity over the short term, it has maintained its general position in the atmosphere across more than 15 years of available data. Scientists believe the Spot is a giant vortex similar to the Great Red Spot and also appears to be quasi-stable like the vortices in Earth's thermosphere. Interactions between charged particles generated from Io and the planet's strong magnetic field likely resulted in redistribution of heat flow, forming the Spot.
Jupiter's magnetic field is fourteen times as strong as that of Earth, ranging from 4.2 gauss (0.42 mT) at the equator to 10–14 gauss (1.0–1.4 mT) at the poles, making it the strongest in the Solar System (except for sunspots). This field is thought to be generated by eddy currents—swirling movements of conducting materials—within the liquid metallic hydrogen core. The volcanoes on the moon Io emit large amounts of sulfur dioxide forming a gas torus along the moon's orbit. The gas is ionized in the magnetosphere producing sulfur and oxygen ions. They, together with hydrogen ions originating from the atmosphere of Jupiter, form a plasma sheet in Jupiter's equatorial plane. The plasma in the sheet co-rotates with the planet causing deformation of the dipole magnetic field into that of magnetodisk. Electrons within the plasma sheet generate a strong radio signature that produces bursts in the range of 0.6–30 MHz.
At about 75 Jupiter radii from the planet, the interaction of the magnetosphere with the solar wind generates a bow shock. Surrounding Jupiter's magnetosphere is a magnetopause, located at the inner edge of a magnetosheath—a region between it and the bow shock. The solar wind interacts with these regions, elongating the magnetosphere on Jupiter's lee side and extending it outward until it nearly reaches the orbit of Saturn. The four largest moons of Jupiter all orbit within the magnetosphere, which protects them from the solar wind.
The magnetosphere of Jupiter is responsible for intense episodes of radio emission from the planet's polar regions. Volcanic activity on Jupiter's moon Io (see below) injects gas into Jupiter's magnetosphere, producing a torus of particles about the planet. As Io moves through this torus, the interaction generates Alfvén waves that carry ionized matter into the polar regions of Jupiter. As a result, radio waves are generated through a cyclotron maser mechanism, and the energy is transmitted out along a cone-shaped surface. When Earth intersects this cone, the radio emissions from Jupiter can exceed the solar radio output.
Jupiter is the only planet whose barycenter with the Sun lies outside the volume of the Sun, though by only 7% of the Sun's radius. The average distance between Jupiter and the Sun is 778 million km (about 5.2 times the average distance between Earth and the Sun, or 5.2 AU) and it completes an orbit every 11.86 years. This is approximately two-fifths the orbital period of Saturn, forming a near orbital resonance between the two largest planets in the Solar System. The elliptical orbit of Jupiter is inclined 1.31° compared to Earth. Because the eccentricity of its orbit is 0.048, Jupiter's distance from the Sun varies by 75 million km between its nearest approach (perihelion) and furthest distance (aphelion).
The axial tilt of Jupiter is relatively small: only 3.13°. As a result, it does not experience significant seasonal changes, in contrast to, for example, Earth and Mars.
Jupiter's rotation is the fastest of all the Solar System's planets, completing a rotation on its axis in slightly less than ten hours; this creates an equatorial bulge easily seen through an Earth-based amateur telescope. The planet is shaped as an oblate spheroid, meaning that the diameter across its equator is longer than the diameter measured between its poles. On Jupiter, the equatorial diameter is longer than the diameter measured through the poles.
Because Jupiter is not a solid body, its upper atmosphere undergoes differential rotation. The rotation of Jupiter's polar atmosphere is about 5 minutes longer than that of the equatorial atmosphere; three systems are used as frames of reference, particularly when graphing the motion of atmospheric features. System I applies from the latitudes 10° N to 10° S; its period is the planet's shortest, at 9h 50m 30.0s. System II applies at all latitudes north and south of these; its period is 9h 55m 40.6s. System III was first defined by radio astronomers, and corresponds to the rotation of the planet's magnetosphere; its period is Jupiter's official rotation.
Jupiter is usually the fourth brightest object in the sky (after the Sun, the Moon and Venus); at times Mars is brighter than Jupiter. Depending on Jupiter's position with respect to the Earth, it can vary in visual magnitude from as bright as −2.94 at opposition down to −1.66 during conjunction with the Sun. The mean apparent magnitude is −2.20 with a standard deviation of 0.33. The angular diameter of Jupiter likewise varies from 50.1 to 29.8 arc seconds. Favorable oppositions occur when Jupiter is passing through perihelion, an event that occurs once per orbit.
Earth overtakes Jupiter every 398.9 days as it orbits the Sun, a duration called the synodic period. As it does so, Jupiter appears to undergo retrograde motion with respect to the background stars. That is, for a period Jupiter seems to move backward in the night sky, performing a looping motion.
Because the orbit of Jupiter is outside that of Earth, the phase angle of Jupiter as viewed from Earth never exceeds 11.5°: Jupiter always appears nearly fully illuminated when viewed through Earth-based telescopes. It was only during spacecraft missions to Jupiter that crescent views of the planet were obtained. A small telescope will usually show Jupiter's four Galilean moons and the prominent cloud belts across Jupiter's atmosphere. A large telescope will show Jupiter's Great Red Spot when it faces Earth.
The planet Jupiter has been known since ancient times. It is visible to the naked eye in the night sky and can occasionally be seen in the daytime when the Sun is low. To the Babylonians, this object represented their god Marduk. They used Jupiter's roughly 12-year orbit along the ecliptic to define the constellations of their zodiac.
The Romans called it "the star of Jupiter" ("Iuppiter Stella"), as they believed it to be sacred to the principal god of Roman mythology, whose name comes from the Proto-Indo-European vocative compound *"Dyēu-pəter" (nominative: *"Dyēus-pətēr", meaning "Father Sky-God", or "Father Day-God"). In turn, Jupiter was the counterpart to the mythical Greek "Zeus" (Ζεύς), also referred to as "Dias" (Δίας), the planetary name of which is retained in modern Greek. The ancient Greeks knew the planet as Phaethon, meaning "shining one" or "blazing star." As supreme god of the Roman pantheon, Jupiter was the god of thunder, lightning and storms, and appropriately called the god of light and sky.
The astronomical symbol for the planet, , is a stylized representation of the god's lightning bolt. The original Greek deity "Zeus" supplies the root "zeno-", used to form some Jupiter-related words, such as "zenographic".
"Jovian" is the adjectival form of Jupiter. The older adjectival form "jovial", employed by astrologers in the Middle Ages, has come to mean "happy" or "merry", moods ascribed to Jupiter's astrological influence.
The Chinese, Vietnamese, Koreans and Japanese called it the "wood star" (), based on the Chinese Five Elements. Chinese Taoism personified it as the Fu star. The Greeks called it "Φαέθων" ("Phaethon", meaning "blazing").
In Vedic astrology, Hindu astrologers named the planet after Brihaspati, the religious teacher of the gods, and often called it "Guru", which literally means the "Heavy One".
In Germanic mythology, Jupiter is equated to Thor, whence the English name "Thursday" for the Roman "dies Jovis".
In Central Asian Turkic myths, Jupiter is called "Erendiz" or "Erentüz", from "eren" (of uncertain meaning) and "yultuz" ("star"). There are many theories about the meaning of "eren". These peoples calculated the period of the orbit of Jupiter as 11 years and 300 days. They believed that some social and natural events connected to Erentüz's movements on the sky.
The observation of Jupiter dates back to at least the Babylonian astronomers of the 7th or 8th century BC. The ancient Chinese also observed the orbit of "Suìxīng" () and established their cycle of 12 earthly branches based on its approximate number of years; the Chinese language still uses its name (simplified as ) when referring to years of age. By the 4th century BC, these observations had developed into the Chinese zodiac, with each year associated with a Tai Sui star and god controlling the region of the heavens opposite Jupiter's position in the night sky; these beliefs survive in some Taoist religious practices and in the East Asian zodiac's twelve animals, now often popularly assumed to be related to the arrival of the animals before Buddha. The Chinese historian Xi Zezong has claimed that Gan De, an ancient Chinese astronomer, discovered one of Jupiter's moons in 362 with the unaided eye. If accurate, this would predate Galileo's discovery by nearly two millennia. In his 2nd century work the "Almagest", the Hellenistic astronomer Claudius Ptolemaeus constructed a geocentric planetary model based on deferents and epicycles to explain Jupiter's motion relative to Earth, giving its orbital period around Earth as 4332.38 days, or 11.86 years.
In 1610, Italian polymath Galileo Galilei discovered the four largest moons of Jupiter (now known as the Galilean moons) using a telescope; thought to be the first telescopic observation of moons other than Earth's. One day after Galileo, Simon Marius independently discovered moons around Jupiter, though he did not publish his discovery in a book until 1614. It was Marius's names for the four major moons, however, that stuck—Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. These findings were also the first discovery of celestial motion not apparently centered on Earth. The discovery was a major point in favor of Copernicus' heliocentric theory of the motions of the planets; Galileo's outspoken support of the Copernican theory placed him under the threat of the Inquisition.
During the 1660s, Giovanni Cassini used a new telescope to discover spots and colorful bands on Jupiter and observed that the planet appeared oblate; that is, flattened at the poles. He was also able to estimate the rotation period of the planet. In 1690 Cassini noticed that the atmosphere undergoes differential rotation.
The Great Red Spot, a prominent oval-shaped feature in the southern hemisphere of Jupiter, may have been observed as early as 1664 by Robert Hooke and in 1665 by Cassini, although this is disputed. The pharmacist Heinrich Schwabe produced the earliest known drawing to show details of the Great Red Spot in 1831.
The Red Spot was reportedly lost from sight on several occasions between 1665 and 1708 before becoming quite conspicuous in 1878. It was recorded as fading again in 1883 and at the start of the 20th century.
Both Giovanni Borelli and Cassini made careful tables of the motions of Jupiter's moons, allowing predictions of the times when the moons would pass before or behind the planet. By the 1670s, it was observed that when Jupiter was on the opposite side of the Sun from Earth, these events would occur about 17 minutes later than expected. Ole Rømer deduced that light does not travel instantaneously (a conclusion that Cassini had earlier rejected), and this timing discrepancy was used to estimate the speed of light.
In 1892, E. E. Barnard observed a fifth satellite of Jupiter with the refractor at Lick Observatory in California. The discovery of this relatively small object, a testament to his keen eyesight, quickly made him famous. This moon was later named Amalthea. It was the last planetary moon to be discovered directly by visual observation.
In 1932, Rupert Wildt identified absorption bands of ammonia and methane in the spectra of Jupiter.
Three long-lived anticyclonic features termed white ovals were observed in 1938. For several decades they remained as separate features in the atmosphere, sometimes approaching each other but never merging. Finally, two of the ovals merged in 1998, then absorbed the third in 2000, becoming Oval BA.
In 1955, Bernard Burke and Kenneth Franklin detected bursts of radio signals coming from Jupiter at 22.2 MHz. The period of these bursts matched the rotation of the planet, and they were also able to use this information to refine the rotation rate. Radio bursts from Jupiter were found to come in two forms: long bursts (or L-bursts) lasting up to several seconds, and short bursts (or S-bursts) that had a duration of less than a hundredth of a second.
Scientists discovered that there were three forms of radio signals transmitted from Jupiter.
Since 1973, a number of automated spacecraft have visited Jupiter, most notably the "Pioneer 10" space probe, the first spacecraft to get close enough to Jupiter to send back revelations about the properties and phenomena of the Solar System's largest planet. Flights to other planets within the Solar System are accomplished at a cost in energy, which is described by the net change in velocity of the spacecraft, or delta-v. Entering a Hohmann transfer orbit from Earth to Jupiter from low Earth orbit requires a delta-v of 6.3 km/s which is comparable to the 9.7 km/s delta-v needed to reach low Earth orbit. Gravity assists through planetary flybys can be used to reduce the energy required to reach Jupiter, albeit at the cost of a significantly longer flight duration.
Beginning in 1973, several spacecraft have performed planetary flyby maneuvers that brought them within observation range of Jupiter. The Pioneer missions obtained the first close-up images of Jupiter's atmosphere and several of its moons. They discovered that the radiation fields near the planet were much stronger than expected, but both spacecraft managed to survive in that environment. The trajectories of these spacecraft were used to refine the mass estimates of the Jovian system. Radio occultations by the planet resulted in better measurements of Jupiter's diameter and the amount of polar flattening.
Six years later, the Voyager missions vastly improved the understanding of the Galilean moons and discovered Jupiter's rings. They also confirmed that the Great Red Spot was anticyclonic. Comparison of images showed that the Red Spot had changed hue since the Pioneer missions, turning from orange to dark brown. A torus of ionized atoms was discovered along Io's orbital path, and volcanoes were found on the moon's surface, some in the process of erupting. As the spacecraft passed behind the planet, it observed flashes of lightning in the night side atmosphere.
The next mission to encounter Jupiter was the "Ulysses" solar probe. It performed a flyby maneuver to attain a polar orbit around the Sun. During this pass, the spacecraft conducted studies on Jupiter's magnetosphere. "Ulysses" has no cameras so no images were taken. A second flyby six years later was at a much greater distance.
In 2000, the "Cassini" probe flew by Jupiter on its way to Saturn, and provided some of the highest-resolution images ever made of the planet.
The "New Horizons" probe flew by Jupiter for a gravity assist en route to Pluto. Its closest approach was on February 28, 2007. The probe's cameras measured plasma output from volcanoes on Io and studied all four Galilean moons in detail, as well as making long-distance observations of the outer moons Himalia and Elara. Imaging of the Jovian system began September 4, 2006.
The first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter was the "Galileo" probe, which entered orbit on December 7, 1995. It orbited the planet for over seven years, conducting multiple flybys of all the Galilean moons and Amalthea. The spacecraft also witnessed the impact of Comet Shoemaker–Levy 9 as it approached Jupiter in 1994, giving a unique vantage point for the event. Its originally designed capacity was limited by the failed deployment of its high-gain radio antenna, although extensive information was still gained about the Jovian system from "Galileo".
A 340-kilogram titanium atmospheric probe was released from the spacecraft in July 1995, entering Jupiter's atmosphere on December 7. It parachuted through of the atmosphere at a speed of about 2,575 km/h (1600 mph) and collected data for 57.6 minutes before the signal was lost at a pressure of about 23 atmospheres at a temperature of 153 °C. It melted thereafter, and possibly vaporized. The "Galileo" orbiter itself experienced a more rapid version of the same fate when it was deliberately steered into the planet on September 21, 2003 at a speed of over 50 km/s to avoid any possibility of it crashing into and possibly contaminating Europa, a moon which has been hypothesized to have the possibility of harboring life.
Data from this mission revealed that hydrogen composes up to 90% of Jupiter's atmosphere. The recorded temperature was more than 300 °C (>570 °F) and the windspeed measured more than 644 km/h (>400 mph) before the probes vapourised.
NASA's "Juno" mission arrived at Jupiter on July 4, 2016 and was expected to complete thirty-seven orbits over the next twenty months. The mission plan called for "Juno" to study the planet in detail from a polar orbit. On August 27, 2016, the spacecraft completed its first fly-by of Jupiter and sent back the first ever images of Jupiter's north pole.
The next planned mission to the Jovian system will be the European Space Agency's Jupiter Icy Moon Explorer (JUICE), due to launch in 2022, followed by NASA's "Europa Clipper" mission in 2023.
There has been great interest in studying the icy moons in detail because of the possibility of subsurface liquid oceans on Jupiter's moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Funding difficulties have delayed progress. NASA's "JIMO" ("Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter") was cancelled in 2005. A subsequent proposal was developed for a joint NASA/ESA mission called EJSM/Laplace, with a provisional launch date around 2020. EJSM/Laplace would have consisted of the NASA-led Jupiter Europa Orbiter and the ESA-led Jupiter Ganymede Orbiter. However, ESA had formally ended the partnership by April 2011, citing budget issues at NASA and the consequences on the mission timetable. Instead, ESA planned to go ahead with a European-only mission to compete in its L1 Cosmic Vision selection.
Jupiter has 79 known natural satellites. Of these, 63 are less than 10 kilometres in diameter and have only been discovered since 1975. The four largest moons, visible from Earth with binoculars on a clear night, known as the "Galilean moons", are Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto.
The moons discovered by Galileo—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto—are among the largest satellites in the Solar System. The orbits of three of them (Io, Europa, and Ganymede) form a pattern known as a Laplace resonance; for every four orbits that Io makes around Jupiter, Europa makes exactly two orbits and Ganymede makes exactly one. This resonance causes the gravitational effects of the three large moons to distort their orbits into elliptical shapes, because each moon receives an extra tug from its neighbors at the same point in every orbit it makes. The tidal force from Jupiter, on the other hand, works to circularize their orbits.
The eccentricity of their orbits causes regular flexing of the three moons' shapes, with Jupiter's gravity stretching them out as they approach it and allowing them to spring back to more spherical shapes as they swing away. This tidal flexing heats the moons' interiors by friction. This is seen most dramatically in the extraordinary volcanic activity of innermost Io (which is subject to the strongest tidal forces), and to a lesser degree in the geological youth of Europa's surface (indicating recent resurfacing of the moon's exterior).
Before the discoveries of the Voyager missions, Jupiter's moons were arranged neatly into four groups of four, based on commonality of their orbital elements. Since then, the large number of new small outer moons has complicated this picture. There are now thought to be six main groups, although some are more distinct than others.
A basic sub-division is a grouping of the eight inner regular moons, which have nearly circular orbits near the plane of Jupiter's equator and are thought to have formed with Jupiter. The remainder of the moons consist of an unknown number of small irregular moons with elliptical and inclined orbits, which are thought to be captured asteroids or fragments of captured asteroids. Irregular moons that belong to a group share similar orbital elements and thus may have a common origin, perhaps as a larger moon or captured body that broke up.
Jupiter has a faint planetary ring system composed of three main segments: an inner torus of particles known as the halo, a relatively bright main ring, and an outer gossamer ring. These rings appear to be made of dust, rather than ice as with Saturn's rings. The main ring is probably made of material ejected from the satellites Adrastea and Metis. Material that would normally fall back to the moon is pulled into Jupiter because of its strong gravitational influence. The orbit of the material veers towards Jupiter and new material is added by additional impacts. In a similar way, the moons Thebe and Amalthea probably produce the two distinct components of the dusty gossamer ring. There is also evidence of a rocky ring strung along Amalthea's orbit which may consist of collisional debris from that moon.
Along with the Sun, the gravitational influence of Jupiter has helped shape the Solar System. The orbits of most of the system's planets lie closer to Jupiter's orbital plane than the Sun's equatorial plane (Mercury is the only planet that is closer to the Sun's equator in orbital tilt), the Kirkwood gaps in the asteroid belt are mostly caused by Jupiter, and the planet may have been responsible for the Late Heavy Bombardment of the inner Solar System's history.
Along with its moons, Jupiter's gravitational field controls numerous asteroids that have settled into the regions of the Lagrangian points preceding and following Jupiter in its orbit around the Sun. These are known as the Trojan asteroids, and are divided into Greek and Trojan "camps" to commemorate the "Iliad". The first of these, 588 Achilles, was discovered by Max Wolf in 1906; since then more than two thousand have been discovered. The largest is 624 Hektor.
Most short-period comets belong to the Jupiter family—defined as comets with semi-major axes smaller than Jupiter's. Jupiter family comets are thought to form in the Kuiper belt outside the orbit of Neptune. During close encounters with Jupiter their orbits are perturbed into a smaller period and then circularized by regular gravitational interaction with the Sun and Jupiter.
Due to the magnitude of Jupiter's mass, the center of gravity between it and the Sun lies just above the Sun's surface. Jupiter is the only body in the Solar System for which this is true.
Jupiter has been called the Solar System's vacuum cleaner, because of its immense gravity well and location near the inner Solar System. It receives the most frequent comet impacts of the Solar System's planets. It was thought that the planet served to partially shield the inner system from cometary bombardment. However, recent computer simulations suggest that Jupiter does not cause a net decrease in the number of comets that pass through the inner Solar System, as its gravity perturbs their orbits inward roughly as often as it accretes or ejects them. This topic remains controversial among scientists, as some think it draws comets towards Earth from the Kuiper belt while others think that Jupiter protects Earth from the alleged Oort cloud. Jupiter experiences about 200 times more asteroid and comet impacts than Earth.
A 1997 survey of early astronomical records and drawings suggested that a certain dark surface feature discovered by astronomer Giovanni Cassini in 1690 may have been an impact scar. The survey initially produced eight more candidate sites as potential impact observations that he and others had recorded between 1664 and 1839. It was later determined, however, that these candidate sites had little or no possibility of being the results of the proposed impacts.
More recent discoveries include the following: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38930 |
Phillis Wheatley
Phillis Wheatley, also spelled Phyllis and Wheatly (c. 1753 – December 5, 1784) was the first African-American author of a book of poetry. Born in West Africa, she was sold into slavery at the age of seven or eight and transported to North America. She was purchased by the Wheatley family of Boston, who taught her to read and write and encouraged her poetry when they saw her talent.
On a 1773 trip to London with her master's son, seeking publication of her work, she was aided in meeting prominent people who became patrons. The publication in London of her "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" on September 1, 1773, brought her fame both in England and the American colonies. Figures such as George Washington praised her work. A few years later, African-American poet Jupiter Hammon praised her work in a poem of his own.
Wheatley was emancipated (set free) by the Wheatleys shortly after the publication of her book. She married in about 1778. Two of her children died as infants. After her husband was imprisoned for debt in 1784, Wheatley fell into working poverty and died of illness. Her last infant son died soon after.
Although the date and place of her birth are not documented, scholars believe that Phillis Wheatley was born in 1753 in West Africa, most likely in present-day Gambia or Senegal. Wheatley was sold by a local chief to a visiting trader, who took her to Boston in the British colony of Massachusetts, on July 11, 1761, on a slave ship called "The Phillis". It was owned by Timothy Fitch and captained by Peter Gwinn.
On arrival she was re-sold to John Wheatley, a wealthy Boston merchant and tailor who bought the young girl as a servant for his wife Susanna. John and Susanna Wheatley named the young girl Phillis, after the slave ship that had transported her to America. She was given their last name of Wheatley, as was a common custom if any surname was used for enslaved people.
The Wheatleys' 18-year-old daughter, Mary, was Phillis's first tutor in reading and writing. Their son Nathaniel also helped her. John Wheatley was known as a progressive throughout New England; his family gave Phillis an unprecedented education for an enslaved person, and for a female of any race. By the age of 12, she was reading Greek and Latin classics and difficult passages from the Bible. At the age of 14, she wrote her first poem, "To the University of Cambridge, in New England." Recognizing her literary ability, the Wheatley family supported Phillis's education and left the household labor to their other domestic slaves. The Wheatleys often showed off her abilities to friends and family. Strongly influenced by her readings of the works of Alexander Pope, John Milton, Homer, Horace, and Virgil, Phillis began to write poetry.
In 1773, at the age of 20, Phillis accompanied Nathaniel Wheatley to London in part for her health, but also because Susanna believed Phillis would have a better chance of publishing her book of poems there. She had an audience with the Lord Mayor of London and other significant members of British society. (An audience with King George III was arranged, but Phillis returned to Boston before it could take place.) Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon, became interested in the talented young African woman and served as the patron of Wheatley's volume of poems, securing its publication in London in the summer of 1773. As Hastings was ill, she and Wheatley never met.
After her book was published, by November 1773 the Wheatley family emancipated (formally freed) Phillis Wheatley. Her former mistress Susanna Wheatley died in the spring of 1774, and John Wheatley in 1778. Shortly after, Phillis Wheatley met and married John Peters, a free black grocer. They struggled with poor living conditions and the deaths of two babies.
Phillis Wheatley wrote a letter to Reverend Samson Occom, commending him on his ideas and beliefs of how the slaves should be given their natural born rights in America. Wheatley also exchanged letters with the British philanthropist John Thornton, who discussed Wheatley and her poetry in correspondence with John Newton. Along with her poetry, she was able to express her thoughts, comments and concerns to others.
In 1775, she sent a copy of a poem entitled, "To His Excellency, George Washington," to the military general. In 1776, Washington invited Wheatley to visit him at his headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Massachusetts, which she did in March 1776. Thomas Paine republished the poem in the "Pennsylvania Gazette" in April 1776.
In 1779, Wheatley submitted a proposal for a second volume of poems, but was unable to publish it because of her financial circumstances, the loss of patrons after her emancipation (publication of books was often based on gaining subscriptions for guaranteed sales beforehand), and the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). However, some of her poems that were to be published in the second volume were later published in pamphlets and newspapers.
Her husband John Peters was improvident, and imprisoned for debt in 1784. The impoverished Wheatley had a sickly infant son. She went to work as a scullery maid at a boarding house to support them, a kind of domestic labor that she had never formerly performed. Wheatley became ill and died on December 5, 1784, at the age of 31. Her infant son died soon after.
In 1768, Wheatley wrote "To the King's Most Excellent Majesty", in which she praised King George III for repealing the Stamp Act. As the American Revolution gained strength, Wheatley's writing turned to themes that expressed ideas of the rebellious colonists.
In 1770 Wheatley wrote a poetic tribute to the evangelist George Whitefield, which received widespread acclaim. Her poetry expressed Christian themes, and many poems were dedicated to famous figures. Over one-third consist of elegies, the remainder being on religious, classical, and abstract themes. She seldom referred to her own life in her poems. One example of a poem on slavery is "On being brought from Africa to America":
Historians have commented on her reluctance to write about slavery. Perhaps it was because she had conflicting feelings about the institution. Also, she wrote her early work while still enslaved, even if she was well treated. In the poem above, critics have said that she praises slavery because it brought her to Christianity. But, in another poem, she wrote that slavery was a cruel fate.
Many colonists found it difficult to believe that an African slave was writing "excellent" poetry. Wheatley had to defend her authorship of her poetry in court in 1772. She was examined by a group of Boston luminaries, including John Erving, Reverend Charles Chauncey, John Hancock (soon to sign the U.S. Declaration of Independence), Thomas Hutchinson, the governor of Massachusetts, and his lieutenant governor Andrew Oliver. They concluded she had written the poems ascribed to her and signed an attestation, which was included in the preface of her book of collected works: "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral," published in London in 1773. Publishers in Boston had declined to publish it, but her work was of great interest to influential people in London.
There, Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and the Earl of Dartmouth acted as patrons to help Wheatley gain publication. Her poetry received comment in "The London Magazine" in 1773, which published as a "specimen" of her work her poem 'Hymn to the Morning', and said: "these poems display no astonishing works of genius, but when we consider them as the productions of a young, untutored African, who wrote them after six months careful study of the English language, we cannot but suppress our admiration for talents so vigorous and lively." "Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral" was printed in 11 editions until 1816.
In 1778, the African-American poet Jupiter Hammon wrote an ode to Wheatley ("An Address to Miss Phillis Wheatley"). His master Lloyd had temporarily moved with his slaves to Hartford, Connecticut, during the Revolutionary War. Hammon thought that Wheatley had succumbed to what he believed were pagan influences in her writing, and so his "Address" consisted of 21 rhyming quatrains, each accompanied by a related Bible verse, that he thought would compel Wheatley to return to a Christian path in life.
In 1838 Boston-based publisher and abolitionist Isaac Knapp published a collection of Wheatley's poetry, along with that of enslaved North Carolina poet George Moses Horton, under the title "Memoir and Poems of Phillis Wheatley, A Native African and a Slave. Also, Poems by a Slave". Wheatley's memoir was earlier published in 1834 by Geo W. Light, but did not include poems by Horton.
Wheatley believed that the power of poetry is immeasurable. John C. Shields, noting that her poetry did not simply reflect the literature she read but was based on her personal ideas and beliefs, writes,:
"Wheatley had more in mind than simple conformity. It will be shown later that her allusions to the sun god and to the goddess of the morn, always appearing as they do here in close association with her quest for poetic inspiration, are of central importance to her."This poem is arranged into three stanzas of four lines in iambic tetrameter, followed by a concluding couplet in iambic pentameter. The rhyme scheme is ABABCC. Shields sums up her writing as being "contemplative and reflective rather than brilliant and shimmering."
She repeated three primary elements: Christianity, classicism, and hierophantic solar worship. The hierophantic solar worship was part of what she brought with her from Africa; the worship of sun gods is expressed as part of her African culture, which may be why she used so many different words for the sun. For instance, she uses Aurora eight times, "Apollo seven, Phoebus twelve, and Sol twice." Shields believes that the word "light" is significant to her as it marks her African history, a past that she has left physically behind. He notes that Sun is a homonym for Son, and that Wheatley intended a double reference to Christ. Wheatley also refers to "heav'nly muse" in two of her poems: "To a Clergy Man on the Death of his Lady" and "Isaiah LXIII," signifying her idea of the Christian deity.
Classical allusions are prominent in Wheatley's poetry, which Shields argues set her work apart from that of her contemporaries: "Wheatley's use of classicism distinguishes her work as original and unique and deserves extended treatment." Particularly extended engagement with the Classics can be found in the poem "To Maecenas", where Wheatley uses references to Maecenas to depict the relationship between her and her own patrons, as well as making reference to Achilles and Patroclus, Homer and Virgil. At the same time, Wheatley indicates to the complexity of her relationship with Classical texts by pointing to the sole example of Terence as an ancestor for her works:
The happier Terence all the choir inspir'd,
His soul replenish'd, and his bosom fir'd;
But say, ye Muses, why this partial grace,
To one alone of Afric's sable race;
While some scholars have argued that Wheatley's allusions to classical material are based on the reading of other neoclassical poetry (such as the works of Alexander Pope), Emily Greenwood has demonstrated that Wheatley's work demonstrates persistent linguistic engagement with Latin texts, suggesting good familiarity with the ancient works themselves. Both Shields and Greenwood have argued that Wheatley's use of classical imagery and ideas was designed to deliver "subversive" messages to her educated, majority white audience, and argue for the freedom of Wheatley herself and other enslaved people.
Black literary scholars in the 1960s and to the present have critiqued Wheatley's writing due to its absence of a strong sense of her identity as a black enslaved person. A number of black literary scholars have viewed her work – and its widespread admiration – as a barrier to the furthering the development of black people during her time and a prime example of Uncle Tom syndrome. These scholars believe that Wheatley's lack of awareness of her condition of enslavement furthers this syndrome among African descendant in the Americas.
It is thought by scholars that Wheatley's perspective came from her upbringing. The Wheatley family took interest in her at a young age because of her timid and submissive nature. Using this to their advantage, the Wheatley family was able to mold and shape her into a person of their liking. The family separated her from other slaves in the home and was prevented from doing anything other than very light house work. This shaping prevented Phillis from ever becoming a threat to the Wheatley family or other people from the white community. As a result, this allowed Phillis to be able to attend white social events and created a misconception of the relationship between black and white people for her.
With the 1773 publication of Wheatley's book "Poems on Various Subjects," she "became the most famous African on the face of the earth." Voltaire stated in a letter to a friend that Wheatley had proved that black people could write poetry. John Paul Jones asked a fellow officer to deliver some of his personal writings to "Phillis the African favorite of the Nine (muses) and Apollo." She was honored by many of America's founding fathers, including George Washington, who wrote to her (after she wrote a poem in his honor) that "the style and manner [of your poetry] exhibit a striking proof of your great poetical Talents."
Critics consider her work fundamental to the genre of African-American literature, and she is honored as the first African-American woman to publish a book of poetry and the first to make a living from her writing.
She is commemorated on the Boston Women's Heritage Trail. The Phyllis Wheatley YWCA in Washington, D.C. and the Phillis Wheatley High School in Houston, Texas, are named for her, as was the historic Phillis Wheatley School in Jensen Beach, Florida, now the oldest building on the campus of American Legion Post 126 (Jensen Beach, Florida). A branch of the Richland County Library in Columbia, South Carolina, which offered the first library services to black citizens, is named for her. Phillis Wheatley Elementary School, New Orleans, opened in 1954 in Tremé, one of the oldest African-American neighborhoods in the US.
On July 16, 2019, at the London site where A. Bell Booksellers published Wheatley's first book in September 1773 (8 Aldgate, now the site of the Dorsett City Hotel), the unveiling took place of a commemorative blue plaque honoring her, organized by the Nubian Jak Community Trust and Black History Walks.
Wheatley is the subject of a project and play by British-Nigerian writer Ade Solanke entitled "Phillis in London", which was showcased at the Greenwich Book Festival in June 2018. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38932 |
Montanism
Montanism , known by its adherents as the New Prophecy, was an early Christian movement of the late 2nd century, later referred to by the name of its founder, Montanus.
Montanism held similar views about the basic tenets of Christian theology to those of the wider Christian Church, but it was labelled a heresy for its belief in new prophetic revelations. The prophetic movement called for a reliance on the spontaneity of the Holy Spirit and a more conservative personal ethic. Parallels have been drawn between Montanism and modern-day movements such as Pentecostalism and the charismatic movement.
It originated in Phrygia, a province of Anatolia, and flourished throughout the region, leading to the movement being referred to elsewhere as Cataphrygian (meaning it was "from Phrygia") or simply as Phrygian. They were sometimes also called Pepuzians after Pepuza, their new Jerusalem. Sometimes the Pepuzians were distinguished from other Montanists for despising those not living in the new Jerusalem. It spread rapidly to other regions in the Roman Empire before Christianity was generally tolerated or legal. It persisted in some isolated places into the 6th century.
Scholars debate as to when Montanus first began his prophetic activity, having chosen dates varying from c. AD 135 to as late as AD 177. Montanus was a recent convert when he first began prophesying, supposedly during the proconsulate of Gratus in a village in Mysia named Ardabau; no proconsul and village so named have been identified, however. Some accounts claim that before his conversion to Christianity, Montanus was a priest of Apollo or Cybele. He believed he was a prophet of God and that the Paraclete spoke through him.
Montanus proclaimed the towns of Pepuza and Tymion in west-central Phrygia as the site of the New Jerusalem, making the larger - Pepuza - his headquarters. Phrygia as a source for this new movement was not arbitrary. Hellenization never fully took root in Phrygia, unlike many of the surrounding Eastern regions of the Roman Empire. This sense of difference, while simultaneously having easy access to the rest of the Mediterranean Christian world, encouraged the foundation of this separate sect of Christianity.
Montanus had two female colleagues, Prisca (sometimes called Priscilla, the diminutive form of her name) and Maximilla, who likewise claimed the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. Their popularity even exceeded Montanus' own. "The Three" spoke in ecstatic visions and urged their followers to fast and to pray, so that they might share these revelations. Their followers claimed they received the prophetic gift from the prophets Quadratus and Ammia of Philadelphia, figures believed to have been part of a line of prophetic succession stretching all the way back to Agabus (1st century AD) and to the daughters of Philip the Evangelist. In time, the New Prophecy spread from Montanus's native Phrygia across the Christian world, to Africa and to Gaul.
The response to the New Prophecy split the Christian communities, and the proto-orthodox clergy mostly fought to suppress it. Opponents believed that evil spirits possessed the Phrygian prophets, and both Maximilla and Priscilla were the targets of failed exorcisms. The churches of Asia Minor pronounced the prophecies profane and excommunicated New Prophecy adherents. Around 177, Apollinarius, Bishop of Hierapolis, presided over a synod which condemned the New Prophecy. The leaders of the churches of Lyons and Vienne in Gaul responded to the New Prophecy in 177. Their decision was communicated to the churches in Asia and Pope Eleuterus, but it is not known what this consisted of, only that it was "prudent and most orthodox". It is likely they called for moderation in dealing with the movement.
There was real doubt at Rome, and its bishop (either Eleuterus or Victor I) even wrote letters in support of Montanism, although he was later persuaded by Praxeas to recall them. In 193, an anonymous writer found the church at Ancyra in Galatia torn in two, and opposed the "false prophecy" there.
Eventually, Montanist teachings came to be regarded as heresy by the orthodox Church for a number of reasons. The clash of basic beliefs between the movement's proponents and the greater Christian world was likely enough for such conflict to occur. Additionally, in the opinion of anti-Montanists, the movement's penchant for dramatic public displays by its adherents brought unwanted attention to the still fledgling religion. Thus, fears concerning the appearance of Montanist practices to their non-Christian rulers fueled anti-Montanist sentiment. The imperial government carried out sporadic executions of Christians under the reign of Marcus Aurelius, circa AD 161–180, which coincides with the spread of Montanism.
There was never a uniform excommunication of New Prophecy adherents, and in many places they maintained their standing within the orthodox community. This was the case at Carthage. While not without tension, the church there avoided schism over the issue. There were women prophesying at Carthage, and prophecy was considered a genuine charism. It was the responsibility of the council of elders to test all prophecy and to determine genuine revelation. Tertullian, undoubtedly the best-known defender of the New Prophecy, believed that the claims of Montanus were genuine beginning c. 207. He believed in the validity of the New Prophecy and admired the movement's discipline and ascetic standards. A common misconception is that Tertullian decisively left the orthodox church and joined a separate Montanist sect; in fact, he remained an early-catholic Christian.
Although what became the orthodox Christian church prevailed against Montanism within a few generations, inscriptions in the Tembris valley of northern Phrygia, dated between 249 and 279, openly proclaim allegiance to the New Prophecy. Speros Vryonis considers these inscriptions remarkable in that they are the only set of inscriptions which openly reveal the religious affiliations of the deceased before the period of toleration, when Christians dared not to do so. In the 3rd century, a new prophetess appeared in Pepuza, Quintilla. Her followers, the Quintillians, were regarded as an important Montanist sect into the 5th century.
A letter of Jerome to Marcella, written in 385, refutes the claims of Montanists that had been troubling her. A group of "Tertullianists" may have continued at Carthage. The anonymous author of "Praedestinatus" records that a preacher came to Rome in 388 where he made many converts and obtained the use of a church for his congregation on the grounds that the martyrs to whom it was dedicated had been Montanists. He was obliged to flee after the victory of Theodosius I.
In his own time, Augustine (354–430) records that the Tertullianist group had dwindled to almost nothing and, finally, was reconciled to the church and handed over its basilica. It is not certain whether these Tertullianists were in all respects "Montanist" or not. In the 6th century, on the orders of the Emperor Justinian, John of Ephesus led an expedition to Pepuza to destroy the Montanist shrine there, which was based on the tombs of Montanus, Priscilla and Maximilla.
A Montanist sect in Galatia, the Tascodrugites, is attested around 600 by Timothy of Constantinople and in the 9th century by Theodore the Studite. A sect called "Montanist" existed in the 8th century; the Emperor Leo III ordered the conversion and baptism of its members. These Montanists refused, locked themselves in their houses of worship, set the buildings on fire and perished.
Because much of what is known about Montanism comes from anti-Montanist sources, it is difficult to know what they actually believed and how those beliefs differed from the Christian mainstream of the time. The New Prophecy was also a diverse movement, and what Montanists believed varied by location and time. Montanism was particularly influenced by Johannine literature, especially the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse of John (also known as the Book of Revelation).
In John's Gospel, Jesus promised to send the Paraclete or Holy Spirit, from which Montanists believed their prophets derived inspiration. In the Apocalypse, John was taken by an angel to the top of a mountain where he sees the New Jerusalem descend to earth. Montanus identified this mountain as being located in Phrygia near Pepuza. Followers of the New Prophecy called themselves "spiritales" ("spiritual people") in contrast to their opponents whom they termed "psychici" ("carnal, natural people").
As the name "New Prophecy" implied, Montanism was a movement focused around prophecy, specifically the prophecies of the movement's founders which were believed to contain the Holy Spirit's revelation for the present age. Prophecy itself was not controversial within 2nd-century Christian communities. However, the New Prophecy, as described by Eusebius of Caesarea, departed from Church tradition:
And he [Montanus] became beside himself, and being suddenly in a sort of frenzy and ecstasy, he raved, and began to babble and utter strange things, prophesying in a manner contrary to the constant custom of the Church handed down by tradition from the beginning.
The Montanist prophets did not speak as messengers of God but were described as possessed by God while being unable to resist. A prophetic utterance by Montanus described this possessed state: "Lo, the man is as a lyre, and I fly over him as a pick. The man sleepeth, while I watch." Thus, the Phrygians were seen as false prophets because they acted irrationally and were not in control of their senses.
A criticism of Montanism was that its followers claimed their revelation received directly from the Holy Spirit could supersede the authority of Jesus or Paul the Apostle or anyone else. In some of his prophecies, Montanus apparently, and somewhat like the oracles of the Greco-Roman world, spoke in the first person as God: "I am the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit."
Many understood this to be Montanus claiming himself to be God. However, scholars agree that these words of Montanus exemplify the general practice of religious prophets to speak as the passive mouthpieces of the divine, and to claim divine inspiration (similar to modern prophets stating "Thus saith the Lord"). That practice occurred in Christian as well as in pagan circles with some degree of frequency.
Other beliefs and practices (or alleged beliefs and practices) of Montanism are as follows: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38933 |
Otto III, Holy Roman Emperor
Otto III (June/July 980 – 23 January 1002) was Holy Roman Emperor from 996 until his early death in 1002. A member of the Ottonian dynasty, Otto III was the only son of the Emperor Otto II and his wife Theophanu.
Otto III was crowned as King of Germany in 983 at the age of three, shortly after his father's death in Southern Italy while campaigning against the Byzantine Empire and the Emirate of Sicily. Though the nominal ruler of Germany, Otto III's minor status ensured his various regents held power over the Empire. His cousin Henry II, Duke of Bavaria, initially claimed regency over the young king and attempted to seize the throne for himself in 984. When his rebellion failed to gain the support of Germany's aristocracy, Henry II was forced to abandon his claims to the throne and to allow Otto III's mother Theophanu to serve as regent until her death in 991. Otto III was then still a child, so his grandmother, Adelaide of Italy, served as regent until 994.
In 996, Otto III marched to Italy to claim the titles of King of Italy and Holy Roman Emperor, which had been left unclaimed since the death of Otto II in 983. Otto III also sought to reestablish Imperial control over the city of Rome, which had revolted under the leadership of Crescentius II, and through it the papacy. Crowned as emperor, Otto III put down the Roman rebellion and installed his cousin as Pope Gregory V, the first Pope of German descent. After the Emperor had pardoned him and left the city, Crescentius II again rebelled, deposing Gregory V and installing John XVI as Pope. Otto III returned to the city in 998, reinstalled Gregory V, and executed both Crescentius II and John XVI. When Gregory V died in 999, Otto III installed Sylvester II as the new Pope. Otto III's actions throughout his life further strengthened imperial control over the Catholic Church.
From the beginning of his reign, Otto III faced opposition from the Slavs along the eastern frontier. Following the death of his father in 983, the Slavs rebelled against imperial control, forcing the Empire to abandon its territories east of the Elbe river. Otto III fought to regain the Empire's lost territories throughout his reign with only limited success. While in the east, Otto III strengthened the Empire's relations with Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary. Through his affairs in Eastern Europe in 1000, he was able to extend the influence of Christianity by supporting mission work in Poland and through the crowning of Stephen I as the first Christian king of Hungary.
Returning to Rome in 1001, Otto faced a rebellion by the Roman aristocracy, which forced him to flee the city. While marching to reclaim the city in 1002, Otto suffered a sudden fever and died in Castle Paterno in Faleria at the age of 21. With no clear heir to succeed him, his early death threw the Empire into political crisis.
Otto III was born in June or July 980 somewhere between Aachen and Nijmegen, in modern-day North Rhine-Westphalia. The only son of Emperor Otto II and Empress Theophanu, Otto III was the youngest of the couple's four children. Immediately prior to Otto III's birth, his father had completed military campaigns in France against King Lothar.
On 14 July 982, Otto II's army suffered a crushing defeat against the Muslim Emirate of Sicily at the Battle of Stilo. Otto II had been campaigning in southern Italy with hopes of annexing the whole of Italy into the Holy Roman Empire. Otto II himself escaped the battle unharmed but many important imperial officials were among the battle's casualties. Following the defeat and at the insistence of the Empire's nobles, Otto II called an assembly of the Imperial Diet in Verona at Pentecost, 983, where he proposed to the assembly to have the three-year-old Otto III elected as King of Germany, becoming Otto II's undoubted heir apparent. This was the first time a German ruler had been elected on Italian soil. After the assembly was concluded, Otto III and his mother Theophanu traveled across the Alps in order for Otto to be crowned at Aix, the traditional location of the coronation of the German kings. Otto II stayed behind to address military action against the Muslims. While still in central Italy, however, Otto II suddenly died on 7 November 983, and was buried in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome.
Otto III was crowned as king on Christmas Day 983, three weeks after his father's death, by Willigis, the Archbishop of Mainz, and by John, the Archbishop of Ravenna. News of Otto II's death first reached Germany shortly after his son's coronation. The unresolved problems in southern Italy and the Slavic uprising on the Empire's eastern border made the Empire's political situation extremely unstable. With a minor on the throne, the Empire was thrown into confusion and Otto III's mother Theophanu assumed the role of regent for her young son.
Otto III's cousin Henry II had been deposed as Duke of Bavaria by Otto II in 976 following his failed rebellion and imprisoned under the Bishopric of Utrecht. Following Otto II's death, Henry was released from prison. As Otto III's nearest male Ottonian relative, Henry II claimed the regency over his infant cousin. Archbishop of Cologne Warin granted Henry II the regency without substantial opposition. Only Otto III's mother Theophanu objected, along with his grandmother, the Dowager Empress Adelaide of Italy, and his aunt, Abbess Matilda of Quedlinburg. Adelaide and Matilda, however, were both in Italy and unable to press their objections.
As regent, Henry II took actions aimed less at guardianship of his infant cousin and more at claiming the throne for himself. According to Gerbert of Aurillac, Henry II adopted a Byzantine-style joint-kingship. Towards the end of 984, Henry II sought to form alliances between himself and other important figures in the Ottonian world, chief among them his cousin King Lothar of France. In exchange for agreeing to make Henry II king of Germany, Henry II agreed to relinquish Lotharingia to Lothar. The two agreed to join their armies on 1 February 985, in order to take the city of Breisach, but at the last minute, Henry's resolve weakened. Nevertheless, Lothair continued to campaign into German lands and succeeded in overrunning the Verdun by March 985.
Henry II took the young Otto III and traveled to Saxony. There, Henry II invited all the great nobles of the kingdom to celebrate Palm Sunday at Magdeburg for 985. He then campaigned openly for his claim to the German throne, with limited success. Among those who supported his claims were Duke Mieszko I of Poland and Duke Boleslaus II of Bohemia. Henry II was also supported by Archbishop Egbert of Trier, Archbishop Gisilher of Magdeburg, and Bishop Dietrich I of Metz.
Those who opposed Henry II's claims fled to Quedlinburg in Saxony to conspire against him. When he became aware of this conspiracy, he moved his army towards Quedlingburg in hopes of crushing his opposition. Henry II sent Folcmar, the Bishop of Utrecht, ahead of him in order to attempt a peace negotiation between him and the conspirators. The negotiations failed when the conspirators refused to swear allegiance to anyone other than Otto III, with Bernard I, Duke of Saxony, maintaining allegiance to the child king. In response to his failure to gain control over Saxony, Henry II promised to hold future peace negotiations and then headed for the Duchy of Bavaria. With his long-standing familial ties in the region, many bishops and counts recognized him as the rightful heir to the throne. Henry III, Duke of Bavaria, who had been installed as Duke by Otto II, refused to recognize Henry II and remained loyal to Otto III.
With his successes and failures in Saxony and Bavaria, Henry II's claims depended on gaining support in the Duchy of Franconia, which was a direct possession of the German kings. The Franconian nobles, led by Archbishop Willigis of Mainz (the Primate of Germany) and Conrad I, Duke of Swabia, refused to abandon Otto III. Fearing outright civil war, Henry II relinquished Otto III to the joint-regency of his mother and grandmother on 29 June 985. In return for his submission, Henry II was restored as the Duke of Bavaria, replacing Henry III who became the new Duke of Carinthia.
The regency of Theophanu, from 984 until her death in 991, was largely spared internal revolt. She struggled throughout to reinstate the Diocese of Merseburg, which her husband Otto II had absorbed into the Archdiocese of Magdeburg in 981. Theophanu also retained Otto II's court chaplains, in particular Count Bernward of Hildesheim and Archbishop Willigis, who, as the Archbishop of Mainz, was "ex officio" the secular Archchancellor of Germany. Though Theophanu was regent, Willigis was given considerable leeway in administering the kingdom. One of the Empress's greatest achievements was her success in maintaining German supremacy over Bohemia, as Boleslaus II, Duke of Bohemia, was forced to accept the authority of Otto III.
In 986 the five-year-old Otto III celebrated Easter at Quedlinburg. The four major dukes of Germany (Henry II of Bavaria, Conrad I of Swabia, Henry III of Carinthia, and Bernard I of Saxony) also paid tribute to the child king. Imitating similar ceremonies carried out under Otto I in 936 and Otto II in 961, the dukes served Otto III as his ceremonial steward, chamberlain, cupbearer, and marshal, respectively. This service symbolized the loyalty of the dukes to Otto III and their willingness to serve him. Most significant was the submission of Henry II, who demonstrated his loyalty to his cousin despite his failed rebellion two years earlier. The next year, from the age of six onward, Otto III would receive education and training from Bernward of Hildesheim and Gerbert d'Aurillac.
During the regency of Theophanu, the "Great Gandersheim Conflict" broke out, concerning control of Gandersheim Abbey and its estates. Both the Archbishop of Mainz and the Bishop of Hildesheim claimed authority over the abbey, including the authority to anoint the abbey's nuns. The conflict began in 989 when Otto III's older sister Sophia became a nun in the abbey. Sophia refused to accept the authority of the Bishop of Hildesheim, instead recognizing only that of the Archbishop of Mainz. The conflict escalated until it was brought before the royal court of Otto III and Theophanu. The royal intervention eased the tensions between the parties by providing that both bishops would anoint Sophia, while anointing the remaining nuns of the abbey would be left to the Bishop of Hildesheim alone.
In 989 Theophanu and Otto III made a royal expedition to Italy to visit the grave of Otto II in Rome. After crossing the Alps and reaching Pavia in northern Italy, the Empress had her longtime confidant John Philagathos appointed as Archbishop of Piacenza. After a year in Italy, the royal court returned to Germany, where Theophanu died in Nijmegen on 15 June 991, at the age of 31. She was buried in the Church of St. Pantaleon in Cologne.
Because Otto III was still a child (only eleven when his mother died), his grandmother, the Dowager Empress Adelaide of Italy, became regent, together with Archbishop Willigis of Mainz, until he became old enough to rule on his own in 994.
As Otto III grew in age, the authority of his grandmother gradually waned until 994 when Otto III reached the age of 14. At an assembly of the Imperial Diet held in Solingen in September 994, Otto III was granted the ability to fully govern the kingdom without the need of a regent. With her grandson no longer in need of a regent, Adelaide retired to a nunnery she had founded at Selz in Alsace. Although she never became a nun, she spent the rest of her days there in the service of the Church and in acts of charity. As Otto III was still unmarried, from 995 until 997 his older sister Sophia accompanied him and acted as his consort.
One of Otto III's first actions as an independent ruler was to appoint Heribert of Cologne as his chancellor over Italy, a position he would hold until Otto's death in 1002. Otto III followed in his Grandfather, Otto I's, footsteps in the beginning of his reign. Just like Otto I, Otto III appointed a new pope, Gregory V, and left Rome. Gregory V was expelled and Otto III returned to Rome in 998 where he stayed permanently until his death. In the summer of 995, Otto sent the Archbishop of Piacenza, John Philagathos, to Constantinople as his representative to arrange a marriage between himself and a Byzantine princess following the example of his father, Otto II, who solidified his claim to the throne by marrying the Byzantine Theophanu. For a while the discussions were about Zoe Porphyrogenita.
The Lutici federation of West Slavic Polabian tribes had remained quiet during the early years of Otto III's reign, even during Henry II's failed rebellion. In 983, following Otto II's defeat at the battle of Stilo, the Slavs revolted against Imperial control, forcing the Empire to abandon its territories east of the Elbe River in the Northern March and the Billung March. With the process of Christianization halted, the Slavs left the Empire in peace, and with Henry II's rebellion put down, Theophanu launched multiple campaigns to re-conquer the lost eastern territories, beginning in 985. Even though he was only six at the time, Otto III personally participated in these campaigns. During the expedition of 986 against the Slavs, Otto III received the homage of Duke Mieszko I of Poland, who provided the Imperial army with military assistance and gave Otto III a camel. Although the Lutici were subdued for a time in 987, they continued to occupy the young king's attention.
In September 991, when Otto III was eleven, Slavonic raiders captured the city of Brandenburg. In 992 this invasion, as well as an incursion of Viking raiders, forced Otto III to lead his army against the invaders, and he suffered a crushing defeat in this campaign. The next year, Germany suffered an outbreak of famine and pestilence. In 994 and 995, Otto III led fruitless campaigns against the northern Slavs and the Vikings, but he did successfully re-conquer Brandenburg in 993, and in 995 he subdued the Obotrite Slavs.
In the fall of 995, after Otto III reached his majority, he again took to the field against the Lutici, this time aided by the Polish Duke Bolesław I the Brave. Then in 997 he had to deal with a new Lutician attack on Arneburg on the Elbe, which they managed to retake for a short while.
Prior to his sudden death in December 983, Otto II had installed Pietro Canepanova as pope. Calling himself Pope John XIV, Canepanova was a non-Roman from Lombardy who had served as Otto II's chancellor in Italy. After Otto II's death, John XIV intervened in the dispute between Henry II of Bavaria and Theophanu over the regency, issuing an edict ordering Henry to turn Otto over to his mother.
During that turmoil, the Roman aristocracy saw this an opportunity to remove the non-Roman John XIV and install a pope from among themselves. The Antipope Boniface VII, who had spent nine years in exile in the Byzantine Empire, joined forces with Byzantine nobles in southern Italy and marched on Rome in April 984 in order to claim the papal throne for himself. With the aid of the sons of Crescentius the Elder — Crescentius II and John Crescentius — Boniface VII was able to imprison John XIV in the Tomb of Hadrian. Four months later, on 20 August 984, John XIV died in his prison, either starved or poisoned, probably on the orders of Boniface.
With Otto's regency seated in Germany, Crescentius II took the title of "Patricius Romanorum" ("Patrician of the Romans") and became the effective ruler of Rome, although he did not act entirely independently of central authority, presenting himself as a lieutenant of the king. When Boniface VII died in 985, Pope John XV was chosen to succeed him. Although the details of the election are unknown, it is likely that Crescentius II played a key role in the process. For a number of years, Crescentius II exercised authority over the city, severely limiting the autonomy of the pope in the process. When the Empress Theophanu was in Rome between 989 and 991, Crescentius II nominally subordinated himself to her, though he maintained his position as ruler of the city.
After taking the crown in 994, the Otto III faced first a Slavic rebellion, which he put down, and then an attempt by Crescentius II to seize power in Italy.
When Otto III turned his attention to Italy, he not only intended to be crowned "Emperor" but also to come to the aid of Pope John XV, who had been forced to flee Rome. Otto set out for Italy from Ratisbon in March 996. In Verona, he became the patron of Otto Orseolo, the son of Venetian Doge Pietro II Orseolo. He then pledged to support Otto Orseolo as the next Doge of Venice, leading to a period of good relations between the Holy Roman Empire and the Republic of Venice after years of conflict under Otto II.
Reaching Pavia for Easter, 996, Otto III was declared King of Italy and crowned with the Iron Crown of the Lombards. The king failed, however, to reach Rome before Pope John XV died of fever. While Otto III was in Pavia, Crescentius II, fearing the king's march on Rome, reconciled with Otto III and agreed to accept his nominee as pope.
While in Ravenna, Otto III nominated his cousin and court chaplain Bruno, who was then only twenty-three years old, and sent him to Rome with Archbishop Willgis to secure the city. In early May 996, Bruno was consecrated as Gregory V, the first pope of German nationality. Despite submitting to Otto III, Crescentius shut himself in his family's stronghold, the Tomb of Hadrian, out of fear of retribution.
The new supreme pontiff crowned Otto III as emperor on 21 May 996, in Rome at St. Peter's Basilica. The Emperor and Pope then held a synod at St. Peter's on 25 May to serve as the Empire's highest judicial court. The Roman nobles who had rebelled against Pope John XV were summoned before the synod to give an account of their actions. A number of the rebels, including Crescentius II, were banished for their crimes. Pope Gregory V, however, wished to inaugurate his papal reign with acts of mercy and pleaded for clemency from the Emperor, who issued pardons to those he convicted. In particular, while Crescentius II was pardoned by Otto III, he was deprived of his title of "Patricius" but was permitted to live out his life in retirement at Rome.
Following the synod, Otto III appointed Gerbert of Aurillac, the Archbishop of Reims, to be his tutor. Counseled by Gerbert and Bishop Adalbert of Prague, Otto III set out to reorganize the Empire. Influenced by the ruin of ancient Rome and perhaps by his Byzantine mother, Otto III dreamed of restoring the glory and power of the Roman Empire, with himself at the head of a theocratic state. He also introduced some Byzantine court customs. To shore up his power in Italy, Otto III sought the support of existing Italian religious communities. For instance, he granted royal immunity to the Abbey of San Salvatore, a rich monastery along the shores of the Lago di Bientina in Tuscany.
Through the election of Gregory V, Otto III exercised greater control over the Church than his grandfather Otto I had decades earlier. The Emperor quickly demonstrated his intention to withdraw Imperial support for the privileges of the Holy See laid out by Otto I. Under the "Diploma Ottonianum" issued by Otto I, the Emperor could only veto papal candidates. Otto III, however, had nominated and successfully installed his own candidate. The Emperor also refused to acknowledge the Donation of Constantine, which Otto III declared a forgery. Under a decree supposedly issued by Roman Emperor Constantine the Great, the Pope was granted secular authority over western Europe. These actions resulted in increased tensions between the Roman nobility and the Church, who had traditionally reserved the right to name the pope from among their own members.
After his coronation, Otto III returned to Germany in December 996, staying along the Lower Rhine (especially in Aachen) until April 997. His specific activities during this time are not known. In summer 997, Otto III campaigned against the Elbe Slavs in order to secure Saxony's eastern border.
When Otto III left Italy for Germany, the situation in Rome remained uncertain. In September 996, a few months after receiving a pardon from Otto III, Crescentius II met with the Archbishop of Piacenza, John Philagathos, a former adviser to the late Empress Theophanu, to devise a plan to depose the newly installed Pope Gregory V. In 997, with the active support of Byzantine Emperor Basil II, Crescentius II led a revolt against Gregory V, deposed him, and installed John Philagathos as Pope John XVI, an antipope, in April 997. Gregory fled to Pavia in northern Italy, held a synod, and excommunicated John.
Putting down the Slavic forces in eastern Saxony, Otto III began his second expedition into Italy in December 997. Accompanied by his sister Sophia into Italy, Otto III named his aunt Matilda, Abbess of Quedlinburg, as his regent in Germany, becoming the first non-duke or bishop to serve in that capacity. Otto III peacefully retook Rome in February 998 when the Roman aristocracy agreed to a peace settlement. With Otto III in control of the city, Gregory V was reinstated as pope. John XVI fled, but the Emperor's troops pursued and captured him, cut off his nose and ears, cut out his tongue, broke his fingers, blinded him, and then brought him before Otto III and Gregory V for judgement. At the intercession of Saint Nilus the Younger, one of his countrymen, Otto III spared John XVI's life and sent him to a monastery in Germany, where he would die in 1001.
Crescentius II retreated again to the Tomb of Hadrian, the traditional stronghold of the Crescentii, and was then besieged by Otto III's imperial army. Towards the end of April, the stronghold was breached, and Crescentius II was taken prisoner and executed by decapitation. His body was put on public display at Monte Mario.
Otto III made Rome the administrative capital of his Empire and revived elaborate Roman customs and Byzantine court ceremonies. During his time in Italy, the Emperor and the Pope attempted to reform the Church, and confiscated church property was returned to the respective religious institutions. Additionally, after the death of the Bishop of Halberstadt in November 996, who had been one of the masterminds behind the abolition of the bishopric of Merseburg, Otto III and Pope Gregory V began the process of reviving the Diocese. Otto I had established the Diocese in 968 following his victory over the Hungarians in order to Christianize the Polabian Slavs but had been effectively destroyed in 983 with the Great Slav Rising following the death of Otto II in 983.
Otto III arranged for his imperial palace to be built on the Palatine Hill and planned to restore the ancient Roman Senate to its position of prominence. He revived the city's ancient governmental system, including appointing a City Patrician, a City Prefect, and a body of judges whom he commanded to recognize only Roman law. In order to strengthen his title to the Roman Empire and to announce his position as the protector of Christendom, Otto III took for himself the titles "the Servant of Jesus Christ," "the Servant of the Apostles", "Consul of the Senate and People of Rome," and "Emperor of the World".
Between 998 and 1000, Otto III made several pilgrimages. In 999, he made a pilgrimage from Gargano to Benevento, where he met with the hermit monk Romuald and the Abbot Nilus the Younger (at that time a highly venerated religious figure) in order to atone for executing Crescentius II after promising his safety. During this particular pilgrimage, his cousin Pope Gregory V died in Rome after a brief illness. Upon learning of Gregory V's death, Otto III installed his long-time tutor Gerbert of Aurillac as Pope Sylvester II. The use of this papal name was not without cause: it recalled the first pope of this name, who had allegedly created the "Christian Empire" together with Emperor Constantine the Great. This was part of Otto III's campaign to further link himself with both the Roman Empire and the Church.
Like his grandfather before him, Otto III strongly aspired to be the successor of Charlemagne. In 1000, he visited Charlemagne's tomb in Aachen, removing relics from it and transporting them to Rome. Otto III also carried back parts of the body of Bishop Adalbert of Prague, which he placed in the church of San Bartolomeo all'Isola he had built on the Tiber Island in Rome. Otto III also added the skin of Saint Bartholomew to the relics housed there.
Around 960, the Polish Piast dynasty under Mieszko I had extended the Duchy of Poland beyond the Oder River in an effort to conquer the Polabian Slavs, who lived along the Elbe River. This brought the Polans into Germany's sphere of influence and into conflict with Otto I's Kingdom of Germany, who also desired to conquer the Polabian Slavs. Otto I sent his trusted lieutenant, the Saxon Margrave Gero, to address the Polan threat, while Otto I traveled to Italy to be crowned as emperor. Gero defeated Mieszko I in 963 and forced him to recognize Otto I as his overlord. In return for submitting tribute to the newly crowned Emperor, Otto I granted Mieszko I the title of "amicus imperatoris" ("Friend of the Emperor") and acknowledged his position as "dux Poloniae" ("Duke of Poland").
Mieszko I remained a powerful ally of Otto I for the remainder of his life. He strengthened his alliance with the Empire by marrying Oda, the daughter of the Saxon Margrave Dietrich of Haldensleben, in 978 and by marrying his son Bolesław I to a daughter of Margrave Rikdag of Meissen. Mieszko I, then a pagan, would marry the Christian daughter of Boleslaus I, Dobrawa, in 965 and would convert to Christianity in 966, bringing Poland closer to the Christian states of Bohemia and the Empire. Following the death of Otto I in 973, Mieszko I sided with Henry II, Duke of Bavaria, against Otto II during Henry's failed revolt in 977. After the revolt was put down, Mieszko I swore loyalty to Otto II. When Otto II died suddenly in 983 and was succeeded by the three-year old Otto III, Mieszko I again supported Henry II in his bid for the German throne. When Henry's revolt failed, Mieszko I swore loyalty to Otto III.
Mieszko I's son Bolesław I succeeded him as Duke in 992, and Poland continued its alliance with the Empire. Polish forces joined the Empire's campaigns to put down the Great Slav Rising, led by the Polabian Lutici tribes during the 980s and 990s.
Germany and the Duchy of Bohemia came into significant contact with one another in 929, when German King Henry I had invaded the Duchy to force Duke Wenceslaus I to pay regular tribute to Germany. When Wenceslaus I was assassinated in 935, his brother Boleslaus I succeeded him as Duke and refused to continue paying the annual tribute to Germany. This action caused Henry I's son and successor Otto I to launch an invasion of Bohemia. Following the initial invasion, the conflict deteriorated into a series of border raids that lasted until 950 when Otto I and Boleslaus I signed a peace treaty. Boleslaus I agreed to resume paying tribute and to recognize Otto I as his overlord. The Duchy was then incorporated into the Holy Roman Empire as a constituent state.
Bohemia would be a major factor in the many battles along the Empire's eastern border. Boleslaus I helped Otto I crush an uprising of Slavs along the Lower Elbe in 953, and they joined forces again to defeat the Hungarians at the battle of Lechfeld in 955. In 973 Otto I established the bishopric of Prague, subordinated to the archbishopric of Mainz, in order to Christianize the Czech territory. To strengthen the Bohemian-Polish alliance, Boleslaus I's daughter Dobrawa was married to the pagan Mieszko I of Poland in 965. The marriage helped bring Christianity to Poland. He died in 972 and was succeeded as Duke by his oldest son Boleslaus II.
After initially siding with Henry II against Otto II during Henry's failed revolt in 977, Boleslaus II swore loyalty to Otto II. When Otto II died suddenly in 983 and was succeeded by the three-year old Otto III, Boleslaus II again supported Henry II in his bid for the German throne. As in 977, Henry's bid failed, and Boleslaus II swore loyalty to Otto III.
Otto I's defeat of the Hungarians at Lechfeld in 955 ended the decades-long Hungarian invasions of Europe. The Hungarian Grand Prince Fajsz was deposed following the defeat and was succeeded by Taksony, who adopted the policy of isolation from the West. He was succeeded by his son Géza in 972, who sent envoys to Otto I in 973. The same year, Géza was baptised in 972, and Christianity spread among the Hungarians during his reign.
Géza expanded his rule over the territories west of the Danube and the Garam, but significant parts of the Carpathian Basin still remained under the rule of local tribal leaders. In 997, Géza died and was succeeded by Stephen (originally called Vajk). Stephen was baptized by Bishop Adalbert of Prague and married Gisela, daughter of Henry II and distant niece of Otto III. Stephen had to face the rebellion of his relative, Koppány, who claimed Géza's inheritance based on the Hungarian tradition of agnatic seniority. Stephen defeated Koppány using some Western tactics and a small number of Swabian Knights.
When Otto III traveled to Poland in 1000, he brought with him a crown from Pope Sylvester II. With Otto III's approval, Stephen was crowned as the first Christian king of Hungary on Christmas Day, 1000.
In 996, Duke Bolesław I of Poland sent the longtime Bishop of Prague, Adalbert, to Christianize the Old Prussians. He was martyred by the Prussians for his efforts in 997. Bolesław I, who had bought Adalbert's body from the Old Prussians for its weight in gold, had Adalbert laid to rest in the cathedral at Gniezno (German: Gnesen), which eventually became the ecclesiastical center of Poland. Otto III and Bolesław I worked together to canonize Adalbert, making him the first Slavic bishop to become a saint. In December 999, Otto III left Italy to make a pilgrimage from Rome to Gniezno in Poland to pray at the grave of Adalbert.
Otto III's pilgrimage allowed the Emperor to extend the influence of Christianity in Eastern Europe and to strengthen relations with Poland and Hungary by naming them "federati" ("allies"). On the pilgrimage to Gniezno, the Emperor was received by Bolesław I at the Polish border on the Bobr River near Małomice. Between 7 and 15 March 1000, Otto III invested Bolesław I with the titles "frater et cooperator Imperii" ("Brother and Partner of the Empire") and "populi Romani amicus et socius" ("Friend and ally of Rome"). Otto III gave Bolesław a replica of his Holy Lance (part of the Imperial Regalia) and Bolesław presented the Emperor with a relic, an arm of Saint Adalbert in exchange.
On the same foreign visit, Otto III raised Gniezno to the rank of an archbishopric and installed Radzim Gaudenty, a brother of Saint Adalbert, as its first archbishop. Otto III also established three new subordinate dioceses under the Archbishop of Gniezno: the Bishopric of Kraków (assigned to Bishop Poppo), the Bishopric of Wrocław (assigned to Bishop Jan), and the Bishopric of Kołobrzeg in Pomerania (assigned to Bishop Reinbern).
Bolesław I subsequently accompanied Otto III on his way back to Germany. Both proceeded to the grave of Charlemagne at Aachen Cathedral, where . Both arranged the betrothal of Bolesław's son Mieszko II Lambert with the Emperor's niece Richeza of Lotharingia.
The Emperor spent the remainder of 1000 in Italy without any notable activities. In 1001, the people of the Italian city of Tibur revolted against Imperial authority. Otto III besieged the city and quickly put down the revolt with ease, sparing its inhabitants. This action angered the people of Rome, who viewed Tibur as a rival and wanted the city destroyed. In a change of policy towards the papacy, Otto III bestowed the governance of the city upon Pope Sylvester II as part of the Papal States but under the overlordship of the Holy Roman Empire. Previously, Otto III had revoked the Pope's rights as secular ruler by denying the "Donation of Constantine" and by amending the "Diploma Ottonianum".
In the weeks after Otto III's actions at Tibur, the Roman people rebelled against their Emperor, led by Count Gregory I of Tusculum. The rebellious citizens besieged Otto III in his palace on the Palatine Hill and drove him from the city. Accompanied by Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim and the German chronicler Thangmar, Otto III returned to the city to conduct peace negotiations with the rebellious Romans. Though both sides agreed to a peaceful settlement with the Romans respecting Otto III's rule over the city, feelings of mistrust characterized the city. Otto III's advisors urged the Emperor to wait outside the city until military reinforcements could arrive to ensure his safety.
Otto III, accompanied by Pope Sylvester II, traveled to Ravenna to do penance in the monastery of Sant'Apollinare in Classe and to summon his army. While in Ravenna, Otto III received ambassadors from Duke Boleslaw I of Poland and approved the plans of King Stephen of Hungary to establish the Archdiocese of Esztergom in order to convert Hungary to Christianity. Otto III also strengthened relations with the Venetian Doge, Pietro II Orseolo. Since 996, the Emperor had been godfather to Pietro II's son, Otto Orseolo, and in 1001 the Emperor arranged for Pietro II's daughter to be baptized.
After summoning his army in late 1001, Otto III headed south to Rome to ensure his rule over the city. During the travel south, however, Otto III suffered a sudden and severe fever. He died in a castle near Civita Castellana on 24 January 1002. He was 21 years old and had reigned as an independent ruler for just under six years, having nominally reigned for nearly 19 years. The Byzantine princess Zoe, second daughter of the Emperor Constantine VIII, had just disembarked in Apulia on her way to marry him. Otto III's death has been attributed to various causes. Medieval sources speak of malaria, which he had caught in the unhealthy marshes that surrounded Ravenna. Following his death, the Roman people suggested that Stefania, the widow of Crescentius II, had made Otto III fall in love with her and then poisoned him.
The Emperor's body was carried back to Germany by his soldiers, as his route was lined with Italians who hurled abuses at his remains. He was buried in Aachen Cathedral alongside the body of Charlemagne.
Otto III, having never married, died without issue, leaving the Empire without a clear successor. As the funeral procession moved through the Duchy of Bavaria in February 1002, Otto III's cousin Henry II, son of Henry the Quarrelsome, and the new Duke of Bavaria, asked the bishops and nobles to elect him as the new king of Germany. With the exception of the Bishop of Augsburg, Henry II received no support for his claims. At Otto III's funeral on Easter 1002, in Aachen, the German nobles repeated their opposition to Henry II. Several rival candidates for the throne -- Count Ezzo of Lotharingia, Margrave Eckard I of Meissen, and Duke Herman II of Swabia—strongly contested the succession of Henry II.
Without an Emperor on the throne, Italy began to break away from German control. On 15 February 1002, the Lombard Margrave of Ivrea Arduin, an opponent of the Ottonian dynasty, was elected King of Italy in Pavia.
Otto's mental gifts were considerable, and were carefully cultivated by Bernward, later bishop of Hildesheim, and Gerbert of Aurillac, archbishop of Reims. He spoke three languages and was so learned that contemporaries called him "mirabilia mundi" or "the wonder of the world" (Later, Frederick II would often be referred to as "stupor mundi", also translated into English as "the wonder of the world." The two emperors are often compared on account of their intellectual power, ambitions and connection to the Italian culture.) Enamoured as he was of Greek and Roman culture, he ended up being contemptuous of his German subjects.
Between 1012 and 1018 Thietmar of Merseburg wrote a "Chronicon", or "Chronicle", of eight books dealing with the period between 908 and 1018. For the earlier part he used Widukind's "Res gestae Saxonicae", the "Annales Quedlinburgenses" and other sources; the latter part is the result of personal knowledge. The chronicle is nevertheless an excellent authority for the history of Saxony during the reigns of the emperors Otto III and Henry II. No kind of information is excluded, but the fullest details refer to the bishopric of Merseburg and to the wars against the Wends and the Poles.
Otto III was a member of the Ottonian dynasty of kings and emperors who ruled the Holy Roman Empire (previously Germany) from 919 to 1024. In relation to the other members of his dynasty, Otto III was the great-grandson of Henry the Fowler, grandson of Otto I, son of Otto II, and a second-cousin to Henry II.
Otto III never married and never fathered any children due to his early death. At the time of his death, the Byzantine princess Zoë Porphyrogenita, second daughter of Emperor Constantine VIII was traveling to Italy to marry him. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38935 |
Yankee
The term "Yankee" and its contracted form "Yank" have several interrelated meanings, all referring to people from the United States; its various senses depend on the context. Outside the United States, "Yank" is used informally to refer to any American, including Southerners. Within the Southern United States, "Yankee" is a derisive term which refers to all Northerners, or specifically to those from the region of New England. According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", it is "a nickname for a native or inhabitant of New England, or, more widely, of the northern States generally"; during the American Civil War, it was "applied by the Confederates to the soldiers of the Federal army".
Elsewhere in the United States, it largely refers to people from the Northeastern states, but especially those with New England cultural ties, such as descendants of colonial New England settlers, wherever they live. Its sense is sometimes more cultural than geographical, emphasizing the Calvinist Puritan Christian beliefs and traditions of the Congregationalists who brought their culture when they settled outside New England. The speech dialect of Eastern New England English is called "Yankee" or "Yankee dialect". Outside the U.S., the informal "Yank" refers to Americans in general. It is especially popular among Britons, Irish, and Australians and sometimes carries pejorative overtones.
British General James Wolfe made the earliest recorded use of the word "Yankee" in 1758 when he referred to the New England soldiers under his command. "I can afford you two companies of Yankees, and the more because they are better for ranging and scouting than either work or vigilance". Later British use of the word often was derogatory, as in a cartoon of 1775 ridiculing Yankee soldiers. New Englanders themselves employed the word in a neutral sense; the "Pennamite–Yankee War", for example, was a series of clashes in 1769 over land titles in Pennsylvania between settlers from Connecticut Colony and "Pennamite" settlers from Pennsylvania.
The meaning of "Yankee" has varied over time. In the 18th century, it referred to residents of New England descended from the original English settlers of the region. Mark Twain used the word in this sense the following century in his novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court", published in 1889. As early as the 1770s, British people applied the term to any person from the United States. In the 19th century, Americans in the southern United States employed the word in reference to Americans from the northern United States, though not to recent immigrants from Europe. Thus, a visitor to Richmond, Virginia commented in 1818, "The enterprising people are mostly strangers; Scots, Irish, and especially New England men, or Yankees, as they are called".
Many etymologies have been suggested for the word "Yankee", but modern linguists generally reject theories which suggest that it originated in any Indian languages. This includes a theory purported by a British officer in 1789, who said that it was derived from the Cherokee word "eankke" ("coward")—despite the fact that no such word existed in the Cherokee language. Another theory surmised that the word was borrowed from the Wyandot pronunciation of the French "l'anglais", meaning "the Englishman" or "the English language", which was sounded as "Y'an-gee".
American musicologist Oscar Sonneck debunked a romanticized false etymology in his 1909 work "Report on "The Star-Spangled Banner", "Hail Columbia", "America", "Yankee Doodle"". He cited a popular theory which claimed that the word came from a tribe who called themselves "Yankoos", said to mean "invincible". The story claimed that New Englanders had defeated this tribe after a bloody battle, and the remaining "Yankoo" Indians transferred their name to the victors—who were "agreeable to the Indian custom". Sonneck notes that multiple American writers since 1775 had repeated this story as if it were fact, despite what he perceived to be holes in it. It had never been the tradition of any Indian tribe to transfer their name to other peoples, according to Sonneck, nor had any settlers ever adopted an Indian name to describe themselves. Sonneck concludes by pointing out that there was never a tribe called the "Yankoos".
Most linguists look to Dutch language sources, noting the extensive interaction between the Dutch colonists in New Netherland (now largely New York, New Jersey, Delaware, and western Connecticut) and the English colonists in New England (Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and eastern Connecticut). The exact application, however, is uncertain; some scholars suggest that it was a term used in derision of the Dutch colonists, others that it was derisive of the English colonists.
Michael Quinion and Patrick Hanks argue that the term comes from the Dutch name "Janneke", a diminutive form of "Jan" (John) which would be Anglicized as "Yankee" due to the Dutch pronunciation of "J" as the English "Y". Quinion and Hanks posit that it was "used as a nickname for a Dutch-speaking American in colonial times" and could have grown to include non-Dutch colonists, as well. Alternatively, the Dutch given names "Jan" () and "Kees" () have long been common, and the two are sometimes combined into a single name (e.g., Jan Kees de Jager). Its Anglicized spelling "Yankee" could, in this way, have been used to mock Dutch colonists. The chosen name "Jan Kees" may have been partly inspired by a dialectal rendition of "Jan Kaas" ("John Cheese"), the generic nickname that Southern Dutch used for Dutch people living in the North.
The Online Etymology Dictionary gives its origin as around 1683, when English colonists used it insultingly in reference to Dutch colonists (especially freebooters). Linguist Jan de Vries notes that there was mention of a pirate named "Dutch Yanky" in the 17th century. "The Life and Adventures of Sir Launcelot Greaves" (1760) contains the passage, "Haul forward thy chair again, take thy berth, and proceed with thy story in a direct course, without yawing like a Dutch yanky." According to this theory, Dutch settlers of New Amsterdam started using the term against the English colonists of neighboring Connecticut.
An early use of the term outside the United States was in the creation of Sam Slick the "Yankee Clockmaker" in a newspaper column in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1835. The character was a plain-speaking American who becomes an example for Nova Scotians to follow in his industry and practicality; and his uncouth manners and vanity were the epitome of qualities that his creator detested. The character was developed by Thomas Chandler Haliburton, and it grew between 1836 and 1844 in a series of publications.
The "damned Yankee" usage dates from 1812. Confederates popularized it as a derogatory term for their Northern enemies during and after the American Civil War (1861–65). Former Rhode Island Governor Bruce Sundlun was a pilot in World War II, and he named his B-17F bomber "Damn Yankee" because a crewman from North Carolina nicknamed him with that epithet.
A pervasive influence on the use of the term throughout the years has been the song "Yankee Doodle" which was popular during the American Revolutionary War (1775–83). The song originated among the British troops, creating a stereotype of the Yankee simpleton who stuck a feather in his cap and thought that he was stylish, but it was rapidly re-appropriated by American patriots after the battles of Lexington and Concord. Today, "Yankee Doodle" is the official state song of Connecticut.
The term "Yankee" now may mean any resident of New England or of any of the Northeastern United States. The original Yankees diffused widely across the northern United States, leaving their imprints in New York, the Upper Midwest, and places as far away as Seattle, San Francisco, and Honolulu. Yankees typically lived in villages consisting of clusters of separate farms. Often they were merchants, bankers, teachers, or professionals. Village life fostered local democracy, best exemplified by the open town meeting form of government which still exists today in New England. Village life also stimulated mutual oversight of moral behavior and emphasized civic virtue. From the New England seaports of Boston, Salem, Providence, and New London, among others, the Yankees built international trade routes, stretching to China by 1800. Much of the profit from trading was reinvested in the textile and machine tools industries.
Yankee ingenuity was a worldwide stereotype of inventiveness, technical solutions to practical problems, "know-how," self-reliance, and individual enterprise. The stereotype first appeared in the 19th century. As Mitchell Wilson notes, "Yankee ingenuity and Yankee git-up-and-go did not exist in colonial days." The great majority of Yankees gravitated toward the burgeoning cities of the northeast, while wealthy New Englanders also sent ambassadors to frontier communities where they became influential bankers and newspaper printers. They introduced the term "Universal Yankee Nation" to proselytize their hopes for national and global influence.
In religion, New England Yankees originally followed the Puritan tradition, as expressed in Congregational churches. Beginning in the late colonial period, many became Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Methodists, Baptists, or, later, Unitarians. Strait-laced 17th-century moralism as derided by novelist Nathaniel Hawthorne faded in the 18th century. The First Great Awakening (under Jonathan Edwards and others) in the mid-18th century and the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century (under Charles Grandison Finney, among others) emphasized personal piety, revivals, and devotion to civic duty. Theologically, Arminianism replaced the original Calvinism. Horace Bushnell introduced the idea of Christian nurture, through which children would be brought to religion without revivals.
After 1800, Yankees spearheaded most reform movements, including those for abolition of slavery, temperance in use of alcohol, increase in women's political rights, and improvement in women's education. Emma Willard and Mary Lyon pioneered in the higher education of women, while Yankees comprised most of the reformers who went South during Reconstruction in the late 1860s to educate the Freedmen.
Historian John Buenker has examined the worldview of the Yankee settlers in the Midwest:Because they arrived first and had a strong sense of community and mission, Yankees were able to transplant New England institutions, values, and mores, altered only by the conditions of frontier life. They established a public culture that emphasized the work ethic, the sanctity of private property, individual responsibility, faith in residential and social mobility, practicality, piety, public order and decorum, reverence for public education, activists, honest, and frugal government, town meeting democracy, and he believed that there was a public interest that transcends particular and stock ambitions. Regarding themselves as the elect and just in a world rife with sin and corruption, they felt a strong moral obligation to define and enforce standards of community and personal behavior…. This pietistic worldview was substantially shared by British, Scandinavian, Swiss, English-Canadian and Dutch Reformed immigrants, as well as by German Protestants and many of the Forty-Eighters.Yankees dominated New England, much of upstate New York, and much of the upper Midwest, and were the strongest supporters of the new Republican party in the 1860s. This was especially true for the Congregationalists, Presbyterians, and (after 1860) the Methodists among them. A study of 65 predominantly Yankee counties showed that they voted only 40% for the Whigs in 1848 and 1852, but became 61–65% Republican in presidential elections of 1856 through 1864.
Ivy League universities remained bastions of old Yankee culture until well after World War II, particularly Harvard and Yale, as well as "Little Ivy" liberal arts colleges.
President Calvin Coolidge exemplified the modern Yankee stereotype. Coolidge moved from rural Vermont to urban Massachusetts and was educated at elite Amherst College. Yet his flint-faced, unprepossessing ways and terse rural speech proved politically attractive. "That Yankee twang will be worth a hundred thousand votes", explained one Republican leader. Coolidge's laconic ways and dry humor were characteristic of stereotypical rural "Yankee humor" at the turn of the 20th century.
The term "Yankee" can have many different meanings within the United States that are contextually and geographically dependent. Traditionally, "Yankee" was most often used to refer to a New Englander descended from the original settlers of the region, thus often suggesting Puritanism and thrifty values. By the mid-20th century, some speakers applied the word to any American inhabiting the area north of the Mason–Dixon Line, though usually with a specific focus still on New England. "New England Yankee" might be used to differentiate. However, within New England itself, the term still refers more specifically to old-stock New Englanders. For example:
In the Southern United States, the term is used in derisive reference to any Northerner, especially one who has migrated to the South and maintains derisive attitudes towards Southerners and the Southern way of life. Alabama lawyer and author Daniel Robinson Hundley in his book "Social Relations in Our Southern States" describes the Yankee as such: Yankee with all these is looked upon usually as a term of reproach --signifying a shrewd, sharp, chaffering, oily-tongued, soft-sawdering, inquisitive, money-making, money-saving, and money-worshipping individual, who hails from Down East, and who is presumed to have no where else on the Globe a permanent local habitation, however ubiquitous he may be in his travels and pursuits.Senator J. William Fulbright of Arkansas pointed out as late as 1966, "The very word 'Yankee' still wakens in Southern minds historical memories of defeat and humiliation, of the burning of Atlanta and Sherman's March to the Sea, or of an ancestral farmhouse burned by Quantrill's Raiders". Ambrose Bierce defines the term in "The Devil's Dictionary" as: "In Europe, an American. In the Northern States of our Union, a New Englander. In the Southern States the word is unknown. (See DAMNYANK.)"
E. B. White humorously draws his own distinctions:
Major League Baseball's New York Yankees acquired the name from journalists after the team moved from Baltimore in 1903, though they were officially known as the Highlanders until 1913. The regional Yankees–Red Sox rivalry can make the utterance of the term "Yankee" unwelcome to some fans in New England, especially to the most dedicated Red Sox fans living in the northeastern United States.
The term "Swamp Yankee" is sometimes used in rural Rhode Island, Connecticut, and southeastern Massachusetts to refer to Protestant farmers of moderate means and their descendants (in contrast to richer or urban Yankees); "swamp Yankee" is often regarded as a derogatory term. Scholars note that the famous Yankee "twang" survives mainly in the hill towns of interior New England, though it is disappearing even there.
Mark Twain's novel "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court" popularized the word as a nickname for residents of Connecticut, and Connecticut Air National Guard unit 103d Airlift Wing is nicknamed "The Flying Yankees."
The shortened form "Yank" is used as a derogatory, pejorative, playful, or colloquial term for Americans in Britain, Australia, Canada, South Africa, Ireland, and New Zealand. The full "Yankee" may be considered mildly derogatory, depending on the country. The Spanish variation "yanqui" is sometimes used in Latin American contexts. Venezuelan Spanish has the word derived c. 1940 around the oil industry from "petty yankee" or "petit yanqui", a derogatory term for those who profess an exaggerated and often ridiculous admiration for anything from the United States.
In the late 19th century, the Japanese were called "the Yankees of the East" in praise of their industriousness and drive to modernization. In Japan, the term has been used since the late 1970s to refer to a type of delinquent youth. In Finland, the word "jenkki" (yank) is sometimes used to refer to any American citizen, and "Jenkkilä" (Yankeeland) refers to the United States itself. It is not considered offensive or anti-American, but rather a colloquial expression. In Sweden, the word "jänkare" is a derivative of yankee that is used to refer to both american citizens and classic american cars from the 50's that are popular in rural Sweden. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=38936 |
Dark Angel (American TV series)
Dark Angel is an American science fiction drama television series that premiered on the Fox network on October 3, 2000. Created by James Cameron and Charles H. Eglee, it stars Jessica Alba in her breakthrough role. Set in 2019, the series chronicles the life of Max Guevara (Alba), a genetically enhanced super-soldier who escapes from a covert military facility as a child. In a post-apocalyptic Seattle, she tries to lead a normal life while eluding capture by government agents and searching for her brothers and sisters scattered in the aftermath of their escape. "Dark Angel" was the first and only series produced by the company Cameron/Eglee Productions, and was filmed in Vancouver at Lions Gate Studios.
The high-budget pilot episode marked Cameron's television debut and was heavily promoted by Fox, reaching 17.4 million viewers. The first season, which was shown on Tuesday nights in the U.S., received mainly positive reviews and won several awards, including the People's Choice Award for Favorite New TV Drama. Alba's portrayal of Max also received mostly positive reviews and several awards. For the second season, the show was moved to the less desirable air time of Friday night and received some criticism for new plot elements. It suffered from a drop in ratings, averaging 6 million viewers per episode, and was canceled.
A series of novels continued the storyline, and a video game adaptation was also released. "Dark Angel" is considered to have gothic and female empowerment themes; Max followed a long line of strong female characters in Cameron's work, including Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. "Dark Angel" is considered to be part of a wave of shows in the late 1990s and early 2000s that feature strong female characters, alongside "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "", and "La Femme Nikita".
In 2009, a genetically enhanced nine-year-old female supersoldier designated as X5-452 (Geneva Locke) escapes along with eleven others from a secret U.S. government institution codenamed Manticore where they were born, raised, and trained to be soldiers and assassins. On June 1, 2009, months after X5-452's escape, terrorists detonate an electromagnetic pulse weapon in the atmosphere over the U.S., which destroys the vast majority of computer and communication systems, throwing the country into chaos.
Ten years later in 2019, the now 19-year-old X5-452 (Jessica Alba), who calls herself Max Guevara, struggles to search for her Manticore brothers and sisters. In the recovering United States which is now barely more than a developing country she tries to live a relatively normal life and evade capture by Manticore, who wishes to recover their lost asset.
Logan Cale (Michael Weatherly), an underground cyber-journalist with the alias Eyes Only, attempts to recruit her to help fight corruption in the post-Pulse world. She initially refuses but accepts after Cale is rendered a paraplegic attempting the assignment he was recruiting her for. A romantic interest buds between the two. While assisting Cale, Max also makes a living as a bicycle messenger at Jam Pony, a courier company, along with her friends Original Cindy (Valarie Rae Miller), Herbal Thought (Alimi Ballard), and Sketchy (Richard Gunn). Other X5s are periodically introduced, most significantly the unit leader Zack (William Gregory Lee). The Manticore hunt for the escaped X5s is led by Colonel Donald Lydecker (John Savage). Near the end of the season, Lydecker is betrayed by his superior, the even more ruthless Elizabeth Renfro (Nana Visitor), and he defects from Manticore. He aids Max and Zack in an assault on Manticore headquarters. Max is badly wounded and captured. Zack, who has also been captured, commits suicide to provide Max with his heart, as she needs an X5 heart transplant to survive.
Cale exposes Manticore to the world. Renfro decides to burn the facility to cover up the evidence and is killed in the process. Aided by Joshua (Kevin Durand), a transgenic with canine DNA, Max escapes the facility and frees the other transgenics including Alec (Jensen Ackles), a fellow X5, who later joins Jam Pony. When Max is reunited with Cale he immediately becomes ill and almost dies. Max discovers that Manticore has infected her with a virus specifically designed to kill Cale, and the two must avoid all physical contact to keep him alive. Max learns that Joshua was the first transgenic created by Sandeman, Manticore's founder. Over the course of the season, it is revealed that a millennia-old breeding cult has bred their own super-soldiers who rival the Manticore-produced transgenics. Ames White (Martin Cummins), a government agent tasked with eliminating the freed transgenics, is revealed to be a member of the cult. When a strange message written in Max's genetic code makes an appearance on her skin it is revealed that Sandeman is a renegade from the breeding cult and Ames White is his son. White is still loyal to the cult and hates his father's transgenic creations with a passion. Believing that Max is a threat to the breeding cult's plans they attempt to kill her, but she escapes to Terminal City, an abandoned part of Seattle where hundreds of outcast transgenics have been hiding. When the police begin to surround Terminal City Max convinces the other transgenics to stand their ground rather than run. The series ends with the military surrounding Terminal City as the residents raise their newly designed flag from one of the buildings, and wait for a possible invasion.
The first season introduced Jessica Alba as the main character Max Guevara (X5-452), a genetically enhanced transgenic super-soldier who escaped from a government facility named Manticore. She works as a bike messenger for the courier company Jam Pony during the day and as a cat burglar at night. Michael Weatherly played Logan Cale, the show's second most prominent character. Cale is a wealthy cyber-journalist and vigilante who operates under the alias Eyes Only. He recruits Max to assist with his campaign against corruption and crime in return for helping her find information on her fellow Manticore escapees. Main roles were given to several of the couriers at Jam Pony, including Valarie Rae Miller as Cynthia "Original Cindy" McEachin, Richard Gunn as Calvin "Sketchy" Theodore, and Alimi Ballard as Herbal Thought. J. C. MacKenzie played Reagan "Normal" Ronald, the company's boss, and Jennifer Blanc played Kendra Maibaum, Max's first roommate, and John Savage played the main antagonist, Col. Donald Lydecker, who is trying to recapture Max and the other Manticore escapees.
The Lydecker character is written out of the series early in the second season, and Herbal Thought and Kendra Maibaum do not appear at all. Season two introduced Kevin Durand as Joshua, an experimental creature from Manticore who has distinct canine facial features. It also introduces Jensen Ackles as Alec McDowell (X5-494), an X5 who has a romantic interest in Max, and Ashley Scott as Asha Barlow, a resistance fighter who has a romantic interest in Cale. Martin Cummins portrayed the season's main antagonist Ames White, a National Security Agency agent tasked with destroying the Manticore escapees.
Following his success with the film "Titanic", director James Cameron teamed up with Charles H. Eglee with whom he had previously worked on projects including "". The two formed a production company, Cameron/Eglee Productions, and began working on ideas for a television series. They considered several options, including a family drama, before deciding on the idea of "Dark Angel". Cameron said they began with the idea that Max would be a genetic construct who "looked normal on the outside but was different on the cellular, genetic level. We explore what that could mean." Cameron was influenced by the manga "Battle Angel Alita", which he was originally intending to after completing "Dark Angel".
"Dark Angel" would be the first and only work by Cameron/Eglee Productions. Max followed a long line of strong female characters in Cameron's work, including Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley. Cameron said "it's a win/win situation" as "women respond to characters who appear strong and capable" and young male audiences "want to see girls kick ass". Later they decided to set the series in a post-social collapse world, saying that the hysteria surrounding Y2K served as inspiration; in the series, an electromagnetic pulse previously destroyed every computer in the United States. Working titles for the series included "Experimental Girl" and "Maximum Girl". The project marked Cameron's television debut; he worked mainly as a writer and executive producer for the series.
More than a thousand young actresses were considered for the part of Max. Cameron started reviewing audition tapes when the field had been narrowed down to twenty or thirty applicants. He was initially not impressed with Alba's audition tape, saying "she had her head down, she was reading out of the script ... she didn't present herself all that well. But there was something about the way she read the script that copped an attitude that I liked." Cameron continually reviewed the audition tapes but kept coming back to Alba's, eventually deciding that he needed to meet her. Alba was hired for the role before the script was written. Eglee said: "We had the benefit of being able to write a script kind of backward, we were writing for this actress, with her cadences and her rhythms and her sensibilities and her attitude and her slang." To train for the role, Alba spent a year doing martial arts and gymnastics and riding motorcycles.
The two-hour premiere episode cost up to $10 million to produce, and Cameron reportedly "brought the pilot in on time and on budget". Subsequent episodes had a considerably smaller budget. Fox spent heavily on the promotional campaign for the premiere, paying for theatrical trailers, billboards, and guerilla marketing. Cameron took a "very basic view" of the show's chance of success, saying: "If it flies, it flies. If it doesn't, it doesn't ... If people connect with it, which I hope they will, fine. If we don't find an audience, we deserve to be off the air. It's that simple." Eglee admitted the series had been "routinely over budget" in the first season, and feared that this would be a factor in whether or not the show was renewed for a second season, though Cameron downplayed these concerns.
Fox "just barely" renewed the series for a second season. The budget for episodes in season two was $1.3 million each. After the intended director of the final episode did not work out, Cameron decided to step in and fill the position. He did this partially for the experience but also to show the network the potential for a third season. It was his first experience directing a TV drama.
The producers were initially told a third season had been approved, but two days later Fox informed them that the series had been canceled.
"Dark Angel" was set in Seattle, and filmed in Vancouver, British Columbia, at Lions Gate Studios. Other filming locations included the Vancouver Art Gallery, as well as Buntzen Lake and Riverview Hospital, also in British Columbia.
In the DVD commentary for "Freak Nation", the series finale, Charles H. Eglee explained what had been planned for season three. The intention was to bring together the storylines of seasons one ("Manticore") and two ("Breeding Cult") and reveal the mythology of "Dark Angel". The season would reveal that thousands of years ago, Earth passed through a comet's tail which deposited viral material that killed 97% of the human race. The breeding cult preserved the survivors' genetic immunity so that when the comet returned, only members of the cult would survive. Sandeman, a cult member, and Max's creator betrayed the cult and decided to give this genetic immunity to the rest of humanity through Max, who would be the savior of the human race. There were multiple ideas on how to spread Max's immunity, including an air burst that would disperse the antibody through the atmosphere, or attaching the immunity to a common cold virus (Eglee detailed how a scene would show Original Cindy sneezing as part of the beginning of the immunity spread). This storyline is expanded upon in the final "Dark Angel" novel "After the Dark" though when the comet returns nobody falls ill, and it is believed that the cult simply had a false prediction.
The first season premiered in the United States on Tuesday, October 3, 2000, from 9:00 pm until 11:00 pm. Fox had to obtain agreements from its affiliates to broadcast past 10:00 pm, as most of them air local news programs at this time. In subsequent weeks the show aired from 9:00 pm till 10:00 pm Tuesdays. During its first season, the show was preempted on several occasions, including by the 2000 World Series, the Billboard Music Awards and coverage of the presidential election. The frequent preemptions became a running joke on the set. "Dark Angel's" scheduled air time put it in direct competition with "Angel" on The WB. Critics debated which of the similarly named shows would dominate the time-slot. Jonathon Storm from "Philadelphia Media Network" believed that "Dark Angel" would prove victorious, while Brad Adgate, a research director at "Horizon Media", predicted that "Dark Angel" would only initially take the lead in the ratings, as "Angel's" strong fanbase would prevail in the long run. Brad Turrell, executive vice-president of Network Communication for the "WB" conceded that the heavy promotion for "Dark Angel" would give it higher initial ratings at first but believed that as "Angel" was a "better show" it would not be affected long-term. Concerned that there might be confusion between the two shows, the "WB" took out a full page ad in "TV Guide", which read "There is only ONE. David Boreanaz is ANGEL." "Angel" won the time slot when Fox moved the broadcast time of "Dark Angel" to 8:00 pm on Fridays for its second season, where it preceded the new series "Pasadena".
The final episode of the series aired on May 3, 2002, as a special 90-minute episode. "Dark Angel" has been syndicated on Syfy and the El Rey Network in the United States and on E4 and the Horror Channel in the UK.
The score for the "Dark Angel" pilot was composed and conducted by Joel McNeely. The pilot score track "Bicycle Ride" was used in the end credits for the duration of the series. The pilot score was released in full as part of the original publicity press kit, titled "Dark Angel: Complete Score from the Dark Angel Pilot". The 37-track CD was for promotional use only and not for resale. McNeely returned to score the entire series, making frequent use of "grumbling timpani rolls, bass drum beats and shrill brass and violin crescendos that familiarly sketch the action arcs of the narrative." Traditional orchestral elements are integrated with innovative electronic sounds and female vocals to create a sense of Max's "otherworldliness", "haunting wind chimes, pseudo-Orientalist refrains and extenuated high-pitched eerie sounds" evoke Max's super-human abilities, and "driving hip hop bass beats with heavy percussive effects [and] high-pitched feedback and reverberation" convey Max's struggles with violence and her memories of Manticore. The theme song for the series was composed by Chuck D and Gary G-Wiz. Both McNeely and G-Wiz cited "Dark Angel" as an opportunity to push sonic boundaries; G-Wiz stated that Eglee and music supervisor Randy Gerston kept calling him and telling him to make the theme song "crazier". McNeely said scoring the series was "like the difference between jazz and classical music. I'm a jazz player, so "Dark Angel" is as free form and as weird as we want to get."
A soundtrack album consisting of hip hop and R&B songs was released on April 23, 2002, through Artemis Records. Eglee explained that he and Cameron began with the idea that they could do a "hip hop youth ensemble thing", noting that "hip hop had become the dominant influence in the country [and] in the world" and that they saw an opportunity to give the future of "Dark Angel" the soundtrack of contemporary American popular culture. In the soundtrack's liner notes, Eglee writes:Reminiscent of another time and place ... that part of the Bronx in the late 1970s known as Fort Apache: a place that for white America, defined lack and limitation, violence and hopelessness. What white Americans couldn't see or hear then was the beautiful thing being birthed there, which, years later, would come to be known as Hip Hop. ... This album remembers the foundations of Hip Hop as it contemplates its future. Randy Gerston said that because of the near future setting of the series, he avoided any major hit songs as these would not sound futuristic. This gave them the opportunity to discover new talent instead. The album features predominately female hip hop and neo soul artists whose lyrics typically "focus on the expression of female agency and power – particularly with regard to sexuality." It peaked at No. 50 on the Top Independent Albums chart. Jason Birchmeier of AllMusic gave the soundtrack three out of five stars. He noted the lack of major artists on the album and commented that it "seems to be a female-orientated soundtrack, perhaps because of the show's female lead character". Birchmeier said many of the songs were "quite impressive" and that it "exceeds your expectations for a television show soundtrack".
"Dark Angel" is considered to be in the cyberpunk genre. Writing in "Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture", Lorna Jowett considered "Dark Angel" to be a "hybrid of science fiction, Gothic, and action" which incorporated forms and themes from all three genres. Jowett compared "Dark Angel" to the Gothic novel "Frankenstein", saying that Max's genetic engineering makes her a "postmodern Frankenstein's monster, blurring boundaries between human and monster". Kathleen McConnell in "Gothic Studies" also compared Max's unconventional conception to Frankenstein's monster, and cited several other Gothic themes in the series. She states that Max fits the model of a Gothic heroine who "ostensibly appear[s] to be conforming to their accepted role within the patriarchy but who actually subvert the father's power at every possible occasion." In her book "Post-feminist Impasses in Popular Heroine Television", Alison Horbury theorizes that "Dark Angel", along with the shows "Alias", "La Femme Nikita", and "Dollhouse" have themes of abduction, physical and symbolic rape, motherlessness, and the discovery of a sister.
Several academics have considered "Dark Angel" to be part of a wave of shows in the late 90s and early 2000s including "Buffy the Vampire Slayer", "", and "La Femme Nikita" that feature strong female characters. Writing in "Science Fiction Film & Television", Clarice Butkus noted Max has been considered to be a "distinctly millennial post-third-wave feminist warrior. She also felt that Max's relationship and dialogue with Original Cindy, an African American lesbian, conveyed female empowerment. For example, Cindy encourages Max not to feel guilt over her sexual behaviour and instead to embrace a traditionally masculine approach to sex. McConnell and Jowett also cited Max as an example of female empowerment; Jowett considered Max to be the "usual postmodern, postfeminist representation of the female action hero with [at least] a reversal or [at most] a mixture of traditional gender traits."
Butkus stated that "Dark Angel" repeatedly paid homage to the film "Blade Runner". Lydecker, the "flawed antagonist" of "Dark Angel" is said to be a transposition of Deckard, the "flawed hero" of "Blade Runner". Alec McDowell/X5-494's love interest is named Rachel, believed to be a reference to the replicant Rachael, though in "Dark Angel" it is McDowell and not Rachel who is bio-engineered. His flashbacks of this traumatic relationship use piano music similar to that used in "Blade Runner" to denote memories and a desire for former times. Alec's genetic memory enhancements enable him, with only a few hours practice, to play a detailed piano piece by Frédéric Chopin, the composer originally scripted for the scene in "Blade Runner" where Rachael inexplicably finds herself able to play the piano; both characters are considered to be pre-programmed by state forces to master superhuman skills.
Initial reaction to the series and Max's character was mostly positive, with favorable reviews in "Rolling Stone" and "Time". Hal Boedeker of the "Orlando Sentinel" said: "Television's newest warrior woman possesses skills worthy of Catwoman, Xena, Emma Peel, and Wonder Woman." Howard Rosenberg said: "If pouty faces and sexy walks could destroy, the highly arresting Max would be wiping out the entire planet." However Joyce Millman said Max was "little more than lips and ass" and considered the series to be an expensive Britney Spears music video. "People" ran a negative review of the Pilot episode in October 2000, though in December they listed Alba's portrayal of Max as among the "breakthrough" performances of 2000.
The first episode was behind only "" as the most watched new show of the week, albeit in a week with fewer new shows because of the presidential debate coverage. Fox chose to debut "Dark Angel" instead of airing the first presidential debate, a move which TV analyst Marc Berman praised, saying: "The people who watch the debates aren't the people who'll tune into "Dark Angel" anyway", though he predicted that the premiere's high ratings would not hold up as the show competed against more varied competition in subsequent weeks. It was the tenth most popular show overall that week, attracting 17.4 million viewers. Cameron said he did not know if the broadcast time change for the second season would have a positive or negative effect on the show's ratings, though R. D. Heldenfels of the "Sun Journal" noted the poor ratings of Friday night television, especially the low viewing rates among 18 to 24-year-olds, the age-group that "Dark Angel" was most popular with. The new time slot saw a ratings drop; for the 2001–02 season "Dark Angel" averaged 6 million viewers, ranking number 114 in the Nielsen ratings.
Commenting on the release of the second season, Cynthia Fuchs of "PopMatters" said the first season of "Dark Angel" was one of the "few straight-up successes, a ratings hit among the coveted 'youth' demographic." She praised the series but clarified: "I'm not getting carried away: Jim Cameron is not going to be making revolutionary art anytime soon." Michael Sauter of "Entertainment Weekly" gave the first season a B+ and spoke highly of Alba, saying that "for a while [she was] TV's hottest kick-butt heroine". Elka Karl of Common Sense Media gave the entire series 3 out of 5 stars, saying: "While the dialogue sometimes falls flat, overall the show is well-scripted and well acted, and Alba does an excellent job of carrying the series. Dark Angel isn't perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but it is compelling television that teen sci-fi fans will enjoy." While praising the first season, Randy Dankievitch of "TVOvermind" labelled the second season "silly", criticizing "dumb stories" like Max's dream episode "Boo", the virus that prevents Logan and Max having physical contact, and the various half-animal Manticore experiments that are revealed.
Writing in his book "The Encyclopedia of Superheroes on Film and Television", John Kenneth Muir said it was necessary for Cameron to set "Dark Angel" in the future because the prosperity of the U.S. in 2000 "offered little possibility for crime, squalor and other societal problems". While criticizing certain plot elements in the second season as contributing to the show's downfall, Muir said that larger factors in ratings dropping were the September 11 attacks, the Enron scandal, and the depletion of the U.S. government's surplus, which changed "Dark Angel's" "futuristic vision of recession in a Third-World America" from an interesting, far-fetched premise to a "depressing reminder that things could still get worse".
In 2004, Max was ranked number 17 on "TV Guide"s list of the 25 Greatest Sci-Fi Legends, and in 2012, Dave Golder of GamesRadar ranked her number 49 on his list of the 100 sexiest women in sci-fi. In 2009, AfterEllen ranked Original Cindy number 6 on their list of the Top 11 Lesbian/Bi Sidekicks. In 2015, Kayti Burt of "Den of Geek" included "Dark Angel" at the top of her list of "10 Sci-Fi Shows That Don't Get Enough Love". In 2016, it was recognized that "Dark Angel" was the first American television series to feature an openly transgender actress playing a transgender character. In the season one episode "Out", transgender actress Jessica Crockett portrayed "Louise", a young woman on a date with Normal.
The 2007 film "Hitman" re-used footage of Max and other Manticore children in training from "Dark Angel". It was used to portray the Hitman protagonist Agent 47, a cloned assassin who, like the Manticore children, has a barcode on the back of his head.
In its first season "Dark Angel" won the Favorite Television New Dramatic Series award at the 27th People's Choice Awards, and was nominated for Best Television by the International Horror Guild Awards. The production team was nominated for the Excellence in Production Design Award by the Art Directors Guild. Editor Stephen Mark won Best Edited Motion Picture for Commercial Television at the Eddie Awards for the pilot episode, and the pilot was also nominated for Outstanding Special Visual Effects for the 53rd Primetime Emmy Awards and "Best Visual Effects: Dramatic Series" by the Leo Awards.
Jessica Alba won Best Actress on Television at the 27th Saturn Awards, Breakout Star of the Year at the TV Guide Awards, Outstanding Actress in a New Television Series at the ALMA Awards, and Choice Actress at the 2001 Teen Choice Awards. She also received nominations for Best Actress – Television Series Drama for the 58th Golden Globe Awards and Best Performance in a TV Drama Series – Leading Young Actress for the 22nd Young Artist Awards.
"Dark Angel" was nominated for fewer awards in its second season. It was nominated for Choice Drama/Action Adventure for the 2002 Teen Choice Awards, where Alba was also nominated for Choice Actress, Drama. Alba was also nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Television Series for the ALMA Awards. At the Leo Awards the episode "Boo" received a nomination for Best Visual Effects: Dramatic Series, and David Geddes won Best Cinematography: Dramatic Series for the episode "Two".
20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released seasons 1 and 2 of "Dark Angel" on DVD in region 1 (R1), as well as a dual-coded region 2 and 4 (R2/4) set in 2003, as six-disc sets packaged in cardboard sleeves containing three DVD cases each of two discs. Season 1 was released in R2/4 in February and R1 in May, and season 2 was released in R2/4 in June and R1 in October.
The R1 releases contain several special features, including four episodes with optional commentary in each season, bloopers, deleted scenes, and featurettes. The R2/4 releases contain no commentaries and fewer other special features, but the episodes are presented in anamorphic widescreen, while R1 releases are fullscreen. Adam Tyner of "DVD Talk" gave the R1 first season three out of five stars for audio and video, and three and a half stars for special features. Shannon Nutt of "DVD Talk" gave the R1 second season three stars out of five for audio and video, and two and a half stars for extras, stating: "it appears [to have] a decent number of features, but then you discover the length of each one and really feel short-changed by Fox". She also noted the episode's commentary was mainly by writers and producers, and did not feature James Cameron or any of the actors.
Both seasons were re-released in R1 on June 5, 2007, with slim packaging consisting of one plastic case containing all six discs (which were unchanged in content and cosmetics).
A video game of the same name based on the series was developed by Radical Entertainment, published by Sierra Entertainment and released for PlayStation 2 on November 18, 2002, and later on Xbox. Alba and Weatherly voiced their respective characters in the game. Development of the game started before the series was cancelled, and the game was met with mixed to negative reception upon release. Brett Todd of GameSpot gave the game 3.8 out of 10, saying: "Although it's impossible to say whether or not the developers' morale was affected by the cancellation of the series, this third-person action adventure plays like it was cranked out to fulfill a contract" and concluded "the development of this game probably should have been cancelled at the same time as the television series". Duke Ferris from Game Revolution gave the game a 'D+', saying that while fans of "Dark Angel" would enjoy it as it "mirrors an episode of the show almost exactly", anybody else was likely to find it boring.
Three original novels written by Max Allan Collins expand upon the "Dark Angel" television series, with two picking up directly where the series ended, and another serving as a prequel. A companion book, "Dark Angel: The Eyes Only Dossier", was written by D.A. Stern.
The companion book, "Dark Angel: The Eyes Only Dossier", begins with a letter written by Logan Cale during the stand-off at Terminal City. It is addressed to Detective Matt Sung, a recurring character from the series who aides Logan, instructing him that the package he is sending him contains documents pertaining to the four most critical Eyes Only investigations. If he is killed by the potential invasion of Terminal City, Logan wants Sung to carry on the investigations. The rest of the book contains the documents relating to the four investigations.
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45929 |
Spirit possession
Spirit possession is the supposed control of a human body by spirits, aliens, demons or gods. The concept of spirit possession exists in many religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, Haitian Vodou, Wicca, Hinduism, Islam and Southeast Asian and African traditions. In a 1969 study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, spirit possession beliefs were found to exist in 74 percent of a sample of 488 societies in all parts of the world. Depending on the cultural context in which it is found, possession may be considered voluntary or involuntary and may be considered to have beneficial or detrimental effects on the host. Within possession cults, the belief that one is possessed by spirits is more common among women than men.
According to Augustin Calmet:
"The Egyptians believed that when the spirit of an animal is separated from its body by violence, it does not go to a distance, but remains near it. It is the same with the soul of a man who has died a violent death; it remains near the body—nothing can make it go away; it is retained there by sympathy; several have been seen sighing near their bodies which were interred. The magicians abuse their power over such in their incantations; they force them to obey, when they are masters of the dead body, or even part of it. Frequent experience taught them that there is a secret virtue in the body, which draws towards it the spirit which has once inhabited it; wherefore those who wish to receive or become the receptacles of the spirits of such animals as know the future, eat the principle parts of them, as the hearts of crows, moles, or hawks. The spirit of these creatures enters into them at the moment they eat this food, and makes them give out oracles like divinities.". "Porphyry, when consulted by Anebo, an Egyptian priest, if those who foretell the future and perform prodigies have more powerful souls, or whether they receive power from some strange spirit, replies that, according to appearance, all these things are done by means of certain evil spirits that are naturally knavish, and take all sorts of shapes, and do everything that one sees happen, whether good or evil; but that in the end they never lead men to what is truly good." – Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants
Among the Gurage people of Ethiopia, spirit possession is a common belief. Wiliam A. Shack postulated that it is caused by Gurage cultural attitudes about food and hunger, while they have a plentiful food supply, cultural pressures that force the Gurage to either share it to meet social obligations, or hoard it and eat it secretly cause feelings of anxiety. Distinctions are drawn between spirits that strictly possess men, spirits that possess women, and spirits that possess victims of either sex. A ritual illness that only affects men is believed to be caused by a spirit called "awre". This affliction presents itself by loss of appetite, nausea, and attacks from severe stomach pains. If it persists the victim may enter a trancelike stupor, in which he sometimes regains consciousness long enough to take food and water. Breathing is often labored. Seizures and trembling overcome the patient, and in extreme cases, partial paralysis of the extremities.
If the victim does not recover naturally, a traditional healer, or "sagwara", is summoned. Once the sagwara has determined the spirit's name through the use of divination, he prescribes a routine formula to exorcise the spirit. This is not a permanent cure, however, it is believed to allow the victim to form a relationship with the spirit. Nevertheless, the victim is subject to chronic repossession, which is treated by repeating the formula. This formula involves the preparation and consumption of a dish of ensete, butter, and red pepper. During this ritual, the victim's head is covered with a drape, and he eats the ensete ravenously while other ritual participants participate by chanting. The ritual ends when the possessing spirit announces that it is satisfied. Shack notes that the victims are overwhelmingly poor men, and that women are not as food-deprived as men are due to ritual activities that involve food redistribution and consumption. Shack postulates that the "awre" serves to bring the possessed man to the center of social attention, and to relieve his anxieties over his inability to gain prestige from redistributing food, which is the primary way in which Gurage men gain status in their society.
The belief in spirit possession is part of their native culture of the Sidama people of southwest Ethiopia. Anthropologists Irene and John Hamer postulated that it is a form of compensation for being deprived within Sidama society, although they do not draw from I.M. Lewis (see Cultural anthropology section under Scientific views). The majority of the possessed are women whose spirits demand luxury goods to alleviate their condition, but men can be possessed as well. Possessed individuals of both sexes can become healers due to their condition. Hamer and Hamer suggest that this is a form of compensation among deprived men in the deeply competitive society of the Sidama, for if a man cannot gain prestige as an orator, warrior, or farmer, he may still gain prestige as a spirit healer. Women are sometimes accused of faking possession, but men never are.
The Digo people of Kenya refer to the spirits that supposedly possess them as "shaitani". These "shaitani" typically demand luxury items to make the patient well again. Despite the fact that men sometimes accuse women of faking the possessions in order to get luxury items, attention, and sympathy, they do generally regard spirit possession as a genuine condition and view victims of it as being ill through no fault of their own. However, men sometimes suspect women of actively colluding with spirits in order to be possessed.
The Giriama people of coastal Kenya believe in spirit possession.
In Mayotte, approximately 25 percent of the adult population, and five times as many women as men, enter trance states in which they are supposedly possessed by certain identifiable spirits who maintain stable and coherent identities from one possession to the next.
In Mozambique, a new belief in spirit possession appeared after the Mozambican Civil War. These spirits, called "gamba", are said to be identified as dead soldiers, and allegedly overwhelmingly possess women. Prior to the war, spirit possession was limited to certain families and was less common.
In Uganda, a woman named Alice Auma was reportedly possessed by the spirit of a male Italian soldier named Lakwena, meaning messenger. She had ultimately led a failed insurrection against governmental forces.
The Sukuma people of Tanzania believe in spirit possession.
A now extinct spirit possession cult existed among the Hadimu women of Zanzibar, revering a spirit called "kitimiri". This cult described in an 1869 account by a French missionary. The cult faded by the 1920s and was virtually unknown by the 1960s.
A belief in spirit possession appears among the Xesibe, a Xhosa speaking people from Transkei, South Africa. The majority of the supposedly possessed are married women. The condition of spirit possession among them is called "inwatso". Those who develop the condition of "inwatso" are regarded as having a special calling to divine the future. They are first treated with sympathy, and then with respect as they allegedly develop their abilities to foretell the future.
In Haitian Vodou and related African diaspora traditions, one way that those who participate or practice can have a spiritual experience is by being possessed by the "Loa" (or "lwa"). When the "loa" descends upon a practitioner, the practitioner's body is being used by the spirit, according to the tradition. Some spirits are believed to be able to give prophecies of upcoming events or situations pertaining to the possessed one, also called "Chwal" or the "Horse of the Spirit." Practitioners describe this as a beautiful but very tiring experience. Most people who are possessed by the spirit describe the onset as a feeling of blackness or energy flowing through their body as if they were being electrocuted. According to Vodou believers, when this occurs, it is a sign that a possession is about to take place.
According to tradition, the practitioner has no recollection of the possession and in fact when the possessing spirit leaves the body, the possessed one is tired and wonders what has happened during the possession. It is also believed that there are those who feign possessions because they want attention or a feeling of importance, because those who are possessed carry a high importance in ceremony. Often, a "chwal" will undergo some form of trial or testing to make sure that the possession is allegedly genuine. As an example, someone possessed by one of the Guédé spirits may be offered "piment", a liqueur made by steeping twenty-one chili peppers in "kleren", a potent alcoholic beverage. If the chwal consumes the piment without showing any evidence of pain or discomfort, the possession is regarded as genuine.
The concept of spirit possession is also found in Umbanda, an Afro-Brazilian folk religion. According to tradition, one such possessing spirit is Pomba Gira, who possesses both women and effeminate males.
According to the Indian medical literature and Tantric Buddhist scriptures, most of the "seizers," or those that threaten the lives of young children, appear in animal form: cow, lion, fox, monkey, horse, dog, pig, cat, crow, pheasant, owl, and snake. But apart from these "nightmare shapes," it is believed the impersonation or incarnation of animals could in some circumstances also be highly beneficial, according to Michel Strickmann.
Ch'i Chung-fu, a Chinese gynecologist writing early in the thirteenth century, wrote that in addition to five sorts of falling frenzy classified according to their causative factors, there were also four types of other frenzies distinguished by the sounds and movements given off by the victim during his seizure: cow, horse, pig, and dog frenzies.
Certain sects of Taoism, Korean shamanism, Shinto, some Japanese new religious movements, and other East Asian religions feature the idea of spirit possession. Some sects feature shamans who supposedly become possessed, or mediums who allegedly channel beings' supernatural power, or enchanters who it is said imbue or foster spirits within objects, like samurai swords. The Hong Kong film "Super Normal II" ("大迷信", 1993) shows the famous story of a woman in Taiwan who possesses a dead body to live her predeterminated remaining life. She is still working in the Zhen Tian Temple in Yunlin County.
See Chinese spirit possession, Shi (personator)
See Shamanism of the Solon People
The concept of spirit possession exists in the culture of modern Rajasthan. Some of the spirits allegedly possessing Rajasthanis are seen as good and beneficial, while others are seen as malevolent. The good spirits are said to include murdered royalty, the underworld god Bhaironji, and Muslim saints & fakirs. Bad spirits are believed to include perpetual debtors who die in debt, stillborn infants, deceased widows, and foreign tourists. The supposedly possessed individual is referred to as a "ghorala", or "mount". Possession, even if by a benign spirit, is regarded as undesirable, as it is seen to entail loss of self-control, and violent emotional outbursts.
Tamil women in India are said to experience possession by "peye" spirits. According to tradition, these spirits overwhelmingly possess new brides, are usually identified as the ghosts of young men who died while romantically or sexually frustrated, and are ritually exorcised.
The animist traditions of the island of Bali (Indonesia) include a practice called "sanghyang", induction of voluntary possession trance states for specific purposes. Roughly similar to voluntary possession in Vaudon (Voodoo), "sanghyang" is considered a sacred state in which hyangs (deities) or helpful spirits temporarily inhabit the bodies of participants. The purpose of sanghyang is believed to be to cleanse people and places of evil influences and restore spiritual balance. Thus, it is often referred to as an exorcism ceremony.
The women of the Bonerate people of Sulawesi, Indonesia practice a possession-trance ritual in which they smother glowing embers with their bare feet at the climax. The fact that they are not burned in the process is considered proof of the authenticity of the possession.
See Misaki
Female workers in Malaysian factories have allegedly become possessed by spirits, and factory owners generally regard it as mass hysteria and an intrusion of irrational and archaic beliefs into a modern setting.
The anthropologist Aihwa Ong noted that spirit possession beliefs in Malaysia were typically held by older, married women, whereas the female factory workers are typically young and unmarried. She connects this to the rapid industrialization and modernization of Malaysia. Ong argued that spirit possession is a traditional way of rebelling against authority without punishment, and suggests that it is a means of protesting the untenable working conditions and sexual harassment that the women were compelled to endure.
The Coast Veddas, a social group within the minority group of Sri Lankan Tamil people in Eastern Province, Sri Lanka, enter trances during religious festivals in which they are regarded as being possessed by a spirit. Although they speak a dialect of Tamil, during trances they will sometimes use a mixed language that contains words from the Vedda language.
The Urapmin people of the New Guinea Highlands practice a form of group possession known as the "spirit disco" (Tok Pisin: "spirit disko"). Men and women gather in church buildings, dancing in circles and jumping up and down while women sing Christian songs; this is called "pulling the [Holy] spirit" (Tok Pisin: "pulim spirit", Urap: "Sinik dagamin"). The songs' melodies are borrowed from traditional women's songs sung at drum dances (Urap: "wat dalamin"), and the lyrics are typically in Telefol or other Mountain Ok languages. If successful, some dancers will "get the spirit" (Tok Pisin: "kisim spirit"), flailing wildly and careening about the dance floor. After an hour or more, those possessed will collapse, the singing will end, and the spirit disco will end with a prayer and, if there is time, a Bible reading and sermon. The body is believed to normally be "heavy" (Urapmin: "ilum") with sin, and possession is the process of the Holy Spirit throwing the sins from one's body, making the person "light" ("fong") again. This is a completely new ritual for the Urapmin, who have no indigenous tradition of spirit-possession.
The concept of spirit possession appears in Chuuk State, one of the four states of Federated States of Micronesia. Although Chuuk is an overwhelmingly Christian society, traditional beliefs in spirit possession by the dead still exist, usually held by women, and "events" are usually brought on by family conflicts. The supposed spirits, speaking through the women, typically admonish family members to treat each other better.
Roman Catholic doctrine states that angels are non-corporeal, spiritual beings with intelligence and will. Fallen angels, or demons, are able to "demonically possess" individuals without the victim's knowledge or consent, leaving them morally blameless.
Spirit possession appears in Islamic theology and tradition. Although opposed by some Muslim scholars, sleeping near a graveyard or a tomb is believed to enable to come into contact with ghosts of the dead, visiting the sleeper in dreams and providing hidden knowledge. Other creatures thought to be able to possess humans are jinn. They are much more physical than spirits, but still due to their subtile bodies (composed of fire and air ("marijin min nar")), able to possess the body of humans. Since such jinn are said to have free will, they can have their own reasons to possess humans and are not necessarily harmful. At an intended possession, the covenant with the jinn must be renewed. Possession by afarit (spirit of the underworld) are said to grant the possessed some supernatural powers, but drives them insane. Another category, sometimes linked to possessions, are infections by the whisperings of demons ("shayatin"), but affecting the soul instead of the body.
Although forbidden in the Hebrew Bible, magic was widely practiced in the late Second Temple Period and well documented in the period following the destruction of the Temple into the 3rd, 4th, and 5th centuries C.E. In Jewish folklore, a dybbuk is a disembodied spirit that wanders restlessly until it inhabits the body of a living person. The Baal Shem could expel the harmful dybbuk through exorcism.
Jewish magical papyri were inscriptions on amulets, ostraca and incantation bowls used in Jewish magical practices against shedim and other unclean spirits.
Wiccans believe in voluntary possession by the Goddess, connected with the sacred ceremony of Drawing Down the Moon. The high priestess solicits the Goddess to possess her and speak through her.
The works of Jean Rouch, Germaine Dieterlen, and Marcel Griaule have been extensively cited in research studies on possession in Western Africa that extended to Brasil and North America due the slave trade.
The anthropologist I.M. Lewis noted that women are more likely to be involved in spirit possession cults than men are, and postulated that such cults act as a means of compensation for their exclusion from other spheres within their respective cultures.
Anthropologists Alice B. Kehoe and Dody H. Giletti argued that the reason that women are more commonly seen in Afro-Eurasian spirit possession cults is because of deficiencies in thiamine, tryptophan-niacin, calcium, and vitamin D. They argued that a combination of poverty and food taboos cause this problem, and that it is exacerbated by the strains of pregnancy and lactation. They postulated that the involuntary symptoms of these deficiencies affecting their nervous systems have been institutionalized as spirit possession.
In clinical psychiatry, trance and possession disorders are defined as "states involving a temporary loss of the sense of personal identity and full awareness of the surroundings", and are generally classed as a type of dissociative disorder. People alleged to be possessed by spirits sometimes exhibit symptoms similar to those associated with mental illnesses such as psychosis, hysteria, mania, Tourette's syndrome, epilepsy, schizophrenia, or dissociative identity disorder, including involuntary, uncensored behavior, and an extra-human, extra-social aspect to the individual's actions. In cases of dissociative identity disorder in which the alter personality is questioned as to its identity, 29 percent are reported to identify themselves as demons. A 19th century term for a mental disorder in which the patient believes that they are possessed by demons or evil spirits is demonomania or cacodemonomanis. See also Bicameralism (psychology). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45936 |
General equilibrium theory
In economics, general equilibrium theory attempts to explain the behavior of supply, demand, and prices in a whole economy with several or many interacting markets, by seeking to prove that the interaction of demand and supply will result in an overall general equilibrium. General equilibrium theory contrasts to the theory of "partial" equilibrium, which only analyzes single markets.
General equilibrium theory both studies economies using the model of equilibrium pricing and seeks to determine in which circumstances the assumptions of general equilibrium will hold. The theory dates to the 1870s, particularly the work of French economist Léon Walras in his pioneering 1874 work "Elements of Pure Economics".
Broadly speaking, general equilibrium tries to give an understanding of the whole economy using a "bottom-up" approach, starting with individual markets and agents. Therefore, general equilibrium theory has traditionally been classified as part of microeconomics. The difference is not as clear as it used to be, since much of modern macroeconomics has emphasized microeconomic foundations, and has constructed general equilibrium models of macroeconomic fluctuations. General equilibrium macroeconomic models usually have a simplified structure that only incorporates a few markets, like a "goods market" and a "financial market". In contrast, general equilibrium models in the microeconomic tradition typically involve a multitude of different goods markets. They are usually complex and require computers to calculate numerical solutions.
In a market system the prices and production of all goods, including the price of money and interest, are interrelated. A change in the price of one good, say bread, may affect another price, such as bakers' wages. If bakers don't differ in tastes from others, the demand for bread might be affected by a change in bakers' wages, with a consequent effect on the price of bread. Calculating the equilibrium price of just one good, in theory, requires an analysis that accounts for all of the millions of different goods that are available. It is often assumed that agents are price takers, and under that assumption two common notions of equilibrium exist: Walrasian, or competitive equilibrium, and its generalization: a price equilibrium with transfers.
The first attempt in neoclassical economics to model prices for a whole economy was made by Léon Walras. Walras' "Elements of Pure Economics" provides a succession of models, each taking into account more aspects of a real economy (two commodities, many commodities, production, growth, money). Some think Walras was unsuccessful and that the later models in this series are inconsistent.
In particular, Walras's model was a long-run model in which prices of capital goods are the same whether they appear as inputs or outputs and in which the same rate of profits is earned in all lines of industry. This is inconsistent with the quantities of capital goods being taken as data. But when Walras introduced capital goods in his later models, he took their quantities as given, in arbitrary ratios. (In contrast, Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu continued to take the initial quantities of capital goods as given, but adopted a short run model in which the prices of capital goods vary with time and the own rate of interest varies across capital goods.)
Walras was the first to lay down a research program much followed by 20th-century economists. In particular, the Walrasian agenda included the investigation of when equilibria are unique and stable— Walras' Lesson 7 shows neither uniqueness, nor stability, nor even existence of an equilibrium is guaranteed. Walras also proposed a dynamic process by which general equilibrium might be reached, that of the tâtonnement or groping process.
The tâtonnement process is a model for investigating stability of equilibria. Prices are announced (perhaps by an "auctioneer"), and agents state how much of each good they would like to offer (supply) or purchase (demand). No transactions and no production take place at disequilibrium prices. Instead, prices are lowered for goods with positive prices and excess supply. Prices are raised for goods with excess demand. The question for the mathematician is under what conditions such a process will terminate in equilibrium where demand equates to supply for goods with positive prices and demand does not exceed supply for goods with a price of zero. Walras was not able to provide a definitive answer to this question (see Unresolved Problems in General Equilibrium below).
In partial equilibrium analysis, the determination of the price of a good is simplified by just looking at the price of one good, and assuming that the prices of all other goods remain constant. The Marshallian theory of supply and demand is an example of partial equilibrium analysis. Partial equilibrium analysis is adequate when the first-order effects of a shift in the demand curve do not shift the supply curve. Anglo-American economists became more interested in general equilibrium in the late 1920s and 1930s after Piero Sraffa's demonstration that Marshallian economists cannot account for the forces thought to account for the upward-slope of the supply curve for a consumer good.
If an industry uses little of a factor of production, a small increase in the output of that industry will not bid the price of that factor up. To a first-order approximation, firms in the industry will experience constant costs, and the industry supply curves will not slope up. If an industry uses an appreciable amount of that factor of production, an increase in the output of that industry will exhibit increasing costs. But such a factor is likely to be used in substitutes for the industry's product, and an increased price of that factor will have effects on the supply of those substitutes. Consequently, Sraffa argued, the first-order effects of a shift in the demand curve of the original industry under these assumptions includes a shift in the supply curve of substitutes for that industry's product, and consequent shifts in the original industry's supply curve. General equilibrium is designed to investigate such interactions between markets.
Continental European economists made important advances in the 1930s. Walras' proofs of the existence of general equilibrium often were based on the counting of equations and variables. Such arguments are inadequate for non-linear systems of equations and do not imply that equilibrium prices and quantities cannot be negative, a meaningless solution for his models. The replacement of certain equations by inequalities and the use of more rigorous mathematics improved general equilibrium modeling.
The modern conception of general equilibrium is provided by a model developed jointly by Kenneth Arrow, Gérard Debreu, and Lionel W. McKenzie in the 1950s. Debreu presents this model in "Theory of Value" (1959) as an axiomatic model, following the style of mathematics promoted by Nicolas Bourbaki. In such an approach, the interpretation of the terms in the theory (e.g., goods, prices) are not fixed by the axioms.
Three important interpretations of the terms of the theory have been often cited. First, suppose commodities are distinguished by the location where they are delivered. Then the Arrow-Debreu model is a spatial model of, for example, international trade.
Second, suppose commodities are distinguished by when they are delivered. That is, suppose all markets equilibrate at some initial instant of time. Agents in the model purchase and sell contracts, where a contract specifies, for example, a good to be delivered and the date at which it is to be delivered. The Arrow–Debreu model of intertemporal equilibrium contains forward markets for all goods at all dates. No markets exist at any future dates.
Third, suppose contracts specify states of nature which affect whether a commodity is to be delivered: "A contract for the transfer of a commodity now specifies, in addition to its physical properties, its location and its date, an event on the occurrence of which the transfer is conditional. This new definition of a commodity allows one to obtain a theory of [risk] free from any probability concept..."
These interpretations can be combined. So the complete Arrow–Debreu model can be said to apply when goods are identified by when they are to be delivered, where they are to be delivered and under what circumstances they are to be delivered, as well as their intrinsic nature. So there would be a complete set of prices for contracts such as "1 ton of Winter red wheat, delivered on 3rd of January in Minneapolis, if there is a hurricane in Florida during December". A general equilibrium model with complete markets of this sort seems to be a long way from describing the workings of real economies, however its proponents argue that it is still useful as a simplified guide as to how real economies function.
Some of the recent work in general equilibrium has in fact explored the implications of incomplete markets, which is to say an intertemporal economy with uncertainty, where there do not exist sufficiently detailed contracts that would allow agents to fully allocate their consumption and resources through time. While it has been shown that such economies will generally still have an equilibrium, the outcome may no longer be Pareto optimal. The basic intuition for this result is that if consumers lack adequate means to transfer their wealth from one time period to another and the future is risky, there is nothing to necessarily tie any price ratio down to the relevant marginal rate of substitution, which is the standard requirement for Pareto optimality. Under some conditions the economy may still be constrained Pareto optimal, meaning that a central authority limited to the same type and number of contracts as the individual agents may not be able to improve upon the outcome, what is needed is the introduction of a full set of possible contracts. Hence, one implication of the theory of incomplete markets is that inefficiency may be a result of underdeveloped financial institutions or credit constraints faced by some members of the public. Research still continues in this area.
Basic questions in general equilibrium analysis are concerned with the conditions under which an equilibrium will be efficient, which efficient equilibria can be achieved, when an equilibrium is guaranteed to exist and when the equilibrium will be unique and stable.
The First Fundamental Welfare Theorem asserts that market equilibria are Pareto efficient. In a pure exchange economy, a sufficient condition for the first welfare theorem to hold is that preferences be locally nonsatiated. The first welfare theorem also holds for economies with production regardless of the properties of the production function. Implicitly, the theorem assumes complete markets and perfect information. In an economy with externalities, for example, it is possible for equilibria to arise that are not efficient.
The first welfare theorem is informative in the sense that it points to the sources of inefficiency in markets. Under the assumptions above, any market equilibrium is tautologically efficient. Therefore, when equilibria arise that are not efficient, the market system itself is not to blame, but rather some sort of market failure.
Even if every equilibrium is efficient, it may not be that every efficient allocation of resources can be part of an equilibrium. However, the second theorem states that every Pareto efficient allocation can be supported as an equilibrium by some set of prices. In other words, all that is required to reach a particular Pareto efficient outcome is a redistribution of initial endowments of the agents after which the market can be left alone to do its work. This suggests that the issues of efficiency and equity can be separated and need not involve a trade-off. The conditions for the second theorem are stronger than those for the first, as consumers' preferences and production sets now need to be convex (convexity roughly corresponds to the idea of diminishing marginal rates of substitution i.e. "the average of two equally good bundles is better than either of the two bundles").
Even though every equilibrium is efficient, neither of the above two theorems say anything about the equilibrium existing in the first place. To guarantee that an equilibrium exists, it suffices that consumer preferences be strictly convex. With enough consumers, the convexity assumption can be relaxed both for existence and the second welfare theorem. Similarly, but less plausibly, convex feasible production sets suffice for existence; convexity excludes economies of scale.
Proofs of the existence of equilibrium traditionally rely on fixed-point theorems such as Brouwer fixed-point theorem for functions (or, more generally, the Kakutani fixed-point theorem for set-valued functions). See Competitive equilibrium#Existence of a competitive equilibrium. The proof was first due to Lionel McKenzie, and Kenneth Arrow and Gérard Debreu. In fact, the converse also holds, according to Uzawa's derivation of Brouwer's fixed point theorem from Walras's law. Following Uzawa's theorem, many mathematical economists consider proving existence a deeper result than proving the two Fundamental Theorems.
Another method of proof of existence, global analysis, uses Sard's lemma and the Baire category theorem; this method was pioneered by Gérard Debreu and Stephen Smale.
Starr (1969) applied the Shapley–Folkman–Starr theorem to prove that even without convex preferences there exists an approximate equilibrium. The Shapley–Folkman–Starr results bound the distance from an "approximate" economic equilibrium to an equilibrium of a "convexified" economy, when the number of agents exceeds the dimension of the goods. Following Starr's paper, the Shapley–Folkman–Starr results were "much exploited in the theoretical literature", according to Guesnerie, who wrote the following:
some key results obtained under the convexity assumption remain (approximately) relevant in circumstances where convexity fails. For example, in economies with a large consumption side, nonconvexities in preferences do not destroy the standard results of, say Debreu's theory of value. In the same way, if indivisibilities in the production sector are small with respect to the size of the economy, [ . . . ] then standard results are affected in only a minor way.
To this text, Guesnerie appended the following footnote:
The derivation of these results in general form has been one of the major achievements of postwar economic theory.
In particular, the Shapley-Folkman-Starr results were incorporated in the theory of general economic equilibria and in the theory of market failures and of public economics.
Although generally (assuming convexity) an equilibrium will exist and will be efficient, the conditions under which it will be unique are much stronger. The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu theorem, proven in the 1970s, states that the aggregate excess demand function inherits only certain properties of individual's demand functions, and that these (Continuity, Homogeneity of degree zero, Walras' law and boundary behavior when prices are near zero) are the only real restriction one can expect from an aggregate excess demand function. Any such function can represent the excess demand of an economy populated with rational utility-maximizing individuals.
There has been much research on conditions when the equilibrium will be unique, or which at least will limit the number of equilibria. One result states that under mild assumptions the number of equilibria will be finite (see regular economy) and odd (see index theorem). Furthermore, if an economy as a whole, as characterized by an aggregate excess demand function, has the revealed preference property (which is a much stronger condition than revealed preferences for a single individual) or the gross substitute property then likewise the equilibrium will be unique. All methods of establishing uniqueness can be thought of as establishing that each equilibrium has the same positive local index, in which case by the index theorem there can be but one such equilibrium.
Given that equilibria may not be unique, it is of some interest to ask whether any particular equilibrium is at least locally unique. If so, then comparative statics can be applied as long as the shocks to the system are not too large. As stated above, in a regular economy equilibria will be finite, hence locally unique. One reassuring result, due to Debreu, is that "most" economies are regular.
Work by Michael Mandler (1999) has challenged this claim. The Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie model is neutral between models of production functions as continuously differentiable and as formed from (linear combinations of) fixed coefficient processes. Mandler accepts that, under either model of production, the initial endowments will not be consistent with a continuum of equilibria, except for a set of Lebesgue measure zero. However, endowments change with time in the model and this evolution of endowments is determined by the decisions of agents (e.g., firms) in the model. Agents in the model have an interest in equilibria being indeterminate:
Indeterminacy, moreover, is not just a technical nuisance; it undermines the price-taking assumption of competitive models. Since arbitrary small manipulations of factor supplies can dramatically increase a factor's price, factor owners will not take prices to be parametric.
When technology is modeled by (linear combinations) of fixed coefficient processes, optimizing agents will drive endowments to be such that a continuum of equilibria exist:
The endowments where indeterminacy occurs systematically arise through time and therefore cannot be dismissed; the Arrow-Debreu-McKenzie model is thus fully subject to the dilemmas of factor price theory.
Some have questioned the practical applicability of the general equilibrium approach based on the possibility of non-uniqueness of equilibria.
In a typical general equilibrium model the prices that prevail "when the dust settles" are simply those that coordinate the demands of various consumers for various goods. But this raises the question of how these prices and allocations have been arrived at, and whether any (temporary) shock to the economy will cause it to converge back to the same outcome that prevailed before the shock. This is the question of stability of the equilibrium, and it can be readily seen that it is related to the question of uniqueness. If there are multiple equilibria, then some of them will be unstable. Then, if an equilibrium is unstable and there is a shock, the economy will wind up at a different set of allocations and prices once the convergence process terminates. However stability depends not only on the number of equilibria but also on the type of the process that guides price changes (for a specific type of price adjustment process see Walrasian auction). Consequently, some researchers have focused on plausible adjustment processes that guarantee system stability, i.e., that guarantee convergence of prices and allocations to some equilibrium. When more than one stable equilibrium exists, where one ends up will depend on where one begins.
Research building on the Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie model has revealed some problems with the model. The Sonnenschein–Mantel–Debreu results show that, essentially, any restrictions on the shape of excess demand functions are stringent. Some think this implies that the Arrow–Debreu model lacks empirical content. At any rate, Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie equilibria cannot be expected to be unique, or stable.
A model organized around the tâtonnement process has been said to be a model of a centrally planned economy, not a decentralized market economy. Some research has tried to develop general equilibrium models with other processes. In particular, some economists have developed models in which agents can trade at out-of-equilibrium prices and such trades can affect the equilibria to which the economy tends. Particularly noteworthy are the Hahn process, the Edgeworth process and the Fisher process.
The data determining Arrow-Debreu equilibria include initial endowments of capital goods. If production and trade occur out of equilibrium, these endowments will be changed further complicating the picture.
In a real economy, however, trading, as well as production and consumption, goes
on out of equilibrium. It follows that, in the course of convergence to equilibrium (assuming that occurs), endowments change. In turn this changes the set of equilibria. Put more succinctly, the set of equilibria is path dependent... [This path dependence]
makes the calculation of equilibria corresponding to the initial state of the system essentially irrelevant. What matters is the equilibrium that the economy will reach from given initial endowments, not the equilibrium that it would have been in, given initial endowments, had prices happened to be just right
(Franklin Fisher).
The Arrow–Debreu model in which all trade occurs in futures contracts at time zero requires a very large number of markets to exist. It is equivalent under complete markets to a sequential equilibrium concept in which spot markets for goods and assets open at each date-state event (they are not equivalent under incomplete markets); market clearing then requires that the entire sequence of prices clears all markets at all times. A generalization of the sequential market arrangement is the temporary equilibrium structure, where market clearing at a point in time is conditional on expectations of future prices which need not be market clearing ones.
Although the Arrow–Debreu–McKenzie model is set out in terms of some arbitrary numéraire, the model does not encompass money. Frank Hahn, for example, has investigated whether general equilibrium models can be developed in which money enters in some essential way. One of the essential questions he introduces, often referred to as the Hahn's problem is : "Can one construct an equilibrium where money has value?" The goal is to find models in which existence of money can alter the equilibrium solutions, perhaps because the initial position of agents depends on monetary prices.
Some critics of general equilibrium modeling contend that much research in these models constitutes exercises in pure mathematics with no connection to actual economies. In a 1979 article, Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen complains: "There are endeavors that now pass for the most desirable kind of economic contributions although they are just plain mathematical exercises, not only without any economic substance but also without any mathematical value." He cites as an example a paper that assumes more traders in existence than there are points in the set of real numbers.
Although modern models in general equilibrium theory demonstrate that under certain circumstances prices will indeed converge to equilibria, critics hold that the assumptions necessary for these results are extremely strong. As well as stringent restrictions on excess demand functions, the necessary assumptions include perfect rationality of individuals; complete information about all prices both now and in the future; and the conditions necessary for perfect competition. However some results from experimental economics suggest that even in circumstances where there are few, imperfectly informed agents, the resulting prices and allocations may wind up resembling those of a perfectly competitive market (although certainly not a stable general equilibrium in all markets).
Frank Hahn defends general equilibrium modeling on the grounds that it provides a negative function. General equilibrium models show what the economy would have to be like for an unregulated economy to be Pareto efficient.
Until the 1970s general equilibrium analysis remained theoretical. With advances in computing power and the development of input–output tables, it became possible to model national economies, or even the world economy, and attempts were made to solve for general equilibrium prices and quantities empirically.
Applied general equilibrium (AGE) models were pioneered by Herbert Scarf in 1967, and offered a method for solving the Arrow–Debreu General Equilibrium system in a numerical fashion. This was first implemented by John Shoven and John Whalley (students of Scarf at Yale) in 1972 and 1973, and were a popular method up through the 1970s. In the 1980s however, AGE models faded from popularity due to their inability to provide a precise solution and its high cost of computation.
Computable general equilibrium (CGE) models surpassed and replaced AGE models in the mid-1980s, as the CGE model was able to provide relatively quick and large computable models for a whole economy, and was the preferred method of governments and the World Bank. CGE models are heavily used today, and while 'AGE' and 'CGE' is used inter-changeably in the literature, Scarf-type AGE models have not been constructed since the mid-1980s, and the CGE literature at current is "not" based on Arrow-Debreu and General Equilibrium Theory as discussed in this article. CGE models, and what is today referred to as AGE models, are based on static, simultaneously solved, macro balancing equations (from the standard Keynesian macro model), giving a precise and explicitly computable result.
General equilibrium theory is a central point of contention and influence between the neoclassical school and other schools of economic thought, and different schools have varied views on general equilibrium theory. Some, such as the Keynesian and Post-Keynesian schools, strongly reject general equilibrium theory as "misleading" and "useless". Other schools, such as new classical macroeconomics, developed from general equilibrium theory.
Keynesian and Post-Keynesian economists, and their underconsumptionist predecessors criticize general equilibrium theory specifically, and as part of criticisms of neoclassical economics generally. Specifically, they argue that general equilibrium theory is neither accurate nor useful, that economies are not in equilibrium, that equilibrium may be slow and painful to achieve, and that modeling by equilibrium is "misleading", and that the resulting theory is not a useful guide, particularly for understanding of economic crises.
Robert Clower and others have argued for a reformulation of theory toward disequilibrium analysis to incorporate how monetary exchange fundamentally alters the representation of an economy as though a barter system.
While general equilibrium theory and neoclassical economics generally were originally microeconomic theories, new classical macroeconomics builds a macroeconomic theory on these bases. In new classical models, the macroeconomy is assumed to be at its unique equilibrium, with full employment and potential output, and that this equilibrium is assumed to always have been achieved via price and wage adjustment (market clearing). The best-known such model is real business-cycle theory, in which business cycles are considered to be largely due to changes in the real economy, unemployment is not due to the failure of the market to achieve potential output, but due to equilibrium potential output having fallen and equilibrium unemployment having risen.
Within socialist economics, a sustained critique of general equilibrium theory (and neoclassical economics generally) is given in "Anti-Equilibrium", based on the experiences of János Kornai with the failures of Communist central planning, although Michael Albert and Robin Hahnel later based their Parecon model on the same theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45938 |
Primary color
A set of primary colors is a set of colorants or colored lights that can be combined in varying amounts to produce a gamut of colors. This is the essential method used in applications that are intended to elicit the perception of diverse sets of color, e.g. electronic displays, color printing, and paintings. Perceptions associated with a given combination of primary colors are predicted by applying the appropriate mixing model (additive, subtractive, additive averaging, etc.) that embodies the underlying physics of how light interacts with the media and ultimately the retina.
Primary colors can be conceptual (not necessarily real colors), either as additive mathematical elements of a color space or as irreducible phenomenological categories in domains such as psychology and philosophy. Color-space primaries are precisely defined and empirically rooted in psychophysical color matching experiments which are foundational for understanding color vision. Primaries of some color spaces are "complete" (that is, all visible colors are described in terms of their weighted sums with nonnegative weights) but necessarily "imaginary" (that is, there is no plausible way that those primary colors could be represented physically, or perceived). Phenomenological accounts of primary colors, such as the psychological primaries, have been used as the conceptual basis for practical color applications even though they are not a quantitative description in and of themselves.
Sets of color-space primaries are generally somewhat "arbitrary", in the sense that there is no one set of primaries that can be considered the canonical set. Primary pigments or light sources selected for a given application on the basis of subjective preferences as well as practical factors such as cost, stability, availability etc.
Elementary art education materials, dictionaries, and electronic search engines often define primary colors effectively as conceptual colors (generally magenta, yellow, and cyan; or red, green, and blue) that can be used to mix "all" other colors, and often go further and suggest that these conceptual colors correspond to specific hues and precise wavelengths. Such sources do not present a coherent, consistent definition of primary colors since real primaries cannot be complete.
The perception elicited by multiple light sources co-stimulating the same area of the retina is additive, i.e., predicted via summing the spectral power distributions or tristimulus values of the individual light sources (assuming a color matching context). For example, a purple spotlight on a dark background could be matched with coincident blue and red spotlights that are both dimmer than the purple spotlight. If the intensity of the purple spotlight was doubled it could be matched by doubling the intensities of both the red and blue spotlights that matched the original purple. The principles of additive color mixing are embodied in Grassmann's laws.
Additive mixing of coincident spot lights was applied in the experiments used to derive the CIE 1931 colorspace. The original "monochromatic" primaries of the (arbitrary) wavelengths of 435.8 nm (violet), 546.1 nm (green), and 700 nm (red) were used in this application due to the convenience they afforded to the experimental work.
Red, green, and blue light are popular primaries for additive color mixing since primary lights with those hues provide a large triangular chromaticity gamut. Small red, green, and blue elements in electronic displays mix additively from an appropriate viewing distance to synthesize compelling colored images.
The exact colors chosen for additive primaries are a technological compromise between the available phosphors (including considerations such as cost and power usage) and the need for large chromaticity gamut. The ITU-R BT.709-5/sRGB primaries are typical.
It is important to note that additive mixing provides very poor predictions of color perception outside the color matching context. Well known demonstrations such as The dress and other examples show how the additive mixing model alone is not sufficient for predicting perceived color in many instances of real images. In general, we cannot completely predict all possible perceived colors from combinations of primary lights in the context of real-world images and viewing conditions. The cited examples suggest just how remarkably poor such predictions can be.
The subtractive color mixing model predicts the spectral power distributions of light filtered through overlaid partially absorbing materials on a reflecting or transparent surface. Each layer partially absorbs some wavelengths of light from the illumination spectrum while letting others pass through multiplicatively, resulting in a colored appearance. Overlapping layers of ink in printing mix subtractively over reflecting white paper in this way to generate photorealistic color images. The typical number of inks in such a printing process ranges from 3 to 6 (e.g., CMYK process, Pantone hexachrome). In general, using fewer inks as primaries results in more economical printing but using more may result in better color reproduction.
Cyan, magenta, and yellow are good subtractive primaries in that idealized filters with those hues can be overlaid to yield the largest chromaticity gamuts of reflected light. An additional "key" ink (shorthand for the "key printing plate" that impressed the artistic detail of an image, usually black) is also usually used since it is difficult to mix a dark enough black ink using the other three inks. Before the color names "cyan" and "magenta" were in common use, these primaries were often known as blue and red, respectively, and their exact color has changed over time with access to new pigments and technologies.
The color of light (i.e., the spectral power distribution) reflected from illuminated surfaces coated in paint mixes, slurries of pigment particles, is not well approximated by a subtractive or additive mixing model. Color predictions that incorporate light scattering effects of pigment particles and paint layer thickness require approaches based on the Kubelka–Munk equations. Even such approaches cannot predict the color of paint mixtures precisely since small variances in particle size distribution, impurity concentrations etc. can be difficult to measure but impart perceptible effects on the way light is reflected from the paint. Artists typically rely on mixing experience and "recipes" to mix desired colors from a small initial set of primaries and do not use mathematical modelling.
There are hundreds of commercially available pigments for visual artists to use and mix (in various media such as oil, watercolor, acrylic, gouache, and pastel). A common approach is to use just a limited palette of pigments that can be physically mixed to any color that the artist desires in the final work. There is no specific set of pigments that are primary colors, the choice of pigments depends entirely on the artist's subjective preference of subject and style of art as well as material considerations like lightfastness and mixing heuristics. Contemporary classical realists have often advocated that a limited palette of white, red, yellow, and black pigment (often described as the "Zorn palette") is sufficient for compelling work.
A chromaticity diagram can illustrate the gamut of different choices of primaries, for example, showing which colors are lost (and gained) if you use RGB for "subtractive" color mixing (instead of CMY).
A contemporary description of the color vision system provides an understanding of primary colors that is consistent with modern color science. The human eye normally contains only three types of color photoreceptors, known as long-wavelength (L), medium-wavelength (M), and short-wavelength (S) cone cells. These photoreceptor types respond to different degrees across the visible electromagnetic spectrum. The S cone response is generally assumed to be negligible at long wavelengths greater than about 560 nm while the L and M cones respond across the entire visible spectrum. The LMS primaries are imaginary since there is no visible wavelength that stimulates only one type of cone (i.e., humans cannot normally see a color that corresponds to pure L, M or S stimulation). The LMS primaries are complete since every visible color can be mapped to a triplet specifying the coordinates in LMS color space.
The L, M and S response curves ("cone fundamentals") were deduced from "color matching functions" obtained from controlled color matching experiments (e.g., CIE 1931) where observers matched the color of a surface illuminated by monochromatic light with mixtures of three monochromatic primary lights illuminating a juxtaposed surface. Practical applications generally use a canonical linear transformation of LMS space known as CIEXYZ. The X, Y, and Z primaries are typically more useful since luminance (Y) is specified separately from a color's chromaticity. Any color space primaries which can be mapped to physiologically relevant LMS primaries by a linear transformation are necessarily either imaginary or incomplete or both. The color-matching context is always three dimensional (since LMS space is three dimensional) but more general "color appearance" models like CIECAM02 describe color in six dimensions and can be used to predict how colors appear under different viewing conditions.
Thus for trichromats like humans, we use three (or more) primaries for most general purposes. Two primaries would be unable to produce even some of the most common among the named colors. Adding a reasonable choice of the third primary can drastically increase the available gamut, while adding a fourth or fifth may increase the gamut but typically not by as much.
Most placental mammals other than primates have only two types of color photoreceptor and are, therefore dichromats, so it is possible that certain combinations of just two primaries might cover some significant gamut relative to the range of their color perception. Meanwhile, birds and marsupials have four color photoreceptors in their eyes, and hence are tetrachromats. There is one scholarly report of a functional human tetrachromat.
The presence of photoreceptor cell types in an organism's eyes do not directly imply that they are being used to functionally perceive color. Measuring functional spectral discrimination in non-human animals is challenging due to the difficulty in performing psychophysical experiments on creatures with limited behavioral repertoires who cannot respond using language. Limitations in the discriminative ability of shrimp having twelve distinct color photoreceptors have demonstrated that having more cell types in itself need not always correlate with better functional color vision.
The opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about color by processing signals from cones and rods in an antagonistic manner. The theory states that every color can be described as a mix along the three axes of red vs. green, blue vs. yellow and white vs. black. The six colors from the pairs might be called "psychological primary colors" because any other color could be described in terms of some combination of these pairs. Although there is a great deal of evidence for opponency in the form of neural mechanisms, there is currently no clear mapping of the psychological primaries to neural substrates.
The three axes of the psychological primaries were applied by Richard S. Hunter as the primaries for the colorspace ultimately known as CIELAB. The Natural Color System is also directly inspired by the psychological primaries.
There are numerous competing primary color systems throughout history. Isaac Newton performed an experiment where sunlight was passed through a prism and an assistant demarcated seven bands on the projected spectrum corresponding to red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Newton referred to these hues as the seven "primary or simple" colors, and analogized them to musical notes. Scholars and scientists engaged in debate over which hues best describe the primary color sensations of the eye. Thomas Young proposed red, green, and violet as the three primary colors, while James Clerk Maxwell favoured changing violet to blue. Hermann von Helmholtz proposed "a slightly purplish red, a vegetation-green, slightly yellowish, and an ultramarine-blue" as a trio. In modern understanding, human cone cells do not correspond precisely to a specific set of primary colors, as each cone type responds to a relatively broad range of wavelengths. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45939 |
Swastika
The swastika or sauwastika as a character, 卐 ("right-facing" or "clockwise") or 卍 ("left-facing" or "counterclockwise") respectively is a geometrical figure and an ancient religious icon in the cultures of Eurasia. It is used as a symbol of divinity and spirituality in Indian religions, including Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism.
In the Western world, it was a symbol of auspiciousness and good luck until the 1930s when the right-facing tilted form became a feature of Nazi symbolism as an emblem of the Aryan race. As a result of World War II and the Holocaust, many people in the West still strongly associate it with Nazism and antisemitism. Swastika still continues to be used as a symbol of good luck and prosperity in Hindu and Buddhist countries such as Nepal, India, and China. Swastika is very commonly used in Hindu marriage ceremonies.
The word "swastika" comes from , meaning 'conducive to well being'. In Hinduism, the right-facing symbol (卐) is called , symbolizing ('sun'), prosperity and good luck, while the left-facing symbol (卍) is called , symbolizing night or tantric aspects of Kali. In Jainism, a swastika is the symbol for Suparshvanatha – the seventh of 24 Tirthankaras (spiritual teachers and saviours), while in Buddhism it symbolizes the auspicious footprints of the Buddha. In several major Indo-European religions, the swastika symbolizes lightning bolts, representing the thunder god and the king of the gods, such as Indra in Vedic Hinduism, Zeus in the ancient Greek religion, Jupiter in the ancient Roman religion, and Thor in the ancient Germanic religion.
The swastika is an icon which is widely found in both human history and the modern world. In various forms, it is otherwise known (in various European languages) as the "fylfot", "gammadion", "tetraskelion", or "cross cramponnée" (a term in Anglo-Norman heraldry); German: ; French: ; Italian: . In Chinese it is called 萬字 ("wànzì") meaning 'all things symbol', pronounced "manji" in Japanese and "manja" (만자) in Korean. A swastika generally takes the form of a cross, the arms of which are of equal length and perpendicular to the adjacent arms, each bent midway at a right angle. The symbol is found in the archeological remains of the Indus Valley Civilization and Mesopotamia, as well as in early Byzantine and Christian artwork.
The right-facing swastika 卐 was adopted by several organizations in pre–World War I Europe, and later by the Nazi Party and Nazi Germany before World War II. It was used by the Nazi Party to symbolize German nationalistic pride. To Jews and other victims and enemies of Nazi Germany, it became a symbol of antisemitism and terror. In many Western countries, the swastika is now viewed as a symbol of racial supremacism and intimidation because of its association with Nazism. Reverence for the swastika symbol in Asian cultures, in contrast to the West's stigmatization of the symbol, has led to misinterpretations and misunderstandings.
The word is derived from the Sanskrit root , which is composed of -
The word "swastika" has been used in the Indian subcontinent since 500 BCE. Its appearance in English dates to the 19th century, replacing "gammadion" from Greek . It is alternatively spelled in contemporary texts as "svastika", and other spellings were occasionally used in the 19th and early 20th century, such as "suastika". It was derived from the Sanskrit term (Devanagari ), which transliterates to "" under the commonly used IAST transliteration system, but is pronounced closer to "swastika" when letters are used with their English values. An important early use of the word swastika in a European text was in 1871 with the publications of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered more than 1,800 ancient samples of the swastika symbol and its variants while digging the Hisarlik mound near the Aegean Sea coast for the history of Troy. Schliemann linked his findings to the Sanskrit .
The word occurs frequently in the Vedas as well as in classical literature, meaning 'health, luck, success, prosperity', and it was commonly used as a greeting. The final is a common suffix that could have multiple meanings. According to Monier-Williams, a majority of scholars consider it a solar symbol. The sign implies something fortunate, lucky, or auspicious, and it denotes auspiciousness or well-being.
The earliest known use of the word is in Panini's Ashtadhyayi which uses it to explain one of the Sanskrit grammar rules, in the context of a type of identifying mark on a cow's ear. Most scholarship suggests that Panini lived in or before the 4th-century BCE, possibly in 6th or 5th century BCE.
Other names for the symbol include:
All swastikas are bent crosses based on a chiral symmetry – but they appear with different geometric details: as compact crosses with short legs, as crosses with large arms and as motifs in a pattern of unbroken lines. One distinct representation of a swastika, as a double swastika or swastika made of squares, appears in a Nepalese silver mohar coin of 1685, kingdom of Patan (NS 805) KM# 337.
Chirality describes an absence of reflective symmetry, with the existence of two versions that are mirror images of each other. The mirror-image forms are typically described as:
The left-facing version is distinguished in some traditions and languages as a distinct symbol from the right-facing and is called the "sauwastika".
The compact swastika can be seen as a chiral irregular icosagon (20-sided polygon) with fourfold (90°) rotational symmetry. Such a swastika proportioned on a 5 × 5 square grid and with the broken portions of its legs shortened by one unit can tile the plane by translation alone. The Nazi "Hakenkreuz" used a 5 × 5 diagonal grid, but with the legs unshortened.
The sauwastika was adopted as a standard character in Chinese, "" () and as such entered various other East Asian languages, including Chinese script. In Japanese the symbol is called or .
The sauwastika is included in the Unicode character sets of two languages. In the Chinese block it is U+534D 卍 (left-facing) and U+5350 for the swastika 卐 (right-facing); The latter has a mapping in the original Big5 character set, but the former does not (although it is in Big5+). In Unicode 5.2, two swastika symbols and two sauwastikas were added to the Tibetan block: swastika , , and sauwastikas , .
European hypotheses of the swastika are often treated in conjunction with cross symbols in general, such as the sun cross of Bronze Age religion. Beyond its certain presence in the "proto-writing" symbol systems, such as the Vinča script, which appeared during the Neolithic.
According to René Guénon, the swastika represents the north pole, and the rotational movement around a centre or immutable axis ("axis mundi"), and only secondly it represents the Sun as a reflected function of the north pole. As such it is a symbol of life, of the vivifying role of the supreme principle of the universe, the absolute God, in relation to the cosmic order. It represents the activity (the Hellenic "Logos", the Hindu "Om", the Chinese "Taiyi", "Great One") of the principle of the universe in the formation of the world. According to Guénon, the swastika in its polar value has the same meaning of the yin and yang symbol of the Chinese tradition, and of other traditional symbols of the working of the universe, including the letters Γ (gamma) and G, symbolizing the Great Architect of the Universe of Freemasonic thought.
According to the scholar Reza Assasi, the swastika represents the north ecliptic north pole centred in ζ Draconis, with the constellation Draco as one of its beams. He argues that this symbol was later attested as the four-horse chariot of Mithra in ancient Iranian culture. They believed the cosmos was pulled by four heavenly horses who revolved around a fixed centre in a clockwise direction. He suggests that this notion later flourished in Roman Mithraism, as the symbol appears in Mithraic iconography and astronomical representations.
According to the Russian archaeologist Gennady Zdanovich, who studied some of the oldest examples of the symbol in Sintashta culture, the swastika symbolizes the universe, representing the spinning constellations of the celestial north pole centred in α Ursae Minoris, specifically the Little and Big Dipper (or Chariots), or Ursa Minor and Ursa Major. Likewise, according to René Guénon the swastika is drawn by visualising the Big Dipper/Great Bear in the four phases of revolution around the pole star.
In his book "Comet" (1985), Carl Sagan reproduces a Han-dynasty Chinese manuscript (the "Book of Silk", 2nd century BCE) that shows comet tail varieties: most are variations on simple comet tails, but the last shows the comet nucleus with four bent arms extending from it, recalling a swastika. Sagan suggests that in antiquity a comet could have approached so close to Earth that the jets of gas streaming from it, bent by the comet's rotation, became visible, leading to the adoption of the swastika as a symbol across the world.
Bob Kobres in his 1992 paper "Comets and the Bronze Age Collapse" contends that the swastika-like comet on the Han-dynasty silk comet manuscript was labeled a "long tailed pheasant star" ("dixing") because of its resemblance to a bird's foot or footprint, the latter comparison also being drawn by J.F.K. Hewitt's observation on page 145 of "Primitive Traditional History: vol. 1". as well as an article concerning carpet decoration in "Good Housekeeping". Kobres goes on to suggest an association of mythological birds and comets also outside China.
The earliest known swastika is from 10,000 BCE – part of "an intricate meander pattern of joined-up swastikas" found on a late paleolithic figurine of a bird, carved from mammoth ivory, found in Mezine, Ukraine. It has been suggested that this swastika may be a stylized picture of a stork in flight. As the carving was found near phallic objects, this may also support the idea that the pattern was a fertility symbol.
Mirror-image swastikas (clockwise and anti-clockwise) have been found on ceramic pottery in the Devetashka cave, Bulgaria, dated to 6,000 BCE.
Some of the earliest archaeological evidence of the swastika in the Indian subcontinent can be dated to 3,000 BCE. Investigators have also found seals with "mature and geometrically ordered" swastikas that date to before the Indus Valley Civilisation (3300–1300 BCE). Their efforts have traced references to swastikas in the "Vedas" at about that time. The investigators put forth the theory that the swastika moved westward from India to Finland, Scandinavia, the British Highlands and other parts of Europe. In England, neolithic or Bronze Age stone carvings of the symbol have been found on Ilkley Moor, such as the Swastika Stone.
Swastikas have also been found on pottery in archaeological digs in Africa, in the area of Kush and on pottery at the Jebel Barkal temples, in Iron Age designs of the northern Caucasus (Koban culture), and in Neolithic China in the Majiabang and Majiayao cultures.
Other Iron Age attestations of the swastika can be associated with Indo-European cultures such as the Illyrians, Indo-Iranians, Celts, Greeks, Germanic peoples and Slavs. In Sintashta culture's "Country of Towns", ancient Indo-European settlements in southern Russia, it has been found a great concentration of some of the oldest swastika patterns.
The swastika is also seen in Egypt during the Coptic period. Textile number T.231-1923 held at the V&A Museum in London includes small swastikas in its design. This piece was found at Qau-el-Kebir, near Asyut, and is dated between CE 300 and 600.
The "Tierwirbel" (the German for "animal whorl" or "whirl of animals") is a characteristic motif in Bronze Age Central Asia, the Eurasian Steppe, and later also in Iron Age Scythian and European (Baltic and Germanic) culture, showing rotational symmetric arrangement of an animal motif, often four birds' heads. Even wider diffusion of this "Asiatic" theme has been proposed, to the Pacific and even North America (especially Moundville).
In Asia, the swastika symbol first appears in the archaeological record around 3000 BCE in the Indus Valley Civilization. It also appears in the Bronze and Iron Age cultures around the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea. In all these cultures, the swastika symbol does not appear to occupy any marked position or significance, appearing as just one form of a series of similar symbols of varying complexity. In the Zoroastrian religion of Persia, the swastika was a symbol of the revolving sun, infinity, or continuing creation. It is one of the most common symbols on Mesopotamian coins.
The icon has been of spiritual significance to Indian religions such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism. The swastika is a sacred symbol in the Bön religion, native to Tibet.
In Jainism, it is a symbol of the seventh tīrthaṅkara, Suparśvanātha. In the Śvētāmbara tradition, it is also one of the aṣṭamaṅgala or eight auspicious symbols. All Jain temples and holy books must contain the swastika and ceremonies typically begin and end with creating a swastika mark several times with rice around the altar. Jains use rice to make a swastika in front of statues and then put an offering on it, usually a ripe or dried fruit, a sweet ( ), or a coin or currency note. The four arms of the swastika symbolize the four places where a soul could be reborn in the cycle of birth and death – svarga "heaven", naraka "hell", manushya "humanity" or "tiryancha" "as flora or fauna" – before the soul attains moksha "salvation" as a siddha, having ended the cycle of birth and death and become omniscient.
The swastika is an important Hindu symbol. The swastika symbol is commonly used before entrances or on doorways of homes or temples, to mark the starting page of financial statements, and mandalas constructed for rituals such as weddings or welcoming a newborn.
The swastika has a particular association with Diwali, being drawn in rangoli (coloured sand) or formed with deepak lights on the floor outside Hindu houses and on wall hangings and other decorations.
In the diverse traditions within Hinduism, both the clockwise and counterclockwise swastika are found, with different meanings. The clockwise or right hand icon is called "swastika", while the counterclockwise or left hand icon is called "sauvastika". The clockwise swastika is a solar symbol (Surya), suggesting the motion of the sun in India (the northern hemisphere), where it appears to enter from the east, then ascend to the south at midday, exiting to the west. The counterclockwise "sauvastika" is less used; it connotes the night, and in tantric traditions it is an icon for the goddess Kali, the terrifying form of Devi Durga. The symbol also represents activity, karma, motion, wheel, and in some contexts the lotus. Its symbolism for motion and Sun may be from shared prehistoric cultural roots, according to Norman McClelland.
A swastika shaped temple tank built in 800 CE by Kamban Araiyan during the reign of Dantivarman is outside the temple complex of Pundarikakshan Perumal Temple(Vishnu temple) in Thiruvallarai, Tiruchirappalli, India. It is one of the important monuments of Pallava dynasty.
In Buddhism, the swastika is considered to symbolize the auspicious footprints of the Buddha. It is an aniconic symbol for the Buddha in many parts of Asia and homologous with the "dharma wheel". The shape symbolizes eternal cycling, a theme found in samsara doctrine of Buddhism.
The swastika symbol is common in esoteric tantric traditions of Buddhism, along with Hinduism, where it is found with Chakra theories and other meditative aids. The clockwise symbol is more common, and contrasts with the counter clockwise version common in the Tibetan Bon tradition and locally called "yungdrung".
Swastika-like symbols were in use in China already in Neolithic scripts. The paired swastika symbols (leftwise and rightwise) are included, at least since the Liao Dynasty (CE 907–1125), as part of the Chinese writing system (卍 and 卐) and are variant characters for 萬 or 万 ("wàn" in Mandarin, 만 ("man") in Korean, Cantonese, and Japanese, "vạn" in Vietnamese) meaning "myriad", "all", or "eternity". The swastika marks the beginning of many Buddhist scriptures. In East Asian countries, the left-facing character is often used as symbol for Buddhism and marks the site of a Buddhist temple on maps.
In Chinese, Japanese, and Korean the swastika is also a homonym of the number 10,000, and is commonly used to represent the whole of creation, e.g. "the myriad things" in the "Tao Te Ching". During the Tang dynasty, Empress Wu Zetian (684–704) decreed that the swastika would also be used as an alternative symbol of the Sun.
When the Chinese writing system was introduced to Japan in the 8th century, the swastika was adopted into the Japanese language and culture. It is commonly referred as the "manji" (lit. "10,000-character"). Since the Middle Ages, it has been used as a "mon" by various Japanese families such as Tsugaru clan, Hachisuka clan or around 60 clans that belong to Tokugawa clan. On Japanese maps, a swastika (left-facing and horizontal) is used to mark the location of a Buddhist temple. The right-facing swastika is often referred to as the or , and can also be called .
In Chinese and Japanese art, the swastika is often found as part of a repeating pattern. One common pattern, called "sayagata" in Japanese, comprises left- and right-facing swastikas joined by lines. As the negative space between the lines has a distinctive shape, the sayagata pattern is sometimes called the "key fret" motif in English.
An object very much like a hammer or a double axe is depicted among the magical symbols on the drums of Sami shamans, used in their religious ceremonies before Christianity was established. The name of the Sami thunder god was Horagalles, thought to derive from "Old Man Thor" ("Þórr karl"). Sometimes on the drums, a male figure with a hammer-like object in either hand is shown, and sometimes it is more like a cross with crooked ends, or a swastika.
The swastika shape (also called a "fylfot") appears on various Germanic Migration Period and Viking Age artifacts, such as the 3rd-century Værløse Fibula from Zealand, Denmark, the Gothic spearhead from Brest-Litovsk, today in Belarus, the 9th-century Snoldelev Stone from Ramsø, Denmark, and numerous Migration Period bracteates drawn left-facing or right-facing.
The pagan Anglo-Saxon ship burial at Sutton Hoo, England, contained numerous items bearing the swastika, now housed in the collection of the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The swastika is clearly marked on a hilt and sword belt found at Bifrons in Kent, in a grave of about the 6th century.
Hilda Ellis Davidson theorized that the swastika symbol was associated with Thor, possibly representing his Mjolnir – symbolic of thunder – and possibly being connected to the Bronze Age sun cross. Davidson cites "many examples" of the swastika symbol from Anglo-Saxon graves of the pagan period, with particular prominence on cremation urns from the cemeteries of East Anglia. Some of the swastikas on the items, on display at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, are depicted with such care and art that, according to Davidson, it must have possessed special significance as a funerary symbol. The runic inscription on the 8th-century Sæbø sword has been taken as evidence of the swastika as a symbol of Thor in Norse paganism.
According to painter Stanisław Jakubowski the "little sun" (Polish "słoneczko") is an Early Slavic pagan symbol of the Sun, he claimed it was engraved on wooden monuments built near the final resting places of fallen Slavs to represent eternal life. The symbol was first seen in his collection of Early Slavic symbols and architectural features, which he named "Prasłowiańskie motywy architektoniczne" (). His work was published in 1923, by a publishing house that was then based in the Dębniki district of Kraków.
In Russia before World War I the swastika was a favorite sign of the last Russian Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. She placed it where she could for happiness, including drawing it in pencil on the walls and windows in the Ipatiev House – where the royal family was executed. There, she also drew a swastika on the wallpaper above the bed where the heir apparently slept. It was printed on some banknotes of the Russian Provisional Government (1917) and some sovznaks (1918–1922). In 1919 it was approved as insignia for the Kalmyk formations, and for a short period had a certain popularity amongst some artists, politics and army groups. Also it was present on icons, vestments and clerical clothing but in World War II it was removed, having become by association a symbol of the German occupation.
In modern Russia, some neo-Nazis and also Rodnovers argue that the Russian name of the swastika is "kolovrat" (, literally "spinning wheel"), but there are no ethnographic sources confirming this. In vernacular speech the swastika was called differently; for example, "breeze" – as in Christianity, the swastika represents spiritual movement, descent of the Holy Spirit, and therefore the "wind" and "spirit", or "ognevtsi" ("little flames"), "geese", "hares" (a towel with a swastika was called as towel with "hares"), "little horses".
The neo-Nazi Russian National Unity group's branch in Estonia is officially registered under the name "Kolovrat" and published an extremist newspaper in 2001 under the same name. A criminal investigation found the paper included an array of racial epithets. One Narva resident was sentenced to 1 year in jail for distribution of "Kolovrat". The Kolovrat has since been used by the Rusich Battalion, a Russian militant group known for its operation during the War in Donbass.
The alleged perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand used the Kolovrat swastika on one of his dog tags alongside the Celtic Cross.
The bronze frontispiece of a ritual pre-Christian () shield found in the River Thames near Battersea Bridge (hence "Battersea Shield") is embossed with 27 swastikas in bronze and red enamel. An Ogham stone found in Anglish, Co Kerry, Ireland (CIIC 141) was modified into an early Christian gravestone, and was decorated with a cross pattée and two swastikas. The Book of Kells () contains swastika-shaped ornamentation. At the Northern edge of Ilkley Moor in West Yorkshire, there is a swastika-shaped pattern engraved in a stone known as the Swastika Stone. A number of swastikas have been found embossed in Galician metal pieces and carved in stones, mostly from the Castro Culture period, although there also are contemporary examples (imitating old patterns for decorative purposes).
Ancient Greek architectural, clothing and coin designs are replete with single or interlinking swastika motifs. There are also gold plate fibulae from the 8th century BCE decorated with an engraved swastika. Related symbols in classical Western architecture include the cross, the three-legged triskele or triskelion and the rounded lauburu. The swastika symbol is also known in these contexts by a number of names, especially "gammadion", or rather the tetra-gammadion. The name "gammadion" comes from its being seen as being made up of four Greek gamma (Γ) letters. Ancient Greek architectural designs are replete with the interlinking symbol.
In Greco-Roman art and architecture, and in Romanesque and Gothic art in the West, isolated swastikas are relatively rare, and the swastika is more commonly found as a repeated element in a border or tessellation. The swastika often represented perpetual motion, reflecting the design of a rotating windmill or watermill. A meander of connected swastikas makes up the large band that surrounds the Augustan Ara Pacis.
A design of interlocking swastikas is one of several tessellations on the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France. A border of linked swastikas was a common Roman architectural motif, and can be seen in more recent buildings as a neoclassical element. A swastika border is one form of meander, and the individual swastikas in such a border are sometimes called "Greek keys". There have also been swastikas found on the floors of Pompeii.
The swastika was widespread among the Illyrians, symbolizing the Sun. The Sun cult was the main Illyrian cult; the Sun was represented by a swastika in clockwise motion, and it stood for the movement of the Sun.
In Armenia the swastika is called the "arevakhach" and "kerkhach" () and is the ancient symbol of eternity and eternal light (i.e. God). Swastikas in Armenia were founded on petroglyphs from the copper age, predating the Bronze Age. During the Bronze Age it was depicted on cauldrons, belts, medallions and other items. Among the oldest petroglyphs is the seventh letter of the Armenian alphabet – Է – "E" (which means "is" or "to be") – depicted as a half-swastika.
Swastikas can also be seen on early Medieval churches and fortresses, including the principal tower in Armenia's historical capital city of Ani. The same symbol can be found on Armenian carpets, cross-stones (khachkar) and in medieval manuscripts, as well as on modern monuments as a symbol of eternity.
Swastika shapes have been found on numerous artifacts from Iron Age Europe.
In Christianity, the swastika is used as a hooked version of the Christian Cross, the symbol of Christ's victory over death. Some Christian churches built in the Romanesque and Gothic eras are decorated with swastikas, carrying over earlier Roman designs. Swastikas are prominently displayed in a mosaic in the St. Sophia church of Kiev, Ukraine dating from the 12th century. They also appear as a repeating ornamental motif on a tomb in the Basilica of St. Ambrose in Milan.
A ceiling painted in 1910 in the church of St Laurent in Grenoble has many swastikas. It can be visited today because the church became the archaeological museum of the city. A proposed direct link between it and a swastika floor mosaic in the Cathedral of Our Lady of Amiens, which was built on top of a pagan site at Amiens, France in the 13th century, is considered unlikely. The stole worn by a priest in the 1445 painting of the Seven Sacraments by Rogier van der Weyden presents the swastika form simply as one way of depicting the cross.
Swastikas also appear in art and architecture during the Renaissance and Baroque era. The fresco "The School of Athens" shows an ornament made out of swastikas, and the symbol can also be found on the facade of the "Santa Maria della Salute", a Roman Catholic church and minor basilica located at Punta della Dogana in the Dorsoduro sestiere of the city of Venice.
In the Polish First Republic the symbol of the swastika was also popular with the nobility. According to chronicles, the Rus' prince Oleg, who in the 9th century attacked Constantinople, nailed his shield (which had a large red swastika painted on it) to the city's gates. Several noble houses, e.g. Boreyko, Borzym, and Radziechowski from Ruthenia, also had swastikas as their coat of arms. The family reached its greatness in the 14th and 15th centuries and its crest can be seen in many heraldry books produced at that time.
The swastika was also a heraldic symbol, for example on the Boreyko coat of arms, used by noblemen in Poland and Ukraine. In the 19th century the swastika was one of the Russian Empire's symbols, and was used on coinage as a backdrop to the .
A swastika can be seen on stonework at Valle Crucis Abbey, near Llangollen.
The swastika can be found on Ashanti gold weights and among adinkra symbols in West Africa.
The swastika is a Navajo symbol for good luck, also translated to "whirling log". The symbol was used on state road signs in Arizona.
In the Western world, the symbol experienced a resurgence following the archaeological work in the late 19th century of Heinrich Schliemann, who discovered the symbol in the site of ancient Troy and associated it with the ancient migrations of Proto-Indo-Europeans, whose proto-language was not coincidentally termed "Proto-Indo-Germanic" by German language historians. He connected it with similar shapes found on ancient pots in Germany, and theorized that the swastika was a "significant religious symbol of our remote ancestors", linking it to ancient Teutons, Greeks of the time of Homer and Indians of the Vedic era. By the early 20th century, it was used worldwide and was regarded as a symbol of good luck and success.
Schliemann's work soon became intertwined with the political "völkisch" movements, which used the swastika as a symbol for the "Aryan race" – a concept that theorists such as Alfred Rosenberg equated with a Nordic master race originating in northern Europe. Since its adoption by the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler, the swastika has been associated with Nazism, fascism, racism in its (white supremacy) form, the Axis powers in World War II, and the Holocaust in much of the West. The swastika remains a core symbol of neo-Nazi groups.
The Benedictine choir school at Lambach Abbey, Upper Austria, which Hitler attended for several months as a boy, had a swastika chiseled into the monastery portal and also the wall above the spring grotto in the courtyard by 1868. Their origin was the personal coat of arms of Abbot Theoderich Hagn of the monastery in Lambach, which bore a golden swastika with slanted points on a blue field. The Lambach swastika is probably of Medieval origin.
In the 1880s the Theosophical Society adopted a swastika as part of its seal, along with an Om, a hexagram or star of David, an Ankh and an Ouroboros. Unlike the much more recent Raëlian movement, the Theosophical Society symbol has been free from controversy, and the seal is still used. The current seal also includes the text "There is no religion higher than truth."
The British author and poet Rudyard Kipling used the symbol on the cover art of a number of his works, including "The Five Nations", 1903, which has it twinned with an elephant.
The Danish brewery company Carlsberg Group used the swastika as a logo from the 19th century until the middle of the 1930s when it was discontinued because of association with the Nazi Party in neighbouring Germany. In Copenhagen at the entrance gate, and tower, of the company's headquarters, built in 1901, swastikas can still be seen. The tower is supported by four stone elephants, each with a swastika on each side. The tower they support is topped with a spire, in the middle of which is a swastika.
The Swastika, or the Thor's hammer as the logo was called, was used as the logo for H/f. Eimskipafjelag Íslands from founding day in 1914 until the Second World War when it was discontinued and changed to read only the letters Eimskip.
The Swastika Laundry was a laundry founded in 1912, located on Shelbourne Road, Ballsbridge, a district of Dublin, Ireland. In the fifties Heinrich Böll came across a van belonging to the company while he was staying in Ireland, leading to some awkward moments before he realized the company was older than Nazism and totally unrelated to it. The chimney of the boiler-house of the laundry still stands, but the laundry has been redeveloped.
In Finland, the swastika ( meaning 'crooked-head', and later , meaning 'hook-cross') was often used in traditional folk-art products, as a decoration or magical symbol on textiles and wood. The swastika was also used by the Finnish Air Force until 1945, and is still used on air force flags.
The , an elaboration on the swastika, is used by scouts in some instances, and by a student organization. The Finnish village of Tursa uses the as a kind of a certificate of authenticity on products made there, and is the origin of this name of the symbol (meaning 'heart of Tursa'), which is also known as the ('walrus-heart'). Traditional textiles are still made in Finland with swastikas as parts of traditional ornaments.
The Finnish Air Force used the swastika as an emblem, introduced in 1918. The type of swastika adopted by the air-force was the symbol of luck for the Swedish count Eric von Rosen, who donated one of its earliest aircraft; he later became a prominent figure in the Swedish nazi-movement.
The swastika was also used by the women's paramilitary organization Lotta Svärd, which was banned in 1944 in accordance with the Moscow Armistice between Finland and the allied Soviet Union and Britain.
The President of Finland is the grand master of the Order of the White Rose. According to the protocol, the president shall wear the Grand Cross of the White Rose with collar on formal occasions. The original design of the collar, decorated with 9 swastikas, dates from 1918 and was designed by the artist Akseli Gallen-Kallela. The Grand Cross with the swastika collar has been awarded 41 times to foreign heads of state. To avoid misunderstandings, the swastika decorations were replaced by fir crosses at the decision of president Urho Kekkonen in 1963 after it became known that the President of France Charles De Gaulle was uncomfortable with the swastika collar.
Also a design by Gallen-Kallela from 1918, the Cross of Liberty has a swastika pattern in its arms. The Cross of Liberty is depicted in the upper left corner of the standard of the President of Finland.
In December 2007, a silver replica of the World War II-period Finnish air defence's relief ring decorated with a swastika became available as a part of a charity campaign.
The original war-time idea was that the public swap their precious metal rings for the state air defence's relief ring, made of iron.
The swastika is an ancient Baltic thunder cross symbol ("pērkona krusts;" also fire cross, "ugunskrusts"), used to decorate objects, traditional clothing and in archaeological excavations. Latvia adopted the swastika, for its Air Force in 1918/1919 and continued its use until the Soviet occupation in 1940. The cross itself was maroon on a white background, mirroring the colors of the Latvian flag. Earlier versions pointed counter-clockwise, while later versions pointed clock-wise and eliminated the white background. Various other Latvian Army units and the Latvian War College (the predecessor of the National Defence Academy) also had adopted the symbol in their battle flags and insignia during the Latvian War of Independence. A stylized fire cross is the base of the Order of Lāčplēsis, the highest military decoration of Latvia for participants of the War of Independence. The Pērkonkrusts, an ultra-nationalist political organization active in the 1930s, also used the fire cross as one of its symbols.
As in Latvia, the symbol is a traditional Baltic ornament, found on relics dating from at least the 13th century.
The traditional symbols of the Podhale Rifles include the edelweiss flower and the Mountain Cross, a swastika symbol popular in folk culture of the Polish mountainous regions. The units of Podhale Rifles, both historical and modern, are notable for their high morale and distinctive uniforms.
The Swedish company ASEA, now a part of ABB, in the late 1800s introduced a company logo featuring a swastika. The logo was replaced in 1933, when Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany. During the early 1900s, the swastika was used as a symbol of electric power, perhaps because it resembled a waterwheel or turbine. On maps of the period, the sites of hydroelectric power stations were marked with swastikas.
The headquarters of the Oslo Municipal Power Station was designed by architects "Bjercke and Eliassen" in 1928–31. Swastikas adorn its wrought iron gates. The architects knew the swastika as a symbol of "electricity" and were probably not yet aware that it had been usurped by the German Nazi party and would soon become the foremost symbol of the German Reich. The fact that these gates survived the cleanup after the German occupation of Norway during WW II is a testimony to the innocence and good faith of the power plant and its architects.
The swastika motif is found in some traditional Native American art and iconography. Historically, the design has been found in excavations of Mississippian-era sites in the Ohio and Mississippi River valleys, and on objects associated with the Southeastern Ceremonial Complex (S.E.C.C.). It is also widely used by a number of southwestern tribes, most notably the Navajo, and plains nations such as the Dakota. Among various tribes, the swastika carries different meanings. To the Hopi it represents the wandering Hopi clan; to the Navajo it is one symbol for the whirling log ("tsin náálwołí"), a sacred image representing a legend that is used in healing rituals. A brightly colored First Nations saddle featuring swastika designs is on display at the Royal Saskatchewan Museum in Canada.
The Passamaquoddy Native American tribe, now located in the state of Maine and in Canada, used an elongated swastika on their war canoes in the American colonial period as well as later. A carving of a canoe with a Passamaquody swastika was found in a ruin in the Argonne Forest in France, having been carved there by Moses Neptune, an American soldier of Passamaquody heritage, who was one of the last American soldiers to die in battle in World War I.
Before the 1930s, the symbol for the 45th Infantry Division of the United States Army was a red diamond with a yellow swastika, a tribute to the large Native American population in the southwestern United States. It was later replaced with a thunderbird symbol.
A swastika shape is a symbol in the culture of the Kuna people of Kuna Yala, Panama. In Kuna tradition it symbolizes the octopus that created the world, its tentacles pointing to the four cardinal points.
In February 1925, the Kuna revolted vigorously against Panamanian suppression of their culture, and in 1930 they assumed autonomy. The flag they adopted at that time is based on the swastika shape, and remains the official flag of Kuna Yala. A number of variations on the flag have been used over the years: red top and bottom bands instead of orange were previously used, and in 1942 a ring (representing the traditional Kuna nose-ring) was added to the center of the flag to distance it from the symbol of the Nazi party.
The town of Swastika, Ontario, Canada, is named after the symbol.
From 1909 to 1916, the K-R-I-T automobile, manufactured in Detroit, Michigan, used a right-facing swastika as their trademark.
The swastika was widely used in Europe at the start of the 20th century. It symbolized many things to the Europeans, with the most common symbolism being of good luck and auspiciousness. In the wake of widespread popular usage, in post-World War I Germany, the newly established Nazi Party formally adopted the (, meaning "hooked-cross") in 1920. The emblem was a black "Hooked Cross" (hooks branching clockwise) rotated 45 degrees on a white circle on a red background. This insignia was used on the party's flag, badge, and armband.
In his 1925 work , Adolf Hitler writes that: "I myself, meanwhile, after innumerable attempts, had laid down a final form; a flag with a red background, a white disk, and a black Hakenkreuz in the middle. After long trials I also found a definite proportion between the size of the flag and the size of the white disk, as well as the shape and thickness of the Hakenkreuz."
When Hitler created a flag for the Nazi Party, he sought to incorporate both the Hakenkreuz and "those revered colors expressive of our homage to the glorious past and which once brought so much honor to the German nation". (Red, white, and black were the colors of the flag of the old German Empire.) He also stated: "As National Socialists, we see our program in our flag. In red, we see the social idea of the movement; in white, the nationalistic idea; in the Hakenkreuz, the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man, and, by the same token, the victory of the idea of creative work."
The swastika was also understood as "the symbol of the creating, effecting life" () and as "race emblem of Germanism" ().
The concept of racial hygiene was an ideology central to Nazism, though it is scientific racism. High-ranking Nazi theorist Alfred Rosenberg noted that the Indo-Aryan peoples were both a model to be imitated and a warning of the dangers of the spiritual and racial "confusion" that, he believed, arose from the proximity of races. The Nazis thus co-opted the sign as a symbol of the Aryan master race, although the use of the swastika as an Aryan symbol dates back to the late-19th century writings of Émile-Louis Burnouf. Following many other writers, the German nationalist poet Guido von List believed it was a uniquely Aryan symbol.
Before the Nazis, the swastika was already in use as a symbol of German nationalist movements ().
José Manuel Erbez says:
On 14 March 1933, shortly after Hitler's appointment as Chancellor of Germany, the NSDAP flag was hoisted alongside Germany's national colors. As part of the Nuremberg Laws, the NSDAP flag – with the swastika slightly offset from center – was adopted as the sole national flag of Germany on 15 September 1935.
During World War II it was common to use small swastikas to mark air-to-air victories on the sides of Allied aircraft, and at least one British fighter pilot inscribed a swastika in his logbook for each German plane he shot down.
Because of its use by Nazi Germany, the swastika since the 1930s has been largely associated with Nazism. In the aftermath of World War II it has been considered a symbol of hate in the West, and of white supremacy in many Western countries.
As a result, all use of it, or its use as a Nazi or hate symbol, is prohibited in some countries, including Germany. Because of the stigma attached to the symbol, many buildings that have used the symbol as decoration have had the symbol removed. In some countries, such as the United States (in the 2003 case "Virginia v. Black"), the highest courts have ruled that the local governments can prohibit the use of swastika along with other symbols such as cross burning, if the intent of the use is to intimidate others.
The German and Austrian postwar criminal code makes the public showing of the (the swastika), the sig rune, the Celtic cross (specifically the variations used by white power activists), the , the odal rune and the skull illegal, except for scholarly reasons. It is also censored from the reprints of 1930s railway timetables published by the . The swastikas on Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain temples are exempt, as religious symbols cannot be banned in Germany.
A controversy was stirred by the decision of several police departments to begin inquiries against anti-fascists. In late 2005 police raided the offices of the punk rock label and mail order store "Nix Gut Records" and confiscated merchandise depicting crossed-out swastikas and fists smashing swastikas. In 2006 the police department started an inquiry against anti-fascist youths using a placard depicting a person dumping a swastika into a trashcan. The placard was displayed in opposition to the campaign of right-wing nationalist parties for local elections.
On Friday, 17 March 2006, a member of the , Claudia Roth reported herself to the German police for displaying a crossed-out swastika in multiple demonstrations against Neo-Nazis, and subsequently got the Bundestag to suspend her immunity from prosecution. She intended to show the absurdity of charging anti-fascists with using fascist symbols: "We don't need prosecution of non-violent young people engaging against right-wing extremism." On 15 March 2007, the Federal Court of Justice of Germany () held that the crossed-out symbols were "clearly directed against a revival of national-socialist endeavors", thereby settling the dispute for the future.
On August 9, 2018, Germany lifted the ban on the usage of swastikas and other Nazi symbols in video games. "Through the change in the interpretation of the law, games that critically look at current affairs can for the first time be given a USK age rating," USK managing director Elisabeth Secker told CTV. "This has long been the case for films and with regards to the freedom of the arts, this is now rightly also the case with computer and videogames."
The European Union's Executive Commission proposed a European Union-wide anti-racism law in 2001, but European Union states failed to agree on the balance between prohibiting racism and freedom of expression. An attempt to ban the swastika across the EU in early 2005 failed after objections from the British Government and others. In early 2007, while Germany held the European Union presidency, Berlin proposed that the European Union should follow German Criminal Law and criminalize the denial of the Holocaust and the display of Nazi symbols including the swastika, which is based on the Ban on the Symbols of Unconstitutional Organizations Act. This led to an opposition campaign by Hindu groups across Europe against a ban on the swastika. They pointed out that the swastika has been around for 5,000 years as a symbol of peace. The proposal to ban the swastika was dropped by Berlin from the proposed European Union wide anti-racism laws on 29 January 2007.
The public display of Nazi-era German flags (or any other flags) is protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which guarantees the right to freedom of speech. The Nazi "Reichskriegsflagge" has also been seen on display at white supremacist events within United States borders.
As with many neo-Nazi groups across the world, the American Nazi Party's used the swastika as part of its flag before its first dissolution in 1967. The symbol was chosen by the organization's founder, George L. Rockwell. It was "re-used" by successor organizations in 1983, without the publicity Rockwell's organization enjoyed.
The swastika, in various iconographic forms, is one of the hate symbols identified in use as graffiti in US schools, and is a part of the 1999 US Department of Education's emergency school-wide response trigger.
In 2010 the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) downgraded the swastika from its status as a Jewish hate symbol, saying "We know that the swastika has, for some, lost its meaning as the primary symbol of Nazism and instead become a more generalized symbol of hate".
In 2010, Microsoft officially spoke out against use of the swastika by players of the first-person shooter "". In "Black Ops", players are allowed to customize their name tags to represent, essentially, whatever they want. The swastika can be created and used, but Stephen Toulouse, director of Xbox Live policy and enforcement, stated that players with the symbol on their name tag will be banned (if someone reports it as inappropriate) from Xbox Live.
In the "Indiana Jones Stunt Spectacular" in Disney Hollywood Studios in Orlando, Florida, the swastikas on German trucks, aircraft and actor uniforms in the reenactment of a scene from "Raiders of the Lost Ark" were removed in 2004. The swastika has been replaced by a stylized Greek cross.
Nazi imagery was adapted and incorporated into the 2016 sci-fi movie "". Its inclusion was to subliminally draw parallels between the movie's Federal Bureau of Termination and Nazi Germany, and also refer to Kurt Vonnegut's experiences as a POW and the influence World War II played in his imagining of a population-controlled future where authorities use gas chambers to terminate people. The Federal Bureau of Termination logo appears as a white geometric design with a black outline, centered on vertical banners, in reference to the Third Reich banners. These banners were initially red, until the crew felt the allusion was too strong. The movie's hospital was envisaged as the Bureau's branch that controlled birth, and their red cross was given 'wings' to transform it into a swastika, and link it to the Bureau's logo.
In 2005, authorities in Tajikistan called for the widespread adoption of the swastika as a national symbol. President Emomali Rahmonov declared the swastika an Aryan symbol, and 2006 "the year of Aryan culture", which would be a time to "study and popularize Aryan contributions to the history of the world civilization, raise a new generation (of Tajiks) with the spirit of national self-determination, and develop deeper ties with other ethnicities and cultures".
In East Asia, the swastika is prevalent in Buddhist monasteries and communities. It is commonly found in Buddhist temples, religious artefacts, texts related to Buddhism and schools founded by Buddhist religious groups. It also appears as a design or motif (singularly or woven into a pattern) on textiles, architecture and various decorative objects as a symbol of luck and good fortune. The icon is also found as a sacred symbol in the Bon tradition, but in the left facing mode.
Many Chinese religions make use of the swastika symbol, including Guiyidao and Shanrendao. The Red Swastika Society, which is the philanthropic branch of Guiyidao, runs two schools in Hong Kong (the Hong Kong Red Swastika Society Tai Po Secondary School and the Hong Kong Red Swastika Society Tuen Mun Primary School) and one in Singapore (Red Swastika School). All of them show the swastika in their logos.
Among the predominantly Hindu population of Bali, in Indonesia, the swastika is common in temples, homes and public spaces. Similarly, the swastika is a common icon associated with Buddha's footprints in Theravada Buddhist communities of Myanmar, Thailand and Cambodia.
In Japan, the swastika is also used as a map symbol and is designated by the Survey Act and related Japanese governmental rules to denote a Buddhist temple.
The city of Hirosaki in Aomori Prefecture designates this symbol as its official flag, which stemmed from its use in the emblem of the Tsugaru clan, the lords of Hirosaki Domain during the Edo period.
In Bhutan, India, Nepal and Sri Lanka, the swastika is common. Temples, businesses and other organisations, such as the Buddhist libraries, Ahmedabad Stock Exchange and the Nepal Chamber of Commerce, use the swastika in reliefs or logos. Swastikas are ubiquitous in Indian and Nepalese communities, located on shops, buildings, transport vehicles, and clothing. The swastika remains prominent in Hindu ceremonies such as weddings. The left facing "sauwastika" symbol is found in tantric rituals.
Musaeus College in Colombo, Sri Lanka, a Buddhist girls' school, has a left facing swastika in their school logo.
In India, swastik and swastika, with their spelling variants, are first names for males and females respectively, for instance with Swastika Mukherjee. The Seal of Bihar contains two swastikas.
In Bhutan, swastika motif is found in its architecture, fabric and religious ceremonies.
Since the end of the 20th century, and through the early 21st century, confusion and controversy has occurred when consumer goods bearing the traditional Jain, Buddhist, or Hindu symbols have been exported to the West, notably to North America and Europe, and have been interpreted by consumers as bearing a Nazi symbol. This has resulted in several such products having been boycotted or pulled from shelves.
When a ten-year-old boy in Lynbrook, New York, bought a set of Pokémon cards imported from Japan in 1999, two of the cards contained the left-facing Buddhist swastika. The boy's parents misinterpreted the symbol as the right-facing Nazi swastika and filed a complaint to the manufacturer. Nintendo of America announced that the cards would be discontinued, explaining that what was acceptable in one culture was not necessarily so in another; their action was welcomed by the Anti-Defamation League who recognised that there was no intention to offend, but said that international commerce meant that, "Isolating [the Swastika] in Asia would just create more problems."
In 2002, Christmas crackers containing plastic toy red pandas sporting swastikas were pulled from shelves after complaints from consumers in Canada. The manufacturer, based in China, said the symbol was presented in a traditional sense and not as a reference to the Nazis, and apologized to the customers for the cross-cultural mixup.
Besides its use as a religious symbol in Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism, which can be traced back to pre-modern traditions, the swastika is also used by adherents of a large number of new religious movements which were established in the modern period. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45943 |
Saint Lawrence River
The Saint Lawrence River (; ; , meaning "big waterway") is a large river in the middle latitudes of North America. The Saint Lawrence River flows in a roughly north-easterly direction, connecting the Great Lakes with the Atlantic Ocean and forming the primary drainage outflow of the Great Lakes Basin. It traverses the Canadian provinces of Quebec and Ontario, and is part of the international boundary between Ontario, Canada, and the U.S. state of New York. This river provides the basis for the commercial Saint Lawrence Seaway.
With the draining of the Champlain Sea, due to a rebounding continent from the Last Glacial Maximum, the Saint Lawrence River was formed. The Champlain Sea lasted from about 13,000 years ago to about 10,000 years ago and was continuously shrinking during that time, a process that continues today.
Today, the Saint Lawrence River begins at the outflow of Lake Ontario and flows adjacent to Gananoque, Brockville, Morristown, Ogdensburg, Massena, Cornwall, Montreal, Trois-Rivières, and Quebec City before draining into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence, the largest estuary in the world. The estuary begins at the eastern tip of Île d'Orléans, just downstream from Quebec City. The river becomes tidal around Quebec City.
The Saint Lawrence River runs from the farthest headwater to the mouth and from the outflow of Lake Ontario. These numbers include the estuary; without the estuary the length from Lake Ontario is ca. 500 km (ca. 300 mi). The farthest headwater is the North River in the Mesabi Range at Hibbing, Minnesota. Its drainage area, which includes the Great Lakes, the world's largest system of freshwater lakes, is , of which is in Canada and is in the United States. The basin covers parts of Ontario and Quebec in Canada, parts of Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Vermont, and Wisconsin, and nearly the entirety of the state of Michigan in the United States. The average discharge below the Saguenay River is . At Quebec City, it is . The average discharge at the river's source, the outflow of Lake Ontario, is .
The Saint Lawrence River includes Lake Saint-Louis south of Montreal, Lake Saint Francis at Salaberry-de-Valleyfield and Lac Saint-Pierre east of Montreal. It encompasses four archipelagoes: the Thousand Islands chain near Alexandria Bay, New York and Kingston, Ontario; the Hochelaga Archipelago, including the Island of Montreal and Île Jésus (Laval); the Lake St. Pierre Archipelago (classified biosphere world reserve by the UNESCO in 2000) and the smaller Mingan Archipelago. Other islands include Île d'Orléans near Quebec City and Anticosti Island north of the Gaspé. It is the second longest river in Canada.
Lake Champlain and the Ottawa, Richelieu, Saint-Maurice, Saint-François, Chaudière and Saguenay rivers drain into the Saint Lawrence.
The Saint Lawrence River is in a seismically active zone where fault reactivation is believed to occur along late Proterozoic to early Paleozoic normal faults related to the opening of the Iapetus Ocean. The faults in the area are rift-related and comprise the Saint Lawrence rift system.
According to the United States Geological Survey, the Saint Lawrence Valley is a physiographic province of the larger Appalachian division, containing the Champlain and Northern physiographic section. However, in Canada, where most of the valley is, it is instead considered part of a distinct Saint Lawrence Lowlands physiographic division, and not part of the Appalachian division at all.
The Norse explored the Gulf of Saint Lawrence in the 11th century and were followed by fifteenth and early sixteenth century European mariners, such as John Cabot, and the brothers Gaspar and Miguel Corte-Real. The first European explorer known to have sailed up the Saint Lawrence River itself was Jacques Cartier. At that time, the land along the river was inhabited by the St. Lawrence Iroquoians; at the time of Cartier's second voyage in 1535. Because Cartier arrived in the estuary on Saint Lawrence's feast day, he named it the "Gulf of Saint Lawrence".
The Saint Lawrence River is partly within the U.S. and as such is that country's sixth oldest surviving European place-name.
The earliest regular Europeans in the area were the Basques, who came to the St Lawrence Gulf and River in pursuit of whales from the early 16th century. The Basque whalers and fishermen traded with indigenous Americans and set up settlements, leaving vestiges all over the coast of eastern Canada and deep into the Saint Lawrence River. Basque commercial and fishing activity reached its peak before the "Armada Invencible"'s disaster (1588), when the Spanish Basque whaling fleet was confiscated by King Philip II of Spain and largely destroyed. Initially, the whaling galleons from Labourd were not affected by the Spanish defeat.
Until the early 17th century, the French used the name "Rivière du Canada" to designate the Saint Lawrence upstream to Montreal and the Ottawa River after Montreal. The Saint Lawrence River served as the main route for European exploration of the North American interior, first pioneered by French explorer Samuel de Champlain.
Control of the river was crucial to British strategy to capture New France in the Seven Years' War. Having captured Louisbourg in 1758, the British sailed up to Quebec the following year thanks to charts drawn up by James Cook. British troops were ferried via the Saint Lawrence to attack the city from the west, which they successfully did at the Battle of the Plains of Abraham. The river was used again by the British to defeat the French siege of Quebec under the Chevalier de Lévis in 1760.
In 1809, the first steamboat to ply its trade on the St. Lawrence was built and operated by John Molson and associates, a scant two years after Fulton's steam-powered navigation of the Hudson River. The "Accommodation" with ten passengers made her maiden voyage from Montreal to Quebec City in 66 hours, for 30 of which she was at anchor. She had a keel of 75 feet, and length overall of 85 feet. The cost of a ticket as eight dollars upstream, and nine dollars down. She had berths that year for twenty passengers.
Within a decade, daily service was available in the hotly-contested Montreal-Quebec route.
Because of the virtually impassable Lachine Rapids, the Saint Lawrence was once continuously navigable only as far as Montreal. Opened in 1825, the Lachine Canal was the first to allow ships to pass the rapids. An extensive system of canals and locks, known as the Saint Lawrence Seaway, was officially opened on 26 June 1959 by Elizabeth II (representing Canada) and President Dwight D. Eisenhower (representing the United States). The Seaway (including the Welland Canal) now permits ocean-going vessels to pass all the way to Lake Superior.
During the Second World War, the Battle of the St. Lawrence involved submarine and anti-submarine actions throughout the lower Saint Lawrence River and the entire Gulf of Saint Lawrence, Strait of Belle Isle and Cabot Strait from May to October 1942, September 1943, and again in October and November 1944. During this time, German U-boats sank several merchant marine ships and three Canadian warships.
In the late 1970s, the river was the subject of a successful ecological campaign (called "Save the River"), originally responding to planned development by the United States Army Corps of Engineers. The campaign was organized, among others, by Abbie Hoffman.
The source of the North River in the Mesabi Range in Minnesota (Seven Beaver Lake) is considered to be the source of the Saint Lawrence River. Because it crosses so many lakes, the water system frequently changes its name. From source to mouth, the names are:
The Saint Lawrence River also passes through Lake Saint-Louis and Lake Saint-Pierre in Quebec.
The Saint Lawrence River is at the heart of many Quebec novels (Anne Hébert's "Kamouraska", Réjean Ducharme's "L'avalée des avalés"), poems (in works of Pierre Morency, Bernard Pozier), and songs (Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne", Michel Rivard's "L'oubli", Joe Dassin's "Dans les yeux d'Émilie"), and André Gagnon's "Le Saint-Laurent"). The river was the setting for the Canadian television drama series Seaway. The river has also been portrayed in paintings, notably by the Group of Seven. In addition, the river is the namesake of Saint-Laurent Herald at the Canadian Heraldic Authority.
In 1980 Jacques Cousteau traveled to Canada to make two films on the Saint Lawrence River and the Great Lakes, "Cries from the Deep" and "St. Lawrence: Stairway to the Sea".
Musician David Usher released the song "St. Lawrence River" on his "Little Songs" album in 1998.
The novel and film "Black Robe" are set primarily on the St. Lawrence River during the 17th century. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45948 |
Minimal deterrence
In nuclear strategy, minimal deterrence (also called minimum deterrence) is an application of deterrence theory in which a state possesses no more nuclear weapons than is necessary to deter an adversary from attacking. Pure minimal deterrence is a doctrine of no first use, holding that the only mission of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear adversary by making the cost of a first strike unacceptably high. To present a credible deterrent, there must be the assurance that any attack would trigger a retaliatory strike. In other words, minimal deterrence requires rejecting a counterforce strategy in favor of pursuing survivable force that can be used in a countervalue second strike.
While the United States and the Soviet Union each developed robust first- and second-strike capabilities during the Cold War, the People's Republic of China pursued a doctrine of minimal nuclear deterrence. Assuming that decision-makers make cost-benefit analyses when deciding to use force, China's doctrine calls for acquiring a nuclear arsenal only large enough to destroy an adversary's "strategic points" in such a way that the expected costs of a first strike outweigh the anticipated benefits. India has also adopted this strategy, which they term Minimum Credible Deterrence.
Minimal deterrence represents one way of solving the security dilemma and avoiding an arms race. Decision-makers often feel pressured to expand their arsenals when they perceive them to be vulnerable to an adversary's first strike, especially when both sides seek to achieve the advantage. Eliminating this perceived vulnerability reduces the incentive to produce more and advanced weapons. For example, the United States’ nuclear force exceeds the requirements of minimal deterrence, and is structured to strike numerous targets in multiple countries and to have the ability to conduct successful counterforce strikes with high confidence. In response to this, China continues to modernize its nuclear forces because its leaders are concerned about the survivability of their arsenal in the face of the United States’ advances in strategic reconnaissance, precision strike, and missile defense.
One disadvantage of minimal deterrence is that it requires an accurate understanding of the level of damage an adversary finds unacceptable, especially if that understanding changes over time so that a previously credible deterrent is no longer credible. A minimal deterrence strategy must also account for the nuclear firepower that would be "lost" or "neutralized" during an adversary's counterforce strike. Additionally, a minimal deterrence capability may embolden a state when it confronts a superior nuclear power, as has been observed in the relationship between China and the United States. Finally, while pursuing minimal deterrence during arms negotiations allows states to make reductions without becoming vulnerable, further reductions may be undesirable once minimal deterrence is reached because they will increase a state's vulnerability and provide an incentive for an adversary to secretly expand its nuclear arsenal. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45951 |
Mutual assured destruction
Mutually assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy in which a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender (see pre-emptive nuclear strike and second strike). It is based on the theory of deterrence, which holds that the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. The strategy is a form of Nash equilibrium in which, once armed, neither side has any incentive to initiate a conflict or to disarm.
The term "mutual assured destruction" was coined by Donald Brennan, a strategist working in Herman Kahn's Hudson Institute in 1962.
Under MAD, each side has enough nuclear weaponry to destroy the other side. Either side, if attacked for any reason by the other, would retaliate with equal or greater force. The expected result is an immediate, irreversible escalation of hostilities resulting in both combatants' mutual, total, and assured destruction. The doctrine requires that neither side construct shelters on a massive scale. If one side constructed a similar system of shelters, it would violate the MAD doctrine and destabilize the situation, because it would have less to fear from a second strike. The same principle is invoked against missile defense.
The doctrine further assumes that neither side will dare to launch a first strike because the other side would launch on warning (also called fail-deadly) or with surviving forces (a second strike), resulting in unacceptable losses for both parties. The payoff of the MAD doctrine was and still is expected to be a tense but stable global peace.
The primary application of this doctrine started during the Cold War (1940s to 1991), in which MAD was seen as helping to prevent any direct full-scale conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union while they engaged in smaller proxy wars around the world. It was also responsible for the arms race, as both nations struggled to keep nuclear parity, or at least retain second-strike capability. Although the Cold War ended in the early 1990s, the MAD doctrine continues to be applied.
Proponents of MAD as part of the US and USSR strategic doctrine believed that nuclear war could best be prevented if neither side could expect to survive a full-scale nuclear exchange as a functioning state. Since the credibility of the threat is critical to such assurance, each side had to invest substantial capital in their nuclear arsenals even if they were not intended for use. In addition, neither side could be expected or allowed to adequately defend itself against the other's nuclear missiles. This led both to the hardening and diversification of nuclear delivery systems (such as nuclear missile silos, ballistic missile submarines, and nuclear bombers kept at fail-safe points) and to the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
This MAD scenario is often referred to as nuclear deterrence. The term "deterrence" is now used in this context; originally, its use was limited to legal terminology.
The concept of MAD had been discussed in the literature for nearly a century before the invention of nuclear weapons. One of the earliest references comes from the English author Wilkie Collins, writing at the time of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870: "I begin to believe in only one civilizing influence—the discovery one of these days of a destructive agent so terrible that War shall mean annihilation and men's fears will force them to keep the peace." The concept was also described in 1863 by Jules Verne in his novel "Paris in the Twentieth Century", though it was not published until 1994. The book is set in 1960 and describes "the engines of war", which have become so efficient that war is inconceivable and all countries are at a perpetual stalemate.
MAD has been invoked by more than one weapons inventor. For example, Richard Jordan Gatling patented his namesake Gatling gun in 1862 with the partial intention of illustrating the futility of war. Likewise, after his 1867 invention of dynamite, Alfred Nobel stated that "the day when two army corps can annihilate each other in one second, all civilized nations, it is to be hoped, will recoil from war and discharge their troops." In 1937, Nikola Tesla published "The Art of Projecting Concentrated Non-dispersive Energy through the Natural Media", a treatise concerning charged particle beam weapons. Tesla described his device as a "superweapon that would put an end to all war."
The March 1940 Frisch–Peierls memorandum, the earliest technical exposition of a practical nuclear weapon, anticipated deterrence as the principal means of combating an enemy with nuclear weapons.
In August 1945, the United States became the first nuclear power after the nuclear attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Four years later, on August 29, 1949, the Soviet Union detonated its own nuclear device. At the time, both sides lacked the means to effectively use nuclear devices against each other. However, with the development of aircraft like the American Convair B-36 and the Soviet Tupolev Tu-95, both sides were gaining a greater ability to deliver nuclear weapons into the interior of the opposing country. The official policy of the United States became one of "massive retaliation", as coined by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, which called for massive attack against the Soviet Union if they were to invade Europe, regardless of whether it was a conventional or a nuclear attack.
By the time of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, both the United States and the Soviet Union had developed the capability of launching a nuclear-tipped missile from a submerged submarine, which completed the "third leg" of the nuclear triad weapons strategy necessary to fully implement the MAD doctrine. Having a three-branched nuclear capability eliminated the possibility that an enemy could destroy all of a nation's nuclear forces in a first-strike attack; this, in turn, ensured the credible threat of a devastating retaliatory strike against the aggressor, increasing a nation's nuclear deterrence.
Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko argue that Nikita Khrushchev (Soviet leader 1953 to 1964) decided that policies that facilitated nuclear war were too dangerous to the Soviet Union. His approach did not greatly change his foreign policy or military doctrine but is apparent in his determination to choose options that minimized the risk of war.
Beginning in 1955, the United States Strategic Air Command (SAC) kept one-third of its bombers on alert, with crews ready to take off within fifteen minutes and fly to designated targets inside the Soviet Union and destroy them with nuclear bombs in the event of a Soviet first-strike attack on the United States. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy increased funding for this program and raised the commitment to 50 percent of SAC aircraft.
During periods of increased tension in the early 1960s, SAC kept part of its B-52 fleet airborne at all times, to allow an extremely fast retaliatory strike against the Soviet Union in the event of a surprise attack on the United States. This program continued until 1969. Between 1954 and 1992, bomber wings had approximately one-third of their assigned aircraft on quick reaction ground alert and were able to take off within a few minutes. SAC also maintained the National Emergency Airborne Command Post (NEACP, pronounced "kneecap"), also known as "Looking Glass", which consisted of several EC-135s, one of which was airborne at all times from 1961 through 1990. During the Cuban missile crisis the bombers were dispersed to several different airfields, and also were sometimes airborne. For example, some were sent to Wright Patterson, which normally did not have B-52s.
During the height of the tensions between the US and the USSR in the 1960s, two popular films were made dealing with what could go terribly wrong with the policy of keeping nuclear-bomb-carrying airplanes at the ready: "Dr. Strangelove" (1964) and "Fail Safe" (1964).
The strategy of MAD was fully declared in the early 1960s, primarily by United States Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara. In McNamara's formulation, there was the very real danger that a nation with nuclear weapons could attempt to eliminate another nation's retaliatory forces with a surprise, devastating the first strike and theoretically "win" a nuclear war relatively unharmed. The true second-strike capability could be achieved only when a nation had a "guaranteed" ability to fully retaliate after a first-strike attack.
The United States had achieved an early form of second-strike capability by fielding continual patrols of strategic nuclear bombers, with a large number of planes always in the air, on their way to or from fail-safe points close to the borders of the Soviet Union. This meant the United States could still retaliate, even after a devastating first-strike attack. The tactic was expensive and problematic because of the high cost of keeping enough planes in the air at all times and the possibility they would be shot down by Soviet anti-aircraft missiles before reaching their targets. In addition, as the idea of a missile gap existing between the US and the Soviet Union developed, there was increasing priority being given to ICBMs over bombers.
It was only with the advent of ballistic missile submarines, starting with the " George Washington" class in 1959, that a genuine survivable nuclear force became possible and a retaliatory second strike capability guaranteed.
The deployment of fleets of ballistic missile submarines established a guaranteed second-strike capability because of their stealth and by the number fielded by each Cold War adversary—it was highly unlikely that all of them could be targeted and preemptively destroyed (in contrast to, for example, a missile silo with a fixed location that could be targeted during a first strike). Given their long-range, high survivability and ability to carry many medium- and long-range nuclear missiles, submarines were credible and effective means for full-scale retaliation even after a massive first strike.
This deterrence strategy and the program have continued into the 21st century, with nuclear submarines carrying Trident II ballistic missiles as one leg of the US strategic nuclear deterrent and as the sole deterrent of the United Kingdom. The other elements of the US deterrent are intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on alert in the continental United States, and nuclear-capable bombers. Ballistic missile submarines are also operated by the navies of China, France, India, and Russia.
The US Department of Defense anticipates a continued need for a sea-based strategic nuclear force. The first of the current "Ohio"-class SSBNs are expected to be retired by 2029, meaning that a replacement platform must already be seaworthy by that time. A replacement may cost over $4 billion per unit compared to the USS "Ohio"s $2 billion. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45958 |
Nuclear strategy
Nuclear strategy involves the development of doctrines and strategies for the production and use of nuclear weapons.
As a sub-branch of military strategy, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addition to the actual use of nuclear weapons whether in the battlefield or strategically, a large part of nuclear strategy involves their use as a bargaining tool.
Some of the issues considered within nuclear strategy include:
Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of military strategy. The immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use, in seeking victory in a traditional military sense, impossible.
Perhaps counterintuitively, an important focus of nuclear strategy has been determining how to prevent and deter their use, a crucial part of mutual assured destruction.
In the context of nuclear proliferation and maintaining the balance of power, states also seek to prevent other states from acquiring nuclear weapons as part of nuclear strategy.
The doctrine of mutual assured destruction (MAD) assumes that a nuclear deterrent force must be credible and survivable. That is, each deterrent force must survive a first strike with sufficient capability to effectively destroy the other country in a second strike. Therefore, a first strike would be suicidal for the launching country.
In the late 1940s and 1950s as the Cold War developed, the United States and Soviet Union pursued multiple delivery methods and platforms to deliver nuclear weapons. Three types of platforms proved most successful and are collectively called a "nuclear triad". These are air-delivered weapons (bombs or missiles), ballistic missile submarines (usually nuclear-powered and called SSBNs), and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), usually deployed in land-based hardened missile silos or on vehicles.
Although not considered part of the deterrent forces, all of the nuclear powers deployed large numbers of tactical nuclear weapons in the Cold War. These could be delivered by virtually all platforms capable of delivering large conventional weapons.
During the 1970s there was growing concern that the combined conventional forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact could overwhelm the forces of NATO. It seemed unthinkable to respond to a Soviet/Warsaw Pact incursion into Western Europe with strategic nuclear weapons, inviting a catastrophic exchange. Thus, technologies were developed to greatly reduce collateral damage while being effective against advancing conventional military forces. Some of these were low-yield neutron bombs, which were lethal to tank crews, especially with tanks massed in tight formation, while producing relatively little blast, thermal radiation, or radioactive fallout. Other technologies were so-called "suppressed radiation devices," which produced mostly blast with little radioactivity, making them much like conventional explosives, but with much more energy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45959 |
Cloaking device
A cloaking device is a hypothetical or fictional stealth technology that can cause objects, such as spaceships or individuals, to be partially or wholly invisible to parts of the electromagnetic (EM) spectrum. However, over the entire spectrum, a cloaked object scatters more than an uncloaked object.
Fictional cloaking devices have been used as plot devices in various media for many years.
Developments in scientific research show that real-world cloaking devices can obscure objects from at least one wavelength of EM emissions. Scientists already use artificial materials called metamaterials to bend light around an object.
"" screenwriter Paul Schneider, inspired in part by the 1958 film "Run Silent, Run Deep," and in part by "The Enemy Below," which in turn had been released the previous year, 1957, imagined cloaking as a space-travel analog of a submarine submerging, and employed it in the 1966 "Star Trek" episode "Balance of Terror", in which he introduced the Romulan species. (He likewise predicted, in the same episode, that invisibility, "selective bending of light" as described above, would have an enormous power requirement.) Another "Star Trek" screenwriter, D.C. Fontana, coined the term ""cloaking device"" for the 1968 episode "The "Enterprise" Incident", which also featured Romulans.
"Star Trek" placed a limit on use of this device: to fire at another ship, a cloaked space vessel must "decloak."
Writers and game designers have since incorporated cloaking devices into many other science-fiction narratives, including "Doctor Who", "Star Wars", and "Stargate".
An operational, non-fictional cloaking device might be an extension of the basic technologies used by stealth aircraft, such as radar-absorbing dark paint, optical camouflage, cooling the outer surface to minimize electromagnetic emissions (usually infrared), or other techniques to minimize other EM emissions, and to minimize particle emissions from the object. The use of certain devices to jam and confuse remote sensing devices would greatly aid in this process, but is more properly referred to as "active camouflage". Alternatively, metamaterials provide the theoretical possibility of making electromagnetic radiation pass freely around the 'cloaked' object.
Optical metamaterials have featured in several recent proposals for invisibility schemes. "Metamaterials" refers to materials that owe their refractive properties to the way they are structured, rather than the substances that compose them. Using transformation optics it is possible to design the optical parameters of a "cloak" so that it guides light around some region, rendering it invisible over a certain band of wavelengths.
These spatially varying optical parameters do not correspond to any natural material, but may be implemented using metamaterials. There are several theories of cloaking, giving rise to different types of invisibility.
In 2014, scientists demonstrated good cloaking performance in murky water, demonstrating that an object shrouded in fog can disappear completely when appropriately coated with metamaterial. This is due to the random scattering of light, such as that which occurs in clouds, fog, milk, frosted glass, etc., combined with the properties of the metamaterial coating. When light is diffused, a thin coat of metamaterial around an object can make it essentially invisible under a range of lighting conditions.
"Active camouflage" (or "adaptive camouflage") is a group of camouflage technologies which would allow an object (usually military in nature) to blend into its surroundings by use of panels or coatings capable of changing color or luminosity. Active camouflage can be seen as having the potential to become the perfection of the art of camouflaging things from visual detection.
"Optical camouflage" is a kind of active camouflage in which one wears a fabric which has an image of the scene directly behind the wearer projected onto it, so that the wearer appears invisible. The drawback to this system is that, when the cloaked wearer moves, a visible distortion is often generated as the 'fabric' catches up with the object's motion. The concept exists for now only in theory and in proof-of-concept prototypes, although many experts consider it technically feasible.
It has been reported that the British Army has tested an invisible tank.
Plasma at certain density ranges absorbs certain bandwidths of broadband waves, potentially rendering an object invisible. However, generating plasma in air is too expensive and a feasible alternative is generating plasma between thin membranes instead. The Defense Technical Information Center is also following up research on plasma reducing RCS technologies. A plasma cloaking device was patented in 1991.
A prototype Metascreen is a claimed cloaking device, which is just few micrometers thick and to a limited extent can hide 3D objects from microwaves in their natural environment, in their natural positions, in all directions, and from all of the observer's positions. It was prepared at the University of Texas, Austin by Professor Andrea Alù.
The metascreen consisted of a 66 micrometre thick polycarbonate film supporting an arrangement of 20 micrometer thick copper strips that resembled a fishing net. In the experiment, when the metascreen was hit by 3.6 GHz microwaves, it re-radiated microwaves of the same frequency that were out of phase, thus cancelling out reflections from the object being hidden. The device only cancelled out the scattering of microwaves in the first order. The same researchers published a paper on "plasmonic cloaking" the previous year.
University of Rochester physics professor John Howell and graduate student Joseph Choi have announced a scalable cloaking device which uses common optical lenses to achieve visible light cloaking on the macroscopic scale, known as the "Rochester Cloak". The device consists of a series of four lenses which direct light rays around objects which would otherwise occlude the optical pathway.
The concepts of cloaking are not limited to optics but can also be transferred to other fields of physics. For example, it was possible to cloak acoustics for certain frequencies as well as touching in mechanics. This renders an object "invisible" to sound or even hides it from touching. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45960 |
Analytic language
In linguistic typology, an analytic language is a language that primarily conveys relationships between words in sentences by way of "helper" words (particles, prepositions, etc.) and word order, as opposed to utilizing inflections (changing the form of a word to convey its role in the sentence). For example, the English-language phrase "The cat chases the ball" conveys the fact that the cat is acting on the ball "analytically" via word order. This can be contrasted to synthetic languages, which rely heavily on inflections to convey word relationships (e.g., the phrases "The cat chase"s" the ball" and "The cat chase"d" the ball" convey different time frames via changing the form of the word "chase"). Most languages are not purely analytic, but many rely primarily on analytic syntax.
Typically, analytic languages have a low morpheme-per-word ratio, especially with respect to inflectional morphemes. A grammatical construction can similarly be "analytic" if it uses unbound morphemes, which are separate words, or word order. Analytic languages rely more heavily on the use of definite and indefinite articles, which tend to be less prominently used or absent in strongly synthetic languages; stricter word order; various prepositions, postpositions, particles, and modifiers; and context.
The term "analytic" is commonly used in a relative rather than an absolute sense and so Chinese and English are both analytic languages, but Chinese is more analytic than English.
The most prominent and widely-used analytic language is Chinese. Other notable analytic languages include English, Thai, Lao, Bulgarian, Macedonian, and Vietnamese.
Many analytic languages developed from the loss of inflections from earlier synthetic languages. A notable example is Modern English, which has lost much of the inflectional morphology inherited from Old English, which, in turn, inherited inflections from Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European. English has lost most inflections over the centuries but has not gained any new inflectional morphemes in the meantime, making it more analytic than most other Indo-European languages.
For example, while Proto-Indo-European had much more complex grammatical conjugation, grammatical genders, dual number and inflections for eight or nine cases in its nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals, participles, postpositions and determiners, standard English has lost nearly all of them (except for three modified cases for pronouns) along with genders and dual number and simplified its conjugation.
Latin, German, Greek, Russian and Spanish are synthetic languages. Nouns in Russian inflect for at least six cases, most of them descended from Proto-Indo-European cases, whose functions English translates using other strategies like prepositions, verbal voice, word order, and possessive "" instead.
Modern Hebrew is much more analytic than Classical Hebrew "both with nouns and with verbs".
A related concept is the isolating language, which is about a low number of any type of morphemes per word, taking into account derivational morphemes as well. A purely isolating language would be analytic by necessity and lack inflectional morphemes by definition. However, the reverse is not necessarily true, and a language can have derivational morphemes but lack inflectional morphemes. For example, Mandarin Chinese has many compound words, giving it a moderately high ratio of morphemes per word, but since it has almost no inflectional affixes at all to convey grammatical relationships, it is a very analytic language.
English is not totally analytic in its nouns since it does use inflections for number (e.g., "one day, three days; one boy, four boys") and possession ("The boy's ball" vs. "The boy has a ball"). Mandarin Chinese, in contrast, has no inflections on its nouns: compare "yī tiān" "one day", "sān tiān" "three days" (literally "three day"); "yī ge nánhái" "one boy" (lit. "one [entity of] male child"), "sì ge nánhái" "four boys" (lit. "four [entity of] male child"). Instead, English is considered to be weakly inflected, and comparatively more analytic than most other Indo-European languages. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45963 |
Chuck Berry
Charles Edward Anderson Berry (October 18, 1926 – March 18, 2017) was an American singer and songwriter, and one of the pioneers of rock and roll music. Nicknamed the "Father of Rock and Roll", Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive with songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958). Writing lyrics that focused on teen life and consumerism, and developing a music style that included guitar solos and showmanship, Berry was a major influence on subsequent rock music.
Born into a middle-class African-American family in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry had an interest in music from an early age and gave his first public performance at Sumner High School. While still a high school student he was convicted of armed robbery and was sent to a reformatory, where he was held from 1944 to 1947. After his release, Berry settled into married life and worked at an automobile assembly plant. By early 1953, influenced by the guitar riffs and showmanship techniques of the blues musician T-Bone Walker, Berry began performing with the Johnnie Johnson Trio. His break came when he traveled to Chicago in May 1955 and met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. With Chess, he recorded "Maybellene"—Berry's adaptation of the country song "Ida Red"—which sold over a million copies, reaching number one on "Billboard" magazine's rhythm and blues chart.
By the end of the 1950s, Berry was an established star, with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had also established his own St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand. He was sentenced to three years in prison in January 1962 for offenses under the Mann Act—he had transported a 14-year-old girl across state lines. After his release in 1963, Berry had several more hits, including "No Particular Place to Go", "You Never Can Tell", and "Nadine". But these did not achieve the same success, or lasting impact, of his 1950s songs, and by the 1970s he was more in demand as a nostalgic performer, playing his past hits with local backup bands of variable quality. In 1972 he reached a new level of achievement when a rendition of "My Ding-a-Ling" became his only record to top the charts. His insistence on being paid in cash led in 1979 to a four-month jail sentence and community service, for tax evasion.
Berry was among the first musicians to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on its opening in 1986; he was cited for having "laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance." Berry is included in several of "Rolling Stone" magazine's "greatest of all time" lists; he was ranked fifth on its 2004 and 2011 lists of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's 500 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll includes three of Berry's: "Johnny B. Goode", "Maybellene", and "Rock and Roll Music". Berry's "Johnny B. Goode" is the only rock-and-roll song included on the Voyager Golden Record.
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, Berry was the fourth child of four. He grew up in the north St. Louis neighborhood known as the Ville, an area where many middle-class people lived. His father, Henry William Berry (1895–1987), was a contractor and deacon of a nearby Baptist church; his mother, Martha Bell (Banks) (1894–1980), was a certified public school principal. Berry's upbringing allowed him to pursue his interest in music from an early age. He gave his first public performance in 1941 while still a student at Sumner High School; he was still a student there in 1944, when he was arrested for armed robbery after robbing three shops in Kansas City, Missouri, and then stealing a car at gunpoint with some friends. Berry's account in his autobiography is that his car broke down and he flagged down a passing car and stole it at gunpoint with a nonfunctional pistol. He was convicted and sent to the Intermediate Reformatory for Young Men at Algoa, near Jefferson City, Missouri, where he formed a singing quartet and did some boxing. The singing group became competent enough that the authorities allowed it to perform outside the detention facility. Berry was released from the reformatory on his 21st birthday in 1947.
On October 28, 1948, Berry married Themetta "Toddy" Suggs, who gave birth to Darlin Ingrid Berry on October 3, 1950. Berry supported his family by taking various jobs in St. Louis, working briefly as a factory worker at two automobile assembly plants and as a janitor in the apartment building where he and his wife lived. Afterwards he trained as a beautician at the Poro College of Cosmetology, founded by Annie Turnbo Malone. He was doing well enough by 1950 to buy a "small three room brick cottage with a bath" on Whittier Street, which is now listed as the Chuck Berry House on the National Register of Historic Places.
By the early 1950s, Berry was working with local bands in clubs in St. Louis as an extra source of income. He had been playing blues since his teens, and he borrowed both guitar riffs and showmanship techniques from the blues musician T-Bone Walker. He also took guitar lessons from his friend Ira Harris, which laid the foundation for his guitar style.
By early 1953 Berry was performing with Johnnie Johnson's trio, starting a long-time collaboration with the pianist. The band played blues and ballads as well as country. Berry wrote, "Curiosity provoked me to lay a lot of our country stuff on our predominantly black audience and some of our black audience began whispering 'who is that black hillbilly at the Cosmo?' After they laughed at me a few times they began requesting the hillbilly stuff and enjoyed dancing to it."
Berry's showmanship, along with a mix of country tunes and R&B tunes, sung in the style of Nat King Cole set to the music of Muddy Waters, brought in a wider audience, particularly affluent white people.
In May 1955, Berry traveled to Chicago, where he met Muddy Waters, who suggested he contact Leonard Chess, of Chess Records. Berry thought his blues music would interest Chess, but Chess was a larger fan of Berry's take on "Ida Red".. On May 21, 1955, Berry recorded an adaptation of the song "Ida Red", under the title "Maybellene", with Johnnie Johnson on the piano, Jerome Green (from Bo Diddley's band) on the maracas, Jasper Thomas on the drums and Willie Dixon on the bass. "Maybellene" sold over a million copies, reaching number one on "Billboard" magazine's rhythm and blues chart and number five on its Best Sellers in Stores chart for September 10, 1955. Berry said, "It came out at the right time when Afro-American music was spilling over into the mainstream pop."
At the end of June 1956, his song "Roll Over Beethoven" reached number 29 on the "Billboard"s Top 100 chart, and Berry toured as one of the "Top Acts of '56". He and Carl Perkins became friends. Perkins said that "I knew when I first heard Chuck that he'd been affected by country music. I respected his writing; his records were very, very great." In late 1957, Berry took part in Alan Freed's "Biggest Show of Stars for 1957", touring the United States with the Everly Brothers, Buddy Holly, and others. He was a guest on ABC's "Guy Mitchell Show", singing his hit song "Rock 'n' Roll Music". The hits continued from 1957 to 1959, with Berry scoring over a dozen chart singles during this period, including the US Top 10 hits "School Days", "Rock and Roll Music", "Sweet Little Sixteen", and "Johnny B. Goode". He appeared in two early rock-and-roll movies: "Rock Rock Rock" (1956), in which he sang "You Can't Catch Me", and "Go, Johnny, Go!" (1959), in which he had a speaking role as himself and performed "Johnny B. Goode", "Memphis, Tennessee", and "Little Queenie". His performance of "Sweet Little Sixteen" at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958 was captured in the motion picture "Jazz on a Summer's Day".
By the end of the 1950s, Berry was a high-profile established star with several hit records and film appearances and a lucrative touring career. He had opened a racially integrated St. Louis nightclub, Berry's Club Bandstand, and invested in real estate. But in December 1959, he was arrested under the Mann Act after allegations that he had had sexual intercourse with a 14-year-old Apache waitress, Janice Escalante, whom he had transported across state lines to work as a hatcheck girl at his club. After a two-week trial in March 1960, he was convicted, fined $5,000, and sentenced to five years in prison. He appealed the decision, arguing that the judge's comments and attitude were racist and prejudiced the jury against him. The appeal was upheld, and a second trial was heard in May and June 1961, resulting in another conviction and a three-year prison sentence. After another appeal failed, Berry served one and one-half years in prison, from February 1962 to October 1963. He had continued recording and performing during the trials, but his output had slowed as his popularity declined; his final single released before he was imprisoned was "Come On".
When Berry was released from prison in 1963, his return to recording and performing was made easier because British invasion bands—notably the Beatles and the Rolling Stones—had sustained interest in his music by releasing cover versions of his songs, and other bands had reworked some of them, such as the Beach Boys' 1963 hit "Surfin' U.S.A.", which used the melody of Berry's "Sweet Little Sixteen". In 1964 and 1965 Berry released eight singles, including three that were commercially successful, reaching the top 20 of the "Billboard" 100: "No Particular Place to Go" (a humorous reworking of "School Days", concerning the introduction of seat belts in cars), "You Never Can Tell", and the rocking "Nadine". Between 1966 and 1969 Berry released five albums for Mercury Records, including his second live album (and first recorded entirely onstage), "Live at Fillmore Auditorium", in which he was backed by the Steve Miller Band.
Although this period was not a successful one for studio work, Berry was still a top concert draw. In May 1964, he had made a successful tour of the UK, but when he returned in January 1965 his behavior was erratic and moody, and his touring style of using unrehearsed local backing bands and a strict nonnegotiable contract was earning him a reputation as a difficult and unexciting performer. He also played at large events in North America, such as the Schaefer Music Festival, in New York City's Central Park in July 1969, and the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival festival in October.
Berry returned to Chess from 1970 to 1973. There were no hit singles from the 1970 album "Back Home", but in 1972 Chess released a live recording of "My Ding-a-Ling", a novelty song which he had recorded in a different version as "My Tambourine" on his 1968 LP "From St. Louie to Frisco". The track became his only number-one single. A live recording of "Reelin' and Rockin'", issued as a follow-up single in the same year, was his last Top 40 hit in both the US and the UK. Both singles were included on the part-live, part-studio album "The London Chuck Berry Sessions" (other albums of London sessions were recorded by Chess's mainstay artists Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf). Berry's second tenure with Chess ended with the 1975 album "Chuck Berry", after which he did not make a studio record until "Rockit" for Atco Records in 1979, which would be his last studio album for 38 years.
In the 1970s Berry toured on the strength of his earlier successes. He was on the road for many years, carrying only his Gibson guitar, confident that he could hire a band that already knew his music no matter where he went. AllMusic said that in this period his "live performances became increasingly erratic, ... working with terrible backup bands and turning in sloppy, out-of-tune performances" which "tarnished his reputation with younger fans and oldtimers" alike. In March 1972 he was filmed, at the BBC Television Theatre in Shepherds Bush, for "Chuck Berry in Concert", part of a 60-date tour backed by the band Rocking Horse. Among the many bandleaders performing a backup role with Berry in the 1970s were Bruce Springsteen and Steve Miller when each was just starting his career. Springsteen related in the documentary film "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll" that Berry did not give the band a set list and expected the musicians to follow his lead after each guitar intro. Berry did not speak to the band after the show. Nevertheless, Springsteen backed Berry again when he appeared at the concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. At the request of Jimmy Carter, Berry performed at the White House on June 1, 1979.
Berry's touring style, traveling the "oldies" circuit in the 1970s (often being paid in cash by local promoters) added ammunition to the Internal Revenue Service's accusations that Berry had evaded paying income taxes. Facing criminal sanction for the third time, Berry pleaded guilty to evading nearly $110,000 in federal income tax owed on his 1973 earnings. Newspaper reports in 1979 put his 1973 joint income (with his wife) at $374,982. He was sentenced to four months in prison and 1,000 hours of community service—performing benefit concerts—in 1979.
Berry continued to play 70 to 100 one-nighters per year in the 1980s, still traveling solo and requiring a local band to back him at each stop. In 1986, Taylor Hackford made a documentary film, "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll", of a celebration concert for Berry's sixtieth birthday, organized by Keith Richards. Eric Clapton, Etta James, Julian Lennon, Robert Cray and Linda Ronstadt, among others, appeared with Berry on stage and in the film. During the concert, Berry played a Gibson ES-355, the luxury version of the ES-335 that he favored on his 1970s tours. Richards played a black Fender Telecaster Custom, Cray a Fender Stratocaster and Clapton a Gibson ES 350T, the same model that Berry used on his early recordings.
In the late 1980s, Berry bought the Southern Air, a restaurant in Wentzville, Missouri. In 1987, Berry was charged with assaulting a woman at New York's Gramercy Park Hotel. He was accused of causing "lacerations of the mouth, requiring five stitches, two loose teeth, [and] contusions of the face." He pleaded guilty to a lesser charge of harassment and paid a $250 fine. In 1990, he was sued by several women who claimed that he had installed a video camera in the bathroom. Berry claimed that he had had the camera installed to catch a worker who was suspected of stealing from the restaurant. Although his guilt was never proven in court, Berry opted for a class action settlement. One of his biographers, Bruce Pegg, estimated that with 59 women it cost Berry over $1.2 million plus legal fees. His lawyers said he had been the victim of a conspiracy to profit from his wealth. During this time Berry began using Wayne T. Schoeneberg as his legal counsel. Reportedly, a police raid on his house found intimate videotapes of women, one of whom was apparently a minor. Also found in the raid were 62 grams of marijuana. Felony drug and child-abuse charges were filed. As the child-abuse charges were dropped, Berry agreed to plead guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. He was given a six-month suspended jail sentence, placed on two years unsupervised probation and was ordered to donate $5,000 to a local hospital.
In November 2000, Berry faced legal issues when he was sued by his former pianist Johnnie Johnson, who claimed that he had co-written over 50 songs, including "No Particular Place to Go", "Sweet Little Sixteen" and "Roll Over Beethoven", that credit Berry alone. The case was dismissed when the judge ruled that too much time had passed since the songs were written.
In 2008, Berry toured Europe, with stops in Sweden, Norway, Finland, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Ireland, Switzerland, Poland and Spain. In mid-2008, he played at the Virgin Festival in Baltimore, Maryland. During a concert on New Year's Day 2011 in Chicago, Berry, suffering from exhaustion, passed out and had to be helped off stage.
Berry lived in Ladue, Missouri, approximately west of St. Louis. He also had a home at "Berry Park", near Wentzville, Missouri, where he lived part-time since the 1950s, and was the home in which he died. This home, with the guitar-shaped swimming pool, is seen in scenes near the end of the film "Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll".
He regularly performed one Wednesday each month at Blueberry Hill, a restaurant and bar located in the Delmar Loop neighborhood of St. Louis, from 1996 to 2014.
Berry announced on his 90th birthday that his first new studio album since "Rockit" in 1979, entitled "Chuck", would be released in 2017. His first new record in 38 years, it includes his children, Charles Berry Jr. and Ingrid, on guitar and harmonica, with songs "covering the spectrum from hard-driving rockers to soulful thought-provoking time capsules of a life's work" and dedicated to his beloved wife of 68 years, Toddy.
On March 18, 2017, police in St. Charles County, Missouri, were called to Berry's house, near Wentzville, Missouri, where he was found unresponsive. He was pronounced dead at the scene, aged 90, by his personal physician. TMZ posted an audio recording on its website in which the 911 operator can be heard responding to a reported "cardiac arrest" at Berry's home.
Berry's funeral was held on April 9, 2017, at The Pageant, in Berry's hometown of St. Louis, Missouri. He was remembered with a public viewing by family, friends, and fans in The Pageant, a music club where he often performed, with his cherry-red guitar bolted to the inside lid of the coffin and with flower arrangements that included one sent by the Rolling Stones in the shape of a guitar. Afterwards a private service was held in the club celebrating Berry's life and musical career, with the Berry family inviting 300 members of the public into the service. Gene Simmons of Kiss gave an impromptu, unadvertised eulogy at the service, while Little Richard was scheduled to lead the funeral procession but was unable to attend due to an illness. The night before, many St. Louis area bars held a mass toast at 10 pm in Berry's honor.
One of Berry's attorneys estimated that his estate was worth $50 million, including $17 million in music rights. Berry's music publishing accounted for $13 million of the estate's value. The Berry estate owned roughly half of his songwriting credits (mostly from his later career), while BMG Rights Management controlled the other half; most of Berry's recordings are currently owned by Universal Music Group. In September 2017, Dualtone, the label which released Berry's final album, "Chuck", agreed to publish all his compositions in the United States.
A pioneer of rock and roll, Berry was a significant influence on the development of both the music and the attitude associated with the rock music lifestyle. With songs such as "Maybellene" (1955), "Roll Over Beethoven" (1956), "Rock and Roll Music" (1957) and "Johnny B. Goode" (1958), Berry refined and developed rhythm and blues into the major elements that made rock and roll distinctive, with lyrics successfully aimed to appeal to the early teenage market by using graphic and humorous descriptions of teen dances, fast cars, high school life, and consumer culture, and utilizing guitar solos and showmanship that would be a major influence on subsequent rock music. Thus Berry, the songwriter, according to critic Jon Pareles, invented rock as "a music of teenage wishes fulfilled and good times (even with cops in pursuit)." Berry contributed three things to rock music: an irresistible swagger, a focus on the guitar riff as the primary melodic element and an emphasis on songwriting as storytelling. His records are a rich storehouse of the essential lyrical, showmanship and musical components of rock and roll. In addition to the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, a large number of significant popular-music performers have recorded Berry's songs. Although not technically accomplished, his guitar style is distinctive—he incorporated electronic effects to mimic the sound of bottleneck blues guitarists and drew on the influence of guitar players such as Carl Hogan, and T-Bone Walker to produce a clear and exciting sound that many later guitarists would acknowledge as an influence in their own style. Berry's showmanship has been influential on other rock guitarists, particularly his one-legged hop routine, and the "duck walk", which he first used as a child when he walked "stooping with full-bended knees, but with my back and head vertical" under a table to retrieve a ball and his family found it entertaining; he used it when "performing in New York for the first time and some journalist branded it the duck walk."
He has been cited as a major reference to a variety of some of the most influential acts of all time:
On July 29, 2011, Berry was honored in a dedication of an eight-foot, in-motion Chuck Berry Statue in the Delmar Loop in St. Louis, Missouri, right across the street from Blue Berry Hill. Berry said, "It's glorious--I do appreciate it to the highest, no doubt about it. That sort of honor is seldom given out. But I don't deserve it."
The rock critic Robert Christgau considers Berry "the greatest of the rock and rollers", while John Lennon said, "if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it 'Chuck Berry'." Ted Nugent said, "If you don't know every Chuck Berry lick, you can't play rock guitar." Bob Dylan called Berry "the Shakespeare of rock 'n' roll". Bruce Springsteen tweeted, "Chuck Berry was rock's greatest practitioner, guitarist, and the greatest pure rock 'n' roll writer who ever lived."
When asked what caused the explosion of the popularity of rock 'n roll that took place in the 1950s, with him and a handful of others, mainly him, Berry said, "Well, actually they begin to listen to it, you see, because certain stations played certain music. The music that we, the blacks, played, the cultures were so far apart, we would have to have a play station in order to play it. The cultures begin to come together, and you begin to see one another's vein of life, then the music came together."
Among the honors Berry received were the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1984 and the Kennedy Center Honors in 2000. He was ranked seventh on "Time" magazine's 2009 list of the 10 best electric guitar players of all time. On May 14, 2002, Berry was honored as one of the first BMI Icons at the 50th annual BMI Pop Awards. He was presented the award along with BMI affiliates Bo Diddley and Little Richard. In August 2014, Berry was made a laureate of the Polar Music Prize.
Berry is included in several of "Rolling Stone" magazine's "Greatest of All Time" lists. In September 2003, the magazine ranked him number 6 in its list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time". In November his compilation album "The Great Twenty-Eight" was ranked 21st in "Rolling Stone"s 500 Greatest Albums of All Time. In March 2004, Berry was ranked fifth on the list of "The Immortals – The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time". In December 2004, six of his songs were included in "Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time": "Johnny B. Goode" (#7), "Maybellene" (#18), "Roll Over Beethoven" (#97), "Rock and Roll Music" (#128), "Sweet Little Sixteen" (#272) and "Brown Eyed Handsome Man" (#374). In June 2008, his song "Johnny B. Goode" was ranked first in the "100 Greatest Guitar Songs of All Time".
The journalist Chuck Klosterman has argued that in 300 years Berry will still be remembered as the rock musician who most closely captured the essence of rock and roll. "Time" magazine stated, "There was no one like Elvis. But there was 'definitely' no one like Chuck Berry." "Rolling Stone" magazine called him "the father of rock & roll" who "gave the music its sound and its attitude, even as he battled racism - and his own misdeeds - all the way," reporting that Leonard Cohen said, "All of us are footnotes to the words of Chuck Berry." Kevin Strait, curator of the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, DC, said that Berry is "one of the primary sonic architects of rock and roll."
On June 25, 2019, "The New York Times Magazine" listed Chuck Berry among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal Studios fire. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45964 |
No first use
No first use (NFU) refers to a pledge or a policy by a nuclear power not to use nuclear weapons as a means of warfare unless first attacked by an adversary using nuclear weapons. This concept is also applied to chemical and biological warfare in case of the NFU policy of India.
China declared its NFU policy in 1964, and has since maintained this policy.
NATO has repeatedly rejected calls for adopting NFU policy, arguing that pre-emptive nuclear strike is a key option, in order to have a credible deterrent that could compensate for the overwhelming conventional weapon superiority enjoyed by the Soviet Army in the Eurasian land mass. In 1993, Russia dropped a pledge against first use of nuclear weapons made in 1982 by Leonid Brezhnev. In 2000, a Russian military doctrine stated that Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons "in response to a large-scale conventional aggression".
China became the first nation to propose and pledge NFU policy when it first gained nuclear capabilities in 1964, stating "not to be the first to use nuclear weapons at any time or under any circumstances." During the Cold War, China decided to keep the size of its nuclear arsenal small, rather than compete in an international arms race with the United States and the Soviet Union. China has repeatedly reaffirmed its no-first-use policy in recent years, doing so in 2005, 2008, 2009 and again in 2011. China has also consistently called on the United States to adopt a no-first-use policy, to reach an NFU agreement bilaterally with China, and to conclude an NFU agreement among the five nuclear weapon states. The United States has repeatedly refused these calls.
India first adopted a "no first use" policy after its second nuclear tests, Pokhran-II, in 1998. In August 1999, the Indian government released a draft of the doctrine which asserts that nuclear weapons are solely for deterrence and that India will pursue a policy of "retaliation only". The document also maintains that India "will not be the first to initiate a nuclear first strike, but will respond with punitive retaliation should deterrence fail" and that decisions to authorise the use of nuclear weapons would be made by the prime minister or his 'designated successor(s)'. According to the National Research Development Corporation, despite the escalation of tensions between India and Pakistan in 2001–2002, India remained committed to its nuclear no-first-use policy. India is in the process of developing a nuclear doctrine based on "credible minimum deterrence".
In a speech at the National Defence College on October 21, 2010 by India's National Security Advisor, Shivshankar Menon, the wording was changed from "no first use" to "no first use against non-nuclear weapon states", but some argued that it was not a substantive change but "an innocent typographical or lexical error in the text of the speech." Prime Minister Modi has, before the recent general elections, reiterated commitment to a no first use policy. In April 2013, Shyam Saran, convener of the National Security Advisory Board, affirmed that regardless of the size of a nuclear attack against India, be it a tactical nuclear weapon or a strategic nuclear weapon, India will retaliate massively. That was in response to reports that Pakistan had developed a tactical battlefield nuclear weapon in an attempt to supposedly nullify an Indian "no first use" retaliatory doctrine. On 10 November 2016, the Indian Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar questioned the no first use policy of India and asked why should India “bind” itself when it is a “responsible nuclear power.” He clarified that it was his personal opinion.
Indian Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, speaking on the death anniversary of former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee on 16 August 2019, said that India's no first use policy might change depending upon the "circumstances." Vajpayee's government conducted the Pokhran-II nuclear tests in 1998.
Pakistan, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and France say that they will use nuclear weapons against either nuclear or non-nuclear states only in the case of invasion or other attack against their territory or against one of their allies. Historically, NATO military strategy, taking into account the numerical superiority of Warsaw Pact conventional forces, assumed that tactical nuclear weapons would have to be used to defeat a Soviet invasion.
At the 16th NATO summit in April 1999, Germany proposed that NATO adopt a no-first-use policy, but the proposal was rejected.
Russia describes its entire military doctrine as defensive military doctrine.
With regard to nuclear weapons specifically, Russia reserves the right to use nuclear weapons:
The new military doctrine of 2014 does not depart from this stance.
In March 2002, the secretary of state for defence Geoff Hoon stated that the UK was prepared to use nuclear weapons against "rogue states" such as Iraq if they ever used "weapons of mass destruction" against British troops in the field. This policy was restated in February 2003. In April 2017 Defence Secretary Michael Fallon confirmed that the UK would use nuclear weapons in a "pre-emptive initial strike" in "the most extreme circumstances". Fallon stated in a parliamentary answer that the UK has neither a 'first use' or 'no first use' in its nuclear weapon policy so that its adversaries would not know when the UK would launch nuclear strikes.
The United States has refused to adopt a no first use policy and says that it "reserves the right to use" nuclear weapons first in the case of conflict. The US doctrine for the use of nuclear weapons was revised most recently in the Nuclear Posture Review, released April 6, 2010. The 2010 Nuclear Posture review reduces the role of U.S. nuclear weapons, "The fundamental role of U.S. nuclear weapons, which will continue as long as nuclear weapons exist, is to deter nuclear attack on the United States, our allies, and partners." The U.S. doctrine also includes the following assurance to other states: "The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear non-proliferation obligations."
For states eligible for the assurance, the United States would not use nuclear weapons in response to a chemical or biological attack but states that those responsible for such an attack would be held accountable and would face the prospect of a devastating conventional military response. Even for states that are not eligible for the assurance, the United States would consider the use of nuclear weapons only in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States or its allies and partners. The Nuclear Posture Review also notes, "It is in the U.S. interest and that of all other nations that the nearly 65-year record of nuclear non-use be extended forever."
This supersedes the doctrine of the George W. Bush administration set forth in "Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations" and written under the direction of Air Force General Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The new doctrine envisions commanders requesting presidential approval to use nuclear weapons to preempt an attack by a nation or a terrorist group using weapons of mass destruction. The draft also includes the option of using nuclear weapons to destroy known enemy stockpiles of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons.
In August 2016, President Barack Obama reportedly considered adopting a 'No First Use' policy. Obama was persuaded by several Cabinet officials that 'No First Use' would rattle U.S. allies and decided not to take up the policy.
In 2017, there were efforts to either require congressional approval for a pre-emptive nuclear strike or to ban it altogether and impose an NFU policy.
Pakistan's Foreign Minister Shamshad Ahmad warned that if Pakistan is ever invaded or attacked, it will use "any weapon in its arsenal" to defend itself.
Pakistan refuses to adopt a no first use doctrine and indicates that it would launch nuclear weapons even if the other side did not use such weapons first. Pakistan's asymmetric nuclear posture has significant influence on India's ability to retaliate, as shown in 2001 and 2008 crises, when non-state actors carried out deadly terrorist attacks on India, only to be met with a relatively subdued response from India. A military spokesperson stated that "Pakistan's threat of nuclear first-use deterred India from seriously considering conventional military strikes."
Pakistan's National Security Advisor Sartaj Aziz defended the policy of first use. Aziz stated that Pakistan's first use doctrine is entirely deterrent in nature. He explained that it was effective after the 2001 Indian Parliament attack and argued that if Pakistan had a no first use policy, there would have been a major war between the two countries.
Although Israel does not officially confirm or deny having nuclear weapons, the country is widely believed to be in possession of them. Its continued ambiguous stance puts it in a difficult position since to issue a statement pledging 'no first use' would confirm their possession of nuclear weapons.
Israel has said that it "would not be the first country in the Middle East to formally introduce nuclear weapons into the region."
If Israel's very existence is threatened, some speculate that Israel would use a "Samson Option," a "last resort" deterrence strategy of massive retaliation with nuclear weapons, should the State of Israel be substantially damaged and/or near destruction. According to Israeli historian Avner Cohen, Israel's policy on nuclear weapons, which was set down in 1966, revolves around four "red lines" which could lead to an Israeli nuclear response:
Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un stated that North Korea would "not use nuclear weapons first unless aggressive hostile forces use nuclear weapons to invade on our sovereignty" during the 7th Congress of the Workers' Party of Korea in 2016. However, two months earlier, he had threatened a pre-emptive attack against the United States using nuclear weapons over their joint US-South Korean military exercises near the Korean peninsula. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45966 |
Richard Burton
Richard Burton, (; born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr.; 10 November 19255 August 1984) was a Welsh actor. Noted for his baritone voice, Burton established himself as a formidable Shakespearean actor in the 1950s, and he gave a memorable performance of Hamlet in 1964. He was called "the natural successor to Olivier" by critic and dramaturge Kenneth Tynan. An alcoholic, Burton's failure to live up to those expectations disappointed critics and colleagues and fuelled the idea that he had wasted his talent.
Burton was nominated for an Academy Award seven times, but never won an Oscar. He was a recipient of BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and Tony Awards for Best Actor. In the mid-1960s, Burton ascended into the ranks of the top box office stars. By the late 1960s, Burton was one of the highest-paid actors in the world, receiving fees of $1 million or more plus a share of the gross receipts. Burton remained closely associated in the public consciousness with his second wife, actress Elizabeth Taylor. The couple's turbulent relationship was rarely out of the news.
Burton was born Richard Walter Jenkins Jr. on 10 November 1925 in a house at 2 Dan-y-bont in Pontrhydyfen, Glamorgan, Wales. He was the twelfth of thirteen children born to Richard Walter Jenkins Sr. (1876–1957), and Edith Maude Jenkins (née Thomas; 1883–1927). Jenkins Sr., called Daddy Ni by the family, was a coal miner, while his mother worked as a barmaid at a pub called the Miner's Arms, which was also the place where she met and married her husband. According to biographer Melvyn Bragg, Richard is quoted saying that Daddy Ni was a "twelve-pints-a-day man" who sometimes went off on drinking and gambling sprees for weeks, and that "he looked very much like me". He remembered his mother to be "a very strong woman" and "a religious soul with fair hair and a beautiful face".
Richard was barely two years old when his mother died on 31 October, six days after the birth of Graham, the family's thirteenth child. Edith's death was a result of postpartum infections; Richard believed it occurred due to "hygiene neglect". According to biographer Michael Munn, Edith "was fastidiously clean", but that her exposure to the dust from the coal mines resulted in her death. Following Edith's death, Richard's elder sister Cecilia, whom he affectionately addressed as "Cis", and her husband Elfed James, also a miner, took him under their care. Richard lived with Cis, Elfed and their two daughters, Marian and Rhianon, in their three bedroom terraced cottage on 73 Caradoc Street, Taibach, a suburban district in Port Talbot, which Bragg describes as "a tough steel town, English-speaking, grind and grime".
Richard remained forever grateful and loving to Cis throughout his life, later going on to say: "When my mother died she, my sister, had become my mother, and more mother to me than any mother could ever have been ... I was immensely proud of her ... she felt all tragedies except her own". Daddy Ni would occasionally visit the homes of his grown daughters but was otherwise absent. Another important figure in Richard's early life was Ifor, his brother, 19 years his senior. A miner and rugby union player, Ifor "ruled the household with the proverbial firm hand". He was also responsible for nurturing a passion for rugby in young Richard. Although Richard also played cricket, tennis, and table tennis, biographer Bragg notes rugby union football to be his greatest interest. On rugby, Richard said he "would rather have played for Wales at Cardiff Arms Park than Hamlet at The Old Vic". The Welsh rugby union centre, Bleddyn Williams believed Richard "had distinct possibilities as a player".
From the age of five to eight, Richard was educated at the Eastern Primary School while he attended the Boys' segment of the same school from eight to twelve years old. He took a scholarship exam for admission into Port Talbot Secondary School in March 1937 and passed it. Biographer Hollis Alpert notes that both Daddy Ni and Ifor considered Richard's education to be "of paramount importance" and planned to send him to the University of Oxford. Richard became the first member of his family to go to secondary school. He displayed an excellent speaking and singing voice since childhood, even winning an eisteddfod prize as a boy soprano. During his tenure at Port Talbot Secondary School, Richard also showed immense interest in reading poetry as well as English and Welsh literature. He earned pocket money by running messages, hauling horse manure, and delivering newspapers.
Richard was bolstered by winning the Eisteddfod Prize and wanted to repeat his success. He chose to sing Sir Arthur Sullivan's "Orpheus with his Lute" (1866), which biographer Alpert thought "a difficult composition". He requested the help of his schoolmaster, Philip Burton, but his voice cracked during their practice sessions. This incident marked the beginning of his association with Philip. Philip later recalled, "His voice was tough to begin with but with constant practice it became memorably beautiful." Richard made his first foray into theatre with a minor role in his school's production of the Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw's "The Apple Cart". He decided to leave school by the end of 1941 and work as a miner as Elfed was not fit due to illness. He worked for the local wartime Co-operative committee, handing out supplies in exchange for coupons. He also simultaneously considered other professions for his future, including boxing, religion and singing. It was also during this period that Richard took up smoking and drinking despite being underage.
When he joined the Port Talbot Squadron 499 of the Air Training Corps section of the Royal Air Force (RAF) as a cadet, he re-encountered Philip, who was the squadron commander. He also joined the Taibach Youth Center, a youth drama group founded by Meredith Jones and led by Leo Lloyd, a steel worker and avid amateur thespian, who taught him the fundamentals of acting. Richard played the role of an escaped convict in Lloyd's play, "The Bishop's Candlesticks", an adaptation of a section of Victor Hugo's "Les Misérables". The entire play did not have any dialogues, but Alpert noted that Richard "mimed his role". Philip gave him a part in a radio documentary/adaptation of his play for BBC Radio, "Youth at the Helm" (1942). Seeing the talent Richard possessed, both Jones and Philip re-admitted him to school on 5 October 1942. Philip called Richard "my son to all intents and purposes. I was committed to him." Philip tutored his charge intensely in school subjects, and also worked at developing the youth's acting voice, including outdoor voice drills which improved his projection. Richard called the experience "the most hardworking and painful period" in his life.
In autumn of 1943, Philip planned to adopt Richard, but was not able to do so as he was 20 days too young to be 21 years older than his ward, a legal requirement. As a result, Richard became Philip's legal ward and changed his surname to "Richard Burton", after Philip's own surname, by means of deed poll, which Richard's father accepted. It was also in 1943 that Richard qualified for admission into a University after excelling in the School Certificate Examination. Philip requested Richard to study at Exeter College, Oxford as a part of a six-month scholarship program offered by the RAF for qualified cadets prior to active service.
In 1943, Burton played Professor Henry Higgins in a school production of another Shaw play directed by Philip, "Pygmalion". The role won him favourable reviews and caught the attention of the dramatist, Emlyn Williams, who offered Burton a small role of the lead character's elder brother, Glan, in his play "The Druid's Rest". The play debuted at the Royal Court Theatre, Liverpool on 22 November 1943, and later premiered in St Martin's Theatre, London in January 1944. Burton thought the role was "a nothing part" and that he "hardly spoke at all". He was paid ten pounds a week for playing the role, which was "three times what the miners got". Alpert states that the play garnered mixed critical reviews, but James Redfern of the "New Statesman" took notice of Burton's performance and wrote: "In a wretched part, Richard Burton showed exceptional ability." Burton noted that single sentence from Redfern changed his life.
During his tenure at Exeter College, Burton featured as "the complicated sex-driven puritan" Angelo in the Oxford University Dramatic Society's 1944 production of William Shakespeare's "Measure for Measure". The play was directed by Burton's English literature professor, Nevill Coghill, and was performed at the college in the presence of an audience of West End theatre luminaries such as John Gielgud, Terence Rattigan and Binkie Beaumont. On Burton's performance, fellow actor and friend, Robert Hardy recalled, "There were moments when he totally commanded the audience by this stillness. And the voice which would sing like a violin and with a bass that could shake the floor." Gielgud appreciated Burton's performance and Beaumont, who knew about Burton's work in "The Druid's Rest", suggested that he "look him up" after completing his service in the RAF if he still wanted to pursue acting as a profession.
In late 1944, Burton successfully completed his six-month scholarship at Exeter College, Oxford, and went to the RAF classification examinations held in Torquay to train as a pilot. He was disqualified for pilot training due to his eyesight being below par, and was classified as a navigator trainee. He served the RAF as navigator for three years, during which he performed an assignment as Aircraftman 1st Class in a Wiltshire-based RAF Hospital. Burton's habits of drinking and smoking increased during this period; he was involved in a brief casual affair with actress Eleanor Summerfield. Burton was cast in an uncredited and unnamed role of a bombing officer by BBC Third Programme in a 1946 radio adaptation of "In Parenthesis", an epic poem of the First World War by David Jones. Burton was discharged from the RAF on 16 December 1947.
In 1948, Burton moved to London to make contact with H. M. Tennent Ltd., where he again met Beaumont, who put him under a contract of £500 per year (£10 a week). Daphne Rye, the casting director for H. M. Tennent Ltd., offered Burton two rooms on the top floor of her house in Pelham Crescent, London as a place for him to stay. Rye cast Burton in a minor role as a young officer, Mr. Hicks, in "Castle Anna" (1948), a drama set in Ireland.
While touring with the cast and crew members of Wynyard Browne's "Dark Summer", Burton was called by Emlyn Williams for a screen test for his film, "The Last Days of Dolwyn" (1949). Burton performed the screen test for the role of Gareth, which Williams wrote especially for him, and was subsequently selected when Williams sent him a telegram that quoted a line from "The Corn Is Green" "You have won the scholarship." This led to Burton making his mainstream film debut. Filming took place during the summer and early autumn months of 1948. It was on the sets of this film that Burton was introduced by Williams to Sybil Williams, whom he married on 5 February 1949 at a register office in Kensington. "The Last Days of Dolwyn" opened to generally positive critical reviews. Burton was praised for his "acting fire, manly bearing and good looks" and film critic Philip French of "The Guardian" called it an "impressive movie debut". After marrying Sybil, Burton moved to his new address at 6 Lyndhurst Road, Hampstead NW3, where he lived from 1949 to 1956.
Pleased with the feedback Burton received for his performance in "The Last Days of Dolwyn", the film's co-producer Alexander Korda offered him a contract at a stipend of £100 a week, which he signed. The contract enabled Korda to lend Burton to films produced by other companies. Throughout the late 1940s and early 50s, Burton acted in small parts in various British films such as "Now Barabbas" (1949) with Richard Greene and Kathleen Harrison, "The Woman with No Name" (1950) opposite Phyllis Calvert, "Waterfront" (1950) with Harrison; he had a bigger part as Robert Hammond, a spy for a newspaper editor in "Green Grow the Rushes" (1951) alongside Honor Blackman. His performance in "Now Barabbas" received positive feedback from critics. C. A. Lejeune of "The Observer" believed Burton had "all the qualities of a leading man that the British film industry badly needs at this juncture: youth, good looks, a photogenic face, obviously alert intelligence and a trick of getting the maximum effort with the minimum of fuss". For "The Woman With No Name", a critic from "The New York Times" thought Burton "merely adequate" in his role of the Norwegian aviator, Nick Chamerd. Biographer Bragg states the reviews for Burton's performance in "Waterfront" were "not bad", and that "Green Grow the Rushes" was a box office bomb.
Rye recommended Richard to director Peter Glenville for the part of Hephaestion in Rattigan's play about Alexander the Great, "Adventure Story", in 1949. The play was directed by Glenville and starred the then up-and-coming actor Paul Scofield as the titular character. Glenville, however, rejected him as he felt that Burton was too short compared to Scofield. Rye came to the rescue again by sending Burton to audition for a role in "The Lady's Not for Burning", a play by Christopher Fry and directed by Gielgud. The lead roles were played by Gielgud himself, and Pamela Brown, while Burton played a supporting role as Richard alongside the then-relatively unknown actress Claire Bloom. Gielgud was initially uncertain about selecting Burton and asked him to come back the following day to repeat his audition. Burton got the part the second time he auditioned for the role. He was paid £15 a week for the part, which was five more than what Beaumont was paying him. After getting the part, he pushed for a raise in his salary from £10 to £30 a week with Williams' assistance, in addition to the £100 Korda paid him; Beaumont accepted it after much persuasion. Bloom was impressed with Burton's natural way of acting, noting that "he just was" and went further by saying "He was recognisably a star, a fact he didn't question."
The play opened at the Globe Theatre in May 1949 and had a successful run in London for a year. Writer and journalist Samantha Ellis of "The Guardian", in her overview of the play, thought critics found Burton to be "most authentic" for his role. Gielgud took the play to Broadway in the United States, where it opened at the Royale Theatre on 8 November 1950. Theatre critic Brooks Atkinson appreciated the performances and praised the play's "hard glitter of wit and skepticism", while describing Fry as precocious with "a touch of genius". The play ran on Broadway until 17 March 1951, and received the New York Drama Critics' Circle award for the Best Foreign Play of 1951. Burton received the Theatre World Award for his performance, his first major award.
Burton went on to feature in two more plays by Fry "The Boy With A Cart" and "A Phoenix Too Frequent". The former opened at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith in February 1950, while the latter premiered at the Dolphin Theatre, Brighton the following month. Gielgud, who also directed "The Boy With A Cart", said that Burton's role in the play "was one of the most beautiful performances" he had ever seen. During its month-long run, Anthony Quayle, who was on the lookout for a young actor to star as Prince Hal in his adaptations of "Henry IV, Part I" and "Henry IV, Part 2" as a part of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre season for the Festival of Britain, came to see the play and as soon as he beheld Burton, he found his man and got his agreement to play the parts. Both plays opened in 1951 at the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon to mixed reviews, but Burton received acclaim for his role as Prince Hal, with many critics dubbing him "the next Laurence Olivier". Theatre critic and dramaturg Kenneth Tynan said of his performance, "His playing of Prince Hal turned interested speculation to awe almost as soon as he started to speak; in the first intermission local critics stood agape in the lobbies." He was also praised by Humphrey Bogart and his wife Lauren Bacall after both saw the play. Bacall later said of him: "He was just marvellous [...] Bogie loved him. We all did." Burton celebrated his success by buying his first car, a Standard Flying Fourteen, and enjoyed a drink with Bogart at a pub called The Dirty Duck. Philip too was happy with the progress his ward made and that he felt "proud, humble, and awed by god's mysterious ways".
Burton went on to perform in "Henry V" as the titular character, and played Ferdinand in "The Tempest" as a part of the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre season as well. Neither role was overwhelmingly received by the critics, with a reviewer saying "he lacked inches" as Henry V. Olivier defended Burton by retaliating that he too received the same kind of review by the same critic for the same role. His last play in 1951 was as a musician named Orphée in Jean Anouilh's "Eurydice" opposite Dorothy McGuire and fellow Welsh actor Hugh Griffith. The play, retitled as "Legend of Lovers", opened in the Plymouth Theatre, New York City and ran for only a week, but critics were kind to Burton, with Bob Francis of "Billboard" magazine finding him "excellent as the self-tortured young accordionist".
Burton began 1952 by starring alongside Noel Willman in the title role of Emmanuel Roblès adventure "Montserrat", which opened on 8 April at the Lyric Hammersmith. The play only ran for six weeks but Burton once again won praises from critics. According to Bragg, some of the critics who watched the performance considered it to be Burton's "most convincing role" till then. Tynan lauded Burton's role of Captain Montserrat, noting that he played it "with a variousness which is amazing when you consider that it is really little more than a protracted exposition of smouldering dismay".
Burton successfully made the transition to Hollywood on the recommendation of film director George Cukor when he was given the lead role in the Gothic romance film, "My Cousin Rachel" (1952) opposite Olivia de Havilland. Darryl F. Zanuck, co-founder of 20th Century Fox, negotiated a deal with Korda to loan Burton to the company for three films as well as pay Burton a total of $150,000 ($50,000 per film). De Havilland did not get along well with Burton during filming, calling him "a coarse-grained man with a coarse-grained charm and a talent not completely developed, and a coarse-grained which makes him not like anyone else". One of Burton's friends opined it may have been due to Burton making remarks at her that she did not find to be in good taste. While shooting the film, Burton was offered the role of Mark Antony in "Julius Caesar" (1953) by the production company, Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), but Burton refused it to avoid schedule conflicts. The role subsequently went to Marlon Brando for which he earned a BAFTA Award for Best Foreign Actor and an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. Based on the 1951 novel of the same name by Daphne du Maurier, "My Cousin Rachel" is about a man who suspects his rich cousin was murdered by his wife in order to inherit his wealth, but ends up falling in love with her, despite his suspicions. Upon release, the film was a decent grosser at the box office, and Burton's performance received mostly excellent reviews. Bosley Crowther, writing for "The New York Times", appreciated Burton's emotional performance, describing it as "most fetching"; he called him "the perfect hero of Miss du Maurier's tale". The "Los Angeles Daily News" reviewer stated "young Burton registers with an intense performance that stamps him as an actor of great potential". Conversely, a critic from the "Los Angeles Examiner" labelled Burton as "terribly, terribly tweedy". The film earned Burton the Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor and his first Academy Award nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category.
The year 1953 marked an important turning point in Burton's career. He arrived in Hollywood at a time when the studio system was struggling. The rise of television was drawing viewers away and the studios looked to new stars and film technologies to tempt viewers back to cinemas. He first appeared in the war film "The Desert Rats" with James Mason, playing an English captain in the North African campaign during World War II who takes charge of a hopelessly out-numbered Australian unit against the indomitable German field marshal, Erwin Rommel, who was portrayed by Mason. The film received generally good reviews from critics in London, although they complained the British contribution to the campaign had been minimised. The critic from "Variety" magazine thought Burton was "excellent" while "The New York Times" reviewer noted his "electric portrayal of the hero" made the film look "more than a plain, cavalier apology". Burton and Sybil became good friends with Mason and his wife Pamela Mason, and stayed at their residence until Burton returned home to the UK in June 1953 in order to play Prince Hamlet as a part of The Old Vic 1953–54 season. This was to be the first time in his career he took up the role.
Burton's second and final film of the year was in the Biblical epic historical drama, "The Robe", notable for being the first ever motion picture to be made in CinemaScope. He replaced Tyrone Power, who was originally cast in the role of Marcellus Gallio, a noble but decadent Roman military tribune in command of the detachment of Roman soldiers that were involved in crucifying Jesus Christ. Haunted by nightmares of the crucifixion, he is eventually led to his own conversion. Marcellus' Greek slave Demetrius (played by Victor Mature) guides him as a spiritual teacher, and his wife Diana (played by Jean Simmons) follows his lead. The film set a trend for Biblical epics such as "Ben-Hur" (1959). Based on Lloyd C. Douglas' 1942 historical novel of the same name, "The Robe" was well received at the time of its release, but contemporary reviews have been less favourable. "Variety" magazine termed the performances of the lead cast "effective" and complemented the fight sequences between Burton and Jeff Morrow. Crowther believed that Burton was "stalwart, spirited and stern" as Marcellus. Jonathan Rosenbaum of the "Chicago Reader" called "The Robe" "pious claptrap". The film was a commercial success, grossing $17 million against a $5 million budget, and Burton received his second Best Actor nomination at the 26th Academy Awards.
Bolstered by "The Robe"s box office collections, Zanuck offered Burton a seven-year, seven-picture $1 million contract, but he politely turned it down as he was planning to head home to portray "Hamlet" at The Old Vic. Zanuck threatened to force Burton into cutting the deal, but the duo managed to come to a compromise when Burton agreed to a less binding contract, also for seven years and seven films at $1 million, that would begin only after he returned from his stint at The Old Vic's 1953–54 season. The incident spread like wildfire and his decision to walk out on a million dollar contract for a stipend of £150 a week at The Old Vic was met with both appreciation and surprise. Bragg believed Burton defied the studio system with this act when it would have been tantamount to unemployment for him. Gossip columnist Hedda Hopper considered Burton's success in his first three films in Hollywood to be "the most exciting success story since Gregory Peck's contracts of ten years back".
At a party held at Simmons' residence in Bel Air, Los Angeles to celebrate the success of "The Robe", Burton met Elizabeth Taylor for the first time. Taylor, who at the time was married to actor Michael Wilding and was pregnant with their first child, recalled her first impression of Burton being "rather full of himself. I seem to remember that he never stopped talking, and I had given him the cold fish eye." Hamlet was a challenge that both terrified and attracted him, as it was a role many of his peers in the British theatre had undertaken, including Gielgud and Olivier. He shared his anxiety with de Havilland whilst coming to terms with her. Bogart too, didn't make it easy for him when he retorted: "I never knew a man who played "Hamlet" who didn't die broke."
Notwithstanding, Burton began his thirty-nine-week tenure at The Old Vic by rehearsing for "Hamlet" in July 1953, with Philip providing expert coaching on how to make Hamlet's character match Burton's dynamic acting style. Burton reunited with Bloom, who played Ophelia. "Hamlet" opened at the Assembly Hall in Edinburgh, Scotland on September 1953 as part of The Old Vic season during the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. The play and Burton's Hamlet were, on the whole, well received, with critics describing his interpretation of the character as "moody, virile and baleful" and that he had "dash, attack and verve". Burton's Hamlet was quite popular with the young audience, who came to watch the play in numbers as they were quite taken with the aggressiveness with which he portrayed the role. Burton also received appreciation from Winston Churchill. Gielgud was not too happy with Burton's Hamlet and asked him while both were backstage: "Shall I go ahead and wait until you're better?... ah, I mean ready?" Burton picked up the hint and infused some of Gielgud's traits to his own in later performances as Hamlet. A greater success followed in the form of the Roman General Gaius Marcius Coriolanus in "Coriolanus". At first, Burton refused to play Coriolanus as he didn't like the character's initial disdain for the poor and the downtrodden. Michael Benthall, who was renowned for his association with Tyrone Guthrie in a 1944 production of "Hamlet", sought Philip's help to entice Burton into accepting it. Philip convinced Burton by making him realise that it was Coriolanus' "lack of ambivalence" which made him an admirable character. Burton received even better reviews for Coriolanus than Hamlet. Hardy thought Burton's Hamlet was "too strong" but that "His Coriolanus is quite easily the best I've ever seen." Olivier too agreed it was the greatest Coriolanus he had ever seen till then.
Burton's other roles for the season were Sir Toby Belch in "Twelfth Night", Caliban in "The Tempest" and Philip of Cognac in "King John". All five of Burton's plays were directed by Benthall; three of those plays featured Bloom. While Belch was considered "disappointing" due to Burton not putting on the proper make-up for the part, his reviews for Caliban and Philip of Cognac were positive. Alpert believed Burton's presence made the 1953–54 season of The Old Vic a commercial success. Burton was an ardent admirer of poet Dylan Thomas since his boyhood days. On the poet's death on 9 November 1953, he wrote an essay about him and took the time to do a 1954 BBC Radio play on one of his final works, "Under Milk Wood", where he voiced the First Voice in an all-Welsh cast. The entire cast of the radio play, including Burton, did their roles free of charge. Burton reprised his role in the play's 1972 film adaptation with Taylor. Burton was also involved in narrating Lindsay Anderson's short documentary film about The Royal School for the Deaf in Margate, "Thursday's Children" (1954).
After The Old Vic season ended, Burton's contract with Fox required him to do three more films. The first was "Prince of Players" (1955), where he was cast as the 19th-century Shakespearean actor Edwin Booth, who was John Wilkes Booth's brother. Maggie McNamara played Edwin's wife, Mary Devlin Booth. Philip thought the script was "a disgrace" to Burton's name. The film's director Philip Dunne observed, "He hadn't mastered yet the tricks of the great movie stars, such as Gary Cooper, who knew them all. The personal magnetism Richard had on the sound stage didn't come through the camera." This was one aspect that troubled Richard throughout his career on celluloid. The film flopped at the box office and has since been described as "the first flop in CinemaScope". Crowther, however, lauded Burton's scenes where he performed Shakespeare plays such as Richard III.
Shortly after the release of "Prince of Players", Burton met director Robert Rossen, who was well known at the time for his Academy Award-winning film, "All the King's Men" (1949). Rossen planned to cast Burton in "Alexander the Great" (1956) as the eponymous character. Burton accepted Rossen's offer after the director reassured him he had been studying the Macedonian king for two years to make sure the film was historically accurate. Burton was loaned by Fox to the film's production company United Artists, which paid him a fee of $100,000. "Alexander the Great" was made mostly in Spain during February 1955 and July 1955 on a budget of $6 million. The film reunited Burton with Bloom and it was also the first film he made with her. Bloom played the role of Barsine, the daughter of Artabazos II of Phrygia, and one of Alexander's three wives. Fredric March, Danielle Darrieux, Stanley Baker, Michael Hordern and William Squire were respectively cast as Philip II of Macedon, Olympias, Attalus, Demosthenes and Aeschines.
After the completion of "Alexander the Great", Burton had high hopes for a favourable reception of the "intelligent epic", and went back to complete his next assignment for Fox, Jean Negulesco's "The Rains of Ranchipur" (1955). In this remake of Fox's own 1939 film "The Rains Came", Burton played a Hindu doctor, Rama Safti, who falls in love with Lady Edwina Esketh (Lana Turner), an invitee of the Maharani of the fictional town of Ranchipur. Burton faced the same troubles with playing character roles as before with Belch. "The Rains of Ranchipur" released on 16 December 1955, three months before "Alexander the Great" rolled out in 28 March 1956. Contrary to Burton's expectations, both the films were critical and commercial failures, and he rued his decision to act in them. "Time" magazine critic derided "The Rains of Ranchipur" and even went as far as to say Richard was hardly noticeable in the film. A. H. Weiler of "The New York Times", however, called Burton's rendering of Alexander "serious and impassioned".
Burton returned to The Old Vic to perform "Henry V" for a second time. The Benthall-directed production opened in December 1955 to glowing reviews and was a much-needed triumph for Burton. Tynan made it official by famously saying Burton was now "the next successor to Olivier". The reviewer from "The Times" began by pointing out the deficiencies in Burton's previous rendition of the character in 1951 before stating:
Mr. Burton's progress as an actor is such that already he is able to make good all the lacks of a few short years ago ... what was greatly metallic has been transformed into a steely strength which becomes the martial ring and hard brilliance of the patriotic verse. There now appears a romantic sense of a high kingly mission and the clear cognisance of the capacity to fulfil it ... the whole performance — a mostly satisfying one — is firmly under the control of the imagination.
In January 1956, the "London Evening Standard" honoured Burton by presenting to him its Theatre Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Henry V. His success in and as Henry V led him to be called the "Welsh Wizard". "Henry V" was followed by Benthall's adaptation of "Othello" in February 1956, where he alternated on successive openings between the roles of Othello and Iago with John Neville. As Othello, Burton received both praise for his dynamism and criticism with being less poetical with his dialogues, while he was acclaimed as Iago.
Burton's stay at The Old Vic was cut short when he was approached by the Italian neorealist director Roberto Rossellini for Fox's "Sea Wife" (1957), a drama set in World War II about a nun and three men marooned on an island after the ship they travel on is torpedoed by a U-boat. Joan Collins, who played the nun, was his co-star. Burton's role was that of an RAF officer who develops romantic feelings for the nun. Rossellini was informed by Zanuck not to have any kissing scenes between Burton and Collins, which Rossellini found unnatural; this led to him walking out of the film and being replaced by Bob McNaught, one of the executive producers. According to Collins, Burton had a "take-the-money-and-run attitude" toward the film. "Sea Wife" was not a successful venture, with biographer Munn observing that his salary was the only positive feature that came from the film. Philip saw it and said he was "ashamed" that it added another insult to injury in Burton's career.
After "Sea Wife", Burton next appeared as the British Army Captain Jim Leith in Nicholas Ray's "Bitter Victory" (1957). Burton admired Ray's "Rebel Without A Cause" (1955) and was excited about working with him, but unfortunately despite positive feedback, "Bitter Victory" tanked as well. By mid-1957, Burton had no further offers in his kitty. He could not return to the UK because of his self-imposed exile from taxation, and his fortunes in film were dwindling. It was then that film producer and screenwriter Milton Sperling offered Burton to star alongside Helen Hayes and Susan Strasberg in Patricia Moyes' adaptation of Jean Anoulih's play, "Time Remembered" ("Léocadia" in the original French version). Sensing an opportunity for a career resurgence, Burton readily agreed to do the role of Prince Albert, who falls in love with a milliner named Amanda (Strasberg). It was on 10 September 1957, a day before he left for New York, that Sybil gave birth to their first child, Kate Burton. "Time Remembered" was well received on its opening nights at Broadway's Morosco Theatre and also at the National Theatre in Washington, D.C.. The play went on to have a good run of 248 performances for six months. Burton received his first Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play nomination while Hayes won her second Tony Award for Best Actress in a Play for her role as Burton's mother, The Duchess of Pont-Au-Bronc.
In 1958, Burton appeared with Yvonne Furneaux in DuPont Show of the Month's 90-minute television adaptation of Emily Brontë's classic novel "Wuthering Heights" as Heathcliff. The film, directed by Daniel Petrie, aired on 9 May 1958 on CBS with Burton garnering plaudits from both the critics and Philip, who thought he was "magnificent" in it.
Burton next featured as Jimmy Porter, "an angry young man" role, in the film version of John Osborne's play "Look Back in Anger" (1959), a gritty drama about middle-class life in the British Midlands, directed by Tony Richardson, again with Claire Bloom as co-star. Biographer Bragg observed that "Look Back in Anger" "had defined a generation, provided a watershed in Britain's view of itself and brought [Osborne] into the public prints as a controversial, dangerous figure". Burton was able to identify himself with Porter, finding it "fascinating to find a man who came presumably from my sort of class, who actually could talk the way I would like to talk". The film, and Burton's performance, received mixed reviews upon release. Biographer Alpert noted that though reviews in the UK were favourable, those in the United States were more negative. Crowther wrote of Burton: "His tirades are eloquent but tiring, his breast beatings are dramatic but dull and his occasional lapses into sadness are pathetic but endurable." Geoff Andrew of "Time Out" magazine felt Burton was too old for the part, and the "Variety" reviewer thought "the role gives him little opportunity for variety". Contemporary reviews of the film have been better and it has a rating of 89% on the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. "Look Back in Anger" is now considered one of the defining films of the British New Wave cinema, a movement from the late 1950s to the late 1960s in which working-class characters became the focus of the film and conflict of social classes a central theme. Jimmy Porter is also considered as one of Burton's best on-screen roles; he was nominated in the Best Actor categories at the BAFTA and Golden Globe Awards but lost to Peter Sellers for "I'm All Right Jack" (1959) and Anthony Franciosa for "Career" (1959) respectively. Though it didn't do well commercially, Burton was proud of the effort and wrote to Philip, "I promise you that there isn't a shred of self-pity in my performance. I am for the first time ever looking forward to seeing a film in which I play." While filming "Look Back in Anger", Burton did another play for BBC Radio, participating in two versions, one in Welsh and another in English, of Welsh poet Saunders Lewis' "Brad", which was about the 20 July plot. Burton voiced one of the conspirators, Caesar von Hofacker.
In 1960, Burton appeared in two films for Warner Bros., neither of which were successful: "The Bramble Bush" which reunited him with his "Wuthering Heights" director Petrie, and Vincent Sherman's adaptation of Edna Ferber's "Ice Palace". Burton called the latter a "piece of shit". He received a fee of $125,000 for both films. Burton's next appearance was as the stammering secularist, George Holyoake in BBC's documentary-style television adaptation of John Osborne's "A Subject of Scandal and Concern". According to Osborne's biographer Luc Gilleman, the film garnered little attention. Burton returned to the United States for the filming of John Frankenheimer's television adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's "The Fifth Column". He also provided narration for 26 episodes of "The Valiant Years", an American Broadcasting Company (ABC) series based on Winston Churchill's memoirs.
Burton made a triumphant return to the stage with Moss Hart's 1960 Broadway production of "Camelot" as King Arthur. The play, written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, had Julie Andrews fresh from her triumph in "My Fair Lady" playing Guinevere, and Robert Goulet as Lancelot completing the love triangle. Roddy McDowall played the villainous Mordred. Hart first came up with the proposal to Burton after learning from Lerner about his ability to sing. Burton consulted Olivier on whether he should take the role, which came with a stipend of $4,000 a week. Olivier pointed out this salary was good and that he should accept the offer. The production was troubled, with both Loewe and Hart falling ill and the pressure was building due to great expectations and huge advance sales. The show's running time was nearly five hours. Burton's intense preparation and competitive desire to succeed served him well. He immediately drafted Philip, who revised the musical's script and cut its running time to three hours while also incorporating three new songs. Burton was generous and supportive to everyone throughout the production and coached the understudies himself. According to Lerner, "he kept the boat from rocking, and "Camelot" might never have reached New York if it hadn't been for him". Burton's reviews were excellent, with the critic from "Time" magazine observing that Richard "gives Arthur the skillful and vastly appealing performance that might be expected from one of England's finest young actors". Broadway theatre reviewer Walter Kerr noted Richard's syllables, "sing, the account of his wrestling the stone from the sword becomes a bravura passage of house-hushing brilliance" and complemented his duets with Andrews, finding Burton's rendition to possess "a sly and fretful and mocking accent to take care of the without destroying the man".
However, on the whole the play initially received mixed reviews on its opening at the Majestic Theatre on Broadway and was slow to earn money. Advance sales managed to keep "Camelot" running for three months until a twenty-minute extract was broadcast on "The Ed Sullivan Show" which helped "Camelot" achieve great success, and an unprecedented three-year run overall from 1960 to 1963. Its success led to Burton being called "The King of Broadway", and he went on to receive the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Musical. The original soundtrack of the musical topped the "Billboard" charts throughout 1961 after its release at the end of 1960. John F. Kennedy, who was then the President of the United States, reportedly enjoyed the play and invited Burton to the White House for a visit. In 1962, Burton appeared as Officer David Campbell, an RAF fighter pilot in "The Longest Day", which included a large ensemble cast featuring: McDowall, George Segal, Henry Fonda, John Wayne, Mel Ferrer, Robert Mitchum, Rod Steiger and Sean Connery. The same year he provided narration for the Jack Howells documentary "Dylan Thomas". The short won the Best Documentary Short Subject at the 35th Academy Awards ceremony.
After performing "Camelot" for six months, in July 1961, Burton met producer Walter Wanger who asked him to replace Stephen Boyd as Mark Antony in director Joseph L. Mankiewicz's magnum opus "Cleopatra". Burton was paid $250,000 for four months work in the film. The gigantic scale of the film's troubled production, Taylor's bouts of illness and fluctuating weight, Burton's off-screen relationship with the actress, (which he gave the sardonic nickname "Le Scandale") all generated enormous publicity; "Life" magazine proclaimed it the "Most Talked About Movie Ever Made". Fox's future appeared to hinge on what became the most expensive movie ever made until then, with costs reaching almost $40 million. During filming, Burton met and fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, who was then married to Eddie Fisher. According to Alpert, at their first meeting on the set while posing for their publicity photographs, Burton said, "Has anyone ever told you that you're a very pretty girl?" Taylor later recalled, "I said to myself, "Oy gevalt", here's the great lover, the great wit, the great intellectual of Wales, and he comes out with a line like that." Bragg contradicts Alpert by pointing out that Burton could not stand Taylor at first, calling her "Miss Tits" and opined to Mankiewicz, "I expect she shaves"; he saw her simply as another celebrity with no acting talent. All that changed when, in their first scene together, Burton was shaky and forgot his lines, and she soothed and helped him; it was at this instance, according to Taylor, that she fell for him. Soon the affair began in earnest; both Fisher and Sybil were unable to bear it. While Fisher fled the sets for Gstaad, Sybil went first to Céligny and then headed off to London. Olivier, shocked by Burton's affair with Taylor, cabled him: "Make up your mind, dear heart. Do you want to be a great actor or a household word?". Burton replied "Both".
"Cleopatra" was finally released on 11 June 1963 with a run time of 243 minutes, to polarising reviews. The "Time" magazine critic found the film, "riddled with flaws, [lacking] style both in image and in action" and that Burton "staggers around looking ghastly and spouting irrelevance". In a contradictory review, Crowther termed the film "generally brilliant, moving, and satisfying" and thought Burton was "exciting as the arrogant Antony". Richard Brody of "The New Yorker" commented positively on the chemistry between Burton and Taylor, describing it as "entrancing in the movie’s drama as it was in life". "Cleopatra" grossed over $26 million, becoming one of the highest-grossing films of 1963. It was not enough to prevent Fox from entering bankruptcy. The studio sued Burton and Taylor for allegedly damaging the film's prospects at the box office with their behaviour, but it proved unsuccessful. "Cleopatra" was nominated for nine Academy Awards, winning for Best Production Design, Best Costume Design and Best Visual Effects.
The film marked the beginning of a series of collaborations with Taylor, in addition to making Burton one of the Top 10 box office draws until 1967. Burton played her tycoon husband Paul Andros in Anthony Asquith's "The V.I.P.s" (1963), an ensemble cast film described by Alpert as a "kind of "Grand Hotel" story" that was set in the VIP lounge of London Heathrow Airport; it proved to be a box-office hit despite mixed reviews. It was after "The V.I.P.s" that Burton became considerably more selective about his roles; he credited Taylor for this as he simply acted in films "to get rich" and she "made me see what kind of rubbish I was doing". Burton divorced Sybil in April 1963 after completing "The V.I.P.s" while Taylor was granted divorce from Fisher on 6 March 1964. Taylor then took a two-year hiatus from films until her next venture with Burton, "The Sandpiper" (1965). The supercouple, dubbed "Liz and Dick" by the press, continued starring together in films in the mid-1960s, earning a combined $88 million over the next decade and spending $65 million. Regarding their earnings, in a 1976 interview with Lester David and Jhan Robbins of "The Ledger", Burton stated that "they say we generate more business activity than one of the smaller African nations" and that the couple "often outspent" the Greek business tycoon Aristotle Onassis.
In 1964, Burton portrayed Thomas Becket, the Archbishop of Canterbury who was martyred by Henry II of England, in the film adaptation of Jean Anouilh's historical play "Becket". Both Alpert and historian Alex von Tunzelmann noted Burton gave an effective, restrained performance, contrasting with co-actor and friend Peter O'Toole's manic portrayal of Henry. Burton asked the film's director, Peter Glenville, not to oust him from the project like he had done for "Adventure Story" before accepting the role of Becket. Writing for "The Christian Science Monitor", Peter Rainer labelled Burton as "extraordinary". Kenneth Turan of the "Los Angeles Times" appreciated Burton's on-screen chemistry with O'Toole and thought his portrayal of Becket served as "a reminder of how fine an actor Burton was". The film received twelve Oscar nominations, including Best Actor for both Burton and O'Toole; they lost to Harrison for "My Fair Lady" (1964). Burton and O'Toole also received nominations for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama at the 22nd Golden Globe Awards, with O'Toole emerging victorious. Burton's triumph at the box office continued with his next appearance as the defrocked clergyman Dr. T. Lawrence Shannon in Tennessee Williams' "The Night of the Iguana" (1964) directed by John Huston; the film was also critically well received. Alpert believed Burton's success was due to how well he varied his acting with the three female characters, each of whom he tries to seduce differently: Ava Gardner (the randy hotel owner), Sue Lyon (the nubile American tourist), and Deborah Kerr (the poor, repressed artist). The success of "Becket" and "The Night of the Iguana" led "Time" magazine to term him "the new Mr. Box Office".
During the production of "Becket", Burton went to watch Gielgud perform in the 1963 stage adaptation of Thornton Wilder's 1948 novel, "The Ides of March". There he was confronted by Gielgud who asked what Burton planned to do as a part of the celebration of Shakespeare's quatercentenary. Burton told him he was approached by theatrical producer Alexander H. Cohen to do "Hamlet" in New York City. Burton had accepted Cohen's offer under the condition that Gielgud would direct it, which he convened to him. Gielgud agreed and soon production began in January 1964 after Burton had completed his work in "Becket" and "The Night of the Iguana". Taking into account Burton's dislike for wearing period clothing, as well as fellow actor Harley Granville-Barker’s notion that the play was best approached as a "permanent rehearsal", Gielgud decided for "Hamlet" to be performed in a 'rehearsal' version with an incomplete set with the actors performing wearing their own clothes. Unaccustomed to this freedom, the cast found it hard to select the appropriate clothes and wore different attire day by day. After the first performance in Toronto, Gielgud decreed that the actors must wear capes as he felt it "lacked colour". In addition to being the play's director, Gielgud appeared as the Ghost of Hamlet's father. According to Gielgud's biographer Jonathan Croall, Burton's basic reading of Hamlet was "a much more vigorous, extrovert" version of Gielgud's own performance in 1936. Burton varied his interpretations of the character in later performances; he even tried a homosexual Hamlet.
When the play debuted at the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in New York City, Burton garnered good reviews for his portrayal of a "bold and virile" Hamlet. Howard Taubman of "The New York Times" called it "a performance of electrical power and sweeping virility", noting that he had never known or seen "a Hamlet of such tempestuous manliness". A critic from "Time" magazine said that Burton "put his passion into Hamlet's language rather than the character. His acting is a technician's marvel. His voice has gem-cutting precision." Walter Kerr felt that though Burton carried "a certain lack of feeling" in his performance, he appreciated Burton's "reverberating" vocal projections. The opening night party was a lavish affair, attended by six hundred celebrities. The play ran for 137 performances, beating the previous record set by Gielgud himself in 1936. The most successful aspect of the production, apart from Burton's performance, was generally considered to be Hume Cronyn's performance as Polonius, winning him the only Tony Award he would ever receive in a competitive category. Burton himself was nominated for his second Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play but lost to Alec Guinness for his portrayal of the poet Dylan Thomas. The performance was immortalised in a film that was created by recording three live performances on camera from 30 June 1964 to 1 July 1964 using a process called Electronovision; it played in US theatres for a week in 1964. The play was also the subject of books written by cast members William Redfield and Richard L. Sterne.
Burton helped Taylor make her stage debut in "A Poetry Reading", a recitation of poems by the couple as well as anecdotes and quotes from the plays Burton had participated in thus far. The idea was conceived by Burton as a benefit performance for his mentor Philip, whose conservatory, the American Musical and Dramatic Academy, had fallen short of funds. "A Poetry Reading" opened at the Lunt-Fontanne on 21 June 1964 to a packed house; the couple received a standing ovation at the end of their performance. Burton remarked on Taylor's performance, "I didn't know she was going to be this good."
After "Hamlet" came to a close in August 1964, Burton and Taylor continued making films together. The first film after their marriage, "The Sandpiper", was poorly received but still became a commercially successful venture. According to Bragg, the films they made during the mid-1960s contained a lot of innuendos that referred directly to their private lives. Burton went on to star opposite Claire Bloom and Oskar Werner in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" (1965), a Cold War espionage story about a British Intelligence agent, Alec Leamas (Burton), who is sent to East Germany on a mission to find and expose a mole working within his organisation for an East German Intelligence officer, Hans-Dieter Mundt (Peter van Eyck). Martin Ritt, the film's director and producer, wanted Burton's character to exhibit more anonymity, which meant no display of eloquent speeches or intense emotional moments. Bragg believed this decision worried Burton, as he had generated his reputation as an actor with those exact traits, and wondered how the film's would turn out. Ritt, a non-drinker, was displeased with Burton's drinking habits as he felt it "lacked a certain discipline" and expected the same level of commitment from him as everyone else during filming. In spite of their differences, Alpert notes that the film transpired well. Based on the 1963 novel of the same name by John le Carré, "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold" garnered positive reviews, with Fernando F. Croce of "Slant Magazine" describing Burton's performance as more of "tragic patsy than swashbuckler" and believed his scenes with Werner "have sharp doses of suspicion, cynicism and sadness". Dave Kehr of the "Chicago Reader" called the film "Grim, monotonous, and rather facile", he found Burton's role had "some honest poignancy". "Variety" thought Burton fitted "neatly into the role of the apparently burned out British agent". Burton also made a brief appearance the same year in Clive Donner's comedy "What's New Pussycat?" as a man who meets the womaniser Michael James (O'Toole) in a bar.
In 1966, Burton and Taylor enjoyed their greatest on-screen success in Mike Nichols's film version of Edward Albee's black comedy play Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, in which a bitter erudite couple trade vicious barbs in front of their guests, Nick (George Segal) and Honey (Sandy Dennis). Burton wanted Taylor for the character of Martha "to stop everyone else from playing it". He didn't want anyone else to do it as he thought it could be for Elizabeth what "Hamlet" was for him. Burton was not the first choice for the role of George. Jack Lemmon was offered the role initially, but when he turned it down, Warner Bros. president Jack L. Warner agreed on Burton and paid him $750,000. Nichols was hired to helm the project at Taylor's request, despite having never directed a film. Albee preferred Bette Davis and James Mason for Martha and George respectively, fearing that the Burtons' strong screen presence would dominate the film. Instead, it proved to be what Alpert described as "the summit of both Richard's and Elizabeth's careers".
The film's script, adapted from Albee's play by Ernest Lehman, broke new ground for its raw language and harsh depiction of marriage. So immersed had the Burtons become in the roles of George and Martha over the months of shooting that, after it was wrapped up, he and Taylor found it difficult not to be George and Martha, "I feel rather lost." Later the couple would state that the film took its toll on their relationship, and that Taylor was "tired of playing Martha" in real life. "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" garnered critical acclaim, with film critic Stanley Kauffmann of "The New York Times" calling it "one of the most scathingly honest American films ever made". Kaufman observed Burton to be "utterly convincing as a man with a great lake of nausea in him, on which he sails with regret and compulsive amusement", and Taylor "does the best work of her career, sustained and urgent". In her review for "The New York Daily News", Kate Cameron thought Taylor "nothing less than brilliant as the shrewish, slovenly. blasphemous, frustrated, slightly wacky, alcoholic wife" while noting that the film gave Burton "a chance to display his disciplined art in the role of the victim of a wife’s vituperative tongue". However, Andrew Sarris of "The Village Voice" criticised Taylor, believing her performance "lack[ed] genuine warmth" but his review of Burton was more favourable, noting that he gave "a performance of electrifying charm". Although all four actors received Academy Award nominations for their roles in the film, which received a total of thirteen nominations, only Taylor and Dennis went on to win. Both Burton and Taylor won their first BAFTA Awards for Best British Actor and Best British Actress respectively; the former also for his role in "The Spy Who Came in from the Cold".
Burton and Taylor next performed a 1966 Oxford Playhouse adaptation of Christopher Marlowe's "Doctor Faustus"; the couple did the play to benefit the Oxford University Dramatic Society and as a token of Burton's gratitude to Nevill Coghill. Burton starred as the titular character, Doctor Faustus while Taylor played her first stage role as Helen of Troy, a non-speaking part. The play received negative reviews but Burton's and Taylor's performances were reviewed constructively. Irving Wardle of "The Times" called it "University drama at its worst" while the American newspaper columnist John Crosby, in his review for "The Observer", lauded Burton's speech where he asks God to be merciful, stating that: "It takes a great actor to deliver that speech without wringing a strangled sob of laughter out of one. But Burton did it." The play nevertheless made $22,000 dollars, which Coghill was happy with. "Doctor Faustus" was adapted for the screen the following year by both Burton and Coghill, with Burton making his directorial debut. He also co-produced the film with Taylor and Coghill; it was critically panned and was a box office failure. The couple's next collaboration was Franco Zeffirelli's lively version of Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew" (1967). The film was a challenge for Burton, who had to chase Taylor on rooftops, noting that he was "permitted to do extreme physical things that wouldn't have been allowed with any other actress". Zeffirelli recalled that Taylor, who had no prior experience performing in a Shakespeare play, "gave the more interesting performance because she invented the part from scratch". Of Burton, the director felt he was, to an extent, "affected by his knowledge of the classics". "The Taming of the Shrew" also became a notable critical and commercial success. He had another quick collaboration with Zeffirelli narrating the documentary, "", which was about the 1966 flood of the Arno that devastated the city of Florence, Italy; the film raised $20 million for the flood relief efforts. By the end of 1967, the combined box office gross of films Burton and Taylor had acted in had reached $200 million. According to biographers John Cottrell and Fergus Cashin, when Burton and Taylor contemplated taking a three-month break from acting, Hollywood "almost had a nervous breakdown" as nearly half the U.S. cinema industry's income for films in theatrical distribution came from pictures starring one or both of them. Later collaborations from the Burtons like "The Comedians" (1967), which was based on Graham Greene's 1966 novel of the same name, and the Tennessee Williams adaptation "Boom!" (1968) were critical and commercial failures.
In 1969, Burton enjoyed a commercial blockbuster with Clint Eastwood in the World War II action film "Where Eagles Dare"; he received a $1 million fee plus a share of the film's box office gross. According to his daughter Kate Burton, “He did that one for us kids, because we kept asking him, 'Can you do a fun movie that we can go see?" Eastwood thought the script "terrible" and was "all exposition and complications". He asked the film's producer Elliott Kastner and its screenwriter Alistair MacLean to be given less dialogue, later remarking "I just stood around firing my machine gun while Burton handled the dialogue." Burton enjoyed working with Eastwood and said of the picture that he "did all the talking and [Eastwood] did all the killing". Burton's last film of the decade, "Anne of the Thousand Days" (1969) for which he was paid $1.25 million, was commercially successful but garnered mixed opinions from reviewers. Noted British film critic Tom Milne of "Time Out" magazine believed that Burton "plays throughout on a monotonous note of bluff ferocity". Conversely, Vincent Canby of "The New York Times" appreciated Burton's portrayal of the English monarch, noting that he "is in excellent form and voice—funny, loutish and sometimes wise". "Anne of the Thousand Days" received ten nominations at the 42nd Academy Awards, including one for Burton's performance as Henry VIII of England, which many thought to be largely the result of an expensive advertising campaign by Universal Studios. The same year, "Staircase" in which he and his "Cleopatra" co-star Rex Harrison appeared as a bickering homosexual couple, received negative reviews and was unsuccessful.
In 1970, on his 45th birthday, Burton was ceremonially honoured with a CBE at Buckingham Palace; Taylor and Cis were present during the ceremony. He attributed not having a knighthood to changing his residence from London to Céligny to escape taxes. From the 1970s, after his completion of "Anne of the Thousand Days", Burton began to work in mediocre films, which hurt his career. This was partly due to the Burtons' extravagant spending, his increasing addiction to alcohol, and his claim that he could not "find any worthy material that is pertinent to our times". He recognised his financial need to work, and understood in the New Hollywood era of cinema, neither he nor Taylor would be paid as well as at the height of their stardom. Some of the films he made during this period include: "Bluebeard" (1972), "Hammersmith Is Out" (1972), "The Klansman" (1974), and "" (1977). His last film with Taylor was the two-part melodrama "Divorce His, Divorce Hers" (1973). He did enjoy one major critical success in the 1970s with the film version of his stage hit "Equus", winning the Golden Globe Award as well as garnering an Academy Award nomination. Public sentiment towards his perennial frustration at not winning an Oscar made many pundits consider him the favourite to finally win the award, but he lost to Richard Dreyfuss in "The Goodbye Girl".
In 1976, Burton received a Grammy Award in the category of Best Recording for Children for his narration of "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. His narration of "Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds" became such a necessary part of the concept album that a hologram of Burton was used to narrate the live stage show (touring in 2006, 2007, 2009 and 2010) of the musical. In 2011, however, Liam Neeson was cast in the part for a "New Generation" re-recording, and replaced Burton as the hologram character in the stage show.
Burton had an international box-office hit with "The Wild Geese" (1978), an adventure tale about mercenaries in Africa. The film was a success in Europe but had only limited distribution in the United States owing to the collapse of the studio that distributed it. He returned to films with "The Medusa Touch" (1978), "Circle of Two" (1980), and the title role in "Wagner" (1983). His last film performance as O'Brien in "Nineteen Eighty-Four" (1984) was critically acclaimed though he was not the first choice for the role. According to the film's director, Michael Radford, Paul Scofield was originally contracted to play the part, but had to withdraw due to a broken leg; Sean Connery, Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger were all approached before Burton was cast. He had "heard stories" about Burton's heavy drinking, which had concerned the producers.
At the time of his death, Burton was preparing to film "Wild Geese II", the sequel to "The Wild Geese", which was eventually released in 1985. Burton was to reprise the role of Colonel Faulkner, while Laurence Olivier was cast as Rudolf Hess. After his death, Burton was replaced by Edward Fox, and the character changed to Faulkner's younger brother.
Burton was married five times, twice consecutively to Taylor. From 1949 until 1963, he was married to Sybil Williams, with whom he had two daughters, Kate (born 1957) and Jessica Burton (born 1959). His marriages to Taylor lasted from 15 March 1964 to 26 June 1974 and from 10 October 1975 to 29 July 1976. Their first wedding was at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Montreal. Of their marriage, Taylor proclaimed, "I'm so happy you can't believe it. This marriage will last forever." Their second wedding took place sixteen months after their divorce, in Chobe National Park in Botswana. Taylor and Eddie Fisher adopted a daughter from Germany, Maria Burton (born 1 August 1961), who was re-adopted by Burton after he and Taylor married. Burton also re-adopted Taylor and producer Mike Todd's daughter, Elizabeth Frances "Liza" Todd (born 6 August 1957), who had been first adopted by Fisher.
The relationship Burton and Taylor portrayed in the film "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" was popularly likened to their real-life marriage. Burton disagreed with others about Taylor's famed beauty, saying that calling her "the most beautiful woman in the world is absolute nonsense. She has wonderful eyes, but she has a double chin and an overdeveloped chest, and she's rather short in the leg." In August 1976, a month after his second divorce from Taylor, Burton married model Suzy Miller, the former wife of Formula 1 Champion James Hunt; the marriage ended in divorce in 1982. From 1983 until his death in 1984, Burton was married to make-up artist Sally Hay.
In 1957, Burton had earned at total of £82,000 from "Prince of Players", "The Rains of Ranchipur" and "Alexander the Great", but only managed to keep £6,000 for personal expenses due to taxation regulations imposed by the then-ruling Conservative Party. As a result, he consulted with his lawyer, Aaron Frosch, who suggested he move to Switzerland where the tax payment was comparatively less. Burton acceded to Frosch's suggestion and moved with Sybil in January 1957 to Céligny, Switzerland where he purchased a villa. In response to criticism from the British government, Burton remarked: "I believe that everyone should pay them —except actors." Burton lived there until his death. In 1968, Burton's elder brother, Ifor, slipped and fell, breaking his neck, after a lengthy drinking session with Burton in Céligny. The injury left him paralysed from the neck down. His younger brother Graham Jenkins opined it may have been guilt over this that caused Burton to start drinking very heavily, particularly after Ifor died in 1972.
In a February 1975 interview with his friend, David Lewin, he said he "tried" homosexuality. He also suggested that perhaps all actors were latent homosexuals, and "we cover it up with drink". In 2000, Ellis Amburn's biography of Elizabeth Taylor suggested that Burton had an affair with Olivier and tried to seduce Eddie Fisher, although this was strongly denied by Burton's younger brother Graham Jenkins.
Burton was a heavy smoker. In a December 1977 interview with Sir Ludovic Kennedy, Burton admitted he was smoking 60–100 cigarettes per day. According to his younger brother, as stated in Graham Jenkins's 1988 book "Richard Burton: My Brother", he smoked at least a hundred cigarettes a day. His father, also a heavy drinker, refused to acknowledge his son's talents, achievements and acclaim. In turn, Burton declined to attend his father's funeral after the elder Burton died from a cerebral haemorrhage in January 1957 at age 81.
In November 1974, Burton was banned permanently from BBC productions for writing two newspaper articles questioning the sanity of Winston Churchill and others in power during World War II – Burton reported hating them "virulently" for the alleged promise to wipe out all Japanese people on the planet. The publication of these articles coincided with what would have been Churchill's centenary, and came after Burton had played him in a favourable light in "A Walk with Destiny", with considerable help from the Churchill family. Politically Burton was a lifelong socialist, although he was never as heavily involved in politics as his close friend Stanley Baker. He admired Democratic Senator Robert F. Kennedy and once got into a sonnet-quoting contest with him. In 1973, Burton agreed to play Josip Broz Tito in a film biography, since he admired the Yugoslav leader. While filming in Yugoslavia he publicly proclaimed that he was a communist, saying he felt no contradiction between earning vast sums of money for films and holding left-wing views since "unlike capitalists, I don't exploit other people".
Burton courted further controversy in 1976 when he wrote an unsolicited article for "The Observer" about his friend and fellow Welsh thespian Stanley Baker, who had recently died from pneumonia at the age of 48; the article upset Baker's widow with its depiction of her late husband as an uncultured womaniser.
Melvyn Bragg, in the notes of his "Richard Burton: A Life", says that Burton told Laurence Olivier around 1970 of his (unfulfilled) plans to make his own film of "Macbeth" with Elizabeth Taylor, knowing that this would hurt Olivier because he had failed to gain funding for his own cherished film version more than a decade earlier.
On his religious views, Burton was an atheist, stating, "I wish I could believe in a God of some kind but I simply cannot."
Burton admired and was inspired by the actor and dramatist Emlyn Williams. He employed his son, Brook Williams, as his personal assistant and adviser, and he was given small roles in some of the films in which Burton starred.
Burton was an alcoholic who reportedly nearly died in 1974 from excessive drinking. According to biographer Robert Sellers, "At the height of his boozing in the mid-70s he was knocking back three to four bottles of hard liquor a day."
After nearly drinking himself to death during the shooting of "The Klansman" (1974), Burton dried out at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Burton was allegedly inebriated while making the movie, and many of his scenes had to be filmed with him sitting or lying down due to his inability to stand upright. In some scenes, he appears to slur his words or speak incoherently. According to his own diaries, he used Antabuse to try to stop his excessive consumption of alcohol, which he blamed for wrecking his marriage to Elizabeth Taylor. Burton himself said of the time leading up to his near loss of life, "I was fairly sloshed for five years. I was up there with John Barrymore and Robert Newton. The ghosts of them were looking over my shoulder."
Burton said that he turned to the bottle for solace "to burn up the flatness, the stale, empty, dull deadness that one feels when one goes offstage".
The 1988 biography by Melvyn Bragg provides a detailed description of the many health issues that plagued Burton throughout his life. In his youth, Burton was a star athlete and well known for his athletic abilities and strength.
By the age of 41, he had declined so far in health that by his own admission his arms were thin and weak. He suffered from bursitis, possibly aggravated by faulty treatment, arthritis, dermatitis, cirrhosis of the liver, and kidney disease, as well as developing, by his mid-forties, a pronounced limp. How much of this was due to his intake of alcohol is impossible to ascertain, according to Bragg, because of Burton's reluctance to be treated for alcohol addiction. In 1974, Burton spent six weeks in a clinic to recuperate from a period during which he had drunk three bottles of vodka a day. He was also a chain smoker, with an intake of between three and five packs a day for most of his adult life. Health issues continued to plague him until his death at the age of 58.
Burton died at age 58 from a brain haemorrhage on 5 August 1984 at his home in Céligny, Switzerland, where he was later buried. Although his death was sudden, his health had been declining for several years, and he suffered from constant and severe neck pain. As early as March 1970, he had been warned that his liver was enlarged, and he was diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver and kidney disease in April 1981. Burton was buried with a copy of Dylan Thomas' poems. He and Taylor had discussed being buried together; his widow Sally purchased the plot next to Burton's and erected a large headstone across both, presumably to prevent Taylor from being buried there.
Burton left an estate worth US$4.58 million. The bulk of his estate consisted of real estate, investments in three countries and works of art. The bulk of his estate was bequeathed to his widow.
For his contributions to cinema, Burton was inducted posthumously into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2013 with a motion pictures star located at 6336 Hollywood Boulevard. For his contributions to theater, Burton was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame.
Selected works, based on award nominations
!colspan="3" style="background:#C1D8FF;"| Husband of Elizabeth Taylor | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45967 |
Tom Jones (singer)
Sir Thomas John Woodward (born 7 June 1940), known professionally as Tom Jones, is a Welsh singer. His career began with a string of top-ten hits in the mid-1960s. He has toured regularly, with appearances in Las Vegas (1967–2011). Jones's voice has been described by Stephen Thomas Erlewine of AllMusic as a "full-throated, robust baritone".
His performing range has included pop, R&B, show tunes, country, dance, soul and gospel. In 2008, the "New York Times" called Jones a musical "shape shifter", who could "slide from soulful rasp to pop croon, with a voice as husky as it was pretty". Jones has sold over 100 million records, with 36 Top 40 hits in the UK and 19 in the US, including "It's Not Unusual", "What's New Pussycat", the theme song for the 1965 James Bond film "Thunderball", "Green, Green Grass of Home", "Delilah", "She's a Lady", "Kiss" and "Sex Bomb".
Jones made his acting debut playing the lead role in the 1979 television film "Pleasure Cove". He played himself in Tim Burton's 1996 film "Mars Attacks!". In 1970 he received a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Television Series Musical or Comedy nomination for hosting the television series "This Is Tom Jones". In 2012, he played a role in an episode of "Playhouse Presents". Jones received a Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966, an MTV Video Music Award in 1989, as well as two Brit Awards: Best British Male in 2000 and the Outstanding Contribution to Music award in 2003. Jones was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1998 and knighted by Queen Elizabeth II for services to music in 2005. Jones experienced a resurgence in notability in the 2010s due to his coaching role on the television talent show "The Voice UK" from 2012 (with the exception of 2016).
Jones was born Thomas John Woodward at 57 Kingsland Terrace, Treforest, Pontypridd, in Glamorgan, South Wales. His parents were Thomas Woodward (31 March 1910 – 5 October 1981), a coal miner, and Freda Jones (30 December 1914 – 7 February 2003). Three of his grandparents were of English origin: his paternal grandfather, James Woodward, was an ironmonger's haulier from Gloucestershire, and his paternal grandmother, Anne Woodward, was from Wiltshire. His maternal grandfather, Albert Jones, was Welsh, and his maternal grandmother, Ada Jones, was born in Pontypridd, to parents from Somerset and Wiltshire.
Jones attended Wood Road Infants School, Wood Road Junior School and Pontypridd Central Secondary Modern School. He began singing at an early age: he would regularly sing at family gatherings, weddings and in his school choir. Jones did not like school or sports, but gained confidence through his singing talent. At 12 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Many years later he said: "I spent two years in bed recovering. It was the worst time of my life." During convalescence, he could do little else but listen to music and draw.
Jones's bluesy singing style developed out of the sound of American soul music. His early influences included blues, R&B and rock and roll singers Little Richard, Solomon Burke, Jackie Wilson, Brook Benton, Elvis Presley and Jerry Lee Lewis.
In March 1957 Jones married his high school girlfriend, Linda Trenchard, when they were expecting a child together, both aged 16. The couple's son, Mark, was born in the month following their wedding. To support his young family, Jones took a job working in a glove factory and was later employed in construction.
Jones's voice has been described as a "full-throated, robust baritone". He became the frontman in 1963 for Tommy Scott and the Senators, a Welsh beat group. They soon gained a local following and reputation in South Wales. In 1964, the group recorded several solo tracks with producer Joe Meek, who took them to various record labels, but they had little success. Later that year, Decca producer Peter Sullivan saw Tommy Scott and the Senators performing in a club and directed them to manager Phil Solomon, but the partnership was short-lived.
The group continued to play gigs at dance halls and working men's clubs in South Wales. One night at the Top Hat in Cwmtillery, Jones was spotted by Gordon Mills, a London-based manager who also originally hailed from South Wales. Mills became Jones's manager, took the young singer to London, and also renamed him "Tom Jones", to exploit the popularity of the Academy Award-winning 1963 film.
Eventually, Mills got Jones a recording contract with Decca. His first single, "Chills and Fever", was released in late 1964. It did not chart, but the follow-up, "It's Not Unusual", became an international hit after offshore pirate radio station Radio Caroline promoted it. The following year was the most prominent of Jones's career, making him one of the most popular vocalists of the British Invasion. In early 1965, "It's Not Unusual" reached No. 1 in the United Kingdom and the top ten in the United States. During 1965, Mills secured a number of film themes for Jones to record, including the theme songs for the film "What's New Pussycat?" (written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David) and also for the James Bond film "Thunderball". Jones was also awarded the Grammy Award for Best New Artist in 1966. In Hollywood, Jones met Elvis Presley for the first time; he recalls Presley singing his song as he walked towards him on set.
In 1966, Jones's popularity began to slip somewhat, causing Mills to reshape the singer's image into that of a crooner. Jones also began to sing material that appealed to a wider audience, such as the country hit "Green, Green Grass of Home". The strategy worked, and Jones returned to the top of the charts in the UK and began hitting the Top 40 again in the US. For the remainder of the decade, he scored a string of hits on both sides of the Atlantic, including "I'll Never Fall in Love Again", "I'm Coming Home", and "Delilah", each of which reached No. 2 in the UK chart.
In 1967, Jones performed in Las Vegas for the first time, at the Flamingo. His performances and style of dress became part of his stage act, and increasingly featured his open, half-unbuttoned shirts and tight trousers. He soon chose to record less, instead concentrating on his lucrative club performances.
Jones and his idol Elvis Presley met in 1965 at the Paramount film stage, when Elvis was filming "Paradise, Hawaiian Style". They became good friends, spending more and more time together in Las Vegas and duetting until the early hours at Presley's private suite. The friendship endured until Presley's death in 1977. Jones's guitarist between 1969 and 1974 was Big Jim Sullivan, who also met and formed a friendship with Presley.
Jones played in Las Vegas at least one week each year until 2011.
Jones had an internationally successful television variety show titled "This Is Tom Jones" from 1969 to 1971. The Associated Television-produced show was worth a reported to Jones over three years. It was broadcast by ITV in the UK and by the American Broadcasting Company in the US. As a result of the show, Jones was nominated in 1970 for a "best actor" Golden Globe. From 1980 to 1981, he had a second television variety show, "Tom Jones", which was produced in Vancouver, Canada, and lasted 24 episodes. Both television shows were the subject of litigation with the original licence holder C/F International. , C/F International was a secured judgment creditor of Classic World Productions and its principal, Darryl Payne, for approximately , and was the principal secured creditor at the time of the subsequent bankruptcy filing by the company. C/F International's action against Classic World Productions and owner Darryl Payne was based on unpaid royalty payments from "This Is Tom Jones" and related recordings. "This Is Tom Jones" is sold on DVD by Time Life rather than by Classic World Productions or C/F International.
C/F International's rights to later Tom Jones material were also disputed. In March 2007, Tom Jones and Tom Jones Enterprises sued C/F International to stop the company from licensing sound recordings made from the 1981 "Tom Jones" series. It was contended that any rights that C/F International had to licence the "Tom Jones" show did not include the right to make and licence separate recordings of the performances on the show, and that any rights that C/F International had in the "Tom Jones" show no longer existed because of numerous breaches of contract. Examples of contentious CDs are "Live on the Tom Jones Show", released in 2006, and "Greatest Hits Live", originally issued by C/F International in 1981 and later licensed to and issued by Prism Leisure Corporation as "30 Greatest Hits – Live in Concert".
On 26 April 1970, CBS released the television special "Raquel!" directed by David Winters, in which he was a guest. It starred Raquel Welch, and other guests included Bob Hope and John Wayne. It was filmed in London, Paris, Acapulco, Mexico City, Yucatan, Big Sur, and Los Angeles and featured lavish production numbers. Welch and Jones combined musical and comedic talents on classic rock 'n' roll standards of the era. Produced by Winters' company Winters/Rosen for CBS-TV, originally co-sponsored by Coca-Cola and Motorola. On the day of the premiere, the show received a 51% share on the National ARB Ratings and an impressive Overnight New York Nielsen Rating of 58% share.
In the 1970s, Jones toured with the female singing groups Quiet Elegance and the Blossoms as his backing groups. He had a number of hit singles, including "She's a Lady", "Till", and "The Young New Mexican Puppeteer", but in the mid-1970s his popularity declined. He did, however, have a big hit in 1976 with "Say You'll Stay Until Tomorrow", which went to No. 1 on the US country chart, No. 15 on the Billboard Hot 100 and reached No. 40 on the UK Singles Chart.
In 1972, he reunited with director and choreographer David Winters for the musical television special "The Special London Bridge Special", co-starring Jennifer O'Neill. Others who participated as guests included The Carpenters, Kirk Douglas, Jonathan Winters, Hermione Gingold, Lorne Greene, Chief Dan George, Charlton Heston, George Kirby, Michael Landon, Terry-Thomas, Engelbert Humperdinck, Elliott Gould, Merle Park, and Rudolf Nureyev.
In 1976, Jones was set to make his film debut in the film "Yockowald", in which he was to play a CIA assassin. The film was shelved after the production ran out of money three weeks into filming.
In 1979, Jones made his acting debut in "Pleasure Cove", an ABC television film which was an unsuccessful pilot for a potential television series along the lines of "Love Boat" and "Fantasy Island". In the film, he played a suave conman named Raymond Gordon staying at the holiday island resort of the title. His co-stars in the film included Constance Forslund, Tanya Roberts and David Hasselhoff. He guest-starred in an episode of "Fantasy Island" in 1984.
In the early 1980s, Jones started to record country music. From 1980 to 1986, he had nine songs in the US country top 40, yet failed to crack the top 100 in the UK or the "Billboard" Hot 100. Jones's manager Gordon Mills died of cancer on 29 July 1986, and Jones's son Mark became his manager.
In 1987, Tom Jones re-entered the singles chart with "A Boy From Nowhere", which went to No. 2 in the UK. The following year, he covered Prince's "Kiss" with Art of Noise. The song reached No. 5 in the UK and No. 31 in the US. The video for "Kiss" was played frequently on MTV and VH1, and won the MTV Video Music Award for Breakthrough Video.
Jones received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1989, located at 6608 Hollywood Boulevard, Los Angeles, California, in front of Frederick's of Hollywood. In 1992, he made his first appearance at the UK's Glastonbury Festival, and in 1993 he appeared as himself in episodes of two popular US sitcoms, "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air" and "The Simpsons".
Jones signed with Interscope Records in 1993 and released the album "The Lead And How To Swing It". The first single, "If I Only Knew", went to No. 11 in the UK. Jones performed the song at the 1994 MTV Europe Music Awards, for which he also served as host. In 1997, Jones contributed to the soundtrack for the UK comedy film "The Full Monty", recording "You Can Leave Your Hat On".
In 1996, he appeared as himself in Tim Burton's ensemble science-fiction comedy film "Mars Attacks!". A scene in the film features Jones performing on stage when aliens attack and he manages to escape with a gun.
In 1999, Jones released the album "Reload", a collection of cover duets with artists such as the Cardigans, Natalie Imbruglia, Cerys Matthews, Van Morrison, Mousse T, Portishead, Stereophonics and Robbie Williams. The album went to No. 1 in the UK and sold over 4 million copies worldwide. Five singles from "Reload" charted in the UK top 40. The single "Sex Bomb" was released in early 2000 and became the album's biggest single, reaching No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart.
US President Bill Clinton invited Jones to perform on New Year's Eve at the 2000 millennium celebrations in Washington, D.C. In 2000, Jones garnered a number of honours for his work, including a BRIT Award for Best British Male. He was also hired as the new voice of Australia's National Rugby League, singing in an advertisement to market the 2000 season.
In 2002, Jones released the album "Mr. Jones", which was produced by Haitian-American rapper Wyclef Jean. The album and the first single, "Tom Jones International", were top 40 hits in the UK.
Jones received the Brit Award for Outstanding Contribution to Music in 2003. The following year, he teamed up with pianist Jools Holland and released "Tom Jones & Jools Holland", a roots rock 'n' roll album. It peaked at No. 5 in the UK.
On 28 May 2005, in celebration of his upcoming 65th birthday, Jones returned to his homeland to perform a concert in Ynysangharad Park, Pontypridd, before an audience of about 20,000. This was his first performance in Pontypridd since 1964. That same year, the BBC reported that Jones was Wales's wealthiest entertainer, having amassed a fortune of £175,000,000. Jones collaborated with Australian pop singer John Farnham in 2005 and released the live album "John Farnham & Tom Jones – Together in Concert". The following year, Jones worked with Chicane and released the dance track "Stoned in Love", which went to No. 7 in the UK Singles Chart.
Jones, who had been awarded an Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1999, was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II in 2006 at Buckingham Palace for his services to music. After receiving a knighthood, Jones stated: "When you first come into show business and get a hit record, it is the start of something. As time goes by it just gets better. This is the best thing I have had. It's a wonderful feeling, a heady feeling."
On 1 July 2007, Jones was among the artists who performed at Wembley Stadium at the Concert for Diana, joined on stage by guitarist Joe Perry of Aerosmith and soul singer Joss Stone. In addition to performing some of his own songs, the group covered the Arctic Monkeys song, "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor". A boxing fan, Jones has performed national anthems before a number of boxing matches. He sang "God Save the Queen", the national anthem of the United Kingdom, before the Floyd Mayweather-Ricky Hatton fight in 2007; he sang "Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau", the Welsh national anthem, at the Bernard Hopkins-Joe Calzaghe fight between fellow Welshman Joe Calzaghe and Bernard Hopkins in 2008; and he sang "God Save the Queen" before the Manny Pacquiao-Ricky Hatton fight in 2009.
In 2008, he released "24 Hours" on S-Curve Records, his first album of new material to be issued in the United States for over 15 years. Jones, who was still performing over 200 dates a year as he approached his seventieth birthday, set out on a world tour to promote the album. "The fire is still in me. Not to be an oldie, but a goodie. I want to be a contender", Jones said. Also in 2008, Jones was inducted into the Hit Parade Hall of Fame. On 16 November 2008, he was invited to perform on BBC's "Strictly Come Dancing"; he performed the debut single from "24 Hours", "If He Should Ever Leave You", which was named the ninth-best song of 2008 by Spinner. One of the songs from "24 Hours", "Give a Little Love", would later be featured in the first trailer for the 2010 comedy film, "Little Fockers".
In February 2009, Jones appeared in an exclusive Take-Away Show with Vincent Moon, performing three songs live in front of a camera in a New York hotel room. In March 2009, Jones went to the top of the UK Music Charts for the third time in his career with a cover of "Islands in the Stream", sung with Ruth Jones, Rob Brydon and Robin Gibb, who co-wrote the original with his brothers Barry and Maurice. The record, which was inspired by the song's having featured in the BBC's hit sitcom "Gavin & Stacey", was released in aid of Comic Relief and reached No. 1 in March 2009.
Jones's album "Praise & Blame" was released on 26 July 2010. The album, consisting primarily of gospel and blues songs, included covers of songs by Bob Dylan, John Lee Hooker and Billy Joe Shaver, and featured guest musicians such as Booker T.
On 7 June 2010, which was Jones's seventieth birthday, the single "Burning Hell", a cover of the John Lee Hooker song from the "Praise & Blame" album, was released. In July 2010, it was reported that David Sharpe, vice-president of Island Records (to whom Jones had moved, from EMI, for £1.5m in October 2009), had emailed colleagues demanding that they "pull back this project immediately or get my money back" and asking if the spiritually themed record had been a "sick joke". Jones later strongly criticised Sharpe and said that he was furious about the leaked email.
In July 2010, Jones appeared on the penultimate episode of "Friday Night with Jonathan Ross" and performed "Burning Hell". In August 2010, "Praise & Blame" debuted at No. 2 on the UK album chart. By 2010 Jones had sold a total of over 100 million records.
On 11 September 2010, Jones performed for an audience of 50,000 at the "Help for Heroes" charity concert at Twickenham Stadium performing "Strange Things Are Happening Every Day" and his hit "Green, Green Grass of Home". On 22 September, Jones appeared on the "Late Show with David Letterman" at the Ed Sullivan Theater in New York.
In May 2011, Jones appeared as a guest vocalist on the debut album "Let Them Talk" by Hugh Laurie. On 15 May 2011, he appeared alongside Laurie in the UK ITV series "Perspectives", singing music from the album in New Orleans. On 25 May 2011, he appeared on " American Idol " after a medley of his hits performed by the American Idol "Top 13".
Jones released a single on 19 March 2012, produced by former White Stripes frontman Jack White, called "Evil". The single was first made available through independent record shops in 7" vinyl format on 5 March. An exclusive three-coloured vinyl was also sold at only one shop – Spillers Records in Cardiff. The shop, from which Jones bought records as a schoolboy in the 1950s and early 1960s, was founded in 1894 and is listed in "Guinness World Records" as the oldest record shop in the world.
In March 2012, Jones became a coach on the BBC talent show "The Voice UK". Jones was joined by will.i.am, Jessie J and Danny O'Donoghue. He mentored Leanne Mitchell to win the first series. Jones returned to coach in 2013, 2014 and 2015. In August 2015, it was announced that Jones's contract with the show would not be renewed and that he would be replaced by Boy George. Jones criticised BBC executives for "sub-standard behaviour", having not consulted with him and informing him only 24 hours before the official announcement.
In May 2012, Jones released the album "Spirit in the Room" on Island Records/Universal Music. The track listing included covers of songs by Paul McCartney, Paul Simon, Leonard Cohen and Richard and Linda Thompson, Blind Willie Johnson, Tom Waits and the Low Anthem.
In May 2012, he starred in a one-off television drama titled "King of the Teds" which aired on Sky Arts as part of a series of standalone teleplays for "Playhouse Presents".
On 4 June 2012, Jones performed at the Queen's Diamond Jubilee Concert in front of Buckingham Palace, singing "Delilah" and "Mama Told Me Not to Come".
On 18 August 2012, Jones performed a fifty-minute set at the V Festival’s Weston Park site in Staffordshire. On 9 September 2012, Jones headlined at BBC Radio 2's Live in Hyde Park festival.
In May 2014, Jones opened for Morrissey at a special show in the United States. On 27 September 2014, Jones performed at the Australian Football League's pre-game entertainment for the 2014 Grand Final along with Ed Sheeran.
In September 2015, Jones announced the long-awaited release of his album "Long Lost Suitcase", on 9 October, through Virgin/EMI. The album is the third in a trilogy of albums, following "Praise & Blame" (2010) and "Spirit in the Room" (2012). The album's track titles are interwoven into the chapters of his autobiography "Over the Top and Back" released at the same time. It was produced by Ethan Johns and the diverse range of compositions includes songs from Gillian Welch, the Rolling Stones, Hank Williams and the Milk Carton Kids.
In November 2015, Jones appeared alongside Rob Brydon in a special 90-minute show, from the SSE Arena, Wembley, for BBC's Children in Need.
In 2015, he appeared on the BBC's "Jools' Annual Hootenanny", broadcast on New Year's Eve, on which he duetted with Paul Weller.
In 2017, he returned to "The Voice" as a coach for series 6.
In 2018, he embarked on a live summer tour, which was planned to run from 1 May to 11 August. In July, however, many shows were cancelled due to sickness or bad weather.
On 25 June 2019 "The New York Times Magazine" listed Jones among hundreds of artists whose material was reportedly destroyed in the 2008 Universal fire.
Jones was married to Linda (born 1941 as Melinda Rose Trenchard) from 2 March 1957 until her death on 10 April 2016. They stayed married despite his many well-publicised infidelities. The couple had one son, Mark Woodward (born 1957).
Jones has stated that he had sex with up to 250 groupies a year at the height of his fame. His philandering once led Linda to assault him. Jones had affairs with well-known women, including Mary Wilson of the Supremes, TV host Charlotte Laws, and former Miss World Marjorie Wallace. In a 2008 interview with "Blender" magazine, Cassandra Peterson (better known as "Elvira, Mistress of the Dark") revealed she lost her virginity to Jones.
One affair resulted in the birth of a son. In October 1987, while on tour in the US, Jones had a brief relationship with model Katherine Berkery, who then discovered she was pregnant. After a legal battle that included DNA testing, a United States court ruled in 1989 that Jones was the boy's father. Jones denied the court's findings, until finally, in 2008, he admitted they were true. He has shown no interest in meeting his son, Jonathan Berkery.
Following the election of a Labour government in 1974, Jones became a tax exile to avoid a 98 per cent income tax. In June 1976, he purchased the red-brick mansion at 363 Copa De Oro Road in the East Gate Old Bel Air in Los Angeles from Dean Martin for $500,000. He sold it to Nicolas Cage in 1998 for a reported $6.469 million. In 2009, after 35 years in the US, Jones said that he and his wife were planning to move back to the UK. "I've had a great time living in Los Angeles", Jones said, "but after all these years, we think now is the time to move home".
In October 2015 his autobiography, "Over the Top and Back: The Autobiography", was published by Michael Joseph. Reviewing the book in the "Daily Express", Clair Woodward said, "In the tradition of so many autobiographies these days, Tom Jones's doesn't tell you what you really want to hear. ... What you are left with is a riotously enjoyable story of Jones 'The Voice' which nicely doubles as the story of British pop and light entertainment from the Sixties onwards."
Linda, Lady Woodward, died on 10 April 2016 at Cedars Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, after a "short but fierce" battle with cancer, with Jones cancelling concerts at the time. After her death, Jones sold their Los Angeles mansion and its contents, apart from treasured photos, and moved back to the UK. He resides in a flat in London, as she suggested.
Space and Cerys Matthews released "The Ballad of Tom Jones", a song about a fighting couple who are calmed down by listening to Jones's music on the radio. The song reached No. 4 in the UK in 1998.
A new musical, "Tom: A Story of Tom Jones", based on the singer's life and recordings, produced by Theatr na nÓg, opened at the Wales Millennium Centre in March 2016. Reviewing the show for "The Stage", Mark Shenton wrote:
...the show itself, written by Mike James and directed by Geinor Styles, is a more humdrum—while hummable—affair than its star and subject deserves. In the familiar jukebox musical style of shows like Jersey Boys and , "A Story of Tom Jones" charts the behind-the-scenes rise to fame of a pop star, but without the craft or polish.
Similar to Elvis Presley with his impersonators, Tom Jones has his share of imitators around the world. These are performers who either sound like him or imitate his act.
In the 2006 film "Flushed Away", the main character, Roddy, is mistaken for Tom Jones by another character while Roddy performs "She's a Lady". Jones's song, "What's New Pussycat?", is played during the ending credits.
In the video game "Team Fortress 2", one of the playable characters, the Scout, is a collector of Tom Jones merchandise, and on his death in the comics, one of the other characters, the Spy, falsely convinces him that Tom Jones is in fact his father. Tom Jones is also depicted using the phrase "What's new pussycat?" several times.
Jones wrote or co-wrote the following songs: "And I Tell the Sea", "Looking Out My Window", "Feel the Rain" from the 2002 "Mr. Jones" album, "Jezebel", "The Letter", "Younger Days", "Tom Jones International", "Holiday", "The Road", "24 Hours", "Seasons", "We Got Love", "Seen That Face", "Give a Little Love", "If He Should Ever Leave You", "Whatever it Takes", and "Traveling Shoes" from the 2012 album "Spirit in the Room". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45968 |
Joan Crawford
Joan Crawford (born Lucille Fay LeSueur; March 23, 190? – May 10, 1977) was an American film and television actress who began her career as a dancer in traveling theatrical companies before debuting as a chorus girl on Broadway. Crawford then signed a motion picture contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925; her career spanned six decades, multiple studios, and controversies.
At different stages of her career, she was noted for her diverse roles playing sympathetic and unsympathetic characters, and for realistic yet multi-layered performances. Her films ranged in genres from contemporary crime, melodramas, film noir, several historical costume dramas, romances, mysteries, musicals, suspense, horror, to three westerns and over a dozen comedies. Regardless, her greater successes and perhaps most memorable performances were in romantic dramas and melodramas. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Crawford tenth on its list of the greatest female stars of Classic Hollywood Cinema.
In the 1930s, Crawford's fame rivaled and later surpassed that of MGM colleagues Norma Shearer and Greta Garbo. Though she started portraying flappers, Crawford often played wealthy women in distress ("Dance, Fools, Dance", "This Modern Age", "Letty Lynton", "No More Ladies", "I Live My Life", "Susan and God") or hard-working young women who found romance and success ("Our Dancing Daughters", "Paid", "Laughing Sinners" , "Dancing Lady", "Sadie McKee", "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney", "The Shining Hour", "The Bride Wore Red", "Mannequin"). These characters and stories were well received by Depression-era audiences, and were popular with women. Crawford became one of Hollywood's more prominent movie stars, and one of the higher-paid women in the United States.
In 1945, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her work in "Mildred Pierce", and received Best Actress nominations for "Possessed" (1947) and "Sudden Fear" (1952). Crawford continued to act in film and television throughout the 1950s and 1960s; she returned to box office success and critical acclaim with horror film "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962), in which she starred alongside her long-time rival Bette Davis.
In 1955, Crawford became involved with the Pepsi-Cola Company through her marriage to company Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alfred Steele.
In 1970 Crawford made her last theatrical film, and until a few weeks before her death, she continued to tape numerous regular radio spots and announcements for a variety of not-for-profit causes. Following a public appearance in 1974, she withdrew from events which required her to be photographed, becoming increasingly reclusive until her death in 1977, although she did appear in 1975 to host the 30th anniversary of "Mildred Pierce".
Crawford married four times. Her first three marriages ended in divorce; the last ended with the death of husband Alfred Steele. She adopted five children, one of whom was reclaimed. Crawford's relationships with her two elder children, Christina and Christopher, were acrimonious. After Crawford's death, Christina released a well-known, but controversial, "tell-all" memoir, "Mommie Dearest" (1978).
Born Lucille Fay LeSueur, of English, French Huguenot, Swedish, and Irish ancestry in San Antonio, Texas, she was the third and youngest child of Tennessee-born Thomas E. LeSueur (January 2, 1868 – January 1, 1938), a construction laborer, and Texas-born Anna Bell Johnson (later Mrs. Anna Cassin), whose date of birth is given as November 29, 1884, although, based on census records, she may have been older. She apparently was still under 20 when her first two children were born. She died on August 15, 1958. Crawford's elder siblings were sister Daisy LeSueur, who died before Lucille's birth, and brother Hal LeSueur.
Thomas LeSueur abandoned the family when Lucille was ten months old, eventually resettling in Abilene, Texas, reportedly working as a construction laborer. Crawford's mother married Henry J. Cassin, however, the marriage is listed in the census as her first. They lived in Lawton, Oklahoma where Cassin ran the Ramsey Opera House; he managed to book diverse and noted performers such as Anna Pavlova and Eva Tanguay. As a child, Crawford preferred the nickname "Billie" and enjoyed watching vaudeville acts perform on the stage of her stepfather's theatre. At that time, Crawford was reportedly unaware that Cassin, whom she referred to as "daddy", was not her biological father until her brother Hal told her the truth. Cassin allegedly began sexually abusing her when she was eleven years old, and continued until she was sent to St. Agnes Academy, a Catholic girls' school.
Beginning in childhood, Crawford's ambition was to be a dancer. One day, in an attempt to escape piano lessons, she leapt from the front porch of her home and cut her foot severely on a broken milk bottle. As a result, she underwent three surgeries to repair the damage. She was unable to attend elementary school or continue with dancing lessons for 18 months.
In June 1917, the family moved to Kansas City, Missouri after Cassin was accused of embezzlement and although acquitted, he was blacklisted in Lawton. Following their relocation, Cassin, a Catholic, placed Crawford at St. Agnes Academy in Kansas City. When her mother and stepfather separated, she remained at school as a work student, where she spent far more time working, primarily cooking and cleaning, than studying. She later attended Rockingham Academy, also as a working student. While there, she began dating, and had her first serious relationship with a trumpet player named Ray Sterling, who reportedly inspired her to begin challenging herself academically.
In 1922, she registered at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, giving her year of birth as 1906. She attended Stephens for only a few months before withdrawing after she realized she was not prepared for college. Her family's instability negatively affected Crawford and her schooling never formally progressed beyond primary education.
Under the name Lucille LeSueur, Crawford began dancing in the choruses of traveling revues, and was spotted dancing in Detroit by producer Jacob J. Shubert. Shubert put her in the chorus line for his 1924 show, "Innocent Eyes", at the Winter Garden Theatre on Broadway in New York City. While appearing in "Innocent Eyes", Crawford met a saxophone player named James Welton. The two were allegedly married in 1924, and lived together for several months, although this supposed marriage was never mentioned in later life by Crawford.
Crawford wanted additional work, and approached Loews Theaters publicist Nils Granlund. Granlund secured a position for her with singer Harry Richman's act and arranged for her to do a screen test which he sent to producer Harry Rapf in Hollywood. Rapf notified Granlund on December 24, 1924, that Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) had offered Crawford a contract at $75 a week. Granlund immediately wired LeSueur, who had returned to her mother's home in Kansas City, with the news; she borrowed $400 for travel expenses.
Credited as Lucille LeSueur, her first film was "Lady of the Night" in 1925, as the body double for Norma Shearer, MGM's most popular female star. She also appeared in "The Circle" and "Pretty Ladies" (both 1925), starring comedian ZaSu Pitts. This was soon followed by equally small and unbilled roles in two other 1925 silent films: "The Only Thing", and "The Merry Widow".
MGM publicity head Pete Smith recognized her ability to become a major star, but felt her name sounded fake; he told studio head Louis B. Mayer that her last name, LeSueur, reminded him of a sewer. Smith organized a contest called "Name the Star" in "Movie Weekly" to allow readers to select her new stage name. The initial choice was "Joan Arden", but after another actress was found to have prior claim to that name, the alternate surname "Crawford" became the choice. She later said that she wanted her first name to be pronounced Jo-Anne, and that she hated the name Crawford because it sounded like "crawfish", but also admitted she "liked the security" that went with the name.
Growing increasingly frustrated over the size and quality of the parts she was given, Crawford embarked on a campaign of self-promotion. As MGM screenwriter Frederica Sagor Maas recalled, "No one decided to make Joan Crawford a star. Joan Crawford became a star because Joan Crawford decided to become a star." She began attending dances in the afternoons and evenings at hotels around Hollywood and at dance venues on the beach piers, where she often won dance competitions with her performances of the Charleston and the Black Bottom.
Her strategy worked and MGM cast her in the film where she first made an impression on audiences, Edmund Goulding's "Sally, Irene and Mary" (1925). From the beginning of her career, Crawford considered Norma Shearer – the studio's most-popular actress – her professional nemesis. Shearer was married to MGM Head of Production Irving Thalberg; hence, she had the first choice of scripts, and had more control than other stars in what films she would and would not make. Crawford was quoted to have said: "How can I compete with Norma? She sleeps with the boss!"
Crawford was named one of 1926's WAMPAS Baby Stars, along with Mary Astor, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor, and Fay Wray, among others. That same year, she co-starred in "Paris" with Charles Ray. Within a few years, she became the romantic lead to many of MGM's top male stars, including Ramón Novarro, John Gilbert, William Haines, and Tim McCoy.
Crawford appeared as a skimpily-clad young carnival assistant in "The Unknown" (1927), starring Lon Chaney, Sr. as a carnival knife thrower with no arms that hopes to marry her. She stated that she learned more about acting from watching Chaney work than from anyone else in her career. "It was then", she said, "I became aware for the first time of the difference between standing in front of a camera, and acting." Also in 1927, she appeared alongside her close friend, William Haines, in "Spring Fever", which was the first of three movies the duo made together.
In 1928, Crawford starred opposite Ramón Novarro in "Across to Singapore", but it was her role as Diana Medford in "Our Dancing Daughters" (1928) that catapulted her to stardom. The role established her as a symbol of modern 1920s-style femininity which rivaled Clara Bow, the original "It girl", and Hollywood's foremost flapper. A stream of hits followed "Our Dancing Daughters", including two more flapper-themed movies, in which Crawford embodied for her legion of fans (many of whom were women) an idealized vision of the free-spirited, all-American girl.
F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote of Crawford:
Crawford described her glamorous onscreen persona more succinctly, saying, "If you want to see the girl next door, go next door."
On June 3, 1929, Crawford married Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church (known as "The Actors' Chapel", owing to its proximity to Broadway theatres) in Manhattan, although neither was Catholic. Fairbanks was the son of Douglas Fairbanks and the stepson of Mary Pickford, who were considered Hollywood royalty. Fairbanks, Sr., and Pickford were opposed to the marriage, and did not invite the couple to their home at Pickfair for eight months after the marriage.
The relationship between Crawford and Fairbanks, Sr., eventually warmed; she called him Uncle Doug, and he called her Billie, her childhood nickname, but one that close friends used throughout her life. She and Pickford, however, continued to despise each other. Following that first invitation, Crawford and Fairbanks, Jr., became more frequent guests. While the Fairbanks men played golf together, Crawford was either left with Pickford, who would retire to her quarters, or simply left alone.
To rid herself of her Southwestern accent, Crawford tirelessly practiced diction and elocution. She said:
After the release of "The Jazz Singer" in 1927—the first feature-length film with some audible dialogue—sound films became all the rage. The transition from silent to sound caused panic for many, if not all, involved with the film industry; many silent film stars found themselves unemployable because of their undesirable voices and hard-to-understand accents, or simply because of their refusal to make the transition to talkies.
Many studios and stars avoided making the transition as long as possible, especially MGM, which was the last of the major studios to switch over to sound. "The Hollywood Revue of 1929" was one of the studio's first all-talking films, and their first attempt to showcase their stars' ability to make the transition from silent to sound. Crawford was among the dozen or more MGM stars included in the movie; she sang the song "Got a Feeling for You" during the film's first act.
Crawford made a successful transition to talkies with her first starring role in the all-talking feature-length film in "Untamed" (1929), co-starring Robert Montgomery. Despite the success of the film at the box office, it received mixed reviews from critics, who noted that while Crawford seemed nervous at making the transition to sound, she had become one of the most popular actresses in the world." Montana Moon" (1930), an uneasy mix of Western clichés and music, teamed her with John Mack Brown and Ricardo Cortez. Although the film had problems with censors, it was a major success at the time of its release. "Our Blushing Brides" (1930) the final installment in the "Our Dancing Daughters" franchise co-starring Robert Montgomery and Anita Page, where Crawford "carries the burden of dramatics in this photoplay and comes off splendidly and intelligently." Her next movie, "Paid" (1930), paired her with Robert Armstrong, and was another success. During the early sound era, MGM began to place Crawford in more sophisticated roles, rather than continuing to promote her flapper-inspired persona of the silent era.
In 1931, MGM cast Crawford in five films. Three of them teamed her opposite Clark Gable, the studio's soon to be biggest male star and "King of Hollywood". "Dance, Fools, Dance", released in February 1931, was the first pairing of Crawford and Gable. Their second movie together, "Laughing Sinners", released in May 1931, was directed by Harry Beaumont, and also co-starred Neil Hamilton. "Possessed", their third film together, released in October, was directed by Clarence Brown. These films were immensely popular with audiences and were generally well received by critics, stapling Crawford's position as one of MGM's top female stars of the decade along with Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo and Jean Harlow. Her only other notable film of 1931, "This Modern Age", was released in August and despite unfavorable reviews was a moderate success.
MGM next cast her in the film "Grand Hotel", directed by Edmund Goulding. As the studio's first all-star production, Crawford co-starred opposite Greta Garbo, John and Lionel Barrymore, and Wallace Beery, among others. Receiving third billing, she played the middle-class stenographer to Beery's controlling general director. Crawford later admitted to being nervous during the filming of the movie because she was working with "very big stars", and that she was disappointed that she had no scenes with the "divine Garbo". "Grand Hotel" was released in April 1932 to critical and commercial success. It was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year, and won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Crawford achieved continued success in "Letty Lynton" (1932). Soon after this movie's release, a plagiarism suit forced MGM's withdrawal and it's therefore considered the "lost" Crawford film. Designed by Adrian, the gown with large ruffled sleeves which Crawford wore in the movie became a popular style that same year, and was even copied by Macy's.
On loan to United Artists, she played prostitute Sadie Thompson in "Rain" (1932), a film version of John Colton's 1923 play. Actress Jeanne Eagels played the role on stage, and Gloria Swanson had originated the part on screen in the 1928 film version. Crawford's performance was panned, and the film was not a success. Despite the failure of "Rain", in 1932, the publishing of the first "Top Ten Money-Making Stars Poll" placed Crawford third in popularity at the box office, behind only Marie Dressler and Janet Gaynor. She remained on the list for the next several years, last appearing on it in 1936. In May 1933, Crawford divorced Fairbanks citing "grievous mental cruelty". Crawford claimed Fairbanks had "a jealous and suspicious attitude" toward her friends, and that they had "loud arguments about the most trivial subjects" lasting "far into the night".
Following her divorce, she was again teamed with Clark Gable, along with Franchot Tone and Fred Astaire, in the hit "Dancing Lady" (1933), in which she received top billing. She next played the title role in "Sadie McKee" (1934), opposite Tone and Gene Raymond. She was paired with Gable for the fifth time in "Chained" (1934), and for the sixth time in "Forsaking All Others" (1934). Crawford's films of this era were some of the most-popular and highest-grossing films of the mid-1930s.
In 1935, Crawford married Franchot Tone, a stage actor from New York who planned to use his film earnings to finance his theatre group. The couple built a small theatre at Crawford's Brentwood home, and put on productions of classic plays for select groups of friends that lived in the popular Brentwood area like Clark Gable and Charley Chase. Tone and Crawford had first appeared together in "Today We Live" (1933), but Crawford was hesitant about entering into another romance so soon after her split from Fairbanks.
Before and during their marriage, Crawford worked to promote Tone's Hollywood career, but he was not interested in being a star, ultimately wanting to just be an actor, and Crawford wearied of the effort. During their marriage they tried on two separate occasions for children, both ending in miscarriage. Tone allegedly began drinking and became physically abusive. She filed for divorce, which was granted in 1939. Crawford and Tone later rekindled their friendship, and Tone even proposed in 1964 that they remarry. When he died in 1968, Crawford arranged for him to be cremated and his ashes scattered at Muskoka Lakes, Canada.
Crawford continued her reign as a popular movie actress well into the mid-1930s. "No More Ladies" (1935) co-starred Robert Montgomery and then-husband Franchot Tone, and was a success. Crawford had long pleaded with MGM's head Louis B. Mayer to cast her in more dramatic roles, and although he was reluctant, he cast her in the sophisticated comedy-drama "I Live My Life" (1935), directed by W.S. Van Dyke, and it was well received by critics.
She next starred in "The Gorgeous Hussy" (1936), opposite Robert Taylor and Lionel Barrymore, as well as Tone. It was a critical and box office success, and became one of Crawford's biggest hits of the decade. "Love on the Run" (1936), a romantic comedy directed by W.S. Van Dyke, was her seventh film co-starring Clark Gable.
Even though Crawford remained a respected MGM actress, and her films still earned profits, her popularity declined in the late 1930s. In 1937, Crawford was proclaimed the first "Queen of the Movies" by "Life" magazine. She unexpectedly slipped from seventh to sixteenth place at the box office that year, and her public popularity also began to wane. Richard Boleslawski's comedy-drama "The Last of Mrs. Cheyney" (1937) teamed her opposite William Powell in their sole screen pairing. The film was also Crawford's last box-office success before the onset of her "box office poison" period.
She co-starred opposite Franchot Tone for the seventh—and final—time in "The Bride Wore Red" (1937). The film was generally unfavorably reviewed by the majority of critics. It also ran a financial loss, becoming one of MGM's biggest failures of the year. "Mannequin", co-starring Spencer Tracy, also released in 1937 did, as the "New York Times" stated, "restore Crawford to her throne as queen of the working girls".
On May 3, 1938, Crawford—along with Greta Garbo, Norma Shearer, Luise Rainer, John Barrymore, Katharine Hepburn, Fred Astaire, Dolores del Río, and others—was dubbed "Box Office Poison" in an open letter in the "Independent Film Journal". The list was submitted by Harry Brandt, president of the Independent Theatre Owners Association of America. Brandt stated that while these stars had "unquestioned" dramatic abilities, their high salaries did not reflect in their ticket sales, thus hurting the movie exhibitors involved. Crawford's follow-up movie, "The Shining Hour" (1938), co-starring Margaret Sullavan and Melvyn Douglas, was well received by critics, but it was a box-office flop.
She made a comeback in 1939 with her role as home-wrecker Crystal Allen in "The Women", opposite her professional nemesis, Norma Shearer. A year later, she played against type in the unglamorous role of Julie in "Strange Cargo" (1940), her eighth—and final—film with Clark Gable. She later starred as a facially disfigured blackmailer in "A Woman's Face" (1941), a remake of the Swedish film "En kvinnas ansikte" which had starred Ingrid Bergman in the lead role three years earlier. While the film was only a moderate box office success, Crawford's performance was hailed by many critics.
Crawford adopted her first child, a daughter, in 1940. Because she was single, California law prevented her from adopting within the state; so, she arranged the adoption through an agency in Las Vegas. The child was temporarily called Joan, until Crawford changed her name to Christina. Crawford married actor Phillip Terry on July 21, 1942, after a six-month courtship. Together, the couple adopted a son whom they named Christopher, but his birth mother reclaimed the child. The couple adopted another boy, whom they named Phillip Terry, Jr. After the marriage ended in 1946, Crawford changed that child's name to Christopher Crawford.
After 18 years, Crawford's contract with MGM was terminated by mutual consent on June 29, 1943. In lieu of the last film remaining under her contract, MGM bought her out for $100,000.
For $500,000, Crawford signed with Warner Bros. for a three-movie deal, and was placed on the payroll on July 1, 1943. Her first film for the studio was "Hollywood Canteen" (1944), an all-star morale-booster film that teamed her with several other top movie stars at the time. Crawford said one of the main reasons she signed with Warner Bros. was because she wanted to play the character "Mattie" in a proposed 1944 film version of Edith Wharton's novel "Ethan Frome" (1911).
She wanted to play the title role in "Mildred Pierce" (1945), but Bette Davis was the studio's first choice. However, Davis turned the role down. Director Michael Curtiz did not want Crawford to play the part, and he instead lobbied for the casting of Barbara Stanwyck. Warner Bros. defied Curtiz and cast Crawford in the film. Throughout the entire production of the movie, Curtiz criticized Crawford. "She comes over here with her high-hat airs and her goddamn shoulder pads... Why should I waste my time directing a has-been?" Curtiz demanded Crawford prove her suitability by taking a screen test; she agreed. After the test, Curtiz agreed to Crawford's casting. Costume fittings started filming off roughly when Curtiz suspected Crawford of wearing shoulder pads and he proceeded to tear the top of her dress. She said "Thankfully I was wearing a bra." "Mildred Pierce" was a resounding critical and commercial success. It epitomized the lush visual style and the hard-boiled film noir sensibility that defined Warner Bros. movies of the late forties. Crawford earned the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Role.
The success of "Mildred Pierce" revived Crawford's movie career. For several years, she starred in what were called "a series of first-rate melodramas". Her next film was "Humoresque" (1946), co-starring John Garfield, a romantic drama about a love affair between an older woman and a younger man. She starred alongside Van Heflin in "Possessed" (1947), for which she received a second Academy Award nomination. In "Daisy Kenyon" (1947), she appeared opposite Dana Andrews and Henry Fonda, and in "Flamingo Road" (1949), her character has an ultimately deadly feud with a corrupt southern sheriff played by Sydney Greenstreet. She made a cameo in "It's a Great Feeling" (1949), poking fun at her own screen image. In 1950, she starred in the film noir "The Damned Don't Cry" and in the melodrama "Harriet Craig".
In 1947, Crawford adopted two more children, whom she named Cindy and Cathy. The children were adopted from Tennessee Children's Home Society, an orphanage/child-trafficking unit operated by Georgia Tann, a source used by many childless Hollywood stars to adopt until Tann's discovery and death erupted in infamy in 1952.
After the completion of "This Woman Is Dangerous" (1952), a film Crawford called her "worst", she asked to be released from her Warner Bros. contract. By this time, she felt Warners was losing interest in her due to "feeble scripts, poor leading men and inept cameramen", so she decided it was time to move on. Later the same year, she received her third—and final—Academy Award nomination for "Sudden Fear" for RKO Radio Pictures.
Crawford worked in the radio series, "The Screen Guild Theater", on January 8, 1939; "Good News"; "Baby", broadcast March 2, 1940, on Arch Oboler's "Lights Out"; "The Word" on "Everyman's Theater" (1941); "Chained" on the "Lux Radio Theater", and Norman Corwin's "Document A/777" (1948). She appeared in episodes of anthology television series in the 1950s, and, in 1959, made a pilot for "The Joan Crawford Show".
Crawford married her fourth—and final—husband, Alfred Steele at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas on May 10, 1955. Crawford and Steele met at a party in 1950, when Steele was an executive at PepsiCo. They renewed their acquaintance at a New Year's Eve party in 1954. By that time, Steele had become president of Pepsi-Cola. He later was named chairman of the board and CEO of Pepsi-Cola. Crawford traveled extensively on behalf of Pepsi following the marriage. She estimated that she traveled over 100,000 miles for the company.
Steele died of a heart attack in April 1959. Crawford initially was advised that her services were no longer required. After she told the story to Louella Parsons, Pepsi reversed its position, and Crawford was elected to fill the vacant seat on the board of directors.
Crawford received the sixth annual "Pally Award", which was in the shape of a bronze Pepsi bottle. It was awarded to the employee making the most significant contribution to company sales. In 1973, Crawford was forced to retire from the company at the behest of company executive Don Kendall, whom Crawford had referred to for years as "Fang".
After her Academy Award-nominated performance in 1952's "Sudden Fear", Crawford continued to work steadily throughout the rest of the decade. After a 10-year absence from MGM, she returned to that studio to star in "Torch Song" (1953), a musical drama centering on the life of a demanding stage star who falls in love with a blind pianist, played by Michael Wilding. Although the film was highly publicized as Crawford's major comeback, it was a critical and financial failure, known today for its camp appeal. In 1954, she starred in "Johnny Guitar", a cult classic directed by Nicholas Ray, co-starring Sterling Hayden and Mercedes McCambridge. She also starred in "Female on the Beach" (1955) with Jeff Chandler, and in "Queen Bee" (1955), alongside John Ireland. The following year, she starred opposite a young Cliff Robertson in "Autumn Leaves" (1956), and filmed a leading role in "The Story of Esther Costello" (1957), co-starring Rossano Brazzi. Crawford, who had been left near-penniless following Alfred Steele's death, accepted a small role in "The Best of Everything" (1959). Although she was not the star of the film, she received positive reviews. Crawford later named the role as being one of her personal favorites. By 1961, Joan Crawford was once again her own publicity machine, with a new script, "Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?", sent by Robert Aldrich.
Crawford starred as Blanche Hudson, an elderly, disabled former A-list movie star who lives in fear of her psychotic sister Jane, in the highly successful psychological thriller "What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?" (1962). Despite the actresses' earlier tensions, Crawford reportedly suggested Bette Davis for the role of Jane. The two stars maintained publicly that there was no feud between them. The director, Robert Aldrich, fueling publicity rumors, explained that Davis and Crawford were each aware of how important the film was to their respective careers, and commented, "It's proper to say that they really detested each other, but they behaved absolutely perfectly."
After filming was completed, their public comments against each other propelled their animosity into a life-long feud. The film was a huge success, recouping its costs within eleven days of its nationwide release reviving Davis and Crawford's careers. Davis was nominated for an Academy Award for her performance as Jane Hudson. Crawford contacted each of the other Oscar nominees in the category (Katharine Hepburn, Lee Remick, Geraldine Page, and Anne Bancroft, all East Coast-based actresses), to let them know that if they could not attend the ceremony, she would be happy to accept the Oscar on their behalf; all agreed. Both Davis and Crawford were backstage - Crawford having presented best director - when the absent Anne Bancroft was announced as the winner and Crawford accepted the award on her behalf. Davis claimed for the rest of her life that Crawford had campaigned against her, a charge Crawford denied.
That same year, Crawford starred as Lucy Harbin in William Castle's horror mystery "Strait-Jacket" (1964). Robert Aldrich cast Crawford and Davis in "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964). After a purported campaign of harassment by Davis on location in Louisiana, Crawford returned to Hollywood entering a hospital. After a prolonged absence, during which Crawford was accused of feigning illness, Aldrich was forced to replace her with Olivia de Havilland. Crawford, who was devastated, said "I heard the news of my replacement over the radio, lying in my hospital bed ... I cried for nine hours." Crawford nursed grudges against Davis and Aldrich for the rest of her life, saying of Aldrich, "He is a man who loves evil, horrendous, vile things", to which Aldrich replied "If the shoe fits, wear it, and I am very fond of Miss Crawford". Despite being replaced, brief footage of Crawford made it into the film when she is seen sitting in a taxi in a wide shot.
In 1965, she played Amy Nelson in "I Saw What You Did", another William Castle vehicle. She starred as Monica Rivers in Herman Cohen's horror thriller film "Berserk!" (1967). After the film's release, Crawford guest-starred as herself on "The Lucy Show". The episode, "Lucy and the Lost Star", first aired on February 26, 1968. Crawford struggled during rehearsals, and drank heavily on-set, leading series star Lucille Ball to suggest replacing her with Gloria Swanson. However, Crawford was letter-perfect the day of the show, which included dancing the Charleston, and received two standing ovations from the studio audience.
In October 1968, Crawford's 29-year-old daughter, Christina (who was then acting in New York on the soap opera "The Secret Storm"), needed immediate medical attention for a ruptured ovarian tumor. Despite the fact that Christina's character was a 28-year-old, and Crawford was in her sixties, Crawford offered to play her role until Christina was well enough to return, to which producer Gloria Monty readily agreed.
Crawford's appearance in the 1969 television film "Night Gallery" (which served as pilot to the series that followed) marked one of Steven Spielberg's earliest directing jobs. Crawford made a cameo appearance as herself in the first episode of "The Tim Conway Show", which aired on January 30, 1970. She starred on the big screen one final time, playing Dr. Brockton in Herman Cohen's science fiction horror film "Trog" (1970), rounding out a career spanning 45 years and more than 80 motion pictures. Crawford made three more television appearances, including one as Stephanie White in a 1970 episode ("The Nightmare") of "The Virginian" and as Joan Fairchild (her final dramatic performance) in a 1972 episode ("Dear Joan: We're Going to Scare You to Death") of "The Sixth Sense".
In 1970, Crawford was presented with the Cecil B. DeMille Award by John Wayne at the Golden Globes, which was telecast from the Coconut Grove at The Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. She also spoke at Stephens College, where she had been a student for two months in 1922.
Crawford published her autobiography, "A Portrait of Joan", co-written with Jane Kesner Ardmore, in 1962 through Doubleday. Crawford's next book, "My Way of Life", was published in 1971 by Simon & Schuster. Those expecting a racy tell-all were disappointed, although Crawford's meticulous ways were revealed in her advice on grooming, wardrobe, exercise, and even food storage. After her death, photographs of John F. Kennedy (for whom she had voted in the 1960 presidential election) were found in her apartment.
In September 1973, Crawford moved from apartment 22-G to a smaller apartment next door, 22-H, at the Imperial House, 150 East 69th Street. Her last public appearance was made on September 23, 1974 at a book party cohosted with her old friend Rosalind Russell at New York's Rainbow Room. Russell was suffering from breast cancer and arthritis at the time. When Crawford saw the unflattering photos that appeared in the papers the next day, she said "If that's how I look, then they won't see me anymore." Crawford cancelled all public appearances, began declining interviews, and left her apartment less and less. Dental problems, including surgery which left her needing round-the-clock nursing care, plagued her from 1972 until mid-1975. While on antibiotics for this problem in October 1974, her drinking caused her to pass out, slip, and strike her face. Whether it was this incident or her return to religion, Christian Science, she quit drinking in 1974.
On May 6, 1977, Crawford gave away her Shih Tzu, Princess Lotus Blossom, because she was too weak to continue to care for her. Crawford died on May 10, 1977 at her New York apartment of a myocardial infarction. A funeral was held at Campbell Funeral Home, New York, on May 13, 1977. In her will, which was signed on October 28, 1976, Crawford bequeathed to her two youngest children, Cindy and Cathy, $77,500 each from her $2 million estate.
She explicitly disinherited the two eldest, Christina and Christopher: "It is my intention to make no provision herein for my son, Christopher, or my daughter, Christina, for reasons which are well known to them." Both of them challenged the will and received a $55,000 settlement. She also bequeathed nothing to her niece, Joan Lowe (1933–1999; born Joan Crawford LeSueur, the only child of her estranged brother, Hal). Crawford left money to her favorite charities: the USO of New York, the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital, the American Cancer Society, the Muscular Dystrophy Association, the American Heart Association, and the Wiltwyck School for Boys. During World War II, she was a member of American Women's Voluntary Services.
A memorial service was held for Crawford at All Souls' Unitarian Church on Lexington Avenue in New York on May 16, 1977. In attendance were long-time friend Myrna Loy and co-stars Geraldine Brooks and Cliff Robertson, who gave eulogies; Pearl Bailey sang "He'll Understand". Another memorial service, organized by George Cukor, was held on June 24 in the Samuel Goldwyn Theater at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills, California. Crawford was cremated, and her ashes placed in a crypt with her fourth and final husband, Alfred Steele, in Ferncliff Cemetery, Hartsdale, New York.
Joan Crawford's handprints and footprints are immortalized in the forecourt of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. She has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 1752 Vine Street, for her contributions to the motion picture industry. "Playboy" listed Crawford as #84 of the "100 Sexiest Women of the 20th century". In 1999, Crawford was also voted the tenth greatest female star of the classic American cinema by the American Film Institute.
Crawford has also attracted a following in the gay community. In "Joan Crawford: The Essential Biography", the author explains that Crawford appeals to many gay men because they sympathize with her struggle for success in both the entertainment industry and her personal life.
In November 1978, Christina Crawford published "Mommie Dearest", which contained allegations that her late adoptive mother was emotionally and physically abusive to Christina and her brother Christopher because she chose fame and her career over parenthood.
Many of Crawford's friends and co-workers, including Van Johnson, Ann Blyth, Myrna Loy, Katharine Hepburn, Cesar Romero, Gary Gray, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (Crawford's first husband), and Crawford's two other younger daughters, Cathy and Cindy, denounced the book, categorically denying any abuse. Others including Betty Hutton, Helen Hayes, James MacArthur (Hayes' son), June Allyson, and Vincent Sherman stated they had witnessed some form of abusive behavior.
"Mommie Dearest" became a best-seller, and was made into the 1981 film "Mommie Dearest", starring Faye Dunaway as Crawford.
Pictures of Crawford were used in the album artwork of The Rolling Stones album "Exile on Main St." (1972).
Four years after her death, Blue Öyster Cult released the song Joan Crawford as part of their album "Fire of Unknown Origin ("1981).
The alleged feud between Crawford and Bette Davis is depicted in the 1989 book "". It was fueled by competition over film roles, Academy Awards, and Franchot Tone (Joan Crawford's second husband), who was Davis's co-star in 1935's "Dangerous".
The Crawford-Davis rivalry is the subject of the 2017 first season of the television series "Feud", inspired by the book and subtitled "Bette and Joan". Crawford is played by Jessica Lange, and Davis is played by Susan Sarandon. As of 2018, any streaming/airing of this series was stopped by restraint order from lower California courts until Olivia de Havilland could be heard by the United States Supreme Court on whether producers had the right to use her likeness without permission despite her being a public figure. In January 2019, the Supreme Court refused to hear the case. The restraint is no longer in place. De Havilland is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45969 |
Pentecost
The Christian holiday of Pentecost, which is celebrated the 49th day (the seventh Sunday) after Easter Sunday, commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles ().
The holiday is also called "White Sunday" or "Whitsunday" or "Whitsun", especially in the United Kingdom, where traditionally the next day, Whit Monday, was also a public holiday (since 1971 fixed by statute on the last Monday in May). The Monday after Pentecost is a legal holiday in many European countries.
In Eastern Christianity, Pentecost can also refer to the entire fifty days of Easter through Pentecost inclusive; hence the book containing the liturgical texts is called the ""Pentecostarion"". Since its date depends on the date of Easter, Pentecost is a "moveable feast".
Pentecost is one of the Great Feasts of the Eastern Orthodox Church, a Solemnity in the Roman Rite of the Catholic Church, a Festival in the Lutheran Churches, and a Principal Feast in the Anglican Communion. Many Christian denominations provide a special liturgy for this holy celebration.
The term Pentecost comes from the Greek () meaning "fiftieth". It refers to the festival celebrated on the fiftieth day after Passover, also known as the "Feast of Weeks" and the "Feast of 50 days" in rabbinic tradition.
The Septuagint uses the term to refer to the "Feast of Pentecost" only twice, in the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit and 2 Maccabees. The Septuagint writers also used the word in two other senses: to signify the year of Jubilee (), an event which occurs every 50th year, and in several passages of chronology as an ordinal number. The term has also been used in the literature of Hellenistic Judaism by Philo of Alexandria and Josephus.
In Judaism the Festival of Weeks ( "Shavuot") is a harvest festival that is celebrated seven weeks and one day after the first day of the Feast of Unleavened Bread in or seven weeks and one day after the Sabbath referred to in . The Festival of Weeks is also called the "feast of Harvest" in and the "day of first fruits" in . In it is called the "firstfruits of the wheat harvest." The date for the "Feast of Weeks" originally came the day after seven full weeks following the first harvest of grain. In Jewish tradition the fiftieth day was known as the "Festival of Weeks". The actual mention of fifty days comes from .
During the Hellenistic period, the ancient harvest festival also became a day of renewing the Noahic covenant, described in , which is established between God and "all flesh that is upon the earth". By this time, some Jews were already living in Diaspora. According to there were Jews from "every nation under heaven" in Jerusalem, possibly visiting the city as pilgrims during Pentecost. In particular the "hoi epidemountes" () are identified as "visitors" to Jerusalem from Rome. This group of visitors includes both Jews and "proselytes" (, "prosēlytos"); sometimes translated as "converts to Judaism", "proselyte" referred to non-Jews who adhered fully to the Mosaic laws, including circumcision. The list of nations represented in the biblical text includes Parthians, Medes, Elamites, Mesopotamia, Judaea, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Phrygia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Cyrene, and those who were visiting from Rome. Scholars have speculated about a possible earlier literary source for the list of nations including an astrological list by Paul of Alexandria and various references to the Jewish diaspora by writers of the Second Temple era (particularly Philo of Alexandria).
After the destruction of the temple in 70 AD offerings could no longer be brought to the Temple and the focus of the festival shifted from agriculture to the giving of the law on Sinai. It became customary to gather at synagogue and read the Book of Ruth and Exodus Chapters 19 and 20. The term Pentecost appears in the Septuagint as one of names for the Festival of Weeks.
The biblical narrative of the Pentecost includes numerous references to earlier biblical narratives like the Tower of Babel, and the flood and creation narratives from the Book of Genesis. It also includes references to certain theophanies, with certain emphasis on God's incarnate appearance on biblical Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments were presented to Moses. Theologian Stephen Wilson has described the narrative as "exceptionally obscure" and various points of disagreement persist among bible scholars.
Some biblical commentators have sought to establish that the (house) given as the location of the events of in Acts 2:2 was one of the thirty halls of the Temple (called ), but the text itself is lacking in specific details. Richard C. H. Lenski and other scholars contend that the author of Acts could have chosen the word (sanctuary or temple) if this meaning were intended, rather than "house". Some semantic details suggest that the "house" could be the "upper room" () mentioned in , but there is no literary evidence to confirm the location with certainty and it remains a subject of dispute amongst scholars.
The events of Acts Chapter 2 are set against the backdrop of the celebration of Pentecost in Jerusalem. There are several major features to the Pentecost narrative presented in the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles. The author begins the narrative by noting that the disciples of Jesus "were all together in one place" on the "day of Pentecost" (). The verb used in to indicate the arrival of the day of Pentecost carries a connotation of fulfillment.
There is a "mighty rushing wind" (wind is a common symbol for the Holy Spirit) and "tongues as of fire" appear. The gathered disciples were "filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance". Some scholars have interpreted the passage as a reference to the multitude of languages spoken by the gathered disciples, while others have taken the reference to "tongues" () to signify ecstatic speech. In Christian tradition, this event represents fulfillment of the promise that Christ will baptize his followers with the Holy Spirit. (Out of the four New Testament gospels, the distinction between baptism by water and the baptism by Christ with "Holy Spirit and fire" is only found in Matthew and Luke.)
The narrative in Acts evokes the symbolism of Jesus' baptism in the Jordan River, and the start of his ministry, by explicitly connecting the earlier prophecy of John the Baptist to the baptism of the disciples with the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. The timing of the narrative during the law giving festival of Pentecost symbolizes both continuity with the giving of the law, but also the central role of the Holy Spirit (understood as an aspect of Jesus Christ) for the early Church. The central role of Christ in Christian faith signified a fundamental theological separation from the traditional Jewish faith, which was grounded in the Torah and Mosaic Law.
Peter's sermon in stresses the resurrection and exaltation. In his sermon, Peter quotes and Psalm 16 to indicate that first Pentecost marks the start of the Messianic Age. About one hundred and twenty followers of Christ (Acts 1:15) were present, including the Twelve Apostles (Matthias was Judas' replacement) (Acts 1:13, 26), Jesus' mother Mary, other female disciples and his brothers (Acts 1:14). While those on whom the Spirit had descended were speaking in many languages, the Apostle Peter stood up with the eleven and proclaimed to the crowd that this event was the fulfillment of the prophecy. In Acts 2:17, it reads: "'And in the last days,' God says, 'I will pour out my spirit upon every sort of flesh, and your sons and your daughters will prophesy and your young men will see visions and your old men will dream dreams." He also mentions () that it was the third hour of the day (about 9:00 am). then reports: "Then they that gladly received his word were baptized: and the same day there were added unto them about three thousand souls." Critical scholars believe some features of the narrative are theological constructions. Scholars believe that even if the Pentecost narrative is not literally true, it does signify an important event in the history of the early Church which enabled the rapid spread of Christianity. Within a few decades important congregations had been established in all major cities of the Roman Empire.
Biblical commentator Richard C. H. Lenski has noted that the use of the term "Pentecost" in Acts is a reference to the Jewish festival. He writes that a well-defined, distinct Christian celebration did not exist until later years, when Christians kept the name of "Pentecost" but began to calculate the date of the feast based on Easter rather than Passover.
Peter stated that this event was the beginning of a continual outpouring that would be available to all believers from that point on, Jews and Gentiles alike.
Scholars believe that Pope Leo I's "Sermons 75–77" were given on Pentecost Sunday. In these sermons, dating to the 5th century, Leo discusses Macedonianism, which the Catholic Church denounced as heresy because Macedonianism considered the Holy Spirit inferior to the Father and Son, thereby undermining the Trinity. He also denounces Manichean doctrine on the Holy Spirit, which taught that the Holy Spirit was present in Mani. Leo discusses other Catholic doctrine pertaining to the Holy Spirit, especially emphasizing the Spirit's relationship to the Father and Son of the Trinity and the Catholic Church. He draws an analogy between Jewish practices and the Christian feast day: "As once to the Hebrew people, freed from Egypt, the law was given on Mt. Sinai on the fiftieth day after the sacrifice of the lamb, so after the Passion of the Christ when the true Lamb of God was killed, on the fiftieth day from his Resurrection, the Holy Spirit came down on the apostles and the community of believers." Leo calls this the Second Covenant and says that it is "established by the same Spirit who has set up the first". He describes the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the disciples on Pentecost as the fulfillment of a "long-awaited promise".
In is used as an alternate name for the Jewish holiday of "Shavuot". The NABRE translation of this passage reads: "on our festival of Pentecost, the holy feast of Weeks".
In the Eastern Orthodox Church, Pentecost is one of the Orthodox Great Feasts and is considered to be the highest ranking Great Feast of the Lord, second in rank only to Easter. The service is celebrated with an All-night Vigil on the eve of the feast day, and the Divine Liturgy on the day of the feast itself. Orthodox churches are often decorated with greenery and flowers on this feast day, and the celebration is intentionally similar to the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, which celebrates the giving of the Mosaic Law.
The feast itself lasts three days. The first day is known as "Trinity Sunday"; the second day is known as "Spirit Monday" (or "Monday of the Holy Spirit"); and the third day, Tuesday, is called the "Third Day of the Trinity." The Afterfeast of Pentecost lasts for one week, during which fasting is not permitted, even on Wednesday and Friday. In the Orthodox Tradition, the liturgical color used at Pentecost is green, and the clergy and faithful carry flowers and green branches in their hands during the services.
A popular tradition arose in both west and east of decorating the church with roses on Pentecost, leading to a popular designation of Pentecost as or "Rose Feast"; in Greek this became (). This led to "Rusalii" becoming the Romanian language term for the feast, as well as the Neapolitan popular designation "Pasca rusata" ("rosey Easter"). In modern times, the term in Greek refers to the eve of Pentecost, not Pentecost itself; or, in the case of Megara in Attica, to the Monday and Tuesday after "Pascha", as roses are often used during the whole liturgical season of the Pentecostarion, not just Pentecost. John Chrysostom warned his flock not to allow this custom to replace spiritually adorning themselves with virtue in reception of the Fruits of the Holy Spirit.
An extraordinary service called the "Kneeling Prayer" is observed on the night of Pentecost. This is a Vespers service to which are added three sets of long poetical prayers, the composition of Saint Basil the Great, during which everyone makes a full prostration, touching their foreheads to the floor (prostrations in church having been forbidden from the day of Pascha (Easter) up to this point). Uniquely, these prayers include a petition for all of those in hell, that they may be granted relief and even ultimate release from their confinement, if God deems this possible.
All of the remaining days of the ecclesiastical year, until the preparation for the next Great Lent, are named for the day after Pentecost on which they occur (for example, the 13th Tuesday After Pentecost).
The Second Monday after Pentecost is the beginning of the Apostles' Fast (which continues until the Feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29). Theologically, Orthodox do not consider Pentecost to be the "birthday" of the Church; they see the Church as having existed before the creation of the world (cf. "The Shepherd of Hermas")
The Orthodox icon of the feast depicts the Twelve Apostles seated in a semicircle (sometimes the Theotokos (Virgin Mary) is shown sitting in the center of them). At the top of the icon, the Holy Spirit, in the form of tongues of fire, is descending upon them. At the bottom is an allegorical figure, called "Kosmos", which symbolizes the world. Although Kosmos is crowned with earthly glory he sits in the darkness caused by the ignorance of God. He is holding a towel on which have been placed 12 scrolls, representing the teaching of the Twelve Apostles.
In the ancient Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria, Pentecost is one of the seven Major "Lord's Feasts". It is celebrated at the time of ninth hour (3:00 pm) on the Sunday of Pentecost by a special three-segment prayer known as the "Office of Genuflection (Kneeling Prayer)". This feast is followed with the "Apostles Fast" which has a fixed end date on the fifth of the Coptic month of Epip [which currently falls on July 12, which is equivalent to June 29, due to the current 13-day Julian-Gregorian calendar offset]. The fifth of Epip is the commemoration of the Martyrdom of St. Peter and Paul.
The liturgical celebrations of Pentecost in Western churches are as rich and varied as those in the East. The main sign of Pentecost in the West is the color red. It symbolizes joy and the fire of the Holy Spirit.
Priests or ministers, and choirs wear red vestments, and in modern times, the custom has extended to the lay people of the congregation wearing red clothing in celebration as well. Red banners are often hung from walls or ceilings to symbolize the blowing of the "mighty wind" and the free movement of the Spirit.
The celebrations may depict symbols of the Holy Spirit, such as the dove or flames, symbols of the church such as Noah's Ark and the Pomegranate, or especially within Protestant churches of Reformed and Evangelical traditions, words rather than images naming for example, the gifts and Fruits of the Spirit. Red flowers at the altar/preaching area, and red flowering plants such as geraniums around the church are also typical decorations for Pentecost masses/services. These symbolize the renewal of life, the coming of the warmth of summer, and the growth of the church at and from the first Pentecost. In the southern hemisphere, for example, in southern Australia, Pentecost comes in the mellow autumntide, after the often great heat of summer, and the red leaves of the poinsettia have often been used to decorate churches then.
These flowers often play an important role in the ancestral rites, and other rites, of the particular congregation. For example, in both Protestant and Catholic churches, the plants brought in to decorate for the holiday may be each "sponsored" by individuals in memory of a particular loved one, or in honor of a living person on a significant occasion, such as their Confirmation day.
In German speaking and other Central European countries, and also in overseas congregations originating from these countries through migration, green branches are also traditionally used to decorate churches for Pentecost. Birch is the tree most typically associated with this practice in Europe, but other species are employed in different climates.
The singing of Pentecost hymns is also central to the celebration in the Western tradition. Hymns such as Martin Luther's "Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott" (Come, Holy Spirit, God and Lord), Charles Wesley's "Spirit of Faith Come Down" and "Come Holy Ghost Our Hearts Inspire" or Hildegard von Bingen's "O Holy Spirit Root of Life" are popular. Some traditional hymns of Pentecost make reference not only to themes relating to the Holy Spirit or the church, but to folk customs connected to the holiday as well, such as the decorating with green branches. Other hymns include "Oh that I had a Thousand Voices" (""O daß ich tausend Zungen hätte"") by German, Johann Mentzer Verse 2: ""Ye forest leaves so green and tender, that dance for joy in summer air"…" or "O Day Full of Grace" (""Den signede Dag"") by Dane, N. F. S. Grundtvig verse 3: ""Yea were every tree endowed with speech and every leaflet singing"…".
As Pentecost closes the Easter Season in the Roman Catholic Church, the dismissal with the double alleluia is sung at the end of Mass. The Paschal Candle is removed from the sanctuary at the end of the day.
In the Roman Catholic Church, Veni Sancte Spiritus is the sequence hymn for the Day of Pentecost. This has been translated into many languages and is sung in many denominations today. As an invocation of the Holy Spirit, Veni Creator Spiritus is sung during liturgical celebrations on the feast of Pentecost.
Trumpeters or brass ensembles are often specially contracted to accompany singing and provide special music at Pentecost services, recalling the Sound of the mighty wind. While this practice is common among a wide spectrum of Western denominations (Eastern Churches do not employ instrumental accompaniment in their worship) it is particularly typical, and distinctive to the heritage of the Moravian Church.
Another custom is reading the appointed Scripture lessons in multiple foreign languages recounting the speaking in tongues recorded in .
In the Middle Ages, cathedrals and great churches throughout Western Europe were fitted with a peculiar architectural feature known as a Holy Ghost hole: a small circular opening in the roof that symbolized the entrance of the Holy Spirit into the midst of the congregation. At Pentecost, these Holy Ghost holes would be decorated with flowers, and sometimes a dove figure lowered through into the church while the narrative of Pentecost was read. Holy Ghost holes can still be seen today in European churches such as Canterbury Cathedral.
Similarly, a large two dimensional dove figure would be, and in some places still is, cut from wood, painted, and decorated with flowers, to be lowered over the congregation, particularly during the singing of the sequence hymn, or "Veni Creator Spiritus". In other places, particularly Sicily and the Italian peninsula, rose petals were and are thrown from the galleries over the congregation, recalling the tongues of fire. In modern times, this practice has been revived, and adapted as well, to include the strewing of origami doves from above or suspending them, sometimes by the hundreds, from the ceiling.
In some cases, red fans, or red handkerchiefs, are distributed to the congregation to be waved during the procession, etc. Other congregations have incorporated the use of red balloons, signifying the "Birthday of the Church". These may be borne by the congregants, decorate the sanctuary, or released all at once.
For some Protestants, the nine days between Ascension Day, and Pentecost are set aside as a time of fasting and universal prayer in honor of the disciples' time of prayer and unity awaiting the Holy Spirit. Similarly among Roman Catholics, special Pentecost novenas are prayed. The Pentecost Novena is considered the first novena, all other novenas prayed in preparation of various feasts deriving their practice from those original nine days of prayer observed by the disciples of Christ.
While the Eve of Pentecost was traditionally a day of fasting for Catholics, contemporary canon law no longer requires it. Both Catholics and Protestants may hold spiritual retreats, prayer vigils, and litanies in the days leading up to Pentecost. In some cases vigils on the Eve of Pentecost may last all night. Pentecost is also one of the occasions specially appointed for the Lutheran Litany to be sung.
From the early days of Western Christianity, Pentecost became one of the days set aside to celebrate Baptism. In Northern Europe Pentecost was preferred even over Easter for this rite, as the temperatures in late spring might be supposed to be more conducive to outdoor immersion as was then the practice. It is proposed that the term Whit Sunday derives from the custom of the newly baptized wearing white clothing, and from the white vestments worn by the clergy in English liturgical uses. The holiday was also one of the three days each year (along with Christmas and Easter) Roman Catholics were required to confess and receive Holy Communion in order to remain in good ecclesiastical standing.
Holy Communion is likewise often a feature of the Protestant observance of Pentecost as well. It is one of the relatively few Sundays some Reformed denominations may offer the communion meal, and is one of the days of the year specially appointed among Moravians for the celebration of their Love Feasts. Ordinations are celebrated across a wide array of Western denominations at Pentecost, or near to it. In some denominations, for example the Lutheran Church, even if an ordination or consecration of a deaconess is not celebrated on Pentecost, the liturgical color will invariably be red, and the theme of the service will be the Holy Spirit.
Above all, Pentecost is a day to hold Confirmation celebrations for youth. Flowers, the wearing of white robes or white dresses recalling Baptism, rites such as the laying on of hands, and vibrant singing play prominent roles on these joyous occasions, the blossoming of Spring forming an equal analogy with the blossoming of youth.
The typical image of Pentecost in the West is that of the Virgin Mary seated centrally and prominently among the disciples with flames resting on the crowns of their heads. Occasionally, parting clouds suggesting the action of the "mighty wind", rays of light and the Dove are also depicted. Of course, the Western iconographic style is less static and stylized than that of the East, and other very different representations have been produced, and, in some cases, have achieved great fame such as the Pentecosts by Titian, Giotto, and el Greco.
St. Paul already in the 1st century notes the importance of this festival to the early Christian communities. (See: & ) Since the lifetime of some who may have been eyewitnesses, annual celebrations of the descent of the Holy Spirit have been observed. Before the Second Vatican Council Pentecost Monday as well was a Holy Day of Obligation during which the Catholic Church addressed the newly baptized and confirmed. After the council, Pentecost Monday is no longer solemnized.
Nevertheless, Pentecost Monday remains an official festival in many Protestant churches, such as the (Lutheran) Church of Sweden, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland, and others. In the Byzantine Catholic Rite Pentecost Monday is no longer a Holy Day of Obligation, but rather a simple holiday. In the Extraordinary Form of the liturgy of the Roman Catholic Church, as at Easter, the liturgical rank of Monday and Tuesday of Pentecost week is a Double of the First Class and across many Western denominations, Pentecost is celebrated with an octave culminating on Trinity Sunday. However, in the modern Roman Rite (Ordinary Form), Pentecost ends after Evening Prayer on the feast day itself, with Ordinary Time resuming the next day.
Marking the festival's importance, in several denominations, such as the Lutheran, Episcopal, and United Methodist churches, and formerly in the Roman Catholic Church, all the Sundays from the holiday itself until Advent in late November or December are designated the 2nd, 3rd, Nth, Sunday after Pentecost, etc. Throughout the year, in Roman Catholic piety, Pentecost is the third of the Glorious Mysteries of the Holy Rosary, as well as being one of the Stations of the Resurrection or Via Lucis.
In some Evangelical and Pentecostal churches, where there is less emphasis on the liturgical year, Pentecost may still be one of the greatest celebrations in the year, such as in Germany or Romania. In other cases, Pentecost may be ignored as a holy day in these churches. In many evangelical churches in the United States, the secular holiday, Mother's Day, may be more celebrated than the ancient and biblical feast of Pentecost. Some evangelicals and Pentecostals are observing the liturgical calendar and observe Pentecost as a day to teach the Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
Across denominational lines Pentecost has been an opportunity for Christians to honor the role of the Holy Spirit in their lives, and celebrate the birth of the Church in an ecumenical context.
Several hymns were written and composed for Pentecost, notably Veni Creator Spiritus (Come, Creator Spirit), attributed to the 9th-century Rabanus Maurus, and translated throughout the centuries in different languages. This one and some more are suitable also for other occasions imploring the Holy Spirit, such as ordinations and coronations.
The Lutheran church of the Baroque observed three days of Pentecost. Some composers wrote sacred cantatas to be performed in the church services of these days. Johann Sebastian Bach composed several cantatas for Pentecost, including "Erschallet, ihr Lieder, erklinget, ihr Saiten!" BWV 172, in 1714 and "Also hat Gott die Welt geliebt", BWV 68, in 1725. Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel wrote cantatas such as "Werdet voll Geistes" (Get full of spirit) in 1737. Mozart composed an antiphon "Veni Sancte Spiritus" in 1768.
Olivier Messiaen composed an organ mass "Messe de la Pentecôte" in 1949/50. In 1964 Fritz Werner wrote an oratorio for Pentecost "Veni, sancte spiritus" (Come, Holy Spirit) on the sequence "Veni Sancte Spiritus", and Jani Christou wrote "Tongues of Fire", a Pentecost oratorio. Richard Hillert wrote a "Motet for the Day of Pentecost" for choir, vibraphone, and prepared electronic tape in 1969. Violeta Dinescu composed "Pfingstoratorium", an oratorio for Pentecost for five soloists, mixed chorus and small orchestra in 1993. Daniel Elder's 21st century piece, "Factus est Repente", for a cappella choir, was premiered in 2013.
In Italy it was customary to scatter rose petals from the ceiling of the churches to recall the miracle of the fiery tongues; hence in Sicily and elsewhere in Italy Whitsunday is called "Pasqua rosatum". The Italian name "Pasqua rossa" comes from the red colours of the vestments used on Whitsunday.
In France it was customary to blow trumpets during Divine service, to recall the sound of the mighty wind which accompanied the Descent of the Holy Spirit.
In the north west of England, church and chapel parades called Whit Walks take place at Whitsun (sometimes on Whit Friday, the Friday after Whitsun). Typically, the parades contain brass bands and choirs; girls attending are dressed in white. Traditionally, Whit Fairs (sometimes called Whitsun Ales) took place. Other customs such as morris dancing and cheese rolling are also associated with Whitsun. "Whitsunday" has been the name of the day in the Church of England. (The Book of Common Prayer only once uses the word "Pentecost" for the festival. Though some think that name derives from white clothes worn by newly baptised in Eastertide, it may well be seen as derived from "wit", hence "wisdom", the reference being to Holy Wisdom (Sancta Sophia, Hagia Sophia), referred to in Proverbs and the Book of Wisdom, with which the Holy Spirit has often been identified.
In Finland there is a saying known virtually by everyone which translates as "if one has no sweetheart until Pentecost, he/she will not have it during the whole summer."
In Port Vila, the capital of Vanuatu, people originating from Pentecost Island usually celebrate their island's name-day with a special church service followed by cultural events such as dancing.
In Ukraine the springtime feast day of "Zeleni Sviata" became associated with the Pentecost. (The exact origin of the relationship is not known). The customs for the festival were performed in the following order: first, home and hearth would be cleaned; second, foods were prepared for the festival; finally, homes and churches were decorated with wildflowers and various types of green herbs and plants. A seven course meal may have been served as the Pentecost feast which may have included traditional dishes such as cereal with honey ("kolyvo"), rice or millet grains with milk, sauerkraut soup ("kapusniak"), chicken broth with handmade noodles ("iushka z zaterkoiu"), cheese turnovers ("pyrizhky syrom"), roast pork, buckwheat cakes served with eggs and cheese ("blyntsi"), and baked kasha.
The earliest possible date is May 10 (as in 1818 and 2285). The latest possible date is June 13 (as in 1943 and 2038). The day of Pentecost is seven weeks after Easter Sunday: that is to say, the fiftieth day after Easter inclusive of Easter Sunday. Pentecost may also refer to the 50 days from Easter to Pentecost Sunday inclusive of both. Because Easter itself has no fixed date, this makes Pentecost a moveable feast.
While Eastern Christianity treats Pentecost as the last day of Easter in its liturgies, in the Roman liturgy it is usually a separate feast. The fifty days from Easter Sunday to Pentecost Sunday may also be called Eastertide.
Since Pentecost itself is on a Sunday, it is automatically considered to be a public holiday in countries with large Christian denominations.
Pentecost Monday is a public holiday in many countries including Andorra, Austria, Belgium, Benin, Cyprus, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Romania (since 2008), Senegal, (most parts of) Switzerland, Togo and Ukraine.
In Sweden it was also a public holiday, but Pentecost Monday (Annandag Pingst) was replaced by Swedish National Day on June 6, by a government decision on December 15, 2004. In Italy and Malta, it is no longer a public holiday. It was a public holiday in Ireland until 1973, when it was replaced by Early Summer Holiday on the first Monday in June. In the United Kingdom the day is known as Whit Monday, and was a bank holiday until 1967 when it was replaced by the Spring Bank Holiday on the last Monday in May. In France, following reactions to the implementation of the "Journée de solidarité envers les personnes âgées", Pentecost Monday has been reestablished as a regular (not as a "working") holiday on May 3, 2005.
According to legend, King Arthur always gathered all his knights at the round table for a feast and a quest on Pentecost:
So ever the king had a custom that at the feast of Pentecost in especial, afore other feasts in the year, he would not go that day to meat until he had heard or seen of a great marvel.
German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe declared Pentecost "das liebliche Fest" – the lovely Feast, in a selection by the same name in his "Reineke Fuchs".
"Pfingsten, das liebliche Fest", speaks of Pentecost as a time of greening and blooming in fields, woods, hills, mountains, bushes and hedges, of birds singing new songs, meadows sprouting fragrant flowers, and of festive sunshine gleaming from the skies and coloring the earth – iconic lines idealizing the Pentecost holidays in the German-speaking lands.
Further, Goethe records an old peasant proverb relating to Pentecost in his "Sankt-Rochus-Fest zu Bingen"
– "Ripe strawberries at Pentecost mean a good wine crop."
Alexandre Dumas, père mentions of Pentecost in "Twenty Years After" (French: Vingt ans après), the sequel to "The Three Musketeers". A meal is planned for the holiday, to which La Ramée, second in command of the prison, is invited, and by which contrivance, the Duke is able to escape. He speaks sarcastically of the festival to his jailor, foreshadowing his escape : ""Now, what has Pentecost to do with me? Do you fear, say, that the Holy Ghost may come down in the form of fiery tongues and open the gates of my prison?""
William Shakespeare mentions Pentecost in a line from "Romeo and Juliet" Act 1, Scene V. At the ball at his home, Capulet speaks in refuting an overestimate of the time elapsed since he last danced: ""What, man? 'Tis not so much, 'tis not so much! 'Tis since the nuptial of Lucentio, Come Pentecost as quickly as it will, Some five-and-twenty years, and then we mask'd."" Note here the allusion to the tradition of mumming, Morris dancing and wedding celebrations at Pentecost. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45971 |
Whatì
Whatì (; from the Dogrib language meaning "Marten Lakes"), officially the "Tłı̨chǫ Community Government of Whatì" is a First Nations community in the North Slave Region of the Northwest Territories, Canada. Whatì is located by Lac La Martre, about northwest of the territorial capital of Yellowknife.
With rich and varied wildlife, the area has long been a favoured hunting ground of the Tłı̨chǫ (Dogrib Dene) Indigenous people. The North West Company established a trading post there in 1793, and many natives began settling there permanently, while they continued to hunt and fish in the area. With the establishment of a trading post at Fort Rae on Great Slave Lake in the late 19th century, most regional trading was accomplished at the Hudson's Bay Company and free traders posts there. A trading post at Lac La Martre was not again established until the 1920s.
On 1 January 1996, the community officially changed its name from Lac La Martre to the Tłı̨chǫ name "Wha Ti", meaning "Marten Lake," the same meaning as the French and then on 4 August 2005 to the current spelling. Other traditional Tłı̨chǫ names for the settlement include Tsoti ('fouled water lake') and Mine Go Kola ('net fishing with houses').
Before 2005, the community was unincorporated, and local governance was provided by a First Nations band government, Wha Ti First Nation. Under the terms of the Tłı̨chǫ Agreement, most responsibilities of Wha Ti have been transferred to a new Whatì Community Government. However, the First Nation is still recognized by the federal government for Indian Act enrollment.
At the 2016 Census the population was 470, a decrease of 4.5% over the 2011 Census. The majority of the population is Indigenous of which 445 were First Nations and 10 were Métis. The main languages were Dogrib and English with a few North Slavey speakers.
In 2017 the Government of the Northwest Territories reported that the population was 522 with an average yearly growth rate of 0.6% from 2007.
While trapping, hunting, and fishing continue to be the main economic activities in this traditional community, efforts have been made to develop tourism as well. A fishing lodge was opened, and many tourists come to see the abundant wildlife, including black bears, barren-ground caribou, wolves, and eagles. The community takes special pride in the fact that no alcohol is allowed there.
Whatì is part of the Tlicho Government.
Whatì is currently only accessible from the rest of Canada by the Whatì Airport and a winter road. Construction of the Tlicho All-Season Road began in 2019 and is due to finish in 2022. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45975 |
Compromise of 1850
The Compromise of 1850 was a package of five separate bills passed by the United States Congress in September 1850 that defused a political confrontation between slave and free states on the status of territories acquired in the Mexican–American War. It also set Texas's western and northern borders and included provisions addressing fugitive slaves and the slave trade. The compromise was brokered by Whig senator Henry Clay and Democratic senator Stephen Douglas with the support of President Millard Fillmore.
A debate over slavery in the territories had erupted during the Mexican–American War, as many Southerners sought to expand slavery to the newly-acquired lands and many Northerners opposed any such expansion. The debate was further complicated by Texas's claim to all former Mexican territory north and east of the Rio Grande, including areas it had never effectively controlled. These issues prevented the passage of organic acts to create organized territorial governments for the land acquired in the Mexican–American War. In early 1850, Clay proposed a package of bills that would settle most of the pressing issues before Congress. Clay's proposal was opposed by President Zachary Taylor, anti-slavery Whigs like William Seward, and pro-slavery Democrats like John C. Calhoun, and congressional debate over the territories continued.
After Taylor died and was succeeded by Fillmore, Douglas took the lead in passing Clay's compromise through Congress as five separate bills. Under the compromise, Texas surrendered its claims to present-day New Mexico and other states in return for federal assumption of Texas's public debt. California was admitted as a free state, while the remaining portions of the Mexican Cession were organized into New Mexico Territory and Utah Territory. Under the concept of popular sovereignty, the people of each territory would decide whether or not slavery would be permitted. The compromise also included a more stringent Fugitive Slave Law and banned the slave trade in Washington, D.C. The issue of slavery in the territories would be re-opened by the Kansas–Nebraska Act, but many historians argue that the Compromise of 1850 played a major role in postponing the American Civil War.
The Republic of Texas gained independence from Mexico following the Texas Revolution of 1836, and, partly because Texas had been settled by a large number of Americans, there was a strong sentiment in both Texas and the United States for the annexation of Texas by the United States. In December 1845, President James K. Polk signed a resolution annexing Texas, and Texas became the 28th state in the union. Polk sought further expansion through the acquisition of the Mexican province of Alta California, which represented new lands to settle as well as a potential gateway to trade in Asia. His administration attempted to purchase California from Mexico, but the annexation of Texas stoked tensions between Mexico and the United States. Relations between the two countries were further complicated by Texas's claim to all land north of the Rio Grande; Mexico argued that the more northern Nueces River was the proper Texan border.
In March 1846, a skirmish broke out on the northern side of the Rio Grande, ending in the death or capture of dozens of American soldiers. Shortly thereafter, the United States declared war on Mexico, beginning the Mexican–American War. In August 1846, Polk asked Congress for an appropriation that he hoped to use as a down payment for the purchase of California in a treaty with Mexico, igniting a debate over the status of future territories. A freshman Democratic Congressman, David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, offered an amendment known as the Wilmot Proviso that would ban slavery in any newly acquired lands. The Wilmot Proviso was defeated in the Senate, but it injected the slavery debate into national politics.
In September 1847, an American army under General Winfield Scott captured the Mexican capital in the Battle for Mexico City. Several months later, Mexican and American negotiators agreed to the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, under which Mexico agreed to recognize the Rio Grande as Texas's southern border and to cede Alta California and New Mexico. The Missouri Compromise had settled the issue of the geographic reach of slavery within the Louisiana Purchase territories by prohibiting slavery in states north of 36°30′ latitude, and Polk sought to extend this line into the newly acquired territory. However, the divisive issue of slavery blocked any such legislation. As his term came to a close, Polk signed the lone territorial bill passed by Congress, which established the Territory of Oregon and banned slavery in it. Polk declined to seek re-election in the 1848 presidential election, and the 1848 election was won by the Whig ticket of Zachary Taylor and Millard Fillmore.
Three major types of issues were addressed by the Compromise of 1850: a variety of boundary issues, the status of territory issues, and the issue of slavery. While capable of analytical distinction, the boundary and territory issues were included in the overarching issue of slavery. Pro-slavery and anti-slavery interests were each concerned with both the amount of land on which slavery was permitted and with the number of States in the slave or free camps. Since Texas was a slave state, not only the residents of that state but also both camps on a national scale had an interest in the size of Texas.
The independent Republic of Texas won the decisive Battle of San Jacinto (April 21, 1836) against Mexico and captured Mexican president Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna. He signed the Treaties of Velasco, which recognized the Rio Grande as the boundary of the Republic of Texas. The treaties were then repudiated by the government of Mexico, which insisted that Mexico remained sovereign over Texas since Santa Anna had signed the treaty under coercion, and promised to reclaim the lost territories. To the extent that there was a "de facto" recognition, Mexico treated the Nueces River as its northern boundary control. A vast, largely-unsettled area lay between the two rivers. Neither Mexico nor the Republic of Texas had the military strength to assert its territorial claim. On December 29, 1845, the Republic of Texas was annexed to the United States and became the 28th state. Texas was staunchly committed to slavery, with its constitution making it illegal for the legislature to free slaves.
The Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo made no mention of the claims of the Republic of Texas; Mexico simply agreed to a Mexico–United States border south of both the "Mexican Cession" and the Republic of Texas claims. After the end of the Mexican–American War, Texas continued to claim a large stretch of disputed land that it had never effectively controlled in present-day eastern New Mexico. New Mexico had long prohibited slavery, a fact that affected the debate over its territorial status, but many New Mexican leaders opposed joining Texas primarily because Texas's capital lay hundreds of miles away and because Texas and New Mexico had a history of conflict dating back to the 1841 Santa Fe Expedition. Outside of Texas, many Southern leaders supported Texas's claims to New Mexico to secure as much territory as possible for the expansion of slavery.
Another issue that would affect the compromise was Texas's debt; it had approximately $10 million in debt left over from its time as an independent nation, and that debt would become a factor in the debates over the territories.
California was part of the Mexican Cession. After the Mexican War, California was essentially run by military governors. President James K. Polk tried to get Congress to establish a territorial government in California officially, but the increasingly sectional debates prevented that. The South wanted to extend slave territory to Southern California and to the Pacific Coast, but the North did not.
From late 1848, Americans and foreigners of many different countries rushed into California for the California Gold Rush, rapidly increasing the population. In response to growing demand for a better more representative government, a Constitutional Convention was held in 1849. The delegates unanimously outlawed slavery. They had no interest in extending the Missouri Compromise Line through California and splitting the state; the lightly populated southern half never had slavery and was heavily Hispanic.
Aside from the disposition of the territories, other issues had risen to prominence during the Taylor years. The Washington, D.C. slave trade angered many in the North, who viewed the presence of slavery in the capital as a blemish on the nation. Disputes around fugitive slaves had grown since 1830 in part due to improving means of transportation, as escaped slaves used roads, railroads, and ships to escape. The Fugitive Slave Act of 1793 had granted jurisdiction to all state and federal judges over cases regarding fugitive slaves, but several Northern states, dissatisfied by the lack of due process in these cases, had passed personal liberty laws that made it more difficult to return alleged fugitive slaves to the South. Congress also faced the issue of Utah, which like California and New Mexico, had been ceded by Mexico. Utah was inhabited largely by Mormons, whose practice of polygamy was unpopular in the United States.
When Taylor took office, the issue of slavery in the Mexican Cession remained unresolved. While a Southern slaveowner himself, Taylor believed that slavery was economically infeasible in the Mexican Cession, and as such he opposed slavery in those territories as a needless source of controversy. In Taylor's view, the best way forward was to admit California as a state rather than a federal territory, as it would leave the slavery question out of Congress's hands. The timing for statehood was in Taylor's favor, as the Gold Rush was well underway at the time of his inauguration, and California's population was exploding. In October 1849, a California constitutional convention unanimously agreed to join the Union—and to ban slavery within their borders. In his December 1849 State of the Union report, Taylor endorsed California's and New Mexico's applications for statehood, and recommended that Congress approve them as written and "should abstain from the introduction of those exciting topics of a sectional character".
On January 29, 1850, Senator Henry Clay introduced a plan which combined the major subjects under discussion. His legislative package included the admission of California as a free state, the cession by Texas of some of its northern and western territorial claims in return for debt relief, the establishment of New Mexico and Utah territories, a ban on the importation of slaves into the District of Columbia for sale, and a more stringent fugitive slave law. Clay had originally favored voting on each of his proposals separately, but Senator Henry S. Foote of Mississippi convinced him to combine the proposals regarding California's admission and the disposition of Texas's borders into one bill. Clay hoped that this combination of measures would convince congressmen from both North and South to support the overall package of laws even if they objected to specific provisions. Clay's proposal attracted the support of some Northern Democrats and Southern Whigs, but it lacked the backing necessary to win passage, and debate over the bill continued.
President Taylor opposed the compromise and continued to call for immediate statehood for both California and New Mexico. Senator John C. Calhoun and some other Southern leaders argued that the compromise was biased against the South because it would lead to the creation of new free states. Most Northern Whigs, led by William Henry Seward, who delivered his famous "Higher Law" speech during the controversy, opposed the Compromise as well because it would apply the Wilmot Proviso to the western territories and because of the pressing of ordinary citizens into duty on slave-hunting patrols. That provision was inserted by Democratic Virginia Senator James M. Mason to entice border-state Whigs, who faced the greatest danger of losing slaves as fugitives but were lukewarm on general sectional issues related to the South on Texas's land claims.
On April 17, a "Committee of Thirteen" agreed on the border of Texas as part of Clay's plan. The dimensions were later changed. That same day, during debates on the measures in the Senate, Vice President Fillmore and Senator Benton verbally sparred, with Fillmore charging that the Missourian was "out of order." During the heated debates, Compromise floor leader Henry S. Foote of Mississippi drew a pistol on Benton.
In early June, nine slaveholding Southern states sent delegates to the Nashville Convention to determine their course of action if the compromise passed. While some delegates preached secession, the moderates ruled and proposed a series of compromises, including extending the dividing line designated by the Missouri Compromise of 1820 to the Pacific Coast.
Taylor died in July 1850, and was succeeded by Vice President Fillmore, who had privately come to support Clay's proposal. The various bills were initially combined into one "omnibus" bill. Despite Clay's efforts, it failed in a crucial vote on July 31, opposed by southern Democrats and by northern Whigs. He announced on the Senate floor the next day that he intended to pass each part of the bill. The 73-year-old Clay, however, was physically exhausted as the effects of tuberculosis, which would eventually kill him, began to take their toll. Clay left the Senate to recuperate in Newport, Rhode Island, and Senator Stephen A. Douglas took the lead in attempting to pass Clay's proposals through the Senate.
Fillmore, anxious to find a quick solution to the conflict in Texas over the border with New Mexico, which threatened to become an armed conflict between Texas militia and the federal soldiers, reversed the administration's position late in July and threw its support to the compromise measures. At the same time, Fillmore denied Texas's claims to New Mexico, asserting that the United States had promised to protect the territorial integrity of New Mexico in the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Fillmore's forceful response helped convince Texas's U.S. Senators, Sam Houston and Thomas Jefferson Rusk, to support Stephen Douglas's compromise. With their support, a Senate bill providing for a final settlement of Texas's borders won passage days after Fillmore delivered his message. Under the terms of the bill, the U.S. would assume Texas's debts, while Texas's northern border was set at the 36° 30' parallel north (the Missouri Compromise line) and much of its western border followed the 103rd meridian. The bill attracted the support of a bipartisan coalition of Whigs and Democrats from both sections, though most opposition to the bill came from the South. The Senate quickly moved onto the other major issues, passing bills that provided for the admission of California, the organization of New Mexico Territory, and the establishment of a new fugitive slave law.
The debate then moved to the House of Representatives, where Fillmore, Senator Daniel Webster, Douglas, Congressman Linn Boyd, and Speaker of the House Howell Cobb took the lead in convincing members to support the compromise bills that had been passed in the Senate. The Senate's proposed settlement of the Texas-New Mexico boundary faced intense opposition from many Southerners, as well as from some Northerners who believed that Texas did not deserve monetary compensation. After a series of close votes that nearly delayed consideration of the issue, the House voted to approve a Texas bill similar to that which had been passed by the Senate. Following that vote, the House and the Senate quickly agreed on each of the major issues, including the banning of the slave trade in Washington. The president quickly signed each bill into law save for the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850; he ultimately signed that law as well after Attorney General Crittenden assured him that the law was constitutional. Though some in Texas still favored sending a military expedition into New Mexico, in November 1850 the state legislature voted to accept the compromise.
The general solution that was adopted by the Compromise of 1850 was to transfer a considerable part of the territory claimed by Texas state to the federal government; to organize two new territories formally, the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah, which expressly would be allowed to locally determine whether they would become slave or free territories, to add another free state to the Union (California), to adopt a severe measure to recover slaves who had escaped to a free state or free territory (the Fugitive Slave Law); and to abolish the slave trade in the District of Columbia. A key provision of each of the laws respectively organizing the Territory of New Mexico and the Territory of Utah was that slavery would be decided by local option, called popular sovereignty. That was an important repudiation of the idea behind the failure to prohibit slavery in any territory acquired from Mexico. However, the admission of California as a free state meant that southerners were giving up their goal of a coast-to-coast belt of slave states.
Texas was allowed to keep the following portions of the disputed land: south of the 32nd parallel and south of the 36°30' parallel north and east of the 103rd meridian west. The rest of the disputed land was transferred to the Federal Government. The United States Constitution (Article IV, Section 3) does not permit Congress unilaterally to reduce the territory of any state, so the first part of the Compromise of 1850 had to take the form of an offer to the Texas State Legislature, rather than a unilateral enactment. This ratified the bargain and, in due course, the transfer of a broad swath of land from the state of Texas to the federal government was accomplished. In return for giving up this land, the United States assumed the debts of Texas.
From the Mexican Cession, the New Mexico Territory received most of the present-day state of Arizona, most of the western part of the present-day state of New Mexico, and the southern tip of present-day Nevada (south of the 37th parallel). The territory also received most of present-day eastern New Mexico, a portion of present-day Colorado (east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains, west of the 103rd meridian, and south of the 38th parallel); all of this land had been claimed by Texas.
From the Mexican Cession, the Utah Territory received present-day Utah, most of present-day Nevada (everything north of the 37th parallel), a major part of present-day Colorado (everything west of the crest of the Rocky Mountains), and a small part of present-day Wyoming. That included the newly founded colony at Salt Lake, of Brigham Young. The Utah Territory also received some land that had claimed by Texas; this land is now part of present-day Colorado that is east of the crest of the Rocky Mountains.
One statute of the Compromise of 1850, enacted September 18, 1850, is informally known as the Fugitive Slave Law, or the Fugitive Slave Act. It bolstered the Fugitive Slave Act of 1793. The new version of the Fugitive Slave Law required federal judicial officials in all states and federal territories, including in those states and territories in which slavery was prohibited, to assist with the return of escaped slaves to their masters actively in the states and territories permitting slavery. Any federal marshal or other official who did not arrest an alleged runaway slave was liable to a fine of $1000. Law enforcement everywhere in the US had a duty to arrest anyone suspected of being a fugitive slave on no more evidence than a claimant's sworn testimony of ownership. Suspected slaves could neither ask for a jury trial nor testify on their own behalf. Also, any person aiding a runaway slave by providing food or shelter was to be subject to six months' imprisonment and a $1000 fine. Officers capturing a fugitive slave were entitled to a fee for their work.
In addition to federal officials, the ordinary citizens of free states could be summoned to join a posse and be required to assist in the capture, custody, and/or transportation of the alleged escaped slave.
The law was so rigorously pro-slavery as to prohibit the admission of the testimony of a person accused of being an escaped slave into evidence at the judicial hearing to determine the status of the accused escaped slave. Thus, if a freedman were claimed to be an escaped slave, they could not resist their return to slavery by truthfully telling their actual history.
The Fugitive Slave Act was essential to meet Southern demands. In terms of public opinion in the North, the critical provision was that ordinary citizens were required to aid slave catchers. Many northerners deeply resented that requirement to help slavery personally. Resentment towards the Act continued to heighten tensions between the North and South, which were inflamed further by abolitionists such as Harriet Beecher Stowe. Her book, "Uncle Tom's Cabin", stressed the horrors of recapturing escaped slaves and outraged Southerners.
A statute enacted as part of the compromise prohibited the slave trade but allowed slavery itself in the District of Columbia. Southerners in Congress were unanimous in opposing that provision, which was seen as a concession to the abolitionists, but they were outvoted.
Passage of the Compromise of 1850, as it became known, caused celebration in Washington and elsewhere, with crowds shouting, "the Union is saved!" Fillmore himself described the Compromise of 1850 as a "final settlement" of sectional issues, though the future of slavery in New Mexico and Utah remained unclear. The admission of new states, or the organization of territories in the remaining unorganized portion of the Louisiana Purchase, could also potentially reopen the polarizing debate over slavery. Not all accepted the Compromise of 1850; a South Carolina newspaper wrote, "the Rubicon is passed ... and the Southern States are now vassals in this Confederacy." Many Northerners, meanwhile, were displeased by the fugitive slave law. The debate over slavery in the territories would be re-opened in 1854 through the Kansas–Nebraska Act.
Many historians argue that the Compromise played a major role in postponing the American Civil War for a decade, while the Northwest was growing more wealthy and more populous and was being brought into closer relations with the Northeast. During that decade, the Whig Party had completely broken down, to be replaced with the new Republican Party dominant in the North and the Democrats in the South.
Others argue that the Compromise only made more obvious the pre-existing sectional divisions and laid the groundwork for future conflict. They view the Fugitive Slave Law as helping to polarize the US, as shown in the enormous reaction to Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Uncle Tom's Cabin". The passage of the Fugitive Slave Law aroused feelings of bitterness in the North. Furthermore, the Compromise of 1850 led to a breakdown in the spirit of compromise in the United States in the antebellum period, directly before the Civil War. The Compromise exemplifies that spirit, but the deaths of influential senators who worked on the compromise, primarily Henry Clay and Daniel Webster, contributed to the feeling of increasing disparity between the North and South.
The delay of hostilities for ten years allowed the free economy of the northern states to continue to industrialize. The southern states, largely based on slave labor and cash crop production, lacked the ability to industrialize heavily. By 1860, the northern states had added many more miles of railroad, steel production, modern factories, and population to the advantages already possessed in 1850. The North was better able to supply, equip, and man its armed forces, which would prove decisive in the later stages of the war.
According to historian Mark Stegmaier, "The Fugitive Slave Act, the abolition of the slave trade in the District of Columbia, the admission of California as a free state, and even the application of the formula of popular sovereignty to the territories were all less important than the least remembered component of the Compromise of 1850—the statute by which Texas relinquished its claims to much of New Mexico in return for federal assumption of the debts."
Proposals in 1846 to 1850 on the division of the Southwest included the following (some of which are not mutually exclusive): | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45976 |
Victoria Beckham
Victoria Caroline Beckham (née Adams; born 17 April 1974) is an English fashion designer and former singer. She rose to prominence in the 1990s as a member of the girl group the Spice Girls, in which she was nicknamed Posh Spice. With over 85 million records sold worldwide, the group became the best-selling female group of all time. After the Spice Girls split in 2001, Beckham was signed to Virgin Records, in which she released her self-titled debut solo album, which respectively produced four UK Top 10 singles including "Out of Your Mind".
Beckham has starred in five official documentaries and reality shows, including "Victoria's Secrets" (2000), "Being Victoria Beckham" (2002), "The Real Beckhams" (2003), "Victoria Beckham - A Mile In Their Shoes" (2004), and "" (2007), She has since made a cameo appearance in an episode of "Ugly Betty" (2007), and been a guest judge on "Project Runway" (2008), "Germany's Next Topmodel" (2009), and "American Idol" (2010).
Beckham has become an internationally recognised style icon and fashion designer. Following high-profile collaborations with other brands, she launched an eponymous label in 2008, and a lower-priced (diffusion) label in 2011. The Victoria Beckham label was named designer brand of the year in the UK in 2011; in 2012 the brand was assessed as the star performer in the Beckham family's business interests. Writing in the "Daily Telegraph" in 2011, Belinda White noted that the transition from WAG to fashion designer had been more successful than most had predicted, saying: "She has gathered a significant celebrity following and won over the scathing fashion pack who now clamour for a ticket to her bi-annual show at New York Fashion Week." Beckham was appointed an OBE in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the fashion industry. She is married to David Beckham, and they have four children, including Brooklyn. As of May 2019, the couple's joint wealth is estimated at £355 million.
Beckham was born at the Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, Essex, United Kingdom, and raised in Goffs Oak, Hertfordshire. She is the eldest of three children of Jacqueline Doreen (née Cannon), a former insurance clerk and hairdresser, and Anthony William Adams, who worked as an electronics engineer. They founded an electronics wholesale business which allowed a comfortable upbringing for Victoria, her sister, Louise, and her brother, Christian Adams. Beckham's great-great-great-grandfather was German artist and revolutionary and great-great granduncle was Minnesota politician William Pfaender.
After watching the musical film "Fame" in 1980, she decided to pursue a musical career. Jacqueline and Anthony Adams enrolled her at Jason Theatre School. In 1991, Beckham entered Laine Theatre Arts in Epsom, Surrey and studied dance and modelling. Beckham attended St. Mary's High School in Cheshunt, where she was embarrassed by her family's wealth and often begged her father not to drop her off outside the school in their Rolls Royce. Eventually, she became a member of a band called Persuasion.
Beckham auditioned for a March 1994 advertisement in "The Stage" which required girls who were "street smart, extrovert, ambitious and able to sing and dance". In 1994, Beckham joined the all-female group, the Spice Girls. In the recordings before her marriage, she is credited with her maiden name as Victoria Adams. The group's first single was called "Wannabe" (1996), and she worked alongside Geri Halliwell, Emma Bunton, Melanie Brown and Melanie Chisholm. It went to number one in the United Kingdom and United States, and another 35 countries. It was followed by eight further number one singles from their albums "Spice", "Spiceworld" and "Forever". Each member of the group received a nickname from the media and Beckham was named "Posh Spice". The group is the best-selling female group of all time, selling over 80 million records worldwide. After the release of their third album, "Forever", which charted at number two in the UK but was far less successful than their previous two albums, the Spice Girls stopped recording, concentrating on their solo careers in regards to their foreseeable future.
On 14 August 2000, Beckham released her first solo single, "Out of Your Mind" in collaboration with Dane Bowers and Truesteppers. The week of release coincided with the release of "Groovejet (If This Ain't Love)" by Spiller featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor, resulting in a chart battle dubbed 'Posh vs. Posher' by the tabloids. Before the single's release, on 8 July 2000, Beckham made her public solo debut at London's Hyde Park at a concert to raise money for the Prince's Trust charity. She sang "Out of Your Mind" to a 100,000-strong audience. Beckham then signed a recording contract with her group label Virgin Records. Her next single as a solo artist, "Not Such An Innocent Girl", was released on 17 September 2001. Again, she faced competition in another hugely hyped chart battle, this time with Kylie Minogue's single "Can't Get You Out of My Head". Despite a huge promotional campaign, Beckham was outsold eight to one, and her single debuted at number 6. Beckham's eponymous debut album, which was released on 1 October 2001, reached Number 10 in the UK album chart. The album cost a reputed £5 million to produce and it sold a modest 50,000 copies.
The second and final single to be released from the album was "A Mind of Its Own" on 11 February 2002. The single reached number 6 in the UK and sold 56,500 copies. Rumours soon spread that Beckham was to be dropped by her label for not charting in the Top Three. These were strongly refuted at the time. Beckham commented "You know what newspapers are like, they just like to put all the negative stuff in, but as far as I'm concerned and the record company is concerned it is all great." A third single, "I Wish", was promoted but never materialised. The single version was a remix featuring Robbie Craig, and was performed on TV on "Friday Night's All Wright". Following the announcement of Beckham's second pregnancy, the single was shelved. Beckham was reportedly dropped by Virgin Records along with fellow Spice Girls Emma Bunton and Melanie B,; but a statement from her publicist denied reports, stating: "No-one has been dropped. The Virgin deal has come to a natural end and both parties have decided not to continue."
In 2002, Beckham signed a contract with Telstar Records and 19 Management worth £1.5 million. In 2003, she began recording an electropop-influenced album, "Open Your Eyes" and chose "Let Your Head Go" as first single. When the album was finalized, Beckham was disappointed with the result and decided to return to the studio to record a new material. She wanted a more urban sound and worked with the producer Damon Dash to work on the R&B and hip hop influenced album "Come Together". When Dash was first asked why he recorded with Beckham, he stated: "Because I see how much she gets photographed over here." A Dash-produced track "It's That Simple" featuring M.O.P. premiered on radio stations in July 2003 as promotional single, generating mixed reviews. Beckham's first single with Telstar, the double A-side "Let Your Head Go" / "This Groove", was released in the UK on 29 December 2003, following heavy promotion and many TV appearances across the Christmas period with the video being directed by Andy Hylton. The single charted at number three in the UK.
The double A-side was a thermometer to Beckham – if "Let Your Head Go" was more successful, she would release the electropop-inspired album "Open Your Eyes", but if "This Groove" was better rated, she would released the R&B album "Come Together". Outside of the UK, Damon Dash had plans for she in the US, including a potential release of "This Groove", and believed that Beckham would be successful because R&B was up in the world and her music style was similar to Jennifer Lopez. With the financial problems of the record company, combined with a rumoured fall-out between Dash and Fuller and the UK media massacring Beckham's solo career, the release of any album was postponed. Beckham's final plan at a solo career was the announcement of a new single, "My Love Is for Real", slated for a Summer 2004 release. But in April 2004, Telstar announced bankruptcy and Beckham gave up music to focus on her fashion career. In 2007 a new song, the hip-hop inspired "Full Stop", featuring the rapper Nas, was leaked on American radios and the media reported that Beckman would release it as a single, but nothing happened.
In 2007, the Spice Girls reformed and announced plans to embark upon a reunion tour, from which they were said to have earned £10 million each (approximately $20 million). Beckham had previously stated that she and her former Spice colleagues were enjoying their solo careers in various fields, saying "We're all still doing our own thing." Their "Greatest Hits" album was released in early November 2007 and the tour began on 2 December 2007. At its advent, Beckham said "I wanted my children to see that Mummy was a pop star. It was the last opportunity for them to stand in a crowd full of people screaming for the Spice Girls." When Beckham had her hair coloured brown for the tour, she stated that her sons immediately reacted by saying "Oh my goodness, it's Posh Spice. She's back." She was the only member of the group not to sing a solo song on the tour, instead posing in the style of a fashion show on a makeshift catwalk, whereas the others each performed a number from their solo careers.
Film-maker Bob Smeaton directed an official film of the tour titled "Spice Girls: Giving You Everything", which was first aired on Fox8 in Australia. It later aired in the UK on 31 December 2007 on BBC One. As well as their sell-out tour, the Spice Girls were contracted to appear in Tesco advertisements, for which they were paid £1 million each.
In October 2009, reports suggested that the Spice Girls were to star in a reality show in which they would cast female actors to play their roles in a musical. The following year, Judy Craymer teamed up with the Spice Girls and Simon Fuller to start developing a Spice Girls musical titled "Viva Forever". On 26 June 2012, all five Spice Girls were in attendance at a press conference in London to promote the launch of Viva Forever: The Musical. The musical is due to open at the West End's Piccadilly Theatre on 11 December 2012. On 12 August 2012, after much speculation, Beckham and the Spice Girls performed a medley of "Wannabe" and "Spice Up Your Life" at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony, reuniting solely for the event. Their performance was the most tweeted moment of Olympics closing ceremony with over 116,000 tweets on Twitter per minute.
The band reunited again for a 2019 tour, however Beckham opted not to participate in the reunion choosing to focus on her fashion label instead. When the American television presenter Ellen DeGeneres asked her why she opted not to join with the other Spice Girls for the reunion tour, she said "It just didn't feel like the right thing to do. [But] I'll always be Posh Spice, always."
Beckham made a guest appearance on the catwalk for Maria Grachvogel on 17 February 2000, marking her debut as a model at London Fashion Week. Beckham also acted as a British ambassador for Dolce and Gabbana and was briefly the face of Rocawear in 2003. Beckham designed a limited-edition fashion line for Rock & Republic called VB Rocks in 2004, consisting mainly of jeans for the high end of the market, retailing at approximately $300 in the US.
On 16 January 2006, Beckham walked the runway for Roberto Cavalli at Milan Fashion Week, and was for a period exclusively dressed by him for red-carpet and social events. For the March 2006 issue of "Harper's Bazaar", Beckham acted as fashion editor when she styled her close friend, Katie Holmes, for a fashion shoot. She has admitted to a personal love of sunglasses, saying "I'm quite obsessed with sunglasses. I collect vintage Guccis and Carreras – they can make virtually any outfit look cool." After Beckham's departure from Rock & Republic, in September 2006, she furthered her fashion ventures by launching her own denim label, dvb Style. Beckham then launched a new official website, dvbstyle.com to promote her fashion work.
On 14 June 2007, Beckham launched dvb Denim collection in New York at Saks Fifth Avenue, along with unveiling her eyewear range in the United States for the first time. In the same month, Beckham made her first appearance at London's annual Graduate Fashion Week as a judge alongside Glenda Bailey (editor-in-chief of "Harper's Bazaar") and Lanvin's Alber Elbaz, to choose the winner of the River Island Gold Award, worth £20,000. In August 2007, Intimately Beckham perfume was launched into US stores, one of more than 20 perfumes she and David Beckham have introduced over the years. In September 2007 her cosmetics line V-Sculpt was launched in Tokyo. In a 2007 appearance at an LA Galaxy press conference, Beckham is credited with having popularised Roland Mouret's 'moon dress' and his brand, and Beckham was also the face of Marc Jacobs for his Spring 2008 collection.
Beckham has graced countless fashion magazine covers during her career, including "I-D" in 2004 and "W" in 2007. Her first "Vogue" appearance was the April 2008 British edition. This was followed by "Vogue India", "Vogue Paris" as well as the German, Russian, Australian, Turkish, Taiwanese, Chinese and Spanish editions. Beckham has also graced various international editions of "Harper's Bazaar" and "Elle".
On 17 July 2018, Victoria's collection of her Reebok collaboration was launched.
Beckham's eponymous label was launched in September 2008 in a low-key presentation. By 2011, it had grown into a fixture of New York Fashion Week and a lower-priced Victoria by Victoria Beckham label was introduced. In the first quarter of 2011–12, it was predicted to generate annual sales of more than £60 million. Known initially for its dresses, the range has expanded into separates and luxury handbags selling at up to £18,000. Alongside the main fashion line and diffusion range, the Victoria Beckham brand still includes separate denim, eyewear and fragrance lines. In November 2011, Victoria Beckham won Designer Brand of the Year at the British Fashion Awards.
In September 2012, Victoria Beckham was the most talked about designer on Twitter during New York Fashion Week, also acquiring 57,000 new followers during the shows according to research by The Whispr Group.
Writing in "The Independent" in February 2014, Alexander Fury described how Victoria Beckham had made the transition from novelty to respected designer, citing her recent guest editorship of French "Vogue" and forthcoming participation in a panel discussion with the dean of Parsons design school in New York. The article concluded that the brand's sales were down to the appeal of the designs themselves, not the celebrity association.
In 2017, Beckham's new collection for Target is including a wide range of sizes from XS to 3X for women. Beckham is also offering a new line for children's wear.
In 2018 the collection was presented at London Fashion Week instead of at New York Fashion Week as normal.
In 2019, a spokesperson for the brand confirmed that the line would remain fur-free, and announced that as of the autumn/winter collection, it would also be free of any exotic skins.
Despite her high social profile, her fashion brand has not been a business success. In November, 2019, the BBC reported that "Victoria Beckham's fashion business has posted another annual loss as demand for the former Spice Girl's high end clothes "plateaued". Victoria Beckham Limited, which has not made a profit since it launched in 2008, reported a loss of £12.3m for 2018. Sales slipped 16% to £35m, amid weaker wholesale demand. Chairman Ralph Toledano said sales of clothing and accessories had levelled off after years of growth. "The performance was in line with expectations, so we were not surprised. Our goal is to reach profitability as soon as possible," he told trade journal Business of Fashion. Mrs Beckham launched her label in 2008 with a collection of luxury dresses, and now sells fashion and accessories in more than 400 stores around the world."
In September 2019, Victoria launched a Beauty brand named "Victoria Beckham Beauty". Victoria envisions it as, "We seek out brands that both fuel and sustain us. This is the heart of #VictoriaBeckhamBeauty. A brand created by two women who are as interested in the best beauty products as they are in wellness solutions for themselves, their friends and families and the world they live in. We aim high and will continue to chase the best for ourselves and our community." Along with co-founder Sarah Creal, She showcased the brand at the London Fashion Week. Secondary packaging of the makeup is made from 100% post-consumer waste, while shipping materials are either recyclable or biodegradable. Victoria mentions it to be “active and effective, but clean and kind.”
First installment of Victoria Beckham Beauty is centered around eye makeup which includes "Satin Kajal Liner" and it comes in three shades (Black, Bronze and Bordeaux). "Lid Lustre" crystal-infused eye shadow in four shades. Four "Smoky Eye Brick", each containing four different eye shadow shades (Onyx, Blonde, Min and Midnight) within a different color palette.
In October 2019, Victoria Beckham has branched out into lip products with her "Your Perfect Pout" lip kit. Includes Bitten Lip Tint in Bisou and six vitamin E-infused, waterproof Lip Definer pencils in a variety of nude hues to suit a range of skin tones. The six nude hues include No. 01 (a pale peach); No. 02 (a neutral beige brown); No. 03 (a pink-y mauve); No. 04 (a rosy brown); No. 05 (a rich caramel); and No. 06 (a deep chestnut).
Beckham has shot five official documentaries. The first, dated 11 January 2000, was called "Victoria's Secrets", a programme only shown in the UK on Channel 4. It involved Beckham being followed by cameras while also discussing and interviewing other British celebrities, such as Elton John.
The second, "Being Victoria Beckham", was broadcast in March 2002 and saw Beckham discussing her career as a solo artist with the release of her first album, and also showed her at various photo shoots and recording sessions. The documentary attracted a strong audience of 8.83 million, coming top in its timeslot. One critic described her as "so clearly level-headed, happy with her not inconsiderable lot and seemingly unfazed by the madly intrusive nature of her monumentally ridiculous fame". The third, "The Real Beckhams", aired on 24 December 2003 on ITV1 and focused on the Beckhams' move to Madrid from London after David Beckham was signed to Real Madrid. It also featured Victoria Beckham re-launching her solo career and showed her mocking the tabloid stories she reads in the paper every day. The special received an audience of 6.10 million viewers and was later released on DVD on 2 February 2004.
The fourth was titled "Full Length & Fabulous: The Beckhams' 2006 World Cup Party", and followed Victoria and David Beckham organising and making preparations to host a 2006 World Cup Party at a marquee in the grounds of their mansion in Hertfordshire, which aimed to raise money for their charity. Two tickets to attend the ball were auctioned on-line for charity, and sold for £103,000. The documentary aired on 28 May 2006 and showed the event itself, where the menu was designed especially by friend and chef Gordon Ramsay and the charity auction was hosted by Graham Norton. Ramsay catered for 600 guests, with the aid of 40 chefs and 100 waiting staff. The ITV documentary attracted an average of 7.56 million viewers.
To document Victoria Beckham's preparations for her family's move to the US, she signed a deal with NBC for six episodes of a half-hour unscripted reality TV series. Despite original plans for six episodes, the show was cut to a one-hour special only as there "just wasn't enough (material) for a series." The show, called "", aired on 16 July 2007 in the US and Canada. It was heavily scrutinised by the American media and critics, with "The New York Post" describing it as "an orgy of self-indulgence" and also describing Beckham as "vapid and condescending". The programme was the third-most-watched programme in its time-slot and received viewing figures of 4.9 million in the US, beaten by a repeat of "Wife Swap" and two sitcoms. The programme aired in Britain on 17 July 2007 on ITV with 3.84 million viewers tuning in. The programme was produced by Simon Fuller who managed her and the Spice Girls on their come-back tour.
In July 2007, it was announced that Beckham would shortly begin filming a cameo appearance as herself in an episode of the second season of ABC's TV series "Ugly Betty". The episode, "A Nice Day for a Posh Wedding", aired on 9 November 2007 in the United States and on 23 November in the United Kingdom. Despite her forays into television, Beckham has denied plans to embark upon a Hollywood movie career. In February 2008, it was revealed that Beckham would be the guest judge for the finale of fourth season of "Project Runway", which aired on 5 March 2008 in the US.
It was reported in October 2007 that Beckham had turned down the opportunity to appear in "". She stated in an interview: "[I was] asked to be in the "Sex and the City" film, which I would have loved to have done, but because I am in full-on Spice Girls rehearsal mode, unfortunately, I can't do it."
On 13 September 2001, Beckham released her first book, "Learning to Fly". The title was taken from a line in a song from the musical "Fame", which Beckham had enjoyed as a child. The verse that inspired the title was: "I'm gonna live forever, I'm gonna learn how to fly". The autobiography documents her childhood, time during the Spice Girls, her marriage and family life, as well as her career at the time. She describes her eating disorder associated with the need to be slim. "Learning to Fly" became the third best-selling non-fiction title of 2001 and the total UK sales stand at more than 500,000 copies. When the book was first released, it went to Number 1 in the book charts after four weeks of release, relegating Robbie Williams' book to second place. A high-profile guest appearance on "Parkinson", watched by nine million people, helped to promote the book. "Hello!", "Daily Mail" and "The Mail on Sunday" joined to buy the rights to preview and serialise the book before its publication. The figure paid was thought to be near £1 million.
Beckham was quoted by a Spanish journalist in 2005 as saying: "I've never read a book in my life". She later explained this was a mistranslation from the original Spanish in which the interview was printed, saying she actually stated that she never had time to finish reading a book because she was always too busy looking after her children.
Beckham's second book, a fashion advice guide titled "That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between", was published on 27 October 2006. "That Extra Half an Inch: Hair, Heels and Everything in Between" includes tips from Beckham on fashion, style and beauty, and also contains photography by Mario Testino, Annie Leibovitz and Steven Meisel. The book became another best-seller, and has sold 400,000 copies in Britain alone since it was published in hardcover. The rights have since been sold to the United States, the Netherlands, Japan, Portugal, Lithuania, Russia, and most recently China.
In 2007, it was reported that Beckham was the 52nd richest woman in Britain and the 19th richest person in Britain with husband David, with an estimated joint wealth of £112 million ($225 million). According to "The Guardian", Beckham Ventures, a company linked to the Victoria Beckham fashion business, was the best performing brand in the family's three businesses in 2012, coming close to matching turnover in a sister company that promotes the David Beckham brand.
In 2010, Beckhams's charity work with Save the Children earned her a nomination for the Do Something With Style Award, an awards show, produced by VH1. She is a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Beckham promotes faux/synthetic furs. Her stand against the fur industry generated praise from animal rights organisations, including PETA. Beckham has stated that she is "supportive of its [PETA's] high-profile anti-fur campaigns," and pledged "never to work with fur in any of her own fashion collections". In February 2013, she was assessed as one of the 100 most powerful women in the UK in the fashion category by "Woman's Hour" on BBC Radio 4.
In 2014, Beckham joined the Ban Bossy campaign as a spokesperson advocating leadership roles for girls.
Beckham was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2017 New Year Honours for services to the fashion industry. She stated she "delighted and humbled for the recognition," which her husband also received in 2003. However, as recipients of honours are sworn to secrecy, and Beckham had announced her honour before the 2017 New Year Honours' official publication, she was criticised for the "betrayal of etiquette" by the Conservative MP Peter Bone.
Beckham began a relationship with Corey Haim in 1995, which ended on mutual terms.
In early 1997, she started dating footballer David Beckham after they met at a charity football match; prior to this he had watched her music videos and commented to teammates that he was attracted to her, but had been overcome with shyness when they were first introduced. A few months earlier, Victoria had also expressed a wish to meet David during a Spice Girls football photo session (by chance, she wore the kit of his club Manchester United for the feature as the group's manager was a supporter). Of their initial meeting, she said, "I didn't really know who he was. I was never into football." The couple announced their engagement in 1998 and were dubbed "Posh and Becks" by the media.
She collects handbags, and owns over 100 Birkin bags, made by Hermès, which are widely considered the most valuable and sought-after, including a £100,000 shocking pink one, and worth a total of more than £1.5 million.
On 4 July 1999 they were married by the Bishop of Cork, Paul Colton, at Luttrellstown Castle, Ireland. The wedding attracted much media coverage. Beckham's teammate, Gary Neville, was the best man, and the couple's four-month-old son Brooklyn was the ring bearer. Most of the media were kept away from the ceremony as an exclusive deal with "OK!" magazine had been arranged, but photographs were released showing the Beckhams sitting on golden thrones. Victoria wore a diamond coronet created for her by jewellery designer Slim Barrett. A total of 437 staff were employed for the wedding reception, which was estimated to have cost £500,000 (US$823,650).
The couple bought what became their most famous home for £2.5 million in 1999; the property, which is set in of land, was given a £3 million renovation and was subsequently dubbed Beckingham Palace by the media.
Victoria and David Beckham have four children: son Brooklyn Joseph (born 4 March 1999), son Romeo James (born 1 September 2002), son Cruz David (born 20 February 2005), and daughter Harper Seven (born 10 July 2011). Elton John and David Furnish are reportedly the godparents of Brooklyn and another son, and their godmother is Elizabeth Hurley.
In January 2000, a tip-off to Scotland Yard detectives exposed a plot to kidnap Victoria and Brooklyn Beckham and hold them at a house in Hampstead, London. The family was then moved to a secret location, but no arrests were made. In March of that year, she received a death threat prior to performing at the Brit Awards with the Spice Girls, and in the show's rehearsal, a red laser light appeared on her chest and she was rushed off stage. After a fire door was found to be lodged open, it was thought that there had been an assassin there, and Beckham later revealed that she was terrified by the experience. In November 2002, five people were arrested after another plot for her kidnap was infiltrated by a tabloid newspaper. All charges were dropped after a witness was deemed unreliable. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45979 |
George Michael
George Michael (born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou; 25 June 1963 – 25 December 2016) was an English singer, songwriter, record producer, and philanthropist who rose to fame as a member of the music duo Wham! and later embarked on a solo career. Michael sold over 80 million records worldwide making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He achieved seven number one songs on the UK Singles Chart and eight number one songs on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. He was widely known for his success in the 1980s and 1990s, including Wham! singles such as "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" and "Last Christmas" and solo singles such as "Careless Whisper" and "Faith".
Michael formed the duo Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981. The band's first two albums, "Fantastic" (1983) and "Make It Big" (1984), reached number one on the UK Albums Chart and the US "Billboard" 200. Michael's first solo single "Careless Whisper" reached number one in over 20 countries, including the UK and US. Michael's debut solo album, "Faith", was released in 1987, topping the UK Albums Chart and staying at number one on the "Billboard" 200 for 12 weeks. Four singles from the album--"Faith", "Father Figure", "One More Try", and "Monkey"—reached number one on the "Billboard" Hot 100. "Faith" was named Album of the Year at the 31st Grammy Awards. Three years after the release of "Faith," "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1" (1990) was released; that album included the "Billboard" Hot 100 number one "Praying for Time". "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", a 1991 duet with Elton John, was also a transatlantic number one.
Michael, who came out as gay in 1998, was an active LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser. Michael's personal life and legal troubles made headlines during the late 1990s and 2000s, as he was arrested for public lewdness in 1998 and was arrested for multiple drug-related offences after that time. The 2005 documentary "" covered his career and personal life. Michael's first tour since 1991, the 25 Live tour, spanned three tours over the course of three years; 2006, 2007, and 2008. Four years later, he performed his final concert at London's Earls Court in 2012. In the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael was found dead at his home in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire aged 53. A coroner's report attributed his death to natural causes.
Michael won various music awards including two Grammy Awards, three Brit Awards, three American Music Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards and six Ivor Novello Awards. In 2004, the Radio Academy named Michael the most played artist on British radio during the period 1984–2004. In 2008, he was ranked 40th on "Billboard"s list of the Greatest Hot 100 Artists of All Time.
George Michael was born Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou () on 25 June 1963 in East Finchley, London. His father, Kyriacos Panayiotou (nicknamed "Jack"), was a Greek Cypriot restaurateur who emigrated to England in the 1950s. His mother, Lesley Angold ("née" Harrison, died 1997), was an English dancer. In June 2008, Michael told the "Los Angeles Times" that his maternal grandmother was Jewish, but she married a non-Jewish man and raised her children with no knowledge of their Jewish background due to her fear during World War II. Michael spent most of his childhood in Kingsbury, London, in the home his parents bought soon after his birth; he attended Roe Green Junior School and Kingsbury High School. His sisters are Yioda (born 1962) and Melanie (1964–2019).
While he was in his early teens, the family moved to Radlett. There, Michael attended Bushey Meads School in Bushey, where he befriended his future Wham! partner Andrew Ridgeley. The two had the same career ambition of being musicians. Michael busked on the London Underground, performing songs such as "'39" by Queen. His involvement in the music business began with his working as a DJ, playing at clubs and local schools around Bushey, Stanmore, and Watford. This was followed by the formation of a short-lived ska band called The Executive, with Ridgeley, Ridgeley's brother Paul, Andrew Leaver, and David Mortimer (later known as David Austin).
Michael formed the duo Wham! with Andrew Ridgeley in 1981. The band's first album "Fantastic" reached No. 1 in the UK in 1983 and produced a series of top 10 singles including "Young Guns", "Wham Rap!" and "Club Tropicana". Their second album, "Make It Big", reached No. 1 on the charts in the US. Singles from that album included "Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go" (No. 1 in the UK and US), "Freedom", "Everything She Wants", and "Careless Whisper" which reached No. 1 in nearly 25 countries, including the UK and US, and was Michael's first solo effort as a single. In 1985 Michael received the first of his three Ivor Novello Awards for Songwriter of the Year from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers and Authors.
Michael sang on the original Band Aid recording of "Do They Know It's Christmas?" (which became the UK Christmas number one) and donated the profits from "Last Christmas" and "Everything She Wants" to charity. Michael sang "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" with Elton John at Live Aid at Wembley Stadium in London on 13 July 1985. He also contributed background vocals to David Cassidy's 1985 hit "The Last Kiss", as well as Elton John's 1985 successes "Nikita" and "Wrap Her Up". Michael cited Cassidy as a major career influence and interviewed Cassidy for David Litchfield's "Ritz Newspaper".
Wham!'s tour of China in April 1985, the first visit to China by a Western popular music act, generated worldwide media coverage, much of it centred on Michael. Before Wham!'s appearance in China, many kinds of music in the country were forbidden. The band's manager, Simon Napier-Bell, had spent 18 months trying to convince Chinese officials to let the duo play. The audience included members of the Chinese government, and Chinese television presenter, Kan Lijun, who was the on stage host, spoke of Wham!'s historic performance; Wham! performed their hits with scantily clad dancers and strobing disco lights. According to Napier-Bell, Michael tried to get the crowd to clap along to "Club Tropicana", but "they hadn't a clue – they thought he wanted applause and politely gave it", before adding some Chinese did eventually "get the hang of clapping on the beat.” A UK embassy official in China stated “there was some lively dancing but this was almost entirely confined to younger western members of the audience.” The tour was documented by film director Lindsay Anderson and producer Martin Lewis in their film "". With the success of Michael's solo singles, "Careless Whisper" (1984) and "A Different Corner" (1986), rumours of an impending break up of Wham! intensified. The duo officially separated in 1986, after releasing a farewell single, "The Edge of Heaven" and a farewell compilation, "The Final" (their third album "Music from the Edge of Heaven" was released in North America and Japan), plus a sell-out concert at Wembley Stadium that included the world premiere of the China film. The Wham! partnership ended officially with the commercially successful single "The Edge of Heaven", which reached No. 1 on the UK chart in June 1986.
During early 1987, at the beginning of his solo career, Michael released "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)", a duet with Aretha Franklin. "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)" was a one-off project that helped Michael achieve an ambition by singing with one of his favourite artists. It scored number one on both the UK Singles Chart and the US "Billboard" Hot 100 upon its release. For Michael, it became his third consecutive solo number one in the UK from three releases, after 1984's "Careless Whisper" (though the single was actually from the Wham! album "Make It Big") and 1986's "A Different Corner". The single was also the first Michael had recorded as a solo artist which he had not written himself. The co-writer, Simon Climie, was unknown at the time; he later had success as a performer with the band Climie Fisher in 1988. Michael and Aretha Franklin won a Grammy Award in 1988 for Best R&B Performance – Duo or Group with Vocal for the song.
In late 1987, Michael released his debut solo album, "Faith". The first single released from the album was "I Want Your Sex", in mid-1987. The song was banned by many radio stations in the UK and US, due to its sexually suggestive lyrics. MTV broadcast the video, featuring celebrity make-up artist Kathy Jeung in a basque and suspenders, only during the late night hours. Michael argued that the act was beautiful if the sex was monogamous, and he recorded a brief prologue for the video in which he said: "This song is not about casual sex." One of the racier scenes involved Michael writing the words "explore monogamy" on his partner's back in lipstick. Some radio stations played a toned-down version of the song, "I Want Your Love", with the word "love" replacing "sex".
When "I Want Your Sex" reached the US charts, "American Top 40" host Casey Kasem refused to say the song's title, referring to it only as "the new single by George Michael." In the US, the song was also sometimes listed as "I Want Your Sex (from "Beverly Hills Cop II")", since the song was featured on the soundtrack of the movie. Despite censorship and radio play problems, "I Want Your Sex" reached No. 2 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and No. 3 in the UK. The second single, "Faith", was released in October 1987, a few weeks before the album. "Faith" became one of his most popular songs. The song was No. 1 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 for four consecutive weeks, becoming the best-selling single of 1988 in the US. It also reached No. 1 in Australia, and No. 2 on the UK Singles Chart. The video provided some definitive images of the 1980s music industry in the process—Michael in shades, leather jacket, cowboy boots, and Levi's jeans, playing a guitar near a classic-design jukebox.
On 30 October, "Faith" was released in the UK and in several markets worldwide. "Faith" topped the UK Albums Chart, and in the US, the album had 51 non-consecutive weeks in the top 10 of "Billboard" 200, including 12 weeks at No. 1. "Faith" had many successes, with four singles ("Faith", "Father Figure", "One More Try", and "Monkey") reaching No. 1 in the US. "Faith" was certified Diamond by the RIAA for sales of 10 million copies in the US. To date, global sales of "Faith" are more than 25 million units. The album was highly acclaimed by music critics, with AllMusic journalist Steve Huey describing it as a "superbly crafted mainstream pop/rock masterpiece" and "one of the finest pop albums of the '80s". In a review by "Rolling Stone" magazine, journalist Mark Coleman commended most of the songs on the album, which he said "displays Michael's intuitive understanding of pop music and his increasingly intelligent use of his power to communicate to an ever-growing audience."
In 1988, Michael embarked on a world tour. In Los Angeles, Michael was joined on stage by Aretha Franklin for "I Knew You Were Waiting (For Me)". It was the second highest grossing event of 1988, earning $17.7 million. At the 1988 Brit Awards held at the Royal Albert Hall on 8 February, Michael received the first of his two awards for Best British Male Solo Artist. Later that month, "Faith" won the Grammy Award for Album of the Year at the 31st Grammy Awards. At the 1989 MTV Video Music Awards on 6 September in Los Angeles, Michael received the Video Vanguard Award. According to Michael in his film, "A Different Story", success did not make him happy and he started to think there was something wrong in being an idol for millions of teenage girls. The whole "Faith" process (promotion, videos, tour, awards) left him exhausted, lonely and frustrated, and far from his friends and family. In 1990, he told his record company Sony that, for his second album, he did not want to do promotions like the one for "Faith".
"Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1" was released in September 1990. For this album, Michael tried to create a new reputation as a serious-minded artist; the title is an indication of his desire to be taken more seriously as a songwriter. Michael refused to do any promotion for this album, including no music videos for the singles released. The first single, "Praying for Time", with lyrics concerning social ills and injustice, was released in August 1990. James Hunter of "Rolling Stone" magazine described the song as "a distraught look at the world's astounding woundedness. Michael offers the healing passage of time as the only balm for physical and emotional hunger, poverty, hypocrisy and hatred." The song was an instant success, reaching No. 1 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100 and No. 6 in the UK. A video was released shortly thereafter, consisting of the lyrics on a dark background. Michael did not appear in this video or any subsequent videos for the album.
The second single "Waiting for That Day" was an acoustic-heavy single, released as an immediate follow-up to "Praying for Time". It reached No. 23 in the UK and No. 27 in the US. in October 1990. The album was released in Europe on 3 September 1990, and one week later in the US. It reached No. 1 in the UK Albums Chart and peaked at No. 2 on the US "Billboard" 200. It spent a total of 88 weeks on the UK Albums Chart and was certified four-times Platinum by the BPI. The album produced five UK singles, which were released quickly, within an eight-month period: "Praying for Time", "Waiting for That Day", "Freedom! '90", "Heal the Pain", and "Cowboys and Angels" (the latter being his only single not to chart in the UK top 40).
"Freedom '90" was the second of only two of its singles to be supported by a music video (the other being the Michael-less "Praying for Time"). The song alludes to his struggles with his artistic identity, and prophesied his efforts shortly thereafter to end his recording contract with Sony Music. As if to prove the song's sentiment, Michael refused to appear in the video (directed by David Fincher), and instead recruited supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Christy Turlington, Tatjana Patitz, and Cindy Crawford to appear in and lip sync in his stead. It also featured lyrics critical of his sex symbol status. It reached No. 8 success on the "Billboard" Hot 100 in the US, and No. 28 on the UK Singles Chart.
"Mother's Pride" gained significant radio play in the US during the first Persian Gulf War during 1991, often with radio stations mixing in callers' tributes to soldiers with the music. It reached No. 46 on "Billboard" Hot 100 with only airplay. In the end, "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1" sold approximately 8 million copies.
At the 1991 Brit Awards, "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1" won the award for Best British Album. Later in 1991, Michael embarked on the Cover to Cover tour in Japan, England, the US, and Brazil, where he performed at Rock in Rio. In the audience in Rio, he saw and later met Anselmo Feleppa, who later became his partner. The tour was not a proper promotion for "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1". Rather, it was more about Michael singing his favourite cover songs. Among his favourites was "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me", a 1974 song by Elton John; Michael and John had performed the song together at the Live Aid concert in 1985, and again for Michael's concert at London's Wembley Arena on 25 March 1991, where the duet was recorded. The single was released at the end of 1991 and reached No. 1 in both the UK and US. In 1991, Michael released an autobiography through Penguin Books titled "Bare", co-written with Tony Parsons.
An expected follow-up album, "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2", was scrapped due to Michael's lawsuit with Sony. Michael complained that Sony had not completely supported the release of his second album, resulting in its poor performance in the US as compared to "Faith". Sony responded that Michael's refusal to appear in promotional videos had caused the bad response. Michael ended the idea for "Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 2" and donated three songs to the charity project "Red Hot + Dance", for the Red Hot Organization which raised money for AIDS awareness; a fourth track "Crazyman Dance" was the B-side of 1992's "Too Funky". Michael donated the royalties from "Too Funky" to the same cause.
"Too Funky" reached No. 4 on the UK Singles Chart and No. 10 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100. It did not appear on any George Michael studio album, but was included on his solo collections "" in 1998 and "Twenty Five" in 2006. The video featured Michael (sporadically) as a director filming supermodels Linda Evangelista, Beverly Peele, Tyra Banks, Estelle Lefébure and Nadja Auermann at a fashion show.
Michael performed at The Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert on 20 April 1992 at London's Wembley Stadium. The concert was a tribute to the life of the late Queen frontman, Freddie Mercury, with the proceeds going to AIDS research. In his last ever radio interview Mercury had praised Michael, adding that he loved his track "Faith". Michael performed "'39", "These Are the Days of Our Lives" with Lisa Stansfield and "Somebody to Love". The performance of the latter was released on the "Five Live" EP.
"Five Live", released in 1993 for Parlophone in the UK and Hollywood Records in the US, features five live recordings (six in several countries) performed by Michael, Queen, and Lisa Stansfield. "Somebody to Love" and "These Are the Days of Our Lives" were recorded at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert. "Killer", "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone", and "Calling You" were recorded during his Cover to Cover Tour from 1991. Michael's performance of "Somebody to Love" was hailed as "one of the best performances of the tribute concert". All proceeds from the sale of the EP benefited the Mercury Phoenix Trust. Sales of the EP were strong through Europe, where it debuted at No. 1 in the UK and several European countries. Chart success in the US was less spectacular, where it reached No. 40 on the "Billboard" 200 ("Somebody to Love" reached No. 30 on the US "Billboard" Hot 100).
During November 1994, after a long period of seclusion, Michael appeared at the first MTV Europe Music Awards show, where he gave a performance of a new song, "Jesus to a Child". The song was a melancholy tribute to his lover, Anselmo Feleppa, who had died in March 1993. The song entered the UK Singles Chart at No. 1 and No. 7 on "Billboard" upon release in 1996. It was Michael's longest UK Top 40 single, at almost seven minutes long. The exact identity of the song's subject—and the nature of Michael's relationship with Feleppa—was shrouded in innuendo and speculation, as Michael had not confirmed he was homosexual and did not do so until 1998. The video for "Jesus to a Child" was a picture of images recalling loss, pain and suffering. Michael consistently dedicated the song to Feleppa before performing it live.
The second single, released in April 1996, was "Fastlove", an energetic tune about wanting gratification and fulfilment without commitment. The single version was nearly five minutes long. "Fastlove" was supported by a futuristic virtual reality-related video. It reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart, spending three weeks at the top spot. In the US, "Fastlove" peaked at No. 8, his most recent single to reach the top 10 in the US. Following "Fastlove", Michael released "Older", his first studio album in six years and only the third in his ten-year solo career. The album's US and Canadian release was the first album released by David Geffen's (now-defunct) DreamWorks Records.
"Older" was particularly notable for the release of its six singles. Each of them reached the UK top 3, a record for the most singles in the British top 3 released from a single album. At the time of release of the album's fifth single, "Star People '97", chart specialist James Masterton noted Michael's success on the singles charts, writing: "George Michael nonetheless makes an impressive Top 3 entry with this single. The "Older" album has now proved itself to be far and away his most commercially successful recording ever. Five singles now lifted and every single one has been a Top 3 hit. Compare this with the two Top 3 hits produced by "Faith" and "Listen Without Prejudice's" scant total of one Top Tenner and one single which missed the Top 40 altogether. This sustained single success has been achieved with a little help from marketing tricks such as remixes – or in this case a new recording of the album track which gives it a much-needed transformation into a deserved commercial smash."
In 1996, Michael was voted Best British Male, at the MTV Europe Music Awards and the Brit Awards; and at the British Academy's Ivor Novello Awards, he was awarded the title of Songwriter of the Year for the third time. Michael performed a concert at Three Mills Studios, London, for "MTV Unplugged". It was his first long performance in years, and in the audience was Michael's mother, who died of cancer the following year.
"Ladies & Gentlemen: The Best of George Michael" was Michael's first solo greatest hits collection released in 1998. The collection of 28 songs (29 songs are included on the European and Australian release) are separated into two halves, with each containing a particular theme and mood. The first CD, titled "For the Heart", predominantly contains ballads; the second CD, "For the Feet", consists mainly of dance tunes. It was released through Sony Music Entertainment as a condition of severing contractual ties with the label.
"Ladies & Gentlemen" was a success, peaking at No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart for eight weeks. It spent over 200 weeks in the UK chart, and is the 38th best-selling album of all time in the UK. It is certified seven-times platinum in the UK and multi-platinum in the US, and is Michael's most commercially successful album in his homeland, having sold more than 2.8 million copies. To date, the album has reached worldwide sales of approximately 15 million copies. The first single of the album, "Outside" was a humorous song making a reference to his arrest for soliciting a policeman in a public toilet. "As", his duet with Mary J. Blige, was released as the second single in many territories around the world. Both singles reached the top 5 in the UK Singles Chart.
Released in 1999, "Songs from the Last Century" is a studio album of cover tracks. The album was Michael's penultimate album released through Virgin Records. To date, the album has achieved the lowest peak of his solo efforts. The album debuted at No. 157 on the American "Billboard" 200 albums chart, which was also the album's peak position. It was also his lowest-charting album in the UK, becoming his only solo effort not to reach No. 1. It peaked at No. 2 in the UK Albums Chart. Each of the 11 tracks was co-produced by Phil Ramone and Michael.
In 2000, Michael worked on the hit single "If I Told You That" with Whitney Houston, a song which was meant to feature Michael Jackson, initially. Michael co-produced on the single along with Rodney Jerkins. Michael began working on what became his fifth studio album, spending two years in the recording studio. His first single "Freeek!", taken from the new album, was successful in Europe going to No. 1 in Italy, Portugal, Spain and Denmark in 2002 and reaching the top 10 in the UK and the top 5 in Australia. It made 22 charts around the world. However, his next single "Shoot the Dog" proved to be controversial when released in July 2002. It was acutely critical of US President George W. Bush and UK Prime Minister Tony Blair in the lead-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. It reached No. 1 in Denmark and made the top 5 in most European charts. It peaked at No. 12 on the UK Singles Chart.
In February 2003, Michael unexpectedly recorded another song in protest against the looming Iraq war, Don McLean's "The Grave". The original was written by McLean in 1971 and was a protest against the Vietnam War. Michael performed the song on numerous TV shows including "Top of the Pops" and "So Graham Norton". His performance of the song on "Top of the Pops" on 7 March 2003 was his first studio appearance on the programme since 1986. He ran into conflict with the show's producers for an anti-war, anti Blair T-shirt worn by some members of his band. In response, Don McLean issued a statement, through his website, praising Michael's recording: "I am proud of George Michael for standing up for life and sanity. I am delighted that he chose a song of mine to express these feelings. We must remember that the Wizard is really a cowardly old man hiding behind a curtain with a loud microphone. It takes courage and a song to pull the curtain open and expose him. Good Luck George."
On 17 November 2003, Michael re-signed with Sony Music, the company he had left in 1995 after a legal battle. When Michael's fifth studio album, "Patience", was released in 2004, it was critically acclaimed and went to No. 1 on the UK Albums Chart, and became one of the fastest selling albums in the UK, selling over 200,000 copies in the first week alone. In Australia it reached No. 2 on 22 March. It reached the Top 5 on most European charts, and peaked at No. 12 in the US, selling over 500,000 copies to earn a Gold certification from the RIAA.
"Amazing", the third single from the album, became a No. 1 hit in Europe. When Michael appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" on 26 May 2004, to promote the album, he performed "Amazing", along with his classic songs "Father Figure" and "Faith". On the show Michael spoke of his arrest, revealing his homosexuality, and his resumption of public performances. He allowed Oprah's crew inside his home outside London. The fourth single taken off the album was "Flawless", which used the sample of the Ones' original dance hit "Flawless". It was a dance hit in Europe as well as North America, reaching No. 1 on the "Billboard" Hot Dance Club Play and became Michael's last No. 1 single on the US Dance chart.
In November 2004, Sony released the fifth single – "Round Here". It was the least successful single taken from "Patience" when it stalled the UK charts at No. 32. In 2005, "John and Elvis Are Dead" was released as the sixth and final single from the album; it was released as a download single and was therefore unable to chart in the UK. Michael told BBC Radio 1 on 10 March 2004 that future music that he puts out would be available for download, with fans encouraged to make a donation to charity.
"Twenty Five" is Michael's second greatest hits album, celebrating the 25th anniversary of his music career. Released in November 2006 by Sony BMG, it debuted at no.1 in the UK. The album contains songs chiefly from Michael's solo career but also from his earlier days in Wham! It comes in two formats: two CDs or a limited edition three-CD set. The 2-CD set contained 26 tracks, including four recorded with Wham! and three new songs: "An Easier Affair"; "This Is Not Real Love" (a duet with Mutya Buena, formerly of Sugababes, which peaked at No.15 in the UK Charts); and a new version of "Heal the Pain" recorded with Paul McCartney. The limited edition three-CD version contains an additional 14 lesser known tracks, including one from Wham! and one new song, "Understand".
"Twenty Five" was released in North America on 1 April 2008 as a 29-song, two-CD set featuring several new songs (including duets with Paul McCartney and Mary J. Blige and a song from the short-lived TV series" Eli Stone") in addition to many of Michael's successful songs from both his solo and Wham! career. To commemorate the "Twenty Five" album, Michael toured North America for the first time in 17 years, playing large venues in major cities including New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, St. Paul/Minneapolis, Tampa/St. Pete, Chicago and Dallas. The DVD version of "Twenty Five" contains 40 videos on two discs, including seven with Wham!
During the 2005 Live 8 concert at Hyde Park, London, Michael joined Paul McCartney on stage, harmonising on The Beatles classic "Drive My Car". In 2006, Michael embarked on his first tour in 15 years, 25 Live. The tour began in Barcelona, Spain, on 23 September and finished in December at Wembley Arena in England. According to his website, the 80-show tour was seen by 1.3 million fans. On 12 May 2007 in Coimbra, Portugal, he began the European "25 Live Stadium Tour 2007", including London and Athens, and ending on 4 August 2007 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. There were 29 tour dates across Europe. On 9 June 2007 Michael became the first artist to perform live at the newly renovated Wembley Stadium in London, where he was later fined £130,000 for over-running the programme for 13 minutes.
On 25 March 2008, a third part of the 25 Live Tour was announced for North America. This part included 21 dates in the United States and Canada. This was Michael's first tour of North America in 17 years. Following news of Michael's North American tour, "Twenty Five" was released in North America on 1 April 2008 as a 29-song, 2-CD set featuring several new songs (including duets with Paul McCartney and Mary J. Blige and a song from the short-lived TV series, "Eli Stone") in addition to many of Michael's successful songs from both his solo and Wham! career.
Michael made his American acting debut by playing a guardian angel to Jonny Lee Miller's character on "Eli Stone", a US TV series. In addition to performing on the show as himself and as "visions", each episode of the show's first season was named after a song of his. Michael appeared on the 2008 finale show of "American Idol" on 21 May singing "Praying for Time". When asked what he thought Simon Cowell would say of his performance, he replied "I think he'll probably tell me I shouldn't have done a George Michael song. He's told plenty of people that in the past, so I think that'd be quite funny." On 1 December, Michael performed in Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates, as part of the 37th National Day celebrations.
On 25 December 2008, Michael released a new track "December Song" on his website for free. It was hoped that fans who downloaded the song would donate money to charity. Though the song is not available any more on his website, it remains available on file sharing networks and a remastered version of "December Song" went on sale on 13 December. The popularity of the single was boosted by a promotional appearance that Michael made on "The X Factor".
In early 2010, Michael performed his first concerts in Australia since 1988. On 20 February 2010, Michael performed his first show in Perth at the Burswood Dome to an audience of 15,000. On 2 March 2011, Michael announced the release of his cover version of New Order's 1987 hit "True Faith" in aid of the UK charity telethon Comic Relief. Michael appeared on Comic Relief itself, featuring in the first Carpool Karaoke sketch of James Corden, with the pair singing songs while Corden drove around London. On 15 April 2011, Michael released a cover of Stevie Wonder's 1972 song, "You and I", as an MP3 gift to Prince William and Catherine Middleton on the occasion of their wedding on 29 April 2011. Although the MP3 was released for free download, Michael appealed to those who downloaded the track to make a contribution to "The Prince William & Miss Catherine Middleton Charitable Gift Fund".
The Symphonica Tour began at the Prague State Opera House on 22 August 2011. In October 2011, Michael was announced as one of the final nominees for the Songwriter's Hall of Fame. In November, he had to cancel the remainder of the tour as he became ill with pneumonia in Vienna, Austria, ultimately slipping into a coma.
In February 2012, two months after leaving hospital, Michael made a surprise appearance at the 2012 Brit Awards at the O2 Arena in London, where he received a standing ovation, and presented Adele the award for Best British Album. In March, Michael announced that he was healthy and that the Symphonica Tour would resume in autumn. The final concert of the tour—which was also the final concert of Michael's life–was performed at London's Earls Court on 17 October 2012.
"Symphonica" was released on 17 March 2014, and became Michael's seventh solo No. 1 album in the UK, and ninth overall including his Wham! chart-toppers. The album was produced by Phil Ramone and Michael; the album was Ramone's last production credit. On 2 November 2016, Michael's management team announced that a second documentary on his life, entitled "Freedom", was set to be released in March 2017. A month after, English songwriter Naughty Boy confirmed plans to collaborate with Michael, for a new song and album. Naughty Boy claimed that the song, currently untitled, is "amazing but [...] bittersweet". On 7 September 2017 (months after Michael's death), the single "Fantasy", featuring Nile Rodgers, was released.
Michael stated that his early fantasies were about women, which "led me to believe I was on the path to heterosexuality", but at puberty he started to fantasise about men, which he later said "had something to do with my environment". At the age of 19, Michael told Andrew Ridgeley that he was bisexual. Michael also told one of his two sisters, but he was advised not to tell his parents about his sexuality. In a 1999 interview with "The Advocate", Michael told the Editor in Chief, Judy Wieder, that it was "falling in love with a man that ended his conflict over bisexuality".
"I never had a moral problem with being gay", Michael told her. "I thought I had fallen in love with a woman a couple of times. Then I fell in love with a man, and realised that none of those things had been love."
In 2004, Michael said, "I used to sleep with women quite a lot in the Wham! days but never felt it could develop into a relationship because I knew that, emotionally, I was a gay man. I didn't want to commit to them but I was attracted to them. Then I became ashamed that I might be using them. I decided I had to stop, which I did when I began to worry about AIDS, which was becoming prevalent in Britain. Although I had always had safe sex, I didn't want to sleep with a woman without telling her I was bisexual. I felt that would be irresponsible. Basically, I didn't want to have that uncomfortable conversation that might ruin the moment, so I stopped sleeping with them." In the same interview, he added: "If I wasn't with Kenny [his boyfriend at the time], I would have sex with women, no question". He said he believed that the formation of his sexuality was "a nurture thing, via the absence of my father who was always busy working. It meant I was exceptionally close to my mother", though he stated that "there are definitely those who have a predisposition to being gay in which the environment is irrelevant." In 2007 Michael said he had hidden the fact he was gay because of worries over what effect it might have on his mother. Two years later, he added: "My depression at the end of Wham! was because I was beginning to realise I was gay, not bisexual."
During the late 1980s, Michael had a relationship with Chinese-American make-up artist Kathy Jeung, who was regarded for a time as his artistic "muse" and who appeared in the "I Want Your Sex" video. Michael later said that she had been his "only bona fide" girlfriend, and that she knew of his bisexuality. In 2016 Jeung reacted to Michael's death by calling him a "true friend" with whom she had spent "some of the best time of [her] life".
In 1992, Michael established a relationship with Anselmo Feleppa, a Brazilian dress designer who he had met at the Rock in Rio concert in 1991. Six months into their relationship, Feleppa discovered that he was HIV-positive. Michael later said: "It was terrifying news. I thought I could have the disease too. I couldn't go through it with my family because I didn't know how to share it with them – they didn't even know I was gay." In 1993, Feleppa died of an AIDS-related brain haemorrhage. Michael's single, "Jesus to a Child", is a tribute to Feleppa (Michael consistently dedicated it to him before performing it live), as is his album "Older" (1996). In 2008, speaking about the loss of Feleppa, Michael said: "It was a terribly depressing time. It took about three years to grieve, then after that I lost my mother. I felt almost like I was cursed."
In 1996, Michael entered into a long-term relationship with Kenny Goss, a former flight attendant, cheerleading coach, and sportswear executive from Dallas. They had a home in Dallas, a 16th-century house in Goring-on-Thames, Oxfordshire and an £8 million mansion in Highgate, North London. In late November 2005, it was reported that Michael and Goss planned to register their relationship as a civil partnership in the UK, but because of negative publicity and his upcoming tour, they postponed their plans. On 22 August 2011, the opening night of his Symphonica world tour, Michael announced that he and Goss had split two years earlier.
Michael's homosexuality became publicly known following his April 1998 arrest for public lewdness. In 2007, Michael said "that hiding his sexuality made him feel 'fraudulent', and his eventual outing, when he was arrested [...] in 1998, was a subconsciously deliberate act."
In 2012, Michael entered a relationship with Fadi Fawaz, an Australian celebrity hairstylist and freelance photographer of Lebanese descent based in London. It was Fawaz who found Michael's body on Christmas morning 2016.
On 7 April 1998, Michael was arrested for "engaging in a lewd act" in a public restroom of the Will Rogers Memorial Park in Beverly Hills, California. Michael was arrested by undercover policeman Marcelo Rodríguez in a sting operation using so-called "pretty police". In an MTV interview, Michael stated: "I got followed into the restroom and then this cop—I didn't know it was a cop, obviously—he started playing this game, which I think is called, 'I'll show you mine, you show me yours, and then when you show me yours, I'm going to nick you!'"
After pleading "no contest" to the charge, Michael was fined US$810 and sentenced to 80 hours of community service. Soon afterwards, Michael made a video for his single "Outside", which satirised the public toilet incident and featured men dressed as policemen kissing. Rodríguez claimed that this video "mocked" him, and that Michael had slandered him in interviews. In 1999, he brought a US$10 million court case in California against the singer. The court dismissed the case, but an appellate court reinstated it on 3 December 2002. The court then ruled that Rodríguez, as a public official, could not legally recover damages for emotional distress.
On 23 July 2006, Michael was again accused of engaging in anonymous public sex, this time at London's Hampstead Heath. The anonymous partner was incorrectly stated to be a 58-year-old unemployed van driver. Michael stated that he cruised for anonymous sex and that this was not an issue in his relationship with partner Kenny Goss.
In February 2006, Michael was arrested for possession of Class C drugs, an incident that he described as "my own stupid fault, as usual". He was cautioned by the police and released. In 2007, he pleaded guilty to drug–impaired driving after obstructing the road at traffic lights in Cricklewood in northwest London, and was subsequently banned from driving for two years and sentenced to community service. On 19 September 2008, Michael was arrested in a public restroom in the Hampstead Heath area for possession of Class A and C drugs. He was taken to the police station and cautioned for controlled substance possession.
In the early hours of Sunday 4 July 2010, Michael was returning from the Gay Pride parade, when he was spotted on CCTV crashing his car into the front of a Snappy Snaps store in Hampstead, north London, and was arrested on suspicion of being unfit to drive. On 12 August, London's Metropolitan Police said he was "charged with possession of cannabis and with driving while unfit through drink or drugs". It was reported that Michael had also been taking the prescription medication amitriptyline. On 24 August 2010, the singer pleaded guilty at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court in London after admitting driving under the influence of drugs. On 14 September 2010, at the same court, Michael was sentenced to eight weeks in prison, a fine, and a five-year ban from driving. Michael was released from Highpoint Prison in Suffolk on 11 October 2010, after serving four weeks.
Michael struggled with substance abuse. He was arrested for drug-related offenses in 2006, 2008, and 2010. In September 2007, on BBC Radio 4's "Desert Island Discs", Michael said that his cannabis use was a problem; he wished he could smoke less of it and was constantly trying to do so. On 5 December 2009, in an interview with "The Guardian", Michael explained he had cut back on cannabis and was smoking only 'seven or eight' spliffs per day instead of the 25 per day he had formerly smoked. Michael also abused sleeping pills.
On 26 October 2011, Michael cancelled a performance at the Royal Albert Hall in London due to a viral infection. On 21 November, Vienna General Hospital admitted Michael after he complained of chest pains while at a hotel two hours before his performance at a venue there for his Symphonica Tour. Michael appeared to be "in good spirits" and responded well to treatment following his admittance, but on 25 November hospital officials said that his condition had "worsened overnight". This development led to cancellations and postponements of Michael's remaining 2011 performances, which had been scheduled mainly for the United Kingdom. The singer was later confirmed to have suffered from pneumonia and, until 1 December, was in an intensive care unit; at one point, he was comatose. On 21 December the hospital discharged him. Michael told the press that the staff at the hospital had saved his life and that he would perform a free concert for them. While making the speech, he became emotional and breathless. During the speech, he also mentioned that he had undergone a tracheotomy. After waking from the coma, Michael had a temporary West Country accent, and there was concern he had developed foreign accent syndrome.
On 16 May 2013, Michael sustained a head injury when he fell from his moving car on the M1 motorway, near St Albans in Hertfordshire, and was airlifted to hospital.
During the time of Margaret Thatcher as the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom throughout the 1980s, Michael voted Labour. In 2000, Michael joined Melissa Etheridge, Garth Brooks, Queen Latifah, the Pet Shop Boys, and k.d. lang, to perform in Washington, D.C. as part of Equality Rocks, a concert to benefit the Human Rights Campaign, an American LGBT rights group. His 2002 single "Shoot the Dog" was critical of the friendly relationship between the UK and US governments, in particular the relationship between Tony Blair and George W. Bush, with their involvement in the Iraq War. Michael voiced his concern about the lack of public consultation in the UK regarding the War on Terror: "On an issue as enormous as the possible bombing of Iraq, how can you represent us when you haven't asked us what we think?"
In 2006, Michael performed a free concert for NHS nurses in London to thank the nurses who had cared for his late mother. He told the audience: "Thank you for everything you do — some people appreciate it. Now if we can only get the government to do the same thing." In 2007, Michael sent the £1,450,000 piano that John Lennon used to write "Imagine" around the United States on a "peace tour", displaying at places where notable acts of violence had taken place, such as Dallas' Dealey Plaza, where US President John F. Kennedy had been shot. He devoted his 2007 concert in Sofia, from his "Twenty Five Tour" to the Bulgarian nurses prosecuted in the HIV trial in Libya. On 17 June 2008, Michael said he was thrilled by California's legalisation of same-sex marriage, calling the move "way overdue".
In November 1984, Michael joined other British and Irish pop stars of the era to form Band Aid, singing on the charity song "Do They Know It's Christmas?" for famine relief in Ethiopia. This single became the UK Christmas number one in December 1984, holding Michael's own song, "Last Christmas" by Wham!, at No. 2; Michael also donated the royalties for "Last Christmas" to Ethiopia. "Do They Know It's Christmas?" sold 3.75 million copies in the UK and became the biggest selling single in UK chart history, a title it held until 1997 when it was overtaken by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997", released in tribute to Princess Diana following her death (Michael attended Diana's funeral with Elton John). Michael donated the royalties from "Last Christmas" to Band Aid and subsequently sang with Elton John at Live Aid (the Band Aid charity concert) in 1985.
In 1986, Michael took part in the Prince's Trust charity concert held at Wembley Arena, performing "Everytime You Go Away" alongside Paul Young. In 1988, Michael participated in the Nelson Mandela 70th Birthday Tribute at Wembley Stadium in London together with many other singers (such as Annie Lennox and Sting), performing "Sexual Healing".
A LGBT rights campaigner and HIV/AIDS charity fundraiser, the proceeds from the 1991 single "Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me" were divided among 10 different charities for children, AIDS and education. He was also a patron of the Elton John AIDS Foundation. Michael wore a red ribbon at the Freddie Mercury Tribute Concert at Wembley Stadium in 1992.
In 2003, he paired up with Ronan Keating on "Who Wants to be a Millionaire?" and won £32,000, after having their original £64,000 winnings halved by missing the £125,000 question. The same year, Michael joined other celebrities to support a campaign to help raise £20 million for terminally ill children run by the Rainbow Trust Children's Charity of which he was a patron. He said: "Loss is such an incredibly difficult thing. I bow down to people who actually have to deal with the loss of a child."
Following his death, many charities revealed that Michael had privately been a supporter of them for many years. Dame Esther Rantzen, the founder and president of Childline, said he had given them "millions" over the years and said that he had given the royalties from his 1996 number one single "Jesus to a Child" to the charity. He had supported the Terrence Higgins Trust "for many years" as well as Macmillan Cancer Support. Michael also donated to individuals: he reportedly called the production team of the quiz show "Deal or No Deal" after a contestant had revealed that she needed £15,000 to fund IVF treatment, and anonymously paid for the treatment personally; and once tipped a student nurse working as a barmaid £5,000 ($6,121) because she was in debt. On 3 January 2017, another woman came forward and (with the permission of Michael's family) revealed he had anonymously paid for her IVF treatment after seeing her talk about her problems conceiving on an episode of "This Morning" in 2010. The woman gave birth to a girl in 2012.
Between 2006 and 2008, according to reports, Michael earned £48.5 million ($97 million) from the 25 Live tour alone. In July 2014, he was reported to have been a celebrity investor in a tax avoidance scheme called Liberty. According to the "Sunday Times" Rich List 2015 of the wealthiest British musicians, Michael was worth £105 million.
A collector of works by the Young British Artists, including those of Damien Hirst and Tracey Emin, in March 2019 Michael's art collection was auctioned in England for £11.3 million. The proceeds were donated to various philanthropical organisations Michael gave to while he was alive.
In the early hours of 25 December 2016, Michael died in bed at his home in Goring-on-Thames, aged 53. He was found by his Australian partner, Fadi Fawaz.
In March 2017, a senior coroner in Oxfordshire attributed Michael's death to dilated cardiomyopathy with myocarditis and a fatty liver.
Owing to the delay in determining the cause of death, Michael's funeral was held 29 March 2017. In a private ceremony, he was buried at Highgate Cemetery in north London, near his mother's grave. That summer an informal memorial garden was created outside his former home in Highgate. The site, in a private square that Michael had owned, is tended by fans.
Elton John was among those who paid tribute to Michael, emotionally addressing the audience in Las Vegas on 28 December, “What a singer, what a songwriter. But more than anything as a human being he was one of the kindest, sweetest, most generous people I’ve ever met.”
At the 59th Annual Grammy Awards on 12 February 2017, Adele performed a slowed-down version of "Fastlove" in tribute to Michael. On 22 February, Coldplay lead singer Chris Martin performed “A Different Corner” at the 2017 Brit Awards. In June, Michael’s close friend, former Spice Girls member Geri Halliwell, released a charity single, "Angels in Chains", a tribute to him, to raise money for Childline.
Michael won numerous music awards throughout his 30-year career, including three Brit Awards—winning Best British Male twice, four MTV Video Music Awards, four Ivor Novello Awards, three American Music Awards (including two in the traditionally-black Soul/R&B category), and two Grammy Awards from eight nominations.
At the time of his death, Michael had sold over 115 million records worldwide. As a solo artist, he sold over 80 million records, making him one of the best-selling music artists. He sold a further 30 million records with Wham!. His debut solo album "Faith" sold more than 25 million copies. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45985 |
Grandfather paradox
The grandfather paradox is a paradox of time travel in which inconsistencies emerge through changing the past. The name comes from the paradox's common description: a person travels to the past and kills his or her own grandfather before the conception of his or her father or mother, which prevents the time traveller's existence. Despite its title, the grandfather paradox does not exclusively regard the contradiction of killing one's own grandfather to prevent one's birth. Rather, the paradox regards any action that alters the past, since there is a contradiction whenever the past becomes different from the way it was.
The grandfather paradox was mentioned in written stories as early as 1929. In 1931 it was described as "the age-old argument of preventing your birth by killing your grandparents" in a letter to American science fiction magazine "Amazing Stories". Early science-fiction stories dealing with the paradox are the short story "Ancestral Voices" by Nathaniel Schachner, published in 1933, and the 1944 book "Future Times Three" by René Barjavel, although a number of other works from the 1930s and 1940s touched upon the topic in various degrees of detail.
The grandfather paradox encompasses any change to the past, and it is presented in many variations. Physicist John Garrison et al. give a variation of the paradox of an electronic circuit that sends a signal through a time machine to shut itself off, and receives the signal before it sends it. An equivalent paradox is known in philosophy as the "retro-suicide paradox" or "autoinfanticide", going back in time and killing a younger version of oneself (such as a baby). Another variant of the grandfather paradox is the "Hitler paradox" or "Hitler's murder paradox", a fairly frequent trope in science fiction, in which the protagonist travels back in time to murder Adolf Hitler before he can instigate World War II and the Holocaust. Rather than necessarily physically preventing time travel, the action removes any "reason" for the travel, along with any knowledge that the reason ever existed, thus removing any point in travelling in time in the first place. Additionally, the consequences of Hitler's existence are so monumental and all-encompassing that for anyone born after the war, it is likely that their birth was influenced in some way by its effects, and thus the lineage aspect of the paradox would directly apply in some way.
Some advocate a parallel universe approach to the grandfather paradox. When the time traveller kills his or her grandfather, the traveller is actually killing a parallel universe version of the grandfather, and the time traveller's original universe is unaltered; it has been argued that since the traveller arrives in a different universe's history and not his or her own history, this is not "genuine" time travel. In other variants, the actions of time travellers have no effects outside of their own personal experience, as depicted in Alfred Bester's short story "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed".
Even without knowing whether time travel to the past is physically possible, it is possible to show using modal logic that changing the past results in a logical contradiction. If it is necessarily true that the past happened in a certain way, then it is false and impossible for the past to have occurred in any other way. A time traveller would not be able to change the past from the way it "is;" they would only act in a way that is already consistent with what "necessarily" happened.
Consideration of the grandfather paradox has led some to the idea that time travel is by its very nature paradoxical and therefore logically impossible. For example, the philosopher Bradley Dowden made this sort of argument in the textbook "Logical Reasoning", arguing that the possibility of creating a contradiction rules out time travel to the past entirely. However, some philosophers and scientists believe that time travel into the past need not be logically impossible provided that there is no possibility of changing the past, as suggested, for example, by the Novikov self-consistency principle. Dowden revised his view after being convinced of this in an exchange with the philosopher Norman Swartz.
Consideration of the possibility of backward time travel in a hypothetical universe described by a Gödel metric led famed logician Kurt Gödel to assert that time might itself be a sort of illusion. He suggests something along the lines of the block time view, in which time is just another dimension like space, with all events at all times being fixed within this four-dimensional "block".
Backward time travel that does not create a grandfather paradox creates a causal loop. The Novikov self-consistency principle expresses one view as to how backward time travel would be possible without the generation of paradoxes. According to this hypothesis, physics in or near closed timelike curves (time machines) can only be consistent with the universal laws of physics, and thus only self-consistent events can occur. Anything a time traveller does in the past must have been part of history all along, and the time traveller can never do anything to prevent the trip back in time from happening, since this would represent an inconsistency. Novikov et al. used the example given by physicist Joseph Polchinski for the grandfather paradox, that of a billiard ball heading toward a time machine. The ball's older self emerges from the time machine and strikes its younger self so that its younger self never enters the time machine. Novikov et al. showed how this system can be solved in a self-consistent way that avoids the grandfather paradox, though it creates a causal loop. Some physicists suggest that causal loops only exist in the quantum scale, in a fashion similar to that of the chronology protection conjecture proposed by Stephen Hawking, so histories over larger scales are not looped. Another conjecture, the cosmic censorship hypothesis, suggests that every closed timelike curve passes through an event horizon, which prevents such causal loops from being observed.
Seth Lloyd and other researchers at MIT have proposed an expanded version of the Novikov principle by which probability bends to prevent paradoxes from occurring. Outcomes would become stranger as one approaches a forbidden act, as the universe must favor improbable events to prevent impossible ones.
Some physicists, such as Daniel Greenberger, Juergen Tolksdorf, and David Deutsch, have proposed that quantum theory allows for time travel where the past must be self-consistent. Deutsch argues that quantum computation with a negative delay—backward time travel—produces only self-consistent solutions, and the chronology-violating region imposes constraints that are not apparent through classical reasoning. In 2014, researchers published a simulation validating Deutsch's model with photons. Deutsch uses the terminology of "multiple universes" in his paper in an effort to express the quantum phenomena, but notes that this terminology is unsatisfactory. Others have taken this to mean that "Deutschian" time travel involves the time traveller emerging in a different universe, which avoids the grandfather paradox.
The interacting-multiple-universes approach is a variation of Everett's many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum mechanics. It involves time travellers arriving in a different universe than the one from which they came; it has been argued that, since travellers arrive in a different universe's history and not their own history, this is not "genuine" time travel. Stephen Hawking has argued that even if the MWI is correct, we should expect each time traveller to experience a single self-consistent history, so that time travellers remain within their own world rather than travelling to a different one. Allen Everett argued that Deutsch's approach "involves modifying fundamental principles of quantum mechanics; it certainly goes beyond simply adopting the MWI", and that even if Deutsch's approach is correct, it would imply that any macroscopic object composed of multiple particles would be split apart when traveling back in time, with different particles emerging in different worlds. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45990 |
Building
A building, or edifice, is a structure with a roof and walls standing more or less permanently in one place, such as a house or factory. Buildings come in a variety of sizes, shapes, and functions, and have been adapted throughout history for a wide number of factors, from building materials available, to weather conditions, land prices, ground conditions, specific uses, and aesthetic reasons. To better understand the term "building" compare the list of nonbuilding structures.
Buildings serve several societal needs – primarily as shelter from weather, security, living space, privacy, to store belongings, and to comfortably live and work. A building as a shelter represents a physical division of the (a place of comfort and safety) and the "outside" (a place that at times may be harsh and harmful).
Ever since the first cave paintings, buildings have also become objects or canvasses of much artistic expression. In recent years, interest in sustainable planning and building practices has also become an intentional part of the design process of many new buildings.
The word "building" is both a noun and a verb: the structure itself and the act of making it. As a noun, a building is 'a structure that has a roof and walls and stands more or less permanently in one place'; "there was a three-storey building on the corner"; "it was an imposing edifice". In the broadest interpretation a fence or wall is a building. However, the word "structure" is used more broadly than "building" including natural and man-made formations and does not necessarily have walls. Structure is more likely to be used for a fence. Sturgis' Dictionary included that "[building] differs from architecture in excluding all idea of artistic treatment; and it differs from construction in the idea of excluding scientific or highly skilful treatment." As a verb, building is the act of construction.
"Structural height" in technical usage is the height to the highest architectural detail on building from street-level. Depending on how they are classified, spires and masts may or may not be included in this height. Spires and masts used as antennas are not generally included. The definition of a "low-rise vs. a high-rise" building is a matter of debate, but generally three storeys or less is considered low-rise.
There is clear evidence of homebuilding from around 18,000 BC. Buildings became common during the Neolithic (see Neolithic architecture).
Single-family residential buildings are most often called houses or homes. Multi-family residential buildings containing more than one dwelling unit are called a duplex or an apartment building. A condominium is an apartment that the occupant owns rather than rents. Houses may also be built in pairs (semi-detached), in terraces where all but two of the houses have others either side; apartments may be built round courtyards or as rectangular blocks surrounded by a piece of ground of varying sizes. Houses which were built as a single dwelling may later be divided into apartments or bedsitters; they may also be converted to another use e.g. an office or a shop.
Building types may range from huts to multimillion-dollar high-rise apartment blocks able to house thousands of people. Increasing settlement density in buildings (and smaller distances between buildings) is usually a response to high ground prices resulting from many people wanting to live close to work or similar attractors. Other common building materials are brick, concrete or combinations of either of these with stone.
Residential buildings have different names for their use depending if they are seasonal include holiday cottage (vacation home) or timeshare; size such as a cottage or great house; value such as a shack or mansion; manner of construction such as a log home or mobile home; proximity to the ground such as earth sheltered house, stilt house, or tree house. Also if the residents are in need of special care such as a nursing home, orphanage or prison; or in group housing like barracks or dormitories.
Historically many people lived in communal buildings called longhouses, smaller dwellings called pit-houses and houses combined with barns sometimes called housebarns.
Buildings are defined to be substantial, permanent structures so other dwelling forms such as houseboats, yurts, and motorhomes are dwellings but not buildings.
Sometimes a group of inter-related (and possibly inter-connected) builds are referred to as a complex – for example a "housing complex", "educational complex", "hospital complex", etc.
The practice of designing, constructing, and operating buildings is most usually a collective effort of different groups of professionals and trades. Depending on the size, complexity, and purpose of a particular building project, the project team may include:
Regardless of their size or intended use, all buildings in the US must comply with zoning ordinances, building codes and other regulations such as fire codes, life safety codes and related standards.
Vehicles—such as trailers, caravans, ships and passenger aircraft—are treated as "buildings" for life safety purposes.
Any building requires a certain general amount of internal infrastructure to function, which includes such elements like heating / cooling, power and telecommunications, water and wastewater etc. Especially in commercial buildings (such as offices or factories), these can be extremely intricate systems taking up large amounts of space (sometimes located in separate areas or double floors / false ceilings) and constitute a big part of the regular maintenance required.
Systems for transport of people within buildings:
Systems for transport of people between interconnected buildings:
Buildings may be damaged during the construction of the building or during maintenance. There are several other reasons behind building damage like accidents such as storms, explosions, subsidence caused by mining, water withdrawal or poor foundations and landslides. Buildings also may suffer from fire damage and flooding in special circumstances. They may also become dilapidated through lack of proper maintenance or alteration work improperly carried out. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45995 |
McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet
The McDonnell Douglas F/A-18 Hornet is a twin-engine, supersonic, all-weather, carrier-capable, multirole combat jet, designed as both a fighter and attack aircraft (hence the F/A designation). Designed by McDonnell Douglas (now part of Boeing) and Northrop (now part of Northrop Grumman), the F/A-18 was derived from the latter's YF-17 in the 1970s for use by the United States Navy and Marine Corps. The Hornet is also used by the air forces of several other nations, and since 1986, by the U.S. Navy's Flight Demonstration Squadron, the Blue Angels.
The F/A-18 was designed to be a highly versatile aircraft due to its avionics, cockpit displays, and excellent aerodynamic characteristics, with the ability to carry a wide variety of weapons. The aircraft can perform fighter escort, fleet air defense, suppression of enemy air defenses, air interdiction, close air support, and aerial reconnaissance. Its versatility and reliability have proven it to be a valuable carrier asset, though it has been criticized for its lack of range and payload compared to its earlier contemporaries, such as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat in the fighter and strike fighter role, and the Grumman A-6 Intruder and LTV A-7 Corsair II in the attack role.
The Hornet first saw combat action during the 1986 United States bombing of Libya and subsequently participated in the 1991 Gulf War and 2003 Iraq War. The F/A-18 Hornet served as the baseline for the Boeing F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, its larger, evolutionary redesign.
The U.S. Navy started the Naval Fighter-Attack, Experimental (VFAX) program to procure a multirole aircraft to replace the Douglas A-4 Skyhawk, the A-7 Corsair II, and the remaining McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom IIs, and to complement the F-14 Tomcat. Vice Admiral Kent Lee, then head of Naval Air Systems Command, was the lead advocate for the VFAX against strong opposition from many Navy officers, including Vice Admiral William D. Houser, deputy chief of naval operations for air warfare – the highest-ranking naval aviator.
In August 1973, Congress mandated that the Navy pursue a lower-cost alternative to the F-14. Grumman proposed a stripped F-14 designated the F-14X, while McDonnell Douglas proposed a naval variant of the F-15, but both were nearly as expensive as the F-14. That summer, Secretary of Defense James R. Schlesinger ordered the Navy to evaluate the competitors in the Air Force's Lightweight Fighter (LWF) program, the General Dynamics YF-16 and Northrop YF-17. The Air Force competition specified a day fighter with no strike capability. In May 1974, the House Armed Services Committee redirected $34 million from the VFAX to a new program, the Navy Air Combat Fighter (NACF), intended to make maximum use of the technology developed for the LWF program.
Though the YF-16 won the LWF competition, the Navy was skeptical that an aircraft with one engine and narrow landing gear could be easily or economically adapted to carrier service, and refused to adopt an F-16 derivative. On 2 May 1975, the Navy announced its selection of the YF-17. Since the LWF did not share the design requirements of the VFAX, the Navy asked McDonnell Douglas and Northrop to develop a new aircraft from the design and principles of the YF-17. On 1 March 1977, Secretary of the Navy W. Graham Claytor announced that the F-18 would be named "Hornet".
Northrop had partnered with McDonnell Douglas as a secondary contractor on NACF to capitalize on the latter's experience in building carrier aircraft, including the widely used F-4 Phantom II. On the F-18, the two companies agreed to evenly split component manufacturing, with McDonnell Douglas conducting final assembly. McDonnell Douglas would build the wings, stabilators, and forward fuselage; while Northrop would build the center and aft fuselage and vertical stabilizers. McDonnell Douglas was the prime contractor for the naval versions, and Northrop would be the prime contractor for the F-18L land-based version which Northrop hoped to sell on the export market.
The F-18, initially known as McDonnell Douglas Model 267, was drastically modified from the YF-17. For carrier operations, the airframe, undercarriage, and tailhook were strengthened, folding wings and catapult attachments were added, and the landing gear was widened. To meet Navy range and reserves requirements, McDonnell increased fuel capacity by , by enlarging the dorsal spine and adding a 96-gallon fuel tank to each wing. A "snag" was added to the wing's leading edge and stabilators to prevent an aeroelastic flutter discovered in the F-15 stabilator. The wings and stabilators were enlarged, the aft fuselage widened by , and the engines canted outward at the front. These changes added to the gross weight, bringing it to . The YF-17's control system was replaced with a fully digital fly-by-wire system with quadruple redundancy, the first to be installed in a production fighter.
Originally, plans were to acquire a total of 780 aircraft of three variants: the single-seat F-18A fighter and A-18A attack aircraft, differing only in avionics, and the dual-seat TF-18A, which retained full mission capability of the F-18 with a reduced fuel load. Following improvements in avionics and multifunction displays, and a redesign of external stores stations, the A-18A and F-18A were able to be combined into one aircraft. Starting in 1980, the aircraft began to be referred to as the F/A-18A, and the designation was officially announced on 1 April 1984. The TF-18A was redesignated F/A-18B.
Northrop developed the F-18L as a potential export aircraft. Since it was not strengthened for carrier service, it was expected to be lighter and better performing, and a strong competitor to the F-16 Fighting Falcon then being offered to American allies. The F-18L's normal gross weight was lighter than the F/A-18A by , via lighter landing gear, lack of wing folding mechanism, reduced part thickness in areas, and lower fuel-carrying capacity. Though the aircraft retained a lightened tailhook, the most obvious external difference was removed "snags" on the leading edge of the wings and stabilators. It still retained 71% commonality with the F/A-18 by parts weight, and 90% of the high-value systems, including the avionics, radar, and electronic countermeasure suite, though alternatives were offered. Unlike the F/A-18, the F-18L carried no fuel in its wings and lacked weapons stations on the intakes. It had three underwing pylons on each side, instead.
The F/A-18L version followed to coincide with the US Navy's F/A-18A as a land-based export alternative. This was essentially an F/A-18A lightened by about ; weight was reduced by removing the folding wing and associated actuators, implementing a simpler landing gear (single wheel nose gear and cantilever oleo main gear), and changing to a land-based tail hook. The revised F/A-18L included wing fuel tanks and fuselage stations of the F/A-18A. Its weapons capacity would increase from , largely due to the addition of a third underwing pylon and strengthened wingtips (11 stations in total vs 9 stations of the F/A-18A). Compared to the F-18L, the outboard weapons pylons are closer to the wingtip missile rails. Because of the strengthened nonfolding wing, the wingtip missile rails were designed to carry either the AIM-7 Sparrow or Skyflash medium-range air-to-air missiles, in addition to the AIM-9 Sidewinder as found on the F/A-18A. The F/A-18L was strengthened for a 9 g design load factor compared to the F/A-18A's 7.5 g factor.
The partnership between McDonnell Douglas and Northrop soured over competition for foreign sales for the two models. Northrop felt that McDonnell Douglas would put the F/A-18 in direct competition with the F-18L. In October 1979, Northrop filed a series of lawsuits charging that McDonnell was using Northrop technology developed for the F-18L for foreign sales of the F/A-18 in violation of their agreement, and asked for a moratorium on foreign sales of the Hornet. McDonnell Douglas countersued, alleging Northrop illegally used F/A-18 technology in its F-20 Tigershark. A settlement was announced 8 April 1985 for all of the lawsuits. McDonnell Douglas paid Northrop $50 million for "rights to sell the F/A-18 wherever it could". Additionally, the companies agreed on McDonnell Douglas as the prime contractor with Northrop as the principal subcontractor. As principal subcontractor, Northrop will produce the rear section for the F/A-18 (A/B/C/D/E/F), while McDonnell Douglas will produce the rest with final assembly to be performed by McDonnell Douglas. At the time of the settlement, Northrop had ceased work on the F-18L. Most export orders for the F18-L were captured by the F-16 or the F/A-18. The F-20 Tigershark did not enter production, and although the program was not officially terminated until 17 November 1986, it was dead by mid-1985.
During flight testing, the snag on the leading edge of the stabilators was filled in, and the gap between the leading-edge extensions (LEX) and the fuselage was mostly filled in. The gaps, called the boundary layer air discharge slots, controlled the vortices generated by the LEX and presented clean air to the vertical stabilizers at high angles of attack, but they also generated a great deal of parasitic drag, worsening the problem of the F/A-18's inadequate range. McDonnell filled in 80% of the gap, leaving a small slot to bleed air from the engine intake. This may have contributed to early problems with fatigue cracks appearing on the vertical stabilizers due to extreme structural loads, resulting in a short grounding in 1984 until the stabilizers were strengthened. Starting in May 1988, a small vertical fence was added to the top of each LEX to broaden the vortices and direct them away from the vertical stabilizers. This also provided a minor increase in controllability as a side effect. F/A-18s of early versions had a problem with insufficient rate of roll, exacerbated by the insufficient wing stiffness, especially with heavy underwing ordnance loads. The first production F/A-18A flew on 12 April 1980. After a production run of 380 F/A-18As (including the nine assigned to flight systems development), manufacture shifted to the F/A-18C in September 1987.
In the 1990s, the U.S. Navy faced the need to replace its aging A-6 Intruders and A-7 Corsair IIs with no replacement in development. To answer this deficiency, the Navy commissioned development of the F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. Despite its designation, it is not just an upgrade of the F/A-18 Hornet, but rather, a new, larger airframe using the design concepts of the Hornet.
Hornets and Super Hornets will serve complementary roles in the U.S. Navy carrier fleet until the Hornet A-D models are completely replaced by the F-35C Lightning II. The Marines have chosen to extend the use of certain F/A-18s up to 10,000 flight hours, due to delays in the F-35B variant.
The F/A-18 is a twin engine, midwing, multimission tactical aircraft. It is highly maneuverable, due to its good thrust-to-weight ratio, digital fly-by-wire control system, and leading-edge extensions, which allow the Hornet to remain controllable at high angles of attack. The trapezoidal wing has a 20-degree sweepback on the leading edge and a straight trailing edge. The wing has full-span, leading-edge flaps and the trailing edge has single-slotted flaps and ailerons over the entire span.
Canted vertical stabilizers are another distinguishing design element, one among several other such elements that enable the Hornet's excellent high angle of attack ability, including oversized horizontal stabilators, oversized trailing-edge flaps that operate as flaperons, large full-length leading-edge slats, and flight control computer programming that multiplies the movement of each control surface at low speeds and moves the vertical rudders inboard instead of simply left and right. The Hornet's normally high angle of attack performance envelope was put to rigorous testing and enhanced in the NASA F-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle (HARV). NASA used the F-18 HARV to demonstrate flight handling characteristics at high angle-of-attack (alpha) of 65–70 degrees using thrust vectoring vanes. F/A-18 stabilators were also used as canards on NASA's F-15S/MTD.
The Hornet was among the first aircraft to heavily use multifunction displays, which at the switch of a button allow a pilot to perform either fighter or attack roles or both. This "force multiplier" ability gives the operational commander more flexibility to employ tactical aircraft in a fast-changing battle scenario. It was the first Navy aircraft to incorporate a digital multiplexing avionics bus, enabling easy upgrades.
The Hornet is also notable for having been designed to reduce maintenance, and as a result, has required far less downtime than its heavier counterparts, the F-14 Tomcat and the A-6 Intruder. Its mean time between failures is three times greater than any other Navy strike aircraft, and requires half the maintenance time. Its General Electric F404 engines were also innovative in that they were designed with operability, reliability, and maintainability first. The engine, while unexceptional in rated performance, demonstrates exceptional robustness under various conditions and is resistant to stall and flameout. The F404 engine connects to the airframe at only 10 points and can be replaced without special equipment; a four-person team can remove the engine within 20 minutes. The aircraft has a top speed of Mach 1.8 at 40,000 ft.
The engine air inlets of the Hornet, like that of the F-16, are of a simpler "fixed" design, while those of the F-4, F-14, and F-15 have variable geometry or variable intake ramp air inlets.
A 1989 USMC study found that single-seat fighters were well suited to air-to-air combat missions, while dual-seat fighters were favored for complex strike missions against heavy air and ground defenses in adverse weather—the question being not so much as to whether a second pair of eyes would be useful, but as to having the second crewman sit in the same fighter or in a second fighter. Single-seat fighters that lacked wingmen were shown to be especially vulnerable.
McDonnell Douglas rolled out the first F/A-18A on 13 September 1978, in blue-on-white colors marked with "Navy" on the left and "Marines" on the right. Its first flight was on 18 November. In a break with tradition, the Navy pioneered the "principal site concept" with the F/A-18, where almost all testing was done at Naval Air Station Patuxent River, instead of near the site of manufacture, and using Navy and Marine Corps test pilots instead of civilians early in development. In March 1979, Lt. Cdr. John Padgett became the first Navy pilot to fly the F/A-18.
Following trials and operational testing by VX-4 and VX-5, Hornets began to fill the Fleet Replacement Squadrons VFA-125, VFA-106, and VMFAT-101, where pilots are introduced to the F/A-18. The Hornet entered operational service with Marine Corps squadron VMFA-314 at MCAS El Toro on 7 January 1983, and with Navy squadron VFA-25 on 1 July 1984, replacing F-4s and A-7Es, respectively.
Navy strike-fighter squadrons VFA-25 and VFA-113 (assigned to CVW-14) deployed aboard from February to August 1985, marking the first deployment for the F/A-18.
The initial fleet reports were complimentary, indicating that the Hornet was extraordinarily reliable, a major change from its predecessor, the F-4J. Other squadrons that switched to F/A-18 are VFA-146 "Blue Diamonds", and VFA-147 "Argonauts". In January 1985, the VFA-131 "Wildcats" and the VFA-132 "Privateers" moved from Naval Air Station Lemoore, California to Naval Air Station Cecil Field, Florida to become the Atlantic Fleet's first F/A-18 squadrons.
The U.S. Navy's Blue Angels Flight Demonstration Squadron switched to the F/A-18 Hornet in 1986, replacing the A-4 Skyhawk. The Blue Angels perform in F/A-18A, B, C, and D models at air shows and other special events across the US and worldwide. Blue Angels pilots must have 1,400 hours and an aircraft-carrier certification. The two-seat B and D models are typically used to give rides to VIPs, but can also fill in for other aircraft in the squadron in a normal show, if the need arises.
NASA operates several F/A-18 aircraft for research purposes and also as chase aircraft; these F/A-18s are based at the Armstrong Flight Research Center (formerly the Dryden Flight Research Center) in California. On 21 September 2012, two NASA F/A-18s escorted a NASA Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft carrying the Space Shuttle "Endeavour" over portions of California to Los Angeles International Airport before being delivered to the California Science Center museum in Los Angeles.
The F/A-18 first saw combat action in April 1986, when VFA-131, VFA-132, VMFA-314, and VMFA-323 Hornets from flew Suppression of Enemy Air Defense (SEAD) missions against Libyan air defenses during Operation Prairie Fire and an attack on Benghazi as part of Operation El Dorado Canyon. During the Gulf War of 1991, the Navy deployed 106 F/A-18A/C Hornets and Marine Corps deployed 84 F/A-18A/C/D Hornets. F/A-18 pilots were credited with two kills during the Gulf War, both MiG-21s. On 17 January, the first day of the war, U.S. Navy pilots Lieutenant Commander Mark I. Fox and his wingman, Lieutenant Nick Mongilio were sent from in the Red Sea to bomb an airfield in southwestern Iraq. While en route, they were warned by an E-2C of approaching MiG-21 aircraft. The Hornets shot down the two MiGs with AIM-7 and AIM-9 missiles in a brief dogfight. The F/A-18s, each carrying four bombs, then resumed their bombing run before returning to "Saratoga".
The Hornet's survivability was demonstrated when a Hornet took hits in both engines and flew back to base. It was repaired and flying within a few days. F/A-18s flew 4,551 sorties with 10 Hornets damaged including three losses, one confirmed lost to enemy fire. All three losses were U.S. Navy F/A-18s, with two of their pilots lost. On 17 January 1991, Lieutenant Commander Scott Speicher of VFA-81 was shot down and killed in the crash of his aircraft. An unclassified summary of a 2001 CIA report suggests that Speicher's aircraft was shot down by a missile fired from an Iraqi Air Force aircraft, most likely a MiG-25.
On 24 January 1991, F/A-18A bureau number 163121, from , piloted by Lt H.E. Overs, was lost due to an engine failure or loss of control over the Persian Gulf. The pilot ejected and was recovered by . On 5 February 1991, F/A-18A bureau number 163096, piloted by Lieutenant Robert Dwyer was lost over the North Persian Gulf after a successful mission to Iraq; he was officially listed as killed in action, body not recovered.
As the A-6 Intruder was retired in the 1990s, its role was filled by the F/A-18. The F/A-18 demonstrated its versatility and reliability during Operation Desert Storm, shooting down enemy fighters and subsequently bombing enemy targets with the same aircraft on the same mission. It broke records for tactical aircraft in availability, reliability, and maintainability.
Both U.S. Navy F/A-18A/C models and Marine F/A-18A/C/D models were used continuously in Operation Southern Watch and over Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s. U.S. Navy Hornets flew during Operation Enduring Freedom in 2001 from carriers operating in the North Arabian Sea. Both the F/A-18A/C and newer F/A-18E/F variants were used during Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, operating from aircraft carriers as well from an air base in Kuwait. Later in the conflict USMC A+, C, and primarily D models operated from bases within Iraq.
An F/A-18C was accidentally downed in a friendly fire incident by a Patriot missile when a pilot tried to evade two missiles fired at his plane and crashed. Two others collided over Iraq in May 2005.
The USMC plans to use the F/A-18 until the early 2030s.
The last operational deployment of the F/A-18C Hornet in U.S. Navy service was aboard the and ended on 12 March 2018. The aircraft briefly went back to sea for routine carrier qualifications in October, but it was retired from active Navy service on 1 February 2019. The type continued to be used by reserve units, primarily for adversary training, but the final Navy F/A-18C operational flight occurred on 2 October 2019. The Blue Angels will continue to fly legacy Hornets until they are replaced by Super Hornets in 2021.
The F/A-18 has been purchased and is in operation with several foreign air services. Export Hornets are typically similar to U.S. models of a similar manufacture date. Since none of the customers operate aircraft carriers, all export models have been sold without the automatic carrier landing system, and the Royal Australian Air Force further removed the catapult attachment on the nose gear. Except for Canada, all export customers purchased their Hornets through the U.S. Navy, via the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, where the Navy acts as the purchasing manager, but incurs no financial gain or loss. Canada is the largest Hornet operator outside of the U.S.
The Royal Australian Air Force purchased 57 F/A-18A fighters and 18 F/A-18B two-seat trainers to replace its Dassault Mirage IIIOs. Numerous options were considered for the replacement, notably the F-15A Eagle, the F-16 Falcon, and the then new F/A-18 Hornet. The F-15 was discounted because the version offered had no ground-attack capability. The F-16 was considered unsuitable largely due to having only one engine. Australia selected the F/A-18 in October 1981. Original differences between the Australian and US Navy's standard F/A-18 were the removed nose-wheel tie bar for catapult launch (later re-fitted with a dummy version to remove nose wheel shimmy), addition of a high frequency radio, an Australian fatigue data analysis system, an improved video and voice recorder, and the use of instrument landing system/VHF omnidirectional range instead of the carrier landing system.
The first two aircraft were produced in the US, with the remainder assembled in Australia at Government Aircraft Factories. F/A-18 deliveries to the RAAF began on 29 October 1984, and continued until May 1990. In 2001, Australia deployed four aircraft to Diego Garcia, in an air-defense role, during coalition operations against the Taliban in Afghanistan. In 2003, 75 Squadron deployed 14 F/A-18s to Qatar as part of Operation Falconer and these aircraft saw action during the invasion of Iraq. Australia had 71 Hornets in service in 2006, after four were lost to crashes.
The fleet was upgraded beginning in the late 1990s to extend their service lives to 2015. They were expected to be retired then and replaced by the F-35 Lightning II. Several of the Australian Hornets have had refits applied to extend their service lives until the planned retirement date of 2020. Australia has also purchased 24 F/A-18F Super Hornets, with deliveries beginning in 2010.
In March 2015, six F/A-18As from No. 75 Squadron were deployed to the Middle East as part of Operation Okra, replacing a detachment of Super Hornets.
Australia has sold 25 F/A-18A/Bs to Canada with first two delivered to RCAF in February 2019.
Canada was the first export customer for the Hornet, replacing the CF-104 Starfighter (air reconnaissance and strike), the McDonnell CF-101 Voodoo (air interception) and the CF-116 Freedom Fighter (ground attack). The Canadian Forces Air Command ordered 98 A models (Canadian designation CF-188A/CF-18A) and 40 B models (designation CF-188B/CF-18B). The original CF-18 as delivered was nearly identical to the F/A-18A and B models.
In 1991, Canada committed 26 CF-18s to the Gulf War, based in Qatar. These aircraft primarily provided Combat Air Patrol duties, although, late in the air war, began to perform air strikes on Iraqi ground targets. On 30 January 1991, two CF-18s on CAP detected and attacked an Iraqi TNC-45 patrol boat. The vessel was repeatedly strafed and damaged by 20mm cannon fire, but an attempt to sink the ship with an air-to-air missile failed. The ship was subsequently sunk by American aircraft, but the Canadian CF-18s received partial credit for its destruction. In June 1999, 18 CF-18s were deployed to Aviano AB, Italy, where they participated in both the air-to-ground and air-to-air roles in the former Yugoslavia.
62 CF-18A and 18 CF-18B aircraft took part in the Incremental Modernization Project which was completed in two phases. The program was launched in 2001 and the last updated aircraft was delivered in March 2010. The aims were to improve air-to-air and air-to-ground combat abilities, upgrade sensors and the defensive suite, and replace the datalinks and communications systems on board the CF-18 from the F/A-18A and F/A-18B standard to the current F/A-18C and F/A-18D standard.
In July 2010 the Canadian government announced plans to replace the remaining CF-18 fleet with 65 F-35 Lightning IIs, with deliveries scheduled to start in 2016. In November 2016, Canada announced plans to buy 18 Super Hornets as an interim solution while reviewing its F-35 order. The plan for Super Hornets was later, in October 2017, put on hold due to a trade conflict with the United States over the Bombardier C-Series. Instead, Canada was seeking to purchase surplus Hornets from Australia or Kuwait. Canada has since acquired 25 ex-Australian F/A-18A/Bs, the first two of which were delivered in February 2019. 18 of these airframes will be introduced into active service with the remaining 7 to be used for spare parts and testing.
The Finnish Air Force ordered 64 F-18C/Ds (57 C models, seven D models). All F-18D were built at St Louis, and then all F-18C were assembled in Finland. Delivery of the aircraft started in November 1995 and ended in August 2000. The Hornet replaced the MiG-21bis and Saab 35 Draken in Finnish service. The Finnish Hornets were initially to be used only for air defense, hence the F-18 designation. The F-18C includes the ASPJ (Airborne-Self-Protection-Jammer) jamming pod ALQ-165. The US Navy later included the ALQ-165 on their F/A-18E/F Super Hornet procurement.
One fighter was destroyed in a mid-air collision in 2001. A damaged F-18C, nicknamed "Frankenhornet", was rebuilt into a F-18D using the forward section of a Canadian CF-18B that was purchased. The modified fighter crashed during a test flight in January 2010, due to a faulty tailplane servo cylinder.
Finland is upgrading its fleet of F-18s with new avionics, including helmet mounted sights (HMS), new cockpit displays, sensors and standard NATO data link. Several of the remaining Hornets are going to be fitted to carry air-to-ground ordnance such as the AGM-158 JASSM, in effect returning to the original F/A-18 multi-role configuration. The upgrade includes also the procurement and integration of new AIM-9X Sidewinder and AIM-120C-7 AMRAAM air-to-air missiles. This Mid-Life Upgrade (MLU) is estimated to cost between €1–1.6 billion and work is scheduled to be finished by 2016. After the upgrades the aircraft are to remain in active service until 2020–2025. In October 2014 the Finnish broadcaster Yle announced that consideration was being given to the replacement of the Hornet.
Over half of the fleet was upgraded by 1 June 2015. During that week the Finnish Air Force was to drop its first live bombs (JDAM) in 70 years, since World War II.
The Kuwait Air Force ("Al Quwwat Aj Jawwaiya Al Kuwaitiya") ordered 32 F/A-18C and eight F/A-18D Hornets in 1988. Delivery started in October 1991 until August 1993. The F/A-18C/Ds replaced A-4KU Skyhawk. Kuwait Air Force Hornets have flown missions over Iraq during Operation Southern Watch in the 1990s. They have also participated in military exercises with the air forces of other Gulf nations. Kuwait had 39 F/A-18C/D Hornets in service in 2008. Kuwait also participated in the Yemeni Civil War (2015–present). In February 2017, the Commander of the Kuwait Air Force revealed that the F/A-18s based at King Khalid Air Base had performed approximately 3,000 sorties over Yemen.
The Royal Malaysian Air Force ("Tentera Udara Diraja Malaysia") has eight F/A-18Ds. Delivery of the aircraft spanned from March 1997 to August 1997.
Three Hornets together with five UK-made BAE Hawk 208 were deployed in a bombing airstrike on the "Royal Security Forces of the Sultanate of Sulu and North Borneo" terrorists on 5 March 2013, just before the joint forces of the Royal Malaysian Army and Royal Malaysia Police commandos launched an all-out assault during Operation Daulat. The Hornets were tasked with close air support to the no-fly zone in Lahad Datu, Sabah.
The Spanish Air Force ("Ejército del Aire") ordered 60 EF-18A model and 12 EF-18B model Hornets (the "E" standing for "España", Spain), named respectively as C.15 and CE.15 by Spanish AF. The Spanish version was delivered from 22 November 1985 to July 1990. These fighters were upgraded to F-18A+/B+ standard, close to F/A-18C/D (plus version includes later mission and armament computers, databuses, data-storage set, new wiring, pylon modifications and software, new abilities as AN/AAS-38B NITE Hawk targeting FLIR pods).
In 1995 Spain obtained 24 ex-USN F/A-18A Hornets, with six more on option. These were delivered from December 1995 until December 1998. Before delivery, they were modified to EF-18A+ standard. This was the first sale of USN surplus Hornets.
Spanish Hornets operate as an all-weather interceptor 60% of the time and as an all-weather day/night attack aircraft for the remainder. In case of war, each of the front-line squadrons would take a primary role: 121 is tasked with tactical air support and maritime operations; 151 and 122 are assigned to all-weather interception and air combat roles; and 152 is assigned the SEAD mission. Air refueling is provided by KC-130Hs and Boeing 707TTs. Pilot conversion to EF-18 is centralized in 153 Squadron (Ala 15). Squadron 462's role is air defense of the Canary Islands, being responsible for fighter and attack missions from Gando AB.
Spanish Air Force EF-18 Hornets have flown Ground Attack, SEAD, combat air patrol (CAP) combat missions in Bosnia and Kosovo, under NATO command, in Aviano detachment (Italy). They shared the base with Canadian and USMC F/A-18s. Six Spanish Hornets had been lost in accidents by 2003.
Over Yugoslavia, eight EF-18s, based at Aviano AB, participated in bombing raids in Operation Allied Force in 1999. Over Bosnia, they also performed missions for air-to-air combat air patrol, close air support air-to-ground, photo reconnaissance, forward air controller-airborne, and tactical air controller-airborne. Over Libya, four Spanish Hornets participated in enforcing a no-fly zone.
The Swiss Air Force purchased 26 C models and eight D models. Aircraft were delivered from January 1996 to December 1999. Three D models and one C model had been lost in crashes as of 2016. On 14 October 2015, a F/A-18D crashed in France during training with two Swiss Air Force Northrop F-5s in the Swiss/French training area EURAC25; the pilot ejected safely.
In late 2007, Switzerland requested to be included in the F/A-18C/D Upgrade 25 Program, to extend the useful life of its F/A-18C/Ds. The program includes significant upgrades to the avionics and mission computer, 12 ATFLIR surveillance and targeting pods, and 44 sets of AN/ALR-67v3 ECM equipment. In October 2008, the Swiss Hornet fleet reached the 50,000 flight hour milestone.
The Swiss Air Force has also taken delivery of two F/A-18C full-scale mock-ups for use as ground crew interactive training simulators. Locally built by Hugo Wolf AG, they are externally accurate copies and have been registered as Boeing F/A-18C (Hugo Wolf) aircraft with tail numbers X-5098 and X-5099. These include a complex equipment fit, including many original cockpit components and instruments, allowing the simulation of fires, fuel leaks, nosewheel collapse and other emergency scenarios. X-5098 is permanently stationed at Payerne Air Base while X-5099, the first one built, is moved between air bases according to training demands.
The F/A-18C and F/A-18D were considered by the French Navy ("Marine Nationale") during the 1980s for deployment on their aircraft carriers "Clemenceau" and "Foch" and again in the 1990s for the later nuclear-powered "Charles de Gaulle", in the event that the Dassault Rafale M was not brought into service when originally planned.
Austria, Chile, Czech Republic, Hungary, Philippines, Poland, and Singapore evaluated the Hornet but did not purchase it. Thailand ordered four C and four D model Hornets but the Asian financial crisis in the late 1990s resulted in the order being canceled. The Hornets were completed as F/A-18Ds for the U.S. Marine Corps.
The F/A-18A and F-18L land-based version competed for a fighter contract from Greece in the 1980s. The Greek government chose F-16 and Mirage 2000 instead.
The "F/A-18A" is the single-seat variant and the "F/A-18B" is the two-seat variant. The space for the two-seat cockpit is provided by a relocation of avionics equipment and a 6% reduction in internal fuel; two-seat Hornets are otherwise fully combat-capable. The B-model is used primarily for training.
In 1992, the original Hughes AN/APG-65 radar was replaced with the Hughes (now Raytheon) AN/APG-73, a faster and more capable radar. A-model Hornets that have been upgraded to the AN/APG-73 are designated "F/A-18A+".
The "F/A-18C" is the single-seat variant and the "F/A-18D" is the two-seat variant. The D-model can be configured for training or as an all-weather strike craft. The "missionized" D model's rear seat is configured for a Marine Corps Naval Flight Officer who functions as a Weapons and Sensors Officer to assist in operating the weapons systems. The F/A-18D is primarily operated by the U.S. Marine Corps in the night attack and Forward Air Controller (Airborne) (FAC(A)) roles.
The F/A-18C and D models are the result of a block upgrade in 1987 incorporating upgraded radar, avionics, and the capacity to carry new missiles such as the AIM-120 AMRAAM air-to-air missile and AGM-65 Maverick and AGM-84 Harpoon air-to-surface missiles. Other upgrades include the Martin-Baker NACES (Navy Aircrew Common ejection seat), and a self-protection jammer. A synthetic aperture ground mapping radar enables the pilot to locate targets in poor visibility conditions. C and D models delivered since 1989 also have improved night attack abilities, consisting of the Hughes AN/AAR-50 thermal navigation pod, the Loral AN/AAS-38 NITE Hawk FLIR (forward looking infrared array) targeting pod, night vision goggles, and two full-color (formerly monochrome) multi-function display (MFDs) and a color moving map.
In addition, 60 D-model Hornets are configured as the night attack "F/A-18D (RC)" with ability for reconnaissance. These could be outfitted with the ATARS electro-optical sensor package that includes a sensor pod and equipment mounted in the place of the M61 cannon.
Beginning in 1992, the F404-GE-402 enhanced performance engine, providing approximately 10% more maximum static thrust became the standard Hornet engine. Since 1993, the AAS-38A NITE Hawk added a designator/ranger laser, allowing it to self-mark targets. The later AAS-38B added the ability to strike targets designated by lasers from other aircraft.
Production of the C- and D- models ended in 2000. The last F/A-18C was assembled in Finland and delivered to the Finnish Air Force in August 2000. The last F/A-18D was delivered to the U.S. Marine Corps in August 2000.
In April 2018, the US Navy announced the retirement of the F/A-18C from combat roles after a final deployment that had ended the month prior.
The single-seat "F/A-18E" and two-seat "F/A-18F", both officially named "Super Hornet", carry over the name and design concept of the original F/A-18 but have been extensively redesigned by McDonnell Douglas. The Super Hornet has a new, 25% larger airframe, larger rectangular air intakes, more powerful GE F414 engines based on F/A-18's F404, and an upgraded avionics suite. Like the Marine Corps' F/A-18D, the Navy's F/A-18F carries a naval flight officer as a second crew member in a weapon systems officer (WSO) role. The Super Hornet is unofficially known as "Rhino" in operational use. This name was chosen to distinguish the newer variants from the legacy F-18A/B/C/D Hornet and avoid confusion during carrier deck operations. The Super Hornet is also operated by Australia.
The EA-18G Growler is an electronic warfare version of the two-seat F/A-18F, which entered production in 2007. The Growler has replaced the Navy's EA-6B Prowler and carries a Naval Flight Officer as a second crewman in an Electronic Warfare Officer (EWO) role.
"These designations are not part of 1962 United States Tri-Service aircraft designation system." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45998 |
Gecko (software)
Gecko is a browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and many other projects.
Gecko is designed to support open Internet standards, and is used by different applications to display web pages and, in some cases, an application's user interface itself (by rendering XUL). Gecko offers a rich programming API that makes it suitable for a wide variety of roles in Internet-enabled applications, such as web browsers, content presentation, and client/server.
Gecko is written in C++ and JavaScript, and, since 2016, additionally in Rust. It is free and open-source software subject to the terms of the Mozilla Public License version 2. Mozilla officially supports its use on Android, Linux, macOS, and Windows.
Development of the layout engine now known as Gecko began at Netscape in 1997, following the company's purchase of DigitalStyle. The existing Netscape rendering engine, originally written for Netscape Navigator 1.0 and upgraded through the years, was slow, did not comply well with W3C standards, had limited support for dynamic HTML and lacked features such as incremental reflow (when the layout engine rearranges elements on the screen as new data is downloaded and added to the page). The new layout engine was developed in parallel with the old, with the intention being to integrate it into Netscape Communicator when it was mature and stable. At least one more major revision of Netscape was expected to be released with the old layout engine before the switch.
After the launch of the Mozilla project in early 1998, the new layout engine code was released under an open-source license. Originally unveiled as "Raptor", the name had to be changed to "NGLayout" (next generation layout) due to trademark problems. Netscape later rebranded NGLayout as "Gecko". While Mozilla Organization (the forerunner of the Mozilla Foundation) initially continued to use the NGLayout name (Gecko was a Netscape trademark), eventually the Gecko branding won out.
In October 1998, Netscape announced that its next browser would use Gecko (which was still called NGLayout at the time) rather than the old layout engine, requiring large parts of the application to be rewritten. While this decision was popular with web standards advocates, it was largely unpopular with Netscape developers, who were unhappy with the six months given for the rewrite. It also meant that most of the work done for Netscape Communicator 5.0 (including development on the Mariner improvements to the old layout engine) had to be abandoned. Netscape 6, the first Netscape release to incorporate Gecko, was released in November 2000 (the name Netscape 5 was never used).
As Gecko development continued, other applications and embedders began to make use of it. America Online, by this time Netscape's parent company, eventually adopted it for use in CompuServe 7.0 and AOL for Mac OS X (these products had previously embedded Internet Explorer). However, with the exception of a few betas, Gecko was never used in the main Microsoft Windows AOL client.
On July 15, 2003, AOL laid off the remaining Gecko developers and the Mozilla Foundation (formed on the same day) became the main steward of Gecko development. Today, Gecko is developed by employees of the Mozilla Corporation, employees of companies that contribute to the Mozilla project, and volunteers.
In October 2016, Mozilla announced Quantum, an ongoing project encompassing several software development efforts to "build the next-generation web engine for Firefox users". It includes numerous improvements to Gecko, taken from the experimental Servo project. Firefox 57, also known as "Firefox Quantum", first shipping in November 2017, is the initial version with major components from the Quantum/Servo projects enabled. These include increased performance in the CSS and GPU rendering components. Additional components will be merged from Servo to Gecko incrementally in future versions.
In September 2018, Mozilla announced GeckoView, the foundation of Mozilla's next generation of mobile products based on a software library that makes Gecko reusable for Android, encompassing newer software development efforts to "decouple the engine itself from its user interface, and made it easy to embed in other applications". Firefox Focus 7.0, shipped in the same month, is the initial version introduced GeckoView, with increased performance in median page loading. Firefox Reality was also built with GeckoView. In June 2019, Mozilla announced Firefox Preview as an ongoing project that focuses on building Android web browser with GeckoView.
From the outset, Gecko was designed to support open Internet standards. Some of the standards Gecko supports include:
Gecko also partially supports SVG 1.1. The SVG font, color profile, animation, view, and cursor modules are yet to be implemented and the filter and text modules are only partially implemented. The extensibility module is also implemented but is currently disabled.
In order to support web pages designed for legacy versions of Netscape and Internet Explorer, Gecko supports DOCTYPE switching. Documents with a modern DOCTYPE are rendered in standards compliance mode, which follows the W3C standards strictly. Documents that have no DOCTYPE or an older DOCTYPE are rendered in quirks mode, which emulates some of the non-standard oddities of Netscape Communicator 4.x; however, some of the 4.x features (such as layers) are not supported.
Gecko also has limited support for some non-standard Internet Explorer features, such as the marquee element and the codice_1 property (though pages explicitly testing for codice_1 will be told it is not supported).
Gecko is primarily used in web browsers, the earliest being Netscape 6 and Mozilla Suite (later renamed SeaMonkey). It is also used in other Mozilla web browser derivatives such as Firefox and Firefox for mobile and the implementation of the Internet Explorer-clone that is part of Wine. Mozilla also uses it in their Thunderbird email-client.
Other web browsers using Gecko include GNU IceCat, Waterfox, K-Meleon, Lunascape, Portable Firefox, Conkeror, Classilla, TenFourFox.
Other products using Gecko include Nightingale, Instantbird and Google's picture-organization software Picasa (for Linux).
Gecko is also used by Sugar for the OLPC XO-1 computer. Gecko is used as a complete implementation of the XUL (XML User Interface Language). Gecko currently defines the XUL specification.
Products that have historically used Gecko include Pale Moon (now currently using Goanna), Songbird, Epiphany (now known as GNOME Web) and GNOME DevHelp both have replaced Gecko with WebKitGTK, Sunbird (calendar), and other web browsers including Swiftfox, Flock, Galeon, Camino, Minimo, Beonex Communicator, Kazehakase, and MicroB.
On Windows and other platforms, Gecko depends on proprietary compilers. Thus, FOSS distributions of Linux can not include the Gecko package used in the Windows compatibility layer Wine.
After Gecko 2.0, the version number was bumped to 5.0 to match Firefox 5, and from then on has been kept in sync with the major version number for both Firefox and Thunderbird, to reflect the fact that it is no longer a separate component.
In the Netscape era, a combination of poor technical and management decisions resulted in Gecko software bloat. Thus in 2001 Apple chose to fork KHTML, not Gecko, to create the WebKit engine for its Safari browser. However, by 2008 Mozilla had addressed some of the bloat problems, resulting in big performance improvements for Gecko.
Quantum is a Mozilla project encompassing several software development efforts to "build the next-generation web engine for Firefox users". It includes numerous improvements to Gecko, largely incorporated from the experimental Servo project. Quantum also includes refinements to the user interface and interactions.
Firefox 57, released in November 2017, is the initial version with a Servo component enabled. Mozilla dubs this and several planned future releases "Firefox Quantum".
In 2013, Mozilla began the experimental Servo project, which is an engine designed from scratch with the goals of improving concurrency and parallelism while also reducing memory safety vulnerabilities. An important factor is writing Servo in the Rust programming language, also created by Mozilla, which is designed to generate compiled code with better memory safety, concurrency, and parallelism than compiled C++ code.
As of April 2016, Servo needed at least several years of development to become a full-featured browser engine. Thus the decision to start the Quantum project to bring stable portions of Servo into Firefox.
The Quantum project is composed of several sub-projects.
The Mozilla Azure project is a stateless low-level graphics abstraction API used in Firefox. The project has several objectives including more accurate Direct2D compatibility, optimized state interoperability, and improved control over performance characteristics and bugs. Azure will provide 2D hardware acceleration on top of 3D graphics backends. Firefox began using Azure instead of Cairo in 2012. It is written in C++ and used by Servo. The Azure name is an ode to the early Netscape founder James H. Clark and his earlier work at SGI. Jim Clark invented Geometry Engine at Stanford University in 1979 which was the first GPU. Silicon Graphics were also the original inventors of OpenGL. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=45999 |
Alexandru Ioan Cuza
Alexandru Ioan Cuza (, or Alexandru Ioan I, also anglicised as Alexander John Cuza; 20 March 1820 – 15 May 1873) was Prince of Moldavia, Prince of Wallachia, and later "Domnitor" (Ruler) of the Romanian Principalities. He was a prominent figure of the Revolution of 1848 in Moldavia. He initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures.
Born in Bârlad, Cuza belonged to the traditional boyar class in Moldavia, being the son of Ispravnic Ioan Cuza (who was also a landowner in Fălciu County) and his wife Sultana (or Soltana), a member of the Cozadini family of Greek Phanariote origins. Alexander received an urbane European education, becoming an officer in the Moldavian Army (rising to the rank of colonel). He married Elena Rosetti in 1844.
In 1848, known as the year of European revolutions, Moldavia and Wallachia fell into revolt. The Moldavian unrest was quickly suppressed, but in Wallachia the revolutionaries took power and governed during the summer ("see 1848 Wallachian revolution"). Young Cuza played a prominent enough part so as to establish his liberal credentials during the Moldavian episode and to be shipped to Vienna as a prisoner, where he made his escape with British support.
Returned during the reign of Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica, he became Moldavia's minister of war in 1858 representing also Galați in the ad hoc Divan at Iași. Cuza was acting freely under the guarantees of the European Powers in the eve of the Crimean War for a recognition of the Prince of Moldavia. Cuza was a prominent speaker in the debates and strongly advocated the union of Moldavia and Walachia. In default of a foreign prince, he was nominated as a candidate in both principalities by the pro-unionist Partida Națională (profiting of an ambiguity in the text of the Treaty of Paris). Cuza was finally elected as Prince of Moldavia on 17 January 1859 (5 January Julian) and, after "street pressure" changed the vote in Bucharest, also Prince of Wallachia, on 5 February 1859 (24 January Julian). He received the firman from the Sultan on 2 December 1861 during a visit to Istanbul.
He was recipient of the Order of Medjidie, Order of Osmanieh, Order of Saints Maurice and Lazarus and Order of the Redeemer.
Although he and his wife Elena Rosetti had no children, she raised as her own children his two sons from his mistress Elena Maria Catargiu-Obrenović: Alexandru Al. Ioan Cuza (1864–1889), and Dimitrie Cuza (1865–1888 "suicide").
Thus Cuza achieved a de facto union of the two principalities. The Powers backtracked, Napoleon III of France remaining supportive, while the Austrian ministry withheld approval of such a union at the Congress of Paris (18 October 1858); partly as a consequence, Cuza's authority was not recognized by his nominal suzerain, Abdülaziz, the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, until 23 December 1861, (and, even then, the union was only accepted for the duration of Cuza's rule).
The union was formally declared three years later, on 5 February 1862, (24 January Julian), the new country bearing the name of Romania, with Bucharest as its capital city.
Cuza invested his diplomatic actions in gaining further concessions from the Powers: the sultan's assent to a single unified parliament and cabinet for Cuza's lifetime, in recognition of the complexity of the task. Thus, he was regarded as the political embodiment of a unified Romania.
Assisted by his councilor Mihail Kogălniceanu, an intellectual leader of the 1848 revolution, Cuza initiated a series of reforms that contributed to the modernization of Romanian society and of state structures.
His first measure addressed a need for increasing the land resources and revenues available to the state, by "secularizing" (confiscating) monastic assets in 1863. Probably more than a quarter of Romania's farmland was controlled by untaxed Eastern Orthodox "Dedicated Monasteries", which supported Greek and other foreign monks in shrines such as Mount Athos and Jerusalem (a substantial drain on state revenues). Cuza got his parliament's backing to expropriate these lands. He offered compensation to the Greek Orthodox Church, but Sophronius III, the Patriarch of Constantinople, refused to negotiate; after several years, the Romanian government withdrew its offer and no compensation was ever paid. State revenues thereby increased without adding any domestic tax burden.
The land reform, liberating peasants from the last corvées, freeing their movements and redistributing some land (1864), was less successful. In attempting to create a solid support base among the peasants, Cuza soon found himself in conflict with the group of Conservatives. A liberal bill granting peasants title to the land they worked was defeated. Then the Conservatives responded with a bill that ended all peasant dues and responsibilities, but gave landlords title to all the land. Cuza vetoed it, then held a plebiscite to alter the Paris Convention (the virtual constitution), in the manner of Napoleon III.
His plan to establish universal manhood suffrage, together with the power of the Domnitor to rule by decree, passed by a vote of 682,621 to 1,307. He consequently governed the country under the provisions of "Statutul dezvoltător al Convenției de la Paris" ("Statute expanding the Paris Convention"), an organic law adopted on 15 July 1864. With his new plenary powers, Cuza then promulgated the Agrarian Law of 1863. Peasants received title to the land they worked, while landlords retained ownership of one third. Where there was not enough land available to create workable farms under this formula, state lands (from the confiscated monasteries) would be used to give the landowners compensation.
Despite the attempts by Lascăr Catargiu's cabinet to force a transition in which some corvées were to be maintained, Cuza's reform marked the disappearance of the boyar class as a privileged group, and led to a channeling of energies into capitalism and industrialization; at the same time, however, land distributed was still below necessities, and the problem became stringent over the following decades – as peasants reduced to destitution sold off their land or found that it was insufficient for the needs of their growing families.
Cuza's reforms also included the adoption of the Criminal Code and the Civil Code based on the Napoleonic code (1864), a Law on Education, establishing tuition-free, compulsory public education for primary schools (1864; the system, nonetheless, suffered from drastic shortages in allocated funds; illiteracy was eradicated about 100 years later, during the communist regime). He founded the University of Iași (1860) and the University of Bucharest (1864), and helped develop a modern, European-style Romanian Army, under a working relationship with France. He is the founder of the Romanian Naval Forces.
Cuza failed in his effort to create an alliance of prosperous peasants and a strong liberal prince, ruling as a benevolent authoritarian in the style of Napoleon III. Having to rely on a decreasing group of hand-picked bureaucrats, Cuza began facing a mounting opposition after his land reform bill, with liberal landowners voicing concerns over his ability to represent their interests. Along with financial distress, there was an awkward scandal that revolved around his mistress, Maria Catargiu-Obrenović, and popular discontent culminated in a coup d'état.
Cuza was forced to abdicate by the so-called "monstrous coalition" of Conservatives and Liberals. At four o'clock on the morning of 22 February 1866, a group of military conspirators broke into the palace, and compelled the prince to sign his abdication. On the following day they conducted him safely across the frontier.
His successor, Prince Karl of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen, was proclaimed Domnitor as Carol I of Romania on 20 April 1866. The election of a foreign prince with ties to an important princely house, legitimizing Romanian independence (which Carol came to do after the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878), had been one of the liberal aims in the revolution of 1848.
Despite the participation of Ion Brătianu and other future leaders of the Liberal Party in the overthrow of Cuza, he remained a hero to the radical and republican wing, who, as Francophiles, had an additional reason to oppose a Prussian monarch; anti-Carol riots in Bucharest during the Franco-Prussian War ("see History of Bucharest") and the coup attempt known as the Republic of Ploiești in August 1870, the conflict was eventually resolved by the compromise between Brătianu and Carol, with the arrival of a prolonged and influential Liberal cabinet.
Cuza spent the remainder of his life in exile, chiefly in Paris, Vienna and Wiesbaden, accompanied by his wife and his two sons. He died in Heidelberg. His remains were buried in his residence in Ruginoasa, but were moved to the Trei Ierarhi Cathedral in Iași after World War II. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46000 |
Browser engine
A browser engine (also known as a layout engine or rendering engine) is a core software component of every major web browser. The primary job of a browser engine is to transform HTML documents and other resources of a web page into an interactive visual representation on a user's device.
A browser engine is not a stand-alone computer program but a critical piece of a larger program, such as a web browser, from which the term is derived. (The word "engine" is an analogy to the engine of a car.)
Besides "browser engine", two other terms are in common use regarding related concepts: "layout engine" and "rendering engine". In theory, layout and rendering (or "painting") could be handled by separate engines. In practice, however, they are tightly coupled and rarely considered separately.
In addition to layout and rendering, a browser engine enforces the security policy between documents, handles navigation through hyperlinks and data submitted through forms, and implements the Document Object Model (DOM) data structure exposed to page scripts.
Executing JavaScript (JS) code is a separate matter, however, as every major web browser uses a dedicated engine for this. The JS language was originally created for use in browsers, but it is now used elsewhere too, so the implementation of JS engines is decoupled from browser engines. In a web browser, the two engines work in concert via the shared DOM data structure.
Browser engines are used in other types of programs besides web browsers. Email clients need them to display HTML email. The Electron framework, which is powered by the two engines of the Google Chrome browser, has been used to create many applications.
The layout of a web page is typically specified by Cascading Style Sheets (CSS). Each style sheet is a series of rules which the browser engine interprets. For example, some rules specify typography details, such as font, color, and text size. The engine combines all relevant CSS rules to calculate precise graphical coordinates for the visual representation it will paint on the screen.
Some engines may begin rendering before all of a page's resources are downloaded. This can result in visual changes as more data is received, such as images being gradually filled in or a flash of unstyled content.
Because the Web platform is a set of open standards, there are multiple browser engine implementations.
Gecko is Mozilla's browser engine, used in its Firefox web browser, the Thunderbird email client, and the SeaMonkey internet suite. Goanna is a fork of Gecko used in the Pale Moon browser.
Apple created the WebKit engine for its Safari browser by forking the KHTML engine of the KDE project.
Google originally used WebKit for its Chrome browser but eventually forked it to create the Blink engine. All Chromium-based browsers use Blink, as do applications built with CEF, Electron, or any other framework that embeds Chromium.
Although Apple permits third-party browsers as alternatives to Safari on iOS devices, all browsers distributed through its App Store must use WebKit as their engine. For example, Opera Mini for iOS uses WebKit, whereas all other Opera variants use Blink. (Opera formerly used its own proprietary Presto engine.)
Microsoft maintains its own proprietary EdgeHTML engine, which is the successor of its Trident engine. However, EdgeHTML is now only used for Universal Windows Platform apps, as the Edge browser has been remade with the Blink engine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46001 |
Pax Americana
Pax Americana (Latin for "American Peace", modeled after "Pax Romana", "Pax Britannica") is a term applied to the concept of relative peace in the Western Hemisphere and later the world beginning around the middle of the 20th century, thought to be caused by the preponderance of power enjoyed by the United States. Although the term finds its primary utility in the latter half of the 20th century, it has been used with different meanings and eras, such as the post-Civil War era in North America, and regionally in the Americas at the start of the 20th century. "Pax Americana" is primarily used in its modern connotations to refer to the peace among great powers established after the end of World War II in 1945, also called the Long Peace. In this modern sense, it has come to indicate the military and economic position of the United States in relation to other nations. For example, the Marshall Plan, which spent $13 billion to rebuild the economy of Western Europe, has been seen as "the launching of the pax americana".
The Latin term is modeled after the Roman Empire's "Pax Romana". Pax Americana, the time period in which the United States has been the most influential and powerful nation in the world, and has led a global system in which the world has been more peaceful than at any other time in its history, has lasted from the end of World War II in 1945 to the present day. While other nations, most notably China, have risen in influence and power in recent years, the United States is projected to stay the most powerful nation decades into the future based on many factors, including strength of economy, military, geography, and demographics, among others.
The first articulation of a "Pax Americana" occurred after the end of the American Civil War (in which the United States both squashed its greatest disunity and demonstrated the ability to field millions of well-equipped soldiers utilizing modern tactics) with reference to the peaceful nature of the North American geographical region, and was abeyant at the commencement of the First World War. Its emergence was concurrent with the development of the idea of American exceptionalism. This view holds that the U.S. occupies a special niche among developed nations in terms of its national credo, historical evolution, political and religious institutions, and unique origins. The concept originates from Alexis de Tocqueville, who asserted that the then-50-year-old United States held a special place among nations because it was a country of immigrants and the first modern democracy. From the establishment of the United States after the American Revolution until the Spanish–American War, the foreign policy of the United States had a regional, instead of global, focus. The Pax Americana, which the Union enforced upon the states of central North America, was a factor in the United States' national prosperity. The larger states were surrounded by smaller states, but these had no anxieties: no standing armies to require taxes and hinder labor; no wars or rumors of wars that would interrupt trade; there is not only peace, but security, for the Pax Americana of the Union covered all the states within the federal constitutional republic. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first time the phrase appeared in print was in the August 1894 issue of "Forum": "The true cause for exultation is the universal outburst of patriotism in support of the prompt and courageous action of President Cleveland in maintaining the supremacy of law throughout the length and breadth of the land, in establishing the "pax Americana"."
With the rise of the New Imperialism in the Western hemisphere at the end of the 19th century, debates arose between imperialist and isolationist factions in the U.S. Here, "Pax Americana" was used to connote the peace across the United States and, more widely, as a Pan-American peace under the aegis of the Monroe Doctrine. Those who favored traditional policies of avoiding foreign entanglements included labor leader Samuel Gompers and steel tycoon Andrew Carnegie. American politicians such as Henry Cabot Lodge, William McKinley, and Theodore Roosevelt advocated an aggressive foreign policy, but the administration of President Grover Cleveland was unwilling to pursue such actions. On January 16, 1893, U.S. diplomatic and military personnel conspired with a small group of individuals to overthrow the constitutional government of the Kingdom of Hawaii and establish a Provisional Government and then a republic. On February 15, they presented a treaty for annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to the U.S. Senate, but opposition to annexation stalled its passage. The United States finally opted to annex Hawaii by way of the Newlands Resolution in July 1898.
After its victory in the Spanish–American War of 1898 and the subsequent acquisition of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam, the United States had gained a colonial empire. By ejecting Spain from the Americas, the United States shifted its position to an uncontested regional power, and extended its influence into Southeast Asia and Oceania. Although U.S. capital investments within the Philippines and Puerto Rico were relatively small, these colonies were strategic outposts for expanding trade with Latin America and Asia, particularly China. In the Caribbean area, the United States established a sphere of influence in line with the Monroe Doctrine, not explicitly defined as such, but recognized in effect by other governments and accepted by at least some of the republics in that area. The events around the start of the 20th century demonstrated that the United States undertook an obligation, usual in such cases, of imposing a "Pax Americana". As in similar instances elsewhere, this Pax Americana was not quite clearly marked in its geographical limit, nor was it guided by any theoretical consistency, but rather by the merits of the case and the test of immediate expediency in each instance. Thus, whereas the United States enforced a peace in much of the lands southward from the Nation and undertook measures to maintain internal tranquility in such areas, the United States on the other hand withdrew from interposition in Mexico.
European powers largely regarded these matters as the concern of the United States. Indeed, the nascent Pax Americana was, in essence, abetted by the policy of the United Kingdom, and the preponderance of global sea power which the British Empire enjoyed by virtue of the strength of the Royal Navy. Preserving the freedom of the seas and ensuring naval dominance had been the policy of the British since victory in the Napoleonic Wars. As it was not in the interests of the United Kingdom to permit any European power to interfere in Americas, the Monroe Doctrine was indirectly aided by the Royal Navy. British commercial interests in South America, which comprised a valuable component of the Informal Empire that accompanied Britain's imperial possessions, and the economic importance of the United States as a trading partner, ensured that intervention by Britain's rival European powers could not engage with the Americas.
The United States lost its Pacific and regionally bounded nature towards the end of the 19th century. The government adopted protectionism after the Spanish–American War and built up the navy, the "Great White Fleet", to expand the reach of U.S. power. When Theodore Roosevelt became President in 1901, he accelerated a foreign policy shift away from isolationism towards foreign intervention which had begun under his predecessor, William McKinley. The Philippine–American War arose from the ongoing Philippine Revolution against imperialism. Interventionism found its formal articulation in the 1904 Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, proclaiming the right of the United States to intervene in the affairs of weak states in the Americas in order to stabilize them, a moment that underlined the emergent U.S. regional hegemony. By 1900, the United States possessed the world's largest industrial capacity and national income, having surpassed both the United Kingdom and Germany.
The United States had been criticized for not taking up the hegemonic mantle following the disintegration of "Pax Britannica" before the First World War and during the interwar period due to the absence of established political structures, such as the World Bank or United Nations which would be created after World War II, and various internal policies, such as protectionism. Though, the United States participated in the Great War, according to Woodrow Wilson:
[...] to vindicate the principles of peace and justice in the life of the world as against selfish and autocratic power and to set up amongst the really free and self-governed peoples of the world such a concert of purpose and of action as will henceforth insure the observance of those principles.
[...] for democracy, for the right of those who submit to authority to have a voice in their own government, for the rights and liberties of small nations, for a universal dominion of right by such a concert of free peoples as shall bring peace and safety to all nations and make the world itself at last free.
The United States' entry into the Great War marked the abandonment of the traditional American policy of isolation and independence of world politics. Not at the close of the Civil War, not as the result of the Spanish War, but in the Interwar period did the United States become a part of the international system. With this global reorganization from the Great War, there were those in the American populace that advocated an activist role in international politics and international affairs by the United States. Activities that were initiated did not fall into political-military traps and, instead, focused on economic-ideological approaches that would increase the American Empire and general worldwide stability. Following the prior path, a precursor to the United Nations and a league to enforce peace, the League of Nations, was proposed by Woodrow Wilson. This was rejected by the American Government in favor of more economic-ideological approaches and the United States did not join the League. Additionally, there were even proposals of extending the Monroe Doctrine to Great Britain put forth to prevent a second conflagration on the European theater. Ultimately, the United States' proposals and actions did not stop the factors of European nationalism spawned by the previous war, the repercussions of Germany's defeat, and the failures of the Treaty of Versailles from plunging the globe into a Second World War.
Between World War I and World War II, America also sought to continue to preserve "Pax America" as a corollary to the Monroe Doctrine. Some sought the peaceful and orderly evolution of existing conditions in the western hemisphere and nothing by immediate changes. Before 1917, the position of the United States government and the feelings of the nation in respect to the "Great War" initially had properly been one of neutrality. Its interests remained untouched, and nothing occurred of a nature to affect those interests.
The average American's sympathies, on the other hand, if the feelings of the vast majority of the nation had been correctly interpreted, was with the Allied (Entente) Powers. The population of the United States was revolted at the ruthlessness of the Prussian doctrine of war, and German designs to shift the burden of aggression encountered skeptical derision. The American populace saw themselves safeguarding liberal peace in the Western World. To this end, the American writer Roland Hugins stated:
The truth is that the United States is the only high-minded Power left in the world. It is the only strong nation that has not entered on a career of imperial conquest, and does not want to enter on it. [...] There is in America little of that spirit of selfish aggression which lies at the heart of militarism. Here alone exists a broad basis for "a new passionate sense of brotherhood, and a new scale of human values." We have a deep abhorrence of war for war's sake; we are not enamored of glamour or glory. We have a strong faith in the principle of self-government. We do not care to dominate alien peoples, white or colored; we do not aspire to be the Romans of tomorrow or the "masters of the world." The idealism of Americans centers in the future of America, wherein we hope to work out those principles of liberty and democracy to which we are committed This political idealism, this strain of pacifism, this abstinence from aggression and desire to be left alone to work out our own destiny, has been manifest from the birth of the republic. We have not always followed our light, but we have never been utterly faithless to it.
It was observed during this time that the initial defeat of Germany opened a moral recasting of the world. The battles between Germans and Allies were seen as far less battles between different nations than they represent the contrast between Liberalism and reaction, between the aspirations of democracy and the Wilhelminism gospel of iron.
The modern "Pax Americana" era is cited by both supporters and critics of U.S. foreign policy after World War II. However, from 1946 to 1992 "Pax Americana" is considered a partial international order, as it applied only to capitalist bloc countries, being preferable for some authors to speak about a "Pax Americana et Sovietica". Many commentators and critics focus on American policies from 1992 to the present, and as such, it carries different connotations depending on the context. For example, it appears three times in the 90 page document, "Rebuilding America's Defenses," by the Project for the New American Century, but is also used by critics to characterize American dominance and hyperpower as imperialist in function and basis. From about the mid-1940s until 1991, U.S. foreign policy was dominated by the Cold War, and characterized by its significant international military presence and greater diplomatic involvement. Seeking an alternative to the isolationist policies pursued after World War I, the United States defined a new policy called containment to oppose the spread of communism.
The modern "Pax Americana" may be seen as similar to the period of peace in Rome, "Pax Romana". In both situations, the period of peace was 'relative peace'. During both "Pax Romana" and "Pax Americana" wars continued to occur, but it was still a prosperous time for both Western and Roman civilizations. It is important to note that during these periods, and most other times of relative tranquility, the peace that is referred to does not mean complete peace. Rather, it simply means that the civilization prospered in their military, agriculture, trade, and manufacturing.
From the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 until World War I in 1914, the United Kingdom played the role of offshore-balancer in Europe, where the balance of power was the main aim. It was also in this time that the British Empire became the largest empire of all time. The global superiority of British military and commerce was guaranteed by dominance of a Europe lacking in strong nation-states, and the presence of the Royal Navy on all of the world's oceans and seas. In 1905, the Royal Navy was superior to any two navies combined in the world. It provided services such as suppression of piracy and slavery. In this era of peace, though, there were several wars between the major powers: the Crimean War, the Franco-Austrian War, the Austro-Prussian War, the Franco-Prussian War, and the Russo-Japanese War, as well as numerous other wars. "La Belle Époque", William Wohlforth argued, was rather "Pax Britannica", "Pax Russica" and later "Pax Germanica", and between 1853 and 1871 it was not "Pax" of any kind.
During the British hegemony, America developed close ties with Britain, evolving into what has become known as a "special relationship" between the two. The many commonalities shared with the two nations (such as language and history) drew them together as allies. Under the managed transition of the British Empire to the Commonwealth of Nations, members of the British government, such as Harold Macmillan, liked to think of Britain's relationship with America as similar to that of a progenitor Greece to America's Rome. Throughout the years, both have been active in North American, Middle Eastern, and Asian countries.
After the Second World War, no armed conflict emerged among major Western nations themselves, and no nuclear weapons were used in open conflict. The United Nations was also soon developed after World War II to help keep peaceful relations between nations and establishing the veto power for the permanent members of the UN Security Council, which included the United States.
In the second half of the 20th century, the USSR and US superpowers were engaged in the Cold War, which can be seen as a struggle between hegemonies for global dominance. After 1945, the United States enjoyed an advantageous position with respect to the rest of the industrialized world. In the Post–World War II economic expansion, the US was responsible for half of global industrial output, held 80 percent of the world's gold reserves, and was the world's sole nuclear power. The catastrophic destruction of life, infrastructure, and capital during the Second World War had exhausted the imperialism of the Old World, victor and vanquished alike. The largest economy in the world at the time, the United States recognized that it had come out of the war with its domestic infrastructure virtually unscathed and its military forces at unprecedented strength. Military officials recognized the fact that Pax Americana had been reliant on the effective United States air power, just as the instrument of Pax Britannica a century earlier was its sea power. In addition, a "unipolar moment" was seen to have occurred following the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The term "Pax Americana" was explicitly used by John F. Kennedy in the 1960s, who advocated against the idea, arguing that the Soviet bloc was composed of human beings with the same individual goals as Americans and that such a peace based on "American weapons of war" was undesirable:
I have, therefore, chosen this time and place to discuss a topic on which ignorance too often abounds and the truth too rarely perceived. And that is the most important topic on earth: peace. What kind of peace do I mean and what kind of a peace do we seek? Not a "Pax Americana" enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, and the kind that enables men and nations to grow, and to hope, and build a better life for their children—not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women, not merely peace in our time but peace in all time.
Beginning around the Vietnam War, the 'Pax Americana' term had started to be used by the critics of American Imperialism. Here in the late 20th century conflict between the Soviet Union and the United States, the charge of "Neocolonialism" was often aimed at Western involvement in the affairs of the Third World and other developing nations. NATO became regarded as a symbol of "Pax Americana" in West Europe:
Currently, the "Pax Americana" is based on the military preponderance beyond challenge by any combination of powers and projection of power throughout the world's "commons"—neutral sea, air and space. This projection is coordinated by the Unified Command Plan which divides the world on regional branches controlled by a single command. Integrated with it are global network of military alliances (the Rio Pact, NATO, ANZUS and bilateral alliances with Japan and several other states) coordinated by Washington in a hub-and-spokes system and worldwide network of several hundreds of military bases and installations. Neither the Rio Treaty, nor NATO, for Robert J. Art, "was a regional collective security organization; rather both were regional imperia run and operated by the United States". Former Security Advisor Zbignew Brzezinski drew an expressive summary of the military foundation of "Pax Americana" shortly after the "unipolar moment":
Besides the military foundation, there are significant non-military international institutions backed by American financing and diplomacy (like the United Nations and WTO). The United States invested heavily in programs such as the Marshall Plan and in the reconstruction of Japan, economically cementing defense ties that owed increasingly to the establishment of the Iron Curtain/Eastern Bloc and the widening of the Cold War.
Being in the best position to take advantage of free trade, culturally indisposed to traditional empires, and alarmed by the rise of communism in China and the detonation of the first Soviet atom bomb, the historically non-interventionist U.S. also took a keen interest in developing multilateral institutions which would maintain a favorable world order among them. The International Monetary Fund and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), part of the Bretton Woods system of international financial management was developed and, until the early 1970s, the existence of a fixed exchange rate to the US dollar. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was developed and consists of a protocol for normalization and reduction of trade tariffs.
With the fall of the Iron Curtain, the demise of the notion of a "Pax Sovietica", and the end of the Cold War, the U.S. maintained significant contingents of armed forces in Europe and East Asia. The institutions behind the Pax Americana and the rise of the United States unipolar power have persisted into the early 21st century. The ability of the United States to act as "the world's policeman" has been constrained by its own citizens' historic aversion to foreign wars. Though there has been calls for the continuation of military leadership, as stated in "Rebuilding America's Defenses":
The American peace has proven itself peaceful, stable, and durable. It has, over the past decade, provided the geopolitical framework for widespread economic growth and the spread of American principles of liberty and democracy. Yet no moment in international politics can be frozen in time; even a global "Pax Americana" will not preserve itself. [... What is required is] a military that is strong and ready to meet both present and future challenges; a foreign policy that boldly and purposefully promotes American principles abroad; and national leadership that accepts the United States' global responsibilities.
This is reflected in the research of American exceptionalism, which shows that "there is some indication for [being a leader of an 'American peace'] among the [U.S.] public, but very little evidence of unilateral attitudes". Resentments have arisen at a country's dependence on American military protection, due to disagreements with United States foreign policy or the presence of American military forces.
In the "post-communism" world of the 21st-century, the French Socialist politician and former Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine describes the US as a hegemonic hyperpower, while the U.S. political scientists John Mearsheimer and Joseph Nye counter that the US is not a "true" hegemony, because it does not have the resources to impose a proper, formal, global rule; despite its political and military strength, the US is economically equal to Europe, thus, cannot rule the international stage. Several other countries are either emerging or re-emerging as powers, such as China, Russia, India, and the European Union.
Joseph Nye discredited the United States as not a "true" hegemony in his 2002 article titled "The New Rome Meets the New Barbarians". His book of the same year he opens: "Not since Rome has one nation loomed so large above the others." And his 1991 book he titled "Bound to Lead". "Leadership", translated into Greek, renders "hegemony"; an alternative translation is "archia" – Greek common word for "empire". Having defined the US hegemony as "not true", Nye looks for an analogy to the true empire: Decline, he writes, is not necessarily imminent. "Rome remained dominant for more than three centuries after the peak of its power ...
In fact, there are striking parallels with the early "Pax Romana" (especially between 189 BC when the supremacy over the Mediterranean was won and the first annexation in 168 BC). Under that "Pax Romana" other states remained formally independent and very seldom were called "clients". The latter term became widely used only in the late medieval period. Usually, other states were called "friends and allies"—a popular expression under the "Pax Americana".
One of the first to use the term "Pax Americana" was the Advisory Committee on Postwar Foreign Policy. In 1942, the Committee envisaged that the United States may have to replace the British Empire. Therefore, the United States "must cultivate a mental view toward world settlement after this war which will enable us to impose our own terms, amounting perhaps to a Pax Americana". According to Swen Holdar, the founder of geopolitics Rudolf Kjellen (1864–1922) predicted the era of US global supremacy using the term "Pax Americana" shortly after World War I. Writing in 1945, Ludwig Dehio remembered that the Germans used the term "Pax Anglosaxonica" in a sense of Pax Americana since 1918:
The United States, Dehio associates on the same page, withdrew to isolation on that occasion. "Rome, too, had taken a long time to understand the significance of her world role." Two years earlier, with the war still at its peak, the founder of the Paneuropean Union, Richard von Coudenhove-Kalergi, invoked the example of the two-centuries long "Pax Romana" which, he suggested, could be repeated if based on the preponderant US air power:
One of the first criticisms of "Pax Americana" was written by Nathaniel Peffer in 1943:
However, Peffer was not certain that this would not happen: "It is conceivable that ... America might drift into empire, imperceptibly, stage by stage, in a kind of power-politics gravitation." He also noted that America was heading precisely in that direction: "That there are certain stirrings in this direction is apparent, though how deep they go is unclear."
The depth soon became clarified. Two later critics of Pax Americana, Michio Kaku and David Axelrod, interpreted the outcome of Pax Americana: "Gunboat diplomacy would be replaced by Atomic diplomacy. Pax Britannica would give way to Pax Americana." After the war, with the German and British militaries in tatters, only one force stood on the way to Pax Americana: the Red Army. Four years after this criticism was written, the Red Army withdrew, paving the way for the unipolar moment. Joshua Muravchik commemorated the event by titling his 1991 article, "At Last, Pax Americana". He detailed:
The following year, in 1992, a US strategic draft for the post-Cold War period was leaked to the press. The person responsible for the confusion, former Assistant Secretary of State, Paul Wolfowitz, confessed seven years later: "In 1992 a draft memo prepared by my office at the Pentagon ... leaked to the press and sparked a major controversy." The draft's strategy aimed "to prevent any hostile power from dominating" a Eurasian region "whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power". He added: "Senator Joseph Biden ridiculed the proposed strategy as 'literally a "Pax Americana" ... It won't work ...' Just seven years later, many of these same critics seem quite comfortable with the idea of a "Pax Americana"."
The post-Cold War period, concluded William Wohlforth, much less ambiguously deserves to be called "Pax Americana". "Calling the current period the true Pax Americana may offend some, but it reflects reality".
The ‘’Pax Americana’’ motif reached its peak in the context of the 2003 Iraq War. The phrase "American Empire" appeared in one thousand news stories over a single six-month period in 2003. Jonathan Freedland observed:
"The New York Review of Books" illustrated a recent piece on US might with a drawing of George Bush togged up as a Roman centurion, complete with shield and spears. Bush's visits to Germany in 2002 and 2006 resulted in further Bush-as-Roman-emperor invective appearing in the German press. In 2006, freelance writer, political satirist, and correspondent for the left-leaning "Die Tageszeitung", Arno Frank, compared the spectacle of the visit by "Imperator" Bush to "elaborate inspection tours of Roman emperors in important but not completely pacified provinces—such as Germania". In September 2002, Boston's WBUR-FM radio station titled a special on US imperial power with the tag "Pax Americana". "The Roman parallel, wrote Niall Ferguson in 2005, is in danger of becoming something of a cliché." Policy analyst Vaclav Smil titled his 2010 book by what he intended to explain: "Why America Is Not a New Rome". The very phenomenon of the Roman-American association became the subject of research for Classicist Paul J. Burton.
Peter Bender, in his 2003 article "America: The New Roman Empire", summarized: "When politicians or professors are in need of a historical comparison in order to illustrate the United States' incredible might, they almost always think of the Roman Empire." The article abounds with analogies:
In 1998, American political author, Charles A. Kupchan, described the world order "After Pax Americana" and the next year "The Life after Pax Americana". In 2003, he announced "The End of the American Era". In 2012, however, he projected: "America's military strength will remain as central to global stability in the years ahead as it has been in the past."
The Russian analyst Leonid Grinin argues that at present and in the nearest future Pax Americana will remain an effective tool of supporting the world order since the US concentrates too many leadership functions which no other country is able to take to the full extent. Thus, he warns that the destruction of Pax Americana will bring critical transformations of the World-system with unclear consequences
"American imperialism" is a term referring to the cultural & political outcomes or ideological elements of United States foreign policy. Since the start of the Cold War, the United States has economically and/or diplomatically supported friendly foreign governments, including many that overtly violated the civil and human rights of their own citizens and residents. American imperialism concepts were initially a product of capitalism critiques and, later, of theorists opposed to what they take to be aggressive United States policies and doctrines.
Although there are various views of the imperialist nature of the United States, which describe many of the same policies and institutions as evidence of imperialism, explanations for imperialism vary widely. In spite of such literature, the historians Archibald Paton Thorton and Stuart Creighton Miller argue against the very coherence of the concept. Miller argues that the overuse and abuse of the term "imperialism" makes it nearly meaningless as an analytical concept. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46002 |
Common Language Runtime
The Common Language Runtime (CLR), the virtual machine component of Microsoft .NET framework, manages the execution of .NET programs. Just-in-time compilation converts the managed code (compiled intermediate language code), into machine instructions which are then executed on the CPU of the computer. The CLR provides additional services including memory management, type safety, exception handling, garbage collection, security and thread management. All programs written for the .NET framework, regardless of programming language, are executed by the CLR. All versions of the .NET framework include CLR. The CLR team was started June 13, 1998.
CLR implements the Virtual Execution System (VES) as defined in the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) standard, initially developed by Microsoft itself. A public standard defines the Common Language Infrastructure specification.
With Microsoft's move to .NET Core, the CLI VES implementation is known as CoreCLR instead of CLR. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46003 |
Common Intermediate Language
Common Intermediate Language (CIL), formerly called Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) or Intermediate Language (IL), is the intermediate language binary instruction set defined within the Common Language Infrastructure (CLI) specification. CIL instructions are executed by a CLI-compatible runtime environment such as the Common Language Runtime. Languages which target the CLI compile to CIL. CIL is object-oriented, stack-based bytecode. Runtimes typically just-in-time compile CIL instructions into native code.
CIL was originally known as Microsoft Intermediate Language (MSIL) during the beta releases of the .NET languages. Due to standardization of C# and the CLI, the bytecode is now officially known as CIL. Windows Defender virus definitions continue to refer to binaries compiled with it as MSIL.
During compilation of CLI programming languages, the source code is translated into CIL code rather than into platform- or processor-specific object code. CIL is a CPU- and platform-independent instruction set that can be executed in any environment supporting the Common Language Infrastructure, such as the .NET runtime on Windows, or the cross-platform Mono runtime. In theory, this eliminates the need to distribute different executable files for different platforms and CPU types. CIL code is verified for safety during runtime, providing better security and reliability than natively compiled executable files.
The execution process looks like this:
CIL bytecode has instructions for the following groups of tasks:
The Common Intermediate Language is object-oriented and stack-based. That means that data is pushed on a stack instead of pulled from registers as in most CPU architectures.
In x86 it might look like this:
add eax, edx
The corresponding code in IL can be rendered as this, where 0 is eax and 1 is edx:
ldloc.0 // push local variable 0 onto stack
ldloc.1 // push local variable 1 onto stack
add // pop and add the top two stack items then push the result onto the stack
stloc.0 // pop and store the top stack item to local variable 0
Here are two locals that are pushed on the stack. When the add-instruction is called the operands get popped and the result is pushed. The remaining value is then popped and stored in the first local.
This extends to object-oriented concepts as well. You may create objects, call methods and use other types of members such as fields.
CIL is designed to be object-oriented and every method needs (with some exceptions) to reside in a class. So does this static method:
.class public Foo
This method does not require any instance of Foo to be declared because it is static. That means it belongs to the class and it may then be used like this in C#:
int r = Foo.Add(2, 3); // 5
In CIL:
ldc.i4.2
ldc.i4.3
call int32 Foo::Add(int32, int32)
stloc.0
An instance class contains at least one constructor and some instance members. This class has a set of methods representing actions of a Car-object.
.class public Car
In C# class instances are created like this:
Car myCar = new Car(1, 4);
Car yourCar = new Car(1, 3);
And these statements are roughly the same as these instructions:
ldc.i4.1
ldc.i4.4
newobj instance void Car::.ctor(int, int)
stloc.0 // myCar = new Car(1, 4);
ldc.i4.1
ldc.i4.3
newobj instance void Car::.ctor(int, int)
stloc.1 // yourCar = new Car(1, 3);
Instance methods are invoked like the one that follows:
myCar.Move(3);
In CIL:
ldloc.0 // Load the object "myCar" on the stack
ldc.i4.3
call instance void Car::Move(int32)
CLI records information about compiled classes as Metadata. Like the type library in the Component Object Model, this enables applications to support and discover the interfaces, classes, types, methods, and fields in the assembly. The process of reading such metadata is called "reflection".
Metadata can be data in the form of " attributes". Attributes can be custom made by extending from the codice_1 class. This is a very powerful feature. It allows the creator of the class the ability to adorn it with extra information that consumers of the class can use in various meaningful ways depending on the application domain.
Below is a basic Hello, World program written in CIL. It will display the string "Hello, world!".
.method static void Main()
The following code is more complex in number of opcodes.
"This code can also be compared with the corresponding code in the article about Java bytecode."
static void Main(string[] args)
In CIL syntax it looks like this:
.method private hidebysig static void Main(string[] args) cil managed
This is just a representation of how CIL looks like near VM-level. When compiled the methods are stored in tables and the instructions are stored as bytes inside the assembly, which is a Portable Executable (PE).
A CIL assembly and instructions are generated by either a compiler or a utility called the "IL Assembler" (ILAsm) that is shipped with the execution environment.
Assembled CIL can also be disassembled into code again using the "IL Disassembler" (ILDASM). There are other tools such as .NET Reflector that can decompile CIL into a high-level language (e. g. C# or Visual Basic). This makes CIL a very easy target for reverse engineering. This trait is shared with Java bytecode. However, there are tools that can obfuscate the code, and do it so that the code cannot be easily readable but still be runnable.
Just-in-time compilation (JIT) involves turning the byte-code into code immediately executable by the CPU. The conversion is performed gradually during the program's execution. JIT compilation provides environment-specific optimization, runtime type safety, and assembly verification. To accomplish this, the JIT compiler examines the assembly metadata for any illegal accesses and handles violations appropriately.
CLI-compatible execution environments also come with the option to do an Ahead-of-time compilation (AOT) of an assembly to make it execute faster by removing the JIT process at runtime.
In the .NET Framework there is a special tool called the Native Image Generator (NGEN) that performs the AOT. A different approach for AOT is CoreRT that allows the compilation of .Net Core code to a single executable with no dependency on a runtime. In Mono there is also an option to do an AOT.
A notable difference from Java's bytecode is that CIL comes with ldind, stind, ldloca, and many call instructions which are enough for data/function pointers manipulation needed to compile C/C++ code into CIL.
class A {
void test_pointer_operations(int param) {
The corresponding code in CIL can be rendered as this:
.method assembly static void modopt([mscorlib]System.Runtime.CompilerServices.CallConvCdecl)
// k = 0;
// ptr = &k;
// *ptr = 1;
// ptr = ¶m
// *ptr = 2
// a = new A;
// ptra = &a;
// ptra->meth();
} // end of method 'Global Functions'::test_pointer_operations | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46004 |
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion or religious liberty is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance. It also includes the freedom to change one's religion or beliefs and to be absent of any religious beliefs.
Freedom of religion is considered by many people and most of the nations to be a fundamental human right. In a country with a state religion, freedom of religion is generally considered to mean that the government permits religious practices of other sects besides the state religion, and does not persecute believers in other faiths.
Freedom of belief is different. It allows the right to believe what a person, group or religion wishes, but it does not necessarily allow the right to practice the religion or belief openly and outwardly in a public manner, a central facet of religious freedom.
Historically, "freedom of religion" has been used to refer to the tolerance of different theological systems of belief, while "freedom of worship" has been defined as freedom of individual action. Each of these have existed to varying degrees. While many countries have accepted some form of religious freedom, this has also often been limited in practice through punitive taxation, repressive social legislation, and political disenfranchisement. Compare examples of individual freedom in Italy or the Muslim tradition of dhimmis, literally "protected individuals" professing an officially tolerated non-Muslim religion.
In Antiquity, a syncretic point of view often allowed communities of traders to operate under their own customs. When street mobs of separate quarters clashed in a Hellenistic or Roman city, the issue was generally perceived to be an infringement of community rights.
Cyrus the Great established the Achaemenid Empire ca. 550 BC, and initiated a general policy of permitting religious freedom throughout the empire, documenting this on the Cyrus Cylinder.
Some of the historical exceptions have been in regions where one of the revealed religions has been in a position of power: Judaism, Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Islam. Others have been where the established order has felt threatened, as shown in the trial of Socrates in 399 BC or where the ruler has been deified, as in Rome, and refusal to offer token sacrifice was similar to refusing to take an oath of allegiance. This was the core for resentment and the persecution of early Christian communities.
Freedom of religious worship was established in the Buddhist Maurya Empire of ancient India by Ashoka the Great in the 3rd century BC, which was encapsulated in the Edicts of Ashoka.
GreekJewish clashes at Cyrene in 73 AD and 117 AD and in Alexandria in 115 AD provide examples of cosmopolitan cities as scenes of tumult.
The Romans tolerated most religions, including Judaism and encouraged local subjects to continue worshipping their own gods. They did not however, tolerate Christianity until it was legalised by the Roman emperor Galerius in 311. The Edict of Milan guaranteed freedom of religion in the Roman Empire until the Edict of Thessalonica in 380, which outlawed all religions except Christianity.
Following a period of fighting lasting around a hundred years before 620 AD which mainly involved Arab and Jewish inhabitants of Medina (then known as "Yathrib"), religious freedom for Muslims, Jews and pagans was declared by Muhammad in the Constitution of Medina. In early Muslim history (until mid 11th century), most Islamic scholars maintained a level of separation from the state which helped to establish some elements of institutional religious freedom. The Islamic Caliphate later guaranteed religious freedom under the conditions that non-Muslim communities accept "dhimmi" status and their adult males pay the punitive "jizya" tax instead of the "zakat" paid by Muslim citizens. Though Dhimmis were not given the same political rights as Muslims, they nevertheless did enjoy equality under the laws of property, contract, and obligation.
Religious pluralism existed in classical Islamic ethics and Sharia, as the religious laws and courts of other religions, including Christianity, Judaism and Hinduism, were usually accommodated within the Islamic legal framework, as seen in the early Caliphate, Al-Andalus, Indian subcontinent, and the Ottoman Millet system. In medieval Islamic societies, the "qadi" (Islamic judges) usually could not interfere in the matters of non-Muslims unless the parties voluntarily choose to be judged according to Islamic law, thus the "dhimmi" communities living in Islamic states usually had their own laws independent from the Sharia law, such as the Jews who would have their own "Halakha" courts.
Dhimmis were allowed to operate their own courts following their own legal systems in cases that did not involve other religious groups, or capital offences or threats to public order. Non-Muslims were allowed to engage in religious practices that were usually forbidden by Islamic law, such as the consumption of alcohol and pork, as well as religious practices which Muslims found repugnant, such as the Zoroastrian practice of incestuous "self-marriage" where a man could marry his mother, sister or daughter. According to the famous Islamic legal scholar Ibn Qayyim (1292–1350), non-Muslims had the right to engage in such religious practices even if it offended Muslims, under the conditions that such cases not be presented to Islamic Sharia courts and that these religious minorities believed that the practice in question is permissible according to their religion.
Despite Dhimmis enjoying special statuses under the Caliphates, they were not considered equals, and sporadic persecutions of non-Muslim groups did occur in the history of the Caliphates.
Ancient Jews fleeing from persecution in their homeland 2,500 years ago settled in India and never faced anti-Semitism. Freedom of religion edicts have been found written during Ashoka the Great's reign in the 3rd century BC. Freedom to practise, preach and propagate any religion is a constitutional right in Modern India. Most major religious festivals of the main communities are included in the list of national holidays.
Although India is an 80% Hindu country, India is a secular state without any state religions.
Many scholars and intellectuals believe that India's predominant religion, Hinduism, has long been a most tolerant religion. Rajni Kothari, founder of the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies has written, "[India] is a country built on the foundations of a civilisation that is fundamentally non-religious."
The Dalai Lama, the Tibetan leader in exile, said that religious tolerance of 'Aryabhoomi,' a reference to India found in the Mahabharata, has been in existence in this country from thousands of years. "Not only Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism which are the native religions but also Christianity and Islam have flourished here. Religious tolerance is inherent in Indian tradition," the Dalai Lama said.
Freedom of religion in the Indian subcontinent is exemplified by the reign of King Piyadasi (304–232 BC) (Ashoka). One of King Ashoka's main concerns was to reform governmental institutes and exercise moral principles in his attempt to create a just and humane society. Later he promoted the principles of Buddhism, and the creation of a just, understanding and fair society was held as an important principle for many ancient rulers of this time in the East.
The importance of freedom of worship in India was encapsulated in an inscription of Ashoka:
On the main Asian continent, the Mongols were tolerant of religions. People could worship as they wished freely and openly.
After the arrival of Europeans, Christians in their zeal to convert local as per belief in conversion as service of God, have also been seen to fall into frivolous methods since their arrival, though by and large there are hardly any reports of law and order disturbance from mobs with Christian beliefs, except perhaps in the north eastern region of India.
Freedom of religion in contemporary India is a fundamental right guaranteed under Article 25 of the nation's constitution. Accordingly, every citizen of India has a right to profess, practice and propagate their religions peacefully.
In September 2010, the Indian state of Kerala's State Election Commissioner announced that "Religious heads cannot issue calls to vote for members of a particular community or to defeat the nonbelievers". The Catholic Church comprising Latin, Syro-Malabar and Syro-Malankara rites used to give clear directions to the faithful on exercising their franchise during elections through pastoral letters issued by bishops or council of bishops. The pastoral letter issued by Kerala Catholic Bishops' Council (KCBC) on the eve of the poll urged the faithful to shun atheists.
Even today, most Indians celebrate all religious festivals with equal enthusiasm and respect. Hindu festivals like Deepavali and Holi, Muslim festivals like Eid al-Fitr, Eid-Ul-Adha, Muharram, Christian festivals like Christmas and other festivals like Buddha Purnima, Mahavir Jayanti, Gur Purab etc. are celebrated and enjoyed by all Indians.
Most Roman Catholic kingdoms kept a tight rein on religious expression throughout the Middle Ages. Jews were alternately tolerated and persecuted, the most notable examples of the latter being the expulsion of all Jews from Spain in 1492. Some of those who remained and converted were tried as heretics in the Inquisition for allegedly practicing Judaism in secret. Despite the persecution of Jews, they were the most tolerated non-Catholic faith in Europe.
However, the latter was in part a reaction to the growing movement that became the Reformation. As early as 1380, John Wycliffe in England denied transubstantiation and began his translation of the Bible into English. He was condemned in a Papal Bull in 1410, and all his books were burned.
In 1414, Jan Hus, a Bohemian preacher of reformation, was given a safe conduct by the Holy Roman Emperor to attend the Council of Constance. Not entirely trusting in his safety, he made his will before he left. His forebodings proved accurate, and he was burned at the stake on 6 July 1415. The Council also decreed that Wycliffe's remains be disinterred and cast out. This decree was not carried out until 1429.
After the fall of the city of Granada, Spain, in 1492, the Muslim population was promised religious freedom by the Treaty of Granada, but that promise was short-lived. In 1501, Granada's Muslims were given an ultimatum to either convert to Christianity or to emigrate. The majority converted, but only superficially, continuing to dress and speak as they had before and to secretly practice Islam. The Moriscos (converts to Christianity) were ultimately expelled from Spain between 1609 (Castile) and 1614 (rest of Spain), by Philip III.
Martin Luther published his famous 95 Theses in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517. His major aim was theological, summed up in the three basic dogmas of Protestantism:
In consequence, Luther hoped to stop the sale of indulgences and to reform the Church from within. In 1521, he was given the chance to recant at the Diet of Worms before Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor. After he refused to recant, he was declared heretic. Partly for his own protection, he was sequestered on the Wartburg in the possessions of Frederick III, Elector of Saxony, where he translated the New Testament into German. He was excommunicated by Papal Bull in 1521.
However, the movement continued to gain ground in his absence and spread to Switzerland. Huldrych Zwingli preached reform in Zürich from 1520 to 1523. He opposed the sale of indulgences, celibacy, pilgrimages, pictures, statues, relics, altars, and organs. This culminated in outright war between the Swiss cantons that accepted Protestantism and the Catholics. In 1531, the Catholics were victorious, and Zwingli was killed in battle. The Catholic cantons made peace with Zurich and Berne.
The defiance of Papal authority proved contagious, and in 1533, when Henry VIII of England was excommunicated for his divorce and remarriage to Anne Boleyn, he promptly established a state church with bishops appointed by the crown. This was not without internal opposition, and Thomas More, who had been his Lord Chancellor, was executed in 1535 for opposition to Henry.
In 1535, the Swiss canton of Geneva became Protestant. In 1536, the Bernese imposed the reformation on the canton of Vaud by conquest. They sacked the cathedral in Lausanne and destroyed all its art and statuary. John Calvin, who had been active in Geneva was expelled in 1538 in a power struggle, but he was invited back in 1540.
The same kind of seesaw back and forth between Protestantism and Catholicism was evident in England when Mary I of England returned that country briefly to the Catholic fold in 1553 and persecuted Protestants. However, her half-sister, Elizabeth I of England was to restore the Church of England in 1558, this time permanently, and began to persecute Catholics again. The King James Bible commissioned by King James I of England and published in 1611 proved a landmark for Protestant worship, with official Catholic forms of worship being banned.
In France, although peace was made between Protestants and Catholics at the Treaty of Saint Germain in 1570, persecution continued, most notably in the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day on 24 August 1572, in which thousands of Protestants throughout France were killed. A few years before, at the "Michelade" of Nîmes in 1567, Protestants had massacred the local Catholic clergy.
The Norman Kingdom of Sicily under Roger II was characterized by its multi-ethnic nature and religious tolerance. Normans, Jews, Muslim Arabs, Byzantine Greeks, Lombards, and native Sicilians lived in harmony. Rather than exterminate the Muslims of Sicily, Roger II's grandson Emperor Frederick II of Hohenstaufen (1215–1250) allowed them to settle on the mainland and build mosques. Not least, he enlisted them in his Christian army and even into his personal bodyguards.
Kingdom of Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic) enjoyed religious freedom between 1436 and 1620 as a result of the Bohemian Reformation, and became one of the most liberal countries of the Christian world during that period of time. The so-called Basel Compacts of 1436 declared the freedom of religion and peace between Catholics and Utraquists. In 1609 Emperor Rudolf II granted Bohemia greater religious liberty with his Letter of Majesty. The privileged position of the Catholic Church in the Czech kingdom was firmly established after the Battle of White Mountain in 1620. Gradually freedom of religion in Bohemian lands came to an end and Protestants fled or were expelled from the country. A devout Catholic, Emperor Ferdinand II forcibly converted Austrian and Bohemian Protestants.
In the meantime, in Germany Philip Melanchthon drafted the Augsburg Confession as a common confession for the Lutherans and the free territories. It was presented to Charles V in 1530.
In the Holy Roman Empire, Charles V agreed to tolerate Lutheranism in 1555 at the Peace of Augsburg. Each state was to take the religion of its prince, but within those states, there was not necessarily religious tolerance. Citizens of other faiths could relocate to a more hospitable environment.
In France, from the 1550s, many attempts to reconcile Catholics and Protestants and to establish tolerance failed because the State was too weak to enforce them. It took the victory of prince Henry IV of France, who had converted into Protestantism, and his accession to the throne, to impose religious tolerance formalized in the Edict of Nantes in 1598. It would remain in force for over 80 years until its revocation in 1685 by Louis XIV of France. Intolerance remained the norm until Louis XVI, who signed the Edict of Versailles (1787), then the constitutional text of 24 December 1789, granting civilian rights to Protestants. The French Revolution then abolished state religion and the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789) guarantees freedom of religion, as long as religious activities do not infringe on public order in ways detrimental to society.
In 1558, the Transylvanian Diet's Edict of Torda declared free practice of both Catholicism and Lutheranism. Calvinism, however, was prohibited. Calvinism was included among the accepted religions in 1564. Ten years after the first law, in 1568, the same Diet, under the chairmanship of King of Hungary, and Prince of Transylvania John Sigismund Zápolya (John II.), following the teaching of Ferenc Dávid, the founder of the Unitarian Church of Transylvania, extended the freedom to all religions, declaring that ""It is not allowed to anybody to intimidate anybody with captivity or expelling for his religion"". However, it was more than a religious tolerance; it declared the equality of the religions, prohibiting all kinds of acts from authorities or from simple people, which could harm other groups or people because of their religious beliefs. The emergence in social hierarchy wasn't dependent on the religion of the person thus Transylvania had also Catholic and Protestant monarchs, who all respected the Edict of Torda. The lack of state religion was unique for centuries in Europe. Therefore, the Edict of Torda is considered as the first legal guarantee of religious freedom in Christian Europe.
Four religions (Catholicism, Lutheranism, Calvinism, Unitarianism) were named as accepted religions (religo recepta), having their representatives in the Transylvanian Diet, while the other religions, like the Orthodoxs, Sabbatarians and Anabaptists were tolerated churches (religio tolerata), which meant that they had no power in the law making and no veto rights in the Diet, but they were not persecuted in any way. Thanks to the Edict of Torda, from the last decades of the 16th Century Transylvania was the only place in Europe, where so many religions could live together in harmony and without persecution.
This religious freedom ended however for some of the religions of Transylvania in 1638. After this year the Sabbatarians begun to be persecuted, and forced to convert to one of the accepted Christian religions of Transylvania.
Also the Unitarians (despite of being one of the "accepted religions") started to be put under an ever-growing pressure, which culminated after the Habsburg conquest of Transylvania (1691), Also after the Habsburg occupation, the new Austrian masters forced in the middle of the 18th century the Hutterite Anabaptists (who found a safe heaven in 1621 in Transylvania, after the persecution to which they were subjected in the Austrian provinces and Moravia) to convert to Catholicism or to migrate in another country, which finally the Anabaptists did, leaving Transylvania and Hungary for Wallachia, than from there to Russia, and finally in the United States.
In the Union of Utrecht (20 January 1579), personal freedom of religion was declared in the struggle between the Northern Netherlands and Spain. The Union of Utrecht was an important step in the establishment of the Dutch Republic (from 1581 to 1795). Under Calvinist leadership, the Netherlands became the most tolerant country in Europe. It granted asylum to persecuted religious minorities, such as the Huguenots, the Dissenters, and the Jews who had been expelled from Spain and Portugal. The establishment of a Jewish community in the Netherlands and New Amsterdam (present-day New York) during the Dutch Republic is an example of religious freedom. When New Amsterdam surrendered to the English in 1664, freedom of religion was guaranteed in the Articles of Capitulation. It benefitted also the Jews who had landed on Manhattan Island in 1654, fleeing Portuguese persecution in Brazil. During the 18th century, other Jewish communities were established at Newport, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, Charleston, Savannah, and Richmond.
Intolerance of dissident forms of Protestantism also continued, as evidenced by the exodus of the Pilgrims, who sought refuge, first in the Netherlands, and ultimately in America, founding Plymouth Colony in Massachusetts in 1620. William Penn, the founder of Philadelphia, was involved in a case which had a profound effect upon future American laws and those of England. In a classic case of jury nullification, the jury refused to convict William Penn of preaching a Quaker sermon, which was illegal. Even though the jury was imprisoned for their acquittal, they stood by their decision and helped establish the freedom of religion.
The General Charter of Jewish Liberties known as the Statute of Kalisz was issued by the Duke of Greater Poland Boleslaus the Pious on 8 September 1264 in Kalisz. The statute served as the basis for the legal position of Jews in Poland and led to the creation of the Yiddish-speaking autonomous Jewish nation until 1795. The statute granted exclusive jurisdiction of Jewish courts over Jewish matters and established a separate tribunal for matters involving Christians and Jews. Additionally, it guaranteed personal liberties and safety for Jews including freedom of religion, travel, and trade. The statute was ratified by subsequent Polish Kings: Casimir III of Poland in 1334, Casimir IV of Poland in 1453 and Sigismund I of Poland in 1539. Poland freed Jews from direct royal authority, opening up enormous administrative and economic opportunities to them.
The right to worship freely was a basic right given to all inhabitants of the future Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth throughout the 15th and early 16th century, however, complete freedom of religion was officially recognized in 1573 during the Warsaw Confederation. Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth kept religious freedom laws during an era when religious persecution was an everyday occurrence in the rest of Europe.
Most of the early colonies were generally not tolerant of dissident forms of worship, with Maryland being one of the exceptions. For example, Roger Williams found it necessary to found a new colony in Rhode Island to escape persecution in the theocratically dominated colony of Massachusetts. The Puritans of the Massachusetts Bay Colony were the most active of the New England persecutors of Quakers, and the persecuting spirit was shared by Plymouth Colony and the colonies along the Connecticut river. In 1660, one of the most notable victims of the religious intolerance was English Quaker Mary Dyer, who was hanged in Boston, Massachusetts for repeatedly defying a Puritan law banning Quakers from the colony. As one of the four executed Quakers known as the Boston martyrs, the hanging of Dyer on the Boston gallows marked the beginning of the end of the Puritan theocracy and New England independence from English rule, and in 1661 King Charles II explicitly forbade Massachusetts from executing anyone for professing Quakerism. Anti-Catholic sentiment appeared in New England with the first Pilgrim and Puritan settlers. In 1647, Massachusetts passed a law prohibiting any Jesuit Roman Catholic priests from entering territory under Puritan jurisdiction. Any suspected person who could not clear himself was to be banished from the colony; a second offense carried a death penalty. The Pilgrims of New England held radical Protestant disapproval of Christmas. Christmas observance was outlawed in Boston in 1659. The ban by the Puritans was revoked in 1681 by an English appointed governor, however it was not until the mid-19th century that celebrating Christmas became common in the Boston region.
Freedom of religion was first applied as a principle of government in the founding of the colony of Maryland, founded by the Catholic Lord Baltimore, in 1634. Fifteen years later (1649), the Maryland Toleration Act, drafted by Lord Baltimore, provided: "No person or persons...shall from henceforth be any waies troubled, molested or discountenanced for or in respect of his or her religion nor in the free exercise thereof." The Act allowed freedom of worship for all Trinitarian Christians in Maryland, but sentenced to death anyone who denied the divinity of Jesus. The Maryland Toleration Act was repealed during the Cromwellian Era with the assistance of Protestant assemblymen and a new law barring Catholics from openly practicing their religion was passed. In 1657, the Catholic Lord Baltimore regained control after making a deal with the colony's Protestants, and in 1658 the Act was again passed by the colonial assembly. This time, it would last more than thirty years, until 1692 when, after Maryland's Protestant Revolution of 1689, freedom of religion was again rescinded. In addition, in 1704, an Act was passed "to prevent the growth of Popery in this Province", preventing Catholics from holding political office. Full religious toleration would not be restored in Maryland until the American Revolution, when Maryland's Charles Carroll of Carrollton signed the American Declaration of Independence.
Rhode Island (1636), Connecticut (1636), New Jersey, and Pennsylvania (1682) founded by Protestants Roger Williams, Thomas Hooker, and William Penn, respectively combined the democratic form of government which had been developed by the Puritans and the Separatist Congregationalists in Massachusetts with religious freedom. These colonies became sanctuaries for persecuted religious minorities. Catholics and later on Jews also had full citizenship and free exercise of their religions. Williams, Hooker, Penn, and their friends were firmly convinced that freedom of conscience was the will of God. Williams gave the most profound argument: As faith is the free work of the Holy Spirit, it cannot be forced on a person. Therefore, strict separation of church and state has to be kept. Pennsylvania was the only colony that retained unlimited religious freedom until the foundation of the United States in 1776. It was the inseparable connection between democracy, religious freedom, and the other forms of freedom which became the political and legal basis of the new nation. In particular, Baptists and Presbyterians demanded the disestablishment of state churches Anglican and Congregationalist and the protection of religious freedom.
Reiterating Maryland's and the other colonies' earlier colonial legislation, the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, written in 1779 by Thomas Jefferson, proclaimed:
[N]o man shall be compelled to frequent or support any religious worship, place, or ministry whatsoever, nor shall be enforced, restrained, molested, or burthened in his body or goods, nor shall otherwise suffer, on account of his religious opinions or belief; but that all men shall be free to profess, and by argument to maintain, their opinions in matters of religion, and that the same shall in no wise diminish, enlarge, or affect their civil capacities.
Those sentiments also found expression in the First Amendment of the national constitution, part of the United States' Bill of Rights: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof...". The acknowledgement of religious freedom as the first right protected in the Bill of Rights points toward the American founders' understanding of the importance of religion to human, social, and political flourishing. The First Amendment makes clear that it sought to protect "the free exercise" of religion, or what might be called ""free exercise equality.""
The United States formally considers religious freedom in its foreign relations. The International Religious Freedom Act of 1998 established the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom which investigates the records of over 200 other nations with respect to religious freedom, and makes recommendations to submit nations with egregious records to ongoing scrutiny and possible economic sanctions. Many human rights organizations have urged the United States to be still more vigorous in imposing sanctions on countries that do not permit or tolerate religious freedom.
Freedom of religion in Canada is a constitutionally protected right, allowing believers the freedom to assemble and worship without limitation or interference. Canadian law goes further, requiring that private citizens and companies provide reasonable accommodation to those, for example, with strong religious beliefs. The Canadian Human Rights Act allows an exception to reasonable accommodation with respect to religious dress, such as a Sikh turban, when there is a "bona fide" occupational requirement, such as a workplace requiring a hard hat. In 2017 the Santo Daime Church Céu do Montréal received religious exemption to use Ayahuasca as a sacrament in their rituals.
On 25 November 1981, the United Nations General Assembly passed the Declaration on the Elimination of All Forms of Intolerance and of Discrimination Based on Religion or Belief. This declaration recognizes freedom of religion as a fundamental human right in accordance with several other instruments of international law.
However, the most substantial binding legal instruments that guarantee the right to freedom of religion that was passed by the international community is the Convention on the Rights of the Child which states in its Article 14: ""States Parties shall respect the right of the child to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. States Parties shall respect the rights and duties of the parents and, when applicable, legal guardians, to provide direction to the child in the exercise of his or her right in a manner consistent with the evolving capacities of the child. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health or morals, or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others.""
In 1993, the UN's human rights committee declared that article 18 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights "protects theistic, non-theistic and atheistic beliefs, as well as the right not to profess any religion or belief." The committee further stated that "the freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief necessarily entails the freedom to choose a religion or belief, including the right to replace one's current religion or belief with another or to adopt atheistic views." Signatories to the convention are barred from "the use of threat of physical force or penal sanctions to compel believers or non-believers" to recant their beliefs or convert. Despite this, minority religions still are persecuted in many parts of the world.
The French philosopher Voltaire noted in his book on English society, "Letters on the English", that freedom of religion in a diverse society was deeply important to maintaining peace in that country. That it was also important in understanding why England at that time was more prosperous in comparison to the country's less religiously tolerant European neighbours. If one religion only were allowed in England, the Government would very possibly become arbitrary; if there were but two, the people would cut one another’s throats; but as there are such a multitude, they all live happy and in peace.Adam Smith, in his book "The Wealth of Nations" (using an argument first put forward by his friend and contemporary David Hume), states that in the long run it is in the best interests of society as a whole and the civil magistrate (government) in particular to allow people to freely choose their own religion, as it helps prevent civil unrest and reduces intolerance. So long as there are enough different religions and/or religious sects operating freely in a society then they are all compelled to moderate their more controversial and violent teachings, so as to be more appealing to more people and so have an easier time attracting new converts. It is this free competition amongst religious sects for converts that ensures stability and tranquillity in the long run.
Smith also points out that laws that prevent religious freedom and seek to preserve the power and belief in a particular religion will, in the long run, only serve to weaken and corrupt that religion, as its leaders and preachers become complacent, disconnected and unpractised in their ability to seek and win over new converts:
Hinduism is one of the more broad-minded religions when it comes to religious freedom. It respects the right of everyone to reach God in their own way. Hindus believe in different ways to preach attainment of God and religion as a philosophy and hence respect all religions as equal. One of the famous Hindu sayings about religion is: "Truth is one; sages call it by different names."
Judaism includes multiple streams, such as Orthodox, Reform Judaism, Conservative Judaism, Reconstructionist Judaism, Jewish Renewal and Humanistic Judaism. However, Judaism also exists in many forms as a civilization, possessing characteristics known as peoplehood, rather than strictly as a religion. In the Torah, Jews are forbidden to practice idolatry and are commanded to root out pagan and idolatrous practices within their midst, including killing idolaters who sacrifice children to their gods, or engage in immoral activities. However, these laws are not adhered to anymore as Jews have usually lived among a multi-religious community.
After the conquest of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judea by the Roman Empire, a Jewish state did not exist until 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel. For over 1500 years Jewish people lived under pagan, Christian, Muslim, etc. rule. As such Jewish people in some of these states faced persecution. From the pogroms in Europe during the Middle Ages to the establishment of segregated Jewish ghettos during World War II. In the Middle East, Jews were categorised as dhimmi, non- Muslims permitted to live within a Muslim state. Even though given rights within a Muslim state, a dhimmi is still not equal to a Muslim within Muslim society, the same way non-Jewish Israeli citizens are not equal with Jewish citizens in modern-day Israel.
Possibly because of this history of long term persecution, Jews in modernity have been among the most active proponents of religious freedom in the US and abroad and have founded and supported anti-hate institutions, including the Anti-Defamation League, the Southern Poverty Law Center and the American Civil Liberties Union. Jews are very active in supporting Muslim and other religious groups in the US against discrimination and hate crimes and most Jewish congregations throughout the US and many individual Jews participate in interfaith community projects and programs.
The State of Israel was established for the Jewish diaspora after World War II. While the Israel Declaration of Independence stresses religious freedom as a fundamental principle, in practice the current government, dominated by the ultra-Orthodox segment of the population has instituted legal barriers for those who do not practice Orthodox Judaism as Jews. However, as a nation state, Israel is very open towards other religions and religious practices, including public Muslim call to prayer chants and Christian prayer bells ringing in Jerusalem. Israel has been evaluated in research by the Pew organization as having "high" government restrictions on religion. The government recognizes only Orthodox Judaism in certain matters of personal status, and marriages can only be performed by religious authorities. The government provides the greatest funding to Orthodox Judaism, even though adherents represent a minority of citizens. Jewish women, including Anat Hoffman, have been arrested at the Western Wall for praying and singing while wearing religious garments the Orthodox feel should be reserved for men. Women of the Wall have organized to promote religious freedom at the Wall. In November 2014, a group of 60 non-Orthodox rabbinical students were told they would not be allowed to pray in the Knesset synagogue because it is reserved for Orthodox. Rabbi Joel Levy, director of the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, said that he had submitted the request on behalf of the students and saw their shock when the request was denied. He noted: "paradoxically, this decision served as an appropriate end to our conversation about religion and state in Israel." MK Dov Lipman expressed the concern that many Knesset workers are unfamiliar with non-Orthodox and American practices and would view "an egalitarian service in the synagogue as an affront." The non-Orthodox forms of Jewish practice function independently in Israel, except for these issues of praying at the Western Wall.
According to the Catholic Church in the Vatican II document on religious freedom, "Dignitatis Humanae", "the human person has a right to religious freedom", which is described as "immunity from coercion in civil society". This principle of religious freedom "leaves untouched traditional Catholic doctrine on the moral duty of men and societies toward the true religion." In addition, this right "is to be recognized in the constitutional law whereby society is governed and thus it is to become a civil right."
Prior to this, Pope Pius IX had written a document called the "Syllabus of Errors. "The Syllabus was made up of phrases and paraphrases from earlier papal documents, along with index references to them, and presented as a list of "condemned propositions". It does not explain why each particular proposition is wrong, but it cites earlier documents to which the reader can refer for the Pope's reasons for saying each proposition is false. Among the statements included in the Syllabus are: "[It is an error to say that] Every man is free to embrace and profess that religion which, guided by the light of reason, he shall consider true" (15); "[It is an error to say that] In the present day it is no longer expedient that the Catholic religion should be held as the only religion of the State, to the exclusion of all other forms of worship"; "[It is an error to say that] Hence it has been wisely decided by law, in some Catholic countries, that persons coming to reside therein shall enjoy the public exercise of their own peculiar worship".
Some Orthodox Christians, especially those living in democratic countries, support religious freedom for all, as evidenced by the position of the Ecumenical Patriarchate. Many Protestant Christian churches, including some Baptists, Churches of Christ, Seventh-day Adventist Church and main line churches have a commitment to religious freedoms. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints also affirms religious freedom.
However others, such as African scholar Makau Mutua, have argued that Christian insistence on the propagation of their faith to native cultures as an element of religious freedom has resulted in a corresponding denial of religious freedom to native traditions and led to their destruction. As he states in the book produced by the Oslo Coalition on Freedom of Religion or Belief, "Imperial religions have necessarily violated individual conscience and the communal expressions of Africans and their communities by subverting African religions."
In their book "Breaking India", Rajiv Malhotra and Aravindan Neelakandan discussed the "US Church" funding activities in India, such as the popularly advertised campaigns to "save" poor children by feeding, clothing, and educating them, with the book arguing that the funds collected were being used not so much for the purposes indicated to sponsors, but for indoctrination and conversion activities. They suggest that India is the prime target of a huge enterprise a "network" of organizations, individuals, and churches that, they argue, seem intensely devoted to the task of creating a separatist identity, history, and even religion for the vulnerable sections of India. They suggest that this nexus of players includes not only church groups, government bodies, and related organizations, but also private think tanks and academics.
Joel Spring has written about the Christianization of the Roman Empire:
Christianity added new impetus to the expansion of empire. Increasing the arrogance of the imperial project, Christians insisted that the Gospels and the Church were the only valid sources of religious beliefs. Imperialists could claim that they were both civilizing the world and spreading the true religion. By the 5th century, Christianity was thought of as co-extensive with the "Imperium romanum". This meant that to be human, as opposed to being a natural slave, was to be "civilized" and Christian. Historian Anthony Pagden argues, "just as the "civitas"; had now become coterminous with Christianity, so to be human to be, that is, one who was 'civil', and who was able to interpret correctly the law of nature one had now also to be Christian." After the fifteenth century, most Western colonialists rationalized the spread of empire with the belief that they were saving a barbaric and pagan world by spreading Christian civilization.
Conversion to Islam is simple, but Muslims are forbidden to convert from Islam to another religion. Certain Muslim-majority countries are known for their restrictions on religious freedom, highly favoring Muslim citizens over non-Muslim citizens. Other countries having the same restrictive laws tend to be more liberal when imposing them. Even other Muslim-majority countries are secular and thus do not regulate religious belief.
Islamic theologians quote the Qur'an ( and , i.e., Sura Al-Kafirun) to show scriptural support for religious freedom.
, referring to the war against Pagans during the Battle of Badr in Medina, indicates that Muslims are only allowed to fight against those who intend to harm them (right of self-defense) and that if their enemies surrender, they must also stop because God does not like those who transgress limits.
In Bukhari:V9 N316, Jabir ibn 'Abdullah narrated that a Bedouin accepted Islam and then when he got a fever he demanded that Muhammad to cancel his pledge (allow him to renounce Islam). Muhammad refused to do so. The Bedouin man repeated his demand once, but Muhammad once again refused. Then, he (the Bedouin) left Medina. Muhammad said, "Madinah is like a pair of bellows (furnace): it expels its impurities and brightens and clear its good." In this narration, there was no evidence demonstrating that Muhammad ordered the execution of the Bedouin for wanting to renounce Islam.
In addition, , which is believed to be God's final revelation to Muhammad, states that Muslims are to fear God and not those who reject Islam, and states that one is accountable only for one's own actions. Therefore, it postulates that in Islam, in the matters of practising a religion, it does not relate to a worldly punishment, but rather these actions are accountable to God in the afterlife. Thus, this supports the argument against the execution of apostates in Islam.
However, on the other hand, some Muslims support the practice of executing apostates who leave Islam, as in Bukhari:V4 B52 N260; "The Prophet said, 'If a Muslim discards his religion and separates from the main body of Muslims, kill him."
In Iran, the constitution recognizes four religions whose status is formally protected: Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The constitution, however, also set the groundwork for the institutionalized persecution of Bahá'ís,
who have been subjected to arrests, beatings, executions, confiscation and destruction of property, and the denial of civil rights and liberties, and the denial of access to higher education. There is no freedom of conscience in Iran, as converting from Islam to any other religion is forbidden.
In Egypt, a 16 December 2006 judgment of the Supreme Constitutional Court of Egypt created a clear demarcation between recognized religions Islam, Christianity and Judaism and all other religious beliefs; no other religious affiliation is officially admissible. The ruling leaves members of other religious communities, including Bahá'ís, without the ability to obtain the necessary government documents to have rights in their country, essentially denying them of all rights of citizenship. They cannot obtain ID cards, birth certificates, death certificates, marriage or divorce certificates, and passports; they also cannot be employed, educated, treated in public hospitals or vote, among other things. See Egyptian identification card controversy.
Among the most contentious areas of religious freedom is the right of an individual to change or abandon his or her own religion (apostasy), and the right to evangelize individuals seeking to convince others to make such a change.
Other debates have centered around restricting certain kinds of missionary activity by religions. Many Islamic states, and others such as China, severely restrict missionary activities of other religions. Greece, among European countries, has generally looked unfavorably on missionary activities of denominations others than the majority church and proselytizing is constitutionally prohibited.
A different kind of critique of the freedom to propagate religion has come from non-Abrahamic traditions such as the African and Indian. African scholar Makau Mutua criticizes religious evangelism on the ground of cultural annihilation by what he calls "proselytizing universalist faiths" (Chapter 28: Proselytism and Cultural Integrity, p. 652):
Some Indian scholars have similarly argued that the right to propagate religion is not culturally or religiously neutral.
In Sri Lanka, there have been debates regarding a bill on religious freedom that seeks to protect indigenous religious traditions from certain kinds of missionary activities. Debates have also occurred in various states of India regarding similar laws, particularly those that restrict conversions using force, fraud or allurement.
In 2008, Christian Solidarity Worldwide, a Christian human rights non-governmental organisation which specializes in religious freedom, launched an in-depth report on the human rights abuses faced by individuals who leave Islam for another religion. The report is the product of a year long research project in six different countries. It calls on Muslim nations, the international community, the UN and the international media to resolutely address the serious violations of human rights suffered by apostates.
In Islam, apostasy is called ""ridda"" ("turning back") and is considered to be a profound insult to God. A person born of Muslim parents that rejects Islam is called a ""murtad fitri"" (natural apostate), and a person that converted to Islam and later rejects the religion is called a ""murtad milli"" (apostate from the community).
In Islamic law (Sharia), the consensus view is that a male apostate must be put to death unless he suffers from a mental disorder or converted under duress, for example due to an imminent danger of being killed. A female apostate must be either executed, according to Shafi'i, Maliki, and Hanbali schools of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence (fiqh), or imprisoned until she reverts to Islam as advocated by the Sunni Hanafi school and by Shi'a scholars.
Ideally, the one performing the execution of an apostate must be an imam. At the same time, all schools of Islamic jurisprudence agree that any Muslim can kill an apostate without punishment.
However, while almost all scholars agree about the punishment, many disagree on the allowable time to retract the apostasy. S. A. Rahman, a former Chief Justice of Pakistan, argues that there is no indication of the death penalty for apostasy in the Qur'an.
Religious practice may also conflict with secular law, creating debates on religious freedom. For instance, even though polygamy is permitted in Islam, it is prohibited in secular law in many countries. This raises the question of whether prohibiting the practice infringes on the beliefs of certain Muslims. The US and India, both constitutionally secular nations, have taken two different views of this. In India, polygamy is permitted, but only for Muslims, under Muslim Personal Law. In the US, polygamy is prohibited for all. This was a major source of conflict between the early LDS Church and the United States until the Church amended its position on practicing polygamy.
Similar issues have also arisen in the context of the religious use of psychedelic substances by Native American tribes in the United States as well as other Native practices.
In 1955, Chief Justice of California Roger J. Traynor neatly summarized the American position on how freedom of religion cannot imply freedom from law: "Although freedom of conscience and the freedom to believe are absolute, the freedom to act is not." But with respect to the religious use of animals within secular law and those acts, the US Supreme Court decision in the case of the "Church of Lukumi Babalu Aye v. City of Hialeah" in 1993 upheld the right of Santeria adherents to practice ritual animal sacrifice, with Justice Anthony Kennedy stating in the decision: "religious beliefs need not be acceptable, logical, consistent or comprehensible to others in order to merit First Amendment protection" (quoted by Justice Kennedy from the opinion by Justice Burger in "Thomas v. Review Board of the Indiana Employment Security Division" ).
In 2015, Kim Davis, a Kentucky county clerk, refused to abide by the Supreme Court decision in "Obergefell v. Hodges" legalizing Same-sex marriage in the United States. When she refused to issue marriage licenses, she became embroiled in the "Miller v. Davis" lawsuit. Her actions caused attorney and author Roberta Kaplan to state that "Kim Davis is the clearest example of someone who wants to use a religious liberty argument to discriminate."
In 1962, the case of Engele v. Vitale went to court over the violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment resulting from a mandatory nondenominational prayer in New York public schools. The Supreme Court ruled in opposition to the state.
In 1963, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Abington School District v. Schempp. Edward Schempp sued the school district in Abington over the Pennsylvania law which required students to hear and sometimes read portions of the bible for their daily education. The court ruled in favor of Schempp and the Pennsylvania law was overturned.
In 1968, the Supreme Court ruled on the case of Epperson v. Arkansas. Susan Epperson, a high school teacher in Arkansas sued over a violation of religious freedom. The state had a law banning the teaching of evolution and the school Epperson worked for had provided curriculum which contained evolutionary theory. Epperson had to choose between violating the law or losing her job. The Supreme Court ruled to overturn the Arkansas law because it was unconstitutional.
The law in Germany provides the term of "religious majority" ("Religiöse Mündigkeit") with a minimum age for minors to follow their own religious beliefs even if their parents don't share those or don't approve. Children 14 and older have the unrestricted right to enter or exit any religious community. Children 12 and older cannot be compelled to change to a different belief. Children 10 and older have to be heard before their parents change their religious upbringing to a different belief. There are similar laws in Austria and in Switzerland.
27 October is International Religious Freedom Day, in commemoration of the execution of the Boston martyrs, a group of Quakers executed by the Puritans on Boston Common for their religious beliefs under the legislature of the Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1659–1661. The US proclaimed 16 January Religious Freedom Day.
In its 2011 annual report, the "United States Commission on International Religious Freedom" designated fourteen nations as "countries of particular concern". The commission chairman commented that these are nations whose conduct marks them as the world's worst religious freedom violators and human rights abusers. The fourteen nations designated were Burma, China, Egypt, Eritrea, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. Other nations on the commission's watchlist include Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Laos, Russia, Somalia, Tajikistan, Turkey, and Venezuela.
There are concerns about the restrictions on public religious dress in some European countries (including the Hijab, Kippah, and Christian cross). Article 18 of the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights limits restrictions on freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs to those necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms of others. Freedom of religion as a legal concept is related to, but not identical with, religious toleration, separation of church and state, or secular state ("laïcité").
The Pew Research Center has performed studies on international religious freedom between 2009 and 2015, compiling global data from 16 governmental and non-governmental organizations–including the United Nations, the United States State Department, and Human Rights Watch–and representing over 99.5 percent of the world's population. In 2009, nearly 70 percent of the world's population lived in countries classified as having heavy restrictions on freedom of religion. This concerns restrictions on religion originating from government prohibitions on free speech and religious expression as well as social hostilities undertaken by private individuals, organisations and social groups. Social hostilities were classified by the level of communal violence and religion-related terrorism.
While most countries provided for the protection of religious freedom in their constitutions or laws, only a quarter of those countries were found to fully respect these legal rights in practice. In 75 countries governments limit the efforts of religious groups to proselytise and in 178 countries religious groups must register with the government. In 2013, Pew classified 30% of countries as having restrictions that tend to target religious minorities, and 61% of countries have social hostilities that tend to target religious minorities.
The countries in North and South America reportedly had some of the lowest levels of "government" and "social" restrictions on religion, while The Middle East and North Africa were the regions with the highest. Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Iran were the countries that top the list of countries with the "overall" highest levels of restriction on religion. Topping the Pew government restrictions index were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Uzbekistan, China, Egypt, Burma, Maldives, Eritrea, Malaysia and Brunei.
Of the world's 25 most populous countries, Iran, Egypt, Indonesia and Pakistan had the most restrictions, while Brazil, Japan, Italy, South Africa, the UK, and the US had some of the lowest levels, as measured by Pew.
Vietnam and China were classified as having high "government" restrictions on religion but were in the moderate or low range when it came to "social" hostilities. Nigeria, Bangladesh and India were high in "social" hostilities but moderate in terms of "government" actions.
Restrictions on religion across the world increased between mid-2009 and mid-2010, according to a 2012 study by the Pew Research Center. Restrictions in each of the five major regions of the world increased—including in the Americas and sub-Saharan Africa, the two regions where overall restrictions previously had been declining. In 2010, Egypt, Nigeria, the Palestinian territories, Russia, and Yemen were added to the "very high" category of social hostilities. The five highest social hostility scores were for Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka, Iraq, and Bangladesh. In 2015, Pew published that social hostilities declined in 2013, but the harassment of Jews increased.
In the Palestinian territories, Palestinians face tight restrictions on practicing the freedom of religion due to the ongoing Israeli–Palestinian conflict. In a report published by the Geneva-based Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor, eyewitnesses reported systematic practices aiming at preventing young men and women from performing their prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. These practices include military orders issued by the Israeli Defense Army commander against specific Palestinians who have an effective role in Jerusalem, interrogating young men, and creating a secret blacklist of people who are prevented from entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46006 |
Moldavia
Moldavia (, or (in Romanian Latin alphabet), literally "The Moldavian Country"; in old Romanian Cyrillic alphabet: ) is a historical region and former principality in Central and Eastern Europe, corresponding to the territory between the Eastern Carpathians and the Dniester River. An initially independent and later autonomous state, it existed from the 14th century to 1859, when it united with Wallachia () as the basis of the modern Romanian state; at various times, Moldavia included the regions of Bessarabia (with the Budjak), all of Bukovina and Hertza. The region of Pokuttya was also part of it for a period of time.
The western half of Moldavia is now part of Romania, the eastern side belongs to the Republic of Moldova, and the northern and southeastern parts are territories of Ukraine.
The original and short-lived reference to the region was "Bogdania", after Bogdan I, the founding figure of the principality. The names "Moldavia" and "Moldova" are derived from the name of the Moldova River; however, the etymology is not known and there are several variants:
On a series of coins of Peter I and Stephen I minted by Saxon masters and with German legends, the reverse feature the name of Moldavia in the form "Molderlang"/"Molderlant" (recte "Molderland").
In several early references, "Moldavia" is rendered under the composite form "Moldo-Wallachia" (in the same way Wallachia may appear as "Hungro-Wallachia"). Ottoman Turkish references to Moldavia included "Boğdan Iflak" (meaning "Bogdan's Wallachia") and "Boğdan" (and occasionally "Kara-Boğdan" – "Black Bogdania"). See also names in other languages.
The name of the region in other languages include , , , (Moldaviya), , .
The inhabitants of Moldavia were Christians. Archaeological works revealed the remains of a Christian necropolis at Mihălășeni, Botoșani county, from the 5th century. The place of worship, and the tombs had Christian characteristics. The place of worship had a rectangular form with sides of eight and seven meters. Similar necropolises and places of worship were found at Nicolina, in Iași
The Bolohoveni, is mentioned by the Hypatian Chronicle in the 13th century. The chronicle shows that this land is bordered on the principalities of Halych, Volhynia and Kiev. Archaeological research also identified the location of 13th-century fortified settlements in this region. Alexandru V. Boldur identified Voscodavie, Voscodavti, Voloscovti, Volcovti, Volosovca and their other towns and villages between the middle course of the rivers Nistru/Dniester and Nipru/Dnieper. The Bolohoveni disappeared from chronicles after their defeat in 1257 by Daniel of Galicia's troops. Their ethnic identity is uncertain; although Romanian scholars, basing on their ethnonym identify them as Romanians (who were called Vlachs in the Middle Ages), archeological evidence and the "Hypatian Chronicle" (which is the only primary source that documents their history) suggest that they were a Slavic people.
In the early 13th century, the "Brodniks", a possible Slavic–Vlach vassal state of Halych, were present, alongside the Vlachs, in much of the region's territory (towards 1216, the Brodniks are mentioned as in service of Suzdal).
Somewhere in the 11th century, a Viking named Rodfos was killed by Vlachs presumably in the area of what would become Moldavia. In 1164, the future Byzantine emperor Andronikos I Komnenos, was taken prisoner by Vlach shepherds in the same region.
Friar William of Rubruck, who visited the court of the Great Khan in the 1250s, listed "the Blac", or Vlachs, among the peoples who paid tribute to the Mongols, but the Vlachs' territory is uncertain. Rubruck described "Blakia" as "Assan's territory" south of the Lower Danube, showing that he identified it with the northern regions of the Second Bulgarian Empire.
Later in the 14th century, King Charles I of Hungary attempted to expand his realm and the influence of the Catholic Church eastwards after the fall of Cuman rule, and ordered a campaign under the command of Phynta de Mende (1324). In 1342 and 1345, the Hungarians were victorious in a battle against Tatar-Mongols; the conflict was resolved by the death of Jani Beg, in 1357. The Polish chronicler Jan Długosz mentioned Moldavians (under the name "Wallachians") as having joined a military expedition in 1342, under King Władysław I, against the Margraviate of Brandenburg.
In 1353, Dragoș, mentioned as a Vlach "Knyaz" in Maramureș, was sent by Louis I to establish a line of defense against the Golden Horde forces of Mongols on the Siret River. This expedition resulted in a polity vassal to Hungary, in the Baia ("Târgul Moldovei" or "Moldvabánya") region.
Bogdan of Cuhea, another Vlach voivode from Maramureș who had fallen out with the Hungarian king, crossed the Carpathians in 1359, took control of Moldavia, and succeeded in removing Moldavia from Hungarian control. His realm extended north to the Cheremosh River, while the southern part of Moldavia was still occupied by the Tatar Mongols.
After first residing in Baia, Bogdan moved Moldavia's seat to Siret (it was to remain there until Petru II Mușat moved it to Suceava; it was finally moved to Iași under Alexandru Lăpușneanu - in 1565). The area around Suceava, roughly correspondent to future Bukovina, would later constitute one of the two administrative divisions of the new realm, under the name "Țara de Sus" (the "Upper Land"), whereas the rest, on both sides of the Prut river, formed "Țara de Jos" (the "Lower Land").
Disfavored by the brief union of Angevin Poland and Hungary (the latter was still the country's overlord), Bogdan's successor Lațcu accepted conversion to Roman Catholicism around 1370. Despite the founding of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Siret, this move did not have any lasting consequences. Despite remaining officially Eastern Orthodox and culturally connected with the Byzantine Empire after 1382, princes of the House of Bogdan-Mușat entered a conflict with the Constantinople Patriarchy over control of appointments to the newly founded Moldavian Metropolitan seat; Patriarch Antony IV even cast an anathema over Moldavia after Roman I expelled his appointee back to Byzantium. The crisis was finally settled in favor of the Moldavian princes under Alexander I. Nevertheless, religious policy remained complex: while conversions to faiths other than Orthodox were discouraged (and forbidden for princes), Moldavia included sizable Roman Catholic communities (Germans and Magyars), as well as non-Chalcedonic Armenians; after 1460, the country welcomed Hussite refugees (founders of Ciuburciu and, probably, Huși).
The principality of Moldavia covered the entire geographic region of Moldavia. In various periods, various other territories were politically connected with the Moldavian principality. This is the case of the province of Pokuttya, the fiefdoms of Cetatea de Baltă and Ciceu (both in Transylvania) or, at a later date, the territories between the Dniester and the Bug rivers.
Petru II profited from the end of the Hungarian-Polish union and moved the country closer to the Jagiellon realm, becoming a vassal of Władysław II on September 26, 1387. This gesture was to have unexpected consequences: Petru supplied the Polish ruler with funds needed in the war against the Teutonic Knights, and was granted control over Pokuttya until the debt was to be repaid; as this is not recorded to have been carried out, the region became disputed by the two states, until it was lost by Moldavia in the Battle of Obertyn (1531). Prince Petru also expanded his rule southwards to the Danube Delta. His brother Roman I conquered the Hungarian-ruled Cetatea Albă in 1392, giving Moldavia an outlet to the Black Sea, before being toppled from the throne for supporting Fyodor Koriatovych in his conflict with Vytautas the Great of Lithuania. Under Stephen I, growing Polish influence was challenged by Sigismund of Hungary, whose expedition was defeated at Ghindăoani in 1385; however, Stephen disappeared in mysterious circumstances.
Although Alexander I was brought to the throne in 1400 by the Hungarians (with assistance from Mircea I of Wallachia), he shifted his allegiances towards Poland (notably engaging Moldavian forces on the Polish side in the Battle of Grunwald and the Siege of Marienburg), and placed his own choice of rulers in Wallachia. His reign was one of the most successful in Moldavia's history, but also saw the very first confrontation with the Ottoman Turks at Cetatea Albă in 1420, and later even a conflict with the Poles. A deep crisis was to follow Alexandru's long reign, with his successors battling each other in a succession of wars that divided the country until the murder of Bogdan II and the ascension of Petru III Aron in 1451. Nevertheless, Moldavia was subject to further Hungarian interventions after that moment, as Matthias Corvinus deposed Aron and backed Alexăndrel to the throne in Suceava. Petru Aron's rule also signified the beginning of Moldavia's Ottoman Empire allegiance, as the ruler agreed to pay tribute to Sultan Mehmed II.
Under Stephen the Great, who took the throne and subsequently came to an agreement with Casimir IV of Poland in 1457, the state reached its most glorious period. Stephen blocked Hungarian interventions in the Battle of Baia, invaded Wallachia in 1471, and dealt with Ottoman reprisals in a major victory (the 1475 Battle of Vaslui); after feeling threatened by Polish ambitions, he also attacked Galicia and resisted Polish reprisals in the Battle of the Cosmin Forest (1497). However, he had to surrender Chilia (Kiliya) and Cetatea Albă (Bilhorod-Dnistrovskyi), the two main fortresses in the Budjak, to the Ottomans in 1484, and in 1498 he had to accept Ottoman suzerainty, when he was forced to agree to continue paying tribute to Sultan Bayezid II. Following the taking of Hotin (Khotyn) and Pokuttya, Stephen's rule also brought a brief extension of Moldavian rule into Transylvania: Cetatea de Baltă and Ciceu became his fiefs in 1489.
Under Bogdan III the One-Eyed, Ottoman overlordship was confirmed in the shape that would rapidly evolve into control over Moldavia's affairs. Peter IV Rareș, who reigned in the 1530s and 1540s, clashed with the Habsburg Monarchy over his ambitions in Transylvania (losing possessions in the region to George Martinuzzi), was defeated in Pokuttya by Poland, and failed in his attempt to extricate Moldavia from Ottoman rule – the country lost Bender to the Ottomans, who included it in their Silistra Eyalet.
A period of profound crisis followed. Moldavia stopped issuing its own coinage circa 1520, under Prince Ștefăniță, when it was confronted with rapid depletion of funds and rising demands from the Porte. Such problems became endemic when the country, brought into the Great Turkish War, suffered the impact of the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire; at one point, during the 1650s and 1660s, princes began relying on counterfeit coinage (usually copies of Swedish riksdalers, as was that issued by Eustratie Dabija). The economic decline was accompanied by a failure to maintain state structures: the feudal-based Moldavian military forces were no longer convoked, and the few troops maintained by the rulers remained professional mercenaries such as the "seimeni".
However, Moldavia and the similarly affected Wallachia remained both important sources of income for the Ottoman Empire and relatively prosperous agricultural economies (especially as suppliers of grain and cattle – the latter was especially relevant in Moldavia, which remained an under-populated country of pastures). In time, much of the resources were tied to the Ottoman economy, either through monopolies on trade that were only lifted in 1829, after the Treaty of Adrianople (which did not affect all domains directly), or through the raise in direct taxes - the one demanded by the Ottomans from the princes, as well as the ones demanded by the princes from the country's population. Taxes were directly proportional with Ottoman requests, but also with the growing importance of Ottoman appointment and sanctioning of princes in front of election by the boyars and the boyar Council – "Sfatul boieresc" (drawing in a competition among pretenders, which also implied the intervention of creditors as suppliers of bribes). The fiscal system soon included taxes such as the "văcărit" (a tax on head of cattle), first introduced by Iancu Sasul in the 1580s.
The economic opportunities offered brought about a significant influx of Greek and Levantine financiers and officials, who entered a stiff competition with the high boyars over appointments to the Court. As the manor system suffered the blows of economic crises, and in the absence of salarisation (which implied that persons in office could decide their own income), obtaining princely appointment became the major focus of a boyar's career. Such changes also implied the decline of free peasantry and the rise of serfdom, as well as the rapid fall in the importance of low boyars (a traditional institution, the latter soon became marginal, and, in more successful instances, added to the population of towns); however, they also implied a rapid transition towards a monetary economy, based on exchanges in foreign currency. Serfdom was doubled by the much less numerous slave population ("robi"), composed of migrant Roma and captured Nogais.
The conflict between princes and boyars was to become exceptionally violent – the latter group, who frequently appealed to the Ottoman court in order to have princes comply with its demands, was persecuted by rulers such as Alexandru Lăpușneanu and John III. Ioan Vodă's revolt against the Ottomans ended in his execution (1574). The country descended into political chaos, with frequent Ottoman and Tatar incursions and pillages. The claims of Mușatins to the crown and the traditional system of succession were ended by scores of illegitimate reigns; one of the usurpers, Ioan Iacob Heraclid, was a Protestant Greek who encouraged the Renaissance and attempted to introduce Lutheranism to Moldavia.
In 1595, the rise of the Movilești boyars to the throne with Ieremia Movilă coincided with the start of frequent anti-Ottoman and anti-Habsburg military expeditions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth into Moldavian territory (see "Moldavian Magnate Wars"), and rivalries between pretenders to the Moldavian throne encouraged by the three competing powers.
The Wallachian prince Michael the Brave, after previously taking over Transylvania, also deposed Prince Ieremia Movilă, in 1600, and managed to become the first Prince to rule over Moldavia, Wallachia, and Transylvania; the episode ended in Polish conquests of lands down to Bucharest, soon ended by the outbreak of the Polish–Swedish War and the reestablishment of Ottoman rule. Polish incursions were dealt a blow by the Ottomans during the 1620 Battle of Cecora, which also saw an end to the reign of Gaspar Graziani.
A period of relative peace followed during the more prosperous and prestigious rule of Vasile Lupu. He took the throne as a boyar appointee in 1637 and began battling his rival Gheorghe Ștefan, as well as the Wallachian prince Matei Basarab. However, his invasion of Wallachia, with the backing of Cossack Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky, ended in disaster at the Battle of Finta in 1653. A few years later, Moldavia was occupied for two short intervals by the anti-Ottoman Wallachian prince Constantin Șerban, who clashed with the first ruler of the Ghica family, George Ghica. In the early 1680s, Moldavian troops under George Ducas intervened in right-bank Ukraine and assisted Mehmed IV in the Battle of Vienna, only to suffer the effects of the Great Turkish War.
During the late 17th century, Moldavia became the target of the Russian Empire's southwards expansion, inaugurated by Peter the Great with the Russo-Turkish War of 1710-1711. Prince Dimitrie Cantemir sided with Peter in open rebellion against the Ottomans, but he was defeated at Stănilești. Sultan Ahmed III officially discarded recognition of local choices for princes, imposing instead a system relying solely on Ottoman approval: the Phanariote epoch, inaugurated by the reign of Nicholas Mavrocordatos.
Phanariote rule was marked by political corruption, intrigue, and high taxation, as well as by sporadic incursions of Habsburg and Russian armies deep into Moldavian territory. Nonetheless, they also attempted legislative and administrative modernization inspired by The Enlightenment (such as the decision by Constantine Mavrocordatos to salarize public offices, to the outrage of boyars, and the abolition of serfdom in 1749, as well as Scarlat Callimachi's "Code"), and signified a decrease in Ottoman demands after the threat of Russian annexation became real and the prospects of a better life led to waves of peasant emigration to neighboring lands. The effects of Ottoman control were also made less notable after the 1774 Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca allowed Russia to intervene in favour of Ottoman subjects of the Eastern Orthodox faith - leading to campaigns of petitioning by the Moldavian boyars against princely policies.
In 1712, Hotin was taken over by the Ottomans and became part of a defensive system that Moldavian princes were required to maintain, as well as an area for Islamic colonization (the Laz community).
In 1775 Moldavia lost to the Habsburg Empire its northwestern part, which became known as Bukovina. For Moldavia, it meant both an important territorial loss and a major blow to the cattle trade, as the region stood on the trade route to Central Europe.
The Treaty of Jassy in 1792 forced the Ottoman Empire to cede Yedisan to the Russian Empire, which made Russian presence much more notable, given that the Empire acquired a common border with Moldavia. The first effect of this was the cession of the eastern half of Moldavia (renamed as Bessarabia) to the Russian Empire in 1812.
Phanariote rule was officially ended after the 1821 occupation of the country by Alexander Ypsilantis's Filiki Eteria during the Greek War of Independence; the subsequent Ottoman retaliation led to the rule of Ioan Sturdza. He was considered the first of a new system, since the Ottomans and Russia had agreed in 1826 to allow for the election by locals of rulers over the two Danubian Principalities, and convened on their mandating for seven-year terms. In practice, a new foundation to reigns in Moldavia was created by the Russo-Turkish War (1828–1829), beginning a period of Russian domination over the two countries which ended only in 1856. Begun as a military occupation under the command of Pavel Kiselyov, Russian domination gave Wallachia and Moldavia, which were not removed from nominal Ottoman control, the modernizing "Organic Statute" (the first document resembling a constitution, as well as the first to regard both principalities). After 1829, the country also became an important destination for immigration of Ashkenazi Jews from the Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria and areas of Russia ("see History of the Jews in Romania and Sudiți").
The first Moldavian rule established under the Statute, that of Mihail Sturdza, was nonetheless ambivalent: eager to reduce abuse of office, Sturdza introduced reforms (the abolition of slavery, secularization, economic rebuilding), but he was widely seen as enforcing his own power over that of the newly instituted consultative Assembly. A supporter of the union of his country with Wallachia and of Romanian Romantic nationalism, he obtained the establishment of a customs union between the two countries (1847) and showed support for radical projects favored by low boyars; nevertheless, he clamped down with noted violence the Moldavian revolutionary attempt in the last days of March 1848. Grigore Alexandru Ghica allowed the exiled revolutionaries to return to Moldavia c. 1853, which led to the creation of the National Party (), a trans-boundary group of radical union supporters which campaigned for a single state under a foreign dynasty.
In 1856, under the terms of the Treaty of Paris, the Russian Empire returned to Moldavia a significant territory in southern Bessarabia (including a part of Budjak), organised later as the Bolgrad, Cahul, and Ismail counties.
Russian domination ended abruptly after the Crimean War, when the Treaty of Paris also passed the two Romanian principalities under the tutelage of Great European Powers (together with Russia and the Ottoman overlord, power-sharing included the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Austrian Empire, the French Empire, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, and Prussia). Due to Austrian and Ottoman opposition and British reserves, the union program as demanded by radical campaigners was debated intensely. In September 1857, given that "Caimacam" Nicolae Vogoride had perpetrated fraud in elections in Moldavia, the Powers allowed the two states to convene ad-hoc divans, which were to decide a new constitutional framework; the result showed overwhelming support for the union, as the creation of a liberal and neutral state. After further meetings among leaders of tutor states, an agreement was reached (the "Paris Convention"), whereby a limited union was to be enforced – separate governments and thrones, with only two bodies (a Court of Cassation and a Central Commission residing in Focșani); it also stipulated that an end to all privilege was to be passed into law, and awarded back to Moldavia the areas around Bolhrad, Cahul, and Izmail.
However, the Convention failed to note whether the two thrones could not be occupied by the same person, allowing "Partida Națională" to introduce the candidacy of Alexandru Ioan Cuza in both countries. On January 17 (January 5, 1859 Old Style), in Iași, he was elected prince of Moldavia by the respective electoral body. After street pressure over the much more conservative body in Bucharest, Cuza was elected in Wallachia as well (February 5/January 24). Exactly three years later, after diplomatic missions that helped remove opposition to the action, the formal union created the United Principalities (the basis of modern Romania) and instituted Cuza as "Domnitor" (all legal matters were clarified after the replacement of the prince with Carol of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen in April 1866, and the creation of an independent Kingdom of Romania in 1881) - this officially ending the existence of the Principality of Moldavia.
Slavery () was part of the social order from before the founding of the Principality of Moldavia, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s. Most of the slaves were of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity. There were also slaves of Tatar ethnicity, probably prisoners captured from the wars with the Nogai and Crimean Tatars. The institution of slavery was first attested in a 1470 Moldavian document, through which Prince Stephen the Great frees Oană, a Tatar slave who had fled to Jagiellon Poland.
The exact origins of slavery are not known, as it was a common practice in medieval Europe. As in the Byzantine Empire, the Roma were held as slaves of the state, of the boyars or of the monasteries. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era; he believed that the Romanians took the Roma as slaves from the Mongols and preserved their status to control their labor. Other historians consider that the Roma were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving prisoners may also have been taken from the Mongols. The ethnic identity of the "Tatar slaves" is unknown, they could have been captured Tatars of the Golden Horde, Cumans, or the slaves of Tatars and Cumans. While it is possible that some Romani people were slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, most of them came from south of the Danube, demonstrating that slavery a widespread practice. The Tatar slaves, smaller in numbers, were eventually merged into the Roma population.
Traditionally, Roma slaves were divided into three categories. The smallest was owned by the "hospodars", and went by the Romanian-language name of "țigani domnești" ("Gypsies belonging to the lord"). The two other categories comprised "țigani mănăstirești" ("Gypsies belonging to the monasteries"), who were the property of Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox monasteries, and "țigani boierești" ("Gypsies belonging to the boyars"), who were enslaved by the category of landowners.
The abolition of slavery was carried out following a campaign by young revolutionaries who embraced the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. In 1844, Moldavian Prince Mihail Sturdza proposed a law on the freeing of slaves owned by the church and state. By the 1850s, the movement gained support from almost the whole of Romanian society. In December 1855, following a proposal by Prince Grigore Alexandru Ghica, a bill drafted by Mihail Kogălniceanu and Petre Mavrogheni was adopted by the Divan; the law emancipated all slaves to the status of taxpayers (citizens).
Support for the abolitionists was reflected in Romanian literature of the mid-19th century. The issue of the Roma slavery became a theme in the literary works of various liberal and Romantic intellectuals, many of whom were active in the abolitionist camp. The Romanian abolitionist movement was also influenced by the much larger movement against Black slavery in the United States through press reports and through a translation of Harriet Beecher Stowe's "Uncle Tom's Cabin". Translated by Theodor Codrescu and first published in Iași in 1853, under the name "Coliba lui Moșu Toma sau Viața negrilor în sudul Statelor Unite din America" (which translates back as "Uncle Toma's Cabin or the Life of Blacks in the Southern United States of America"), it was the first American novel to be published in Romanian. The foreword included a study on slavery by Mihail Kogălniceanu.
Under the reign of Stephen the Great, all farmers and villagers had to bear arms. Stephen justified this by saying that "every man has a duty to defend his fatherland"; according to Polish chronicler Jan Długosz, if someone was found without carrying a weapon, he was sentenced to death. Stephen reformed the army by promoting men from the landed free peasantry "răzeși" (i.e. something akin to freeholding yeomen) to infantry ("voinici") and light cavalry ("hânsari") — to make himself less dependent on the boyars — and introduced his army to guns. In times of crises, The Small Host ("Oastea Mică") — which consisted of around 10,000 to 12,000 men — stood ready to engage the enemy, while the Large Host ("Oastea Mare") — which could reach up to 40,000 — had all the free peasantry older than 14, and strong enough to carry a sword or use the bow, recruited. This seldom happened, for such a levée en masse was devastating for both economy and population growth. In the Battle of Vaslui, Stephen had to summon the Large Host and also recruited mercenary troops.
In the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the Moldavians relied on light cavalry ("călărași") which used hit-and-run tactics similar to those of the Tatars; this gave them great mobility and also flexibility, in case they found it more suitable to dismount their horses and fight in hand-to-hand combat, as it happened in 1422, when 400 horse archers were sent to aid Jagiellon Poland, Moldavia's overlord against the Teutonic Knights. When making eye-contact with the enemy, the horse archers would withdraw to a nearby forest and camouflage themselves with leaves and branches; according to Jan Długosz, when the enemy entered the wood, they were "showered with arrows" and defeated. The heavy cavalry consisted of the nobility, namely, the boyars and their guards, the "viteji" (lit. "brave ones", small nobility) and the "curteni" — the Court Cavalry (all nominally part of the "Small Host"). In times of war, boyars were compelled by the feudal system of allegiance to supply the prince with troops in accordance with the extent of their manorial domain.
Other troops consisted of professional foot soldiers ("lefegii") which fulfilled the heavy infantry role, and the "plăieși", free peasants whose role was that of border guards: they guarded the mountain passes and were prepared to ambush the enemy and to fight delaying actions.
In the absence of the prince, command was assigned to the "Mare Spătar" (Grand Sword-Bearer - a military office) or to the "Mare Vornic" (approx. Governor of the Country; a civilian office second only to the "Voievod", which was filled by the prince himself). Supplying the troops was by tradition-later-made-into-law the duty of the inhabitants of those lands on which the soldiers were present at a given time.
The Moldavians' (as well as Wallachians') favourite military doctrine in (defensive) wars was a scorched earth policy combined with harassment of the advancing enemy using hit-and-run tactics and disruption of communication and supply lines, followed by a large scale ambush: a weakened enemy would be lured in a place where it would find itself in a position hard or impossible to defend. A general attack would follow, often with devastating results. The shattered remains of what was once the enemy army would be pursued closely and harassed all the way to the border and sometimes beyond. A typical example of successful employments of this scenario is the Battle of Vaslui.
Towards the end of the 15th century, especially after the success of guns and cannons, mercenaries became a dominant force in the country's military. With the economic demands created by the stagnation of the Ottoman Empire, the force diminished and included only mercenaries such as the "seimeni".
The 1829 Treaty of Adrianople allowed Moldavia to again maintain its own troops, no longer acting as an auxiliary under strict Ottoman supervision, and assigned red over blue pennants ("see Flag and coat of arms of Moldavia"). Their renewed existence under Mihail Sturdza was a major symbol and rally point for the nationalist cause, aiding in bringing about the 1848 Moldavian revolution.
An early mention of a Moldavian naval fleet is found in connection with the rule of Aron Tiranul, who used it to help Wallachian ruler Michael the Brave establish his control over the Chilia branch of the Danube and Dobruja.
The Treaty of Adrianople provided for a Moldavian self-defense naval force, to be composed of caicque vessels. Schooners armed with cannons were first built in the 1840s. Along with patrolling the Danube, these made their way on its tributaries, the Siret and the Prut River.
Geographically, Moldavia is limited by the Carpathian Mountains to the West, the Cheremosh River to the North, the Dniester River to the East and the Danube and Black Sea to the South. The Prut River flows approximately through its middle from north to south.
Of late 15th century Moldavia, with an area of approximately , the biggest part and the core of the former principality is located in Romania (45.6%), followed by the Republic of Moldova (31.7%), and Ukraine (22.7%). This represents 88.2% of the Republic of Moldova's surface, 18% of Romania's surface, and 3.5% of Ukraine's surface.
The region is mostly hilly, with a range of mountains in the west, and plain areas in the southeast. Moldavia's highest altitude is Ineu peak (2,279 m), which is also the westernmost point of the region.
Contemporary historians estimate the population (historically referred to as Moldavians) of the Moldavian Principality in the 15th century, at between 250,000 - 600,000 people, but an extensive catagraphy was first conducted in 1769–1774.
In 1848, the northwestern part, annexed in 1775 by the Habsburg Empire, Bukovina, had a population of 377,571; in 1856, the eastern half of Moldavia, Bessarabia, annexed in 1812 by the Russian Empire, had a population of 990,274, while the population of Moldavia proper (the western half), in 1859, was 1,463,927.
The largest cities (as per last censuses) and metropolitan areas in the Moldavia region are:
In 1562, the so-called Schola Latina (a Latin Academic College) was founded in Cotnari, near Iași, a school which marked the beginnings of the organized humanistic education institutions in Moldavia.
The first institute of higher learning that functioned on the territory of Romania was Academia Vasiliană (1640), founded by Prince Vasile Lupu as a "Higher School for Latin and Slavonic Languages", followed by the Princely Academy, in 1707. The first high education structure in Romanian language was established in the autumn of 1813, when Gheorghe Asachi laid the foundations of a class of engineers, its activities taking place within the Greek Princely Academy.
After 1813, other moments marked the development of higher education in Romanian language, regarding both humanities and the technical science. Academia Mihăileană, founded in 1835 by Prince Mihail Sturdza, is considered the first Romanian superior institute. In 1860, three faculties part of the Academia Mihăileană formed the nucleus for the newly established University of Iași, the first Romanian modern university. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46007 |
Gary Numan
Gary Anthony James Webb (born 8 March 1958), better known as Gary Numan, is an English singer, musician, songwriter, composer, and record producer. He entered the music industry as the frontman of the new wave band Tubeway Army. After releasing two albums with the band, he released his debut solo album "The Pleasure Principle" in 1979, topping the UK Albums Chart. While his commercial popularity peaked in the late 1970s and early 1980s with the No. 1 singles "Are 'Friends' Electric?" and "Cars", he maintains a strong cult following.
Numan is considered a pioneer of electronic music, with his signature sound consisting of heavy synthesiser hooks fed through guitar effects pedals. He is also known for his distinctive voice and androgynous "android" persona. In 2017, he received an Ivor Novello Award, the Inspiration Award, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.
Numan was born Gary Anthony James Webb on 8 March 1958 in Hammersmith, London. His father was a British Airways bus driver based at Heathrow Airport. He was educated at Town Farm Junior School in Stanwell, Surrey; Ashford County Grammar School; and Slough Grammar School, followed by Brooklands Technical College in Weybridge, Surrey. He joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager and then briefly held various jobs including forklift truck driver, air conditioning ventilator fitter, and accounts clerk. When Numan was 15 years old, his father bought him a Gibson Les Paul, which became his most treasured possession. He played in various bands, including Mean Street and the Lasers, before forming Tubeway Army with his uncle, Jess Lidyard, and Paul Gardiner. His initial pseudonym was "Valerian", probably in reference to the hero in French science fiction comic series "Valérian and Laureline". He later picked the surname "Numan" from an advert in the Yellow pages for a plumber whose surname was "Neumann".
Numan came to prominence at the mid of the 1970s as lead singer, songwriter, and record producer for Tubeway Army. After recording an album's worth of punk-influenced demo tapes (released in 1984 as "The Plan"), he was signed by Beggars Banquet Records in 1978 and quickly released two singles, "That's Too Bad" and "Bombers", neither of which charted.
A self-titled, new wave-oriented debut album later that same year sold out its limited run and introduced Numan's fascination with dystopian science fiction and synthesisers. Tubeway Army's third single, the dark-themed and slow-paced "Down in the Park" (1979), and though it never appeared on the charts, it became one of Numan's most enduring and oft-covered songs. It was featured with other contemporary hits on the soundtrack for the 1980 film "Times Square", and a live version of the song can be seen in the 1982 film "Urgh! A Music War". Following exposure in a television advertisement for Lee Cooper jeans with the jingle "Don't Be a Dummy", Tubeway Army released the single "Are 'Friends' Electric?" in May 1979. After seven weeks the single climbed to No. 1 at the end of June; its parent album "Replicas" simultaneously reached No. 1.
A few months later Numan found success in the charts on both sides of the Atlantic with "Cars", which peaked at No. 1 in the UK in 1979, No. 1 in Canada and No. 9 in the U.S. in 1980. "Cars" and the 1979 album "The Pleasure Principle" were both released under Numan's own stage name. The album reached number-one in the UK, and a sell-out tour ("The Touring Principle") followed; the concert video it spawned is often cited as the first full-length commercial music video release. "The Pleasure Principle" was a rock album with no guitars; instead, Numan used synthesisers fed through guitar effects pedals to achieve a distorted, phased, metallic tone. A second single from the album, "Complex", made it to No. 6 on the UK Singles Chart.
In 1980, Numan topped the album charts for a third time with "Telekon", with the singles "We Are Glass", "" released prior to the album reaching No. 5 and No. 6. "This Wreckage" taken from the album in December also entered the Top 20. "Telekon", the final studio album that Numan retrospectively termed the "Machine" section of his career, reintroduced guitars to Numan's music and featured a wider range of synthesisers. The same year he embarked on his second major tour ("The Teletour") with an even more elaborate stage show than "the Touring Principle" the previous year. He announced his retirement from touring with a series of sell-out concerts at Wembley Arena in April 1981, supported by experimental musician Nash the Slash and Shock, a rock/mime/burlesque troupe whose members included Barbie Wilde, Tik and Tok, and Carole Caplin. A live two album set from the 1979 and 1980 tours released at this time reached No. 2 in the charts. Both albums, also individually released as "Living Ornaments '79" and "Living Ornaments '80" also charted. The decision to retire would be short-lived.
Departing from the pure electropop that he had been associated with, Numan began experimenting with jazz, funk, and ethereal, rhythmic pop. His first album after his 1981 farewell concerts was "Dance" (1981). The album charted as high as No. 3 on the UK charts, with an eight-week chart run and produced one hit single ("She's Got Claws") reaching No. 6. The album featured several distinguished guest players; Mick Karn (bass guitar; saxophone) and Rob Dean (guitar) of Japan, Roger Mason (keyboards) of Models, and Roger Taylor (drums) of Queen.
With his former backing band, Chris Payne (keyboards; viola), Russell Bell (guitar), and Ced Sharpley (drums) now reformed as Dramatis, Numan contributed vocals to the minor hit "Love Needs No Disguise" from the album "For Future Reference" and lent vocals to the first single release by his long-term bassist Paul Gardiner, "Stormtrooper in Drag", which also made the charts. However, Numan's career had begun to experience a gradual decline, and he was eclipsed initially by acts such as Adam Ant, and later by the Human League, Duran Duran, and Depeche Mode. Each album also saw a new "image", none of which captured the public's imagination to nearly the same extent as the lonely android of 1979.
The album "I, Assassin" (1982) fared less well than "Dance". Despite producing one Top 10 and two Top 20 singles, the album peaked at No. 8 with a six-week chart run.
"Warriors" (1983) further developed Numan's jazz-influenced style and featured contributions from avant-garde musician Bill Nelson (who fell out with Numan during recording and chose to be uncredited as the album's co-producer), and saxophonist Dick Morrissey (who would play on most of Numan's albums until 1991). The album peaked at No. 12, produced two hit singles including the Top 20 title-track and, like "I, Assassin", spent six weeks in the charts. "Warriors" was the last album Numan recorded for Beggars Banquet Records, and was supported by a 40-date UK tour (again with support from robotic mime and music duo Tik and Tok).
Numan subsequently issued a series of albums and singles on his own record label, Numa. The first album released on Numa, 1984's "Berserker" was also notable for being Numan's first foray into music computers/samplers, in this case the PPG Wave. The album was accompanied by a new blue-and-white visual image (including Numan himself with blue hair), a tour, a live album/video/EP, and the title track reached the UK Top 40 when released as a single. Despite this, the album divided critics and fans and commercially it was Numan's least successful release to that point.
Numan's next album, "The Fury" (1985), charted slightly higher than "Berserker" breaking the Top 30. Again, the album heralded a change of image, this time featuring Numan in a white suit and red bow tie. Four singles were released from the album, all reaching the UK Top 50.
Collaborations with Bill Sharpe of Shakatak as Sharpe & Numan helped little, though two singles that the duo recorded did see chart action: "Change Your Mind", reached No. 17 in 1985, and "No More Lies" reached No. 35 in 1988. In 1987, Numan performed vocals for three singles by Radio Heart, a project of brothers Hugh and David Nicholson, formerly of Marmalade and Blue, which charted with varying success ("Radio Heart" No. 35 UK, "London Times" No. 48, "All Across The Nation" #81). An album was also released, credited to "Radio Heart featuring Gary Numan" although Numan only appeared on three tracks, but failed to chart. Also in 1987, Numan's old label Beggars Banquet released the best-of compilation "Exhibition", which reached No. 43 on the UK albums chart, and a remix of "Cars". The remix, titled "Cars (E Reg Model)" charted at No. 16, Numan's final Top 20 hit until the 1996 rerelease of the same song. Numa Records, which had been launched in a flurry of idealistic excitement, folded after the release of Numan's 1986 album "Strange Charm", though the album did contain two Top 30 hits (Numan's highest singles chart placings since 1983). In addition to Numa Records' commercial failure, Numan's own fortune amassed since the late 1970s, which he estimated at £4.5 million, was drained. Numan then signed to I.R.S. Records though his final studio album of the 1980s, "Metal Rhythm" (1988), also sold relatively poorly. For its American release, the record label changed the album's title to "New Anger" after the album's lead single, changed the album colour from black to blue, and remixed several of its tracks against Numan's wishes. In 1989, the Sharpe & Numan album "Automatic" was released through Polydor Records, though this too failed to garner much commercial success, briefly entering the charts.
In 1991, Numan ventured into film-scoring by co-composing the music for "The Unborn" with Michael R. Smith (the score was later released as an instrumental album in 1995, "Human"). After "Outland" (1991), another critical and commercial disappointment and his second and last studio album with I.R.S., Numan reactivated Numa Records, under which he would release his next two albums. He supported Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (who had opened for him in 1979) on a 1993 arena tour. By 1994, Numan decided to stop attempting to crack the pop market and concentrate instead on exploring more personal themes, including his vocal atheism. His future wife Gemma encouraged him to strip away the influences of the more recent years. Numan re-evaluated his career and veered toward a harsher, more industrial direction with his songwriting on the album "Sacrifice"—for the first time he played almost all the instruments himself. The move was critically well-received, as Numan's harder and darker sound emerged just as Numan-influenced bands like Nine Inch Nails were enjoying their first rush of fame. The influence was two-way; Numan claimed that Nine Inch Nails' song "Closer" is his favourite hit single of all time, and influenced his music. "Sacrifice" was the last album Numan made before shutting down Numa Records permanently. His next two studio albums, "Exile" (1997) and "Pure" (2000), were well received and significantly helped to restore his critical reputation, as did a tribute album, "Random", released shortly before "Exile". that featured artists like Damon Albarn and Jesus Jones who had been influenced by Numan. Numan toured the U.S. in support of "Exile", his first stateside concerts since the early 1980s. Fear Factory produced a cover of "Cars" (featuring a prominent guest appearance by Numan himself) for the digipak version of their 1999 album, "Obsolete". Numan had become acknowledged and respected by his peers, with such musicians as Dave Grohl (of Foo Fighters and Nirvana), Trent Reznor (of Nine Inch Nails), and Marilyn Manson proclaiming his work an influence and recording cover versions of old Numan hits. The band Basement Jaxx had a huge hit in 2002 with "Where's Your Head At", which relied on a sample of Numan's "M.E."—from "The Pleasure Principle"—for its hook. Nine Inch Nails covered the song "Metal" on The Fragile remix album "Things Falling Apart" as did Afrika Bambaataa (with Numan himself) on the album "Dark Matter Moving at the Speed of Light". "Cars" remains Numan's most enduring song; it was a hit again in 1987 (remixed by Zeus B. Held) and 1996, in the latter case thanks to an appearance in an advert for Carling brewery. In 2000, DJ Armand Van Helden sampled the track and mixed it up in his single "Koochy" which conquered the dance floors. In 2002, English girl group the Sugababes scored a No. 1 with "Freak Like Me"—a mashup of Adina Howard's "Freak Like Me" and "Are "Friends" Electric?" by Numan's Tubeway Army.
In 2002, Numan enjoyed chart success once again with the single "Rip", reaching No. 29 on the UK Singles Chart and in 2003 with the Gary Numan vs Rico single "Crazier", which reached No. 13 in the UK chart. Rico also worked on the remix album "Hybrid" which featured reworkings of older songs in a more contemporary industrial style as well as new material. Other artists and producers who contributed on these remixes included Curve, Flood, Andy Gray, Alan Moulder, New Disease, and Sulpher. 2003 also saw Numan performing the vocals on a track named "Pray for You" on the Plump DJs album "Eargasm". In 2004, Numan took control of his own business affairs again, launching the label Mortal Records and releasing a series of live DVDs. On 13 March 2006, Numan's album, "Jagged", was released. An album launch gig took place at The Forum, London on 18 March followed by UK, European and U.S. tours in support of the release. Numan also launched a "Jagged" website to showcase the new album, and made plans to have his 1981 farewell concert (previously released as "Micromusic" on VHS) issued on DVD by November 2006 as well as releasing the DVD version of the "Jagged" album launch gig. Numan undertook a "Telekon" 'Classic Album' tour in the UK in December 2006.
Numan contributed vocals to four tracks on the April 2007 release of the debut solo album by Ade Fenton, "Artificial Perfect", on his new industrial/electronic label, Submission, including "The Leather Sea", "Slide Away", "Recall", and the first single to be taken from the album, "Healing". The second single to be released in the UK was "The Leather Sea" on 30 July 2007, which charted.
He sold out a 15-date UK & Ireland tour in spring 2008 during which he performed his 1979 number-one album "Replicas" in its entirety, and all the Replicas-era music including B-sides. The successful tour also raised Numan's profile in the media again due to the fact that it coincided with his 30th anniversary in the music business.
In November 2007, Numan confirmed via his website that work on a new album, with the working title of "Splinter", would be under way throughout 2008, after finishing an alternate version of "Jagged" (called "Jagged Edge") and the CD of unreleased songs from his previous three albums (confirmed to be titled "Dead Son Rising" on 1 December 2008 via official mailing list message). He wrote that "Splinter" was likely to be released in early 2010.
In a September 2009 interview with "The Quietus", Numan said that he and Trent Reznor planned to make music together.
Numan was set to perform a small number of American live dates in April 2010, including a Coachella Festival appearance in California, but had to cancel because air travel in Europe was halted by the Icelandic volcanic ash cloud. As a result, the tour was not only postponed but expanded, and his Pleasure Principle 30th Anniversary Tour's American and Mexican dates began on 17 October 2010, at Firestone Live in Orlando, Florida.
Numan toured Australia in May 2011 performing his seminal album The Pleasure Principle in its entirety to celebrate its thirtieth anniversary. Joining him on tour was Australian electronic band Severed Heads, coming out of retirement especially for the shows.
Numan lent his vocals to the track "My Machines" on Battles's 2011 album "Gloss Drop". He was chosen by Battles to perform at the ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival that they co-curated in December 2011 in Minehead, England. Numan's album "Dead Son Rising" was released on 16 September 2011 which had a full UK tour split in two halves, 15–21 September and 7–11 December, Both parts were supported by Welsh soloist Jayce Lewis in an interview during the tour; Numan praised Lewis for being the best supporting act ever in his 30 years of touring, later documenting the tour in a tour diary and publicly inviting Lewis to join him for an American tour in 2012.
Numan also provided narration for Aurelio Voltaire's short film "Odokuro" in 2011.
While working on a new album due for release in 2013, Numan said "The one I'm working on now which I'm trying to get out in the middle of next year. It's very heavy, very aggressive and very dark. There are elements of "Dead Son Rising" in that, but it's much further along that particular road."
The album "Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)", was released on 14 October 2013. It reached the UK Top 20, his first album to do so for 30 years. It was promoted by an extensive US, Canada, UK & Ireland tour which continued in 2014 to include Israel, New Zealand, Australia and Europe. A further US leg took place in late 2014.
In June 2014, Numan collaborated with Jayce Lewis and his Protafield project on the track "Redesign" featured on Protafield's "Nemesis" Album.
Numan also provided vocals for the song "Long Way Down" composed by Masafumi Takada and Rich Dickerson for the video game "The Evil Within". The game was released on 14 October 2014. Numan performed a sold-out, one-off live show in London in November 2014 at the Hammersmith Apollo supported by Gang of Four.
On 29 April 2015, Numan announced via his Facebook page that he had begun writing songs for the follow-up album to "Splinter (Songs from a Broken Mind)".
Numan collaborated with the industrial pop group VOWWS for "Losing Myself in You" on their debut album "The Great Sun".
On 6 May 2016, Numan was one of several collaborators on Jean-Michel Jarre's album "", with the track "Here for You", cowritten by Jarre and Numan.
On 10 May 2016, Numan was named the recipient of the 2016 Moog Innovation Award by Moog Music. On 18 May 2017, Numan was awarded an Ivor Novello for Inspiration award in London.
In 2017, Numan released the single "My Name Is Ruin" and went on a European tour September. Numan's album "Savage (Songs from a Broken World)" was released on 15 September and charted at number two in the UK. He was the winner of the 2017 T3 tech legends award.
In 2017 he received an Ivor Novello Award, the Inspiration Award, from the British Academy of Songwriters, Composers, and Authors.
On 24 September 2018, Numan's tour bus hit and killed an elderly man in Cleveland, Ohio, US. The driver was not immediately charged. Numan was scheduled to appear at the Cleveland House of Blues that evening but cancelled the show for being "inappropriate" in light of the day's tragedy. Numan posted on Twitter later in the day, saying, "We are all utterly devastated by the fatal accident involving our tour bus in Cleveland earlier today. Everyone of us is filled with a sadness that made it impossible to even consider playing our show this evening, and out of respect it would have been entirely wrong. I'm sure you can understand why we cancelled and I apologize to the House of Blues and to the fans for any difficulties or disappointment this decision may have caused. All tickets will be honored at the point of purchase. At the moment all we can think about are the people affected by this terrible tragedy and to them we send all our love."
On 2 May 2019, Numan announced the working title of his next album as "Intruder", due for release in 2020.
Numan joined the Air Training Corps as a teenager, when he wanted to be either a pilot or a pop star. In 1978 he started learning to fly at Blackbushe, but the success of his music career in 1979 meant that obtaining his Private Pilot's Licence was delayed until 17 December 1980. The following day; 18 December 1980, Numan bought his first aeroplane for £12,000; a Cessna 182. On 1 July 1981 Numan founded Numanair, a small charter flight company operating from Blackbushe, and acquired a Cessna 210 Centurion (registered G-OILS) and a Piper Navajo (registered G-NMAN). He also indulged his passion for motor racing in 1981 by sponsoring Mike Mackonochie who drove a Van Diemen RF81 in Numanair livery in the Formula Ford 1600 class.
In November and December 1981 Numan successfully flew around the world in his Piper Navajo with co-pilot Bob Thompson on their second attempt. The first attempt, in the Cessna 210 Centurion, had ended in India with Numan and Thompson being arrested on suspicion of smuggling and spying. This aircraft was written off on 29 January 1982 when it ran out of fuel near Southampton and made a forced landing with Numan at the controls.
In 1984 Numan bought a Harvard trainer registered G-AZSC and had the aircraft painted to resemble a Japanese Zero fighter. He also gained a display pilot's licence and flew the machine on the UK air display circuit. He and friend Norman Lees, who also owned a Harvard, formed the Radial Pair, performing synchronised aerobatics from the 1992 air display season. Later they teamed up with other Harvard owners to fly up to five aircraft as The Harvard Formation Team with Numan choreographing their aerobatic routines for several seasons.
Numan held licences for piston and turbine helicopters and had a fixed wing multi engined rating. He was an aerobatic flying instructor and was appointed by the Civil Aviation Authority as an air display pilot evaluator. Then in 2005, after several of his friends and colleagues were killed in unrelated flying accidents, he gave up flying. In an interview in 2009 he said "I loved going to air shows, you'd bond really tightly with your team mates - it's an extreme thing to be doing, and you trust our life to them. And then it ended. I'd turn up and not know anyone. It got depressing. I'd sit down in the pilot's tent and there'd be all these people I'd not recognise. You'd look forward to someone turning up to have a chat with them, and they'd be dead."
Numanair continued operating but after 31 years, with Numan and his family emigrating to the US, it was dissolved on 18 June 2013.
In the late 1970s, Numan began developing his style. According to Numan, this was an unintentional result of acne; before an appearance on "Top of the Pops", "I had spots everywhere, so they slapped about half an inch of white make-up on me before I'd even walked in the door. And my eyes were like pissholes in the snow, so they put black on there. My so-called image fell into place an hour before going on the show." His "wooden" stage presence was, in his words, a result of extreme self-consciousness and lack of "showmanship" and often referred to as being "like an android". During this period, Numan generated an army of fans calling themselves "Numanoids", providing him with a fanbase which maintained their support through the latter half of the 1980s, when his fortunes began to fall. He later said that he "got really hung up with this whole thing of not feeling, being cold about everything, not letting emotions get to you, or presenting a front of not feeling".
Numan has been credited as a key influence by fellow British musician Kim Wilde as she was working on her debut single "Kids in America" with her brother Ricky. Curt Smith and Roland Orzabal of Tears for Fears, another New Wave act of the 1980s, cited Numan's style as one that inspired them while recording their debut album "The Hurting".
Numan is an atheist. He was an outspoken supporter of the Conservative Party and Margaret Thatcher after her election as Prime Minister. He later expressed regret for giving his public support, calling it "a noose around my neck". He has previously said that he considers himself neither left- nor right-wing and that he does not support Tony Blair or David Cameron. He also said, "I'm not socialist, I know that. I don't believe in sharing my money."
In 1997, Numan married Gemma O'Neill, a member of his fan club from Sidcup. They have three daughters named Raven, Persia, and Echo. They briefly appeared in the music video for his 2013 song "Love Hurt Bleed". Persia, at the age of 11, contributed vocals to Numan's 2017 song "My Name Is Ruin" and appeared in its video. Numan and his family lived in Essex, then Heathfield and Waldron, and finally moving in October 2012 to Santa Monica, California.
At age 15, after a series of outbursts in which he would "smash things up, scream and shout, get in people's faces and break stuff", Numan was prescribed antidepressants and anxiolytics. In the 1990s, his wife suggested he had Asperger syndrome; after reading about the syndrome and taking a series of online tests, he agreed, though at the time he said he had not been officially diagnosed. Conversely, he said in an April 2018 interview with "The Guardian" that he had been diagnosed with Asperger syndrome at the age of 14. In a 2001 interview, he said, "Polite conversation has never been one of my strong points. Just recently I actually found out that I'd got a mild form of Asperger's syndrome which basically means I have trouble interacting with people. For years, I couldn't understand why people thought I was arrogant, but now it all makes more sense."
Numan published his autobiography, "Praying to the Aliens", in 1997 (updated in 1998), in collaboration with Steve Malins, who also wrote the liner notes for most of the CD reissues of Numan's albums in the late 1990s, as well as executive producing the "Hybrid" album in 2003.
Following the alleged harassment of his wife while his family was walking down a high street in his local area, and his feelings following the 2011 London riots, Numan filed papers to emigrate to the US, saying: "Every village and town in England has a bunch of thugs running around in it. The riots were the nail in the coffin." However, in a September 2011 Q&A on his website, in answer to the question, "Is it true you now hate England and want to leave?" he replied, "No, that's utter rubbish." He stated that he had "never been abused in my local high street" and has "made no firm decision about leaving the UK" but that thugs are helping make such a decision, pointing out that the rioting "makes us look like a country of ignorant savages, beating up people already injured, pretending to help while stealing their things, hitting old men, killing them". He went on to explain that soundtracks may be a logical next career step as he gets older, and that a move to the U.S. might be more reasonable since "in the UK we have no meaningful film industry to speak of". He concluded by saying that his family are highest priority and that "if I see somewhere that seems safer, happier, and will give them a better life than the UK, I'll take them there if I possibly can". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46014 |
Psion Organiser
The Psion Organiser was the brand name of a range of pocket computers developed by the British company Psion in the 1980s. The Organiser I (launched in 1984) and Organiser II (launched in 1986) had a characteristic hard plastic sliding cover protecting a 6×6 keyboard with letters arranged alphabetically.
The Organiser II competed with the Filofax and can be considered the first usable Electronic organizer, or Personal digital assistant (PDA) in that it combined an electronic diary and searchable address database in a small, portable device.
Production of consumer hand-held devices by Psion has now ceased; the company, after corporate changes, now concentrates on hardware and software for industrial and commercial data-collection applications.
On an episode of "The Gadget Show" (first aired on 30 March 2009), the Psion was pitted against the BlackBerry for a place on the show's Hall of Fame. Whilst the Psion was highly praised as a device that pioneered portable computing, the accolade was ultimately given (by host Jon Bentley) to the BlackBerry.
As of autumn 2017 several software features and hardware devices are still being developed and are available including a Javascript Emulator, Parallel Interface, USB Commslink, 32k and 256k RamPaks, and 512k FlashPak.
Launched in 1984, the Psion Organiser was the "world's first practical pocket computer". Based on an 8-bit Hitachi 6301-family processor, running at 0.9 MHz, with 4 kB of ROM and 2 kB of static RAM and had a single-row monochrome LCD screen. The size with the case closed is 142 × 78 × 29.3 mm, and the mass is 225 grams.
"BYTE"s reviewer described the Organiser's software as a "clever design ... for fast and foolproof use". He approved of the consistent user interface across applications and reported that without documentation he was able to figure out how to do everything except program in 15 minutes. The machine provided a simple flat-file database, calculator and clock, and had no operating system. The Organiser I supported removable storage write-once devices, which used EPROM storage. The machine could host two of these so-called DATAPAKs (or simply PAKs), to which it could write data, but which needed to be removed from the machine and erased by being exposed to ultraviolet light before they could be re-used. As Psion had patented the use of EPROMS as storage device, it was impossible for other device manufacturers to copy this unusual approach to mobile storage.
Software supplied on DATAPAK included a crude programming language called POPL, in which end-users could write their own programs. Software DATAPAKs titled Science, Maths and Finance contained the POPL programming language editor, interpreter and runtime and extended the built-in calculator by adding named functions. These DATAPAKs also contained different sets of application programs written in the POPL language.
A far more sophisticated programming tool was later made available with the implementation of the Forth programming language, but was available to registered professional developers rather than end users. The Psion Forth Development System for the Organiser I was a powerful set of IBM PC-based cross-development tools for producing Forth application programs, including a Forth compiler. The Forth system on the Organiser I itself had a compiler to intermediate code, interpreter and runtime, and had a number of unusual design features one being that it could interpret – that is, read and execute – Forth intermediate code directly in place on a DATAPAK, rather than needing to copy it into precious RAM first, despite the DATAPAKs not being execute-in-place memory-mapped.
Software developed by Psion as part of the Organiser I project and application software after its launch was written in 6301 assembler language, in POPL, and in other custom-designed languages. Assembler language development at Psion itself was carried out using cross-development tools, including a cross assembler and linker, all of which ran on a DEC VAX.
Application developers writing in 6301 assembler struggled with the small amount of RAM (2 kB) and the lack of an operating system. Another difficulty for developers was with the performance limitations of the earliest DATAPAKs, which used a serial-access internal architecture, as opposed to random access. Retrieving, for example, byte 2000 from a DATAPAK meant issuing successive hardware commands to either step from the current read position one address place at time until position 2000 was reached or, in the worst case, resetting the read position to zero and then issuing a step-forward command 2000 times.
The Hitachi 6301 processor is an enhanced development based on the Motorola 6801 implemented in CMOS, with a number of extra instructions, various hardware system-on-single chip facilities on-chip, power management and support for a sleep state. The particular variant chosen also had 4 KiB of masked ROM on-chip, so an external ROM was not needed on the board.
Having fully static RAM and a processor whose clock could be frozen without losing state meant spectacular battery life, measured in weeks or even months. Minimal battery consumption was aided by the processor being frozen whenever there was no work to do, plus a deeper sleep mode, which turned off the display.
The machine lacked a full independently battery-backed, date-time real-time hardware clock, instead it had a simple hardware counter. While the machine was sleeping, the counter counted 1024 seconds and then woke the machine very briefly, so that software could add 1024 seconds to a record of the time held in RAM. This meant that when sleeping the machine woke very fleetingly every 17 min 4 s.
The original 1984 price was 99 GBP or 199 CAD and included one Datapak and one software DATAPAK, the "Utility" pack. This latter adds scientific and trigonometric functions to the otherwise basic calculator routines.
In 1986, the successful Organiser II introduced a number of hardware improvements, a better keyboard and display, a much larger ROM and either 8 KiB or 16 KiB of battery-backed RAM, and featured a capable newly designed single-tasking operating system. The first Organiser II models featured a two-line display. The new model supported a number of different types of improved DATAPAKs, containing either EPROM or battery-backed RAM storage, each storing between 8 KiB and 128 KiB of data. Later flashpaks (EEPROM) and RAMpaks were added to the range, capable of storing up to 256 KiB on each extension slot.
The machine had vastly more application functionality, including a number of built-in application programs, an easy-to-use database, a diary and an alarm clock and featured end-user programmability in the form of the successful Organiser Programming Language (OPL), a BASIC-like language, which was compiled to intermediate code, in contrast to the interpreters, which were commonly available for other consumer computers of the time. More advanced users could reach into the system machine-code routines, either by direct machine code or by calls from OPL, and could manipulate the built-in address database, as well as create their own.
The Organiser II was widely used for commercial applications in companies such as Marks and Spencer, where it was used on the shop floor, with their branding as opposed to PSION's and with only limited keys visible to the end user. It was also used in the world's first large-scale application of mobile technology in government, where over 3000 were used for benefit calculations by the Employment Services department of the UK government.
The Organiser II also had an external device slot, into which various plug-in modules could be fitted, including a device that provided an RS232 port (called "CommsLink"), thus enabling it to communicate with other devices or computers. This "top slot" also supported various other hardware additions, such as telephone dialers, a speech synthesiser, barcode reader and even a dedicated thermal printer. This latter was used by several banks as a counter-top exchange-rate calculator for some years. As it was easy to get hardware specifications, numerous bespoke devices were developed by small companies such as A/D converters and even an interface to the entire range of Mitutoyo measuring equipment, allowing it to be used in quality control for various car manufacturers. Later models in the Organiser II range offered other hardware improvements, with 4-line displays, and also models were introduced with 32, 64 and 96 KiB RAM.
The name "Organiser" was not used for later Psion handhelds, such as the "SIBO" family Psion MC400 laptop, the Psion Series 3 and the 32-bit Psion Series 5 machines, which were of a clamshell design with a QWERTY keyboard. In terms of hardware architecture and operating system, these had no links to the earlier "Organiser" range, other than the end-user programming language, which shared a great deal of structure with OPL.
The "SIBO" family name stood for "SIxteen-Bit Organiser", and the improved version of the OPL language (with window and focus controls) was replaced in 1997 by a new ARM-based operating system EPOC33 written in C++; the latter was later sold as the Symbian operating system, which until 2010 was the most widely used OS in smartphones, being in 2011 displaced by Google's Android OS. This change was more significant than appeared at the time. The still shares features with OPL, but the developer toolkits were from then on focused on programmers familiar with C and only the Symbian operating system remains.
The first similar device made in the USA didn't appear until 1985 and was manufactured by Validec. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46015 |
Psion (company)
Psion was a designer and manufacturer of mobile handheld computers for commercial and industrial applications. The company was headquartered in London, England with major operations in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada and additional company offices in Europe, the United States, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. It was a public company listed on the London Stock Exchange () and was once a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index.
Psion's operational business was formed in September 2000 from a merger of Psion and Canadian-based Teklogix Inc. and was a global provider of solutions for mobile computing and wireless data collection. The Group's products and services include rugged mobile hardware, secure wireless networks, robust software, professional services and support programs. Psion works with its clients in the area of new and emerging technologies including image capture, voice recognition and RFID. Psion has customers in more than 80 countries around the world, as well as operations in 14 countries.
Formed in 1980, Psion achieved its first successes as a consumer hardware company that developed the revolutionary Psion Organiser as well as a whole range of more advanced, clamshell-design Personal Digital Assistants. Psion closed, or disposed of, all its previous operations and is now focused on rugged mobile computing solutions. It withdrew from the consumer devices marketplace in 2001. It was announced on 15 June 2012 that Motorola Solutions had agreed to buy the company for $200 million.
Psion was established in 1980 as a software house with a close relationship with Sinclair Research. The company developed games and other software for the ZX81 and ZX Spectrum home computers, released under the Sinclair/Psion brand. Psion's games for the ZX Spectrum included "Chess", "Chequered Flag", "Flight Simulation" and the "Horace" series.
Early software releases for the ZX Spectrum included titles such as VU-Calc, VU-File and VU-3D along with dozens of other titles.
The company name is an acronym standing for "Potter Scientific Instruments", after the company's founder, David Potter. The acronym PSI was already in use elsewhere in the world so "ON" was added to make the name PSION unique. David Potter remained managing director until 1999 and was chairman of the company until late 2009.
In early 1983, Sinclair approached Psion regarding the development of a suite of office applications for the forthcoming Sinclair QL personal computer. Psion were already working on a project in this area and the QL was launched in 1984, bundled with "Quill", "Archive", "Abacus" and "Easel"; respectively a word processor, database, spreadsheet and business graphics application. These were later ported to MS-DOS, collectively called "PC-Four", or "Xchange" in an enhanced version.
1984 also marked Psion's first foray into hardware; the Psion Organiser, an early handheld computer, in appearance resembling a pocket calculator with an alphanumeric keyboard. In 1986, the vastly improved Psion Organiser II was released, and was assembled by Speedboard Assembly Services. Its success led the company into a decade long period of "Psion" Computer and operating system development. It included a simple-to-use database programming language, OPL, which sparked a large independent software market. In 1987, Psion began development of its "SIBO" ("SIxteen Bit Organiser") family of devices and its own new multitasking operating system called EPOC to run its third generation product, Laptops (MC), industrial handhelds (HC and Workabout) and PDA (Series 3) products. It is often rumoured that EPOC stands for "Electronic Piece Of Cheese" however Colly Myers, who was Symbian's CEO from founding until 2002, said in an interview that it stood for 'epoch' and nothing more. This development effort produced the clamshell QWERTY-based Psion Series 3 palmtops (1993–98), which sold in the hundreds of thousands, and the Psion MC-series laptops, which sold poorly compared to the DOS-based laptops of the era.
A second effort, dubbed Project Protea, produced the Psion Series 5 for sale in 1997, a completely new product from the 32-bit hardware upwards through the OS, UI, and applications. It is still remembered for its high quality keyboard which, despite its size, allowed for touch-typing. However, the new feel of the product, and the removal of certain familiar quirks, alienated loyal Series 3 users, who tended to stick with their PDAs rather than upgrade. In 1999, Psion released the Psion Series 7, which was much like a larger version of the Series 5, but with a double-size VGA-resolution screen that featured 256 colours (the Series 5 had a half-VGA screen with 16 grey shades). It was followed by the very similar Psion netBook.
Psion was being challenged by the arrival of cheaper PDAs such as the Palm Pilot, and PocketPCs running Microsoft's Windows CE, and in 2003, Psion released a Netbook Pro running Windows CE .NET 4.2 instead of EPOC.
The 32-bit EPOC developed by Project Protea resulted in the eventual formation of Symbian Ltd. in June 1998 in conjunction with Nokia, Ericsson and Motorola. The OS was renamed the Symbian Operating System and was envisioned as the base for a new range of smartphones. Psion gave 130 key staff to the new company and retained a 31% shareholding in the spun-out business. The Symbian operating system powered around 125 million mobile phones such as the Sony Ericsson P900 series.
The development of new and updated products by Psion slowed after the Symbian spin-off. Other products failed or had limited success — a Psion Siemens' GSM device, a Series 5 based STB, the Wavefinder DAB radio, an attempt to add Dragon's speech recognition software to a PDA, Ericsson cancelled a Series 5MX derived smartphone project in 2001.
Psion had sold its sole manufacturing plant in 1999 and started to withdraw from its PDA markets in late 2001, shedding 250 of 1,200 staff and writing-off £40 million. The PDA, which was once a niche market, had become a global horizontal marketplace where it was difficult for Psion to compete. The final blow for Psion's Organiser and PDA business came in January 2001 when Motorola pulled out of a joint project with Psion, Samsung, and Parthus, to create "Odin", an ARM-based PDA-phone.
In 2000, Psion acquired Teklogix in Canada for £240 million, and merged its business-to-business division, Psion Enterprise, with the newly acquired company. Teklogix was re-branded Psion Teklogix. This division now forms the core of Psion Plc's business.
In 2002, Psion created a new division called Psion Software. This business developed push email solutions for Symbian smartphones, Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes. This business was sold to Visto (USA) in 2003.
In 2004, Psion announced its intention to dispose of the company's remaining Symbian shareholding to Nokia, as they no longer regarded it as a core part of their strategy.
Psion intends to tailor and customize modular variants of its products through its online community, Ingenuity Working. Launched in March 2010, Ingenuity Working had more than 35,000 visitors per month within its first six months.
In January 2011, the company refreshed its corporate identity and developed a new logo, which it describes as an icon. It claims it did this to "demonstrate its new business model in action and to signal that it is no longer a consumer products company, which was symbolized by the old Psion logo".
At the same time it removed Teklogix from its operating company name to create a "clear, unifying, global identity".
Psion registered the trademark "NETBOOK" in various territories, including European Union and , which was applied for on 18 December 1996 and registered by USPTO on 21 November 2000. They used this trademark for the Psion netBook product, discontinued in November 2003, and from October 2003, the NETBOOK PRO, later also discontinued.
Intel started using the term "netbook" in March 2008 as a generic term to describe "small laptops that are designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet", believing they were "not offering a branded line of computers here" and "see no naming conflict".
In response to the growing use of the term, on 23 December 2008 Psion Teklogix sent cease and desist letters to various parties including enthusiast website(s) demanding they no longer use the term ""netbook"".
In early 2009, Intel sued Psion Teklogix (US & Canada) and Psion (UK) in the Federal Court, seeking a cancellation of the trademark and an order enjoining Psion from asserting any trademark rights in the term "netbook", a declarative judgement regarding their use of the term, attorneys' fees, costs and disbursements and "such other and further relief as the Court deems just and proper". The suit was settled out of court, and on June 2, 2009 Psion announced that the company was withdrawing all of its trademark registrations for the term "Netbook" and that Psion agreed to "waive all its rights against third parties in respect of past, current or future use" of the term.
Similar marks were rejected by the USPTO citing a "likelihood of confusion" under section 2(d), including 'G NETBOOK' ( rejected 31 October 2008), MSI's 'WIND NETBOOK' () and Coby Electronics' 'COBY NETBOOK' ( rejected 13 January 2009)
Psion PLC had a lengthy, but distant, interest in Linux as an operating system on its electronic devices. In 1998, it supported the Linux7K project that had been initiated by Ed Bailey at Red Hat, which was to port Linux to its Series 5 personal computer. The project was named after the
Cirrus Logic PS-7110 chip of the Series 5. Although this project was one of the earliest attempts to port Linux to a handheld computer, it did not come to fruition for Psion. The project soon transitioned to an informal open source project at Calcaria.net that kept the name Linux7K. After the project transitioned again to sourceforge.net, the project's name was changed to a more general name "PsiLinux", and more recently to "OpenPsion". The project has developed Linux kernels and filesystems for the Revo, Series 5 and 5MX, and Series 7 and netBook.
In 2003–4, Psion Teklogix and its founder David Potter expressed interest in Linux as the operating system for its devices as it divested from Symbian. However, the only result of that interest was Linux as the operating system on a limited number of custom NetBook Pros designed for a hospital setting.
The Embeddable Linux Kernel Subset project has produced a small subset of Linux that runs on Psion Series 3 PDAs.
All these PDAs except the Psion netpad have a small keyboard, which excepting the Organiser, HC and Workabout was of the standard QWERTY layout, or a regional variation thereof. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46016 |
Speaker of the United States House of Representatives
The Speaker of the United States House of Representatives is the presiding officer of the United States House of Representatives. The office was established in 1789 by of the U.S. Constitution. The speaker is the political and parliamentary leader of the House of Representatives, and is simultaneously the House's presiding officer, "de facto" leader of the body's majority party, and the institution's administrative head. Speakers also perform various other administrative and procedural functions. Given these several roles and responsibilities, the speaker usually does not personally preside over debates. That duty is instead delegated to members of the House from the majority party. Neither does the speaker regularly participate in floor debates.
The Constitution does not require the speaker to be an incumbent member of the House of Representatives, although every speaker thus far has been. The speaker is second in the United States presidential line of succession, after the vice president and ahead of the president "pro tempore" of the Senate.
The current House speaker, Democrat Nancy Pelosi of California, was elected to the office on January 3, 2019. Pelosi previously served as speaker from January 4, 2007, to January 3, 2011. She has the distinction of being the first woman to serve as speaker, and is also the first former speaker to be returned to office since Sam Rayburn in 1955.
The House elects its speaker at the beginning of a new Congress (i.e. , after a general election) or when a speaker dies, resigns or is removed from the position intra-term. Since 1839, the House has elected speakers by roll call vote. Traditionally, each party's caucus or conference selects a candidate for the speakership from among its senior leaders prior to the roll call. Representatives are not restricted to voting for the candidate nominated by their party, but generally do, as the outcome of the election effectively determines which party has the majority and consequently will organize the House. As the Constitution does not explicitly state that the speaker must be an incumbent member of the House, it is permissible for representatives to vote for someone who is not a member of the House at the time, and non-members have received a few votes in various speaker elections over the past several years. Every person elected speaker has been a member.
Representatives that choose to vote for someone other than their party's nominated candidate usually vote for someone else in their party or vote "present". Anyone who votes for the other party's candidate would face serious consequences, as was the case when Democrat Jim Traficant voted for Republican Dennis Hastert in 2001 (107th Congress). In response, the Democrats stripped him of his seniority and he lost all of his committee posts.
To be elected speaker, a candidate must receive an absolute majority of the votes cast, as opposed to an absolute majority of the full membership of the Housepresently 218 votes, in a House of 435. There have only been a few instances during the past century where a person received a majority of the votes cast, and thus won the election, while failing to obtain a majority of the full membership. It happened most recently in 2015 (114th Congress), when John Boehner was elected with 216 votes (as opposed to 218). Such a variation in the number of votes necessary to win a given election might arise due to vacancies, absentees, or members being present but not voting. If no candidate wins a majority of the "votes cast for a person by name", then the roll call is repeated until a speaker is elected. Multiple roll calls have been necessary only 14 times (out of 126 speakership elections) since 1789; and not since 1923 (68th Congress), when a closely divided House needed nine ballots to elect Frederick H. Gillett speaker. Upon winning election the new speaker is immediately sworn in by the dean of the United States House of Representatives, the chamber's longest-serving member.
The first speaker of the House, Frederick Muhlenberg of Pennsylvania, was elected to office on April 1, 1789, the day the House organized itself at the start of the 1st Congress. He served two non-consecutive terms in the speaker's chair, 1789–1791 (1st Congress) and 1793–1795 (3rd Congress).
As the Constitution does not state the duties of the speaker, the speaker's role has largely been shaped by traditions and customs that evolved over time. A partisan position from early in its existence, the speakership began to gain power in legislative development under Henry Clay (1811–1814, 1815–1820, and 1823–1825). In contrast to many of his predecessors, Clay participated in several debates, and used his influence to procure the passage of measures he supported—for instance, the declaration of the War of 1812, and various laws relating to Clay's "American System" economic plan. Furthermore, when no candidate received an Electoral College majority in the 1824 presidential election, causing the president to be elected by the House, Speaker Clay threw his support to John Quincy Adams instead of Andrew Jackson, thereby ensuring Adams' victory. Following Clay's retirement in 1825, the power of the speakership once again began to decline, despite speakership elections becoming increasingly bitter. As the Civil War approached, several sectional factions nominated their own candidates, often making it difficult for any candidate to attain a majority. In 1855 and again in 1859, for example, the contest for speaker lasted for two months before the House achieved a result. Speakers tended to have very short tenures during this period. For example, from 1839 to 1863 there were eleven speakers, only one of whom served for more than one term. To date, James K. Polk is the only speaker of the House who was later elected president of the United States.
Towards the end of the 19th century, the office of speaker began to develop into a very powerful one. At the time, one of the most important sources of the speaker's power was his position as Chairman of the Committee on Rules, which, after the reorganization of the committee system in 1880, became one of the most powerful standing committees of the House. Furthermore, several speakers became leading figures in their political parties; examples include Democrats Samuel J. Randall, John Griffin Carlisle, and Charles F. Crisp, and Republicans James G. Blaine, Thomas Brackett Reed, and Joseph Gurney Cannon.
The power of the speaker was greatly augmented during the tenure of the Republican Thomas Brackett Reed (1889–1891, 1895–1899). "Czar Reed", as he was called by his opponents, sought to end the obstruction of bills by the minority, in particular by countering the tactic known as the "disappearing quorum". By refusing to vote on a motion, the minority could ensure that a quorum would not be achieved, and that the result would be invalid. Reed, however, declared that members who were in the chamber but refused to vote would still count for the purposes of determining a quorum. Through these and other rulings, Reed ensured that the Democrats could not block the Republican agenda.
The speakership reached its apogee during the term of Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon (1903–1911). Cannon exercised extraordinary control over the legislative process. He determined the agenda of the House, appointed the members of all committees, chose committee chairmen, headed the Rules Committee, and determined which committee heard each bill. He vigorously used his powers to ensure that Republican proposals were passed by the House. In 1910, however, Democrats and several dissatisfied Republicans joined together to strip Cannon of many of his powers, including the ability to name committee members and his chairmanship of the Rules Committee. Fifteen years later, Speaker Nicholas Longworth restored much, but not all, of the lost influence of the position.
One of the most influential speakers in history was Democrat Sam Rayburn. Rayburn had the most cumulative time as speaker in history, holding office from 1940 to 1947, 1949 to 1953, and 1955 to 1961. He helped shape many bills, working quietly in the background with House committees. He also helped ensure the passage of several domestic measures and foreign assistance programs advocated by Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Rayburn's successor, Democrat John W. McCormack (served 1962–1971), was a somewhat less influential speaker, particularly because of dissent from younger members of the Democratic Party. During the mid-1970s, the power of the speakership once again grew under Democrat Carl Albert. The Committee on Rules ceased to be a semi-independent panel, as it had been since 1910. Instead, it once again became an arm of the party leadership. Moreover, in 1975, the speaker was granted the authority to appoint a majority of the members of the Rules Committee. Meanwhile, the power of committee chairmen was curtailed, further increasing the relative influence of the speaker.
Albert's successor, Democrat Tip O'Neill, was a prominent speaker because of his public opposition to the policies of President Ronald Reagan. O'Neill is the longest continually serving speaker, from 1977 through 1987. He challenged Reagan on domestic programs and on defense expenditures. Republicans made O'Neill the target of their election campaigns in 1980 and 1982 but Democrats managed to retain their majorities in both years.
The roles of the parties reversed in 1994 when, after spending forty years in the minority, the Republicans regained control of the House with the "Contract with America", an idea spearheaded by Minority Whip Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich would regularly clash with Democratic President Bill Clinton, leading to the United States federal government shutdown of 1995 and 1996, in which Clinton was largely seen to have prevailed. Gingrich's hold on the leadership was weakened significantly by that and several other controversies, and he faced a caucus revolt in 1997. After the Republicans lost House seats in 1998 (although retaining a majority) he did not stand for a third term as speaker. His successor, Dennis Hastert, had been chosen as a compromise candidate, since the other Republicans in the leadership were more controversial. Hastert played a much less prominent role than other contemporary speakers, being overshadowed by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay and President George W. Bush. The Republicans came out of the 2000 elections with a further reduced majority but made small gains in 2002 and 2004. The periods of 2001–2002 and 2003–2007 were the first times since 1953–1955 that there was single-party Republican leadership in Washington, interrupted from 2001–2003 as Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont left the Republican Party to become independent and caucused with Senate Democrats to give them a 51–49 majority.
In the 2006 midterm elections, the Democrats won a majority in the House. Nancy Pelosi became speaker when the 110th Congress convened on January 4, 2007, making her the first woman to hold the office. With the election of Barack Obama as president and Democratic gains in both houses of Congress, Pelosi became the first speaker since Tom Foley to hold the office during single-party Democratic leadership in Washington. During the 111th Congress, Pelosi was the driving force behind several of Obama's major initiatives that proved controversial, and the Republicans campaigned against the Democrats' legislation by staging a "Fire Pelosi" bus tour and regained control of the House in the 2010 midterm elections.
John Boehner was elected speaker when the 112th Congress convened on January 5, 2011, and was subsequently re-elected twice, at the start of the 113th and 114th Congresses. On both of those occasions his remaining in office was threatened by the defection of several members from his own party who chose not to vote for him. Boehner's tenure as speaker, which ended when he resigned from Congress in October 2015, was marked by multiple battles with the conservatives in his own party related to "Obama Care," appropriations, among other political issues. This intra-party discord continued under Boehner's successor, Paul Ryan.
Following the 2018 Congressional midterm elections which saw the election of a Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi was elected Speaker when the 116th Congress convened on January 3, 2019. When Republican leader John Boehner succeeded her as Speaker in 2011, Pelosi remained the leader of the Democratic Party in the House of Representatives and served as House minority leader for eight years before she led her party to victory in the 2018 elections. In addition to being the first woman to hold the office, Pelosi became the first Speaker to return to power since Sam Rayburn in the 1950s.
Historically, there have been several controversial elections to the speakership, such as the contest of 1839. In that case, even though the 26th United States Congress convened on December 2, the House could not begin the speakership election until December 14 because of an election dispute in New Jersey known as the "Broad Seal War". Two rival delegations, one Whig and the other Democrat, had been certified as elected by different branches of the New Jersey government. The problem was compounded by the fact that the result of the dispute would determine whether the Whigs or the Democrats held the majority. Neither party agreed to permit a speakership election with the opposite party's delegation participating. Finally, it was agreed to exclude both delegations from the election and a speaker was finally chosen on December 17.
Another, more prolonged fight occurred in 1855 in the 34th United States Congress. The old Whig Party had collapsed but no single party had emerged to replace it. Candidates opposing the Democrats had run under a bewildering variety of labels, including Whig, Republican, American (Know Nothing), and simply "Opposition". By the time Congress actually met in December 1855, most of the northerners were concentrated together as Republicans, while most of the southerners and a few northerners used the American or Know Nothing label. Opponents of the Democrats held a majority in House, with the party makeup of the 234 representatives being 83 Democrats, 108 Republicans, and 43 Know Nothings (primarily southern oppositionists). The Democratic minority nominated William Alexander Richardson of Illinois as speaker, but because of sectional distrust, the various oppositionists were unable to agree on a single candidate for speaker. The Republicans supported Nathaniel Prentice Banks of Massachusetts, who had been elected as a Know Nothing but was now largely identified with the Republicans. The southern Know Nothings supported first Humphrey Marshall of Kentucky, and then Henry M. Fuller of Pennsylvania. The voting went on for almost two months with no candidate able to secure a majority, until it was finally agreed to elect the speaker by plurality vote, and Banks was elected. The House found itself in a similar dilemma when the 36th Congress met in December 1859. Although the Republicans held a plurality, the Republican candidate, John Sherman, was unacceptable to southern oppositionists due to his anti-slavery views, and once again the House was unable to elect a speaker. After Democrats allied with southern oppositionists to nearly elect the North Carolina oppositionist William N. H. Smith, Sherman finally withdrew in favor of compromise candidate William Pennington of New Jersey, a former Whig of unclear partisan loyalties, who was finally elected speaker on February 1, 1860.
The last time that an election for speaker went beyond one ballot was in December 1923 at the start of the 68th Congress, when Republican Frederick H. Gillett needed nine ballots to win reelection. Progressive Republicans had refused to support Gillett in the first eight ballots. Only after winning concessions from Republican conference leaders (a seat on the House Rules Committee and a pledge that requested House rules changes would be considered) did they agree to support him.
In 1997, several Republican congressional leaders tried to force Speaker Newt Gingrich to resign. However, Gingrich refused since that would have required a new election for speaker, which could have led to Democrats along with dissenting Republicans voting for Democrat Dick Gephardt (then minority leader) as speaker. After the 1998 midterm elections where the Republicans lost seats, Gingrich did not stand for re-election. The next two figures in the House Republican leadership hierarchy, Majority Leader Richard Armey and Majority Whip Tom DeLay, chose not to run for the office. The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee, Bob Livingston, declared his bid for the speakership, which was unopposed, making him speaker-designate. It was then revealed, by Livingston himself, who had been publicly critical of President Bill Clinton's perjury during his sexual harassment trial, that he had engaged in an extramarital affair. He opted to resign from the House, despite being urged to stay on by House Democratic leader Gephardt. Subsequently, chief deputy whip Dennis Hastert was selected as speaker. The Republicans retained their majorities in the 2000, 2002, and 2004 elections.
The Democrats won a majority of seats in the 2006 midterm elections. On November 16, 2006, Nancy Pelosi, who was then minority leader, was selected as speaker-designate by House Democrats. When the 110th Congress convened on January 4, 2007, she was elected as the 52nd speaker by a vote of 233–202, becoming the first woman elected speaker of the House. Pelosi remained speaker through the 111th Congress.
The most recent speakership election took place on January 3, 2019, on the opening day of the 116th United States Congress, two months after the 2018 elections in which the Democrats won a majority of the seats. Nancy Pelosi, who had been serving as House Minority Leader since relinquishing the speakership in 2011, won the election, securing 220 votes, to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy's 192 votes, with 18 more going to others. As 430 representatives cast a vote, the majority needed to win was 216.
The Constitution does not spell out the political role of the speaker. As the office has developed historically, however, it has taken on a clearly partisan cast, very different from the speakership of most Westminster-style legislatures, such as the speaker of the British House of Commons, which is meant to be scrupulously non-partisan. The speaker in the United States, by tradition, is the head of the majority party in the House of Representatives, outranking the majority leader. However, despite having the right to vote, the speaker usually does not participate in debate.
The speaker is responsible for ensuring that the House passes legislation supported by the majority party. In pursuing this goal, the speaker may use their power to determine when each bill reaches the floor. They also chair the majority party's steering committee in the House. While the speaker is the functioning head of the House majority party, the same is not true of the president "pro tempore" of the Senate, whose office is primarily ceremonial and honorary.
When the speaker and the president belong to the same party, the speaker tends to play the role in a more ceremonial light, as seen when Dennis Hastert played a very restrained role during the presidency of fellow Republican George W. Bush. Nevertheless, when the speaker and the president belong to the same party, there are also times that the speaker plays a much larger role, and the speaker is tasked, e.g., with pushing through the agenda of the majority party, often at the expense of the minority opposition. This can be seen, most of all, in the speakership of Democratic-Republican Henry Clay, who personally ensured the presidential victory of fellow Democratic-Republican John Quincy Adams. Democrat Sam Rayburn was a key player in the passing of New Deal legislation under the presidency of fellow Democrat Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Republican Joseph Gurney Cannon (under Theodore Roosevelt) was particularly infamous for his marginalization of the minority Democrats and centralizing of authority to the speakership. In more recent times, Speaker Nancy Pelosi played a role in continuing the push for health care reform during the presidency of fellow Democrat Barack Obama.
On the other hand, when the speaker and the president belong to opposite parties, the public role and influence of the speaker tend to increase. As the highest-ranking member of the opposition party (and "de facto" leader of the opposition), the speaker is normally the chief public opponent of the president's agenda. In this scenario, the speaker is known for undercutting the president's agenda by blocking measures by the minority party or rejecting bills by the Senate. One famous instance came in the form of Thomas Brackett Reed (under Grover Cleveland), a speaker notorious for his successful attempt to force the Democrats to vote on measures where the Republicans had clear majorities, which ensured that Cleveland's Democrats were in no position to challenge the Republicans in the House. Joseph Cannon was particularly unique in that he led the conservative "Old Guard" wing of the Republican Party, while his president – Theodore Roosevelt – was of the more progressive clique, and more than just marginalizing the Democrats, Cannon used his power to punish the dissidents in his party and obstruct the progressive wing of the Republican Party.
More modern examples include Tip O'Neill, who was a vocal opponent of President Ronald Reagan's economic and defense policies; Newt Gingrich, who fought a bitter battle with President Bill Clinton for control of domestic policy; Nancy Pelosi, who argued with President George W. Bush over the Iraq War; John Boehner, who clashed with President Barack Obama over budget issues and health care; and once again, Nancy Pelosi, who refused to support Donald Trump over funding for a border wall.
As presiding officer of the House of Representatives, the speaker holds a variety of powers over the House and is ceremonially the highest-ranking legislative official in the US government. The speaker may delegate their powers to a member of the House to act as speaker "pro tempore" and to preside over the House in the speaker's absence; when this has occurred the delegation has always been to a member of the same party. During important debates, the speaker "pro tempore" is ordinarily a senior member of the majority party who may be chosen for his or her skill in presiding. At other times, more junior members may be assigned to preside to give them experience with the rules and procedures of the House. The speaker may also designate, with approval of the House, a speaker "pro tempore" for special purposes, such as designating a representative whose district is near Washington, D.C. to sign enrolled bills during long recesses.
Under the rules of the House, the speaker, "as soon as practicable after the election of the speaker and whenever appropriate thereafter", must deliver to the clerk of the House a confidential list of members who are designated to act as speaker in the case of a vacancy or physical inability of the speaker to perform their duties.
On the floor of the House, the presiding officer is always addressed as "Mister Speaker" or "Madam Speaker", even if that person is serving as speaker "pro tempore". When the House resolves itself into a Committee of the Whole, the speaker designates a member to preside over the committee, who is addressed as "Mister Chairman" or "Madam Chairwoman". To speak, members must seek the presiding officer's recognition. The presiding officer also rules on all points of order but such rulings may be appealed to the whole House. The speaker is responsible for maintaining decorum in the House and may order the Sergeant-at-Arms to enforce House rules.
The speaker's powers and duties extend beyond presiding in the chamber. In particular, the speaker has great influence over the committee process. The speaker selects nine of the thirteen members of the powerful Committee on Rules, subject to the approval of the entire majority party. The leadership of the minority party chooses the remaining four members. Furthermore, the speaker appoints all members of select committees and conference committees. Moreover, when a bill is introduced, the speaker determines which committee will consider it. As a member of the House, the speaker is entitled to participate in debate and to vote. Ordinarily, the speaker votes only when the speaker's vote would be decisive or on matters of great importance, such as constitutional amendments or major legislation.
In addition to being the political and parliamentary leader of the House of Representatives and representing their congressional district, the speaker also perform various other administrative and procedural functions, such as:
Additionally, the speaker is second in the presidential line of succession under the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, immediately after the vice president and before the president pro tempore of the Senate (who is followed by members of the president's Cabinet). Thus, if both the presidency and vice-presidency were vacant simultaneously, then the speaker would become acting president, after resigning from the House and as speaker.
Ratification of the Twenty-fifth Amendment in 1967, with its mechanism for filling an intra-term vice presidential vacancy, has made calling on the speaker, president pro tempore, or a cabinet member to serve as acting president unlikely to happen, except in the aftermath of a catastrophic event. However, only a few years after it went into effect, in October 1973, at the height of Watergate, Vice President Spiro Agnew resigned. With Agnew's unexpected departure, and the state of Richard Nixon's presidency, Speaker of the House Carl Albert was suddenly first in line to become acting president. The vacancy continued until Gerald Ford was sworn in as vice president on December 6, 1973. Albert was also next in line from the time Ford assumed the presidency on August 9, 1974, following Nixon's resignation from office, until Ford's choice to succeed him as vice president, Nelson Rockefeller, was confirmed by Congress four months later. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46023 |
Abraham Robinson
Abraham Robinson (born Robinsohn; October 6, 1918 – April 11, 1974) was a mathematician who is most widely known for development of non-standard analysis, a mathematically rigorous system whereby infinitesimal and infinite numbers were reincorporated into modern mathematics. Nearly half of Robinson's papers were in applied mathematics rather than in pure mathematics.
He was born to a Jewish family with strong Zionist beliefs, in Waldenburg, Germany, which is now Wałbrzych, in Poland. In 1933, he emigrated to British Mandate of Palestine, where he earned a first degree from the Hebrew University. Robinson was in France when the Nazis invaded during World War II, and escaped by train and on foot, being alternately questioned by French soldiers suspicious of his German passport and asked by them to share his map, which was more detailed than theirs. While in London, he joined the Free French Air Force and contributed to the war effort by teaching himself aerodynamics and becoming an expert on the airfoils used in the wings of fighter planes.
After the war, Robinson worked in London, Toronto, and Jerusalem, but ended up at University of California, Los Angeles in 1962.
He became known for his approach of using the methods of mathematical logic to attack problems in analysis and abstract algebra. He "introduced many of the fundamental notions of model theory". Using these methods, he found a way of using formal logic to show that there are self-consistent nonstandard models of the real number system that include infinite and infinitesimal numbers. Others, such as Wilhelmus Luxemburg, showed that the same results could be achieved using ultrafilters, which made Robinson's work more accessible to mathematicians who lacked training in formal logic. Robinson's book "Non-standard Analysis" was published in 1966. Robinson was strongly interested in the history and philosophy of mathematics, and often remarked that he wanted to get inside the head of Leibniz, the first mathematician to attempt to articulate clearly the concept of infinitesimal numbers.
While at UCLA his colleagues remember him as working hard to accommodate PhD students of all levels of ability by finding them projects of the appropriate difficulty. He was courted by Yale, and after some initial reluctance, he moved there in 1967. In the Spring of 1973 he was a member of the Institute for Advanced Study. He died of pancreatic cancer in 1974. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46024 |
Omnipotence paradox
The omnipotence paradox is a family of paradoxes that arise with some understandings of the term "omnipotent". The paradox arises, for example, if one assumes that an omnipotent being has no limits and is capable of realizing any outcome, even logically contradictory ideas such as creating square circles. A no-limits understanding of omnipotence such as this has been rejected by theologians from Thomas Aquinas to contemporary philosophers of religion, such as Alvin Plantinga. Atheological arguments based on the omnipotence paradox are sometimes described as evidence for atheism, though Christian theologians and philosophers, such as Norman Geisler and William Lane Craig, contend that a no-limits understanding of omnipotence is not relevant to orthodox Christian theology. Other possible resolutions to the paradox hinge on the definition of omnipotence applied and the nature of God regarding this application and whether omnipotence is directed toward God himself or outward toward his external surroundings.
The omnipotence paradox has medieval origins, dating at least to the 12th century. It was addressed by Averroës and later by Thomas Aquinas. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (before 532) has a predecessor version of the paradox, asking whether it is possible for God to "deny himself".
The most well-known version of the omnipotence paradox is the so-called "paradox of the stone": "Could God create a stone so heavy that even He could not lift it?" This phrasing of the omnipotence paradox is vulnerable to objections based on the physical nature of gravity, such as how the weight of an object depends on what the local gravitational field is. Alternative statements of the paradox that do not involve such difficulties include "If given the axioms of Euclidean geometry, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles do not add up to 180 degrees?" and "Can God create a prison so secure that he cannot escape from it?".
A common modern version of the omnipotence paradox is expressed in the question: "Can [an omnipotent being] create a stone so heavy that it cannot lift it?" This question generates a dilemma. The being can either create a stone it cannot lift, or it cannot create a stone it cannot lift. If the being create a stone that it cannot lift, then it is not omnipotent because there is a weight threshold beyond its own power to lift. If the being create a stone it cannot lift, then there is something it cannot create, and is therefore not omnipotent. In either case, the being is not omnipotent.
A related issue is whether the concept of "logically possible" is different for a world in which omnipotence exists than a world in which omnipotence does not exist.
The dilemma of omnipotence is similar to another classic paradox—the irresistible force paradox: "What would happen if an irresistible force were to meet an immovable object?" One response to this paradox is to disallow its formulation, by saying that if a force is irresistible, then by definition there is no immovable object; or conversely, if an immovable object exists, then by definition no force can be irresistible. Some claim that the only way out of this paradox is if the irresistible force and immovable object never meet. But this is not a way out, because an object cannot in principle be immovable if a force exists that can in principle move it, regardless of whether the force and the object actually meet.
Peter Geach describes and rejects four levels of omnipotence. He also defines and defends a lesser notion of the "almightiness" of God.
Augustine of Hippo in his City of God writes "God is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills" and thus proposes the definition that "Y is omnipotent" means "If Y wishes to do X then Y can and does do X".
The notion of omnipotence can also be applied to an entity in different ways. An essentially omnipotent being is an entity that is necessarily omnipotent. In contrast, an accidentally omnipotent being is an entity that can be omnipotent for a temporary period of time, and then becomes non-omnipotent. The omnipotence paradox can be applied to each type of being differently.
Some Philosophers, such as René Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent. In addition, some philosophers have considered the assumption that a being is either omnipotent or non-omnipotent to be a false dilemma, as it neglects the possibility of varying degrees of omnipotence. Some modern approaches to the problem have involved semantic debates over whether language—and therefore philosophy—can meaningfully address the concept of omnipotence itself.
A common response from Christian philosophers, such as Norman Geisler or William Lane Craig, is that the paradox assumes a wrong definition of omnipotence. Omnipotence, they say, does not mean that God can do anything "at all" but, rather, that he can do "anything that's possible according to his nature." The distinction is important. God cannot perform logical absurdities; he cannot, for instance, make 1+1=3. Likewise, God cannot make a being greater than himself because he is, by definition, the greatest possible being. God is limited in his actions to his nature. The Bible supports this, they assert, in passages such as Hebrews 6:18, which says it is "impossible for God to lie."
Another common response to the omnipotence paradox is to try to define omnipotence to mean something weaker than absolute omnipotence, such as definition 3 or 4 above. The paradox can be resolved by simply stipulating that omnipotence does not require that the being have abilities that are logically impossible, but only be able to do anything that conforms to the laws of logic. A good example of a modern defender of this line of reasoning is George Mavrodes. Essentially, Mavrodes argues that it is no limitation on a being's omnipotence to say that it cannot make a round square. Such a "task" is termed by him a "pseudo-task" as it is self-contradictory and inherently nonsense. Harry Frankfurt—following from Descartes—has responded to this solution with a proposal of his own: that God can create a stone impossible to lift and also lift said stoneFor why should God not be able to perform the task in question? To be sure, it is a task—the task of lifting a stone which He cannot lift—whose description is self-contradictory. But if God is supposed capable of performing one task whose description is self-contradictory—that of creating the problematic stone in the first place—why should He not be supposed capable of performing another—that of lifting the stone? After all, is there any greater trick in performing two logically impossible tasks than there is in performing one?
If a being is "accidentally omnipotent", it can resolve the paradox by creating a stone it cannot lift, thereby becoming non-omnipotent. Unlike essentially omnipotent entities, it is possible for an accidentally omnipotent being to be non-omnipotent. This raises the question, however, of whether the being was ever truly omnipotent, or just capable of great power. On the other hand, the ability to voluntarily give up great power is often thought of as central to the notion of the Christian Incarnation.
If a being is "essentially omnipotent", then it can also resolve the paradox (as long as we take omnipotence not to require absolute omnipotence). The omnipotent being is essentially omnipotent, and therefore it is impossible for it to be non-omnipotent. Further, the omnipotent being can do what is logically impossible—just like the accidentally omnipotent—and have no limitations except the inability to become non-omnipotent. The omnipotent being cannot create a stone it cannot lift.
The omnipotent being cannot create such a stone because its power is equal to itself—thus, removing the omnipotence, for there can only be one omnipotent being, but it nevertheless retains its omnipotence. This solution works even with definition 2—as long as we also know the being is essentially omnipotent rather than accidentally so. However, it is possible for non-omnipotent beings to compromise their own powers, which presents the paradox that non-omnipotent beings can do something (to themselves) which an essentially omnipotent being cannot do (to itself). This was essentially the position Augustine of Hippo took in his "The City of God":For He is called omnipotent on account of His doing what He wills, not on account of His suffering what He wills not; for if that should befall Him, He would by no means be omnipotent. Wherefore, He cannot do some things for the very reason that He is omnipotent.
Thus Augustine argued that God could not do anything or create any situation that would, in effect, make God not God.
In a 1955 article in the philosophy journal "Mind", J. L. Mackie tried to resolve the paradox by distinguishing between first-order omnipotence (unlimited power to act) and second-order omnipotence (unlimited power to determine what powers to act things shall have). An omnipotent being with both first and second-order omnipotence at a particular time might restrict its own power to act and, henceforth, cease to be omnipotent in either sense. There has been considerable philosophical dispute since Mackie, as to the best way to formulate the paradox of omnipotence in formal logic.
Another common response is that since God is supposedly omnipotent, the phrase "could not lift" does not make sense and the paradox is meaningless. This may mean that the complexity involved in rightly understanding omnipotence—contra all the logical details involved in misunderstanding it—is a function of the fact that omnipotence, like infinity, is perceived at all by contrasting reference to those complex and variable things, "which it is not". An alternative meaning, however, is that a non-corporeal God cannot lift anything, but can raise it (a linguistic pedantry)—or to use the beliefs of Hindus (that there is one God, who can be manifest as several different beings) that whilst it is possible for God to do all things, it is not possible for all his incarnations to do them. As such, God could create a stone so heavy that, in one incarnation, he couldn't lift it, yet could do something that an incarnation that "could" lift the stone could not.
The lifting a rock paradox ("Can God lift a stone larger than he can carry?") uses human characteristics to cover up the main skeletal structure of the question. With these assumptions made, two arguments can stem from it:
The act of killing oneself is not applicable to an omnipotent being, since, despite that such an act does involve some power, it also involves a "lack" of power: the human person who can kill himself is already not indestructible, and, in fact, every agent constituting his environment is more powerful in some ways than himself. In other words, all non-omnipotent agents are concretely "synthetic": constructed as contingencies of other, smaller, agents, meaning that they, unlike an omnipotent agent, logically can exist not only in multiple instantiation (by being constructed out of the more basic agents they are made of), but are each bound to a different location in space contra transcendent omnipresence.
Thomas Aquinas asserts that the paradox arises from a misunderstanding of omnipotence. He maintains that inherent contradictions and logical impossibilities do not fall under the omnipotence of God. J. L Cowan sees this paradox as a reason to reject the concept of 'absolute' omnipotence, while others, such as René Descartes, argue that God is absolutely omnipotent, despite the problem.
C. S. Lewis argues that when talking about omnipotence, referencing "a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it" is nonsense just as much as referencing "a square circle"; that it is not logically coherent in terms of power to think that omnipotence includes the power to do the logically impossible. So asking "Can God create a rock so heavy that even he cannot lift it?" is just as much nonsense as asking "Can God draw a square circle?" The logical contradiction here being God's simultaneous ability and disability in lifting the rock: the statement "God can lift this rock" must have a truth value of either true or false, it cannot possess both. This is justified by observing that for the omnipotent agent to create such a stone, it must already be more powerful than itself: such a stone is too heavy for the omnipotent agent to lift, but the omnipotent agent already can create such a stone; If an omnipotent agent already is more powerful than itself, then it already is just that powerful. This means that its power to create a stone that is too heavy for it to lift is identical to its power to lift that very stone. While this does not quite make complete sense, Lewis wished to stress its implicit point: that even within the attempt to prove that the concept of omnipotence is immediately incoherent, one admits that it is immediately coherent, and that the only difference is that this attempt is forced to admit this despite that the attempt is constituted by a perfectly irrational route to its own unwilling end, with a perfectly irrational set of 'things' included in that end.
In other words, the 'limit' on what omnipotence 'can' do is not a "limit" on its actual agency, but an "epistemological boundary" without which omnipotence could not be "identified" (paradoxically or otherwise) in the first place. In fact, this process is merely a fancier form of the classic Liar Paradox: If I say, "I am a liar", then how can it be true if I am telling the truth therewith, and, if I am telling the truth therewith, then how can I be a liar? So, to think that omnipotence is an "epistemological" paradox is like failing to recognize that, when taking the statement, 'I am a liar' self-referentially, the statement is reduced to an actual failure to lie. In other words, if one maintains the supposedly 'initial' position that the necessary conception of omnipotence includes the 'power' to compromise both itself and all other identity, and if one concludes from this position that omnipotence is epistemologically incoherent, then one implicitly is asserting that one's own 'initial' position is incoherent. Therefore, the question (and therefore the perceived paradox) is meaningless. Nonsense does not suddenly acquire sense and meaning with the addition of the two words, "God can" before it. Lewis additionally said that, "Unless something is self-evident, nothing can be proved." This implies for the debate on omnipotence that, "as in matter, so in the human understanding of truth: it takes no true insight to destroy a perfectly integrated structure, and the effort to destroy has greater effect than an equal effort to build; so, a man is thought a fool who assumes its integrity, and thought an abomination who argues for it. It is easier to teach a fish to swim in outer space than to convince a room full of ignorant fools why it cannot be done."
The philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein is frequently interpreted as arguing that language is not up to the task of describing the kind of power an omnipotent being would have. In his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus", he stays generally within the realm of logical positivism until claim 6.4—but at 6.41 and following, he argues that ethics and several other issues are "transcendental" subjects that we cannot examine with language. Wittgenstein also mentions the will, life after death, and God—arguing that, "When the answer cannot be put into words, neither can the question be put into words."
Wittgenstein's work expresses the omnipotence paradox as a problem in semantics—the study of how we give symbols meaning. (The retort "That's only semantics," is a way of saying that a statement only concerns the definitions of words, instead of anything important in the physical world.) According to the "Tractatus," then, even attempting to formulate the omnipotence paradox is futile, since language cannot refer to the entities the paradox considers. The final proposition of the "Tractatus" gives Wittgenstein's dictum for these circumstances: "What we cannot speak of, we must pass over in silence".
Wittgenstein's approach to these problems is influential among other 20th century religious thinkers such as D. Z. Phillips. In his later years, however, Wittgenstein wrote works often interpreted as conflicting with his positions in the "Tractatus", and indeed the later Wittgenstein is mainly seen as the leading critic of the early Wittgenstein.
In the 6th century, Pseudo-Dionysius claims that a version of the omnipotence paradox constituted the dispute between Paul the Apostle and Elymas the Magician mentioned in Acts 13:8, but it is phrased in terms of a debate as to whether God can "deny himself" ala 2 Tim 2:13. In the 11th century, Anselm of Canterbury argues that there are many things that God cannot do, but that nonetheless he counts as omnipotent.
Thomas Aquinas advanced a version of the omnipotence paradox by asking whether God could create a triangle with internal angles that did not add up to 180 degrees. As Aquinas put it in "Summa contra Gentiles":
This can be done on a sphere, and not on a flat surface. The later invention of non-Euclidean geometry does not resolve this question; for one might as well ask, "If given the axioms of Riemannian geometry, can an omnipotent being create a triangle whose angles "do not" add up to "more" than 180 degrees?" In either case, the real question is whether an omnipotent being would have the ability to evade consequences that follow logically from a system of axioms that the being created.
A version of the paradox can also be seen in non-theological contexts. A similar problem occurs when accessing legislative or parliamentary sovereignty, which holds a specific legal institution to be omnipotent in legal power, and in particular such an institution's ability to regulate itself.
In a sense, the classic statement of the omnipotence paradox — a rock so heavy that its omnipotent creator cannot lift it — is grounded in Aristotelian science. After all, if we consider the stone's position relative to the sun the planet orbits around, one could hold that the stone is "constantly" lifted—strained though that interpretation would be in the present context. Modern physics indicates that the choice of phrasing about lifting stones should relate to acceleration; however, this does not in itself of course invalidate the fundamental concept of the generalized omnipotence paradox. However, one could easily modify the classic statement as follows: "An omnipotent being creates a universe that follows the laws of Aristotelian physics. Within this universe, can the omnipotent being create a stone so heavy that the being cannot lift it?"
Ethan Allen's "Reason" addresses the topics of original sin, theodicy and several others in classic Enlightenment fashion. In Chapter 3, section IV, he notes that "omnipotence itself" could not exempt animal life from mortality, since change and death are defining attributes of such life. He argues, "the one cannot be without the other, any more than there could be a compact number of mountains without valleys, or that I could exist and not exist at the same time, or that God should effect any other contradiction in nature." Labeled by his friends a Deist, Allen accepted the notion of a divine being, though throughout "Reason" he argues that even a divine being must be circumscribed by logic.
In "Principles of Philosophy," Descartes tried refuting the existence of atoms with a variation of this argument, claiming God could not create things so indivisible that he could not divide them. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46025 |
Wallachia
Wallachia or Walachia ( , literally "The Romanian Country"; archaic: ', Romanian Cyrillic alphabet: ) is a historical and geographical region of Romania. It is situated north of the Lower Danube and south of the Southern Carpathians. Wallachia is traditionally divided into two sections, Muntenia (Greater Wallachia) and Oltenia (Lesser Wallachia). Wallachia as a whole is sometimes referred to as Muntenia through identification with the larger of the two traditional sections.
Wallachia was founded as a principality in the early 14th century by Basarab I, after a rebellion against Charles I of Hungary, although the first mention of the territory of Wallachia west of the river Olt dates to a charter given to the voivode Seneslau in 1246 by Béla IV of Hungary. In 1417, Wallachia accepted the suzerainty of the Ottoman Empire; this lasted until the 19th century, albeit with brief periods of Russian occupation between 1768 and 1854.
In 1859, Wallachia united with Moldavia to form the United Principalities, which adopted the name "Romania" in 1866 and officially became the Kingdom of Romania in 1881. Later, following the dissolution of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the resolution of the elected representatives of Romanians in 1918, Bukovina, Transylvania as well as parts of Banat, Crișana, and Maramureș were allocated to the Kingdom of Romania, thereby forming the modern Romanian state.
The name Wallachia is an exonym, generally not used by Romanians themselves who used the denomination "Țara Românească/Rumânească" – Romanian Country or Romanian Land. The term "Wallachia" (however present in some Romanian texts as "Valahia" or "Vlahia") is derived from the term "walhaz" used by Germanic peoples to describe Celts, and later romanized Celts and all Romance-speaking people. In Northwestern Europe this gave rise to Wales, Cornwall, and Wallonia, among others, while in Southeast Europe it was used to designate Romance-speakers, and subsequently shepherds generally.
In the Early Middle Ages, in Slavonic texts, the name " ( or "Hungaro-Wallachian Land") was also used as a designation for its location. The term, translated in Romanian as "Ungrovalahia", remained in use up to the modern era in a religious context, referring to the Romanian Orthodox Metropolitan seat of Hungaro-Wallachia, in contrast to Thessalian or Great Vlachia in Greece or Small Wallachia (Mala Vlaška) in Serbia. The Romanian-language designations of the state were Muntenia (The Land of Mountains), Țara Românească (the Romanian Land), Valahia, and, rarely, România
For long periods after the 14th century, Wallachia was referred to as ' () by Bulgarian sources, ' () by Serbian sources, ' () by Ukrainian sources and ' or ' by German-speaking (Transylvanian Saxon) sources. The traditional Hungarian name for Wallachia is ', literally "Snowy Lowlands", the older form of which is ', meaning "Land beyond the snowy mountains" ("snowy mountains" refers to the – Southern Carpathians (the Transylvanian Alps)); its translation into Latin, ' was used in the official royal documents of Kingdom of Hungary. In Ottoman Turkish, the term ', or simply , appears. (Note that in a turn of linguistic luck utterly in favor of the Wallachians' eastward posterity, this toponym, at least according to the phonotactics of modern Turkish, is homophonous with another word, , meaning "heavens" or "skies".)
Arabic chronicles from the 13th century had used the name of Wallachia instead of Bulgaria. They gave the coordinates of Wallachia and specified that Wallachia was named ' and the dwellers ' or ".
The area of Oltenia in Wallachia was also known in Turkish as "Kara-Eflak" ("Black Wallachia") and "Kuçuk-Eflak" ("Little Wallachia"), while the former has also been used for Ottoman Moldova.
In the Second Dacian War (AD 105) western Oltenia became part of the Roman province of Dacia, with parts of Wallachia included in the Moesia Inferior province. The Roman "limes" was initially built along the Olt River in 119 before being moved slightly to the east in the second century, during which time it stretched from the Danube up to Rucăr in the Carpathians. The Roman line fell back to the Olt in 245 and, in 271, the Romans pulled out of the region.
The area was subject to Romanization also during the Migration Period, when most of present-day Romania was also invaded by Goths and Sarmatians known as the Chernyakhov culture, followed by waves of other nomads. In 328, the Romans built a bridge between Sucidava and Oescus (near Gigen) which indicates that there was a significant trade with the peoples north of the Danube. A short period of Roman rule in the area is attested under Emperor Constantine the Great, after he attacked the Goths (who had settled north of the Danube) in 332. The period of Goth rule ended when the Huns arrived in the Pannonian Basin and, under Attila, attacked and destroyed some 170 settlements on both sides of the Danube.
Byzantine influence is evident during the 5th to 6th century, such as the site at Ipotești-Cândești, but from the second half of the 6th century and in the seventh century, Slavs crossed the territory of Wallachia and settled in it, on their way to Byzantium, occupying the southern bank of the Danube. In 593, the Byzantine commander-in-chief Priscus defeated Slavs, Avars and Gepids on future Wallachian territory, and, in 602, Slavs suffered a crucial defeat in the area; Flavius Mauricius Tiberius, who ordered his army to be deployed north of the Danube, encountered his troops' strong opposition.
Wallachia was under the control of the First Bulgarian Empire from its establishment in 681, until approximately the Hungarians' conquest of Transylvania at the end of the 10th century. With the decline and subsequent Byzantine conquest of Bulgaria (from the second half of the 10th century up to 1018), Wallachia came under the control of the Pechenegs, Turkic peoples who extended their rule west through the 10th and 11th century, until they were defeated around 1091, when the Cumans of southern Ruthenia took control of the lands of Wallachia. Beginning with the 10th century, Byzantine, Bulgarian, Hungarian, and later Western sources mention the existence of small polities, possibly peopled by, among others, Vlachs led by "knyazes" and "voivodes".
In 1241, during the Mongol invasion of Europe, Cuman domination was ended—a direct Mongol rule over Wallachia was not attested, but it remains probable. Part of Wallachia was probably briefly disputed by the Kingdom of Hungary and Bulgarians in the following period, but it appears that the severe weakening of Hungarian authority during the Mongol attacks contributed to the establishment of the new and stronger polities attested in Wallachia for the following decades.
One of the first written pieces of evidence of local voivodes is in connection with Litovoi (1272), who ruled over land each side of the Carpathians (including Hațeg Country in Transylvania), and refused to pay tribute to Ladislaus IV of Hungary. His successor was his brother Bărbat (1285–1288). The continuing weakening of the Hungarian state by further Mongol invasions (1285–1319) and the fall of the Árpád dynasty opened the way for the unification of Wallachian polities, and to independence from Hungarian rule.
Wallachia's creation, held by local traditions to have been the work of one "Radu Negru" (Black Radu), is historically connected with Basarab I of Wallachia (1310–1352), who rebelled against Charles I of Hungary and took up rule on either side of the Olt, establishing his residence in Câmpulung as the first ruler of the House of Basarab. Basarab refused to grant Hungary the lands of Făgăraș, Almaș and the Banate of Severin, defeated Charles in the Battle of Posada (1330), and, according to Romanian historian Ștefan Ștefănescu, extended his lands to the east, to comprise lands as far as Kiliya in the Budjak (reportedly providing the origin of "Bessarabia"); the supposed rule over the latter was not preserved by the princes that followed, as Kilia was under the rule of Nogais c.1334.
There is evidence that the Second Bulgarian Empire ruled at least nominally the Wallachian lands up to the Rucăr–Bran corridor as late as the late 14th century. In a charter by Radu I, the Wallachian voivode requests that tsar Ivan Alexander of Bulgaria order his customs officers at Rucăr and the Dâmboviţa River bridge to collect tax following the law. The presence of Bulgarian customs officers at the Carpathians indicates a Bulgarian suzerainty over those lands, though Radu's imperative tone hints at a strong and increasing Wallachian autonomy. Under Radu I and his successor Dan I, the realms in Transylvania and Severin continued to be disputed with Hungary. Basarab was succeeded by Nicholas Alexander, followed by Vladislav I. Vladislav attacked Transylvania after Louis I occupied lands south of the Danube, conceded to recognize him as overlord in 1368, but rebelled again in the same year; his rule also witnessed the first confrontation between Wallachia and the Ottoman Empire (a battle in which Vladislav was allied with Ivan Shishman).
As the entire Balkans became an integral part of the growing Ottoman Empire (a process that concluded with the fall of Constantinople to Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror in 1453), Wallachia became engaged in frequent confrontations in the final years of the reign of Mircea I (r. 1386–1418). Mircea initially defeated the Ottomans in several battles, including the Battle of Rovine in 1394, driving them away from Dobruja and briefly extending his rule to the Danube Delta, Dobruja and Silistra (c. 1400–1404). He swung between alliances with Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, and Jagiellon Poland (taking part in the Battle of Nicopolis), and accepted a peace treaty with the Ottomans in 1417, after Mehmed I took control of Turnu Măgurele and Giurgiu. The two ports remained part of the Ottoman state, with brief interruptions, until 1829. In 1418–1420, Michael I defeated the Ottomans in Severin, only to be killed in battle by the counter-offensive; in 1422, the danger was averted for a short while when Dan II inflicted a defeat on Murad II with the help of Pippo Spano.
The peace signed in 1428 inaugurated a period of internal crisis, as Dan had to defend himself against Radu II, who led the first in a series of boyar coalitions against established princes. Victorious in 1431 (the year when the boyar-backed Alexander I Aldea took the throne), boyars were dealt successive blows by Vlad II Dracul (1436–1442; 1443–1447), who nevertheless attempted to compromise between the Ottoman Sultan and the Holy Roman Empire.
The following decade was marked by the conflict between the rival houses of Dănești and Drăculești. Faced with both internal and external conflict, Vlad II Dracul reluctantly agreed to pay the tribute demanded of him by the Ottoman Empire, despite his affiliation with the Order of the Dragon, a group of independent nobleman whose creed had been to repel the Ottoman invasion. As part of the tribute, the sons of Vlad II Dracul (Radu cel Frumos and Vlad III Dracula) were taken into Ottoman custody. Recognizing the Christian resistance to their invasion, leaders of the Ottoman Empire released Vlad III to rule in 1448 after his father's assassination in 1447.
Known as Vlad III the Impaler or Vlad III Dracula, he immediately put to death the boyars who had conspired against his father, and was characterized as both a national hero and a cruel tyrant. He was cheered for restoring order to a destabilized principality, yet showed no mercy toward thieves, murderers or anyone who plotted against his rule. Vlad demonstrated his intolerance for criminals by utilizing impalement as a form of execution, having learned of the method of the impalement from his youth spent in Ottoman captivity. Vlad fiercely resisted Ottoman rule, having both repelled the Ottomans and been pushed back several times.
The Transylvanian Saxons were also furious with him for strengthening the borders of Wallachia, which interfered with their stranglehold on the trade routes. In retaliation, the Saxons distributed grotesque poems of cruelty and other propaganda, demonizing Vlad III Dracula as a drinker of blood. These tales strongly influenced an eruption of vampiric fiction throughout the West and, in particular, Germany. As well the main character in the 1897 Gothic novel "Dracula" by Bram Stoker could be modelled on Vlad III Dracula. According to Elizabeth Miller Stoker borrowed only the name and "scraps of miscellaneous information" about Romanian history; as well, there are no comments about Vlad III in the author's working notes.
In 1462, Vlad III defeated Mehmed the Conqueror's offensive during the Night Attack at Târgovişte before being forced to retreat to Târgoviște and accepting to pay an increased tribute. Meanwhile, Vlad III faced parallel conflicts with his brother, Radu cel Frumos, (r. 1437/1439—1475), who had at this time become Muslim, and Basarab Laiotă cel Bătrân. This led to the conquest of Wallachia by Radu who would rule it for 11 years until his death. Subsequently, Radu IV the Great (Radu cel Mare, who ruled 1495–1508) reached several compromises with the boyars, ensuring a period of internal stability that contrasted his clash with Bogdan III the One-Eyed of Moldavia.
The late 15th century saw the ascension of the powerful Craiovești family, virtually independent rulers of the Oltenian banat, who sought Ottoman support in their rivalry with Mihnea cel Rău (1508–1510) and replaced him with Vlăduț. After the latter proved to be hostile to the bans, the House of Basarab formally ended with the rise of Neagoe Basarab, a Craioveşti. Neagoe's peaceful rule (1512–1521) was noted for its cultural aspects (the building of the Curtea de Argeş Cathedral and Renaissance influences). It was also a period of increased influence for the Saxon merchants in Brașov and Sibiu, and of Wallachia's alliance with Louis II of Hungary. Under Teodosie, the country was again under a four-month-long Ottoman occupation, a military administration that seemed to be an attempt to create a Wallachian "Pashaluk". This danger rallied all boyars in support of Radu de la Afumaţi (four rules between 1522 and 1529), who lost the battle after an agreement between the Craiovești and Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent; Prince Radu eventually confirmed Süleyman's position as suzerain and agreed to pay an even higher tribute.
Ottoman suzerainty remained virtually unchallenged throughout the following 90 years. Radu Paisie, who was deposed by Süleyman in 1545, ceded the port of Brăila to Ottoman administration in the same year. His successor Mircea Ciobanul (1545–1554; 1558–1559), a prince without any claim to noble heritage, was imposed on the throne and consequently agreed to a decrease in autonomy (increasing taxes and carrying out an armed intervention in Transylvania – supporting the pro-Turkish John Zápolya). Conflicts between boyar families became stringent after the rule of Pătrașcu the Good, and boyar ascendancy over rulers was obvious under Petru the Younger (1559–1568; a reign dominated by Doamna Chiajna and marked by huge increases in taxes), Mihnea Turcitul, and Petru Cercel.
The Ottoman Empire increasingly relied on Wallachia and Moldavia for the supply and maintenance of its military forces; the local army, however, soon disappeared due to the increased costs and the much more obvious efficiency of mercenary troops.
Initially profiting from Ottoman support, Michael the Brave ascended to the throne in 1593, and attacked the troops of Murad III north and south of the Danube in an alliance with Transylvania's Sigismund Báthory and Moldavia's Aron Vodă (see Battle of Călugăreni). He soon placed himself under the suzerainty of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman Emperor, and, in 1599–1600, intervened in Transylvania against Poland's king Sigismund III Vasa, placing the region under his authority; his brief rule also extended to Moldavia later in the following year. For a brief period, Michael the Brave ruled (in a personal, but not formal, union) all the territories where Romanians lived, rebuilding the mainland of the ancient Kingdom of Dacia. The rule of Michael the Brave, with its break with Ottoman rule, tense relations with other European powers and the leadership of the three states, was considered in later periods as the precursor of a modern Romania, a thesis which was argued with noted intensity by Nicolae Bălcescu. Following Michael's downfall, Wallachia was occupied by the Polish–Moldavian army of Simion Movilă (see Moldavian Magnate Wars), who held the region until 1602, and was subject to Nogai attacks in the same year.
The last stage in the Growth of the Ottoman Empire brought increased pressures on Wallachia: political control was accompanied by Ottoman economical hegemony, the discarding of the capital in Târgoviște in favour of Bucharest (closer to the Ottoman border, and a rapidly growing trade center), the establishment of serfdom under Michael the Brave as a measure to increase manorial revenues, and the decrease in importance of low-ranking boyars (threatened with extinction, they took part in the "seimeni" rebellion of 1655). Furthermore, the growing importance of appointment to high office in front of land ownership brought about an influx of Greek and Levantine families, a process already resented by locals during the rules of Radu Mihnea in the early 17th century. Matei Basarab, a boyar appointee, brought a long period of relative peace (1632–1654), with the noted exception of the 1653 Battle of Finta, fought between Wallachians and the troops of Moldavian prince Vasile Lupu—ending in disaster for the latter, who was replaced with Prince Matei's favourite, Gheorghe Ștefan, on the throne in Iași. A close alliance between Gheorghe Ștefan and Matei's successor Constantin Șerban was maintained by Transylvania's George II Rákóczi, but their designs for independence from Ottoman rule were crushed by the troops of Mehmed IV in 1658–1659. The reigns of Gheorghe Ghica and Grigore I Ghica, the sultan's favourites, signified attempts to prevent such incidents; however, they were also the onset of a violent clash between the Băleanu and Cantacuzino boyar families, which was to mark Wallachia's history until the 1680s. The Cantacuzinos, threatened by the alliance between the Băleanus and the Ghicas, backed their own choice of princes (Antonie Vodă din Popești and George Ducas) before promoting themselves—with the ascension of Șerban Cantacuzino (1678–1688).
Wallachia became a target for Habsburg incursions during the last stages of the Great Turkish War around 1690, when the ruler Constantin Brâncoveanu secretly and unsuccessfully negotiated an anti-Ottoman coalition. Brâncoveanu's reign (1688–1714), noted for its late Renaissance cultural achievements (see Brâncovenesc style), also coincided with the rise of Imperial Russia under Tsar Peter the Great—he was approached by the latter during the Russo-Turkish War of 1710–11, and lost his throne and life sometime after sultan Ahmed III caught news of the negotiations. Despite his denunciation of Brâncoveanu's policies, Ștefan Cantacuzino attached himself to Habsburg projects and opened the country to the armies of Prince Eugene of Savoy; he was himself deposed and executed in 1716.
Immediately following the deposition of Prince Ștefan, the Ottomans renounced the purely nominal elective system (which had by then already witnessed the decrease in importance of the Boyar Divan over the sultan's decision), and princes of the two Danubian Principalities were appointed from the Phanariotes of Constantinople. Inaugurated by Nicholas Mavrocordatos in Moldavia after Dimitrie Cantemir, Phanariote rule was brought to Wallachia in 1715 by the very same ruler. The tense relations between boyars and princes brought a decrease in the number of taxed people (as a privilege gained by the former), a subsequent increase in total taxes, and the enlarged powers of a boyar circle in the Divan.
In parallel, Wallachia became the battleground in a succession of wars between the Ottomans on one side and Russia or the Habsburg Monarchy on the other. Mavrocordatos himself was deposed by a boyar rebellion, and arrested by Habsburg troops during the Austro-Turkish War of 1716–18, as the Ottomans had to concede Oltenia to Charles VI of Austria (the Treaty of Passarowitz). The region, subject to an enlightened absolutist rule that soon disenchanted local boyars, was returned to Wallachia in 1739 (the Treaty of Belgrade, upon the close of the Austro-Russian–Turkish War (1735–39)). Prince Constantine Mavrocordatos, who oversaw the new change in borders, was also responsible for the effective abolition of serfdom in 1746 (which put a stop to the exodus of peasants into Transylvania); during this period, the ban of Oltenia moved his residence from Craiova to Bucharest, signalling, alongside Mavrocordatos' order to merge his personal treasury with that of the country, a move towards centralism.
In 1768, during the Fifth Russo-Turkish War, Wallachia was placed under its first Russian occupation (helped along by the rebellion of Pârvu Cantacuzino). The Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) allowed Russia to intervene in favour of Eastern Orthodox Ottoman subjects, curtailing Ottoman pressures—including the decrease in sums owed as tribute—and, in time, relatively increasing internal stability while opening Wallachia to more Russian interventions.
Habsburg troops, under Prince Josias of Coburg, again entered the country during the Russo-Turkish-Austrian War, deposing Nicholas Mavrogenes in 1789. A period of crisis followed the Ottoman recovery: Oltenia was devastated by the expeditions of Osman Pazvantoğlu, a powerful rebellious pasha whose raids even caused prince Constantine Hangerli to lose his life on suspicion of treason (1799), and Alexander Mourousis to renounce his throne (1801). In 1806, the Russo-Turkish War of 1806–12 was partly instigated by the Porte's deposition of Constantine Ypsilantis in Bucharest—in tune with the Napoleonic Wars, it was instigated by the French Empire, and also showed the impact of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (with its permissive attitude towards Russian political influence in the Danubian Principalities); the war brought the invasion of Mikhail Andreyevich Miloradovich. After the Peace of Bucharest, the rule of Jean Georges Caradja, although remembered for a major plague epidemic, was notable for its cultural and industrial ventures. During the period, Wallachia increased its strategic importance for most European states interested in supervising Russian expansion; consulates were opened in Bucharest, having an indirect but major impact on Wallachian economy through the protection they extended to "Sudiți" traders (who soon competed successfully against local guilds).
The death of prince Alexander Soutzos in 1821, coinciding with the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence, established a boyar regency which attempted to block the arrival of Scarlat Callimachi to his throne in Bucharest. The parallel uprising in Oltenia, carried out by the Pandur leader Tudor Vladimirescu, although aimed at overthrowing the ascendancy of Greeks, compromised with the Greek revolutionaries in the Filiki Eteria and allied itself with the regents, while seeking Russian support (see also: Rise of nationalism under the Ottoman Empire).
On March 21, 1821, Vladimirescu entered Bucharest. For the following weeks, relations between him and his allies worsened, especially after he sought an agreement with the Ottomans; Eteria's leader Alexander Ypsilantis, who had established himself in Moldavia and, after May, in northern Wallachia, viewed the alliance as broken—he had Vladimirescu executed, and faced the Ottoman intervention without Pandur or Russian backing, suffering major defeats in Bucharest and Drăgășani (before retreating to Austrian custody in Transylvania). These violent events, which had seen the majority of Phanariotes siding with Ypsilantis, made Sultan Mahmud II place the Principalities under its occupation (evicted by a request of several European powers), and sanction the end of Phanariote rules: in Wallachia, the first prince to be considered a local one after 1715 was Grigore IV Ghica. Although the new system was confirmed for the rest of Wallachia's existence as a state, Ghica's rule was abruptly ended by the devastating Russo-Turkish War of 1828–1829.
The 1829 Treaty of Adrianople placed Wallachia and Moldavia under Russian military rule, without overturning Ottoman suzerainty, awarding them the first common institutions and semblance of a constitution (see Regulamentul Organic). Wallachia was returned ownership of Brăila, Giurgiu (both of which soon developed into major trading cities on the Danube), and Turnu Măgurele. The treaty also allowed Moldavia and Wallachia to freely trade with countries other than the Ottoman Empire, which signalled substantial economic and urban growth, as well as improving the peasant situation. Many of the provisions had been specified by the 1826 Akkerman Convention between Russia and the Ottomans, but it had never been fully implemented in the three-year interval. The duty of overseeing of the Principalities was left to Russian general Pavel Kiselyov; this period was marked by a series of major changes, including the reestablishment of a Wallachian Army (1831), a tax reform (which nonetheless confirmed tax exemptions for the privileged), as well as major urban works in Bucharest and other cities. In 1834, Wallachia's throne was occupied by Alexandru II Ghica—a move in contradiction with the Adrianople treaty, as he had not been elected by the new Legislative Assembly; he was removed by the suzerains in 1842 and replaced with an elected prince, Gheorghe Bibescu.
Opposition to Ghica's arbitrary and highly conservative rule, together with the rise of liberal and radical currents, was first felt with the protests voiced by Ion Câmpineanu (quickly repressed); subsequently, it became increasingly conspiratorial, and centered on those secret societies created by young officers such as Nicolae Bălcescu and Mitică Filipescu.
"Frăția", a clandestine movement created in 1843, began planning a revolution to overthrow Bibescu and repeal "Regulamentul Organic" in 1848 (inspired by the European rebellions of the same year). Their pan-Wallachian "coup d'état" was initially successful only near Turnu Măgurele, where crowds cheered the "Islaz Proclamation" (June 9); among others, the document called for political freedoms, independence, land reform, and the creation of a national guard. On June 11–12, the movement was successful in deposing Bibescu and establishing a Provisional Government. Although sympathetic to the anti-Russian goals of the revolution, the Ottomans were pressured by Russia into repressing it: Ottoman troops entered Bucharest on September 13. Russian and Turkish troops, present until 1851, brought Barbu Dimitrie Știrbei to the throne, during which interval most participants in the revolution were sent into exile.
Briefly under renewed Russian occupation during the Crimean War, Wallachia and Moldavia were given a new status with a neutral Austrian administration (1854–1856) and the Treaty of Paris: a tutelage shared by Ottomans and a Congress of Great Powers (Britain, France, the Kingdom of Piedmont-Sardinia, the Austrian Empire, Prussia, and, albeit never again fully, Russia), with a "kaymakam"-led internal administration. The emerging movement for a union of the Danubian Principalities (a demand first voiced in 1848, and a cause cemented by the return of revolutionary exiles) was advocated by the French and their Sardinian allies, supported by Russia and Prussia, but was rejected or suspicioned by all other overseers.
After an intense campaign, a formal union was ultimately granted: nevertheless, elections for the "Ad hoc Divans" of 1859 profited from a legal ambiguity (the text of the final agreement specified two thrones, but did not prevent any single person from simultaneously taking part in and winning elections in both Bucharest and Iași). Alexander John Cuza, who ran for the unionist "Partida Națională", won the elections in Moldavia on January 5; Wallachia, which was expected by the unionists to carry the same vote, returned a majority of anti-unionists to its "divan".
Those elected changed their allegiance after a mass protest of Bucharest crowds, and Cuza was voted prince of Wallachia on February 5 (January 24 Old Style), consequently confirmed as "Domnitor" of the United Principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia ("of Romania" from 1862). Internationally recognized only for the duration of his reign, the union was irreversible after the ascension of Carol I in 1866 (coinciding with the Austro-Prussian War, it came at a time when Austria, the main opponent of the decision, was not in a position to intervene).
Slavery () was part of the social order from before the founding of the Principality of Wallachia, until it was abolished in stages during the 1840s and 1850s. Most of the slaves were of Roma (Gypsy) ethnicity. The very first document attesting the presence of Roma people in Wallachia dates back to 1385, and refers to the group as "ațigani" (from the Greek" athinganoi", the origin of the Romanian term "țigani", which is synonymous with "Gypsy").
The exact origins of slavery are not known. Slavery was a common practice in Eastern Europe at the time, and there is some debate over whether the Romani people came to Wallachia as free people or as slaves. In the Byzantine Empire, they were slaves of the state and it seems the situation was the same in Bulgaria and Serbia until their social organization was destroyed by the Ottoman conquest, which would suggest that they came as slaves who had a change of 'ownership'. Historian Nicolae Iorga associated the Roma people's arrival with the 1241 Mongol invasion of Europe and considered their slavery as a vestige of that era, the Romanians taking the Roma from the Mongols as slaves and preserving their status. Other historians consider that they were enslaved while captured during the battles with the Tatars. The practice of enslaving prisoners may also have been taken from the Mongols. While it is possible that some Romani people were slaves or auxiliary troops of the Mongols or Tatars, the bulk of them came from south of the Danube at the end of the 14th century, some time after the foundation of Wallachia. The arrival of the Roma made slavery a widespread practice.
Traditionally, Roma slaves were divided into three categories. The smallest was owned by the "hospodars", and went by the Romanian-language name of "țigani domnești" ("Gypsies belonging to the lord"). The two other categories comprised "țigani mănăstirești" ("Gypsies belonging to the monasteries"), who were the property of Romanian Orthodox and Greek Orthodox monasteries, and "țigani boierești" ("Gypsies belonging to the boyars"), who were enslaved by the category of landowners.
The abolition of slavery was carried out following a campaign by young revolutionaries who embraced the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment. The earliest law which freed a category of slaves was in March 1843, which transferred the control of the state slaves owned by the prison authority to the local authorities, leading to their sedentarizing and becoming peasants. During the Wallachian Revolution of 1848, the agenda of the Provisional Government included the emancipation ("dezrobire") of the Roma as one of the main social demands. By the 1850s the movement gained support from almost the whole of Romanian society, and the law from February 1856 emancipated all slaves to the status of taxpayers (citizens).
With an area of approximately , Wallachia is situated north of the Danube (and of present-day Bulgaria), east of Serbia and south of the Southern Carpathians, and is traditionally divided between Muntenia in the east (as the political center, Muntenia is often understood as being synonymous with Wallachia), and Oltenia (a former banat) in the west. The division line between the two is the Olt River.
Wallachia's traditional border with Moldavia coincided with the Milcov River for most of its length. To the east, over the Danube north-south bend, Wallachia neighbours Dobruja (Northern Dobruja). Over the Carpathians, Wallachia shared a border with Transylvania; Wallachian princes have for long held possession of areas north of the line (Amlaș, Ciceu, Făgăraș, and Hațeg), which are generally not considered part of Wallachia proper.
The capital city changed over time, from Câmpulung to Curtea de Argeș, then to Târgoviște and, after the late 17th century, to Bucharest.
Contemporary historians estimate the population of Wallachia in the 15th century at 500,000 people. In 1859, the population of Wallachia was 2,400,921 (1,586,596 in Muntenia and 814,325 in Oltenia).
According to the latest 2011 census data, the region has a total population of 8,256,532 inhabitants, distributed among the ethnic groups as follows (as per 2001 census): Romanians (97%), Roma (2.5%), others (0.5%).
The largest cities (as per the 2011 census) in the Wallachia region are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46026 |
Gerhard Gentzen
Gerhard Karl Erich Gentzen (November 24, 1909 – August 4, 1945) was a German mathematician and logician. He made major contributions to the foundations of mathematics, proof theory, especially on natural deduction and sequent calculus. He died of starvation in a Soviet prison camp in Prague in 1945, having been interned as a German national after the Second World War.
Gentzen was a student of Paul Bernays at the University of Göttingen. Bernays was fired as "non-Aryan" in April 1933 and therefore Hermann Weyl formally acted as his supervisor. Gentzen joined the Sturmabteilung in November 1933 although he was by no means compelled to do so. Nevertheless he kept in contact with Bernays until the beginning of the Second World War. In 1935, he corresponded with Abraham Fraenkel in Jerusalem and was implicated by the Nazi teachers' union as one who "keeps contacts to the Chosen People." In 1935 and 1936, Hermann Weyl, head of the Göttingen mathematics department in 1933 until his resignation under Nazi pressure, made strong efforts to bring him to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton.
Between November 1935 and 1939 he was an assistant of David Hilbert in Göttingen. Gentzen joined the Nazi Party in 1937. In April 1939 Gentzen swore the oath of loyalty to Adolf Hitler as part of his academic appointment. From 1943 he was a teacher at the german Charles-Ferdinand University of Prague. Under a contract from the SS Gentzen evidently worked for the V-2 project.
Gentzen was arrested during the citizens uprising against the occupying German forces on May 5, 1945. He, along with the rest of the staff of the German University in Prague was subsequently handed over to Soviet forces. Because of his past association with the SA, NSDAP and NSD Dozentenbund, Gentzen was detained in a prison camp, where he died of starvation on August 4, 1945.
Gentzen's main work was on the foundations of mathematics, in proof theory, specifically natural deduction and the sequent calculus. His cut-elimination theorem is the cornerstone of proof-theoretic semantics, and some philosophical remarks in his "Investigations into Logical Deduction", together with Ludwig Wittgenstein's later work, constitute the starting point for inferential role semantics.
One of Gentzen's papers had a second publication in the ideological "Deutsche Mathematik" that was founded by Ludwig Bieberbach who promoted "Aryan" mathematics.
Gentzen proved the consistency of the Peano axioms in a paper published in 1936. In his Habilitationsschrift, finished in 1939, he determined the proof-theoretical strength of Peano arithmetic. This was done by a direct proof of the unprovability of the principle of transfinite induction, used in his 1936 proof of consistency, within Peano arithmetic. The principle can, however, be expressed in arithmetic, so that a direct proof of Gödel's incompleteness theorem followed. Gödel used a coding procedure to construct an unprovable formula of arithmetic. Gentzen's proof was published in 1943 and marked the beginning of ordinal proof theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46027 |
Wisdom
Wisdom, sapience, or sagacity is the ability to think and act using knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Wisdom is associated with attributes such as unbiased judgment, compassion, experiential self-knowledge, self-transcendence and non-attachment, and virtues such as ethics and benevolence.
Wisdom has been defined in many different ways, including several distinct approaches to assess the characteristics attributed to wisdom.
The "Oxford English Dictionary" defines wisdom as "Capacity of judging rightly in matters relating to life and conduct; soundness of judgement in the choice of means and ends; sometimes, less strictly, sound sense, esp. in practical affairs: opp. to folly;" also "Knowledge (esp. of a high or abstruse kind); enlightenment, learning, erudition." Charles Haddon Spurgeon defined wisdom as "the right use of knowledge". Robert I. Sutton and Andrew Hargadon defined the "attitude of wisdom" as "acting with knowledge while doubting what one knows". In social and psychological sciences, several distinct approaches to wisdom exist, with major advances made in the last two decades with respect to operationalization and measurement of wisdom as a psychological construct.
The ancient Greeks considered wisdom to be an important virtue, personified as the goddesses Metis and Athena. Metis was the first wife of Zeus, who, according to Hesiod's Theogony, had devoured her pregnant; Zeus earned the title of Mêtieta ("The Wise Counselor") after that, as Metis was the embodiment of wisdom, and he gave birth to Athena, who is said to have sprung from his head. Athena was portrayed as strong, fair, merciful, and chaste. Apollo was also considered a god of wisdom, designated as the conductor of the Muses ("Musagetes"), who were personifications of the sciences and of the inspired and poetic arts; According to Plato in his Cratylus, the name of Apollo could also mean ""Ballon"" (archer) and ""Omopoulon"" (unifier of poles [divine and earthly]), since this god was responsible for divine and true inspirations, thus considered an archer who was always right in healing and oracles: “he is an ever-darting archer”. Apollo was considered the god who prophesied through the priestesses (Pythia) in the Temple of Apollo (Delphi), where the aphorism “know thyself" ("gnōthi seauton") was inscribed (part of the wisdom of the Delphic maxims). He was contrasted with Hermes, who was related to the sciences and technical wisdom, and, in the first centuries after Christ, was associated with Thoth in an Egyptian syncretism, under the name Hermes Trimegistus. Greek tradition recorded the earliest introducers of wisdom in the Seven Sages of Greece.
To Socrates and Plato, philosophy was literally the love of wisdom (philo-sophia). This permeates Plato's dialogues; in "The Republic" the leaders of his proposed utopia are philosopher kings who understand the Form of the Good and possess the courage to act accordingly. Aristotle, in "Metaphysics", defined wisdom as understanding why things are a certain way (causality), which is deeper than merely knowing things are a certain way. He was the first to make the distinction between "phronesis" and "sophia".
According to Plato and Xenophon, the Pythia of the Delphic Oracle answered the question "who is the wisest man in Greece?" by stating Socrates was the wisest. According to Plato's "Apology", Socrates decided to investigate the people who might be considered wiser than him, concluding they lacked true knowledge:
Thus it became popularly immortalized in the phrase "I know that I know nothing" that it is wise to recognize one's own ignorance and to value epistemic humility.
The ancient Romans also valued wisdom which was personified in Minerva, or Pallas. She also represents skillful knowledge and the virtues, especially chastity. Her symbol was the owl which is still a popular representation of wisdom, because it can see in darkness. She was said to be born from Jupiter's forehead.
Wisdom is also important within Christianity. Jesus emphasized it. Paul the Apostle, in his first epistle to the Corinthians, argued that there is both secular and divine wisdom, urging Christians to pursue the latter. Prudence, which is intimately related to wisdom, became one of the four cardinal virtues of Catholicism. The Christian philosopher Thomas Aquinas considered wisdom to be the "father" (i.e. the cause, measure, and form) of all virtues.
In Buddhist traditions, developing wisdom plays a central role where comprehensive guidance on how to develop wisdom is provided. In the Inuit tradition, developing wisdom was one of the aims of teaching. An Inuit Elder said that a person became wise when they could see what needed to be done and did it successfully without being told what to do.
In many cultures, the name for third molars, which are the last teeth to grow, is etymologically linked with wisdom, e.g., as in the English "wisdom tooth." It has its nickname originated from the classical tradition, which in the Hippocratic writings has already been called "sóphronistér" (in Greek, related to the meaning of moderation or teaching a lesson), and in Latin "dens sapientiae" (wisdom tooth), since they appear at the age of maturity in late adolescence and early adulthood.
Public schools in the US have an approach to character education. Eighteenth century thinkers such as Benjamin Franklin, referred to this as training wisdom and virtue. Traditionally, schools share the responsibility to build character and wisdom along with parents and the community.
Nicholas Maxwell, a contemporary philosopher in the United Kingdom, advocates that academia ought to alter its focus from the acquisition of knowledge to seeking and promoting wisdom. This he defines as the capacity to realize what is of value in life, for oneself and others. He teaches that new knowledge and technological know-how increase our power to act. Without wisdom though, Maxwell claims this new knowledge may cause human harm as well as human good.
Psychologists have begun to gather data on commonly held beliefs or folk theories about wisdom. Initial analyses indicate that although "there is an overlap of the implicit theory of wisdom with intelligence, perceptiveness, spirituality and shrewdness, it is evident that wisdom is an expertise in dealing with difficult questions of life and adaptation to the complex requirements."
Such implicit theories stand in contrast to the explicit theories and empirical research on resulting psychological processes underlying wisdom.
Opinions on the exact psychological definitions of wisdom vary, but there is some consensus that critical to wisdom are certain meta-cognitive processes affording life reflection and judgment about critical life matters. These processes include recognizing the limits of one’s own knowledge, acknowledging uncertainty and change, attention to context and the bigger picture, and integrating different perspectives of a situation. Cognitive scientists suggest that wisdom requires coordinating such reasoning processes, as they may provide insightful solutions for managing one’s life. Notably, such reasoning is both theoretically and empirically distinct from general intelligence. Robert Sternberg has suggested that wisdom is not to be confused with general (fluid or crystallized) intelligence. In line with this idea, researchers have shown empirically that wise reasoning is distinct from IQ. Several more nuanced characterizations of wisdom are listed below.
Baltes and colleagues in "Wisdom: its structure and function in regulating lifespan successful development" defined wisdom as "the ability to deal with the contradictions of a specific situation and to assess the consequences of an action for themselves and for others. It is achieved when in a concrete situation, a balance between intrapersonal, inter- personal and institutional interests can be prepared". Balance itself appears to be a critical criterion of wisdom. Empirical research started to provide support to this idea, showing that wisdom-related reasoning is associated with achieving balance between intrapersonal and interpersonal interests when facing personal life challenges, and when setting goals for managing interpersonal conflicts.
Researchers in the field of positive psychology have defined wisdom as the coordination of "knowledge and experience" and "its deliberate use to improve well being." Under this definition, wisdom is further defined with the following facets:
This theoretical model has not been tested empirically, with an exception of a broad link between wisdom-related reasoning and well-being.
Grossmann and colleagues have synthesized prior psychological literature, indicating that in the face of ill-defined life situations wisdom involves certain cognitive processes affording unbiased, sound judgment: (i) intellectual humility or recognition of limits of own knowledge; (ii) appreciation of perspectives broader than the issue at hand; (iii) sensitivity to the possibility of change in social relations; and (iv) compromise or integration of different perspectives. Importantly, Grossmann highlights the fundamental role of contextual factors, including the role of culture, experiences, and social situations for understanding, development, and propensity of showing wisdom, with implications for training and educational practice. This situated account of wisdom ushered a novel phase of wisdom scholarship, using rigorous evidence-based methods to understand contextual factors affording sound judgment. For instance, Grossmann and Kross have identified a phenomenon they called "the Solomon's paradox" - wiser reflections on other people's problems as compared to one's own. It is named after King Solomon, the third leader of the Jewish Kingdom, who has shown a great deal of wisdom when making judgments about other people's dilemmas but lacked insight when it came to important decisions in his own life.
Empirical scientists have also begun to focus on the role of emotions in wisdom. Most researchers would agree that emotions and emotion regulation would be key to effectively managing the kinds of complex and arousing situations that would most call for wisdom. However, much empirical research has focused on the cognitive or meta-cognitive aspects of wisdom, assuming that an ability to reason through difficult situations would be paramount. Thus, although emotions would likely play a role in determining how wisdom plays out in real events and on reflecting on past events, only recently has empirical evidence started to provide robust evidence on how and when different emotions improve or harm a person’s ability to deal wisely with complex events. One notable finding concerns the positive relationship between diversity of emotional experience and wise reasoning, irrespective of emotional intensity.
Measurement of wisdom often depends on researcher’s theoretical position about the nature of wisdom. A major distinction here concerning either viewing wisdom as a stable personality trait or rather as a context-bound process The former approach often capitalizes on single-shot questionnaires. However, recent studies indicated that such single-shot questionnaires produce biased responses., which is antithetical to the wisdom construct, and neglects the notion that wisdom is best understood in the contexts when it is most relevant, namely in complex life challenges. In contrast, the latter approach advocates for measuring wisdom-related features of cognition, motivation, and emotion on the level of a specific situation. Use of such state-level measures provides less biased responses as well as greater power in explaining meaningful psychological processes. Furthermore, a focus on the level of the situation has allowed wisdom researchers to develop a fuller understanding of the role of context itself for producing wisdom. Specifically, studies showed evidence of cross-cultural and within-cultural variability and systematic variability in reasoning wisely across contexts and in daily life.
Many, but not all, studies find that adults' self-ratings of perspective/wisdom do not depend on age. This belief stands in contrast to the popular notion that wisdom increases with age. The answer to the question of age-wisdom association depends on how one defines wisdom, and the methodological framework used to evaluate theoretical claims. Most recent work suggests that the answer to this question also depends on the degree of experience in a specific domain, with some contexts favoring older adults, others favoring younger adults, and some not differentiating age groups. Notably, rigorous longitudinal work is necessary to fully unpack the question of age-wisdom relationship and such work is still outstanding, with most studies relying on cross-sectional observations.
Sapience is closely related to the term ""sophia"" often defined as "transcendent wisdom", "ultimate reality", or the ultimate truth of things. Sapiential perspective of wisdom is said to lie in the heart of every religion, where it is often acquired through intuitive knowing. This type of wisdom is described as going beyond mere practical wisdom and includes self-knowledge, interconnectedness, conditioned origination of mind-states and other deeper understandings of subjective experience. This type of wisdom can also lead to the ability of an individual to act with appropriate judgement, a broad understanding of situations and greater appreciation/compassion towards other living beings.
The word "sapience" is derived from the Latin "sapientia", meaning "wisdom".
The corresponding verb "sapere" has the original meaning of "to taste", hence "to perceive, to discern" and "to know"; its present participle "sapiens" was chosen by Carl Linnaeus for the Latin binomial for the human species, "Homo sapiens".
In Mesopotamian religion and mythology, Enki, also known as Ea, was the God of wisdom and intelligence. Divine Wisdom allowed the provident designation of functions and the ordering of the cosmos, and it was achieved by humans in following me-s (in Sumerian, order, rite, righteousness), restoring the balance. In addition to hymns to Enki or Ea dating from the third millennium BC., there is amongst the clay tablets of Abu Salabikh from 2600 BC, considered as being the oldest dated texts, an "Hymn to Shamash", in which it is recorded written:
The concept of Logos or manifest word of the divine thought, a concept also present in the philosophy and hymns of Egypt and Ancient Greece (being central to the thinker Heraclitus), and substantial in the Abrahamic traditions, seems to have been derived from Mesopotamian culture.
Sia represents the personification of perception and thoughtfulness in the traditional mythology adhered to in Ancient Egypt. Thoth, married to Maat (in ancient Egyptian, meaning order, righteousness, truth), was also important and regarded as a national introducer of wisdom.
In the Avesta hymns traditionally attributed to Zoroaster, the Gathas, Ahura Mazda means "Lord" (Ahura) and "Wisdom" (Mazda), and it is the central deity who embodies goodness, being also called "Good Thought" (Vohu Manah). In Zoroastrianism in general, the order of the universe and morals is called Asha (in Avestan, truth, righteousness), which is determined by the designations of this omniscient Thought and also considered a deity emanating from Ahura (Amesha Spenta); it is related to another ahura deity, Spenta Mainyu (active Mentality). It says in Yazna 31:
The word wisdom (חכם) is mentioned 222 times in the Hebrew Bible. It was regarded as one of the highest virtues among the Israelites along with kindness (חסד) and justice (צדק). Both the books of Proverbs and Psalms urge readers to obtain and to increase in wisdom.
In the Hebrew Bible, wisdom is represented by Solomon, who asks God for wisdom in . Much of the Book of Proverbs, which is filled with wise sayings, is attributed to Solomon. In , the fear of the Lord is called the beginning of wisdom. In , there is also reference to wisdom personified in female form, "Wisdom calls aloud in the streets, she raises her voice in the marketplaces." In , this personified wisdom is described as being present with God before creation began and even taking part in creation itself.
The Talmud teaches that a wise person is a person who can foresee the future. "Nolad" is a Hebrew word for "future," but also the Hebrew word for "birth", so one rabbinic interpretation of the teaching is that a wise person is one who can foresee the consequences of his/her choices (i.e. can "see the future" that he/she "gives birth" to).
In Christian theology, "wisdom" (From Hebrew: "חכמה" transliteration: chokmâh pronounced: khok-maw', Greek: "Sophia", Latin: "Sapientia") describes an aspect of God, or the theological concept regarding the wisdom of God.
There is an oppositional element in Christian thought between secular wisdom and Godly wisdom. Paul the Apostle states that worldly wisdom thinks the claims of Christ to be foolishness. However, to those who are "on the path to salvation" Christ represents the wisdom of God. () Wisdom is considered one of the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit according to Anglican, Catholic, and Lutheran belief. gives an alternate list of nine virtues, among which wisdom is one.
The book of Proverbs in the Old Testament of the Bible primarily focuses on wisdom, and was primarily written by one of the wisest kings according to Jewish history, King Solomon. Proverbs is found in the Old Testament section of the Bible and gives direction on how to handle various aspects of life; one's relationship with God, marriage, dealing with finances, work, friendships and persevering in difficult situations faced in life.
According to King Solomon, wisdom is gained from God, "For the Lord gives wisdom; from His mouth come knowledge and understanding" Proverbs 2:6. And through God's wise aide, one can have a better life: "He holds success in store for the upright, he is a shield to those whose walk is blameless, for he guards the course of the just and protects the way of his faithful ones" Proverbs 2:7-8. "Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to him, and he will make your paths straight" Proverbs 3:5-6. Solomon basically states that with the wisdom one receives from God, one will be able to find success and happiness in life.
There are various verses in Proverbs that contain parallels of what God loves, which is wise, and what God does not love, which is foolish. For example in the area of good and bad behaviour Proverbs states, "The way of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord, But He loves him who pursues righteousness (Proverbs 15:9). In relation to fairness and business it is stated that, "A false balance is an abomination to the Lord, But a just weight is His delight" (Proverbs 11:1; cf. 20:10,23). On the truth it is said, "Lying lips are an abomination to the Lord, But those who deal faithfully are His delight" (12:22; cf. 6:17,19). These are a few examples of what, according to Solomon, are good and wise in the eyes of God, or bad and foolish, and in doing these good and wise things, one becomes closer to God by living in an honorable and kind manner.
The book of James, written by the apostle James, is said to be the New Testament version of the book of Proverbs, in that it is another book that discusses wisdom. It reiterates Proverbs message of wisdom coming from God by stating, "If any of you lacks wisdom, you should ask God, who gives generously to all without finding fault, and it will be given to you." James 1:5. James also explains how wisdom helps one acquire other forms of virtue, "But the wisdom that comes from heaven is first of all pure; then peace-loving, considerate, submissive, full of mercy and good fruit, impartial and sincere." James 3:17. In addition, James focuses on using this God-given wisdom to perform acts of service to the less fortunate.
Apart from Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and James, other main books of wisdom in the Bible are Job, Psalms, and 1 and 2 Corinthians, which give lessons on gaining and using wisdom through difficult situations.
In the Indian traditions, wisdom can be called prajña or vijñana.
Developing wisdom is of central importance in Buddhist traditions, where the ultimate aim is often presented as “seeing things as they are” or as gaining a “penetrative understanding of all phenomena,” which in turn is described as ultimately leading to the “complete freedom from suffering.” In Buddhism, developing wisdom is accomplished through an understanding of what are known as the Four Noble Truths and by following the Noble Eightfold Path. This path lists mindfulness as one of eight required components for cultivating wisdom.
Buddhist scriptures teach that a wise person is usually endowed with good and maybe bodily conduct, and sometimes good verbal conduct, and good mental conduct.("AN 3:2") A wise person does actions that are unpleasant to do but give good results, and doesn’t do actions that are pleasant to do but give bad results ("AN 4:115"). Wisdom is the antidote to the self-chosen poison of ignorance. The Buddha has much to say on the subject of wisdom including:
To recover the original supreme wisdom of self-nature (Buddha-nature or Tathagata) covered by the self-imposed three dusty poisons (the kleshas: greed, anger, ignorance) Buddha taught to his students the threefold training by turning greed into generosity and discipline, anger into kindness and meditation, ignorance into wisdom. As the Sixth Patriarch of Chán Buddhism, Huineng, said in his Platform Sutra,"Mind without dispute is self-nature discipline, mind without disturbance is self-nature meditation, mind without ignorance is self-nature wisdom." In Mahayana and esoteric buddhist lineages, Mañjuśrī is considered as an embodiment of Buddha wisdom.
In Hinduism, wisdom is considered a state of mind and soul where a person achieves liberation.
The god of wisdom is Ganesha and the goddess of knowledge is Saraswati.
The Sanskrit verse to attain knowledge is:
Wisdom in Hinduism is knowing oneself as the truth, basis for the entire Creation, i.e., of "Shristi". In other words, wisdom simply means a person with Self-awareness as the one who witnesses the entire creation in all its facets and forms. Further it means realization that an individual through right conduct and right living over an unspecified period comes to realize their true relationship with the creation and the "Paramatma".
The Arabic term corresponding to Hebrew "Chokmah" is "ḥikma".
The term occurs a number of times in the Quran, notably in Sura 2:269:
"He gives wisdom to whom He wills, and whoever has been given wisdom has certainly been given much good. And none will remember except those of understanding." ().
and Sura 22:46: "Have they not travelled in the land, and have they hearts wherewith to feel and ears wherewith to hear? For indeed it is not the eyes that grow blind, but it is the hearts, which are within the bosoms, that grow blind."
Sura 6: 151: "Say: "Come, I will rehearse what Allah (God) hath (really) prohibited you from": Join not anything as equal with Him; be good to your parents; kill not your children on a plea of want;― We provide sustenance for you and for them;― come not nigh to shameful deeds, whether open or secret; take not life, which Allah hath made sacred, except by way of justice and law: thus doth He command you, that ye may learn wisdom" ().
The sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi considers "al-Hakim" ("The Wise") as one of the names of the Creator. Wisdom and truth, considered divine attributes, were concepts related and valued in the Islamic sciences and philosophy since their beginnings, and the first Arab philosopher, Al-Kindi says at the beginning of his book:
The Buddhist term "Prajñā" was translated into Chinese as
According to the "Doctrine of the Mean", Confucius said:
"Love of learning is akin to wisdom. To practice with vigor is akin to humanity. To know to be shameful is akin to courage (zhi, ren, yong.. three of Mengzi's sprouts of virtue)."
Compare this with the Confucian classic "Great Learning", which begins with: "The Way of learning to be great consists in manifesting the clear character, loving the people, and abiding in the highest good." One can clearly see the correlation with the Roman virtue prudence, especially if one interprets "clear character" as "clear conscience". (From Chan's Sources of Chinese Philosophy).
In Taoism, wisdom is construed as adherence to the Three Treasures (Taoism): charity, simplicity, and humility.
"He who knows other men is discerning [智]; he who knows himself is intelligent [明]." (Tao Te Ching 33)
In Norse mythology, the god Odin is especially known for his wisdom, often acquired through various hardships and ordeals involving pain and self-sacrifice. In one instance he plucked out an eye and offered it to Mímir, guardian of the well of knowledge and wisdom, in return for a drink from the well.
In another famous account, Odin hanged himself for nine nights from Yggdrasil, the World Tree that unites all the realms of existence, suffering from hunger and thirst and finally wounding himself with a spear until he gained the knowledge of runes for use in casting powerful magic. He was also able to acquire the mead of poetry from the giants, a drink of which could grant the power of a scholar or poet, for the benefit of gods and mortals alike.
In Bahá'í scripture,
"The essence of wisdom is the fear of God, the dread of His scourge and punishment, and the apprehension of His justice and decree." Wisdom is seen as a light, that casts away darkness, and "its dictates must be observed under all circumstances". One may obtain knowledge and wisdom through God, his Word, and his Divine Manifestation and the source of all learning is the knowledge of God.
In the Star Wars universe, wisdom is valued in the narrative of the films, in which George Lucas figured issues of spirituality and morals, recurrent in mythological and philosophical themes; one of his inspirations was Joseph Campbell's The Hero of a Thousand Faces. Master Yoda is generally considered a popular figure of wisdom, evoking the image of an "Oriental Monk", and he is frequently quoted, analogously to Chinese thinkers or Eastern sages in general. Psychologist D. W. Kreger's book ""The Tao of Yoda"" adapts the wisdom of the Tao Te Ching in relation to Yoda's thinking. Knowledge is canonically considered one of the pillars of the Jedi, which is also cited in the non-canon book "The Jedi Path", and wisdom can serve as a tenet for Jediism. The Jedi Code also states: "Ignorance, yet knowledge." In a psychology populational study published by Grossmann and team in 2019, master Yoda is considered wiser than Spock, another fictional character (from the Star Trek series), due to his emodiversity trait, which was positively associated to wise reasoning in people: "Yoda embraces his emotions and aims to achieve a balance between them. Yoda is known to be emotionally expressive, to share a good joke with others, but also to recognize sorrow and his past mistakes". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46029 |
Alfred Bester
Alfred Bester (December 18, 1913 – September 30, 1987) was an American science fiction author, TV and radio scriptwriter, magazine editor and scripter for comic strips and comic books. He is best remembered for his science fiction, including "The Demolished Man", winner of the inaugural Hugo Award in 1953.
Science fiction author Harry Harrison wrote, "Alfred Bester was one of the handful of writers who invented modern science fiction."
Shortly before his death, the Science Fiction Writers of America (SFWA) named Bester its ninth Grand Master, presented posthumously in 1988.
The Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001.
Alfred Bester was born in Manhattan, New York City, on December 18, 1913. His father, James J. Bester, owned a shoe store and was a first-generation American whose parents were both Austrian Jews. Alfred's mother, Belle (née Silverman), was born in Russia and spoke Yiddish as her first language before coming to America as a youth. Alfred was James and Belle's second and final child, and only son. (Their first child, Rita, was born in 1908.) Though his mother was born Jewish, she became a Christian Scientist, and Alfred himself was not raised within any religious traditions; he wrote that "his home life was completely liberal and iconoclastic."
Bester attended the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a member of the Philomathean Society. He played on the Penn Quakers football team in 1935 and, by his own account, was "the most successful member of the fencing team." He went on to Columbia Law School, but tired of it and dropped out.
Bester and Rolly Goulko (December 21, 1917 – January 12, 1984) married in 1936. Rolly Bester was a Broadway, radio and television actress, originating the role of Lois Lane on the radio program "The Adventures of Superman". She changed careers in the 1960s, becoming a vice president, casting director and supervisor at the advertising agency Ted Bates & Co. in New York City. The Besters remained married for 48 years until her death. Bester was very nearly a lifelong New Yorker, although he lived in Europe for a little over a year in the mid-1950s and moved to exurban Pennsylvania with Rolly in the early 1980s. Once settled there, they lived on Geigel Hill Road in Ottsville, Pennsylvania.
After his university career, 25-year-old Alfred Bester was working in public relations when he turned to writing science fiction. Bester's first published short story was "The Broken Axiom", which appeared in the April 1939 issue of "Thrilling Wonder Stories" after winning an amateur story competition. Bester recalled, "Two editors on the staff, Mort Weisinger and Jack Schiff, took an interest in me, I suspect mostly because I'd just finished reading and annotating Joyce's "Ulysses" and would preach it enthusiastically without provocation, to their great amusement. ... They thought "Diaz-X" [Bester's original title] might fill the bill if it was whipped into shape." This was the very same contest that Robert A. Heinlein famously chose not to enter, as the prize was only $50 and Heinlein realized he could do better selling "his" 7,000-word unpublished story to "Astounding Science Fiction" for a penny a word, or $70. Years later, Bester interviewed Heinlein for "Publishers Weekly" and the latter told of changing his mind for "Astounding". Bester says that he replied (in jest), "You sonofabitch. I won that "Thrilling Wonder" contest, and you beat me by twenty dollars."
However, as Bester was the winner of the contest, Mort Weisinger also "introduced me to the informal luncheon gatherings of the working science fiction authors of the late thirties." He met Henry Kuttner, Edmond Hamilton, Otto Binder, Malcolm Jameson and Manly Wade Wellman there. During 1939 and 1940 Weisinger published three more of Bester's stories in "Thrilling Wonder Stories" and "Startling Stories". For the next few years, Bester continued to publish short fiction, most notably in John W. Campbell's "Astounding Science Fiction".
In 1942, two of his science fiction editors got work at DC Comics, and invited Bester to contribute to various DC titles. Consequently, Bester left the field of short story writing and began working for DC Comics as a writer on "Superman", and, under the editorship of Julius Schwartz, "Green Lantern", among other titles. He created super-villain Solomon Grundy and the version of the Green Lantern Oath that begins "In brightest day, In blackest night". Bester was also the writer for Lee Falk's comic strips "The Phantom" and "Mandrake the Magician" while their creator served in World War II. It is widely speculated how much influence Bester had on these comics. One theory claims that Bester was responsible for giving the Phantom his surname, "Walker".
After four years in the comics industry, in 1946 Bester turned his attention to radio scripts, after wife Rolly (a busy radio actress) told him that the show "Nick Carter, Master Detective" was looking for story submissions. Over the next few years, Bester wrote for "Nick Carter", as well as "The Shadow", "Charlie Chan", "The New Adventures of Nero Wolfe" and other shows. He later wrote for "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater".
With the advent of American network television in 1948, Bester also began writing for television, although most of these projects were lesser-known.
In early 1950, after eight years away from the field, Bester resumed writing science fiction short stories. However, after an initial return to "Astounding" with the story "The Devil's Invention" ( "Oddy and Id"), he stopped writing for the magazine in mid-1950 when editor John Campbell became preoccupied with L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics, the forerunner to Scientology. Bester then turned to "Galaxy Science Fiction", where he found in H. L. Gold another exceptional editor as well as a good friend.
In New York, he socialized at the Hydra Club, an organization of New York's science fiction writers, including such luminaries as Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Anthony Boucher, Avram Davidson, Judith Merril, and Theodore Sturgeon.
In his first period of writing science fiction (1939–1942), Bester had been establishing a reputation as a short story writer in science fiction circles with stories such as "Adam and No Eve". However, Bester gained his greatest renown for the work he wrote and published in the 1950s, including "The Demolished Man" and "The Stars My Destination" (also known as "Tiger! Tiger!").
"The Demolished Man", recipient of the first Hugo Award for best Science Fiction novel, is a police procedural that takes place in a future world in which telepathy is relatively common. Bester creates a harshly capitalistic, hierarchical and competitive social world that exists without deceit: a society in which the right person with some skill (or money) and curiosity can access your memories, secrets, fears and past misdeeds more swiftly than even you.
Originally published in three parts in "Galaxy", beginning in January 1952, "The Demolished Man" appeared in book form in 1953. It was dedicated to Gold, who made a number of suggestions during its writing. Originally, Bester wanted the title to be "Demolition!", but Gold talked him out of it.
Bester's 1953 novel "Who He?" (also known as "The Rat Race") concerns a TV variety show writer who wakes up after an alcoholic blackout and discovers that someone is out to destroy his life. According to Bester, the TV show elements were based on his experiences working on "The Paul Winchell Show". A contemporary novel with no science fiction elements, it did not receive wide attention. It did, however, earn Bester a fair amount of money from the sale of the paperback reprint rights (the book appeared in paperback as "The Rat Race"). He also received a substantial sum of money from a movie studio for the film option to the book. Reportedly, Jackie Gleason was interested in starring as the variety show writer and licensed movie rights to the story; however no movie was ever made of "Who He?" Still, the payout from the film option was large enough that Alfred and Rolly Bester decided they could afford to travel to Europe for the next few years. They lived mainly in Italy and England during this period.
Bester's next novel was outlined while he was living in England and mostly written when he was living in Rome. "The Stars My Destination" (also known as "Tiger! Tiger!") had its origins in a newspaper clipping that Bester found about Poon Lim, a shipwrecked World War II sailor on a raft, who had drifted unrescued in the Pacific for a world record 133 days because passing ships thought he was a lure to bring them within torpedo range of a hidden submarine. From that germ grew the story of Gully Foyle, seeking revenge for his abandonment and causing havoc all about him: a science fiction re-telling of Alexandre Dumas' "The Count of Monte Cristo" with teleportation added to the mix. It has been described as an ancestor of cyberpunk.
First published in book form in the UK in June 1956 as "Tiger! Tiger!", "The Stars My Destination" was subsequently serialized in "Galaxy", where "The Demolished Man" had also appeared. It ran in four parts (October 1956 through January 1957) and the book was published in the USA later in 1957. Though repeatedly voted in polls the "Best Science Fiction Novel of All Time", "The Stars My Destination" would prove to be Bester's last novel for 19 years. A radio adaptation was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 in 1991 and again in 1993.
Film adaptations of "The Stars My Destination" have been frequently rumored. According to David Hughes' "Greatest Sci-Fi Movies Never Made", Richard Gere owned the rights to this novel right after his success with "Pretty Woman", and wanted to star in it. Later, "NeverEnding Story" producer Bernd Eichinger had the rights and hired Neal Adams to do concept art. Still later, Paul W.S. Anderson was set to direct it, but wound up doing "Event Horizon" instead. Since then, a number of scripts have been written, but nothing more has happened.
While on his European trip, Bester began selling non-fiction pieces about various European locations to the mainstream travel/lifestyle magazine "Holiday". The "Holiday" editors, impressed with his work, invited Bester back to their headquarters in New York and began commissioning him to write travel articles about various far-flung locales, as well as doing interviews with such stars as Sophia Loren, Anthony Quinn, and Sir Edmund Hillary. As a result of steady work with "Holiday", Bester's science fiction output dropped precipitously in the years following the publication of "The Stars My Destination".
Bester published three short stories each in 1958 and 1959, including 1958's "The Men Who Murdered Mohammed" and 1959's "The Pi Man", both of which were nominated for Hugo Awards. However, for a four-year period from October 1959 to October 1963, he published no fiction at all. Instead, he concentrated on his work at "Holiday" (where he was made a senior editor), reviewed books for "The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction" (from 1960 to 1962) and returned to television scripting.
During the 1950s, Bester contributed a satiric sketch, "I Remember Hiroshima," to "The Paul Winchell Show". His later story "Hobson's Choice" was based on it.
In 1959, Bester adapted his 1954 story "Fondly Fahrenheit" to television as "Murder and the Android". Telecast in color on October 18, 1959, the hour-long drama took place in the year 2359 amid futuristic sets designed by Ted Cooper. This "NBC Sunday Showcase" production, produced by Robert Alan Aurthur with a cast of Kevin McCarthy, Rip Torn, Suzanne Pleshette and Telly Savalas, was reviewed by syndicated radio-television critic John Crosby:
"Murder and the Android" was nominated for a 1960 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation and was given a repeat on September 5, 1960, the Labor Day weekend in which that Hugo Award was presented (to "The Twilight Zone") at the World Science Fiction Convention in Pittsburgh. Bester returned to "Sunday Showcase" March 5, 1960, with an original teleplay, "Turn the Key Deftly". Telecast in color, that mystery, set in a traveling circus, starred Julie Harris, Maximilian Schell and Francis Lederer.
For "Alcoa Premiere", hosted by Fred Astaire, he wrote "Mr. Lucifer", which aired November 1, 1962, with Astaire in the title role opposite Elizabeth Montgomery. A light comedy, the story concerned the modern day Lucifer—whose offices are now on Madison Avenue—working with his beautiful secretary to try to corrupt a clean-cut American husband and wife.
After a four-year layoff, Bester published a handful of science fiction short stories in 1963 and 1964. However, writing science fiction was at this stage in Bester's life clearly more of a sideline than the focus of his career. As a result, from 1964 until the original version of "Holiday" folded in 1971, Bester published only one science fiction short story, a 700-word science fiction spoof in the upscale mainstream magazine "Status".
Still, as senior editor of "Holiday", Bester was able to introduce occasional science fiction elements into the non-fiction magazine. On one occasion, he commissioned and published an article by Arthur C. Clarke describing a tourist flight to the Moon. Bester himself, though, never published any science fiction in "Holiday", which was a mainstream travel/lifestyle magazine marketed to upscale readers during an era when science fiction was largely dismissed as juvenilia.
"Holiday" magazine ceased publication in 1971, although it was later revived and reformatted by other hands, without Bester's involvement. For the first time in nearly 15 years, Bester did not have full-time employment.
After a long layoff from writing science fiction, Bester returned to the field in 1972. His 1974 short story "The Four-Hour Fugue" was nominated for a Hugo Award, and Bester received Hugo and Nebula Award nominations for his 1975 novel "The Computer Connection" (titled "The Indian Giver" as a magazine serial and later reprinted as "Extro"). Despite these nominations, Bester's work of this era generally failed to receive the critical or commercial success of his earlier period.
Bester's eyesight began failing in the mid-1970s, making writing increasingly difficult, and another layoff from published writing took place between early 1975 and early 1979. It is alleged during this period that the producer of the 1978 "Superman" movie sent his son off to search for a writer. The name Alfred Bester came up, but Bester wanted to focus the story on Clark Kent as the real hero, while Superman was only "his gun." The producers instead hired Mario Puzo, author of "The Godfather", to write the film.
Carolyn Wendell wrote, "I shall always remember the time I saw Alfie Bester in larger-than-life action, at an academic conference in New York City ten years before he died":
Bester published two short stories in 1979 and rang in the 1980s with the publication of two new novels: "Golem100" (1980), and "The Deceivers" (1981). In addition to his failing eyesight, other health issues began to affect him, and Bester produced no new published work after 1981. His wife Rolly died in 1984. In the following years, Bester dated Judith H. McQuown [pronounced "McQueen"].
In 1985, it was announced that Bester would be a Guest of Honor at the 1987 Worldcon, to be held in Brighton, England. As the event neared, however, Bester fell and broke his hip. With his worsening overall health, he was plainly too ill to attend.
Bester died less than a month after the convention from complications related to his broken hip. However, shortly before his death he learned that the Science Fiction Writers of America would honor him with their Grand Master Nebula award at their 1988 convention.
Two works by Bester were published posthumously. The first, "Tender Loving Rage" (1991), was a mainstream (i.e., non-science fiction) novel that was probably written in the late 1950s or early 1960s. The second, "Psychoshop" (1998), was based on an incomplete 92-page story fragment. It was completed by Roger Zelazny and remained unpublished until three years after Zelazny's death. When published, it was credited as a collaborative work.
Upon his death, Bester left his literary estate to his friend and bartender Joe Suder.
The Science Fiction Writers of America made Bester its 9th SFWA Grand Master in 1988 (announced before his 1987 death) and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Hall of Fame inducted him in 2001, its sixth class of two deceased and two living writers.
Beside winning the inaugural Hugo Award, he was one of the runners-up for several annual literary awards.
Hugo Award:
Hugo nominations:
In the Best Novel categories, "The Computer Connection" was a finalist for both the Hugo and Nebula Awards and third place for the Locus Award. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46034 |
Porpoise
Porpoises are a group of fully aquatic marine mammals, similar in appearance to a dolphin, all of which are classified under the family Phocoenidae, parvorder Odontoceti (toothed whales). There are seven extant species of porpoise. They are small toothed whales that are very closely related to oceanic dolphins. The most obvious visible difference between the two groups is that porpoises have shorter beaks and flattened, spade-shaped teeth distinct from the conical teeth of dolphins. Porpoises, and other cetaceans, belong to the clade Cetartiodactyla with even-toed ungulates, and their closest living relatives are the hippopotamuses, having diverged from them about 40 million years ago.
Porpoises range in size from the vaquita, at in length and in weight, to the Dall's porpoise, at and . Several species exhibit sexual dimorphism in that the females are larger than males. They have streamlined bodies and two limbs that are modified into flippers. Porpoises use echolocation as their primary sensory system. Some species are well adapted for diving to great depths. They have a layer of fat, or blubber, under the skin to keep them warm in cold water.
Porpoises are not very widespread, with many specialising near the polar regions, usually near the coast. Porpoises feed largely on fish and squid, much like the rest of the odontocetes. Males typically mate with multiple females every year, but females only mate every two to three years. Calves are typically born in the spring and summer months and females bear all the responsibility for raising them. Some porpoises produce a variety of clicks and whistles, which are thought to be primarily for social purposes. A few species, like the harbour porpoise, are highly sociable, but pods generally do not exceed ten individuals for most species.
Porpoises were, and still are, hunted by some countries by means of drive hunting. Some species are attributed with high levels of intelligence. At the 2012 meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, support was reiterated for a cetacean bill of rights that would list cetaceans as non-human persons. The vaquita nearly became extinct in the twentieth century, with a predicted population of fewer than 100 individuals, and, since the extinction of the baiji, is considered the most endangered cetacean. Other threats to porpoises include becoming bycatch, facing competition (from humans), and marine pollution. Porpoises are sometimes kept in captivity and trained to perform tricks, but breeding success has been poor.
Porpoises, along with whales and dolphins, are descendants of land-living ungulates (hoofed animals) that first entered the oceans around 50 million years ago (Mya). During the Miocene (23 to 5 Mya), mammals were fairly modern, meaning they seldom changed physiologically from the time. The cetaceans diversified, and fossil evidence suggests porpoises and dolphins diverged from their last common ancestor around 15 Mya. The oldest fossils are known from the shallow seas around the North Pacific, with animals spreading to the European coasts and Southern Hemisphere only much later, during the Pliocene.
Recently discovered hybrids between male harbour porpoises and female Dall's porpoises indicate the two species may actually be members of the same genus.
Porpoises have a bulbous head, no external ear flaps, a non-flexible neck, a torpedo shaped body, limbs modified into flippers, and a tail fin. Their skull has small eye orbits, small, blunt snouts, and eyes placed on the sides of the head. Porpoises range in size from the and Vaquita to the and Dall's porpoise. Overall, they tend to be dwarfed by other cetaceans. Almost all species have female-biased sexual dimorphism, with the females being larger than the males, although those physical differences are generally small; one exception is Dall's porpoise.
Odontocetes possess teeth with cementum cells overlying dentine cells. Unlike human teeth, which are composed mostly of enamel on the portion of the tooth outside of the gum, whale teeth have cementum outside the gum. Porpoises, like other odontocetes, possess only one blowhole. Breathing involves expelling stale air from the blowhole, forming an upward, steamy spout, followed by inhaling fresh air into the lungs. All porpoises have a thick layer of blubber. This blubber can help with insulation from the harsh underwater climate, protection to some extent as predators would have a hard time getting through a thick layer of fat, and energy for leaner times. Calves are born with only a thin layer of blubber, but some species compensate for this with a covering of fine, downy hair known as lanugo.
Porpoises have a two-chambered stomach that is similar in structure to those of terrestrial carnivores. They have fundic and pyloric chambers.
Porpoises have two flippers on the front, and a tail fin. Although porpoises do not possess fully developed hind limbs, they possess discrete rudimentary appendages, which may contain feet and digits. Their flippers, for example, contain four digits. Porpoises are fast swimmers in comparison to seals, which typically cruise at . The fusing of the neck vertebrae, while increasing stability when swimming at high speeds, decreases flexibility, making it impossible for them to turn their head. When swimming, they move their tail fin and lower body up and down, propelling themselves through vertical movement, while their flippers are mainly used for steering. Flipper movement is continuous. Some species log out of the water, which may allow then to travel faster, and sometimes they porpoise out of the water, meaning jump out of the water. Their skeletal anatomy allows them to be fast swimmers. They have a very well defined and triangular dorsal fin, allowing them to steer better in the water. Unlike their dolphin counterparts, they are adapted for coastal shores, bays, and estuaries.
The porpoise ear has specific adaptations to the marine environment. In humans, the middle ear works as an impedance equaliser between the outside air's low impedance and the cochlear fluid's high impedance. In whales, and other marine mammals, there is no great difference between the outer and inner environments. Instead of sound passing through the outer ear to the middle ear, porpoises receive sound through the throat, from which it passes through a low-impedance fat-filled cavity to the inner ear. The porpoise ear is acoustically isolated from the skull by air-filled sinus pockets, which allow for greater directional hearing underwater. Odontocetes send out high frequency clicks from an organ known as a melon. This melon consists of fat, and the skull of any such creature containing a melon will have a large depression. The large bulge on top of the porpoises head is caused by the melon.
The porpoise eye is relatively small for its size, yet they do retain a good degree of eyesight. As well as this, the eyes of a porpoise are placed on the sides of its head, so their vision consists of two fields, rather than a binocular view like humans have. When porpoises surface, their lens and cornea correct the nearsightedness that results from the refraction of light; their eyes contain both rod and cone cells, meaning they can see in both dim and bright light. Porpoises do, however, lack short wavelength sensitive visual pigments in their cone cells indicating a more limited capacity for colour vision than most mammals. Most porpoises have slightly flattened eyeballs, enlarged pupils (which shrink as they surface to prevent damage), slightly flattened corneas and a tapetum lucidum; these adaptations allow for large amounts of light to pass through the eye and, therefore, they are able to form a very clear image of the surrounding area.
The olfactory lobes are absent in porpoises, suggesting that they have no sense of smell.
Porpoises are not thought to have a good sense of taste, as their taste buds are atrophied or missing altogether. However, some have preferences between different kinds of fish, indicating some sort of attachment to taste.
Unlike most animals, porpoises are conscious breathers. All mammals sleep, but porpoises cannot afford to become unconscious for long because they may drown. While knowledge of sleep in wild cetaceans is limited, porpoises in captivity have been recorded to sleep with one side of their brain at a time, so that they may swim, breathe consciously, and avoid both predators and social contact during their period of rest.
Porpoises are fully aquatic creatures. Females deliver a single calf after a gestation period lasting about a year. Calving takes place entirely under water, with the foetus positioned for tail-first delivery to help prevent drowning. Females have mammary glands, but the shape of a newborn calf's mouth does not allow it to obtain a seal around the nipple— instead of the calf sucking milk, the mother squirts milk into the calf's mouth. This milk contains high amounts of fat, which aids in the development of blubber; it contains so much fat that it has the consistency of toothpaste. The calves are weaned at about 11 months of age. Males play no part in rearing calves. The calf is dependent for one to two years, and maturity occurs after seven to ten years, all varying between species. This mode of reproduction produces few offspring, but increases the probability of each one surviving.
Porpoises eat a wide variety of creatures. The stomach contents of harbour porpoises suggests that they mainly feed on benthic fish, and sometimes pelagic fish. They may also eat benthic invertebrates. In rare cases, algae, such as "Ulva lactuca", is consumed. Atlantic porpoises are thought to follow the seasonal migration of bait fish, like herring, and their diet varies between seasons. The stomach contents of Dall's porpoises reveal that they mainly feed on cephalopods and bait fish, like capelin and sardines. Their stomachs also contained some deep-sea benthic organisms.
The finless porpoise is known to also follow seasonal migrations. It is known that populations in the mouth of the Indus River migrate to the sea from April through October to feed on the annual spawning of prawns. In Japan, sightings of small pods of them herding sand lance onto shore are common year-round.
Little is known about the diets of other species of porpoises. A dissection of three Burmeister's porpoises shows that they consume shrimp and euphausiids. A dissection of a beached Vaquita showed remains of squid and grunts. Nothing is known about the diet of the spectacled porpoise.
In Aristotle's time, the 4th century BCE, porpoises were regarded as fish due to their superficial similarity. Aristotle, however, could already see many physiological and anatomical similarities with the terrestrial vertebrates, such as blood (circulation), lungs, uterus and fin anatomy. His detailed descriptions were assimilated by the Romans, but mixed with a more accurate knowledge of the dolphins, as mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his “Natural history”. In the art of this and subsequent periods, porpoises are portrayed with a long snout (typical of dolphins) and a high-arched head. The harbour porpoise was one of the most accessible species for early cetologists, because it could be seen very close to land, inhabiting shallow coastal areas of Europe. Much of the findings that apply to all cetaceans were first discovered in porpoises. One of the first anatomical descriptions of the airways of the whales on the basis of a harbor porpoise dates from 1671 by John Ray. It nevertheless referred to the porpoise as a fish.
Harbour porpoises have historically been kept in captivity, under the assumption that they would fare better than their dolphin counterparts due to their smaller size and shallow-water habitats. Up until the 1980s, they were consistently short-lived. Harbour porpoises have a very long captive history, with poorly documented attempts as early as the 15th century, and better documented starting in the 1860s and 1870s in London Zoo, the now-closed Brighton Aquarium & Dolphinarium, and a zoo in Germany. At least 150 harbour porpoises have been kept worldwide, but only about 20 were actively caught for captivity. The captive history is best documented from Denmark where about 100 harbour porpoises have been kept, most in the 1960s and 1970s. All but two were incidental catches in fishing nets or strandings. Nearly half of these died within a month of diseases caught before they were captured or from damage sustained during capture. Up until 1984, none lived for more than 14 months. Attempts of rehabilitation seven rescued individuals in 1986 only resulted in three that could be released 6 months later. Very few have been brought into captivity later, but they have lived considerably longer. In recent decades the only place keeping the species in Denmark is the Fjord & Bælt Centre, where three rescues have been kept, along with their offspring. Among the three rescues, one (father of world's first harbour porpoise born in captivity) lived for 20 years in captivity and another 15 years, while the third (mother of first born in captivity) was still alive in 2018 after 20 years. This is older than the typical age reached in the wild, which is 14 years or less. Very few harbour porpoises have been born in captivity. Historically, harbour porpoises were often kept singly and those who were together often were not mature or of the same sex. Disregarding one born more than 100 years ago that was the result of a pregnant female being brought into captivity, the world's first full captive breeding was in 2007 in the Fjord & Bælt Centre, followed by another in 2009 in the Dolfinarium Harderwijk, the Netherlands. In addition to the few kept in Europe, harbour porpoise were displayed at the Vancouver Aquarium (Canada) until recently. This was a female that had beached herself onto Horseshoe Bay in 2008 and a male that had done the same in 2011. They died in 2017 and 2016 respectively.
Finless porpoises have commonly been kept in Japan, as well as China and Indonesia. As of 1984, ninety-four in total had been in captivity in Japan, eleven in China, and at least two in Indonesia. As of 1986, three establishments in Japan had bred them, and there had been five recorded births. Three calves died moments after their birth, but two survived for several years. This breeding success, combined with the results with harbour porpoise in Denmark and the Netherlands, proved that porpoises can be successfully bred in captivity, and this could open up new conservation options. The reopened Miyajima Public Aquarium (Japan) houses three finless porpoises. As part of an attempt of saving the narrow-ridged (or Yangtze) finless porpoise, several are kept in the Baiji Dolphinarium in China. After having been kept in captivity for 9 years, the first breeding happened in 2005.
Small numbers of Dall's porpoises have been kept in captivity in both the United States and Japan, with the most recent being in the 1980s. These animals consistently failed to thrive. Captive Dall's porpoises often repeatedly ran into the walls of their enclosures, refused food, and exhibited skin sloughing. Almost all Dall's porpoises introduced to aquaria died shortly after, typically within days. Only two have lived for more than 60 days: a male reached 15 months at Marineland of the Pacific and another 21 months at a United States Navy facility.
As part of last-ditch effort of saving the extremely rare vaquita (the tiny remaining population is rapidly declining because of bycatch in gillnets), there have been attempts of transferring some to captivity. The first and only caught for captivity were two females in 2017. Both became distressed and were rapidly released, but one of them died in the process. Soon after the project was abandoned.
Only a single Burmeister's porpoise and a single spectacled porpoise have been kept in captivity. Both were stranded individuals that only survived a few days after their rescue.
Porpoises and other smaller cetaceans, mainly dolphins, are hunted in an activity known as drive hunting. This is accomplished by driving a pod together with boats and usually into a bay or onto a beach. Their escape is prevented by closing off the route to the ocean with other boats or nets. Porpoises are hunted this way in several places around the world, including the Faroe Islands, Peru, and Japan, the most well-known practitioner of this method. Porpoises are mostly hunted for their meat. Despite the controversial nature of the hunt resulting in international criticism, and the possible health risk that the high methylmercury levels impose, cetaceans are hunted at unsustainable levels. Dall's porpoises are the most targeted in Japan, and between the 1986 moratorium banning whaling worldwide and 2013, more than 400,000 had been killed.
Porpoises are highly affected by bycatch. Many porpoises, mainly the vaquita, are subject to great mortality due to gillnetting. Although it is the world's most endangered marine cetacean, the vaquita continues to be caught in small-mesh gillnet fisheries throughout much of its range. Incidental mortality caused by the fleet of El Golfo de Santa Clara was estimated to be at around 39 vaquitas per year, which is over 17% of the population size. Harbour porpoises also suffer drowning by gillnetting, but on a less threatening scale due to their high population; their mortality rate per year increases a mere 5% due to this.
The fishing market, historically has always had a porpoise bycatch. Today, the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972 has enforced the use of safer fishing equipment to reduce bycatch.
Porpoises are very sensitive to anthropogenic disturbances, and are keystone species, which can indicate the overall health of the marine environment. Populations of harbor porpoises in the North and Baltic Seas are under increasing pressure from anthropogenic causes such as offshore construction, ship traffic, fishing, and military exercises. Increasing pollution is a serious problem for marine mammals. Heavy metals and plastic waste are not biodegradable, and sometimes cetaceans consume these hazardous materials, mistaking them for food items. As a result, the animals are more susceptible to diseases and have fewer offspring. Harbour porpoises from the English Channel were found to have accumulated heavy metals.
The military and geologists employ strong sonar and produce an increases in noise in the oceans. Marine mammals that make use of biosonar for orientation and communication are not only hindered by the extra noise, but may race to the surface in panic. This may lead to a bubbling out of blood gases, and the animal then dies because the blood vessels become blocked, so-called decompression sickness. This effect, of course, only occurs in porpoises that dive to great depths, such as Dall's porpoise.
Additionally, civilian vessels produce sonar waves in order to measure the depth of the body of water in which they are. Similar to the navy, some boats produce waves that attract porpoises, while others may repel them. The problem with the waves that attract is that the animal may be injured or even killed by being hit by the vessel or its propeller.
The harbour porpoise, spectacled porpoise, Burmeister's porpoise, and Dall's porpoise are all listed on Appendix II of the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS). In addition, the Harbour porpoise is covered by the Agreement on the Conservation of Small Cetaceans of the Baltic, North East Atlantic, Irish and North Seas (ASCOBANS), the Agreement on the Conservation of Cetaceans in the Black Sea, Mediterranean Sea and Contiguous Atlantic Area (ACCOBAMS) and the Memorandum of Understanding Concerning the Conservation of the Manatee and Small Cetaceans of Western Africa and Macaronesia. Their conservation statuses are either at least concern or data deficient.
As of 2014, only 505 Yangtze finless porpoises remained in the main section of the Yangtze, with an alarming population density in Ezhou and Zhenjiang. While many threatened species decline rate slows after their classification, population decline rates of the porpoise are actually accelerating. While population decline tracked from 1994 to 2008 has been pegged at a rate of 6.06% annually, from 2006 to 2012, the porpoise population decreased by more than half. Finless porpoise population decrease of 69.8% in just a 22-year span from 1976 to 2000. 5.3%. A majority of factors of this population decline are being driven by the massive growth in Chinese industry since 1990 which caused increased shipping and pollution and ultimately environmental degradation. Some of these can be seen in damming of the river as well as illegal fishing activity. To protect the species, China's Ministry of Agriculture classified the species as being National First Grade Key Protected Wild Animal, the strictest classification by law, meaning it is illegal to bring harm to a porpoise. Protective measures in the Tian-e-Zhou Oxbow Nature Reserve has increased its population of porpoises from five to forty in 25 years. The Chinese Academy of Science's Wuhan Institute of Hydrobiology has been working with the World Wildlife Fund to ensure the future for this subspecies, and have placed five porpoises in another well-protected area, the He-wang-miao oxbow. Five protected natural reserves have been established in areas of the highest population density and mortality rates with measures being taken to ban patrolling and harmful fishing gear in those areas. There have also been efforts to study porpoise biology to help specialize conservation through captivation breeding. The Baiji Dolphinarium, was established in 1992 at the Institute of Hydrobiology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Wuhan which allowing the study of behavioral and biological factors affecting the finless porpoise, specifically breeding biology like seasonal changes in reproductive hormones and breeding behavior.
Because vaquitas are indigenous to the Gulf of California, Mexico is leading conservation efforts with the creation of the International Committee for the Recovery of the Vaquita (CIRVA), which has tried to prevent the accidental deaths of vaquitas by outlawing the use of fishing nets within the vaquita's habitat. CIRVA has worked together with the CITES, the Endangered Species Act, and the Marine Mammal Protection Act (MMPA) to nurse the vaquita population back to a point at which they can sustain themselves. CIRVA concluded in 2000 that between 39 and 84 individuals are killed each year by such gillnets. In order to try to prevent extinction, the Mexican government has created a nature reserve covering the upper part of the Gulf of California and the Colorado River delta. They have also placed a temporary ban on fishing, with compensation to those affected, that may pose a threat to the vaquita. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=46037 |
Due process
Due process is the legal requirement that the state must respect all legal rights that are owed to a person. Due process balances the power of law of the land and protects the individual person from it. When a government harms a person without following the exact course of the law, this constitutes a due process violation, which offends the rule of law.
Due process has also been frequently interpreted as limiting laws and legal proceedings (see substantive due process) so that judges, instead of legislators, may define and guarantee fundamental fairness, justice, and liberty. That interpretation has proven controversial. Analogous to the concepts of natural justice, and procedural justice used in various other jurisdictions, the interpretation of due process is sometimes expressed as a command that the government must not be unfair to the people or abuse them physically. The term is not used in contemporary English law, but two similar concepts are natural justice, which generally applies only to decisions of administrative agencies and some types of private bodies like trade unions, and the British constitutional concept of the rule of law as articulated by A. V. Dicey and others. However, neither concept lines up perfectly with the American theory of due process, which, as explained below, presently contains many implied rights not found in either ancient or modern concepts of due process in England.
Due process developed from clause 39 of Magna Carta in England. Reference to due process first appeared in a statutory rendition of clause 39 in 1354 thus: "No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law." When English and American law gradually diverged, due process was not upheld in England but became incorporated in the US Constitution.
In clause 39 of Magna Carta, issued in 1215, John of England promised: "No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgment of his equals or by the law of the land." Magna Carta itself immediately became part of the "law of the land", and Clause 61 of that charter authorized an elected body of 25 barons to determine by majority vote what redress the King must provide when the King offends "in any respect against any man". Thus, Magna Carta established the rule of law in England by not only requiring the monarchy to obey the law of the land but also limiting how the monarchy could change the law of the land. However, in the 13th century, the provisions may have been referring only to the rights of landowners, and not to ordinary peasantry or villagers.
Shorter versions of Magna Carta were subsequently issued by British monarchs, and Clause 39 of Magna Carta was renumbered "29". The phrase "due process of law" first appeared in a statutory rendition of Magna Carta in 1354 during the reign of Edward III of England, as follows: "No man of what state or condition he be, shall be put out of his lands or tenements nor taken, nor disinherited, nor put to death, without he be brought to answer by due process of law."
In 1608, the English jurist Edward Coke wrote a treatise in which he discussed the meaning of Magna Carta. Coke explained that no man shall be deprived but by "legem terrae", the law of the land, "that is, by the common law, statute law, or custom of England... (that is, to speak it once and for all) by the due course, and process of law.."
Both the clause in Magna Carta and the later statute of 1354 were again explained in 1704 (during the reign of Queen Anne) by the Queen's Bench, in the case of "Regina v. Paty". In that case, the British House of Commons had deprived John Paty and certain other citizens of the right to vote in an election and committed them to Newgate Prison merely for the offense of pursuing a legal action in the courts. The Queen's Bench, in an opinion by Justice Powys, explained the meaning of "due process of law" as follows:
Chief Justice Holt dissented in this case because he believed that the commitment had not in fact been by a legal authority. The House of Commons had purported to legislate unilaterally, without approval of the British House of Lords, ostensibly to regulate the election of its members. Although the Queen's Bench held that the House of Commons had not infringed or overturned due process, John Paty was ultimately freed by Queen Anne when she prorogued Parliament.
Throughout centuries of British history, many laws and treatises asserted various requirements as being part of "due process" or included in the "law of the land". That view usually held in regards to what was required by existing law, rather than what was intrinsically required by due process itself. As the United States Supreme Court has explained, a due process requirement in Britain was not "essential to the idea of due process of law in the prosecution and punishment of crimes, but was only mentioned as an example and illustration of due process of law as it actually existed in cases in which it was customarily used".
Ultimately, the scattered references to "due process of law" in English law did not limit the power of the government; in the words of American law professor John V. Orth, "the great phrases failed to retain their vitality." Orth points out that this is generally attributed to the rise of the doctrine of parliamentary supremacy in the United Kingdom, which was accompanied by hostility towards judicial review as an undemocratic foreign invention.
Scholars have occasionally interpreted Lord Coke's ruling in "Dr. Bonham's Case" as implying the possibility of judicial review, but by the 1870s, Lord Campbell was dismissing judicial review as "a foolish doctrine alleged to have been laid down extra-judicially in Dr. Bonham's Case..., a conundrum [that] ought to have been laughed at". Lacking the power of judicial review, English courts possessed no means by which to declare government statutes or actions invalid as a violation of due process. In contrast, American legislators and executive branch officers possessed virtually no means by which to overrule judicial invalidation of statutes or actions as due process violations, with the sole exception of proposing a constitutional amendment, which are rarely successful. As a consequence, English law and American law diverged. Unlike their English counterparts, American judges became increasingly assertive about enforcing due process of law. In turn, the legislative and executive branches learned how to avoid such confrontations in the first place, by tailoring statutes and executive actions to the constitutional requirements of due process as elaborated upon by the judiciary.
In 1977, an English political science professor explained the present situation in England for the benefit of American lawyers:
An American constitutional lawyer might well be surprised by the elusiveness of references to the term 'due process of law' in the general body of English legal writing... Today one finds no space devoted to due process in Halsbury's "Laws of England", in Stephen's "Commentaries", or Anson's "Law and Custom of the Constitution." The phrase rates no entry in such works as Stroud's "Judicial Dictionary" or Wharton's "Law Lexicon."
Two similar concepts in contemporary English law are natural justice, which generally applies only to decisions of administrative agencies and some types of private bodies like trade unions, and the British constitutional concept of the rule of law as articulated by A. V. Dicey and others. However, neither concept lines up perfectly with the American conception of due process, which presently contains many implied rights not found in the ancient or modern concepts of due process in England.
The Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution each contain a Due Process Clause. Due process deals with the administration of justice and thus the Due Process Clause acts as a safeguard from arbitrary denial of life, liberty, or property by the government outside the sanction of law. The Supreme Court of the United States interprets the clauses as providing four protections: procedural due process (in civil and criminal proceedings), substantive due process, a prohibition against vague laws, and as the vehicle for the incorporation of the Bill of Rights.
Various countries recognize some form of due process under customary international law. Although the specifics are often unclear, most nations agree that they should guarantee foreign visitors a basic minimum level of justice and fairness. Some nations have argued that they are bound to grant no more rights to aliens than they do to their own citizens, the doctrine of national treatment, which also means that both would be vulnerable to the same deprivations by the government. With the growth of international human rights law and the frequent use of treaties to govern treatment of foreign nationals abroad, the distinction, in practice, between these two perspectives may be disappearing. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40359 |
Dosimeter
A radiation dosimeter is a device that measures dose uptake of external ionizing radiation. It is worn by the person being monitored when used as a personal dosimeter, and is a record of the radiation dose received. Modern electronic personal dosimeters can give a continuous readout of cumulative dose and current dose rate, and can warn the wearer with an audible alarm when a specified dose rate or a cumulative dose is exceeded. Other dosimeters, such as thermoluminescent or film types, require processing after use to reveal the cumulative dose received, and cannot give a current indication of dose while being worn.
The personal ionising radiation dosimeter is of fundamental importance in the disciplines of radiation dosimetry and radiation health physics and is primarily used to estimate the radiation dose deposited in an individual wearing the device.
Ionising radiation damage to the human body is cumulative, and is related to the total dose received, for which the SI unit is the sievert. Workers exposed to radiation, such as radiographers, nuclear power plant workers, doctors using radiotherapy, those in laboratories using radionuclides, and HAZMAT teams are required to wear dosimeters so a record of occupational exposure can be made. Such devices are known as "legal dosimeters" if they have been approved for use in recording personnel dose for regulatory purposes.
Dosimeters are typically worn on the outside of clothing, a "whole body" dosimeter is worn on the chest or torso to represent dose to the whole body. This location monitors exposure of most vital organs and represents the bulk of body mass. Additional dosimeters can be worn to assess dose to extremities or in radiation fields that vary considerably depending on orientation of the body to the source.
Common types of personal dosimeters for ionizing radiation include:
The electronic personal dosimeter is an electronic device that has a number of sophisticated functions, such as continual monitoring which allows alarm warnings at preset levels and live readout of dose accumulated. These are especially useful in high dose areas where residence time of the wearer is limited due to dose constraints. The dosimeter can be reset, usually after taking a reading for record purposes, and thereby re-used multiple times.
Metal–oxide–semiconductor field-effect transistor dosimeters are now used as clinical dosimeters for radiotherapy radiation beams. The main advantages of MOSFET devices are:
1. The MOSFET dosimeter is direct reading with a very thin active area (less than 2 μm).
2. The physical size of the MOSFET when packaged is less than 4 mm.
3. The post radiation signal is permanently stored and is dose rate independent.
Gate oxide of MOSFET which is conventionally silicon dioxide is an active sensing material in MOSFET dosimeters. Radiation creates defects (acts like electron-hole pairs) in oxide, which in turn affects the threshold voltage of the MOSFET. This change in threshold voltage is proportional to radiation dose. Alternate high-k gate dielectrics like Hafnium dioxide and Aluminum oxides are also proposed as a radiation dosimeters.
A thermoluminescent dosimeter measures ionizing radiation exposure by measuring the intensity of visible light emitted from a crystal in the detector when heated. The intensity of light emitted is dependent upon the radiation exposure. These were once sold surplus and one format resembled a dark green wristwatch containing the active components and a highly sensitive IR diode mounted to the LiF glass chip. The main advantage is that the chip records dosage passively until exposed to light or heat so even a used sample can provide valuable scientific data.
Film badge dosimeters are for one-time use only. The level of radiation absorption is indicated by a change to the film emulsion, which is shown when the film is developed. They are now mostly superseded by electronic personal dosimeters and thermoluminescent dosimeters.
These use the property of a quartz fiber to measure the static electricity held on the fiber. Before use by the wearer a dosimeter is charged to a high voltage, causing the fiber to deflect due to electrostatic repulsion. As the gas in the dosimeter chamber becomes ionized by radiation the charge leaks away, causing the fiber to straighten and thereby indicate the amount of dose received against a graduated scale, which is viewed by a small in-built microscope.
They are only used for short durations, such as a day or a shift, as they can suffer from charge leakage, which gives a false high reading.
They are now largely superseded by electronic personal dosimeters for short term monitoring.
These use a conventional Geiger-Muller tube typically a ZP1301 or similar energy compensated tube requiring between 600 and 700V and a low power counter IC with display driver. The display on most was a bubble type with 4 digits though some newer units used a liquid crystal display module, and a button to enable the display for long battery life.
The voltage was derived from a small step-up that often used a unijunction transistor which though expensive was reliable over time and especially in high radiation environments common with tunnel diodes.
These have the disadvantage that the stored becquerel or microsievert count is volatile and vanishes if the power supply gets disconnected though there can be a capacitor to prevent this.
The fix was to use a long life battery, knurled high quality contacts and security screws to hold the typically glass front panel in place.
The operational quantity for personal dosimetry is the personal dose equivalent, which is defined by the International Commission on Radiological Protection as the dose equivalent in soft tissue at an appropriate depth, below a specified point on the human body. The specified point is usually given by the position where the individual’s dosimeter is worn.
This is an actual reading obtained from such as an ambient dose gamma monitor, or a personal dosimeter. The dosimeter is calibrated in a known radiation field to ensure display of accurate operational quantities and allow a relationship to known health effect. The personal dose equivalent is used to assess dose uptake, and allow regulatory limits to be met. It is the figure usually entered into the records of external dose for occupational radiation workers.
The dosimeter plays an important role within the international radiation protection system developed by the International Commission on Radiological Protection and the International Commission on Radiation Units and Measurements. This is shown in the accompanying diagram.
The "slab" phantom is used to represent the human torso for calibration of whole body dosimeters. This replicates the radiation scattering and absorption effects of the human torso. The International Atomic Energy Agency states "The slab phantom is 300 mm × 300 mm × 150 mm depth to represent the human torso".
Manufacturing processes that treat products with ionizing radiation, such as food irradiation, use dosimeters to calibrate doses deposited in the matter being irradiated. These usually must have a greater dose range than personal dosimeters, and doses are normally measured in the unit of absorbed dose: the gray (Gy). The dosimeter is located on or adjacent to the items being irradiated during the process as a validation of dose levels received. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40363 |
Electrometer
An electrometer is an electrical instrument for measuring electric charge or electrical potential difference. There are many different types, ranging from historical handmade mechanical instruments to high-precision electronic devices. Modern electrometers based on vacuum tube or solid-state technology can be used to make voltage and charge measurements with very low leakage currents, down to 1 femtoampere. A simpler but related instrument, the electroscope, works on similar principles but only indicates the relative magnitudes of voltages or charges.
The gold-leaf electroscope was one of the instruments used to indicate electric charge. It is still used for science demonstrations but has been superseded in most applications by electronic measuring instruments. The instrument consists of two thin leaves of gold foil suspended from an electrode. When the electrode is charged by induction or by contact, the leaves acquire similar electric charges and repel each other due to the Coulomb force. Their separation is a direct indication of the net charge stored on them. On the glass opposite the leaves, pieces of tin foil may be pasted, so that when the leaves diverge fully they may discharge into the ground. The leaves may be enclosed in a glass envelope to protect them from drafts, and the envelope may be evacuated to minimize charge leakage. A further cause of charge leakage is ionizing radiation, so to prevent this, the electrometer must be surrounded by lead shielding. This principle has been used to detect ionizing radiation, as seen in the quartz fibre electrometer and Kearny fallout meter.
This type of electroscope usually acts as an indicator and not a measuring device, although it can be calibrated. The Braun electroscope replaced the gold-leaf electroscope for more accurate measurements.
The instrument was developed in the 18th century by several researchers, among them Abraham Bennet (1787) and Alessandro Volta.
While the term "quadrant electrometer" eventually referred to Kelvin's version, this term was first used to describe a simpler device. It consists of an upright stem of wood, to which is affixed to a semicircle of ivory. From the center there hangs a light cork ball upon a pivot. When the instrument is placed upon a charged body, the stem participates and repels the cork ball. The amount of repulsion may be read off the graduated semicircle, though the measured angle is not in direct proportion to the charge. Early inventors included William Henley (1770) and Horace-Bénédict de Saussure.
Torsion is used to give a measurement more sensitive than repulsion of gold leaves or cork-balls. It consists of a glass cylinder with a glass tube on top. In the axes of the tube is a glass thread, the lower end of this holds a bar of gum lac, with a gilt pith ball at each extremity. Through another aperture on the cylinder, another gum lac rod with gilt balls may be introduced. This is called the carrier rod.
If the lower ball of the carrier rod is charged when it is entered into the aperture, this will repel one of the movable balls inside. An index and scale (not pictured) is attached to the top of the twistable glass rod. The number of degrees twisted to bring the balls back together is in exact proportion of the amount of charge of the ball of the carrier rod.
Francis Ronalds, the inaugural Director of the Kew Observatory, made important improvements to the Coulomb torsion balance around 1844 and the modified instrument was sold by London instrument-makers. Ronalds used a thin suspended needle rather than the gum lac bar and replaced the carrier rod with a fixed piece in the plane of the needle. Both were metal, as was the suspending line and its surrounding tube, so that the needle and the fixed piece could be charged directly through wire connections. Ronalds also employed a Faraday cage and trialled photography to record the readings continuously. It was the forerunner of Kelvin's quadrant electrometer (described below).
Developed by Peltier, this uses a form of magnetic compass to measure deflection by balancing the electrostatic force with a magnetic needle.
The Bohnenberger electrometer, developed by J. G. F. von Bohnenberger from an invention by T. G. B. Behrens, consists of a single gold leaf suspended vertically between the anode and cathode of a dry pile. Any charge imparted to the gold leaf causes it to move toward one or the other pole; thus, the sign of the charge as well as its approximate magnitude may be gauged.
Also known as "attracted disk electrometers", attraction electrometers are sensitive balances measuring the attraction between charged disks. William Snow Harris is credited with the invention of this instrument, which was further improved by Lord Kelvin.
Developed by Lord Kelvin, this is the most sensitive and accurate of all the mechanical electrometers. The original design uses a light aluminum sector suspended inside a drum cut into four segments. The segments are insulated and connected diagonally in pairs. The charged aluminum sector is attracted to one pair of segments and repelled from the other. The deflection is observed by a beam of light reflected from a small mirror attached to the sector, just as in a galvanometer. The engraving on the right shows a slightly different form of this electrometer, using four flat plates rather than closed segments. The plates can be connected externally in the conventional diagonal way (as shown), or in a different order for specific applications.
A more sensitive form of quadrant electrometer was developed by Frederick Lindemann. It employs a metal-coated quartz fiber instead of an aluminum sector. The deflection is measured by observing the movement of the fiber under a microscope. Initially used for measuring star light, it was employed for the infrared detection of airplanes in the early stages of World War II.
Some mechanic electrometers were housed inside a cage often referred to as a “bird cage”. This is a form of Faraday Cage that protected the instrument from external electrostatic charges.
Electricity readings may be recorded continuously with a device known as an electrograph. Francis Ronalds created an early electrograph around 1814 in which the changing electricity made a pattern in a rotating resin-coated plate. It was employed at Kew Observatory and the Royal Observatory, Greenwich in the 1840s to create records of variations in atmospheric electricity. In 1845, Ronalds invented photographic means of registering the atmospheric electricity. The photosensitive surface was pulled slowly past of the aperture diaphragm of the camera box, which also housed an electrometer, and captured ongoing movements of the electrometer indices as a trace. Kelvin used similar photographic means for his quadrant electrometer (see above) in the 1860s.
A modern electrometer is a highly sensitive electronic voltmeter whose input impedance is so high that the current flowing into it can be considered, for most practical purposes, to be zero. The actual value of input resistance for modern electronic electrometers is around 1014Ω, compared to around 1010Ω for nanovoltmeters. Owing to the extremely high input impedance, special design considerations must be applied to avoid leakage current such as driven shields and special insulation materials.
Among other applications, electrometers are used in nuclear physics experiments as they are able to measure the tiny charges left in matter by the passage of ionizing radiation. The most common use for modern electrometers is the measurement of radiation with ionization chambers, in instruments such as geiger counters.
Vibrating reed electrometers use a variable capacitor formed between a moving electrode (in the form of a vibrating reed) and a fixed input electrode. As the distance between the two electrodes varies, the capacitance also varies and electric charge is forced in and out of the capacitor. The alternating current signal produced by the flow of this charge is amplified and used as an analogue for the DC voltage applied to the capacitor. The DC input resistance of the electrometer is determined solely by the leakage resistance of the capacitor, and is typically extremely high, (although its AC input impedance is lower).
For convenience of use, the vibrating reed assembly is often attached by a cable to the rest of the electrometer. This allows for a relatively small unit to be located near the charge to be measured while the much larger reed-driver and amplifier unit can be located wherever it is convenient for the operator.
Valve electrometers use a specialized vacuum tube (thermionic valve) with a very high gain (transconductance) and input resistance. The input current is allowed to flow into the high impedance grid, and the voltage so generated is vastly amplified in the anode (plate) circuit. Valves designed for electrometer use have leakage currents as low as a few femtoamperes (10−15 amperes). Such valves must be handled with gloved hands as the salts left on the glass envelope can provide leakage paths for these tiny currents.
In a specialized circuit called "inverted triode", the roles of anode and grid are reversed. This places the control electrode at a maximum distance from the space-charge region surrounding the filament, minimizing the amount of electrons collected by the control electrode, and thus minimizing the input current.
The most modern electrometers consist of a solid state amplifier using one or more field-effect transistors, connections for external measurement devices, and usually a display and/or data-logging connections. The amplifier amplifies small currents so that they are more easily measured. The external connections are usually of a co-axial or tri-axial design, and allow attachment of diodes or ionization chambers for ionising radiation measurement. The display or data-logging connections allow the user to see the data or record it for later analysis. Electrometers designed for use with ionization chambers may include a high-voltage power supply, which is used to bias the ionization chamber.
Solid-state electrometers are often multipurpose devices that can measure voltage, charge, resistance and current. They measure voltage by means of "voltage balancing", in which the input voltage is compared with an internal reference voltage source using an electronic circuit with a very high input impedance (of the order of 1014 ohms). A similar circuit modified to act as a current-to-voltage converter enables the instrument to measure currents as small as a few femtoamperes. Combined with an internal voltage source, the current measuring mode can be adapted to measure very high resistances, of the order of 1017 ohms. Finally, by calculation from the known capacitance of the electrometer's input terminal, the instrument can measure very small electric charges, down to a small fraction of a picocoulomb. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40364 |
Galvanometer
A galvanometer is an electromechanical instrument used for detecting and indicating an electric current. A galvanometer works as an actuator, by producing a rotary deflection (of a "pointer"), in response to electric current flowing through a coil in a constant magnetic field. Early galvanometers were not calibrated, but their later developments were used as measuring instruments, called ammeters, to measure the current flowing through an electric circuit.
Galvanometers developed from the observation that the needle of a magnetic compass is deflected near a wire that has electric current flowing through it, first described by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820. They were the first instruments used to detect and measure small amounts of electric currents. André-Marie Ampère, who gave mathematical expression to Ørsted's discovery and named the instrument after the Italian electricity researcher Luigi Galvani, who in 1791 discovered the principle of the frog galvanoscope – that electric current would make the legs of a dead frog jerk.
Sensitive galvanometers have been essential for the development of science and technology in many fields. For example, in the 1800s they enabled long range communication through submarine cables, such as the earliest transatlantic telegraph cables, and were essential to discovering the electrical activity of the heart and brain, by their fine measurements of current.
Galvanometers also had widespread use as the visualising part in other kinds of analog meters, for example in light meters, VU meters, etc., where they were used to measure and display the output of other sensors. Today the main type of galvanometer mechanism, still in use, is the moving coil, D'Arsonval/Weston type.
Modern galvanometers, of the D'Arsonval/Weston type, are constructed with a small pivoting coil of wire, called a spindle, in the field of a permanent magnet. The coil is attached to a thin pointer that traverses a calibrated scale. A tiny torsion spring pulls the coil and pointer to the zero position.
When a direct current (DC) flows through the coil, the coil generates a magnetic field. This field acts against the permanent magnet. The coil twists, pushing against the spring, and moves the pointer. The hand points at a scale indicating the electric current. Careful design of the pole pieces ensures that the magnetic field is uniform, so that the angular deflection of the pointer is proportional to the current. A useful meter generally contains provision for damping the mechanical resonance of the moving coil and pointer, so that the pointer settles quickly to its position without oscillation.
The basic sensitivity of a meter might be, for instance, 100 microamperes full scale (with a voltage drop of, say, 50 millivolts at full current). Such meters are often calibrated to read some other quantity that can be converted to a current of that magnitude. The use of current dividers, often called shunts, allows a meter to be calibrated to measure larger currents. A meter can be calibrated as a DC voltmeter if the resistance of the coil is known by calculating the voltage required to generate a full scale current. A meter can be configured to read other voltages by putting it in a voltage divider circuit. This is generally done by placing a resistor in series with the meter coil. A meter can be used to read resistance by placing it in series with a known voltage (a battery) and an adjustable resistor. In a preparatory step, the circuit is completed and the resistor adjusted to produce full scale deflection. When an unknown resistor is placed in series in the circuit the current will be less than full scale and an appropriately calibrated scale can display the value of the previously unknown resistor.
These capabilities to translate different kinds of electric quantities, in to pointer movements, make the galvanometer ideal for turning output of other sensors that outputs electricity (in some form or another), into something that can be read by a human.
Because the pointer of the meter is usually a small distance above the scale of the meter, parallax error can occur when the operator attempts to read the scale line that "lines up" with the pointer. To counter this, some meters include a mirror along the markings of the principal scale. The accuracy of the reading from a mirrored scale is improved by positioning one's head while reading the scale so that the pointer and the reflection of the pointer are aligned; at this point, the operator's eye must be directly above the pointer and any parallax error has been minimized.
Probably the largest use of galvanometers was of the D'Arsonval/Weston type used in analog meters in electronic equipment. Since the 1980s, galvanometer-type analog meter movements have been displaced by analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) for many uses. A digital panel meter (DPM) contains an ADC and numeric display. The advantages of a digital instrument are higher precision and accuracy, but factors such as power consumption or cost may still favour application of analog meter movements.
Most modern uses for the galvanometer mechanism are in positioning and control systems.
Galvanometer mechanisms are divided into moving magnet and moving coil galvanometers; in addition, they are divided into "closed-loop" and "open-loop" - or "resonant" - types.
"Mirror" galvanometer systems are used as beam positioning or beam steering elements in laser scanning systems. For example, for material processing with high-power lasers, closed loop mirror galvanometer mechanisms are used with servo control systems. These are typically high power galvanometers and the newest galvanometers designed for beam steering applications can have frequency responses over 10 kHz with appropriate servo technology. Closed-loop mirror galvanometers are also used in similar ways in stereolithography, laser sintering, laser engraving, laser beam welding, laser TVs, laser displays and in imaging applications such as retinal scanning with Optical Coherence Tomography (OCT). Almost all of these galvanometers are of the moving magnet type. The closed loop is obtained measuring the position of the rotating axis with an infrared emitter and 2 photodiodes. This feedback is an analog signal.
Open loop, or resonant mirror galvanometers, are mainly used in some types of laser-based bar-code scanners, printing machines, imaging applications, military applications and space systems. Their non-lubricated bearings are especially of interest in applications that require functioning in a high vacuum.
Moving coil type galvanometer mechanisms (called 'voice coils' by hard disk manufacturers) are used for controlling the "head positioning" servos in hard disk drives and CD/DVD players, in order to keep mass (and thus access times), as low as possible.
A major early use for galvanometers was for finding faults in telecommunications cables. They were superseded in this application late in the 20th century by time-domain reflectometers.
Galvanometer mechanisms were also used to get readings from photoresistors in the metering mechanisms of film cameras (as seen in the adjacent image).
In analog strip chart recorders such as used in electrocardiographs, electroencephalographs and polygraphs, galvanometer mechanisms were used to position the "pen". Strip chart recorders with galvanometer driven pens may have a full scale frequency response of 100 Hz and several centimeters of deflection.
The deflection of a magnetic compass needle by current in a wire was first described by Hans Christian Ørsted in 1820. The phenomenon was studied both for its own sake and as a means of measuring electric current.
The earliest galvanometer was reported by Johann Schweigger at the University of Halle on 16 September 1820. André-Marie Ampère also contributed to its development. Early designs increased the effect of the magnetic field generated by the current by using multiple turns of wire. The instruments were at first called "multipliers" due to this common design feature. The term "galvanometer," in common use by 1836, was derived from the surname of Italian electricity researcher Luigi Galvani, who in 1791 discovered that electric current would make a dead frog's leg jerk.
Originally, the instruments relied on the Earth's magnetic field to provide the restoring force for the compass needle. These were called "tangent" galvanometers and had to be oriented before use. Later instruments of the "astatic" type used opposing magnets to become independent of the Earth's field and would operate in any orientation.
An early mirror galvanometer was invented in 1826 by Johann Christian Poggendorff. The most sensitive form of astatic galvanometer, the Thomson galvanometer, for which Thomson coined the term "mirror galvanometer", was patented in 1858 by William Thomson (Lord Kelvin). Thomson's mirror galvanometer was an improvement of a design invented by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1849. Thomson's design was able to detect very rapid current changes by using small magnets attached to a lightweight mirror, suspended by a thread, instead of a compass needle. The deflection of a light beam on the mirror greatly magnified the deflection induced by small currents. Alternatively, the deflection of the suspended magnets could be observed directly through a microscope.
The ability to measure quantitatively voltage and current allowed Georg Ohm, in 1827, to formulate Ohm's Law – that the voltage across a conductor is directly proportional to the current through it.
The early moving-magnet form of galvanometer had the disadvantage that it was affected by any magnets or iron masses near it, and its deflection was not linearly proportional to the current. In 1882 Jacques-Arsène d'Arsonval and Marcel Deprez developed a form with a stationary permanent magnet and a moving coil of wire, suspended by fine wires which provided both an electrical connection to the coil and the restoring torque to return to the zero position. An iron tube between the magnet's pole pieces defined a circular gap through which the coil rotated. This gap produced a consistent, radial magnetic field across the coil, giving a linear response throughout the instrument's range. A mirror attached to the coil deflected a beam of light to indicate the coil position. The concentrated magnetic field and delicate suspension made these instruments sensitive; d'Arsonval's initial instrument could detect ten microamperes.
Edward Weston extensively improved the design. He replaced the fine wire suspension with a pivot, and provided restoring torque and electrical connections through spiral springs rather like those of a wristwatch balance wheel hairspring. He developed a method of stabilizing the magnetic field of the permanent magnet, so the instrument would have consistent accuracy over time. He replaced the light beam and mirror with a knife-edge pointer that could be read directly. A mirror under the pointer, in the same plane as the scale, eliminated parallax observation error. To maintain the field strength, Weston's design used a very narrow circumferential slot through which the coil moved, with a minimal air-gap. This improved linearity of pointer deflection with respect to coil current. Finally, the coil was wound on a light-weight form made of conductive metal, which acted as a damper. By 1888, Edward Weston had patented and brought out a commercial form of this instrument, which became a standard electrical equipment component. It was known as a "portable" instrument because it was affected very little by mounting position or by transporting it from place to place. This design is almost universally used in moving-coil meters today.
Initially laboratory instruments relying on the Earth's own magnetic field to provide restoring force for the pointer, galvanometers were developed into compact, rugged, sensitive portable instruments essential to the development of electro-technology.
The taut-band movement is a modern development of the D'Arsonval-Weston movement. The jewel pivots and hairsprings are replaced by tiny strips of metal under tension. Such a meter is more rugged for field use.
Some galvanometers use a solid pointer on a scale to show measurements; other very sensitive types use a miniature mirror and a beam of light to provide mechanical amplification of low-level signals.
A tangent galvanometer is an early measuring instrument used for the measurement of electric current. It works by using a compass needle to compare a magnetic field generated by the unknown current to the magnetic field of the Earth. It gets its name from its operating principle, the tangent law of magnetism, which states that the tangent of the angle a compass needle makes is proportional to the ratio of the strengths of the two perpendicular magnetic fields. It was first described by Johan Jacob Nervander in 1834 (see J.J. Nervander, “Mémoire sur un Galvanomètre à châssis
cylindrique par lequel on obtient immédiatement et sans calcul la mesure de l’intensité du courant électrique qui produit la déviation de l’aiguille aimantée,” Annales de Chimie et de Physique (Paris), Tome 55, 156–184, 1834. and J. Venermo and A. Sihvola, "The tangent galvanometer of Johan Jacob Nervander," IEEE Instrumentation & Measurement
Magazine, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 16-23, June 2008.) and in 1837 by Claude Pouillet.
A tangent galvanometer consists of a coil of insulated copper wire wound on a circular non-magnetic frame. The frame is mounted vertically on a horizontal base provided with levelling screws. The coil can be rotated on a vertical axis passing through its centre. A compass box is mounted horizontally at the centre of a circular scale. It consists of a tiny, powerful magnetic needle pivoted at the centre of the coil. The magnetic needle is free to rotate in the horizontal plane. The circular scale is divided into four quadrants. Each quadrant is graduated from 0° to 90°. A long thin aluminium pointer is attached to the needle at its centre and at right angle to it. To avoid errors due to parallax, a plane mirror is mounted below the compass needle.
In operation, the instrument is first rotated until the magnetic field of the Earth, indicated by the compass needle, is parallel with the plane of the coil. Then the unknown current is applied to the coil. This creates a second magnetic field on the axis of the coil, perpendicular to the Earth's magnetic field. The compass needle responds to the vector sum of the two fields, and deflects to an angle equal to the tangent of the ratio of the two fields. From the angle read from the compass's scale, the current could be found from a table. The current supply wires have to be wound in a small helix, like a pig's tail, otherwise the field due to the wire will affect the compass needle and an incorrect reading will be obtained.
The galvanometer is oriented so that the plane of the coil is vertical and aligned along parallel to the horizontal component of the Earth's magnetic field (i.e. parallel to the local "magnetic meridian"). When an electric current flows through the galvanometer coil, a second magnetic field is created. At the center of the coil, where the compass needle is located, the coil's field is perpendicular to the plane of the coil. The magnitude of the coil's field is:
where is the current in amperes, is the number of turns of the coil and is the radius of the coil. These two perpendicular magnetic fields add vectorially, and the compass needle points along the direction of their resultant . The current in the coil causes the compass needle to rotate by an angle :
From tangent law, , i.e.
or
or , where is called the Reduction Factor of the tangent galvanometer.
One problem with the tangent galvanometer is that its resolution degrades at both high currents and low currents. The maximum resolution is obtained when the value of is 45°. When the value of is close to 0° or 90°, a large percentage change in the current will only move the needle a few degrees.
A tangent galvanometer can also be used to measure the magnitude of the horizontal component of the geomagnetic field. When used in this way, a low-voltage power source, such as a battery, is connected in series with a rheostat, the galvanometer, and an ammeter. The galvanometer is first aligned so that the coil is parallel to the geomagnetic field, whose direction is indicated by the compass when there is no current through the coils. The battery is then connected and the rheostat is adjusted until the compass needle deflects 45 degrees from the geomagnetic field, indicating that the magnitude of the magnetic field at the center of the coil is the same as that of the horizontal component of the geomagnetic field. This field strength can be calculated from the current as measured by the ammeter, the number of turns of the coil, and the radius of the coils.
Unlike the tangent galvanometer, the "astatic galvanometer" does not use the Earth's magnetic field for measurement, so it does not need to be oriented with respect to the Earth's field, making it easier to use. Developed by Leopoldo Nobili in 1825, it consists of two magnetized needles parallel to each other but with the magnetic poles reversed. These needles are suspended by a single silk thread. The lower needle is inside a vertical current sensing coil of wire and is deflected by the magnetic field created by the passing current, as in the tangent galvanometer above. The purpose of the second needle is to cancel the dipole moment of the first needle, so the suspended armature has no net magnetic dipole moment, and thus is not affected by the earth's magnetic field. The needle's rotation is opposed by the torsional elasticity of the suspension thread, which is proportional to the angle.
To achieve higher sensitivity to detect extremely small currents, the mirror galvanometer substitutes a lightweight mirror for the pointer. It consists of horizontal magnets suspended from a fine fiber, inside a vertical coil of wire, with a mirror attached to the magnets. A beam of light reflected from the mirror falls on a graduated scale across the room, acting as a long mass-less pointer. The mirror galvanometer was used as the receiver in the first trans-Atlantic submarine telegraph cables in the 1850s, to detect the extremely faint pulses of current after their thousand-mile journey under the Atlantic. In a device called an oscillograph, the moving beam of light is used, to produce graphs of current versus time, by recording measurements on photographic film. The string galvanometer is a type of mirror galvanometer so sensitive that it was used to make the first electrocardiogram of the electrical activity of the human heart.
A ballistic galvanometer is a type of sensitive galvanometer for measuring the quantity of charge discharged through it. In reality it is an integrator, unlike a current-measuring galvanometer, the moving part has a large moment of inertia that gives it a long oscillation period. It can be either of the moving coil or moving magnet type; commonly it is a mirror galvanometer. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40365 |
Analog-to-digital converter
In electronics, an analog-to-digital converter (ADC, A/D, or A-to-D) is a system that converts an analog signal, such as a sound picked up by a microphone or light entering a digital camera, into a digital signal. An ADC may also provide an isolated measurement such as an electronic device that converts an input analog voltage or current to a digital number representing the magnitude of the voltage or current. Typically the digital output is a two's complement binary number that is proportional to the input, but there are other possibilities.
There are several ADC architectures. Due to the complexity and the need for precisely matched components, all but the most specialized ADCs are implemented as integrated circuits (ICs). These typically take the form of metal–oxide–semiconductor (MOS) mixed-signal integrated circuit chips that integrate both analog and digital circuits.
A digital-to-analog converter (DAC) performs the reverse function; it converts a digital signal into an analog signal.
An ADC converts a continuous-time and continuous-amplitude analog signal to a discrete-time and discrete-amplitude digital signal. The conversion involves quantization of the input, so it necessarily introduces a small amount of error or noise. Furthermore, instead of continuously performing the conversion, an ADC does the conversion periodically, sampling the input, limiting the allowable bandwidth of the input signal.
The performance of an ADC is primarily characterized by its bandwidth and signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). The bandwidth of an ADC is characterized primarily by its sampling rate. The SNR of an ADC is influenced by many factors, including the resolution, linearity and accuracy (how well the quantization levels match the true analog signal), aliasing and jitter. The SNR of an ADC is often summarized in terms of its effective number of bits (ENOB), the number of bits of each measure it returns that are on average not noise. An ideal ADC has an ENOB equal to its resolution. ADCs are chosen to match the bandwidth and required SNR of the signal to be digitized. If an ADC operates at a sampling rate greater than twice the bandwidth of the signal, then per the Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem, perfect reconstruction is possible. The presence of quantization error limits the SNR of even an ideal ADC. However, if the SNR of the ADC exceeds that of the input signal, its effects may be neglected resulting in an essentially perfect digital representation of the analog input signal.
The resolution of the converter indicates the number of discrete values it can produce over the range of analog values. The resolution determines the magnitude of the quantization error and therefore determines the maximum possible average signal-to-noise ratio for an ideal ADC without the use of oversampling. The values are usually stored electronically in binary form, so the resolution is usually expressed as the audio bit depth. In consequence, the number of discrete values available is assumed to be a power of two. For example, an ADC with a resolution of 8 bits can encode an analog input to one in 256 different levels (28 = 256). The values can represent the ranges from 0 to 255 (i.e. unsigned integer) or from −128 to 127 (i.e. signed integer), depending on the application.
Resolution can also be defined electrically, and expressed in volts. The change in voltage required to guarantee a change in the output code level is called the least significant bit (LSB) voltage. The resolution "Q" of the ADC is equal to the LSB voltage. The voltage resolution of an ADC is equal to its overall voltage measurement range divided by the number of intervals:
where "M" is the ADC's resolution in bits and "E"FSR is the full scale voltage range (also called 'span'). "E"FSR is given by
where "V"RefHi and "V"RefLow are the upper and lower extremes, respectively, of the voltages that can be coded.
Normally, the number of voltage intervals is given by
where "M" is the ADC's resolution in bits.
That is, one voltage interval is assigned in between two consecutive code levels.
Example:
In many cases, the useful resolution of a converter is limited by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and other errors in the overall system expressed as an ENOB.
Quantization error is introduced by quantization in an ideal ADC. It is a rounding error between the analog input voltage to the ADC and the output digitized value. The error is nonlinear and signal-dependent. In an ideal ADC, where the quantization error is uniformly distributed between −1/2 LSB and +1/2 LSB, and the signal has a uniform distribution covering all quantization levels, the Signal-to-quantization-noise ratio (SQNR) is given by
where Q is the number of quantization bits. For example, for a 16-bit ADC, the quantization error is 96.3 dB below the maximum level.
Quantization error is distributed from DC to the Nyquist frequency. Consequently, if part of the ADC's bandwidth is not used, as is the case with oversampling, some of the quantization error will occur out-of-band, effectively improving the SQNR for the bandwidth in use. In an oversampled system, noise shaping can be used to further increase SQNR by forcing more quantization error out of band.
In ADCs, performance can usually be improved using dither. This is a very small amount of random noise (e.g. white noise), which is added to the input before conversion. Its effect is to randomize the state of the LSB based on the signal. Rather than the signal simply getting cut off altogether at low levels, it extends the effective range of signals that the ADC can convert, at the expense of a slight increase in noise. Note that dither can only increase the resolution of a sampler. It cannot improve the linearity, and thus accuracy does not necessarily improve.
Quantization distortion in an audio signal of very low level with respect to the bit depth of the ADC is correlated with the signal and sounds distorted and unpleasant. With dithering, the distortion is transformed into noise. The undistorted signal may be recovered accurately by averaging over time. Dithering is also used in integrating systems such as electricity meters. Since the values are added together, the dithering produces results that are more exact than the LSB of the analog-to-digital converter.
Dither is often applied when quantizing photographic images to a fewer number of bits per pixel—the image becomes noisier but to the eye looks far more realistic than the quantized image, which otherwise becomes banded. This analogous process may help to visualize the effect of dither on an analog audio signal that is converted to digital.
An ADC has several sources of errors. Quantization error and (assuming the ADC is intended to be linear) non-linearity are intrinsic to any analog-to-digital conversion. These errors are measured in a unit called the least significant bit (LSB). In the above example of an eight-bit ADC, an error of one LSB is 1/256 of the full signal range, or about 0.4%.
All ADCs suffer from nonlinearity errors caused by their physical imperfections, causing their output to deviate from a linear function (or some other function, in the case of a deliberately nonlinear ADC) of their input. These errors can sometimes be mitigated by calibration, or prevented by testing. Important parameters for linearity are integral nonlinearity and differential nonlinearity. These nonlinearities introduce distortion that can reduce the signal-to-noise ratio performance of the ADC and thus reduce its effective resolution.
When digitizing a sine wave formula_5, the use of a non-ideal sampling clock will result in some uncertainty in when samples are recorded. Provided that the actual sampling time uncertainty due to clock jitter is formula_6, the error caused by this phenomenon can be estimated as formula_7. This will result in additional recorded noise that will reduce the effective number of bits (ENOB) below that predicted by quantization error alone. The error is zero for DC, small at low frequencies, but significant with signals of high amplitude and high frequency. The effect of jitter on performance can be compared to quantization error: formula_8, where q is the number of ADC bits.
Clock jitter is caused by phase noise. The resolution of ADCs with a digitization bandwidth between 1 MHz and 1 GHz is limited by jitter. For lower bandwidth conversions such as when sampling audio signals at 44.1 kHz, clock jitter has a less significant impact on performance.
The analog signal is continuous in time and it is necessary to convert this to a flow of digital values. It is therefore required to define the rate at which new digital values are sampled from the analog signal. The rate of new values is called the "sampling rate" or "sampling frequency" of the converter. A continuously varying bandlimited signal can be sampled and then the original signal can be reproduced from the discrete-time values by a reconstruction filter. The Nyquist–Shannon sampling theorem implies that a faithful reproduction of the original signal is only possible if the sampling rate is higher than twice the highest frequency of the signal.
Since a practical ADC cannot make an instantaneous conversion, the input value must necessarily be held constant during the time that the converter performs a conversion (called the "conversion time"). An input circuit called a sample and hold performs this task—in most cases by using a capacitor to store the analog voltage at the input, and using an electronic switch or gate to disconnect the capacitor from the input. Many ADC integrated circuits include the sample and hold subsystem internally.
An ADC works by sampling the value of the input at discrete intervals in time. Provided that the input is sampled above the Nyquist rate, defined as twice the highest frequency of interest, then all frequencies in the signal can be reconstructed. If frequencies above half the Nyquist rate are sampled, they are incorrectly detected as lower frequencies, a process referred to as aliasing. Aliasing occurs because instantaneously sampling a function at two or fewer times per cycle results in missed cycles, and therefore the appearance of an incorrectly lower frequency. For example, a 2 kHz sine wave being sampled at 1.5 kHz would be reconstructed as a 500 Hz sine wave.
To avoid aliasing, the input to an ADC must be low-pass filtered to remove frequencies above half the sampling rate. This filter is called an "anti-aliasing filter", and is essential for a practical ADC system that is applied to analog signals with higher frequency content. In applications where protection against aliasing is essential, oversampling may be used to greatly reduce or even eliminate it.
Although aliasing in most systems is unwanted, it can be exploited to provide simultaneous down-mixing of a band-limited high-frequency signal (see undersampling and frequency mixer). The alias is effectively the lower heterodyne of the signal frequency and sampling frequency.
For economy, signals are often sampled at the minimum rate required with the result that the quantization error introduced is white noise spread over the whole passband of the converter. If a signal is sampled at a rate much higher than the Nyquist rate and then digitally filtered to limit it to the signal bandwidth produces the following advantages:
Oversampling is typically used in audio frequency ADCs where the required sampling rate (typically 44.1 or 48 kHz) is very low compared to the clock speed of typical transistor circuits (>1 MHz). In this case, the performance of the ADC can be greatly increased at little or no cost. Furthermore, as any aliased signals are also typically out of band, aliasing can often be completely eliminated using very low cost filters.
The speed of an ADC varies by type. The Wilkinson ADC is limited by the clock rate which is processable by current digital circuits. For a successive-approximation ADC, the conversion time scales with the logarithm of the resolution, i.e. the number of bits. Flash ADCs are certainly the fastest type of the three; The conversion is basically performed in a single parallel step.
There is a potential tradeoff between speed and precision. Flash ADCs have drifts and uncertainties associated with the comparator levels results in poor linearity. To a lesser extent, poor linearity can also be an issue for successive-approximation ADCs. Here, nonlinearity arises from accumulating errors from the subtraction processes. Wilkinson ADCs have the best linearity of the three.
The sliding scale or randomizing method can be employed to greatly improve the linearity of any type of ADC, but especially flash and successive approximation types. For any ADC the mapping from input voltage to digital output value is not exactly a floor or ceiling function as it should be. Under normal conditions, a pulse of a particular amplitude is always converted to the same digital value. The problem lies in that the ranges of analog values for the digitized values are not all of the same widths, and the differential linearity decreases proportionally with the divergence from the average width. The sliding scale principle uses an averaging effect to overcome this phenomenon. A random, but known analog voltage is added to the sampled input voltage. It is then converted to digital form, and the equivalent digital amount is subtracted, thus restoring it to its original value. The advantage is that the conversion has taken place at a random point. The statistical distribution of the final levels is decided by a weighted average over a region of the range of the ADC. This in turn desensitizes it to the width of any specific level.
These are the most common ways of implementing an electronic ADC:
A direct-conversion ADC or flash ADC has a bank of comparators sampling the input signal in parallel, each firing for their decoded voltage range. The comparator bank feeds a logic circuit that generates a code for each voltage range. Direct conversion is very fast, capable of gigahertz sampling rates, but usually has only 8 bits of resolution or fewer, since the number of comparators needed, 2N – 1, doubles with each additional bit, requiring a large, expensive circuit. ADCs of this type have a large die size, a high input capacitance, high power dissipation, and are prone to produce glitches at the output (by outputting an out-of-sequence code). Scaling to newer submicrometre technologies does not help as the device mismatch is the dominant design limitation. They are often used for video, wideband communications or other fast signals in optical storage. There are four different types of direct ADCs.
A successive-approximation ADC uses a comparator to successively narrow a range that contains the input voltage. At each successive step, the converter compares the input voltage to the output of an internal digital to analog converter which might represent the midpoint of a selected voltage range. At each step in this process, the approximation is stored in a successive approximation register (SAR). For example, consider an input voltage of 6.3 V and the initial range is 0 to 16 V. For the first step, the input 6.3 V is compared to 8 V (the midpoint of the range). The comparator reports that the input voltage is less than 8 V, so the SAR is updated to narrow the range to . For the second step, the input voltage is compared to 4 V (midpoint of ). The comparator reports the input voltage is above 4 V, so the SAR is updated to reflect the input voltage is in the range . For the third step, the input voltage is compared with 6 V (halfway between 4 V and 8 V); the comparator reports the input voltage is greater than 6 volts, and search range becomes . The steps are continued until the desired resolution is reached.
A ramp-compare ADC produces a saw-tooth signal that ramps up or down then quickly returns to zero. When the ramp starts, a timer starts counting. When the ramp voltage matches the input, a comparator fires, and the timer's value is recorded. Timed ramp converters require the fewest transistors. The ramp time is sensitive to temperature because the circuit generating the ramp is often a simple oscillator. There are two solutions: use a clocked counter driving a DAC and then use the comparator to preserve the counter's value, or calibrate the timed ramp. A special advantage of the ramp-compare system is that comparing a second signal just requires another comparator, and another register to store the voltage value. A very simple (nonlinear) ramp converter can be implemented with a microcontroller and one resistor and capacitor. Vice versa, a filled capacitor can be taken from an integrator, time-to-amplitude converter, phase detector, sample and hold circuit, or peak and hold circuit and discharged. This has the advantage that a slow comparator cannot be disturbed by fast input changes.
The Wilkinson ADC was designed by D. H. Wilkinson in 1950. The Wilkinson ADC is based on the comparison of an input voltage with that produced by a charging capacitor. The capacitor is allowed to charge until its voltage is equal to the amplitude of the input pulse (a comparator determines when this condition has been reached). Then, the capacitor is allowed to discharge linearly, which produces a ramp voltage. At the point when the capacitor begins to discharge, a gate pulse is initiated. The gate pulse remains on until the capacitor is completely discharged. Thus the duration of the gate pulse is directly proportional to the amplitude of the input pulse. This gate pulse operates a linear gate which receives pulses from a high-frequency oscillator clock. While the gate is open, a discrete number of clock pulses pass through the linear gate and are counted by the address register. The time the linear gate is open is proportional to the amplitude of the input pulse, thus the number of clock pulses recorded in the address register is proportional also. Alternatively, the charging of the capacitor could be monitored, rather than the discharge.
An integrating ADC (also dual-slope or multi-slope ADC) applies the unknown input voltage to the input of an integrator and allows the voltage to ramp for a fixed time period (the run-up period). Then a known reference voltage of opposite polarity is applied to the integrator and is allowed to ramp until the integrator output returns to zero (the run-down period). The input voltage is computed as a function of the reference voltage, the constant run-up time period, and the measured run-down time period. The run-down time measurement is usually made in units of the converter's clock, so longer integration times allow for higher resolutions. Likewise, the speed of the converter can be improved by sacrificing resolution. Converters of this type (or variations on the concept) are used in most digital voltmeters for their linearity and flexibility.
A delta-encoded ADC or counter-ramp has an up-down counter that feeds a digital to analog converter (DAC). The input signal and the DAC both go to a comparator. The comparator controls the counter. The circuit uses negative feedback from the comparator to adjust the counter until the DAC's output is close enough to the input signal. The number is read from the counter. Delta converters have very wide ranges and high resolution, but the conversion time is dependent on the input signal level, though it will always have a guaranteed worst-case. Delta converters are often very good choices to read real-world signals. Most signals from physical systems do not change abruptly. Some converters combine the delta and successive approximation approaches; this works especially well when high frequencies are known to be small in magnitude.
A pipelined ADC (also called subranging quantizer) uses two or more steps of subranging. First, a coarse conversion is done. In a second step, the difference to the input signal is determined with a digital to analog converter (DAC). This difference is then converted finer, and the results are combined in a last step. This can be considered a refinement of the successive-approximation ADC wherein the feedback reference signal consists of the interim conversion of a whole range of bits (for example, four bits) rather than just the next-most-significant bit. By combining the merits of the successive approximation and flash ADCs this type is fast, has a high resolution, and only requires a small die size.
A sigma-delta ADC (also known as a delta-sigma ADC) oversamples the desired signal by a large factor and filters the desired signal band. Generally, a smaller number of bits than required are converted using a Flash ADC after the filter. The resulting signal, along with the error generated by the discrete levels of the Flash, is fed back and subtracted from the input to the filter. This negative feedback has the effect of noise shaping the error due to the Flash so that it does not appear in the desired signal frequencies. A digital filter (decimation filter) follows the ADC which reduces the sampling rate, filters off unwanted noise signal and increases the resolution of the output (sigma-delta modulation, also called delta-sigma modulation).
A time-interleaved ADC uses M parallel ADCs where each ADC samples data every M:th cycle of the effective sample clock. The result is that the sample rate is increased M times compared to what each individual ADC can manage. In practice, the individual differences between the M ADCs degrade the overall performance reducing the spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR). However, technologies exist to correct for these time-interleaving mismatch errors.
An ADC with intermediate FM stage first uses a voltage-to-frequency converter to convert the desired signal into an oscillating signal with a frequency proportional to the voltage of the desired signal, and then uses a frequency counter to convert that frequency into a digital count proportional to the desired signal voltage. Longer integration times allow for higher resolutions. Likewise, the speed of the converter can be improved by sacrificing resolution. The two parts of the ADC may be widely separated, with the frequency signal passed through an opto-isolator or transmitted wirelessly. Some such ADCs use sine wave or square wave frequency modulation; others use pulse-frequency modulation. Such ADCs were once the most popular way to show a digital display of the status of a remote analog sensor.
There can be other ADCs that use a combination of electronics and other technologies. A time-stretch analog-to-digital converter (TS-ADC) digitizes a very wide bandwidth analog signal, that cannot be digitized by a conventional electronic ADC, by time-stretching the signal prior to digitization. It commonly uses a photonic preprocessor frontend to time-stretch the signal, which effectively slows the signal down in time and compresses its bandwidth. As a result, an electronic backend ADC, that would have been too slow to capture the original signal, can now capture this slowed down signal. For continuous capture of the signal, the frontend also divides the signal into multiple segments in addition to time-stretching. Each segment is individually digitized by a separate electronic ADC. Finally, a digital signal processor rearranges the samples and removes any distortions added by the frontend to yield the binary data that is the digital representation of the original analog signal.
Commercial ADCs are usually implemented as integrated circuits. Most converters sample with 6 to 24 bits of resolution, and produce fewer than 1 megasample per second. Thermal noise generated by passive components such as resistors masks the measurement when higher resolution is desired. For audio applications and in-room temperatures, such noise is usually a little less than (microvolt) of white noise. If the MSB corresponds to a of output signal, this translates to a noise-limited performance that is less than 20~21 bits, and obviates the need for any dithering. As of February 2002, Mega- and giga-sample per second converters are available. Mega-sample converters are required in digital video cameras, video capture cards, and TV tuner cards to convert full-speed analog video to digital video files. Commercial converters usually have ±0.5 to ±1.5 LSB error in their output.
In many cases, the most expensive part of an integrated circuit is the pins, because they make the package larger, and each pin has to be connected to the integrated circuit's silicon. To save pins, it is common for slow ADCs to send their data one bit at a time over a serial interface to the computer, with the next bit coming out when a clock signal changes state, say from 0 to 5 V. This saves quite a few pins on the ADC package, and in many cases, does not make the overall design any more complex (even microprocessors which use memory-mapped I/O only need a few bits of a port to implement a serial bus to an ADC). Commercial ADCs often have several inputs that feed the same converter, usually through an analog multiplexer. Different models of ADC may include sample and hold circuits, instrumentation amplifiers or differential inputs, where the quantity measured is the difference between two voltages.
Analog-to-digital converters are integral to 2000s era music reproduction technology and digital audio workstation-based sound recording. People often produce music on computers using an analog recording and therefore need analog-to-digital converters to create the pulse-code modulation (PCM) data streams that go onto compact discs and digital music files. The current crop of analog-to-digital converters utilized in music can sample at rates up to 192 kilohertz. Considerable literature exists on these matters, but commercial considerations often play a significant role. Many recording studios record in 24-bit/96 kHz (or higher) pulse-code modulation (PCM) or Direct Stream Digital (DSD) formats, and then downsample or decimate the signal for Compact Disc Digital Audio production (44.1 kHz) or to 48 kHz for commonly used radio and television broadcast applications because of the Nyquist frequency and hearing range of humans.
ADCs are required to process, store, or transport virtually any analog signal in digital form. TV tuner cards, for example, use fast video analog-to-digital converters. Slow on-chip 8, 10, 12, or 16 bit analog-to-digital converters are common in microcontrollers. Digital storage oscilloscopes need very fast analog-to-digital converters, also crucial for software defined radio and their new applications.
Digital imaging systems commonly use analog-to-digital converters in digitizing pixels. Some radar systems commonly use analog-to-digital converters to convert signal strength to digital values for subsequent signal processing. Many other in situ and remote sensing systems commonly use analogous technology. The number of binary bits in the resulting digitized numeric values reflects the resolution, the number of unique discrete levels of quantization (signal processing). The correspondence between the analog signal and the digital signal depends on the quantization error. The quantization process must occur at an adequate speed, a constraint that may limit the resolution of the digital signal. Many sensors in scientific instruments produce an analog signal; temperature, pressure, pH, light intensity etc. All these signals can be amplified and fed to an ADC to produce a digital number proportional to the input signal.
Some non-electronic or only partially electronic devices, such as rotary encoders, can also be considered ADCs. Typically the digital output of an ADC will be a two's complement binary number that is proportional to the input. An encoder might output a Gray code.
Testing an Analog to Digital Converter requires an analog input source and hardware to send control signals and capture digital data output. Some ADCs also require an accurate source of reference signal.
The key parameters to test a SAR ADC are: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40367 |
John Thaw
John Edward Thaw, (3 January 1942 – 21 February 2002) was an English actor who appeared in a range of television, stage, and cinema roles. He starred in the television series "Inspector Morse", "Redcap", "The Sweeney", "Home to Roost" and "Kavanagh QC".
Thaw was born in Gorton, Manchester, to working-class parents Dorothy (née Ablott) and John, a long-distance lorry driver. Thaw had a difficult childhood as his mother left when he was seven years old. His younger brother, Raymond Stuart "Ray" emigrated to Australia in the mid-1960s. Thaw grew up in Gorton and Burnage, attending the Ducie Technical High School for Boys. He entered the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) at the age of 16.
Soon after leaving RADA, Thaw made his formal stage début in "A Shred of Evidence" at the Liverpool Playhouse and was awarded a contract with the theatre. His first film role was a bit part in the adaptation of "The Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner" (1962) starring Tom Courtenay and he also acted on-stage opposite Sir Laurence Olivier in "Semi-Detached" (1962) by David Turner. He appeared in several episodes of the BBC police series "Z-Cars" in 1963–64 as a detective constable. Between 1964 and 1966, he starred in two series of the ABC Weekend Television/ITV production "Redcap", playing the hard-nosed military policeman Sergeant John Mann. He was also a guest star in an early episode of "The Avengers". In 1967 he appeared in "Bat Out of Hell". In 1967 he appeared in the Granada TV/ITV series, "Inheritance", alongside James Bolam and Michael Goodliffe, as well as appearing in TV plays such as "The Talking Head" and episodes of series such as "Budgie", where he played against type (opposite Adam Faith) as an effeminate failed playwright with a full beard and a Welsh accent.
Thaw will perhaps be best remembered for two roles: the hard-bitten, tough talking Flying Squad detective Jack Regan in the Thames Television/ITV series "The Sweeney" (1975–1978), which established him as a major star in the United Kingdom. The series had two film spin-offs. Thaw was only 32 when he was cast in "The Sweeney", although many viewers thought he was older.
The second role was the quietly spoken, introspective, well-educated and bitter detective "Inspector Morse" (1987–93, with later specials until 2000). Alongside his put-upon Detective Sergeant Lewis (Kevin Whately), Morse became a high-profile character—"a cognitive curmudgeon with his love of classical music, his drinking, his classic Jaguar and spates of melancholy". Thaw was the definitive Morse, grumpy, crossword-fixated, drunk, slightly anti-feminist, and pedantic about grammar. Inspector Morse became one of the UK's most loved TV series; the final three episodes, shown in 2000, were seen by 18 million people, about one third of the British population. He won "Most Popular Actor" at the 1999 National Television Awards and won two BAFTA awards for his role as Morse.
He subsequently played liberal working-class Lancastrian barrister James Kavanagh in "Kavanagh QC" (1995–99, and a special in 2001). Thaw also appeared in two sitcoms—"Thick as Thieves" (London Weekend/ITV, 1974) with Bob Hoskins and "Home to Roost" (Yorkshire/ITV, 1985–90). Thaw is mainly known in America for the Morse series, as well as the BBC series "A Year in Provence" (1993) with Lindsay Duncan.
He appeared in a number of films for director Richard Attenborough, including "Cry Freedom", where he portrayed the conservative South African justice minister Jimmy Kruger (for which he received a BAFTA nomination for Best Supporting Actor), and "Chaplin" alongside Robert Downey Jr..
Thaw also appeared in the TV adaptation of the Michelle Magorian book "Goodnight Mister Tom" (Carlton Television/ITV). It won "Most Popular Drama" at the National Television Awards, 1999.
During the 1970s and '80s, Thaw appeared in productions with the Royal Shakespeare Company and National Theatre. He was the subject of "This Is Your Life" in 1981 when he was surprised by Eamonn Andrews in the foyer of the National Theatre in London.
In the summer of 1964, Thaw married Sally Alexander, a feminist activist and theatre stage manager, and now professor of history at Goldsmiths, University of London. They divorced four years later. He met actress Sheila Hancock in 1969 on the set of a London comedy "So What About Love?" She was married to fellow actor Alexander "Alec" Ross, and after Thaw professed his love to Hancock, she told him that she would not have an affair. After the death of her husband (from oesophageal cancer) in 1971, Thaw and Hancock married on 24 December 1973 in Cirencester, and he remained with her until his death in 2002 (also from oesophageal cancer).
He had three daughters (all of whom are actresses): Abigail from his first marriage to Sally Alexander, Joanna from his second marriage to Sheila Hancock, and he also adopted Sheila Hancock's daughter Melanie Jane, from Hancock's first marriage to Alec Ross. Melanie Jane legally changed her surname from Ross to Thaw.
Thaw was a committed socialist and lifelong supporter of the Labour Party. He was appointed a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (CBE) in March 1993 by Queen Elizabeth II. In September 2006, Thaw was voted by the general public as number 3, after David Jason and Morecambe and Wise, in a poll of TV's 50 Greatest Stars for the past 50 years.
A heavy drinker until going teetotal in 1995, and a heavy smoker from the age of 12, Thaw was diagnosed with cancer of the oesophagus in June 2001. He underwent chemotherapy in hope of overcoming the illness, at first had appeared to respond well to the treatment but just before Christmas 2001 he was told that the cancer had spread.
He died on 21 February 2002, seven weeks after his 60th birthday, the day after he signed a new contract with ITV, and the day before his wife's birthday. At the time of his death he was living at his country home, near the villages of Luckington and Sherston in Wiltshire, and was cremated in Westerleigh, near Yate in South Gloucestershire, in a private service. A memorial service was held on 4 September 2002 at St Martin-in-the-Fields church in Trafalgar Square, attended by 800 people including the Prince of Wales, Richard Attenborough, Tom Courtenay and Cherie Blair.
Won
Nominated
A memorial bench is dedicated to Thaw on the grounds of St Paul's Covent Garden. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40372 |
Space technology
Space technology is technology developed by space science or the aerospace industry for use in spaceflight, satellites, or space exploration. Space technology includes spacecraft, satellites, space stations, and support infrastructure, equipment, and procedures and space warfare. Space is such a novel environment that attempting to work in it requires new tools and techniques. Many common everyday services such as weather forecasting, remote sensing, GPS systems, satellite television, and some long-distance communications systems critically rely on space infrastructure. Of the sciences, astronomy and Earth science benefit from space technology. New technologies originating with or accelerated by space-related endeavors are often subsequently exploited in other economic activities.
The earth on which we live is a more-or-less spherical planet which orbits a medium-sized star, the Sun. The Earth is one of nine planets which orbit the sun. These planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. In his 1970 science fiction novel Ringworld, Larry Niven imagined a civilization that created a rotating wheel space within the habitable zone around its star that rotated sufficiently rapidly to maintain artificial gravity. Future space technology may well encompass similar concepts to allow human civilization to expand further into the solar system and beyond. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40375 |
Ole Einar Bjørndalen
Ole Einar Bjørndalen (born 27 January 1974) is a retired Norwegian professional biathlete and coach, often referred to by the nickname, the "King of Biathlon". With 13 Winter Olympic Games medals, he is second on the list of multiple medalists behind Marit Bjørgen who has won 15 medals. He is also the most successful biathlete of all time at the Biathlon World Championships, having won 45 medals, more than double that of any other biathlete except Martin Fourcade. With 95 World Cup wins, Bjørndalen is ranked first all-time for career victories on the Biathlon World Cup tour, more than twice that of anyone else but Fourcade. He has won the Overall World Cup title six times, in 1997–98, in 2002–03, in 2004–05, in 2005–06, in 2007–08 and in 2008–09.
In 1992, he won his first career medal at the junior world championships. A year later in 1993, after winning three junior world championship titles, a medal haul only previously achieved by Sergei Tchepikov, Bjørndalen made his Biathlon World Cup debut. His breakthrough came in 1994 when he featured on his first World Cup podium in a sprint race held in Bad Gastein, Austria. Bjørndalen first competed in the Olympic Games at the Lillehammer 1994 Winter Olympics, held in his home country of Norway. He obtained his first major victory on 11 January 1996 in an individual competition held in Antholz-Anterselva, Italy. On 20 February 2014, Bjørndalen was elected to an eight-year term at the International Olympic Committee's athlete commission. He resigned from this role in 2016 as he elected to continue his career.
At the age of 16 Bjørndalen left home to pursue his sporting career at a sports academy in Geilo, where he initially trained in both cross-country skiing and biathlon, although after one year there he decided to focus on the latter.
In 1993, at the age of 19, Bjørndalen first came into focus by winning 3 out of 4 possible gold medals at the Junior Biathlon World Championships, which among other things led to him being chosen to represent Norway in the 1994 Olympics, at the cost of highly merited biathlete Eirik Kvalfoss. At those Games Bjørndalen's best finish was a 28th position in the sprint.
He has won the World Cup six times (1997–98, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2007–08, and 2008–09), finished second six times (1996–97, 1998–99, 1999–2000, 2000–01, 2003–04, and 2006–07), and third once (2001–02). In his first season (1992–93) he finished 62nd, the season after, 30th and the season after that, fourth. In the 1995-96 season, he dropped down to ninth, but finished in the runner-up position in 1996-97. When winning the overall world cup in 1998, at the age of 24, he won titles at each of the three major championships in biathlon in one season – a world championship gold medal, an Olympic gold medal and the overall World Cup title. He finished second in the overall World Cup for the following three seasons and then third in 2001-02.
His World Cup podium record is 179 podium finishes, 95 1st places, 53 2nd places, and 31 3rd places in the individual events. Bjørndalen has 1 World Cup victory in the team event. In relay Bjørndalen has won 37 races, he has also 21 2nd places and 14 3rd.places. In total he has 72 podium finishes in the world cup, relay event. Bjørndalen has 252 World cup podium finishes, individual, team and relay races combined in Biathlon, and 5 podium finishes in cross-country skiing World cup. In total Ole Einar Bjørndalen has 257 World cup podium finishes. When he took his 87th World Cup race victory in February 2009, he overtook Ingemar Stenmark as the skier with the most World Cup wins in history.
Bjørndalen has won the Sprint world cup nine times in the seasons: 1994-1995, 1996-1997, 1997-1998, 1999-2000, 2000–01, 2002–03, 2004–05, 2007–08 and 2008-09. Ole Einar Bjoerndalen also came 2nd in the Sprint world cup in the seasons: 2003-04 and 2005-06. Ole Einar has won Pursuit world cup five times from 1999-00, 2002–03, 2005–06, 2007–08 and 2008-09. He has 2nd place in the seasons 2000-01, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2006-07 and 3rd places in 1996-97, 1998–99 and 2001-02. Bjoerndalen has been winner of the Mass start world cup five times in: 2002-03, 2004–05, 2005–06, 2006–07 and 2007-08. He came 2nd in 2000-01, 2003–04 and 2008-09.
Ole Einar Bjoerndalen was number 3 in the Mass start world cup in the season 1998-99. He has also once won the Individual distance world cup. It was in 2004-05. Bjoerndalen has also finished number 2 in the 1998–99, 2000–01, 2001–02 and 2005-06 seasons.
Ole Einar also came 3rd in the 1997-98 season. He has won a total of 20 times, 13 times finished in second place and five times came in 3rd place. Overall, he has been on the podium 38 times.
Bjørndalen has won the relay world cup 11 times in the seasons: 1997-98, 1999-00, 2000–01, 2001–02, 2003–04, 2004–05, 2007–08, 2009–10, 2010–11, 2015–16 and 2017/18. He has 6 times finished second in the world cup relay in: 1996-97, 2006–07, 2008–09, 2011–12, 2012–13 and 2014-15.
Bjoerndalen also came in third place in 1998-99 and 2002-03. Altogether he has been on the podium 19 seasons in the world cup relay. Bjørndalen has won the mixed relay world cup 4 times. It happened in the seasons: 2012-13, 2013–14, 2014–15 and 2015-16.
Bjørndalen has won (together with the Norwegian biathlon team) the nations cup ten times. It happened in the: 1998/99, 2002/03, 2003/04, 2004/05, 2007/08, 2008/09, 2010/11, 2013/14, 2014/15 and 2015/16 season. Bjørndalen has also achieved five-second places in the nations cup in the years: 1999/00, 2000/01, 2001/02, 2005/06 and 2012/13. He has finished in third place in the nations cup 3 times, in the: 1996/97, 1997/98 and 2006/07 season. In total he has finished 18 times at the podium in the nations cup for men.
He is the only biathlete ever to win all biathlon events in a single Winter Olympics (2002 Salt Lake City Games). This encompassed the sprint, pursuit, individual, and relay events, the latter together with three other participants. He was the most successful competitor at these Games. This also made him only the third Winter Olympian to win four golds at one Games, and he was also the first biathlete to win more than two gold medals at a single Games. In addition, he had won all three competitions staged at the Olympic test event in Salt Lake City the previous year. He also took a four gold medal haul at the Biathlon World Championships 2005 in Hochfilzen, Austria and at the Biathlon World Championships 2009 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. Bjørndalen's 95 biathlon World Cup victories and one cross-country victory is two behind of Gunda Niemann-Stirnemann's record of 98 World Cup victories for a winter sport athlete.
At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Bjørndalen took three medals from five events, winning two silvers and a bronze. At the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics, Bjørndalen became the most successful biathlete in Winter Olympic history by surpassing the previous record of nine career Olympic medals, which he shared with Uschi Disl of Germany. He then anchored Norway to gold in the 4 × 7.5 km relay. This was the second time that Norway had won a title in this event, with the other being at the 2002 Winter Olympics (also anchored by Bjørndalen). With this victory he became the second most decorated Winter Olympian of all time and one of only two athletes to win 11 medals at the Winter Olympics. With his gold medal in 10 km sprint at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, he tied fellow Norwegian Bjørn Dæhlie for most Winter Olympic medals, with 12 in total, before overtaking Dæhlie by winning his second gold of the Games as part of the Norwegian mixed relay team.
Bjørndalen has won eight Olympic gold medals, four silver and a bronze. He has also won 20 World Championship gold medals, 14 silver and 11 bronze (more than anybody in biathlon history), along with a record 95 World Cup victories in biathlon and 1 World Cup victory in cross-country skiing, 179 podium finishes in biathlon individual races and 3 in cross-country skiing. He also finished in the top three of the Overall World Cup rankings for a record thirteen successive seasons between the 1996–97 and 2008–09 seasons. In total Ole Einar Bjørndalen has won 44 Norwegian Championship gold medals. He has won 30 gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, winter event: 20 individual gold medals: individual (4), sprint (6), pursuit (6), mass start (4) and 10 gold medals in relay and the team event: relay (8) and team (2). Bjørndalen has also achieved 14 individual gold medals in the Norwegian Championship, biathlon, summer event: sprint (7) and pursuit (7).
In January 2018 Arne Botnan, the sporting director for Norwegian biathlon, announced that Bjørndalen would not be selected for the 2018 Winter Olympics, after he failed to achieve the qualifying standard of a top six finish in a World Cup race before the Norwegian Biathlon Association was due to nominate its Olympic squad on the 15th of that month. However, he did travel to the Games after being accredited as part of the Belorussian Olympic delegation as a coach, in order to support Darya Domracheva. On 3 April 2018 Bjørndalen announced his retirement from competition, explaining that his form had been affected by heart murmurs several times during the previous season.
In September 2019, Bjørndalen and Domracheva were appointed as head coach and women's coach respectively of the Chinese biathlon team.
Bjørndalen finished the 2005–06 International Biathlon Union World Cup season in first place, with Frenchman Raphaël Poirée in second place and German Sven Fischer in third. Bjørndalen lay in third place in the standings going into the last three races of the season in Holmenkollen, with Poirée in first, and Fischer in second. However, Bjørndalen won all three races, giving him six victories in the last eight races, and clinching the crystal globe. He also won the pursuit, and the mass start title, and came second in the individual and the sprint. In the pursuit he finished ahead of Fischer by 54 points, and 29 points ahead of Poirée in the mass start. In the individual he finished 41 points behind Michael Greis, and in the sprint he was 5 points behind Tomasz Sikora. Norway finished fourth in the relay.
Bjørndalen closed out the season by winning all three events (sprint, pursuit, and mass start) at the Holmenkollen ski festival biathlon competition. This put his career victories at the ski events to five, having won once both in 2003 (pursuit) and in 2004 (sprint).
Bjørndalen made a perfect start to the season, winning all of the first five races in Östersund and Hochfilzen. In the fifth race of the season, the pursuit race in Hochfilzen, he won with one of his largest margins ever, more than 2 minutes. On 30 December 2006 Bjørndalen took part in the Biathlon World Team Challenge in Gelsenkirchen in the Veltins Arena. In front of about 51,000 people he won it for fourth time in a row. His partner for second consecutive time was Linda Grubben. They both left their rivals, the Robert family, more than one minute behind.
In Oberhof, coming down from training in the heights, Bjørndalen performed below standard for the season, and finishing only 30th and 5th in the individual competitions.
In Ruhpolding he led his teammates to victory in the relay event. He won the two following individual competitions. After competing in the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships Sapporo 2007, he missed several Biathlon World Cup events; after missing eight competitions altogether Bjørndalen finished second in the overall standings, after German Michael Greis.
Bjørndalen started off the season suffering from the effects of long-term illness, but still placed second in both of the pursuit events. He missed the Biathlon World Team Challenge in Gelsenkirchen, focusing on training instead. After the break, he returned with victories in both the sprint and pursuit events in Ruhpolding and a third place in the mass start in Oberhof.
At the Biathlon World Championships 2009 in Pyeongchang, during the men's 12.5 km pursuit, Bjørndalen with at least 15 other competitors accidentally skied the wrong way at the start of the first lap due to the bad marking. Just after leaving the start, the athletes skied over a bridge instead of skiing beside it, which was the right way. A jury meeting decided to give all these athletes a one-minute time penalty, following a complaint from the Russian team. However, another complaint by seven other member states led to the Appeal Jury reverting to the original result. Along with Bjørndalen's first ever 20 km individual World Championship title, he won four out of six possible gold medals (10 km sprint, 12.5 km pursuit, 20 km individual and the 4 × 7.5 km relay).
After the World Championships Bjørndalen came second in the sprint in Vancouver, he took over the world cup overall lead. He followed up with a second place, and two victories at the events in Granåsen, Trondheim (the latter being a mass start where he shot clean). He secured his sixth overall win in the last sprint of the season, in Khanty-Mansiysk where he placed second. In the following event (a pursuit), he was beaten at the finish line by teammate Emil Hegle Svendsen, but won the pursuit cup.
Bjørndalen grew up on a farm in , the fourth of five children: one of his siblings is fellow biathlete Dag Bjørndalen. Both brothers were part of the Norwegian team that took the silver medal in the men's relay at the 1998 Winter Olympics.
Bjørndalen resides in the village of Obertilliach, Austria. He also used to live in Toblach, Italy, with Italian-Belgian biathlete Nathalie Santer. They started dating in 1998 and married on 27 May 2006. On 4 October 2012, they filed for divorce by mutual consent.
In April 2016, along with announcing that he will continue his career until the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, Bjørndalen confirmed that he was in a relationship with Belarusian biathlete Darya Domracheva, and that she was pregnant with the couple's first child. On 7 July 2016, they married in Sjusjøen, Norway. Their daughter Xenia was born on October 1, 2016.
On 3 April 2018 Bjørndalen announced his retirement from biathlon. Bjørndalen ended his Olympic career after being left off Norway's 2018 team for PyeongChang, thus ending a bid for a seventh Winter Games.
His close to one hundred individual World Cup wins makes Ole Bjorndalen the most winning winter sports athlete of all time. He brings the same focused intensity and spirit of victory to the brands and products who sponsor him. Ole Bjorndalen cooperates with big and renowned brands. He has been Certina’s loyal ambassador since 2011, brand ambassador since 2015. Among sports equipment brands that he promotes are Madshus, , and Casco.
Ole Einar Bjørndalen won the Aftenposten's gold medal in 1998. He was named the Norwegian Sportsperson of the Year in 2002 and 2014. For his accomplishments in biathlon and cross-country skiing, Bjørndalen received the Egebergs Ærespris in 2002. Bjørndalen was also awarded with the Fearnleys olympic honorary award in 2002. He was voted Best Male Athlete of 2002 by International Sports Press Association. Ole Einar Bjørndalen was nominated for Laureus World Sportsman of the Year in 2003. He came second, only lost to Lance Armstrong that year, who was later rescinded. In 2008, a nearly three meter tall bronze statue of Bjørndalen, created by sculptor Kirsten Kokkin, was erected in his hometown of Simostranda, Norway. Bjørndalen was awarded the Fair Play Mecenante Award in Castiglion in Fiorentino in Italy in 2009. Bjørndalen was elected Biathlon Athlete of the Year by AIPS Nordic Ski and Biathlon Commission in 2002, 2003, 2005 and 2009. In March 2011, he, Michael Greis and Andrea Henkel were awarded the Holmenkollen Medal, the first biathletes to receive the medal. In February 2014, Bjørndalen was voted Best Male Athlete of the 2014 Winter Olympics by International Sports Press Association. In November 2014, Bjørndalen was awarded Best Male Athlete of the 2014 Winter Olympics by the Association des Comités Nationaux Olympiques.
Bjørndalen first participated in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup in Finland in the 10 kilometre freestyle event in a small town called Muonio in November 1998, finishing 23rd. His first podium place in the FIS Cross-Country World Cup came in Kuopio 25 November 2001, where he finished in 2nd place in the 10 km freestyle event. One month later he once again came in 2nd place, this time losing out to Per Elofsson in the 30 km freestyle mass-start event in Ramsau, Austria.
On 18 November 2006 Bjørndalen made history by becoming the first male biathlete to win a FIS Cross-Country World Cup event in the Swedish town Gällivare. Bjørndalen won the 15 km freestyle event. In 2007 his countryman, and fellow biathlete Lars Berger won the 15 km cross-country event at the World Championship in 2007.
Bjørndalen has twice finished on the podium in cross-country world cup relays for Norway: first in Beitostølen in 2003, where his team finished third, and secondly in La Clusaz in France in 2006, where Norway came in 2nd place. In total Bjørndalen has been on the podium 5 times in the Cross-Country World Cup.
In addition, Bjørndalen has won FIS events in cross-country twice. His first win was in 1997 in the 30 kilometre freestyle event in Valdres, Norway, and the second was in the 10 km freestyle event in Beitostølen, Norway in 2006. He has also two 2nd places in a FIS-event: in the 15 km freestyle event in Misurina, Italy in 1998 and in the 10 km freestyle event at Beitostølen in 2004. In addition to this, Bjørndalen has one third place in a FIS event, in the 10 km freestyle at Beitostølen in 2001. Following his two Cross-Country World Cup podium finishes in the 2001-02 season, ahead of the 2002 Winter Olympics he stated that he was hoping to become the first competitor to take Olympic medals in both biathlon and cross-country skiing, however Bjørndalen missed out on a cross-country medal, finishing 5th in the 30 km freestyle cross-country race in Salt Lake City on 9 February 2002. He won Skarverennet in 2006 and 2007, and came in 2nd after Petter Northug in 2008.
Ole Einar Bjørndalen won the Beach Volleyball Championship at Laguna Beach in 2001. Bjørndalen has won the biathlon exhibition event in Gelsenkirchen (held at the Veltins-Arena, the home ground of football club Schalke 04) in 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006. He also won a bronze together with his wife Darya Domracheva in 2018 Ole Einar Bjørndalen finished second in the 2003 Dobbiaco-Cortina, a long-distance cross-country skiing event, (42 km) in Italy in the town of Cortina. He took his second place in the 26th edition of this prestigious event, finishing behind Italy's Costantin Pierluigi, and finishing half a second behind Pierluigi's winning time of 1 hour 43 minutes and 16.5 seconds. In 2008, Bjørndalen won the biathlon exhibition event in Püttlingen together with Kati Wilhelm. He also finished in second place in 2011 alongside with Magdalena Neuner. Bjørndalen also got a bronze in this event in 2005 together with Nathalie Santer and in 2010 with Sabrina Buchholz. He won the Blink Festival in Sandnes in 2008. In April 2016, Bjørndalen and Karin Oberhofer won the Champions Race in Tyumen, Russia.
All results are sourced from the International Biathlon Union.
"13 medals (8 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze)"
"45 medals (20 gold, 14 silver, 11 bronze)"
"95 victories (36 Sp, 37 Pu, 8 In, 14 MS)"; one victory at Winter Olympics 2014 isn't counted as a World Cup victory.
Bjørndalen is a solid shooter, but is generally outside the top twenty marksmen. Bjørndalen finished the 2005–06 season with a shooting percentage of 84%, hitting 292 out of 345 possible targets, that placed him in 36th position for shooting accuracy. His shooting record for both prone and standing were practically identical, 146/172 in the prone and 146/173 in the standing position. In the individual disciplines, he shot 92% in the individual, 89% in the sprint, 96% in the pursuit, 93% in the mass start and 96% in the relay.
In the 2004–05 season Bjørndalen was the 16th best shot with an 85% success rate, the second best Norwegian behind Egil Gjelland. He hit 331 targets out of a possible 364. His prone like most biathletes was much better than his standing shoot, he hit 169/180 (92%) in the prone and 163/184 (81%) in the standing. He had an average of 88% in the individual, sprint and relay, a 91% hit rate in the mass start but only 79% in the pursuit. During his career in 1999/00 he averaged 82%, in 2000–01 78%, 2001–02 74%, 2002–03 86% and in 2003–04 he hit 80% of the targets, however in those five years his standing shoot was the same or better than his prone shoot. In comparison, his greatest rival Raphaël Poirée averaged 87% in 2004–05 and 86% in 2005–06. Nikolay Kruglov was the best shot in 2004–05 with a 91% success rate, with Ricco Groß in second with 89%, and in 2005 Julien Robert was best with a 93% average and Groß again second with 91%.
Statistics sourced from the International Biathlon Union.
and
All results are sourced from the International Ski Federation (FIS).
Bjørndalen uses Madshus skis, boots and poles.
He uses Rottefella NNN bindings.
His gloves and base layer are from Odlo, and he uses Casco glasses.
During the off-season in 2006 Bjørndalen was testing a new ski boot that had a high heel in the Torsby ski tunnel with boot manufacturers Madshus. The theory is that it forces the knee more forward for better position and it incorporates the large gluteal muscles.
General
Specific | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40377 |
Upper Canada
The Province of Upper Canada () was a part of British Canada established in 1791 by the Kingdom of Great Britain, to govern the central third of the lands in British North America, formerly part of the Province of Quebec since 1763. Upper Canada included all of modern-day Southern Ontario and all those areas of Northern Ontario in the which had formed part of New France, essentially the watersheds of the Ottawa River or Lakes Huron and Superior, excluding any lands within the watershed of Hudson Bay. The "upper" prefix in the name reflects its geographic position along the Great Lakes, mostly above the headwaters of the Saint Lawrence River, contrasted with Lower Canada (present-day Quebec) to the northeast.
It was the primary destination of Loyalist refugees and settlers from the United States after the American Revolution, who often were granted land to settle in Upper Canada. The province was characterized by its British way of life, including bicameral parliament and separate civil and criminal law, rather than mixed as in Lower Canada or elsewhere in the British Empire. The division was created to ensure the exercise of the same rights and privileges enjoyed by loyal subjects elsewhere in the North American colonies. In 1812, war broke out between Great Britain and the United States, leading to several battles in Upper Canada. The US attempted to capture Upper Canada, but the war ended with the situation unchanged.
The government of the colony came to be dominated by a small group of persons, known as the "Family Compact", who held most of the top positions in the Legislative Council and appointed officials. In 1837, an unsuccessful rebellion attempted to overthrow the undemocratic system. Representative government would be established in the 1840s. Upper Canada existed from its establishment on 26 December 1791 to 10 February 1841, when it was united with adjacent Lower Canada to form the Province of Canada.
As part of the 1763 Treaty of Paris which ended the Seven Years' War global conflict and the French and Indian War in North America, Great Britain retained control over the former New France, which had been defeated in the French and Indian War. The British had won control after Fort Niagara had surrendered in 1759 and Montreal capitulated in 1760, and the British under Robert Rogers took formal control of the Great Lakes region in 1760. Fort Michilimackinac was occupied by Roger's forces in 1761.
The territories of contemporary southern Ontario and southern Quebec were initially maintained as the single Province of Quebec, as it had been under the French. From 1763 to 1791, the Province of Quebec maintained its French language, cultural behavioural expectations, practices and laws. The British passed the "Quebec Act" in 1774, which expanded the Quebec colony's authority to include part of the Indian Reserve to the west (i.e., parts of southern Ontario), and other western territories south of the Great Lakes including much of what would become the United States' Northwest Territory, including the modern states of Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and parts of Minnesota.
After the American War of Independence ended in 1783, Britain retained control of the area north of the Ohio River. The official boundaries remained undefined until 1795 and the Jay Treaty. The British authorities encouraged the movement of people to this area from the United States, offering free land to encourage population growth. For settlers, the head of the family received and per family member, and soldiers received larger grants. These settlers are known as United Empire Loyalists and were primarily English-speaking Protestants. The first townships (Royal and Cataraqui) along the St. Lawrence and eastern Lake Ontario were laid out in 1784, populated mainly with decommissioned soldiers and their families.
"Upper Canada" became a political entity on 26 December 1791 with the Parliament of Great Britain's passage of the "Constitutional Act of 1791". The act divided the Province of Quebec into Upper and Lower Canada, but did not yet specify official borders for Upper Canada. The division was effected so that Loyalist American settlers and British immigrants in Upper Canada could have English laws and institutions, and the French-speaking population of Lower Canada could maintain French civil law and the Catholic religion. The first lieutenant-governor was John Graves Simcoe.
The 1795 Jay Treaty officially set the borders between British North America and the United States north to the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. On 1 February 1796, the capital of Upper Canada was moved from Newark (now Niagara-on-the-Lake) to York (now Toronto), which was judged to be less vulnerable to attack by the US.
The Act of Union 1840, passed 23 July 1840 by the British Parliament and proclaimed by the Crown on 10 February 1841, merged Upper Canada with Lower Canada to form the short-lived United Province of Canada.
Upper Canada's constitution was said to be "the very image and transcript" of the British constitution, and based on the principle of "mixed monarchy" – a balance of monarchy, aristocracy and democracy.
The Executive arm of government in the colony consisted of a lieutenant-governor, his executive council, and the Officers of the Crown (equivalent to the Officers of the Parliament of Canada): the Adjutant General of the Militia, the Attorney General, the Auditor General of Land Patents for Upper Canada, the Auditor General (only one appointment ever made), Crown Lands Office, Indian Office, Inspector General, Kings' Printer, Provincial Secretary & Registrar's Office, Receiver General of Upper Canada, Solicitor General, & Surveyor General.
The Executive Council of Upper Canada had a similar function to the Cabinet in England but was not responsible to the Legislative Assembly. They held a consultative position, however, and did not serve in administrative offices as cabinet ministers do. Members of the Executive Council were not necessarily members of the Legislative Assembly but were usually members of the Legislative Council.
The Legislative branch of the government consisted of the parliament comprising legislative council and legislative assembly. When the capital was first moved to Toronto from Newark (present-day Niagara-on-the-Lake) in 1796, the Parliament Buildings of Upper Canada were located at the corner of Parliament and Front Streets, in buildings that were burned by US forces in the War of 1812, rebuilt, then burned again by accident. The site was eventually abandoned for another, to the west.
The Legislative Council of Upper Canada was the upper house governing the province of Upper Canada. Although modelled after the British House of Lords, Upper Canada had no aristocracy. Members of the Legislative council, appointed for life, formed the core of the oligarchic group, the Family Compact, that came to dominate government and economy in the province.
The Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada functioned as the lower house in the Parliament of Upper Canada. Its legislative power was subject to veto by the appointed Lieutenant Governor, Executive Council, and Legislative Council.
Local government in the Province of Upper Canada was based on districts. In 1788, four districts were created:
The name changes all took place in 1792.
Justices of the Peace were appointed by the Lt. Governor. Any two justices meeting together could form the lowest level of the justice system, the Courts of Request. A Court of Quarter Sessions was held four times a year in each district composed of all the resident justices. The Quarter Sessions met to oversee the administration of the district and deal with legal cases. They formed, in effect, the municipal government until an area was incorporated as either a Police Board or a City after 1834.
Additional districts were created from the existing districts as the population grew until 1849, when local government mainly based on counties came into effect. At that time, there were 20 districts; legislation to create a new Kent District was never completed. Up until 1841, the district officials were appointed by the lieutenant-governor, although usually with local input.
The Family Compact is the epithet applied to an oligarchic group of men who exercised most of the political and judicial power in Upper Canada from the 1810s to the 1840s. It was noted for its conservatism and opposition to democracy. The uniting factors amongst the Compact were its loyalist tradition, hierarchical class structure and adherence to the established Anglican Church. Leaders such as John Beverley Robinson and John Strachan proclaimed it an ideal government, especially as contrasted with the rowdy democracy in the nearby United States. The Family Compact emerged from the War of 1812 and collapsed in the aftermath of the Rebellions of 1837.
There were many outstanding individual reform politicians in Upper Canada, including Robert Randal, Peter Perry, Marshall Spring Bidwell, William Ketchum and Dr. William Warren Baldwin; however, organised collective reform activity began with Robert Fleming Gourlay. Gourlay was a well-connected Scottish emigrant who arrived in 1817, hoping to encourage "assisted emigration" of the poor from Britain. He solicited information on the colony through township questionnaires, and soon became a critic of government mismanagement. When the local legislature ignored his call for an inquiry, he called for a petition to the British Parliament. He organised township meetings, and a provincial convention – which the government considered dangerous and seditious. Gourlay was tried in December 1818 under the 1804 Sedition Act and jailed for 8 months. He was banished from the province in August 1819. His expulsion made him a martyr in the reform community.
The next wave of organised Reform activity emerged in the 1830s through the work of William Lyon Mackenzie, James Lesslie, John Rolph, William John O'Grady and Dr Thomas Morrison, all of Toronto. They were critical to introducing the British Political Unions to Upper Canada. Political Unions were not parties. The unions organised petitions to Parliament.
The Upper Canada Central Political Union was organised in 1832–33 by Dr Thomas David Morrison (mayor of Toronto in 1836) while William Lyon Mackenzie was in England. This union collected 19,930 signatures on a petition protesting Mackenzie's unjust expulsion from the House of Assembly by the Family Compact.
This union was reorganised as the Canadian Alliance Society (1835). It shared a large meeting space in the market buildings with the Mechanics Institute and the Children of Peace. The Canadian Alliance Society adopted much of the platform (such as secret ballot & universal suffrage) of the Owenite National Union of the Working Classes in London, England, that were to be integrated into the Chartist movement in England.
The Canadian Alliance Society was reborn as the Constitutional Reform Society (1836), when it was led by the more moderate reformer, Dr William W. Baldwin. After the disastrous 1836 elections, it took the final form as the Toronto Political Union in 1837. It was the Toronto Political Union that called for a Constitutional Convention in July 1837, and began organising local "Vigilance Committees" to elect delegates. This became the organizational structure for the Rebellion of 1837.
The Upper Canada Rebellion was an insurrection against the oligarchic government of the Family Compact by W.L. Mackenzie in December 1837. Long term grievances included antagonism between Later Loyalists and British Loyalists, political corruption, the collapse of the international financial system and the resultant economic distress, and a growing republican sentiment. While public grievances had existed for years, it was the Rebellion in Lower Canada (present day Quebec) that emboldened rebels in Upper Canada to openly revolt soon after. The Upper Canada Rebellion was largely defeated shortly after it began, although resistance lingered until 1838 (and became more violent) – mainly through the support of the Hunters' Lodges, a secret anti-British, American militia that emerged in states around the Great Lakes. They launched the Patriot War in 1838–39.
John Lambton, Lord Durham's support for "responsible government" undercut the Tories and gradually led the public to reject what it viewed as poor administration, unfair land and education policies, and inadequate attention to urgent transportation needs. Durham's report led to the administrative unification of Upper and Lower Canada as the Province of Canada in 1841. Responsible government did not occur until the late 1840s under Robert Baldwin and Louis-Hippolyte Lafontaine.
After the Rebellions, the new governor, Charles Poulett Thomson, 1st Baron Sydenham, proved an exemplary Utilitarian, despite his aristocratic pretensions. This combination of free trade and aristocratic pretensions needs to be underscored; although a liberal capitalist, Sydenham was no radical democrat. Sydenham approached the task of implementing those aspects of Durham's report that the colonial office approved of, municipal reform, and the union of the Canadas, with a "campaign of state violence and coercive institutional innovation ... empowered not just by the British state but also by his Benthamite certainties." Like governors Bond Head before him, and Metcalfe after, he was to turn to the Orange Order for often violent support. It was Sydenham who played a critical role in transforming Compact Tories into Conservatives.
Sydenham introduced a vast expansion of the state apparatus through the introduction of municipal government. Areas not already governed through civic corporations or police boards would be governed through centrally controlled District Councils with authority over roads, schools, and local policing. A strengthened Executive Council would further usurp much of the elected assembly's legislative role, leaving elected politician's to simply review the administration's legislative program and budgets.
The First Nations occupying the territory that was to become Upper Canada were:
Prior to the creation of Upper Canada in 1791 much land had already been ceded by the First Nations to the Crown in accordance with the Royal Proclamation of 1763. During the American Revolutionary War most of the First Nations supported the British. After the Americans launched a campaign that burned the villages of the Iroquois in New York State in 1779 the refugees fled to Fort Niagara and other British posts, and remained permanently in Canada.Land was granted to these allied Six Nations who had served on the British side during the American Revolution by the Haldimand Proclamation (1784). Haldimand had purchased a tract of land from the Mississaugas. The nature of the grant has been under dispute.
Crown land policy to 1825 was multi-fold in the use of a "free" resource that had value to people who themselves may have little or no money for its purchase and for the price of settling upon it to support themselves and a create a new society. First, the cash-strapped Crown government in Canada could pay and reward the services and loyalty of the "United Empire Loyalists" who, originated outside of Canada, without encumbrance of debt by being awarded with small portions of land (under ) with the proviso that it be settled by those to which it was granted; Second, portions would be reserved for the future use of the Crown and the clergy that did not require settlement by which to gain control. Lt. Governor Simcoe saw this as the mechanism by which an aristocracy might be created, and that compact settlement could be avoided with the grants of large tracts of land to those Loyalists not required to settle on it as the means of gaining control.
The Calton weavers were a community of handweavers established in the community of Calton, then in Lanarkshire just outside Glasgow, Scotland in the 18th century. In the early 19th century, many of the weavers emigrated to Canada, settling in Carleton Place and other communities in eastern Ontario, where they continued their trade.
In 1825, 1,878 Irish Immigrants from the city of Cork arrived in the community of Scott's Plains. The British Parliament had approved an experimental emigration plan to transport poor Irish families to Upper Canada in 1822. The scheme was managed by Peter Robinson, a member of the Family Compact and brother of the Attorney General. Scott's Plains was renamed Peterborough in his honour.
Thomas Talbot emigrated in 1791, where he became personal secretary to John Graves Simcoe, Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada. Talbot convinced the government to allow him to implement a land settlement scheme of in Elgin County in the townships of Dunwich and Aldborough in 1803. According to his government agreement, he was entitled to for every settler who received ; in this way he gained an estate of . Talbot's administration was regarded as despotic. He was infamous for registering settlers' names on the local settlement map in pencil and if displeased, erasing their entry. Talbot's abuse of power was a contributing factor in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837.
The Crown reserves, one seventh of all lands granted, were to provide the provincial executive with an independent source of revenue not under the control of the elected Assembly. The clergy reserves, also one seventh of all lands granted in the province, were created "for the support and maintenance of a Protestant clergy" in lieu of tithes. The revenue from the lease of these lands was claimed by the Rev. John Strachan on behalf of the Church of England. These reserves were directly administered by the Crown; which, in turn, came under increasing political pressure from other Protestant bodies. The Reserve lands were to be a focal point of dissent within the Legislative Assembly.
The Clergy Corporation was incorporated in 1819 to manage the clergy reserves. After the Rev. John Strachan was appointed to the Executive Council, the advisory body to the Lieutenant Governor, in 1815, he began to push for the Church of England's autonomous control of the clergy reserves on the model of the Clergy Corporation created in Lower Canada in 1817. Although all clergymen in the Church of England were members of the body corporate, the act prepared in 1819 by Strachan's former student, Attorney General John Beverly Robinson, also appointed the Inspector General and the Surveyor General to the board, and made a quorum of three for meetings; these two public officers also sat on the Legislative Council with Strachan. These three were usually members of the Family Compact.
The clergy reserves were not the only types of landed endowment for the Anglican Church and clergy. The "1791 Act" also provided for glebe land to be assigned and vested in the Crown (for which were set aside), where the revenues would be remitted to the Church. The act also provided for the creation of parish rectories, giving parishes a corporate identity so that they could hold property (although none were created until 1836, prior to the recall of John Colborne, in which he created 24 of them). They were granted lands amounting to , of which were drawn from the clergy reserves and other glebe lots, while were taken from ordinary Crown lands. A later suit to have this action annulled was dismissed by the Court of Chancery of Upper Canada.
In 1797, lands in twelve townships (six east of York, and six west, totalling about ) were set aside, from which revenues arising from their sale or lease were dedicated to support the establishment of grammar schools and a university for the Province. They were distributed as follows:
The land grant policy changed after 1825 as the Upper Canadian administration faced a financial crisis that would otherwise require raising local taxes, thereby making it more dependent on a local elected legislature. The Upper Canadian state ended its policy of granting land to "unofficial" settlers and implemented a broad plan of revenue-generating sales. The Crown replaced its old policy of land grants to ordinary settlers in newly opened districts with land sales by auction. It also passed legislation that allowed the auctioning of previously granted land for payment of back-taxes.
Few chose to lease the Crown reserves as long as free grants of land were still available. The Lieutenant Governor increasingly found himself depending upon the customs duties shared with, but collected in Lower Canada for revenue; after a dispute with the lower province on the relative proportions to be allocated to each, these duties were withheld, forcing the Lieutenant Governor to search for new sources of revenue. The Canada Company was created as a means of generating government revenue that was not under the control of the elected Assembly, thereby granting the Lt. Governor greater independence from local voters.
The plan for the Canada Company was promoted by the province's Attorney General, John Beverly Robinson, then studying law at Lincoln's Inn in London. The Lt. Governor's financial crisis led to a quick adoption of Robinson's scheme to sell the Crown reserves to a new land company which would provide the provincial government with annual payments of between £15,000 to £20,000. The Canada Company was chartered in London in 1826; after three years of mismanagement by John Galt, the company hired William Allan and Thomas Mercer Jones to manage the company's Upper Canadian business. Jones was to manage the "Huron Tract," and Allan to sell the Crown reserves already surveyed in other districts.
According to the Canada Company, "the poorest individual can here procure for himself and family a valuable tract; which, with a little labour, he can soon convert into a comfortable home, such as he could probably never attain in any other country – all his own!" However, recent studies have suggested that a minimum of £100 to £200 plus the cost of land was required to start a new farm in the bush. As a result, few of these poor settlers had any hope of starting their own farm, although many tried.
The Huron Tract lies in the counties of Huron, Perth, Middlesex and present-day Lambton County, Ontario, bordering on Lake Huron to the west and Lake Erie to the east. The tract was purchased by the Canada Company for resale to settlers. Influenced by William "Tiger" Dunlop, John Galt and other businessmen formed the Canada Company. The Canada Company was the administrative agent for the Huron Tract.
Incorporated in Upper Canada era (to 1841)
Incorporated in Canada West (1841-1867)
Although the province is frequently referred to as "English Canada" after the Union of the Canadas, and its ethnic homogeneity said to be a factor in the Upper Canada Rebellion of 1837, there was range of ethnic groups in Upper Canada. However, due to the lack of a detailed breakdown, it is difficult to count each group, and this may be considered abuse of statistics. An idea of the ethnic breakdown can be had if one considers the religious census of 1842, which is helpfully provided below: Roman Catholics were 15% of the population, and adherents to this religion were, at the time, mainly drawn from the Irish and the French settlers. The Roman Catholic faith also numbered some votaries from amongst the Scottish settlers. The category of "other" religious adherents, somewhat under 5% of the population, included the Aboriginal and Metis culture.
See above: Land Settlement
Many British and French-Canadian fur traders married First Nations and Inuit women from the Cree, Ojibwa, or Saulteaux First Nations. The majority of these fur traders were Scottish and French and were Catholic.
Early settlements in the region include the Mission of Sainte-Marie among the Hurons at Midland in 1649, Sault Ste. Marie in 1668, and Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit in 1701. Southern Ontario was part of the "Pays d'en-haut" (Upper Country) of New France, and later part of the province of Quebec until Quebec was split into Upper and Lower Canada in 1791. The first wave of settlement in the Detroit/Windsor area came in the 18th century during the French regime. A second wave came in the 19th and early 20th centuries to the areas of Eastern Ontario and Northeastern Ontario. In the Ottawa Valley, in particular, some families have moved back and forth across the Ottawa River for generations (the river is the border between Ontario and Quebec). In the city of Ottawa some areas such as Vanier and Orleans have a rich Franco-heritage where families often have members on both sides of the Ottawa River.
After an initial group of about 7,000 United Empire Loyalists were thinly settled across the province in the mid-1780s, a far larger number of "late-Loyalists" arrived in the late 1790s and were required to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown to obtain land if they came from the US. Their fundamental political allegiances were always considered dubious. By 1812, this had become acutely problematic since the American settlers outnumbered the original Loyalists by more than ten to one. Following the War of 1812, the colonial government under Lt. Governor Gore took active steps to prevent Americans from swearing allegiance, thereby making them ineligible to obtain land grants. The tensions between the Loyalists and late Loyalists erupted in the "Alien Question" crisis in 1820–21 when the Bidwells (Barnabas and his son Marshall) sought election to the provincial assembly. They faced opponents who claimed they could not hold elective office because of their American citizenship. If the Bidwells were aliens so were the majority of the province. The issue was not resolved until 1828 when the Colonial government retroactively granted them citizenship.
The Act Against Slavery passed in Upper Canada on 9 July 1793. The 1793 "Act against Slavery" forbade the importation of any additional slaves and freed children. It did not grant freedom to adult slaves—they were finally freed by the British Parliament in 1833. As a consequence, many Canadian slaves fled south to New England and New York, where slavery was no longer legal. Many American slaves who had escaped from the South via the Underground Railroad or fleeing from the Black Codes in the Ohio Valley came north to Ontario, a good portion settling on land lots and began farming. It is estimated that thousands of escaped slaves entered Upper Canada from the United States.
The Great Migration from Britain from 1815 to 1850 has been numbered at 800,000. The population of Upper Canada in 1837 is documented at 409,000. Given the lack of detailed census data, it is difficult to assess the relative size of the American and Canadian born "British" and the foreign-born "British." By the time of the first census in 1841, only half of the population of Upper Canada were foreign-born British.
The first Lt. Governor, Sir John Graves Simcoe, sought to make the Church of England the Established Church of the province. To that end, he created the clergy reserves, the revenues of which were to support the church. The clergy reserves proved to be a long-term political issue, as other denominations, particularly the Church of Scotland (Presbyterians) sought a proportional share of the revenues. The Church of England was never numerically dominant in the province, as it was in England, especially in the early years when most of the American born Later Loyalists arrived. The growth of the Church of England depended largely on later British emigration for growth.
The Church was led by the Rev. John Strachan (1778–1867), a pillar of the Family Compact. Strachan was part of the oligarchic ruling class of the province, and besides leading the Church of England, also sat on the Executive Council, the Legislative Council, helped found the Bank of Upper Canada, Upper Canada College, and the University of Toronto.
Father Alexander Macdonell was a Scottish Catholic priest who formed his evicted clan into The Glengarry Fencibles regiment, of which he served as chaplain. He was the first Catholic chaplain in the British Army since the Reformation. When the regiment was disbanded, Rev. Macdonell appealed to the government to grant its members a tract of land in Canada, and, in 1804, were provided in what is now Glengarry County, Canada.
In 1815, he began his service as the first Roman Catholic Bishop at St. Raphael's Church in the Highlands of Ontario. In 1819, he was appointed Vicar Apostolic of Upper Canada, which in 1826 was erected into a suffragan bishopric of the Archdiocese of Quebec. In 1826, he was appointed to the legislative council.
Macdonell's role on the Legislative Council was one of the tensions with the Toronto congregation, led by Father William O'Grady. O'Grady, like Macdonell, had served as an army chaplain (to Connell James Baldwin's soldiers in Brazil). O'Grady followed Baldwin to Toronto Gore Township in 1828. From January 1829 he was pastor of St. Paul's church in York. Tensions between the Scottish and Irish came to a head when O'Grady was defrocked, in part for his activities in the Reform movement. He went on to edit a Reform newspaper in Toronto, the "Canadian Correspondent".
The undisputed leader of the highly fractious Methodists in Upper Canada was Egerton Ryerson, editor of their newspaper, "The Christian Guardian". Ryerson (1803–1882) was an itinerant minister – or circuit rider – in the Niagara area for the Methodist Episcopal Church – an American branch of Methodism. As British immigration increased, Methodism in Upper Canada was torn between those with ties to the Methodist Episcopal Church and the British Wesleyan Methodists. Ryerson used the "Christian Guardian" to argue for the rights of Methodists in the province and, later, to help convince rank-and-file Methodists that a merger with British Wesleyans (effected in 1833) was in their best interest.
The earliest Presbyterian ministers in Upper Canada came from various denominations based in Scotland, Ireland, and the United States. The "Presbytery of the Canadas" was formed in 1818 primarily by Scottish Associate Presbyterian missionaries, yet independently of their mother denomination in the hope of including Presbyterian ministers of all stripes in Upper and Lower Canada. Although successfully including members from Irish Associate, and American Presbyterian and Reformed denominations, the growing group of missionaries belonging to the Church of Scotland remained separate. Instead, in 1831, they formed their own "Synod of the Presbyterian Church of Canada in Connection with the Established Church of Scotland". That same year the "Presbytery of the Canadas", having grown and been re-organized, became the "United Synod of Upper Canada". In its continued pursuit for Presbyterian unity (and a share of government funding from the clergy reserves for established churches) the United Synod sought a union with the Church of Scotland synod which it finally joined in 1840. However, some ministers had left the United Synod prior to this merger (including, notably, Rev. James Harris, Rev. William Jenkins, and Rev. Daniel Eastman). In the 1832 new Secessionist missionaries began to arrive, belonging to "The United Associate Synod in Scotland" (after 1847, the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland). Committed to the voluntarist principle of rejecting government funding they decided against joining the "United Synod of Upper Canada" and on Christmas Day 1834 formed the "Missionary Presbytery of the Canadas". Although this new presbytery was formed at Rev. James Harris's church in Toronto, he and his congregation remained independent from it. However, the voluntarist, Rev. Jenkins and his congregation in Richmond Hill joined the Missionary Presbytery a few years later. Rev. Eastman had left the United Synod in 1833 to form the "Niagara Presbytery" of the Presbyterian Church in the USA. After this presbytery dissolved following the Rebellion of 1837, he rejoined the United Synod which then joined the Church of Scotland. Outside of these four Presbyterian denominations, only two others gained a foothold in the province. The small "Stamford Presbytery" of the American Secessionist tradition was formed in 1835 in the Niagara region, and the Scottish Reformed Presbyterian or "Covenanter" tradition was represented in the province to an even lesser extent. Despite the numerous denominations, by the late 1830s, the Church of Scotland was the main expression of Presbyterianism in Upper Canada.
These groups of later Loyalists were proportionately larger in the early decades of the province's settlement. The Mennonites, Tunkers, Quakers and Children of Peace are the traditional Peace churches. The Mennonites and Tunkers were generally German-speaking and immigrated as Later Loyalists from Pennsylvania. Many of their descendants continue to speak a form of German called Pennsylvania German. The Quakers (Society of Friends) immigrated from New York, the New England States and Pennsylvania. The Children of Peace were founded during the War of 1812 after a schism in the Society of Friends in York County. A further schism occurred in 1828, leaving two branches, "Orthodox" Quakers and "Hicksite" Quakers.
In the decade ending in 1837, the population of Upper Canada doubled, to 397,489, fed in large part by erratic spurts of displaced paupers, the "surplus population" of the British Isles. Historian Rainer Baehre estimated that between 1831 and 1835 a bare minimum of one-fifth of all emigrants to the province arrived totally destitute, forwarded by their parishes in the United Kingdom. The pauper immigrants arriving in Toronto were the excess agricultural workers and artisans whose growing ranks sent the cost of parish-based poor relief in England spiralling; a financial crisis that generated frenetic public debate and the overhaul of the Poor Laws in 1834. "Assisted emigration," a second solution to the problem touted by the Parliamentary Under-Secretary in the Colonial Office, Robert Wilmot Horton, would remove them permanently from the parish poor rolls.
The roots of Wilmot-Horton's "assisted emigration" policies began in April 1820, in the middle of an insurrection in Glasgow, where a young, already twice bankrupted William Lyon Mackenzie was setting sail for Canada on a ship called Psyche. After the week-long violence, the rebellion was easily crushed; the participants were driven less by treason than distress. In a city of 147,000 people without a regular parish system of poor relief, between ten and fifteen thousand were destitute. The Prime Minister agreed to provide free transportation from Quebec to Upper Canada, a land grant, and a year's supply of provisions to any of the rebellious weavers who could pay their own way to Quebec. In all, in 1820 and 1821, a private charity helped 2,716 Lanarkshire and Glasgow emigrants to Upper Canada to take up their free grants, primarily in the Peterborough area. A second project was the Petworth Emigration Committee organised by the Reverend Thomas Sockett, who chartered ships and sent emigrants from England to Canada in each of the six years between 1832 and 1837. This area in the south of England was terrorised by the Captain Swing Riots, a series of clandestine attacks on large farmers who refused relief to unemployed agricultural workers. The area hardest hit – Kent – was the area where Sir Francis Bond Head, later Lt. Governor of Upper Canada in 1836, was the Assistant Poor Law Commissioner. One of his jobs was to force the unemployed into "Houses of Industry."
There were two types of corporate actors at work in the Upper Canadian economy: the legislatively chartered companies and the unregulated joint-stock companies. The joint stock company was popular in building public works, since it should be for general public benefit, as the benefit would otherwise be sacrificed to legislated monopolies with exclusive privileges. or lie dormant. An example of the legislated monopoly is found in the Bank of Upper Canada. However, the benefit of the joint-stock shareholders, as the risk takers, was whole and entire; and the general public benefitted only indirectly. As late as 1849, even the moderate reform politician Robert Baldwin was to complain that "unless a stop were made to it, there would be nothing but corporations from one end of the country to the other." Radical reformers, like William Lyon Mackenzie, who opposed all "legislated monopolies," saw joint stock associations as the only protection against "the whole property of the country... being tied up as an irredeemable appendage to incorporated institutions, and put beyond the reach of individual possession." As a result, most of the joint-stock companies formed in this period were created by political reformers who objected to the legislated monopolies granted to members of the Family Compact.
The government of Upper Canada never issued a provincial currency. A variety of coins, mainly of French, Spanish, English and American origin circulated. The government used the Halifax standard, where one pound Halifax equalled four Spanish dollars. One pound sterling equalled £1 2s 2¾d (until 1820), and £1 2s 6½d Halifax pounds after 1820.
Paper currency was issued primarily by the Bank of Upper Canada, although with the diversification of the banking system, each bank would issue its own distinctive notes.
The Bank of Upper Canada was "captured" from Kingston merchants by the York elite at the instigation of John Strachan in 1821, with the assistance of William Allan, a Toronto merchant and Executive Councillor. York was too small to warrant such an institution as indicated by the inability of its promoters to raise even the minimal 10% of the £200,000 authorised capital required for start-up. It succeeded where the Bank of Kingston had failed only because it had the political influence to have this minimum reduced by half, and because the provincial government subscribed for two thousand of its eight thousand shares. The administration appointed four of the bank's fifteen directors that, as with the Clergy Corporation, made for a tight bond between the nominally private company and the state. Forty-four men served as bank directors during the 1830s; eleven of them were executive councillors, fifteen of them were legislative councillors, and thirteen were magistrates in Toronto. More importantly, all 11 men who had ever sat on the Executive Council also sat on the board of the Bank at one time or another. 10 of these men also sat on the Legislative Council. The overlapping membership on the boards of the Bank of Upper Canada and on the Executive and Legislative Councils served to integrate the economic and political activities of church, state, and the "financial sector." These overlapping memberships reinforced the oligarchic nature of power in the colony and allowed the administration to operate without any effective elective check. The Bank of Upper Canada was a political sore point for the Reformers throughout the 1830s.
The difference between the chartered banks and the joint-stock banks lay almost entirely on the issue of liability and its implications for the issuance of bank notes. The joint-stock banks lacked limited liability, hence every partner in the bank was responsible for the bank's debts to the full extent of their personal property. The formation of new joint-stock banks blossomed in 1835 in the aftermath of a parliamentary report by Dr Charles Duncombe, which established their legality here. Duncombe's report drew in large part on an increasingly dominant banking orthodoxy in the United Kingdom which challenged the English system of chartered banks. Duncombe's Select Committee on Currency offered a template for the creation of joint-stock banks based on several successful British banks. Within weeks two Devonshire businessmen, Capt. George Truscott and John Cleveland Green, established the "Farmer's Bank" in Toronto. The only other successful bank established under this law was "The Bank of the People" which was set up by Toronto's Reformers. The Bank of the People provided the loan that allowed William Lyon Mackenzie to establish the newspaper The Constitution in 1836 in the lead up to the Rebellion of 1837. Mackenzie wrote at the time: "Archdeacon Strachan's bank (the old one) ... serve the double purpose of keeping the merchants in chains of debt and bonds to the bank manager, and the Farmer's acres under the harrow of the storekeeper. You will be shewn how to break this degraded yoke of mortgages, ejectments, judgments and bonds. Money bound you – money shall loose you". During the financial panic of 1836, the Family Compact sought to protect its interests in the nearly bankrupt Bank of Upper Canada by making joint-stock banks illegal.
After the Napoleonic Wars, as industrial production in Britain took off, English manufacturers began dumping cheap goods in Montreal; this allowed an increasing number of shopkeepers in York to obtain their goods competitively from Montreal wholesalers. It was during this period that the three largest pre-war merchants who imported directly from Britain retired from business as a result; Quetton St. George in 1815, Alexander Wood in 1821, and William Allan in 1822. Toronto and Kingston then underwent a boom in the number of increasingly specialised shops and wholesalers. The Toronto wholesale firm of Isaac Buchanan and Company were one of the largest of the new wholesalers. Isaac Buchanan was a Scots merchant in Toronto, in partnership with his brother Peter, who remained in Glasgow to manage the British end of the firm. They established their business in Toronto in 1835, having bought out Isaac's previous partners, William Guild and Co., who had established themselves in Toronto in 1832. As a wholesale firm, the Buchanan's had invested more than £10,000 in their business.
Another of those new wholesale businesses was the Farmers' Storehouse Company. The Farmers Storehouse Company was formed in the Home District and is probably Canada's first Farmers' Cooperative. The Storehouse expedited the sale of farmer's wheat to Montreal, and provided them with cheaper consumer goods.
Upper Canada was in the unenviable position of having few exports with which to pay for all its imported manufactured needs. For the vast majority of those who settled in rural areas, debt could be paid off only through the sale of wheat and flour; yet, throughout much of the 1820s, the price of wheat went through periodic cycles of boom and bust depending upon the British markets that ultimately provided the credit upon which the farmer lived.
In the decade 1830–39, exports of wheat averaged less than £1 per person a year (less than £6 per household), and in the 1820s just half that.
Given the small amounts of saleable wheat and flour, and the rarity of cash, some have questioned how market oriented these early farmers were. Instead of depending on the market to meet their needs, many of these farmers depended on networks of shared resources and cooperative marketing. For example, rather than hire labour, they met their labour needs through "work bees." such farmers are said to be 'subsistence oriented' and not to respond to market cues; rather, they engage in a moral economy seeking 'subsistence insurance' and a 'just price'. The Children of Peace in the village of Hope (now Sharon) are a well documented example. They were the most prosperous agricultural community in Canada West by 1851.
The Ottawa River timber trade resulted from Napoleon's 1806 Continental Blockade in Europe. The United Kingdom required a new source of timber for its navy and shipbuilding. Later the UK's application of gradually increasing preferential tariffs increased Canadian imports. The trade in squared timber lasted until the 1850s. The transportation of raw timber by means of floating down the Ottawa River was proved possible in 1806 by Philemon Wright. Squared timber would be assembled into large rafts which held living quarters for men on their six-week journey to Quebec City, which had large exporting facilities and easy access to the Atlantic Ocean.
The timber trade was Upper and Lower Canada's major industry in terms of employment and value of the product. The largest supplier of square red and white pine to the British market was the Ottawa River and the Ottawa Valley. They had "rich red and white pine forests." Bytown (later called Ottawa), was a major lumber and sawmill centre of Canada.
The early nineteenth century was the age of canals. The Erie Canal, stretching from Buffalo to Albany, New York, threatened to divert all of the grain and other trade on the upper Great Lakes through the Hudson River to New York city after its completion in 1825. Upper Canadians sought to build a similar system that would tie this trade to the St Lawrence River and Montreal.
The Rideau Canal's purpose was military and hence was paid for by the British and not the local treasury. It was intended to provide a secure supply and communications route between Montreal and the British naval base in Kingston. The objective was to bypass the St. Lawrence River bordering New York; a route which would have left British supply ships vulnerable to an attack. Westward from Montreal, travel would proceed along the Ottawa River to Bytown (now Ottawa), then southwest via the canal to Kingston and out into Lake Ontario. Because the Rideau Canal was easier to navigate than the St. Lawrence River due to the series of rapids between Montreal and Kingston, it became a busy commercial artery from Montreal to the Great Lakes. The construction of the canal was supervised by Lieutenant-Colonel John By of the Royal Engineers. The work started in 1826, and was completed 6 years later in 1832 at a cost of £822,000.
The Welland Canal was created to directly link Lake Erie with Lake Ontario, bypassing Niagara Falls and the Erie Canal. It was the idea of William Hamilton Merritt who owned a sawmill, grist mill and store on the Twelve Mile Creek. The Legislature authorised the joint-stock Welland Canal Company on 19 January 1824, with a capitalisation of $150,000, and Merritt as the agent. The canal was officially opened exactly five years later on 30 November 1829. However, the original route to Lake Erie followed the Welland and Niagara Rivers and was difficult and slow to navigate. The Welland Canal Company obtained a loan of 50,000 pounds from the Province of Upper Canada in March 1831 to cut a canal directly to Gravelly Bay (now Port Colborne) as the new Lake Erie terminus for the canal.
By the time the canal was finished in 1837, it had cost the province £425,000 in loans and stock subscriptions. The company was supposed to have been a private one using private capital; but the province had little private capital available, hence most of the original funds came from New York. To keep the canal in Upper Canadian hands, the province had passed a law barring Americans from the company's directorate. The company was thus controlled by the Family Compact, even though they had few shares. By 1834, it was clear the canal would never make money and that the province would be on the hook for the large loans; the canal and the canal company thus became a political issue, as local farmers argued the huge expense would ultimately only benefit American farmers in the west and the merchants who transported their grain.
The Desjardins Canal, named after its promoter Pierre Desjardins, was built to give Dundas, Ontario, easier access to Burlington Bay and Lake Ontario. Access to Lake Ontario from Dundas was made difficult by the topography of the area, which included a natural sand and gravel barrier, across Burlington Bay which allowed only boats with a shallow draft through. In 1823 a canal was dug through the sandbar. In 1826 the passage was completed, allowing schooners to sail to neighbouring Hamilton. Hamilton then became a major port and quickly expanded as a centre of trade and commerce. In 1826 a group of Dundas businessmen incorporated to compete with Hamilton and increase the value of their real estate holdings. The project to build Desjardins Canal continued for ten years, from 1827 to 1837, and required constant infusions of money from the province. In 1837, the year it opened, the company's income was £6,000, of which £5,000 was from a government loan and £166 was received from canal tolls.
There is disagreement as to whether the Canadian-built (), launched on 7 September 1816, at Ernestown, Ontario or the US-built "Ontario" (), launched in the spring of 1817 at Sacketts Harbor, New York, was the first steamboat on the Great Lakes. While "Frontenac" was launched first, "Ontario" began active service first. The first steamboat on the upper Great Lakes was the passenger-carrying "Walk-In-The-Water", built in 1818 to navigate Lake Erie.
In the years between 1809 and 1837 just over 100 steamboats were launched by Upper and Lower Canadians for the St. Lawrence River and Great Lakes trade, of which ten operated on Lake Ontario. The single largest engine foundry in British North America before 1838 was the Eagle Foundry of Montreal, founded by John Dod Ward in the fall of 1819 which manufactured 33 of the steam engines. The largest Upper Canadian engine manufacturer was Sheldon & Dutcher of Toronto, who made three engines in the 1830s before being driven to Bankruptcy by the Bank of Upper Canada in 1837.
The major owner-operators of steamships on Lake Ontario were Donald Bethune, John Hamilton, Hugh Richardson, and Henry Gildersleeve, each of whom would have invested a substantial fortune.
Besides marine travel, Upper Canada had a few Post roads or footpaths used for transportation by horse or stagecoaches along the key settlements between London to Kingston.
The Governor's Road was built beginning in 1793 from Dundas to Paris and then to the proposed capital of London by 1794. The road was further extended eastward with new capital of York in 1795. his road was eventually known as Dundas Road.
A second route was known as Lakeshore Road or York Road which was built from York to Trent River from 1799 to 1900 and later extended eastwards to Kingston in 1817. This road was later renamed as Kingston Road.
During the War of 1812 with the United States, Upper Canada was the chief target of the Americans, since it was weakly defended and populated largely by American immigrants. However, division in the United States over the war, a lackluster American militia, the incompetence of American military commanders, and swift and decisive action by the British commander, Sir Isaac Brock, kept Upper Canada part of British North America.
Detroit was captured by the British on 6 August 1812. The Michigan Territory was held under British control until it was abandoned in 1813. The Americans won the decisive Battle of Lake Erie (10 September 1813) and forced the British to retreat from the western areas. On the retreat they were intercepted at the Battle of the Thames (5 October 1813) and destroyed in a major American victory that killed Tecumseh and broke the power of Britain's Indian allies.
Major battles fought on territory in Upper Canada included:
Many other battles were fought in American territory bordering Upper Canada, including the Northwest Territory (most in modern-day Michigan), upstate New York and naval battles in the Great Lakes.
The Treaty of Ghent (ratified in 1815) ended the war and restored the status quo ante bellum.
Mackenzie, Duncombe, John Rolph and 200 supporters fled to Navy Island in the Niagara River, where they declared themselves the Republic of Canada on 13 December. They obtained supplies from supporters in the United States, resulting in British reprisals (see Caroline affair). This incident has been used to establish the principle of "anticipatory self-defense" in international politics, which holds that it may be justified only in cases in which the "necessity of that self-defense is instant, overwhelming, and leaving no choice of means, and no moment for deliberation". This formulation is part of the "Caroline" test. The "Caroline" affair is also now invoked frequently in the course of the dispute around preemptive strike (or preemption doctrine).
On 13 January 1838, under attack by British armaments, the rebels fled. Mackenzie went to the United States where he was arrested and charged under the Neutrality Act. The Neutrality Act of 1794 made it illegal for an American to wage war against any country at peace with the United States. Application of the Neutrality Act during the Patriot War led to the largest use of US government military force against its own citizens since the Whiskey Rebellion.
The extended series of incidents comprising the Patriot War were finally settled by US Secretary of State Daniel Webster and Alexander Baring, 1st Baron Ashburton, in the course of their negotiations leading to the Webster–Ashburton Treaty of 1842.
In 1807 the Grammar School Act allowed the government to take over various grammar schools across the province and incorporating them into a network of eight new, public grammar schools (secondary schools), one for each of the eight districts (Eastern, Johnstown, Midland, Newcastle, Home, Niagara, London, and Western):
Canada West was the western portion of the United Province of Canada from 10 February 1841, to 1 July 1867. Its boundaries were identical to those of the former Province of Upper Canada. Lower Canada would also become Canada East.
The area was named the Province of Ontario under the "British North America Act" of 1867. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40389 |
Design Patterns
Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software (1994) is a software engineering book describing software design patterns. The book was written by Erich Gamma, Richard Helm, Ralph Johnson, and John Vlissides, with a foreword by Grady Booch. The book is divided into two parts, with the first two chapters exploring the capabilities and pitfalls of object-oriented programming, and the remaining chapters describing 23 classic software design patterns. The book includes examples in C++ and Smalltalk.
It has been influential to the field of software engineering and is regarded as an important source for object-oriented design theory and practice. More than 500,000 copies have been sold in English and in 13 other languages. The authors are often referred to as the Gang of Four (GoF).
The book started at a birds of a feather (BoF) session at OOPSLA '90, "Towards an Architecture Handbook", run by Bruce Anderson, where Erich Gamma and Richard Helm met and discovered their common interest. They were later joined by Ralph Johnson and John Vlissides. The original publication date of the book was October 21, 1994 with a 1995 copyright, hence it is often cited with a 1995-year, despite being published in 1994. The book was first made available to the public at the OOPSLA meeting held in Portland, Oregon, in October 1994.
In 2005 the ACM SIGPLAN awarded that year's Programming Languages Achievement Award to the authors, in recognition of the impact of their work "on programming practice and programming language design". As of March 2012, the book was in its 40th printing.
Chapter 1 is a discussion of object-oriented design techniques, based on the authors' experience, which they believe would lead to good object-oriented software design, including:
The authors claim the following as advantages of interfaces over implementation:
Use of an interface also leads to dynamic binding and polymorphism, which are central features of object-oriented programming.
The authors refer to inheritance as "white-box reuse", with
white-box referring to visibility, because the internals of parent classes are often visible to subclasses. In contrast, the authors refer to object composition (in which objects with well-defined interfaces are used dynamically at runtime by objects obtaining references to
other objects) as "black-box reuse" because no internal details of composed objects need be visible in the code using them.
The authors discuss the tension between inheritance and encapsulation at length and state that in their experience, designers overuse inheritance (Gang of Four 1995:20). The danger is stated as follows:
They warn that the implementation of a subclass can become so bound up with the implementation of its parent class that any change in the parent's implementation will force the subclass to change. Furthermore, they claim that a way to avoid this is to inherit only from abstract classes—but then, they point out that there is minimal code reuse.
Using inheritance is recommended mainly when adding to the functionality of existing components, reusing most of the old code and adding relatively small amounts of new code.
To the authors, 'delegation' is an extreme form of object composition that can always be used to replace inheritance. Delegation involves two objects: a 'sender' passes itself to a 'delegate' to let the delegate refer to the sender. Thus the link between two parts of a system are established only at runtime, not at compile-time. The Callback article has more information about delegation.
The authors also discuss so-called parameterized types, which are also known as generics (Ada, Eiffel, Java, C#, VB.NET, and Delphi) or templates (C++). These allow any type to be defined without specifying all the other types it uses—the unspecified types are supplied as 'parameters' at the point of use.
The authors admit that delegation and parameterization are very powerful but add a warning:
The authors further distinguish between 'Aggregation', where one object 'has' or 'is part of' another object (implying that an aggregate object and its owner have identical lifetimes) and acquaintance, where one object merely 'knows of' another object. Sometimes acquaintance is called 'association' or the 'using' relationship. Acquaintance objects may request operations of each other, but they aren't responsible for each other. Acquaintance is a weaker relationship than aggregation and suggests much looser coupling between objects, which can often be desirable for maximum maintainability in a design.
The authors employ the term 'toolkit' where others might today use 'class library', as in C# or Java. In their parlance, toolkits are the object-oriented equivalent of subroutine libraries, whereas a 'framework' is a set of cooperating classes that make up a reusable design for a specific class of software. They state that applications are hard to design, toolkits are harder, and frameworks are the hardest to design.
Chapter 2 is a step-by-step case study on "the design of a 'What-You-See-Is-What-You-Get' (or 'WYSIWYG') document editor called Lexi." (pp.33)
The chapter goes through seven problems that must be addressed in order to properly design Lexi, including any constraints that must be followed. Each problem is analyzed in depth, and solutions are proposed. Each solution is explained in full, including pseudo-code and a slightly modified version of Object Modeling Technique where appropriate.
Finally, each solution is associated directly with one or more design patterns. It is shown how the solution is a direct implementation of that design pattern.
The seven problems (including their constraints) and their solutions (including the pattern(s) referenced), are as follows:
The document is "an arrangement of basic graphical elements" such as characters, lines, other shapes, etc., that "capture the total information content of the document"(pp.35). The structure of the document contains a collection of these elements, and each element can in turn be a substructure of other elements.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
A "recursive composition" is a hierarchical structure of elements, that builds "increasingly complex elements out of simpler ones" (pp.36). Each node in the structure knows of its own children and its parent. If an operation is to be performed on the whole structure, each node calls the operation on its children (recursively).
This is an implementation of the composite pattern, which is a collection of nodes. The node is an abstract base class, and derivatives can either be leaves (singular), or collections of other nodes (which in turn can contain leaves or collection-nodes). When an operation is performed on the parent, that operation is recursively passed down the hierarchy.
Formatting differs from structure. Formatting is a method of constructing a particular instance of the document's physical structure. This includes breaking text into lines, using hyphens, adjusting for margin widths, etc.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
A "Compositor" class will encapsulate the algorithm used to format a composition. Compositor is a subclass of the primitive object of the document's structure. A Compositor has an associated instance of a Composition object. When a Compositor runs its codice_1, it iterates through each element of its associated Composition, and rearranges the structure by inserting Row and Column objects as needed.
The Compositor itself is an abstract class, allowing for derivative classes to use different formatting algorithms (such as double-spacing, wider margins, etc.)
The Strategy Pattern is used to accomplish this goal. A Strategy is a method of encapsulating multiple algorithms to be used based on a changing context. In this case, formatting should be different, depending on whether text, graphics, simple elements, etc., are being formatted.
The ability to change the graphical interface that the user uses to interact with the document.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
The use of a "transparent enclosure" allows elements that augment the behaviour of composition to be added to a composition. These elements, such as Border and Scroller, are special subclasses of the singular element itself. This allows the composition to be augmented, effectively adding state-like elements. Since these augmentations are part of the structure, their appropriate codice_2 will be called when the structure's codice_2 is called. This means that the client does not need any special knowledge or interface with the structure in order to use the embellishments.
This is a Decorator pattern, one that adds responsibilities to an object without modifying the object itself.
Look-and-feel refers to platform-specific UI standards. These standards "define guidelines for how applications appear and react to the user" (pp.47).
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
Since object creation of different concrete objects cannot be done at runtime, the object creation process must be abstracted. This is done with an abstract guiFactory, which takes on the responsibility of creating UI elements. The abstract guiFactory has concrete implementations, such as MotifFactory, which creates concrete elements of the appropriate type (MotifScrollBar). In this way, the program need only ask for a ScrollBar and, at run-time, it will be given the correct concrete element.
This is an Abstract Factory. A regular factory creates concrete objects of one type. An abstract factory creates concrete objects of varying types, depending on the concrete implementation of the factory itself. Its ability to focus on not just concrete objects, but entire "families" of concrete objects "distinguishes it from other creational patterns, which involve only one kind of product object" (pp.51).
Just as look-and-feel is different across platforms, so is the method of handling windows. Each platform displays, lays out, handles input to and output from, and layers windows differently.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
It is possible to develop "our own abstract and concrete product classes", because "all window systems do generally the same thing" (p.52). Each window system provides operations for drawing primitive shapes, iconifying/de-iconifying, resizing, and refreshing window contents.
An abstract base codice_4 class can be derived to the different types of existing windows, such as application, iconified, dialog. These classes will contain operations that are associated with windows, such as reshaping, graphically refreshing, etc. Each window contains elements, whose codice_5 functions are called upon by the codice_4's own draw-related functions.
In order to avoid having to create platform-specific Window subclasses for every possible platform, an interface will be used. The codice_4 class will implement a codice_4 implementation (codice_9) abstract class. This class will then in turn be derived into multiple platform-specific implementations, each with platform-specific operations. Hence, only one set of codice_4 classes are needed for each type of codice_4, and only one set of codice_9 classes are needed for each platform (rather than the Cartesian product of all available types and platforms). In addition, adding a new window type does not require any modification of platform implementation, or vice versa.
This is a Bridge pattern. codice_4 and codice_9 are different, but related. codice_4 deals with windowing in the program, and codice_9 deals with windowing on a platform. One of them can change without ever having to modify the other. The Bridge pattern allows these two "separate class hierarchies to work together even as they evolve independently" (p.54).
All actions the user can take with the document, ranging from entering text, changing formatting, quitting, saving, etc.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
Each menu item, rather than being instantiated with a list of parameters, is instead done with a "Command" object.
Command is an abstract object that only has a single abstract codice_17 method. Derivative objects extend the codice_17 method appropriately (i.e., the codice_19 would utilize the content's clipboard buffer). These objects can be used by widgets or buttons just as easily as they can be used by menu items.
To support undo and redo, codice_20 is also given codice_21 and codice_22. In derivative classes, the former contains code that will undo that command, and the latter returns a boolean value that defines if the command is undoable. codice_22 allows some commands to be non-undoable, such as a Save command.
All executed codice_24 are kept in a list with a method of keeping a "present" marker directly after the most recently executed command. A request to undo will call the codice_25 directly before "present", then move "present" back one command. Conversely, a codice_26 request will call codice_27 after "present", and move "present" forward one.
This codice_20 approach is an implementation of the Command pattern. It encapsulates requests in objects, and uses a common interface to access those requests. Thus, the client can handle different requests, and commands can be scattered throughout the application.
This is the document editor's ability to textually analyze the contents of a document. Although there are many analyses that can be performed, spell check and hyphenation-formatting are the focus.
Problems and Constraints
Solution and Pattern
Removing the integer-based index from the basic element allows for a different iteration interface to be implemented. This will require extra methods for traversal and object retrieval. These methods are put into an abstract codice_29 interface. Each element then implements a derivation of the codice_29, depending on how that element keeps its list (codice_31, codice_32, etc.).
Functions for traversal and retrieval are put into the abstract Iterator interface. Future Iterators can be derived based on the type of list they will be iterating through, such as Arrays or Linked Lists. Thus, no matter what type of indexing method any implementation of the element uses, it will have the appropriate Iterator.
This is an implementation of the Iterator pattern. It allows the client to traverse through any object collection, without needing to access the contents of the collection directly, or be concerned about the type of list the collection's structure uses.
Now that traversal has been handled, it is possible to analyze the elements of a structure. It is not feasible to build each type of analysis into the element structure themselves; every element would need to be coded, and much of the code would be the same for similar elements.
Instead, a generic codice_33 method is built into the element's abstract class. Each Iterator is given a reference to a specific algorithm (such as spell check, grammar check, etc.). When that Iterator iterates through its collection, it calls each element's codice_34, passing the specified algorithm. codice_34 then passes a reference to its element back to said algorithm for analysis.
Thus, to perform a spell check, a front-to-end iterator would be given a reference to a codice_36 object. The iterator would then access each element, executing its codice_33 method with the codice_36 parameter. Each codice_34 would then call the codice_36, passing a reference to the appropriate element.
In this manner, any algorithm can be used with any traversal method, without hard-code coupling one with the other. For example, Find can be used as "find next" or "find previous", depending on if a "forward" iterator was used, or a "backwards" iterator.
In addition, the algorithms themselves can be responsible for dealing with different elements. For example, a codice_36 algorithm would ignore a codice_42 element, rather than having to program every codice_42-derived element to not send themselves to a codice_36.
Creational patterns are ones that create objects, rather than having to instantiate objects directly. This gives the program more flexibility in deciding which objects need to be created for a given case.
These concern class and object composition. They use inheritance to compose interfaces and define ways to compose objects to obtain new functionality.
Most of these design patterns are specifically concerned with communication between objects.
Criticism has been directed at the concept of software design patterns generally, and at "Design Patterns" specifically. A primary criticism of "Design Patterns" is that its patterns are simply workarounds for missing features in C++, replacing elegant abstract features with lengthy concrete patterns, essentially becoming a "human compiler" or "generating by hand the expansions of some macro". Peter Norvig demonstrates that 16 out of the 23 patterns in "Design Patterns" are simplified or eliminated (via direct language support) in Lisp or Dylan. Related observations were made by Hannemann and Kiczales who implemented several of the 23 design patterns using an aspect-oriented programming language (AspectJ) and showed that code-level dependencies were removed from the implementations of 17 of the 23 design patterns and that aspect-oriented programming could simplify the implementations of design patterns.
Paul Graham wrote:
There has also been humorous criticism, such as a show trial at OOPSLA '99 on 3 November 1999, and a parody of the format, by Jim Coplien, entitled "Kansas City Air Conditioner".
In an interview with InformIT in 2009, Erich Gamma stated that the book authors had a discussion in 2005 on how they would have refactored the book and concluded that they would have recategorized some patterns and added a few additional ones. Gamma wanted to remove the Singleton pattern, but there was no consensus among the authors to do so. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40394 |
Montana-class battleship
The "Montana"-class battleships were planned as successors of the for the United States Navy, to be slower but larger, better armored, and with superior firepower. Five were approved for construction during World War II, but changes in wartime building priorities resulted in their cancellation in favor of continuing production of s and "Iowa"-class battleships before any "Montana"-class keels were laid.
Intended armament would have been twelve Mark 7 guns in four 3-gun turrets, up from the "Iowa"s nine Mark 7 guns in three turrets. Unlike the three preceding classes of battleships, the "Montana" class was designed without any restrictions from treaty limitations. With an increased anti-aircraft capability and substantially thicker armor in all areas, the "Montana"s would have been the largest, best-protected, and most heavily armed U.S. battleships ever. They were also the only class to rival the Empire of Japan's immense s.
Preliminary design work for the "Montana" class began before the US entry into World War II. The first two vessels were approved by Congress in 1939 following the passage of the Second Vinson Act. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor delayed construction of the "Montana" class. The success of carrier combat at the Battle of the Coral Sea and, to a greater extent, the Battle of Midway, diminished the perceived value of the battleship. Consequently, the US Navy chose to cancel the "Montana" class in favor of more urgently needed aircraft carriers, amphibious and anti-submarine vessels.
Because the "Iowa"s were far along enough in construction and urgently needed to operate alongside the new "Essex"-class aircraft carriers, their orders were retained, making them the last U.S. Navy battleships to be commissioned.
As the political situation in Europe and Asia worsened in the prelude to World War II, Carl Vinson, the chairman of the House Committee on Naval Affairs, instituted the Vinson Naval Plan, which aimed to get the Navy into fighting shape after the cutbacks imposed by the Great Depression and the two London Naval Treaties of the 1930s. As part of the overall plan, Congress passed the Second Vinson Act in 1938, which was promptly signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and cleared the way for construction of the four fast battleships and the first two fast battleships (hull numbers BB-61 and BB-62). Four additional battleships (with hull numbers BB-63, BB-64, BB-65, and BB-66) were approved for construction in 1940, with the last two intended to be the first ships of the "Montana" class. By 1942, it was apparent to the US Navy high command that they needed as many fast battleships as possible, and hull numbers BB-65 and BB-66 were allocated to planned "Iowa"-class fast battleships and .
The Navy had been considering large battleship design schemes since 1938 to counter the threat posed by potential battleships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, which had refused to sign the Second London Naval Treaty and furthermore refused to provide details about its s. Although the Navy knew little about the "Yamato" class, some rumors regarding the new Japanese battleships placed main gun battery caliber at . The potential of naval treaty violations by the new Japanese battleships resulted in the remaining treaty powers, Britain, France and the United States, invoking the tonnage "Escalator Clause" of the Second London Naval Treaty in June 1938, which raised the maximum standard displacement limit from to .
The increased displacement limit allowed the Navy to begin evaluating 45,000-ton battleship designs, including "slow" schemes that increased firepower and protection over previous designs and also "fast" schemes. The "fast" design evolved into the "Iowa" class while the "slow" design, with main armament battery eventually settled on twelve guns and evolution into a 60,500-ton design, was assigned the name "Montana" and cleared for construction by the United States Congress under the Two-Ocean Navy Act in 1940; funding for the new ships was approved in 1941. These ships, the last battleships to be ordered by the Navy, were originally to be designated BB-65 through BB-69; however, BB-65 and BB-66 were subsequently re-ordered as "Iowa"-class ships, "Illinois" and "Kentucky", and the "Montana"s were redesignated BB-67 through BB-71.
Completion of the "Montana" class, and the last two "Iowa"-class battleships, was intended to give the US Navy a considerable advantage over any other nation, or probable combination of nations, with a total of 17 new battleships by the late 1940s. The "Montana"s also would have been the only American ships to rival Japan's massive "Yamato" and her sister "Musashi" in size and raw firepower.
Preliminary planning for the "Montana"-class battleships took place in 1939, when the aircraft carrier was still considered strategically less important than the battleship. The initial schemes for what would eventually become the "Montana" class were continuations of various 1938 design studies for a 45,000-ton "slow" battleship alternative to the "fast" battleship design that would become the "Iowa" class. The "slow" battleship design proposals had a maximum speed of and considered various main gun battery options, including /45 cal, 16-inch/50 cal, 16-inch/56 cal, and /48 cal guns; a main battery of twelve 16-inch/50 cal guns was eventually selected by the General Board for offering the best combination of performance and weight. The initial design schemes for the "Montana" class were given the "BB65" prefix.
In July 1939, a series of 45,000-ton BB65 design schemes were evaluated, but in 1940, as a result of the outbreak of World War II and the abandonment of the naval treaties, the Battleship Design Advisory Board moved to larger designs capable of simultaneously offering increased armament and protection. The design board issued a basic outline for the "Montana" class that called for it to be free of beam restrictions imposed by the extant Panama Canal, be 25% stronger offensively and defensively than any other battleship completed or under construction, and be capable of withstanding the new "super heavy" armor-piercing (AP) shells used by US battleships equipped with either the 16-inch/45 cal guns or 16-inch/50 cal Mark 7 guns. No longer restricted by treaty displacement limits, naval architects were able to increase armor protection for the new BB65 design schemes, enabling the ships to withstand enemy fire equivalent to their own guns' ammunition. In conjunction with the "Montana" class, the Navy also planned to add a third set of locks to the Panama Canal that would be wide to enable ship designs with greater beam; these locks would have been armored and would normally be reserved for use by Navy warships. Although freed of the beam restriction from the extant Panama Canal, the length and height of the BB65 designs had to take into account one of the shipyards at which they were to be built: the New York Navy Yard slipways could not handle the construction of a ship more than , and vessels built there had to be low enough to clear the Brooklyn Bridge at low tide. Consequently, the yard's number 4 dry dock had to be enlarged and the ships would be floated out rather than conventionally launched.
The larger BB65 design studies would again settle on main armament of twelve 16-inch/50 cal guns while providing protection against the "super heavy" AP shells. After debate at the design board about whether the "Montana" class should be fast, achieving the high speed of the "Iowa" class, or maintain the 27-to-28-knot speed of the "North Carolina"- and "South Dakota" classes, the lower speed was chosen in order to rein in size and displacement. Design study of the BB65-8 scheme for a 33-knot battleship resulted in standard displacement over , waterline length of , and required ; by returning the BB65 design to the slower maximum speed, the standard displacement and waterline length of the ships could be reduced to a more practical and respectively as exemplified by the BB65-5 scheme. In practice, the 27-to-28-knot speed would have still been enough to escort and defend the Pacific-based Allied fast aircraft carrier task forces, although the "Montana"s ability in this regard would be considerably more limited compared to the "Iowa"s as the latter could keep up with fleet carriers at full speed. In September 1940, the 58,000-ton BB65-5A preliminary design scheme with powerplant, the same as the one on "Iowa" class, was refined and subsequently named BB67-1 after hull numbers BB-65 and 66 were reordered as "Iowa"-class ships "Illinois" and "Kentucky". Waterline length was reduced from for BB65-5 to for BB65-5A and then increased to for BB67-1.
By January 1941, the design limit for the 58,000-ton battleship plan had been reached, and consensus among those designing the battleship class was to increase the displacement to a nominal to support the desired armor and weaponry on the ships. At the same time, upon discovering that the propulsion plant was more powerful than needed, planners decided to reduce output from 212,000 shaft horsepower in BB67-2 to in BB67-3 for a better machinery arrangement and improved internal subdivisions. The secondary armament battery of ten two-gun turrets was also changed to mount the /54 cal guns instead of the 5-inch/38 cal guns used on the "Iowa"s. The number of 40-mm Bofors anti-aircraft gun mounts also increased, while protection of the propulsion shafts changed from the extension of the belt and deck armor aft of the citadel to armored tubes in an effort to control weight growth.
By 1942, the "Montana" class design was further revised to BB67-4. The armored freeboard was increased by , while the propulsion plant had its power reduced again to ; the standard displacement became and full load displacement was . Aesthetically, the net design for the "Montana" class somewhat resembled the "Iowa" class since they would be equipped with the same caliber main guns and similar secondary guns; however, "Montana" and her sisters would have more armor, mount three more main guns in one more turret, and be longer and wider than the "Iowa" class. The final contract design was issued in June 1942. Construction was authorized by the United States Congress and the projected date of completion was estimated to be somewhere between 1 July and 1 November 1945.
The Navy ordered the ships in May 1942, but the "Montana" class was placed on hold because the "Iowa"-class battleships and the "Essex"-class aircraft carriers were under construction in the shipyards intended to build the "Montana"s. Both the "Iowa" and "Essex" classes had been given higher priorities: the "Iowa"s as they were far along enough in construction and urgently needed to operate alongside the "Essex"-class carriers and defend them with 5-inch, 40 mm, and 20 mm AA guns, and the "Essex"es because of their ability to launch aircraft to gain and maintain air supremacy over the islands in the Pacific and intercept warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy. The entire "Montana" class was suspended in June 1942 following the Battle of Midway, before any of their keels had been laid. In July 1943, the construction of the "Montana" class was finally canceled after the Navy fully accepted the shift in naval warfare from surface engagements to air supremacy and from battleships to aircraft carriers. Work on the new locks for the Panama Canal also ceased in 1941 owing to a shortage of steel due to the changing strategic and material priorities.
The final BB67-4 design for the "Montana"-class battleships was long at the waterline and long overall. The maximum beam was while the waterline beam was due to the inclination of the external armor belt. The design displacement figures were standard, full load, and emergency load. At emergency load displacement, the mean draft was . At design combat displacement of , the mean draft was and (GM) metacentric height was .
The "Montana" design shares many characteristics with the previous classes of American fast battleships starting from the "North Carolina" class, such as a bulbous bow, triple bottom under the armored citadel, and twin skegs in which the inner shafts were housed. The "Montana"s overall construction would make extensive use of welding for joining structural plates and homogeneous armor.
The armament of the "Montana"-class battleships would have been similar to the preceding "Iowa"-class battleships, but with an increase in the number of primary guns and more potent secondary guns for use against enemy surface ships and aircraft. Had they been completed, the "Montana"s would have been gun-for-gun the most powerful battleships the United States had constructed, and the only US battleship class that would have rivaled the Imperial Japanese Navy battleships "Yamato" and "Musashi" in armament, armor, and displacement.
The primary armament of a "Montana"-class battleship would have been twelve /50 caliber Mark 7 guns, which were to be housed in four three-gun turrets: two forward and two aft. The guns, the same used to arm the "Iowa"-class battleships, were long – 50 times their bore, or 50 calibers, from breechface to muzzle. Each gun weighed about without the breech, or with the breech. They fired armor-piercing projectiles at a muzzle velocity of , or high-capacity projectiles at , with a range of up to . At maximum range the projectile would have spent almost 1½ minutes in flight. The addition of the No. 4 turret would have allowed "Montana" to overtake "Yamato" as the battleship having heaviest broadside overall; "Montana" and her sisters would have had a broadside of vs. for "Yamato". Each turret would have rested within an armored barbette, but only the top of the barbette would have protruded above the main deck. The barbettes would have extended either four decks (turrets 1 and 4) or five decks (turrets 2 and 3) down. The lower spaces would have contained rooms for handling the projectiles and storing the powder bags used to fire them. Each turret would have required a crew of 94 men to operate. The turrets would not have been attached to the ship, but would have rested on rollers, which meant that had any of the "Montana"-class ships capsized, the turrets would have fallen out. Each turret would have cost US$1.4 million, but this figure did not take into account the cost of the guns themselves.
The turrets would have been "three-gun", not "triple", because each barrel would have elevated and fired independently. The ships could fire any combination of their guns, including a broadside of all twelve. Contrary to popular belief, the ships would not have moved sideways noticeably when a broadside was fired. The guns would have had an elevation range of −5° to +45°, moving at up to 12° per second. The turrets would have rotated about 300° at about 4° per second and could even be fired back beyond the beam, which is sometimes called "over the shoulder". Within each turret, a red stripe on the wall of the turret, just inches from the railing, would have marked the boundary of the gun's recoil, providing the crew of each gun turret with a visual reference for the minimum safe distance range.
Like most battleships in World War II, the "Montana" class would have been equipped with a fire control computer, in this case the Ford Instrument Company Mk 1A Ballistic Computer, a rangekeeper designed to direct gunfire on land, sea, and in the air. This analog computer would have been used to direct the fire from the battleship's big guns, taking into account several factors such as the speed of the targeted ship, the time it takes for a projectile to travel, and air resistance to the shells fired at a target. At the time the "Montana" class was set to begin construction, the rangekeepers had gained the ability to use radar data to help target enemy ships and land-based targets. The results of this advance were telling: the rangekeeper was able to track and fire at targets at a greater range and with increased accuracy, as was demonstrated in November 1942 when the battleship engaged the Imperial Japanese Navy battleship at a range of at night; the "Washington" scored at least nine heavy caliber hits that critically damaged the "Kirishima" and led to her loss. This gave the US Navy a major advantage in World War II, as the Japanese did not develop radar or automated fire control to the level of the US Navy.
The large caliber guns were designed to fire two different 16-inch shells: an armor-piercing round for anti-ship and anti-structure work, and a high-explosive round designed for use against unarmored targets and shore bombardment. The Mk. 8 APC (Armor-Piercing, Capped) shell weighed in at , and was designed to penetrate the hardened steel armor carried by foreign battleships. At , the Mk. 8 could penetrate of vertical steel armor plate. For unarmored targets and shore bombardment, the Mk. 13 HC (High-Capacity – referring to the large bursting charge) shell was available. The Mk. 13 shell could create a crater wide and deep upon impact and detonation, and could defoliate trees from the point of impact.
The final type of ammunition developed for the 16-inch guns, well after the "Montanas" had been cancelled, were W23 "Katie" shells. These were born from the nuclear deterrence that had begun to shape the US armed forces at the start of the Cold War. To compete with the United States Air Force and the United States Army, which had developed nuclear bombs and nuclear shells for use on the battlefield, the Navy began a top-secret program to develop Mk. 23 nuclear naval shells with an estimated yield of 15 to 20 kilotons. The shells entered development around 1953, and were reportedly ready by 1956; however, only the "Iowa"-class battleships could have fired them.
The secondary armament for "Montana" and her sisters was to be twenty /54 cal guns housed in ten turrets along the superstructure island of the battleship; five on the starboard side and five on the port. These guns, designed specifically for the "Montana"s, were to be the replacement for the /38 cal secondary gun batteries then in widespread use with the US Navy.
The 5-inch/54 cal gun turrets were similar to the 5-inch/38 cal gun mounts in that they were equally adept in an anti-aircraft role and for damaging smaller ships, but differed in that they weighed more and fired heavier rounds of ammunition at greater velocities, thus increasing their effectiveness. However, the heavier rounds resulted in faster crew fatigue than the 5-inch/38 cal guns. The ammunition storage for the 5-inch/54 cal gun was 500 rounds per turret, and the guns could fire at targets nearly away at a 45° angle. At an 85° angle, the guns could hit an aerial target at over .
The cancellation of the "Montana"-class battleships in 1943 pushed back the combat debut of the 5-inch/54 cal guns to 1945, when they were used aboard the US Navy's s. The guns proved adequate for the carrier's air defense, but were gradually phased out of use by the carrier fleet because of their weight. (Rather than having the carrier defend itself by gunnery this would be assigned to other surrounding ships within a carrier battle group.)
While the "Montana" class would not be designed principally for escorting the fast carrier task forces, they would have nonetheless been equipped with a wide array of anti-aircraft guns to protect themselves and other ships (principally the US aircraft carriers) from Japanese fighters and dive bombers. If commissioned, the ships were expected to mount a considerable array of Oerlikon 20 mm and Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft weapons.
The Oerlikon 20 mm anti-aircraft cannon was one of the most heavily produced anti-aircraft guns of World War II; the US alone manufactured a total of 124,735 of these guns. When activated in 1941, these guns replaced the .50 in (12.7 mm)/90 cal M2 Browning MG on a one-for-one basis. The Oerlikon 20 mm AA gun remained the primary anti-aircraft weapon of the United States Navy until the introduction of the 40 mm Bofors AA gun in 1943.
These guns are air-cooled and use a gas blow-back recoil system. Unlike other automatic guns employed during World War II, the barrel of the 20 mm Oerlikon gun does not recoil; the breechblock is never locked against the breech and is actually moving forward when the gun fires. This weapon lacks a counter-recoil brake, as the force of the counter-recoil is checked by recoil from the firing of the next round of ammunition. Between December 1941 and September 1944, 32% of all Japanese aircraft downed were credited to this weapon, with the high point being 48% for the second half of 1942. In 1943, the revolutionary Mark 14 gunsight was introduced, which made these guns even more effective. The 20 mm guns, however, were found to be ineffective against the Japanese kamikaze attacks used during the latter half of World War II. They were subsequently phased out in favor of the heavier 40 mm Bofors AA guns.
The Bofors 40 mm anti-aircraft gun was used on almost every major warship in the US and UK fleet from about 1943 to 1945. Although a descendant of German, Dutch, and Swedish designs, the Bofors mounts used by the US Navy during World War II had been heavily Americanized to bring the guns up to the standards placed on them by the Navy. This resulted in a gun system set to British standards (now known as the Standard System) with interchangeable ammunition, which simplified the logistics situation for World War II. When coupled with hydraulic couple drives to reduce salt contamination and the Mark 51 director for improved accuracy, the Bofors 40 mm gun became a fearsome adversary, accounting for roughly half of all Japanese aircraft shot down between 1 October 1944 and 1 February 1945.
The propulsion plant of the "Montana"s would have consisted of eight Babcock & Wilcox two-drum boilers with a steam pressure of and a steam temperature of feeding four geared steam turbines, each driving one shaft with ; this would result in a total propulsive power of , which gave a design speed of 28 knots at 70,500 tons displacement. While less powerful than the powerplant used by the "Iowa"s, the "Montana"s plant enabled the machinery spaces to be considerably more subdivided, with extensive longitudinal and traverse subdivisons of the boiler and engine rooms. The machinery arrangement was reminiscent of that of the , with the boiler rooms flanking the two central turbine rooms for the inboard shafts, while the turbine rooms for the wing shafts were placed at the after end of the machinery spaces. "Montana"s machinery arrangement combined with increased power would eventually be used on the . The "Montana"s were designed to carry of fuel oil and had a nominal range of at . Two semi-balanced rudders were placed behind the two inboard screws. The inboard shafts were housed in skegs, which while increasing hydrodynamic drag, substantially strengthened the stern structure.
To meet the high electrical loads anticipated for the ships, the design was to have ten 1,250 kW ship service turbogenerators (SSTG), providing a total of 12,500 kW of non-emergency electrical power at 450 volts alternating current. The ships would also be equipped with two 500 kW emergency diesel generators.
Aside from its firepower, a battleship's defining feature is its armor. The exact design and placement of the armor, inextricably linked with the ship's stability and performance, is a complex science honed over decades. A battleship is usually armored to withstand an attack from guns the size of its own, but the armor scheme of the preceding "North Carolina" class was only proof against shells (which they had originally been intended to carry), while the "South Dakota" and "Iowa" classes were designed only to resist their original complement of Mk. 5 shells, not the new "super-heavy" Mk. 8 armor-piercing shells they actually used. The "Montana"s were the only US battleships designed to resist the Mk. 8, and were designed to give a zone of immunity against fire from 16-inch/45-caliber firing shell, between 18,000 and 31,000 yards (16,459 and 28,346 m) and 16-inch/45-caliber firing shell, between 16,500 and 34,500 yards (15,087 and 31,546 m) away.
As designed, the "Montana"s used the "all or nothing" armor philosophy, with most of the armor concentrated on the citadel that includes the machinery spaces, armament, magazines, and command and control facilities. Unlike the previous "Iowa" and "South Dakota" classes, the "Montana" class design returned to an external armor belt due to the greater beam providing sufficient stability while having the required belt inclination; this arrangement would have made construction and damage repairs much easier. The belt armor would be Class A face-hardened Krupp cemented (K.C.) armor mounted on Special Treatment Steel (STS), inclined at 19 degrees. Below the waterline, the belt tapered to . To protect against potential underwater shell hits, the ships would have a separate Class B homogeneous Krupp-type armor lower belt, by the magazines and by the machinery, that would also have served as one of the torpedo bulkheads, inclined at 10 degrees; this lower belt would taper to 1 inch at the triple bottom and was mounted on STS. The ends of the armored citadel would be closed by Class A traverse bulkheads thick in the front and in the aft. The deck armor would be in three layers, consisting of STS laminated on STS for a total of STS weather deck, Class B laminated on STS for a total of second deck on the centerline, and a splinter deck; the outboard section would have Class B laminated on STS for a total of second deck and a splinter deck. Over the magazines, the splinter deck would be replaced by a STS third deck to protect from spalling.
The main batteries were designed to have very heavy protection, with turret faces having Class B mounted on STS, resulting in thick laminated plate. The turret sides were to have up to Class A and turret roofs would have Class B. The barbettes would have been protected by up to Class A forward and aft, while the conning tower sides would have Class A.
"Montana"s torpedo protection system design incorporated lessons learned from those of previous US fast battleships, and was to consist of four internal longitudinal torpedo bulkheads behind the outer hull shell plating that would form a multi-layered "bulge". Two of the compartments would be liquid loaded in order to disrupt the gas bubble of a torpedo warhead detonation while the bulkheads would elastically deform and absorb the energy. Due to the external armor belt, the geometry of the "bulge" was more similar to that of the "North Carolina" class rather than that of the "South Dakota" and "Iowa" classes. However, like on the "South Dakota" and "Iowa" classes, the two outer compartments would be liquid loaded, while two inner ones be void with the lower Class B armor belt to form the holding bulkhead between them. The greater beam of the "Montana"s would allow a higher system depth of compared to of the "North Carolina"s.
Until the authorization of the "Montana" class all US battleships were built within the size limits for the Panama Canal. The main reason for this was logistical: the largest US shipyards were located on the East Coast of the United States, while the United States had territorial interests in both oceans. Requiring the battleships to fit within the Panama Canal took days off the transition time from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean by allowing ships to move through the canal instead of sailing around South America. By the time of the Two Ocean Navy bill, the Navy realized that ship designs could no longer be limited by the extant Panama Canal and thus approved the "Montana" class while simultaneously planning for a new third set of locks that were wide. This shift in policy meant that the "Montana" class would have been the only World War II–era US battleships to be adequately armored against guns of the same power as their own.
The "Montana" class would have used aircraft for reconnaissance and for gunnery spotting. The type of aircraft used would have depended on when exactly the battleships would have been commissioned, but in all probability they would have used either the Kingfisher or the Seahawk. The aircraft would have been floatplanes launched from catapults on the ship's fantail. They would have landed on the water and taxied to the stern of the ship to be lifted by a crane back to the catapult.
The Vought OS2U Kingfisher was a lightly armed two-man aircraft designed in 1937. The Kingfisher's high operating ceiling of 13,000 feet (nearly four kilometers) made it well-suited for its primary mission: to observe the fall of shot from a battleship's guns and radio corrections back to the ship. The floatplanes used in World War II also performed search and rescue for naval aviators who were shot down or forced to ditch in the ocean.
In June 1942, the US Navy Bureau of Aeronautics requested industry proposals for a new seaplane to replace the Kingfisher and Curtiss SO3C Seamew. The new aircraft was required to be able to use landing gear as well as floats. Curtiss submitted a design on 1 August, and received a contract for two prototypes and five service-test aircraft on 25 August. The first flight of a prototype XSC-1 took place on 16 February 1944 at the Columbus, Ohio Curtiss plant. The first production aircraft were delivered in October 1944, and by the beginning of 1945 the single-seat Curtiss SC Seahawk floatplane began replacing the Kingfisher. Had the "Montana" class been completed, they would have arrived around the time of this replacement, and would likely have been equipped with the Seahawk for use in combat operations and seaborne search and rescue.
Five ships of the "Montana" class were authorized on 19 July 1940, but they were suspended indefinitely until being canceled on 21 July 1943. The ships were to be built at the New York Navy Yard, Philadelphia Navy Yard and Norfolk Navy Yard.
"Montana" was planned to be the lead ship of the class. She was the third ship to be named in honor of the 41st state, and was assigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard. Both the earlier battleship, , and BB-67 were canceled, so Montana is the only one of the (48 at the time) US states never to have had a battleship with a "BB" hull classification completed in its honor.
"Ohio" was to be the second "Montana"-class battleship. She was to be named in honor of the 17th state, and was assigned to the Philadelphia Navy Yard for construction. "Ohio" would have been the fourth ship to bear that name had she been commissioned.
"Maine" was to be the third "Montana"-class battleship. She was to be named in honor of the 23rd state, and was assigned to the New York Navy Yard. "Maine" would have been the third ship to bear that name had she been commissioned.
"New Hampshire" was to be the fourth "Montana"-class battleship, and was to be named in honor of the ninth state. She was assigned to the New York Navy Yard, and would have been the third ship to bear that name had she been commissioned.
"Louisiana" was to be the fifth and final "Montana"-class battleship. She was to be named in honor of the 18th state and assigned to the Norfolk Navy Yard, Portsmouth, Virginia. "Louisiana" would have been the third ship to bear that name had she been commissioned. By hull number, "Louisiana" was the last American battleship authorized for construction. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40396 |
James A. Garfield
James Abram Garfield (November 19, 1831 – September 19, 1881) was the 20th president of the United States, serving from March 4, 1881, until his death by assassination six and a half months later. He is the only sitting member of the United States House of Representatives to be elected to the presidency.
Garfield entered politics as a Republican in 1857. He served as a member of the Ohio State Senate from 1859 to 1861. Garfield opposed Confederate secession, served as a major general in the Union Army during the American Civil War, and fought in the battles of Middle Creek, Shiloh, and Chickamauga. He was first elected to Congress in 1862 to represent Ohio's 19th district. Throughout Garfield's congressional service after the war, he firmly supported the gold standard and gained a reputation as a skilled orator. He initially agreed with Radical Republican views on Reconstruction, but later favored a moderate approach to civil rights enforcement for freedmen.
At the 1880 Republican National Convention, delegates chose Garfield, who had not sought the White House, as a compromise presidential nominee on the 36th ballot. In the 1880 presidential election, he conducted a low-key front porch campaign and narrowly defeated Democrat Winfield Scott Hancock. Garfield's accomplishments as president included a resurgence of presidential authority against senatorial courtesy in executive appointments, purging corruption in the Post Office, and appointing a U.S. Supreme Court justice. He enhanced the powers of the presidency when he defied the powerful New York senator Roscoe Conkling by appointing William H. Robertson to the lucrative post of Collector of the Port of New York, starting a fracas that ended with Robertson's confirmation and Conkling's resignation from the Senate. Garfield advocated agricultural technology, an educated electorate, and civil rights for African Americans. He also proposed substantial civil service reforms, which were passed by Congress in 1883 and signed into law by his successor, Chester A. Arthur, as the Pendleton Civil Service Reform Act.
On July 2, 1881, Charles J. Guiteau, a disappointed and delusional office seeker, shot Garfield at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington D.C. The wound was not immediately fatal, but he died on September 19, 1881, from infections caused by his doctors. Guiteau was executed for Garfield's murder in June 1882.
James Garfield was born the youngest of five children on November 19, 1831, in a log cabin in Orange Township, now Moreland Hills, Ohio. Orange Township had been in the Western Reserve until 1800, and like many who settled there, Garfield's ancestors were from New England, his ancestor Edward Garfield immigrating from Hillmorton, Warwickshire, England, to Massachusetts around 1630. James's father Abram had been born in Worcester, New York, and came to Ohio to woo his childhood sweetheart, Mehitabel Ballou, only to find her married. He instead wed her sister Eliza, who had been born in New Hampshire. James was named for an older brother who died in infancy.
In early 1833, Abram and Eliza Garfield joined the Church of Christ, a decision that shaped their youngest son's life. Abram died later that year; James was raised in poverty in a household led by the strong-willed Eliza. He was her favorite child, and the two remained close for the rest of his life. Eliza Garfield remarried in 1842, but soon left her second husband, Warren Belden (or Alfred Belden), and a then scandalous divorce was awarded in 1850. James took his mother's side and when Belden died in 1880, noted it in his diary with satisfaction. Garfield enjoyed his mother's stories about his ancestry, especially his Welsh great-great-grandfathers and his ancestor who served as a knight of Caerffili Castle.
Poor and fatherless, Garfield was mocked by his fellow boys, and was very sensitive to slights throughout his life. He escaped by reading all the books he could find. He left home at age 16 in 1847. Rejected by the only ship in port in Cleveland, Garfield instead found work on a canal boat, responsible for managing the mules that pulled it. This labor was used to good effect by Horatio Alger, who wrote Garfield's campaign biography in 1880.
After six weeks, illness forced Garfield to return home and, during his recuperation, his mother and a local education official got him to promise to postpone his return to the canals for a year and go to school. Accordingly, in 1848, he began at Geauga Seminary, in nearby Chester Township, Geauga County, Ohio. Garfield later said of his childhood, "I lament that I was born to poverty, and in this chaos of childhood, seventeen years passed before I caught any inspiration ... a precious 17 years when a boy with a father and some wealth might have become fixed in manly ways."
At Geauga Academy, which he attended from 1848 to 1850, Garfield learned academic subjects for which he had not previously had time. He shone as a student, and was especially interested in languages and elocution. He began to appreciate the power a speaker had over an audience, writing that the speaker's platform "creates some excitement. I love agitation and investigation and glory in defending unpopular truth against popular error." Geauga was coeducational, and Garfield was attracted to one of his fellow students, Lucretia Rudolph, whom he later married. To support himself at Geauga, he worked as a carpenter's assistant and a teacher. The need to go from town to town to find work as a teacher disgusted Garfield, and he thereafter developed a dislike of what he called "place-seeking", which became, he said, "the law of my life." In later years, he astounded his friends by letting positions pass that could have been his with a little politicking. Garfield had attended church more to please his mother than to worship God, but in his late teens underwent a religious awakening, and attended many camp meetings, at one of which he was born again on March 4, 1850, baptized into Christ by being submerged in the icy waters of the Chagrin River.
After leaving Geauga, Garfield worked for a year at various jobs, including teaching. Finding that some New Englanders worked their way through college, Garfield determined to do the same, and sought a school that could prepare him for the entrance examinations. From 1851 to 1854, he attended the Western Reserve Eclectic Institute (later named Hiram College) in Hiram, Ohio, a school run by the Disciples. While there, he was most interested in the study of Greek and Latin, but was inclined to learn about and discuss any new thing he encountered. Securing a position on entry as janitor, he was hired to teach while still a student. Lucretia Rudolph also enrolled at the Institute, and Garfield wooed her while teaching her Greek. He developed a regular preaching circuit at neighboring churches, in some cases earning a gold dollar per service. By 1854, Garfield had learned all the Institute could teach him and was a full-time teacher. Garfield then enrolled at Williams College in Williamstown, Massachusetts, as a third-year student, given credit for two years' study at the Institute after passing a cursory examination. Garfield was impressed with the college president, Mark Hopkins, who had responded warmly to Garfield's letter inquiring about admission. He said of Hopkins, "The ideal college is Mark Hopkins on one end of a log with a student on the other." Hopkins later said of Garfield in his student days, "There was a large general capacity applicable to any subject. There was no pretense of genius, or alternation of spasmodic effort, but a satisfactory accomplishment in all directions." After his first term, Garfield was hired to teach penmanship to the students of nearby Pownal, Vermont, a post previously held by Chester A. Arthur.
Garfield graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Williams in August 1856 as salutatorian, giving an address at the commencement. His biographer Ira Rutkow writes that Garfield's years at Williams gave Garfield the opportunity to know and respect those of different social backgrounds, and that despite his origin as an unsophisticated Westerner, he was liked and respected by socially conscious New Englanders. "In short", Rutkow writes, "Garfield had an extensive and positive first experience with the world outside the Western Reserve of Ohio."
On his return to Ohio, the degree from a prestigious Eastern school made Garfield a man of distinction. He returned to Hiram to teach at the Institute, and in 1857 was made its president. He did not see education as a field that would realize his full potential. At Williams, he had become more politically aware in the school's intensely anti-slavery atmosphere, and began to consider politics as a career. In 1858, he married Lucretia; they had seven children, five of whom survived infancy. Soon after the wedding, he formally entered his name to read law (1859) at the office of attorney Albert Gallatin Riddle a Cleveland firm, although he did his studying in Hiram. He was admitted to the bar in 1861.
Local Republican leaders invited Garfield to enter politics upon the death of Cyrus Prentiss, the presumptive nominee for the local state senate seat. He was nominated at the party convention on the sixth ballot, and was elected, serving until 1861. Garfield's major effort in the state senate was a bill providing for Ohio's first geological survey to measure its mineral resources, but it failed.
After Abraham Lincoln's election as president, several Southern states announced their secession from the Union to form a new government, the Confederate States of America. Garfield read military texts while anxiously awaiting the war effort, which he regarded as a holy crusade against the Slave Power. In April 1861, the rebels bombarded Fort Sumter, one of South's last federal outposts, beginning the Civil War. Although he had no military training, Garfield knew that his place was in the Union Army.
At Governor William Dennison's request, Garfield deferred his military ambitions to remain in the legislature, where he helped appropriate the funds to raise and equip Ohio's volunteer regiments. Afterward, the legislature adjourned and Garfield spent the spring and early summer on a speaking tour of northeastern Ohio, encouraging enlistment in the new regiments. Following a trip to Illinois to purchase muskets, Garfield returned to Ohio and, in August 1861, received a commission as a colonel in the 42nd Ohio Infantry regiment. The 42nd Ohio existed only on paper, so Garfield's first task was to fill its ranks. He did so quickly, recruiting many of his neighbors and former students. The regiment traveled to Camp Chase, outside Columbus, Ohio, to complete training. In December, Garfield was ordered to bring the 42nd to Kentucky, where they joined the Army of the Ohio under Brigadier General Don Carlos Buell.
Buell quickly assigned Garfield the task of driving Confederate forces out of eastern Kentucky, giving him the 18th Brigade for the campaign, which, besides his own 42nd, included the 40th Ohio Infantry, two Kentucky infantry regiments and two cavalry units. They departed Catlettsburg, Kentucky, in mid-December, advancing through the valley of the Big Sandy River. The march was uneventful until Union forces reached Paintsville, Kentucky, on January 6, 1862, where Garfield's cavalry engaged the rebels at Jenny's Creek. Confederate troops under Brigadier General Humphrey Marshall held the town in numbers roughly equal to Garfield's own, but Garfield positioned his troops so as to deceive Marshall into believing the rebels were outnumbered. Marshall ordered his troops to withdraw to the forks of Middle Creek, on the road to Virginia; Garfield ordered his troops to pursue them. They attacked the rebel positions on January 9, 1862, in the Battle of Middle Creek, the only pitched battle Garfield personally commanded. At the fighting's end, the Confederates withdrew from the field, and Garfield sent his troops to Prestonsburg to reprovision.
In recognition of his success, Garfield was promoted to brigadier general. After Marshall's retreat, Garfield's command was the sole remaining Union force in eastern Kentucky, and he announced that any men who had fought for the Confederacy would be granted amnesty if they returned to their homes and lived peaceably and remained loyal to the Union. The proclamation was surprisingly lenient, as Garfield now believed the war was a crusade for eradication of slavery. Following a brief skirmish at Pound Gap, the last rebel units in the area were outflanked and retreated to Virginia.
Garfield's promotion gave him command of the 20th Brigade of the Army of the Ohio, which was ordered in early 1862 to join Major General Ulysses S. Grant's forces as they advanced on Corinth, Mississippi. Before the 20th Brigade arrived, however, Confederate forces under General Albert Sidney Johnston surprised Grant's men in their camps, driving them back. Garfield's troops got word of the battle and advanced quickly, joining the rest of the army on the second day to drive the Confederates back across the field and into retreat. The action, later known as the Battle of Shiloh, was the bloodiest of the war to date; Garfield was exposed to fire for much of the day, but emerged uninjured. Major General Henry W. Halleck, Grant's superior, took charge of the combined armies and advanced ponderously toward Corinth; when they arrived, the Confederates had fled.
That summer Garfield suffered from jaundice and significant weight loss. He was forced to return home, where his wife nursed him back to health. While he was home, Garfield's friends worked to gain him the Republican nomination for Congress, but he refused to campaign with the delegates. He returned to military duty that autumn and went to Washington to await his next assignment. During this period of idleness, a rumor of an extramarital affair caused friction in the Garfields' marriage until Lucretia eventually chose to overlook it. Garfield repeatedly received tentative assignments that were quickly withdrawn, to his frustration. In the meantime, he served on the court-martial of Fitz John Porter for his tardiness at the Second Battle of Bull Run. He was convinced of Porter's guilt, and voted with his fellow generals to convict. The trial lasted almost two months, from November 1862 to January 1863, and by its end, Garfield had procured an assignment as Chief of Staff to Major General William S. Rosecrans.
Generals' chiefs of staff were usually more junior officers, but Garfield's influence with Rosecrans was greater than usual, with duties extending beyond communication of orders to actual management of his Army of the Cumberland. Rosecrans had a voracious appetite for conversation, especially when unable to sleep; in Garfield, he found "the first well read person in the Army" and the ideal candidate for discussions that ran deep into the night. The two became close despite Garfield's being 12 years Rosecrans's junior, and they discussed everything, especially religion; Rosecrans, who had converted from Methodism to Roman Catholicism, softened Garfield's view of his faith. Garfield recommended that Rosecrans replace wing commanders Alexander McCook and Thomas Crittenden, whom he believed ineffective, but Rosecrans ignored the suggestion. With Rosecrans, Garfield devised the Tullahoma Campaign to pursue and trap Confederate General Braxton Bragg in Tullahoma. After initial Union success, Bragg retreated toward Chattanooga, where Rosecrans stalled and requested more troops and supplies. Garfield argued for an immediate advance, in line with demands from Halleck and Lincoln. After a council of war and lengthy deliberations, Rosecrans agreed to attack.
At the ensuing Battle of Chickamauga on September 19 and 20, 1863, confusion among the wing commanders over Rosecrans's orders created a gap in the lines, resulting in a rout of the right flank. Rosecrans concluded that the battle was lost and fell back on Chattanooga to establish a defensive line. Garfield, however, thought that part of the army had held and, with Rosecrans's approval, headed across Missionary Ridge to survey the scene. Garfield's hunch was correct. His ride became legendary, while Rosecrans's error reignited criticism about his leadership. While Rosecrans's army had avoided disaster, they were stranded in Chattanooga, surrounded by Bragg's army. Garfield sent a telegram to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton alerting Washington to the need for reinforcements to avoid annihilation, and Lincoln and Halleck delivered 20,000 troops by rail within nine days. In the meantime, Grant was promoted to command of the western armies, and quickly replaced Rosecrans with George H. Thomas. Garfield was ordered to report to Washington, where he was promoted to major general, a commission he resigned before taking a seat in the House of Representatives. According to historian Jean Edward Smith, Grant and Garfield had a "guarded relationship", since Grant promoted Thomas, rather than Garfield, to command of the Army of the Cumberland after Rosecrans's dismissal.
While serving in the Army in early 1862, Garfield was approached by friends about running for Congress from Ohio's newly redrawn, heavily Republican 19th district. He was worried that he and other state-appointed generals would get obscure assignments, and running for Congress would allow him to resume his political career. The fact that the new Congress would not hold its first regular session until December 1863 allowed him to continue his war service for a time. Home on medical leave, he refused to campaign for the nomination, leaving that to political managers who secured it at the local convention in September 1862 on the eighth ballot. In October, he defeated D.B. Woods by a two-to-one margin in the general election for a seat in the 38th Congress.
Soon after his nomination, Garfield was ordered to report to War Secretary Edwin Stanton in Washington to discuss his military future. There, he met Treasury Secretary Salmon P. Chase, who befriended him, seeing him as a younger version of himself. The two agreed politically, and both were part of the Radical wing of the Republican Party. Once he took his seat in December 1863, Garfield was frustrated that Lincoln seemed reluctant to press the South hard. Many radicals, led in the House by Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens, wanted rebel-owned lands confiscated, but Lincoln threatened to veto any bill to do that on a widespread basis. In debate on the House floor, Garfield supported such legislation and, discussing England's Glorious Revolution, hinted that Lincoln might be thrown out of office for resisting it. Garfield had supported Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation, and marveled that it was a "strange phenomenon in the world's history, when a second-rate Illinois lawyer is the instrument to utter words which shall form an epoch memorable in all future ages."
Garfield not only favored abolition of slavery, but believed that the leaders of the rebellion had forfeited their constitutional rights. He supported the confiscation of southern plantations and even exile or execution of rebellion leaders as a means to ensure a permanent end to slavery. Garfield felt Congress was obliged "to determine what legislation is necessary to secure equal justice to all loyal persons, without regard to color." He was more supportive of Lincoln when Lincoln took action against slavery. Early in his tenure, he differed from his party on several issues; his was the solitary Republican vote to terminate the use of bounties in recruiting. Some financially able recruits had used the bounty system to buy their way out of service (called commutation), which Garfield considered reprehensible. Garfield gave a speech pointing out the flaws in the existing conscription law: that of 300,000 called upon to enlist, barely 10,000 had, the remainder claiming exemption or providing money or a substitute. Lincoln appeared before the Military Affairs committee on which Garfield served, demanding a more effective bill; even if it cost him reelection, Lincoln was confident he could win the war before his term expired. After many false starts, Garfield, with Lincoln's support, procured the passage of a conscription bill that excluded commutation.
Under Chase's influence, Garfield became a staunch proponent of a dollar backed by a gold standard, and was therefore a strong opponent of the "greenback"; he regretted very much, but understood, the necessity for suspension of payment in gold or silver during the Civil War. Garfield voted with the Radical Republicans in passing the Wade–Davis Bill, designed to give Congress more authority over Reconstruction, but it was defeated by Lincoln's pocket veto.
Garfield did not consider Lincoln particularly worthy of reelection, but there seemed to be no viable alternative. "He will probably be the man, though I think we could do better", he said. Garfield attended the party convention and promoted Rosecrans as Lincoln's running mate, but delegates chose Military Governor of Tennessee Andrew Johnson. Lincoln and Garfield were reelected. By then, Chase had left the Cabinet and had been appointed Chief Justice, and his relations with Garfield became more distant.
Garfield took up the practice of law in 1865 as a means to improve his personal finances. His efforts took him to Wall Street where, the day after Lincoln's assassination, a riotous crowd led him into an impromptu speech to calm it: "Fellow citizens! Clouds and darkness are round about Him! His pavilion is dark waters and thick clouds of the skies! Justice and judgment are the establishment of His throne! Mercy and truth shall go before His face! Fellow citizens! God reigns, and the Government at Washington still lives!" The speech, with no mention or praise of Lincoln, was, according to Garfield biographer Robert G. Caldwell, "quite as significant for what it did not contain as for what it did." In the following years, Garfield had more praise for Lincoln; a year after Lincoln's death, Garfield said, "Greatest among all these developments were the character and fame of Abraham Lincoln," and in 1878 he called Lincoln "one of the few great rulers whose wisdom increased with his power."
Garfield was as firm a supporter of black suffrage as he had been of abolition, though he admitted that the idea of African Americans as whites' political equals gave him "a strong feeling of repugnance." President Johnson sought the rapid restoration of the Southern states during the months between his accession and the meeting of Congress in December 1865; Garfield hesitantly supported this policy as an experiment. Johnson, an old friend, sought Garfield's backing, and their conversations led Garfield to assume that Johnson's differences with Congress were not large. When Congress assembled in December (to Johnson's chagrin without the elected representatives of the Southern states, who were excluded), Garfield urged conciliation on his colleagues, although he feared that Johnson, a former Democrat, might join other Democrats to gain political control. Garfield foresaw conflict even before February 1866, when Johnson vetoed a bill to extend the life of the Freedmen's Bureau, charged with aiding the former slaves. By April, Garfield had concluded that Johnson was either "crazy or drunk with opium."
The conflict between the branches of government was the major issue of the 1866 campaign, with Johnson taking to the campaign trail in a Swing Around the Circle and Garfield facing opposition within his party in his home district. With the South still disenfranchised and Northern public opinion behind the Republicans, they gained a two-thirds majority in both houses of Congress. Garfield, having overcome his challengers at his district nominating convention, was easily reelected.
Garfield opposed the initial talk of impeaching Johnson when Congress convened in December 1866, but supported legislation to limit Johnson's powers, such as the Tenure of Office Act, which restricted Johnson in removing presidential appointees. Distracted by committee duties, he rarely spoke about these bills, but was a loyal Republican vote against Johnson. Due to a court case, he was absent on the day in April 1868 when the House impeached Johnson, but soon gave a speech aligning himself with Thaddeus Stevens and others who sought Johnson's removal. When the president was acquitted in trial before the Senate, Garfield was shocked, and blamed the outcome on the trial's presiding officer, Chief Justice Chase, his onetime mentor.
By the time Ulysses S. Grant succeeded Johnson in 1869, Garfield had moved away from the remaining radicals (Stevens, their leader, had died in 1868). He hailed the ratification of the 15th Amendment in 1870 as a triumph, and he favored Georgia's readmission to the Union as a matter of right, not politics. In 1871, Garfield opposed passage of the Ku Klux Klan Act, saying, "I have never been more perplexed by a piece of legislation." He was torn between his indignation at "these terrorists" and his concern for the freedoms endangered by the power the bill gave the president to enforce the act through suspension of habeas corpus.
Throughout his political career, Garfield favored the gold standard and decried attempts to increase the money supply through the issuance of paper money not backed by gold, and later, through the free and unlimited coinage of silver. In 1865, he was placed on the House Ways and Means Committee, a long-awaited opportunity to focus on financial and economic issues. He reprised his opposition to the greenback, saying, "Any party which commits itself to paper money will go down amid the general disaster, covered with the curses of a ruined people." In 1868 Garfield gave a two-hour speech on currency in the House, which was widely applauded as his best oratory to that point; in it he advocated a gradual resumption of specie payments, that is, the government paying out silver and gold, rather than paper money that could not be redeemed.
Tariffs had been raised to high levels during the Civil War. Afterward, Garfield, who made a close study of financial affairs, advocated moving toward free trade, though the standard Republican position was a protective tariff that would allow American industries to grow. This break with his party likely cost him his place on the Ways and Means Committee in 1867, and though Republicans held the majority in the House until 1875, Garfield remained off that committee. Garfield came to chair the powerful House Appropriations Committee, but it was Ways and Means, with its influence over fiscal policy, that he really wanted to lead. Part of the reason he was denied a place on Ways and Means was the opposition of the influential Republican editor Horace Greeley.
In September 1870, Garfield, then chairman of the House Banking Committee, led an investigation into the Black Friday Gold Panic scandal. The investigation was thorough, but found no indictable offenses. Garfield blamed the easy availability of fiat money greenbacks for financing the speculation that led to the scandal.
Garfield was not at all enthused about President Grant's reelection in 1872—until Greeley, who emerged as the candidate of the Democrats and Liberal Republicans, became the only serious alternative. Garfield said, "I would say Grant was not fit to be nominated and Greeley is not fit to be elected." Both Grant and Garfield were overwhelmingly reelected.
The Crédit Mobilier of America scandal involved corruption in the financing of the Union Pacific Railroad, part of the transcontinental railroad that was completed in 1869. Union Pacific officers and directors secretly purchased control of the Crédit Mobilier of America company, then contracted with it to undertake construction of the railroad. The railroad paid the company's grossly inflated invoices with federal funds appropriated to subsidize the project, and the company was allowed to purchase Union Pacific securities at par value, well below the market rate. Crédit Mobilier showed large profits and stock gains, and distributed substantial dividends. The high expenses meant that Congress was called upon to appropriate more funds. One of the railroad officials who controlled Crédit Mobilier was also a congressman, Oakes Ames of Massachusetts. He offered some of his colleagues the opportunity to buy Crédit Mobilier stock at par value, well below what it sold for on the market, and the railroad got its additional appropriations.
The story broke in July 1872, in the middle of the presidential campaign. Among those named were Vice President (and former House Speaker) Schuyler Colfax, Grant's second-term running mate (Massachusetts Senator Henry Wilson), Speaker James G. Blaine of Maine, and Garfield. Greeley had little luck taking advantage of the scandal. When Congress reconvened after the election, Blaine, seeking to clear his name, demanded a House investigation. Evidence before the special committee exonerated Blaine. Garfield had said in September 1872 that Ames had offered him stock but he had repeatedly refused it. Testifying before the committee in January, Ames said that he had offered Garfield ten shares of stock at par value, but that Garfield had never taken them or paid for them, though a year passed, from 1867 to 1868, before Garfield had finally refused. Appearing before the committee on January 14, 1873, Garfield confirmed much of this. Ames testified several weeks later that Garfield agreed to take the stock on credit, and that it was paid for by the company's huge dividends. The two men differed over $300 that Garfield received and later paid back, with Garfield deeming it a loan and Ames a dividend.
Garfield's biographers have been unwilling to exonerate him in Crédit Mobilier. Allan Peskin writes, "Did Garfield lie? Not exactly. Did he tell the truth? Not completely. Was he corrupted? Not really. Even Garfield's enemies never claimed that his involvement ... influenced his behavior." Rutkow writes, "Garfield's real offense was that he knowingly denied to the House investigating committee that he had agreed to accept the stock and that he had also received a dividend of $329." Caldwell suggests that Garfield "told the truth [before the committee]", but "certainly failed to tell the whole truth, clearly evading an answer to certain vital questions and thus giving the impression of worse faults than those of which he was guilty." That Crédit Mobilier was a corrupt organization had been a secret badly kept, even mentioned on the floor of Congress, and editor Sam Bowles wrote at the time that Garfield, in his positions on committees dealing with finance, "had no more right to be ignorant in a matter of such grave importance as this, than the sentinel has to snore on his post."
Another issue that caused Garfield trouble in his 1874 reelection bid was the so-called "Salary Grab" of 1873, which increased the compensation for members of Congress by 50%, retroactive to 1871. Garfield was responsible, as Appropriations Committee chairman, for shepherding the legislative appropriations bill through the House; during the debate in February 1873, Massachusetts Representative Benjamin Butler offered the increase as an amendment, and despite Garfield's opposition, it passed the House and eventually became law. The law was very popular in the House, as almost half the members were lame ducks, but the public was outraged, and many of Garfield's constituents blamed him, though he refused to accept the increase. In a bad year for Republicans, who lost control of the House for the first time since the Civil War, Garfield had his closest congressional election, winning with only 57% of the vote.
With the Democratic takeover of the House of Representatives in 1875, Garfield lost his chairmanship of the Appropriations Committee. The Democratic leadership in the House appointed Garfield as a Republican member of Ways and Means. With many of his leadership rivals defeated in the 1874 Democratic landslide, and Blaine elected to the Senate, Garfield was seen as the Republican floor leader and the likely Speaker should the party regain control of the chamber.
Garfield thought the land grants given to expanding railroads was an unjust practice. He also opposed some monopolistic practices by corporations, as well as the power sought by workers' unions. Garfield supported the proposed establishment of the United States civil service as a means of ridding officials of the annoyance of aggressive office seekers. He especially wished to eliminate the common practice whereby government workers, in exchange for their positions, were forced to kick back a percentage of their wages as political contributions.
As the 1876 presidential election approached, Garfield was loyal to the candidacy of Senator Blaine, and fought for the former Speaker's nomination at the 1876 Republican National Convention in Cincinnati. When it became clear, after six ballots, that Blaine could not prevail, the convention nominated Ohio Governor Rutherford B. Hayes. Although Garfield had supported Blaine, he had kept good relations with Hayes, and wholeheartedly supported the governor. Garfield had hoped to retire from politics after his term expired to devote himself full-time to the practice of law, but to help his party, he sought re-election, and won it easily that October. Any celebration was short lived, as Garfield's youngest son, Neddie, fell ill with whooping cough shortly after the congressional election, and soon died.
When Hayes appeared to have lost the presidential election the following month to Democrat Samuel Tilden, the Republicans launched efforts to reverse the result in Southern states where they held the governorship: South Carolina, Louisiana, and Florida. If Hayes won all three states, he would take the election by a single electoral vote. Grant asked Garfield to serve as a "neutral observer" in the recount in Louisiana. The observers soon recommended to the state electoral commissions that Hayes be declared the winner—Garfield recommended that the entire vote of West Feliciana Parish, which had given Tilden a sizable majority, be thrown out. The Republican governors of the three states certified that Hayes had won their states, to the outrage of Democrats, who had the state legislatures submit rival returns, and threatened to prevent the counting of the electoral vote—under the Constitution, Congress is the final arbiter of the election. Congress then passed a bill establishing the Electoral Commission, to determine the winner. Although he opposed the Commission, feeling that Congress should count the vote and proclaim Hayes victorious, Garfield was appointed to it over the objections of Democrats that he was too partisan. Hayes emerged the victor by a Commission vote of 8 to 7, with all eight votes being cast by Republican politicians or appointees of that party to the Supreme Court. As part of the deal whereby they recognized Hayes as president, Southern Democrats secured the removal of federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction.
Although a Senate seat would be disposed of by the Ohio General Assembly after the resignation of John Sherman to become Treasury Secretary, Hayes needed Garfield's expertise to protect him from the agenda of a hostile Congress, and asked him not to seek it. Garfield, as the president's key legislator, gained considerable prestige and respect for his role. When Congress debated what became the Bland–Allison Act, to have the government purchase large quantities of silver and strike it into fully legal tender dollar coins, Garfield fought against this deviation from the gold standard, but it was enacted over Hayes's veto in February 1878.
Garfield during this time purchased the property in Mentor that reporters later dubbed Lawnfield, and from which he would conduct the first successful front porch campaign for the presidency.
President Hayes suggested that Garfield run for governor in 1879, seeing that as a road that would likely put Garfield in the White House. Garfield preferred to seek election as a U.S. Senator. Rivals were spoken of for the seat, such as Secretary Sherman, but he had presidential ambitions (for which he sought Garfield's support), and other candidates fell by the wayside. Garfield was elected to the Senate by the General Assembly in January 1880, though his term was not scheduled to commence until March 4, 1881. Garfield was never seated in the U.S. Senate.
Garfield was one of three attorneys who argued for the petitioners in the landmark Supreme Court case "Ex parte Milligan" in 1866. His clients were pro-Confederate northern men who had been found guilty and sentenced to death by a military court for treasonous activities. The case turned on whether the defendants should instead have been tried by a civilian court, and resulted in a ruling that civilians could not be tried before military tribunals while the civil courts were operating. The oral argument was Garfield's first court appearance. Jeremiah Black had taken him in as a junior partner a year before, and assigned the case to him in light of his highly regarded oratory skills. With the result, Garfield instantly achieved a reputation as a preeminent appellate lawyer.
During Grant's first term, discontented with public service, Garfield pursued opportunities in the law, but declined a partnership offer when told his prospective partner was of "intemperate and licentious" reputation. In 1873, after the death of Chase, Garfield appealed to Grant to appoint Justice Noah H. Swayne as Chief Justice. Grant, however, appointed Morrison R. Waite.
In 1876, Garfield displayed his mathematical talent when he developed a trapezoid proof of the Pythagorean theorem. His finding was placed in the "New England Journal of Education". Mathematics historian William Dunham wrote that Garfield's trapezoid work was "really a very clever proof."
After his conversion experience in 1850, religious inquiry was a high priority for Garfield. He read widely and moved beyond the narrowness of his early experience as a member of the Disciples of Christ. His new, broader perspective was rooted in his devotion to freedom of inquiry and his study of history. The intensity of Garfield's religious thought was also shaped in part by his experience in combat and his interaction with voters.
Having just been elected to the Senate with Sherman's support, Garfield entered the 1880 campaign season committed to Sherman as his choice for the Republican presidential nominee. Even before the convention began, however, a few Republicans, including Wharton Barker of Philadelphia, thought Garfield the best choice for the nomination. Garfield denied any interest in the position, but the attention was enough to make Sherman suspicious of his lieutenant's ambitions. Besides Sherman, the early favorites for the nomination were Blaine and former President Grant, but several other candidates attracted delegates as well.
During this period, the Republican Party was split into two factions: The Stalwarts, who supported the existing federal government patronage system; and the Half-Breeds, who supported civil service reform. As the convention began, Senator Roscoe Conkling of New York (the floor leader for the Stalwarts, who supported former President Ulysses S. Grant), proposed that the delegates pledge to support the eventual nominee in the general election. When three West Virginia delegates declined to be so bound, Conkling sought to expel them from the convention. Garfield rose to defend the men, giving a passionate speech in defense of their right to reserve judgment. The crowd turned against Conkling, and he withdrew the motion. The performance delighted Garfield's boosters, who now believed more than ever that he was the only man who could attract a majority of the delegates' votes.
After speeches in favor of the other front-runners, Garfield rose to place Sherman's name in nomination; his nominating speech was well-received, but the delegates mustered little excitement for the idea of Sherman as the next president. The first ballot showed Grant leading with 304 votes and Blaine in second with 284; Sherman's 93 placed him in a distant third. Subsequent ballots quickly demonstrated a deadlock between the Grant and Blaine forces, with neither having the 379 votes needed for nomination. Jeremiah McLain Rusk, a member of the Wisconsin delegation, and Benjamin Harrison, an Indiana delegate, sought to break the deadlock by shifting a few of the anti-Grant votes to a dark horse candidate—Garfield. Garfield gained 50 votes on the 35th ballot, and the stampede began. Garfield protested to the other members of his Ohio delegation that he had not sought the nomination and had never intended to betray Sherman, but they overruled his objections and cast their ballots for him. In the next round of voting, nearly all the Sherman and Blaine delegates shifted their support to Garfield, giving him 399 votes and the Republican nomination. Most of the Grant forces backed the former president to the end, creating a disgruntled Stalwart minority in the party. To obtain that faction's support for the ticket, former New York customs collector Chester A. Arthur, a member of Conkling's political machine, was chosen as the vice presidential nominee.
Despite including a Stalwart on the ticket, animosity between the Republican factions carried over from the convention, and Garfield traveled to New York to meet with party leaders there. After convincing the Stalwart crowd to put aside their differences and unite for the coming campaign, Garfield returned to Ohio, leaving the active campaigning to others, as was traditional at the time. Meanwhile, the Democrats settled on their nominee, Major General Winfield Scott Hancock of Pennsylvania, a career military officer. Hancock and the Democrats expected to carry the Solid South, while much of the North was considered safe territory for Garfield and the Republicans; most of the campaign would involve a few close states, including New York and Indiana.
Practical differences between the candidates were few, and Republicans began the campaign with the familiar theme of waving the bloody shirt: reminding Northern voters that the Democratic Party was responsible for secession and four years of civil war, and that if Democrats held power they would reverse the gains of that war, dishonor Union veterans, and pay Confederate veterans pensions out of the federal treasury. With fifteen years having passed since the end of the war, and Union generals at the head of both tickets, the bloody shirt was of diminishing value in exciting the voters. With a few months to go before the election, the Republicans switched tactics to emphasize the tariff. Seizing on the Democratic platform's call for a "tariff for revenue only", Republicans told Northern workers that a Hancock presidency would weaken the tariff protection that kept them in good jobs. Hancock made the situation worse when, attempting to strike a moderate stance, he said, "The tariff question is a local question." The ploy proved effective in uniting the North behind Garfield. In the end, fewer than two thousand votes, of the more than 9.2 million popular votes cast, separated the two candidates, but in the Electoral College Garfield had an easy victory over Hancock, 214 to 155.
Between his election and his inauguration, Garfield was occupied with assembling a cabinet that would establish peace between Conkling's and Blaine's warring factions. Blaine's delegates had provided much of the support for Garfield's nomination, and the Maine senator received the place of honor: Secretary of State. Blaine was not only the president's closest advisor, he was obsessed with knowing all that took place in the White House, and was even said to have spies posted there in his absence. Garfield nominated William Windom of Minnesota as Secretary of the Treasury, William H. Hunt of Louisiana as Secretary of the Navy, Robert Todd Lincoln as Secretary of War, and Samuel J. Kirkwood of Iowa as Secretary of the Interior. New York was represented by Thomas Lemuel James as Postmaster General. Garfield appointed Pennsylvania's Wayne MacVeagh, an adversary of Blaine's, as Attorney General. Blaine tried to sabotage the appointment by convincing Garfield to name an opponent of MacVeagh, William E. Chandler, as Solicitor General under MacVeagh. Only Chandler's rejection by the Senate forestalled MacVeagh's resignation over the matter.
Distracted by cabinet maneuvering, Garfield's inaugural address was not up to his typical oratorical standards. In one high point, Garfield emphasized the civil rights of African-Americans, saying "Freedom can never yield its fullness of blessings so long as the law or its administration places the smallest obstacle in the pathway of any virtuous citizen." After discussing the gold standard, the need for education, and an unexpected denunciation of Mormon polygamy, the speech ended. The crowd applauded, but the speech, according to Peskin, "however sincerely intended, betrayed its hasty composition by the flatness of its tone and the conventionality of its subject matter."
Garfield's appointment of James infuriated Conkling, a factional opponent of the Postmaster General, who demanded a compensatory appointment for his faction, such as the position of Secretary of the Treasury. The resulting squabble occupied much of Garfield's brief presidency. The feud with Conkling reached a climax when the president, at Blaine's instigation, nominated Conkling's enemy, Judge William H. Robertson, to be Collector of the Port of New York. This was one of the prize patronage positions below cabinet level, and was then held by Edwin A. Merritt. Conkling raised the time-honored principle of senatorial courtesy in an attempt to defeat the nomination, to no avail. Garfield, who believed the practice was corrupt, would not back down and threatened to withdraw all nominations unless Robertson was confirmed, intending to "settle the question whether the president is registering clerk of the Senate or the Executive of the United States." Ultimately, Conkling and his New York colleague, Senator Thomas C. Platt, resigned their Senate seats to seek vindication, but found only further humiliation when the New York legislature elected others in their places. Robertson was confirmed as Collector and Garfield's victory was clear. To Blaine's chagrin, the victorious Garfield returned to his goal of balancing the interests of party factions, and nominated a number of Conkling's Stalwart friends to offices.
In 1880, President Hayes had nominated Stanley Matthews to the Supreme Court of the United States. The U.S. Senate declined to act on the Matthews nomination. In March 1881, Garfield re-nominated Matthews to the Supreme Court. The Senate confirmed Matthews to the high Court by a vote of 24-23. According to "The New York Times", "opposition to Matthews's Supreme Court appointment ...stemmed from his prosecution in 1859 of a newspaper editor who had assisted two runaway slaves." Because Matthews was "a professed abolitionist at the time, the case was later framed as political expediency triumphing over moral principle." Matthews served on the Court until his death in 1889.
Grant and Hayes had both advocated civil service reform, and by 1881, civil service reform associations had organized with renewed energy across the nation. Garfield sympathized with them, believing that the spoils system damaged the presidency and distracted from more important concerns. Some reformers were disappointed that Garfield had advocated limited tenure only to minor office seekers and had given appointments to his old friends, but many remained loyal and supported Garfield.
Corruption in the post office also cried out for reform. In April 1880, there had been a congressional investigation into corruption in the Post Office Department, in which profiteering rings allegedly stole millions of dollars, securing bogus mail contracts on star routes. After obtaining contracts with the lowest bid, costs to run the mail routes would be escalated and profits would be divided among ring members. That year, Hayes stopped the implementation of any new star route contracts. Shortly after taking office, Garfield received information from Attorney General MacVeagh and Postmaster General James of postal corruption by an alleged star route ringleader, Second Assistant Postmaster General Thomas J. Brady. Garfield demanded Brady's resignation and ordered prosecutions that would end in trials for conspiracy. When told that his party, including his own campaign manager, Stephen W. Dorsey, was involved, Garfield directed MacVeagh and James to root out the corruption in the Post Office Department "to the bone", regardless of where it might lead. Brady resigned and was eventually indicted for conspiracy. After two "star route" ring trials in 1882 and 1883, the jury found Brady not guilty.
Garfield believed that the key to improving the state of African American civil rights would be found in education aided by the federal government. During Reconstruction, freedmen had gained citizenship and suffrage that enabled them to participate in government, but Garfield believed their rights were being eroded by Southern white resistance and illiteracy, and was concerned that blacks would become America's permanent "peasantry." He answered by proposing a "universal" education system funded by the federal government. Congress and the northern white public, however, had lost interest in African-American rights, and federal funding for universal education did not find support in Congress during Garfield's term. Garfield also worked to appoint several African Americans to prominent positions: Frederick Douglass, recorder of deeds in Washington; Robert Elliot, special agent to the Treasury; John M. Langston, Haitian minister; and Blanche K. Bruce, register to the Treasury. Garfield believed that Southern support for the Republican party could be gained by "commercial and industrial" interests rather than race issues and began to reverse Hayes's policy of conciliating Southern Democrats. He appointed William H. Hunt, a carpetbagger Republican from Louisiana, as Secretary of the Navy. To break the hold of the resurgent Democratic Party in the Solid South, Garfield took patronage advice from Virginia Senator William Mahone of the biracial independent Readjuster Party, hoping to add the independents' strength to the Republicans' there.
Entering the presidency, Garfield had little foreign policy experience, so he leaned heavily on Blaine. Blaine, a former protectionist, now agreed with Garfield on the need to promote freer trade, especially within the Western Hemisphere. Their reasons were twofold: firstly, Garfield and Blaine believed that increasing trade with Latin America would be the best way to keep Great Britain from dominating the region. Secondly, by encouraging exports, they believed they could increase American prosperity. Garfield authorized Blaine to call for a Pan-American conference in 1882 to mediate disputes among the Latin American nations and to serve as a forum for talks on increasing trade. At the same time, they hoped to negotiate a peace in the War of the Pacific then being fought by Bolivia, Chile, and Peru. Blaine favored a resolution that would not result in Peru yielding any territory, but Chile, which by 1881 had occupied the Peruvian capital, Lima, rejected any settlement that restored the previous "status quo". Garfield sought to expand American influence in other areas, calling for renegotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty to allow the United States to construct a canal through Panama without British involvement, as well as attempting to reduce British influence in the strategically located Kingdom of Hawaii. Garfield's and Blaine's plans for the United States' involvement in the world stretched even beyond the Western Hemisphere, as he sought commercial treaties with Korea and Madagascar. Garfield also considered enhancing the United States' military strength abroad, asking Navy Secretary Hunt to investigate the condition of the navy with an eye toward expansion and modernization. In the end, these ambitious plans came to nothing after Garfield was assassinated. Nine countries had accepted invitations to the Pan-American conference, but the invitations were withdrawn in April 1882 after Blaine resigned from the cabinet and Arthur, Garfield's successor, cancelled the conference. Naval reform continued under Arthur, if on a more modest scale than Garfield and Hunt had envisioned, ultimately ending in the construction of the Squadron of Evolution.
Garfield was shot by Charles J. Guiteau, a disgruntled office seeker, at the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad Station in Washington, D.C. on July 2, 1881. After eleven weeks of intensive care Garfield died in Elberon, New Jersey, the second of four presidents to be assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln.
Guiteau had followed various professions in his life, but in 1880 had determined to gain federal office by supporting what he expected would be the winning Republican ticket. He composed a speech, "Garfield vs. Hancock", and got it printed by the Republican National Committee. One means of persuading the voters in that era was through orators expounding on the candidate's merits, but with the Republicans seeking more famous men, Guiteau received few opportunities to speak. On one occasion, according to Kenneth D. Ackerman in his book about Garfield's candidacy and assassination, Guiteau was unable to finish his speech due to nerves. Guiteau, who considered himself a Stalwart, deemed his contribution to Garfield's victory sufficient to justify the position of consul in Paris, despite the fact that he spoke no French, nor any foreign language. Guiteau has since been described by one medical expert as possibly being a narcissistic schizophrenic; neuroscientist Kent Kiehl assessed him as being a clinical psychopath.
One of President Garfield's more wearying duties was seeing office seekers, and he saw Guiteau at least once. White House officials suggested to Guiteau that he approach Blaine, as the consulship was within the Department of State. Blaine also saw the public regularly, and Guiteau became a regular at these sessions. Blaine, who had no intention of giving Guiteau a position he was unqualified for and had not earned, simply stated that the deadlock in the Senate over Robertson's nomination made it impossible to consider the Paris consulship, which required Senate confirmation. Once the New York senators had resigned, and Robertson had been confirmed as Collector, Guiteau pressed his claim, and Blaine told him he would not receive the position.
Guiteau came to believe he had lost the position because he was a Stalwart. The office-seeker decided that the only way to end the internecine warfare in the Republican Party was for Garfield to die—though he had nothing personal against the president. Arthur's succession would restore peace, he felt, and lead to rewards for fellow Stalwarts, including Guiteau.
The assassination of Abraham Lincoln was deemed a fluke due to the Civil War, and Garfield, like most people, saw no reason why the president should be guarded; Garfield's movements and plans were often printed in the newspapers. Guiteau knew the president would leave Washington for a cooler climate on July 2, and made plans to kill him before then. He purchased a gun he thought would look good in a museum, and followed Garfield several times, but each time his plans were frustrated, or he lost his nerve. His opportunities dwindled to one—Garfield's departure by train for New Jersey on the morning of July 2, 1881.
Guiteau concealed himself by the ladies' waiting room at the Sixth Street Station of the Baltimore and Potomac Railroad, from where Garfield was scheduled to depart. Most of Garfield's cabinet planned to accompany him at least part of the way. Blaine, who was to remain in Washington, came to the station to see him off. The two men were deep in conversation and did not notice Guiteau before he took out his revolver and shot Garfield twice, once in the back and once in the arm. The time was 9:30 a.m. The assassin attempted to leave the station, but was quickly captured. As Blaine recognized him and Guiteau made no secret of why he had shot Garfield, the assassin's motivation to benefit the Stalwarts reached many with the early news of the shooting, causing rage against that faction.
Garfield was struck by two shots; one glanced off his arm while the other pierced his back, shattering a rib and embedding itself in his abdomen. "My God, what is this?" he exclaimed. Guiteau, as he was led away, stated, "I did it. I will go to jail for it. I am a Stalwart and Arthur will be President."
Among those at the station was Robert Todd Lincoln, who was deeply upset, thinking back to when his father Abraham Lincoln was assassinated 16 years earlier. Garfield was taken on a mattress upstairs to a private office, where several doctors examined him, probing the wound with unwashed fingers. At his request, Garfield was taken back to the White House, and his wife, then in New Jersey, was sent for. Blaine sent word to Vice President Arthur in New York City, who received threats against his life because of his animosity toward Garfield and Guiteau's statements.
Although Joseph Lister's pioneering work in antisepsis was known to American doctors, with Lister himself having visited America in 1876, few of them had confidence in it, and none of his advocates were among Garfield's treating physicians. The physician who took charge at the depot and then at the White House was Doctor Willard Bliss. A noted physician and surgeon, Bliss was an old friend of Garfield, and about a dozen doctors, led by Bliss, were soon probing the wound with unsterilized fingers and instruments. Garfield was given morphine for the pain, and asked Bliss to frankly tell him his chances, which Bliss put at one in a hundred. "Well, Doctor, we'll take that chance."
Over the next few days, Garfield made some improvement, as the nation viewed the news from the capital and prayed. Although he never stood again, he was able to sit up and write several times, and his recovery was viewed so positively that a steamer was fitted out as a seagoing hospital to aid with his convalescence. He was nourished on oatmeal porridge (which he detested) and milk from a cow on the White House lawn. When told that Indian chief Sitting Bull, a prisoner of the army, was starving, Garfield said, "Let him starve," then, "Oh, no, send him my oatmeal." X-radiation (or X-ray) usage, which likely would have helped the president's physicians determine exactly where the bullet was lodged in his body, would not be invented for another fourteen years. Alexander Graham Bell tried to locate the bullet with a primitive metal detector. He was not successful, although the invention had been effective when tested on others. The problem was that Bliss limited the extent of its use on Garfield, taking control of the experiment and ensuring that he remained in charge. Because Bliss thought that the bullet rested in someplace that it did not, the detector was unable to locate it. Shortly after the first attempt, Bell returned for another test after enhancing the abilities of his invention. The test resulted in a noise around the area that Bliss believed to be where the bullet was lodged, despite the sound being different from what Bell heard in his previous tests. Bliss took this as confirmation that the bullet was where he declared it to be. Bliss wrote in a bulletin that the test was a success, and that it was "now unanimously agreed that the location of the ball has been ascertained with reasonable certainty, and that it lies, as heretofore stated, in the front wall of the abdomen, immediately over the groin, about five inches below and to the right of the navel."
One means of keeping the president comfortable in Washington's summer heat was one of the first successful air conditioning units: air that was propelled by fans over ice and then dried had reduced the temperature in the sickroom by 20 degrees Fahrenheit (11 degrees Celsius). Engineers from the navy, along with some scientists, worked together to develop this version of air conditioning in an attempt to help the president recover. There were some issues, such as it made excessive noise and immensely increased the humidity in Garfield's room, but the engineers worked hard to find solutions for these problems in their efforts to ease Garfield's suffering.
Beginning on July 23, Garfield took a turn for the worse. His temperature increased to ; doctors, concerned by an abscess that had developed by the wound, operated and inserted a drainage tube. This initially seemed to help, and Garfield, in his bed, was able to hold a brief cabinet meeting on July 29, though members were under orders from Bliss to discuss nothing that might excite Garfield. Doctors probed the abscess, which went into Garfield's body, hoping to find the bullet; they most likely only made the infections worse. Garfield performed only one state act in August, signing an extradition paper. By the end of the month, the president was much more feeble than he had been, and his weight had decreased from to .
Garfield had long been anxious to escape hot, unhealthy Washington, and in early September the doctors agreed to move him to Elberon, part of Long Branch, New Jersey, where his wife had recovered earlier in the summer. He left the White House for the last time on September 5, traveling in a specially cushioned railway car; a spur line to the Francklyn Cottage, a seaside mansion given over to his use, was built in a night by volunteers. There, Garfield could see the ocean as officials and reporters maintained what became (after an initial rally) a death watch. Garfield's personal secretary, Joe Stanley Brown, wrote 40 years later, "to this day I cannot hear the sound of the low slow roll of the Atlantic on the shore, the sound which filled my ears as I walked from my cottage to his bedside, without recalling again that ghastly tragedy."
On September 18, Garfield asked Colonel A.F. Rockwell, a friend, if he would have a place in history. Rockwell assured him he would, and told Garfield he had much work still before him. But his response was, "No, my work is done." The following day, Garfield, by then also suffering from pneumonia and heart pains, marveled that he could not pick up a glass despite feeling well, and went to sleep without discomfort. He awoke that evening around 10:15 p.m. complaining of great pain in his chest to his chief of staff and friend General David Swaim, who was watching him, as he placed his hand on his breast over his heart. The president then requested a drink of water from Swaim. After finishing his glass, Garfield said, "Oh Swaim, this terrible pain – press your hand on it." As Swaim obligingly put his hand on Garfield's chest, Garfield's hands went up reflexively. Clutching his heart, he exclaimed, "Oh, Swaim, can't you stop this? Oh, oh, Swaim!" Swaim ordered another attendant to send for Bliss, who found him unconscious. Despite efforts to revive him, Garfield never awoke, and he died at 10:30 p.m., aged 49. Learning from a reporter of Garfield's death, Chester A. Arthur took the presidential oath of office administered by New York Supreme Court Justice John R. Brady.
According to some historians and medical experts, Garfield might have survived his wounds had the doctors attending him had at their disposal today's medical research, knowledge, techniques, and equipment. Standard medical practice at the time dictated that priority be given to locating the path of the bullet. Several of his doctors inserted their unsterilized fingers into the wound to probe for the bullet, a common practice in the 1880s. Historians agree that massive infection was a significant factor in President Garfield's demise. Biographer Peskin stated that medical malpractice did not contribute to Garfield's death; the inevitable infection and blood poisoning that would ensue from a deep bullet wound resulted in damage to multiple organs and spinal bone fragmentation. Rutkow, a professor of surgery at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, has argued that starvation also played a role. Rutkow suggests that "Garfield had such a nonlethal wound. In today's world, he would have gone home in a matter of two or three days." The conventional narrative regarding James A. Garfield's post-shooting medical condition was challenged by Theodore Pappas and Shahrzad Joharifard in a 2013 article "The American Journal of Surgery". They argued that Garfield died from a late rupture of a splenic artery pseudoaneurysm (that initially developed shortly after Guiteau's shooting of Garfield, thus preventing Garfield from bleeding to death immediately after he was shot by Guiteau but instead allowing him to live for an additional 80 days). They also argued that the symptoms that Garfield suffered in the last couple of months of his life were actually caused by acute cholecystitis. Based on Garfield's autopsy report, the authors speculate this condition developed as a result of his doctors accidentally puncturing his bladder in July 1881, three or four weeks after he was shot by Guiteau. Pappas and Joharifard say this caused the decline in Garfield's condition that was visible starting from July 23, 1881.
Guiteau was indicted on October 14, 1881, for the murder of the president. Guiteau declared that he was not responsible for the death of Garfield. He admitted to the shooting but not the killing. In his defense, Guiteau wrote: "General Garfield died from malpractice. According to his own physicians, he was not fatally shot. The doctors who mistreated him ought to bear the odium of his death, and not his assailant. They ought to be indicted for murdering James A. Garfield, and not me." In a chaotic trial in which Guiteau often interrupted and argued, and in which his counsel used the insanity defense, the jury found him guilty on January 5, 1882, and he was sentenced to death by hanging. Guiteau might have had neurosyphilis, a disease that causes physiological mental impairment. He was executed on June 30, 1882.
Garfield's funeral train left Long Branch on the same special track that brought him there, traveling over tracks blanketed with flowers and past houses adorned with flags. His body was transported to the Capitol and then continued on to Cleveland for burial. More than 70,000 citizens, some waiting over three hours, passed by Garfield's coffin as his body lay in state at the United States Capitol rotunda; later, on September 25, 1881, in Cleveland, more than 150,000—a number equal to the entire population of that city—likewise paid their respects. His body was temporarily interred in a vault in Cleveland's Lake View Cemetery until his permanent memorial was built.
Memorials to Garfield were erected across the country. On April 10, 1882, seven months after Garfield's death, the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp in his honor, the second stamp issued by the U.S. to honor an assassinated president. In 1884, sculptor Frank Happersberger completed a monument on the grounds of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers. In 1887, the James A. Garfield Monument was dedicated in Washington. Another monument, in Philadelphia's Fairmount Park, was erected in 1896. In Victoria, Australia, Cannibal Creek was renamed Garfield in his honor.
On May 19, 1890, Garfield's body was permanently interred, with great solemnity and fanfare, in a mausoleum in Lake View Cemetery in Cleveland. Attending the dedication ceremonies were former President Hayes, President Benjamin Harrison, and future president William McKinley. Garfield's Treasury Secretary, William Windom, also attended. Harrison said that Garfield was always a "student and instructor" and that his life works and death would "... continue to be instructive and inspiring incidents in American history." Three panels on the monument display Garfield as a teacher, Union major general, and orator; another shows him taking the presidential oath, and a fifth shows his body lying in state at the Capitol rotunda in Washington, D.C.
Garfield's murder by a deranged office-seeker awakened public awareness of the need for civil service reform legislation. Senator George H. Pendleton, a Democrat from Ohio, launched a reform effort that resulted in the Pendleton Act in January 1883. This act reversed the "spoils system" where office seekers paid up or gave political service to obtain or keep federally appointed positions. Under the act, appointments were awarded on merit and competitive examination. To ensure the reform was implemented, Congress and Arthur established and funded the Civil Service Commission. The Pendleton Act, however, covered only 10% of federal government workers. For Arthur, previously known for having been a "veteran spoilsman," civil service reform became his most noteworthy achievement.
A marble statue of Garfield by Charles Niehaus was added to the National Statuary Hall Collection in the Capitol in Washington D.C., a gift from the State of Ohio in 1886.
On March 2, 2019, the National Park Service erected exhibit panels in Washington to mark the site of the assassination.
For a few years after his assassination, Garfield's life story was seen as an exemplar of the American success story—that even the poorest boy might someday become President of the United States. Peskin noted that, "In mourning Garfield, Americans were not only honoring a president; they were paying tribute to a man whose life story embodied their own most cherished aspirations." As the rivalry between Stalwarts and Half-Breeds faded from the scene in the late 1880s and after, so too did memories of Garfield. Beginning in 1882, the year after Garfield's death, the U.S. Post Office began issuing postage stamps honoring the late president. Despite his short term as president, nine different issues were printed over the years. In the 1890s, Americans became disillusioned with politicians, and looked elsewhere for inspiration, focusing on industrialists, labor leaders, scientists, and others as their heroes. Increasingly, Garfield's short time as president was forgotten.
The 20th century saw no revival for Garfield. Thomas Wolfe deemed the presidents of the Gilded Age, including Garfield, "lost Americans" whose "gravely vacant and bewhiskered faces mixed, melted, swam together." The politicians of the Gilded Age faded from the public eye, their luster eclipsed by those who had influenced America outside of political office during that time: the robber barons, the inventors, those who had sought social reform, and others who had lived as America rapidly changed. Current events and more recent figures occupied America's attention: according to Ackerman, "the busy Twentieth Century has made Garfield's era seem remote and irrelevant, its leaders ridiculed for their very obscurity."
Garfield's biographers, and those who have studied his presidency, tend to think well of him, and that his presidency saw a promising start before its untimely end. Historian Justus D. Doenecke, while deeming Garfield a bit of an enigma, chronicles his achievements, "by winning a victory over the Stalwarts, he enhanced both the power and prestige of his office. As a man, he was intelligent, sensitive, and alert, and his knowledge of how government worked was unmatched." Yet Doenecke criticizes Garfield's dismissal of Merritt in Robertson's favor, and wonders if the president was truly in command of the situation even after the latter's confirmation. According to Caldwell, writing in 1931, "If Garfield lives in history, it will be partly on account of the charm of his personality—but also because in life and in death, he struck the first shrewd blows against a dangerous system of boss rule which seemed for a time about to engulf the politics of the nation. Perhaps if he had lived he could have done no more." Rutkow writes, "James Abram Garfield's presidency is reduced to a tantalizing 'what if.
Peskin believes Garfield deserves more credit for his political career than he has received:
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1876 United States presidential election
The 1876 United States presidential election was the 23rd quadrennial presidential election, held on Tuesday, November 7, 1876. It was one of the most contentious and controversial presidential elections in American history, and is known for being the catalyst for the end of Reconstruction. Republican nominee Rutherford B. Hayes faced Democrat Samuel J. Tilden. After a controversial post-election process, Hayes was declared the winner.
After President Ulysses S. Grant declined to seek a third term despite previously being expected to do so, Congressman James G. Blaine emerged as the front-runner for the Republican nomination. However, Blaine was unable to win a majority at the 1876 Republican National Convention, which settled on Governor Hayes of Ohio as a compromise candidate. The 1876 Democratic National Convention nominated Governor Tilden of New York on the second ballot.
The results of the election remain among the most disputed ever. Although it is not disputed that Tilden outpolled Hayes in the popular vote, after a first count of votes, Tilden had won 184 electoral votes to Hayes' 165, with 20 votes from four states unresolved: in Florida, Louisiana, and South Carolina, each party reported its candidate had won the state, while in Oregon, one elector was replaced after being declared illegal for being an "elected or appointed official". The question of who should have been awarded these electoral votes is the source of the continued controversy.
An informal deal was struck to resolve the dispute: the Compromise of 1877, which awarded all 20 electoral votes to Hayes; in return for the Democrats' acquiescence to Hayes' election, the Republicans agreed to withdraw federal troops from the South, ending Reconstruction. The Compromise effectively ceded power in the Southern states to the Democratic Redeemers, who proceeded to disenfranchise black voters thereafter.
The 1876 election is the second of five presidential elections in which the person who won the most popular votes did not win the election, but the only such election in which the popular vote winner received a majority (rather than a plurality) of the popular vote. To date, it remains the election that recorded the smallest electoral vote victory (185–184), and the election that yielded the highest voter turnout of the eligible voting age population in American history, at 81.8%. Despite not becoming president, Tilden was the first Democratic presidential nominee since James Buchanan in 1856 to win the popular vote and the first since Franklin Pierce in 1852 to do so in an outright majority (In fact, Tilden received a slightly higher percentage than Pierce in 1852, despite the fact that Pierce won in a landslide).
It was widely assumed during the year 1875 that incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant would run for a third term as president in spite of the poor economic conditions, the numerous political scandals that had developed since he assumed office in 1869, and a long-standing tradition set by the first president, George Washington, not to stay in office longer than two terms. Grant's inner circle advised him to go for a third term and he almost did, but the House, by a sweeping 233 to 18 vote, passed a resolution declaring that the two-term tradition was to prevent a dictatorship. Late in the year, President Grant ruled himself out of running in 1876. He instead tried to persuade his Secretary of State, Hamilton Fish to run for the presidency, but the 67-year-old Fish declined, believing himself too old for the role. Grant nonetheless sent a letter to the convention imploring them to nominate Fish, but the letter was misplaced and never read out to the convention, and Fish later confirmed that he would have declined the nomination even had he been offered it.
When the Sixth Republican National Convention assembled in Cincinnati, Ohio, on June 14, 1876, it appeared that James G. Blaine would be the nominee. On the first ballot, Blaine was just 100 votes short of a majority. His vote began to slide after the second ballot, however, as many Republicans feared that Blaine could not win the general election. Anti-Blaine delegates could not agree on a candidate until Blaine's total rose to 41% on the sixth ballot. Leaders of the reform Republicans met privately and considered alternatives. They chose Ohio's reform governor, Rutherford B. Hayes, who had been gradually building support during the convention until he finished second on the sixth ballot. On the seventh ballot, Hayes was nominated with 384 votes to 351 for Blaine and 21 for Benjamin Bristow. William A. Wheeler was nominated for vice-president by a much larger margin (366–89) over his chief rival, Frederick Theodore Frelinghuysen, who later served as a member of the electoral commission that awarded the election to Hayes.
Democratic candidates:
The 12th Democratic National Convention assembled in St. Louis, Missouri, in June 1876, the first political convention held by one of the major American parties west of the Mississippi River. Five thousand people jammed the auditorium in St. Louis with hopes for the Democratic Party's first presidential victory in 20 years. The platform called for immediate and sweeping reforms in response to the scandals that had plagued the Grant administration. Tilden won more than 400 votes on the first ballot and the nomination by a landslide on the second.
Tilden defeated Thomas A. Hendricks, Winfield Scott Hancock, William Allen, Thomas F. Bayard, and Joel Parker for the presidential nomination. Tilden overcame strong opposition from "Honest John" Kelly, the leader of New York's Tammany Hall, to obtain the nomination. Thomas Hendricks was nominated for vice-president, since he was the only person put forward for the position.
The Democratic platform pledged to replace the corruption of the Grant administration with honest, efficient government and to end "the rapacity of carpetbag tyrannies" in the South. It also called for treaty protection for naturalized United States citizens visiting their homelands, restrictions on Asian immigration, tariff reform, and opposition to land grants for railroads. It has been claimed that the voting Democrats received Tilden's nomination with more enthusiasm than any leader since Andrew Jackson.
Source: "Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held in St. Louis, Mo., June 27th, 28th and 29th, 1876". (September 3, 2012).
Source: "Official proceedings of the National Democratic convention, held in St. Louis, Mo., June 27th, 28th and 29th, 1876" (September 3, 2012).
Greenback candidates:
The Greenback Party had been organized by agricultural interests in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1874 to urge the federal government to inflate the economy through the mass issuance of paper money called greenbacks. Its first national nominating convention was held in Indianapolis in the spring of 1876. Peter Cooper was nominated for president with 352 votes to 119 for three other contenders. The convention nominated Anti-Monopolist Senator Newton Booth of California for Vice-President; after Booth declined to run, the national committee chose Samuel Fenton Cary as his replacement on the ticket.
Source: US President – G Convention. "Our Campaigns". (February 10, 2012).
The Prohibition Party, in its second national convention in Cleveland, nominated Green Clay Smith as its presidential candidate and Gideon T. Stewart as its vice-presidential candidate.
This small political party used several different names, often with different names in different states. It was a continuation of the Anti-Masonic Party that met in 1872 and nominated Charles Francis Adams for president. When Adams declined to run, the party did not contest the 1872 election.
The convention was held from June 8 to 10, 1875, in Liberty Hall, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. B.T. Roberts of New York served as chairman, and Jonathan Blanchard was the keynote speaker.
The platform supported the Reconstruction Amendments to the Constitution, international arbitration, the reading of the scriptures in public schools, specie payments, justice for Native Americans, abolition of the Electoral College, and prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages. It declared the first day of the week to be a day of rest for the United States. The platform opposed secret societies and monopolies.
The convention considered three potential presidential nominees: Charles F. Adams, Jonathan Blanchard, and James B. Walker. When Blanchard declined to run, Walker was unanimously nominated. The convention then nominated Donald Kirkpatrick of New York unanimously for vice president.
Tilden, who had prosecuted machine politicians in New York and sent legendary political boss William M. Tweed to jail, ran as a reform candidate against the background of the corruption of the Grant administration. Both parties backed civil service reform and an end to Reconstruction. Both sides mounted mud-slinging campaigns, with Democratic attacks on Republican corruption being countered by Republicans raising the Civil War issue, a tactic ridiculed by Democrats who called it "waving the bloody shirt". Republicans chanted, "Not every Democrat was a rebel, but every rebel was a Democrat."
Hayes was a virtual unknown outside his home state of Ohio, where he had served two terms as a Congressman and then two terms as governor. Henry Adams wrote "[Hayes] is a third-rate nonentity whose only recommendations are that he is obnoxious to no one." He had served in the Civil War with distinction as colonel of the 23rd Ohio Regiment and was wounded several times, which made him marketable to veterans. He had later been brevetted as a Major General. Hayes' most important asset was his help to the Republican ticket in carrying the crucial swing state of Ohio. On the other side, newspaperman John D. Defrees described Tilden as "a very nice, prim, little, withered-up, fidgety old bachelor, about one-hundred and twenty-pounds avoirdupois, who never had a genuine impulse for many nor any affection for woman."
The Democratic strategy for victory in the South was highly reliant on paramilitary groups such as the Red Shirts and the White League. Using the strategy of the Mississippi Plan, these groups actively suppressed black and white Republican voter turnouts by disrupting meetings and rallies and even using violence and intimidation. They saw themselves as the military wing of the Democratic Party.
Because it was considered improper for a candidate to pursue the presidency actively, neither Tilden nor Hayes actively stumped as part of the campaign, leaving that job to surrogates.
Colorado was admitted to the Union as the 38th state on August 1, 1876, but as there was insufficient time or money to organize a presidential election in the new state, Colorado's state legislature selected the state's electors. These electors gave their three votes to Hayes and the Republican Party. This was the last election in which any state chose electors through its state legislature.
In Florida (with 4 electoral votes), Louisiana (with 8), and South Carolina (with 7), reported returns favored Tilden, but election results in each state were marked by electoral fraud and threats of violence against Republican voters. The worst case was in South Carolina, where an impossible 101 percent of all eligible voters in the state had their votes counted. One of the points of contention revolved around the design of ballots. At the time, parties would print ballots or "tickets" to enable voters to support them in the open ballots. To aid illiterate voters the parties would print symbols on the tickets. In this election, many Democratic ballots were printed with the Republican symbol, Abraham Lincoln, on them. The Republican-dominated state electoral commissions subsequently disallowed enough Democratic votes to award their electoral votes to Hayes.
In two southern states, the governor recognized by the United States had signed the Republican certificates. The Democratic certificates from Florida were signed by the state attorney-general and the new Democratic governor. Those from Louisiana were signed by the Democratic gubernatorial candidate, and those from South Carolina by no state official. In the latter state, the Tilden electors simply claimed that they were chosen by the popular vote, and they were rejected by the state election board.
Meanwhile, in Oregon, the vote of a single elector was disputed. The statewide result clearly favored Hayes, but the state's Democratic governor, La Fayette Grover, claimed that one GOP elector, former postmaster John Watts, was ineligible under Article II, Section 1, of the United States Constitution, since he was a "person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States." Grover then substituted a Democratic elector in his place. The two Republican electors dismissed Grover's action and each reported three votes for Hayes, while the Democratic elector, C.A. Cronin, reported one vote for Tilden and two votes for Hayes. The two Republican electors presented a certificate signed by the secretary of state of Oregon. Cronin and the two electors he appointed (Cronin voted for Tilden while his associates voted for Hayes) used a certificate signed by the governor and attested by the secretary of state. Ultimately, all three of Oregon's votes were awarded to Hayes.
Hayes thus had a majority of one in the Electoral College. The Democrats cried fraud. Suppressed excitement pervaded the country. Threats were even muttered that Hayes would never be inaugurated. In Columbus, Ohio, a shot was fired at Governor Hayes' residence as he sat down to dinner. Supporters marched to his home, calling for the "president". Hayes urged the crowd that, "it is impossible, at so early a time, to obtain the result." President Grant quietly strengthened the military force in and around Washington.
The Constitution provides that "the President of the Senate shall, in presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the [electoral] certificates, and the votes shall then be counted." Certain Republicans held that the power to count the votes lay with the President of the Senate, the House and Senate being mere spectators. The Democrats objected to this construction, since the Republican President of the Senate, Thomas W. Ferry, could then count the votes of the disputed states for Hayes. The Democrats insisted that Congress should continue the practice followed since 1865, which was that no vote objected to should be counted except by the concurrence of both houses. The House had a solid Democratic majority; by throwing out the vote of one state, it could elect Tilden.
Facing an unprecedented constitutional crisis, the Congress of the United States passed a law on January 29, 1877 that formed a 15-member Electoral Commission to settle the result. Five members were selected from each house of Congress, and they were joined by five members of the Supreme Court. William M. Evarts served as counsel for the Republican Party. The Compromise of 1877 might have helped the Democrats accept this electoral commission as well.
The majority party in each house named three members and the minority party two. As the Republicans controlled the Senate and the Democrats the House of Representatives, this yielded five Democratic and five Republican members of the Commission. Of the Supreme Court justices, two Republicans and two Democrats were chosen, with the fifth to be selected by these four.
The justices first selected a political independent, Justice David Davis. According to one historian, "[n]o one, perhaps not even Davis himself, knew which presidential candidate he preferred." Just as the Electoral Commission Bill was passing Congress, the legislature of Illinois elected Davis to the Senate. Democrats in the Illinois legislature believed that they had purchased Davis' support by voting for him. However, they had made a miscalculation; instead of staying on the Supreme Court so that he could serve on the Commission, he promptly resigned as a Justice to take his Senate seat. All the remaining available justices were Republicans, so the four justices already selected chose Justice Joseph P. Bradley, who was considered the most impartial remaining member of the court. This selection proved decisive.
It was drawing perilously near to Inauguration Day. The commission met on January 31. The cases of Florida, Louisiana, Oregon, and South Carolina were in succession submitted to it by Congress. Eminent counsel appeared for each side. There were double sets of returns from every one of the states named.
The commission first decided not to question any returns that were "prima facie" lawful. Bradley joined the other seven Republican committee members in a series of 8–7 votes that gave all 20 disputed electoral votes to Hayes, giving Hayes a 185–184 electoral vote victory. The commission adjourned on March 2; Hayes privately took the oath of office the next day and was publicly sworn into office on March 5, 1877, Hayes was inaugurated without disturbance.
During intense closed-door meetings, Democratic leaders agreed reluctantly to accept Hayes as president in return for the withdrawal of federal troops from the last two still-occupied Southern states, South Carolina and Louisiana. Republican leaders in return agreed on a number of handouts and entitlements, including Federal subsidies for a transcontinental railroad line through the South. Although some of these promises were not kept, in particular the railroad proposal, it was enough for the time being to avert a dangerous standoff.
The returns accepted by the Commission put Hayes' margin of victory in South Carolina at 889 votes, the second-closest popular vote margin in a decisive state in U.S. history, after the election of 2000, which was decided by 537 votes in Florida (though in 2000, the declared margin of victory in the Electoral College for George W. Bush was five votes, as opposed to Hayes' one vote).
Though it is not possible to conclude definitively what the result would have been if a fair election had been held without the violence and intimidation throughout the South that disenfranchised many African Americans made eligible to vote under the 15th Amendment, in the likeliest fair scenario, Hayes would have won the election (with 189 electoral votes to Tilden's 180) by winning all of the states that he did ultimately carry, plus Mississippi, but minus Florida. In a truly fair election, it seems probable that South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, which all had majority-black populations, would have gone Republican, while Florida, with a majority white population, would have likely gone to Tilden. It is therefore likely that Hayes would have won appreciably more of the popular vote in a fair election, perhaps even a plurality or majority.
Upon his defeat, Tilden said, "I can retire to public life with the consciousness that I shall receive from posterity the credit of having been elected to the highest position in the gift of the people, without any of the cares and responsibilities of the office." Hayes paid off those who helped him win the Electoral College with government sinecures.
According to the Commission's rulings, of the 2,249 counties and independent cities making returns, Tilden won in 1,301 (57.85%) while Hayes carried only 947 (42.11%). One county (0.04%) in Nevada split evenly between Tilden and Hayes.
While the Greenback ticket did not have a major impact on the election's outcome, attracting slightly under one percent of the popular vote, Cooper nonetheless had the strongest performance of any third-party presidential candidate since John Bell in 1860. The Greenbacks' best showings were in Kansas, where Cooper earned just over six percent of the vote, and Indiana, where he earned 17,207 votes, far exceeding Tilden's roughly 5,500-vote margin of victory over Hayes in that state.
The election of 1876 was the last one held before the end of the Reconstruction era, which sought to protect the rights of African Americans in the South who usually voted for Republican presidential candidates. No antebellum slave state would be carried by a Republican again until the 1896 realignment that saw William McKinley carry Delaware, Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky. No Republican presidential candidate until Warren G. Harding in 1920 would carry any states that seceded and joined the Confederacy; that year he carried Tennessee, which never experienced a long period of occupation by Federal troops and was completely "reconstructed" well before the first presidential election of the Reconstruction period (1868). None of the Southern states that experienced long periods of occupation by Federal troops was carried by a Republican again until Herbert Hoover in 1928 (when he won Texas, Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia). This proved the last election in which the Republican candidate won Louisiana until 1956, when Dwight D. Eisenhower carried it, and the last in which the Republican candidate won South Carolina until 1964, when Barry Goldwater did. The next time those two states voted against the Democrats was when they supported the "Dixiecrat" candidate Strom Thurmond in 1948.
Although 1876 marked the last competitive two-party election in the South before Democratic dominance of the South through 1948 and of the border states through 1896, it was also the last election (as of 2017) in which the Democrats won the pro-Union counties of Mitchell in North Carolina, Wayne and Henderson in Tennessee, and Lewis County, Kentucky. Hayes is also the most recent Republican president elected without carrying Indiana.
Source: Data from Walter Dean Burnham, "Presidential ballots, 1836–1892" (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1955) pp 247–57.
Margin of victory less than 5% (171 electoral votes):
Margin of victory between 5% and 10% (33 electoral votes):
The presidential election of 1876 is a major theme of Gore Vidal's novel "1876". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40402 |
George Whitefield
George Whitefield (; 30 September 1770), also spelled Whitfield, was an English Anglican cleric and evangelist who was one of the founders of Methodism and the evangelical movement.
Born in Gloucester, he matriculated at Pembroke College at the University of Oxford in 1732. There he joined the "Holy Club" and was introduced to the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, with whom he would work closely in his later ministry. Whitefield was ordained after receiving his Bachelor of Arts degree. He immediately began preaching, but he did not settle as the minister of any parish. Rather he became an itinerant preacher and evangelist. In 1740, Whitefield traveled to North America, where he preached a series of revivals that became part of the "Great Awakening". His methods were controversial and he engaged in numerous debates and disputes with other clergymen.
Whitefield received widespread recognition during his ministry; he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million listeners in Great Britain and the American colonies. Whitefield could enthrall large audiences through a potent combination of drama, religious rhetoric, and imperial pride.
Whitefield was born on at the Bell Inn, Southgate Street, Gloucester in England. Whitefield was the fifth son (seventh and last child) of Thomas Whitefield and Elizabeth Edwards, who kept an inn at Gloucester. At an early age, he found that he had a passion and talent for acting in the theatre, a passion that he would carry on with the very theatrical re-enactments of Bible stories he told during his sermons. He was educated at The Crypt School, Gloucester, and Pembroke College, Oxford.
Because business at the inn had diminished, Whitefield did not have the means to pay for his tuition. He therefore came up to the University of Oxford as a servitor, the lowest rank of undergraduates. Granted free tuition, he acted as a servant to Fellows and Fellow-commoners; duties including teaching them in the morning, helping them bathe, cleaning their rooms, carrying their books, and assisting them with work. He was a part of the "Holy Club" at the University with the Wesley brothers, John and Charles. An illness, as well as Henry Scougal's "The Life of God in the Soul of Man", influenced him to turn to the Church. Following a religious conversion, he became passionate for preaching his new-found faith. The Bishop of Gloucester ordained him a deacon.
Whitefield preached his first sermon at St Mary de Crypt Church in his home town of Gloucester, a week after his ordination. He had earlier become the leader of the Holy Club at Oxford when the Wesley brothers departed for Georgia.
In 1738 he went to Savannah, Georgia, in the American colonies, as parish priest of Christ Church. While there he decided that one of the great needs of the area was an orphan house. He decided this would be his life's work. He returned to England to raise funds, as well as to receive priest's orders. While preparing for his return, he preached to large congregations. At the suggestion of friends he preached to the miners of Kingswood, outside Bristol, in the open air. Because he was returning to Georgia he invited John Wesley to take over his Bristol congregations, and to preach in the open air for the first time at Kingswood and then at Blackheath, London.
Whitefield accepted the Church of England's doctrine of predestination and disagreed with the Wesley brothers' Arminian views on the doctrine of the atonement. As a result, Whitefield did what his friends hoped he would not do—hand over the entire ministry to John Wesley. Whitefield formed and was the president of the first Methodist conference, but he soon relinquished the position to concentrate on evangelical work.
Three churches were established in England in his name—one in Penn Street, Bristol, and two in London, in Moorfields and in Tottenham Court Road—all three of which became known by the name of "Whitefield's Tabernacle". The society meeting at the second Kingswood School at Kingswood, a town on the eastern edge of Bristol, was eventually also named Whitefield's Tabernacle.
Whitefield acted as chaplain to Selina, Countess of Huntingdon, and some of his followers joined the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion, whose chapels were built by Selina, where a form of Calvinistic Methodism similar to Whitefield's was taught. Many of Selina's chapels were built in the English and Welsh counties. One was erected in London—Spa Fields Chapel.
In 1739, Whitefield returned to England to raise funds to establish the Bethesda Orphanage, now the Bethesda Academy. It is the oldest extant charity in North America.
Whitefield's endeavor to build an orphanage in Georgia was central to his preaching. The Bethesda Orphanage and his preaching comprised the "two-fold task" that occupied the rest of his life. On 25 March 1740, construction began. Whitefield wanted the orphanage to be a place of strong Gospel influence, with a wholesome atmosphere and strong discipline.
Having raised the money by his preaching, Whitefield "insisted on sole control of the orphanage". He refused to give the Trustees a financial accounting. The Trustees also objected to Whitefield's using "a wrong Method" to control the children, who "are often kept praying and crying all the Night".
On returning to North America in 1740, he preached a series of revivals that came to be known as the First Great Awakening. In 1740 he engaged Moravian Brethren from Georgia to build an orphanage for negro children on land he had bought in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania. Following a theological disagreement, he dismissed them and was unable to complete the building, which the Moravians subsequently bought and completed. This now is the Whitefield House in the center of the Moravian settlement of Nazareth, Pennsylvania. The Whitefield House is owned by the Moravian Historical Society, and operates as the Society's museum and administrative offices.
He preached nearly every day for months to large crowds of sometimes several thousand people as he traveled throughout the colonies, especially New England. His journey on horseback from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, was at that time the longest in North America by a white man.
Like his contemporary and acquaintance, Jonathan Edwards, Whitefield preached staunchly Calvinist theology that was in line with the "moderate Calvinism" of the Thirty-nine Articles. While explicitly affirming God's sole agency in salvation, Whitefield freely offered the Gospel, saying at the end of his sermons: "Come poor, lost, undone sinner, come just as you are to Christ."
The Church of England did not assign him a pulpit, so he began preaching in parks and fields in England on his own, reaching out to people who normally did not attend church. Like Jonathan Edwards, he developed a style of preaching that elicited emotional responses from his audiences. But Whitefield had charisma, and his loud voice, his small stature, and even his cross-eyed appearance (which some people took as a mark of divine favour) all served to help make him one of the first celebrities in the American colonies. Whitefield included slaves in his revivals and their response was great. Historians see this as "the genesis of African-American Christianity."
To Whitefield "the gospel message was so critically important that he felt compelled to use all earthly means to get the word out." Thanks to widespread dissemination of print media, perhaps half of all colonists eventually heard about, read about, or read something written by Whitefield. He employed print systematically, sending advance men to put up broadsides and distribute handbills announcing his sermons. He also arranged to have his sermons published.
Whitefield sought to influence the colonies after he returned to England from his 1740 tour in America. He contracted to have his autobiographical "Journals" published throughout America. These "Journals" have been characterized as "the ideal vehicle for crafting a public image that could work in his absence." They depicted Whitefield in the "best possible light". When he returned to America for his third tour in 1745, he was better known than when he had left.
Much of Whitefield's publicity was the work of William Seward, a wealthy layman who accompanied Whitefield. Seward acted as Whitefield's "fund-raiser, business co-ordinator, and publicist". He furnished newspapers and booksellers with material, including copies of Whitefield's writings.
When Whitefield returned to England in 1742, a crowd Whitefield estimated at 20,000 and William M'Culloch, the local minister, at 30,000, met him.
One such open-air congregation took place on Minchinhampton common. Whitefield preached to the "Rodborough congregation" - a gathering of 10,000 people - at a place now known as "Whitefield's tump."
Whitefield's contemporary, John Wesley denounced slavery as "the sum of all villainies," and detailed its abuses. However, defenses of slavery were common among 18th-century Protestants, especially missionaries who used the institution to emphasize God's providence. Whitefield was at first conflicted about slaves. He believed that they were "human", but he also believed that they were "subordinate Creatures".
Slavery had been outlawed in the young Georgia colony in 1735. In 1747, Whitefield attributed the financial woes of his Bethesda Orphanage to Georgia's prohibition of slavery. He argued that "the constitution of that colony [Georgia] is very bad, and it is impossible for the inhabitants to subsist without the use of slaves."
Between 1748 and 1750, Whitefield campaigned for slavery's legalisation. He said that the colony would not be prosperous unless farmers had slave labor. Whitefield wanted slavery legalized not only for the prosperity of the colony, but also for the financial viability of the Bethesda Orphanage. "Had Negroes been allowed", he said, "I should now have had a sufficiency to support a great many orphans without expending above half the sum that has been laid out." Whitefield's push for the legalization of slavery "cannot be explained solely on the basics of economics." It was also that "the specter of massive slave revolts pursued him."
Slavery was legalized in 1751. Whitefield saw the "legalization of slavery as part personal victory and part divine will." Whitefield now argued a scriptural justification for slavery. He increased his number of slaves, using his preaching to raise money to purchase them. Whitefield became "perhaps the most energetic, and conspicuous, evangelical defender and practitioner of slavery." By propagating such "a theological defense for slavery" Whitefield "participated in a tragic chapter of the nation's experience."
Whitefield left everything in Georgia to the Countess of Huntingdon. This included 4,000 acres of land and 50 slaves.
In 1740, during his second visit to America, Whitefield published "an open letter to the planters of South Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland" chastising them for their cruelty to their slaves. He wrote, "I think God has a Quarrel with you for your Abuse of and Cruelty to the poor Negroes." Furthermore, Whitefield wrote: "Your dogs are caressed and fondled at your tables; but your slaves who are frequently styled dogs or beasts, have not an equal privilege." However, Whitefield "stopped short of rendering a moral judgment on slavery itself as an institution."
The Bethesda Orphanage "set an example of humane treatment of slaves". Phillis Wheatley (1753–1784), who was a slave, wrote a poem "On the Death of the Rev. Mr. George Whitefield" in 1770. The first line calls Whitefield a "happy saint".
Benjamin Franklin attended a revival meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was greatly impressed with Whitefield's ability to deliver a message to such a large group. Franklin had previously dismissed as exaggeration reports of Whitefield preaching to crowds of the order of tens of thousands in England. When listening to Whitefield preaching from the Philadelphia court house, Franklin walked away towards his shop in Market Street until he could no longer hear Whitefield distinctly—Whitefield could be heard over 500 feet. He then estimated his distance from Whitefield and calculated the area of a semicircle centred on Whitefield. Allowing two square feet per person he computed that Whitefield could be heard by over 30,000 people in the open air.
Franklin admired Whitefield as a fellow intellectual but thought Whitefield's plan to run an orphanage in Georgia would lose money. He published several of Whitefield's tracts and was impressed by Whitefield's ability to preach and speak with clarity and enthusiasm to crowds. Franklin was an ecumenist and approved of Whitefield's appeal to members of many denominations, but, unlike Whitefield, was not an evangelical. After one of Whitefield's sermons, Franklin noted the:
A lifelong close friendship developed between the revivalist preacher and the worldly Franklin. Looking beyond their public images, one finds a common charity, humility, and ethical sense embedded in the character of each man. True loyalty based on genuine affection, coupled with a high value placed on friendship, helped their association grow stronger over time.
Letters exchanged between Franklin and Whitefield can be found at the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia. These letters document the creation of an orphanage for boys named the Charity School.
And in 1749, Franklin chose the Whitefield meeting house, with its Charity School, to be purchased as the site of the newly-formed Academy of Philadelphia which opened in 1751, followed in 1755 with the College of Philadelphia, both the predecessors of the University of Pennsylvania. A statue of George Whitefield is located in the Dormitory Quadrangle, standing in front of the Morris and Bodine sections of the present Ware College House on the University of Pennsylvania campus.
Whitefield is remembered as one of the first to preach to slaves. Phillis Wheatley wrote a poem in his memory after he died, while she was still a slave.
In an age when crossing the Atlantic Ocean was a long and hazardous adventure, he visited America seven times, making 13 ocean crossings in total. It is estimated that throughout his life, he preached more than 18,000 formal sermons, of which 78 have been published. In addition to his work in North America and England, he made 15 journeys to Scotland—most famously to the ""Preaching Braes"" of Cambuslang in 1742—two journeys to Ireland, and one each to Bermuda, Gibraltar, and the Netherlands. In England and Wales, Whitefield's itinerary included every county.
He went to the Georgia Colony in 1738 following John Wesley's departure, to serve as a colonial chaplain at Savannah.
While in Georgia, Whitefield served as minister for an orphanage and traveled extensively throughout both North America and Britain in an effort to raise money for the organization. He would often preach and attend public events during his travels, which served to further spread his message.
"I believe it is God's will that I should marry", George Whitefield wrote to a friend in 1740. But he was concerned: "I pray God that I may not have a wife till I can live as though I had none." That ambivalence—believing God willed a wife, yet wanting to live as if without one—brought Whitefield a disappointing love life and a largely unhappy marriage.
His wife Elizabeth, a widow previously Elizabeth James, née Gwynne, married Whitefield on 14 November 1741, After their 1744–48 stay in America, she never accompanied him on his travels. Whitefield reflected that "none in America could bear her". His wife believed that she had been "but a load and burden" to him. Cornelius Winter, who for a time lived with the Whitefields, observed that Whitefield "was not happy in his wife". Thus, "her death set his mind much at liberty".
Elizabeth died of a fever on 9 August 1768. She was buried in a vault at the Tottenham Court Road Chapel. At the end of the 19th century the Chapel needed restoration and all those interred there, except Augustus Toplady, were moved to Chingford Mount cemetery in north London.
In 1743 after four miscarriages, Elizabeth had bore the couple's only child, a son. The baby died at four months old.
In 1770, the 55-year-old Whitefield continued preaching in spite of poor health. He said, "I would rather wear out than rust out." His last sermon was preached in a field "atop a large barrel". The next morning Whitefield died in the parsonage of Old South Presbyterian Church, Newburyport, Massachusetts, on 30 September 1770, and was buried, according to his wishes, in a crypt under the pulpit of this church. A bust of Whitefield is in the collection of the Gloucester City Museum & Art Gallery.
It was John Wesley who preached his funeral sermon in London, at Whitefield's request.
Whitefield left almost £1,500 () to friends and family. Furthermore, he had deposited £1,000 () for his wife if he predeceased her and had contributed £3,300 () to the Bethesda Orphanage. "Questions concerning the source of his personal wealth dogged his memory. His will stated that all this money had lately been left him 'in a most unexpected way and unthought of means.'"
In terms of theology, Whitefield, unlike John Wesley, was a supporter of Calvinism. The two differed on eternal election, final perseverance, and sanctification, but were reconciled as friends and co-workers, each going his own way. It is a prevailing misconception that Whitefield was not primarily an organizer like Wesley. However, as Wesleyan historian Luke Tyerman states, "It is notable that the first Calvinistic Methodist Association was held eighteen months before Wesley held his first Methodist Conference." He was a man of profound experience, which he communicated to audiences with clarity and passion. His patronization by the Countess of Huntingdon reflected this emphasis on practice.
Whitefield welcomed opposition because as he said, "the more I am opposed, the more joy I feel". He proved himself adept at creating controversy. In his 1740 visit to Charles Town, it "took Whitefield only four days to plunge Charles Town into religious and social controversy."
Whitefield thought he might be martyred for his views. After he attacked the established church he predicted that he would "be set at nought by the Rabbies of our Church, and perhaps at last be killed by them".
Whitefield chastised other clergy for teaching only "the shell and shadow of religion" because they did not hold the necessity of a new birth, without which a person would be "thrust down into Hell".
In his 1740–1741 visit to America (as he had done in England), he attacked other clergy (mostly Anglican) calling them "God's persecutors". He said that Edmund Gibson, Bishop of London with supervision over Anglican clergy in America, knew no "more of Christianity, than Mahaomet, or an Infidel".
Whitefield issued a blanket indictment of New England's Congregational ministers for their "lack of zeal".
After Whitefield preached at St. Philip's, Charleston, the Commissary, Alexander Garden, suspended him. After being suspended, Whitefield attacked all South Carolina's Anglican clergy in print.
In 1740, Whitefield published attacks on "the works of two of Anglicanism's revered seventeenth-century authors". Whitefield wrote that John Tillotson, archbishop of Canterbury (1691–1694), had "no more been a true Christian than had Muhammad". He also attacked Richard Allestree's "The Whole Duty of Man", one of Anglicanism's most popular spiritual tracts. At least once Whitefield had his followers burn the tract "with great Detestation".
In England and Scotland (1741–1744), Whitefield bitterly accused John Wesley of undermining his work. He preached against Wesley, arguing that Wesley's attacks on predestination had alienated "very many of my spiritual children". Wesley replied that Whitefield's attacks were "treacherous" and that Whitefield had made himself "odious and contemptible". However, the two reconciled in later life.
When Joseph Trapp criticized Whitefield's "Journals", Whitefield retorted that Trapp was "no Christian but a servant of Satan".
Whitefield had been influenced by the Moravian Church, but in 1753 he condemned them and attacked their leader, Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf, and their practices.
English, Scottish, and American clergy attacked Whitefield, often in response to his attacks on them and Anglicanism, as documented in this section. Early in his career, Whitefield criticized the Church of England. In response, clergy called Whitefield one of "the young quacks in divinity" who are "breaking the peace and unity" of the church.
From 1738 to 1741, Whitefield issued seven "Journals". A sermon in St Paul's Cathedral depicted them as "a medley of vanity, and nonsense, and blasphemy jumbled together". Joseph Trapp called the Journals "blasphemous" and accused Whitefield of being "besotted either with pride or madness".
In England, by 1738 when he was ordained priest, Whitefield wrote that "the spirit of the clergy began to be much embittered" and that "churches were gradually denied me". In response to Whitefield's "Journals", the bishop of London, Edmund Gibson, published a 1739 pastoral letter criticizing Whitefield. Whitefield responded by labeling Anglican clerics as "lazy, non-spiritual, and pleasure seeking". He rejected ecclesiastical authority claiming that 'the whole world is now my parish'.
In 1740, Whitefield had attacked John Tillotson and Richard Allestree's "The Whole Duty of Man". These attacks
resulted in hostile responses and reduced attendance at his London open-air preaching.
In 1741, Whitefield made his first visit to Scotland at the invitation of "Ralph and Ebenezer Erskine, leaders of the breakaway Associate Presbytery. When they demanded and Whitefield refused that he preach only in their churches, they attacked him as a " sorcerer" and a "vain-glorious, self-seeking, puffed-up creature". In addition, Whitefield's collecting money for his Bethesda orphanage, combined with the hysteria evoked by his open-air sermons, resulted in bitter attacks in Edinburgh and Glasgow.
Whitefield's itinerant preaching throughout the colonies was opposed by Bishop Benson who had ordained him for a settled ministry in Georgia. Whitefield replied that if bishops did not authorize his itinerant preaching, God would give him the authority.
In 1740, Jonathan Edwards invited Whitefield to preach in his church in Northampton. Edwards was "deeply disturbed by his unqualified appeals to emotion, his openly judging those he considered unconverted, and his demand for instant conversions". Whitefield refused to discuss Edwards' misgivings with him. Later, Edwards delivered a series of sermons containing but "thinly veiled critiques" of Whitefield's preaching, "warning against over-dependence upon a preacher's eloquence and fervency".
During Whitefield's 1744–1748 visit to America, ten critical pamphlets were published, two by officials of Harvard and Yale. This criticism was in part evoked by Whitefield's criticism of "their education and Christian commitment" in his Journal of 1741. Whitefield saw this opposition as "a conspiracy" against him.
After Whitefield preached at St. Philip's, Charleston, the Commissary, Alexander Garden suspended him as a "vagabond clergyman."
When Whitefield preached in a dissenting church and "the congregation's response was dismal," he ascribed the response to "the people's being hardened" as were "Pharaoh and the Egyptians" in the Bible.
Many New Englanders claimed that Whitefield destroyed "New England's orderly parish system, communities, and even families". The "Declaration of the Association of the County of New Haven, 1745" stated that after Whitefield's preaching "religion is now in a far worse state than it was". After Whitefield preached in Charlestown, a local newspaper article attacked him as "blasphemous, uncharitable, and unreasonable."
After Whitefield condemned Moravians and their practices, his former London printer (a Moravian), called Whitefield "a Mahomet, a Caesar, an imposter, a Don Quixote, a devil, the beast, the man of sin, the Antichrist".
In the open air in Dublin, Ireland (1757), Whitefield condemned Roman Catholicism, inciting an attack by "hundreds and hundreds of papists" who cursed and wounded him severely and smashed his portable pulpit.
On various occasions, a woman assaulted Whitefield with "scissors and a pistol, and her teeth". "Stones and dead cats" were thrown at him. A man almost killed him with a brass-headed cane. "Another climbed a tree to urinate on him."
In 1760, Whitefield was burlesqued by Samuel Foote in "The Minor".
Selina Hastings, Countess of Huntingdon made Whitefield her personal chaplain. In her chapel, it was noted that his preaching was "more Considered among persons of a Superior Rank" who attended the Countess's services. Whitefield was humble before the Countess saying that he cried when he was "thinking of your Ladyship's condescending to patronize such a dead dog as I am". He now said that he "highly esteemed bishops of the Church of England because of their sacred character". He confessed that in "many things" he had "judged and acted wrong" and had "been too bitter in my zeal". In 1763, in a defense of Methodism, Whitefield "repeated contrition for much contained in his Journals".
Among the nobility who heard Whitefield in the Countess of Huntingdon's home was Lady Townshend. Regarding the changes in Whitefield, someone asked Lady Townshend, "Pray, madam, is it true that Whitefield has "recanted"?" She replied, "No, sir, he has only "canted"." One meaning of cant is "to affect religious or pietistic phraseology, esp. as a matter of fashion or profession; to talk unreally or hypocritically with an affectation of goodness or piety.".
In the First Great Awakening, rather than listening demurely to preachers, people groaned and roared in enthusiastic emotion. Whitefield was a "passionate preacher" who often "shed tears". Underlying this was his conviction that genuine religion "engaged the heart, not just the head".
In his preaching, Whitefield used a number of rhetorical ploys that were characteristic of theater, an artistic medium largely unknown in colonial America. refers to him as a "divine dramatist" and ascribes his success to the theatrical sermons which laid foundations to a new form of pulpit oratory. Whitefield's "Abraham Offering His Son Isaac" is an example of a sermon whose whole structure resembles a theatrical play. As observed by , "Whitefield reconstructs the biblical story of Abraham and Isaac as a drama that was to be 'acted out' from the pulpit: he endows the text with carefully calibrated dialogues and monologues, and divides the developing plot into scene-like sections, which gradually lead to the 'dramatic' climax".
New divinity schools opened to challenge the hegemony of Yale and Harvard; personal experience became more important than formal education for preachers. Such concepts and habits formed a necessary foundation for the American Revolution. Whitefield's preaching bolstered "the evolving republican ideology that sought local democratic control of civil affairs and freedom from monarchial and parliamentary intrusion."
Whitefield's sermons were widely reputed to inspire his audience's enthusiasm. Many of them as well as his letters and journals were published during his lifetime. He was an excellent orator as well, strong in voice and adept at extemporaneity. His voice was so expressive that people are said to have wept just hearing him allude to "Mesopotamia". His journals, originally intended only for private circulation, were first published by Thomas Cooper. James Hutton then published a version with Whitefield's approval. His exuberant and "too apostolical" language were criticised; his journals were no longer published after 1741.
Whitefield prepared a new installment in 1744–45, but it was not published until 1938. 19th-century biographies generally refer to his earlier work, "A Short Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend George Whitefield" (1740), which covered his life up to his ordination. In 1747 he published "A Further Account of God's Dealings with the Reverend George Whitefield", covering the period from his ordination to his first voyage to Georgia. In 1756, a vigorously edited version of his journals and autobiographical accounts was published. Whitefield was "profoundly image-conscious". His writings were "intended to convey Whitefield and his life as a model for biblical ethics ... , as humble and pious".
After Whitefield's death, John Gillies, a Glasgow friend, published a memoir and six volumes of works, comprising three volumes of letters, a volume of tracts, and two volumes of sermons. Another collection of sermons was published just before he left London for the last time in 1769. These were disowned by Whitefield and Gillies, who tried to buy all copies and pulp them. They had been taken down in shorthand, but Whitefield said that they made him say nonsense on occasion. These sermons were included in a 19th-century volume, "Sermons on Important Subjects", along with the "approved" sermons from the "Works". An edition of the journals, in one volume, was edited by William Wale in 1905. This was reprinted with additional material in 1960 by the Banner of Truth Trust. It lacks the Bermuda journal entries found in Gillies' biography and the quotes from manuscript journals found in 19th-century biographies. A comparison of this edition with the original 18th-century publications shows numerous omissions—some minor and a few major.
Whitefield also wrote several hymns. Charles Wesley composed a hymn in 1739, "Hark, how all the welkin rings". Whitefield revised the opening couplet in 1758 for "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing".
Whitefield is honoured together with Francis Asbury with a feast day on the liturgical calendar of the Episcopal Church (USA) on 15 November.
Whitfield County, Georgia, United States, is named after Whitefield. When the act by the Georgia General Assembly was written to create the county, the "e" was omitted from the spelling of the name to reflect the pronunciation of the name.
Mark Galli wrote of Whitefield's legacy:
George Whitefield was probably the most famous religious figure of the eighteenth century. Newspapers called him the 'marvel of the age'. Whitefield was a preacher capable of commanding thousands on two continents through the sheer power of his oratory. In his lifetime, he preached at least 18,000 times to perhaps 10 million hearers.
Whitefield, Bangalore, a neighbourhood in Bangalore, is named after him. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40405 |
Sweyn Forkbeard
Sweyn Forkbeard (; Old Norse: "Sveinn Haraldsson tjúguskegg"; Danish: "Svend Tveskæg"; 960 – 3 February 1014) was king of Denmark from 986 to 1014. He was the father of King Harald II of Denmark, King Cnut the Great and Queen Estrid Svendsdatter.
In the mid-980s, Sweyn revolted against his father, Harald Bluetooth, and seized the throne. Harald was driven into exile and died shortly afterwards in November 986 or 987. In 1000, with the allegiance of Trondejarl, Eric of Lade, Sweyn ruled most of Norway. In 1013, shortly before his death, he became the first Danish king of England after a long effort.
Historiographical sources on Sweyn's life include the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle" (where his name is rendered as "Swegen"), Adam of Bremen's 12th-century "Deeds of the Bishops of Hamburg", and Snorri Sturluson's 13th-century "Heimskringla". Conflicting accounts of Sweyn's later life also appear in the "Encomium Emmae Reginae", an 11th-century Latin "encomium" in honour of his son king Cnut's queen Emma of Normandy, along with "Chronicon ex chronicis" by Florence of Worcester, another 11th-century author.
Sweyn's father, Harald Bluetooth, was the first of the reigning Scandinavian kings to be baptised, in the early or mid-960s. According to Adam of Bremen, Harald's son Sweyn was baptised "Otto" (in honour of German king Otto I).
There are conflicting records as to the identity of his mother. Adam of Bremen identifies her as "Gunhild", but some modern day scholars give her name as Tove from Western Wendland.
Sweyn married the widow of Erik, king of Sweden, named "Gunhild" in some sources, or identified as an unnamed sister of Boleslav, ruler of Poland.
In the mid-980s, Sweyn revolted against his father and seized the throne. Harald was driven into exile and died shortly afterwards in November 986 or 987.
Adam of Bremen depicted Sweyn as a rebellious pagan who persecuted Christians, betrayed his father and expelled German bishops from Scania and Zealand. According to Adam, Sweyn was sent into exile by his father's German friends and deposed in favour of king Eric the Victorious of Sweden, whom Adam wrote ruled Denmark until his death in 994 or 995. Sørensen (2001) argues that Adam's depiction of Sweyn may be overly negative, as seen through an "unsympathetic and intolerant eye".
Adam's account is thus not seen as entirely reliable; the claimed 14-years' exile of Sweyn to Scotland does not seem to agree with Sweyn's building churches in Denmark throughout the same period, including the churches in Lund and Roskilde. According to Adam, Sweyn was punished by God for leading the uprising which led to king Harald's death, and had to spend fourteen years abroad (i.e. 986–1000). The historicity of this exile, or its duration, is uncertain. Adam purports that Sweyn was shunned by all those with whom he sought refuge, but was finally allowed to live for a while in Scotland. Adam also suggests that Sweyn in his youth lived among heathens, and only achieved success as a ruler after accepting Christianity.
Harald Bluetooth had already established a foothold in Norway, controlling Viken in c. 970.
He may, however, have lost control over his Norwegian claims following his defeat against a German army in 974.
Sweyn built an alliance with Swedish king Olof Skötkonung and Eirik Hákonarson, Jarl of Lade, against Norwegian king Olaf Tryggvason.
The Kings' sagas ascribe the causes of the alliance to Olaf Tryggvason's ill-fated marriage proposal to Sigrid the Haughty and his problematic marriage to Thyri, sister of Svein Forkbeard.
The allies attacked and defeated king Olaf in the western Baltic Sea when he was sailing home from an expedition, in the Battle of Svolder, fought in September of either 999 or 1000. The victors divided Norway among them. According to the account of the "Heimskringla",
Sweyn re-gained direct control of Viken district.
King Olaf of Sweden received four districts in Trondheim as well as Møre, Romsdal and Rånrike (the "Fagrskinna", by contrast, says that the Swedish part consisted of Oppland and a part of Trondheim). He gave these to his son in law, Jarl Svein Hákonarson, to hold as a vassal. The rest of Norway was ruled by Eirik Hákonarson as King Svein's vassal.
The Jarls Eirik and Svein proved strong, competent rulers, and their reign was prosperous. Most sources say that they adopted Christianity but allowed the people religious freedom, leading to a backlash against Christianity which undid much of Olaf Tryggvason's missionary work.
Sweyn apparently recruited priests and bishops from England, in preference to the Archbishopric of Bremen. In part, this reflected the fact that there were numerous Christian priests of Danish origin in the Danelaw, while Sweyn had few personal connections to Germany. However, Sweyn's preference for the English church may also have had a political motive, because German bishops were an integral part of the state. It suggested that Sweyn was seeking to pre-empt any diminution of his independence, by German leaders. This may have been a reason for Adam of Bremen's apparent hostility in his accounts of Sweyn; by accentuating English ecclesiastical influence in his kingdom, Sweyn was effectively spurning the Archbishop of Bremen.
The "Chronicle of John of Wallingford" (c. 1225–1250) records Sweyn's involvement in raids against England during 1002–1005, 1006–1007, and 1009–1012 to avenge the St. Brice's Day massacre of England's Danish inhabitants in November 1002. According to Ashley (1998), Sweyn's invasion was partly motivated by the massacre of Danes in England ordered by Æthelred the Unready in 1002, in which his sister and brother-in-law are said to have been killed. but Lund (2001) argues that the main motivation for the raids was more likely the prospect of revenue.
Sweyn campaigned in Wessex and East Anglia in 1003–1004, but a famine forced him to return to Denmark in 1005. Further raids took place in 1006–1007, and in 1009–1012 Thorkell the Tall led a Viking invasion into England. Simon Keynes regards it as uncertain whether Sweyn supported these invasions, but "whatever the case, he was quick to exploit the disruption caused by the activities of Thorkell's army".
Sweyn acquired massive sums of "Danegeld" through the raids. In 1013, he is reported to have personally led his forces in a full-scale invasion of England.
The contemporary "Peterborough Chronicle" (part of the "Anglo-Saxon Chronicle") states:
before the month of August came king Sweyn with his fleet to Sandwich. He went very quickly about East Anglia into the Humber's mouth, and so upward along the Trent till he came to Gainsborough. Earl Uchtred and all Northumbria quickly bowed to him, as did all the people of the Kingdom of Lindsey, then the people of the Five Boroughs. He was given hostages from each shire. When he understood that all the people had submitted to him, he bade that his force should be provisioned and horsed; he went south with the main part of the invasion force, while some of the invasion force, as well as the hostages, were with his son Cnut. After he came over Watling Street, they went to Oxford, and the town-dwellers soon bowed to him, and gave hostages. From there they went to Winchester, and the people did the same, then eastward to London.
But the Londoners put up a strong resistance, because King Æthelred and Thorkell the Tall, a Viking leader who had defected to Æthelred, personally held their ground against him in London itself. Sweyn then went west to Bath, where the western thanes submitted to him and gave hostages. The Londoners then followed suit, fearing Sweyn's revenge if they resisted any longer. King Æthelred sent his sons Edward and Alfred to Normandy, and himself retreated to the Isle of Wight, and then followed them into exile. On Christmas Day 1013 Sweyn was declared King of England.
Based in Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, Sweyn began to organise his vast new kingdom, but he died there on 3 February 1014, having ruled England for only five weeks. His embalmed body was returned to Denmark for burial in the church he had built. Tradition locates this church in Roskilde, but it is more plausible that it was actually located in Lund in Scania (now part of Sweden).
Sweyn's elder son, Harald II, succeeded him as King of Denmark, while his younger son, Cnut, was proclaimed King of England by the people of the Danelaw. However, the English nobility sent for Æthelred, who upon his return from exile in Normandy in the spring of 1014 managed to drive Cnut out of England. Cnut soon returned and became king of all England in 1016, following the deaths of Æthelred and his son Edmund Ironside; he succeeded his brother as King of Denmark in 1019 and eventually also ruled Norway, parts of Sweden, Pomerania, and Schleswig.
Cnut and his sons, Harold Harefoot and Harthacnut, ruled England over a combined 26-year period (1016–1042). After Harthacnut's death, the English throne reverted to the House of Wessex under Æthelred's younger son Edward the Confessor (reigned 1042–1066).
Sweyn's daughter, Estrid Svendsdatter, was the mother of King Sweyn II of Denmark. Her descendants continue to reign in Denmark to this day. One of them, Margaret of Denmark, married James III of Scotland in 1469, introducing Sweyn's bloodline into the Scottish royal house. After James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne in 1603, Sweyn's descendants became monarchs of England again.
Sweyn had eight children with Sigrid the Haughty and Gunhild of Wenden: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40406 |
Harold Fürth
Harold Fürth (January 13, 1930 – February 21, 2002) was an Austrian-American physicist who was a pioneer in leading the American efforts to harness thermonuclear fusion for the generation of electricity. He died of a heart ailment on 21 February 2002.
Fürth emigrated to the United States in 1941, and graduated at the head of his class at The Hill School. He graduated from Harvard University with a bachelor's degree in 1951 and received his Ph.D. from Harvard in 1960.
Fürth worked at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory for several years before going to Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory (PPPL) where he would spend the rest of his career working in plasma physics and nuclear fusion. He was also a professor of astrophysics at Princeton University.
In the late 1960s, Fürth contributed some important theoretical work on resistive magnetohydrodynamics instabilities in a slightly resistive plasma.
In 1981 Fürth became the director at PPPL and led the laboratory until 1990 during record setting magnetic fusion energy experiments on the largest tokamak in the country, the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR).
In 1983, Fürth was awarded the James Clerk Maxwell Prize for Plasma Physics by the American Physical Society. In 1992, he was awarded the Delmer S. Fahrney Medal (now known as the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Physics) by the Franklin Institute.
Fürth was also a member of the National Academy of Sciences. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40407 |
Outer Hebrides
The Outer Hebrides or Western Isles ( or ), sometimes known as ("islands of the strangers") or the Long Isle/Long Island (), is an island chain off the west coast of mainland Scotland. The islands are geographically coextensive with , one of the 32 unitary council areas of Scotland. They form part of the archipelago of the Hebrides, separated from the Scottish mainland and from the Inner Hebrides by the waters of the Minch, the Little Minch, and the Sea of the Hebrides. Scottish Gaelic is the predominant spoken language, although in a few areas English speakers form a majority.
Most of the islands have a bedrock formed from ancient metamorphic rocks and the climate is mild and oceanic. The 15 inhabited islands have a total population of and there are more than 50 substantial uninhabited islands. From Barra Head to the Butt of Lewis is roughly .
There are various important prehistoric structures, many of which pre-date the first written references to the islands by Roman and Greek authors. The Western Isles became part of the Norse kingdom of the "", which lasted for over 400 years until sovereignty for the Outer Hebrides was transferred to Scotland by the Treaty of Perth in 1266. Control of the islands was then held by clan chiefs, principal of whom were the MacLeods, MacDonalds, Mackenzies and MacNeils. The Highland Clearances of the 19th century had a devastating effect on many communities and it is only in recent years that population levels have ceased to decline. Much of the land is now under local control and commercial activity is based on tourism, crofting, fishing, and weaving.
Sea transport is crucial and a variety of ferry services operate between the islands and to mainland Scotland. Modern navigation systems now minimise the dangers but in the past the stormy seas have claimed many ships. Religion, music and sport are important aspects of local culture, and there are numerous designated conservation areas to protect the natural environment.
The islands form an archipelago whose major islands are Lewis and Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist, and Barra. Lewis and Harris has an area of and is the largest island in Scotland and the third-largest in the British Isles, after Great Britain and Ireland. It incorporates Lewis in the north and Harris in the south, both of which are frequently referred to as individual islands, although they are connected by land. The island does not have a single name in either English or Gaelic, and is referred to as "Lewis and Harris", "Lewis with Harris", "Harris with Lewis" etc.
The largest islands are deeply indented by arms of the sea such as Loch Ròg, Loch Seaforth and Loch nam Madadh. There are also more than 7,500 freshwater lochs in the Outer Hebrides, about 24% of the total for the whole of Scotland. North and South Uist and Lewis, in particular, have landscapes with a high percentage of fresh water and a maze and complexity of loch shapes. Harris has fewer large bodies of water but has innumerable small lochans. Loch Langavat on Lewis is long, and has several large islands in its midst, including Eilean Mòr. Although Loch Suaineabhal has only 25% of Loch Langavat's surface area, it has a mean depth of and is the most voluminous on the island. Of Loch Sgadabhagh on North Uist it has been said that "there is probably no other loch in Britain which approaches Loch Scadavay in irregularity and complexity of outline." Loch Bì is South Uist's largest loch and at long it all but cuts the island in two.
Much of the western coastline of the islands is machair, a fertile low-lying dune pastureland. Lewis is comparatively flat, and largely consists of treeless moors of blanket peat. The highest eminence is Mealisval at in the south west. Most of Harris is mountainous, with large areas of exposed rock and Clisham, the archipelago's only Corbett, reaches in height. North and South Uist and Benbecula (sometimes collectively referred to as The Uists) have sandy beaches and wide cultivated areas of machair to the west and virtually uninhabited mountainous areas to the east. The highest peak here is Beinn Mhòr at . The Uists and their immediate outliers have a combined area of . This includes the Uists themselves and the islands linked to them by causeways and bridges. Barra is in extent and has a rugged interior, surrounded by machair and extensive beaches.
The scenic qualities of the islands are reflected in the fact that three of Scotland's forty national scenic areas (NSAs) are located here. The national scenic areas are defined so as to identify areas of exceptional scenery and to ensure its protection from inappropriate development, and are considered to represent the type of scenic beauty "popularly associated with Scotland and for which it is renowned". The three NSA within the Outer Hebridies are:
Much of the archipelago is a protected habitat, including both the islands and the surrounding waters. There are 53 Sites of Special Scientific Interest of which the largest are Loch an Duin, North Uist () and North Harris (). South Uist is considered the best place in the UK for the aquatic plant Slender Naiad, which is a European Protected Species.
There has been considerable controversy over hedgehogs on the Uists. Hedgehogs are not native to the islands but were introduced in the 1970s to reduce garden pests. Their spread posed a threat to the eggs of ground-nesting wading birds. In 2003 Scottish Natural Heritage undertook culls of hedgehogs in the area, but these were halted in 2007; trapped animals are now relocated to the mainland.
Nationally important populations of breeding waders are present in the Outer Hebrides, including common redshank, dunlin, lapwing and ringed plover. The islands also provide a habitat for other important species such as corncrake, hen harrier, golden eagle and otter. Offshore, basking shark and various species of whale and dolphin can often be seen, and the remoter islands' seabird populations are of international significance. St Kilda has 60,000 northern gannets, amounting to 24% of the world population; 49,000 breeding pairs of Leach's petrel, up to 90% of the European population; and 136,000 pairs of puffin and 67,000 northern fulmar pairs, about 30% and 13% of the respective UK totals. Mingulay is an important breeding ground for razorbills, with 9,514 pairs, 6.3% of the European population.
The bumblebee "Bombus jonellus" var. "hebridensis" is endemic to the Hebrides and there are local variants of the dark green fritillary and green-veined white butterflies. The St Kilda wren is a subspecies of wren whose range is confined to the islands whose name it bears.
The islands' total population was 26,502 at the 2001 census, and the 2011 figure was 27,684. During the same period Scottish island populations as a whole grew by 4% to 103,702. The largest settlement in the Outer Hebrides is Stornoway on Lewis, which has a population of about 8,100.
In addition to the major North Ford ("") and South Ford causeways that connect North Uist to Benbecula via the northern of the Grimsays, and another causeway from Benbecula to South Uist, several other islands are linked by smaller causeways or bridges. Great Bernera and Scalpay have bridge connections to Lewis and Harris respectively, with causeways linking Baleshare and Berneray to North Uist; Eriskay to South Uist; , and the southern Grimsay to Benbecula; and Vatersay to Barra. This means that all the inhabited islands are now connected to at least one other island by a land transport route.
There are more than fifty uninhabited islands greater in size than in the Outer Hebrides, including the Barra Isles, Flannan Isles, Monach Islands, the Shiant Islands and the islands of . In common with the other main island chains of Scotland, many of the more remote islands were abandoned during the 19th and 20th centuries, in some cases after continuous habitation since the prehistoric period. More than 35 such islands have been identified in the Outer Hebrides alone. On Barra Head, for example, Historic Scotland have identified eighty-three archaeological sites on the island, the majority being of a pre-medieval date. In the 18th century, the population was over fifty, but the last native islanders had left by 1931. The island became completely uninhabited by 1980 with the automation of the lighthouse.
Some of the smaller islands continue to contribute to modern culture. The "Mingulay Boat Song", although evocative of island life, was written after the abandonment of the island in 1938 and Taransay hosted the BBC television series "Castaway 2000". Others have played a part in Scottish history. On 4 May 1746, the "Young Pretender" Charles Edward Stuart hid on with some of his men for four days whilst Royal Navy vessels patrolled the Minch.
Smaller isles and skerries and other island groups pepper the North Atlantic surrounding the main islands. Some are not geologically part of the Outer Hebrides, but are administratively and in most cases culturally, part of . to the west of Lewis lies St Kilda, now uninhabited except for a small military base. A similar distance to the north of Lewis are North Rona and , two small and remote islands. While Rona used to support a small population who grew grain and raised cattle, is an inhospitable rock. Thousands of northern gannets nest here, and by special arrangement some of their young, known as "" are harvested annually by the men of Ness. The status of Rockall, which is to the west of North Uist and which the Island of Rockall Act 1972 decreed to be a part of the Western Isles, remains a matter of international dispute.
Most of the islands have a bedrock formed from Lewisian gneiss. These are amongst the oldest rocks in Europe, having been formed in the Precambrian period up to three billion years ago. In addition to the Outer Hebrides, they form basement deposits on the Scottish mainland west of the Moine Thrust and on the islands of Coll and Tiree. These rocks are largely igneous in origin, mixed with metamorphosed marble, quartzite and mica schist and intruded by later basaltic dykes and granite magma. The gneiss's delicate pink colours are exposed throughout the islands and it is sometimes referred to by geologists as "The Old Boy".
Granite intrusions are found in the parish of Barvas in west Lewis, and another forms the summit plateau of the mountain Roineabhal in Harris. The granite here is anorthosite, and is similar in composition to rocks found in the mountains of the Moon. There are relatively small outcrops of Triassic sandstone at Broad Bay near Stornoway. The Shiant Islands and St Kilda are formed from much later tertiary basalt and basalt and gabbros respectively. The sandstone at Broad Bay was once thought to be Torridonian or Old Red Sandstone.
The Outer Hebrides have a cool temperate climate that is remarkably mild and steady for such a northerly latitude, due to the influence of the North Atlantic Current. The average temperature for the year is 6 °C (44 °F) in January and 14 °C (57 °F) in summer. The average annual rainfall in Lewis is and sunshine hours range from 1,100 to 1,200 per year. The summer days are relatively long and May to August is the driest period. Winds are a key feature of the climate and even in summer there are almost constant breezes. According to the writer W. H. Murray if a visitor asks an islander for a weather forecast "he will not, like a mainlander answer dry, wet or sunny, but quote you a figure from the Beaufort Scale." There are gales one day in six at the Butt of Lewis and small fish are blown onto the grass on top of 190 metre (620 ft) high cliffs at Barra Head during winter storms.
The Hebrides were originally settled in the Mesolithic era and have a diversity of important prehistoric sites. in on North Uist was constructed around 3200–2800 BC and may be Scotland's earliest crannog (a type of artificial island). The Callanish Stones, dating from about 2900 BC, are the finest example of a stone circle in Scotland, the 13 primary monoliths of between one and five metres high creating a circle about in diameter. on South Uist, the only site in the UK where prehistoric mummies have been found, and the impressive ruins of Dun Carloway on Lewis both date from the Iron Age.
The earliest written references that have survived relating to the islands were made by Pliny the Elder in his "Natural History", where he states that there are 30 ', and makes a separate reference to ', which Watson (1926) concludes is unequivocally the Outer Hebrides. Writing about 80 years later, in 140–150 AD, Ptolemy, drawing on the earlier naval expeditions of , also distinguished between the ', of which he writes there were only five (and thus possibly meaning the Inner Hebrides) and . ' is cognate with the Early Celtic "dumnos" and means the "deep-sea isle". Pliny probably took his information from Pytheas of Massilia who visited Britain sometime between 322 and 285 BC. It is possible that Ptolemy did as well, as Agricola's information about the west coast of Scotland was of poor quality. Breeze also suggests that might be Lewis and Harris, the largest island of the Outer Hebrides although he conflates this single island with the name "Long Island". Watson (1926) states that the meaning of Ptolemy's ' is unknown and that the root may be pre-Celtic. Murray (1966) claims that Ptolemy's ' was originally derived from the Old Norse "", meaning "isles on the edge of the sea". This idea is often repeated but no firm evidence of this derivation has emerged.
Other early written references include the flight of the Nemed people from Ireland to "Domon", which is mentioned in the 12th-century ' and a 13th-century poem concerning , then the heir to the throne of Mann and the Isles, who is said to have "broken the gate of '". " means "the plain of Domhna (or Domon)", but the precise meaning of the text is not clear.
In Irish mythology the islands were the home of the Fomorians, described as "huge and ugly" and "ship men of the sea". They were pirates, extracting tribute from the coasts of Ireland and one of their kings was (i.e. Indech, son of the goddess Domnu, who ruled over the deep seas).
In modern Gaelic the islands are sometimes referred to collectively as ' (the Long Island) or ' (the Outer Isles). "" (islands of the foreigners or strangers) is also heard occasionally, a name that was originally used by mainland Highlanders when the islands were ruled by the Norse.
The individual island and place names in the Outer Hebrides have mixed Gaelic and Norse origins. Various Gaelic terms are used repeatedly:
There are also several islands called ' from the Norse ' meaning "tidal" or "ebb island".
In Scotland, the Celtic Iron Age way of life, often troubled but never extinguished by Rome, re-asserted itself when the legions abandoned any permanent occupation in 211 AD. Hanson (2003) writes: "For many years it has been almost axiomatic in studies of the period that the Roman conquest must have had some major medium or long-term impact on Scotland. On present evidence that cannot be substantiated either in terms of environment, economy, or, indeed, society. The impact appears to have been very limited. The general picture remains one of broad continuity, not of disruption ... The Roman presence in Scotland was little more than a series of brief interludes within a longer continuum of indigenous development." The Romans' direct impact on the Highlands and Islands was scant and there is no evidence that they ever actually landed in the Outer Hebrides.
The later Iron Age inhabitants of the northern and western Hebrides were probably Pictish, although the historical record is sparse. Hunter (2000) states that in relation to King Bridei I of the Picts in the sixth century AD: "As for Shetland, Orkney, Skye and the Western Isles, their inhabitants, most of whom appear to have been Pictish in culture and speech at this time, are likely to have regarded Bridei as a fairly distant presence." The island of Pabbay is the site of the Pabbay Stone, the only extant Pictish symbol stone in the Outer Hebrides. This 6th century stele shows a flower, V-rod and lunar crescent to which has been added a later and somewhat crude cross.
Viking raids began on Scottish shores towards the end of the 8th century AD and the Hebrides came under Norse control and settlement during the ensuing decades, especially following the success of Harald Fairhair at the Battle of Hafrsfjord in 872. In the Western Isles Ketill Flatnose was the dominant figure of the mid 9th century, by which time he had amassed a substantial island realm and made a variety of alliances with other Norse leaders. These princelings nominally owed allegiance to the Norwegian crown, although in practice the latter's control was fairly limited. Norse control of the Hebrides was formalised in 1098 when Edgar, King of Scotland formally signed the islands over to Magnus III of Norway. The Scottish acceptance of Magnus III as King of the Isles came after the Norwegian king had conquered Orkney, the Hebrides and the Isle of Man in a swift campaign earlier the same year, directed against the local Norwegian leaders of the various islands‘ petty kingdoms. By capturing the islands Magnus imposed a more direct royal control, although at a price. His skald Bjorn Cripplehand recorded that in Lewis "fire played high in the heaven" as "flame spouted from the houses" and that in the Uists "the king dyed his sword red in blood". Thompson (1968) provides a more literal translation: "Fire played in the fig-trees of Liodhus; it mounted up to heaven. Far and wide the people were driven to flight. The fire gushed out of the houses".
The Hebrides were now part of Kingdom of the Isles, whose rulers were themselves vassals of the Kings of Norway. The Kingdom had two parts: the ' or South Isles encompassing the Hebrides and the Isle of Man; and the ' or North Isles of Orkney and Shetland. This situation lasted until the partitioning of the Western Isles in 1156, at which time the Outer Hebrides remained under Norwegian control while the Inner Hebrides broke out under Somerled, the Norse-Celtic kinsman of the Manx royal house.
Following the ill-fated 1263 expedition of Haakon IV of Norway, the Outer Hebrides along with the Isle of Man, were yielded to the Kingdom of Scotland a result of the 1266 Treaty of Perth. Although their contribution to the islands can still be found in personal and placenames, the archaeological record of the Norse period is very limited. The best known find from this time is the Lewis chessmen, which date from the mid 12th century.
As the Norse era drew to a close the Norse-speaking princes were gradually replaced by Gaelic-speaking clan chiefs including the MacLeods of Lewis and Harris, the MacDonalds of the Uists and MacNeil of Barra. This transition did little to relieve the islands of internecine strife although by the early 14th century the MacDonald Lords of the Isles, based on Islay, were in theory these chiefs' feudal superiors and managed to exert some control.
The growing threat that Clan Donald posed to the Scottish crown led to the forcible dissolution of the Lordship of the Isles by James IV in 1493, but although the king had the power to subdue the organised military might of the Hebrides, he and his immediate successors lacked the will or ability to provide an alternative form of governance. The House of Stuart's attempts to control the Outer Hebrides were then at first desultory and little more than punitive expeditions. In 1506 the Earl of Huntly besieged and captured Stornoway Castle using cannon. In 1540 James V himself conducted a royal tour, forcing the clan chiefs to accompany him. There followed a period of peace, but all too soon the clans were at loggerheads again.
In 1598 King James VI authorised some "Gentleman Adventurers" from Fife to civilise the "most barbarous Isle of Lewis". Initially successful, the colonists were driven out by local forces commanded by Murdoch and Neil MacLeod, who based their forces on in . The colonists tried again in 1605 with the same result but a third attempt in 1607 was more successful, and in due course Stornoway became a Burgh of Barony. By this time Lewis was held by the Mackenzies of Kintail, (later the Earls of Seaforth), who pursued a more enlightened approach, investing in fishing in particular. The historian W. C. MacKenzie was moved to write:
The Seaforth's royalist inclinations led to Lewis becoming garrisoned during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms by Cromwell's troops, who destroyed the old castle in Stornoway and in 1645 Lewismen fought on the royalist side at the Battle of Auldearn. A new era of Hebridean involvement in the affairs of the wider world was about to commence.
With the implementation of the Treaty of Union in 1707 the Hebrides became part of the new Kingdom of Great Britain, but the clans' loyalties to a distant monarch were not strong. A considerable number of islandmen "came out" in support of the Jacobite Earl of Mar in the "15" although the response to the 1745 rising was muted. Nonetheless the aftermath of the decisive Battle of Culloden, which effectively ended Jacobite hopes of a Stuart restoration, was widely felt. The British government's strategy was to estrange the clan chiefs from their kinsmen and turn their descendants into English-speaking landlords whose main concern was the revenues their estates brought rather than the welfare of those who lived on them. This may have brought peace to the islands, but in the following century it came at a terrible price.
The Highland Clearances of the 19th century destroyed communities throughout the Highlands and Islands as the human populations were evicted and replaced with sheep farms. For example, Colonel Gordon of Cluny, owner of Barra, South Uist and Benbecula, evicted thousands of islanders using trickery and cruelty and even offered to sell Barra to the government as a penal colony. Islands such as were completely cleared of their populations and even today the subject is recalled with bitterness and resentment in some areas. The position was exacerbated by the failure of the islands' kelp industry, which thrived from the 18th century until the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 and large scale emigration became endemic. For example, hundreds left North Uist for Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. The pre-clearance population of the island had been almost 5,000, although by 1841 it had fallen to 3,870 and was only 2,349 by 1931.
For those who remained new economic opportunities emerged through the export of cattle, commercial fishing and tourism. During the summer season in the 1860s and 1870s five thousand inhabitants of Lewis could be found in Wick on the mainland of Scotland, employed on the fishing boats and at the quaysides. Nonetheless emigration and military service became the choice of many and the archipelago's populations continued to dwindle throughout the late 19th and 20th centuries. By 2001 the population of North Uist was only 1,271.
The work of the Napier Commission and the Congested Districts Board, and the passing of the Crofting Act of 1886 helped, but social unrest continued. In July 1906 grazing land on Vatersay was raided by landless men from Barra and its isles. Lady Gordon Cathcart took legal action against the "raiders" but the visiting judge took the view that she had neglected her duties as a landowner and that "long indifference to the necessities of the cottars had gone far to drive them to exasperation". Millennia of continuous occupation notwithstanding, many of the remoter islands were abandoned — Mingulay in 1912, Hirta in 1930, and in 1942 among them. This process involved a transition from these places being perceived as relatively self-sufficient agricultural economies to a view becoming held by both island residents and outsiders alike that they lacked the essential services of a modern industrial economy.
There were gradual economic improvements, among the most visible of which was the replacement of the traditional thatched blackhouse with accommodation of a more modern design. The creation of the Highlands and Islands Development Board and the discovery of substantial deposits of North Sea oil in 1965, the establishment of a unitary local authority for the islands in 1975 and more recently the renewables sector have all contributed to a degree of economic stability in recent decades. The Arnish yard has had a chequered history but has been a significant employer in both the oil and renewables industries. , the local authority, employs 2,000 people, making it the largest employer in the Outer Hebrides. See also the " area plan 2010" and the 's "Factfile – Economy".
Modern commercial activities centre on tourism, crofting, fishing, and weaving including the manufacture of Harris tweed. Some of the larger islands have development trusts that support the local economy and, in striking contrast to the 19th and 20th century domination by absentee landlords, more than two thirds of the Western Isles population now lives on community-owned estates. However the economic position of the islands remains relatively precarious. The Western Isles, including Stornoway, are defined by Highlands and Islands Enterprise as an economically "Fragile Area" and they have an estimated trade deficit of some £163.4 million. Overall, the area is relatively reliant on primary industries and the public sector, and fishing and fish farming in particular are vulnerable to environmental impacts, changing market pressures, and European legislation.
There is some optimism about the possibility of future developments in, for example, renewable energy generation, tourism, and education, and after declines in the 20th century the population has stabilised since 2003, although it is ageing.
From the passing of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 to 1975 Lewis formed part of the county of Ross and Cromarty and the rest of the archipelago, including Harris, was part of Inverness-shire.
The Outer Hebrides became a unitary council area in 1975, although in most of the rest of Scotland similar unitary councils were not established until 1996. Since then, the islands have formed one of the 32 unitary council areas that now cover the whole country, with the council officially known by its Gaelic name, ' under the terms of the Local Government (Gaelic Names) (Scotland) Act 1997. The council has its base in Stornoway on Lewis and is often known locally simply as "the " or '. The is one of only three Councils in Scotland with a majority of elected members who are independents. The other independent-run councils are Shetland and Orkney. Moray is run by a Conservative/Independent coalition.
The name for the British Parliament constituency covering this area is , the seat being held by Angus MacNeil MP since 2005, while the Scottish Parliament constituency for the area is , the incumbent being Alasdair Allan MSP.
The Scottish independence referendum has led some islanders to call for a debate on the constitutional position of the Western Isles, linked with similar initiatives in Orkney and Shetland.
The Outer Hebrides have historically been a very strong Scottish Gaelic ("Gàidhlig") speaking area. Both the 1901 and 1921 census reported that all parishes were over 75% Gaelic speaking, including areas of high population density such as Stornoway. However, the Education (Scotland) Act 1872 mandated English-only education, and is now recognised as having dealt a major blow to the language. People still living can recall being beaten for speaking Gaelic in school. Nonetheless, by 1971 most areas were still more than 75% Gaelic speaking – with the exception of Stornoway, Benbecula and South Uist at 50-74%.
In the 2001 census, each island overall was over 50% Gaelic speaking – South Uist (71%), Harris (69%), Barra (68%), North Uist (67%), Lewis (56%) and Benbecula (56%). With 59.3% of Gaelic speakers or a total of 15,723 speakers, this made the Outer Hebrides the most strongly coherent Gaelic speaking area in Scotland.
Most areas were between 60-74% Gaelic speaking and the areas with the highest density of over 80% are Scalpay near Harris, Newtonferry and Kildonan, whilst Daliburgh, Linshader, Eriskay, Brue, Boisdale, West Harris, Ardveenish, Soval, Ness, and Bragar all have more than 75%. The areas with the lowest density of speakers are Stornoway (44%), Braigh (41%), Melbost (41%), and Balivanich (37%).
The Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act was enacted by the Scottish Parliament in 2005 to provide continuing support for the language. However, by 2011 the overall percentage of Gaelic speakers in the Outer Hebrides had fallen to 52%.
Scheduled ferry services between the Outer Hebrides and the Scottish Mainland and Inner Hebrides operate on the following routes:
Other ferries operate between some of the islands.
National Rail services are available for onward journeys, from stations at Oban and Mallaig, which has direct services to Glasgow. However, parliamentary approval notwithstanding, plans in the 1890s to lay a railway connection to Ullapool were unable to obtain sufficient funding.
There are scheduled flights from Stornoway, Benbecula and Barra airports both inter-island and to the mainland. Barra's airport is claimed to be the only one in the world to have scheduled flights landing on a beach. At high water the runways are under the sea so flight times vary with the tide.
Bus na Comhairle (meaning "Bus of the Council") is the council-owned local bus company of the Western Isles of Scotland. The company serves the Broadbay area of Lewis with 12 buses, 5 Optare Solos, 5 BMC Schoolbuses, 1 ADL Enviro 200 and 1 VDL Plaxton Centro.
The archipelago is exposed to wind and tide, and lighthouses are sited as an aid to navigation at locations from Barra Head in the south to the Butt of Lewis in the north. There are numerous sites of wrecked ships, and the Flannan Isles are the location of an enduring mystery that occurred in December 1900, when all three lighthouse keepers vanished without trace.
"Annie Jane", a three-masted immigrant ship out of Liverpool bound for Montreal, Canada, struck rocks off the West Beach of Vatersay during a storm on Tuesday 28 September 1853. Within ten minutes the ship began to founder and break up casting 450 people into the raging sea. In spite of the conditions, islanders tried to rescue the passengers and crew. The remains of 350 men, women and children were buried in the dunes behind the beach and a small cairn and monument marks the site.
The tiny Beasts of Holm off the east coast of Lewis were the site of the sinking of during the first few hours of 1919, one of the worst maritime disasters in United Kingdom waters during the 20th century. Calvay in the Sound of Barra provided the inspiration for Compton Mackenzie's novel "Whisky Galore" after the ran aground there with a cargo of single malt in 1941.
Christianity has deep roots in the Western Isles, but owing mainly to the different allegiances of the clans in the past, the people in the northern islands (Lewis, Harris, North Uist) have historically been predominantly Presbyterian, and those of the southern islands (Benbecula, South Uist, Barra) predominantly Roman Catholic.
At the time of the 2001 Census, 42% of the population identified themselves as being affiliated with the Church of Scotland, with 13% Roman Catholic and 28% with other Christian churches. Many of this last group belong to the Free Church of Scotland, known for its strict observance of the Sabbath. 11% stated that they had no religion. This made the Western Isles the Scottish council area with the smallest percentage of non-religious in the population. There are also small Episcopalian congregations in Lewis and Harris and the Outer Hebrides are part of the Diocese of Argyll and The Isles in both the Episcopalian and Catholic traditions.
Gaelic music is popular in the islands and the Lewis and Harris Traditional Music Society plays an active role in promoting the genre. Fèis Bharraigh began in 1981 with the aim of developing the practice and study of the Gaelic language, literature, music, drama and culture on the islands of Barra and Vatersay. A two-week festival, it has inspired 43 other "feisean" throughout Scotland. The Lewis Pipe Band was founded in 1904 and the Lewis and Harris Piping Society in 1977.
Outdoor activities including rugby, football, golf, shinty, fishing, riding, canoeing, athletics, and multi-sports are popular in the Western Isles. The Hebridean Challenge is an adventure race run in five daily stages, which takes place along the length of the islands and includes hill and road running, road and mountain biking, short sea swims and demanding sea kayaking sections. There are four main sports centres: "Ionad Spors Leodhais" in Stornoway, which has a 25 m swimming pool; Harris Sports Centre; Lionacleit Sports Centre on Benbecula; and Castlebay Sports Centre on Barra. The Western Isles is a member of the International Island Games Association.
South Uist is home to the Askernish Golf Course. The oldest links in the Outer Hebrides, it was designed by Old Tom Morris. Although it was in use until the 1930s, its existence was largely forgotten until 2005 and it is now being restored to Morris's original design. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40410 |
Mnemonic
A mnemonic (, the first "m" is not pronounced) device, or memory device, is any learning technique that aids information retention or retrieval (remembering) in the human memory. Mnemonics make use of elaborative encoding, retrieval cues, and imagery as specific tools to encode any given information in a way that allows for efficient storage and retrieval. Mnemonics aid original information in becoming associated with something more accessible or meaningful—which, in turn, provides better retention of the information.
Commonly encountered mnemonics are often used for lists and in auditory form, such as short poems, acronyms, initialisms, or memorable phrases, but mnemonics can also be used for other types of information and in visual or kinesthetic forms. Their use is based on the observation that the human mind more easily remembers spatial, personal, surprising, physical, sexual, humorous, or otherwise "relatable" information, rather than more abstract or impersonal forms of information.
The word "mnemonic" is derived from the Ancient Greek word μνημονικός ("mnēmonikos"), meaning "of memory, or relating to memory" and is related to Mnemosyne ("remembrance"), the name of the goddess of memory in Greek mythology. Both of these words are derived from μνήμη ("mnēmē"), "remembrance, memory". Mnemonics in antiquity were most often considered in the context of what is today known as the art of memory.
Ancient Greeks and Romans distinguished between two types of memory: the "natural" memory and the "artificial" memory. The former is inborn, and is the one that everyone uses instinctively. The latter in contrast has to be trained and developed through the learning and practice of a variety of mnemonic techniques.
Mnemonic systems are techniques or strategies consciously used to improve memory. They help use information already stored in long-term memory to make memorization an easier task.
The general name of mnemonics, or "memoria technica," was the name applied to devices for aiding the memory, to enable the mind to reproduce a relatively unfamiliar idea, and especially a series of dissociated ideas, by connecting it, or them, in some artificial whole, the parts of which are mutually suggestive. Mnemonic devices were much cultivated by Greek sophists and philosophers and are frequently referred to by Plato and Aristotle. In later times the poet Simonides was credited for development of these techniques, perhaps for no reason other than that the power of his memory was famous. Cicero, who attaches considerable importance to the art, but more to the principle of order as the best help to memory, speaks of Carneades (perhaps Charmades) of Athens and Metrodorus of Scepsis as distinguished examples of people who used well-ordered images to aid the memory. The Romans valued such helps in order to support facility in public speaking.
The Greek and the Roman system of mnemonics was founded on the use of mental places and signs or pictures, known as "topical" mnemonics. The most usual method was to choose a large house, of which the apartments, walls, windows, statues, furniture, etc., were each associated with certain names, phrases, events or ideas, by means of symbolic pictures. To recall these, an individual had only to search over the apartments of the house until discovering the places where images had been placed by the imagination.
In accordance with this system, if it were desired to fix a historic date in memory, it was localised in an imaginary town divided into a certain number of districts, each with ten houses, each house with ten rooms, and each room with a hundred quadrates or memory-places, partly on the floor, partly on the four walls, partly on the ceiling. Therefore, if it were desired to fix in the memory the date of the invention of printing (1436), an imaginary book, or some other symbol of printing, would be placed in the thirty-sixth quadrate or memory-place of the fourth room of the first house of the historic district of the town. Except that the rules of mnemonics are referred to by Martianus Capella, nothing further is known regarding the practice until the 13th century.
Among the voluminous writings of Roger Bacon is a tractate "De arte memorativa". Ramon Llull devoted special attention to mnemonics in connection with his "ars generalis." The first important modification of the method of the Romans was that invented by the German poet Konrad Celtes, who, in his "Epitoma in utramque Ciceronis rhetoricam cum arte memorativa nova" (1492), used letters of the alphabet for associations, rather than places. About the end of the 15th century, Petrus de Ravenna (b. 1448) provoked such astonishment in Italy by his mnemonic feats that he was believed by many to be a necromancer. His "Phoenix artis memoriae" (Venice, 1491, 4 vols.) went through as many as nine editions, the seventh being published at Cologne in 1608.
About the end of the 16th century, Lambert Schenkel ("Gazophylacium", 1610), who taught mnemonics in France, Italy and Germany, similarly surprised people with his memory. He was denounced as a sorcerer by the University of Louvain, but in 1593 he published his tractate "De memoria" at Douai with the sanction of that celebrated theological faculty. The most complete account of his system is given in two works by his pupil Martin Sommer, published in Venice in 1619. In 1618 John Willis (d. 1628?) published "Mnemonica; sive ars reminiscendi", containing a clear statement of the principles of topical or local mnemonics. Giordano Bruno included a "memoria technica" in his treatise "De umbris idearum," as part of his study of the "ars generalis" of Llull. Other writers of this period are the Florentine Publicius (1482); Johannes Romberch (1533); Hieronimo Morafiot, "Ars memoriae" (1602);and B. Porta, "Ars reminiscendi" (1602).
In 1648 Stanislaus Mink von Wennsshein revealed what he called the "most fertile secret" in mnemonics — using consonants for figures, thus expressing numbers by words (vowels being added as required), in order to create associations more readily remembered. The philosopher Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz adopted an alphabet very similar to that of Wennsshein for his scheme of a form of writing common to all languages.
Wennsshein's method was adopted with slight changes afterward by the majority of subsequent "original" systems. It was modified and supplemented by Richard Grey (1694-1771), a priest who published a "Memoria technica" in 1730. The principal part of Grey's method is briefly this:
To assist in retaining the mnemonical words in the memory, they were formed into memorial lines. Such strange words in difficult hexameter scansion, are by no means easy to memorise. The vowel or consonant, which Grey connected with a particular figure, was chosen arbitrarily.
A later modification was made in 1806 Gregor von Feinaigle, a German monk from Salem near Constance. While living and working in Paris, he expounded a system of mnemonics in which (as in Wennsshein) the numerical figures are represented by letters chosen due to some similarity to the figure or an accidental connection with it. This alphabet was supplemented by a complicated system of localities and signs. Feinaigle, who apparently did not publish any written documentation of this method, travelled to England in 1811. The following year one of his pupils published "The New Art of Memory" (1812), giving Feinaigle's system. In addition, it contains valuable historical material about previous systems.
Other mnemonists later published simplified forms, as the more complicated menemonics were generally abandoned. Methods founded chiefly on the so-called laws of association (cf. Mental association) were taught with some success in Germany.
A wide range of mnemonics are used for several purposes. The most commonly used mnemonics are those for lists, numerical sequences, foreign-language acquisition, and medical treatment for patients with memory deficits.
A common mnemonic for remembering lists is to create an easily remembered acronym, or, taking each of the initial letters of the list members, create a memorable phrase in which the words with the same acronym as the material. Mnemonic techniques can be applied to most memorisation of novel materials.
Some common examples for first-letter mnemonics:
Mnemonic phrases or poems can be used to encode numeric sequences by various methods, one common one is to create a new phrase in which the number of letters in each word represents the according digit of pi. For example, the first 15 digits of the mathematical constant pi (3.14159265358979) can be encoded as "Now I need a drink, alcoholic of course, after the heavy lectures involving quantum mechanics"; "Now", having 3 letters, represents the first number, 3. Piphilology is the practice dedicated to creating mnemonics for pi.
Another is used for "calculating" the multiples of 9 up to 9 × 10 using one's fingers. Begin by holding out both hands with all fingers stretched out. Now count left to right the number of fingers that indicates the multiple. For example, to figure 9 × 4, count four fingers from the left, ending at your left-hand index finger. Bend this finger down and count the remaining fingers. Fingers to the left of the bent finger represent tens, fingers to the right are ones. There are three fingers to the left and six to the right, which indicates 9 × 4 = 36. This works for 9 × 1 up through 9 × 10.
For remembering the rules in adding and multiplying two signed numbers, Balbuena and Buayan (2015) made the letter strategies LAUS (like signs, add; unlike signs, subtract) and LPUN (like signs, positive; unlike signs, negative), respectively.
Mnemonics may be helpful in learning foreign languages, for example by transposing difficult foreign words with words in a language the learner knows already, also called "cognates" which are very common in the Spanish language. A useful such technique is to find linkwords, words that have the same pronunciation in a known language as the target word, and associate them visually or auditorially with the target word.
For example, in trying to assist the learner to remember "ohel" (אוהל), the Hebrew word for "tent", the linguist Ghil'ad Zuckermann proposes the memorable sentence ""Oh hell", there's a raccoon in my "tent"". The memorable sentence "There's a "fork" in "Ma’s leg"" helps the learner remember that the Hebrew word for "fork" is "mazleg" (מזלג). Similarly, to remember the Hebrew word "bayit" (בית), meaning "house", one can use the sentence "that's a lovely "house", I'd like to "buy it"." The linguist Michel Thomas taught students to remember that "estar" is the Spanish word for "to be" by using the phrase "to be a star".
Another Spanish example is by using the mnemonic "Vin Diesel Has Ten Weapons" to teach irregular command verbs in the you(tú) form. Spanish verb forms and tenses are regularly seen as the hardest part of learning the language. With a high number of verb tenses, and many verb forms that are not found in English, Spanish verbs can be hard to remember and then conjugate. The use of mnemonics has been proven to help students better learn foreign languages, and this holds true for Spanish verbs. A particularly hard verb tense to remember is command verbs. Command verbs in Spanish are conjugated differently depending on who the command is being given to. The phrase, when pronounced with a Spanish accent, is used to remember "Ven Di Sal Haz Ten Ve Pon Sé", all of the irregular Spanish command verbs in the you(tú) form. This mnemonic helps students attempting to memorize different verb tenses.
Another technique is for learners of gendered languages to associate their mental images of words with a colour that matches the gender in the target language. An example here is to remember the Spanish word for "foot," "pie," [pee-ay] with the image of a foot stepping on a pie, which then spills blue filling (blue representing the male gender of the noun in this example).
For French verbs which use etre as a participle: DR and MRS VANDERTRAMPP: descendre, rester, monter, revenir, sortir, venir, arriver, naître, devenir, entrer, rentrer, tomber, retourner, aller, mourir, partir, passer.
Masculine countries in French (le): "Neither can a breeze make a sane Japanese chilly in the USA." Netherlands (Pays-Bas), Canada, Brazil (Brésil), Mexico (Mexique), Senegal, Japan (Japon), Chile (Chili), & (les) USA (États-Unis d'Amérique).
Mnemonics can be used in aiding patients with memory deficits that could be caused by head injuries, strokes, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and other neurological conditions.
In a study conducted by Doornhein and De Haan, the patients were treated with six different memory strategies including the mnemonics technique. The results concluded that there were significant improvements on the immediate and delayed subtest of the RBMT, delayed recall on the Appointments test, and relatives rating on the MAC from the patients that received mnemonics treatment. However, in the case of stroke patients, the results did not reach statistical significance.
Academic study of the use of mnemonics has shown their effectiveness. In one such experiment, subjects of different ages who applied mnemonic techniques to learn novel vocabulary outperformed control groups that applied contextual learning and free-learning styles.
Mnemonics vary in effectiveness for several groups ranging from young children to the elderly. Mnemonic learning strategies require time and resources by educators to develop creative and effective devices. The most simple and creative mnemonic devices usually are the most effective for teaching. In the classroom, mnemonic devices must be used at the appropriate time in the instructional sequence to achieve their maximum effectiveness.
Mnemonics were seen to be more effective for groups of people who struggled with or had weak long-term memory, like the elderly. Five years after a mnemonic training study, a research team followed-up 112 community-dwelling older adults, 60 years of age and over. Delayed recall of a word list was assessed prior to, and immediately following mnemonic training, and at the 5-year follow-up. Overall, there was no significant difference between word recall prior to training and that exhibited at follow-up. However, pre-training performance gains scores in performance immediately post-training and use of the mnemonic predicted performance at follow-up. Individuals who self-reported using the mnemonic exhibited the highest performance overall, with scores significantly higher than at pre-training. The findings suggest that mnemonic training has long-term benefits for some older adults, particularly those who continue to employ the mnemonic.
This contrasts with a study from surveys of medical students that approximately only 20% frequently used mnemonic acronyms.
In humans, the process of aging particularly affects the medial temporal lobe and hippocampus, in which the episodic memory is synthesized. The episodic memory stores information about items, objects, or features with spatiotemporal contexts. Since mnemonics aid better in remembering spatial or physical information rather than more abstract forms, its effect may vary according to a subject's age and how well the subject's medial temporal lobe and hippocampus function.
This could be further explained by one recent study which indicates a general deficit in the memory for spatial locations in aged adults (mean age 69.7 with standard deviation of 7.4 years) compared to young adults (mean age 21.7 with standard deviation of 4.2 years). At first, the difference in target recognition was not significant.
The researchers then divided the aged adults into two groups, aged unimpaired and aged impaired, according to a neuropsychological testing. With the aged groups split, there was an apparent deficit in target recognition in aged impaired adults compared to both young adults and aged unimpaired adults. This further supports the varying effectiveness of mnemonics in different age groups.
Moreover, a different research was done previously with the same notion, which presented with similar results to that of Reagh et al. in verbal mnemonics discrimination task.
Studies (notably "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two") have suggested that the short-term memory of adult humans can hold only a limited number of items; grouping items into larger chunks such as in a mnemonic might be part of what permits the retention of a larger total amount of information in short-term memory, which in turn can aid in the creation of long-term memories. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40411 |
License
A license (American English) or licence (British English) is an official permission or permit to do, use, or own something (as well as the document of that permission or permit).
A license can be granted by a party to another party as an element of an agreement between those parties. A shorthand definition of a license is "an authorization to use licensed material."
In particular, a license may be issued by authorities, to allow an activity that would otherwise be forbidden. It may require paying a fee or proving a capability. The requirement may also serve to keep the authorities informed on a type of activity, and to give them the opportunity to set conditions and limitations.
A licensor may grant a license under intellectual property laws to authorize a use (such as copying software or using a patented invention) to a licensee, sparing the licensee from a claim of infringement brought by the licensor. A license under intellectual property commonly has several components beyond the grant itself, including a term, territory, renewal provisions, and other limitations deemed vital to the licensor.
Term: many licenses are valid for a particular length of time. This protects the licensor should the value of the license increase, or market conditions change. It also preserves enforceability by ensuring that no license extends beyond the term of the agreement.
Territory: a license may stipulate what territory the rights pertain to. For example, a license with a territory limited to "North America" (Mexico/United States/Canada) would not permit a licensee any protection from actions for use in Japan.
A shorthand definition of license is "a promise by the licensor not to sue the licensee". That means without a license any use or exploitation of intellectual property by a third party would amount to copying or infringement. Such copying would be improper and could, by using the legal system, be stopped if the intellectual property owner wanted to do so.
Intellectual property licensing plays a major role in business, academia and broadcasting. Business practices such as franchising, technology transfer, publication and character merchandising entirely depend on the licensing of intellectual property. Land licensing (proprietary licensing) and IP licensing form sub-branches of law born out of the interplay of general laws of contract and specific principles and statutory laws relating to these respective assets.
Mass distributed software is used by individuals on personal computers under license from the developer of that software. Such license is typically included in a more extensive end-user license agreement (EULA) entered into upon the installation of that software on a computer.
Typically, a license is associated with a unique code, that when approved grants the end user access to the software in question.
Under a typical end-user license agreement, the user may install the software on a limited number of computers.
The enforceability of end-user license agreements is sometimes questioned.
As of 2020, there are various ways to license software with different kinds of licensing models, which allow software vendors to profit from their product offerings in flexible ways.
A licensor may grant permission to a licensee to conduct activities which would otherwise be within the, offer for sale, or import a patented product, or to perform a patented process. The term of a patent license may be a "fixed" (i.e., specified) term, such as 5 years, or may be for the life of the patent (i.e., until the patent expires). A patent is by its nature limited in territorial scope; it only covers activity within the borders of the country issuing the patent. Accordingly, a patent license does not require a territory provision.
The consideration provided by the licensee in return for the patent license grant is called a patent royalty payment. In a "paid-up" license, the "lump sum" royalty payment is a specified monetary amount, typically due shortly after the effective date of the patent (e.g., within 15 business days of the effective date), and no further payments are required. Otherwise, the royalty payment is a "running royalty," typically payable on an annual basis. The annual royalty may be a specified amount (e.g., one million dollars each year), or an amount proportional to the volume of licensed activity conducted by the licensee (e.g., one dollar per unit of licensed product sold by the licensee that year, or one percent of the net sales amount of the licensed products sold by the licensee that year).
A licensing agreement is an arrangement whereby a licensor grants the right to intangible property to another entity for a specified period, and in return, the licensor receives a royalty fee from the licensee. Intangible property includes patents, inventions, formulas, processes, designs, copyrights, and trademarks.
Advantages of a licensing agreement:
Disadvantages of a licensing agreement
A licensor may grant permission to a licensee to distribute products under a trademark. With such a license, the licensee may use the trademark without fear of a claim of trademark infringement by the licensor.
The assignment of a license often depends on specific contractual terms. The most common terms are, that a license is only applicable for a particular geographic region, just for a certain period of time or merely for a stage in the value chain.
Moreover, there are different types of fees within the trademark and brand licensing. The first form demands a fee independent of sales and profits, the second type of license fee is dependent on the productivity of the licensee.
When a licensor grants permission to a licensee to not only distribute, but manufacture a patented product, it is known as licensed production.
A licensor may grant a permission to a licensee to copy and distribute copyrighted works such as "art" (e.g., Thomas Kinkade's painting "Dawn in Los Gato") and characters (e.g., Mickey Mouse). With such license, a licensee need not fear a claim of copyright infringement brought by the copyright owner.
Artistic license is, however, not related to the aforementioned license. It is a euphemism that denotes freedom of expression, the ability to make the subject appear more engaging or attractive, by fictionalising part of the subject.
A licentiate is an academic degree that traditionally conferred the license to teach at a university or to practice a particular profession. The term survived despite the fact that nowadays a doctorate is typically needed in order to teach at a university. The term is also used for a person who holds a licentiate. In English, the degree has never been called a license. In France, the "licence" is the first degree awarded in Universities.
In Sweden, Finland, and in some other European university systems, a 'licentiate' is a postgraduate degree between the master's degree and the doctorate. The licentiate is a popular choice in those countries where a full doctoral degree would take five or more years to achieve.
A license to driving certain vehicles has been applied to many countries around the world. Being allowed to drive a certain vehicle requires a specific driving license, the type of license depending on the type of vehicle.
In the United Kingdom prisoners serving a determinate sentence (a fixed time in prison) will be released prior to the completion of their full sentence "on licence". The licence is the prisoner's agreement to maintain certain conditions, such as periodic reporting in to a probation officer and only living at an approved address, in exchange for their early release. If they break the conditions of the licence, they can be "recalled" (returned to prison).
Offenders serving determinate sentences are released automatically at a set point in their sentence, whereas prisoners serving indeterminate sentences (e.g. life imprisonment) can only be released by the parole board.
Patent licensing has been studied in formal economic models in the field of industrial organization. In particular, Katz and Shapiro (1986) have explored the optimal licensing strategy of a research lab selling to firms who are competitors on the product market. It turns out that (compared to the welfare-maximizing solution) the licensor’s incentives to develop innovations may be excessive, while the licensor’s incentives to disseminate the innovation are typically too low. Subsequently, the seminal work of Katz and Shapiro (1986) has been extended in several directions. For example, Bhattacharya, Glazer, and Sappington (1992) have taken into account that the firms acquiring licenses must make further investments in order to develop marketable products. Schmitz (2002, 2007) has shown that asymmetric information due to adverse selection or moral hazard may lead the research lab to sell more licenses than it would do under complete information. Antelo and Sampayo (2017) have studied the optimal number of licenses in a signalling model.
The provision of licenses and the agencies that mandate them are often criticised by libertarians, like Milton Friedman, for creating an anticompetitive environment for occupations, which creates a barrier to entry for more qualified and skilled individuals who may not have the resources to obtain the necessary licences. According to Friedman, licenses and permits have become so burdensome due to legislation that favors the current establishment of wealthy occupants that they decrease the supply of such occupations, which raises prices for the average consumer. Libertarians and the anti-authoritarian left (anarcho-communists) view competing guilds and other voluntary communes as being more beneficial for disseminating the skills and education required to perform a specified career.
Intellectual property-related:
Other: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=40412 |
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