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Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who committed the murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of 15 of the 16 murders he had committed in Wisconsin, and was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment on February 15, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.
Dahmer was born May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the first of two sons of Joyce Annette (née Flint), a teletype machine instructor, and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, a Marquette University chemistry student. Lionel Dahmer was of German and Welsh ancestry, and Joyce Dahmer was of Norwegian and Irish ancestry.
It has been claimed that Dahmer was deprived of attention as an infant. Other sources, however, suggest that Dahmer was generally doted upon as an infant and toddler by both parents, although his mother was known to be tense, greedy for both attention and pity, and argumentative with her husband and their neighbors.
As Dahmer entered first grade, Joyce began to spend an increasing amount of time in bed recovering from weakness. Lionel's university studies kept him away from home much of the time; when he was home, his wife—a hypochondriac who suffered from depression—demanded constant attention. She reportedly worked herself into a state of anxiety over trivial matters simply to appease her husband. She once attempted suicide with Equanil. Consequently, neither parent devoted much time to their son.
Dahmer had been an "energetic and happy child" but became notably subdued after double hernia surgery shortly before his fourth birthday. He recalled extreme tension and arguments between his parents during his early years. At elementary school, Dahmer was regarded as quiet and timid; one teacher said she sensed he felt neglected because of his mother's illnesses. Nonetheless, in grade school, Dahmer did have a small number of friends.
From an early age, Dahmer manifested an interest in dead animals. He initially collected large insects, such as dragonflies and butterflies, in jars. Later he collected animal carcasses from the roadside, occasionally accompanied by one or more friends; he dismembered these animals either at home or in nearby woodland. According to one friend, Dahmer dismembered these animals and stored the parts in jars in the family's toolshed, explaining that he was curious as to how animals "fitted together".
In one instance, Dahmer decapitated the carcass of a dog before nailing the body to a tree and impaling the skull on a stake beside a wooden cross in woods near his house. His fascination with dead animals might have begun when, at the age of four, he saw his father removing animal bones from beneath the family home. According to Lionel, Dahmer was "oddly thrilled" by the sound the bones made, and became preoccupied with animal bones. He occasionally searched beneath and around the family home for additional bones, and explored the bodies of live animals to discover where their bones were located.
In October 1966, the family moved to Doylestown, Ohio. When Joyce gave birth in December, Jeffrey was allowed to choose the name of his new baby brother; he chose the name David. The same year, Lionel earned his degree and started work as an analytical chemist in nearby Akron, Ohio.
In 1968, the family moved to Bath Township, Ohio. Two years later, during a chicken dinner, Dahmer asked Lionel what would happen if chicken bones were placed in bleach. Lionel, pleased by Dahmer's curiosity, demonstrated how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones. Dahmer incorporated these techniques into his bone collecting.
From his freshman year at Revere High School, Dahmer was seen as an outcast. At 14 he began drinking beer and hard alcohol in school; he told a classmate it was his "medicine". Although largely uncommunicative, in his freshman year, Dahmer was seen by staff as polite and highly intelligent but with average grades. He was a keen tennis player and played briefly in the high school band.
When he reached puberty, Dahmer discovered he was gay; he did not tell his parents. In his early teens, he had brief relationship with another teenage boy, although they never had intercourse. By his later admission, Dahmer began fantasizing about dominating and controlling a completely submissive male partner. These fantasies gradually became intertwined with dissection. When he was about 16, Dahmer conceived a fantasy of rendering unconscious a particular male jogger he found attractive, and then making sexual use of his body. On one occasion Dahmer concealed himself in bushes with a baseball bat to lay in wait for this man, who did not however pass by on that particular day. Dahmer later said this was his first attempt to attack someone.
Despite being regarded as a loner and an oddball among his peers at RHS, Dahmer became something of a class clown who often staged pranks, which became known as "Doing a Dahmer"; these included bleating and simulating epileptic seizures or cerebral palsy, at school and local stores.
By 1977 his grades had declined; his parents hired a private tutor, with limited success. That same year, in an attempt to save their marriage, his parents attended counseling sessions. They continued to quarrel frequently. When Lionel discovered Joyce had engaged in a brief affair in September 1977, they both decided to divorce, telling their sons they wished to do so amicably. Lionel moved out of the house in early 1978.
In May 1978, Dahmer graduated from high school. A few weeks before his graduation, one of his teachers observed Dahmer sitting close to the school parking lot, drinking several cans of beer. When the teacher threatened to report the matter, Dahmer informed him he was experiencing "a lot of problems" at home and that the school's guidance counselor was aware of them. That spring, Joyce and David moved out of the family home to live with relatives. Dahmer had just turned 18 and remained in the family home. Dahmer's parents' divorce was finalized on July 24, 1978. Joyce was awarded custody of her younger son and alimony payments.
Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978, three weeks after his graduation. At the time he was living alone in the family home in Bath. Following their decision to divorce, Lionel temporarily lived in a nearby motel and Joyce had relocated to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, with his younger brother David.
On June 18, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks, who was almost 19. Dahmer lured the youth to his house on the pretext of the two young men drinking alcohol together. Hicks, who had been hitchhiking to a rock concert in Lockwood Corners, agreed to accompany Dahmer to his house. According to Dahmer, after several hours drinking and listening to music, Hicks "wanted to leave and [I] didn't want him to."
In response, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks with a 10 lb. dumbbell. He later stated he struck Hicks twice from behind with the dumbbell as Hicks sat upon a chair. When Hicks fell unconscious, Dahmer strangled him to death with the bar of the dumbbell, then stripped the clothes from Hicks' body before masturbating as he stood above the corpse. The following day, Dahmer dissected Hicks' body in his basement; he later buried the remains in a shallow grave in his backyard before, several weeks later, unearthing the remains and paring the flesh from the bones. He dissolved the flesh in acid before flushing the solution down the toilet; he crushed the bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them in the woodland behind the family home.
Six weeks after the murder of Hicks, Dahmer's father and his fiancée returned to his home, where they discovered Jeffrey living alone at the house. That August, Dahmer enrolled at Ohio State University (OSU), hoping to major in business. Dahmer's sole term at OSU was completely unproductive, largely because of his persistent alcohol abuse throughout the majority of the term. He received failing grades in Introduction to Anthropology, Classical Civilizations, and Administrative Science. The only course Dahmer was successful at was Riflery, having received a B- grade. His overall GPA was 0.45/4.0. On one occasion, Lionel paid a surprise visit to his son, only to find his room strewn with empty liquor bottles. Despite his father having paid in advance for the second term, Dahmer dropped out of OSU after just three months.
In January 1979, on his father's urging, Dahmer enlisted in the United States Army, where he trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. On July 13, 1979, he was stationed in Baumholder, West Germany, where he served as a combat medic in 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division. According to published reports, in Dahmer's first year of service, he was an "average or slightly above average" soldier.
Two soldiers attest to having been raped by Dahmer while in the Army. One stated in 2010 that Dahmer had repeatedly raped him over a 17-month period while they were both stationed at Baumholder, while another soldier believes Dahmer drugged and raped him inside an armored personnel carrier in 1979. Owing to Dahmer's alcohol abuse, his performance deteriorated and, in March 1981, he was deemed unsuitable for military service and was later discharged from the Army. He received an honorable discharge, as his superiors did not believe that any problems Dahmer had in the Army would be applicable to civilian life.
On March 24, 1981, Dahmer was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for debriefing and provided with a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he felt he could not return home to face his father, so he opted to travel to Miami Beach, Florida, both because he was "tired of the cold" and in an attempt to live by his own means. In Florida, Dahmer found employment at a delicatessen and rented a room in a nearby motel. Dahmer spent most of his salary on alcohol, and was soon evicted from the motel for non-payment. He initially spent his evenings on the beach as he continued to work at the sandwich shop until phoning his father and asking to return to Ohio in September of the same year.
After his return to Ohio, Dahmer initially resided with his father and stepmother and insisted on being delegated numerous chores to occupy his time while he looked for work. He continued to drink heavily, and two weeks after his return Dahmer was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, for which he was fined $60 and given a suspended 10-day jail sentence. Dahmer's father tried unsuccessfully to wean his son off alcohol. In December 1981, he and Dahmer's stepmother sent him to live with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin. Dahmer's grandmother was the only family member to whom he displayed any affection. They hoped that her influence, plus the change of scenery, might persuade Dahmer to refrain from alcohol, find a job, and live responsibly.
Initially, Dahmer's living arrangements with his grandmother were harmonious: he accompanied her to church; willingly undertook chores; actively sought work; and abided by most of her house rules (although he did continue to drink and smoke). This new influence in his life initially brought results and, in early 1982, Dahmer found employment as a phlebotomist at the Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center. He held this job for a total of 10 months before being laid off. Dahmer remained unemployed for over two years, during which he lived upon whatever money his grandmother gave him.
Shortly before losing his job, Dahmer was arrested for indecent exposure. On August 7, 1982, at Wisconsin State Fair Park, he was observed to expose himself to a crowd of 25 women and children. For this incident, he was convicted and fined $50 plus court costs.
In January 1985, Dahmer was hired as a mixer at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, where he worked from 11 p.m to 7 a.m. six nights per week, with Saturday evenings off. Shortly after Dahmer found this employment, an incident occurred in which he was propositioned by another man while sitting reading in the West Allis Public Library. The stranger threw Dahmer a note offering to perform fellatio upon him. Although Dahmer did not respond to this proposition, the incident stirred in his mind the fantasies of control and dominance he had developed as a teenager, and he began to familiarize himself with Milwaukee's gay bars, gay bathhouses and bookstores. He is also known to have stolen a male mannequin from a store, which he briefly used for sexual stimulation, until his grandmother discovered the item stowed in a closet and demanded that he discard it.
By late 1985, Dahmer had begun to regularly frequent the bathhouses, which he later described as being "relaxing places", but during his sexual encounters, he became frustrated at his partners' moving during the sexual act. Following his arrest, he stated: "I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of [as] people". For this reason, beginning in June 1986, he administered sleeping pills to his partners, giving them liquor laced with the sedatives, then raping their unconscious bodies. After approximately 12 such instances, the bathhouses' administration revoked Dahmer's membership, and he began to use hotel rooms to continue this practice.
Shortly after his membership of the bathhouses was revoked, Dahmer read a report in a newspaper regarding the upcoming funeral of an 18-year-old male. He conceived the idea of stealing the freshly interred corpse and taking it home. According to Dahmer, he attempted to dig the coffin from the ground, but found the soil too hard, before abandoning the plan.
In August 1986, Dahmer was arrested for masturbating in front of two 12-year-old boys as he stood close to the Kinnickinnic River. He initially admitted the offense and was again charged with indecent exposure, but quickly changed his story and claimed he had merely been urinating, unaware that there were witnesses. The charge was changed to disorderly conduct and, on March 10, 1987, Dahmer was sentenced to one year of probation, with additional instructions he was to undergo counseling.
On November 20, 1987, Dahmer—at the time residing with his grandmother in West Allis—encountered a 25-year-old man from Ontonagon, Michigan, named Steven Tuomi at a bar and persuaded him to return to the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee, where Dahmer had rented a room for the evening. According to Dahmer, he had no intention of murdering Tuomi, but rather intended to drug and rape him as he lay unconscious. The following morning, however, he awoke to find Tuomi lying beneath him on the bed, his chest "crushed in" and "black and blue" with bruises. Blood was also seeping from the corner of his mouth, and Dahmer's fists and one forearm were extensively bruised. Dahmer stated he had no memory of having killed Tuomi, and later informed investigators that he "could not believe this had happened."
To dispose of Tuomi's body, Dahmer purchased a large suitcase in which he transported the body to his grandmother's residence. There, one week later, he severed the head, arms, and legs from the torso, then filleted the bones from the body before cutting the flesh into pieces small enough to handle. Dahmer then placed the flesh inside plastic garbage bags. He wrapped the bones inside a sheet and pounded them into splinters with a sledgehammer. The entire dismemberment process took Dahmer approximately two hours to complete, and he disposed of all of Tuomi's remains—excluding the severed head—in the trash.
For a total of two weeks following Tuomi's murder, Dahmer retained the victim's head wrapped in a blanket. After two weeks, Dahmer boiled the head in a mixture of Soilex (an alkali-based industrial detergent) and bleach in an effort to retain the skull, which he then used as stimulus for masturbation. Eventually, the skull was rendered too brittle by this bleaching process, so Dahmer pulverized and disposed of it.
Following the murder of Tuomi, Dahmer began to actively seek victims, most of whom he encountered in or close to gay bars, and whom he typically lured to his grandmother's home. There, he drugged them before or shortly after engaging in sexual activity with them. Once he had rendered the victim unconscious with sleeping pills, he killed them by strangulation.
Two months after the Tuomi killing, Dahmer encountered a 14-year-old Native American male prostitute named James Doxtator; Dahmer lured the youth to his home with an offer of $50 to pose for nude pictures. At Dahmer's West Allis residence, the pair engaged in sexual activity before Dahmer drugged Doxtator and strangled him on the floor of the cellar. Dahmer left the body in the cellar for one week before dismembering it in much the same manner as he had with Tuomi. He placed all of Doxtator's remains (excluding the skull) in the trash. He boiled the skull, and initially retained it before pulverizing it.
On March 24, 1988, Dahmer met a 22-year-old bisexual man named Richard Guerrero outside a gay bar called The Phoenix. Dahmer lured Guerrero to his grandmother's residence, although the incentive on this occasion was $50 to simply spend the remainder of the night with him; he then drugged Guerrero with sleeping pills and strangled him with a leather strap, with Dahmer then performing oral sex upon the corpse. Guerrero's body was dismembered within 24 hours of his murder, with the remains again disposed of in the trash and the skull again retained before being pulverized several months later.
On April 23, Dahmer lured another young man to his house; however, after giving the victim a drugged coffee, both he and the victim heard Dahmer's grandmother call, "Is that you, Jeff?" Although Dahmer replied in a manner that led his grandmother to believe he was alone, she did observe that Dahmer was not alone. Because of this, Dahmer opted not to kill this particular victim, instead waiting until he had become unconscious before taking him to the County General Hospital.
In September 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out because of his habit of bringing young men to her house late at night and the foul smells emanating from both the basement and the garage. Dahmer found a one-bedroom apartment on North 25th Street and moved into his new residence on September 25. The following day, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy whom he had lured to his home on the pretext of posing nude for photographs. In January 1989, Dahmer was convicted of second-degree sexual assault and of enticing a child for immoral purposes. Sentencing for the assault was suspended until May 1989. On March 20, Dahmer commenced a 10-day Easter absence from work, during which he moved back into his grandmother's home.
Two months after his conviction and two months prior to his sentencing for the sexual assault, Dahmer murdered his fifth victim. He was a mixed-race 24-year-old aspiring model named Anthony Sears, whom Dahmer met at a gay bar on March 25, 1989. According to Dahmer, on this particular occasion, he was not looking to commit a crime; however, shortly before closing time that evening, Sears "just started talking to me". Dahmer lured Sears to his grandmother's home, where the pair engaged in oral sex before Dahmer drugged and strangled Sears.
The following morning, Dahmer placed the corpse in his grandmother's bathtub, where he decapitated the body before attempting to flay the corpse. He then stripped the flesh from the body and pulverized the bones, which were again disposed of in the trash. According to Dahmer, he found Sears "exceptionally attractive", and Sears was the first victim from whom he permanently retained any body parts: he preserved Sears' head and genitalia in acetone and stored them in his work locker. When he moved to a new address the following year, he took the remains there.
On May 23, 1989, Dahmer was sentenced to five years' probation and one year in the House of Correction, with work release permitted in order that he be able to keep his job; he was also required to register as a sex offender.
Two months before his scheduled release from the work camp, Dahmer was paroled from this regime. (His five years' probation imposed in 1989 began at this point.) On release, Dahmer temporarily moved back to his grandmother's home in West Allis before, in May 1990, moving into the Oxford Apartments, located on North 25th Street in Milwaukee. Although located in a high crime area, the apartment was close to his workplace, was furnished and, at $300 per month inclusive of all bills excluding electricity, was economical.
On May 14, 1990, Dahmer moved out of his grandmother's house and into 924 North 25th Street, Apartment 213, taking Sears' mummified head and genitals with him. Within one week of his moving into his new apartment, Dahmer had killed his sixth victim, Raymond Smith. Smith was a 32-year-old male prostitute whom Dahmer lured to Apartment 213 with the promise of $50 for sex. Inside the apartment, he gave Smith a drink laced with seven sleeping pills and manually strangled him.
The following day, Dahmer purchased a Polaroid camera with which he took several pictures of Smith's body in suggestive positions before dismembering him in the bathroom. He boiled the legs, arms, and pelvis in a steel kettle with Soilex, which allowed him to then rinse the bones in his sink. Dahmer dissolved the remainder of Smith's skeleton—excluding the skull—in a container filled with acid. He later spray-painted Smith's skull, which he placed alongside the skull of Sears upon a black towel inside a metal filing-cabinet.
Approximately one week after the murder of Smith, on or about May 27, Dahmer lured another young man to his apartment. On this occasion, however, Dahmer himself accidentally consumed the drink laden with sedatives intended for consumption by his guest. When he awoke the following day, he discovered his intended victim had stolen several items of his clothing, $300, and a watch. Dahmer never reported this incident to the police, although on May 29, he divulged to his probation officer that he had been robbed.
In June 1990, Dahmer lured a 27-year-old acquaintance named Edward Smith to his apartment. He drugged and strangled Smith. On this occasion, rather than immediately acidifying the skeleton or repeating previous processes of bleaching (which had rendered previous victims' skulls brittle), Dahmer placed Smith's skeleton in his freezer for several months in the hope it would not retain moisture. Freezing the skeleton did not remove moisture, and the skeleton of this victim would be acidified several months later. Dahmer accidentally destroyed the skull when he placed it in the oven to dry—a process that caused the skull to explode. Dahmer himself was to later inform police he had felt "rotten" about Smith's murder as he had been unable to retain any parts of his body.
Less than three months after the murder of Smith, Dahmer encountered a 22-year-old Chicago native named Ernest Miller on the corner of North 27th Street. Miller agreed to accompany Dahmer to his apartment for $50 and further agreed to allow him to listen to his heart and stomach. When Dahmer attempted to perform oral sex upon Miller, he was informed, "That'll cost you extra," whereupon Dahmer gave his intended victim a drink laced with two sleeping pills.
On this occasion, Dahmer had only two sleeping pills to give his victim. Therefore, he killed Miller by slashing his carotid artery with the same knife he used to dissect his victims' bodies. Miller bled to death within minutes. Dahmer then posed the nude body for various suggestive Polaroid photographs before placing the body in his bathtub for dismemberment. Dahmer repeatedly kissed and talked to the severed head while he dismembered the remainder of the body.
Dahmer wrapped Miller's heart, biceps, and portions of flesh from the legs in plastic bags and placed them in the fridge for later consumption. He boiled the remaining flesh and organs into a "jelly-like substance" using Soilex, which again enabled him to rinse the flesh off the skeleton, which he intended to retain. To preserve the skeleton, Dahmer placed the bones in a light bleach solution for 24 hours before allowing them to dry upon a cloth for one week; the severed head was initially placed in the refrigerator before also being stripped of flesh, then painted and coated with enamel.
Three weeks after the murder of Miller, on September 24, Dahmer encountered a 22-year-old man named David Thomas at the Grand Avenue Mall and persuaded him to return to his apartment for a few drinks, with additional money on offer if he would pose for photographs. In his statement to police after his arrest, Dahmer stated that, after giving Thomas a drink laden with sedatives, he did not feel attracted to him, but was afraid to allow him to awake in case he would be angry over having been drugged. Therefore, he strangled him and dismembered the body—intentionally retaining no body parts whatsoever. He photographed the dismemberment process and retained these photographs, which later aided in Thomas's subsequent identification.
Following the murder of Thomas, Dahmer did not kill anyone for almost five months, although on a minimum of five occasions between October 1990 and February 1991, he unsuccessfully attempted to lure men to his apartment. He is also known to have regularly complained of feelings of both anxiety and depression to his probation officer throughout 1990; with frequent references to his sexuality, his solitary lifestyle, and financial difficulties. On several occasions, Dahmer is also known to have referred to harboring suicidal thoughts.
In February 1991, Dahmer observed a 17-year-old named Curtis Straughter standing at a bus stop near Marquette University. According to Dahmer, he lured Straughter into his apartment with an offer of money for posing for nude photos, with the added incentive of sexual intercourse. Dahmer drugged and strangled Straughter with a leather strap, then dismembered him, with Dahmer retaining the youth's skull, hands, and genitals and photographing each stage of the dismemberment process.
Less than two months later, on April 7, Dahmer encountered a 19-year-old named Errol Lindsey walking to get a key cut. Lindsey was heterosexual. Dahmer lured Lindsey to his apartment, where he drugged him, drilled a hole in his skull and poured hydrochloric acid into it. According to Dahmer, Lindsey awoke after this experiment (which Dahmer had conceived in the hope of inducing a permanent, unresistant, submissive state), saying: "I have a headache. What time is it?" In response to this, Dahmer again drugged Lindsey, then strangled him. He decapitated Lindsey and retained his skull; he then flayed Lindsey's body, placing the skin in a solution of cold water and salt for several weeks in the hope of permanently retaining it. Reluctantly, he disposed of Lindsey's skin when he noted it had become too frayed and brittle.
By 1991, fellow residents of the Oxford Apartments had repeatedly complained to the building's manager, Sopa Princewill, of the foul smells emanating from Apartment 213, in addition to the sounds of falling objects and the occasional sound of a chainsaw. Princewill did contact Dahmer in response to these complaints on several occasions, although he initially excused the odors emanating from his apartment as being caused by his freezer breaking, causing the contents to become "spoiled". On later occasions, he informed Princewill that the reason for the resurgence of the odor was that several of his tropical fish had recently died, and that he would take care of the matter.
On the afternoon of May 26, 1991, Dahmer encountered a 14-year-old named Konerak Sinthasomphone on Wisconsin Avenue. By coincidence, Sinthasomphone was the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988. He approached the youth with an offer of money to accompany him to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. According to Dahmer, Sinthasomphone was initially reluctant to the proposal, before changing his mind and accompanying Dahmer to his apartment, where the youth posed for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer drugged him into unconsciousness and performed oral sex on him.
On this occasion, Dahmer drilled a single hole into Sinthasomphone's skull, through which he injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe. Before Sinthasomphone fell unconscious, Dahmer led the boy into his bedroom, where the body of 31-year-old Tony Hughes, whom Dahmer had killed three days earlier, lay naked on the floor. According to Dahmer, he "believed [that Sinthasomphone] saw this body," yet did not react to seeing the bloated corpse—likely because of the effects of the sleeping pills he had ingested and the hydrochloric acid Dahmer had injected through his skull. Sinthasomphone soon became unconscious, whereupon Dahmer drank several beers while lying alongside Sinthasomphone before leaving his apartment to drink at a bar, then purchase more alcohol.
In the early morning hours of May 27, Dahmer returned toward his apartment to discover Sinthasomphone sitting outside naked on the corner of 25th and State, talking in Lao, with three distressed young women standing near him. Dahmer approached the trio and explained to the women that Sinthasomphone (whom he referred to by the alias John Hmung) was his friend, and attempted to lead him to his apartment by the arm. The three women dissuaded Dahmer, explaining they had phoned 9-1-1.
Upon the arrival of two Milwaukee police officers, John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, Dahmer's demeanor relaxed: he informed the officers that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, that he had drunk too much following a quarrel, and that he frequently behaved in this manner when intoxicated. The three women were exasperated, and when one of the trio attempted to indicate to one of the officers that Sinthasomphone was bleeding from his buttocks and that he had seemingly struggled against Dahmer's attempts to walk him to his apartment, the officer harshly informed her to "butt out," "shut the hell up" and to not interfere, adding the incident was "domestic."
Against the protests of the three women, the officers simply covered Sinthasomphone with a towel and walked him to Dahmer's apartment where, in an effort to verify his claim that he and Sinthasomphone were lovers, Dahmer showed the officers the two semi-nude Polaroid pictures he had taken of the youth the previous evening. The officers later reported having noted a strange scent reminiscent of excrement inside the apartment (this odor emanated from the decomposing body of Hughes). Dahmer stated that to investigate this, one officer simply "peeked his head around the bedroom but really didn't take a good look." The officers then left, with a departing remark that Dahmer "take good care" of Sinthasomphone.
Had Balcerzak and Gabrish conducted a background check on Dahmer, it would have revealed that he was a convicted child molester under probation. Upon the departure of the two officers from his apartment, Dahmer again injected hydrochloric acid into Sinthasomphone's brain. On this second occasion, the injection proved fatal. The following day, May 28, Dahmer took a day's leave from work to devote himself to the dismemberment of the bodies of Sinthasomphone and Hughes. He retained both victims' skulls.
On June 30, Dahmer traveled to Chicago, where he encountered a 20-year-old named Matt Turner at a bus station. Turner accepted Dahmer's offer to travel to Milwaukee for a professional photo shoot. At the apartment, Dahmer drugged, strangled and dismembered Turner and placed his head and internal organs in separate plastic bags in the freezer. Turner was not reported missing. Five days later, on July 5, Dahmer lured 23-year-old Jeremiah Weinberger from a Chicago bar to his apartment on the promise of spending the weekend with him. He drugged Weinberger and twice injected boiling water through his skull, sending him into a coma from which he died two days later.
On July 15, Dahmer encountered 24-year-old Oliver Lacy at the corner of 27th and Kilbourn. Lacy agreed to Dahmer's ruse of posing nude for photographs and accompanied him to his apartment, where the pair engaged in tentative sexual activity before Dahmer drugged Lacy. On this occasion, Dahmer intended to prolong the time he spent with Lacy while alive. After unsuccessfully attempting to render Lacy unconscious with chloroform, he phoned his workplace to request a day's absence; this was granted, although the next day, he was suspended.
After strangling Lacy, Dahmer had sex with the corpse before dismembering him. He placed Lacy's head and heart in the refrigerator and his skeleton in the freezer. Four days later, on July 19, Dahmer received word that he was fired. Upon receipt of this news, Dahmer lured 25-year-old Joseph Bradehoft to his apartment. Bradehoft was strangled and left lying on Dahmer's bed covered with a sheet for two days. On July 21, Dahmer removed these sheets to find the head covered in maggots, whereupon he decapitated the body, cleaned the head and placed it in the refrigerator. He later acidified Bradehoft's torso along with those of two other victims killed within the previous month.
On July 22, 1991, Dahmer approached three men with an offer of $100 to accompany him to his apartment to pose for nude photographs, drink beer and simply keep him company. One of the trio, 32-year-old Tracy Edwards, agreed to accompany him to his apartment. Upon entering Dahmer's apartment, Edwards noted a foul odor and several boxes of hydrochloric acid on the floor, which Dahmer claimed to use for cleaning bricks. After some minor conversation, Edwards responded to Dahmer's request to turn his head and view his tropical fish, whereupon Dahmer placed a handcuff upon his wrist. When Edwards asked, "What's happening?" Dahmer unsuccessfully attempted to cuff his wrists together, then told Edwards to accompany him to the bedroom to pose for nude pictures. While inside the bedroom, Edwards noted nude male posters on the wall and that a videotape of "The Exorcist III" was playing; he also noted a blue 57-gallon drum in the corner, from which a strong odor emanated.
Dahmer then brandished a knife and informed Edwards he intended to take nude pictures of him. In an attempt to appease Dahmer, Edwards unbuttoned his shirt, saying he would allow him to do so if he would remove the handcuffs and put the knife away. In response to this promise, Dahmer simply turned his attention towards the TV. Edwards observed Dahmer rocking back and forth and chanting before turning his attention back to him. He placed his head on Edwards' chest, listened to his heartbeat and, with the knife pressed against his intended victim, informed Edwards he intended to eat his heart.
In continuous attempts to prevent Dahmer from attacking him, Edwards repeated that he was Dahmer's friend and that he was not going to run away. Edwards had decided he was going to either jump from a window or run through the unlocked front door upon the next available opportunity. When Edwards next stated he needed to use the bathroom, he asked if they could sit with a beer in the living room, where there was air conditioning. Dahmer consented, and the pair walked to the living room when Edwards exited the bathroom. Inside the living room, Edwards waited until he observed Dahmer have a momentary lapse of concentration before requesting to use the bathroom again. When Edwards rose from the couch, he noted Dahmer was not holding the handcuffs, whereupon Edwards punched him in the face, knocking Dahmer off balance, and ran out the front door.
At 11:30 p.m. on July 22, Edwards flagged down two Milwaukee police officers, Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller, at the corner of North 25th Street. The officers noted Edwards had a handcuff attached to his wrist, whereupon he explained to the officers that a "freak" had placed the handcuffs upon him and asked if the police could remove them. When the officers' handcuff keys failed to fit the brand of handcuffs, Edwards agreed to accompany the officers to the apartment where, Edwards stated, he had spent the previous five hours before escaping.
When the officers and Edwards arrived at Apartment 213, Dahmer invited the trio inside and acknowledged he had indeed placed the handcuffs upon Edwards, although he offered no explanation as to why he had done so. At this point, Edwards divulged to the officers that Dahmer had also brandished a large knife upon him and that this had happened in the bedroom. Dahmer made no comment to this revelation, indicating to one of the officers, Mueller, that the key to the handcuffs was in his bedside dresser. As Mueller entered the bedroom, Dahmer attempted to pass Mueller to himself retrieve the key, whereupon the second officer present, Rauth, informed him to "back off".
In the bedroom, Mueller noted there was indeed a large knife beneath the bed. He also saw an open drawer which, upon closer inspection, contained scores of Polaroid pictures—many of which were of human bodies in various stages of dismemberment. Mueller noted the decor indicated they had been taken in the very apartment in which they were standing. Mueller walked into the living room to show them to his partner, uttering the words, "These are for real."
When Dahmer saw that Mueller was holding several of his Polaroids, he fought with the officers in an effort to resist arrest. The officers quickly overpowered him, cuffed his hands behind his back, and called a second squad car for backup. At this point, Mueller opened the refrigerator to reveal the freshly severed head of a black male on the bottom shelf. As Dahmer lay pinned on the floor beneath Rauth, he turned his head towards the officers and muttered the words: "For what I did I should be dead."
A more detailed search of the apartment, conducted by the Milwaukee police's Criminal Investigation Bureau, revealed a total of four severed heads in Dahmer's kitchen. A total of seven skulls—some painted, some bleached—were found in Dahmer's bedroom and inside a closet. In addition, investigators discovered collected blood drippings upon a tray at the bottom of Dahmer's refrigerator, plus two human hearts and a portion of arm muscle, each wrapped inside plastic bags upon the shelves. In Dahmer's freezer, investigators discovered an entire torso, plus a bag of human organs and flesh stuck to the ice at the bottom.
Elsewhere in Apartment 213, investigators discovered two entire skeletons, a pair of severed hands, two severed and preserved penises, a mummified scalp and, in the 57-gallon drum, three further dismembered torsos dissolving in the acid solution. A total of 74 Polaroid pictures detailing the dismemberment of Dahmer's victims were found. In reference to the recovery of body parts and artifacts at 924 North 25th Street, the chief medical examiner later stated: "It was more like dismantling someone's museum than an actual crime scene."
Beginning in the early hours of July 23, 1991, Dahmer was questioned by Detective Patrick Kennedy as to the murders he had committed and the evidence found at his apartment. Over the following two weeks, Kennedy and, later, Detective Patrick Murphy conducted numerous interviews with Dahmer which, when combined, totalled over 60 hours. Dahmer waived his right to have a lawyer present throughout his interrogations, adding he wished to confess all as he had "created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it." He readily admitted to having murdered 16 young men in Wisconsin since 1987, with one further victim—Steven Hicks—killed in Ohio back in 1978.
Most of Dahmer's victims had been rendered unconscious prior to their murder, although some had died as a result of having acid or boiling water injected into their brain. As he had no memory of the murder of Tuomi, he was unsure whether he was unconscious when beaten to death, although he did concede it was possible that his viewing the exposed chest of Tuomi while in a drunken stupor may have led him to unsuccessfully attempt to tear Tuomi's heart from his chest. Almost all the murders Dahmer committed after moving into the Oxford Apartments had involved a ritual of posing the victims' bodies in suggestive positions—typically with the chest thrust outwards—prior to dismemberment.
Dahmer readily admitted to engaging in necrophilia with several of his victims' bodies, including performing sexual acts with their viscera as he dismembered their bodies in his bathtub. Having noted that much of the blood pooled inside his victims' chest after death, Dahmer first removed their internal organs, then suspended the torso so the blood drained into his bathtub, before dicing any organs he did not wish to retain and paring the flesh from the body. The bones he wished to dispose of were pulverized or acidified, with Soilex and bleach solutions used to aid in the preservation of the skeletons and skulls he wished to keep. In addition, Dahmer confessed to having consumed the hearts, livers, biceps, and portions of thighs of several victims killed within the previous year.
Describing the increase in his rate of killing in the two months prior to his arrest, Dahmer stated he had been "completely swept along" with his compulsion to kill, adding: "It was an incessant and never-ending desire to be with someone at whatever cost. Someone good looking, really nice looking. It just filled my thoughts all day long." When asked as to why he had preserved a total of seven skulls and the entire skeletons of two victims, Dahmer stated he had been in the process of constructing a private altar of victims' skulls which he had intended to display on the black table located in his living room and upon which he had photographed the bodies of many of his victims.
This display of skulls was to be adorned at each side with the complete skeletons of Miller and Lacy. The four severed heads found in his kitchen were to be removed of all flesh and used in this altar, as was the skull of at least one future victim. Incense sticks were to be placed at each end of the black table, above which Dahmer intended to place a large blue lamp with extending blue globe lights. The entire construction was to be placed before a window covered with a black, opaque shower curtain, in front of which Dahmer intended to sit in a black leather chair. When asked in a November 18, 1991 interview who the altar was dedicated to, Dahmer replied: "Myself ... It was a place where I could feel at home." He further described his intended altar as a "place for meditation," from where he believed he could draw a sense of power, adding: "If this [his arrest] had happened six months later, that's what they would have found."
On July 25, 1991, Dahmer was charged with four counts of first-degree murder. By August 22, he had been charged with a further 11 murders committed in Wisconsin. On September 14, investigators in Ohio, having uncovered hundreds of bone fragments in woodland behind the address in which Dahmer had confessed to killing his first victim, formally identified two molars and a vertebra with X-ray records of Hicks. Three days later, Dahmer was charged by authorities in Ohio with Hicks's murder.
Dahmer was not charged with the attempted murder of Edwards, nor with the murder of Tuomi. He was not charged with Tuomi's murder because the Milwaukee County District Attorney only brought charges where murder could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt and Dahmer had no memory of actually committing this particular murder, for which no physical evidence of the crime existed. At a scheduled preliminary hearing on January 13, 1992, Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane to 15 counts of murder.
Dahmer's trial began on January 30, 1992. He was tried in Milwaukee for the 15 counts of first-degree murder before Judge Laurence Gram. By pleading guilty on January 13 to the charges brought against him, Dahmer had waived his rights to an initial trial to establish guilt (as defined in Wisconsin law). The issue debated by opposing counsels at Dahmer's trial was to determine whether he suffered from either a mental or a personality disorder: the prosecution claiming that any disorders did not deprive Dahmer of the ability to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to deprive him of the ability to resist his impulses; the defense arguing that Dahmer suffered from a mental disease and was driven by obsessions and impulses he was unable to control.
Defense experts argued that Dahmer was insane due to his necrophilic drive – his compulsion to have sexual encounters with corpses. Defense expert Dr. Fred Berlin testified that Dahmer was unable to conform his conduct at the time that he committed the crimes because he was suffering from paraphilia or, more specifically, necrophilia. Dr. Judith Becker, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, was the second expert witness for the defense; Becker also diagnosed Dahmer with necrophilia. The final defense expert to testify, forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carl Wahlstrom, diagnosed Dahmer with necrophilia, borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and a psychotic disorder.
The prosecution rejected the defense's argument that Dahmer was insane. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Phillip Resnick testified that Dahmer did not suffer from primary necrophilia because he preferred live sexual partners as evidenced by his efforts to create unresistant, submissive sexual partners devoid of rational thought and to whose needs he did not have to cater. Another prosecution expert to testify, Dr. Fred Fosdel, testified to his belief that Dahmer was without mental disease or defect at the time he committed the murders. He described Dahmer as a calculating and cunning individual, able to differentiate between right and wrong, with the ability to control his actions. Although Fosdel did state his belief that Dahmer suffered from paraphilia, his conclusion was that Dahmer was not a sadist.
The final witness to appear for the prosecution, forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz, began his testimony on February 12. Dietz testified that he did not believe Dahmer to be suffering from any mental disease or defect at the time that he committed the crimes, stating: "Dahmer went to great lengths to be alone with his victim and to have no witnesses." He explained that there was ample evidence that Dahmer prepared in advance for each murder, therefore, his crimes were not impulsive. Although Dietz did concede any acquisition of a paraphilia was not a matter of personal choice, he also stated his belief that Dahmer's habit of becoming intoxicated prior to committing each of the murders was significant, stating: "If he had a compulsion to kill, he would not have to drink alcohol. He had to drink alcohol to overcome his inhibition, to do the crime which he would rather not do."
Dietz also noted that Dahmer strongly identified with evil and corrupt characters from both "The Exorcist III" and "Return of the Jedi"; particularly the level of power held by these characters. Expounding on the significance of these movies on Dahmer's psyche and many of the murders committed at the Oxford Apartments, Dietz explained that Dahmer occasionally viewed scenes from these films before searching for a victim. Dietz diagnosed Dahmer with substance use disorder, paraphilia, and schizotypal personality disorder.
Two court-appointed mental health professionals—testifying independently of either prosecution or defense—were forensic psychiatrist George Palermo and clinical psychologist Samuel Friedman. Palermo stated that the murders were the result of a "pent-up aggression within himself [Dahmer]. He killed those men because he wanted to kill the source of his homosexual attraction to them. In killing them, he killed what he hated in himself." Palermo concluded that Dahmer was a sexual sadist with antisocial personality disorder, but legally sane.
Friedman testified that it was a longing for companionship that caused Dahmer to kill. He stated, "Mr. Dahmer is not psychotic." He spoke kindly of Dahmer, describing him as, "Amiable, pleasant to be with, courteous, with a sense of humor, conventionally handsome, and charming in manner. He was, and still is, a bright young man." He diagnosed Dahmer with a personality disorder not otherwise specified featuring borderline, obsessive-compulsive, and sadistic traits.
The trial lasted two weeks. On February 14, both counsels delivered their closing arguments to the jury. Each counsel was allowed to speak for two hours. Defense attorney Gerald Boyle argued first. Repeatedly harking to the testimony of the mental health professionals—almost all of whom had agreed Dahmer was suffering from a mental disease—Boyle argued that Dahmer's compulsive killings had been a result of "a sickness he discovered, not chose." Boyle portrayed Dahmer as a desperately lonely and profoundly sick individual "so out of control he could not conform his conduct any more."
Following the defense counsel's 75-minute closing argument, Michael McCann delivered his closing argument for the prosecution, describing Dahmer as a sane man, in full control of his actions, who simply strove to avoid detection. McCann argued that the act of murder was committed in hostility, anger, resentment, frustration, or hatred, and that the 15 victims for whose murder he was tried "died merely to afford Dahmer a period of sexual pleasure." McCann further argued that by pleading guilty but insane to the charges, Dahmer was seeking to escape responsibility for his crimes.
On February 15, the court reconvened to hear the verdict: Dahmer was ruled to be sane and not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each of the 15 murders for which he was tried, although in each count, two of the 12 jurors signified their dissent. On the first two counts, Dahmer was sentenced to life imprisonment plus ten years, with the remaining 13 counts carrying a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 70 years. The death penalty was not an option for Judge Gram to consider at the penalty phase, as Wisconsin had abolished capital punishment in 1853.
Upon hearing of Dahmer's sentencing, his father Lionel and stepmother Shari requested to be allowed a ten-minute private meeting with their son before he was transferred to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, to begin his sentence. This request was granted and the trio exchanged hugs and well-wishes before Dahmer was escorted away.
Three months after his conviction in Milwaukee, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio to be tried for the murder of his first victim, Steven Hicks. In a court hearing lasting just 45 minutes, Dahmer again pleaded guilty to the charges and was sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment on May 1, 1992.
Upon sentencing, Dahmer was transferred to the Columbia Correctional Institution. For the first year of his incarceration, Dahmer was placed in solitary confinement due to concerns for his physical safety should he come into contact with fellow inmates. With Dahmer's consent, after one year in solitary confinement, he was transferred to a less secure unit, where he was assigned a two-hour daily work detail cleaning the toilet block.
Shortly after completing his lengthy confessions in 1991, Dahmer had requested to Detective Murphy that he be given a copy of the Bible. This request was granted and Dahmer gradually devoted himself to Christianity and became a born-again Christian. On his father's urging, he also read creationist books from the Institute for Creation Research. In May 1994, Dahmer was baptized by Roy Ratcliff, a minister in the Church of Christ and a graduate of Oklahoma Christian University, in the prison whirlpool.
Following his baptism, Ratcliff visited Dahmer on a weekly basis up until November 1994. Dahmer and Ratcliff regularly discussed the prospect of death, and Dahmer questioned whether he was sinning against God by continuing to live. Referring to his crimes in a 1994 interview with Stone Phillips on "Dateline NBC", Dahmer had stated: "If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway."
In July 1994, a fellow inmate, Osvaldo Durruthy, attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor embedded in a toothbrush as Dahmer returned to his cell from Ratcliff's weekly church service conducted in the prison chapel. Dahmer received superficial wounds and was not seriously hurt in this incident. According to Dahmer's family, he had long been ready to die, and accepted any punishment which he might endure in prison. In addition to his father and stepmother maintaining regular contact, Dahmer's mother, Joyce, also maintained regular contact with her son (although prior to his arrest, the two had not seen each other since Christmas 1983). Joyce related that in her weekly phone calls, whenever she expressed concerns for her son's physical well-being, Dahmer responded with comments to the effect of: "It doesn't matter, Mom. I don't care if something happens to me."
On the morning of November 28, 1994, Dahmer left his cell to conduct his assigned work detail. Accompanying him were two fellow inmates: Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The trio were left unsupervised in the showers of the prison gym for approximately 20 minutes. At approximately 8:10 a.m. Dahmer was discovered on the floor of the bathrooms of the gym suffering from extreme head and facial wounds; he had been severely bludgeoned about the head and face with a 20-inch (51 cm) metal bar. His head had also been repeatedly struck against the wall in the assault. Although Dahmer was still alive and was rushed to a nearby hospital, he was pronounced dead one hour later. Anderson had also been beaten with the same instrument, and died two days later from his wounds.
Scarver, who was serving a life sentence for a murder committed in 1990, informed authorities he had first attacked Dahmer with the metal bar as he (Dahmer) was cleaning a staff locker room, before attacking Anderson as he (Anderson) cleaned an inmate locker room. According to Scarver, Dahmer did not yell or make any noise as he was attacked. Immediately after attacking both men, Scarver, who was thought to be schizophrenic, returned to his cell and informed a prison guard: "God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead." Scarver was adamant he had not planned the attacks in advance, although he later divulged to investigators he had concealed the 20-inch iron bar used to kill both men in his clothing shortly before the killings.
Upon learning of his death, Dahmer's mother Joyce responded angrily to the media: "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" The response of the families of Dahmer's victims was mixed, although it appears most were pleased with his death. The district attorney who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned against turning Scarver into a folk hero, noting that Dahmer's death was still murder. On May 15, 1995, Scarver was sentenced to two additional terms of life imprisonment for the murders of Dahmer and Anderson.
Although Scarver had confessed in 1994 to having concealed the weapon used to kill Dahmer and Anderson in his clothing on the morning of the murders, in 2015, he publicly stated the murders of Dahmer and Anderson had resulted from a confrontation in which one of the two men had poked him (Scarver) in the back as the three had begun their assigned work detail. In this renewed account of events, Scarver claimed that the two had laughed at him when he had turned around in response before Dahmer and Anderson each walked to separate rooms to begin their cleaning duty, with Scarver following Dahmer toward the staff locker room.
Scarver alleges that immediately before murdering Dahmer, he had cornered him, presented a newspaper article detailing Dahmer's crimes, and demanded that Dahmer answer whether the account was true. Scarver further alleged he had been revolted by Dahmer's crimes and that Dahmer had been openly unrepentant; that Dahmer taunted prison employees and fellow inmates by shaping his prison food into imitations of severed limbs, complete with ketchup to simulate blood spattering; and that prison staff, knowing of Scarver's hatred for Dahmer, had deliberately left the two men unsupervised so that he could kill him. Furthermore, Scarver stated that Dahmer was so disliked by fellow inmates that he required a personal escort of at least one guard whenever he was out of his cell to prevent inmates from attacking him.
Dahmer had stated in his will that he wished for no services to be conducted and that he wished to be cremated. In September 1995, Dahmer's body was cremated, and his ashes divided between his parents.
On August 5, 1991, as the nature and scale of Dahmer's crimes initially came to light, a candlelight vigil to celebrate and heal the Milwaukee community was attended by more than 400 people. Present at the vigil were community leaders, gay rights activists, and family members of several of Dahmer's victims. Organizers stated the purpose of the vigil was to enable Milwaukeeans to "share their feelings of pain and anger over what happened".
The Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street, where Dahmer had killed twelve of his victims, were demolished in November 1992. The site is now a vacant lot. Alternate plans to convert the site into either a memorial garden, a playground, or to reconstruct new housing have failed to materialize.
Dahmer's estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer representing eight of the families, announced a planned auction of Dahmer's estate. Although victims' relatives stated the motivation was not greed, the announcement sparked controversy. A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride, was quickly established in an effort to raise the funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's possessions. The group pledged $407,225, including a $100,000 gift by Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber, for purchase of Dahmer's estate; five of the eight families represented by Jacobson agreed to the terms, and Dahmer's possessions were subsequently destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.
Lionel Dahmer is retired and now lives with his second wife, Shari. Both have refused to change their surname and have professed their love of Dahmer in spite of his crimes. In 1994, Lionel published a book, "A Father's Story," and donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims' families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel and Shari, although three families subsequently sued Lionel: two for using their names in the book without obtaining prior consent; and a third family—that of Steven Hicks—filing a wrongful death suit against Lionel, Shari, and former wife Joyce, citing parental negligence as the cause for the claim.
Joyce Flint died of cancer in November 2000. Prior to her death, she had attempted suicide on at least one occasion. Dahmer's younger brother, David, changed his surname and lives in anonymity.
Jeffrey Dahmer is known to have killed 17 young men between 1978 and 1991. Of these victims, 12 were killed in his North 25th Street apartment. Three further victims were murdered and dismembered at his grandmother's West Allis residence, with his first and second victims being murdered at his parents' home in Ohio, and at the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee respectively. A total of 14 of Dahmer's victims were from various ethnic minority backgrounds, with nine victims being black. Dahmer was adamant that the race of his victims was incidental to him and that it was the body form of a potential victim that attracted his attention.
Most of Dahmer's victims were killed by strangulation after being drugged with sedatives, although his first victim was killed by a combination of bludgeoning and strangulation and his second victim was battered to death, with one further victim killed in 1990, Ernest Miller, dying of a combination of shock and blood loss due to his carotid artery being cut. Many of Dahmer's victims killed in 1991 had holes bored into their skulls through which Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid or, later, boiling water, directly into the brain in an attempt to induce a permanent, submissive, unresistant state. On at least three occasions, this proved fatal although on none of these occasions was this Dahmer's intention. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16218 |
Joseph Cotten
Joseph Cheshire Cotten Jr. (May 15, 1905 – February 6, 1994) was an American film, stage, radio and television actor. Cotten achieved prominence on Broadway, starring in the original stage productions of "The Philadelphia Story" and "Sabrina Fair".
He first gained worldwide fame in three Orson Welles films: "Citizen Kane" (1941), "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942), and "Journey into Fear" (1943), for which Cotten was also credited with the screenplay. He went on to become one of the leading Hollywood actors of the 1940s, appearing in films such as "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943), "Love Letters" (1945), "Duel in the Sun" (1946), "Portrait of Jennie" (1948), "The Third Man" (1949) and "Niagara" (1953). One of his final films was Michael Cimino's "Heaven's Gate" (1980).
Joseph Cotten was born in 1905 in Petersburg, Virginia, the first of three boys born for Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster, and Sally Willson Cotten. He grew up in the Tidewater region and showed an aptitude for drama and a gift for storytelling.
In 1923, when Cotten was 18, his family arranged for him to receive private lessons at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington, D.C., and underwrote his expenses.
Cotten earned spending money playing professional football on Sundays, for $25 a quarter. After graduation, he earned enough money as a lifeguard at Wilcox Lake to pay back his family's loan, with interest.
He moved to Miami in 1925 and worked as an advertising salesman for "The Miami Herald" at $35 a week. He started performing at the Miami Civic Theatre, and worked there for five years, also reviewing the shows for the "Herald".
Cotten moved to New York and went to work for David Belasco as an assistant stage manager. He understudied Melvyn Douglas in "Tonight or Never" then took over Douglas' role for the Copley Theatre in Boston, where he worked on over 30 plays.
Cotten struggled to find work in the depression so turned to modeling and acting in industrial films. He also performed on radio. Cotten made his Broadway debut in 1932 in "Absent Friends" which ran for 88 performances.
He followed it with "Jezebel" (1933), staged by Katherine Cornell and Guthrie McClintic, which only had a short run.
He was in "Loose Moments" which ran for 8 performances.
In 1934, Cotten met and became friends with Orson Welles, a fellow cast member on CBS Radio's "The American School of the Air". Welles regarded Cotten as a brilliant comic actor, and gave him the starring role in his Federal Theatre Project farce, " Horse Eats Hat" (September 26 – December 5, 1936). Cotten was sure that "Horse Eats Hat" won him the notice of his future Broadway co-star, Katharine Hepburn.
Cotten said Welles later told him "You're very lucky to be tall and thin and have curly hair. You can also move about the stage without running into the furniture. But these are fringe assets, and I'm afraid you'll never make it as an actor. But as a star, I think you well might hit the jackpot."
In 1937, Cotten became an inaugural member of Welles's Mercury Theatre company, starring in its Broadway productions "Caesar" as Publius; it ran for 157 performances.
He followed it with "The Shoemaker's Holiday" (1938) and "Danton's Death" (1938) for Welles. Cotten also performed in radio dramas presented on "The Mercury Theatre on the Air" and "The Campbell Playhouse".
Cotten made his film debut in the Welles-directed short, "Too Much Johnson", a comedy that was intended to complement the aborted 1938 Mercury stage production of William Gillette's 1890 play. The film was never screened in public and was lost until 2013.
Cotten returned to Broadway in 1939, creating the role of C. K. Dexter Haven opposite Katharine Hepburn's Tracy Lord in the original production of Philip Barry's "The Philadelphia Story". The play ran for 417 performances at the Shubert Theatre, and in the months before its extensive national tour a film version was to be made by MGM. Cotten went to Hollywood, but discovered there that his stage success in "The Philadelphia Story" translated to, in the words of his agent Leland Hayward, "spending a solid year creating the Cary Grant role." Hayward suggested that they call Cotten's good pal, Orson Welles. "He's been making big waves out here," Hayward said. "Maybe nobody in Hollywood ever heard of the Shubert Theatre in New York, but everybody certainly knows about the Mercury Theatre in New York."
After the success of Welles's "War of the Worlds" 1938 Halloween radio broadcast, Welles gained a unique contract with RKO Pictures. The two-picture deal promised full creative control for the young director below an agreed budget limit, and Welles's intention was to feature the Mercury Players in his productions. Shooting had still not begun on a Welles film after a year, but after a meeting with writer Herman J. Mankiewicz Welles had a suitable project.
In mid-1940, filming began on "Citizen Kane", portraying the life of a press magnate (played by Welles) who starts out as an idealist but eventually turns into a corrupt, lonely old man. The film featured Cotten prominently in the role of Kane's best friend Jedediah Leland, eventually a drama critic for one of Kane's papers.
When released on May 1, 1941, "Citizen Kane" — based in part on the life of William Randolph Hearst — did not do much business at theaters; Hearst owned numerous major newspapers, and forbade them to carry advertisements for the film. Nominated for nine Academy Awards in 1942, the film won only for Best Screenplay, for Mankiewicz and Welles. "Citizen Kane" launched the film careers of the Mercury Players, including Agnes Moorehead (who played Kane's mother), Ruth Warrick (Kane's first wife), and Ray Collins (Kane's political opponent). However, Cotten was the only one of the four to find major success as a lead in Hollywood outside of "Citizen Kane"; Moorehead and Collins became successful character film actors and Warrick spent decades in a career in daytime television.
Alexander Korda then hired Cotten to play Merle Oberon's leading man in "Lydia" (1941). "I didn't care about the movies, really," Cotten said later. "I was tall. I had curly hair. I could talk. It was easy to do."
Cotten starred in Welles's adaptation and production of "The Magnificent Ambersons" (1942). After the commercial disappointment of "Citizen Kane", RKO was apprehensive about the new film, and after poor preview responses, cut it by nearly an hour before its release. Though at points the film appeared disjointed, it was well received by critics. Despite the critical accolades Cotten received for his performance, he was again snubbed by the Academy.
Cotten was cast in the Nazi-related thriller "Journey into Fear" (1943) based on the novel by Eric Ambler. It was originally scripted by Ben Hecht but Welles, who was supervising, disliked it, and he rewrote it with Cotten. Released by RKO, the Mercury production was directed by Norman Foster. It was a collaborative effort due to the difficulties shooting the film and the pressures related to Welles's imminent departure to South America to begin work on "It's All True".
Alfred Hitchcock hired Cotten to play a charming serial killer in "Shadow of a Doubt" (1943). It was made for Universal Pictures, who for whom Cotten then appeared in "Hers to Hold" (1943), as Deanna Durbin's leading man.
After Welles's return he and Cotten co-produced "The Mercury Wonder Show" for members of the U.S. armed services. Opening August 3, 1943, the all-star magic and variety show was presented in a tent at 9000 Cahuenga Boulevard in Hollywood. Featured were Welles (Orson the Magnificent), Cotten (Jo-Jo the Great), Rita Hayworth (forced to quit by Columbia Pictures boss Harry Cohn and replaced by Marlene Dietrich), Agnes Moorehead (Calliope Aggie) and others. Tickets were free to servicemen, and more than 48,000 of them had seen show by September 1943.
In late 1943, Cotten visited Welles's office and said that producer David O. Selznick wanted to make two or three films with him, but that he wanted him under his own contract. Welles then tore up Cotten's contract with Mercury Productions, saying, "He can do more for you than I can. Good luck!" Cotten signed a long term deal with Selznick.
Selznick loaned out Cotten and Ingrid Bergman to MGM for the thriller "Gaslight" (1944) which was a major hit. Selznick then put Cotten in a wartime drama "Since You Went Away" (1944) alongside Claudette Colbert, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple; it was another major success.
Selznick followed this up by teaming Cotten with Ginger Rogers and Temple in "I'll Be Seeing You" (1945), another melodrama. Hal Wallis borrowed Cotten and Jones to make "Love Letters" (1945). Exhibitors voted him the 17th most popular star in the United States in 1945.
Selznick used Cotten, Jennifer Jones and Gregory Peck in "Duel in the Sun" (1946), an epic Western that was hugely popular at the box office.
Dore Schary, who had worked for Selznick, went to run RKO and hired Cotten for "The Farmer's Daughter" (1947), where he was Loretta Young's leading man. Cotten then made "Portrait of Jennie" (1948) for Selznick, co starring with Jones; Cotten played a melancholy artist who becomes obsessed with a girl who might have died many years before. His performance won Cotten the International Prize for Best Actor at the 1949 Venice International Film Festival.
Cotten was reunited with Welles in "The Third Man" (1949), produced by Korda and Selznick. Cotten portrays a writer of pulp fiction who travels to postwar Vienna to meet his friend Harry Lime (Welles). When he arrives, he is told that Lime has died. Determined to prove to the police that his friend was murdered, he uncovers an even darker secret.
Cotten then reunited with Hitchcock and Ingrid Bergman in "Under Capricorn" (1949) as an Australian landowner with a shady past; it was a box office disappointment. So too was "Beyond the Forest" (1949) with Bette Davis at Warner Bros.
Cotten co-starred with Joan Fontaine in "September Affair" (1950) for Hal Wallis. Selznick loaned him to 20th Century Fox for the dark Civil War Western "Two Flags West" (1950), then to RKO for "Walk Softly, Stranger" (1950, shot in 1948) which reunited him with Alida Valli from "The Third Man". It was a huge flop.
At Fox he did "Half Angel" (1951) with Young, then did another with Wallis at Paramount, "Peking Express" (1951) and went to MGM for "The Man with a Cloak" (1951) with Barbara Stanwyck. He had a cameo in Welles' "Othello" (1951).
Cotten did a Western at Universal, "Untamed Frontier" (1953), during the filming of which he was injured. He did a thriller for Andrew L. Stone, "The Steel Trap" (1952), which reunited with Teresa Wright from "Shadow of a Doubt".
At Fox he was in the Marilyn Monroe vehicle "Niagara" (1953), after James Mason turned down the role. He narrated "Egypt by Three" (1953) and was reunited with Stone in "A Blueprint for Murder" (1953).
On the stage in 1953, Cotten created the role of Linus Larrabee, Jr., in the original Broadway production of "Sabrina Fair", opposite Margaret Sullavan. The production ran November 11, 1953 – August 21, 1954, and was the basis of the Billy Wilder film "Sabrina", which starred Humphrey Bogart and Audrey Hepburn. He and Sullivan did a TV production of "State of the Union" for "Producers' Showcase" directed by Arthur Penn.
Cotten made "Special Delivery" (1955) in West Germany, did a TV adaptation of "Broadway" for "The Best of Broadway" (1955) directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. He appeared in episodes of "Celebrity Playhouse", "The Ford Television Theatre", "Star Stage", "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" (several times) and "General Electric Theater".
In 1955 Cotten hosted "The 20th Century Fox Hour" on television.
In 1956, Cotten starred in the NBC anthology series "On Trial" (renamed at mid-season "The Joseph Cotten Show"). It ran for 41 episodes.
He returned to features with "The Bottom of the Bottle" (1956), "The Killer Is Loose" (1957) and "The Halliday Brand" (1957).
He guest starred on "Jane Wyman Presents The Fireside Theatre", "Telephone Time", "Playhouse 90", "Schlitz Playhouse", "Zane Grey Theater", "Suspicion", and "Westinghouse Desilu Playhouse". He made a cameo appearance in Welles's"Touch of Evil" (1958) and a starring role in the film adaptation of Jules Verne's "From the Earth to the Moon" (also 1958).
Cotten had another success on Broadway when he appeared in "Once More, With Feeling" (1958–60) which ran for 263 performances. For the third time Cotten was in a Broadway hit but did not reprise his role in the film version – Yul Brynner did.
In 1960, Cotten married British actress Patricia Medina after his first wife, Lenore Kipp, died of leukemia earlier in the year.
Cotten had a supporting role in the films "The Angel Wore Red" (1960) and "The Last Sunset" (1961), the latter directed by Robert Aldrich, and guest starred on "The DuPont Show with June Allyson", "Checkmate", "The Barbara Stanwyck Show", "Bus Stop", "Theatre '62" (an adaptation of "Notorious"), "Dr. Kildare", "Wagon Train", and "Saints and Sinners".
Cotten returned to Broadway to appear in "Calculated Risk" (1962–63), which ran for 221 performances and meant he had to turn down a role in a film "Harrigan's Halo". He guest starred on "The Great Adventure", and "77 Sunset Strip", and did the pilot "Alexander the Great" (1963).
After some time away from film, Cotten returned in the horror classic "Hush… Hush, Sweet Charlotte" (1964) for Aldrich, with Bette Davis, Olivia de Havilland and Agnes Moorehead.
Cotten was top billed in "The Great Sioux Massacre" (1965) and "The Tramplers" (1965), but back to support parts for "The Money Trap" (1965) and "The Oscar" (1966). He was top billed in "Brighty of the Grand Canyon" (1966), directed by Foster, "The Cruel Ones" (1967), "Some May Live" (1967) and "Gangsters '70" (1968).
He guest starred on "Cimarron Strip", "Ironside", and "Journey to the Unknown" and had a support role in "Jack of Diamonds" (1967). He had the lead in "White Comanche" (1968) and "Latitude Zero" (1969) (shot in Japan with his wife) and supported in the TV movies "The Lonely Profession" (1969), "Cutter's Trail" (1970).
Cotten was in "The Name of the Game", "It Takes a Thief", "NET Playhouse", "The Grasshopper" (1970), "Tora! Tora! Tora!", "The Virginian", "Assault on the Wayne" (1971), "Do You Take This Stranger?" (1971), "City Beneath the Sea" (1971), "The Abominable Dr. Phibes" (1971), "Lady Frankenstein" (1971), and "The Screaming Woman" (1972) with de Havilland.
He had lead roles in "Doomsday Voyage" (1972), "Baron Blood" (1972), and "The Scopone Game" (1973) and was in "The Devil's Daughter" (1973), "The Streets of San Francisco", "Soylent Green" (1973), "A Delicate Balance" (1973), "The Rockford Files", "Syndicate Sadists" (1975), "The Timber Tramps" (1975), "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case" (1976), "A Whisper in the Dark" (1976), "Origins of the Mafia" (1976), "Twilight's Last Gleaming" (1977) for Aldrich, "Airport '77", "Aspen" (1977), "The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries", "Last In, First Out" (1978), "Caravans" (1978), "Indagine su un delitto perfetto" (1978), "Screamers" (1979), "Concorde Affaire '79" (1979), "" (1979), "Churchill and the Generals" (1979), "Tales of the Unexpected" and "Fantasy Island".
"I was in a lot of junk," he admitted later. "I get nervous when I don't work."
Cotten's final performances included "The Hearse" (1980), "Casino" (1980), "Heaven's Gate" (1980), "The Love Boat" (1981), "The Survivor" (1981), shot in Australia, and "Delusion" (1981). Cotten suffered a stroke in 1981 which caused him to temporarily lose his voice.
Joseph Cotten married Patricia Medina on October 20, 1960, in Beverly Hills at the home of David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones.
There were no children of the marriage.
On June 8, 1981, Cotten experienced a heart attack followed by a stroke that affected his brain's speech center. He began years of therapy which in time made it possible for him to speak again. As he began to recover, he and Orson Welles talked on the phone each week for a couple of hours. "He was strong and supportive," Cotten wrote, "and whenever I used the wrong word (which was frequently) he would say, 'That's a much better word, Jo, I'm going to use it.'" He and Welles would meet for lunch and reminisce. When Cotten announced he had written a book, Welles asked for the manuscript and read it that night.
In a phone conversation on October 9, 1985, Welles told his friend and mentor Roger Hill that Cotten had written a book, and Hill asked how it read. "Gentle, witty, and self-effacing, just like Jo," Welles replied. "My only complaint is that it's too brief." Welles died the following day. "Somewhere among his possessions is a manuscript of this book," Cotten wrote on the last page of his autobiography, published in 1987 under the title "Vanity Will Get You Somewhere".
In 1990, Cotten's larynx was removed due to cancer. He died on February 6, 1994, of pneumonia, at the age of 88. He was buried at Blandford Cemetery in Petersburg, Virginia.
At the 10th Venice International Film Festival, Cotten was given the Volpi Cup for Best Actor for his performance in the film "Portrait of Jennie" (1948). He was also given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960.
Cotten was portrayed by Tim Robbins in the 1985 TV film "Malice in Wonderland", James Tupper in the film "Me and Orson Welles" (2008) and by Matthew Glave in the television series "Feud" (2017), which depicts the filming of "Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16219 |
Jonah
Jonah or Jonas, in the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh/Old Testament), is a prophet of the northern kingdom of Israel in about the 8th century BCE. He is the central figure of the Book of Jonah, in which he is called upon by God to travel to Nineveh and warn its residents of impending divine wrath. Instead, Jonah boards a ship to Tarshish. Caught in a storm, he orders the ship's crew to cast him overboard, whereupon he is swallowed by a giant fish. Three days later, after Jonah agrees to go to Nineveh, the fish vomits him out onto the shore. Jonah successfully convinces the entire city of Nineveh to repent, but waits outside the city in expectation of its destruction. God shields Jonah from the sun with a plant, but later sends a worm to cause it to wither. When Jonah complains of the bitter heat, God rebukes him.
In Judaism, the story of Jonah represents the teaching of "teshuva", which is the ability to repent and be forgiven by God. In the New Testament, Jesus calls himself "greater than Jonah" and promises the Pharisees "the sign of Jonah", which is his resurrection. Early Christian interpreters viewed Jonah as a type for Jesus. Jonah is regarded as a prophet in Islam and the biblical narrative of Jonah is repeated, with a few notable differences, in the Quran. Some mainstream Bible scholars generally regard the Book of Jonah as fictional and often at least partially satirical, but the character of Jonah may have been based on the historical prophet of the same name mentioned in .
Although the word "whale" is often used in English versions of the Jonah story, the Hebrew text actually uses the phrase "dag gadol", which means "giant fish". In the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, the species of the fish that swallowed Jonah was the subject of speculation for naturalists, who interpreted the story as an account of a historical incident. Some modern scholars of folklore have noted similarities between Jonah and other legendary figures, specifically Gilgamesh and the Greek hero Jason.
Jonah is the central character in the Book of Jonah, in which God commands him to go to the city of Nineveh to prophesy against it "for their great wickedness is come up before me," but Jonah instead attempts to flee from "the presence of the Lord" by going to Jaffa (sometimes transliterated as "Joppa" or "Joppe"), and sailing to Tarshish. A huge storm arises and the sailors, realizing that it is no ordinary storm, cast lots and discover that Jonah is to blame. Jonah admits this and states that if he is thrown overboard, the storm will cease. The sailors refuse to do this and continue rowing, but all their efforts fail and they are eventually forced to throw Jonah overboard. As a result, the storm calms and the sailors then offer sacrifices to God. Jonah is miraculously saved by being swallowed by a large fish, in whose belly he spends three days and three nights. While in the great fish, Jonah prays to God in his affliction and commits to thanksgiving and to paying what he has vowed. God then commands the fish to vomit Jonah out.
God again commands Jonah to travel to Nineveh and prophesy to its inhabitants. This time he goes and enters the city, crying, "In forty days Nineveh shall be overthrown." After Jonah has walked across Nineveh, the people of Nineveh begin to believe his word and proclaim a fast. The king of Nineveh puts on sackcloth and sits in ashes, making a proclamation which decrees fasting, the wearing of sackcloth, prayer, and repentance. God sees their repentant hearts and spares the city at that time. The entire city is humbled and broken with the people (and even the animals) in sackcloth and ashes.
Displeased by this, Jonah refers to his earlier flight to Tarshish while asserting that, since God is merciful, it was inevitable that God would turn from the threatened calamities. He then leaves the city and makes himself a shelter, waiting to see whether or not the city will be destroyed. God causes a plant (in Hebrew a "kikayon") to grow over Jonah's shelter to give him some shade from the sun. Later, God causes a worm to bite the plant's root and it withers. Jonah, now being exposed to the full force of the sun, becomes faint and pleads for God to kill him.
The Book of Jonah (Yonah יונה) is one of the twelve minor prophets included in the Tanakh. According to one tradition, Jonah was the boy brought back to life by Elijah the prophet in . Another tradition holds that he was the son of the woman of Shunem brought back to life by Elisha in and that he is called the "son of Amittai" ("Truth") due to his mother's recognition of Elisha's identity as a prophet in . The Book of Jonah is read every year, in its original Hebrew and in its entirety, on Yom Kippur – the Day of Atonement, as the Haftarah at the afternoon mincha prayer. According to Rabbi Eliezer, the fish that swallowed Jonah was created in the primordial era and the inside of its mouth was like a synagogue; the fish's eyes were like windows and a pearl inside its mouth provided further illumination.
According to the Midrash, while Jonah was inside the fish, it told him that its life was nearly over because soon the Leviathan would eat them both. Jonah promised the fish that he would save them. Following Jonah's directions, the fish swam up alongside the Leviathan and Jonah threatened to leash the Leviathan by its tongue and let the other fish eat it. The Leviathan heard Jonah's threats, saw that he was circumcised, and realized that he was protected by the Lord, so it fled in terror, leaving Jonah and the fish alive. The medieval Jewish scholar and rabbi Abraham ibn Ezra (1092 – 1167) argued against any literal interpretation of the Book of Jonah, stating that the "experiences of all the prophets except Moses were visions, not actualities." The later scholar Isaac Abarbanel (1437 – 1509), however, argued that Jonah could have easily survived in the belly of the fish for three days, because "after all, fetuses live nine months without access to fresh air."
Teshuva – the ability to repent and be forgiven by God – is a prominent idea in Jewish thought. This concept is developed in the Book of Jonah: Jonah, the son of truth (the name of his father "Amitai" in Hebrew means truth), refuses to ask the people of Nineveh to repent. He seeks the truth only, and not forgiveness. When forced to go, his call is heard loud and clear. The people of Nineveh repent ecstatically, "fasting, including the sheep," and the Jewish scripts are critical of this. The Book of Jonah also highlights the sometimes unstable relationship between two religious needs: comfort and truth.
Jonah is mentioned twice in the fourteenth chapter of the deuterocanonical Book of Tobit, the conclusion of which finds Tobit's son, Tobias, rejoicing at the news of Nineveh's destruction by Nebuchadnezzar and Ahasuerus in apparent fulfillment of Jonah's prophecy against the Assyrian capital.
In the New Testament, Jonah is mentioned in and and in . In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus makes a reference to Jonah when he is asked for a sign by some of the scribes and the Pharisees. Jesus says that the sign will be the sign of Jonah: Jonah's restoration after three days inside the great fish prefigures His own resurrection.
Jonah is regarded as a saint by a number of Christian denominations. His feast day in the Roman Catholic Church is on 21 September, according to the "Martyrologium Romanum". On the Eastern Orthodox liturgical calendar, Jonah's feast day is on 22 September (for those churches which follow the traditional Julian calendar; 22 September currently falls in October on the modern Gregorian calendar). In the Armenian Apostolic Church, moveable feasts are held in commemoration of Jonah as a single prophet and as one of the Twelve Minor Prophets. Jonah's mission to the Ninevites is commemorated by the Fast of Nineveh in Syriac and Oriental Orthodox Churches. Jonah is commemorated as a prophet in the Calendar of Saints of the Missouri Synod of the Lutheran Church on 22 September.
Christian theologians have traditionally interpreted Jonah as a type for Jesus Christ. Jonah being in swallowed by the giant fish was regarded as a foreshadowing of Jesus's crucifixion and Jonah emerging from the fish after 3 days was seen as a parallel for Jesus's emerging from the tomb after 3 days. Saint Jerome equates Jonah with Jesus's more nationalistic side, and justifies Jonah's actions by arguing that "Jonah acts thus as a patriot, not so much that he hates the Ninevites, as that he does not want to destroy his own people."
John Calvin and John Hooper regarded the Book of Jonah as a warning to all those who might attempt to flee from the wrath of God. While Luther had been careful to maintain that the Book of Jonah was not written by Jonah, Calvin declared that the Book of Jonah was Jonah's personal confession of guilt. Calvin sees Jonah's time inside the fish's belly as equivalent to the fires of Hell, intended to correct Jonah and set him on the path of righteousness. Also unlike Luther, Calvin finds fault with all the characters in the story, describing the sailors on the boat as "hard and iron-hearted, like Cyclops'", the penitence of the Ninevites as "untrained", and the king of Nineveh as a "novice". Hooper, on the other hand, sees Jonah as the archetypal dissident and the ship he is cast out from as a symbol of the state. Hooper deplores such dissidents, decrying: "Can you live quietly with so many Jonasses? Nay then, throw them into the sea!" In the eighteenth century, German professors were forbidden from teaching that the Book of Jonah was anything other than a literal, historical account.
Jonah () is the title of the tenth chapter of the Quran. He is traditionally viewed as highly important in Islam as a prophet who was faithful to Allah and delivered His messages. Jonah is the only one of the Twelve Minor Prophets to be mentioned by name in the Quran. In Surahs and 68:48, Jonah is called Dhul-Nūn (; meaning "The One of the Fish"). In 4:163 and 6:86, he is referred to as "an apostle of Allah". Surah 37:139-148 retells the full story of Jonah:
The Quran never mentions Jonah's father, but Muslim tradition teaches that Jonah was from the tribe of Benjamin and that his father was Amittai.
Jonah is also mentioned in a few incidents during the lifetime of Muhammad. In some instances, Jonah's name is spoken of with praise and reverence by Muhammad. According to historical narrations about Muhammad's life, after ten years of receiving revelations, Muhammad went to the city of Ta’if to see if its leaders would allow him to preach his message from there rather than Mecca, but he was cast from the city by the people. He took shelter in the garden of Utbah and Shaybah, two members of the Quraysh tribe. They sent their servant, Addas, to serve him grapes for sustenance. Muhammad asked Addas where he was from and the servant replied Nineveh. "The town of Jonah the just, son of Amittai!" Muhammad exclaimed. Addas was shocked because he knew that the pagan Arabs had no knowledge of the prophet Jonah. He then asked how Muhammad knew of this man. "We are brothers," Muhammad replied. "Jonah was a Prophet of God and I, too, am a Prophet of God." Addas immediately accepted Islam and kissed the hands and feet of Muhammad.
One of the sayings of Muhammad, in the collection of Imam Bukhari, says that Muhammad said "One should not say that I am better than Jonah". A similar statement occurs in a hadith written by Yunus bin Yazid, the second caliph of the Umayyad Dynasty. Umayya ibn Abi al-Salt, an older contemporary of Muhammad, taught that, had Jonah not prayed to Allah, he would have remained trapped inside the fish until Judgement Day, but, because of his prayer, Jonah "stayed only a few days within the belly of the fish".
The ninth-century Persian historian Al-Tabari records that, while Jonah was inside the fish, "none of his bones or members were injured". Al-Tabari also writes that Allah made the body of the fish transparent, allowing Jonah to see the "wonders of the deep" and that Jonah heard all the fish singing praises to Allah. Kisai Marvazi, a tenth-century poet, records that Jonah's father was seventy years old when Jonah was born and that he died soon afterwards, leaving Jonah's mother with nothing but a wooden spoon, which turned out to be a cornucopia.
Nineveh's current location is marked by excavations of five gates, parts of walls on four sides, and two large mounds: the hill of Kuyunjik and hill of Nabi Yunus (see map link in footnote). A mosque atop Nabi Yunus was dedicated to the prophet Jonah and contained a shrine, which was revered by both Muslims and Christians as the site of Jonah's tomb. The tomb was a popular pilgrimage site and a symbol of unity to Jews, Christians, and Muslims across the Middle East. On July 24, 2014, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) destroyed the mosque containing the tomb as part of a campaign to destroy religious sanctuaries it deemed to be idolatrous. After Mosul was taken back from ISIL in January 2017, an ancient Assyrian palace built by Esarhaddon dating to around the first half of the 7th century BCE was discovered beneath the ruined mosque. ISIL had plundered the palace of items to sell on the black market, but some of the artifacts that were more difficult to transport still remained in place.
Other reputed locations of Jonah's tomb include the Arab village of Mashhad, located on the ancient site of Gath-hepher in Israel; the Palestinian West Bank town of Halhul, north of Hebron; and a sanctuary near the city of Sarafand (Sarepta) in Lebanon. Another tradition places the tomb at a hill now called Giv'at Yonah, "Jonah's Hill", at the northern edge of the Israeli town of Ashdod, at a site covered by a modern lighthouse.
A tomb of Jonah can be found in Diyarbakir, Turkey, located behind the mihrab at . Evliya Celebi states in his "Seyahatname" that he visited the tombs of prophet Jonah and prophet George in the city.
The consensus of mainstream Biblical scholars holds that the contents of the Book of Jonah are entirely ahistorical. Although the prophet Jonah allegedly lived in the eighth century BCE, the Book of Jonah was written centuries later during the time of the Achaemenid Empire. The Hebrew used in the Book of Jonah shows strong influences from Aramaic and the cultural practices described in it match those of the Achaemenid Persians. Many scholars regard the Book of Jonah as an intentional work of parody or satire. If this is the case, then it was probably admitted into the canon of the Hebrew Bible by sages who misunderstood its satirical nature and mistakenly interpreted it as a serious prophetic work.
While the Book of Jonah itself is considered fiction, Jonah himself may have been a historical prophet; he is briefly mentioned in the Second Book of Kings:
Most scholars believe that the anonymous author of the Book of Jonah may have seized upon this obscure prophet from 2 Kings and used him as the basis for the fictional character of Jonah, but some have contended that the figure of Jonah himself is entirely legendary.
The views expressed by Jonah in the Book of Jonah are a parody of views held by members of Jewish society at the time when it was written. The primary target of the satire may have been a faction whom Morton Smith calls "Separationists", who believed that God would destroy those who disobeyed him, that sinful cities would be obliterated, and that God's mercy did not extend to those outside the Abrahamic covenant. McKenzie and Graham remark that "Jonah is in some ways the most 'orthodox' of Israelite theologians – to make a theological point." Jonah's statements throughout the book are characterized by their militancy, but his name ironically means "dove", a bird which the ancient Israelites associated with peace.
Jonah's rejection of God's commands is a parody of the obedience of the prophets described in other Old Testament writings. The king of Nineveh's instant repentance parodies the rulers throughout the other writings of the Old Testament who disregard prophetic warnings, such as Ahab and Zedekiah. The readiness to worship God displayed by the sailors on the ship and the people of Nineveh contrasts ironically with Jonah's own reluctance, as does Jonah's greater love for "kikayon" providing him shade than for all the people in Nineveh.
The Book of Jonah also employs elements of literary absurdism; it exaggerates the size of the city of Nineveh to an implausible degree and incorrectly refers to the administrator of the city as a "king". According to scholars, no human being could realistically survive for three days inside a fish, and the description of the livestock in Nineveh fasting alongside their owners is "silly".
The motif of a protagonist being swallowed by a giant fish or whale became a stock trope of later satirical writings. Similar incidents are recounted in Lucian of Samosata's "A True Story", which was written in the second century CE, and in the novel "Baron Munchausen's Narrative of his Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia", published by Rudolf Erich Raspe in 1785.
Though it is often called a whale today, the Hebrew, as throughout scripture, refers to no species in particular, simply saying "great fish" or "big fish" (whales are today classified as mammals and not fish, but no such distinction was made in antiquity). While some biblical scholars suggest the size and habits of the great white shark correspond better to the representations given of Jonah's being swallowed, normally an adult human is too large to be swallowed whole. The development of whaling from the 18th century onwards made it clear that most, if not all, species of whale were incapable of swallowing a man, leading to much controversy about the veracity of the biblical story of Jonah.
In Jonah 2:1 (1:17 in English translations), the Hebrew text reads "dag gadol" (דג גדול) or, in the Hebrew Masoretic Text, "dāḡ gā·ḏō·wl" (דָּ֣ג גָּד֔וֹל), which means "great fish." The Septuagint translates this phrase into Greek as "kētei megalōi" (κήτει μεγάλῳ), meaning "huge fish". In Greek mythology, the same word meaning "fish" ("kêtos") is used to describe the sea monster slain by the hero Perseus that nearly devoured the Princess Andromeda. Jerome later translated this phrase as in his Latin Vulgate. He translated "kétos", however, as "ventre ceti" in Matthew : this second case occurs only in this verse of the New Testament.
At some point "cetus" became synonymous with "whale" (the study of whales is now called "cetology"). In his 1534 translation, William Tyndale translated the phrase in Jonah 2:1 as "greate fyshe" and the word "kétos" (Greek) or "cetus" (Latin) in as "whale". Tyndale's translation was later incorporated into the Authorized Version of 1611. Since then, the "great fish" in Jonah 2 has been most often interpreted as a whale. In English some translations use the word "whale" for Matthew 12:40, while others use "sea creature" or "big fish".
In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, naturalists, interpreting the Jonah story as a historical account, became obsessed with trying to identify the exact species of the fish that swallowed Jonah. In the mid-nineteenth century, Edward Bouverie Pusey, professor of Hebrew at Oxford University, claimed that the Book of Jonah must have been authored by Jonah himself and argued that the fish story must be historically true, or else it would not have been included in the Bible. Pusey attempted to scientifically catalogue the fish, hoping to "shame those who speak of the miracle of Jonah's preservation in the fish as a thing less credible than any of God's other miraculous doings".
The debate over the fish in the Book of Jonah played a major role during Clarence Darrow's cross-examination of William Jennings Bryan at the Scopes Trial in 1925. Darrow asked Bryan "When you read that... the whale swallowed Jonah... how do you literally interpret that?" Bryan replied that "a God who can make a whale and can make a man and make both of them do what He pleases." Bryan ultimately admitted that it was necessary to interpret the Bible, and is generally regarded as having come off looking like a "buffoon".
The largest whales—baleen whales, a group which includes the blue whale—eat plankton and "it is commonly said that this species would be choked if it attempted to swallow a herring." As for the whale shark, Dr. E. W. Gudger, an Honorary Associate in Ichthyology at the American Museum of Natural History, notes that, while the whale shark does have a large mouth, its throat is only four inches wide, with a sharp elbow or bend behind the opening, meaning that not even a human arm would be able to pass through it. He concludes that "the whale shark is not the fish that swallowed Jonah."
In Turkish, "Jonah fish" (in Turkish "yunus baligi") is the term used for dolphins. A long-established expression among sailors uses the term, "a Jonah", to mean a sailor or a passenger whose presence on board brings bad luck and endangers the ship. Later, this meaning was extended to mean, "a person who carries a jinx, one who will bring bad luck to any enterprise."
Despite its brevity, the Book of Jonah has been adapted numerous times in literature and in popular culture. In Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick" (1851), Father Mapple delivers a sermon on the Book of Jonah. Mapple asks why Jonah does not show remorse for disobeying God while he is inside of the fish. He comes to the conclusion that Jonah admirably understands that "his dreadful punishment is just." Carlo Collodi's "The Adventures of Pinocchio" (1883) features the title character and his father Geppetto being swallowed by a whale, an allusion to the story of Jonah. Walt Disney's 1940 film adaptation of the novel retains this allusion. The story of Jonah was adapted into Phil Vischer and Mike Nawrocki's animated film "" (2002). In the film, Jonah is swallowed by a gargantuan whale. The film was Big Idea Entertainment's first full-length theatrical release and, on its first weekend, it earned approximately $6.5 million.
Joseph Campbell suggests that the story of Jonah parallels a scene from the "Epic of Gilgamesh", in which Gilgamesh obtains a plant from the bottom of the sea. In the Book of Jonah, a worm (in Hebrew "tola'ath", "maggot") bites the shade-giving plant's root causing it to wither; whereas in the "Epic of Gilgamesh", Gilgamesh ties stones to his feet and plucks his plant from the floor of the sea. Once he returns to the shore, the rejuvenating plant is eaten by a serpent.
Campbell also noted several similarities between the story of Jonah and that of Jason in Greek mythology. The Greek rendering of the name Jonah is "Jonas", which differs from "Jason" only in the order of sounds—both "o"s are omegas suggesting that Jason may have been confused with Jonah. Gildas Hamel, drawing on the Book of Jonah and Greco-Roman sources—including Greek vases and the accounts of Apollonius of Rhodes, Gaius Valerius Flaccus and Orphic Argonautica—identifies a number of shared motifs, including the names of the heroes, the presence of a dove, the idea of "fleeing" like the wind and causing a storm, the attitude of the sailors, the presence of a sea-monster or dragon threatening the hero or swallowing him, and the form and the word used for the "gourd" (kikayon).
Hamel takes the view that it was the Hebrew author who reacted to and adapted this mythological material to communicate his own, quite different message. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16224 |
Jacquard machine
The Jacquard machine () is a device fitted to a loom that simplifies the process of manufacturing textiles with such complex patterns as brocade, damask and matelassé. It was invented by Joseph Marie Jacquard in 1804, based on earlier inventions by the Frenchmen Basile Bouchon (1725), Jean Baptiste Falcon (1728), and Jacques Vaucanson (1740). The machine was controlled by a "chain of cards"; a number of punched cards laced together into a continuous sequence. Multiple rows of holes were punched on each card, with one complete card corresponding to one row of the design. Several such paper cards, generally white in color, can be seen in the images below. Chains, like Bouchon's earlier use of paper tape, allowed sequences of any length to be constructed, not limited by the size of a card.
Both the Jacquard process and the necessary loom attachment are named after their inventor. This mechanism is probably one of the most important weaving inventions as Jacquard shedding made possible the automatic production of unlimited varieties of pattern weaving. The term "Jacquard" is not specific or limited to any particular loom, but rather refers to the added control mechanism that automates the patterning. The process can also be used for patterned knitwear and machine-knitted textiles, such as jerseys.
This use of replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware.
Traditionally, figured designs were made on a drawloom. The heddles with warp ends to be pulled up were manually selected by a second operator, the draw boy, not the weaver. The work was slow and labour-intensive, and the complexity of the pattern was limited by practical factors.
An improvement of the draw loom took place in 1725, when Basile Bouchon introduced the principle of applying a perforated band of paper. A continuous roll of paper was punched by hand, in sections, each of which represented one lash or tread, and the length of the roll was determined by the number of shots in each repeat of pattern. The Jacquard machine then evolved from this approach.
Joseph Marie Jacquard saw that a mechanism could be developed for the production of sophisticated patterns. He possibly combined mechanical elements of other inventors, but certainly innovated. His machine was generally similar to Vaucanson's arrangement, but he made use of Jean-Baptiste Falcon's individual paste board cards and his square prism (or card "cylinder"): he is credited with having fully perforated each of its four sides, replacing Vaucanson's perforated "barrel". Jacquard's machine also contained eight rows of needles and uprights, where Vaucanson had double row, a modification that enabled him to increase the figuring capacity of the machine. In his first machine, he supported the harness by knotted cords, which he elevated by a single trap board.
One of the chief advantages claimed for the Jacquard machine was that unlike previous damask-weaving machines, in which the figuring shed was usually drawn once for every four shots, with the new apparatus, it could be drawn on every shot, thus producing a fabric with greater definition of outline.
Jacquard's invention had a deep influence on Charles Babbage. In that respect, he is viewed by some authors as a precursor of modern computing science.
On the diagram, the cards are fastened into a continuous chain (1) which passes over a square box. At each quarter rotation a new card is presented to the Jacquard head which represents one row. The box swings from the right to the position shown and presses against the control rods (2). Where there is a hole the rod passes through the card and is unmoved whereas if the hole is not punched the rod is pushed to the left. Each rod acts upon a hook( 3). When the rod is pushed in the hook moves out of position to the left, a rod that is not pushed in leaves its hook in place. A beam (4) then rises under the hooks and those hooks in the rest location are raised; the hooks that have been displaced are not moved by the beam. Each hook can have multiple cords (5). The cords pass through a guide(6) and are attached to their heddle (7) and a return weight (8). The heddles raise the warp to create the shed through which the shuttle carrying the weft will pass. A loom with a 400 hook head might have four threads connected to each hook, resulting in a fabric that is 1600 warp ends wide with four repeats of the weave going across.
The term "Jacquard loom" is somewhat inaccurate. It is the "Jacquard head" that adapts to a great many dobby looms that allow the weaving machine to then create the intricate patterns often seen in Jacquard weaving.
Jacquard-driven looms, although relatively common in the textile industry, are not as ubiquitous as dobby looms which are usually faster and much cheaper to operate. However, dobby looms are not capable of producing so many different weaves from one warp. Modern jacquard machines are controlled by computers in place of the original punched cards, and can have thousands of hooks.
The threading of a Jacquard machine is so labor-intensive that many looms are threaded only once. Subsequent warps are then tied into the existing warp with the help of a knotting robot which ties each new thread on individually. Even for a small loom with only a few thousand warp ends the process of re-threading can take days.
Originally the Jacquard machines were mechanical, and the fabric design was stored in a series of punched cards which were joined to form a continuous chain. The Jacquards often were small and only independently controlled a relatively few warp ends. This required a number of repeats across the loom width. Larger capacity machines, or the use of multiple machines, allowed greater control, with fewer repeats, and hence larger designs could be woven across the loom width.
A factory must choose looms and shedding mechanisms to suit its commercial requirements. As a rule the more warp control required the greater the expense. So it is not economical to purchase Jacquard machines if one can make do with a dobby mechanism. As well as the capital expense, the Jacquard machines are more costly to maintain, as they are complex and require higher skilled personnel; an expensive design system is required to prepare the designs for the loom, and possibly a card-cutting machine. Weaving is more costly since Jacquard mechanisms are more likely to produce faults than dobby or cam shedding. Also, the looms will not run as quickly and down-time will increase because it takes time to change the continuous chain of cards when a design changes. For these reasons it is best to weave larger batches with mechanical Jacquards.
It is recorded that in 1855, a Frenchman adapted the Jacquard mechanism to a system by which it could be worked by electro-magnets. There was significant interest, but trials were not successful, and the development was soon lost to history.
Bonas Machine Company Ltd. launched the first successful electronic Jacquard at ITMA, Milan in 1983. Although the machines were initially small, modern technology has allowed Jacquard machine capacity to increase significantly, and single end warp control can extend to more than 10,000 warp ends. That avoids the need for repeats and symmetrical designs and allows almost infinite versatility. The computer-controlled machines significantly reduce the down time associated with changing punched paper designs, thus allowing smaller batch sizes. However, electronic Jacquards are costly and may not be required in a factory weaving large batch sizes, and smaller designs. The larger machines allowing single end warp control are very expensive, and can only be justified where great versatility is required, or very specialized design requirements need to be met. For example, they are an ideal tool to increase the ability and stretch the versatility of the niche linen Jacquard weavers who remain active in Europe and the West, while most of the large batch commodity weaving has moved to low cost areas.
Linen products associated with Jacquard weaving are linen damask napery, Jacquard apparel fabrics and damask bed linen.
Of course, Jacquard weaving uses all sorts of fibers and blends of fibers, and it is used in the production of fabrics for many end uses. Research is under way to develop layered and shaped items as reinforcing components for structures made from composite materials.
A pinnacle of production using a Jacquard machine is a prayer book, woven in silk. The book's title is "Livre de Prières tissé d'après les enluminures des manuscrits du XIVe au XVI siecle". All 58 pages of the prayer book were made of silk, woven using a Jacquard machine, using black and gray thread. The pages have elaborate borders with text and pictures of saints. It is estimated that 200,000 to 500,000 punch cards were necessary to encode the pages, at 160 threads per cm (400 threads per inch).
It was issued in 1886 and 1887, in Lyon, France. It was publicly displayed at the 1889 "Exposition Universelle" (World's Fair). It was designed by R.P.J. Hervier, woven by J.A. Henry and published by A. Roux. It took 2 years and almost 50 trials to get correct. An estimated 50 or 60 copies were produced.
The Jacquard head used replaceable punched cards to control a sequence of operations. It is considered an important step in the history of computing hardware. The ability to change the pattern of the loom's weave by simply changing cards was an important conceptual precursor to the development of computer programming and data entry. Charles Babbage knew of Jacquard machines and planned to use cards to store programs in his Analytical Engine. In the late 19th century, Herman Hollerith took the idea of using punched cards to store information a step further when he created a punched card tabulating machine which he used to input data for the 1890 U.S. Census. A large data processing industry using punched-card technology was developed in the first half of the twentieth centurydominated initially by the International Business Machine corporation (IBM), with its line of unit record equipment. The cards were used for data, however, with programming done by plugboards.
Some early computers, such as the 1944 IBM Automatic Sequence Controlled Calculator (Harvard Mark I) received program instructions from a paper tape punched with holes, similar to Jacquard's string of cards. Later computers executed programs from higher-speed memory, though cards were commonly used to load the programs into memory. Punched cards remained in use in computing up until the mid 1980s. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16225 |
JUnit
JUnit is a unit testing framework for the Java programming language. JUnit has been important in the development of test-driven development, and is one of a family of unit testing frameworks which is collectively known as xUnit that originated with SUnit.
JUnit is linked as a JAR at compile-time; the framework resides under package codice_1 for JUnit 3.8 and earlier, and under package codice_2 for JUnit 4 and later.
A research survey performed in 2013 across 10,000 Java projects hosted on GitHub found that JUnit (in a tie with slf4j-api), was the most commonly included external library. Each library was used by 30.7% of projects.
A JUnit test fixture is a Java object. With older versions of JUnit, fixtures had to inherit from codice_3, but the new tests using JUnit 4 should not do this. Test methods must be annotated by the codice_4 annotation. If the situation requires it, it is also possible to define a method to execute before (or after) each (or all) of the test methods with the codice_5 (or codice_6) and codice_7 (or codice_8) annotations.
import org.junit.*;
public class FoobarTest { | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16226 |
Jerome Kern
Jerome David Kern (January 27, 1885 – November 11, 1945) was an American composer of musical theatre and popular music. One of the most important American theatre composers of the early 20th century, he wrote more than 700 songs, used in over 100 stage works, including such classics as "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "The Song Is You", "All the Things You Are", "The Way You Look Tonight" and "Long Ago (and Far Away)". He collaborated with many of the leading librettists and lyricists of his era, including George Grossmith Jr., Guy Bolton, P. G. Wodehouse, Otto Harbach, Oscar Hammerstein II, Dorothy Fields, Johnny Mercer, Ira Gershwin and Yip Harburg.
A native New Yorker, Kern created dozens of Broadway musicals and Hollywood films in a career that lasted for more than four decades. His musical innovations, such as 4/4 dance rhythms and the employment of syncopation and jazz progressions, built on, rather than rejected, earlier musical theatre tradition. He and his collaborators also employed his melodies to further the action or develop characterization to a greater extent than in the other musicals of his day, creating the model for later musicals. Although dozens of Kern's musicals and musical films were hits, only "Show Boat" is now regularly revived. Songs from his other shows, however, are still frequently performed and adapted. Many of Kern's songs have been adapted by jazz musicians to become standard tunes.
Kern was born in New York City, on Sutton Place, in what was then the city's brewery district. His parents were Henry Kern (1842–1908), a Jewish German immigrant, and Fannie Kern "née" Kakeles (1852–1907), who was an American Jew of Bohemian parentage. At the time of Kern's birth, his father ran a stable; later he became a successful merchant. Kern grew up on East 56th Street in Manhattan, where he attended public schools. He showed an early aptitude for music and was taught to play the piano and organ by his mother, an accomplished player and teacher.
In 1897, the family moved to Newark, New Jersey, where Kern attended Newark High School (which became Barringer High School in 1907). He wrote songs for the school's first musical, a minstrel show, in 1901, and for an amateur musical adaptation of "Uncle Tom's Cabin" put on at the Newark Yacht Club in January 1902. Kern left high school before graduation in the spring of his senior year in 1902. In response, Kern's father insisted that his son work with him in business, instead of composing. Kern, however, failed miserably in one of his earliest tasks: he was supposed to purchase two pianos for the store, but instead he ordered 200. His father relented, and later in 1902, Kern became a student at the New York College of Music, studying the piano under Alexander Lambert and Paolo Gallico, and harmony under Dr. Austin Pierce. His first published composition, a piano piece, "At the Casino", appeared in the same year. Between 1903 and 1905, he continued his musical training under private tutors in Heidelberg, Germany, returning to New York via London.
For a time, Kern worked as a rehearsal pianist in Broadway theatres and as a song-plugger for Tin Pan Alley music publishers. While in London, he secured a contract from the American impresario Charles Frohman to provide songs for interpolation in Broadway versions of London shows. He began to provide these additions in 1904 to British scores for "An English Daisy", by Seymour Hicks and Walter Slaughter, and "Mr. Wix of Wickham", for which he wrote most of the songs.
In 1905, Kern contributed the song "How'd you like to spoon with me?" to Ivan Caryll's hit musical "The Earl and the Girl" when the show transferred to Chicago and New York in 1905. He also contributed to the New York production of "The Catch of the Season" (1905), "The Little Cherub" (1906) and "The Orchid" (1907), among other shows. From 1905 on, he spent long periods of time in London, contributing songs to West End shows like "The Beauty of Bath" (1906; with lyricist P. G. Wodehouse) and making valuable contacts, including George Grossmith Jr. and Seymour Hicks, who were the first to introduce Kern's songs to the London stage. In 1909 during one of his stays in England, Kern took a boat trip on the River Thames with some friends, and when the boat stopped at Walton-on-Thames, they went to an inn called the Swan for a drink. Kern was much taken with the proprietor's daughter, Eva Leale (1891–1959), who was working behind the bar. He wooed her, and they were married at the Anglican church of St. Mary's in Walton on October 25, 1910. The couple then lived at the Swan when Kern was in England.
Kern is believed to have composed music for silent films as early as 1912, but the earliest documented film music which he is known to have written was for a twenty-part serial, "Gloria's Romance" in 1916. This was one of the first starring vehicles for Billie Burke, for whom Kern had earlier written the song "Mind the Paint", with lyrics by A. W. Pinero. The film is now considered lost, but Kern's music survives. Another score for the silent movies, "Jubilo", followed in 1919. Kern was one of the founding members of ASCAP.
Kern's first complete score was Broadway's "The Red Petticoat" (1912), one of the first musical-comedy Westerns. The libretto was by Rida Johnson Young. By World War I, more than a hundred of Kern's songs had been used in about thirty productions, mostly Broadway adaptations of West End and European shows. Kern contributed two songs to "To-Night's the Night" (1914), another Rubens musical. It opened in New York and went on to become a hit in London. The best known of Kern's songs from this period is probably "They Didn't Believe Me", which was a hit in the New York version of the Paul Rubens and Sidney Jones musical, "The Girl from Utah" (1914), for which Kern wrote five songs. Kern's song, with four beats to a bar, departed from the customary waltz-rhythms of European influence and fitted the new American passion for modern dances such as the fox-trot. He was also able to use elements of American styles, such as ragtime, as well as syncopation, in his lively dance tunes. Theatre historian John Kenrick writes that the song put Kern in great demand on Broadway and established a pattern for musical comedy love songs that lasted through the 1960s.
In May 1915, Kern was due to sail with Charles Frohman from New York to London on board the RMS "Lusitania", but Kern missed the boat, having overslept after staying up late playing poker. Frohman died in the sinking of the ship.
Kern composed 16 Broadway scores between 1915 and 1920 and also contributed songs to the London hit "Theodore & Co" (1916; most of the songs are by the young Ivor Novello) and to revues like the Ziegfeld Follies. The most notable of his scores were those for a series of shows written for the Princess Theatre, a small (299-seat) house built by Ray Comstock. Theatrical agent Elisabeth Marbury asked Kern and librettist Guy Bolton to create a series of intimate and low-budget, yet smart, musicals.
The "Princess Theatre shows" were unique on Broadway not only for their small size, but their clever, coherent plots, integrated scores and naturalistic acting, which presented "a sharp contrast to the large-scale Ruritanian operettas then in vogue" or the star-studded revues and extravaganzas of producers like Florenz Ziegfeld. Earlier musical comedy had often been thinly plotted, gaudy pieces, marked by the insertion of songs into their scores with little regard to the plot. But Kern and Bolton followed the examples of Gilbert and Sullivan and French "opéra bouffe" in integrating song and story. "These shows built and polished the mold from which almost all later major musical comedies evolved. ... The characters and situations were, within the limitations of musical comedy license, believable and the humor came from the situations or the nature of the characters. Kern's exquisitely flowing melodies were employed to further the action or develop characterization." The shows featured modern American settings and simple scene changes to suit the small theatre.
The team's first Princess Theatre show was an adaptation of Paul Rubens' 1905 London show, "Mr. Popple (of Ippleton)", called "Nobody Home" (1915). The piece ran for 135 performances and was a modest financial success. However, it did little to fulfill the new team's mission to innovate, except that Kern's song, "The Magic Melody", was the first Broadway showtune with a basic jazz progression. Kern and Bolton next created an original piece, "Very Good Eddie", which was a surprise hit, running for 341 performances, with additional touring productions that went on into the 1918-19 season. The British humorist, lyricist and librettist P. G. Wodehouse joined the Princess team in 1917, adding his skill as a lyricist to the succeeding shows. "Oh, Boy!" (1917) ran for an extraordinary 463 performances. Other shows written for the theatre were "Have a Heart" (1917), "Leave It to Jane" (1917) and "Oh, Lady! Lady!!" (1918). The first opened at another theatre before "Very Good Eddie" closed. The second played elsewhere during the long run of "Oh Boy!" An anonymous admirer wrote a verse in their praise that begins:
In February 1918, Dorothy Parker wrote in "Vanity Fair":
"Oh, Lady! Lady!!" was the last successful "Princess Theatre show". Kern and Wodehouse disagreed over money, and the composer decided to move on to other projects. Kern's importance to the partnership was illustrated by the fate of the last musical of the series, "Oh, My Dear!" (1918), to which he contributed only one song: "Go, Little Boat". The rest of the show was composed by Louis Hirsch and ran for 189 performances: "Despite a respectable run, everyone realized there was little point in continuing the series without Kern."
The 1920s were an extremely productive period in American musical theatre, and Kern created at least one show every year for the entire decade. His first show of 1920 was "The Night Boat", with book and lyrics by Anne Caldwell, which ran for more than 300 performances in New York and for three seasons on tour. Later in the same year, Kern wrote the score for "Sally", with a book by Bolton and lyrics by Otto Harbach. This show, staged by Florenz Ziegfeld, ran for 570 performances, one of the longest runs of any Broadway show in the decade, and popularized the song "Look for the Silver Lining" (which had been written for an earlier show), performed by the rising star Marilyn Miller. It also had a long run in London in 1921, produced by George Grossmith Jr. Kern's next shows were "Good Morning, Dearie" (1921, with Caldwell) which ran for 347 performances; followed in 1922 by a West End success, "The Cabaret Girl" in collaboration with Grossmith and Wodehouse; another modest success by the same team, "The Beauty Prize" (1923); and a Broadway flop, "The Bunch and Judy", remembered, if at all, as the first time Kern and Fred Astaire worked together.
"Stepping Stones" (1923, with Caldwell) was a success, and in 1924 the Princess Theatre team of Bolton, Wodehouse and Kern reunited to write "Sitting Pretty", but it did not recapture the popularity of the earlier collaborations. Its relative failure may have been partly due to Kern's growing aversion to having individual songs from his shows performed out of context on radio, in cabaret, or on record, although his chief objection was to jazz interpretations of his songs. He called himself a "musical clothier – nothing more or less," and said, "I write music to both the situations and the lyrics in plays." When "Sitting Pretty" was produced, he forbade any broadcasting or recording of individual numbers from the show, which limited their chance to gain popularity.
1925 was a major turning point in Kern's career when he met Oscar Hammerstein II, with whom he would entertain a lifelong friendship and collaboration. As a young man, Kern had been an easy companion with great charm and humor, but he became less outgoing in his middle years, sometimes difficult to work with: he once introduced himself to a producer by saying, "I hear you're a son of a bitch. So am I." He rarely collaborated with any one lyricist for long. With Hammerstein, however, he remained on close terms for the rest of his life. Their first show, written together with Harbach, was "Sunny", which featured the song "Who (Stole My Heart Away)?" Marilyn Miller played the title role, as she had in "Sally". The show ran for 517 performances on Broadway, and the following year ran for 363 performances in the West End, starring Binnie Hale and Jack Buchanan.
Because of the strong success of "Sally" and "Sunny" and consistent good results with his other shows, Ziegfeld was willing to gamble on Kern's next project in 1927. Kern had been impressed by Edna Ferber's novel "Show Boat" and wished to present a musical stage version. He persuaded Hammerstein to adapt it and Ziegfeld to produce it. The story, dealing with racism, marital strife and alcoholism, was unheard of in the escapist world of musical comedy. Despite his doubts, Ziegfeld spared no expense in staging the piece to give it its full epic grandeur. According to the theatre historian John Kenrick: "After the opening night audience filed out of the Ziegfeld Theatre in near silence, Ziegfeld thought his worst fears had been confirmed. He was pleasantly surprised when the next morning brought ecstatic reviews and long lines at the box office. In fact, "Show Boat" proved to be the most lasting accomplishment of Ziegfeld's career – the only one of his shows that is regularly performed today." The score is, arguably, Kern's greatest and includes the well-known songs "Ol' Man River" and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" as well as "Make Believe", "You Are Love", "Life Upon the Wicked Stage", "Why Do I Love You", all with lyrics by Hammerstein, and "Bill", originally written for "Oh, Lady! Lady!", with lyrics by P. G. Wodehouse. The show ran for 572 performances on Broadway and was also a success in London. Although Ferber's novel was filmed unsuccessfully as a part-talkie in 1929 (using some songs from the Kern score), the musical itself was filmed twice, in 1936, and, with Technicolor, in 1951. In 1989, a stage version of the musical was presented on television for the first time, in a production from the Paper Mill Playhouse telecast by PBS on "Great Performances".
While most Kern musicals have largely been forgotten, except for their songs, "Show Boat" remains well-remembered and frequently seen. It is a staple of stock productions and has been revived numerous times on Broadway and in London. A 1946 revival integrated choreography into the show, in the manner of a Rodgers and Hammerstein production, as did the 1994 Harold Prince–Susan Stroman revival, which was nominated for ten Tony Awards, winning five, including best revival. It was the first musical to enter a major opera company's repertory (New York City Opera, 1954), and the rediscovery of the 1927 score with Robert Russell Bennett's original orchestrations led to a large-scale EMI recording in 1987 and several opera-house productions. In 1941, the conductor Artur Rodziński wished to commission a symphonic suite from the score, but Kern considered himself a songwriter and not a symphonist. He never orchestrated his own scores, leaving that to musical assistants, principally Frank Saddler (until 1921) and Russell Bennett (from 1923). In response to the commission, Kern oversaw an arrangement by Charles Miller and Emil Gerstenberger of numbers from the show into the orchestral work "Scenario for Orchestra: Themes from Show Boat", premiered in 1941 by the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Rodziński.
Kern's last Broadway show in the 1920s was "Sweet Adeline" (1929), with a libretto by Hammerstein. It was a period piece, set in the Gay 90s, about a girl from Hoboken, New Jersey (near Kern's childhood home), who becomes a Broadway star. Opening just before the stock market crash, it received rave reviews, but the elaborate, old-fashioned piece was a step back from the innovations in "Show Boat", or even the Princess Theatre shows. In January 1929, at the height of the Jazz Age, and with "Show Boat" still playing on Broadway, Kern made news on both sides of the Atlantic for reasons wholly unconnected with music. He sold at auction, at New York's Anderson Galleries, the collection of English and American literature that he had been building up for more than a decade. The collection, rich in inscribed first editions and manuscript material of eighteenth and nineteenth century authors, sold for a total of $1,729,462.50 – a record for a single-owner sale that stood for over fifty years. Among the books he sold were first or early editions of poems by Robert Burns and Percy Bysshe Shelley, and works by Jonathan Swift, Henry Fielding and Charles Dickens, as well as manuscripts by Alexander Pope, John Keats, Shelley, Lord Byron, Thomas Hardy and others.
In 1929 Kern made his first trip to Hollywood to supervise the 1929 film version of "Sally", one of the first "all-talking" Technicolor films. The following year, he was there a second time to work on "Men of the Sky", released in 1931 without his songs, and a 1930 film version of "Sunny". There was a public reaction against the early glut of film musicals after the advent of film sound; Hollywood released more than 100 musical films in 1930, but only 14 in 1931. Warner Bros. bought out Kern's contract, and he returned to the stage. He collaborated with Harbach on the Broadway musical "The Cat and the Fiddle" (1931), about a composer and an opera singer, featuring the songs "She Didn't Say Yes" and "The Night Was Made for Love". It ran for 395 performances, a remarkable success for the Depression years, and transferred to London the following year. It was filmed in 1934 with Jeanette MacDonald.
"Music in the Air" (1932) was another Kern-Hammerstein collaboration and another show-biz plot, best remembered today for "The Song Is You" and "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star". It was "undoubtedly an operetta", set in the German countryside, but without the Ruritanian trimmings of the operettas of Kern's youth. "Roberta" (1933) by Kern and Harbach included the songs "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Let's Begin and "Yesterdays" and featured, among others, Bob Hope, Fred MacMurray, George Murphy and Sydney Greenstreet all in the early stages of their careers. Kern's "Three Sisters" (1934), was his last West End show, with a libretto by Hammerstein. The musical, depicting horse-racing, the circus, and class distinctions, was a failure, running for only two months. Its song "I Won't Dance" was used in the film "Roberta". Some British critics objected to American writers essaying a British story; James Agate, doyen of London theatre critics of the day, dismissed it as "American inanity," though both Kern and Hammerstein were strong and knowledgeable Anglophiles. Kern's last Broadway show (other than revivals) was "Very Warm for May" (1939), another show-biz story and another disappointment, although the score included the Kern and Hammerstein classic "All The Things You Are".
In 1935, when musical films had become popular once again, thanks to Busby Berkeley, Kern returned to Hollywood, where he composed the scores to a dozen more films, although he also continued working on Broadway productions. He settled permanently in Hollywood in 1937. After suffering a heart attack in 1939, he was told by his doctors to concentrate on film scores, a less stressful task, as Hollywood songwriters were not as deeply involved with the production of their works as Broadway songwriters. This second phase of Kern's Hollywood career had considerably greater artistic and commercial success than the first. With Hammerstein, he wrote songs for the film versions of his recent Broadway shows "Music in the Air" (1934), which starred Gloria Swanson in a rare singing role, and "Sweet Adeline" (1935). With Dorothy Fields, he composed the new music for "I Dream Too Much" (1935), a musical melodrama about the opera world, starring the Metropolitan Opera diva Lily Pons. Kern and Fields interspersed the opera numbers with their songs, including "the swinging 'I Got Love,' the lullaby 'The Jockey on the Carousel,' and the entrancing title song." Also with Fields, he wrote two new songs, "I Won't Dance" and "Lovely to Look At", for the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers film version of "Roberta" (1935), which was a hit. The show also included the song "I'll Be Hard to Handle". This was given a 1952 remake called "Lovely to Look At".
Their next film, "Swing Time" (1936) included the song "The Way You Look Tonight", which won the Academy Award in 1936 for the best song. Other songs in "Swing Time" include "A Fine Romance", "Pick Yourself Up" and "Never Gonna Dance". "The Oxford Companion to the American Musical" calls "Swing Time" "a strong candidate for the best of the Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers musicals" and says that, although the screenplay is contrived, it "left plenty of room for dance and all of it was superb. ... Although the movie is remembered as one of the great dance musicals, it also boasts one of the best film scores of the 1930s." For the 1936 film version of "Show Boat", Kern and Hammerstein wrote three new songs, including "I Have The Room Above Her" and "Ah Still Suits Me". "High, Wide, and Handsome" (1937) was intentionally similar in plot and style to "Show Boat", but it was a box-office failure. Kern songs were also used in the Cary Grant film, "When You're in Love" (1937), and the first Abbott and Costello feature, "One Night in the Tropics" (1940). In 1940, Hammerstein wrote the lyric "The Last Time I Saw Paris", in homage to the French capital, recently occupied by the Germans. Kern set it, the only time he set a pre-written lyric, and his only hit song not written as part of a musical. Originally a hit for Tony Martin and later for Noël Coward, the song was used in the film "Lady Be Good" (1941) and won Kern another Oscar for best song. Kern's second and last symphonic work was his 'Mark Twain Suite" (1942).
In his last Hollywood musicals, Kern worked with several new and distinguished partners. With Johnny Mercer for "You Were Never Lovelier" (1942), he contributed "a set of memorable songs to entertain audiences until the plot came to its inevitable conclusion". The film starred Astaire and Rita Hayworth and included the song "I'm Old Fashioned". Kern's next collaboration was with Ira Gershwin on "Cover Girl" starring Hayworth and Gene Kelly (1944) for which Kern composed "Sure Thing","Put Me to the Test," "Make Way for Tomorrow" (lyric by E. Y. Harburg), and the hit ballad "Long Ago (and Far Away)". For the Deanna Durbin Western musical, "Can't Help Singing" (1944), with lyrics by Harburg, Kern "provided the best original score of Durbin's career, mixing operetta and Broadway sounds in such songs as 'Any Moment Now,' 'Swing Your Partner,' 'More and More,' and the lilting title number." "More and More" was nominated for an Oscar.
Kern composed his last film score, "Centennial Summer" (1946) in which "the songs were as resplendent as the story and characters were mediocre. ... Oscar Hammerstein, Leo Robin, and E. Y. Harburg contributed lyrics for Kern's lovely music, resulting in the soulful ballad 'All Through the Day,' the rustic 'Cinderella Sue,' the cheerful 'Up With the Lark,' and the torchy 'In Love in Vain.'" "All Through the Day" was another Oscar nominee. The music of Kern's last two films is notable in the way it developed from his earlier work. Some of it was too advanced for the film companies; Kern's biographer, Stephen Banfield, refers to "tonal experimentation ... outlandish enharmonics" that the studios insisted on cutting. At the same time, in some ways his music came full circle: having in his youth helped to end the reigns of the waltz and operetta, he now composed three of his finest waltzes ("Can't Help Singing", "Californ-i-ay" and "Up With the Lark"), the last having a distinctly operetta-like character.
Kern and his wife, Eva, often vacationed on their yacht "Show Boat". He collected rare books and enjoyed betting on horses. At the time of Kern's death, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was filming a fictionalized version of his life, "Till the Clouds Roll By", which was released in 1946 starring Robert Walker as Kern. In the film, Kern's songs are sung by Judy Garland, Kathryn Grayson, June Allyson, Lena Horne, Dinah Shore, Frank Sinatra and Angela Lansbury, among others, and Gower Champion and Cyd Charisse appear as dancers. Many of the biographical facts are fictionalized.
In the fall of 1945, Kern returned to New York City to oversee auditions for a new revival of "Show Boat", and began to work on the score for what would become the musical "Annie Get Your Gun", to be produced by Rodgers and Hammerstein. On November 5, 1945, at 60 years of age, he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage while walking at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street. Identifiable only by his ASCAP card, Kern was initially taken to the indigent ward at City Hospital, later being transferred to Doctors Hospital in Manhattan. Hammerstein was at his side when Kern's breathing stopped. Hammerstein hummed or sang the song "I've Told Ev'ry Little Star" from "Music in the Air" (a personal favorite of the composer's) into Kern's ear. Receiving no response, Hammerstein realized Kern had died. Rodgers and Hammerstein then assigned the task of writing the score for "Annie Get Your Gun" to the veteran Broadway composer Irving Berlin.
Kern is interred at Ferncliff Cemetery in Westchester County, New York. His daughter, Betty Jane (1913–1996) married Artie Shaw in 1942 and later Jack Cummings. Kern's wife eventually remarried, to a singer named George Byron.
Jerome Kern was nominated eight times for an Academy Award, and won twice. Seven nominations were for Best Original Song; these included a posthumous nomination in each of 1945 and 1946. One nomination was in 1945 for Best Original Music Score. Kern was not eligible for any Tony Awards, which were not created until 1947. In 1976, "Very Good Eddie" was nominated for a Drama Desk Award as Outstanding Revival, and the director and actors received various Tony, Drama Desk and other awards and nominations. Elisabeth Welsh was nominated for a Tony Award for her performance in "Jerome Kern Goes to Hollywood" in 1986, and "Show Boat" received Tony nominations in both 1983 and 1995, winning for best revival in 1995 (among numerous other awards and nominations), and won the Laurence Olivier Award for best revival in 2008. In 1986, "Big Deal" was nominated for the Tony for best musical, among other awards, and Bob Fosse won as best choreographer. In 2000, "Swing!", featuring Kern's "I Won't Dance" was nominated for the Tony for Best Musical, among others. In 2002, "Elaine Stritch at Liberty", featuring Kern's "All in Fun", won the Tony Award for Best Special Theatrical Event. In 2004, "Never Gonna Dance" received two Tony nominations.
Kern was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame posthumously, in 1970. In 1985, the U.S. Post Office issued a postage stamp (Scott #2110, 22¢), with an illustration of Kern holding sheet music.
Note: All shows listed are musical comedies for which Kern was the sole composer unless otherwise specified.
During his first phase of work (1904–1911), Kern wrote songs for 22 Broadway productions, including songs interpolated into British musicals or featured in revues (sometimes writing lyrics as well as music), and he occasionally co-wrote musicals with one or two other composers. During visits to London beginning in 1905, he also composed songs that were first performed in several London shows. The following are some of the most notable such shows from this period:
From 1912 to 1924, the more-experienced Kern began to work on dramatically concerned shows, including incidental music for plays, and, for the first time since his college show "Uncle Tom's Cabin", he wrote musicals as the sole composer. His regular lyricist collaborators for his more than 30 shows during this period were Bolton, Wodehouse, Caldwell, Harry B. Smith and Howard Dietz. Some of his most notable shows during this very productive period were as follows:
During the last phase of his theatrical composing career, Kern continued to work with his previous collaborators but also met Oscar Hammerstein II and Otto Harbach, with whom Kern wrote his most lasting, memorable, and well-known works. The most successful of these are as follows:
In addition to revivals of his most popular shows, Kern's music has been posthumously featured in a variety of revues, musicals and concerts on and off Broadway.
Among the more than 700 songs by Kern are such classics as "They Didn't Believe Me" (1914), "Look for the Silver Lining" (1920), "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "Make Believe", "You Are Love" and "Bill" (all from "Show Boat", 1927), "The Song Is You" (1932), "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes", "Yesterdays" and "Let's Begin" (all from "Roberta", 1933), "I Won't Dance" (1935), "A Fine Romance" and the Academy Award-winning "The Way You Look Tonight" (both from "Swing Time", 1936) and "All the Things You Are" (1939), "I'm Old Fashioned" (1942). Another Oscar winner was "The Last Time I Saw Paris". One of Kern's last hits was "Long Ago (and Far Away)" (1944). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16227 |
Jim Henson
James Maury Henson (September 24, 1936 – May 16, 1990) was an American puppeteer, animator, cartoonist, actor, inventor, filmmaker, and screenwriter who achieved worldwide notice as the creator of The Muppets (1955–present) and "Fraggle Rock" (1983–1987); and as the director of "The Dark Crystal" (1982) and "Labyrinth" (1986). He was born in Greenville, Mississippi, and raised in Leland, Mississippi, and University Park, Maryland.
Henson began developing puppets in high school. He created "Sam and Friends", a short-form comedy television program, while he was a freshman at the University of Maryland, College Park. He graduated from the University of Maryland with a degree in home economics, after which he produced coffee advertisements and developed experimental films. In 1958, he co-founded Muppets, Inc., which became The Jim Henson Company.
In 1969, Henson joined the children's educational television program "Sesame Street" where he helped to develop characters for the series. He and his creative team also appeared on the sketch comedy show "Saturday Night Live". He produced "The Muppet Show" during this period, premiering the series in 1976. He won fame for his characters, particularly Kermit the Frog, Rowlf the Dog, and Ernie. During the later years of his life, he founded the Jim Henson Foundation and Jim Henson's Creature Shop. He won the Emmy Award twice for his involvement in "The Storyteller" and "The Jim Henson Hour".
On May 16, 1990, Henson died in New York City at the age of 53. His ashes were scattered near Taos, New Mexico. In the weeks following his death, he was celebrated with a wave of tributes. He was posthumously inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1991 and was selected to be one of the Disney Legends in 2011.
Henson was born James Maury Henson on September 24, 1936, in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two children of Paul Ransom Henson (1904–1994), an agronomist for the United States Department of Agriculture, and his wife Betty Marcella (, 1904–1972). He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, before moving with his family to University Park, Maryland, near Washington, DC, in the late 1940s. He remembered the arrival of the family's first television as "the biggest event of his adolescence", being heavily influenced by radio ventriloquist Edgar Bergen and the early television puppets of Burr Tillstrom on "Kukla, Fran and Ollie" and Bil and Cora Baird. He remained a Christian Scientist at least into his twenties when he taught Sunday School, but he wrote to a Christian Science church in 1975 to inform them that he was no longer a practicing member.
Henson began working for WTOP-TV (now WUSA-TV) in 1954 while attending Northwestern High School, creating puppets for a Saturday morning children's show called "The Junior Morning Show". He enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park as a studio arts major upon graduation, thinking that he might become a commercial artist. A puppetry class offered in the applied arts department introduced him to the craft and textiles courses in the College of home economics, and he graduated in 1960 with a Bachelor of Science degree in home economics. As a freshman, he created "Sam and Friends", a five-minute puppet show for WRC-TV. The characters on "Sam and Friends" were forerunners of the Muppets, and the show included a prototype of Henson's most famous character Kermit the Frog. He remained at WRC from 1954 to 1961.
In the show, Henson began experimenting with techniques that changed the way in which puppetry was used on television, including using the frame defined by the camera shot to allow the puppet performer to work from off-camera. He believed that television puppets needed to have "life and sensitivity" and began making characters from flexible, fabric-covered foam rubber, allowing them to express a wider array of emotions at a time when many puppets were made of carved wood. A marionette's arms are manipulated by strings, but Henson used rods to move his Muppets' arms, allowing greater control of expression. Additionally, he wanted the Muppet characters to "speak" more creatively than was possible for previous puppets, which had random mouth movements, so he used precise mouth movements to match the dialogue.
When Henson began work on "Sam and Friends", he asked fellow University of Maryland senior Jane Nebel to assist him. The show was a financial success, but he began to have doubts about going into a career performing with puppets once he graduated. He spent several months in Europe, where he was inspired by European puppet performers who looked on their work as an art form. He began dating Jane after his return to the United States.
Henson spent much of the next two decades working in commercials, talk shows, and children's projects before realizing his dream of the Muppets as "entertainment for everybody". The popularity of his work on "Sam and Friends" in the late 1950s led to a series of guest appearances on network talk and variety shows. He appeared as a guest on many shows, including "The Steve Allen Show", "The Jack Paar Program", and "The Ed Sullivan Show". (Sullivan introduced him as "Jim Newsom and his Puppets" on September 11, 1966.) These television broadcasts greatly increased his exposure, leading to hundreds of commercial appearances by Henson characters throughout the '60s.
Among the most popular of Henson's commercials was a series for the local Wilkins Coffee company in Washington, DC, in which his Muppets were able to get away with a greater level of slapstick violence than might have been acceptable with human actors and eventually worked into many acts on "The Muppet Show". In the first Wilkins ad, a Muppet named Wilkins is poised behind a cannon seen in profile. Another Muppet named Wontkins is in front of its barrel. Wilkins asks, "Okay buddy, what do you think of Wilkins Coffee?" and Wontkins responds gruffly, "I've never tasted it!" Wilkins fires the cannon and blows Wontkins away, then turns the cannon directly toward the viewer and ends the ad with, "Now, what do "you" think of Wilkins?" Henson later explained, "Till then, advertising agencies believed that the hard sell was the only way to get their message over on television. We took a very different approach. We tried to sell things by making people laugh." The first seven-second commercial for Wilkins was an immediate hit and was syndicated and reshot by Henson for local coffee companies throughout the United States, and he ultimately produced more than 300 coffee ads. Henson sold the rights to the Wilkins' Coffee, who allowed marketing executive John T. Brady to sell the rights to some toymakers and film studios, however in July 1992 Brady was sued by Jim Henson Productions for unfair competition in addition to copyright and trademark infringement. The Henson company claimed that Brady was incorrectly using Henson's name and likeness in their attempts to license the characters.
In 1963, Henson and his wife moved to New York City where the newly formed Muppets, Inc. resided for some time, and Henson lived there until his death. Jane quit performing to raise their children, and Henson hired writer Jerry Juhl in 1961 and puppet performer Frank Oz in 1963 to replace her. Henson credited them both with developing much of the humor and character of his Muppets. He and Oz developed a close friendship and a performing partnership that lasted until Henson's death; their teamwork is particularly evident in their portrayals of Bert and Ernie, Kermit and Miss Piggy, and Kermit and Fozzie Bear. In New York City, Henson formed a partnership with Bernie Brillstein who managed Henson's career until the puppeteer's death.
Henson's talk show appearances culminated when he devised Rowlf, a piano-playing anthropomorphic dog that became the first Muppet to make regular appearances on "The Jimmy Dean Show". Henson was so grateful for this break that he offered Jimmy Dean a 40-percent interest in his production company, but Dean declined, stating that Henson deserved all the rewards for his own work, a decision of conscience that Dean never regretted. From 1963 to 1966, Henson began exploring filmmaking and produced a series of experimental films. His nine-minute experimental film "Time Piece" was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1966. He produced "The Cube" in 1969. Around this time, he wrote the first drafts of a live-action movie script with Jerry Juhl which became "Tale of Sand". The script remained in the Henson Company archives until it was adapted in the 2012 graphic novel "Jim Henson's Tale of Sand".
In 1969, television producer Joan Ganz Cooney and her staff at the Children's Television Workshop were impressed by the quality and creativity of the Henson-led team, so they asked Henson and staff to work full-time on "Sesame Street", a children's program for public television that premiered on National Educational Television on November 10, 1969. Part of the show was set aside for a series of funny, colorful puppet characters living on Sesame Street, including Grover, Bert and Ernie, Cookie Monster, Oscar the Grouch, and Big Bird. Henson performed the characters of Ernie, game-show host Guy Smiley, and Kermit, who appeared as a roving television news reporter.
Henson's Muppets initially appeared separately from the realistic segments on the Street, but the show was revamped to integrate the two segments, placing much greater emphasis on Henson's work. Cooney frequently praised Henson's work, and PBS called him "the spark that ignited our fledgling broadcast service." The success of "Sesame Street" also allowed him to stop producing commercials, and he said that "it was a pleasure to get out of that world".
Henson was also involved in producing various shows and animation inserts during the first two seasons. He produced a series of counting films for the numbers 1 through 10 which always ended with a baker (voiced by Henson) falling down the stairs while carrying the featured number of desserts. He also worked on a variety of inserts for the numbers 2 through 12, including the films "Dollhouse"; "Number Three Ball Film"; the stop-motions "King of Eight" and "Queen of Six"; the cut-out animation "Eleven Cheer"; and the computer animation "Nobody Counts To 10." He also directed the original "C Is For Cookie" and "Tales from Muppetland", a short series of TV movie specials that were comic retellings of classic fairy tales aimed at a young audience and hosted by Kermit the Frog. The series included "Hey, Cinderella!", "The Frog Prince", and "The Muppet Musicians of Bremen".
Henson, Oz, and his team were concerned that the company was becoming typecast solely as purveyors of children's entertainment, so they targeted an adult audience with a series of sketches on the first season of the late-night live television variety show "Saturday Night Live". Eleven "Land of Gorch" sketches were aired between October 1975 and January 1976 on NBC, with four additional appearances in March, April, May, and September 1976. Henson liked Lorne Michaels' work and wanted to be a part of it, but he ultimately concluded that "what we were trying to do and what his writers could write for it never gelled". The "SNL" writers were not comfortable writing for the characters, and they frequently disparaged Henson's creations; Michael O'Donoghue quipped, "I won't write for felt."
Henson began developing a Broadway show and a weekly television series both featuring the Muppets. The American networks rejected the series in 1976, believing that Muppets would appeal only to a child audience. Then Henson pitched the show to British impresario Lew Grade to finance the show. The show would be shot in the United Kingdom and syndicated worldwide. That same year, he scrapped plans for his Broadway show and moved his creative team to England, where "The Muppet Show" began taping. The show featured Kermit as host and a variety of other characters, notably Miss Piggy, Gonzo the Great, and Fozzie Bear, along with other characters such as Animal. Henson's teammates sometimes compared his role to that of Kermit: a shy, gentle boss with "a whim of steel" who ran things like "an explosion in a mattress factory." Caroll Spinney was the puppet performer of Big Bird and Oscar the Grouch, and he remembered that Henson would never say he didn't like something. "He would just go 'Hmm.'… And if he liked it, he would say, 'Lovely!'" Henson recognized Kermit as an alter ego, though he thought that Kermit was bolder than he; he once said of the character, "He can say things I hold back."
The Muppets appeared in their first theatrical feature film "The Muppet Movie" in 1979. It was both a critical and financial success; it made $65.2 million domestically and was the 61st highest-grossing film at the time. Henson's idol Edgar Bergen died at age 75 during production of the film, and Henson dedicated it to his memory. Henson as Kermit sang "The Rainbow Connection", and it hit number 25 on the "Billboard" Hot 100 and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Song. The Henson-directed "The Great Muppet Caper" (1981) followed, and Henson decided to end the "Muppet Show" to concentrate on making films, though the Muppet characters continued to appear in TV movies and specials.
Henson also aided others in their work. The producers of "The Empire Strikes Back" (1980) asked him to aid make-up artist Stuart Freeborn in the creation and articulation of Yoda. He suggested that George Lucas use Frank Oz as the puppeteer and voice of Yoda, and Oz did so in it and the five subsequent "Star Wars" films. Lucas lobbied unsuccessfully to have Oz nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
In 1982, Henson founded the Jim Henson Foundation to promote and develop the art of puppetry in the United States. Around that time, he began creating darker and more realistic fantasy films that did not feature the Muppets and displayed "a growing, brooding interest in mortality." He co-directed
"The Dark Crystal" (1982) with Frank Oz, "trying to go toward a sense of realism—toward a reality of creatures that are actually alive". To provide a visual style distinct from the Muppets, the puppets in "The Dark Crystal" were based on conceptual artwork by Brian Froud, and it was a financial and critical success.
Oz directed "The Muppets Take Manhattan" (1984) which grossed $25.5 million domestically and ranked one of the top 40 films of 1984. "Labyrinth" (1986) was a fantasy that Henson directed by himself, but it was considered a commercial disappointment, despite some positive reviews; "The New York Times" called it "a fabulous film". This demoralized Henson; his son Brian Henson described it as "the closest I've seen him to turning in on himself and getting quite depressed." The film later became a cult classic.
Henson continued creating children's television, such as "Fraggle Rock" and the animated "Muppet Babies". He also continued to address darker, more mature themes with the folk tale and mythology oriented show "The Storyteller" (1988), which won an Emmy for Outstanding Children's Program. The next year, he returned to television with "The Jim Henson Hour" which mixed lighthearted Muppet fare with more risqué material. It was critically well-received and won him another Emmy for Outstanding Directing in a Variety or Music Program, but it was canceled after 13 episodes due to low ratings. Henson blamed its failure on NBC's constant rescheduling.
In late 1989, Henson entered into negotiations to sell his company to The Walt Disney Company for almost $150 million, hoping that he would "be able to spend a lot more of my time on the creative side of things" with Disney handling business matters. By 1990, he had completed production on the television special "The Muppets at Walt Disney World" and the Walt Disney World attraction "Muppet*Vision 3D", and he was developing film ideas and a television series entitled "Muppet High".
Henson married Jane Nebel in 1959, and their children are Lisa (b. 1960), Cheryl (b. 1961), Brian (b. 1963), John (1965–2014), and Heather (b. 1970). Henson and his wife separated in 1986, although they remained close for the rest of his life. Jane said that Jim was so involved with his work that he had very little time to spend with her or their children. All five of his children began working with Muppets at an early age, partly because "one of the best ways of being around him was to work with him", according to Cheryl. Henson was a strong supporter of the civil rights movement.
Henson appeared with Kermit on "The Arsenio Hall Show" on May 4, 1990; it would be his final television appearance. He disclosed to his publicist that he was tired and had a sore throat, but he felt that it would soon go away. On May 12, 1990, Henson traveled to Ahoskie, North Carolina, with his daughter Cheryl to visit his father and stepmother. They returned to their home in New York City the following day, and Henson cancelled a Muppet recording session that had been scheduled for May 14, 1990 His estranged wife came to visit that night.
Henson was having trouble breathing when he woke up at around 2:00 a.m. on May 15, 1990 and he began coughing up blood. He suggested to his wife that he might be dying, but he did not want to take time off from his schedule to visit a hospital. Two hours later, he agreed to be taken by taxi to the emergency room at New York–Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Shortly after admission, he stopped breathing and was rushed into the intensive care unit. X-ray images taken of his chest revealed that he had multiple abscesses in both of his lungs as a result of a previous bacterial infection. He was placed on a ventilator but quickly deteriorated over the next several hours despite increasingly aggressive treatment with multiple antibiotics; although the medicine killed off most of the infection, it had already weakened Henson's body in many of his organs.
On May 16, 1990, Henson died at New York Hospital at 1:21 a.m. He was 53 years old. Dr. David Gelmont announced that Henson had died from "Streptococcus pneumoniae", an infection that causes bacterial pneumonia. However, on May 29, 1990, Gelmont reclassified it as organ dysfunction resulting from streptococcal toxic shock syndrome caused by "Streptococcus pyogenes". News spread quickly and admirers of his work responded from around the world with tributes and condolences. Many of Henson's co-stars and directors from "Sesame Street", the Muppets, and other works also shared their thoughts on his death. On May 21, 1990, Henson's public memorial service was conducted in Manhattan at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Another was conducted on July 2, 1990 at St Paul's Cathedral in London. In accordance with Henson's wishes, no one in attendance wore black, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band finished the service by performing "When the Saints Go Marching In". Harry Belafonte sang "Turn the World Around", a song that he had debuted on "The Muppet Show", as each member of the congregation waved a brightly colored foam butterfly attached to a puppet performer's rod. Later, Big Bird walked onto the stage and sang Kermit's signature song "Bein' Green". Dave Goelz as Gonzo, Frank Oz, Kevin Clash, Steve Whitmire, Jerry Nelson, and Richard Hunt sang a medley of Henson's favorite songs in their characters' voices, ending with a performance of "Just One Person". The funeral was described by "Life" as "an epic and almost unbearably moving event". Henson was cremated and in 1992, his ashes were scattered near Taos in New Mexico.
The Jim Henson Company and the Jim Henson Foundation continued after his death, producing new series and specials. Jim Henson's Creature Shop also continues to create characters and special effects for both Henson-related and outside projects. Steve Whitmire, who had joined the Muppets cast in 1978, began performing Kermit the Frog six months after Henson's death. He was dismissed from the cast in 2016, and Matt Vogel succeeded him in the role of Kermit.
Sesame Workshop acquired the "Sesame Street" characters in 2000. On February 17, 2004, the Muppets and the "Bear in the Big Blue House" properties were sold to the Walt Disney Company.
One of Henson's last projects was the attraction "Muppet*Vision 3D", which opened at Disney's Hollywood Studios on May 16, 1991, exactly one year after his death. The Jim Henson Company retains the Creature Shop; as well as the rest of its film and television library including "Fraggle Rock", "Farscape", "The Dark Crystal", and "Labyrinth". Brian Jay Jones published "Jim Henson: The Biography" on September 24, 2013, Henson's 77th birthday.
The moving image collection of Jim Henson is held at the Academy Film Archive. The collection contains the film work of Jim Henson and the Jim Henson Company. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16228 |
Joystick
A joystick is an input device consisting of a stick that pivots on a base and reports its angle or direction to the device it is controlling. A joystick, also known as the control column, is the principal control device in the cockpit of many civilian and military aircraft, either as a center stick or side-stick. It often has supplementary switches to control various aspects of the aircraft's flight.
Joysticks are often used to control video games, and usually have one or more push-buttons whose state can also be read by the computer. A popular variation of the joystick used on modern video game consoles is the analog stick. Joysticks are also used for controlling machines such as cranes, trucks, underwater unmanned vehicles, wheelchairs, surveillance cameras, and zero turning radius lawn mowers. Miniature finger-operated joysticks have been adopted as input devices for smaller electronic equipment such as mobile phones.
Joysticks originated as controls for aircraft ailerons and elevators, and are first known to have been used as such on Louis Bleriot's Bleriot VIII aircraft of 1908, in combination with a foot-operated rudder bar for the yaw control surface on the tail.
The name "joystick" is thought to originate with early 20th century French pilot Robert Esnault-Pelterie. There are also competing claims on behalf of fellow pilots Robert Loraine, James Henry Joyce, and A. E. George. Loraine is cited by the "Oxford English Dictionary" for using the term "joystick" in his diary in 1909 when he went to Pau to learn to fly at Bleriot's school. George was a pioneer aviator who with his colleague Jobling built and flew a biplane at Newcastle in England in 1910. He is alleged to have invented the "George Stick" which became more popularly known as the joystick. The George and Jobling aircraft control column is in the collection of the Discovery Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne, England.
Joysticks were present in early planes, though their mechanical origins are uncertain. The coining of the term "joystick" may actually be credited to Loraine, as his is the earliest known usage of the term, although he most certainly did not invent the device.
The electrical two-axis joystick was invented by C. B. Mirick at the United States Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) and patented in 1926 (U.S. Patent no. 1,597,416)". NRL was actively developing remote controlled aircraft at the time and the joystick was possibly used to support this effort. In the awarded patent, Mirick writes: "My control system is particularly applicable in maneuvering aircraft without a pilot."
The Germans developed an electrical two-axis joystick around 1944. The device was used as part of the Germans' "Funkgerät" FuG 203 "Kehl" radio control transmitter system used in certain German bomber aircraft, used to guide both the rocket-boosted anti-ship missile "Henschel Hs 293", and the unpowered pioneering precision-guided munition "Fritz-X", against maritime and other targets. Here, the joystick of the "Kehl" transmitter was used by an operator to steer the missile towards its target. This joystick had on-off switches rather than analogue sensors. Both the Hs 293 and Fritz-X used FuG 230 "Straßburg" radio receivers in them to send the "Kehl's" control signals to the ordnance's control surfaces. A comparable joystick unit was used for the contemporary American Azon steerable munition, strictly to laterally steer the munition in the yaw axis only.
This German invention was picked up by someone in the team of scientists assembled at the "Heeresversuchsanstalt" in Peenemünde. Here a part of the team on the German rocket program was developing the Wasserfall missile, a variant of the V-2 rocket, the first ground-to-air missile. The Wasserfall steering equipment converted the electrical signal to radio signals and transmitted these to the missile.
In the 1960s the use of joysticks became widespread in radio-controlled model aircraft systems such as the Kwik Fly produced by Phill Kraft (1964). The now-defunct Kraft Systems firm eventually became an important OEM supplier of joysticks to the computer industry and other users. The first use of joysticks outside the radio-controlled aircraft industry may have been in the control of powered wheelchairs, such as the Permobil (1963). During this time period NASA used joysticks as control devices as part of the Apollo missions. For example, the lunar lander test models were controlled with a joystick.
In many modern airliners aircraft, for example all Airbus aircraft developed from the 1980s, the joystick has received a new lease on life for flight control in the form of a "side-stick", a controller similar to a gaming joystick but which is used to control the flight, replacing the traditional yoke. The sidestick saves weight, improves movement and visibility in the cockpit, and may be safer in an accident than the traditional "control yoke".
Ralph H. Baer, inventor of the Magnavox Odyssey console, released in 1972, created the first video game joysticks in 1967. They were able to control the horizontal and vertical position of a spot displayed on a screen. The earliest known electronic game joystick with a fire button was released by Sega as part of their 1969 arcade game "Missile", a shooter simulation game that used it as part of an early dual-control scheme, where two directional buttons are used to move a motorized tank and a two-way joystick is used to shoot and steer the missile onto oncoming planes displayed on the screen; when a plane is hit, an explosion is animated on screen along with an explosion sound. In 1970, the game was released in North America as "S.A.M.I." by Midway Games.
Taito released a four-way joystick as part of their arcade racing video game "Astro Race" in 1973, while their 1975 run and gun multi-directional shooter game "Western Gun" introduced dual-stick controls with one eight-way joystick for movement and the other for changing the shooting direction. In North America, it was released by Midway under the title "Gun Fight". In 1976, Taito released "Interceptor", an early first-person combat flight simulator that involved piloting a jet fighter, using an eight-way joystick to aim with a crosshair and shoot at enemy aircraft.
The Atari standard joystick, developed for the Atari 2600, released in 1977, was a digital controller, with a single fire button. The Atari joystick port was for many years the "de facto" standard digital joystick specification. Joysticks were commonly used as controllers in first and second generation game consoles, but they gave way to the familiar game pad with the Nintendo Entertainment System and Sega Master System during the mid-1980s, though joysticks—especially arcade-style one—were and are popular after-market add-ons for any console.
In 1985, Sega's third-person arcade rail shooter game "Space Harrier" introduced a true analog flight stick, used for movement. The joystick could register movement in any direction as well as measure the degree of push, which could move the player character at different speeds depending on how far the joystick was pushed in a certain direction.
A distinct variation of an analog joystick is a positional gun, which works differently from a light gun. Instead of using light sensors, a positional gun is essentially an analog joystick mounted in a fixed location that records the position of the gun to determine where the player is aiming on the screen. It is often used for arcade gun games, with early examples including Sega's "Sea Devil" in 1972; Taito's "Attack" in 1976; "Cross Fire" in 1977; and Nintendo's "Battle Shark" in 1978.
During the 1990s, joysticks such as the CH Products Flightstick, Gravis Phoenix, Microsoft SideWinder, Logitech WingMan, and Thrustmaster FCS were in demand with PC gamers. They were considered a prerequisite for flight simulators such as "F-16 Fighting Falcon" and "LHX Attack Chopper". Joysticks became especially popular with the mainstream success of space flight simulator games like "" and "Wing Commander", as well as the "Six degrees of freedom" 3D shooter "Descent". VirPil Controls' MongoosT-50 joystick was designed to mimic the style of Russian aircraft (including the Sukhoi Su-35 and Sukhoi Su-57), unlike most flight joysticks.
However, since the beginning of the 21st century, these types of games have waned in popularity and are now considered a "dead" genre, and with that, gaming joysticks have been reduced to niche products. In NowGamer's interview with Jim Boone, a producer at Volition Inc., he stated that "FreeSpace 2"s poor sales could have been due to joysticks' being sold poorly because they were "going out of fashion" because more modern first-person shooters, such as "Quake", were "very much about the mouse and [the] keyboard". He went further on to state "Before that, when we did "Descent" for example, it was perfectly common for people to have joysticks – we sold a lot of copies of Descent. It was around that time [when] the more modern FPS with mouse and keyboard came out, as opposed to just keyboard like "Wolfenstein [3D]" or something.".
Since the late 1990s, "analog sticks" (or "thumbsticks", due to their being controlled by one's thumbs) have become standard on controllers for video game consoles, popularized by Nintendo's Nintendo 64 controller, and have the ability to indicate the stick's displacement from its neutral position. This means that the software does not have to keep track of the position or estimate the speed at which the controls are moved. These devices usually use potentiometers to determine the position of the stick, though some newer models instead use a Hall effect sensor for greater reliability and reduced size.
In 1997, ThrustMaster, Inc. introduced a 3D programmable controller, which was integrated into computer games to experience flight simulations. This line adapted several aspects of NASA's RHC (Rotational Hand Controller), which is used for landing and navigation methods.
An arcade stick is a large-format controller for use with home consoles or computers. They use the stick-and-button configuration of some arcade cabinets, such as those with particular multi-button arrangements. For example, the six button layout of the arcade games "Street Fighter II" or "Mortal Kombat" cannot be comfortably emulated on a console joypad, so licensed home arcade sticks for these games have been manufactured for home consoles and PCs.
A hat switch is a control on some joysticks. It is also known as a POV (point of view) switch. It allows one to look around in one's virtual world, browse menus, etc. For example, many flight simulators use it to switch the player's views, while other games sometimes use it as a substitute for the D-pad. Computer gamepads with both an analogue stick and a D-pad usually assign POV switch scancodes to the latter.
The term hat switch is a shortening of the term "Coolie hat switch", named for the similar-looking headgear.
In a real aircraft, the hat switch may control things like aileron or elevator trim.
In recent times, the employment of joysticks has become commonplace in many industrial and manufacturing applications, such as; cranes, assembly lines, forestry equipment, mining trucks, and excavators. In fact, the use of such joysticks is in such high demand, that it has virtually replaced the traditional mechanical control lever in nearly all modern hydraulic control systems. Additionally, most unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and submersible remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) require at least one joystick to control either the vehicle, the on-board cameras, sensors and/or manipulators.
Due to the highly hands-on, rough nature of such applications, the industrial joystick tends to be more robust than the typical video-game controller, and able to function over a high cycle life. This led to the development and employment of Hall effect sensing to such applications in the 1980s as a means of contactless sensing. Several companies produce joysticks for industrial applications using Hall effect technology. Another technology used in joystick design is the use of strain gauges to build force transducers from which the output is proportional to the force applied rather than physical deflection. Miniature force transducers are used as additional controls on joysticks for menu selection functions.
Some larger manufacturers of joysticks are able to customize joystick handles and grips specific to the OEM needs while small regional manufacturers often concentrate on selling standard products at higher prices to smaller OEMs.
Specialist joysticks, classed as an assistive technology pointing device, are used to replace the computer mouse for people with fairly severe physical disabilities. Rather than controlling games, these joysticks control the pointer. They are often useful to people with athetoid conditions, such as cerebral palsy, who find them easier to grasp than a standard mouse. Miniature joysticks are available for people with conditions involving muscular weakness such as muscular dystrophy or motor neurone disease as well. They are also used on electric powered wheelchairs for control since they are simple and effective to use as a control method. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16229 |
Juan Fernández Islands
The Juan Fernández Islands () are a sparsely inhabited island group in the South Pacific Ocean reliant on tourism and fishing. Situated off the coast of Chile, they are composed of three main volcanic islands: Robinson Crusoe, Alejandro Selkirk and Santa Clara. The group is considered part of Insular Chile.
The islands are primarily known for having been the home to the marooned sailor Alexander Selkirk for more than four years from 1704, which may have inspired Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe". Most of the archipelago's present-day inhabitants reside on Robinson Crusoe Island, and mainly in the capital, San Juan Bautista, located at Cumberland Bay on the island's north coast.
The group of islands is part of Chile's Valparaíso Region (which also includes Easter Island) and, along with the Desventuradas Islands, forms one of the nine communes of Valparaíso Province. The islands are named after Juan Fernandez, the explorer who discovered them in the 1570s.
Alejandro Selkirk is the largest of the Juan Fernández Islands at , and its highest peak, Cerro de Los Inocentes, is also the highest point of the archipelago at . The island's population was 57 in 2012. Robinson Crusoe is the second largest island in the archipelago at ; its highest peak, El Yunque, is . The population of Robinson Crusoe was 843 in 2012. Santa Clara is in area and reaches a height of . Santa Clara is uninhabited. The maximum elevations of Juan Fernández, for Robinson Crusoe and for Alejandro Selkirk, respectively, are high enough to cause the phenomenon known as Kármán vortex street, which can be seen from space.
The islands are volcanic in origin, produced by the movement of the Nazca Plate over the Juan Fernández hotspot. As the plate moved eastward over the hot spot, volcanic eruptions formed the Juan Fernández Ridge before being subducted under the South American continent at the Peru–Chile Trench. The islands occur where the peaks of the submarine ridge have protruded above sea level. Radiometric dating indicates that Santa Clara is the oldest of the islands, at 5.8 million years old, followed by Robinson Crusoe, 3.8 – 4.2 million years old, and Alexander Selkirk, 1.0 – 2.4 million years old.
The seafloor around Juan Fernández Islands is rich in Manganese–Iron nodules, which may be of potential economic interest.
The islands have a subtropical Mediterranean climate, moderated by the cold Humboldt Current, which flows northward to the east of the islands, and the southeast trade winds. Temperatures range from to , with an annual mean of . Higher elevations are generally cooler, with occasional frosts on Robinson Crusoe.
Average annual precipitation is , varying from to year to year. Much of the variability in rainfall depends on the El Niño-Southern Oscillation. Rainfall is higher in the winter months, and varies with elevation and exposure; elevations above experience almost daily rainfall, while the western, leeward side of Robinson Crusoe and Santa Clara are quite dry.
The Juan Fernández islands are home to a high percentage of rare and endemic plants and animals, and are recognized as a distinct ecoregion. The volcanic origin and remote location of the islands meant that the islands' flora and fauna had to reach the archipelago from far across the sea; as a result, the island is home to relatively few plant species and very few animal species. The closest relatives of the archipelago's plants and animals are found in the Temperate broadleaf and mixed forests ecoregions of southern South America, including the Valdivian temperate rain forests, Magellanic subpolar forests, and Desventuradas Islands.
There are 209 native species of vascular plants in the Juan Fernandez Islands, approximately 150 of which are flowering plants, and 50 are ferns. There are 126 species (62 percent) that are endemic, with 12 endemic genera and one endemic family, Lactoridaceae. Many plants are characteristic of the Antarctic flora, and are related to plants found in southern South America, New Zealand and Australia. Vegetation zones generally correspond to elevation, with grasslands and shrublands at lower elevations, tall and montane forests at middle elevations, and shrublands at the highest elevations. The two main islands have somewhat distinct plant communities.
Alejandro Selkirk is mostly covered with grassland from 0 to , interspersed with wooded ravines "(quebradas)", home to dry forests of "Myrceugenia" and "Zanthoxylum fagara". From to are lower montane forests, with upper montane forest from to . The treeline is at approximately , above which is alpine shrubland and grassland, dominated by temperate Magellanic vegetation such as "Acaena, Dicksonia, Drimys, Empetrum, Gunnera, Myrteola, Pernettya", and "Ugni". On Robinson Crusoe, grasslands predominate from 0 to ; introduced shrubs from to ; tall forests from to ; montane forests from to , with dense tree cover of "Cuminia fernandezia, Fagara", and "Rhaphithamnus venustus"; tree fern forests from to , and brushwood forests above . Santa Clara is covered with grassland.
Three endemic species dominate the tall and lower montane forests of the archipelago, "Drimys confertifolia" on both main islands, "Myrceugenia fernandeziana" on Robinson Crusoe, and "M. schulzii" on Alexander Selkirk. Endemic tree fern species of southern hemisphere genus "Dicksonia" ("D. berteroana" on Robinson Crusoe and "D. externa" on Alexander Selkirk) and the endemic genus "Thyrsopteris" "(T. elegans)" are the predominant species in the tree-fern forests. An endemic species of sandalwood, "Santalum fernandezianum", was overexploited for its fragrant wood, has not been seen since 1908, and is believed extinct. The Chonta palm ("Juania australis") is endangered.
The Juan Fernández Islands have a very limited fauna, with no native land mammals, reptiles, or amphibians. Seventeen land and sea-bird species breed on the islands. The island has three endemic bird species, and two endemic subspecies. Introduced fauna by humans include rats and goats. Robinson Crusoe Island is home to an endemic and endangered hummingbird, the Juan Fernández firecrown ("Sephanoides fernandensis"). This large hummingbird, about long, is thought to number only about 500 individuals. The other endemic bird species are the Juan Fernández tit-tyrant ("Anairetes fernandezianus") of Robinson Crusoe Island, and the Masafuera rayadito ("Aphrastura masafuerae") of Alejandro Selkirk Island. The islands support the entire known breeding populations of two petrel species, Stejneger's Petrel "Pterodroma longirostris" (IUCN status VU) and the Juan Fernandez Petrel "Pterodroma externa" (IUCN status VU). In addition, the Juan Fernandez Islands may still support a third breeding petrel species, De Filippi's Petrel "Pterodroma defilippiana" (IUCN status VU), whose only other known breeding grounds are on the Desventuradas Islands.
The Magellanic penguin breeds on Robinson Crusoe Island within the archipelago. The endemic Juan-Fernandez spiny lobster (without claws) lives in the marine waters ("Jasus frontalis"). The Juan Fernández fur seal ("Arctocephalus philippii") also lives on the islands. This species was nearly exterminated in the sixteenth to nineteenth century, but it was rediscovered in 1965. A census in 1970 found about 750 fur seals living there. Only two were sighted on the Desventuradas Islands, located some to the north. The actual population of the Desventuradas may be higher, because the species tends to hide in sea caves. There seems to be a yearly population increase of 16–17 percent.
The archipelago was discovered on 22 November 1574, by the Spanish sailor Juan Fernández, who was sailing south between Callao and Valparaíso along a route which he also discovered, hundreds of miles west of the coast of Chile, which avoided the northerly Humboldt current. He called the islands Más Afuera, Más a Tierra, and Santa Clara.
In the 17th and 18th centuries, the islands were used as a hideout for pirates and became the location of a penal colony. It was during this period that Alexander Selkirk became marooned on the islands. In the 1740s, they were visited by Commodore Anson's flotilla during his ill-fated venture to the South Seas. The location of the archipelago was fixed by Alessandro Malaspina in 1790; previous charts had differed on the location. British and American whaling vessels were regular visitors to the islands, starting with the "London" (Captain Joshua Coffin) in 1795.
During the maritime fur trade era of the early 19th century the islands were a source of fur seal skins, and the Juan Fernández fur seal was nearly driven to extinction. In his book, "Two Years Before the Mast" (Chapter VII), Richard Henry Dana, Jr. described the islands as he found them circa 1834. At this time the main island was being used as a penal colony. However, when Dr John Coulter visited the penal colony in the early 1840s, he reported it deserted after the convicts had risen up and killed the soldiers who had held them captive. The prisoners fled to mainland Chile, where they were later hunted down and shot. The story appears in Coulter's book "Adventures in the Pacific" (1845). In 1908, the islands were visited by the Swedish Magellanic Expedition and Carl Skottsberg is believed to have been the last to have seen the "Santalum fernandezianum" tree alive.
Late in 1914 the islands were the rendezvous for Admiral Maximilian von Spee's East Asiatic Squadron as he gathered his ships together before defeating the British under Admiral Christopher Cradock at the Battle of Coronel. Following the Royal Navy's win at the Battle of the Falkland Islands a month later, the only surviving German cruiser, , was hunted down and cornered illegally at Más a Tierra early in 1915, although she was in Chilean territorial waters, where it was scuttled after a brief battle with British cruisers.
In 1966 the Chilean government renamed Más Afuera as Alejandro Selkirk Island and Más a Tierra as Robinson Crusoe Island, in order to promote tourism. Incidentally, Selkirk never set foot on Más Afuera, only on Más a Tierra. On 30 July 2007, a constitutional reform gave the Juan Fernández Islands and Easter Island the status of "special territories" of Chile. Pending the enactment of a charter the archipelago will continue to be governed as a commune of the Valparaíso Region.
On 27 February 2010, a tsunami following the 8.8 magnitude earthquake off Maule, Chile struck the islands causing at least 8 deaths. Eleven people were reported as missing. Some early reports described the tsunami wave as being high, but later reports measured it at . Most of the town of San Juan Bautista on Robinson Crusoe Island was destroyed.
As a commune, the Juan Fernández Islands are a third-level administrative division of Chile governed by a municipal council, headed by a mayor () who is directly elected every four years. The mayor for the term 2012–2016 was Felipe Paredes Vergara.
Within the electoral divisions of Chile, the commune was represented in the Chamber of Deputies by Joaquín Godoy (RN) and Aldo Cornejo (PDC) as part of the 13th electoral district (together with Valparaíso and Easter Island). It was represented in the Senate by Francisco Chahuán Chahuán (RN) and Ricardo Lagos Weber (PPD) as part of the 6th senatorial constituency (Valparaíso-Coast).
The islands are served by Robinson Crusoe Airfield, located on Robinson Crusoe Island.
According to data from the 2012 Census of Population and Housing, the commune of Juan Fernández had 900 inhabitants; of these, 800 (88.9 percent) lived in urban areas and 100 (11.1 percent) in rural areas. At that time there were 536 men and 364 women. Most of the population is of European origin, mainly Spanish, British, German and other European nationalities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16232 |
John Maynard Smith
John Maynard Smith (6 January 1920 – 19 April 2004) was a British theoretical and mathematical evolutionary biologist and geneticist. Originally an aeronautical engineer during the Second World War, he took a second degree in genetics under the well-known biologist J. B. S. Haldane. Maynard Smith was instrumental in the application of game theory to evolution with George R. Price, and theorised on other problems such as the evolution of sex and signalling theory.
John Maynard Smith was born in London, the son of the surgeon Sidney Maynard Smith, but following his father's death in 1928, the family moved to Exmoor, where he became interested in natural history. Quite unhappy with the lack of formal science education at Eton College, Maynard Smith took it upon himself to develop an interest in Darwinian evolutionary theory and mathematics, after having read the work of old Etonian J. B. S. Haldane, whose books were in the school's library despite the bad reputation Haldane had at Eton for his communism. He became an atheist at age 14.
On leaving school, Maynard Smith joined the Communist Party of Great Britain and started studying engineering at Trinity College, Cambridge. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, he defied his party's line and volunteered for service. He was rejected, however, because of poor eyesight and was told to finish his engineering degree, which he did in 1941. He later quipped that "under the circumstances, my poor eyesight was a selective advantage—it stopped me getting shot". The year of his graduation, he married Sheila Matthew, and they later had two sons and one daughter (Tony, Carol, and Julian). Between 1942 and 1947, he applied his degree to military aircraft design.
Maynard Smith, having decided that aircraft were “noisy and old-fashioned”, then took a change of career, entering University College London (UCL) to study fruit fly genetics under Haldane. After graduating he became a lecturer in Zoology at UCL between 1952 and 1965, where he directed the "Drosophila" lab and conducted research on population genetics. He published a popular Penguin book, "The Theory of Evolution", in 1958 (with subsequent editions in 1966, 1975, 1993).
He became gradually less attracted to communism and became a less active member, finally leaving the Party in 1956 like many other intellectuals, after the Soviet Union brutally suppressed the Hungarian Revolution (Haldane had left the party in 1950 after becoming similarly disillusioned).
In 1962 he was one of the founding members of the University of Sussex and was a Dean between 1965–85. He subsequently became a professor emeritus. Prior to his death the building housing much of Life Sciences at Sussex was renamed the John Maynard Smith Building, in his honour.
In 1973 Maynard Smith formalised a central concept in evolutionary game theory called the evolutionarily stable strategy (ESS), based on a verbal argument by George R. Price. This area of research culminated in his 1982 book "Evolution and the Theory of Games". The Hawk-Dove game is arguably his single most influential game theoretical model.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1977. In 1986 he was awarded the Darwin Medal.
Maynard Smith published a book entitled "The Evolution of Sex" which explored in mathematical terms, the notion of the "two-fold cost of sex". During the late 1980s he also became interested in the other major evolutionary transitions with the evolutionary biologist Eörs Szathmáry. Together they wrote an influential 1995 book "The Major Transitions in Evolution", a seminal work which continues to contribute to ongoing issues in evolutionary biology. A popular science version of the book, entitled "The Origins of Life: From the birth of life to the origin of language" was published in 1999.
In 1991 he was awarded the Balzan Prize for Genetics and Evolution "For his powerful analysis of evolutionary theory and of the role of sexual reproduction as a critical factor in evolution and in the survival of species; for his mathematical models applying the theory of games to evolutionary problems" (motivation of the Balzan General Prize Committee). In 1995 he was awarded the Linnean Medal by The Linnean Society and in 1999 he was awarded the Crafoord Prize jointly with Ernst Mayr and George C. Williams. In 2001 he was awarded the Kyoto Prize.
In his honour, the European Society for Evolutionary Biology has an award for extraordinary young evolutionary biology researchers named "The John Maynard Smith Prize".
His final book, "Animal Signals", co-authored with David Harper, on signalling theory was published in 2003.
He died on 19 April 2004 sitting in a chair at home, surrounded by books. He is survived by his wife Sheila and their children.
The John Maynard Smith Archive is housed at the British Library. The papers can be accessed through the British Library catalogue. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16233 |
John Danforth
John Claggett Danforth (born September 5, 1936) is an American politician, attorney and diplomat who began his career in 1968 as the Attorney General of Missouri and served three terms as United States Senator from Missouri. In 2004, he served briefly as United States Ambassador to the United Nations. Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest.
Danforth was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Dorothy (Claggett) and Donald Danforth. He is the grandson of William H. Danforth, founder of Ralston Purina. Danforth's brother, William Henry Danforth, is former chancellor of Washington University in St. Louis.
Danforth attended St. Louis Country Day School and went on to Princeton University, where he graduated with an A.B. in religion in 1958 after completing a 111-page long senior thesis titled "Christ and Meaning: An Interpretation of Reinhold Niebuhr's Christology." He received degrees from Yale Law School and Yale Divinity School in 1963.
Danforth practiced law at the New York law firm Davis Polk & Wardwell from 1963 to 1968
Before Danforth entered Republican politics, Missouri was a reliably Democratic state with both its U.S. Senators and Governors regularly being Democrats. Prior to Symington, Danforth's seat in the Senate was held by Democratic Party heavyweights Thomas Hart Benton and Harry S. Truman.
Danforth was elected in 1968 at the age of 32 to be Missouri Attorney General, the first Republican elected statewide in 40 years. On his staff of assistant attorneys general were Kit Bond, John Ashcroft, D. Brook Bartlett, and Clarence Thomas. Danforth was reelected in 1972.
In 1970 Danforth ran for the United States Senate for the first time, against Democratic incumbent Stuart Symington. Danforth was defeated in a close race.
In 1976 Danforth ran to succeed Symington, who was retiring. Danforth ran in the Republican primary with little opposition. The Democrats had a three-way battle among Symington's son James W. Symington, former Missouri Governor Warren Hearnes and rising political star Congressman Jerry Litton. Litton and his family were killed when the plane taking them to their victory party in Kansas City crashed on take off in Chillicothe, Missouri. Hearnes, who had finished second in the primary far behind Litton, was appointed to challenge Danforth. Danforth easily won even though Jimmy Carter of Georgia won Missouri in the presidential election.
Danforth was narrowly re-elected in 1982. His Democratic opponent was Harriett Woods, a relatively unknown state senator from the St. Louis suburb of University City, Missouri. She was active in women's rights organizations and collected union support and was a cousin of Democratic Senator Howard Metzenbaum of Ohio. Her speeches denounced Ronald Reagan's policies so vigorously that she ran on the nickname, "Give 'em Hell, Harriett" (a play on the famous Truman phrase). Danforth won 51% to 49%. Woods' pro-choice stance was said to be the reason for her defeat.
In 1988 Danforth defeated Democrat Jay Nixon, 68%–32%. Danforth chose not to run for a fourth term and retired from the Senate in 1995. He was succeeded by former Missouri governor John Ashcroft. Nixon would later be elected to Danforth's former post as Missouri Attorney General, and in 2008, Governor of Missouri.
In January 2001, when Missouri Democrats lined up against John Ashcroft to oppose his nomination for U.S. Attorney General, Danforth's name was invoked. Former U.S. Senator Tom Eagleton reacted to the nomination by saying: "John Danforth would have been my first choice. John Ashcroft would have been my last choice."
During the 1991 Senate hearings regarding U.S. Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, Danforth used his considerable clout to aid the confirmation of Thomas, who had served Danforth during his state attorney general years and later as an aide in the Senate.
A political moderate, Danforth was once quoted as saying he joined the Republican Party for "the same reason you sometimes choose which movie to see — [it's] the one with the shortest line."
Danforth is a longtime opponent of capital punishment, as he made clear on the Senate floor in 1994.
In 1988, Danforth was vetted by the campaign of George H.W. Bush as a potential running mate in that year's presidential election, but ultimately Bush selected Senator Dan Quayle instead.
On July 1, 2004, Danforth was sworn in as the United States Ambassador to the United Nations, succeeding John Negroponte, who left the post after becoming the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq in June. Danforth is best remembered for attempts to bring peace to the Sudan but stayed at the UN for just six months. Danforth was mentioned as a successor to Secretary of State Colin Powell. Six days after the announcement that Condoleezza Rice was going to take the position Danforth submitted his resignation on November 22, 2004, effective January 20, 2005. Danforth's resignation letter said, "Forty-seven years ago, I married the girl of my dreams, and, at this point in my life, what is most important to me is to spend more time with her."
In 1999, Democratic U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno appointed Danforth to lead an investigation into the FBI's role in the 1993 Waco Siege. Danforth appointed Democratic U.S. Attorney Edward L. Dowd Jr. for the Eastern District of Missouri as his deputy special counsel for Waco. He also hired Bryan Cave law firm partner Thomas A. Schweich as his chief of staff. Assistant U.S. Attorney James G. Martin served as Danforth's director of investigative operations for what became known as the "Waco Investigation" or "Danforth Report."
In July 2000, Danforth's name was leaked as being on the short list of potential vice presidential nominees for Republican candidate George W. Bush, along with Michigan Governor John Engler, New York Governor George Pataki, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Ridge, and former American Red Cross President Elizabeth Dole. Just one week before the 2000 Republican National Convention was to be held in Philadelphia, campaign sources said that Dick Cheney, the man charged with leading the selection process for the nominee, had recommended Danforth to Bush for the position. However, despite growing speculation that Danforth was Bush's final pick, Bush selected Cheney himself for the position. Bush wrote in his autobiography "Decision Points" that Danforth would have been his choice if Cheney did not accept.
In September 2001, President Bush appointed Danforth a special envoy to Sudan. He brokered a peace deal that officially ended the civil war in the South between Sudan's Islamic government and Christian-backed Sudanese rebels, but elements of that conflict still remain unresolved (as has the separate Darfur conflict). The Second Sudanese Civil War ended in January 2005, with the signing of a peace agreement. Due to the Islamic-dominated North's military superiority, most of southern Sudan was decimated and the Christian rebels, and thus Danforth, achieved little for their efforts.
On June 11, 2004, Danforth presided over the funeral of Ronald Reagan, held at Washington National Cathedral.
On March 30, 2005, Danforth wrote an op-ed piece in "The New York Times" critical of the Republican party. The article began: "By a series of recent initiatives, Republicans have transformed our party into the political arm of conservative Christians...". The article by an ordained Episcopal priest (followed by a June 17, 2005 piece headlined "Onward, Moderate Christian Soldiers") ignited considerable debate. "The Washington Post" on February 2, 2006, headlined its article "'St. Jack' and the Bullies in the Pulpit".
On May 9, 2012, Danforth became part of a group, led by son-in-law and Summitt Distributing CEO Tom Stillman, that took over ownership of the St. Louis Blues of the National Hockey League.
In 2015, Danforth joined 299 other Republicans in signing an amicus brief calling on the Supreme Court to legalize same-sex marriage.
Contributing to the anthology "Our American Story" (2019), Danforth addressed the possibility of a shared American narrative and focused on the "great American purpose" of "hold[ing] together in one nation a diverse and often contentious people." He encouraged continued work "to demand a functioning government where compromise is the norm, to integrate all our people into one indivisible nation, and to incorporate separated individuals into the wholeness of the community." Danforth is a member of the Reformers Caucus of Issue One.
Danforth has received a star on the St. Louis Walk of Fame. He is an Honorary Board Member of the humanitarian organization Wings of Hope.As an ordained Episcopal priest, Danforth officiated the funeral services of former president Ronald Reagan on June 11, 2004 at the Washington National Cathedral although Ronald Reagan was not an Episcopalian. He did the same for "Washington Post" executive Katharine Graham in 2001, also at the National Cathedral. He also officiated the funeral services of former United States Senator Harry Flood Byrd Jr. of Virginia at Christ Episcopal Church in Winchester on August 3, 2013. He also officiated at the funeral services of Missouri State Auditor Tom Schweich in March, 2015.
Danforth married the former Sally Dobson in 1957. They have five children and 15 grandchildren. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16238 |
Jim Bakker
James Orsen Bakker (; born January 2, 1940) is an American televangelist, entrepreneur, and convicted fraudster. He hosted the television program "The PTL Club" with his then-wife, Tammy Faye, from 1974 to 1989. He also developed Heritage USA, a now-defunct Christian theme park in Fort Mill, South Carolina.
In the late 1980s, Bakker resigned from the ministry over a cover-up of hush money to church secretary Jessica Hahn for an alleged rape. Subsequent revelations of accounting fraud brought about felony charges, conviction, imprisonment, and divorce. Bakker later remarried and returned to televangelism, founding Morningside Church in Blue Eye, Missouri. He hosts "The Jim Bakker Show", which focuses on the end times and the Second Coming of Christ while promoting emergency survival products. He has written several books, including "I Was Wrong" and "Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead".
James Orsen Bakker was born in Muskegon, Michigan, the son of Raleigh Bakker and Furnia Lynette "Furn" Irwin. Bakker attended North Central University (a Bible college affiliated with the Assemblies of God in Minneapolis), where he met fellow student Tammy Faye LaValley in 1960. He worked at a restaurant in the Young-Quinlan department store in Minneapolis; Tammy Faye worked at the Three Sisters, a nearby boutique.
The Bakkers married on April 1, 1961, and left college to become evangelists. They had two children, Tammy Sue "Sissy" Bakker Chapman (born March 2, 1970) and Jamie Charles "Jay" Bakker (born December 18, 1975). They divorced on March 13, 1992. On September 4, 1998, Bakker married Lori Beth Graham, a former televangelist, 50 days after they met. In 2002 they adopted five children.
In 1966, the Bakkers began working at Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, which had an audience in the low thousands at the time. They contributed to the network's growth, and their success with a variety show format (including interviews and puppets) helped make "The 700 Club" a company staple. "The Jim and Tammy Show", aimed at young children, was broadcast for several years from their Portsmouth, Virginia studio. The Bakkers then hosted the first version of "The 700 Club". In 1972 the Bakkers left Robertson's ministry and in 1973 joined with Paul and Jan Crouch to help co-found the Trinity Broadcasting Network. Jim and his wife then moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. In 1976 they first put "The PTL Club" on the air.
From 1974 to 1987, the Bakkers hosted "The PTL Club", which functioned like a late-night talk show. Guests ranged from religious figures such as Billy Graham and Oral Roberts to entertainers such as Mr. T and Mickey Rooney. Bakker founded the PTL Satellite Network in 1974, which aired "The PTL Club" and other religious television programs.
Throughout the 1970s, Bakker built a headquarters for their ministry in the Carolinas called Heritage Village. Over time, the Bakkers expanded the ministry to include the Heritage USA amusement park in Fort Mill, South Carolina. Heritage USA became the third-most-successful theme park in the US at the time. Viewer contributions were estimated to exceed $1 million a week, with proceeds to expand the theme park and "The PTL Club" mission. Bakker responded to inquiries about his use of mass media by saying: "I believe that if Jesus were alive today, he would be on TV".
The Bakkers had a lavish lifestyle. In a 1990 "New Yorker" article, Frances FitzGerald quoted Dave Barry: "They personified the most characteristic excesses of the 1980s—the greed, the love of glitz, and the shamelessness—which in their case were so pure as to almost amount to a kind of innocence." Two scandals brought down the ministry in 1987; Bakker was accused of sexual misconduct by church secretary Jessica Hahn, which led to his resignation, and illegal misuse of ministry funds eventually led to his imprisonment. Bakker was dismissed as an Assemblies of God minister on May 6, 1987. In 1990, the biographical TV movie, "Fall from Grace" starring Kevin Spacey and Bernadette Peters depicted his rise and fall within the religious televangelist arena. On January 18, 2019, ABC's "20/20" aired a two-hour special, entitled "Unfaithfully Yours", about the rise and downfall of the Bakkers.
In 1979, Bakker and his PTL ministry came under investigation by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) for allegedly misusing funds raised on the air. The FCC report was finalized in 1982 and found that Bakker had raised $350,000 that he told viewers would go towards funding overseas missions but were actually used to pay for part of Heritage USA. The report also found that Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker used PTL funds for personal expenses. FCC commissioners voted four to three to drop the investigation, after which they allowed Bakker to sell the only TV station that he owned, therefore bypassing future FCC oversight. The FCC forwarded their report to the Justice Department, who declined to press charges, citing insufficient evidence. Bakker used the controversy to raise more funds from his audience, branding the investigation a "witch-hunt", and asking viewers to "give the Devil a black eye".
A confidential 1985 Internal Revenue Service report found that $1.3 million in ministry funds were used for the Bakkers' personal benefit from 1980 to 1983. The report recommended that PTL be stripped of its tax-exempt status but no action was taken until the Jessica Hahn scandal in 1987. Art Harris and Michael Isikoff wrote in "The Washington Post" that politics may have played a role in the three government agencies taking no action against PTL despite the evidence against them, as members of the Reagan administration were not eager to go after television ministers whose evangelical followers made up their base.
A $279,000 payoff for the silence of Jessica Hahn, who alleged that Bakker and former "PTL Club" co-host John Wesley Fletcher drugged and raped her, was paid with PTL's funds through Bakker's associate Roe Messner. Bakker, who made the PTL organization's financial decisions, allegedly kept two sets of books to conceal accounting irregularities. "The Charlotte Observer" reporters, led by Charles Shepard, investigated the PTL organization's finances and published a series of articles.
On March 19, 1987, after the disclosure of a payoff to Hahn, Bakker resigned from PTL. Although he acknowledged that he had a sexual encounter with Hahn at a hotel room in Clearwater, Florida, he denied raping her. Bakker was the subject of homosexual and bisexual allegations made by John Wesley Fletcher and PTL director Jay Babcock, which he denied under oath. Rival televangelist John Ankerberg appeared on "Larry King Live" and made several allegations against Bakker, which both Bakkers denied.
Bakker was succeeded as PTL head by Southern Baptist pastor Jerry Falwell. He chose Falwell as his successor because he feared that fellow Pentecostal pastor Jimmy Swaggart was attempting to take over his ministry. Swaggart had initiated a church investigation into Bakker over allegations of Bakker's sexual misconduct.
Bakker believed that Falwell would temporarily lead the ministry until the scandal died down, but Falwell barred Bakker from returning to PTL on April 28, 1987. Later that summer, as donations declined sharply in the wake of Bakker's resignation and the end of the Bakkers' "PTL Club" TV program, Falwell raised $20 million to keep PTL solvent and took a promised water slide ride at Heritage USA. Falwell and the remaining members of the PTL board resigned in October 1987, stating that a ruling from a bankruptcy court judge made rebuilding the ministry impossible.
In response to the scandal, Falwell called Bakker a liar, an embezzler, a sexual deviant, and "the greatest scab and cancer on the face of Christianity in 2,000 years of church history". On CNN, Swaggart told Larry King that Bakker was a "cancer in the body of Christ". In February 1988, Swaggart became involved in a sex scandal of his own after being caught visiting prostitutes in New Orleans. The Bakker and Swaggart scandals had a profound effect on the world of televangelism, causing greater media scrutiny of televangelists and their finances. Falwell said that the scandals had "strengthened broadcast evangelism and made Christianity stronger, more mature and more committed." Joe Carter of "The Gospel Coalition" compared the PTL scandal to the 2017 Harvey Weinstein sexual abuse allegations.
"The PTL Club"s fundraising activities between 1984 and 1987 were reported by "The Charlotte Observer", eventually leading to criminal charges against Bakker. Bakker and his PTL associates sold $1,000 "lifetime memberships", entitling buyers to an annual three-night stay at a luxury hotel at Heritage USA, during that period. According to the prosecution at Bakker's fraud trial, tens of thousands of memberships were sold but only one 500-room hotel was ever finished. Bakker sold "exclusive partnerships" which exceeded capacity, raising more than twice the money needed to build the hotel. Much of the money paid Heritage USA's operating expenses, and Bakker kept $3.4 million.
After a 16-month federal grand-jury probe, Bakker was indicted in 1988 on eight counts of mail fraud, 15 counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy. In 1989, after a five-week trial which began on August 28 in Charlotte, North Carolina, a jury found him guilty on all 24 counts. Judge Robert Daniel Potter sentenced Bakker to 45 years in federal prison and imposed a $500,000 fine. At the Federal Medical Center, Rochester in Rochester, Minnesota, he shared a cell with activist Lyndon LaRouche and skydiver Roger Nelson.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upheld Bakker's conviction on the fraud and conspiracy charges, voided Bakker's 45-year sentence and $500,000 fine, and ordered a new sentencing hearing in February 1991. The court ruled that Potter's sentencing statement about Bakker, that "those of us who do have a religion are sick of being saps for money-grubbing preachers and priests", was evidence that the judge had injected his religious beliefs into Bakker's sentence.
A sentence-reduction hearing was held on November 16, 1992, and Bakker's sentence was reduced to eight years. In August 1993, he was transferred to a minimum-security federal prison in Jesup, Georgia. Bakker was paroled in July 1994, after serving almost five years of his sentence. His son, Jay, spearheaded a letter-writing campaign to the parole board advocating leniency. Celebrity lawyer Alan Dershowitz acted as his parole attorney, having said that he "would guarantee that Mr. Bakker would never again engage in the blend of religion and commerce that led to his conviction." Bakker was released from Federal Bureau of Prisons custody on December 1, 1994, owing $6 million to the Internal Revenue Service.
In 2003, Bakker began broadcasting "The Jim Bakker Show" daily at Studio City Café in Branson, Missouri, with his second wife, Lori; it has been carried on CTN, Daystar, Folk TV, Grace Network (Canada), GEB America, Hope TV (Canada) Impact Network, WGN, WHT, TCT Network, The Word Network, UpliftTV, and ZLiving networks. Most of Bakker's audience receives his program on DirecTV and Dish Network. Bakker condemned the prosperity theology that he took part in earlier in his career and has embraced apocalypticism. His show has a millennial, survivalist focus and sells buckets of freeze-dried food to his audience in preparation for the end of days. Elspeth Reeve wrote in "The Atlantic" that Bakker's doomsday food is overpriced. A man named Jerry Crawford, who credits Bakker with having saved his marriage, invested $25 million in a new ministry for Bakker in Blue Eye, Missouri, named Morningside. Production for "The Jim Bakker Show" moved to Morningside in 2008.
In 2013, Bakker wrote "Time Has Come: How to Prepare Now for Epic Events Ahead" about end-time events. Bakker has changed his views on prosperity theology. In his 1980 book "Eight Keys to Success", he stated, "God wants you to be happy, God wants you to be rich, God wants you to prosper." In his 1996 book, "I Was Wrong", he admitted that the first time he actually read the Bible all the way through was in prison. Bakker also wrote that he realized that he had taken passages out of context and used them as prooftexts to support his prosperity theology.
Bakker's revived show features a number of ministers who bill themselves as "prophets". He now says that "PTL" stands for "Prophets Talking Loud".
In an October 2017 video, Bakker said that "God will punish those" who ridicule him; he has said that Hurricane Harvey was a judgment of God, and blamed Hurricane Matthew on then-President Barack Obama. Bakker predicted that if current President Donald Trump is impeached, Christians would begin a Second American Civil War. He compared the 2017 Washington train derailment to the sinking of the RMS "Titanic" and stated the Amtrak train derailment was a warning from God. He also claimed that he predicted the September 11 attacks of 2001, stating that he "saw 9/11 in 1999 before New Year's Eve" and that there would "be terrorism" and bombings in New York City and Washington, D.C." A few days after the Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, he stated that in a dream that "God came to him wearing a camouflage, a hunting vest, and an AR-15 rifle strapped to his back" and that God supported Trump's plan to arm teachers. Following the death of Billy Graham on February 21, 2018, Bakker attended Graham's funeral and paid his respects, stating that Graham was the greatest preacher since Jesus, and also remarking that Graham had visited him in prison.
Ed Brayton called Bakker a false prophet in an article on the Patheos website, and Geoffrey Grider called him a false teacher on the Now The End Begins website. On the "Stand in the Gap Today" radio program, Pennsylvania Pastors Network president Sam Rohrer criticized Bakker's civil-war prediction. "Christian Today" criticized Bakker's show for preying on "the most vulnerable kinds of people," and claimed that it had "no place on our TV screens."
Bakker sells colloidal silver supplements, which he advertises as a panacea. In March 2020, the office of the Attorney General of New York ordered Bakker to cease making false medicinal claims about his supplements' alleged ability to cure the 2019-20 strains of coronavirus. The Federal Trade Commission and the Food and Drug Administration also sent a warning letter to Bakker about his claims regarding the supplements and coronavirus, and Missouri attorney general Eric Schmitt filed a lawsuit against Bakker and Morningside Church Productions "For misrepresentations about the effectiveness of "Silver Solution" as a treatment for 2019 novel coronavirus." Bakker is represented by former Missouri governor Jay Nixon in his lawsuit against the state, who has argued for the suit to be dismissed. Nixon says that the allegations made in the lawsuit are false, stating "Bakker is being unfairly targeted by those who want to crush his ministry and force his Christian television program off the air."
In April, prohibited from receiving credit card transactions, Bakker disclosed to his viewers that his ministry was on the brink of filing for bankruptcy, and urgently petitioned them for donations. The following month, GEB America and World Harvest Television dropped Bakker's program from their networks after AT&T asked channels to reconsider airing his show. Connecticut-based liberal Christian group Faithful America also began a deplatforming campaign against Bakker.
On May 8, Lori Bakker announced that Bakker had suffered a stroke, which his son Jay described as "minor". Lori stated that he would be taking a sabbatical from the program until he recovers. She blamed the stroke on Bakker's hard work on his show and wrote that he had described the criticism against him as "the most vicious attack that he has ever experienced". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16240 |
Jan and Dean
Jan and Dean were an American rock duo consisting of William Jan Berry (April 3, 1941 – March 26, 2004) and Dean Ormsby Torrence (born March 10, 1940). In the early 1960s, they were pioneers of the California Sound and vocal surf music styles popularized by the Beach Boys.
Among their most successful songs was 1963's "Surf City", the first surf song to top the Hot 100. Their other charting top 10 singles were "Drag City" (1963), "Dead Man's Curve" (1964) (inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2008), and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" (1964).
In 1972, Torrence won the Grammy Award for Best Album Cover for the psychedelic rock band Pollution's first eponymous 1971 album, and was nominated three other times in the same category for albums of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band. In 2013, Torrence's design contribution of the Surf City Allstars' "In Concert" CD was named a Silver Award of Distinction at the Communicator Awards competition.
William Jan Berry (April 3, 1941 – March 26, 2004), was born in Los Angeles, California to Clara Lorentze Mustad (born September 2, 1919, Bergen, Norway – died July 9, 2009) and aeronautical engineer William L. Berry (born December 7, 1909, New York City – died December 19, 2004, Camarillo, California), He was raised in Bel Air, Los Angeles.
Jan's father worked for Howard Hughes as a project manager of the "Spruce Goose" and flew on its only flight with Hughes.
Dean Ormsby Torrence (born March 10, 1940) was born in Los Angeles, California, the son of Natalie Ormsby (April 10, 1911 – August 10, 2008) and Maurice Dean Torrence (December 5, 1907 – November 16, 1997). His father Maurice was a graduate of Stanford University, and was a sales manager at the Wilshire Oil Company.
Berry and Torrence met while both were students at Emerson Junior High School in Westwood, Los Angeles, and both were on the school's football team. By 1957, they were students in the Vagabond Class of 1958 at the nearby University High School, where again they were both on the school's football team, the Warriors. Berry and Torrence had adjoining lockers, and after football practice, they began harmonizing together in the showers with several other football players, including future actor James Brolin.
In order to enter a talent competition at University High School, Berry and Torrence helped form a doo-wop group known as "The Barons" (named after their high school's Hi-Y club, of which they were members), which comprised fellow University High students William "Chuck" Steele (lead singer), Arnold P. "Arnie" Ginsburg (born November 19, 1939; 1st tenor), Wallace S. "Wally" Yagi (born July 20, 1940; 2nd tenor), John 'Sagi" Seligman (2nd tenor), with Berry singing bass and Torrence providing falsetto.
During its short duration, Sandy Nelson, Torrence's neighbor, played drums, and future Beach Boy Bruce Johnston occasionally sang and played piano. The Barons rehearsed for hours in Berry's parents' garage, where Berry's father provided an upright piano and two two-track Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorders.
In 1958, the Barons performed to popular acclaim at the talent competition at University High School, covering contemporary hits like "Get a Job", "Rock and Roll is Here to Stay", and "Short Shorts". Following the contest, various members of the Barons drifted away, leaving only Berry and Torrence, who tried to write their own songs.
After being inspired by a poster featuring a local Hollywood burlesque performer, Virginia Lee Hicks, who was then performing as Jennie Lee, the "Bazoom Girl", at the New Follies Burlesk at 548 S. Main St, Los Angeles, Ginsburg wrote a tribute song, "Jennie Lee", that he brought to Berry and Torrence. Berry adapted the Civil War tune "Aura Lea" and arranged the harmonies. After weeks of practice, Berry, Ginsburg, and Torrence planned to make a demo recording in Berry's garage, but Torrence was conscripted into the United States Army Reserve, forcing Berry and Ginsburg to record "Jennie Lee" without Torrence, with Berry's friend and fellow University High student Donald J. Altfeld (born March 18, 1940, in Los Angeles, California) "beating out the rhythm on a children's metal high chair". The next day Berry took their recording to Radio Recorders, a small recording studio, to have it transferred to an acetate disc. Joe Lubin, Vice President and Head of A & R of Arwin Records, was impressed and offered to add instruments and to release it through Arwin.
In March 1958, the fathers of Berry and Ginsburg signed contracts authorizing Lubin to produce, arrange, and manage their sons.
Produced by Lubin, "Jennie Lee" (Arwin 108), backed with "Gotta Get a Date" (credited to Ginsburg, Berry & Lubin), became a surprise commercial success. According to Berry biographer Mark A. Moore, "The song (with backing vocals, plus additional instruments added by the Ernie Freeman combo) had a raucous R&B flavor, with a bouncing bomp-bomp vocal hook that would become a signature from Jan on future recordings." Distributed by Dot Records, "Jennie Lee" was released in mid-April, entered the charts on May 10, 1958, the same day they appeared on ABC's "Dick Clark Show". "Jennie Lee" peaked at No. 3 on the "Cash Box" charts on June 21, 1958, No. 4 on the R&B charts, and No. 8 on the Billboard charts on June 30, 1958. Billy Ward and his Dominoes's R&B cover of "Jennie Lee" reached No. 55 in the Pop charts in June 1958, while other cover versions including that of Moon Mullican (Coral 9-61994) and Bobby Phillips & the Toppers (Tops 45-R422-49), released in 1958 failed to chart.
In July 1958, Jan & Arnie released their second single, "Gas Money" backed with "Bonnie Lou" (Arwin 111), both written by Berry, Ginsburg, and Altfeld. Like "Jennie Lee", "Gas Money" contained a few elements of what would later become surf music. It entered the "Billboard" charts on August 24, 1958, and peaked at No. 81 a week later. Jan & Arnie were a featured act on the Summer Dance Party that toured the US East Coast, including Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut in July 1958. By the end of the month, they traveled to Manhattan to appear on "The Dick Clark Show".
On August 24, 1958, Jan & Arnie played in a live show hosted by Dick Clark that featured Bobby Darin, the Champs, Sheb Wooley, the Blossoms, the Six Teens, Jerry Wallace, Jack Jones, Rod McKuen and the Ernie Freeman Orchestra in front of nearly 12,000 fans at the first rock-n-roll show ever held at the Hollywood Bowl.
By September 6, 1958, Jan & Arnie's third and final single, "The Beat That Can't Be Beat" backed with "I Love Linda" (Arwin 113), again composed by the Berry, Ginsburg and Altfeld team, was released. However this single failed to chart, due in part to a lack of distribution. On October 19, 1958, Jan & Arnie performed "The Beat That Can't Be Beat" on CBS's "Jack Benny Show".
Arnie Ginsburg recorded a one-off single with a band named the Rituals on the Arwin label. The single, "Girl in Zanzibar" b/w "Guitarro", was released on vinyl in January 1959, preceding Jan and Dean's first single "Baby Talk", released in May 1959. Other than Arnie, the single featured Richard Podolor on guitar, Sandy Nelson on drums, Bruce Johnston on piano, Dave Shostac on sax, Harper Cosby on bass and Mike Deasy on guitar. It is unclear if the actual single was released for the general public but there are several promotional copies pressed to vinyl in existence.
By the end of the year, when Torrence had completed his six-month stint at Fort Ord, Ginsburg had become disenchanted with the music business. Ginsburg enrolled in the School of Architecture and Design at the University of Southern California and graduated in the field of product design in 1966. After graduation Ginsburg worked for several noted Los Angeles architects, among them Charles Eames, and in December 1973 he was granted a U.S. patent for a table he designed.
Ginsburg moved in 1975 to Santa Barbara, California, where he worked as an architectural designer. designing the innovative Ginsburg House. In September 1976, Ginsburg and Michael W. O'Neill were granted a patent for a portable batting cage.
After Torrence returned from a six-month compulsory stint in the US Army Reserve, Berry and Torrence began to make music as "Jan and Dean". With the help of record producers Herb Alpert and Lou Adler, Jan and Dean scored a No. 10 hit on the Dore label with "Baby Talk" (1959) (which was incorrectly labeled as Jan & Arnie when it initially was released), then scored a series of hits over the next couple of years. Playing local venues, they met and performed with the Beach Boys, and discovered the appeal of the latter's "surf sound". By this time Berry was co-writing, arranging, and producing all of Jan and Dean's original material.
During this time Berry co-wrote or arranged and produced songs for other artists outside of Jan and Dean, including the Angels ("I Adore Him", Top 30), the Gents, the Matadors (Sinners), Pixie (unreleased), Jill Gibson, Shelley Fabares, Deane Hawley, the Rip Chords ("Three Window Coupe", Top 30), and Johnny Crawford, among others.
Unlike most other rock 'n roll acts of the period, Jan and Dean did not give music their full-time attention. Jan and Dean were college students, maintaining their studies while writing and recording music and making public appearances on the side. Torrence majored in advertising design in the school of architecture at USC, where he also was a member of the Phi Sigma Kappa fraternity. Berry took science and music classes at UCLA, became a member of Phi Gamma Delta fraternity, and entered the California College of Medicine (now the UC Irvine School of Medicine) in 1963.
Jan and Dean reached their commercial peak in 1963 and 1964, after they met Brian Wilson. The duo scored sixteen Top 40 hits on the "Billboard" and "Cash Box" magazine charts, with a total of twenty-six chart hits over an eight-year period (1958–1966). Berry and Wilson collaborated on roughly a dozen hits and album cuts for Jan and Dean, including "Surf City", co-written by Jan Berry and Brian Wilson, in 1963. Subsequent top 10 hits included "Drag City" (#10, 1964), the eerily portentous "Dead Man's Curve" (#8, 1964), and "The Little Old Lady from Pasadena" (#3, 1964).
In 1964, at the height of their fame, Jan and Dean hosted and performed at "The T.A.M.I. Show," a historic concert film directed by Steve Binder. The film also featured such acts as the Rolling Stones, Chuck Berry, Gerry & the Pacemakers, James Brown, Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, Marvin Gaye, the Supremes, Lesley Gore, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles and the Beach Boys. Also in 1964, the duo performed the title track for the Columbia Pictures film "Ride the Wild Surf", starring Fabian Forte, Tab Hunter, Peter Brown, Shelley Fabares, and Barbara Eden. The song, penned by Jan Berry, Brian Wilson and Roger Christian, was a Top 20 national hit. The pair were also to have appeared in the film, but their roles were cut following their friendship with Barry Keenan, who had engineered the Frank Sinatra Jr. kidnapping.
Jan and Dean also filmed two unreleased television pilots: "Surf Scene" in 1963 and "On the Run" in 1966. Their feature film for Paramount Pictures "Easy Come, Easy Go" was canceled when Berry, as well as the film's director and other crew members, were seriously injured in a railroad accident while shooting the film in Chatsworth, California, in August 1965.
After the surfing craze, Jan and Dean scored two Top-30 hits in 1965: "You Really Know How to Hurt a Guy" got up to 27 and "I Found a Girl" got to 30—the latter from the album "Folk 'n Roll". During this period, they also began to experiment with cutting-edge comedy concepts such as the original (unreleased) "Filet of Soul" and "Jan & Dean Meet Batman". The former's album cover shows Berry with his leg in a cast as a result of the accident while filming "Easy Come, Easy Go".
On April 12, 1966, Berry received severe head injuries in an automobile accident on Whittier Drive, just a short distance from Dead Man's Curve in Beverly Hills, California, two years after the song had become a hit. He was on his way to a business meeting when he crashed his Corvette into a parked truck on Whittier Drive, near the intersection of Sunset Boulevard, in Beverly Hills. He also had separated from his girlfriend of seven years, singer-artist Jill Gibson, later a member of the Mamas & the Papas for a short time, who also had co-written several songs with him. Berry was in a coma for more than two months; he awoke on the morning of June 16, 1966.
Berry recovered from brain damage and partial paralysis. He had limited use of his right arm, and had to learn to write with his left hand and had to learn to walk again.
In Berry's absence, Torrence released several singles on the J&D Record Co. label and recorded "Save for a Rainy Day" in 1966, a concept album featuring all rain-themed songs. Torrence posed with Berry's brother Ken for the album cover photos. Columbia Records released one single from the project ("Yellow Balloon") as did the song's writer, Gary Zekley, with the Yellow Balloon.
Berry returned to the studio in April 1967, almost one year to the day after his accident. Working with Alan Wolfson, he began writing and producing music again. In December 1967, Jan and Dean signed an agreement with Warner Bros. Records. Warner issued three singles under the name "Jan and Dean", but a 1968 Berry-produced album for Warner Bros., the psychedelic "Carnival of Sound", remained unreleased until February 2010, when Rhino Records' "Handmade" label put out CD and vinyl compilations of all tracks recorded for "Carnival", along with various outtakes and remixes from the project.
In 1971, Jan & Dean released the album "Jan & Dean Anthology Album" under the label United Artists Records. The album included many of their top hits, starting with 1958's "Jennie Lee" and ending with 1968's "Vegetables".
Berry began to sing again in the early 1970s, touring with his Aloha band, while Dean began performing with a band called Papa Doo Run Run.
On August 26, 1973, Torrence was scheduled to appear at the Hollywood Palladium as part of Jim Pewter's "Surfer's Stomp" reunion. Torrence had recently released some Jan & Dean songs with new vocal parts by Bruce Johnston (of the Beach Boys) and producer Terry Melcher under the moniker the Legendary Masked Surfers. Torrence arranged with Berry to join him lip-syncing on stage to a pre-recorded track. The two anticipated that the audience would know it was a tape recording, and they decided to make light of it during the performance. That night, they joked around and stopped lip-syncing on stage while the music continued, but the audience became angry and started booing. The duo's first live performance after Berry's accident occurred at the Palomino Nightclub in North Hollywood on June 5, 1976, ten years after the accident, as guests of Disneyland regulars Papa Doo Run Run. Their first actual multi-song concert billed as Jan and Dean took place in 1978 in New York City at the Palladium as part of the Murray the K Brooklyn Fox Reunion Show. This was followed by a handful of East Coast shows as guests of their longtime friends the Beach Boys. Four nationwide J & D headlining tours followed through 1980. Berry was still suffering the effects of his 1966 accident, with partial paralysis and aphasia.
The duo experienced a resurgence after Paul Morantz’s "Road back from Deadman’s Curve" article appeared in "Rolling Stone" in 1974, writing the piece after spending extensive time with the two singers, their families, doctors and associates. Morantz first submitted the story to "Playboy", who recommended it to "Rolling Stone". He then wrote a film treatment from his story which was purchased by CBS.
On February 3, 1978, CBS aired a made-for-TV film about the duo titled "Deadman's Curve". The biopic starred Richard Hatch as Jan Berry and Bruce Davison as Dean Torrence, with cameo appearances by Dick Clark, Wolfman Jack, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Bruce Johnston (who at that time was temporarily out of the Beach Boys), as well as Berry himself. Near the end of the film he can be seen sitting in the audience, watching "himself" (Richard Hatch) perform onstage. The part of Jan & Dean's band was played by Papa Doo Run Run, which included Mark Ward and Jim Armstrong, who went on to form Jan & Dean and the Bel-Air Bandits. Johnston and Berry had known each other since high school, and had played music together in Berry's garage in Bel Air — long before Jan & Dean or the Beach Boys were formed. Following the release of the film, the duo made steps toward an official comeback that year, including touring with the Beach Boys, and performing with Papa Doo Run Run at Cupertino High School. In the Netherlands the showing on television of the movie by Veronica in August 1979 earned them a huge hit record of the re-recorded "Surf City" and "Deadman's Curve" songs as a double A-sided single record release, and a Golden Oldies record having "The Little Old Lady From Pasadena" as its flip side reached a lower position in the charts.
In the early 1980s, Papa Doo Run Run left to explore other performance and recording ventures. Berry struggled to overcome drug addiction. In 1979, Berry had performed over 100 concerts of Jan and Dean songs with another front man from Hawaii, Randy Ruff. Torrence also toured briefly as "Mike & Dean", with Mike Love of the Beach Boys. Later, the duo reunited for good. In "Phase II" of their career, Torrence led the touring operation.
Jan and Dean continued to tour on their own throughout the 1980s, the 1990s, and into the new millennium – with 1960s nostalgia providing them with a ready audience, headlining oldies shows throughout North America. Sundazed Records reissued Torrence's "Save for a Rainy Day" in 1996 in CD and vinyl formats, as well as the collector's vinyl 45 rpm companion EP, "Sounds For A Rainy Day", featuring four instrumental versions of the album's tracks.
Between the 1970s and the early 2000s, Torrence issued a number of re-recordings of classic Jan and Dean and Beach Boys hits. A double album titled "One Summer Night / Live" was issued by Rhino Records in 1982. Torrence released the album "Silver Summer" with the help of Mike Love in 1985 for Jan & Dean's 25th anniversary. "Silver Summer" was officially released as a Jan & Dean album, but falsely gives credit to Berry as co-producer and singer; Berry did not partake in the album. Torrence participated with Berry on "Port to Paradise", released as a cassette on the J&D Records label in 1986. In 1997, after many years of hard work, Berry released a solo album called "Second Wave" on One Way Records. June 11, 2002, Torrence released a solo album titled "Anthology: Legendary Masked Surfer Unmasked".
On August 31, 1991, Berry married Gertie Filip at the Stardust Convention Centre in Las Vegas, Nevada. Torrence was Berry's best man at the wedding.
Jan and Dean's career together ended with Jan Berry's death on March 26, 2004, after he suffered a seizure eight days before his 63rd birthday. Berry was an organ donor, and his body was cremated. On April 18, 2004, a "Celebration of Life" was held in Berry's memory at the Roxy Theatre on the Sunset Strip in West Hollywood, California. Attendees included Torrence, Lou Adler, Jill Gibson, and Nancy Sinatra, along with many family members, friends, and musicians associated with Jan and Dean and the Beach Boys, including the original members of Papa Doo Run Run.
In February 2010, the Jan & Dean album "Carnival of Sound" was released on the Rhino Handmade label. The album cover was designed by Torrence. Along with the CD, there was a limited edition (1500 copies), which included a 10-track LP. The album was released in Europe in April 2010 in its original US form.
In 2012, Torrence reunited with Bruce Davison, who portrayed him in the 1978 film "Deadman's Curve", to perform with the Bamboo Trading Company on their "From Kitty Hawk To Surf City" album. The songs were "Shrewd Awakening" and "Tonga Hut", which was featured on the film "Return of the Killer Shrews", a sequel to the 1959 film "The Killer Shrews" and also "Tweet (Don't Talk Anymore)", "Drinkin' In the Sunshine", and "Star Of The Beach". The album also features Dean's two daughters, Jillian and Katie Torrence. Torrence and his two daughters were featured in the music video of "Shrewd Awakening".
After Berry's death, Torrence began touring occasionally with the Surf City All-Stars. He serves as a spokesman for the City of Huntington Beach, California, which, thanks in part to his efforts, is nationally recognized as "Surf City USA". Torrence's website features—among other things—rare images, a complete Jan & Dean discography, a biography, and a timeline of his career with cohort Jan Berry. He currently resides in Huntington Beach, California, with his wife and two daughters.
In 1964, Jan and Dean were signed to host what became the first multi-act Rock and Roll show that was edited into a motion picture designed for wide distribution. "The T.A.M.I. Show" became a seminal and original production – in essence one of the first rock videos – on its release in 1964. Using a high-resolution videotape process called Electronovision (transferred from television directly onto 35mm motion picture stock as a kinescope), new sound recording techniques and having a remarkable cast, "The T.A.M.I. Show" set the standard for all succeeding music film and video work, including many of the early videos shown by MTV 17 years later. The revolutionary technical achievements of "The T.A.M.I. Show" and the list of performers (including a performance by James Brown that many critics have called the best of his career) marked a high point for Jan and Dean, as they were the hosts and one of the main featured acts as well. They became one of the main faces of mid-1960s music, until Berry's auto accident two years later, through their "T.A.M.I. Show "appearance.
According to rock critic Dave Marsh, the attitude and public persona of punk rock can be traced to Jan and Dean. Certainly their casual and goofy stage antics were consistent with some of punk rock's ethos. But their constant improvement and the increased complexity of their arrangements in the latter recordings showed their fealty to Brian Wilson's baroque approach. Many of their records feature the top session players of the era, and their arrangements, with multiple key changes and complex vocal harmonies, reflected a high level of craftsmanship.
Nevertheless, Jan Berry and Dean Torrence's anti-establishment attitudes toward the music industry are well-documented. Their music has been covered by numerous punk rock and alternative rock bands since the 1970s.
Brian Wilson has cited Berry as having a direct impact on his own growth as a record producer.
In an interview conducted by Jan & Dean fan and historian David Beard for the Collectors' Choice release, "Jan & Dean, the Complete Liberty Singles", Dean Torrence stated that he felt the duo should be in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: "We have the scoreboard if you just want to compare number of hits and musical projects done. We beat 75-percent of the people in there. So what else is it? I've got to think that we were pretty irreverent when it came to the music industry. They kind of always held that against us. That's okay with me." Jan & Dean were, however, inducted into the Hollywood Rock Walk of Fame on April 12, 1996, exactly 30 years after Jan Berry had his near fatal car accident.
The Who covered Jan and Dean's "Bucket T" on their UK EP "Ready Steady Who" from 1966. It is one of only a few songs the group performed that surf-fan Keith Moon provided the lead vocals.
Alternative rock group the Red Hot Chili Peppers referenced the duo in their song "Did I Let You Know", on the album "I'm with You". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16241 |
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru (; ; 14 November 1889 – 27 May 1964) was an Indian independence activist and, subsequently, the first Prime Minister of India, as well as a central figure in Indian politics both before and after independence. He emerged as an eminent leader of the Indian independence movement, serving India as Prime Minister from its establishment in 1947 as an independent nation, until his death in 1964. He was also known as Pandit Nehru due to his roots with the Kashmiri Pandit community, while Indian children knew him as better as Chacha Nehru (Hindi; ).
The son of Swarup Rani and Motilal Nehru, a prominent lawyer and nationalist statesman, Nehru was a graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge and the Inner Temple, where he trained to be a barrister. Upon his return to India, he enrolled at the Allahabad High Court and took an interest in national politics, which eventually replaced his legal practice. A committed nationalist since his teenage years, he became a rising figure in Indian politics during the upheavals of the 1910s. He became the prominent leader of the left-wing factions of the Indian National Congress during the 1920s, and eventually of the entire Congress, with the tacit approval of his mentor, Gandhi. As Congress President in 1929, Nehru called for complete independence from the British Raj and instigated the Congress's decisive shift towards the left.
Nehru and the Congress dominated Indian politics during the 1930s as the country moved towards independence. His idea of a secular nation-state was seemingly validated when the Congress swept the 1937 provincial elections and formed the government in several provinces; on the other hand, the separatist Muslim League fared much poorer. However, these achievements were severely compromised in the aftermath of the Quit India Movement in 1942, which saw the British effectively crush the Congress as a political organisation. Nehru, who had reluctantly heeded Gandhi's call for immediate independence, for he had desired to support the Allied war effort during World War II, came out of a lengthy prison term to a much altered political landscape. The Muslim League under his old Congress colleague and now opponent, Muhammad Ali Jinnah, had come to dominate Muslim politics in India. Negotiations between Congress and Muslim League for power sharing failed and gave way to the independence and bloody partition of India in 1947.
Nehru was elected by the Congress to assume office as independent India's first Prime Minister, although the question of leadership had been settled as far back as 1941, when Gandhi acknowledged Nehru as his political heir and successor. As Prime Minister, he set out to realise his vision of India. The Constitution of India was enacted in 1950, after which he embarked on an ambitious program of economic, social and political reforms. Chiefly, he oversaw India's transition from a colony to a republic, while nurturing a plural, multi-party system. In foreign policy, he took a leading role in the Non-Aligned Movement while projecting India as a regional hegemon in South Asia.
Under Nehru's leadership, the Congress emerged as a catch-all party, dominating national and state-level politics and winning consecutive elections in 1951, 1957, and 1962. He remained popular with the people of India in spite of political troubles in his final years and failure of leadership during the 1962 Sino-Indian War. In India, his birthday is celebrated as "Bal Diwas" ("Children's Day").
Jawaharlal Nehru was born on 14 November 1889 in Allahabad in British India. His father, Motilal Nehru (1861–1931), a self-made wealthy barrister who belonged to the Kashmiri Pandit community, served twice as President of the Indian National Congress, in 1919 and 1928. His mother, Swarup Rani Thussu (1868–1938), who came from a well-known Kashmiri Brahmin family settled in Lahore, was Motilal's second wife, the first having died in childbirth. Jawaharlal was the eldest of three children, two of whom were girls. The elder sister, Vijaya Lakshmi, later became the first female president of the United Nations General Assembly. The youngest sister, Krishna Hutheesing, became a noted writer and authored several books on her brother.
Nehru described his childhood as a "sheltered and uneventful one." He grew up in an atmosphere of privilege at wealthy homes including a palatial estate called the Anand Bhavan. His father had him educated at home by private governesses and tutors. Under the influence Ferdinand T. Brooks' tutelage, Nehru became interested in science and theosophy. He was subsequently initiated into the Theosophical Society at age thirteen by family friend Annie Besant. However, his interest in theosophy did not prove to be enduring and he left the society shortly after Brooks departed as his tutor. He wrote: "for nearly three years [Brooks] was with me and in many ways he influenced me greatly."
Nehru's theosophical interests had induced him to the study of the Buddhist and Hindu scriptures. According to Bal Ram Nanda, these scriptures were Nehru's "first introduction to the religious and cultural heritage of [India].… [They] provided Nehru the initial impulse for [his] long intellectual quest which culminated…in "The Discovery of India"."
Nehru became an ardent nationalist during his youth. The Second Boer War and the Russo-Japanese War intensified his feelings. About the latter he wrote, "[The] Japanese victories [had] stirred up my enthusiasm.… Nationalistic ideas filled my mind.… I mused of Indian freedom and Asiatic freedom from the thraldom of Europe." Later, when he had begun his institutional schooling in 1905 at Harrow, a leading school in England, he was greatly influenced by G. M. Trevelyan's Garibaldi books, which he had received as prizes for academic merit. He viewed Garibaldi as a revolutionary hero. He wrote: "Visions of similar deeds in India came before, of [my] gallant fight for [Indian] freedom and in my mind India and Italy got strangely mixed together."
Nehru went to Trinity College, Cambridge in October 1907 and graduated with an honours degree in natural science in 1910. During this period, he also studied politics, economics, history, and literature desultorily. The writings of Bernard Shaw, H. G. Wells, John Maynard Keynes, Bertrand Russell, Lowes Dickinson, and Meredith Townsend moulded much of his political and economic thinking.
After completing his degree in 1910, Nehru moved to London and studied law at Inner temple Inn During this time, he continued to study the scholars of the Fabian Society including Beatrice Webb. He was called to the Bar in 1912.
After returning to India in August 1912, Nehru enrolled himself as an advocate of the Allahabad High Court and tried to settle down as a barrister. But, unlike his father, he had only a desultory interest in his profession and did not relish either the practice of law or the company of lawyers: "Decidedly the atmosphere was not intellectually stimulating and a sense of the utter insipidity of life grew upon me." His involvement in nationalist politics would gradually replace his legal practice in the coming years.
Nehru had developed an interest in Indian politics during his time in Britain as a student and a barrister.
Within months of his return to India in 1912, Nehru attended an annual session of the Indian National Congress in Patna. Congress in 1912 was the party of moderates and elites, and he was disconcerted by what he saw as "very much an English-knowing upper-class affair." Nehru harboured doubts regarding the effectiveness of Congress but agreed to work for the party in support of the Indian civil rights movement led by Mahatma Gandhi in South Africa, collecting funds for the movement in 1913. Later, he campaigned against indentured labour and other such discrimination faced by Indians in the British colonies.
When World War I broke out, sympathy in India was divided. Although educated Indians "by and large took a vicarious pleasure" in seeing the British rulers humbled, the ruling upper classes sided with the Allies. Nehru confessed that he viewed the war with mixed feelings. As Frank Moraes writes, "[i]f [Nehru's] sympathy was with any country it was with France, whose culture he greatly admired." During the war, Nehru volunteered for the St. John Ambulance and worked as one of the provincial secretaries of the organisation in Allahabad. He also spoke out against the censorship acts passed by the British government in India.
Nehru emerged from the war years as a leader whose political views were considered radical. Although the political discourse had been dominated at this time by Gopal Krishna Gokhale, a moderate who said that it was "madness to think of independence," Nehru had spoken "openly of the politics of non-cooperation, of the need of resigning from honorary positions under the government and of not continuing the futile politics of representation." He ridiculed the Indian Civil Service for its support of British policies. He noted that someone had once defined the Indian Civil Service, "with which we are unfortunately still afflicted in this country, as neither Indian, nor civil, nor a service." Motilal Nehru, a prominent moderate leader, acknowledged the limits of constitutional agitation, but counselled his son that there was no other "practical alternative" to it. Nehru, however, was not satisfied with the pace of the national movement. He became involved with aggressive nationalists leaders who were demanding Home Rule for Indians.
The influence of the moderates on Congress politics began to wane after Gokhale died in 1915. Anti-moderate leaders such as Annie Besant and Bal Gangadhar Tilak took the opportunity to call for a national movement for Home Rule. However, in 1915, the proposal was rejected because of the reluctance of the moderates to commit to such a radical course of action.
Besant nevertheless formed a league for advocating Home Rule in 1916, and Tilak, on his release from a prison term, had in April 1916 formed his own league. Nehru joined both leagues but worked especially for the former. He remarked later that "[Besant] had a very powerful influence on me in my childhood…even later when I entered political life her influence continued." Another development which brought about a radical change in Indian politics was the espousal of Hindu-Muslim unity with the Lucknow Pact at the annual meeting of the Congress in December 1916. The pact had been initiated earlier in the year at Allahabad at a meeting of the All India Congress Committee which was held at the Nehru residence at Anand Bhawan. Nehru welcomed and encouraged the rapprochement between the two Indian communities.
Several nationalist leaders banded together in 1916 under the leadership of Annie Besant to voice a demand for self-governance, and to obtain the status of a Dominion within the British Empire as enjoyed by Australia, Canada, South Africa, New Zealand, and Newfoundland at the time. Nehru joined the movement and rose to become secretary of Besant's Home Rule League.
In June 1917, Besant was arrested and interned by the British government. The Congress and various other Indian organisations threatened to launch protests if she were not set free. The British government was subsequently forced to release Besant and make significant concessions after a period of intense protest.
The first big national involvement of Nehru came at the onset of the Non-Cooperation movement in 1920. He led the movement in the United Provinces (now Uttar Pradesh). Nehru was arrested on charges of anti-governmental activities in 1921, and was released a few months later. In the rift that formed within the Congress following the sudden closure of the Non-Cooperation movement after the Chauri Chaura incident, Nehru remained loyal to Gandhi and did not join the Swaraj Party formed by his father Motilal Nehru and CR Das. In 1923, Nehru suffered imprisonment in Nabha, a princely state, when he went there to see the struggle that was being waged by the Sikhs against the corrupt Mahants.
Nehru played a leading role in the development of the internationalist outlook of the Indian independence struggle. He sought foreign allies for India and forged links with movements for independence and democracy all over the world. In 1927, his efforts paid off and the Congress was invited to attend the congress of oppressed nationalities in Brussels in Belgium. The meeting was called to coordinate and plan a common struggle against imperialism. Nehru represented India and was elected to the Executive Council of the League against Imperialism that was born at this meeting.
Increasingly, Nehru saw the struggle for independence from British imperialism as a multinational effort by the various colonies and dominions of the Empire; some of his statements on this matter, however, were interpreted as complicity with the rise of Hitler and his espoused intentions. In the face of these allegations, Nehru responded:We have sympathy for the national movement of Arabs in Palestine because it is directed against British Imperialism. Our sympathies cannot be weakened by the fact that the national movement coincides with Hitler's interests.
Nehru drafted the policies of the Congress and a future Indian nation in 1929. He declared that the aims of the congress were freedom of religion; right to form associations; freedom of expression of thought; equality before law for every individual without distinction of caste, colour, creed, or religion; protection to regional languages and cultures, safeguarding the interests of the peasants and labour; abolition of untouchability; introduction of adult franchise; imposition of prohibition, nationalisation of industries; socialism; and establishment of a secular India. All these aims formed the core of the "Fundamental Rights and Economic Policy" resolution drafted by Nehru in 1929–31 and were ratified in 1931 by the Congress party session at Karachi chaired by Vallabhbhai Patel.
Nehru was one of the first leaders to demand that the Congress Party should resolve to make a complete and explicit break from all ties with the British Empire. His resolution for independence was approved at the Madras session of Congress in 1927 despite Gandhi's criticism. At that time he also formed Independence for India league, a pressure group within the Congress. In 1928, Gandhi agreed to Nehru's demands and proposed a resolution that called for the British to grant dominion status to India within two years. If the British failed to meet the deadline, the Congress would call upon all Indians to fight for complete independence. Nehru was one of the leaders who objected to the time given to the British—he pressed Gandhi to demand immediate actions from the British. Gandhi brokered a further compromise by reducing the time given from two years to one. Nehru agreed to vote for the new resolution.
Demands for dominion status were rejected by the British in 1929. Nehru assumed the presidency of the Congress party during the Lahore session on 29 December 1929 and introduced a successful resolution calling for complete independence. Nehru drafted the Indian declaration of independence, which stated:
We believe that it is the inalienable right of the Indian people, as of any other people, to have freedom and to enjoy the fruits of their toil and have the necessities of life, so that they may have full opportunities of growth. We believe also that if any government deprives a people of these rights and oppresses them the people have a further right to alter it or abolish it. The British government in India has not only deprived the Indian people of their freedom but has based itself on the exploitation of the masses, and has ruined India economically, politically, culturally and spiritually. We believe therefore, that India must sever the British connection and attain Purna Swaraj or complete independence.
At midnight on New Year's Eve 1929, Nehru hoisted the tricolour flag of India upon the banks of the Ravi in Lahore. A pledge of independence was read out, which included a readiness to withhold taxes. The massive gathering of public attending the ceremony was asked if they agreed with it, and the vast majority of people were witnessed to raise their hands in approval. 172 Indian members of central and provincial legislatures resigned in support of the resolution and in accordance with Indian public sentiment. The Congress asked the people of India to observe 26 January as Independence Day. The flag of India was hoisted publicly across India by Congress volunteers, nationalists and the public. Plans for a mass civil disobedience were also underway.
After the Lahore session of the Congress in 1929, Nehru gradually emerged as the paramount leader of the Indian independence movement. Gandhi stepped back into a more spiritual role. Although Gandhi did not officially designate Nehru his political heir until 1942, the country as early as the mid-1930s saw in Nehru the natural successor to Gandhi.
Nehru and most of the Congress leaders were initially ambivalent about Gandhi's plan to begin civil disobedience with a "satyagraha" aimed at the British salt tax. After the protest gathered steam, they realised the power of salt as a symbol. Nehru remarked about the unprecedented popular response, "it seemed as though a spring had been suddenly released." He was arrested on 14 April 1930 while on train from Allahabad for Raipur. He had earlier, after addressing a huge meeting and leading a vast procession, ceremoniously manufactured some contraband salt. He was charged with breach of the salt law, tried summarily behind prison walls and sentenced to six months of imprisonment.
He nominated Gandhi to succeed him as Congress President during his absence in jail, but Gandhi declined, and Nehru then nominated his father as his successor. With Nehru's arrest the civil disobedience acquired a new tempo, and arrests, firing on crowds and lathi charges grew to be ordinary occurrences.
The Salt Satyagraha succeeded in drawing the attention of the world. Indian, British, and world opinion increasingly began to recognise the legitimacy of the claims by the Congress party for independence. Nehru considered the salt satyagraha the high-water mark of his association with Gandhi, and felt that its lasting importance was in changing the attitudes of Indians:
Of course these movements exercised tremendous pressure on the British Government and shook the government machinery. But the real importance, to my mind, lay in the effect they had on our own people, and especially the village masses.… Non-cooperation dragged them out of the mire and gave them self-respect and self-reliance.… They acted courageously and did not submit so easily to unjust oppression; their outlook widened and they began to think a little in terms of India as a whole.… It was a remarkable transformation and the Congress, under Gandhi's leadership, must have the credit for it.
During the mid-1930s, Nehru was much concerned with developments in Europe, which seemed to be drifting toward another world war. He was in Europe in early 1936, visiting his ailing wife, shortly before she died in a sanitarium in Switzerland. At that time, he emphasised that, in the event of war, India's place was alongside the democracies, though he insisted that India could only fight in support of Great Britain and France as a free country.
Nehru's visit to Europe in 1936 proved to be the watershed in his political and economic thinking. His real interest in Marxism and his socialist pattern of thought stem from that tour. His subsequent "sojourns" in prison enabled him to study Marxism in more depth. Interested in its ideas but repelled by some of its methods, he could never bring himself to accept Karl Marx's writings as revealed scripture. Yet from then on, the yardstick of his economic thinking remained Marxist, adjusted, where necessary, to Indian conditions.
At the 1936 Lucknow session of 1936, the Congress party, despite opposition from the newly elected Nehru as the party president, agreed to contest the provincial elections to be held in 1937 under the "Government of India Act 1935". The elections brought Congress party to power in a majority of the provinces with increased popularity and power for Nehru. Since the Muslim League under Muhammad Ali Jinnah (who was to become the creator of Pakistan) had fared badly at the polls, Nehru declared that the only two parties that mattered in India were the British colonial authorities and the Congress. Jinnah's statements that the Muslim League was the third and "equal partner" within Indian politics was widely rejected. Nehru had hoped to elevate Maulana Azad as the preeminent leader of Indian Muslims, but in this, he was undermined by Gandhi, who continued to treat Jinnah as the voice of Indian Muslims.
In the 1930s, the Congress Socialist Party group was formed within the INC under the leadership of Jayaprakash Narayan, Narendra Deo, and others. Nehru, however, never joined the group but did act as bridge between them and Gandhi. He had the support of the left-wing Congressmen Maulana Azad and Subhas Chandra Bose. The trio combined to oust Dr. Prasad as Congress President in 1936. Nehru was elected in his place and held the presidency for two years (1936–37). He was then succeeded by his socialist colleagues Bose (1938–39) and Azad (1940–46). During Nehru's second term as general secretary of the Congress, he proposed certain resolutions concerning the foreign policy of India. From that time onward, he was given "carte blanche" in framing the foreign policy of any future Indian nation. Nehru worked closely with Bose in developing good relations with governments of free countries all over the world.
Nehru was one of the first nationalist leaders to realise the sufferings of the people in the states ruled by Indian princes. The nationalist movement had been confined to the territories under direct British rule. He helped to make the struggle of the people in the princely states a part of the nationalist movement for independence. Nehru was also given the responsibility of planning the economy of a future India and appointed the National Planning Commission in 1938 to help in framing such policies. However, many of the plans framed by Nehru and his colleagues would come undone with the unexpected partition of India in 1947.
The All India States Peoples Conference (AISPC) was formed in 1927 and Nehru, who had been supporting the cause of the people of the princely states for many years, was made the President of the organization in 1939. He opened up its ranks to membership from across the political spectrum. The body would play an important role during the political integration of India, helping Indian leaders Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon (to whom Nehru had delegated the task of integrating the princely states into India) negotiate with hundreds of princes.
When World War II began, Viceroy Linlithgow had unilaterally declared India a belligerent on the side of the Britain, without consulting the elected Indian representatives. Nehru hurried back from a visit to China, announcing that, in a conflict between democracy and fascism, that "our sympathies must inevitably be on the side of democracy.… I should like India to play its full part and throw all her resources into the struggle for a new order.
After much deliberation, the Congress under Nehru informed the government that it would cooperate with the British but on certain conditions. First, Britain must give an assurance of full independence for India after the war and allow the election of a constituent assembly to frame a new constitution; second, although the Indian armed forces would remain under the British Commander-in-Chief, Indians must be included immediately in the central government and given a chance to share power and responsibility. When Nehru presented Lord Linlithgow with the demands, he chose to reject them. A deadlock was reached: "The same old game is played again," Nehru wrote bitterly to Gandhi, "the background is the same, the various epithets are the same and the actors are the same and the results must be the same."
On 23 October 1939, the Congress condemned the Viceroy's attitude and called upon the Congress ministries in the various provinces to resign in protest. Before this crucial announcement, Nehru urged Jinnah and the Muslim League to join the protest but the latter declined.
As Nehru firmly placed India on the side of democracy and freedom during a time when the world was under the threat of fascism, he and Bose would split in the late 1930s when the latter agreed to seek the help of fascists in driving the British out of India. At the same time, Nehru had supported the Republicans who were fighting against Francisco Franco's forces in the Spanish Civil War. Nehru along with his aide V. K. Krishna Menon visited Spain and declared support for the Republicans. He refused to meet Benito Mussolini, dictator of Italy, when the latter expressed his desire to meet him.
In March 1940, Muhammad Ali Jinnah passed what would come to be known as the "Pakistan Resolution", declaring that "Muslims are a nation according to any definition of a nation, and they must have their homelands, their territory and their State." This state was to be known as Pakistan, meaning 'Land of the Pure'. Nehru angrily declared that "all the old problems…pale into insignificance before the latest stand taken by the Muslim League leader in Lahore." Linlithgow made Nehru an offer on 8 October 1940, which stated that Dominion status for India was the objective of the British government. However, it referred neither to a date nor method of accomplishment. Only Jinnah received something more precise: "The British would not contemplate transferring power to a Congress-dominated national government the authority of which was 'denied by large and powerful elements in India's national life.'"
In October 1940, Gandhi and Nehru, abandoning their original stand of supporting Britain, decided to launch a limited civil disobedience campaign in which leading advocates of Indian independence were selected to participate one by one. Nehru was arrested and sentenced to four years' imprisonment. On 15 January 1941, Gandhi had stated:
Some say Jawaharlal and I were estranged. It will require much more than difference of opinion to estrange us. We had differences from the time we became co-workers and yet I have said for some years and say so now that not Rajaji but Jawaharlal will be my successor.After spending a little more than a year in jail, Nehru was released, along with other Congress prisoners, three days before the bombing of Pearl Harbor in Hawaii.
When the Japanese carried their attack through Burma (now Myanmar) to the borders of India in the spring of 1942, the British government, faced by this new military threat, decided to make some overtures to India, as Nehru had originally desired. Prime Minister Winston Churchill dispatched Sir Stafford Cripps, a member of the war Cabinet who was known to be politically close to Nehru and also knew Jinnah, with proposals for a settlement of the constitutional problem. As soon as he arrived he discovered that India was more deeply divided than he had imagined. Nehru, eager for a compromise, was hopeful; Gandhi was not. Jinnah had continued opposing the Congress: "Pakistan is our only demand, and by God we will have it," and declared the Muslim League newspaper "Dawn". Cripps' mission failed as Gandhi would accept nothing less than independence. Relations between Nehru and Gandhi cooled over the latter's refusal to cooperate with Cripps, but the two later reconciled.
In 1942, Gandhi called on the British to leave India; Nehru, though reluctant to embarrass the allied war effort, had no alternative but to join Gandhi. Following the Quit India resolution passed by the Congress party in Bombay on 8 August 1942, the entire Congress working committee, including Gandhi and Nehru, was arrested and imprisoned. Most the Congress working committee including, Nehru, Abdul Kalam Azad, Sardar Patel were incarcerated at the Ahmednagar Fort until 15 June 1945.
During the period where all of the Congress leadership were in jail, the Muslim League under Jinnah grew in power. In April 1943, the League captured the governments of Bengal and, a month later, that of the North West Frontier Province. In none of these provinces had the League previously had a majority – only the arrest of Congress members made it possible. With all the Muslim dominated provinces except the Punjab under Jinnah's control, the artificial concept of a separate Muslim State was turning into a reality. However, by 1944, Jinnah's power and prestige were on the wane.
A general sympathy towards the jailed Congress leaders was developing among Muslims, and much of the blame for the disastrous Bengal famine of 1943–44 during which two million died, had been laid on the shoulders of the province's Muslim League government. The numbers at Jinnah's meetings, once counted in thousands soon numbered only a few hundreds. In despair, Jinnah left the political scene for a stay in Kashmir. His prestige was restored unwittingly by Gandhi, who had been released from prison on medical grounds in May 1944 and had met Jinnah in Bombay in September. There he offered the Muslim leader a plebiscite in the Muslim areas after the war to see whether they wanted to separate from the rest of India. Essentially, it was an acceptance of the principle of Pakistan – but not in so many words. Jinnah demanded that the exact words be said; Gandhi refused and the talks broke down. Jinnah, however, had greatly strengthened his own position and that of the League. The most influential member of Congress had been seen to negotiate with him on equal terms. Other Muslim League leaders, opposed both to Jinnah and to the partition of India, lost strength.
Nehru served as prime minister for 18 years, first as the interim prime minister and from 1950 as the prime minister of the republic of India.
In July 1946, Nehru pointedly observed that no princely state could prevail militarily against the army of independent India. In January 1947, he said that independent India would not accept the Divine right of kings, and in May 1947, he declared that any princely state which refused to join the Constituent Assembly would be treated as an enemy state. Vallabhbhai Patel and V. P. Menon were more conciliatory towards the princes, and as the men charged with integrating the states, were successful in the task. During the drafting of the Indian constitution, many Indian leaders (except Nehru) of that time were in favour of allowing each princely state or covenanting state to be independent as a federal state along the lines suggested originally by the "Government of India Act 1935". But as the drafting of the constitution progressed and the idea of forming a republic took concrete shape, it was decided that all the princely states/covenanting States would merge with the Indian republic.
Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, as prime minister, de-recognised all the rulers by a presidential order in 1969, a decision struck down by the Supreme Court of India. Eventually, her government by the 26th amendment to the constitution was successful in derecognizing these former rulers and ending the privy purse paid to them in 1971. In a series of letters Nehru wrote to his ten-year-old daughter Indira in 1928, "Letters from a Father to His Daughter," he promotes the republican model of government to her, and heavily criticizes the monarchs of India:When the patriarch’s office became hereditary, that is son succeeded father, there was little difference between him and a king. He developed into a king and the king got the strange notion that everything in the country belonged to him. He thought he was the country. ... Kings forgot that they were really chosen by the people in order to organize and distribute the food and other things of the country among the people. They forgot that they were chosen because they were supposed to be the cleverest and the most experienced persons in the tribe or country. They imagined that they were masters and all the other people in the country were their servants. As a matter of fact, they were servants of the country.
Later on ... kings became so conceited that they thought that people had nothing to do with choosing them. It was God himself, they said, that had made them kings. They called this the “divine right of kings.” For long years, they misbehaved like this and lived in great pomp and luxury while their people starved.
In India, we have still many rajas and maharajas and nawabs. You see them going about with fine clothes, in expensive motor cars and spending a lot of money on themselves. Where do they get all this money from? They get it in taxes from the people. The taxes are given so that the money may be used to help all the people in the country — by making schools and hospitals and libraries and museums and good roads and many other things for the good of the people. But our rajas and maharajas still think as the French king did of old L’etat c’est moi — “the state, it is I.” And they spend the money of the people on their own pleasures. While they live in luxury, their people, who work hard and give them the money, starve and their children have no schools to go to.
Nehru and his colleagues were released prior to the arrival of the British 1946 Cabinet Mission to India to propose plans for transfer of power. The agreed plan in 1946 led to elections to the provincial assemblies and the members of the assemblies in turn electing members of the Constituent assembly. Congress won majority of seats in the assembly and headed the interim government with Nehru as the prime minister.
The period before independence in early 1947 was impaired by outbreaks of communal violence and political disorder, and the opposition of the Muslim League led by Muhammad Ali Jinnah, who were demanding a separate Muslim state of Pakistan. After failed bids to form coalitions, Nehru reluctantly supported the partition of India, according to a plan released by the British on 3 June 1947.
He took office as the Prime Minister of India on 15 August, and delivered his inaugural address titled "Tryst with Destiny".
Long years ago we made a tryst with destiny, and now the time comes when we shall redeem our pledge, not wholly or in full measure, but very substantially. At the stroke of the midnight hour, when the world sleeps, India will awake to life and freedom. A moment comes, which comes but rarely in history, when we step out from the old to the new, when an age ends, and when the soul of a nation, long suppressed, finds utterance. It is fitting that at this solemn moment we take the pledge of dedication to the service of India and her people and to the still larger cause of humanity."
On 30 January 1948, Gandhi was shot while he was walking to a platform from which he was to address a prayer meeting. The assassin, Nathuram Godse, was a Hindu nationalist with links to the extremist Hindu Mahasabha party, who held Gandhi responsible for weakening India by insisting upon a payment to Pakistan. Nehru addressed the nation through radio:
Friends and comrades, the light has gone out of our lives, and there is darkness everywhere, and I do not quite know what to tell you or how to say it. Our beloved leader, Bapu as we called him, the father of the nation, is no more. Perhaps I am wrong to say that; nevertheless, we will not see him again, as we have seen him for these many years, we will not run to him for advice or seek solace from him, and that is a terrible blow, not only for me, but for millions and millions in this country.
Yasmin Khan argued that Gandhi's death and funeral helped consolidate the authority of the new Indian state under Nehru and Patel. The Congress tightly controlled the epic public displays of grief over a two-week period—the funeral, mortuary rituals and distribution of the martyr's ashes—as millions participated and hundreds of millions watched. The goal was to assert the power of the government, legitimise the Congress party's control and suppress all religious paramilitary groups. Nehru and Patel suppressed the RSS, the Muslim National Guards, and the Khaksars, with some 200,000 arrests. Gandhi's death and funeral linked the distant state with the Indian people and made more understand the need to suppress religious parties during the transition to independence for the Indian people.
In later years, there emerged a revisionist school of history which sought to blame Nehru for the partition of India, mostly referring to his highly centralised policies for an independent India in 1947, which Jinnah opposed in favour of a more decentralised India.
The British Indian Empire, which included present-day India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh, was divided into two types of territories: the Provinces of British India, which were governed directly by British officials responsible to the Viceroy of India; and princely states, under the rule of local hereditary rulers who recognised British suzerainty in return for local autonomy, in most cases as established by a treaty. Between 1947 and about 1950, the territories of the princely states were politically integrated into the Indian Union under Nehru and Sardar Patel. Most were merged into existing provinces; others were organised into new provinces, such as Rajputana, Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Bharat, and Vindhya Pradesh, made up of multiple princely states; a few, including Mysore, Hyderabad, Bhopal, and Bilaspur, became separate provinces. The Government of India Act 1935 remained the constitutional law of India pending adoption of a new Constitution.
The new Constitution of India, which came into force on 26 January 1950, made India a sovereign democratic republic. The new republic was declared to be a "Union of States". The constitution of 1950 distinguished between three main types of states:
After the adoption of the constitution on 26 November 1949, the Constituent Assembly continued to act as the interim parliament until new elections. Nehru's interim cabinet consisted of 15 members from diverse communities and parties. The first elections to Indian legislative bodies (National parliament and State assemblies ) under the new constitution of India were held in 1952. Various members of the cabinet resigned from their posts and formed their own parties to contest the elections. During that period, the then Congress party president, Purushottam Das Tandon also resigned his post because of differences with Nehru and since Nehru's popularity was needed for winning elections. Nehru, while being the PM, also was elected the president of Congress for 1951 and 1952. In the election, despite a large number of parties competing, the Congress party under Nehru's leadership won large majorities at both state and national level.
In December 1953, Nehru appointed the States Reorganisation Commission to prepare for the creation of states on linguistic lines. Headed by Justice Fazal Ali, the commission itself was also known as the Fazal Ali Commission. The efforts of this commission were overseen by Govind Ballabh Pant, who served as Nehru's Home Minister from December 1954. The commission created a report in 1955 recommending the reorganisation of India's states.
Under the Seventh Amendment, the existing distinction between Part A, Part B, Part C, and Part D states was abolished. The distinction between Part A and Part B states was removed, becoming known simply as "states". A new type of entity, the "union territory", replaced the classification as a Part C or Part D state. Nehru stressed commonality among Indians and promoted pan-Indianism, refusing to reorganise states on either religious or ethnic lines. Western scholars have mostly praised Nehru for the integration of the states into a modern republic, though the act was not accepted universally in India.
In the 1957 elections, Nehru also led the Congress party to victory with 47.8% of the votes and taking 371 of the 494 seats in the 1957 elections.
In 1962, Nehru led the Congress to victory yet with a diminished majority. Communist and socialist parties were the main beneficiaries although some right-wing groups like Bharatiya Jana Sangh also did well.
According to Bhikhu Parekh, Nehru can be regarded as the founder of the modern Indian state. Parekh attributes this to the national philosophy for India that Nehru formulated. For Nehru, modernization was the national philosophy, with seven goals: national unity, parliamentary democracy, industrialization, socialism, development of the scientific temper, and non-alignment. In Parekh's opinion, the philosophy and the policies that resulted from that benefited a large section of society such as the public sector workers, industrial houses, middle and upper peasantry. It failed, however, to benefit the urban and rural poor, the unemployed and the Hindu fundamentalists.
After the fall of Bose from the mainstream of Indian politics (because of his support of violence in driving the British out of India), the power struggle between the socialists and conservatives balanced out. However, Sardar Patel died in 1950, leaving Nehru as the sole remaining iconic national leader, and soon the situation became such that Nehru was able to implement many of his basic policies without hindrance. Nehru's daughter, Indira Gandhi, during the state of Emergency she imposed, was able to fulfill her father's dream by the 42nd amendment (1976) of the Indian constitution by which India officially became "socialist" and "secular."
Nehru implemented policies based on import substitution industrialization and advocated a mixed economy where the government controlled public sector would co-exist with the private sector. He believed that the establishment of basic and heavy industry was fundamental to the development and modernisation of the Indian economy. The government, therefore, directed investment primarily into key public sector industries—steel, iron, coal, and power—promoting their development with subsidies and protectionist policies.
The policy of non-alignment during the Cold War meant that Nehru received financial and technical support from both power blocs in building India's industrial base from scratch. Steel mill complexes were built at Bokaro and Rourkela with assistance from the Soviet Union and West Germany. There was substantial industrial development. Industry grew 7.0% annually between 1950 and 1965—almost trebling industrial output and making India the world's seventh largest industrial country. Nehru's critics, however, contended that India's import substitution industrialisation, which was continued long after the Nehru era, weakened the international competitiveness of its manufacturing industries. India's share of world trade fell from 1.4% in 1951–1960 to 0.5% over 1981–1990. On the other hand, India's export performance is argued to have actually showed sustained improvement over the period. The volume of exports went up at an annual rate of 2.9% in 1951–1960 to 7.6% in 1971–1980.
GDP and GNP grew 3.9 and 4.0% annually between 1950–1951 and 1964–1965. It was a radical break from the British colonial period, but the growth rates were considered anemic at best in comparison to other industrial powers in Europe and East Asia. India lagged behind the miracle economies (Japan, West Germany, France, and Italy). State planning, controls, and regulations were argued to have impaired economic growth. While India's economy grew faster than both the United Kingdom and the United States, low initial income and rapid population increase meant that growth was inadequate for any sort of catch-up with rich income nations.
Nehru's preference for big state controlled enterprises created a complex system of quantitative regulations, quotas and tariffs, industrial licenses and a host of other controls. This system, known in India as Permit Raj, was responsible for economic inefficiencies that stifled entrepreneurship and checked economic growth for decades until the liberalization policies initiated by Congress government in 1991 under P. V. Narasimha Rao.
Under Nehru's leadership, the government attempted to develop India quickly by embarking on agrarian reform and rapid industrialisation. A successful land reform was introduced that abolished giant landholdings, but efforts to redistribute land by placing limits on landownership failed. Attempts to introduce large-scale cooperative farming were frustrated by landowning rural elites, who formed the core of the powerful right-wing of the Congress and had considerable political support in opposing the efforts of Nehru. Agricultural production expanded until the early 1960s, as additional land was brought under cultivation and some irrigation projects began to have an effect. The establishment of agricultural universities, modelled after land-grant colleges in the United States, contributed to the development of the economy. These universities worked with high-yielding varieties of wheat and rice, initially developed in Mexico and the Philippines, that in the 1960s began the Green Revolution, an effort to diversify and increase crop production. At the same time a series of failed monsoons would cause serious food shortages despite the steady progress and increase in agricultural production.
Nehru was a passionate advocate of education for India's children and youth, believing it essential for India's future progress. His government oversaw the establishment of many institutions of higher learning, including the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, the Indian Institutes of Technology, the Indian Institutes of Management and the National Institutes of Technology. Nehru also outlined a commitment in his five-year plans to guarantee free and compulsory primary education to all of India's children. For this purpose, Nehru oversaw the creation of mass village enrollment programs and the construction of thousands of schools. Nehru also launched initiatives such as the provision of free milk and meals to children to fight malnutrition. Adult education centers, vocational and technical schools were also organised for adults, especially in the rural areas.
Under Nehru, the Indian Parliament enacted many changes to Hindu law to criminalize caste discrimination and increase the legal rights and social freedoms of women.
Nehru specifically wrote Article 44 of the Indian constitution under the Directive Principles of State Policy which states: "The State shall endeavor to secure for the citizens a uniform civil code throughout the territory of India." The article has formed the basis of secularism in India. However, Nehru has been criticized for the inconsistent application of the law. Most notably, Nehru allowed Muslims to keep their personal law in matters relating to marriage and inheritance. Also in the small state of Goa, a civil code based on the old Portuguese Family Laws was allowed to continue, and Muslim personal law was prohibited by Nehru. This was the result of the annexation of Goa in 1961 by India, when Nehru promised the people that their laws would be left intact. This has led to accusations of selective secularism.
While Nehru exempted Muslim law from legislation and they remained unreformed, he did pass the "Special Marriage Act" in 1954. The idea behind this act was to give everyone in India the ability to marry outside the personal law under a civil marriage. As usual the law applied to all of India, except Jammu and Kashmir (again leading to accusations of selective secularism). In many respects, the act was almost identical to the "Hindu Marriage Act, 1955", which gives some idea as to how secularised the law regarding Hindus had become. The "Special Marriage Act" allowed Muslims to marry under it and thereby retain the protections, generally beneficial to Muslim women, that could not be found in the personal law. Under the act polygamy was illegal, and inheritance and succession would be governed by the "Indian Succession Act", rather than the respective Muslim personal law. Divorce also would be governed by the secular law, and maintenance of a divorced wife would be along the lines set down in the civil law.
A system of reservations in government services and educational institutions was created to eradicate the social inequalities and disadvantages faced by peoples of the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. Nehru also championed secularism and religious harmony, increasing the representation of minorities in government.
Nehru led the faction of the Congress party which promoted Hindi as the "lingua franca" of the Indian nation. After an exhaustive and divisive debate with the non-Hindi speakers, Hindi was adopted as the official language of India in 1950 with English continuing as an associate official language for a period of 15 years, after which Hindi would become the sole official language. Efforts by the Indian Government to make Hindi the sole official language after 1965 were not acceptable to many non-Hindi Indian states, who wanted the continued use of English. The Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK), a descendant of Dravidar Kazhagam, led the opposition to Hindi. To allay their fears, Nehru enacted the "Official Languages Act" in 1963 to ensure the continuing use of English beyond 1965. The text of the Act did not satisfy the DMK and increased their scepticism that his assurances might not be honoured by future administrations.The Official Languages Act was eventually amended in 1967 by the Congress Government headed by Indira Gandhi to guarantee the indefinite use of Hindi and English as official languages. This effectively ensured the current "virtual indefinite policy of bilingualism" of the Indian Republic.
Throughout his long tenure as the prime minister, Nehru also held the portfolio of External Affairs. As such, he has been credited as the sole architect of Indian foreign policy by many including Rajendra Prasad Dubey.
His idealistic approach focused on giving India a leadership position in nonalignment. He sought to build support among the newly independent nations of Asia and Africa in opposition to the two hostile superpowers contesting the Cold War. The war with China in 1962 caused a radical shift. After that he became more realistic and defense-minded.
After independence, Nehru wanted to maintain good relations with Britain and other British commonwealth countries and signed the London Declaration, under which India agreed that, when it becomes a republic in January 1950, it would join the Commonwealth of Nations and accept the British monarch as a "symbol of the free association of its independent member nations and as such the Head of the Commonwealth." The other nations of the Commonwealth recognised India's continuing membership of the association. The reaction back home was favourable; only the far-left and the far-right criticised Nehru's decision.
On the international scene, Nehru was an opponent of military action and of military alliances. He was a strong supporter of the United Nations, except when it tried to resolve the Kashmir question. He pioneered the policy of non-alignment and co-founded the Non-Aligned Movement of nations professing neutrality between the rival blocs of nations led by the US and the USSR. Recognising the People's Republic of China soon after its founding (while most of the Western bloc continued relations with Taiwan), Nehru argued for its inclusion in the United Nations and refused to brand the Chinese as the aggressors in their conflict with Korea. He sought to establish warm and friendly relations with China in 1950, and hoped to act as an intermediary to bridge the gulf and tensions between the communist states and the Western bloc.
Nehru was a key organizer of the Bandung Conference of April 1955, which brought 29 newly independent nations together from Asia and Africa, and was designed to galvanize the nonalignment movement under Nehru's leadership. He envisioned it as his key leadership opportunity on the world stage, where he would bring together the emerging nations. Instead, he was upstaged by the Chinese representative, Zhou Enlai, who downplayed revolutionary communism and acknowledged the right of all nations to choose their own economic and political systems, including even capitalism. Nehru and his top foreign-policy aide V.K. Krishna Menon by contrast gained an international reputation as rude and undiplomatic. Zhou said privately, "I have never met a more arrogant man than Mr. Nehru." A senior Indian foreign office official characterize Menon as "an outstanding world statesman but the world's worst diplomat," adding that he was often "overbearing, churlish and vindictive".
Nehru, while adverse to war, led the preparations and actual campaigns against Pakistan with regard to Kashmir. He used overwhelming military force to seize Hyderabad In 1948 and Goa In 1961. He was keenly sensitive regarding the geostrategic and military strengths and weaknesses of India in 1947. While laying the foundation stone of the National Defence Academy in 1949, he stated: "We, who for generations had talked about and attempted in everything a peaceful way and practised non-violence, should now be, in a sense, glorifying our army, navy and air force. It means a lot. Though it is odd, yet it simply reflects the oddness of life. Though life is logical, we have to face all contingencies, and unless we are prepared to face them, we will go under. There was no greater prince of peace and apostle of non-violence than Mahatma Gandhi...but yet, he said it was better to take the sword than to surrender, fail or run away. We cannot live carefree assuming that we are safe. Human nature is such. We cannot take the risks and risk our hard-won freedom. We have to be prepared with all modern defense methods and a well-equipped army, navy and air force."
Nehru envisioned the development of nuclear weapons and established the Atomic Energy Commission of India in 1948. Nehru also called Dr. Homi J. Bhabha, a nuclear physicist, who was entrusted with complete authority over all nuclear-related affairs and programs and answered only to Nehru himself. Indian nuclear policy was set by unwritten personal understanding between Nehru and Bhabha. Nehru famously said to Bhabha, "Professor Bhabha take care of Physics, leave international relation to me". From the outset in 1948, Nehru had high ambition to develop this program to stand against the industrialised states, and to establish a nuclear weapons capability as part of India's regional superiority to other South-Asian states, most particularly Pakistan. Nehru also told Bhabha, and later it was told by Bhabha to Raja Rammanna, that: "We must have the capability. We should first prove ourselves and then talk of Gandhi, non-violence and a world without nuclear weapons".""
Nehru was hailed by many for working to defuse global tensions and the threat of nuclear weapons after the Korean War (1950–1953). He commissioned the first study of the effects of nuclear explosions on human health, and campaigned ceaselessly for the abolition of what he called "these frightful engines of destruction". He also had pragmatic reasons for promoting de-nuclearisation, fearing that a nuclear arms race would lead to over-militarisation that would be unaffordable for developing countries such as his own.
At Lord Mountbatten's urging Nehru had promised in 1948 to hold a plebiscite in Kashmir under the auspices of the UN. Kashmir was a disputed territory between India and Pakistan, the two having gone to war with each other over the state in 1947. However, as Pakistan failed to pull back troops in accordance with the UN resolution, and as Nehru grew increasingly wary of the UN, he declined to hold a plebiscite in 1953. His policies on Kashmir and the integration of the state into India were frequently defended in front of the United Nations by his aide, V. K. Krishna Menon, who earned a reputation in India for his passionate speeches.
Nehru orchestrated the ouster and arrest of Sheikh Abdullah, the then prime minister of Kashmir in 1953, whom he had previously supported but now suspected of harbouring separatist ambitions; Bakshi Ghulam Mohammad replaced him.
In 1957, Menon was instructed to deliver an unprecedented eight-hour speech defending India's stand on Kashmir; to date, the speech is the longest ever delivered in the United Nations Security Council, covering five hours of the 762nd meeting on 23 January, and two hours and forty-eight minutes on the 24th, reportedly concluding with Menon's collapse on the Security Council floor. During the filibuster, Nehru moved swiftly and successfully to consolidate Indian power in Kashmir (then under great unrest). Menon's passionate defence of Indian sovereignty in Kashmir enlarged his base of support in India, and led to the Indian press temporarily dubbing him the "Hero of Kashmir". Nehru was then at the peak of his popularity in India; the only (minor) criticism came from the far-right.
In 1954, Nehru signed with China the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, known in India as the Panchsheel (from the Sanskrit words, panch: five, sheel: virtues), a set of principles to govern relations between the two states. Their first formal codification in treaty form was in an agreement between China and India in 1954 which recognized Chinese sovereignty over Tibet. They were enunciated in the preamble to the "Agreement (with exchange of notes) on trade and intercourse between Tibet Region of China and India", which was signed at Peking on 29 April 1954. Negotiations took place in Delhi from December 1953 to April 1954 between the Delegation of the PRC Government and the Delegation of the Indian Government on the relations between the two countries with respect to the disputed territories of Aksai Chin and South Tibet. By 1957, Chinese premier Zhou Enlai had also succeeded in persuading Nehru to accept the Chinese position on Tibet, thus depriving Tibet of a possible ally, and of the possibility of receiving military aid from India. The treaty was disregarded in the 1960s, but in the 1970s, the Five Principles again came to be seen as important in China–India relations, and more generally as norms of relations between states. They became widely recognised and accepted throughout the region during the premiership of Indira Gandhi and the 3-year rule of the Janata Party (1977–1980). Although the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence were the basis of the 1954 Sino-Indian border treaty, in later years, Nehru's foreign policy suffered from increasing Chinese assertiveness over border disputes and Nehru's decision to grant asylum to the 14th Dalai Lama.
In 1956, Nehru had criticised the joint invasion of the Suez Canal by the British, French and Israelis. The role of Nehru, both as Indian Prime Minister and a leader of the Non-Aligned Movement was significant; he tried to be even-handed between the two sides, while denouncing Eden and co-sponsors of the invasion vigorously. Nehru had a powerful ally in the US president Dwight Eisenhower who, if relatively silent publicly, went to the extent of using America's clout in the International Monetary Fund to make Britain and France back down.During the Suez crisis, Nehru's right-hand man, Menon attempted to persuade a recalcitrant Gamal Nasser to compromise with the West, and was instrumental in moving Western powers towards an awareness that Nasser might prove willing to compromise.
The US had hoped to court Nehru after its intervention in favour of Nasser during the Suez crisis. However, Cold War suspicions and the American distrust of Nehruvian socialism cooled relations between India and the US, which suspected Nehru of tacitly supporting the Soviet Union. Nehru maintained good relations with Britain even after the Suez Crisis. Nehru accepted the arbitration of the UK and World Bank, signing the Indus Waters Treaty in 1960 with Pakistani ruler Ayub Khan to resolve long-standing disputes about sharing the resources of the major rivers of the Punjab region.
After years of failed negotiations, Nehru authorised the Indian Army to invade Portuguese-controlled Goa in 1961, and then he formally annexed it to India. It increased his popularity in India, but he was criticised by the communist opposition in India for the use of military force.
Dag Hammarskjöld, the second Secretary-General of the United Nations, said that while Nehru was superior from a moral point of view, Zhou Enlai was more skilled in realpolitik.
From 1959, in a process that accelerated in 1961, Nehru adopted the "Forward Policy" of setting up military outposts in disputed areas of the Sino-Indian border, including in 43 outposts in territory not previously controlled by India. China attacked some of these outposts, and thus the Sino-Indian War began, which India lost, and China withdrew to pre-war lines in eastern zone at Tawang but retained Aksai Chin which was within British India and was handed over to India after independence. Later, Pakistan handed over some portion of Kashmir near Siachen controlled by Pakistan since 1948 to China.
The war exposed the unpreparedness of India's military which could send only 14,000 troops to the war zone in opposition to the much larger Chinese army, and Nehru was widely criticised for his government's insufficient attention to defence. In response, Nehru sacked the defence minister V. K. Krishna Menon and sought U.S. military aid. Nehru's improved relations with the US under John F. Kennedy proved useful during the war, as in 1962, President of Pakistan (then closely aligned with the Americans) Ayub Khan was made to guarantee his neutrality in regards to India, who was threatened by "communist aggression from Red China." The Indian relationship with the Soviet Union, criticised by right-wing groups supporting free-market policies was also seemingly validated. Nehru would continue to maintain his commitment to the non-aligned movement despite calls from some to settle down on one permanent ally.
The aftermath of the war saw sweeping changes in the Indian military to prepare it for similar conflicts in the future, and placed pressure on Nehru, who was seen as responsible for failing to anticipate the Chinese attack on India. Under American advice (by American envoy John Kenneth Galbraith who made and ran American policy on the war as all other top policy makers in the US were absorbed in coincident Cuban Missile Crisis) Nehru refrained, not according to the best choices available, from using the Indian air force to beat back the Chinese advances. The CIA later revealed that at that time the Chinese had neither the fuel nor runways long enough for using their air force effectively in Tibet. Indians, in general, became highly sceptical of China and its military. Many Indians view the war as a betrayal of India's attempts at establishing a long-standing peace with China and started to question Nehru's usage of the term "Hindi-Chini bhai-bhai" ('Indians and Chinese are brothers'). The war also put an end to Nehru's earlier hopes that India and China would form a strong Asian Axis to counteract the increasing influence of the Cold War bloc superpowers.
The unpreparedness of the army was blamed on Defence Minister Menon, who "resigned" his government post to allow for someone who might modernise India's military further. India's policy of weaponisation via indigenous sources and self-sufficiency began in earnest under Nehru, completed by his daughter Indira Gandhi, who later led India to a crushing military victory over rival Pakistan in 1971. Toward the end of the war India had increased her support for Tibetan refugees and revolutionaries, some of them having settled in India, as they were fighting the same common enemy in the region. Nehru ordered the raising of an elite Indian-trained "Tibetan Armed Force" composed of Tibetan refugees, which served with distinction in future wars against Pakistan in 1965 and 1971.
During the conflict, Nehru wrote two desperate letters to US President John F. Kennedy, requesting 12 squadrons of fighter jets and a modern radar system. These jets were seen as necessary to beef up Indian air strength so that air-to-air combat could be initiated safely from the Indian perspective (bombing troops was seen as unwise for fear of Chinese retaliatory action). Nehru also asked that these aircraft be manned by American pilots until Indian airmen were trained to replace them. These requests were rejected by the Kennedy Administration (which was involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis during most of the Sino-Indian War), leading to a cool down in Indo-US relations. According to former Indian diplomat G Parthasarathy, "only after we got nothing from the US did arms supplies from the Soviet Union to India commence". Per "Time" Magazine's 1962 editorial on the war, however, this may not have been the case. The editorial states, 'When Washington finally turned its attention to India, it honoured the ambassador's pledge, loaded 60 US planes with $5,000,000 worth of automatic weapons, heavy mortars and land mines. Twelve huge C-130 Hercules transports, complete with US crews and maintenance teams, took off for New Delhi to fly Indian troops and equipment to the battle zone. Britain weighed in with Bren and Sten guns, and airlifted 150 tons of arms to India. Canada prepared to ship six transport planes. Australia opened Indian credits for $1,800,000 worth of munitions'.
There were four known assassination attempts on Nehru. The first attempt on his life was during partition in 1947 while he was visiting North-West Frontier Province (now in Pakistan) in a car. The second one was by a knife-wielding rickshaw-puller near Nagpur in 1955. The third one happened in Bombay in 1956. The fourth one was a failed bombing attempt on train tracks in Maharashtra in 1961. Despite threats to his life, Nehru despised having too much security around him and did not like to disrupt traffic due to his movement.
Nehru's health began declining steadily after 1962, and he spent months recuperating in Kashmir through 1963. Some historians attribute this dramatic decline to his surprise and chagrin over the Sino-Indian War, which he perceived as a betrayal of trust. Upon his return from Dehradun on 26 May 1964 he was feeling quite comfortable and went to bed at about 23:30 as usual, he had a restful night until about 06:30 soon after he returned from bathroom, Nehru complained of pain in the back. He spoke to the doctors who attended on him for a brief while and almost immediately Nehru collapsed. He remained unconscious until he died. His death was announced to Lok Sabha at 14:00 local time on 27 May 1964 (same day); cause of death is believed to be heart attack. Draped in the Indian national Tri-colour flag the body of Jawaharlal Nehru was placed for public viewing. "Raghupati Raghava Rajaram" was chanted as the body was placed on the platform. On 28 May, Nehru was cremated in accordance with Hindu rites at the Shantivan on the banks of the Yamuna, witnessed by 1.5 million mourners who had flocked into the streets of Delhi and the cremation grounds.
Nehru's death left India with no clear political heir to his leadership (later Lal Bahadur Shastri succeeded him as the Prime Minister). The death was announced to the Indian parliament in words similar to Nehru's own at the time of Gandhi's assassination: "The light is out."
Nehru served as the prime minister for eighteen years. During his tenure he had many ministers in his cabinet who were heavy weights in their own right. Key members from his first cabinet include Vallabhbhai Patel who oversaw the integration of princely states in the Indian union but was also his greatest rival in the Congress party, and B. R. Ambedkar, the law minister in the interim cabinet who also chaired the Constitution Drafting Committee.
Vallabhbhai Patel served as home minister in the interim government. He was instrumental in getting the Congress party working committee to vote for partition. He is also credited with integrating peacefully most of the princely states of India. Patel was a strong rival to Nehru but died in 1950, leaving Nehru as the unchallenged leader of India until his own death in 1964.
Jagjivan Ram became the youngest minister in Nehru's Interim government of India a Labour Minister and also a member of the Constituent Assembly of India, where, as a member from the dalit caste, he ensured that social justice was enshrined in the Constitution. He went on to serve as a minister with various portfolios during Nehru's tenure and in Shastri and Indira Gandhi governments.
Govind Ballabh Pant (1887–1961) was a key figure in the Indian independence movement and later a pivotal figure in the politics of UP and later in the Indian Government.
Pant served in Nehru's cabinet as Union Home Minister from 1955 until Pant's death in 1961.
As Home Minister, his chief achievement was the re-organisation of States along linguistic lines. He was also responsible for the establishment of Hindi as an official language of the central government and a few states.
During his tenure as the Home Minister, Pant was awarded the Bharat Ratna.
C.D. Deshmukh was one of 5 members of the Planning Commission when it was constituted in 1950 by a cabinet resolution. Deshmukh succeeded John Mathai as the Union Finance Minister in 1950 after Mathai resigned in protest over the transfer of certain powers to the Planning Commission. As Finance Minister, Deshmukh continued to remain a member of the Planning Commission. Deshmukh's tenure – during which he delivered six budgets and an interim budget – is noted for the effective management of the Indian economy and its steady growth which saw the economy recover from the impacts of the events of the 1940s.
During Deshmukh's tenure the State Bank of India was formed in 1955 through the nationalisation and amalgamation of the Imperial Bank with several smaller banks. The nationalisation of insurance companies and the formation of the Life Insurance Corporation of India was accomplished by him through the Life Insurance Corporation of India Act, 1956.
Deshmukh resigned over the proposal of the Government of India to move a bill in Parliament bifurcating Bombay State into Gujarat and Maharashtra while designating the city of Bombay a Union Territory.
Vengalil Krishnan Krishna Menon (1896–1974) was a close associate of Nehru, and had been described by some as the second most powerful man in India during Nehru's tenure as prime minister.Under Nehru, he served as India's high commissioner to UK, UN ambassador, and union minister of defence. He was forced to resign after the debacle of 1962 China war.
In the years following independence, Nehru frequently turned to his daughter Indira to look after him and manage his personal affairs. Indira moved into Nehru's official residence to attend to him and became his constant companion in his travels across India and the world. She would virtually become Nehru's chief of staff. Indira was elected as Congress party President in 1959 which aroused criticism for alleged nepotism, although actually Nehru had disapproved of her election, partly because he considered that it smacked of "dynasticism"; he said, indeed it was "wholly undemocratic and an undesirable thing", and refused her a position in his cabinet. Indira herself was at loggerheads with her father over policy; most notably, she used his oft-stated personal deference to the Congress Working Committee to push through the dismissal of the Communist Party of India government in the state of Kerala, over his own objections. Nehru began to be frequently embarrassed by her ruthlessness and disregard for parliamentary tradition, and was "hurt" by what he saw as an assertiveness with no purpose other than to stake out an identity independent of her father.
Nehru married Kamala Kaul in 1916. Their only daughter Indira was born a year later in 1917. Kamala gave birth to a boy in November 1924, but he lived for only a week. Indira married Feroze Gandhi in 1942. They had two sons – Rajiv (b. 1944) and Sanjay (b. 1946).
After Kamala's death in 1936, Nehru was rumoured to have relationships with several women. These included Shraddha Mata, Padmaja Naidu and Edwina Mountbatten. Edwina's daughter Pamela acknowledged Nehru's platonic relationship with Edwina. Nehru sent an Indian Navy frigate to the sea burial of Edwina Mountbatten in 1960.
British historian Philip Ziegler, with access to the private letters and diaries, concludes the relationship:
Nehru's sister, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit told Pupul Jayakar, Indira Gandhi's friend and biographer, that Padmaja Naidu and Nehru lived together for many years.
During most of Nehru's tenure as the prime minister, Indira served her father unofficially as a personal assistant. Towards the end of the 1950s, Indira Gandhi served as the President of the Congress. In that capacity, she was instrumental in getting the Communist led Kerala State Government dismissed in 1959.
Described as Hindu Agnostic, and styling himself as a "scientific humanist", Nehru thought that religious taboos were preventing India from going forward and adapting to modern conditions: "No country or people who are slaves to dogma and dogmatic mentality can progress, and unhappily our country and people have become extraordinarily dogmatic and little-minded."
In his autobiography, he analysed Christianity and Islam, and their impact on India. He wanted to model India as a secular country; his secularist policies remain a subject of debate.
As India's first Prime minister and external affairs minister, Jawaharlal Nehru played a major role in shaping modern India's government and political culture along with sound foreign policy. He is praised for creating a system providing universal primary education, reaching children in the farthest corners of rural India. Nehru's education policy is also credited for the development of world-class educational institutions such as the All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Indian Institutes of Technology, and the Indian Institutes of Management.
In addition, Nehru's stance as an unfailing nationalist led him to also implement policies which stressed commonality among Indians while still appreciating regional diversities. This proved particularly important as post-Independence differences surfaced since British withdrawal from the subcontinent prompted regional leaders to no longer relate to one another as allies against a common adversary. While differences of culture and, especially, language threatened the unity of the new nation, Nehru established programs such as the National Book Trust and the National Literary Academy which promoted the translation of regional literatures between languages and also organised the transfer of materials between regions. In pursuit of a single, unified India, Nehru warned, "Integrate or perish."
Historian Ramachandra Guha writes, "[had] Nehru retired in 1958 he would be remembered as not just India's best prime minister, but as one of the great statesmen of the modern world." Nehru, thus, left behind a disputed legacy, being "either adored or reviled for India's progress or lack of it".
In his lifetime, Jawaharlal Nehru enjoyed an iconic status in India and was widely admired across the world for his idealism and statesmanship. His birthday, 14 November is celebrated in India as "Bal Divas" ("Children's Day") in recognition of his lifelong passion and work for the welfare, education and development of children and young people. Children across India remember him as "Chacha Nehru" (Uncle Nehru). Nehru remains a popular symbol of the Congress Party which frequently celebrates his memory. Congress leaders and activists often emulate his style of clothing, especially the "Gandhi cap" and the "Nehru jacket", and his mannerisms. Nehru's ideals and policies continue to shape the Congress Party's manifesto and core political philosophy. An emotional attachment to his legacy was instrumental in the rise of his daughter Indira to leadership of the Congress Party and the national government.
In 2012, Nehru was ranked number 4 in "Outlook"s poll of "The Greatest Indian".
Nehru's personal preference for the sherwani ensured that it continues to be considered formal wear in North India today; aside from lending his name to a kind of cap, the Nehru jacket is named in his honour because of his preference for that style.
Numerous public institutions and memorials across India are dedicated to Nehru's memory. The Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi is among the most prestigious universities in India. The Jawaharlal Nehru Port near the city of Mumbai is a modern port and dock designed to handle a huge cargo and traffic load. Nehru's residence in Delhi is preserved as the Teen Murti House now has Nehru Memorial Museum & Library, and one of five Nehru Planetariums that were set in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore, Allahabad and Pune. The complex also houses the offices of the 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fund', established in 1964 under the Chairmanship of Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan, then President of India. The foundation also gives away the prestigious 'Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial Fellowship', established in 1968. The Nehru family homes at Anand Bhavan and Swaraj Bhavan are also preserved to commemorate Nehru and his family's legacy.
Many documentaries about Nehru's life have been produced. He has also been portrayed in fictionalised films. The canonical performance is probably that of Roshan Seth, who played him three times: in Richard Attenborough's 1982 film "Gandhi", Shyam Benegal's 1988 television series "Bharat Ek Khoj", based on Nehru's "The Discovery of India", and in a 2007 TV film entitled "The Last Days of the Raj". In Ketan Mehta's film "Sardar", Nehru was portrayed by Benjamin Gilani. Girish Karnad's historical play, "Tughlaq" (1962) is an allegory about the Nehruvian era. It was staged by Ebrahim Alkazi with National School of Drama Repertory at Purana Qila, Delhi in the 1970s and later at the Festival of India, London in 1982.
Nehru was a prolific writer in English and wrote a number of books, such as "The Discovery of India", "Glimpses of World History", and his autobiography, "Toward Freedom." He had written 30 letters to his daughter Indira Gandhi, when she was 10 years old and in a boarding school in Mussoorie, teaching about natural history and the story of civilisations. The collection of these letters was later published as a book "Letters from a Father to His Daughter".
In 1955, Nehru was awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honour. President Rajendra Prasad awarded him the honour without taking advice from the Prime Minister as would be the normal constitutional procedure. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16243 |
Janis Joplin
Janis Lyn Joplin (January 19, 1943 – October 4, 1970) was an American singer-songwriter who sang rock, soul and blues music. One of the most successful and widely known rock stars of her era, she was noted for her powerful mezzo-soprano vocals and "electric" stage presence.
In 1967, Joplin rose to fame following an appearance at Monterey Pop Festival, where she was the lead singer of the then little-known San Francisco psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company. After releasing two albums with the band, she left Big Brother to continue as a solo artist with her own backing groups, first the Kozmic Blues Band and then the Full Tilt Boogie Band. She appeared at the Woodstock festival and the "Festival Express" train tour. Five singles by Joplin reached the "Billboard" Hot 100, including a cover of the Kris Kristofferson song "Me and Bobby McGee", which reached number 1 in March 1971. Her most popular songs include her cover versions of "Piece of My Heart", "Cry Baby", "Down on Me", "Ball and Chain", and "Summertime"; and her original song "Mercedes Benz", her final recording.
Joplin died of an accidental heroin overdose in 1970 at age 27, after releasing three albums. A fourth album, "Pearl", was released in January 1971, just over three months after her death. It reached number one on the "Billboard" charts. She was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1995. "Rolling Stone" ranked Joplin number 46 on its 2004 list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and number 28 on its 2008 list of 100 Greatest Singers of All Time. She remains one of the top-selling musicians in the United States, with Recording Industry Association of America certifications of 15.5 million albums sold.
Janis Lyn Joplin was born in Port Arthur, Texas, on , to Dorothy Bonita East (1913–1998), a registrar at a business college, and her husband, Seth Ward Joplin (1910–1987), an engineer at Texaco. She had two younger siblings, Michael and Laura. The family belonged to the Churches of Christ denomination.
Her parents felt that Janis needed more attention than their other children. As a teenager, Joplin befriended a group of outcasts, one of whom had albums by blues artists Bessie Smith, Ma Rainey, and Lead Belly, whom Joplin later credited with influencing her decision to become a singer. She began singing blues and folk music with friends at Thomas Jefferson High School.
Joplin stated that she was ostracized and bullied in high school. As a teen, she became overweight and suffered from acne, leaving her with deep scars that required dermabrasion. Other kids at high school would routinely taunt her and call her names like "pig," "freak," "nigger lover," or "creep." She stated, "I was a misfit. I read, I painted, I thought. I didn't hate niggers."
Joplin graduated from high school in 1960 and attended Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas, during the summer and later the University of Texas at Austin (UT), though she did not complete her college studies. The campus newspaper, "The Daily Texan", ran a profile of her in the issue dated July 27, 1962, headlined "She Dares to Be Different." The article began, "She goes barefooted when she feels like it, wears Levis to class because they're more comfortable, and carries her autoharp with her everywhere she goes so that in case she gets the urge to break into song, it will be handy. Her name is Janis Joplin." While at UT she performed with a folk trio called the Waller Creek Boys and frequently socialized with the staff of the campus humor magazine "The Texas Ranger". According to Freak Brothers cartoonist Gilbert Shelton, who befriended her, she used to sell "The Texas Ranger", which contained some of Shelton's early comic books, on the campus.
Joplin cultivated a rebellious manner and styled herself partly after her female blues heroines and partly after the Beat poets. Her first song, "What Good Can Drinkin' Do", was recorded on tape in December 1962 at the home of a fellow University of Texas student.
She left Texas in January 1963 ("Just to get away," she said, "because my head was in a much different place"), hitchhiking with her friend Chet Helms to North Beach, San Francisco. Still in San Francisco in 1964, Joplin and future Jefferson Airplane guitarist Jorma Kaukonen recorded a number of blues standards, which incidentally featured Kaukonen's wife Margareta using a typewriter in the background. This session included seven tracks: "Typewriter Talk", "Trouble in Mind", "Kansas City Blues", "Hesitation Blues", "Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out", "Daddy, Daddy, Daddy", and "Long Black Train Blues", and was released long after Joplin's death as the bootleg album "The Typewriter Tape".
In 1963, Joplin was arrested in San Francisco for shoplifting. During the two years that followed, her drug use increased and she acquired a reputation as a "speed freak" and occasional heroin user. She also used other psychoactive drugs and was a heavy drinker throughout her career; her favorite alcoholic beverage was Southern Comfort.
In May 1965, Joplin's friends in San Francisco, noticing the detrimental effects on her from regularly injecting methamphetamine (she was described as "skeletal" and "emaciated"), persuaded her to return to Port Arthur. During that month, her friends threw her a bus-fare party so she could return to her parents in Texas. Five years later, Joplin told "Rolling Stone" magazine writer David Dalton the following about her first stint in San Francisco: "I didn't have many friends and I didn't like the ones I had."
Back in Port Arthur in the spring of 1965, after Joplin's parents noticed her weight of , she changed her lifestyle. She avoided drugs and alcohol, adopted a beehive hairdo, and enrolled as an anthropology major at Lamar University in nearby Beaumont, Texas. During her time at Lamar University, she commuted to Austin to sing solo, accompanying herself on acoustic guitar. One of her performances was at a benefit by local musicians for Texas bluesman Mance Lipscomb, who was suffering with ill health.
Joplin became engaged to Peter de Blanc in the fall of 1965. She had begun a relationship with him toward the end of her first stint in San Francisco. Now living in New York where he worked with IBM computers, he visited her to ask her father for her hand in marriage. Joplin and her mother began planning the wedding. De Blanc, who traveled frequently, ended the engagement soon afterward.
In 1965 and 1966, Joplin commuted from her family's Port Arthur home to Beaumont, Texas, where she had regular sessions with a psychiatric social worker named Bernard Giarritano at a counseling agency that was funded by the United Fund, which after her death changed its name to the United Way. Interviewed by biographer Myra Friedman after his client's death, Giarritano said Joplin had been baffled by how she could pursue a professional career as a singer without relapsing into drugs, and her drug-related memories from immediately prior to returning to Port Arthur continued to frighten her. Joplin sometimes brought an acoustic guitar with her to her sessions with Giarritano, and people in other offices within the building could hear her singing.
Giarritano tried to reassure her that she did not have to use narcotics in order to succeed in the music business. She also said that if she were to avoid singing professionally, she would have to become a keypunch operator (as she had done a few years earlier) or a secretary, and then a wife and mother, and she would have to become very similar to all the other women in Port Arthur.
Approximately a year before Joplin joined Big Brother and the Holding Company, she recorded seven studio tracks with her acoustic guitar. Among the songs she recorded were her original composition for the song "Turtle Blues" and an alternate version of "Cod'ine" by Buffy Sainte-Marie. These tracks were later issued as a new album in 1995, titled "This is Janis Joplin 1965" by James Gurley.
In 1966, Joplin's bluesy vocal style attracted the attention of the San Francisco-based psychedelic rock band Big Brother and the Holding Company, which had gained some renown among the nascent hippie community in Haight-Ashbury. She was recruited to join the group by Chet Helms, a promoter who had known her in Texas and who at the time was managing Big Brother. Helms sent his friend Travis Rivers to find her in Austin, Texas, where she had been performing with her acoustic guitar, and to accompany her to San Francisco.
Aware of her previous nightmare with drug addiction in San Francisco, Rivers insisted that she inform her parents face-to-face of her plans, and he drove her from Austin to Port Arthur (he waited in his car while she talked with her startled parents) before they began their long drive to San Francisco. Joplin joined Big Brother on June 4, 1966. Her first public performance with them was at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.
In June, Joplin was photographed at an outdoor concert in San Francisco that celebrated the summer solstice. The image, which was later published in two books by David Dalton, shows her before she relapsed into drugs. Due to persistent persuading by keyboardist and close friend Stephen Ryder, Joplin avoided drugs for several weeks. She made Travis Rivers, with whom she shared an apartment upon their arrival in San Francisco, promise that using needles would not be allowed there. When bandmate Dave Getz accompanied her from a rehearsal to her home, Rivers was not there, but "two or three" (according to Getz' recollection 25 years later) guests whom Rivers had invited were in the process of injecting drugs. "One of them was about to tie off," recalled Getz. ""Janis went nuts!" I had never seen anybody explode like that. She was screaming and crying and Travis walked in. She screamed at him: 'We had a pact! You promised me! There wouldn't be any of that in front of me!' I was over my head and I tried to calm her down. I said, 'They're just doing mescaline,' because that's what I thought it was. She said, 'You don't understand! I can't see that! I just can't stand to see that!'"
A San Francisco concert from that summer (1966) was recorded and released in the 1984 album "Cheaper Thrills". In July, all five bandmates and guitarist James Gurley's wife Nancy moved to a house in Lagunitas, California, where they lived communally. They often partied with the Grateful Dead, who lived less than two miles away. She had a short relationship and longer friendship with founding member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.
The band went to Chicago for a four-week engagement in August 1966, then found themselves stranded after the promoter ran out of money when their concerts did not attract the expected audience levels, and he was unable to pay them. In the circumstances the band signed to Bob Shad's record label Mainstream Records; recordings for the label took place in Chicago in September, but these were not satisfactory, and the band returned to San Francisco, continuing to perform live, including at the Love Pageant Rally. The band recorded two tracks, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", in Los Angeles, and these were released by Mainstream as a single which did not sell well. After playing at a "happening" in Stanford in early December 1966, the band travelled back to Los Angeles to record ten tracks between December 12 and 14, 1966, produced by Bob Shad, which appeared on the band's debut album in August 1967.
In late 1966, Big Brother switched managers from Chet Helms to Julius Karpen.
One of Joplin's earliest major performances in 1967 was at the Mantra-Rock Dance, a musical event held on January 29 at the Avalon Ballroom by the San Francisco Hare Krishna temple. Janis Joplin and Big Brother performed there along with the Hare Krishna founder Bhaktivedanta Swami, Allen Ginsberg, Moby Grape, and Grateful Dead, donating proceeds to the Krishna temple. In early 1967, Joplin met Country Joe McDonald of the group Country Joe and the Fish. The pair lived together as a couple for a few months. Joplin and Big Brother began playing clubs in San Francisco, at the Fillmore West, Winterland and the Avalon Ballroom. They also played at the Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles, as well as in Seattle, Washington, Vancouver, British Columbia, the Psychedelic Supermarket in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Golden Bear Club in Huntington Beach, California.
The band's debut studio album, "Big Brother & the Holding Company", was released by Mainstream Records in August 1967, shortly after the group's breakthrough appearance in June at the Monterey Pop Festival. Two tracks, "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", were released separately as singles, while the tracks from the previous single, "Blindman" and "All Is Loneliness", were added to the remaining eight tracks. When Columbia Records took over the band's contract and re-released the album, they included "Coo Coo" and "The Last Time", and put "featuring Janis Joplin" on the cover. The debut album spawned four minor hits with the singles "Down on Me", a traditional song arranged by Joplin, "Bye Bye Baby", "Call On Me" and "Coo Coo", on all of which Joplin sang lead vocals.
Two songs from the second of Big Brother's two sets at Monterey, which they played on Sunday, were filmed (their first set, which was on Saturday, was not filmed, though it was audio-recorded). Some sources, including a Joplin biography by Ellis Amburn, claim that she was dressed in thrift store hippie clothes or second-hand Victorian clothes during the band's Saturday set, but still photographs do not appear to have survived. Digitized color film of two songs in the Sunday set, "Combination of the Two" and a version of Big Mama Thornton's "Ball and Chain", appear in the DVD box set of D. A. Pennebaker's documentary "Monterey Pop" released by The Criterion Collection. She is seen wearing an expensive gold tunic dress with matching pants. They were created for her by San Francisco clothing designer Colin Rose.
Documentary filmmaker Pennebaker inserted two cutaway shots of Cass Elliot of the Mamas & the Papas seated in the audience during Joplin's performance of "Ball and Chain", one in the middle of the song as her eyes, covered by sunglasses, are fixed on Joplin, and also a shot during the applause as she silently mouths "Oh, wow!" and looks at the person seated next to her. Elliot and the audience are seen in sunlight, but Sunday's Big Brother performance was filmed in the evening. An explanation has come from Big Brother's road manager John Byrne Cooke, who remembers that Pennebaker discreetly filmed the audience (including Elliot) during Big Brother's Saturday performance when he was not allowed to point a camera at the band.
The prohibition of Pennebaker from filming on Saturday afternoon came from Big Brother's manager Julius Karpen. The band had a bitter argument with Karpen and overruled him as they prepared for their second set that the festival organizers had added on the spur of the moment. Backstage at the festival, the band became acquainted with New York-based talent manager Albert Grossman, but did not sign with him until several months later, firing Karpen at that time.
Only "Ball and Chain" was included in the "Monterey Pop" film that was released to cinemas throughout the United States in 1969 and shown on television in the 1970s. Those who did not attend the Monterey Pop Festival saw the band's performance of "Combination of the Two" for the first time in 2002 when The Criterion Collection released the box set.
For the remainder of 1967, even after Big Brother signed with Albert Grossman, they performed mainly in California. On February 16, 1968, the group began its first East Coast tour in Philadelphia, and the following day gave their first performance in New York City at the Anderson Theater. On April 7, 1968, the last day of their East Coast tour, Joplin and Big Brother performed with Jimi Hendrix, Buddy Guy, Joni Mitchell, Richie Havens, Paul Butterfield, and Elvin Bishop at the "Wake for Martin Luther King, Jr." concert in New York.
"Live at Winterland '68", recorded at the Winterland Ballroom on April 12 and 13, 1968, features Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company at the height of their mutual career working through a selection of tracks from their albums. A recording became available to the public for the first time in 1998 when Sony Music Entertainment released the compact disc. One month after the Winterland concert, Owsley Stanley recorded them at the Carousel Ballroom, released in 2012 as "Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968".
On July 31, 1968, Joplin made her first nationwide television appearance when the band performed on "This Morning", an ABC daytime 90-minute variety show hosted by Dick Cavett. Shortly thereafter, network employees wiped the videotape, though the audio survives. (In 1969 and 1970, Joplin made three appearances on Cavett's prime-time program. Video was preserved and excerpts have been included in most documentaries about Joplin. Audio of her 1968 appearance has not been used since then.)
Sometime in 1968, the band's billing was changed to "Janis Joplin and Big Brother and the Holding Company," and the media coverage given to Joplin generated resentment within the band. The other members of Big Brother thought that Joplin was on a "star trip", while others were telling Joplin that Big Brother was a terrible band and that she ought to dump them. "Time" magazine called Joplin "probably the most powerful singer to emerge from the white rock movement", and Richard Goldstein wrote for the May 1968 issue of "Vogue" magazine that Joplin was "the most staggering leading woman in rock ... she slinks like tar, scowls like war ... clutching the knees of a final stanza, begging it not to leave ... Janis Joplin can sing the chic off any listener."
For her first major studio recording, Joplin played a major role in the arrangement and production of the songs that would comprise Big Brother and the Holding Company's second album, "Cheap Thrills". During the recording sessions, produced by John Simon, Joplin was said to be the first person to enter the studio and the last person to leave. Footage of Joplin and the band in the studio shows Joplin in great form and taking charge during the recording for "Summertime". The album featured a cover design by counterculture cartoonist Robert Crumb.
The band made another East Coast tour during July–August 1968, performing at the Columbia Records convention in Puerto Rico and the Newport Folk Festival. After returning to San Francisco for two hometown shows at the Palace of Fine Arts Festival on August 31 and September 1, Joplin announced that she would be leaving Big Brother. On September 14, 1968, culminating a three-night engagement together at Fillmore West, fans thronged to a concert that Bill Graham publicized as the last official concert of Janis Joplin with Big Brother and the Holding Company. The opening acts on this night were Chicago (then still called Chicago Transit Authority) and Santana.
Despite Graham's announcement that the Fillmore West gig was Big Brother's last concert with Joplin, the band—with Joplin still as lead vocalist—toured the U.S. that fall. Reflecting Joplin's crossover appeal, two October 1968 performances at a roller rink in Alexandria, Virginia, were reviewed by John Segraves of the conservative "Washington Evening Star" at a time when the Washington metropolitan area's hard rock scene was in its infancy. An opera buff at the time, he wrote, "Miss Joplin, in her early 20s, has been for the last year or two the vocalist with Big Brother and the Holding Company, a rock quintet of superior electric expertise. Shortly she will be merely Janis Joplin, a vocalist singing folk rock on her first album as a single. Whatever she does and whatever she sings she'll do it well because her vocal talents are boundless. This is the way she came across in a huge, high-ceilinged roller skating rink without any acoustics but, thankfully a good enough sound system behind her. In a proper room, I would imagine there would be no adjectives to describe her."
Later that month (October 1968), Big Brother performed at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and at the Worcester Polytechnic Institute. Aside from two 1970 reunions, Joplin's last performance with Big Brother was at a Chet Helms benefit in San Francisco on December 1, 1968.
After splitting from Big Brother and the Holding Company, Joplin formed a new backup group, the Kozmic Blues Band, composed of session musicians like keyboardist Stephen Ryder and saxophonist Cornelius "Snooky" Flowers, as well as former Big Brother and the Holding Company guitarist Sam Andrew and future Full Tilt Boogie Band bassist Brad Campbell. The band was influenced by the Stax-Volt rhythm and blues (R&B) and soul bands of the 1960s, as exemplified by Otis Redding and the Bar-Kays. The Stax-Volt R&B sound was typified by the use of horns and had a funky, pop-oriented sound in contrast to many of the psychedelic/hard rock bands of the period.
By early 1969, Joplin was allegedly shooting at least $200 worth of heroin per day (equivalent to $1300 in 2016 dollars) although efforts were made to keep her clean during the recording of "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!". Gabriel Mekler, who produced "Kozmic Blues", told publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman after Joplin's death that she had lived in his Los Angeles house during the June 1969 recording sessions at his insistence so he could keep her away from drugs and her drug-using friends.
Joplin's appearances with the Kozmic Blues Band in Europe were released in cinemas, in multiple documentaries. "Janis", which was reviewed by the "Washington Post" on March 21, 1975, shows Joplin arriving in Frankfurt by plane and waiting inside a bus next to the Frankfurt venue, while an American female fan who is visiting Germany expresses enthusiasm to the camera (no security was used in Frankfurt, so by the end of the concert, the stage was so packed with people the band members could not see each other). "Janis" also includes interviews with Joplin in Stockholm and from her visit to London, for her gig at Royal Albert Hall. The London interview was dubbed with a voiceover in the German language for broadcast on German television. John Byrne Cooke, road manager for Joplin and the Kozmic Blues Band, wrote a book published in 2014 in which he revealed the illegal status of Joplin's ongoing use of narcotics.
On Kozmic Blues' tour of Europe, Janis was terrified at every border crossing and customs inspection, knowing that the works and the smack she had stashed on her person could send her directly to jail on a tough rap to beat in foreign courts. But she was unwilling to go without, so she carried a supply everywhere, despite the risks.
On the episode of "The Dick Cavett Show" that was telecast in the United States on the night of July 18, 1969, Joplin and her band performed "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)" as well as "To Love Somebody". As Dick Cavett interviewed Joplin, she admitted that she had a terrible time touring in Europe, claiming that audiences there are very uptight and don't "get down".
Released in September 1969, the "Kozmic Blues" album was certified gold later that year but did not match the success of "Cheap Thrills". Reviews of the new group were mixed. However, the album's recording quality and engineering, as well as the musicianship (including three performances by former Bob Dylan/Paul Butterfield/Electric Flag guitarist Mike Bloomfield), were considered superior to her previous releases, and some music critics argued that the band was working in a much more constructive way to support Joplin's sensational vocal talents. Joplin wanted a horn section similar to that featured by the Chicago Transit Authority; her voice had the dynamic qualities and range not to be overpowered by the brighter horn sound.
Some music critics, however, including Ralph J. Gleason of the "San Francisco Chronicle", were negative. Gleason wrote that the new band was a "drag" and Joplin should "scrap" her new band and "go right back to being a member of Big Brother ... (if they'll have her)."
Other reviewers, such as reporter Carl Bernstein of the "Washington Post", generally ignored the band's flaws and devoted entire articles to celebrating the singer's magic. Bernstein's review said that Joplin "has finally assembled a group of first-rate musicians with whom she is totally at ease and whose abilities complement the incredible range of her voice."
When Joplin and her back-up band performed at Vets Memorial Auditorium in Columbus, Ohio, on Sunday night, May 11, 1969, "Columbus Dispatch" reviewer John Huddy wrote:
Frequently suggestive with a series of limited but obvious moves, Miss Joplin wears hip-hugging silk bellbottoms and alternates between a wail and a teeth-rattling scream. Like Elvis in his pelvis-moving days or Wayne Cochran with his towering hairdo, Janis is a curiosity as well as a musical attraction. She cultivates a Madame of Rock image, lounging against an organ, exchanging profanities with bandsmen, cackling coarsely at private jokes, even taking a belt or two while onstage. She also has something to say in her songs, about the raw and rudimentary dimensions of sex, love, and life. She gets her point across, splitting a few eardrums in the process. Opening the Joplin concert were Teegarden and Van Winkle, an organ-drums duo ... Before her concert, Miss Joplin walked into the lobby and watched customers (sic) arrive. She was not recognized.
Columbia Records released "Kozmic Blues" as a single, which peaked at number 41 on the "Billboard" Hot 100, and a live rendition of "Raise Your Hand" was released in Germany and became a top ten hit there. Containing other hits like "Try (Just a Little Bit Harder)", "To Love Somebody", and "Little Girl Blue", "I Got Dem Ol' Kozmic Blues Again Mama!" reached number five on the "Billboard" 200 soon after its release.
Joplin appeared at Woodstock starting at approximately 2:00 a.m., on Sunday, August 17, 1969. Joplin informed her band that they would be performing at the concert as if it were just another gig. On Saturday afternoon, when she and the band were flown by helicopter with the pregnant Joan Baez and Baez's mother from a nearby motel to the festival site and Joplin saw the enormous crowd, she instantly became extremely nervous and giddy. Upon landing and getting off the helicopter, Joplin was approached by reporters asking her questions. She referred them to her friend and sometime lover Peggy Caserta as she was too excited to speak. Initially, Joplin was eager to get on the stage and perform but was repeatedly delayed as bands were contractually obliged to perform ahead of Joplin. Faced with a ten-hour wait after arriving at the backstage area, Joplin shot heroin and drank alcohol with Caserta, and by the time of reaching the stage, Joplin was "three sheets to the wind". During her performance, Joplin's voice became slightly hoarse and wheezy, and she struggled to dance.
Joplin pulled through, however, and engaged frequently with the crowd, asking them if they had everything they needed and if they were staying stoned. The audience cheered for an encore, to which Joplin replied and sang "Ball and Chain". Pete Townshend, who performed with the Who later in the same morning after Joplin finished, witnessed her performance and said the following in his 2012 memoir: "She had been amazing at Monterey, but tonight she wasn't at her best, due, probably, to the long delay, and probably, too, to the amount of booze and heroin she'd consumed while she waited. But even Janis on an off-night was incredible."
Janis remained at Woodstock for the remainder of the festival. Starting at approximately 3:00 a.m. on Monday, August 18, Joplin was among many Woodstock performers who stood in a circle behind Crosby, Stills & Nash during their performance, which was the first time anyone at Woodstock ever had heard the group perform. This information was published by David Crosby in 1988. Later in the morning of August 18, Joplin and Joan Baez sat in Joe Cocker's van and witnessed Hendrix's close-of-show performance, according to Baez's memoir "And a Voice to Sing With" (1989).
Still photographs in color show Joplin backstage with Grace Slick the day after Joplin's performance, wherein Joplin appears to be very happy. Joplin was ultimately unhappy with her performance, however, and blamed Caserta. Her singing was not included (by her own insistence) in the 1970 documentary film or the soundtrack for "", although the 25th anniversary director's cut of "Woodstock" includes her performance of "Work Me, Lord". The documentary film of the festival that was released to theaters in 1970 includes, on the left side of a split screen, 37 seconds of footage of Joplin and Caserta walking toward Joplin's dressing room tent.
In addition to Woodstock, Joplin also had problems at Madison Square Garden, in 1969. Biographer Myra Friedman said she witnessed a duet Joplin sang with Tina Turner during the Rolling Stones concert at the Garden on Thanksgiving Day. Friedman said Joplin was "so drunk, so stoned, so out of control, that she could have been an institutionalized psychotic rent by mania." During another Garden concert where she had solo billing on December 19, some observers believed Joplin tried to incite the audience to riot. For part of this concert she was joined onstage by Johnny Winter and Paul Butterfield.
Joplin told rock journalist David Dalton that Garden audiences watched and listened to "every note [she sang] with 'Is she gonna make it?' in their eyes." In her interview with Dalton she added that she felt most comfortable performing at small, cheap venues in San Francisco that were associated with the counterculture.
At the time of this June 1970 interview, she had already performed in the Bay Area for what turned out to be the last time. Sam Andrew, the lead guitarist who had left Big Brother with Joplin in December 1968 to form her back-up band, quit in late summer 1969 and returned to Big Brother. At the end of the year, the Kozmic Blues Band broke up. Their final gig with Joplin was the one at Madison Square Garden with Winter and Butterfield.
In February 1970, Joplin traveled to Brazil, where she stopped her drug and alcohol use. She was accompanied on vacation there by her friend Linda Gravenites, who had designed the singer's stage costumes from 1967 to 1969.
In Brazil, Joplin was romanced by a fellow American tourist named David (George) Niehaus, who was traveling around the world. A Joplin biography written by her sister Laura said, "David was an upper-middle-class Cincinnati kid who had studied communications at Notre Dame. ... [and] had joined the Peace Corps after college and worked in a small village in Turkey. ... He tried law school, but when he met Janis he was taking time off."
Niehaus and Joplin were photographed by the press at Rio Carnival in Rio de Janeiro. Gravenites also took color photographs of the two during their Brazilian vacation. According to Joplin biographer Ellis Amburn, in Gravenites' snapshots they "look like a carefree, happy, healthy young couple having a tremendously good time."
"Rolling Stone" magazine interviewed Joplin during an international phone call, quoting her: "I'm going into the jungle with a big bear of a beatnik named David Niehaus. I finally remembered I don't have to be on stage twelve months a year. I've decided to go and dig some other jungles for a couple of weeks." Amburn added in 1992, "Janis was trying to kick heroin in Brazil, and one of the nicest things about David was that he wasn't into drugs."
When Joplin returned to the U.S., she began using heroin again. Her relationship with Niehaus soon ended because he witnessed her shooting drugs at her new home in Larkspur, California. The relationship was also complicated by her ongoing romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta, who also was an intravenous addict, and Joplin's refusal to take some time off and travel the world with him.
Around this time, she formed her new band, known for a short time as Main Squeeze, then renamed the Full Tilt Boogie Band. The band comprised mostly young Canadian musicians previously associated with Ronnie Hawkins and featured an organ, but no horn section. Joplin took a more active role in putting together the Full Tilt Boogie band than she did with her prior group. She was quoted as saying, "It's "my" band. Finally it's "my" band!" In May 1970, after performing under the name Main Squeeze at a Hell's Angels event, the renamed Full Tilt Boogie Band began a nationwide tour. Joplin became very happy with her new group, which eventually received mostly positive feedback from both her fans and the critics.
According to Joplin's biographer Ellis Amburn, Big Brother with its lead singer Nick Gravenites was the opening act at the party that was attended by 2,300 people. The Hells Angels, who had known Joplin since 1966, paid her a fee of 240 dollars to perform. Gravenites and Sam Andrew (who had resumed playing guitar with Big Brother) differed in their opinions of her performance and how substance abuse affected it. Gravenites described her singing as "stupendous," according to Amburn. Amburn quoted Andrew twenty years later: "She was visibly deteriorating and she looked bloated. She was like a parody of what she was at her best. I put it down to her drinking too much and I felt a tinge of fear for her well-being. Her singing was real flabby, no edge at all."
Shortly thereafter, Joplin began wearing multi-coloured feather boas in her hair. (She had not worn them at the May 21 Hell's Angels party / concert in San Rafael). By the time she began touring with Full Tilt Boogie, Joplin told people she was drug-free, but her drinking increased.
Preparing to board the all-star "Festival Express" train tour through Canada, members of Full Tilt Boogie passed through customs at what was then called Toronto International Airport. Road manager John Byrne Cooke recalled the scene in his 2014 book.
The inspecting officers pass [band members except Joplin] through with a few perfunctory pokes in their bags while a diminutive officer with a solemn, round face begins a thorough search of Janis's luggage. Unaccountably, she seems to welcome his attention.
Her suitcase looks as if she packed by throwing clothes at it from across the room. Her hippie handbag is overflowing with odds and ends scooped up at the last minute during the bleary rush of our early-morning departure [from a hotel in Schenectady, New York where they performed the previous night].
"Hey, man," Janis says to the small customs officer. "Don't you want to look in here? That's my toilet kit, man, there might be some pills in there."
What the hell is going on? I try to signal Janis to quit goading the inspector so we can get out of here before we all keel over from exhaustion. I'm afraid to do it too openly for fear of arousing more suspicion. Janis takes no notice.
Like a sheep being led to the dipping trough, the officer follows Janis's direction. He heads straight for the toilet kit and pulls out a bag of powder. My heart skips a beat.
"What is this, 'ma'mselle'?"
Janis can scarcely contain herself. "That's douche powder, honey!" she proclaims, loud enough for everyone to hear.
"Ah, 'oui, oui, ma'mselle'." The little French-Canadian inspector almost chokes with embarrassment. His complexion explores the scarlet end of the spectrum while he moves on quickly to something safer. But he keeps searching. ...
The border watchdogs can search all day and never find a thing. Janis is clean. She is as respectable as a symphony conductor. She is proud and she is celebrating.
The boys [Full Tilt Boogie musicians] amuse themselves as best they can. [Pianist] Richard Bell passes the time with a yo-yo. Nothing fancy, just up and down, up and down, grinning as he watches Janis urge the inspector on. ...
Janis prolongs the game until even the obtuse little customs inspector finally realizes that no one who has anything to hide would behave like this.
From June 28 to July 4, 1970, during the Festival Express tour, Joplin and Full Tilt Boogie performed alongside Buddy Guy, the Band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, Ten Years After, Grateful Dead, Delaney & Bonnie, Eric Andersen, and Ian & Sylvia. They played concerts in Toronto, Winnipeg, and Calgary. Joplin jammed with the other performers on the train, and her performances on this tour are considered to be among her greatest.
Joplin headlined the festival on all three nights. At the last stop in Calgary, she took to the stage with Jerry Garcia while her band was tuning up. Film footage shows her telling the audience how great the tour was and she and Garcia presenting the organizers with a case of tequila. She then burst into a two-hour set, starting with "Tell Mama". Throughout this performance, Joplin engaged in several banters about her love life. In one, she reminisced about living in a San Francisco apartment and competing with a female neighbor in flirting with men on the street. She finished the Calgary concert with long versions of "Get It While You Can" and "Ball and Chain".
Footage of her performance of "Tell Mama" in Calgary became an MTV video in the early 1980s, and the audio from the same film footage was included on the "Farewell Song" (1982) album. The audio of other "Festival Express" performances was included on Joplin's "In Concert" (1972) album. Video of the performances was also included on the "Festival Express" DVD.
These performances of entire songs during the "Festival Express" concerts in Toronto and Calgary can be purchased, although other songs remain in vaults and have yet to be released.
In the "Tell Mama" video shown on MTV in the 1980s, Joplin wore a psychedelically colored, loose-fitting costume and feathers in her hair. This was her standard stage costume in the spring and summer of 1970. She chose the new costumes after her friend and designer, Linda Gravenites (whom Joplin had praised in "Vogue"s profile of her in its May 1968 edition), cut ties with Joplin shortly after their return from Brazil, due largely to Joplin's continued use of heroin.
During the "Festival Express" tour, Joplin was accompanied by "Rolling Stone" writer David Dalton, who later wrote several articles and two books on Joplin. She told Dalton:
Among Joplin's last public appearances were two broadcasts of "The Dick Cavett Show". In her June 25, 1970 appearance, she announced that she would attend her ten-year high school class reunion. When asked if she had been popular in school, she admitted that when in high school, her schoolmates "laughed me out of class, out of town and out of the state" (during the year she had spent at the University of Texas at Austin, Joplin had been voted "Ugliest Man on Campus" by frat boys). In the subsequent "Cavett Show" broadcast, on August 3, 1970, and featuring Gloria Swanson, Joplin discussed her upcoming performance at the Festival for Peace to be held at Shea Stadium in Queens, New York, three days later.
On August 7, 1970, a tombstone—jointly paid for by Joplin and Juanita Green, who as a child had done housework for Bessie Smith—was erected at Smith's previously unmarked grave. The following day, the Associated Press circulated this news, and the August 9 edition of "The New York Times" carried it. The lead paragraph of the AP story said Joplin and Green had "shared the cost of a stone for the 'Empress of the Blues,'" but, according to publicist/biographer Myra Friedman, the two women never met. Joplin had been at home in Larkspur, California when she had received a long-distance phone call with an explanation of the need to finance a gravestone for Bessie Smith, whom Joplin had frequently cited as a musical influence. Joplin immediately wrote a check and mailed it to the name and address provided by the phone caller.
On August 8, 1970, as the Associated Press circulated the news about Smith's new gravestone, Joplin performed at the Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York). It was there that she first performed "Mercedes Benz", a song (partially inspired by a Michael McClure poem) that she had written that day in the bar next door to the Capitol Theatre with fellow musician and friend Bob Neuwirth. According to Myra Friedman's account, Joplin performed two shows at the Capitol Theatre, the first of which was attended by actors Geraldine Page and her husband Rip Torn, and it was during subsequent free time at a "gin mill" very close to this concert venue that Joplin and Neuwirth penned the lyrics to the song and she performed it at the second show.
Joplin's last public performance with the Full Tilt Boogie Band took place on August 12, 1970, at the Harvard Stadium in Boston. "The Harvard Crimson" gave the performance a positive, front-page review, despite the fact that Full Tilt Boogie had performed with makeshift amplifiers after their regular sound equipment was stolen in Boston.
Joplin attended her high school reunion on August 14, accompanied by Neuwirth, road manager John Cooke, and sister Laura, but it was reportedly an unhappy experience for her. Joplin held a press conference in Port Arthur during her reunion visit. When asked by a reporter if she ever entertained at Thomas Jefferson High School when she was a student there, Joplin replied, "Only when I walked down the aisles." Joplin denigrated Port Arthur and the classmates who had humiliated her a decade earlier.
During late August, September, and early October 1970, Joplin and her band rehearsed and recorded a new album in Los Angeles with producer Paul A. Rothchild, best known for his lengthy relationship with The Doors. Although Joplin died before all the tracks were fully completed, there was enough usable material to compile an LP.
The posthumous "Pearl" (1971) became the biggest-selling album of her career and featured her biggest hit single, a cover of Kris Kristofferson and Fred Foster's "Me and Bobby McGee" (Kristofferson had previously been Joplin's lover in the spring of 1970). The opening track, "Move Over", was written by Joplin, reflecting the way that she felt men treated women in relationships. Also included was the social commentary of "Mercedes Benz", presented in an "a cappella" arrangement; the track on the album features the first and only take that Joplin recorded. A cover of Nick Gravenites's "Buried Alive in the Blues", to which Joplin had been scheduled to add her vocals on the day she was found dead, was included as an instrumental.
Joplin checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel in Hollywood on August 24, 1970, near Sunset Sound Recorders, where she began rehearsing and recording her album. During the sessions, Joplin continued a relationship with Seth Morgan, a 21-year-old UC Berkeley student, cocaine dealer, and future novelist who had visited her new home in Larkspur in July and August. She and Morgan were engaged to be married in early September, even though he visited Sunset Sound Recorders for just eight of Joplin's many rehearsals and sessions.
Morgan later told biographer Myra Friedman that, as a non-musician, he had felt excluded whenever he had visited Sunset Sound Recorders. Instead, he stayed at Joplin's Larkspur home while she stayed alone at the Landmark, although several times she visited Larkspur to be with him and to check the progress of renovations she was having done on the house. She told her construction crew to design a carport to be shaped like a flying saucer, according to biographer Ellis Amburn, the concrete foundation for which was poured the day before she died.
Peggy Caserta claimed in her book, "Going Down With Janis" (1973), that she and Joplin had decided mutually in April 1970 to stay away from each other to avoid enabling each other's drug use. Caserta, a former Delta Air Lines stewardess and owner of one of the first clothing boutiques in the Haight Ashbury, said in the book that by September 1970, she was smuggling cannabis throughout California and had checked into the Landmark Motor Hotel because it attracted drug users.
For approximately the first two weeks of Joplin's stay at the Landmark, she did not know Caserta was in Los Angeles. Joplin learned of Caserta's presence at the Landmark from a heroin dealer who made deliveries there. Joplin begged Caserta for heroin, and when Caserta refused to provide it, Joplin reportedly admonished her by saying, "Don't think if you can get it, I can't get it." Joplin's publicist Myra Friedman was unaware during Joplin's lifetime that this had happened. Later, while Friedman was working on her book "Buried Alive", she determined that the time frame of the Joplin-Caserta encounter was one week before Jimi Hendrix's death.
Within a few days, Joplin became a regular customer of the same heroin dealer who had been supplying Caserta.
Joplin's manager Albert Grossman and his assistant/publicist Friedman, had staged an intervention with Joplin the previous winter while Joplin was in New York. In September 1970, Grossman and Friedman, who worked out of a New York office, knew Joplin was staying at a Los Angeles hotel, but were unaware it was a haven for drug users and dealers.
Grossman and Friedman knew during Joplin's lifetime that her friend Caserta, whom Friedman met during the New York sessions for "Cheap Thrills" and on later occasions, used heroin. During the many long-distance telephone conversations that Joplin and Friedman had in September 1970 and on October 1, Joplin never mentioned Caserta, and Friedman assumed Caserta had been out of Joplin's life for a while. Friedman, who had more time than Grossman to monitor the situation, never visited California. She thought Joplin sounded on the phone like she was less depressed than she had been over the summer.
When Joplin was not at Sunset Sound Recorders, she liked to drive her Porsche over the speed limit "on the winding part of Sunset Blvd.", according to a statement made by her attorney Robert Gordon in 1995 at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Friedman wrote that the only Full Tilt Boogie member who rode as her passenger, Ken Pearson, often hesitated to join her, though he did on the night she died. He was not interested in experimenting with hard drugs.
On September 26, 1970, Joplin recorded vocals for "Half Moon" and "Cry Baby". The session ended with Joplin, organist Ken Pearson, and drummer Clark Pierson making a special one-minute recording as a birthday gift to John Lennon. Joplin was among several singers who had been contacted by Yoko Ono with a request for a taped greeting for Lennon's 30th birthday, on October 9. Joplin, Pearson, and Pierson chose the Dale Evans composition "Happy Trails" as part of the greeting. Lennon told Dick Cavett on-camera the following year that Joplin's recorded birthday wishes arrived at his home after her death.
The last recording Joplin completed was on October 1, 1970—"Mercedes Benz". On Saturday, October 3, Joplin visited Sunset Sound Recorders to listen to the instrumental track for Nick Gravenites's song "Buried Alive in the Blues", which the band had recorded earlier that day. She and Paul Rothchild agreed she would record the vocal the following day.
At some point on Saturday, she learned by telephone, to her dismay, that Seth Morgan had met other women at a Marin County, California, restaurant, invited them to her home, and was shooting pool with them using her pool table. People at Sunset Sound Recorders overheard Joplin expressing anger about the state of her relationship with Morgan, as well as joy about the progress of the sessions. As biographer Myra Friedman wrote based on early 1970s interviews with some of the people present at Sunset Sound Recorders,
What impressed everyone that night when she arrived at the studio was the exceptional brightness of her spirits.
"You're smiling and jumping around, Janis," [pianist] Richard Bell remarked as he and Janis walked toward a Chinese restaurant during a break.
"Well," she teased, "I've got a secret." [When Friedman wrote this text in the early 1970s, her sources included a list of outgoing phone calls that the Landmark Motor Hotel claimed Joplin had made from her room, allegedly including one to Los Angeles City Hall to inquire about a marriage license for her and Seth Morgan. Friedman believed the "secret" was marriage plans for Joplin and Morgan. In a version of Friedman's book that she wrote twenty years later, she said about the hotel's claim of a phone call to City Hall, "This may have been untrue."]
By the time they returned to the studio, it was jammed. Nick Gravenites was there. So was song writer Bobby Womack. Bennett Glotzer [Albert Grossman's partner in their New York-based talent management company] was around. All in all, there were perhaps twenty to twenty-five people present. Janis did not sing that night, but merely listened to the instrumental track the band had completed that day. It was Nick's song, "Buried Alive in the Blues."
Janis was exhilarated by the prospect of doing the vocal on Sunday, a light like a sunburst in her smile and eyes.
Joplin and Ken Pearson later left the studio together and she drove him and a male fan in her Porsche to the West Hollywood landmark called Barney's Beanery. Friedman wrote, "At the bar, she drank vodka and orange juice, only two." Glotzer was also present there, according to what he told John Byrne Cooke immediately after he (Glotzer) learned of her death. After midnight, she drove Pearson and the male fan back to the Landmark. During the car ride, the fan asked Joplin questions "about her singing style," according to Friedman, and "she mostly ignored him" so she could converse with Pearson. As Joplin and Pearson prepared to part in the lobby of the Landmark, she expressed a fear, possibly in jest, that he and the other Full Tilt Boogie musicians might decide to stop making music with her.. Pearson was the second-to-last person to see her alive. The last was the Landmark's night shift desk clerk. He had met her several times but did not know her.
Joplin's significant relationships with men included ones with Peter de Blanc, Country Joe McDonald (who wrote the song "Janis" at Joplin's request), David (George) Niehaus, Kris Kristofferson, and Seth Morgan (from July 1970 until her death, at which time they were allegedly engaged).
She also had relationships with women. During her first stint in San Francisco in 1963, Joplin met and briefly lived with Jae Whitaker, an African American woman whom she had met while playing pool at the bar Gino & Carlo in North Beach. Whitaker broke off their relationship because of Joplin's hard drug use and sexual relationships with other people. Whitaker was first identified by name in connection with Joplin in 1999, when Alice Echols' biography "Scars of Sweet Paradise" was published.
Joplin also had an on-again-off-again romantic relationship with Peggy Caserta. They first met in November 1966 when Big Brother performed at a San Francisco venue called The Matrix. Caserta was one of 15 people in the audience. At the time, Caserta ran a successful clothing boutique in the Haight Ashbury. Approximately a month after Caserta attended the concert, Joplin visited her boutique and said she could not afford to buy a pair of jeans that was for sale. Caserta took pity on her and gave her a pair for free. Their friendship was platonic for more than a year. Before it moved to the next level, Caserta was in love with Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, and sometime during the first half of 1968 she traveled from San Francisco to New York to flirt with him. He did not want a serious relationship with her, and Joplin sympathized with Caserta's disappointment.
The "Woodstock" movie includes 37 seconds of Joplin and Caserta walking together before they reached the tent where Joplin waited for her turn to perform. By the time the festival took place in August 1969, both women were intravenous heroin addicts.
According to Caserta's book "Going Down With Janis", Joplin introduced her to Seth Morgan in Joplin's room at the Landmark Motor Hotel on Tuesday evening, September 29, 1970. Caserta "had seen him around" San Francisco but had not met him before. All three of them agreed to reunite three nights later, on Friday night, for a ménage à trois in Joplin's room. Caserta saw Joplin briefly the next day, Wednesday, again in Joplin's room, when Caserta accommodated her new Los Angeles friend Debbie Nuciforo, age 19, an aspiring hard rock drummer who wanted to meet Joplin. Nuciforo was stoned on heroin at the time, and the three women's encounter was brief and unpleasant. Caserta suspected that the reason for Joplin's foul mood was that Morgan had abandoned her earlier that day after having spent less than 24 hours with her.
Caserta did not see nor communicate by phone with Joplin again, although she later claimed she had made several attempts to reach her by phone at the Landmark Motor Hotel and at Sunset Sound Recorders. Caserta and Seth Morgan lost touch with each other, and each decided independently to abandon Joplin on Friday night, October 2. Joplin mentioned her disappointment (over both of her friends' bailing out of their ménage à trois) to her drug dealer on Saturday while he was selling her the dose of heroin that killed her, as Caserta later learned from the drug dealer.
Given the near-infinite potentials of infancy, it is really impossible to make generalizations about what lies behind sexual practices. This, however, is probable: to become clearly homosexual, to make the choice that one honestly prefers relations with one's own sex, no matter the origins of such preference, requires a certain integration, a stability of psychic development, a tidiness of personality organization. The ridicule and the humiliation that took place at that most delicate period in [Joplin's] early teens, her own inability to surmount the obstacles to regular growth, devastated her a great deal more than most people comprehended. Janis was not heir to an ego so cohesive as to permit her an identity one way or the other. She was, as [the psychiatric social worker she saw regularly in Beaumont, Texas in 1965 and 1966] Mr. [Bernard] Giarritano put it [in an interview with Friedman], "diffused" -- spewing, splattering, splaying all over, without a center to hold. That had as much to do with her original use of drugs [before she first met Giarritano] as did the critical component of guilt and its multiplicity of sources above and beyond the contribution made by her relationships with women. Were she so simple as the lesbians wished her to be or so free as her associates imagined!
Kim France reported in "The New York Times" article, "Nothin' Left to Lose" (May 2, 1999): "Once she became famous, Joplin cursed like a truck driver, did not believe in wearing undergarments, was rarely seen without her bottle of Southern Comfort and delighted in playing the role of sexual predator."
On July 11, 1970, Full Tilt Boogie and Big Brother and the Holding Company both performed at the same concert in the San Diego Sports Arena, which was decades later renamed the Valley View Casino Center. Joplin sang with Full Tilt Boogie and appeared briefly onstage with Big Brother without singing, according to the next day's review in the "San Diego Union". She had a conversation offstage with her old friend Richard Hundgen, the Grateful Dead's San Francisco-based road manager whom she had known since 1966, in which she said:
I hear a rumor that somebody in San Francisco is spreading stories that I'm a dyke. You go back there and find out who it is and tell them that Janis says she's gotten it on with a couple of thousand cats in her life and a few hundred chicks and see what they can do with "that"!
In the late afternoon of Sunday, October 4, 1970, producer Paul Rothchild became concerned when Joplin failed to show up at Sunset Sound Recorders for a recording session in which she was scheduled to provide the vocal track for the instrumental track of the song "Buried Alive in the Blues". In the evening, Rothchild phoned the Landmark Motor Hotel and reached Full Tilt Boogie's road manager, John Cooke, Joplin’s close friend who was staying at the Landmark in a room that was not near hers, according to his 2014 book "On the Road with Janis Joplin". Rothchild expressed his concern over her absence from Sunset Sound Recorders and asked Cooke to search for her. Cooke and two of his friends noticed her psychedelically painted Porsche 356 C Cabriolet in the hotel parking lot. Upon entering Joplin's room (#105), he found her dead on the floor beside her bed.
Alcohol was present in the hotel room. Newspapers reported that no drugs or paraphernalia were present.. According to a 1983 book authored by Joseph DiMona and Los Angeles County coroner Thomas Noguchi, evidence of narcotics was removed from the scene by a friend of Joplin’s and later put back there after the person realized that an autopsy was going to reveal that narcotics were in her system. The book adds that prior to Joplin’s death, Noguchi had investigated other fatal drug overdoses of decedents in Los Angeles whose friends believed they were doing favors for decedents by removing evidence of narcotics, then they “thought things over” and returned to put back the evidence. Noguchi performed an autopsy on Joplin and determined the cause of death to be a heroin overdose, possibly compounded by alcohol. John Cooke believed Joplin had been given heroin that was much more potent than what she and other Los Angeles heroin users had received on previous occasions, as was indicated by overdoses of several of her dealer's other customers during the same weekend as hers. Her death was ruled accidental.
According to Joplin’s publicist-turned-biographer Myra Friedman, who researched the cause of death in the early 1970s, when memories of people at the Los Angeles County coroner's office were fresh and all official documents still existed:
Peggy Caserta, Joplin's close friend, and Seth Morgan, Joplin's fiance, both had failed to meet Joplin the Friday immediately prior to her death, October 2, and Joplin had been expecting both of them to keep her company that night. According to Caserta, Joplin was saddened that neither of her friends visited her at the Landmark as they had promised. During the twenty-four hours Joplin lived after this disappointment, Caserta did not phone her to explain why she had failed to show up. Caserta admitted to waiting until late Saturday night to dial the Landmark switchboard, only to learn that Joplin had instructed the desk clerk not to accept any incoming phone calls for her after midnight. Morgan did speak to Joplin via telephone within the twenty-four hours prior to her death, but it is not known whether he admitted to her that he had broken his promise.
Joplin was cremated at Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park and Mortuary in Los Angeles, California, and her ashes were scattered from a plane into the Pacific Ocean.
Joplin's death in October 1970 at age 27 stunned her fans and shocked the music world, especially when coupled with the death just 16 days earlier of another rock icon, Jimi Hendrix, also at age 27. (This would later cause some people to attribute significance to the death of musicians at the age of 27, as celebrated in the notional '27 Club'.) Music historian Tom Moon wrote that Joplin had "a devastatingly original voice", music columnist Jon Pareles of "The New York Times" wrote that Joplin as an artist was "overpowering and deeply vulnerable", and author Megan Terry said that Joplin was the female version of Elvis Presley in her ability to captivate an audience.
A book about Joplin by her publicist Myra Friedman, titled "Buried Alive: The Biography of Janis Joplin" (1973), was excerpted in many newspapers. At the same time, Peggy Caserta's memoir, "Going Down With Janis" (1974), attracted a lot of attention, with its provocative title referring to her performing oral sex with Joplin while they were high on heroin, in September 1970. The very first sentence in the book goes into more detail about that particular encounter. Caserta's language and description repelled many people at a time when few books or filmed interviews of Joplin or her loved ones were accessible to the public. Peggy Caserta was described as "halfway between a groupie and a friend" in an interview that writer Ellis Amburn did with Joplin's bandmate Sam Andrew circa 1990 and published in 1992. Soon after the 1973 publication of "Going Down With Janis", Joplin's friends learned that graphic descriptions of sexual acts and intravenous drug use were not the only portions of the book that would haunt them.
According to a statement in the early 1990s by a close friend of Caserta and Joplin's, Caserta's book angered the Los Angeles heroin dealer she described in detail, including the make and model of his car, for her book. According to Ellis Amburn, in 1973 a "carful of dope dealers" visited a Los Angeles lesbian bar Caserta had been frequenting since Joplin was alive. Amburn quoted Caserta's friend Kim Chappell, who was in the alley behind the bar: "I was stabbed because, when Peggy's book came out, her dealer, the same one who'd given Janis her last fix, didn't like it that he was referred to and was out to get Peggy. He couldn't find her, so he went for her lover. When they realized who I was, they felt that my death would also hit Peggy, and so they stabbed me." Despite being "stabbed three times in the chest, puncturing both lungs," Chappell eventually recovered.
According to biographers, Caserta was one of many friends of Joplin's who did not become clean and sober until a very long time after the singer's death, while others died from overdoses. Although (Big Brother guitarist) James Gurley's wife, who was Joplin's close friend, died from a heroin overdose in 1969, he did not become clean and sober until 1984. Caserta survived "a near-fatal OD in December 1995," wrote Alice Echols. On January 13, 2000, Caserta appeared on-camera for a segment about Joplin on "20/20".
Joplin, along with Grace Slick of Jefferson Airplane, opened opportunities in the rock music business for future female singers.
Joplin's body art, with a wristlet and a small heart on her left breast, by the San Francisco tattoo artist Lyle Tuttle, was an early moment in the popular culture's acceptance of tattoos as art. Another trademark was her flamboyant hair styles, which often included colored streaks, and accessories such as scarves, beads, and feathers. When in New York City, Joplin, often in the company of actor Michael J. Pollard, frequented Limbo on St. Mark's Place. Joplin, well known to the boutique's employees, made a practice of putting aside vintage and other one-of-a-kind garments she favored on stage and off.
The Mamas & the Papas' song "Pearl" (1971), from their "People Like Us" album, was a tribute. Likewise, Leonard Cohen's song, "Chelsea Hotel #2" (1974), is about Joplin, and lyricist Robert Hunter has commented that Jerry Garcia's "Birdsong" from his first solo album, "Garcia" (1972), is about Joplin and the end of her suffering through death. Mimi Farina's composition, "In the Quiet Morning", most famously covered by Joan Baez on her "Come from the Shadows" (1972) album, was a tribute to Joplin. Another song by Baez, "Children of the Eighties," mentioned Joplin. A Serge Gainsbourg-penned French language song by English singer Jane Birkin, "Ex fan des sixties" (1978), references Joplin alongside other disappeared "idols" such as Jimi Hendrix, Brian Jones, and Marc Bolan. When Joplin was alive, Country Joe McDonald released a song called "Janis" on his band's album "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-to-Die" (1967).
At the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival, Nina Simone, whom Joplin admired greatly, commented on Joplin and referred to the documentary "Janis" (1975) that evidently was screened at the festival:
The film "The Rose" (1979) is loosely based on Joplin's life. Originally planned to be titled "Pearl"—Joplin's nickname and the title of her last album—the film was fictionalized after her family declined to allow the producers the rights to her story. Bette Midler earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in the film.
In 1988, on what would have been Joplin's 45th birthday, the Janis Joplin Memorial, with an original gold, multi-image sculpture of Joplin by Douglas Clark, was dedicated during a ceremony in Port Arthur, Texas.
In 1992, the first major biography of Joplin in two decades, "Love, Janis", authored by her younger sister, Laura Joplin, was published. In an interview, Laura stated that Joplin enjoyed being on the "Dick Cavett Show", that Joplin while growing up in Texas had difficulties with some people at school, but not the entire school, and that Joplin was really enthusiastic after performing at Woodstock in 1969.
In 1995, Joplin was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In 2005, she received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award. In November 2009, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum honored her as part of its annual American Music Masters Series; among the artifacts at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum exhibition are Joplin's scarf and necklaces, her 1965 Porsche 356 Cabriolet with psychedelically designed painting, and a sheet of LSD blotting paper designed by Robert Crumb, designer of the "Cheap Thrills" cover. Also in 2009, Joplin was the honoree at the Rock Hall's American Music Master concert and lecture series.
In the late 1990s, the musical play "Love, Janis" was created and directed by Randal Myler, with input from Janis' younger sister Laura and Big Brother guitarist Sam Andrew, with an aim to take it to Off Broadway. Opening in the summer of 2001 and scheduled for only a few weeks of performances, the show won acclaim, packed houses, and was held over several times.
In 2013, Washington's Arena Stage featured a production of "A Night with Janis Joplin", starring Mary Bridget Davies. In it, Joplin puts on a concert for the audience, while telling stories of her past inspirations including Odetta, Aretha Franklin, and others. It went on tour in 2016.
On November 4, 2013, Joplin was awarded with the 2,510th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contributions to the music industry. Her star is located at 6752 Hollywood Boulevard, in front of Musicians Institute.
On August 8, 2014, the U.S. Postal Service revealed a commemorative stamp honoring Janis Joplin, as part of its Music Icons Forever Stamp series during a first-day-of-issue ceremony at the Outside Lands Music Festival at Golden Gate Park.
On December 15, 2015, Amy J. Berg released her biographical documentary film, "Janis: Little Girl Blue", narrated by Cat Power. It was a "New York Times" Critics' Pick. Among the memorabilia she left behind is a Gibson Hummingbird guitar.
Joplin had a profound influence on many singers. For example, Florence Welch of Florence and the Machine spoke of Joplin's impact, in an interview for "Why Music Matters" that appeared in a commercial against piracy:
Stevie Nicks considers Joplin one of her idols, and has said:
Pink said about Joplin: "She was so inspiring by singing blues music when it wasn't culturally acceptable for white women, and she wore her heart on her sleeve. She was so witty and charming and intelligent, but she also battled an ugly-duckling syndrome. I would love to play her in a movie." In a tribute performance on her Try This Tour, Pink called Joplin "a woman who inspired me when everyone else ... didn't!"
Janis Joplin recorded four albums in her four-year career. The first two albums were recorded with and credited to Big Brother and the Holding Company; the later two were recorded with different backing bands and released as solo albums. Previously unreleased studio and live material, including early performances as well as Joplin's greatest hits, have been released on several posthumous compilations.
Some of Joplin's live concerts with Big Brother were professionally recorded and have been released on albums like "Live at Winterland '68" and "Live at the Carousel Ballroom 1968". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16245 |
John Fink
John Fink (born February 11, 1940) is an American film and television actor.
In the 1970-1971 the NBC sitcom "Nancy", Fink was cast as an Iowa veterinarian, Dr. Adam Hudson, who marries the daughter of the President of the United States. The short-lived series starred Renne Jarrett (born 1946) as the title character and Celeste Holm and Robert F. Simon in supporting roles.
He is known for his roles in two "Batman" movies, "Batman Forever" (1995) and "Batman & Robin" (1997), and his other film credits include "Loving" (1970), "The Carey Treatment" (1972), "Home for the Holidays" (1972), "The Lindbergh Kidnapping Case" (1976), "Flatliners" (1990), "What's Love Got to Do with It" (1993) and "The Client" (1994). He has also had minor roles in "Saved by the Bell", "Ally McBeal", "McMillan & Wife", "Columbo", and various other series since the 1970s.
While he was billed as a supporting actor in the 1978 "Battlestar Galactica" pilot, a majority of his scenes were cut mainly because those scenes dealt with Serina's (Jane Seymour) "space cancer" B-story which had been excised from the final cut. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16249 |
Jacques Cousteau
Jacques-Yves Cousteau, (, also , ; 11 June 1910 – 25 June 1997) was a French naval officer, explorer, conservationist, filmmaker, innovator, scientist, photographer, author and researcher who studied the sea and all forms of life in water. He co-developed the Aqua-Lung, pioneered marine conservation and was a member of the Académie française.
Cousteau described his underwater world research in a series of books, perhaps the most successful being his first book, "", published in 1953. Cousteau also directed films, most notably the documentary adaptation of the book, "The Silent World", which won a Palme d'or at the 1956 Cannes Film Festival. He remained the only person to win a Palme d'Or for a documentary film, until Michael Moore won the award in 2004 for "Fahrenheit 9/11".
Cousteau was born on 11 June 1910, in Saint-André-de-Cubzac, Gironde, France, to Daniel and Élisabeth Cousteau. He had one brother, Pierre-Antoine. Cousteau completed his preparatory studies at the Collège Stanislas in Paris. In 1930, he entered the École Navale and graduated as a gunnery officer. However, an automobile accident, which broke both his arms, cut short his career in naval aviation. The accident forced Cousteau to change his plans to become a naval pilot, so he then indulged his passion for the ocean.
In Toulon, where he was serving on the "Condorcet", Cousteau carried out his first underwater experiments, thanks to his friend Philippe Tailliez who in 1936 lent him some Fernez underwater goggles, predecessors of modern swimming goggles. Cousteau also belonged to the information service of the French Navy, and was sent on missions to Shanghai and Japan (1935–1938) and in the USSR (1939).
On 12 July 1937 he married Simone Melchior, with whom he had two sons, Jean-Michel (born 1938) and Philippe (1940–1979). His sons took part in the adventures of the "Calypso". In 1991, one year after his wife Simone's death from cancer, he married Francine Triplet. They already had a daughter Diane Cousteau (born 1980) and a son, Pierre-Yves Cousteau (born 1982), born during Cousteau's marriage to his first wife.
The years of World War II were decisive for the history of diving. After the armistice of 1940, the family of Simone and Jacques-Yves Cousteau took refuge in Megève, where he became a friend of the Ichac family who also lived there. Jacques-Yves Cousteau and Marcel Ichac shared the same desire to reveal to the general public unknown and inaccessible places — for Cousteau the underwater world and for Ichac the high mountains. The two neighbors took the first ex-aequo prize of the Congress of Documentary Film in 1943, for the first French underwater film: "Par dix-huit mètres de fond" ("18 meters deep"), made without breathing apparatus the previous year in the Embiez islands in Var, with Philippe Tailliez and Frédéric Dumas, using a depth-pressure-proof camera case developed by mechanical engineer Léon Vèche an engineer of Arts and Measures at the Naval College.
In 1943, they made the film "Épaves" ("Shipwrecks"), in which they used two of the very first Aqua-Lung prototypes. These prototypes were made in Boulogne-Billancourt by the Air Liquide company, following instructions from Cousteau and Émile Gagnan. When making "Épaves", Cousteau could not find the necessary blank reels of movie film, but had to buy hundreds of small still camera film reels the same width, intended for a make of child's camera, and cemented them together to make long reels.
Having kept bonds with the English speakers (he spent part of his childhood in the United States and usually spoke English) and with French soldiers in North Africa (under Admiral Lemonnier), Jacques-Yves Cousteau (whose villa "Baobab" at Sanary (Var) was opposite Admiral Darlan's villa "Reine"), helped the French Navy to join again with the Allies; he assembled a commando operation against the Italian espionage services in France, and received several military decorations for his deeds. At that time, he kept his distance from his brother Pierre-Antoine Cousteau, a "pen anti-semite" who wrote the collaborationist newspaper "Je suis partout" ("I am everywhere") and who received the death sentence in 1946. However, this was later commuted to a life sentence, and Pierre-Antoine was released in 1954.
During the 1940s, Cousteau is credited with improving the Aqua-Lung design which gave birth to the open-circuit scuba technology used today. According to his first book, "" (1953), Cousteau started diving with Fernez goggles in 1936, and in 1939 used the self-contained underwater breathing apparatus invented in 1926 by Commander Yves le Prieur. Cousteau was not satisfied with the length of time he could spend underwater with the Le Prieur apparatus so he improved it to extend underwater duration by adding a demand regulator, invented in 1942 by Émile Gagnan. In 1943 Cousteau tried out the first prototype Aqua-Lung which finally made extended underwater exploration possible.
In 1946, Cousteau and Tailliez showed the film "Épaves" ("Shipwrecks") to Admiral Lemonnier, who gave them the responsibility of setting up the Groupement de Recherches Sous-marines (GRS) (Underwater Research Group) of the French Navy in Toulon. A little later it became the GERS (Groupe d'Études et de Recherches Sous-Marines, = Underwater Studies and Research Group), then the COMISMER ("COMmandement des Interventions Sous la MER", = "Undersea Interventions Command"), and finally more recently the CEPHISMER. In 1947, Chief Petty Officer Maurice Fargues became the first diver to die using an aqualung, while attempting a new depth record with the GERS near Toulon.
In 1948, between missions of mine clearance, underwater exploration and technological and physiological tests, Cousteau undertook a first campaign in the Mediterranean on board the sloop "Élie Monnier", with Philippe Tailliez, Frédéric Dumas, Jean Alinat and the scenario writer Marcel Ichac. The small team also undertook the exploration of the Roman wreck of Mahdia (Tunisia). It was the first underwater archaeology operation using autonomous diving, opening the way for scientific underwater archaeology. Cousteau and Marcel Ichac brought back from there the Carnets diving film (presented and preceded with the Cannes Film Festival 1951).
Cousteau and the "Élie Monnier" then took part in the rescue of Professor Jacques Piccard's bathyscaphe, the FNRS-2, during the 1949 expedition to Dakar. Thanks to this rescue, the French Navy was able to reuse the sphere of the bathyscaphe to construct the FNRS-3.
The adventures of this period are told in the two books "" (1953, by Cousteau and Dumas) and "Plongées sans câble" (1954, by Philippe Tailliez).
In 1949, Cousteau left the French Navy.
In 1950, he founded the French Oceanographic Campaigns (FOC), and leased a ship called "Calypso" from Thomas Loel Guinness for a symbolic one franc a year. Cousteau refitted the "Calypso" as a mobile laboratory for field research and as his principal vessel for diving and filming. He also carried out underwater archaeological excavations in the Mediterranean, in particular at Grand-Congloué (1952).
With the publication of his first book in 1953, "", he correctly predicted the existence of the echolocation abilities of porpoises. He reported that his research vessel, the "Élie Monier," was heading to the Straits of Gibraltar and noticed a group of porpoises following them. Cousteau changed course a few degrees off the optimal course to the center of the strait, and the porpoises followed for a few minutes, then diverged toward mid-channel again. It was evident that they knew where the optimal course lay, even if the humans did not. Cousteau concluded that the cetaceans had something like sonar, which was a relatively new feature on submarines.
In 1954, Cousteau conducted a survey of Abu Dhabi waters on behalf of British Petroleum. Among those accompanying him was Louis Malle who made a black-and-white film of the expedition for the company. Cousteau won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival in 1956 for "The Silent World" co-produced with Malle. In 1957, Cousteau took over as leader of the Oceanographic Museum of Monaco. Afterward, with the assistance of Jean Mollard, he made a "diving saucer" SP-350, an experimental underwater vehicle which could reach a depth of 350 meters. The successful experiment was quickly repeated in 1965 with two vehicles which reached 500 meters.
In 1957, he was elected as director of the Oceanographical Museum of Monaco. He directed Précontinent, about the experiments of diving in saturation (long-duration immersion, houses under the sea), and was admitted to the United States National Academy of Sciences.
He was involved in the creation of Confédération Mondiale des Activités Subaquatiques and served as its inaugural president from 1959 to 1973.
Cousteau also took part in inventing the "SP-350 Denise Diving Saucer" in 1959 which was an invention best for exploring the ocean floor, as it allowed one to explore on solid ground.
In October 1960, a large amount of radioactive waste was going to be discarded in the Mediterranean Sea by the Commissariat à l'énergie atomique (CEA). The CEA argued that the dumps were experimental in nature, and that French oceanographers such as Vsevelod Romanovsky had recommended it. Romanovsky and other French scientists, including Louis Fage and Jacques Cousteau, repudiated the claim, saying that Romanovsky had in mind a much smaller amount. The CEA claimed that there was little circulation (and hence little need for concern) at the dump site between Nice and Corsica, but French public opinion sided with the oceanographers rather than with the CEA atomic energy scientists. The CEA chief, Francis Perrin, decided to postpone the dump. Cousteau organized a publicity campaign which in less than two weeks gained wide popular support. The train carrying the waste was stopped by women and children sitting on the railway tracks, and it was sent back to its origin.
In the 1960s Cousteau was involved with a set of three projects to build underwater "villages"; the projects were named Precontinent I, Precontinent II and Precontinent III. Each ensuing project was aimed at increasing the depth at which people continuously lived under water, and were an attempt at creating an environment in which men could live and work on the sea floor. The projects are best known as Conshelf I (1962), Conshelf II (1963), and Conshelf III (1965). The names "Precontinent", and "Continental Shelf Station" (Conshelf) were used interchangeably by Cousteau.
A meeting with American television companies (ABC, Métromédia, NBC) created the series "The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau", with the character of the commander in the red bonnet inherited from standard diving dress intended to give the films a "personalized adventure" style. This documentary television series ran for ten years from 1966 to 1976. A second documentary series, "The Cousteau Odyssey", ran from 1977 to 1982 on public television stations.
In 1970, he wrote the book "The Shark: Splendid Savage of the Sea" with his son Philippe. In this book, Cousteau described the oceanic whitetip shark as "the most dangerous of all sharks".
In December 1972, two years after the volcano's last eruption, The Cousteau Society was filming "Voyage au bout du monde" on Deception Island, Antarctica, when Michel Laval, "Calypso"'s second in command, was struck and killed by a rotor of the helicopter that was ferrying between "Calypso" and the island.
In 1973, along with his two sons and Frederick Hyman, he created the Cousteau Society for the Protection of Ocean Life, Frederick Hyman being its first President.
In 1975, John Denver released the tribute song "Calypso" on his album "Windsong", and on the B-side of his hit song "I'm Sorry". "Calypso" became a hit on its own and was later considered the new A-side, reaching #2 on the charts.
In 1976, Cousteau located the wreck of HMHS "Britannic". He also found the wreck of the French 17th-century ship-of-the-line "La Therese" in coastal waters of Crete.
In 1977, together with Peter Scott, he received the UN International Environment prize.
On 28 June 1979, while the "Calypso" was on an expedition to Portugal, his second son Philippe, his preferred and designated successor and with whom he had co-produced all his films since 1969, died in a PBY Catalina flying boat crash in the Tagus river near Lisbon. Cousteau was deeply affected. He called his then eldest son, the architect Jean-Michel, to his side. This collaboration lasted 14 years.
From 1980 to 1981, he was a regular on the animal reality show "Those Amazing Animals", along with Burgess Meredith, Priscilla Presley, and Jim Stafford.
In 1980, 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".
In 1985, he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from Ronald Reagan.
From 1986 to 1992, Cousteau released "Rediscovery of the World".
On 24 November 1988, he was elected to the Académie française, chair 17, succeeding Jean Delay. His official reception under the cupola took place on 22 June 1989, the response to his speech of reception being given by Bertrand Poirot-Delpech. After his death, he was replaced by Érik Orsenna on 28 May 1998.
In June 1990, the composer Jean Michel Jarre paid homage to the commander by entitling his new album "Waiting for Cousteau". He also composed the music for Cousteau's documentary "Palawan, the last refuge".
On 2 December 1990, his wife Simone Cousteau died of cancer.
In June 1991, in Paris, Jacques-Yves Cousteau remarried, to Francine Triplet, with whom he had (before this marriage) two children, Diane and Pierre-Yves. Francine Cousteau currently continues her husband's work as the head of the Cousteau Foundation and Cousteau Society. From that point, the relations between Jacques-Yves and his elder son worsened.
In November 1991, Cousteau gave an interview to the "UNESCO Courier", in which he stated that he was in favour of human population control and population decrease. Widely quoted on the Internet are these two paragraphs from the interview: "What should we do to eliminate suffering and disease? It's a wonderful idea but perhaps not altogether a beneficial one in the long run. If we try to implement it we may jeopardize the future of our species...It's terrible to have to say this. World population must be stabilized and to do that we must eliminate 350,000 people per day. This is so horrible to contemplate that we shouldn't even say it. But the general situation in which we are involved is lamentable".
In 1992, he was invited to Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, for the United Nations' International Conference on Environment and Development, and then he became a regular consultant for the UN and the World Bank.
In 1995, he sued his son, who was advertising "Cousteau Fiji Islands Resort", to prevent him from using the Cousteau name for business purposes in the United States.
On 11 January 1996, "Calypso" was accidentally rammed and sunk in the port of Singapore by a barge. The "Calypso" was refloated and towed home to France.
Jacques-Yves Cousteau died of a heart attack on 25 June 1997 in Paris, two weeks after his 87th birthday. He was buried in the family vault at Saint-André-de-Cubzac, his birthplace. An homage was paid to him by the town by naming the street which runs out to the house of his birth "rue du Commandant Cousteau", where a commemorative plaque was placed.
During his lifetime, Jacques-Yves Cousteau received these distinctions:
Cousteau's legacy includes more than 120 television documentaries, more than 50 books, and an environmental protection foundation with 300,000 members.
Cousteau liked to call himself an "oceanographic technician." He was, in reality, a sophisticated showman, teacher, and lover of nature. His work permitted many people to explore the resources of the oceans.
His work also created a new kind of scientific communication, criticized at the time by some academics. The so-called "divulgationism", a simple way of sharing scientific concepts, was soon employed in other disciplines and became one of the most important characteristics of modern television broadcasting.
The Cousteau Society and its French counterpart, l'Équipe Cousteau, both of which Jacques-Yves Cousteau founded, are still active today. The Society is currently attempting to turn the original "Calypso" into a museum and it is raising funds to build a successor vessel, the "Calypso II".
In his last years, after marrying again, Cousteau became involved in a legal battle with his son Jean-Michel over Jean-Michel licensing the Cousteau name for a South Pacific resort, resulting in Jean-Michel Cousteau being ordered by the court not to encourage confusion between his for-profit business and his father's non-profit endeavours.
In 2007, the International Watch Company introduced the IWC Aquatimer Chronograph "Cousteau Divers" Special Edition. The timepiece incorporated a sliver of wood from the interior of Cousteau's Calypso research vessel. Having developed the diver's watch, IWC offered support to The Cousteau Society. The proceeds from the timepieces' sales were partially donated to the non-profit organization involved in conservation of marine life and preservation of tropical coral reefs.
The 1957 science-fiction book "The Deep Range" mentions a large research expedition submarine named "Cousteau".
Though he was not particularly a religious man, Cousteau believed that the teachings of the different major religions provide valuable ideals and thoughts to protect the environment. In a Chapter entitled "The Holy Scriptures and The Environment" in the posthumous work "The Human, the Orchid, and the Octopus", he is quoted as stating that "The glory of nature provides evidence that God exists".
Jacques Cousteau has been portrayed in films: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16252 |
J. Philippe Rushton
John Philippe Rushton (December 3, 1943 – October 2, 2012) was a Canadian psychologist and author. He taught at the University of Western Ontario and became known to the general public during the 1980s and 1990s for research on race and intelligence, race and crime, and other apparent racial variations. His book "Race, Evolution, and Behavior" (1995) is about the application of "r"/"K" selection theory to humans.
Rushton's work was heavily criticized by the scientific community for the questionable quality of its research, | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16253 |
Juliana Hatfield
Juliana Hatfield is an American musician and singer-songwriter from the Boston area, formerly of the indie rock bands Blake Babies, Some Girls, and The Lemonheads. She also fronted her own band, The Juliana Hatfield Three, along with bassist Dean Fisher and drummer Todd Philips, which was active in the mid-1990s and again in the mid-2010s. It was with the Juliana Hatfield Three that she produced her best-charting work, including the critically acclaimed albums "Become What You Are" (1993) and "Whatever, My Love" (2015) and the singles "My Sister" (1993) and "Spin the Bottle" (1994).
She has performed and recorded as a solo artist and as one half of Minor Alps with Matthew Caws of Nada Surf. In December 2014, "Paste" named her cover of the song "Needle in the Hay" by Elliott Smith number 10 in a list of the 20 Best Cover Songs of 2014. In 2014, she reformed The Juliana Hatfield Three, announcing the new album "Whatever, My Love" for 2015. In late December, "Stereogum" named the album "one of their most anticipated albums of 2015", and on January 4, 2015, "Consequence of Sound" named it "one of the 50 most anticipated albums of 2015."
In 2016 she formed a collaboration with Paul Westerberg under the moniker The I Don't Cares to release the album "Wild Stab". More recently, she has released an album of original work titled "Weird" in 2019, sandwiched between two albums of cover songs, "Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John" (2018) and "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police" (2019).
Hatfield grew up in the Boston suburb of Duxbury. Despite recording a song titled "My Sister", Hatfield has no sisters but she does have two brothers.
Her father claimed his family descended from the West Virginia Hatfields of the Hatfield–McCoy feud following the Civil War. Her father served in the U.S. Navy during the Vietnam War.
Hatfield went to Duxbury High School in Duxbury, Massachusetts. She attended Boston University and studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, Massachusetts. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Hatfield also attended art school at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 2012 in a year-long, post-baccalaureate certificate program, to study painting.
Hatfield acquired a love of rock music during the 1970s, having been introduced by a babysitter to the music of the Los Angeles punk rock band X, which proved a life-changing experience. She was also attracted to the music of more mainstream artists like Olivia Newton-John and The Police.
While still at Berklee College of Music in 1986, she formed the band Blake Babies with John Strohm and Freda Love. The band released 4 albums between 1987-1991, but failed to gain much critical notice, radio airplay, or commercial sales. The band broke up in 1992, but had a brief reunion in 2001 to produce another album.
After the break-up of the Blake Babies, she joined The Lemonheads as their bass player, replacing founding bassist Jesse Peretz, and played on their breakthrough album "It's a Shame About Ray" in 1992. She left the band after about a year, but returned in 1993 as a guest vocalist on several tracks of "Come on Feel the Lemonheads".
In 1992, she released her debut solo album "Hey Babe", which attracted little attention.
Her commercial breakthrough came in 1993 with the formation of the band The Juliana Hatfield Three along with high-school friend Dean Fisher on bass and former Bullet LaVolta drummer Todd Philips, with herself performing lead vocal and lead guitar duties. The band produced the album "Become What You Are" and two hit singles, "My Sister" and "Spin the Bottle".
"My Sister" was based on a real person: Hatfield's older brother's girlfriend, Maggie Rafferty, who lived with the family while Hatfield was in high school. She enjoyed Rafferty's eclectic record collection. Rafferty also took Hatfield to see the Del Fuegos and the Violent Femmes, which inspired her to form a band.
"Spin the Bottle" was used in the soundtrack of the Hollywood film "Reality Bites" (1994). Hatfield also made the cover of "Spin" magazine.
Hatfield was profiled in a number of girls' magazines, most notably "Sassy," at this time and addressed serious issues faced by young women in her songs and interviews. About this period she says: "I was never comfortable with the attention. I thought it had come too soon. I hadn’t earned it yet." She gained notoriety in 1992 for saying that she was still a virgin in her mid-twenties in "Interview" magazine. In a 1994 interview for the magazine "Vox", she said she was surprised by the effect 'outing' herself had: "I think there are a lot of people out there who don't care about sex, but who you never hear from, so I thought I should say it. The magazine I did the interview for is full of beef-cake hunky guys and scantily-clad models, so I thought it would be really funny to say that I didn't care about sex in a magazine that's full of sex and beauty – but no one really got the joke."
The Juliana Hatfield Three only remained together through 1994, by 1995 she had returned to solo status and released the album "Only Everything", in which she "turned up the volume and the distortion and had a lot of fun". One reviewer describes it as "a fun, engaging pop album". The album spawned another alternative radio hit for Hatfield in "Universal Heartbeat". In the video Hatfield portrayed a demanding aerobics instructor. Before the tour for "Only Everything", she released Phillips and hired Jason Sutter on drums, Ed Slanker on guitar, and Lisa Mednick on keyboards. Two weeks into the tour, she canceled the tour.
In her memoir, Hatfield writes that she was suffering from depression severe enough to be suicidal. She disagreed with the decision to avoid talking about her depression. The drummer was replaced by Phillips, and touring resumed with Jeff Buckley as the opening act.
In 1996, she traveled to Woodstock, New York where she recorded tracks for "God's Foot", which was to be her fourth solo album (third if not counting "Become What You Are", which was recorded with the Juliana Hatfield Three), intended for 1997 release. After three failures to satisfy requests by Atlantic Records to come up with a single, she asked to be released from her contract. The label obliged but kept the rights to the songs recorded during these sessions. Atlantic had paid $180,000 on the recordings. "Mountains of Love" and "Fade Away" were released on a greatest hits collection entitled "Gold Stars", while "Can't Kill Myself" was available for download from Hatfield's website. The remaining tracks surfaced on bootlegs, which she disapproved of, and she has rarely played them live.
In 1997 Hatfield toured with Lilith Fair, an all-female rock festival founded by singer Sarah McLachlan.
After the experience of "God's Foot", and freed from her label obligations, Hatfield recorded the EP "Please Do Not Disturb" for the independent label Bar/None. Produced by Hatfield, the album included drummer Todd Phillips, guitarists Ed Slanker and Mike Leahy, and bassist Mikey Welsh of Weezer. The EP included "Trying Not to Think About It," a tribute to her friend, deceased musician Jeff Buckley.
Almost as a reaction to the seemingly endless studio sessions surrounding "God's Foot", Hatfield recorded the album "Bed" in 1998 in six days, about which she said on her website, "It sounds as raw as I felt. It has no pretty sheen. The mistakes and unattractive parts were left in, not erased. Just like my career. Just like life."
In 2000, she released "Beautiful Creature". This album left the rockier side of Hatfield's musical personality unexpressed, however, so simultaneously she recorded "" with Zephan Courtney and Mikey Welsh. She called the latter album "a loud release of tension" with "lots of long sloppy guitar solos. And no love songs...a not-at-all attractive reaction to the ugly side of humanity, specifically American culture." The two albums were released simultaneously . "Billboard" called the first "a collection of plaintive demos" and the second "chock-a-block with punk guitar missives." "Juliana's Pony: Total System Failure" was panned by some critics who preferred the more acoustic "Beautiful Creature". On "Beautiful Creature", Hatfield worked with musician Davíd Garza who co-produced much of the album. Wally Gagel, a producer for Sebadoh and Tanya Donelly, helped Hatfield record her most electronica-influenced songs, "Cool Rock Boy" and "Don't Rush Me", which added texture to the otherwise acoustic album.
In 2002, Hatfield released "". It contained singles from her solo albums, two songs from the unreleased "God's Foot", a cover of Neil Young's "Only Love Can Break Your Heart", and new songs.
In 2004, Hatfield released "In Exile Deo", an attempt at a more commercial sound with input from producers and engineers who had worked with Pink and Avril Lavigne. Hatfield produced the album with David Leonard, receiving co-production credits on "Jamie's in Town" and the bright rocker "Sunshine". The critics praised it, with some calling it her best work since the start of her solo career.
By contrast, the 2005 album "Made in China" was recorded in Bellows Falls, Vermont and Cambridge, Massachusetts, and was released on her own record label, Ye Olde Records. The record had a much rawer feel, with Hatfield playing instruments accompanied by the band Unbusted and other contributors. For the first time, Hatfield also played drums on at least one track.
John Doe of the band X described the disc as "a frighteningly dark and beautiful record filled with stark, angular, truly brutal songs and guitars. This is surely a 'Woman Under the Influence', though I'm not sure of what." Reviews were mixed, with some liking the lo-fi sound and others seeing it as slackness.
The release of "Made in China" started a trend where Hatfield licensed her music, selling it via her website and with a distribution deal through Red Eye.
In December 2005, Hatfield toured the United States with the band X, whom she idolized during her teenage years.
In 2006, Hatfield released her first live album. Titled "", the album featured performances from her tour with X. It was Hatfield's third release for her record label.
Hatfield's 9th studio album, "How to Walk Away", was released on August 19, 2008 on Ye Olde Records. The album's heartfelt subject on the break-up of a relationship resonated with critics, who gave the album largely positive reviews, with some hailing it as her best album since "In Exile Deo".
Hatfield returned two years later as her 10th studio album "Peace & Love" was released on Ye Olde Records, February 16, 2010. The album's composition, arrangement, performance, production, engineering, and mixing were solely credited to Hatfield. The album received mixed reviews, with several complaining the album's low-key moody nature working against the potential of the songs.
Hatfield offered, via her website, to write custom songs in order to fund a couple of projects; one of which was to release archive material. About halfway through the project, Hatfield stated that it had "completely re-energized and inspired" her again.
During October 2010 Hatfield and Evan Dando played two sell-out acoustic live shows together at The Mercury Lounge in New York. The following month the duo played sell out shows in Allston, a neighborhood of Boston. This tour was followed, in January 2011, by five dates on the American east coast.
On April 2011, Hatfield announced her intention to work on a new album via fan-funding platform website PledgeMusic, from which she asked fans to help fund the project in exchange for personal artwork and memorabilia ranging from posters, CDs, and demos to one of Juliana's First Act guitars (used during the recording sessions) and even locks of her hair. The project also included donations for the Save a Sato foundation to which Hatfield is a major contributor. Fan response was enthusiastic, going over 400% of the original project cost. The album was originally going to be titled "Speeches Delivered to Animals and Plants", in reference to a passage in the John Irving novel "The World According to Garp", but later Hatfield herself changed it to "There's Always Another Girl", in reference to a song in the album of the same name she had written as a defense for Lindsay Lohan after watching her flop "I Know Who Killed Me".
"There's Always Another Girl" was released on August 30, 2011, again independently on her Ye Olde Records label, though a downloadable version was made available to contributors a month before on July 27, which was Juliana's birthday. The album has received mostly positive reviews from critics.
On August 28, 2012, Juliana Hatfield released a covers record titled "Juliana Hatfield" on her Ye Olde Records label. The album features covers of songs originally performed by The Who, Liz Phair, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Ryan Adams, I Blame Coco, and Led Zeppelin.
As of July 2013, Juliana Hatfield has finished recording her thirteenth solo album, "Wild Animals", with crowd-funding—for the third time—through PledgeMusic.
In December 2014, "Paste Magazine" named her track "Needle in the Hay," an Elliott Smith cover, as No. 10 one of the "20 Best Cover Songs of 2014." The review called the cover "a more upbeat, approachable take on Smith’s disparate, wrought-iron classic. But even though it now employs bass, drums, tambourine and synth, the songs stays true to the sorrowful, tension-riddled original." Also that month, "SPIN Magazine" named the cover one of the "40 Best 2014 Songs by 1994 Artists ," where it came it at No. 36. The review stated "The tempo's a bit quicker, and she double-tracks herself for the song’s entirety. But the (tasteful) inclusion of chintzy drum programming and mellotron cleverly point to Smith's eventual creative direction."
In 2014, The Juliana Hatfield Three reunited two decades after it disbanded. She used PledgeMusic to raise funds for the new album, titled "Whatever, My Love", the trio's first since 1993's "Become What You Are". Hatfield said, "We haven't totally reinvented the wheel or anything," and that the tracks exhibit the "stuff I am sort of known for, I guess. But I am a lot more confident now than I was then with the first album. And I had more fun recording this one." The twelve tracks for "Whatever, My Love" were recorded at Nuthouse Recording in Hoboken, New Jersey with Beaujour and Hatfield co-producing.
The lead single, "If I Could," was released in December 2014 and was premiered in "Rolling Stone". That month the album was made available for pre-order on American Laundromat Records with an announced release date of February 17, 2015. The band announced they would tour the United States in support of the album throughout February, visiting cities on both coasts and in the midwest, and appearing at the Bowery Ballroom in New York City, and The Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles.
In late December 2014, "Stereogum" named the album "one of their most anticipated albums of 2015," and on January 4, 2015, "Consequence of Sound" named it "one of the 50 most anticipated albums of 2015." On January 9, 2015, Hatfield was featured at Nylon.com, which wrote that the upcoming album came off as "unforced, and with its sly lyrics and mega-hooky coffeehouse-grunge aesthetic." The album's second single "Ordinary Guy" premiered on "Consequence of Sound" on January 14, 2015.
In 2015 Juliana Hatfield and Paul Westerberg announced that they have formed a new group, called the I Don't Cares. The released the album "Wild Stab" in 2016.
Since then, Hatfield has released a number of solo albums, including two albums of all cover songs, "Juliana Hatfield Sings Olivia Newton-John" (2018) and "Juliana Hatfield Sings The Police" (2019) and two albums of original work, "Pussycat" (2017) and "Weird" (2019).
From her work with the Blake Babies to the present, Hatfield's output has been characterized by an alternation between heavy, rocking tunes and songs written in a gentler, more melodic or folk-oriented style. Hatfield has stated that in the 1990s she tried smoking cigarettes for a short time in the hope of giving her voice a rougher quality, but eventually reconciled herself with her distinctive vocal instrument.
Hatfield's musical influences are diverse, ranging from punk groups like X, The Stooges, and The Replacements to more folk-oriented rock artists like Neil Young, whose songs the Blake Babies frequently covered in live shows. Her work has also cross-fertilized with some other contemporaneous indie rock bands such as Dinosaur Jr. and Lemonheads, whose musicians are also friends of Hatfield's. From an early age, she has also had a special love for pretty-sounding pop music. In a 1998 interview, she stated, "I just always liked pop music and really good melodies and major chords. That's just the type of music that comes naturally to me". In a 1993 interview in "Melody Maker" magazine, Hatfield stated that her enthusiasm for the music of the pop group Wilson Phillips apparently led, at least in part, to the breakup of the Blake Babies.
Although much of Hatfield's output is exuberant and hard-rocking, Hatfield nonetheless describes herself as very shy and somewhat of a loner, and has said that "happy lyrics don't come naturally to me." She has also described her music and songwriting as a form of therapy, an outlet that helps her to overcome rough periods and depression.
Hatfield has also recorded with The Lemonheads, living for a time with Evan Dando in the college neighborhood of Allston in Boston, and contributed backing vocals to recordings by Belly, Giant Sand, Susanna Hoffs, Aimee Mann, and Mary Lou Lord. She teamed up with Dando in 1999 to record Gram Parsons's song "$1,000 Wedding" on the compilation, "".
In 2001, she joined with Freda Love and Heidi Gluck (of The Pieces and The Only Children) to form the trio Some Girls, with which she performs in addition to her solo work; the group has toured the United States twice and has released two albums. The trio is another outlet for Hatfield's more lighthearted material. Their first album, entitled "Feel It", was released by Koch Records in 2003. The lead single "Necessito" is a funky affirmation of the power of music, sung in a mixture of English and Spanish. Some Girls' second album, "Crushing Love", was released in July 2006.
In 2007 Hatfield signed the Boston (now Austin)-based band Frank Smith to her record label, Ye Olde Records. Along with releasing their 2007 album "Heavy Handed Peace and Love", Hatfield also recorded an EP with the band titled "Sittin' in a Tree". The EP, produced by Frank Smith's Aaron Sinclair, features banjos, pedal steel, and other instruments normally associated with country music.
Hatfield and Matthew Caws of Nada Surf formed a band called Minor Alps whose first album, "Get There", was released October 29, 2013, on Barsuk Records.
Hatfield and Paul Westerberg formed The I Don't Cares, releasing "Wild Stab" January 22, 2016, on Dry Wood Records.
Beyond her musical accomplishments, Hatfield has also guest-starred on several television shows, including "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" as a lunch lady and on the cult classic "My So-Called Life's" 1994 Christmas episode as a deceased homeless girl who has become an angel. During the mid-1990s she was a staple on MTV's "120 Minutes" alternative music program, and she performed on the "Late Show with David Letterman" and "Late Night with Conan O'Brien" in 1995.
On March 25, 2008, Hatfield began her own blog through her website titled An Arm and A Leg. The blogs lasted about a year before being removed. Each week, or thereabouts, she'd revealed the influences behind one of her songs.
Hatfield briefly appeared on an episode of "Space Ghost Coast to Coast" named "Surprise", which aired on June 19, 1996. Instead of being interviewed, she simply said "uhh" and then was zapped by Zorak.
Hatfield released the book "When I Grow Up: A Memoir" on September 22, 2008. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16261 |
Joint Political Military Group
On November 29, 1983 a memorandum of agreement was set up between Israel and the United States regarding political, military and economic cooperation. Part of the agreement was for a Joint Political Military Group (JPMG) as a high-level planning forum to discuss and implement combined planning, joint exercises, and logistics. The JPMG is co-chaired by the director general of the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Political-Military Affairs. The JPMG meets biannually, alternating between Israel and the United States.
The JPMG was originally intended to discuss means of countering Soviet involvement in the Middle East. But more recently the concern has been over the spread of chemical weapons and ballistic missiles.
Military relations between the United States and Israel improved under the Reagan Administration. The Reagan Administration sought to build an "anti-Soviet strategic consensus in the Middle East." At the time, Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger and Israeli Minister of Defense Ariel Sharon signed a memorandum of understanding in 1981 "establishing a framework for continued consultation and cooperation to enhance" national security. This agreement led to the establishment of the Joint Political Military Group, which has since met regularly to "address" foreign military sales to Israel, joint exercises and simulations, and logistical arrangements. Joint air and sea exercises started in 1984.
As part of the agreement, the United States and Israel meet twice a year to honor the obligations of the memorandum of understanding. In 2001 an annual "inter-agency strategic dialogue" including representatives from all areas of defense and intelligence was created. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16263 |
Joke
A joke is a display of humour in which words are used within a specific and well-defined narrative structure to make people laugh and is not meant to be taken seriously. It takes the form of a story, usually with dialogue, and ends in a punch line. It is in the punch line that the audience becomes aware that the story contains a second, conflicting meaning. This can be done using a pun or other word play such as irony or sarcasm, a logical incompatibility, nonsense, or other means. Linguist Robert Hetzron offers the definition:
It is generally held that jokes benefit from brevity, containing no more detail than is needed to set the scene for the punchline at the end. In the case of riddle jokes or one-liners the setting is implicitly understood, leaving only the dialogue and punchline to be verbalised. However, subverting these and other common guidelines can also be a source of humor—the shaggy dog story is in a class of its own as an anti-joke; although presenting as a joke, it contains a long drawn-out narrative of time, place and character, rambles through many pointless inclusions and finally fails to deliver a punchline. Jokes are a form of humour, but not all humour is a joke. Some humorous forms which are "not" verbal jokes are: involuntary humour, situational humour, practical jokes, slapstick and anecdotes.
Identified as one of the simple forms of oral literature by the Dutch linguist André Jolles, jokes are passed along anonymously. They are told in both private and public settings; a single person tells a joke to his friend in the natural flow of conversation, or a set of jokes is told to a group as part of scripted entertainment. Jokes are also passed along in written form or, more recently, through the internet.
Stand-up comics, comedians and slapstick work with comic timing, precision and rhythm in their performance, relying as much on actions as on the verbal punchline to evoke laughter. This distinction has been formulated in the popular saying "A comic says funny things; a comedian says things funny".
Any joke documented from the past has been saved through happenstance rather than design. Jokes do not belong to refined culture, but rather to the entertainment and leisure of all classes. As such, any printed versions were considered ephemera, i.e., temporary documents created for a specific purpose and intended to be thrown away. Many of these early jokes deal with scatological and sexual topics, entertaining to all social classes but not to be valued and saved.
Various kinds of jokes have been identified in ancient pre-classical texts. The oldest identified joke is an ancient Sumerian proverb from 1900 BC containing toilet humour: "Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap." Its records were dated to the Old Babylonian period and the joke may go as far back as 2300 BC. The second oldest joke found, discovered on the Westcar Papyrus and believed to be about Sneferu, was from Ancient Egypt circa 1600 BC: "How do you entertain a bored pharaoh? You sail a boatload of young women dressed only in fishing nets down the Nile and urge the pharaoh to go catch a fish." The tale of the three ox drivers from Adab completes the three known oldest jokes in the world. This is a comic triple dating back to 1200 BC Adab. It concerns three men seeking justice from a king on the matter of ownership over a newborn calf, for whose birth they all consider themselves to be partially responsible. The king seeks advice from a priestess on how to rule the case, and she suggests a series of events involving the men's households and wives. Unfortunately, the final portion of the story (which included the punch line), has not survived intact, though legible fragments suggest it was bawdy in nature.
The earliest extant joke book is the "Philogelos" (Greek for "The Laughter-Lover"), a collection of 265 jokes written in crude ancient Greek dating to the fourth or fifth century AD. The author of the collection is obscure and a number of different authors are attributed to it, including "Hierokles and Philagros the "grammatikos"", just "Hierokles", or, in the "Suda", "Philistion". British classicist Mary Beard states that the "Philogelos" may have been intended as a jokester's handbook of quips to say on the fly, rather than a book meant to be read straight through. Many of the jokes in this collection are surprisingly familiar, even though the typical protagonists are less recognisable to contemporary readers: the absent-minded professor, the eunuch, and people with hernias or bad breath. The "Philogelos" even contains a joke similar to Monty Python's "Dead Parrot Sketch".
During the 15th century, the printing revolution spread across Europe following the development of the movable type printing press. This was coupled with the growth of literacy in all social classes. Printers turned out Jestbooks along with Bibles to meet both lowbrow and highbrow interests of the populace. One early anthology of jokes was the "Facetiae" by the Italian Poggio Bracciolini, first published in 1470. The popularity of this jest book can be measured on the twenty editions of the book documented alone for the 15th century. Another popular form was a collection of jests, jokes and funny situations attributed to a single character in a more connected, narrative form of the picaresque novel. Examples of this are the characters of Rabelais in France, Till Eulenspiegel in Germany, Lazarillo de Tormes in Spain and Master Skelton in England. There is also a jest book ascribed to William Shakespeare, the contents of which appear to both inform and borrow from his plays. All of these early jestbooks corroborate both the rise in the literacy of the European populations and the general quest for leisure activities during the Renaissance in Europe.
The practice of printers to use jokes and cartoons as page fillers was also widely used in the broadsides and chapbooks of the 19th century and earlier. With the increase in literacy in the general population and the growth of the printing industry, these publications were the most common forms of printed material between the 16th and 19th centuries throughout Europe and North America. Along with reports of events, executions, ballads and verse, they also contained jokes. Only one of many broadsides archived in the Harvard library is described as "1706. Grinning made easy; or, Funny Dick's unrivalled collection of curious, comical, odd, droll, humorous, witty, whimsical, laughable, and eccentric jests, jokes, bulls, epigrams, &c. With many other descriptions of wit and humour." These cheap publications, ephemera intended for mass distribution, were read alone, read aloud, posted and discarded.
There are many types of joke books in print today; a search on the internet provides a plethora of titles available for purchase. They can be read alone for solitary entertainment, or used to stock up on new jokes to entertain friends. Some people try to find a deeper meaning in jokes, as in "Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar... Understanding Philosophy Through Jokes". However a deeper meaning is not necessary to appreciate their inherent entertainment value. Magazines frequently use jokes and cartoons as filler for the printed page. "Reader's Digest" closes out many articles with an (unrelated) joke at the bottom of the article. "The New Yorker" was first published in 1925 with the stated goal of being a "sophisticated humour magazine" and is still known for its cartoons.
Telling a joke is a cooperative effort; it requires that the teller and the audience mutually agree in one form or another to understand the narrative which follows as a joke. In a study of conversation analysis, the sociologist Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in the telling a single joke. "This telling is composed, as for stories, of three serially ordered and adjacently placed types of sequences … the preface [framing], the telling, and the response sequences." Folklorists expand this to include the context of the joking. Who is telling what jokes to whom? And why is he telling them when? The context of the joke telling in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who engage in institutionalised banter and joking.
Framing is done with a (frequently formulaic) expression which keys the audience in to expect a joke. "Have you heard the one…", "Reminds me of a joke I heard…", "So, a lawyer and a doctor…"; these conversational markers are just a few examples of linguistic frames used to start a joke. Regardless of the frame used, it creates a social space and clear boundaries around the narrative which follows. Audience response to this initial frame can be acknowledgement and anticipation of the joke to follow. It can also be a dismissal, as in "this is no joking matter" or "this is no time for jokes".
Within its performance frame, joke-telling is labelled as a culturally marked form of communication. Both the performer and audience understand it to be set apart from the "real" world. "An elephant walks into a bar…"; a native English speaker automatically understands that this is the start of a joke, and the story that follows is not meant to be taken at face value (i.e. it is non-bona-fide communication). The framing itself invokes a play mode; if the audience is unable or unwilling to move into play, then nothing will seem funny.
Following its linguistic framing the joke, in the form of a story, can be told. It is not required to be verbatim text like other forms of oral literature such as riddles and proverbs. The teller can and does modify the text of the joke, depending both on memory and the present audience. The important characteristic is that the narrative is succinct, containing only those details which lead directly to an understanding and decoding of the punchline. This requires that it support the same (or similar) divergent scripts which are to be embodied in the punchline.
The narrative always contains a protagonist who becomes the "butt" or target of the joke. This labelling serves to develop and solidify stereotypes within the culture. It also enables researchers to group and analyse the creation, persistence and interpretation of joke cycles around a certain character. Some people are naturally better performers than others, however anyone can tell a joke because the comic trigger is contained in the narrative text and punchline. A joke poorly told is still funny unless the punchline gets mangled.
The punchline is intended to make the audience laugh. A linguistic interpretation of this punchline / response is elucidated by Victor Raskin in his Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour. Humour is evoked when a trigger contained in the punchline causes the audience to abruptly shift its understanding of the story from the primary (or more obvious) interpretation to a secondary, opposing interpretation. "The punchline is the pivot on which the joke text turns as it signals the shift between the [semantic] scripts necessary to interpret [re-interpret] the joke text." To produce the humour in the verbal joke, the two interpretations (i.e. scripts) need to be both compatible with the joke text AND opposite or incompatible with each other. Thomas R. Shultz, a psychologist, independently expands Raskin's linguistic theory to include "two stages of incongruity: perception and resolution." He explains that "… incongruity alone is insufficient to account for the structure of humour. […] Within this framework, humour appreciation is conceptualized as a biphasic sequence involving first the discovery of incongruity followed by a resolution of the incongruity." Resolution generates laughter.
This is the point at which the field of neurolinguistics offers some insight into the cognitive processing involved in this abrupt laughter at the punchline. Studies by the cognitive science researchers Coulson and Kutas directly address the theory of script switching articulated by Raskin in their work. The article "Getting it: Human event-related brain response to jokes in good and poor comprehenders" measures brain activity in response to reading jokes. Additional studies by others in the field support more generally the theory of two-stage processing of humour, as evidenced in the longer processing time they require. In the related field of neuroscience, it has been shown that the expression of laughter is caused by two partially independent neuronal pathways: an "involuntary" or "emotionally driven" system and a "voluntary" system. This study adds credence to the common experience when exposed to an off-colour joke; a laugh is followed in the next breath by a disclaimer: "Oh, that's bad…" Here the multiple steps in cognition are clearly evident in the stepped response, the perception being processed just a breath faster than the resolution of the moral / ethical content in the joke.
Expected response to a joke is laughter. The joke teller hopes the audience "gets it" and is entertained. This leads to the premise that a joke is actually an "understanding test" between individuals and groups. If the listeners do not get the joke, they are not understanding the two scripts which are contained in the narrative as they were intended. Or they do "get it" and don't laugh; it might be too obscene, too gross or too dumb for the current audience. A woman might respond differently to a joke told by a male colleague around the water cooler than she would to the same joke overheard in a women's lavatory. A joke involving toilet humour may be funnier told on the playground at elementary school than on a college campus. The same joke will elicit different responses in different settings. The punchline in the joke remains the same, however it is more or less appropriate depending on the current context.
The context explores the specific social situation in which joking occurs. The narrator automatically modifies the text of the joke to be acceptable to different audiences, while at the same time supporting the same divergent scripts in the punchline. The vocabulary used in telling the same joke at a university fraternity party and to one's grandmother might well vary. In each situation it is important to identify both the narrator and the audience as well as their relationship with each other. This varies to reflect the complexities of a matrix of different social factors: age, sex, race, ethnicity, kinship, political views, religion, power relationship, etc. When all the potential combinations of such factors between the narrator and the audience are considered, then a single joke can take on infinite shades of meaning for each unique social setting.
The context, however, should not be confused with the function of the joking. "Function is essentially an abstraction made on the basis of a number of contexts". In one long-term observation of men coming off the late shift at a local café, joking with the waitresses was used to ascertain sexual availability for the evening. Different types of jokes, going from general to topical into explicitly sexual humour signalled openness on the part of the waitress for a connection. This study describes how jokes and joking are used to communicate much more than just good humour. That is a single example of the function of joking in a social setting, but there are others. Sometimes jokes are used simply to get to know someone better. What makes them laugh, what do they find funny? Jokes concerning politics, religion or sexual topics can be used effectively to gage the attitude of the audience to any one of these topics. They can also be used as a marker of group identity, signalling either inclusion or exclusion for the group. Among pre-adolescents, "dirty" jokes allow them to share information about their changing bodies. And sometimes joking is just simple entertainment for a group of friends.
The context of joking in turn leads into a study of joking relationships, a term coined by anthropologists to refer to social groups within a culture who take part in institutionalised banter and joking. These relationships can be either one-way or a mutual back and forth between partners. "The joking relationship is defined as a peculiar combination of friendliness and antagonism. The behaviour is such that in any other social context it would express and arouse hostility; but it is not meant seriously and must not be taken seriously. There is a pretence of hostility along with a real friendliness. To put it in another way, the relationship is one of permitted disrespect." Joking relationships were first described by anthropologists within kinship groups in Africa. But they have since been identified in cultures around the world, where jokes and joking are used to mark and re-inforce appropriate boundaries of a relationship.
The advent of electronic communications at the end of the 20th century introduced new traditions into jokes. A verbal joke or cartoon is emailed to a friend or posted on a bulletin board; reactions include a replied email with a :-) or LOL, or a forward on to further recipients. Interaction is limited to the computer screen and for the most part solitary. While preserving the text of a joke, both context and variants are lost in internet joking; for the most part emailed jokes are passed along verbatim. The framing of the joke frequently occurs in the subject line: "RE: laugh for the day" or something similar. The forward of an email joke can increase the number of recipients exponentially.
Internet joking forces a re-evaluation of social spaces and social groups. They are no longer only defined by physical presence and locality, they also exist in the connectivity in cyberspace. "The computer networks appear to make possible communities that, although physically dispersed, display attributes of the direct, unconstrained, unofficial exchanges folklorists typically concern themselves with". This is particularly evident in the spread of topical jokes, "that genre of lore in which whole crops of jokes spring up seemingly overnight around some sensational event … flourish briefly and then disappear, as the mass media move on to fresh maimings and new collective tragedies". This correlates with the new understanding of the internet as an "active folkloric space" with evolving social and cultural forces and clearly identifiable performers and audiences.
A study by the folklorist Bill Ellis documented how an evolving cycle was circulated over the internet. By accessing message boards that specialised in humour immediately following the 9/11 disaster, Ellis was able to observe in real time both the topical jokes being posted electronically and responses to the jokes. "Previous folklore research has been limited to collecting and documenting successful jokes, and only after they had emerged and come to folklorists' attention. Now, an Internet-enhanced collection creates a time machine, as it were, where we can observe what happens in the period before the risible moment, when attempts at humour are unsuccessful". Access to archived message boards also enables us to track the development of a single joke thread in the context of a more complicated virtual conversation.
A joke cycle is a collection of jokes about a single target or situation which displays consistent narrative structure and type of humour. Some well-known cycles are elephant jokes using nonsense humour, dead baby jokes incorporating black humour and light bulb jokes, which describe all kinds of operational stupidity. Joke cycles can centre on ethnic groups, professions (viola jokes), catastrophes, settings (…walks into a bar), absurd characters (wind-up dolls), or logical mechanisms which generate the humour (knock-knock jokes). A joke can be reused in different joke cycles; an example of this is the same Head & Shoulders joke refitted to the tragedies of Vic Morrow, Admiral Mountbatten and the crew of the Challenger space shuttle. These cycles seem to appear spontaneously, spread rapidly across countries and borders only to dissipate after some time. Folklorists and others have studied individual joke cycles in an attempt to understand their function and significance within the culture.
Joke cycles circulated in the recent past include:
As with the 9/11 disaster discussed above, cycles attach themselves to celebrities or national catastrophes such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, the death of Michael Jackson, and the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. These cycles arise regularly as a response to terrible unexpected events which command the national news. An in-depth analysis of the Challenger joke cycle documents a change in the type of humour circulated following the disaster, from February to March 1986. "It shows that the jokes appeared in distinct 'waves', the first responding to the disaster with clever wordplay and the second playing with grim and troubling images associated with the event…The primary social function of disaster jokes appears to be to provide closure to an event that provoked communal grieving, by signaling that it was time to move on and pay attention to more immediate concerns".
The sociologist Christie Davies has written extensively on ethnic jokes told in countries around the world. In ethnic jokes he finds that the "stupid" ethnic target in the joke is no stranger to the culture, but rather a peripheral social group (geographic, economic, cultural, linguistic) well known to the joke tellers. So Americans tell jokes about Polacks and Italians, Germans tell jokes about Ostfriesens, and the English tell jokes about the Irish. In a review of Davies' theories it is said that "For Davies, [ethnic] jokes are more about how joke tellers imagine themselves than about how they imagine those others who serve as their putative targets…The jokes thus serve to center one in the world – to remind people of their place and to reassure them that they are in it."
A third category of joke cycles identifies absurd characters as the butt: for example the grape, the dead baby or the elephant. Beginning in the 1960s, social and cultural interpretations of these joke cycles, spearheaded by the folklorist Alan Dundes, began to appear in academic journals. Dead baby jokes are posited to reflect societal changes and guilt caused by widespread use of contraception and abortion beginning in the 1960s. Elephant jokes have been interpreted variously as stand-ins for American blacks during the Civil Rights Era or as an "image of something large and wild abroad in the land captur[ing] the sense of counterculture" of the sixties. These interpretations strive for a cultural understanding of the themes of these jokes which go beyond the simple collection and documentation undertaken previously by folklorists and ethnologists.
As folktales and other types of oral literature became collectibles throughout Europe in the 19th century (Brothers Grimm et al.), folklorists and anthropologists of the time needed a system to organise these items. The Aarne–Thompson classification system was first published in 1910 by Antti Aarne, and later expanded by Stith Thompson to become the most renowned classification system for European folktales and other types of oral literature. Its final section addresses anecdotes and jokes, listing traditional humorous tales ordered by their protagonist; "This section of the Index is essentially a classification of the older European jests, or merry tales – humorous stories characterized by short, fairly simple plots. …" Due to its focus on older tale types and obsolete actors (e.g., numbskull), the Aarne–Thompson Index does not provide much help in identifying and classifying the modern joke.
A more granular classification system used widely by folklorists and cultural anthropologists is the Thompson Motif Index, which separates tales into their individual story elements. This system enables jokes to be classified according to individual motifs included in the narrative: actors, items and incidents. It does not provide a system to classify the text by more than one element at a time while at the same time making it theoretically possible to classify the same text under multiple motifs.
The Thompson Motif Index has spawned further specialised motif indices, each of which focuses on a single aspect of one subset of jokes. A sampling of just a few of these specialised indices have been listed under other motif indices. Here one can select an index for medieval Spanish folk narratives, another index for linguistic verbal jokes, and a third one for sexual humour. To assist the researcher with this increasingly confusing situation, there are also multiple bibliographies of indices as well as a how-to guide on creating your own index.
Several difficulties have been identified with these systems of identifying oral narratives according to either tale types or story elements. A first major problem is their hierarchical organisation; one element of the narrative is selected as the major element, while all other parts are arrayed subordinate to this. A second problem with these systems is that the listed motifs are not qualitatively equal; actors, items and incidents are all considered side-by-side. And because incidents will always have at least one actor and usually have an item, most narratives can be ordered under multiple headings. This leads to confusion about both where to order an item and where to find it. A third significant problem is that the "excessive prudery" common in the middle of the 20th century means that obscene, sexual and scatological elements were regularly ignored in many of the indices.
The folklorist Robert Georges has summed up the concerns with these existing classification systems: It has proven difficult to organise all different elements of a joke into a multi-dimensional classification system which could be of real value in the study and evaluation of this (primarily oral) complex narrative form.
The General Theory of Verbal Humour or GTVH, developed by the linguists Victor Raskin and Salvatore Attardo, attempts to do exactly this. This classification system was developed specifically for jokes and later expanded to include longer types of humorous narratives. Six different aspects of the narrative, labelled Knowledge Resources or KRs, can be evaluated largely independently of each other, and then combined into a concatenated classification label. These six KRs of the joke structure include:
As development of the GTVH progressed, a hierarchy of the KRs was established to partially restrict the options for lower level KRs depending on the KRs defined above them. For example, a lightbulb joke (SI) will always be in the form of a riddle (NS). Outside of these restrictions, the KRs can create a multitude of combinations, enabling a researcher to select jokes for analysis which contain only one or two defined KRs. It also allows for an evaluation of the similarity or dissimilarity of jokes depending on the similarity of their labels. "The GTVH presents itself as a mechanism … of generating [or describing] an infinite number of jokes by combining the various values that each parameter can take. … Descriptively, to analyze a joke in the GTVH consists of listing the values of the 6 KRs (with the caveat that TA and LM may be empty)." This classification system provides a functional multi-dimensional label for any joke, and indeed any verbal humour.
Many academic disciplines lay claim to the study of jokes (and other forms of humour) as within their purview. Fortunately there are enough jokes, good, bad and worse, to go around. Unfortunately the studies of jokes from each of the interested disciplines brings to mind the tale of the blind men and an elephant where the observations, although accurate reflections of their own competent methodological inquiry, frequently fail to grasp the beast in its entirety. This attests to the joke as a traditional narrative form which is indeed complex, concise and complete in and of itself. It requires a "multidisciplinary, interdisciplinary, and cross-disciplinary field of inquiry" to truly appreciate these nuggets of cultural insight.
Sigmund Freud was one of the first modern scholars to recognise jokes as an important object of investigation. In his 1905 study "Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious" Freud describes the social nature of humour and illustrates his text with many examples of contemporary Viennese jokes. His work is particularly noteworthy in this context because Freud distinguishes in his writings between jokes, humour and the comic. These are distinctions which become easily blurred in many subsequent studies where everything funny tends to be gathered under the umbrella term of "humour", making for a much more diffuse discussion.
Since the publication of Freud's study, psychologists have continued to explore humour and jokes in their quest to explain, predict and control an individual's "sense of humour". Why do people laugh? Why do people find something funny? Can jokes predict character, or vice versa, can character predict the jokes an individual laughs at? What is a "sense of humour"? A current review of the popular magazine "Psychology Today" lists over 200 articles discussing various aspects of humour; in psychospeak the subject area has become both an emotion to measure and a tool to use in diagnostics and treatment. A new psychological assessment tool, the Values in Action Inventory developed by the American psychologists Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman includes humour (and playfulness) as one of the core character strengths of an individual. As such, it could be a good predictor of life satisfaction. For psychologists, it would be useful to measure both how much of this strength an individual has and how it can be measurably increased.
A 2007 survey of existing tools to measure humour identified more than 60 psychological measurement instruments. These measurement tools use many different approaches to quantify humour along with its related states and traits. There are tools to measure an individual's physical response by their smile; the Facial Action Coding System (FACS) is one of several tools used to identify any one of multiple types of smiles. Or the laugh can be measured to calculate the funniness response of an individual; multiple types of laughter have been identified. It must be stressed here that both smiles and laughter are not always a response to something funny. In trying to develop a measurement tool, most systems use "jokes and cartoons" as their test materials. However, because no two tools use the same jokes, and across languages this would not be feasible, how does one determine that the assessment objects are comparable? Moving on, whom does one ask to rate the sense of humour of an individual? Does one ask the person themselves, an impartial observer, or their family, friends and colleagues? Furthermore, has the current mood of the test subjects been considered; someone with a recent death in the family might not be much prone to laughter. Given the plethora of variants revealed by even a superficial glance at the problem, it becomes evident that these paths of scientific inquiry are mined with problematic pitfalls and questionable solutions.
The psychologist has been very active in the research of humour. He has collaborated with the linguists Raskin and Attardo on their General Theory of Verbal Humour (GTVH) classification system. Their goal is to empirically test both the six autonomous classification types (KRs) and the hierarchical ordering of these KRs. Advancement in this direction would be a win-win for both fields of study; linguistics would have empirical verification of this multi-dimensional classification system for jokes, and psychology would have a standardised joke classification with which they could develop verifiably comparable measurement tools.
"The linguistics of humor has made gigantic strides forward in the last decade and a half and replaced the psychology of humor as the most advanced theoretical approach to the study of this important and universal human faculty." This recent statement by one noted linguist and humour researcher describes, from his perspective, contemporary linguistic humour research. Linguists study words, how words are strung together to build sentences, how sentences create meaning which can be communicated from one individual to another, how our interaction with each other using words creates discourse. Jokes have been defined above as oral narrative in which words and sentences are engineered to build toward a punchline. The linguist's question is: what exactly makes the punchline funny? This question focuses on how the words used in the punchline create humour, in contrast to the psychologist's concern (see above) with the audience response to the punchline. The assessment of humour by psychologists "is made from the individual's perspective; e.g. the phenomenon associated with responding to or creating humor and not a description of humor itself." Linguistics, on the other hand, endeavours to provide a precise description of what makes a text funny.
Two major new linguistic theories have been developed and tested within the last decades. The first was advanced by Victor Raskin in "Semantic Mechanisms of Humor", published 1985. While being a variant on the more general concepts of the incongruity theory of humour, it is the first theory to identify its approach as exclusively linguistic. The Script-based Semantic Theory of Humour (SSTH) begins by identifying two linguistic conditions which make a text funny. It then goes on to identify the mechanisms involved in creating the punchline. This theory established the semantic/pragmatic foundation of humour as well as the humour competence of speakers.
Several years later the SSTH was incorporated into a more expansive theory of jokes put forth by Raskin and his colleague Salvatore Attardo. In the General Theory of Verbal Humour, the SSTH was relabelled as a Logical Mechanism (LM) (referring to the mechanism which connects the different linguistic scripts in the joke) and added to five other independent Knowledge Resources (KR). Together these six KRs could now function as a multi-dimensional descriptive label for any piece of humorous text.
Linguistics has developed further methodological tools which can be applied to jokes: discourse analysis and conversation analysis of joking. Both of these subspecialties within the field focus on "naturally occurring" language use, i.e. the analysis of real (usually recorded) conversations. One of these studies has already been discussed above, where Harvey Sacks describes in detail the sequential organisation in the telling a single joke. Discourse analysis emphasises the entire context of social joking, the social interaction which cradles the words.
Folklore and cultural anthropology have perhaps the strongest claims on jokes as belonging to their bailiwick. Jokes remain one of the few remaining forms of traditional folk literature transmitted orally in western cultures. Identified as one of the "simple forms" of oral literature by André Jolles in 1930, they have been collected and studied since there were folklorists and anthropologists abroad in the lands. As a genre they were important enough at the beginning of the 20th century to be included under their own heading in the Aarne–Thompson index first published in 1910: Anecdotes and jokes.
Beginning in the 1960s, cultural researchers began to expand their role from collectors and archivists of "folk ideas" to a more active role of interpreters of cultural artefacts. One of the foremost scholars active during this transitional time was the folklorist Alan Dundes. He started asking questions of tradition and transmission with the key observation that "No piece of folklore continues to be transmitted unless it means something, even if neither the speaker nor the audience can articulate what that meaning might be." In the context of jokes, this then becomes the basis for further research. Why is the joke told right now? Only in this expanded perspective is an understanding of its meaning to the participants possible.
This questioning resulted in a blossoming of monographs to explore the significance of many joke cycles. What is so funny about absurd nonsense elephant jokes? Why make light of dead babies? In an article on contemporary German jokes about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, Dundes justifies this research: "Whether one finds Auschwitz jokes funny or not is not an issue. This material exists and should be recorded. Jokes are always an important barometer of the attitudes of a group. The jokes exist and they obviously must fill some psychic need for those individuals who tell them and those who listen to them." A stimulating generation of new humour theories flourishes like mushrooms in the undergrowth: Elliott Oring's theoretical discussions on "appropriate ambiguity" and Amy Carrell's hypothesis of an "audience-based theory of verbal humor (1993)" to name just a few.
In his book "Humor and Laughter: An Anthropological Approach", the anthropologist Mahadev Apte presents a solid case for his own academic perspective. "Two axioms underlie my discussion, namely, that humor is by and large culture based and that humor can be a major conceptual and methodological tool for gaining insights into cultural systems." Apte goes on to call for legitimising the field of humour research as "humorology"; this would be a field of study incorporating an interdisciplinary character of humour studies.
While the label "humorology" has yet to become a household word, great strides are being made in the international recognition of this interdisciplinary field of research. The International Society for Humor Studies was founded in 1989 with the stated purpose to "promote, stimulate and encourage the interdisciplinary study of humour; to support and cooperate with local, national, and international organizations having similar purposes; to organize and arrange meetings; and to issue and encourage publications concerning the purpose of the society." It also publishes "" and holds yearly conferences to promote and inform its speciality.
In 1872, Charles Darwin published one of the first "comprehensive and in many ways remarkably accurate description of laughter in terms of respiration, vocalization, facial action and gesture and posture" (Laughter). In this early study Darwin raises further questions about who laughs and why they laugh; the myriad responses since then illustrates the complexities of this behaviour. To understand laughter in humans and other primates, the science of gelotology (from the Greek "", meaning laughter) has been established; it is the study of laughter and its effects on the body from both a psychological and physiological perspective. While jokes can provoke laughter, laughter cannot be used as a one-to-one marker of jokes because there are multiple stimuli to laughter, humour being just one of them. The other six causes of laughter listed are: social context, ignorance, anxiety, derision, acting apology, and tickling. As such, the study of laughter is a secondary albeit entertaining perspective in an understanding of jokes.
Computational humour is a new field of study which uses computers to model humour; it bridges the disciplines of computational linguistics and artificial intelligence. A primary ambition of this field is to develop computer programs which can both generate a joke and recognise a text snippet as a joke. Early programming attempts have dealt almost exclusively with punning because this lends itself to simple straightforward rules. These primitive programs display no intelligence; instead they work off a template with a finite set of pre-defined punning options upon which to build.
More sophisticated computer joke programs have yet to be developed. Based on our understanding of the SSTH / GTVH humour theories, it is easy to see why. The linguistic scripts (a.k.a. frames) referenced in these theories include, for any given word, a "large chunk of semantic information surrounding the word and evoked by it [...] a cognitive structure internalized by the native speaker". These scripts extend much further than the lexical definition of a word; they contain the speaker's complete knowledge of the concept as it exists in his world. As insentient machines, computers lack the encyclopaedic scripts which humans gain through life experience. They also lack the ability to gather the experiences needed to build wide-ranging semantic scripts and understand language in a broader context, a context that any child picks up in daily interaction with his environment.
Further development in this field must wait until computational linguists have succeeded in programming a computer with an ontological semantic natural language processing system. It is only "the most complex linguistic structures [which] can serve any formal and/or computational treatment of humor well". Toy systems (i.e. dummy punning programs) are completely inadequate to the task. Despite the fact that the field of computational humour is small and underdeveloped, it is encouraging to note the many interdisciplinary efforts which are currently underway. As this field grows in both understanding and methodology, it provides an ideal testbed for humour theories; the rules must firstly be cleanly defined in order to write a computer program around a theory. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16267 |
Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American life. As well as a painter, storyteller, and interpreter, he was an educator. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", though by his own account the primary influence was not so much French art as the shapes and colors of Harlem. He brought the African-American experience to life using blacks and browns juxtaposed with vivid colors. He also taught and spent 16 years as a professor at the University of Washington.
Lawrence is among the best-known 20th-century African-American painters. He was 23 years old when he gained national recognition with his 60-panel "Migration Series", painted on cardboard. The series depicted the Great Migration of African Americans from the rural South to the urban North. A part of this series was featured in a 1941 issue of "Fortune". The collection is now held by two museums: the odd-numbered paintings are on exhibit in the Phillips Collection in Washington, D.C., and the even-numbered are on display at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Lawrence's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Philadelphia Museum of Art, MoMA, the Whitney Museum, the Phillips Collection, Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Brooklyn Museum, Reynolda House Museum of American Art, and the Museum of Northwest Art. He is widely known for his modernist illustrations of everyday life as well as epic narratives of African-American history and historical figures.
Jacob Lawrence was born September 7, 1917 in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Jacobs's parents moved him and his siblings from the rural south, after which they divorced in 1924. His mother put him and his two younger siblings into foster care in Philadelphia. When he was 13, he and his siblings moved to New York City, where he reconnected with his mother in Harlem. Lawrence was introduced to art shortly after that when their mother enrolled him in after school classes at an arts and crafts settlement house in Harlem, called Utopia Children's Center, in an effort to keep him busy. The young Lawrence often drew patterns with crayons. In the beginning, he copied patterns of his mother's carpets. One of his art teachers noted great potential in Lawrence.
After dropping out of school at 16, Lawrence worked in a laundromat and a printing plant. He continued with art, attending classes at the Harlem Art Workshop, taught by the noted African-American artist Charles Alston. Alston urged him to attend the Harlem Community Art Center, led by the sculptor Augusta Savage. Savage secured Lawrence a scholarship to the American Artists School and a paid position with the Works Progress Administration, established during the Great Depression by the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Lawrence continued his studies as well, working with Alston and Henry Bannarn, another Harlem Renaissance artist, in the Alston-Bannarn workshop.
On July 24, 1941, Lawrence married the painter Gwendolyn Knight, also a student of Savage. She supported his work and even helped him with captions for many of his series of paintings. They were married until his death in 2000.
In October 1943 (during the Second World War), Lawrence was drafted in the United States Coast Guard and served as a public affairs specialist with the first racially integrated crew on the "USCGC Sea Cloud," under Carlton Skinner. He continued to paint and sketch while in the Coast Guard, documenting the experience of war around the world. He produced 48 paintings during this time, all of which have been lost. He achieved the rank of petty officer third class. After the war, he created his famous "War Series."
Back in New York, Lawrence continued to paint. He grew depressed, however, and in 1949, he checked himself into Hillside Hospital in Queens, where he stayed for 11 months. He painted as an inpatient. The works he created in hospital differed from his usual artworks because they displayed sadness and agony. Shortly after leaving Hillside, Lawrence turned to theater.
After many years in New York, in 1970 Lawrence and Knight moved to the Pacific Northwest, where he had been invited to be an art professor at the University of Washington. They settled in Seattle. Some of his works are displayed in the university's Meany Hall for the Performing Arts and in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Lawrence's painting "Theater," installed in the main lobby of Meany Hall, was commissioned by the University in 1985 for that space.
For Jacob Lawrence's education, he took Works Progress Administration art classes in New York (1934-1937) and he also studied at Harlem Art Workshop in New York in 1937. Harlem provided crucial training for the majority of black artists in the United States. Lawrence was one of the first artists trained in and by the African-American community in Harlem. Throughout his lengthy artistic career, Lawrence concentrated on exploring the history and struggles of African Americans. He often portrayed important periods in African-American history. The artist was 21 years old when his series of paintings of the Haitian general Toussaint L’Ouverture, who led the revolution of the slaves that eventually gained independence, was shown in an exhibit of African-American artists at the Baltimore Museum of Art. This impressive work was followed by a series of paintings of the lives of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as well as a series of pieces about the abolitionist John Brown. Harlem artist Charles Allston instantly recognized Lawrence’s talent. "The place of Jacob Lawrence among younger painters is unique," Allston said. "Having thus far miraculously escaped the imprint of academic ideas and current vogues in art, to which young artists are most susceptible, he has followed a course of development dictated entirely by his own inner motivations."
Lawrence was 23 when he completed the 60-panel set of narrative paintings entitled "Migration of the Negro," now called the "Migration Series". The series was a portrayal of the Great Migration, when hundreds of thousands of African Americans moved from the rural South to the North after World War I and showed their adjusting to Northern cities. It was exhibited in New York at the Museum of Modern Art, and brought him national recognition. His early work involved general depictions of everyday life in Harlem and also a major series dedicated to Black History (1940-1941). In the 1940s Lawrence was given his first major solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and became the most celebrated African-American painter in the country. Lawrence taught at Black Mountain College during the 1946 Summer Art Institute, where he was influenced by the teaching of Josef Albers. This is when his form and design changed in his style of realism.
The "hard, bright, brittle" aspects of Harlem during the Great Depression inspired Lawrence as much as the colors, shapes and patterns inside the residents' homes. "Even in my mother's home," Lawrence told historian Paul Karlstrom, "people of my mother's generation would decorate their homes in all sorts of color... so you'd think in terms of Matisse." He used water-based media throughout his career. Lawrence started to gain some notice for his dramatic and lively portrayals of both contemporary scenes of African-American urban life as well as historical events, all of which he depicted in crisp shapes, bright, clear colors, dynamic patterns, and through revealing posture and gestures. However, his mother still hoped he would choose a career in the Civil Service.
Shortly after moving to Washington state, Lawrence did a series of five paintings on the westward journey of African-American pioneer, George Washington Bush. These paintings are now in the collection of the State of Washington History Museum.
Lawrence illustrated an adaptation of Aesop's Fables for the University of Washington Press in 1997.
Lawrence taught at several universities including the University of Washington where he was graduate advisor to lithographer and abstract painter James Claussen
Lawrence continued to paint until a few weeks before his death from lung cancer in June 2000 at the age of 82. Shortly before his death he stated: "...for me, a painting should have three things: universality, clarity and strength. Clarity and strength so that it may be aesthetically good. Universality so that it may be understood by all men." His last commissioned public work, the mosaic mural "New York in Transit," was installed in October 2001 in the Times Square subway station in New York City.
His work is in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Phillips Collection, the Brooklyn Museum, the National Gallery of Art and Reynolda House Museum of American Art. In May 2007, the White House Historical Association (via the White House Acquisition Trust) purchased Lawrence's "The Builders" (1947) for $2.5 million at auction. The painting hangs in the White House Green Room.
When Lawrence died on June 9, 2000, "The New York Times" described him as "One of America's leading modern figurative painters" and "among the most impassioned visual chroniclers of the African-American experience." His wife, artist Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence, died several years later in 2005. Jacob Lawrence made 319 artworks in his life. Before he died, he and his wife set up the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation. It serves as the official Estates of both artists. It maintains a searchable archive of nearly 1,000 images of their work. The U.S. copyright representative for the Jacob and Gwendolyn Knight Lawrence Foundation is the Artists Rights Society. Major traveling exhibitions of his works have been presented in museums across the country.
"Selected Permanent Collections" | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16268 |
James Stewart
James Maitland Stewart (May 20, 1908July 2, 1997) was an American actor and military officer. Known for his distinctive drawl and everyman screen persona, Stewart had a film career that spanned over 55 years and 80 films. With the strong morality he portrayed both on and off the screen, Stewart epitomized the "American ideal" in twentieth-century United States. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked him third on its list of the greatest American male actors.
Born and raised in Indiana, Pennsylvania, Stewart started acting while studying at Princeton University. After graduating in 1932, he began a career as a stage actor, appearing on Broadway and in summer stock productions. In 1935, he signed a film contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM). The studio did not see leading man material in Stewart, but after three years of supporting roles and being loaned out to other studios, he had his big breakthrough in Frank Capra's ensemble comedy "You Can't Take It with You" (1938). The following year, Stewart garnered his first of five Academy Award nominations for his portrayal of an idealized and virtuous man who becomes a senator in Capra's "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939). He won his only Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in the screwball comedy "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), which also starred Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
A licensed amateur pilot, Stewart enlisted as a private in the Army Air Corps as soon as he could after the United States entered the Second World War in 1941. Although still an MGM star, his only public and film appearances from 1941 to 1945 were scheduled by the Air Corps. After fighting in the European theater of war, he had attained the rank of colonel and had received several awards for his service. He remained in the U.S. Air Force Reserve and was promoted to brigadier general in 1959. He retired in 1968, and was awarded the United States Air Force Distinguished Service Medal.
After the war, Stewart had difficulties in adapting to changing Hollywood and even thought about ending his acting career. He became a freelancer, and had his first postwar role as George Bailey in Capra's "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946). Although it earned him an Oscar nomination, the film was not a big success at first. It has increased in popularity in the decades since its release, and is considered a Christmas classic and one of Stewart's most famous performances. In the 1950s, Stewart experienced a career revival by playing darker, more morally ambiguous characters in Westerns and thrillers. Some of his most important collaborations during this period were with directors Anthony Mann, with whom he made eight films including "Winchester '73" (1950), "The Glenn Miller Story" (1954) and "The Naked Spur" (1953), and Alfred Hitchcock, with whom he collaborated on "Rope" (1948), "Rear Window" (1954), "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956), and "Vertigo" (1958). "Vertigo" was ignored by critics at its time of release, but has since been reevaluated and recognized as an American cinematic masterpiece. His other films in the 1950s included the Broadway adaptation "Harvey" (1950) and the courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), both of which landed him Academy Award nominations. He was one of the most popular film stars of the decade, with most of his films becoming box office successes.
Stewart's later Westerns included "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962) and "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), both directed by John Ford. He signed a lucrative multi-movie deal with 20th Century-Fox in 1962, and appeared in many popular family comedies during the decade. After a brief venture into television acting, Stewart semi-retired by the 1980s, although he remained a public figure due to the renewed interest in his films with Capra and Hitchcock and his appearances at President Reagan's White House. He received many honorary awards, including an Academy Honorary Award and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, both in 1985.
Stewart remained unmarried until his 40s, and was dubbed "The Great American Bachelor" by the press. In 1949, he married former model Gloria Hatrick McLean. They had twin daughters, and he adopted her two sons from her previous marriage. The marriage lasted until McLean's death in 1994; Stewart died of a pulmonary embolism three years later.
James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, the eldest child and only son born to Elizabeth Ruth ("née" Jackson; 1875–1953) and Alexander Maitland Stewart (1872–1962). Stewart had two younger sisters, Mary (1912–1977) and Virginia (1914–1972). He was of Scottish and Ulster-Scot ancestry. The Stewart family had lived in Pennsylvania for many generations. Stewart's father ran the family business, the J.M. Stewart and Company Hardware Store, which he hoped Stewart would take over as an adult after attending Princeton University, as was the family tradition. Raised a Presbyterian by his deeply religious father, Stewart was a devout church-goer for much of his life.
Stewart's mother was a pianist, and music was an important part of family life. When a customer at the store was unable to pay his bill, Stewart's father accepted an old accordion as payment. Stewart learned to play the instrument with the help of a local barber. His accordion became a fixture offstage during his acting career. A shy child, Stewart spent much of his time after school in the basement working on model airplanes, mechanical drawings, and chemistry—all with a dream of going into aviation. He attended the Wilson Model School for primary school and junior high school. He was not a gifted student and received average to low grades. According to his teachers this was not from a lack of intelligence, but due to being creative and having a tendency to daydream.
Stewart began attending Mercersburg Academy prep school in fall 1923, because his father did not believe he would be accepted into Princeton if he attended public high school. At Mercersburg, Stewart participated in a variety of extracurricular activities. He was a member of the track team (competing as a high jumper under coach Jimmy Curran), the art editor of the school yearbook, a member of the glee club, and a member of the John Marshall Literary Society. To his disappointment, he was relegated to the third-tier football team due to his slender physique. Stewart also made his first onstage appearance at Mercersburg, as Buquet in the play "The Wolves" in 1928. During summer breaks, he returned to Indiana, working first as a brick loader and then as a magician's assistant. Due to scarlet fever that turned into a kidney infection, he had to take time out from school in 1927, which delayed his graduation until 1928. He remained passionate about aviation, with his interest enhanced by Charles Lindbergh's first solo transatlantic flight, but abandoned visions of becoming a pilot when his father steered him towards Princeton.
Stewart enrolled at Princeton in 1928 as a member of the class of 1932, majoring in architecture and becoming a member of the Princeton Charter Club. He excelled academically, but also became attracted to the school's drama and music clubs, including the Princeton Triangle Club. Upon his graduation in 1932, he was awarded a scholarship for graduate studies in architecture for his thesis on an airport design, but chose instead to join University Players, an intercollegiate summer stock company performing in West Falmouth, Massachusetts, on Cape Cod.
Stewart performed in bit parts in the University Players' productions in Cape Cod during the summer of 1932. The company's directors included Joshua Logan, Bretaigne Windust and Charles Leatherbee, and amongst its other actors were married couple Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan, who became Stewart's close friends. At the end of the season, Stewart moved to New York with his Players friends Logan, Myron McCormick, and newly single Henry Fonda. Along with McCormick, Stewart debuted on Broadway in the brief run of "Carry Nation" and a few weeks later – again with McCormick – appeared as a chauffeur in the comedy "Goodbye Again", in which he had a walk-on line. "The New Yorker" commented, "Mr. James Stewart's chauffeur... comes on for three minutes and walks off to a round of spontaneous applause." Following the seven-month run of "Goodbye Again", Stewart took a stage manager position in Boston, but was fired after frequently missing his cues. Returning to New York, he then landed a small part in "Spring in Autumn" and a role in "All Good Americans", where he was required to throw a banjo out of the window. Brooks Atkinson of "The New York Times" wrote, "Throwing a $250 banjo out of the window at the concierge is constructive abuse and should be virtuously applauded." Both plays folded after only short runs, and Stewart began to think about going back to his studies.
Stewart was convinced to continue acting when he was cast in the lead role of "Yellow Jack", playing a soldier who becomes the subject of a yellow fever experiment. It premiered at the Martin Beck Theater in March 1934. Stewart received unanimous praise from the critics, but the play proved unpopular with audiences and folded by June. During the summer, Stewart made his film debut with an unbilled appearance in the Shemp Howard comedy short "Art Trouble" (1934), filmed in Brooklyn, and acted in summer stock productions of "We Die Exquisitely" and "All Paris Knows" at the Red Barn Theater on Long Island. In the fall, he again received excellent reviews for his role in "Divided by Three" at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre, which he followed with the modestly successful "Page Miss Glory" and the critical failure "A Journey By Night" in spring 1935.
Soon after "A Journey By Night" ended, Stewart signed a seven-year contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), orchestrated by talent scout Bill Grady, who had been tracking Stewart's career since seeing him perform in Princeton. His first Hollywood role was a minor appearance in the Spencer Tracy vehicle "The Murder Man" (1935). His performance was largely ignored by critics, although the "New York Herald Tribune", remembering him in "Yellow Jack", called him "wasted in a bit that he handles with characteristically engaging skill." As MGM did not see leading-man material in Stewart, described by biographer Michael D. Rinella as a "lanky young bumpkin with a hesitant manner of speech" during this time, his agent Leland Hayward decided that the best path for him would be through loan-outs to other studios.
Stewart had only a small role in his second MGM film, the hit musical "Rose Marie" (1936), but it led to his casting in seven other films within one year, from "Next Time We Love" to "After the Thin Man". He also received crucial help from his University Players friend Margaret Sullavan, who campaigned for him to be her leading man in the Universal romantic comedy "Next Time We Love" (1936), filmed right after "Rose Marie". Sullavan rehearsed extensively with him, boosting his confidence and helping him incorporate his mannerisms and boyishness into his screen persona. "Next Time We Love" was a box-office success and received mostly positive reviews, leading Stewart to be noticed by critics and MGM executives. "TIME" stated that "the chief significance of [the film] in the progress of the cinema industry is likely to reside in the presence in its cast of James Stewart" and "The New York Times" called him "a welcome addition to the roster of Hollywood's leading men."
Stewart followed "Next Time We Love" with supporting roles in two commercially successful romantic comedies, "Wife vs. Secretary" (1936) and "Small Town Girl" (1936). In both, he played the betrayed boyfriend of the leading lady, portrayed by Jean Harlow and Janet Gaynor, respectively. Both films garnered him some good reviews. After an appearance in the short subject "Important News" (1936), Stewart had his first top-billed role in the low-budget "B" movie "Speed" (1936), in which he played a mechanic and speed driver competing in the Indianapolis 500. The film was a critical and commercial failure, although Frank Nugent of "The New York Times" stated that "Mr. Stewart [and the rest of the cast] perform as pleasantly as possible."
Stewart's last three film releases of 1936 were all box-office successes. He had only a bit part in "The Gorgeous Hussy", but a starring role in the musical "Born to Dance". His performance in the latter was not well-received: "The New York Times" stated that his "singing and dancing will (fortunately) never win him a song-and-dance-man classification," and "Variety" called "his singing and dancing [...] rather painful on their own," although it otherwise found Stewart aptly cast in an "assignment [that] calls for a shy youth." Stewart's last film to be released in 1936, "After the Thin Man", featured him as a murderer. Kate Cameron of the "New York Daily News" wrote that he "has one grand scene in which he demonstrates most effectively that he is something more than a musical comedy juvenile."
For his next film, the romantic drama "Seventh Heaven" (1937), Stewart was loaned to 20th Century-Fox to play a Parisian sewer worker in a remake of Frank Borzage's silent classic released a decade earlier. He and co-star Simone Simon were miscast, and the film was a critical and commercial failure. William Boehnel of the "New York World-Telegram" called Stewart's performance emotionless and Eileen Creelman of "The New York Sun" wrote that he made little attempt to look or sound French. Stewart's next film, "The Last Gangster" (1937) starring Edward G. Robinson, was also a failure, but it was followed by a critically acclaimed performance in "Navy Blue and Gold" (1937) as a football player at the United States Naval Academy. The film was a box-office success and earned Stewart the best reviews of his career up to that point. "The New York Times" wrote "the ending leaves us with the conviction that James Stewart is a sincere and likable triple-threat man in the [MGM] backfield" and "Variety" called his performance "fine."
Despite good reviews, Stewart was still a minor star and MGM remained hesitant to cast him in leading roles, preferring to loan him out to other studios. After a well-received supporting part in "Of Human Hearts" (1938), he was loaned to RKO to act opposite Ginger Rogers in the romantic comedy "Vivacious Lady" (1938). The production was shut down for months in 1937 as Stewart recovered from an undisclosed illness, during which he was hospitalized. RKO initially wanted to replace Stewart, but eventually, the project was canceled. However, Rogers's success in a stage musical caused the film to be picked up again. Stewart was recast in "Vivacious Lady" at Rogers's insistence and due to his performance in "Of Human Hearts". It was a critical and commercial success, and showed Stewart's talent for performing in romantic comedies; "The New York Herald" called him "one of the most knowing and engaging young actors appearing on the screen at present."
Stewart's third film release of 1938, the First World War drama "The Shopworn Angel", saw him collaborate again with Margaret Sullavan. In his performance, Stewart drew upon his own feelings of unrequited love towards Sullavan, who was married to his agent, Leland Hayward. Although the film was otherwise well-received, critics were mixed about Stewart. Bland Johaneson of the "New York Daily Mirror" compared him to Stan Laurel in this melodramatic film and "Variety" called his performance unfocused. Irene Thier of "The New York Post" wrote that his role was "just another proof that this young man is one of the finest actors of the screen's young roster."
Stewart became a major star when he was loaned out to Columbia Pictures to play the lead role in Frank Capra's "You Can't Take It With You" (1938) opposite Jean Arthur. Stewart played the son of a banker who falls in love with a woman from a poor and eccentric family. Capra had recently completed several well-received films, and was looking for a new type of leading man. He had been impressed by Stewart's role in "Navy Blue and Gold" (1937). According to Capra, Stewart was one of the best actors ever to hit the screen, understood character archetypes intuitively and required little directing. "You Can't Take It With You" became the fifth highest-grossing film of the year and won the Academy Award for Best Picture. The film was also critically successful, but while "Variety" wrote that the performances of Stewart and Arthur garnered "much of the laughs," most of the critical acclaim went to Lionel Barrymore and Edward Arnold.
In contrast to the success of "You Can't Take It With You", Stewart's first three film releases of 1939 were all commercial disappointments. In the melodrama "Made for Each Other" (1939), he shared the screen with Carole Lombard. Stewart blamed its directing and screenwriting for its poor box-office performance. Regardless, the film received favorable reviews, with "Newsweek" writing that Stewart and Lombard were "perfectly cast in the leading roles." The other two films, "The Ice Follies of 1939" and "It's a Wonderful World", were critical failures.
Stewart's fourth 1939 film saw him work again with Capra and Jean Arthur in the political comedy-drama "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", in which Stewart played an idealist thrown into the political arena. It garnered critical praise and became the third-highest-grossing film of the year. "The Nation" stated "[Stewart] takes first place among Hollywood actors...Now he is mature and gives a difficult part, with many nuances, moments of tragic-comic impact." Later, critic Andrew Sarris qualified Stewart's performance as "lean, gangling, idealistic to the point of being neurotic, thoughtful to the point of being tongue-tied," describing him as "particularly gifted in expressing the emotional ambivalence of the action hero." Stewart won the New York Film Critics Circle award and received his first nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Stewart's last screen appearance of 1939 came in the Western parody "Destry Rides Again", in which he portrayed a pacifist lawman and Marlene Dietrich a saloon girl who falls in love with him. It was critically and commercially successful. "TIME" magazine wrote, "James Stewart, who had just turned in the top performance of his cinematurity as Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington", turns in as good a performance or better as Thomas Jefferson Destry." Between films, Stewart had begun a radio career, and had become a distinctive voice on the "Lux Radio Theater", "The Screen Guild Theater" and other shows. So well-known had his slow drawl become that comedians began impersonating him.
Stewart and Sullavan reunited for two films in 1940. The Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy "The Shop Around the Corner" starred them as co-workers who cannot stand each other but unknowingly become romantic pen-pals. It received good reviews and was a box-office success in Europe, but failed to find an audience in the US, where less gentle screwball comedies were more popular. Director Lubitsch assessed it to be the best film of his career, and it has been regarded highly by later critics, such as Pauline Kael and Richard Schickel.
The drama "The Mortal Storm", directed by Frank Borzage, featured Sullavan and Stewart as lovers caught in turmoil upon Hitler's rise to power. It was one of the first blatantly anti-Nazi films to be produced in Hollywood, but according to film scholar Ben Urwand, "ultimately made very little impact" as it did not show the persecution experienced by Jews or name that ethnic group. Despite being well received by critics, it failed at the box office. Ten days after filming "The Mortal Storm", Stewart began filming "No Time for Comedy" (1940) with Rosalind Russell. Critics complimented Stewart's performance; Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" called Stewart "the best thing in the show," yet the film was again not a box-office success.
Stewart's final film to be released in 1940 was George Cukor's romantic comedy "The Philadelphia Story", in which he played an intrusive, fast-talking reporter sent to cover the wedding of a socialite (Katharine Hepburn) with the help of her ex-husband (Cary Grant). The film became one of the largest box office successes of the year, and received widespread critical acclaim. "The New York Herald Tribune" stated that "Stewart...contributes most of the comedy to the show...In addition, he contributes some of the most irresistible romantic moments." His performance earned him his only Academy Award in a competitive category for Best Actor, beating out Henry Fonda, for whom he had voted. Stewart himself assessed his performance in "Mr. Smith" to be superior, and believed the Academy was recompensing for not giving him the award the year prior. Moreover, Stewart's character was a supporting role, not the male lead. He gave the Oscar to his father, who displayed it at his hardware store alongside other family awards and military medals.
Stewart next appeared in two comedies—"Come Live with Me" (1941), which paired him with Hedy Lamarr, and "Pot o' Gold" (1941), featuring Paulette Goddard—that were both box-office failures. Stewart considered the latter to be the worst film of his career. His last film before military service was the musical "Ziegfeld Girl" (1941), which co-starred Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr and Lana Turner. It was a critical failure but also one of the best box-office performers of the year.
Stewart became the first major American movie star to enlist in the United States Army to fight in World War II. His family had deep military roots: both of his grandfathers had fought in the Civil War, and his father had served during both the Spanish–American War and World War I. After first being rejected for low weight in November 1940, he successfully enlisted in February 1941. As an experienced amateur pilot, he reported for induction as a private in the Air Corps on March 22, 1941. Soon to be 33 years old, he was over the maximum age restriction for Aviation Cadet training—the normal path of commissioning for pilots, navigators and bombardiers—and therefore applied for an Air Corps commission as both a college graduate and a licensed commercial pilot. Stewart received his commission as a second lieutenant on January 1, 1942.
After enlisting, Stewart made no new commercial films, although he remained under contract to MGM. His public appearances were limited to engagements for the Army Air Forces. The Air Corps scheduled him on network radio with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and to the radio program "We Hold These Truths", a celebration of the United States Bill of Rights, which was broadcast a week after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Stewart also appeared in a First Motion Picture Unit short film, "Winning Your Wings", to help recruit airmen. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary in 1942, it appeared in movie theaters nationwide beginning in late May 1942 and resulted in 150,000 new recruits.
Stewart was concerned that his celebrity status would relegate him to duties behind the lines. After spending over a year training pilots at Kirtland Army Airfield in Albuquerque, New Mexico, he appealed to his commander, and was sent to England as part of the 445th Bombardment Group, to pilot a B-24 Liberator, in November 1943.
Stewart was promoted to major following a mission to Ludwigshafen, Germany, on January 7, 1944. He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for actions as deputy commander of the 2d Bombardment Wing, and the French Croix de Guerre with palm and the Air Medal with three oak leaf clusters. Stewart was promoted to full colonel on March 29, 1945, becoming one of the few Americans to ever rise from private to colonel in only four years. At the beginning of June 1945, Stewart was the presiding officer of the court martial of a pilot and navigator who accidentally bombed Zurich, Switzerland.
Stewart returned to the United States in early fall 1945. He continued to play a role in the Army Air Forces Reserve after the war, and was also one of the 12 founders of the Air Force Association in October 1945. On July 23, 1959, Stewart was promoted to brigadier general, becoming the highest-ranking actor in American military history. During the Vietnam War, he flew as a non-duty observer in a B-52 on an Arc Light bombing mission in February 1966. He served for 27 years, officially retiring from the Air Force on May 31, 1968, when he reached the mandatory retirement age of 60. Upon his retirement, he was awarded the United States Air Force Distinguished Service Medal. Stewart rarely spoke about his wartime service, but did appear in an episode of the British television documentary series "The World at War" (1974), commenting on the disastrous 1943 mission against Schweinfurt, Germany.
After his experiences in the war, Stewart considered returning to Pennsylvania to run the family store. His former agent Leland Hayward had also left the talent business in 1944 after selling his roster of stars, including Stewart, to Music Corporation of America (MCA). Stewart decided not to renew his MGM contract and instead signed a deal with MCA. He later stated that he was given a new beginning by Frank Capra, who asked him to star in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), the first postwar film for both of them. Stewart played George Bailey, an upstanding small-town man who becomes increasingly frustrated by his ordinary existence and financial troubles. Driven to suicide on Christmas Eve, he is led to reassess his life by Clarence Odbody, an "angel, second class" played by Henry Travers. During filming, Stewart experienced doubts about his abilities and continued to consider retiring from acting.
Although "It's a Wonderful Life" was nominated for five Academy Awards, including Stewart's third Best Actor nomination, it received mixed reviews and was only a moderate success at the box office, failing to cover its production costs. Several critics found the movie too sentimental, although Bosley Crowther wrote that Stewart did a "warmly appealing job, indicating that he has grown in spiritual stature as well as in talent during the years he was in the war," and President Harry S. Truman concluded that "If [my wife] and I had a son we'd want him to be just like Jimmy Stewart [in this film]." In the decades since its release, "It's a Wonderful Life" has grown to define Stewart's film persona and is widely considered a Christmas classic, and according to the American Film Institute is one of the 100 best American movies ever made. Andrew Sarris stated that Stewart's performance was underappreciated by critics of the time who could not see "the force and fury" of it, and considered his proposal scene with Donna Reed, "one of the most sublimely histrionic expressions of passion." Stewart later named the film his personal favorite out of his filmography.
In the aftermath of "It's A Wonderful Life", Capra's production company went into bankruptcy, while Stewart continued to have doubts about his acting abilities. His generation of actors was fading and a new wave of actors, including Marlon Brando, Montgomery Clift and James Dean, would soon remake Hollywood. Stewart returned to making radio dramas in 1946; he continued this work between films until the mid-1950s. He also made a comeback on Broadway to star in Mary Coyle Chase's "Harvey" in July 1947, replacing the original star Frank Fay for the duration of his vacation. The play had opened to nearly universal praise in 1944, and told the story of Elwood P. Dowd, a wealthy eccentric, whose best friend is an invisible man-sized rabbit, and whose relatives are trying to get him committed to a mental asylum. Stewart gained a following in the unconventional play, and although Fay returned to the role in August, they decided that Stewart would take his place again the next summer. Stewart's only film to be released in 1947 was the William A. Wellman comedy "Magic Town", one of the first films about the new science of public opinion polling. It was poorly received both commercially and critically.
Stewart appeared in four new film releases in 1948. "Call Northside 777" was a critically acclaimed film noir, while the musical comedy "On Our Merry Way", in which Stewart and Henry Fonda played jazz musicians in an ensemble cast, was a critical and commercial failure. The comedy "You Gotta Stay Happy", which paired Stewart with Joan Fontaine, was the most successful of his post-war films up to that point. "Rope", in which Stewart played the idolized teacher of two young men who commit murder to show their supposed superiority, began his collaboration with Alfred Hitchcock. Shot in long "real-time" takes, Stewart felt pressure to be flawless in his performance; the added stress led to him sleeping very little and drinking more heavily. "Rope" received mixed reviews, and Andrew Sarris and Scott Eyman have later called him miscast in the role of a Nietzsche-loving philosophy professor. The film's screenwriter Arthur Laurents also stated that "the casting of [Stewart] was absolutely destructive. He's not sexual as an actor."
Stewart found success again with "The Stratton Story" (1949), playing baseball champion Monty Stratton opposite June Allyson. It became the sixth-highest-grossing film of 1949 and was well received by the critics. "The New York Times" noted, ""The Stratton Story" was the best thing that has yet happened to Mr. Stewart in his post-war film career...he gives such a winning performance that it is almost impossible to imagine any one else playing the role." Stewart's other 1949 release saw him reunited with Spencer Tracy in the World War II film "Malaya" (1949). It was a commercial failure and received mixed reviews.
In the 1950s, Stewart experienced a career renewal as the star of Westerns and collaborated on several films with director Anthony Mann. The first of these was the Universal production "Winchester '73" (1950), which Stewart agreed to do in exchange for being cast in a screen adaptation of "Harvey". It also marked a turning point in Hollywood, as Stewart's agent, Lew Wasserman, brokered an innovative deal with Universal, in which Stewart would receive no fee in exchange for a percentage of the profits. Stewart was also granted authority to collaborate with the studio on casting and hiring decisions. Stewart ended up earning about $600,000 for "Winchester '73", significantly more than his usual fee, and other stars quickly capitalized on this new way of doing business, which further undermined the decaying studio system.
Stewart chose Mann to direct, and the film gave him the idea of redefining his screen persona through the Western genre. In the film, Stewart is a tough, vengeful sharpshooter, the winner of a prized rifle which is stolen and passes through many hands, until the showdown between him and his brother. "Winchester '73" became a box-office success upon its summer release and earned Stewart rave reviews. He also starred in another successful Western that summer, "Broken Arrow" (1950), which featured him as an ex-soldier and Native American agent making peace with the Apache.
Stewart's third film release of 1950 was the comedy "The Jackpot"; it received critical acclaim and was commercially successful, but was a minor film in his repertoire and has largely been forgotten by contemporary critics and fans. In December 1950, the screen adaptation of "Harvey" was released, directed by Henry Koster and with Stewart reprising his role. With critics again comparing his performance with Fay's, Stewart's performance as well as the film itself received mixed reviews. Bosley Crowther of "The New York Times" wrote that "so darling is the acting of James Stewart [...] and all the rest that a virtually brand new experience is still in store for even those who saw the play," while "Variety" called him "perfect" in the role. John McCarten of the "New Yorker" stated that although he "doesn't bring his part to the battered authority of Frank Fay...he nevertheless succeeds in making plausible the notion that Harvey, the rabbit, would accept him as a pal." Stewart later stated that he was dissatisfied with his performance, stating, "I played him a little too dreamily, a little too cute-cute." Despite its poor box office, Stewart received his fourth Academy Award nomination as well as his first Golden Globe nomination. Similar to "It's a Wonderful Life", "Harvey" achieved popularity later, after frequent television showings.
Stewart appeared in only one film released in 1951, playing a scientist in Koster's British production "No Highway in the Sky", which was one of the first airplane disaster films ever made. Filmed in England, it became a box office success in the United Kingdom, but failed to attract audiences in the United States. Stewart took a small supporting role as a troubled clown in Cecil B. DeMille's "The Greatest Show on Earth" (1952), which went on to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Critics were curious why Stewart had taken such as small, out-of-character role; he responded that he was inspired by Lon Chaney's ability to disguise himself while letting his character emerge. In the same year, Stewart starred in a critically and commercially failed biopic "Carbine Williams" (1952), and continued his collaboration with Mann in "Bend of the River" (1952), which was again a commercial and critical success.Stewart followed "Bend of the River" with four more collaborations with Mann in the next two years. "The Naked Spur" (1953), "Thunder Bay" (1953), and "The Far Country" (1954) were all successful with audiences and developed Stewart's screen persona into a more mature, ambiguous, and edgier presence. The films featured him as a troubled cowboy seeking redemption while facing corrupt cattlemen, ranchers and outlaws; a man who knows violence first hand and struggles to control it. The Stewart–Mann collaborations laid the foundation for many of the Westerns of the 1950s and remain popular today for their grittier, more realistic depiction of the classic movie genre. In addition, Stewart starred in the Western radio show "The Six Shooter" for its one-season run from 1953 to 1954. He and Mann also collaborated on films outside the Western genre, the first of which was "The Glenn Miller Story" (1954), a critically acclaimed biopic in which he starred opposite June Allyson. It garnered Stewart a BAFTA nomination, and continued his portrayals of 'American heroes'.
Stewart's second collaboration with Hitchcock, the thriller "Rear Window", became the third highest-grossing film of 1954. Hitchcock and Stewart had also formed a corporation, Patron Inc., to produce the film. Stewart portrayed a photographer, loosely based on Robert Capa, who projects his fantasies and fears onto the people he observes out his apartment window while on hiatus due to a broken leg, and comes to believe that he has witnessed a murder. Limited by his wheelchair, Stewart had to react to what his character sees with mostly facial responses. Like Mann, Hitchcock uncovered new depths to Stewart's acting, showing a protagonist confronting his fears and his repressed desires. Although most of the initial acclaim for "Rear Window" was directed towards Hitchcock, critic Vincent Canby later described Stewart's performance in it as "grand" and stated that "[his] longtime star status in Hollywood has always obscured recognition of his talent." 1954 was a landmark year in Stewart's career in terms of audience success, and he topped "Look" magazine's list of most popular movie stars, displacing rival Western star John Wayne.
Stewart continued his successful box-office run with two collaborations with Mann in 1955. "Strategic Air Command" paired him again with June Allyson in a Cold War propaganda film geared to show audiences that extensive military spending was necessary. Stewart took a central role in its development, using his experiences from the air force. Despite criticism for the dry, mechanistic storyline, it became the sixth highest-grossing film of 1955. Stewart's final collaboration with Mann in the Western genre, "The Man from Laramie", one of the first Westerns to be shot in CinemaScope, was well received by the critics and audiences alike. Following his work with Mann, Stewart starred opposite Doris Day in Hitchcock's remake of his earlier film "The Man Who Knew Too Much" (1956). The film was yet another success. Even though critics preferred the first version, Hitchcock himself considered his remake superior.
Stewart's next film, Billy Wilder's "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957), saw him star as his childhood hero, Charles Lindbergh. It was a big-budget production with elaborate special effects for the flying sequences, but received only mixed reviews and did not earn back its production costs. Stewart ended the year with a starring role in the Western "Night Passage" (1957), which had originally been slated as his ninth collaboration with Mann. During the pre-production, a rift developed between Mann and writer Borden Chase over the script, which Mann considered weak. Mann decided to leave the film, and never collaborated with Stewart again. James Neilson replaced Mann, and the film opened in 1957 to become a box office flop. Soured by this failure, Stewart avoided the genre and would not make another Western for four years.
Stewart's collaboration with Hitchcock ended the following year with "Vertigo" (1958), in which he starred as an acrophobic former policeman who becomes obsessed with a woman (Kim Novak) he is shadowing. Although "Vertigo" has later become considered one of Hitchcock's key works and was ranked the greatest film ever made by the "Sight & Sound" critics poll in 2012, it met with unenthusiastic reviews and poor box-office receipts upon its release. Regardless, several critics complimented Stewart for his performance, with Bosley Crowther noting, "Mr. Stewart, as usual, manages to act awfully tense in a casual way."
Hitchcock blamed the film's failure on Stewart being too old to convincingly be Novak's love interest: he was fifty years old at the time and had begun wearing a silver hairpiece in his movies. Consequently, Hitchcock cast Cary Grant in his next film, "North by Northwest" (1959), a role Stewart wanted; Grant was four years older than Stewart but photographed much younger. Stewart's second 1958 film release, the romantic comedy "Bell, Book and Candle" (1958), also paired him with Kim Novak, with Stewart later echoing Hitchcock in saying that he was miscast as 25-year-old Novak's romantic partner. The film and Stewart's performance received poor reviews and resulted in a box office failure. However, according to film scholar David Bingham, by the early 1950s, "Stewart's personality was so credible and well-established," that his choice of role no longer affected his popularity.
Stewart ended the decade with Otto Preminger's realistic courtroom drama "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959) and the crime film "The FBI Story" (1959). The former was a box office success despite its explicit dealing with subjects such as rape, and garnered good reviews. Stewart received critical acclaim for his role as a small-town lawyer involved in a difficult murder case; Bosley Crowther called it "one of the finest performances of his career." Stewart won his first BAFTA, a Volpi Cup, a New York Film Critics Circle Award and a Producers Guild of America Award, as well as gained his fifth and final Academy Award nomination for his performance. The latter film, in which Stewart portrayed a Depression-era FBI agent, was less well received by critics and was commercially unsuccessful. Despite the commercial failure of "The FBI Story", the film marked the close of the most commercially successful decade of Stewart's career. According to Quigley's annual poll, Stewart was one of the top money-making stars for ten years, appearing in the top ten in 1950, 1952–1959, and 1965. He topped the list in 1955.
Stewart opened the new decade with an appearance in the war film "The Mountain Road" (1960). To his surprise, it was a box office failure, despite his claims that it was one of the best scripts he'd ever read. He began a new director-collaboration with John Ford, making his debut in his films in the Western "Two Rode Together" (1961), which had thematic echoes of Ford's "The Searchers". The same year, he also narrated the film "X-15" for the USAAF. Stewart was considered for the role of Atticus Finch in the 1962 film adaptation of Harper Lee's novel "To Kill a Mockingbird", but he turned it down, concerned that the story was too controversial.
Next, Stewart appeared as part of an all-star cast—including Henry Fonda and John Wayne—in "How the West Was Won", a Western epic released in early 1962. The film went on to win three Academy Awards and reap massive box-office figures. Stewart and Ford's next collaboration was "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" (1962). A classic psychological Western, the picture was shot in black-and-white film noir style at Ford's insistence, with Stewart as an East Coast attorney who goes against his non-violent principles when he is forced to confront a psychopathic outlaw (Lee Marvin) in a small frontier town. The complex film initially garnered mixed reviews but became a critical favorite over the ensuing decades. Stewart was billed above John Wayne in posters and the trailers but Wayne received top billing in the film itself. Stewart, Wayne and Ford also collaborated for a television play that same year, "Flashing Spikes" (1962), for ABC's anthology series "Alcoa Premiere", albeit featuring Wayne billed with a television pseudonym for his lengthy cameo.
In 1962, Stewart signed a multi-movie deal with 20th Century Fox. The first two of these films reunited him with director Henry Koster in the family-friendly comedies "Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation" (1962) and "Take Her, She's Mine" (1963), which were both box-office successes. The former received moderately positive reviews and won Stewart the Silver Bear for Best Actor at the Berlin International Film Festival; the latter was panned by the critics. Stewart then appeared in John Ford's final Western, "Cheyenne Autumn" (1964), playing a white-suited Wyatt Earp in a long semi-comedic sequence in the middle of the movie. The film failed domestically and was quickly forgotten.
In 1965, Stewart was given his first honorary award for his career, the Cecil B. DeMille Award. He appeared in three films that year. The Fox family-comedy "Dear Brigitte" (1965), which featured French model Brigitte Bardot as the object of Stewart's son's infatuation, was a box-office failure. The Civil War film "Shenandoah" (1965) was a commercial success with strong anti-war and humanitarian themes. "The Flight of the Phoenix" (1965) continued Stewart's series of aviation-themed films; it was well-received critically but a box-office failure.
Since the mid-1960s, Stewart acted in a series of Westerns: "The Rare Breed" (1966) with Maureen O'Hara, "Firecreek" (1968) with Henry Fonda, "Bandolero!" (1968) with Dean Martin, and "The Cheyenne Social Club" (1970) with Henry Fonda again. In 1968, he received the Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. Stewart returned on Broadway to revise his role as Elwood P. Dowd in "Harvey" at the ANTA Theatre in February 1970; the revival ran until May. He won the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Performance for it.
In 1971, Stewart starred in the NBC sitcom "The Jimmy Stewart Show". He played a small-town college professor, whose adult son moves back home with his family. Stewart disliked the amount of work needed to film the show each week, and was relieved when it was canceled after only one season due to bad reviews and lack of audiences. His only film release for 1971, the comedy-drama Western "Fools' Parade", was more positively received. Robert Greenspun of "The New York Times" stated that "the movie belongs to Stewart, who has never been more wonderful." For his contributions to Western films, Stewart was inducted into the Hall of Great Western Performers at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City in 1972.
Stewart returned to television in "Harvey" for NBC's Hallmark Hall of Fame series in 1972, and then starred in the CBS mystery series "Hawkins" in 1973. Playing a small-town lawyer investigating mysterious cases – similar to his character in "Anatomy of a Murder" – Stewart won a Golden Globe for his performance. Nevertheless, "Hawkins" failed to gain a wide audience, possibly because it rotated with "Shaft", which had a starkly conflicting demographic, and was canceled after one season. Stewart also periodically appeared on Johnny Carson's "The Tonight Show", sharing poems he had written at different times in his life. His poems were later compiled into a short collection, "Jimmy Stewart and His Poems" (1989).
After performing again in "Harvey" at the Prince of Wales Theatre in London in 1975, Stewart returned to films with a major supporting role in John Wayne's final film, "The Shootist" (1976), playing a doctor giving Wayne's gunfighter a terminal cancer diagnosis. By this time, Stewart had a hearing impairment, which affected his ability to hear his cues and led to him repeatedly flubbing his lines; his vanity would not allow him to admit this or to wear a hearing aid. Stewart was offered the role of Howard Beale in "Network" (1976), but refused it due to its explicit language. Instead, he appeared in supporting roles in the disaster film "Airport '77" (1977), the remake "The Big Sleep" (1978), and the family film "The Magic of Lassie" (1978). Despite mixed reviews, "Airport '77" was a box-office success, but the two other films were commercial and critical failures. Harry Haun of "New York Daily News" wrote in his review of "The Big Sleep" that it was "really sad to see James Stewart struggle so earnestly with material that just isn't there." Stewart's final live-action feature film was the critically panned Japanese film "The Green Horizon" (1980), directed by Susumu Hani. Stewart took the role because the film promoted wildlife conservation and allowed his family to travel with him to Kenya.
In the 1980s, Stewart semi-retired from acting. He was offered the role of Norman Thayer in "On Golden Pond" (1981), but turned it down because he disliked the film's father-daughter relationship; the role went instead to his friend, Henry Fonda. Stewart filmed two television movies in the 1980s: "Mr. Krueger's Christmas" (1980), produced by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which allowed him to fulfill a lifelong dream to conduct the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and "Right of Way" (1983), an HBO drama that co-starred Bette Davis. He also made an appearance in the historical miniseries "North and South" in 1986, and did voiceover work for commercials for Campbell's Soups in the 1980s and 1990s. Stewart's last film performance was voicing the character of Sheriff Wylie Burp in the animation movie "" (1991).
Stewart remained in the public eye due to his frequent visits to the Reagan White House. The re-release of Hitchcock films gained him renewed recognition, with "Rear Window" and "Vertigo" in particular praised by film critics and introducing Stewart to younger audiences. Stewart also received several honorary film industry awards at the end of his career: an American Film Institute Award in 1980, a Silver Bear in 1982, Kennedy Center Honors in 1983, an Academy Honorary Award in 1985, and National Board of Review and Film Society of Lincoln Center's Chaplin Award in 1990. The honorary Oscar was presented by former co-star Cary Grant "for his 50 years of memorable performances, for his high ideals both on and off the screen, with respect and affection of his colleagues." In addition, Stewart received the highest civilian award in the US, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, "for his contributions in the fields of the arts, entertainment and public service," in 1985.
As a friend, mentor, and focus of his early romantic feelings, Margaret Sullavan had a unique influence on Stewart's life. They had met while they were both performing for the University Players; he was smitten with her and invited her on a date. She regarded him as just a close friend and co-worker, and they never began a romantic relationship, but Stewart regardless felt unrequited romantic love towards her for many years. Though Sullavan was always aware of his feelings, he never directly revealed them to her. Sullavan loved Stewart but was never interested in him romantically; rather, she felt protective and maternal. However, director of "The Shopworn Angel", H.C. Potter suggested that they may have married each other had Stewart been more forthcoming with his feelings. She became his acting mentor in Hollywood and according to director Edward H. Griffith, "made [him] a star"; they went on to co-star in four films: "Next Time You Love" (1936), "The Shopworn Angel" (1938), "The Shop Around the Corner" (1940) and "Mortal Storm" (1940).
Stewart did not marry until his forties, which attracted a significant amount of contemporary media attention; gossip columnist Hedda Hopper called him the "Great American Bachelor." Regardless, he had several romantic relationships prior to marriage. After being introduced by Henry Fonda, Stewart and Ginger Rogers had a brief relationship in 1935. During production of "The Shopworn Angel" (1938), Stewart dated actress Norma Shearer for six weeks. Afterward, he dated Loretta Young; she wanted to settle down but Stewart did not and their relationship ended when Young's other boyfriend proposed to her. While filming "Destry Rides Again" (1939), Stewart had an affair with his co-star Marlene Dietrich, who was married at the time. Dietrich allegedly became pregnant, but it was quickly terminated. Stewart ended their relationship after the filming was completed. Hurt by Stewart's rejection, she barely mentioned him in her memoir and waved him off as a one-time affair.
Stewart dated Olivia de Havilland in the late 1930s and early 1940s and even proposed marriage to her, but she rejected the proposal as she believed he was not ready to settle down. She ended the relationship shortly before he began his military service, as she had fallen in love with director John Huston. In 1942, while serving in the military, Stewart met singer Dinah Shore at the Hollywood Canteen, a club mainly for servicemen. They began a romantic relationship and were nearly married in Las Vegas in 1943, but Stewart called off the marriage before they arrived, citing cold feet. After the war, Stewart began a relationship with co-star Myrna Dell during the filming of "The Stratton Story" (1949). Although gossip columnists made claims that they were planning to marry, Dell said this was not true.
Stewart's first interaction with his future wife, Gloria Hatrick McLean, was at Keenan Wynn's Christmas party in 1947. He had crashed the party and became inebriated, leaving a poor impression of himself with Hatrick. A year later, Gary Cooper and his wife Veronica invited Hatrick and Stewart to a dinner party, and the two began dating. A former model, Hatrick was divorced with two children. Stewart and Hatrick were married at Brentwood Presbyterian Church on August 9, 1949, and remained married until her death from lung cancer in 1994.
Stewart and Hatrick made their home in Beverly Hills, living in a house they purchased in 1951 until their deaths. They also owned the Winecup Gamble Ranch in Nevada from 1953 to 1957. Stewart adopted Gloria's two sons, Ronald (1944–1969) and Michael (born 1946), and with Gloria, he had twin daughters, Judy and Kelly, on May 7, 1951. Ronald was killed in action in Vietnam on June 8, 1969, at the age of 24, while serving as a lieutenant in the Marine Corps.
Stewart was guarded about his personal life and, according to biographer Scott Eyman, tended to avoid the emotional connection in interviews he was known for in his films, preferring to keep his thoughts and feelings to himself. He was known as a loner who did not have intimate relationships with many people. Director John Ford said of Stewart, "You don't get to know Jimmy Stewart, Jimmy Stewart gets to know you."
Stewart's fifty-year friendship with Henry Fonda began in Manhattan when Fonda invited Stewart to be his third roommate (in addition to Joshua Logan and Myron McCormick) in order to make rent. When Stewart moved to Hollywood in 1935, he again shared an apartment with Fonda, and the two gained reputations as playboys. Over their careers, they starred in four films together: "On Our Merry Way" (1948), "How the West Was Won", "Firecreek" (1968), and "The Cheyenne Social Club" (1970). Both Stewart and Fonda's children later noted that their favorite activity when not working seemed to be quietly sharing time together while building and painting model airplanes, a hobby they had taken up in New York years earlier. Besides building model airplanes, Stewart and Fonda also liked to build and fly kites, play golf, and reminisce about the "old days." After Fonda's death in 1982, Stewart's only public comment was "I've just lost my best friend." Their friendship was chronicled in Scott Eyman's biography, "Hank and Jim" (2017).
Aside from Fonda, Stewart's close friends included his former agent Leland Hayward; director John Ford; photographer John Swope, Stewart's former roommate; and Billy Grady, the talent scout who discovered Stewart and also served as the best man at his wedding. Gary Cooper was another close friend of Stewart's; on April 17, 1961, he was too ill to attend the 33rd Academy Awards ceremony, so Stewart accepted the honorary Oscar on his behalf.
In addition to his film career, Stewart had diversified investments including real estate, oil wells, the charter-plane company Southwest Airways and membership on major corporate boards, and he became a multimillionaire. Already prior to his enlistment in the Air Corps, he had been an avid amateur pilot, with a private pilot certificate and a commercial pilot license as well as over 400 hours of flying time. A highly proficient pilot, he entered a cross-country race with Leland Hayward in 1937, and was one of the early investors in Thunderbird Field, a pilot-training school built and operated by Southwest Airways in Glendale, Arizona.
Stewart was also active in philanthropy over the years. He served as the national vice chairman of entertainment for the American Red Cross's fund-raising campaign for wounded soldiers in Vietnam as well as contributed donations for improvements and restorations to Indiana, his hometown in Pennsylvania. His signature charity event, "The Jimmy Stewart Relay Marathon Race," held annually since 1982, has raised millions of dollars for the Child and Family Development Center at St. John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California.
Stewart was a lifelong supporter of scouting, having been a Second Class Scout when he was a youth. He was an adult Scout leader, and a recipient of the Silver Buffalo Award from the Boy Scouts of America (BSA). In the 1970s and 1980s, he made advertisements for the BSA, which led to his being sometimes incorrectly identified as an Eagle Scout. An award for Boy Scouts, "The James M. Stewart Good Citizenship Award" has been presented since 2003. Stewart was also a Life Member of the Sons of the Revolution in California.
Stewart was a staunch Republican throughout his life. A political argument in 1947 resulted in a fistfight with Henry Fonda, according to some accounts, but the two maintained their friendship by never discussing politics again. The fistfight may be apocryphal as Jhan Robbins quotes Stewart as saying, "Our views never interfered with our feelings for each other. We just didn't talk about certain things. I can't remember ever having an argument with him—ever!"
In 1964, Stewart campaigned for the conservative presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and, according to biographer Marc Eliot, erred on the obsessive prior to the election. Stewart was a hawk on the Vietnam War and maintained that his son, Ronald, did not die in vain. Following the assassination of Senator Robert F. Kennedy in 1968, Stewart, Charlton Heston, Kirk Douglas and Gregory Peck issued a statement calling for support of President Lyndon B. Johnson's Gun Control Act of 1968.
Stewart actively supported Reagan's bid for the Republican presidential nomination in 1976. He attended Reagan's campaign rallies, in one speech assuring he was more conservative than ever, regardless of the death of his son in the war. In 1988, Stewart made a plea in congressional hearings, along with Burt Lancaster, Katharine Hepburn, Ginger Rogers, film director Martin Scorsese and many others, against Ted Turner's decision to 'colorize' classic black and white films, including "It's a Wonderful Life". Stewart stated, "the coloring of black-and-white films is wrong. It's morally and artistically wrong and these profiteers should leave our film industry alone." In 1989, Stewart founded the American Spirit Foundation to apply entertainment industry resources to developing innovative approaches to public education and to assist the emerging democracy movements in the former Iron Curtain countries. In the last years of his life, he donated to the campaign of Bob Dole for the 1996 presidential election.
Stewart's wife Gloria died of lung cancer on February 16, 1994. According to biographer Donald Dewey, her death left Stewart depressed and "lost at sea." Stewart became even more reclusive, spending most of his time in his bedroom, exiting only to eat and visit with his children. He shut out most people from his life, not only media and fans but also his co-stars and friends. Stewart's friends Leonard Gershe and Gregory Peck said Stewart was not depressed or unhappy but finally allowed to rest and be alone.
Stewart was hospitalized after falling in December 1995. In December 1996, he was due to have the battery in his pacemaker changed but opted not to. In February 1997, he was hospitalized for an irregular heartbeat. On June 25, a thrombosis formed in his right leg, leading to a pulmonary embolism one week later. Stewart died of a heart attack caused by the embolism at the age of 89 surrounded by his children at his home in Beverly Hills on July 2, 1997. President Bill Clinton commented that America had lost a "national treasure ... a great actor, a gentleman and a patriot." Stewart was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. Over 3,000 mourners attended his memorial service, including his friends and co-workers June Allyson, Carol Burnett, Bob Hope, Lew Wasserman, Nancy Reagan, Esther Williams, and Robert Stack. The service included full military honors and three volleys of musketry.
According to biographer Scott Eyman, Stewart was an instinctive actor. He was natural and at ease in front of the camera, despite his shy off-screen personality. In line with his natural and conversational acting style, Stewart's costars found him easy to work with as he was willing to improvise around any situation that arose while filming. Later in his career, Stewart began to resent his reputation of having a "natural" acting technique. He asserted that there wasn't anything natural about standing on a sound stage in front of lights and cameras while acting out a scene.
Stewart had established early in his career that he was proficient at communicating personality and character nuances through his performances alone. He used an "inside-out" acting technique, preferring to represent the character without accents, makeup, and props. Additionally, he tended to act with his body, not only with his voice and face; for example, in "Harvey", Stewart portrays the main character's age and loneliness by slightly hunching down. He was also known for his pauses that had the ability to hold the audience's attention. Film critic Geoffrey O'Brien related that Stewart's "stammering pauses" created anxious space for the audience, leaving them in anticipation for the scene which Stewart took his time leading up to.
Stewart himself claimed to dislike his earlier film performances, saying he was "all hands and feet", yet added that he "didn't seem to know what to do with either". He added that even though he did not always like his performances, he would not get discouraged. He said, "But I always tried, and if the script wasn't too good, well, then, I just tried a little bit harder. I hope, though, not so hard that it shows." Former co-star Kim Novak stated of his acting style that for emotional scenes, he would access emotions deep inside of him and would take time to wind down after the scene ended. He could not turn it off immediately after the director yelled cut.
Stewart was particularly adept at performing vulnerable scenes with women. Jack Lemmon suggested that Stewart's talent for performing with women was that he was able to allow the audience to see the respect and gentility he felt toward the women through his eyes. He showed that his characters needed them as much as their characters needed him. In connection to Stewart's screen persona with women, Peter Bradshaw said "The Philadelphia Story" is "a film every school pupil should see" due to Stewart's character's clear explanation of sexual consent after being accused of taking advantage of the main female character.
Stewart's screen persona was that of an "everyman", an ordinary man placed in extraordinary circumstances. Audiences could identify with him, in contrast to other Hollywood leading men of the time, such as Cary Grant, who represented what the audience wanted to become. Stewart's screen persona has been compared to those of Gary Cooper and Tom Hanks. Eyman described that Stewart could portray several different characters: "the brother, the sweetheart, [and] the nice guy next door with a bias toward doing the right thing, always decent but never a pushover". In Stewart's early career, Louella Parsons described his "boyish appeal" and "ability to win audience sympathy" as the reason for his success as an actor; Stewart's performances appealed to both young and old audiences. According to film scholar Dennis Bingham, Stewart's essential persona was, "a small-town friendly neighbor, with a gentle face and voice and a slim body that is at once graceful and awkward." Unlike many actors who developed their on-screen persona over time, Stewart's on-screen persona was recognizable as early as "Art Trouble" (1932), his uncredited debut film role, where Stewart was relaxed and comfortable on-screen. He portrayed this persona most strongly in the 1940s but maintained a classic everyman persona throughout his career.
Film scholar Dennis Bingham wrote that Stewart was "both a 'personality' star and a chameleon" who evoked both masculine and feminine qualities. Consequently, it was difficult for filmmakers to sell Stewart as the stereotypical leading man, and thus he "became a star in films that capitalized on his sexual ambivalence." Stewart's asexual persona as a leading man was unusual for the time period for an actor who was not mainly a comedian. However, during his career "Stewart [encompassed] the furthest extremes of American masculinity, from Reaganite militarist patriotism to Hitchcockian perversity."
According to Roger Ebert, Stewart's pre-World War II characters were usually likable, but in postwar years directors chose to cast Stewart in darker roles, such as Jeffries in "Rear Window". Ebert put this into contemporary perspective by asking, "What would it feel like to see [Tom Hanks] in a bizarre and twisted light?", explaining that it is jarring to see a beloved everyman persona such as Stewart in dark roles. Furthermore, Jonathan Rosenbaum explained that since audiences were primarily interested in Stewart's "star persona" and "aura" than his characters, "this makes it more striking when Anthony Mann and Alfred Hitchcock periodically explore the neurotic and obsessive aspects of Stewart's persona to play against his all-American innocence and earnestness."
Film scholar John Belton argued that rather than playing characters in his films, Stewart often played his own screen persona. He had difficulty playing famous historical personages because his persona could not accommodate the historical character. Belton explained that "James Stewart is more James Stewart than Glenn Miller in "The Glenn Miller Story" (1954) or Charles Lindbergh in "The Spirit of St. Louis" (1957)." Moreover, Jonathan Rosenbaum continued that Stewart's "pre-existing life-size persona" in "Winchester '73" "helped to shape and determine the impact of [his character] in [this film]."
On the other hand, Stewart has been described as a character actor who went through several distinct career phases. According to film scholar Amy Lawrence, the main elements of Stewart's persona "a propensity for physical and spiritual suffering, lingering fears of inadequacy," were established by Frank Capra in the 1930s and were enhanced through his later work with Hitchcock and Mann. John Belton explained that "James Stewart evolves from the naive, small-town, populist hero of Frank Capra's 1930s comedies to the bitter, anxiety-ridden, vengeance-obsessed cowboy in Anthony Mann's 1950s Westerns and the disturbed voyeur and sexual fetishist in Alfred Hitchcock's 1950s suspense thrillers." During his postwar career, Stewart avoided appearing in comedies, "Harvey" being the exception. He played many different types of characters, including manipulative, cynical, obsessive, or crazy characters. Stewart found that acting allowed him to express the fear and anxiety that he could not express during the war; his post-war performances were received well by audiences because audiences could still see the innocent, pre-war Stewart underneath his dark roles. According to Andrew Sarris, Stewart was "the most complete actor-personality in the American cinema."
Selected Credits:
Stewart is remembered for portraying idealist "everyman" characters in his films. His heroism on-screen and devotion to his family made him relatable and representative of the American ideal, leading Stewart to be considered one of the best-loved figures in twentieth-century American popular culture. According to film scholar Dennis Bingham, "his ability to 'play'—even symbolize—honesty and 'American ideals' made him an icon into whose mold later male stars tried to pour themselves." Similarly, film scholar James Naremore has called Stewart "the most successful actor of the 'common man' in the history of movies" and "the most intensely emotional leading man to emerge from the studio system," who could cry on screen without losing his masculinity. David Thomson has explained Stewart's appeal by stating that "we wanted to be him, and we wanted to be liked by him," while Roger Ebert has stated that "whether he played everyman, or everyman's hidden psyche, Stewart was an innately likable man whose face, loping gait and distinctive drawl became famous all over the world." Among Stewart's most recognizable qualities was his manner of speaking with a hesitant drawl. According to film scholar Tim Palmer, "Stewart's legacy rest on his roles as the nervous idealist standing trial for, and gaining stature from, the sincerity of his beliefs, while his emotive convictions are put to the test." Film critic David Ansen wrote about Stewart's appeal as a person in addition to his appeal as an actor. Ansen retold a story in which Jack Warner, upon being told about Ronald Reagan's presidential ambitions, said, "No. Jimmy Stewart for president, Ronald Reagan for best friend." Ansen further explained that Stewart was the ultimate trustworthy movie star.
In contrast to his popularly remembered "all-American" screen persona, film critics and scholars have tended to emphasize that his performances also often showed a "dark side." According to film scholar Murray Pomerance, "the other Jimmy Stewart ... was a different type altogether, a repressed and neurotic man buried beneath an apparently calm facade, but ready at any moment to explode with vengeful anxiety and anger, or else with deeply twisted and constrained passions that could never match up with cheery personality of the alter ego." Bingham has described him as having "two coequal personas; the earnest idealist, the nostalgic figure of the homespun boy next door; and the risk-taking actor who probably performed in films for more canonical auteurs than any other American star." According to him, it is this complexity and his ambiguous masculinity and sexuality with which he approached his roles that characterised his persona. Naremore has stated that there was a "troubled, cranky, slightly repressed feeling in [Stewart's] behavior," and Thomson has written that it was his dark side that produced "great cinema."
Stewart was one of the most sought-after actors in 1950s Hollywood, proving that independent actors could be successful in the film industry, which led more actors in Hollywood to forego studio contracts. According to Bingham, Stewart marked "the transition between the studio period...and the era of free-lance actors, independent production, and powerful talent agents that made possible the "new kind of star" of the late 1960s." Although Stewart was not the first big-name freelance actor, his "mythic sweetness and idealism [which] were combined with eccentric physical equipment and capacity as an actor to enact emotion, anxiety, and pain" enabled him to succeed in both the studio system, which emphasized the star as a real person, and the skeptical post-studio era.
A number of Stewart's films have become classics of American cinema, with twelve of his films having been inducted into the United States National Film Registry as of 2019, and five —"Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939), "The Philadelphia Story" (1940), "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946), "Rear Window" (1954), and "Vertigo" (1958)— being featured on the American Film Institute's list of the 100 greatest American films of all time. Stewart and Robert DeNiro share the title for the most films represented on the AFI list. Stewart is also the most represented leading actor on the "100 Greatest Movies of All Time" list presented by "Entertainment Weekly". Two of his characters —Jefferson Smith in "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington" (1939) and George Bailey in "It's a Wonderful Life" (1946)— made AFI's list of the one hundred greatest heroes and villains, and "Harvey" (1950) and "The Philadelphia Story" (1940) were included in their list of Greatest American Comedies. In 1999, the American Film Institute (AFI) ranked Stewart third on its list of the greatest American male actors.
Stewart has several memorials in his childhood hometown, Indiana, Pennsylvania. On May 20, 1995, his 87th birthday, The Jimmy Stewart Museum was established there. The museum is located near his birthplace, his childhood home, and the former location of his father's hardware store. According to biographer Gary Fishgall, some residents of Indiana were angered by the creation of the museum; they believed he had contributed nothing to the town aside from growing up there. The museum committee insisted that Stewart had contributed significant donations to the town, but it was done quietly so it was unknown to most residents. A large statue of Stewart stands on the lawn of the Indiana County Courthouse and a plaque marks his birthplace. In 2011, the United States Post Office located at 47 South 7th Street in Indiana, Pennsylvania, was designated the "James M. 'Jimmy' Stewart Post Office Building." Additionally, the Indiana County–Jimmy Stewart Airport was named in his honor.
In 1960, Stewart was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1700 Vine Street for his contributions to the film industry. In 1974, he received the Golden Plate Award of the American Academy of Achievement. In 1997, Princeton University, Stewart's alma mater, honored him with the dedication of the James M. Stewart Theater along with a retrospective of his films. Stewart has also been honored with his own postal stamp as part of the "Legends of Hollywood" stamp series. In 1999, a bust of Stewart was unveiled at the Eighth Air Force Heritage Museum in Georgia. The L. Tom Perry Special Collections Library at Brigham Young University houses his personal papers and movie memorabilia including letters, scrapbooks, recordings of early radio programs, and two of his accordions. Stewart donated his papers and memorabilia to the library after becoming friends with the curator of its arts and communications collections, James D'Arc.
Archival materials | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16273 |
Jalalabad
Jalālābād (; Pashto/) is the fifth-largest city of Afghanistan. It has a population of about 356,274, and serves as the capital of Nangarhar Province in the eastern part of the country, about from the capital Kabul. Jalalabad is located at the junction of the Kabul River and the Kunar River in a plateau to the south of the Hindu Kush mountains. It is linked by highways with Kabul to the west and the Pakistani city of Peshawar to the east including through the Khyber Pass.
Jalalabad is a leading center of social and trade activity because of its proximity with the Torkham border crossing, away. Major industries include papermaking, as well as agricultural products including oranges, lemon, rice, and sugarcane, helped by its warm climate. It hosts Afghanistan's second largest educational institute, Nangarhar University. For centuries the city has been favored by Afghan kings and it is a cultural significance in Afghan poetry.
Faxian visited and worshiped the sacred Buddhist sites such as of The Shadow of the Buddha in Nagarhara (modern Jalalabad). In 630 AD Xuan Zang, the famous Chinese Buddhist monk, visited Jalalabad, which he referred to as Adinapur, and a number of other locations nearby. The city was a major center of Gandhara's Greco-Buddhist culture in the past until it was conquered by Ghaznavids in the 11th century. However, not everyone converted to Islam at that period as some still refused to accept it. In "Hudud-al-Alam", written in 982 CE, there is reference to a village near Jalalabad where the local king used to have many Hindu, Muslim and Afghan wives.
The region became part of the Ghaznavid Empire in the 10th century. Sabuktigin annexed the land all the way west of the Neelum River in Kashmir. "The Afghans and Khiljies who resided among the mountains having taken the oath of allegiance to Sabuktigin, many of them were enlisted in his army, after which he returned in triumph to Ghazni." The Ghurids succeeded the Ghaznavids and expanded the Islamic empire further into Hindustan. The region around Jalalabad later became part of the Khalji territory, followed by that of the Timurids.
It is said that the original name of Jalalabad was Adinapur. Jalalabad was named in honour of Mughal ruler Jalal-uddin in the last decade of the sixteenth century, the grandson of Babur. The modern city gained prominence during the reign of Babur, founder of the Mughal Empire. Babur had chosen the site for this city which was built by his grandson Jalal-uddin Mohammad Akbar in 1560.
It remained part of the Mughal Empire until around 1738 when Nader Shah and his Afsharid forces from Khorasan began defeating the Mughals. Nader Shah's forces were accompanied by the young Ahmad Shah Durrani and his 4,000-strong Afghan army from southern Afghanistan. In 1747, he founded the Durrani Empire (Afghan Empire) after re-conquering the area. The Afghan army has long used the city while going back and forth during their military campaigns into the Indian subcontinent.
The British-Indian forces invaded Jalalabad in 1838, during the First Anglo-Afghan War. In the 1842 Battle of Jellalabad, Akbar Khan besieged the British troops on their way to Jalalabad. In 1878, during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, the British again invaded and set up camps in Jalalabad but withdrew two years later.
Jalalabad is considered one of the most important cities of the Pashtun culture. Seraj-ul-Emarat, the residence of Amir Habibullah and King Amanullah was destroyed in 1929 when Habibullah Kalakani rose to power; the other sanctuaries however, retain vestiges of the past. The mausoleum of both rulers is enclosed by a garden facing Seraj-ul-Emart. The Sulemankhils, a Pashtun family famous for their scientific research, is from Jalalabad. Other celebrated Pashtun families originate from the villages near Jalalabad too.
From 1978 to early 1990s, the city served as a strategic location for the Soviet-backed Democratic Republic of Afghanistan. In March 1989, two Mujahideen rebel factions backed by Pakistan and the U.S. assaulted the city during the Battle of Jalalabad. However government forces managed to drive them out within two months, which was a major setback to the resistance fighters and the ISI. The city was heavily bombarded and hundreds of civilians were killed. Many buildings, such as schools, hospitals and public buildings were destroyed during the 2 month battle.
After the resignation of President Najibullah, Jalalabad quickly fell to mujahideen rebels of Yunus Khalis on April 19, 1992. On September 12, 1996, the Taliban took control of the city until they were toppled by the US-backed Afghan forces in late 2001. Al-Qaeda had been building terrorist training camps in Jalalabad. The city returned to Afghan government control under Hamid Karzai.
The economy of Jalalabad gradually increased in the last decade. Many of the city's population began joining the Afghan National Security Forces. Construction has also risen. The Jalalabad Airport has long served as a military base for the NATO forces. In 2011, the U.S. Embassy in Kabul announced that it plans to establish a consulate in Jalalabad. Many suicide attacks by jihadist insurgents have taken place, including in August 2013, April 2015, January 2018, July 2018, September 2018 and 2019. The groups responsible for the attacks include the Taliban, Haqqani Network, al-Qaeda, and ISIS (Daesh). The United States has promised to totally eliminate these groups before withdrawing from Afghanistan.
The city population is estimated to be 356,274 in year 2015. It has six districts and a total land area of . The total number of dwellings in this city is 39,586.
Nearly all residents of Jalalabad are Muslim, followers of Sunni Islam. Jalalabad is also a center of the country's Sikhs, although the community has dwindled in the city (and nationwide) since the wars began. Similarly it is also has a Hindu minority.
Jalalabad is the regional hub in eastern Afghanistan, close to the border with Pakistan. Agriculture is the predominant land use at 44%, higher density of dwellings is found in Districts 1-5 and vacant plots are largely clustered in District 6. Districts 1-6 all have a grid network of roads.
Jalalabad's climate is hot desert (Köppen: BWh), and it is one of the hottest localities in Afghanistan. The city's climate has close resemblance to that of Arizona in the United States. It receives six to eight inches (152 to 203 mm) of rainfall per annum which are limited to winter and the months of spring. Frosts are not common, and during the summer, the temperature can reach a maximum of 120 °F (49 °C).
The north and southwestern parts of the city which has lower elevation are welcoming places to winds from the north and west cooling the parts in summer months. Jalalabad has the highest relative humidity in summer compared to other Afghan cities. However the moderate temperatures of winter has led to various people down the history establishing their settlements in the city. Because of its warm temperature relative to most of Afghanistan, Jalalabad (alongside Peshawar) was often the "winter capital" of various Afghan rulers of the past centuries, while rich people would relocate to villas in Jalalabad to avoid the freezing temperatures in Kabul.
Jalalabad is home to a large number of fruits. Various types of citrus fruits like orange, tangerine, grapefruit, lemon, lime grow in gardens as well as in orchards. The orange trees yield a crop only once in three years. The "narindj" variety of orange is the most common one which has yellow skin and its taste is a combination of orange and grapefruit. The grapefruits grown here have a diameter of eight or nine inches. Per year 1800 tonnes of pomegranates, 334 tones of grapes, and 7750 tones of mulberries are produced in Jalalabad. The fruits are either sold in local markets or transported to Kabul markets from where they are exported. The second most common crop is local "vatani" variety of sugarcane. It contains 15% sugar by weight.
The Jalalabad Airport was built for dual-use, civilian and military. It is designed to serve the population of Nangarhar Province and neighboring province for domestic flights. The airport is currently used by NATO-led forces, including the Afghan Air Force, and houses large number of ISAF forces. The airport is also used as one of the launching and monitoring spots of drone attacks in Pakistan.
There are proposals for the establishment of Afghanistan's rail network linking Jalalabad with Pakistan Railways, allowing for increased trade of goods, people and commerce between the two countries.
Jalalabad is connected by main roads with the Afghan capital of Kabul, the city of Peshawar in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan, and several nearby Afghan cities and towns. All trade between Afghanistan and Pakistan passes through this city. The highway between Jalalabad and Kabul was resurfaced in 2006, reducing the transit time between these two important cities. This highway is considered to be one of the most dangerous in the world because of the large number of accidents. An improvement in the road networks between Jalalabad and Peshawar has also been proposed, with the intention of widening the existing road and improving security to attract more tourists and allow for safer passage of goods between to the two countries.
On the southeastern fringe of Jalalabad, a modern suburb called Ghazi Amanullah Town is under construction. Named after King Amanullah Khan. Construction has begun near the city on one of Afghanistan's cricket stadiums. It is hoped that this ground will serve the domestic competition and attract international teams.
Jalalabad Airport (IATA: JAA, ICAO: OAJL) is located southeast of Jalalabad city in Afghanistan. This airport is currently being used only for military purposes and sometimes the United Nations' aircraft use this airport. It is occupied and maintained by the United States Armed Forces. They operate out of Forward Operating Base Fenty, which is adjacent to Jalalabad Airport. The Afghan Air Force (AAF) and members of the International Security Assistance Force also use the airport.
Hamidullah Qaderi, Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation of Afghanistan, announced in April 2009 the construction of a new civilian airport in the Gambiri area northwest of Jalalabad. The new airport will be constructed with financial assistance from the United States.
India and Pakistan operate their consulate here for trade, military and political links.
Jalalabad district has three hospitals: Fatumatu Zahra, Medical Hospital of Nangarhar, and the General Hospital of Public Health. The General Hospital of Public Health is one of the largest in the country.[8]
, polio (NSL3) has been identified and reported in the Jalalabad district area. This specific case has been linked to others reported in the past due to the highly transient and mobile population.[9]
Nangarhar University (Pashto: د ننګرهار پوهنتون) is a government-funded higher learning institution in Jalalabad, Afghanistan. It is the second largest university in Afghanistan.[2] It has approximately 25 faculty and 3,500 students.[3]
Nangarhar University was established in 1962 as a medical college.[4] It was later merged with other local colleges to become a full-fledged university. It now houses faculties in agriculture, engineering, education, medicine, theology, pedagogy, political science and veterinary medicine.
Nangarhar consists of many faculties including engineering, political science, economics, teachers' training, veterinary, and computer science. Nangarhar Medical Faculty (NMF) is the second largest medical school in Afghanistan.
They also take part in an e-learning program organized by Afghans Next Generation e-Learning.
The nearest village within walking distance of Jalalabad is Ghouchak.
The province is represented in domestic cricket competitions by the Nangarhar province cricket team. National team member Hamid Hasan was born in the province and he currently represents Afghanistan in international cricket. The Ghazi Amanullah International Cricket Stadium is the first international standard cricket stadium in Afghanistan. It is located in the Ghazi Amanullah Town, a modern suburb on the southeastern fringe of Jalalabad in Nangarhar Province. Construction on the stadium began in March 2010 when the foundation stone was laid by Minister of Finance and president of the Afghanistan Cricket Board, Omar Zakhilwal. The project, which was developed on 30 acres of land donated by the developer constructing the Ghazi Amanullah Town, cost up the first phase of construction $1.8 million. The first phase, which took one year to complete, included the completion of the stadium itself. The remainder of the phases will see the construction of a pavilion, accommodation for players and administrative buildings. The stadium, which has a capacity of 14,000, was completed before the national team and under-19 team left for Canada and the Under-19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier in Ireland respectively. The two sides inaugurated the stadium in a Twenty20 match.[2] It is hoped that the stadium will be able to attract international teams to play Afghanistan, who currently have One Day International status until at least 2013. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16274 |
Jakarta
Jakarta (; ), officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta (), is the capital and largest city of Indonesia. Situated on the northwest coast of the world's most populous island of Java, it is the centre of economy, culture and politics of Indonesia with a population of more than ten million . Although Jakarta only covers , the smallest among any Indonesian provinces, its metropolitan area covers ; it is the world's second-most populous urban area after Tokyo, with a population of about 30 million . Jakarta's business opportunities, as well as its potential to offer a higher standard of living, have attracted migrants from across the Indonesian archipelago, making it a melting pot of numerous cultures. Jakarta is nicknamed the "Big Durian", the thorny strongly-odored fruit native to the region, seen as the Indonesian equivalent of Big Apple (New York).
Established in the fourth century as Sunda Kelapa, the city became an important trading port for the Sunda Kingdom. It was the "de facto" capital of the Dutch East Indies when it was known as Batavia. Jakarta is officially a province with special capital region status, though it is commonly referred to as a city. Its provincial government consists of five administrative cities and one administrative regency. Jakarta is an alpha world city and is the seat of the ASEAN secretariat, making it an important city for international diplomacy. Financial institutions such as the Bank of Indonesia, Indonesia Stock Exchange, and corporate headquarters of numerous Indonesian companies and multinational corporations are located in the city. Jakarta has grown more rapidly than Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok and Beijing. In 2017, the city's GRP PPP was estimated at US$483.4 billion.
Jakarta's prime challenges include rapid urban growth, ecological breakdown, gridlocked traffic, congestion, and flooding. Additionally, Jakarta is sinking up to 17 cm (6.7 inches) per year, which, coupled with the rising of sea levels, has made the city more prone to flooding. It is also one of the fastest-sinking capitals in the world. In August 2019, President Joko Widodo announced a move of the capital to the province of East Kalimantan on the island of Borneo.
Jakarta has been home to multiple settlements. Below is the list of names used during its existence.
Its current name 'Jakarta' derives from the word "Jayakarta" (Devanagari: जयकृत) which is ultimately derived from the Sanskrit जय "jaya" (victorious) and कृत "krta" (accomplished, acquired), thus "Jayakarta" translates as 'victorious deed', 'complete act' or 'complete victory'. It was named after Muslim troops of Fatahillah successfully defeated and drove out the Portuguese away from the city in 1527. Before it was called Jayakarta, the city was known as 'Sunda Kelapa'. Tomé Pires, a Portuguese apothecary during his journey to East Indies, wrote the city name on his magnum opus as "Jacatra" or "Jacarta".
In the 17th century, the city was also known as "Koningin van het Oosten" (Queen of the Orient), for the urban beauty of downtown Batavia's canals, mansions and ordered city layout. After expanding to the south in the 19th century, this nickname came to be more associated with the suburbs (e.g. Menteng and the area around Merdeka Square), with their wide lanes, green spaces and villas. During the Japanese occupation, the city was renamed as .
The current official name used is "Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta", which literally means Jakarta Capital Special Region.
The north coast area of western Java including Jakarta was the location of prehistoric Buni culture that flourished from 400 BC to 100 AD. The area in and around modern Jakarta was part of the 4th-century Sundanese kingdom of Tarumanagara, one of the oldest Hindu kingdoms in Indonesia. The area of North Jakarta around Tugu became a populated settlement in the early 5th century. The Tugu inscription (probably written around 417 AD) discovered in Batutumbuh hamlet, Tugu village, Koja, North Jakarta, mentions that King Purnawarman of Tarumanagara undertook hydraulic projects; the irrigation and water drainage project of the Chandrabhaga river and the Gomati river near his capital. Following the decline of Tarumanagara, its territories, including the Jakarta area, became part of the Hindu Kingdom of Sunda. From the 7th to the early 13th century, the port of Sunda was under the Srivijaya maritime empire. According to the Chinese source, "Chu-fan-chi", written circa 1225, Chou Ju-kua reported in the early 13th century that Srivijaya still ruled Sumatra, the Malay peninsula and western Java (Sunda). The source says the port of Sunda as strategic and thriving, mentioning pepper from Sunda as among the best in quality. The people worked in agriculture, and their houses were built on wooden piles. The harbour area became known as Sunda Kelapa, (Sundanese: ) and by the 14th century, it was an important trading port for the Sunda kingdom.
The first European fleet, four Portuguese ships from Malacca, arrived in 1513 while looking for a route for spices. The Sunda Kingdom made an alliance treaty with the Portuguese by allowing them to build a port in 1522 to defend against the rising power of Demak Sultanate from central Java. In 1527, Fatahillah, a Javanese general from Demak attacked and conquered Sunda Kelapa, driving out the Portuguese. Sunda Kelapa was renamed Jayakarta and became a fiefdom of the Banten Sultanate, which became a major Southeast Asian trading centre.
Through the relationship with Prince Jayawikarta of Banten Sultanate, Dutch ships arrived in 1596. In 1602, the British East India Company's first voyage, commanded by Sir James Lancaster, arrived in Aceh and sailed on to Banten where they were allowed to build a trading post. This site became the centre of British trade in the Indonesian archipelago until 1682. Jayawikarta is thought to have made trading connections with the British merchants, rivals of the Dutch, by allowing them to build houses directly across from the Dutch buildings in 1615.
When relations between Prince Jayawikarta and the Dutch deteriorated, his soldiers attacked the Dutch fortress. His army and the British, however, were defeated by the Dutch, in part owing to the timely arrival of Jan Pieterszoon Coen. The Dutch burned the British fort and forced them to retreat on their ships. The victory consolidated Dutch power, and they renamed the city "Batavia" in 1619.
Commercial opportunities in the city attracted native and especially Chinese and Arab immigrants. This sudden population increase created burdens on the city. Tensions grew as the colonial government tried to restrict Chinese migration through deportations. Following a revolt, 5,000 Chinese were massacred by the Dutch and natives on 9 October 1740, and the following year, Chinese inhabitants were moved to Glodok outside the city walls. At the beginning of the 19th century, around 400 Arabs and Moors lived in Batavia, a number that changed little during the following decades. Among the commodities traded were fabrics, mainly imported cotton, "batik" and clothing worn by Arab communities.
The city began to expand further south as epidemics in 1835 and 1870 forced residents to move away from the port. The "Koningsplein", now Merdeka Square was completed in 1818, the housing park of Menteng was started in 1913, and Kebayoran Baru was the last Dutch-built residential area. By 1930, Batavia had more than 500,000 inhabitants, including 37,067 Europeans.
On 5 March 1942, the Japanese wrested Batavia from Dutch control, and the city was named Jakarta (, under the special status that was assigned to the city). After the war, the Dutch name Batavia was internationally recognised until full Indonesian independence on 27 December 1949. The city, now renamed Jakarta, was officially proclaimed the national capital of Indonesia.
After World War II ended, Indonesian nationalists declared independence on 17 August 1945, and the government of the Jakarta City was changed into the Jakarta National Administration in the following month. During the Indonesian National Revolution, Indonesian Republicans withdrew from Allied-occupied Jakarta and established their capital in Yogyakarta.
After securing full independence, Jakarta again became the national capital in 1950. With Jakarta selected to host the 1962 Asian Games, Sukarno, envisaging Jakarta as a great international city, instigated large government-funded projects with openly nationalistic and modernist architecture. Projects included a cloverleaf interchange, a major boulevard (Jalan MH Thamrin-Sudirman), monuments such as The National Monument, Hotel Indonesia, a shopping centre, and a new building intended to be the headquarters of CONEFO. In October 1965, Jakarta was the site of an abortive coup attempt in which six top generals were killed, precipitating a violent anti-communist purge which killed at least 500,000 people, including some ethnic Chinese. The event marked the beginning of Suharto's New Order. The first government was led by a mayor until the end of 1960 when the office was changed to that of a governor. The last mayor of Jakarta was Soediro until he was replaced by Soemarno Sosroatmodjo as governor. Based on law No. 5 of 1974 relating to regional governments, Jakarta was confirmed as the capital of Indonesia and one of the country's then 26 provinces.
In 1966, Jakarta was declared a 'special capital region' ("Daerah Khusus Ibukota"), with a status equivalent to that of a province. Lieutenant General Ali Sadikin served as governor from 1966 to 1977; he rehabilitated roads and bridges, encouraged the arts, built hospitals and a large number of schools. He cleared out slum dwellers for new development projects — some for the benefit of the Suharto family— and attempted to eliminate rickshaws and ban street vendors. He began control of migration to the city to stem overcrowding and poverty. Foreign investment contributed to a real estate boom that transformed the face of Jakarta.
The boom ended with the 1997 Asian financial crisis, putting Jakarta at the centre of violence, protest and political manoeuvring. After three decades in power, support for President Suharto began to wane. Tensions peaked when four students were shot dead at Trisakti University by security forces. Four days of riots and violence ensued that killed an estimated 1,200, and destroyed or damaged 6,000 buildings, forcing Suharto to resign. Much of the rioting targeted Chinese Indonesians. In the post-Suharto era, Jakarta has remained the focal point of democratic change in Indonesia. Jemaah Islamiah-connected bombings occurred almost annually in the city between 2000 and 2005, with another in 2009. In August 2007, Jakarta held its first-ever election to choose a governor as part of a nationwide decentralisation program that allows direct local elections in several areas. Previously, governors were elected by the city's legislative body.
Jakarta is administratively equal to a province with special status. The executive branch is headed by an elected governor and a deputy governor, while the Jakarta Regional People's Representative Council ("Dewan Perwakilan Rakyat Daerah Provinsi Daerah Khusus Ibukota Jakarta", DPRD DKI Jakarta) is the legislative branch with 106 directly elected members. The Jakarta City Hall at the south of Merdeka Square houses the office of the governor and the deputy governor, and the main administrative office.
Executive governance consists of five administrative cities ("Kota Administratif"), each headed by a mayor—and one administrative regency ("Kabupaten Administratif") headed by a regent ("Bupati"). Unlike other cities and regencies in Indonesia where the mayor or regent are directly elected, Jakarta's mayors and regents are chosen by the governor of Jakarta. Each city and regency is divided into administrative districts.
Aside from representatives to the Regional Representative Council, Jakarta sends 21 members to the People's Representative Council. The representatives are elected from Jakarta's three national electoral districts, which also includes overseas voters. The Jakarta Smart City (JSC) program was launched on 14 December 2014 with a goal for smart governance, smart people, smart mobility, smart economy, smart living and a smart environment in the city using the web and various smartphone-based apps.
Polda Metro Jaya maintains the law, security and order of Jakarta. It is led by a Regional Chief of police "Kapolda", who holds the rank of Inspector General of Police.
The Jakarta provincial government relies on transfers from the central government for the bulk of its income. Local (non-central government) sources of revenue are incomes from various taxes such as vehicle ownership and vehicle transfer fees, among others. The ability of the regional government to respond to Jakarta's many problems is constrained by limited finances.
The provincial government consistently runs a surplus of between 15–20% of planned spending, primarily because of delays in procurement and other inefficiencies. Regular under-spending is a matter of public comment. In 2013, the budget was around Rp 50 trillion ($US5.2 billion), equivalent to around $US380 per citizen. Spending priorities were on education, transport, flood control, environment and social spending (such as health and housing). Jakarta's regional budget (APBD) was Rp 77.1 trillion ($US5.92 billion), Rp 83.2 trillion ($US6.2 billion), and Rp 89 trillion ($US6.35 billion) for the year of 2017, 2018 and 2019 respectively.
Jakarta consists of five "Kota Administratif" (Administrative cities/municipalities), each headed by a mayor, and one "Kabupaten Administratif" (Administrative regency). Each city and regency is divided into districts/Kecamatan. The administrative cities/municipalities of Jakarta are:
The only administrative regency ("kabupaten") of Jakarta is the Thousand Islands ("Kepulauan Seribu"), formerly a district within North Jakarta. It is a collection of 105 small islands located on the Java Sea. It is of high conservation value because of its unique ecosystems. Marine tourism, such as diving, water bicycling, and windsurfing, are the primary tourist activities in this territory. The main mode of transportation between the islands is speed boats or small ferries.
Jakarta covers , the smallest among any Indonesian provinces. However, its metropolitan area covers , which extends into two of the bordering provinces of West Java and Banten. The Greater Jakarta area includes three bordering regencies (Bekasi Regency, Tangerang Regency and Bogor Regency) and five adjacent cities (Bogor, Depok, Bekasi, Tangerang and South Tangerang).
Jakarta is situated on the northwest coast of Java, at the mouth of the Ciliwung River on Jakarta Bay, an inlet of the Java Sea. The northern part of Jakarta is plain land, some areas of which are below sea level and subject to frequent flooding. The southern parts of the city are hilly. It is one of only two Asian capital cities located in the southern hemisphere (along with East Timor's Dili). Officially, the area of the Jakarta Special District is of land area and of sea area. The Thousand Islands, which are administratively a part of Jakarta, are located in Jakarta Bay, north of the city.
Jakarta lies in a low and flat alluvial plain, ranging from with an average elevation of above sea level with historically extensive swampy areas. Thirteen rivers flow through Jakarta. They are Ciliwung River, Kalibaru, Pesanggrahan, Cipinang, Angke River, Maja, Mookervart, Krukut, Buaran, West Tarum, Cakung, Petukangan, Sunter River and Grogol River. They flow from the Puncak highlands to the south of the city, then across the city northwards towards the Java Sea. The Ciliwung River divides the city into the western and eastern districts.
These rivers, combined with the wet season rains and insufficient drainage due to clogging, make Jakarta prone to flooding. Moreover, Jakarta is sinking about each year, and up to in the northern coastal areas. After a feasibility study, a ring dyke is under construction around Jakarta Bay to help cope with the threat from the sea. The dyke will be equipped with a pumping system and retention areas to defend against seawater and function as a toll road. The project, known as Giant Sea Wall Jakarta, is expected to be completed by 2025. In January 2014, the central government agreed to build two dams in Ciawi, Bogor and a tunnel from Ciliwung River to Cisadane River to ease flooding in the city. Nowadays, a , with capacity per second, underground water tunnel between Ciliwung River and the East Flood Canal is being worked on to ease the Ciliwung River overflows.
Jakarta has a tropical monsoon climate ("Am") according to the Köppen climate classification system. The wet season in Jakarta covers the majority of the year, running from October through May. The remaining four months (June through September) constitute the city's drier season (each of these four months has an average monthly rainfall of fewer than ). Technically speaking, however, only August qualifies as the genuine dry season month, as it has less than of rainfall. Located in the western part of Java, Jakarta's wet season rainfall peaks in January and February with average monthly rainfall of , and its dry season's low point is in August with a monthly average of .
Jakarta attracts people from across Indonesia, often in search of employment. The 1961 census showed that 51% of the city's population was born in Jakarta. Inward immigration tended to negate the effect of family planning programs.
Between 1961 and 1980, the population of Jakarta doubled, and during the period 1980–1990, the city's population grew annually by 3.7%. The 2010 census counted some 9.58 million people, well above government estimates. The population rose from 4.5 million in 1970 to 9.5 million in 2010, counting only legal residents, while the population of Greater Jakarta rose from 8.2 million in 1970 to 28.5 million in 2010. As per 2014, the population of Jakarta stood at ten million, with a population density of 15,174 people/km2. As per 2014, the population of Greater Jakarta was 30 million, accounting for 11% of Indonesia's overall population. It is predicted to reach 35.6 million people by 2030 to become the world's biggest megacity. The gender ratio was 102.8 (males per 100 females) in 2010 and 101.3 in 2014.
Jakarta is a pluralistic and religiously diverse city. As of the 2010 Census, 36.17% of the city's population were Javanese, 28.29% Betawi, 14.61% Sundanese, 6.62% Chinese, 3.42% Batak, 2.85% Minangkabau, 0.96% Malays, Indo and others 7.08%.
The 'Betawi' ("Orang Betawi", or 'people of Batavia') are the descendants of the people living in and around Batavia and became recognised as an ethnic group around the 18th–19th century. They mostly descend from Southeast Asian ethnic groups brought or attracted to Batavia to meet labour needs. Betawi people are a creole ethnic group who came from various parts of Indonesia and intermarried with Chinese, Arabs and Europeans. Betawi form a minority in the city; most lived in the fringe areas of Jakarta with hardly any Betawi-dominated regions of central Jakarta.
A significant Chinese community has lived in Jakarta for many centuries. They traditionally reside around old urban areas, such as Pinangsia, Pluit and Glodok (Jakarta Chinatown) areas. They also can be found in the old Chinatowns of Senen and Jatinegara. Officially, they make up 5.53% of the Jakarta population, although this number may be under-reported.
The Sumatran residents are diverse. According to the 2010 Census, roughly 346,000 Batak, 305,000 Minangkabau and 155,000 Malays lived in the city. The number of Batak people has grown in ranking, from eighth in 1930 to fifth in 2000. Toba Batak is the largest sub-ethnic Batak group in Jakarta. Minangkabau people generally work as merchants, peddlers, and artisans, with more in white-collar professions, such as doctors, teachers and journalists.
Indonesian is the official and dominant language of Jakarta, while many elderly people speak Dutch or Chinese, depending on their upbringing. English is also widely used for communication, especially in Central and South Jakarta. Each of the ethnic groups uses their mother language at home, such as Betawi, Javanese, and Sundanese. The Betawi language is distinct from those of the Sundanese or Javanese, forming itself as a language island in the surrounding area. It is mostly based on the East Malay dialect and enriched by loan words from Dutch, Portuguese, Sundanese, Javanese, Minangkabau, Chinese, and Arabic.
In 2017, Jakarta's religious composition was distributed over Islam (83.43%), Protestantism (8.63%), Catholicism (4.0%), Buddhism (3.74%), Hinduism (0.19%), and Confucianism (0.01%). About 231 people claimed to follow folk religions.
Most "pesantren" (Islamic boarding schools) in Jakarta are affiliated with the traditionalist Nahdlatul Ulama, modernist organisations mostly catering to a socioeconomic class of educated urban elites and merchant traders. They give priority to education, social welfare programs and religious propagation. Many Islamic organisations have headquarters in Jakarta, including Nahdlatul Ulama, Indonesian Ulema Council, Muhammadiyah, Jaringan Islam Liberal, and Front Pembela Islam.
The Roman Catholic community has a Metropolis, the Archdiocese of Jakarta that includes West Java as part of the ecclesiastical province. There is also a Bahá'í community.
As the capital of Indonesia, Jakarta is the melting point of cultures of all ethnic groups of the country. Though Betawi people are considered as an indigenous community of Jakarta, the culture of the city represents many languages and ethnic groups, support differences in regard to religion, traditions and linguistics, rather than any single and dominant culture.
The Betawi culture is distinct from those of the Sundanese or Javanese, forming a language island in the surrounding area. Betawi arts have a low profile in Jakarta, and most Betawi people have moved to the suburbs. The cultures of the Javanese and other Indonesian ethnic groups have a higher profile than that of the Betawi. There is a significant Chinese influence in Betawi culture, reflected in the popularity of Chinese cakes and sweets, firecrackers and Betawi wedding attire that demonstrates Chinese and Arab influences.
Some festivals such as the "Jalan Jaksa Festival", "Kemang Festival", "Festival Condet" and "Lebaran Betawi" include efforts to preserve Betawi arts by inviting artists to display performances. Jakarta has several performing art centres, such as the classical concert hall Aula Simfonia Jakarta in Kemayoran, Taman Ismail Marzuki (TIM) art centre in Cikini, Gedung Kesenian Jakarta near Pasar Baru, Balai Sarbini in the Plaza Semanggi area, Bentara Budaya Jakarta in the Palmerah area, Pasar Seni (Art Market) in Ancol, and traditional Indonesian art performances at the pavilions of some provinces in Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. Traditional music is often found at high-class hotels, including Wayang and Gamelan performances. Javanese Wayang Orang performances can be found at Wayang Orang Bharata theatre.
Arts and culture festivals and exhibitions include the annual ARKIPEL - Jakarta International Documentary and Experimental Film Festival, Jakarta International Film Festival (JiFFest), Djakarta Warehouse Project, Jakarta Fashion Week, Jakarta Fashion & Food Festival (JFFF), Jakarnaval, Jakarta Night Festival, Kota Tua Creative Festival, Indonesia International Book Fair (IIBF), Indonesia Creative Products and Jakarta Arts and Crafts exhibition. Art Jakarta is a contemporary art fair, which is held annually. "Flona Jakarta" is a flora-and-fauna exhibition, held annually in August at Lapangan Banteng Park, featuring flowers, plant nurseries, and pets. Jakarta Fair is held annually from mid-June to mid-July to celebrate the anniversary of the city and is mostly centred around a trade fair. However, this month-long fair also features entertainment, including arts and music performances by local musicians. Jakarta International Java Jazz Festival (JJF) is one of the largest jazz festivals in the world and arguably the biggest in the Southern hemisphere, and is held annually in March.
Several foreign art and culture centres in Jakarta promote culture and language through learning centres, libraries and art galleries. These include the Chinese Confucius Institute, the Dutch Erasmus Huis, the British Council, the French Alliance Française, the German Goethe-Institut, the Japan Foundation, and the Jawaharlal Nehru Indian Cultural Center.
All varieties of Indonesian cuisine have a presence in Jakarta. The local cuisine is Betawi cuisine, which reflects various foreign culinary traditions. Betawi cuisine is heavily influenced by Malay-Chinese Peranakan cuisine, Sundanese and Javanese cuisine, which is also influenced by Indian, Arabic and European cuisines. One of the most popular local dishes of Betawi cuisine is "Soto Betawi" which is prepared from chunks of beef and offal in rich and spicy cow's milk or coconut milk broth. Other popular Betawi dishes include "soto kaki, nasi uduk, kerak telor" (spicy omelette), "nasi ulam, asinan, ketoprak, rujak" and "gado-gado" Betawi (salad in peanut sauce).
Jakarta cuisine can be found in modest street-side "warung" food stalls and "kaki lima" (five legs) travelling vendors to high-end fine dining restaurants. Live music venues and exclusive restaurants are abundant. Many traditional foods from far-flung regions in Indonesia can be found in Jakarta. For example, traditional Padang restaurants and low-budget "Warteg" ("Warung Tegal") food-stalls are ubiquitous in the capital. Other popular street foods include "nasi goreng" (fried rice), "sate" (skewered meats), "pecel lele" (fried catfish), "bakso" (meatballs), "bakpau" (Chinese bun) and "siomay" (fish dumplings).
Jalan Sabang, Jalan Sidoarjo, Jalan Kendal at Menteng area, Kota Tua, Blok S, Blok M, Jalan Tebet are all popular destinations for street-food lovers.
Trendy restaurants, cafe and bars can be found at Menteng, Kemang, Jalan Senopati, Kuningan, Senayan, Pantai Indah Kapuk, and Kelapa Gading. Chinese street-food is plentiful at Jalan Pangeran, Manga Besar and Petak Sembilan in the old Jakarta area, while the "Little Tokyo" area of Blok M has many Japanese style restaurants and bars. Lenggang Jakarta is a food court, accommodating small traders and street vendors, where Indonesian foods are available within a single compound. At present, there are two such food courts, located at Monas and Kemayoran. "Thamrin 10" is a food and creative park located at Menteng, where varieties of food stall are available.
Global fast-food chains like McDonald's, KFC, Burger King, Carl's Jr., Wendy's, A&W, Fatburger, Johnny Rockets, Starbucks, Dunkin' Donuts are present, along with local brands like J'CO, Es Teler 77, Kebab Turki, CFC, and Japanese HokBen. Foreign cuisines such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indian, American, French, Mediterranean cuisine's like Turkish, Italian, Middle-Eastern cuisine, and modern fusion food restaurants can all be found in Jakarta.
Jakarta hosts 142 museums, clustered around the Central Jakarta's Merdeka Square area, Jakarta Old Town and Taman Mini Indonesia Indah. The Old Town contains museums in former institutional buildings of colonial Batavia, including Jakarta History Museum (former City Hall of Batavia), Wayang Museum (Puppet Museum) (former Church of Batavia), the Fine Art and Ceramic Museum (former Court House of Justice of Batavia), the Maritime Museum (former Sunda Kelapa warehouse), Bank Indonesia Museum (former Javasche Bank) and Bank Mandiri Museum (former "Nederlandsche Handels Maatschappij").
Museums clustered in central Jakarta around the Merdeka Square area include National Museum of Indonesia which also known as "Gedung Gajah" (the Elephant Building), National Gallery of Indonesia, National History Museum at National Monument, Istiqlal Islamic Museum in Istiqlal Mosque and Jakarta Cathedral Museum on the second floor of Jakarta Cathedral. Also in central is the Taman Prasasti Museum (the former cemetery of Batavia), and Textile Museum in Tanah Abang area. Museum MACAN is an art museum of modern and contemporary Indonesian and international art located at West Jakarta.
The recreational area of Taman Mini Indonesia Indah in East Jakarta contains fourteen museums, such as Indonesia Museum, Purna Bhakti Pertiwi Museum, Asmat Museum, Bayt al-Qur'an Islamic Museum, Pusaka (heirloom) Museum, and other science-based museums such as Research & Technology Information Center, Komodo Indonesian Fauna Museum, Insect Museum, Petrol and Gas Museum, plus the Transportation Museum. Other museums include Satria Mandala Military Museum, Museum Sumpah Pemuda, and Lubang Buaya.
Daily newspapers include "Kompas", "Koran Tempo", "Media Indonesia", and "Republika". English-language newspapers are also published daily, for example, "The Jakarta Post" and "The Jakarta Globe". Chinese language newspapers also circulate, such as "Indonesia Shang Bao" (印尼商报), "Harian Indonesia" (印尼星洲日报), and "Guo Ji Ri Bao" (国际日报). The only Japanese language newspaper is "The Daily Jakarta Shimbun" (じゃかるた新聞). Jakarta also has the daily newspapers segment such as "Pos Kota", "Warta Kota", "Koran Jakarta", "Berita Kota" for local readers; "Bisnis Indonesia", "Investor Daily", "Kontan", "Harian Neraca" (business news) as well as "Top Skor" and "Soccer" (sports news).
Jakarta is the headquarters for Indonesia's state media, TVRI as well as private national television networks, such as Metro TV, tvOne, Kompas TV, RCTI and NET. Jakarta has local television channels such as Jak TV, O Channel, Elshinta TV, and DAAI TV Indonesia. The city is home to the country's leading pay television service. Cable channels available includes First Media and TelkomVision. Satellite television (DTH) has yet to gain mass acceptance in Jakarta. Prominent DTH entertainment services are Indovision, Okevision, Yes TV, Transvision, and Aora TV. Many TV stations are analogue PAL, but some are now converting to digital signals using DVB-T2 following a government plan to digital television migration.
Around 75 radio stations broadcast in Jakarta, 52 on the FM band, and 23 on the AM band.
Indonesia is the largest economy of ASEAN, and Jakarta is the economic nerve centre of the Indonesian archipelago. Jakarta's nominal GDP was US$483.8 billion in 2016, which is about 17.5% of Indonesia's. Jakarta ranked at 21 in the list of "Cities Of Economic Influence Index" in 2020 by CEOWORLD magazine. According to the "Japan Center for Economic Research", GRP per capita of Jakarta will rank 28th among the 77 cities in 2030 from 41st in 2015, the largest in Southeast Asia. Savills Resilient Cities Index has predicted Jakarta to be within the top 20 cities in the world by 2028.
Jakarta's economy depends highly on manufacturing and service sectors such as banking, trading and financial. Industries include electronics, automotive, chemicals, mechanical engineering and biomedical sciences. The head office of Bank Indonesia and Indonesia Stock Exchange are located in the city. Most of the SOEs include Pertamina, PLN, Angkasa Pura, and Telkomsel operate head offices in the city, as do major Indonesian conglomerates, such as Salim Group, Sinar Mas Group, Astra International, Gudang Garam, Kompas-Gramedia, and MNC Group. The headquarters of the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry and Indonesian Employers Association are also located in the city. As of 2017, the city is home to six Forbes Global 2000, two Fortune 500 and four Unicorn companies. Google and Alibaba has regional cloud centers in Jakarta.
As of 2018, Jakarta contributes about 17% of Indonesia's GRDP (Gross Regional Domestic Product). In 2017, the economic growth was 6.22%. Throughout the same year, the total value of investment was Rp 108.6 trillion (US$8 billion), an increase of 84.7% from the previous year. In 2015, GDP per capita was estimated at Rp 194.87 million (US$14,570). The most significant contributions to GRDP were by finance, ownership and business services (29%); trade, hotel and restaurant sector (20%), and manufacturing industry sector (16%). In 2007, the increase in per capita GRDP of Jakarta inhabitants was 11.6% compared to the previous year. Both GRDP by at current market price and GRDP by at 2000 constant price in 2007 for the Municipality of Central Jakarta, which was Rp 146 million and Rp 81 million, was higher than other municipalities in Jakarta.
The Wealth Report 2015 by Knight Frank reported that 24 individuals in Indonesia in 2014 had wealth at least US$1 billion and 18 live in Jakarta. The cost of living continues to rise. Both land price and rents have become expensive. Mercer's "2017 Cost of Living Survey" ranked Jakarta as 88th costliest city in the world for expatriates. Industrial development and the construction of new housing thrive on the outskirts, while commerce and banking remain concentrated in the city centre. Jakarta has a bustling luxury property market. Knight Frank, a global real estate consultancy based in London, reported in 2014 that Jakarta offered the highest return on high-end property investment in the world in 2013, citing a supply shortage and a sharply depreciated currency as reasons.
As of 2015, with a total of 550 hectares, Jakarta had total shopping mall floor area, which is the world's largest within a single city. Malls include Plaza Indonesia, Grand Indonesia, Plaza Senayan, Senayan City, Pacific Place, Mall Taman Anggrek, and Pondok Indah Mall. Fashion retail brands in Jakarta include Debenhams, in Senayan City and Lippo Mall Kemang Village, Japanese Sogo, Seibu in Grand Indonesia Shopping Town, and French brand, Galeries Lafayette, at Pacific Place. The new Satrio-Casablanca shopping belt includes centres such as Kuningan City, Mal Ambassador, Kota Kasablanka, and Lotte Shopping Avenue. Shopping malls are also located at Grogol and Puri Indah in West Jakarta.
Traditional markets include Blok M, Pasar Mayestik, Tanah Abang, Senen, Pasar Baru, Glodok, Mangga Dua, Cempaka Mas, and Jatinegara. Special markets sell antique goods at Surabaya Street and gemstones in Rawabening Market.
Though Jakarta has been named the most popular location as per tag stories and ranked eighth most-posted among the cities in the world in 2017 on image-sharing site Instagram, it is not a top international tourist destination. The city, however, is ranked as the fifth fastest-growing tourist destination among 132 cities according to MasterCard Global Destination Cities Index. The World Travel and Tourism Council also listed Jakarta as among the top ten fastest-growing tourism cities in the world in 2017 and categorised it as an "emerging performer", which will see a significant increase in tourist arrivals in less than ten years. According to "Euromonitor International's latest Top 100 City Destinations Ranking" of 2019, Jakarta ranked at 57th among 100 most visited cities of the world.
Most of the visitors attracted to Jakarta are domestic tourists. As the gateway of Indonesia, Jakarta often serves as a stop-over for foreign visitors on their way to other Indonesian tourist destinations such as Bali, Lombok, Komodo Island and Yogyakarta. Jakarta is trying to attract more international tourist by MICE tourism, by arranging increasing numbers of conventions. In 2012, the tourism sector contributed Rp. 2.6 trillion (US$268.5 million) to the city's total direct income of Rp. 17.83 trillion (US$1.45 billion), a 17.9% increase from the previous year 2011.
The popular heritage tourism attractions are in Kota and around Merdeka square. Kota is the centre of old Jakarta, with its Maritime Museum, Kota Intan Bridge, Gereja Sion, Wayang Museum, Stadhuis Batavia, Fine Art and Ceramic Museum, Toko Merah, Bank Indonesia Museum, Bank Mandiri Museum, Jakarta Kota railway station, and Glodok (Chinatown). Kota Tua was named the most-visited destination in Indonesia in 2017 by Instagram. In the old ports of Sunda Kelapa, the tall-masted pinisi ships are still anchored.
Other tourist attractions include the Thousand Islands, Taman Mini Indonesia Indah, Setu Babakan, Ragunan Zoo, Sunda Kelapa old port and the Ancol Dreamland complex on Jakarta Bay, which houses Dunia Fantasi (Fantasy World) theme park, Sea World, Atlantis Water Adventure, and Gelanggang Samudra. Thousand Islands, which is north to the coast of the city and in the Java Sea is also a popular tourist destination.
Most international hotel chains have a presence in the city. Jalan Jaksa and surrounding areas are popular among backpackers for cheaper accommodation, travel agencies, second-hand bookstores, money changers, laundries and pubs. PIK is a relatively new suburb for hangout, while Kemang is a popular suburb for expats.
To transform the city into a more livable one, a 10-year "urban regeneration" project is undertaken, which will cost Rp 571 trillion ($40.5 billion). The project is aimed at infrastructure development, including the creation of a better integrated public transit system and the improvement of the city’s clean water and wastewater systems, housing and flood control system.
Two private companies, PALYJA and Aetra, provide piped water in the western and eastern half of Jakarta respectively under 25-year concession contracts signed in 1998. A public asset holding company called PAM Jaya owns the infrastructure. Eighty per cent of the water distributed in Jakarta comes through the West Tarum Canal system from Jatiluhur reservoir on the Citarum River, southeast of the city. The water supply was privatised by President Suharto in 1998 to the French company Suez Environnement and the British company Thames Water International. Both companies subsequently sold their concessions to Indonesian companies. Customer growth in the first seven years of the concessions had been lower than before, possibly because of substantial inflation-adjusted tariff increases during this period. In 2005, tariffs were frozen, leading the private water companies to cut down on investments.
According to PALYJA, the service coverage ratio increased substantially from 34% (1998) to 65% (2010) in its western half of the concession. According to data by the Jakarta Water Supply Regulatory Body, access in the eastern half of the city served by PTJ increased from about 57% in 1998 to about 67% in 2004 but stagnated afterwards. However, other sources cite much lower access figures for piped water supply to houses, excluding access provided through public hydrants: one study estimated access as low as 25% in 2005, while another estimated it to be as low as 18.5% in 2011. Those without access to piped water get water mostly from wells that are often salty and unsanitary. As of 2017, according to the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources, Jakarta had a crisis over clean water.
Jakarta has many of the country's best-equipped private and public facilities in healthcare. In January 2014, the Indonesian government launched a universal health care called the "Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional" (JKN). It is the world's most extensive insurance system today that covers around 250 million people. It is expected that the entire population will be covered in 2019.
Hospitals are of a good standard though often overcrowded. Government-run specialised hospitals include Dr. Cipto Mangunkusumo Hospital, Gatot Soebroto Army Hospital as well as community hospitals Puskesmas. Private hospitals and clinics are the other options for healthcare services. The private healthcare sector has seen significant changes, as the government began allowing foreign investment in the private sector in 2010. While some private facilities are run by nonprofit or religious organisations, most are for-profit. Hospital chains such as Siloam, Mayapada, Mitra Keluarga, Medika, Medistra, Ciputra, Hermina operate in the city.
Despite a variety of transport systems, Jakarta faces traffic congestion during rush hours. The city prioritised the development of road networks, which were designed to accommodate personal vehicles. According to the National Development Planning Agency, (Bappenas), traffic congestion in Greater Jakarta costs about $7.4 billion each year. As of 2018, there are over 13 million motorcycles and 4.4 million cars that run on the roads of Jakarta. About 3.6 million people commute from the outskirts. Fifty-eight per cent of these use motorcycles, 12.8% use cars and only 27% use public transportation. The city's 9.5% average annual growth rate of motorised vehicles far exceeds the 0.01% increase in road length between 2005 and 2010. As of 2019, mobility rate is about 88 million movements per day in the Jakarta metro area, and public transportation serves only 30% of commuter trips.
The first public transport system in the city was the Jakarta Tramline, which opened in 1869 and ceased operation in 1962. At present, public transit consists of BRT TransJakarta, rail transit KRL Commuterline, Jakarta MRT, Jakarta LRT and Soekarno-Hatta Airport Rail Link. Another transit system under construction is the Greater Jakarta LRT, which is expected to be operational by 2021. There are several transit-oriented developments currently under construction like Dukuh Atas TOD to facilitate commuters to transfer between different mode of public transportation. The city administration is also implementing a one-fare integrated payment public transportation system by for all public transportation using "Jak Lingko" card.
A structured road network was developed in the early 19th century as a part of the Java Great Post Road by former Governor-General Daendels. It connects most cities throughout Java. During the following decades, the expanding road network could not keep up with the increasing numbers of motorised vehicles. A toll road network composed of an inner and outer ring road and five toll roads radiating outwards provides inner as well as outer city connections. The Jakarta Outer Ring Road 2 is a toll road encircling greater Jakarta area, parallel with the Jakarta Outer Ring Road. The Jakarta Elevated Toll Road with a dedicated public transportation lane, connecting the Jakarta Inner Ring Toll Road which is 69.77 kilometres in length, is currently under construction.
Many attempts have been made to reduce traffic congestion, including a 'three-in-one' rush-hour law, during which cars with fewer than three passengers were prohibited, a ban on trucks passing main avenues during the day, and an 'odd-even' policy that permitted cars with either odd or even-numbered registration plates to drive on alternate days. Electronic Road Pricing (ERP) is expected to be operational by 2019 along with the opening of the Jakarta MRT.
Many bus routes connect neighbourhoods within the city limit to other areas of the Greater Jakarta area and to cities across the island. The biggest bus terminal in the city, and arguably in Southeast Asia as well, is the Pulo Gebang Bus Terminal.
In 1971, cycle rickshaws ("becak") were banned from major roads. Shortly thereafter, the government attempted a total ban, which substantially reduced their numbers. From the early 1940s to 1991, bajaj auto-rickshaws were common, later allowed only in the back streets of some parts of the city.
Bicycle-sharing company Gowes ("to paddle" in Indonesian), began operation in limited areas of Jakarta in 2018. As of November 2019, Jakarta has 63 kilometres of a separate bicycle lane, which will be extended to 200 kilometres by 2020.
Although "ojek" (motorcycle taxis) are not an official form of public transport, they are prevalent. Since the 2010s, most ojeks have been operated by transportation network companies such as Go-Jek and Grab. Angkot micro-buses play a major role in connecting neighbourhoods of the city. There are plenty of taxicabs along with Go-Jek and Grab.
TransJakarta serves as the bus rapid transit service, including the world's longest bus rapid transit routes ( in length). TransJakarta had a total of 128 routes as of April 2018 (corridor, cross route and feeder route) – a significant increase from 41 in 2015. TransJakarta targeted to serve one million passengers per day by the end of 2018. Other private-owned bus systems include Kopaja, MetroMini, and .
The Jakarta city government provides free double-decker "City tour bus service" that offers sightseeing. Tourists can catch the bus—free of charge, in several designated bus stops in front of the city's points of interest. Several routes cover tourist attractions such as Monas, Istiqlal Mosque, the Cathedral, National Museum, Sarinah, Hotel Indonesia crossing, Kota Tua and Kalijodo Park. The service includes Kota Tua in the north, Kalijodo Park in the west and Gelora Bung Karno Stadium in Senayan area in the south, via Sudirman avenue. TransJakarta operates free tour buses every Saturday from 5 PM to 11 PM to popular culinary destinations in Central Jakarta. TransJakarta has special bus service to move shoppers from one mall to another, including Grand Indonesia, Plaza Indonesia, Plaza Senayan, Senayan City and fX Sudirman.
Long-distance railways and local tram services were introduced during the colonial era. The first station was built in 1887 by a private railway company, which later became Jakarta Kota station. The trams were replaced with buses in the post-colonial era, while long-distance railways continued to connect the city to its neighbouring regions as well as cities throughout Java. The main terminals for long-distance train services are and . High-speed railways are under construction connecting Jakarta to Bandung, while a line between Jakarta and Surabaya is in planning.
KRL Commuterline is a commuter rail system that reaches Rangkasbitung in Banten and Cikarang in Bekasi Regency. The rail system uses rolling stock of rapid transit standard and operates at high frequency with a minimum headway. Daily ridership average was about one million, totalling 336.7 million passengers in 2018.
Jakarta MRT is constructing a north–south line metro between Kota and Lebak Bulus, and an east–west line that will connect to the north–south line at Sawah Besar station. The first, 15.2 km-long line between Hotel Indonesia and Lebak Bulus is opened at March 2019 with 13 stations (seven elevated and six underground). When complete, the network will stretch approximately . The MRT operates 285 trips daily from 5 AM until midnight, with a five-minute headway.
Greater Jakarta LRT was aimed to tackle Jakarta's high road traffic congestion. The northern section of the LRT project partly replaces the cancelled Jakarta Monorail project. The system is planned to connect Jakarta city centre with suburbs such as Bekasi, Bogor and Depok. The first phase will connect east Bekasi and Cibubur with , passing through intersection. This phase will be long, with 18 stations. Another Jakarta LRT line connecting Kelapa Gading district and Jakarta International Velodrome opened for public trial in June 2019 and is not yet fully operational.
Soekarno-Hatta Airport Rail Link is a commuter train service connecting the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport to the city centre. Another express train service is now in planning to connect Soekarno-Hatta International Airport with Halim Perdanakusuma Airport. Completion of this line is expected to be operational in 2019.
Soekarno–Hatta International Airport (CGK) is the main airport, located in Tangerang, Banten. The airport was ranked 18th busiest by Airports Council International, with about 63 million passengers in 2017. The Soekarno–Hatta Airport Rail Link connects the airport to BNI City railway station, Central Jakarta. A second airport, Halim Perdanakusuma Airport (HLP) serves domestic low-cost airlines, private and VIP flights. Other airports include Pondok Cabe Airport and an airfield on Pulau Panjang, part of the Thousand Island archipelago ("Kepulauan Seribu").
Jakarta's main seaport Tanjung Priok offers ferry connections. Tanjung Priok is Indonesia's busiest port, handling over 6.59 million TEUs. To boost port capacity, the two-phase 'New Tanjung Priok' extension project was undertaken. When fully operational in 2023, it will triple the existing capacity. Muara Angke port is used as a public port, while Ancol marina port is used as a tourist port to connect to the Thousand Islands.
On 6 June 2007, the city administration introduced the Waterway (officially "Angkutan Sungai"), a riverboat service along the Ciliwung River. However, because of varying water levels during the dry and wet seasons, and plastic pollution that comes from upstream during heavy rain, this service was discontinued.
Jakarta has architecturally significant buildings spanning distinct historical and cultural periods. Architectural styles reflect Malay, Javanese, Arabic, Chinese and Dutch influences. External influences inform the architecture of the Betawi house. The houses were built of nangka wood ("Artocarpus integrifolia") and comprise three rooms. The shape of the roof is reminiscent of the traditional Javanese joglo. Additionally, the number of registered cultural heritage buildings has increased.
Colonial buildings and structures include those that were constructed during the colonial period. The dominant colonial styles can be divided into three periods: the Dutch Golden Age (17th to late 18th century), the transitional style period (late 18th century – 19th century), and Dutch modernism (20th century). Colonial architecture is apparent in houses and villas, churches, civic buildings and offices, mostly concentrated in the Jakarta Old Town and Central Jakarta. Architects such as J.C. Schultze and Eduard Cuypers designed some of the significant buildings. Schultze's works include Jakarta Art Building, the Indonesia Supreme Court Building and Ministry of Finance Building, while Cuypers designed Bank Indonesia Museum and Bank Mandiri Museum.
In the early 20th century, most buildings were built in Neo-Renaissance style. By the 1920s, the architectural taste had begun to shift in favour of rationalism and modernism, particularly art deco architecture. The elite suburb Menteng, developed during the 1910s, was the city's first attempt at creating an ideal and healthy housing for the middle class. The original houses had a longitudinal organisation, with overhanging eaves, large windows and open ventilation, all practical features for a tropical climate. These houses were developed by N.V. de Bouwploeg, and established by P.A.J. Moojen.
After independence, the process of nation-building in Indonesia and demolishing the memory of colonialism was as important as the symbolic building of arterial roads, monuments, and government buildings. The National Monument in Jakarta, designed by Sukarno, is Indonesia's beacon of nationalism. In the early 1960s, Jakarta provided highways and super-scale cultural monuments as well as Senayan Sports Stadium. The parliament building features a hyperbolic roof reminiscent of German rationalist and Corbusian design concepts. The office tower Wisma 46 soars to a height of with 48 stories and its nib-shaped top celebrates technology and symbolises stereoscopy.
The urban construction booms continued in the 21st century. The Golden Triangle of Jakarta is one of the fastest evolving CBD's in the Asia-Pacific region. According to CTBUH and Emporis, there are 88 skyscrapers that reach or exceed , which puts the city in the top 10 of world rankings. It has more buildings taller than 150 metres than any other Southeast Asian or Southern Hemisphere cities.
Most landmarks, monuments and statues in Jakarta were begun in the 1960s during the Sukarno era, then completed in the Suharto era, while some date from the colonial period. Although many of the projects were completed after his presidency, Sukarno, who was an architect, is credited for planning Jakarta's monuments and landmarks, as he desired the city to be the beacon of a powerful new nation. Among the monumental projects were built, initiated, and planned during his administration are the National Monument, Istiqlal mosque, the Legislature Building, and the Gelora Bung Karno stadium. Sukarno also built many nationalistic monuments and statues in the capital city.
The most famous landmark, which became the symbol of the city, is the obelisk of the National Monument ("Monumen Nasional" or "Monas") in the centre of Merdeka Square. On its southwest corner stands a Mahabharata-themed Arjuna Wijaya chariot statue and fountain. Further south through Jalan M.H. Thamrin, one of the main avenues, the "Selamat Datang" monument stands on the fountain in the centre of the Hotel Indonesia roundabout. Other landmarks include the Istiqlal Mosque, Jakarta Cathedral and the Immanuel Church. The former Batavia Stadhuis, Sunda Kelapa port in Jakarta Old Town is another landmark. The Gama Tower building in South Jakarta is currently, at 310 metres, the tallest building in Indonesia.
Some of statues and monuments are nationalist, such as the West Irian Liberation Monument, the Tugu Tani, the Youth statue and the . Some statues commemorate Indonesian national heroes, such as the Diponegoro and Kartini statues in Merdeka Square. The Sudirman and Thamrin statues are located on the streets bearing their names. There is also a statue of Sukarno and Hatta at the Proclamation Monument at the entrance to Soekarno–Hatta International Airport.
In June 2011, Jakarta had only 10.5% green open spaces ("Ruang Terbuka Hijau") although this grew to 13.94%. Public parks are included in public green open spaces. There are about 300 integrated child-friendly public spaces (RPTRA) in the city in 2019. As of 2014, 183 water reservoirs and lakes supported the greater Jakarta area.
Jakarta hosted the 1962 Asian Games and the 2018 Asian Games, co-hosted by Palembang. Jakarta also hosted the Southeast Asian Games in 1979, 1987, 1997 and 2011 (supporting Palembang). Gelora Bung Karno Stadium, the biggest in the city with a capacity of 77,193 seats, hosted the group stage, quarterfinal and final of the 2007 AFC Asian Cup along with Malaysia, Thailand and Vietnam.
The Senayan sports complex has several sports venues, including the Bung Karno football stadium, Madya Stadium, Istora Senayan, aquatic arena, baseball field, basketball hall, a shooting range, several indoor and outdoor tennis courts. The Senayan complex was built in 1960 to accommodate the 1962 Asian Games. For basketball, the Kelapa Gading Sport Mall in Kelapa Gading, North Jakarta, with a capacity of 7,000 seats, is the home arena of the Indonesian national basketball team. The BritAma Arena serves as a playground for Satria Muda Pertamina Jakarta, the 2017 runner-up of the Indonesian Basketball League. Jakarta International Velodrome is a sporting facility located at Rawamangun, which was used as a venue for the 2018 Asian Games. It has a seating capacity of 3,500 for track cycling, and up to 8,500 for shows and concerts, which can also be used for various sports activities such as volleyball, badminton and futsal. Jakarta International Equestrian Park is an equestrian sports venue located at Pulomas, which was also used as a venue for 2018 Asian Games.
The Jakarta Car-Free Days are held weekly on Sunday on the main avenues of the city, Jalan Sudirman, and Jalan Thamrin, from 6 AM to 11 AM. The briefer Car-Free Day, which lasts from 6 AM to 9 AM, is held on every other Sunday. The event invites local pedestrians to do sports and exercise and have their activities on the streets that are usually full of traffic. Along the road from the Senayan traffic circle on Jalan Sudirman, South Jakarta, to the "Selamat Datang" Monument at the Hotel Indonesia traffic circle on Jalan Thamrin, north to the National Monument in Central Jakarta, cars are blocked from entering. During the event, morning gymnastics, callisthenics and aerobic exercises, futsal games, jogging, bicycling, skateboarding, badminton, karate, on-street library and musical performances take over the roads and the main parks.
Jakarta's most popular home football club is Persija, which plays in Indonesia Super League and uses Bung Karno Stadium as a home venue. Another football team in Jakarta is Persitara who compete in 2nd Division Football League and play in Kamal Muara Stadium and Soemantri Brodjonegoro Stadium.
Jakarta Marathon is said to be the "biggest running event of Indonesia". It is recognised by AIMS and IAAF. It was established in 2013 to promote Jakarta sports tourism. In the 2015 edition, more than 15,000 runners from 53 countries participated.
Jakarta is home to colleges and universities. The University of Indonesia (UI) is the largest and oldest tertiary-level educational institution in Indonesia. It is a public institution with campuses in Salemba (Central Jakarta) and in Depok. The three other public universities in Jakarta are Syarif Hidayatullah State Islamic University Jakarta, the State University of Jakarta (UNJ) and the University of Pembangunan Nasional 'Veteran' Jakarta (UPN "Veteran" Jakarta). Some major private universities in Jakarta are Trisakti University, The Christian University of Indonesia, Mercu Buana University, Tarumanagara University, Atma Jaya Catholic University of Indonesia, Pelita Harapan University, Bina Nusantara University, Jayabaya University, and Pancasila University.
STOVIA ("School tot Opleiding van Indische Artsen") was the first high school in Jakarta, established in 1851. Jakarta houses many students from around Indonesia, many of whom reside in dormitories or home-stay residences. For basic education, a variety of primary and secondary schools are available, tagged with the public ("national"), private ("national and bi-lingual national plus") and "international" labels. Four of the major international schools are the Gandhi Memorial International School, IPEKA International Christian School Jakarta Intercultural School and the British School Jakarta. Other international schools include the Jakarta International Korean School, Bina Bangsa School, Jakarta International Multicultural School, Australian International School, New Zealand International School, Singapore International School and Sekolah Pelita Harapan.
Jakarta hosts foreign embassies. Jakarta also serves as the seat of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Secretariat and is ASEAN's diplomatic capital.
Jakarta is a member of the Asian Network of Major Cities 21, C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group and ASEAN Smart Cities Network.
Jakarta signed sister city agreements with other cities, including Casablanca. To promote friendship between two cities, the main avenue famous for its shopping and business centres was named after Jakarta's Moroccan sister city. No street in Casablanca is named after Jakarta. However, the Moroccan capital city of Rabat has an avenue named after Sukarno, Indonesia's first president, to commemorate his visit in 1960 and as a token of friendship.
Jakarta has established a partnership with Rotterdam, especially on integrated urban water management, including capacity-building and knowledge exchange. This cooperation is mainly because both cities are dealing with similar problems; they lie in low-lying flat plains and are prone to flooding. Additionally, for below-sea-level areas, they have both implemented drainage systems involving canals, dams, and pumps vital for both cities. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16275 |
Jack Ruby
Jack Leon Ruby (born Jacob Leon Rubenstein; April 25, 1911 – January 3, 1967) was an American nightclub owner. He fatally shot Lee Harvey Oswald on November 24, 1963, while Oswald was in police custody after being charged with assassinating United States President John F. Kennedy and murdering Dallas policeman J. D. Tippit about an hour later. A Dallas jury found him guilty of murdering Oswald, and he was sentenced to death. Ruby's conviction was later appealed, and he was granted a new trial. However, as the date for his new trial was being set, Ruby became ill in prison and died of a pulmonary embolism from lung cancer on January 3, 1967.
In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Ruby acted alone in killing Oswald. Various groups believed Ruby was involved with major figures in organized crime and that he killed Oswald as part of an overall plot surrounding the assassination of Kennedy.
Jack Ruby was born Jacob Leon Rubenstein, on March 25, 1911, in the Maxwell Street area of Chicago the son of Joseph Rubenstein and Fannie Turek Rutkowski (or Rokowsky), both Polish-born Orthodox Jews from Sokołów. Ruby was the fifth of his parents' 10 surviving children. While he was growing up, his parents were often violent towards each other and regularly separated; Ruby's mother was eventually committed to a mental hospital. His troubled childhood and adolescence was marked by juvenile delinquency with time being spent in foster homes. At age 11 in 1922, he was arrested for truancy. Ruby eventually skipped school enough times that he spent time at the Institute for Juvenile Research. Still a young man, he sold horse-racing tip sheets and various novelties, then acted as a business agent for a local refuse collectors union that later became part of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT).
From his early childhood, Ruby was nicknamed "Sparky" by those who knew him. His sister, Eva Grant, said that he acquired the nickname because he resembled a slow-moving horse named "Spark Plug" or "Sparky" in the contemporary comic strip Barney Google. ("Spark Plug" debuted as a character in the strip in 1922, when Ruby was 11.) Other accounts say that the name was given because of his quick temper. In either event, Grant stated that Ruby did not like the nickname Sparky, and was quick to fight anyone who called him that.
In the 1940s, Ruby frequented race tracks in Illinois and California. He was drafted in 1943 and served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II, working as an aircraft mechanic at U.S. bases until 1946. He had an honorable record and was promoted to Private First Class. Upon discharge, in 1946, Ruby returned to Chicago.
In 1947, Ruby moved to Dallas where he and his brothers soon afterward shortened their surnames from Rubenstein to Ruby. The stated reason for this was that the name "Rubenstein" was too long and that he was "well known" as Jack Ruby. Ruby later went on to manage various nightclubs, strip clubs, and dance halls. He developed close ties to many Dallas Police officers who frequented his nightclubs, where he provided them with free liquor, prostitutes and other favors.
Ruby never married and had no children. At the time of the assassination, Ruby was living with a male roommate, George Senator, who referred to Ruby as "my boyfriend" during the Warren Commission hearing, but denied the two being homosexual lovers. Warren Commission lawyer Burt Griffin later told author Gerald Posner: "I'm not sure if Senator was honest with us about his relationship with Ruby. People did not advertise their homosexuality in 1963".
There was evidence indicating Jack Ruby had been involved in the underworld activities of illegal gambling, narcotics, and prostitution.
A 1956 FBI report stated that their informant, Eileen Curry, reported that in January of that year, she moved to Dallas with her boyfriend, James Breen, after jumping bond on narcotics charges. Breen told her that he had made connections with a large narcotics setup operating between Texas, Mexico, and the East, and that "in some fashion, James got the okay to operate through Jack Ruby of Dallas."
Former Dallas County Sheriff Steve Guthrie told the FBI that he believed Ruby "operated some prostitution activities and other vices in his club" since living in Dallas.
Dallas disc jockey Kenneth Dowe testified that Ruby was known around the station for "procuring women for different people who came to town."
According to the people interviewed by law enforcement and the Warren Commission, Ruby was desperate to attract attention to himself and to his club. He knew a great number of people in Dallas, but had only a few friends. His business ventures remained unsuccessful, and during the time of the assassination, he was heavily in debt.
The Commission received reports of Ruby's penchant for violence. He had a volatile temper, and often resorted to violence with employees who had upset him. Acting as the bouncer of his club, Ruby beat his customers on at least 25 occasions. The fights would often end with Ruby throwing his victims down the club's stairs.
Government officials also heard stories of Ruby's eccentric and unstable behavior. He sometimes took his shirt or other clothes off in social gatherings, and then either hit his chest like a gorilla or rolled around the floor. During conversations, he could change the topic suddenly in mid-sentence. He sometimes welcomed a guest to his club, but on other nights forbade the same guest from entering without giving an explanation. Ruby was described by those who knew him as "a kook", "totally unpredictable", "a psycho", and "suffering from some form of disturbance".
The Warren Commission attempted to reconstruct Ruby's movements from November 21, 1963 through November 24. The Commission reported that he was attending to his duties as the proprietor of the Carousel Club located at 1312 1/2 Commerce St. in downtown Dallas and the Vegas Club in the city's Oak Lawn district from the afternoon of November 21 to the early hours of November 22.
According to the Warren Commission, Ruby was in the second-floor advertising offices of the "Dallas Morning News", five blocks away from the Texas School Book Depository, placing weekly advertisements for his nightclubs when he learned of the assassination around 12:45 p.m. Ruby then made phone calls to his assistant at the Carousel Club and to his sister. The Commission stated that an employee of the "Dallas Morning News" estimated that Ruby left the newspaper's offices at 1:30 p.m., but indicated that other testimony suggested he may have left earlier.
According to the Warren Commission, Ruby arrived back at the Carousel Club shortly before 1:45 p.m. to notify employees that the club would be closed that evening.
Ruby was seen in the halls of the Dallas Police Headquarters on several occasions after Lee Harvey Oswald's arrest on November 22, 1963. Newsreel footage from WFAA-TV (Dallas) and NBC shows that Ruby impersonated a newspaper reporter during a press conference at Dallas Police Headquarters on the night of Kennedy's death. District Attorney Henry Wade briefed reporters at the press conference telling them that Lee Oswald was a member of the anti-Castro Free Cuba Committee. Ruby was one of several people there who spoke up to correct Wade, saying, "Henry, that's the Fair Play for Cuba Committee," a pro-Castro organization. One month after his arrest for killing Oswald, Ruby told the FBI that he had his loaded snub-nosed Colt Cobra .38 revolver in his right pocket during the press conference.
On November 24, Ruby drove into town with his pet dachshund Sheba (whom he would often jokingly refer to as his "wife") to send an emergency money order at the Western Union on Main Street to one of his employees. The time stamp of completion for the cash transaction on the money order was 11:17 a.m. Ruby then walked one half block to the nearby Dallas police headquarters, where he made his way into the basement via either the Main Street ramp or a stairway accessible from an alleyway next to the Dallas Municipal Building. At 11:21 a.m. CST—while authorities were escorting Oswald through the police basement to an armored car that was to take him to the nearby county jail—Ruby stepped out from a crowd of reporters with his .38 Colt Cobra revolver aimed at Oswald's abdomen and fired a single round at point blank range, mortally wounding him. The bullet entered Oswald's left side in the front part of the abdomen and caused damage to his spleen, stomach, aorta, vena cava, kidney, liver, diaphragm, and eleventh rib before coming to rest on his right side. Oswald made a cry of anguish and his manacled hands clutched at his abdomen as he writhed with pain, and he slumped to the concrete paving, where he moaned several times. Police detective Billy Combest suddenly recognized Ruby and exclaimed: "Jack, you son of a bitch!" Ruby was immediately subdued by agents and police. A moaning Oswald was carried back into the basement level jail office. He lost consciousness shortly thereafter. Taken by ambulance to Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where President Kennedy was pronounced dead two days earlier, Oswald died at 1:07 p.m.
The crowd outside the headquarters burst into applause when they heard that Oswald had been shot.
A network television pool camera was broadcasting live to cover the transfer; millions of people watching on NBC witnessed the shooting as it happened and on other networks within minutes afterward. Several photographs were taken of the event just before, as, and after Ruby pulled the trigger. In 1964, Robert H. Jackson of the "Dallas Times Herald" was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photography for his image of the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby.
After his arrest, Ruby asked Dallas attorney Tom Howard to represent him. Howard accepted and asked Ruby if he could think of anything that might damage his defense. Ruby responded that there would be a problem if a man by the name of "Davis" should come up. Ruby told his attorney that he "... had been involved with Davis, who was a gunrunner entangled in anti-Castro efforts".
Later, Ruby replaced attorney Tom Howard with prominent San Francisco defense attorney Melvin Belli, who agreed to represent Ruby "pro bono". On March 14, 1964, Ruby was convicted of murder with malice and was sentenced to death.
Ruby's conviction was overturned by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on the grounds that "an oral confession of premeditation made while in police custody" should have been ruled inadmissible, because it violated a Texas criminal statute. The court also ruled that the venue should have been changed to a Texas county other than the one in which the high-profile crime had been committed.
Ruby died technically unconvicted, because his original conviction was overturned and his retrial was pending at the time of his death.
During the six months following Kennedy's assassination, Ruby repeatedly asked, orally and in writing, to speak to the members of the Warren Commission. The commission initially showed no interest. Only after Ruby's sister Eileen wrote letters to the commission (and her letters became public) did the Warren Commission agree to talk to Ruby. In June 1964, Chief Justice Earl Warren, then-Representative Gerald R. Ford of Michigan, and other commission members went to Dallas to see Ruby. Ruby asked Warren several times to take him to Washington D.C., saying "my life is in danger here" and that he wanted an opportunity to make additional statements. He added: "I want to tell the truth, and I can't tell it here." Warren told Ruby that he would be unable to comply, because many legal barriers would need to be overcome, and public interest in the situation would be too heavy. Warren also told Ruby that the commission would have no way of protecting him, since it had no police powers. Ruby said he wanted to convince President Lyndon Johnson that he was not part of any conspiracy to kill Kennedy.
Eventually, the appellate court agreed with Ruby's lawyers that he should be granted a new trial. On October 5, 1966, the court ruled that his motion for a change of venue before the original trial court should have been granted. Ruby's conviction and death sentence were overturned. Arrangements were underway for a new trial to be held in February 1967 in Wichita Falls, Texas, when on December 9, 1966, Ruby was admitted to Parkland Hospital in Dallas, suffering from pneumonia. A day later, doctors realized he had cancer in his liver, lungs, and brain. Three weeks later, he died.
Ruby died of a pulmonary embolism, secondary to bronchogenic carcinoma, on January 3, 1967, at Parkland Hospital, the same facility where Oswald had died and where President Kennedy had been pronounced dead after his assassination. He was buried beside his parents in the Westlawn Cemetery in Norridge, Illinois.
The Warren Commission found no evidence linking Ruby's killing of Oswald with any broader conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. In 1964, the Warren Commission provided a detailed biography of Ruby's life and activities to help ascertain whether he was involved in a conspiracy to assassinate Kennedy. The Commission indicated that there was not a "significant link between Ruby and organized crime" and said he acted independently in killing Oswald.
Warren Commission investigator David Belin said that postal inspector Harry Holmes arrived unannounced at the Dallas police station and, upon invitation by the investigators, questioned Oswald, thus delaying his transfer by half an hour. Belin concluded that, had Ruby been part of a conspiracy, he would have been downtown 30 minutes earlier.
In Gerald Posner's book "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK", Ruby's friends, relatives and associates claimed that he was upset over President Kennedy's death, even crying on occasions and closing his clubs for three days as a mark of respect. They also disputed the conspiracy claims, saying that Ruby's connection with gangsters was minimal at most and that he was not the sort to be entrusted with such an act within a high-level conspiracy.
Dallas reporter Tony Zoppi, who knew Ruby well, claimed that one "would have to be crazy" to entrust Ruby with anything as important as a high-level plot to kill Kennedy since he "couldn't keep a secret for five minutes ... Jack was one of the most talkative guys you would ever meet. He'd be the worst fellow in the world to be part of a conspiracy, because he just plain talked too much." He and others described Ruby as the sort who enjoyed being at "the center of attention", trying to make friends with people and being more of a nuisance.
Some writers, including former Los Angeles District Attorney Vincent Bugliosi, dismiss Ruby's connections to organized crime as being highly minimal: "It is very noteworthy that without exception, not one of these conspiracy theorists knew or had ever met Jack Ruby. Without our even resorting to his family and roommate, all of whom think the suggestion of Ruby being connected to the mob is ridiculous, those who knew him, unanimously and without exception, think the notion of his being connected to the Mafia, and then killing Oswald for them, is nothing short of laughable."
Bill Alexander, who prosecuted Ruby for Oswald's murder, equally rejected any suggestions that Ruby was part-and-parcel of organized crime, claiming that conspiracy theorists based it on the claim that "A knew B, and Ruby knew B back in 1950, so he must have known A, and that must be the link to the conspiracy."
Ruby's brother Earl denied allegations that Jack was involved in racketeering Chicago nightclubs, and author Gerald Posner suggested that witnesses may have confused Ruby with Harry Rubenstein, a convicted Chicago felon. Entertainment reporter Tony Zoppi was also dismissive of mob ties. He knew Ruby and described him as a "born loser".
Author Norman Mailer and others have questioned why Ruby would have left his two beloved dogs in his car if he had planned on killing Oswald at police headquarters.
Some critics have not accepted the conclusions of the Warren Commission and have proposed several other theories.
Ruby was arrested immediately after shooting Oswald, and he told several witnesses that he had been distraught over President Kennedy's death and had helped the city of Dallas "redeem" itself in the eyes of the public, and that his motive for killing Oswald was "saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial". He also claimed he shot Oswald on the spur of the moment when the opportunity presented itself, without considering any reason for doing so. Ruby told the FBI he was "in mourning" Friday and Saturday. He said he cried when he heard the President was shot, "cried a great deal" Saturday afternoon and was depressed Saturday night. He explained that this grief was caused by his great love for the President and his sympathy for the Kennedy family. The anguish over the assassination, Ruby stated, finally "reached the point of insanity", suddenly compelling him to shoot when Oswald walked to the police ramp that Sunday morning. At the time of the shooting, Ruby said he was taking phenmetrazine, a central nervous system stimulant. Ruby broke into tears at his bond hearing in January 1964, as he talked to reporters regarding the assassination of President Kennedy. His voice breaking, Ruby said that he could not understand "how a great man like that could be lost". According to an unnamed Associated Press source, Ruby made a final statement from his hospital bed on December 19, 1966, that he alone had been responsible for the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald. "There is nothing to hide ... There was no one else," Ruby said.
White House correspondent Seth Kantor, who was a passenger in President Kennedy's motorcade, testified that after President Kennedy was shot, he had visited Parkland Hospital while doctors were trying to save the President's life. Kantor said that as he entered the hospital, at about 1:30 p.m., he felt a tug on his coat. He turned around to see Jack Ruby, who called him by his first name and shook his hand; he said that he had become acquainted with Ruby while he was a reporter for the "Dallas Times Herald" newspaper. According to Kantor, Ruby asked him if he thought that it would be a good idea for him to close his nightclubs for the next three nights because of the tragedy and Kantor responded with thinking that doing so would be a good idea.
The Warren Commission dismissed Kantor's testimony, saying that the encounter at Parkland Hospital would have had to take place in a span of a few minutes before and after 1:30 pm, as evidenced by telephone company records of calls made by both people then. The Commission also pointed to contradictory witness testimony and to the lack of video confirmation of Ruby at the scene. The Commission concluded that "Kantor probably did not see Ruby at Parkland Hospital" and "may have been mistaken about both the time and the place that he saw Ruby".
In 1979, the House Select Committee on Assassinations reexamined Kantor's testimony and stated, "While the Warren Commission concluded that Kantor was mistaken [about his Parkland encounter with Ruby], the Committee determined he probably was not."
Kantor also reported that Ruby might have tampered with evidence while at Parkland. Goaded by the Warren Commission's dismissal of his testimony, Kantor researched the Ruby case for years. In a later published book "Who Was Jack Ruby?", Kantor wrote:
The mob was Ruby's "friend." And Ruby could well have been paying off an IOU the day he was used to kill Lee Harvey Oswald. Remember: "I have been used for a purpose," the way Ruby expressed it to Chief Justice Warren in their June 7, 1964 session. It would not have been hard for the mob to maneuver Ruby through the ranks of a few negotiable police [to kill Oswald].
The House Select Committee on Assassinations, in its 1979 Final Report, opined:
... Ruby's shooting of Oswald was not a spontaneous act, in that it involved at least some premeditation. Similarly, the committee believed it was less likely that Ruby entered the police basement without assistance, even though the assistance may have been provided with no knowledge of Ruby's intentions ... The committee was troubled by the apparently unlocked doors along the stairway route and the removal of security guards from the area of the garage nearest the stairway shortly before the shooting ... There is also evidence that the Dallas Police Department withheld relevant information from the Warren Commission concerning Ruby's entry to the scene of the Oswald transfer.
According to Lieutenant Billy Grammer, a dispatcher for the Dallas Police Department, he received an anonymous phone call at 3 a.m. on November 24 from a man who knew Grammer's name. The caller told Grammer that he knew of the plan to move Oswald from the basement and that unless the plans for Oswald's transfer were changed, the caller warned "we are going to kill him". After Oswald was shot, Grammer, who knew Ruby, and found the voice familiar at the time of the call, identified Ruby as the caller. Grammer remained convinced that Ruby's shooting of Oswald was "a planned event".
Detective Archer testified to the Warren Commission that when he searched Jack Ruby after his arrest, he was worried about Oswald's condition and he said to Ruby, "Jack, I think you killed him." Archer said that Ruby looked him straight in the eye and said, "Well, I intended to shoot him three times." Seth Kantor believes that Ruby's response to Archer does not suggest a spontaneous reaction, and the very word "intended" implies having prior intention.
Ruby's explanation for killing Oswald would be "exposed ... as a fabricated legal ploy", according to the House Select Committee on Assassinations. In a private note to one of his attorneys, Joseph Tonahill, Ruby wrote: "Joe, you should know this. My first lawyer Tom Howard told me to say that I shot Oswald so that Caroline and Mrs. Kennedy wouldn't have to come to Dallas to testify. OK?"
G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for the House Select Committee on Assassinations from 1977 to 1979, said: "The most plausible explanation for the murder of Oswald by Jack Ruby was that Ruby had stalked him on behalf of organized crime, trying to reach him on at least three occasions in the forty-eight hours before he silenced him forever."
In his testimony before the Warren Commission, Russell Lee Moore Knight said that Ruby held no bitterness towards Oswald and called him "a good looking guy" who resembled Paul Newman.
In his book "Contract on America", David Scheim noted that although some people claimed that they saw Ruby upset over the weekend of the assassination, others said that he was not. On Friday night, TV newsman Vic Robertson Jr. saw Ruby at police headquarters and reported that Ruby "appeared to be anything but under stress or strain. He seemed happy, jovial, was joking and laughing". Announcer Glen Duncan also testified that Ruby "was not grieving" and if anything, was "happy that evidence was piling up against Oswald".
Scheim also presented evidence that he claimed showed that Ruby made a "candid confession" when giving testimony to the Warren Commission. During his testimony, Ruby teared up when talking about a Saturday morning eulogy for President Kennedy, but after composing himself, inexplicably said, "I must be a great actor, I tell you that." Ruby also remarked that "they didn't ask me another question: "If I loved the President so much, why wasn't I at the parade?"" (referring to the presidential motorcade) and "it's strange that perhaps I didn't vote for President Kennedy, or didn't vote at all, that I should build up such a great affection for him".
Jada, a stripper at Ruby's club, in an interview with ABC's Paul Good: "I believe he disliked Bobby Kennedy".
Schiem also noted several people who knew Ruby, who claimed that the patriotic statements Ruby professed were quite out of character. Harry Hall, Ruby's partner in a gambling operation, told the FBI that "Ruby was the type who was interested in any way to make money" and also said that he "could not conceive of Ruby doing anything out of patriotism". Jack Kelly, who had known Ruby casually since 1943, "scoffed at the idea of a patriotic motive being involved by Ruby in the slaying of Oswald", and reportedly stated that he "could not see Ruby" killing Oswald "out of patriotism" but "for publicity
or ... for money".
Ruby's friend Paul Roland Jones was paraphrased by his FBI interviewers as affirming that:
from his acquaintance with Ruby he doubted that he would have become emotionally upset and killed Oswald on the spur of the moment. He felt Ruby would have done it for money.
Following Ruby's March 1964 conviction for murder with malice, Ruby's lawyers, led by Sam Houston Clinton, appealed to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, the highest criminal court in Texas. Ruby's lawyers argued that he could not have received a fair trial in Dallas because of the excessive publicity surrounding the case. A year after his conviction, in March 1965, Ruby conducted a brief televised news conference in which he stated: "Everything pertaining to what's happening has never come to the surface. The world will never know the true facts of what occurred, my motives. The people who had so much to gain, and had such an ulterior motive for putting me in the position I'm in, will never let the true facts come above board to the world." When asked by a reporter, "Are these people in very high positions, Jack?", he responded "Yes."
Journalist Seth Kantor speculated in 1978 that the man by the name of "Davis" that Ruby mentioned may have been Thomas Eli Davis III, a CIA-connected mercenary.
Dallas Deputy Sheriff Al Maddox claimed: "Ruby told me, he said, 'Well, they injected me for a cold.' He said it was cancer cells. That's what he told me, Ruby did. I said you don't believe that bullshit. He said, 'I damn sure do!' [Then] one day when I started to leave, Ruby shook hands with me and I could feel a piece of paper in his palm ... [In this note] he said it was a conspiracy and he said ... if you will keep your eyes open and your mouth shut, you're gonna learn a lot. And that was the last letter I ever got from him." In the note, Ruby claimed he was part of a conspiracy, and that his role was to silence Oswald.
Not long before Ruby died, according to an article in the London "Sunday Times", he told psychiatrist Werner Teuter that the assassination was "an act of overthrowing the government" and that he knew "who had President Kennedy killed". He added: "I am doomed. I do not want to die. But I am not insane. I was framed to kill Oswald."
In his book, "Contract on America", David Scheim presented evidence that Mafia leaders Carlos Marcello and Santo Trafficante, Jr., as well as organized labor leader Jimmy Hoffa, ordered the assassination of President Kennedy. Scheim cited in particular a 25-fold increase in the number of out-of-state telephone calls from Jack Ruby to associates of these crime bosses in the months before the assassination. According to author Vincent Bugliosi, both the Warren Commission and the House Select Committee on Assassinations determined all of these calls were related to Ruby seeking help from the American Guild of Variety Artists in a matter concerning two of his competitors. The House Select Committee on Assassinations report stated "... that most of Ruby's phone calls during late 1963 were related to his labor troubles. In the light of the identity of some of the individuals with whom Ruby spoke, however, the possibility of other matters being discussed could not be dismissed."
In his memoir, "Bound by Honor", Bill Bonanno, son of New York Mafia boss Joseph Bonanno, stated that he realized that certain Mafia families were involved in the JFK assassination when Ruby killed Oswald, since Bonanno was aware that Ruby was an associate of Chicago mobster Sam Giancana.
In 1979, fifteen years after the Warren report, the House Select Committee on Assassinations undertook a similar investigation of Ruby and said that he "had a significant number of associations and direct and indirect contacts with underworld figures" and "the Dallas criminal element" but that he was not a "member" of organized crime.
Ruby was known to have been acquainted with both the police and the Mafia. The HSCA said that Ruby had known Chicago mobster Sam Giancana (1908–1975) and Joseph Campisi (1918–1990) since 1947, and had been seen with them on many occasions. After an investigation of Joe Campisi, the HSCA found:
While Campisi's technical characterization in federal law enforcement records as an organized crime member has ranged from definite to suspected to negative, it is clear that he was an associate or friend of many Dallas-based organized crime members, particularly Joseph Civello, during the time he was the head of the Dallas organization. There was no indication that Campisi had engaged in any specific organized crime-related activities.
Similarly, a PBS "Frontline" investigation into the connections between Ruby and Dallas organized crime figures reported the following:
In 1963, Sam and Joe Campisi were leading figures in the Dallas underworld. Jack knew the Campisis and had been seen with them on many occasions. The Campisis were lieutenants of Carlos Marcello, the Mafia boss who had reportedly talked of killing the President.
A day before Kennedy was assassinated, Ruby went to Joe Campisi's restaurant. At the time of the Kennedy assassination, Ruby was close enough to the Campisis to ask them to come see him after he was arrested for shooting Lee Oswald. Joe Campisi and his wife visited with Jack Ruby in jail for ten minutes on November 30, 1963.
Howard P. Willens—the third-highest official in the Department of Justice and assistant counsel to J. Lee Rankin—helped organize the Warren Commission. Willens also outlined the Commission's investigative priorities and terminated an investigation of Ruby's Cuban related activities. An FBI report states that Willens's father had been Tony Accardo's next door neighbor going back to 1958. In 1946, Tony Accardo allegedly asked Jack Ruby to go to Texas with Mafia associates Pat Manno and Romie Nappi to make sure that Dallas County Sheriff Steve Gutherie would acquiesce to the Mafia's expansion into Dallas.
Four years before the assassination of President Kennedy, Ruby went to see a man named Lewis McWillie in Cuba. Ruby considered McWillie, who had previously run illegal gambling establishments in Texas, to be one of his closest friends. At the time Ruby visited him, in August 1959, McWillie was supervising gambling activities at Havana's Tropicana Club. Ruby told the Warren Commission that his August trip to Cuba was merely a social visit at the invitation of McWillie. The House Select Committee on Assassinations would later conclude that Ruby "... most likely was serving as a courier for gambling interests". The committee also found "circumstantial," but not conclusive, evidence that "... Ruby met with [Mafia boss] Santo Trafficante in Cuba sometime in 1959."
James E. Beaird, who claimed to be a poker-playing friend of Jack Ruby, told both "The Dallas Morning News" and the FBI that Ruby smuggled guns and ammunition from Galveston Bay, Texas to Fidel Castro's guerrillas in Cuba in the late 1950s. Beaird said that Ruby "was in it for the money. It wouldn't matter which side, just [whichever] one that would pay him the most." Beaird said that the guns were stored in a two-story house near the waterfront, and that he saw Ruby and his associates load "many boxes of new guns, including automatic rifles and handguns" on a 50-foot military-surplus boat. He claimed that "each time that the boat left with guns and ammunition, Jack Ruby was on the boat."
Blaney Mack Johnson, an FBI informant, said Ruby was "active in arranging illegal flights of weapons from Miami" to pro-Castro forces in Cuba in the early 1950s.
Articles of clothing that Ruby wore when he killed Oswald—including his suit, hat and shoes—are on display at the Historic Auto Attractions museum in Roscoe, Illinois. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16277 |
James Randi
James Randi (born Randall James Hamilton Zwinge; August 7, 1928) is a Canadian-American retired stage magician and a scientific skeptic who has extensively challenged paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. Randi is the co-founder of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI), originally known as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP). He is also the founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF). He began his career as a magician under the stage name The Amazing Randi and later chose to devote most of his time to investigating paranormal, occult, and supernatural claims, which he collectively calls "woo-woo". Randi retired from practicing magic at age 60, and from the JREF at 87.
Although often referred to as a "debunker", Randi has said he dislikes the term's connotations and prefers to describe himself as an "investigator". He has written about paranormal phenomena, skepticism, and the history of magic. He was a frequent guest on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson", famously exposing fraudulent faith healer Peter Popoff, and was occasionally featured on the television program ""
Before Randi's retirement, JREF sponsored the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge, which offered a prize of one million dollars US to eligible applicants who could demonstrate evidence of any paranormal, supernatural, or occult power or event under test conditions agreed to by both parties. The paranormal challenge was officially terminated by the JREF in 2015. The foundation continues to make grants to non-profit groups that encourage critical thinking and a fact-based world view.
Randi was born on August 7, 1928 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, the son of Marie Alice (née Paradis) and George Randall Zwinge. He has a younger brother and sister. He took up magic after seeing Harry Blackstone Sr. and reading conjuring books while spending 13 months in a body cast following a bicycle accident. He confounded doctors who expected he would never walk again. Randi often skipped classes and, at 17, dropped out of high school to perform as a conjurer in a carnival roadshow. He practised as a mentalist in local nightclubs and at Toronto's Canadian National Exhibition and wrote for Montreal's tabloid press.
In his twenties, Randi posed as an astrologer and, to establish that they were actually doing simple tricks, he briefly wrote an astrological column in the Canadian tabloid "Midnight" under the name "Zo-ran" by simply shuffling up items from newspaper astrology columns and pasting them randomly into a column. In his thirties, Randi worked in the UK, Europe, Philippine nightclubs, and all across Japan. He witnessed many tricks that were presented as being supernatural. One of his earliest reported experiences is that of seeing an evangelist using a version of the "one-ahead" technique to convince churchgoers of his divine powers.
Though defining himself as a conjuror, Randi began a career as a professional stage magician and escapologist in 1946. Initially, he presented himself under his real name, Randall Zwinge, which he later dropped in favor of "The Amazing Randi". Early in his career, he performed numerous escape acts from jail cells and safes around the world. On February 7, 1956, he appeared live on NBC's "Today" show, where he remained for 104 minutes in a sealed metal coffin that had been submerged in a hotel swimming pool, breaking what was said to be Harry Houdini's record of 93 minutes, though Randi calls attention to the fact that he was much younger than Houdini was when the original record was established in 1926.
Randi was a frequent guest on the Long John Nebel program on New York radio station WOR, and did character voices for commercials. After Nebel went to WNBC in 1962, Randi was given the time slot, and from 1967 to '68 hosted "The Amazing Randi Show". This show often had guests who defended paranormal claims, among them Randi's then-friend James W. Moseley. Randi says he quit WOR over complaints (disputed by Randi) from the archbishop of New York, that Randi had said on-air that "Jesus Christ was a religious nut."
Randi also hosted numerous television specials and went on several world tours. As "The Amazing Randi" he appeared regularly on the New York-based children's television series "Wonderama" from 1959 to 1967. He also auditioned for a revival of the 1950s children's show "The Magic Clown" in 1970, which showed briefly in Detroit and in Kenya, but was never picked up. In the February 2, 1974, issue of the British conjuring magazine "Abracadabra", Randi, defining the community of magicians, stated: "I know of no calling which depends so much upon mutual trust and faith as does ours." In the December 2003 issue of "The Linking Ring", the monthly publication of the International Brotherhood of Magicians, it is stated: "Perhaps Randi's ethics are what make him Amazing" and "The Amazing Randi not only talks the talk, he walks the walk."
During Alice Cooper's 1973–1974 Billion Dollar Babies tour, Randi performed on stage both as a mad dentist and as Alice's executioner. He also built several of the stage props, including the guillotine. Shortly after that, in a 1976 performance for the Canadian TV special "World of Wizards", Randi escaped from a straitjacket while suspended upside-down over Niagara Falls.
Randi has been accused of actually using "psychic powers" to perform acts such as spoon bending. According to James Alcock, at a meeting where Randi was duplicating the performances of Uri Geller, a professor from the University at Buffalo shouted out that Randi was a fraud. Randi said: "Yes, indeed, I'm a trickster, I'm a cheat, I'm a charlatan, that's what I do for a living. Everything I've done here was by trickery." The professor shouted back: "That's not what I mean. You're a fraud because you're pretending to do these things through trickery, but you're actually using psychic powers and misleading us by not admitting it." A similar event involved Senator Claiborne Pell, a confirmed believer in psychic phenomena. When Randi personally demonstrated to Pell that he could reveal—by simple trickery—a concealed drawing that had been secretly made by the senator, Pell refused to believe that it was a trick, saying: "I think Randi may be a psychic and doesn't realize it." Randi has consistently denied having any paranormal powers or abilities.
Randi is a member of the Society of American Magicians (SAM), the International Brotherhood of Magicians (IBM), and The Magic Circle in the UK, holding the rank of "Member of the Inner Magic Circle with Gold Star."
Randi said the hardest people to fool are not the highly educated, but children, because they are not sophisticated enough to be fooled, as they have not learned the body cues that adults have learned and which magicians take advantage of.
Randi is the author of ten books, among them "Conjuring" (1992), a biographical history of noted magicians. The book is subtitled "Being a Definitive History of the Venerable Arts of Sorcery, Prestidigitation, Wizardry, Deception, & Chicanery and of the Mountebanks & Scoundrels Who have Perpetrated these Subterfuges on a Bewildered Public, in short, MAGIC!" The book's cover says that it is by "James Randi, Esq., A Contrite Rascal Once Dedicated to these Wicked Practices but Now Almost Totally Reformed". The book selects the most influential magicians and tells some of their history, often in the context of strange deaths and careers on the road. This work expanded on Randi's second book titled "Houdini, His Life and Art". This illustrated work was published in 1976 and was co-authored with Bert Sugar. It focuses on the professional and private life of Houdini.
Randi also wrote a children's book in 1989 titled "The Magic World of the Amazing Randi", which introduced children to magic tricks. In addition to his magic books, he has written several educational works about paranormal and pseudoscientific claims. These include biographies of Uri Geller and Nostradamus as well as reference material on other major paranormal figures. He is currently working on "A Magician in the Laboratory", which recounts his application of skepticism to science. He was a member of the all-male literary banqueting club the Trap Door Spiders, which served as the basis of his good friend Isaac Asimov's fictional group of mystery solvers, the Black Widowers.
Other books are "Flim-Flam!" (1982), "The Faith Healers" (1987), "James Randi, Psychic Investigator" (1991), "Test Your ESP Potential" (1982) and "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural" (1995).
Randi was a regular contributor to "Skeptic" magazine, penning the "'Twas Brillig ..." column, and also served on its editorial board. He is also a frequent contributor to "Skeptical Inquirer" magazine, which is published by CSI, of which he is also a Fellow.
Randi gained the international spotlight in 1972 when he publicly challenged the claims of Uri Geller. He accused Geller of being nothing more than a charlatan and a fraud who used standard magic tricks to accomplish his allegedly paranormal feats, and he presented his claims in the book "The Truth About Uri Geller" (1982).
Believing that it was important to get columnists and TV personalities to challenge Geller and others like him, Randi and CSICOP reached out in an attempt to educate them. Randi said that CSICOP had a "very substantial influence on the printed media ... in those days." During this effort, Randi made contact with Johnny Carson and discovered that he was "very much on our side. He wasn't only a comedian ... he was a great thinker." According to Randi, when he was on "The Tonight Show", Carson broke his usual protocol of not talking with guests before their entrance on stage, but instead would ask what Randi wanted to be emphasized in the interview. "He wanted to be aware of how he could help me."
In 1973, Geller appeared on "The Tonight Show", and this appearance is recounted in the "Nova" documentary "Secrets of the Psychics".
In the documentary, Randi says that Carson "had been a magician himself and was skeptical" of Geller's claimed paranormal powers, so before the date of taping, Randi was asked "to help prevent any trickery". Per Randi's advice, the show prepared its own props without informing Geller, and did not let Geller or his staff "anywhere near them". When Geller joined Carson on stage, he appeared surprised that he was not going to be interviewed, but instead was expected to display his abilities using the provided articles. Geller said "This scares me" and "I'm surprised because before this program your producer came and he read me at least 40 questions you were going to ask me." Geller was unable to display any paranormal abilities, saying "I don't feel strong" and expressing his displeasure at feeling like he was being "pressed" to perform by Carson. According to Adam Higginbotham's Nov. 7, 2014 article in the "New York Times":
However, this appearance on "The Tonight Show", which Carson and Randi had orchestrated to debunk Geller's claimed abilities, backfired. According to Higginbotham,
According to Higginbotham, this result caused Randi to realize that much more must be done to stop Geller and those like him. So in 1976, Randi approached Ray Hyman, a psychologist who had observed the tests of Geller's ability at Stanford and thought them slipshod, and suggested they create an organization dedicated to combating pseudoscience. Later that same year, together with Martin Gardner, a "Scientific American" columnist whose writing had helped hone Hyman's and Randi's skepticism, they formed the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP).
Using donations and sales of their magazine, "Skeptical Inquirer", they and secular humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz took seats on the executive board, with Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan joining as founding members. Randi traveled the world on behalf of CSICOP, becoming its public face, and according to Hyman, the face of the skeptical movement.
András G. Pintér, producer and co-host of the European Skeptics Podcast called Randi the grandfather of European skepticism by virtue of Randi "playing a role in kickstarting several European organizations."
Geller sued Randi and CSICOP for $15 million in 1991 and lost. Geller's suit against CSICOP was thrown out in 1995, and he was ordered to pay $120,000 for filing a frivolous lawsuit. The legal costs Randi incurred used almost all of a $272,000 MacArthur Foundation grant awarded to Randi in 1986 for his work. Randi also dismissed Geller's claims that he was capable of the kind of psychic photography made famous by the case of Ted Serios. It is a matter, Randi argues, of trick photography using a simple hand-held optical device. During the period of Geller's legal dispute, CSICOP's leadership, wanting to avoid becoming a target of Geller's litigation, demanded that Randi refrain from commenting on Geller. Randi refused and resigned, though he has maintained a respectful relationship with the group, which in 2006 changed its name to the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry (CSI). In 2010, Randi was one of 16 new CSI fellows elected by its board.
Randi has gone on to write many articles criticizing beliefs and claims regarding the paranormal. He has also demonstrated flaws in studies suggesting the existence of paranormal phenomena; in his Project Alpha hoax, Randi successfully planted two fake psychics in a privately funded psychic research experiment. The hoax became a scandal and demonstrated the shortcomings of many paranormal research projects at the university level.
Randi has appeared on numerous TV shows, sometimes to directly debunk the claimed abilities of fellow guests. In a 1981 appearance on "That's My Line", Randi appeared opposite claimed psychic James Hydrick, who said that he could move objects with his mind and appeared to demonstrate this claim on live television by turning a page in a telephone book without touching it. Randi, having determined that Hydrick was surreptitiously blowing on the book, arranged foam packaging peanuts on the table in front of the telephone book for the demonstration. This prevented Hydrick from demonstrating his abilities, which would have been exposed when the blowing moved the packaging. Randi writes that, eventually, Hydrick "confessed everything".
Randi was awarded a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 1986. The fellowship's five-year $272,000 grant helped support Randi's investigations of faith healers, including W. V. Grant, Ernest Angley, and Peter Popoff, whom Randi first exposed on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" in February 1986. Hearing about his investigation of Popoff, Carson invited Randi onto his show without seeing the evidence he was going to reveal. Carson appeared stunned after Randi showed a brief video segment from one of Popoff's broadcasts showing him calling out a woman in the audience, revealed personal information about her that he claimed came from God, and then performed a laying-on-of-hands healing to drive the devil from her body. Randi then replayed the video, but with some of the sound dubbed in that he and his investigating team captured during the event using a radio scanner and recorder. Their scanner had detected the radio frequency Popoff's wife Elizabeth was using backstage to broadcast directions and information to a miniature radio receiver hidden in Popoff's left ear. That information had been gathered by Popoff's assistants, who had handed out "prayer cards" to the audience before the show, instructing them to write down all the information Popoff would need to pray for them.
The news coverage generated by Randi's exposé on "The Tonight Show" led to many TV stations dropping Popoff's show, eventually forcing him into bankruptcy in September 1987. However, the televangelist returned soon after with faith-healing infomercials that reportedly attracted more than $23 million in 2005 from viewers sending in money for promised healing and prosperity. The Canadian Centre for Inquiry's "Think Again! TV" documented one of Popoff's more recent performances before a large audience who gathered in Toronto on May 26, 2011, hoping to be saved from illness and poverty.
In February 1988, Randi tested the gullibility of the media by perpetrating a hoax of his own. By teaming up with Australia's "60 Minutes" program and by releasing a fake press package, he built up publicity for a "spirit channeler" named Carlos, who was actually artist José Alvarez, Randi's partner. While performing as Carlos, Alvarez was prompted by Randi using sophisticated radio equipment. According to the "60 Minutes" program on the Carlos hoax, "it was claimed that Alvarez would not have had the audience he did at the Opera House (and the potential sales therefrom) had the media coverage been more aggressive (and factual)", though an analysis by "The Skeptic"'s Tim Mendham concluded that, while the media coverage of Alvarez's appearances was not credulous, the hoax "at least showed that they could benefit by being a touch more sceptical". The hoax was exposed on "60 Minutes Australia"; "Carlos" and Randi explained how they had pulled it off.
In his book "The Faith Healers", Randi wrote that his anger and relentlessness arose from compassion for the victims of fraud. Randi has also been critical of João de Deus (John of God), a self-proclaimed psychic surgeon who has received international attention. Randi observed, referring to psychic surgery, "To any experienced conjurer, the methods by which these seeming miracles are produced are very obvious."
In 1982, Randi verified the abilities of Arthur Lintgen, a Philadelphia doctor, who was able to identify the classical music recorded on a vinyl LP solely by examining the grooves on the record. However, Lintgen did not claim to have any paranormal ability, merely knowledge of the way that the groove forms patterns on particular recordings.
In 1988, John Maddox, editor of the prominent science journal "Nature", asked Randi to join the supervision and observation of the homeopathy experiments conducted by Jacques Benveniste's team. Once Randi's stricter protocol for the experiment was in place, the positive results could not be reproduced.
James Randi stated that Daniel Dunglas Home, who could allegedly play an accordion that was locked in a cage without touching it, was caught cheating on a few occasions, but the incidents were never made public. He also stated that the actual instrument in use was a one-octave mouth organ concealed under Home's large moustache and that other one-octave mouth organs were found in Home's belongings after his death. According to Randi, author William Lindsay Gresham told Randi "around 1960" that he had seen these mouth organs in the Home collection at the Society for Psychical Research (SPR). Eric J. Dingwall, who catalogued Home's collection on its arrival at the SPR does not record the presence of the mouth organs. According to Peter Lamont, the author of an extensive Home biography, "It is unlikely Dingwall would have missed these or did not make them public."The fraudulent medium Henry Slade also played an accordion while held with one hand under a table. Slade and Home played the same pieces. They had at one time lived near each other in the U.S.A. The magician Chung Ling Soo exposed how Slade had performed the trick.
Randi distinguishes between pseudoscience and crackpot science. He regards most of parapsychology as pseudoscience because of the way in which it is approached and conducted, but nonetheless sees it as a legitimate subject that "should be pursued", and from which real scientific discoveries may develop. Randi regards crackpot science as "equally wrong" as pseudoscience, but with no scientific pretensions.
Despite multiple debunkings, Randi didn't like to be called a "debunker", preferring to call himself a "skeptic" or an "investigator”:
Skeptics and magicians Penn & Teller credit Randi and his career as a skeptic for their own careers. During an interview at TAM! 2012, Penn stated that "Flim-Flam!" was an early influence on him, and said "If not for Randi there would not be Penn & Teller as we are today." He went on to say "Outside of my family ... no one is more important in my life. Randi is everything to me."
At the NECSS skeptic conference in 2017, Randi was asked by George Hrab what a "'skeptic coming of age ceremony' would look like" and Randi talked about what it was like as a child to learn about the speed of light and how that felt like he was looking into the past. Randi stated "More kids need to be stunned".
At The Amaz!ng Meeting in 2011 (TAM 9) the Independent Investigations Group (IIG) organised a tribute to James Randi. The group gathered together with other attendees, put on fake white beards, and posed for a large group photo with Randi. At the CSICon in 2017, in absence of Randi, the IIG organised another group photo with leftover beards from the 2011 photo. After Randi was sent the photo, he replied, "I'm always very touched by any such expression. This is certainly no exception. You have my sincere gratitude. I suspect, however that a couple of those beards were fake. But I'm in a forgiving mood at the moment. I'm frankly very touched. I'll see you at the next CSICon. Thank you all."
"Exploring Psychic Powers ... Live" was a two-hour television special aired live on June 7, 1989, wherein Randi examined several people claiming psychic powers. Hosted by actor Bill Bixby, the program offered $100,000 (Randi's $10,000 prize plus $90,000 put up by the show's syndicator, LBS Communications, Inc.) to anyone who could demonstrate genuine psychic powers.
In 1996, Randi established the James Randi Educational Foundation. Randi and his colleagues publish in JREF's blog, "Swift". Topics have included the interesting mathematics of the one-seventh area triangle, a classic geometric puzzle. In his weekly commentary, Randi often gives examples of what he considers the nonsense that he deals with every day.
Beginning in 2003, the JREF annually hosted The Amaz!ng Meeting, a gathering of scientists, skeptics, and atheists. The last meeting was in 2015, coinciding with Randi's retirement from the JREF.
Randi began a series of conferences known as "The Amazing Meeting" (TAM) which quickly became the largest gathering of skeptics in the world, drawing audiences from Asia, Europe, South America, and the UK. It also attracted a large percentage of younger attendees. Randi has been regularly featured on many podcasts, including The Skeptics Society's official podcast "Skepticality" and the Center for Inquiry's official podcast "Point of Inquiry". From September 2006 onwards, he has occasionally contributed to "The Skeptics' Guide to the Universe" podcast with a column titled "Randi Speaks." In addition, "The Amazing Show" is a podcast in which Randi shares various anecdotes in an interview format.
In 2014, Part2Filmworks released "An Honest Liar", a feature film documentary, written by Tyler Measom and Greg O'Toole, and directed and produced by Measom and Justin Weinstein. The film, which was funded through Kickstarter, focuses on Randi's life, his investigations, and his relationship with longtime partner José Alvarez (born Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga), to whom he was married in 2013. The film was screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, at Toronto's Hot Docs film festival, and at the June 2014 AFI Docs Festival in Silver Spring, Maryland and Washington, D.C., where it won the Audience Award for Best Feature. It also received positive reviews from critics. The film was featured on the PBS "Independent Lens" series, shown in the U.S. and Canada, on March 28, 2016.
In 2017, Randi appeared in animated form on Holy Koolaid, in which he discussed the challenge of finding the balance between connecting sincerely with his audience and at the same time tricking/fooling them with an artful ruse and indicated that this is a balance many magicians struggle with.
Since 2013, Randi has been listed on the Advisory Council of the National Center for Science Education.
Randi's parents were members of the Anglican Church but rarely attended services. He attended Sunday School at St. Cuthbert's Church in Toronto a few times as a child, but he independently decided to stop going when he was not answered when he asked for proof of the teachings of the Church.
In his essay "Why I Deny Religion, How Silly and Fantastic It Is, and Why I'm a Dedicated and Vociferous Bright", Randi, who identifies himself as an atheist, opined that many accounts in religious texts, including the virgin birth, the miracles of Jesus Christ, and the parting of the Red Sea by Moses, are not believable. Randi refers to the Virgin Mary as being "impregnated by a ghost of some sort, and as a result produced a son who could walk on water, raise the dead, turn water into wine, and multiply loaves of bread and fishes" and questions how Adam and Eve "could have two sons, one of whom killed the other, and yet managed to populate the Earth without committing incest". He wrote that, compared to the Bible, ""The Wizard of Oz" is more believable. And much more fun."
Clarifying his view of atheism, Randi wrote "I've said it before: there are two sorts of atheists. One sort claims that there is no deity, the other claims that there is no evidence that proves the existence of a deity; I belong to the latter group, because if I were to claim that no god exists, I would have to produce evidence to establish that claim, and I cannot. Religious persons have by far the easier position; they say they believe in a deity because that's their preference, and they've read it in a book. That's their right."
In "An Encyclopedia of Claims, Frauds, and Hoaxes of the Occult and Supernatural" (1995), he examines various spiritual practices skeptically. Of the meditation techniques of Guru Maharaj Ji, he writes "Only the very naive were convinced that they had been let in on some sort of celestial secret." In 2003, he was one of the signers of the Humanist Manifesto.
In a discussion with Kendrick Frazier at CSICon 2016, Randi stated "I think that a belief in a deity is ... an unprovable claim ... and a rather ridiculous claim. It is an easy way out to explain things to which we have no answer." He then summarized his current concern with religious belief as follows:
The James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) offered a prize of US$1,000,000 to anyone able to demonstrate a supernatural ability under scientific testing criteria agreed to by both sides. Based on the paranormal challenges of John Nevil Maskelyne and Houdini, the foundation began in 1996, when Randi put up $1,000 of his own money payable to anyone who could provide objective proof of the paranormal. The prize money grew to $1,000,000, and had formal published rules. No one progressed past the preliminary test, which was set up with parameters agreed to by both Randi and the applicant. He refused to accept any challengers who might suffer serious injury or death as a result of the testing.
On April 1, 2007, it was ruled that only persons with an established, nationally recognized media profile and the backing of a reputable academic were allowed to apply for the challenge, in order to avoid wasting JREF resources on frivolous claimants.
On "Larry King Live", March 6, 2001, Larry King asked claimed medium Sylvia Browne if she would take the challenge and she agreed. Randi appeared with Browne on "Larry King Live" six months later, and she again appeared to accept his challenge. However, according to Randi, she ultimately refused to be tested, and the Randi Foundation kept a clock on its website recording the number of weeks since Browne allegedly accepted the challenge without following through, until Browne's death in November 2013.
During a subsequent appearance on "Larry King Live" on June 5, 2001, Randi challenged Rosemary Altea, another claimed medium, to undergo testing for the million dollars, but Altea refused to address the question. Instead Altea replied only, "I agree with what he says, that there are many, many people who claim to be spiritual mediums, they claim to talk to the dead. There are many people, we all know this. There are cheats and charlatans everywhere." On January 26, 2007, Altea and Randi again appeared on the show, and Altea again refused to answer whether or not she would take the One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge.
In October 2007, claimed psychic John Edward appeared on "Headline Prime", hosted by Glenn Beck. When asked if he would take ""the Amazing Randi's"" challenge, Edward responded, "It's funny. I was on "Larry King Live" once, and they asked me the same question. And I made a joke [then], and I'll say the same thing here: Why would I allow myself to be tested by somebody who's got an adjective as a first name?" Beck simply allowed Edward to continue, ignoring the challenge.
Randi asked British businessman Jim McCormick, the inventor of the bogus ADE 651 bomb detector, to take the challenge in October 2008. Randi called the ADE 651 "a useless quack device which cannot perform any other function than separating naive persons from their money. It's a fake, a scam, a swindle, and a blatant fraud. Prove me wrong and take the million dollars." There was no response from McCormick. According to Iraqi investigators, the ADE 651, which was corruptly sold to the Baghdad bomb squad, was responsible for the deaths of hundreds of civilians who died as a result of terrorist bombs which were not detected at checkpoints. On April 23, 2013, McCormick was convicted of three counts of fraud at the Old Bailey in London; he was subsequently sentenced to ten years' imprisonment for his part in the ADE 651 scandal, which Randi was the first to expose.
A public log of past participants in the Million Dollar Challenge exists.
In 2015, the James Randi paranormal challenge was officially terminated due to Randi's retirement from, and thus lack of direct involvement with, the foundation.
Randi has been involved in a variety of legal disputes but says that he has "never paid even one dollar or even one cent to anyone who ever sued me." However, he says, he has paid out large sums to defend himself in these suits.
Randi met magician Uri Geller in the early 1970s, and found Geller to be "Very charming. Likable, beautiful, affectionate, genuine, forward-going, handsome — everything!" But Randi viewed Geller as a con-man, and began a long effort to expose him as a fraud. According to Randi, Geller tried to sue him several times, accusing him of libel. Geller never won, save for a ruling in a Japanese court that ordered Randi to pay Geller one-third of one percent of what Geller had requested. This ruling was canceled, and the matter dropped, when Geller decided to concentrate on another legal matter.
In May 1991, Geller sued Randi and CSICOP for $15 million on a charge of slander, after Randi told the "International Herald Tribune" that Geller had "tricked even reputable scientists" with stunts that "are the kind that used to be on the back of cereal boxes", referring to the old spoon-bending trick. The court dismissed the case and Geller had to settle at a cost to him of $120,000, after Randi produced a cereal box which bore instructions on how to do the spoon-bending trick. Geller's lawyer Don Katz was disbarred mid-way into this action and Geller ended up suing him. After failing to pay before the deadline imposed by the court, Geller was sanctioned an additional $20,000.
Geller sued both Randi and CSICOP. CSICOP argued that the organization was not responsible for Randi's statements. The court agreed that including CSICOP was frivolous and dropped them from the action, leaving Randi to face the action alone, along with the legal costs. Geller was ordered to pay substantial damages, but only to CSICOP. The matter was subsequently settled out of court, and the details of the settlement have been kept confidential. The settlement also included an agreement that Geller would not pursue Randi for the award in the Japanese case or other outstanding cases.
In 1993, a jury in the U.S. District Court in Baltimore found Randi liable for defaming Eldon Byrd for calling him a child molester in a magazine story and a "shopping market molester" in a 1988 speech. However, the jury found that Byrd was not entitled to any monetary damages after hearing testimony that he had sexually molested and later married his sister-in-law. The jury also cleared the other defendant in the case, CSICOP.
Late in 1996, Randi launched a libel suit against a Toronto-area psychic named Earl Gordon Curley. Curley had made multiple objectionable comments about Randi on Usenet. Despite suggesting to Randi on Usenet that Randi should sue – Curley's comments implying that if Randi did not sue, then his allegations must be true – Curley seemed entirely surprised when Randi actually retained Toronto's largest law firm and initiated legal proceedings. The suit was eventually dropped in 1998 when Earl Curley died at the age of 51 of "alcohol toxicity."
Allison DuBois, on whose life the television series "Medium" was based, threatened Randi with legal action for using a photo of her from her website in his December 17, 2004, commentary without her permission. Randi removed the photo and subsequently used a caricature of DuBois when mentioning her on his site, beginning with his December 23, 2005, commentary.
Sniffex, producer of a dowsing bomb detection device, sued Randi and the JREF in 2007 and lost. Sniffex sued Randi for his comments regarding a government test in which the Sniffex device failed. The company was later investigated and charged with fraud.
When he hosted his own radio show in the 1960s, Randi lived in a small house in Rumson, New Jersey, that featured a sign on the premises that read: "Randi — Charlatan". In a Fort Lauderdale public library in 1986, Randi, who had recently moved to Florida, met Venezuelan artist José Alvarez (born Deyvi Orangel Peña Arteaga). They eventually moved in together, and were married in Washington on July 2, 2013, with Randi turning 85 the next month. They live in Plantation, Florida.
In 1987, Randi became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Randi has said that one reason he became an American citizen was an incident while he was on tour with Alice Cooper where the Royal Canadian Mounted Police searched the band's lockers during a performance. Nothing illicit or illegal was found, yet the RCMP trashed the room.
In February 2006, Randi underwent coronary artery bypass surgery. In early February 2006, he was declared to be in stable condition and "receiving excellent care" with his recovery proceeding well. The weekly commentary updates to his Web site were made by guests while he was hospitalized. Randi recovered after his surgery and was able to help organize and attend the 2007 Amaz!ng Meeting (T.A.M.) in Las Vegas, Nevada, his annual convention of scientists, magicians, skeptics, atheists and freethinkers.
Randi was diagnosed with colorectal cancer in June 2009. He had a series of small tumors removed from his intestines during laparoscopic surgery. He announced the diagnosis a week later at The Amaz!ng Meeting 7, as well as the fact that he was scheduled to begin chemotherapy in the following weeks. He also said at the conference: "One day, I'm gonna die. That's all there is to it. Hey, it's too bad, but I've got to make room. I'm using a lot of oxygen and such—I think it's good use of oxygen myself, but of course, I'm a little prejudiced on the matter."
Randi underwent his final chemotherapy session on December 31, 2009, later saying that his chemotherapy experience was not as unpleasant as he had imagined it might be. In a video posted April 12, 2010, Randi stated that he had been given a clean bill of health.
In a March 21, 2010, blog entry, Randi came out as gay, a move he said was inspired by seeing the 2008 biographical drama film "Milk".
In the 1993 documentary "Secrets of the Psychics", Randi stated, "I've never involved myself in narcotics of any kind; I don't smoke; I don't drink, because that can easily just fuzz the edges of my rationality, fuzz the edges of my reasoning powers, and I want to be as aware as I possibly can. That means giving up a lot of fantasies that might be comforting in some ways, but I'm willing to give that up in order to live in an actually real world, as close as I can get to it".
In a video released on October 16, 2017, Randi revealed that he had recently suffered a minor stroke, and that he was under medical advice not to travel during his recovery, so would be unable to attend CSICon 2017 in Las Vegas later that month.
Randi is a registered Democrat.
The following are Guinness World Records:
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James Lind
James Lind (4 October 1716 – 13 July 1794) was a Scottish doctor. He was a pioneer of naval hygiene in the Royal Navy. By conducting one of the first ever clinical trials, he developed the theory that citrus fruits cured scurvy.
Lind argued for the health benefits of better ventilation aboard naval ships, the improved cleanliness of sailors' bodies, clothing and bedding, and below-deck fumigation with sulphur and arsenic. He also proposed that fresh water could be obtained by distilling sea water. His work advanced the practice of preventive medicine and improved nutrition.
Lind was born in Edinburgh, Scotland in 1716 into a family of merchants, then headed by his father, James Lind. He had an elder sister. He was educated at the High School in Edinburgh.
In 1731 he began his medical studies as an apprentice of George Langlands, a fellow of the Incorporation of Surgeons which preceded the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. In 1739, he entered the Navy as a surgeon's mate, serving in the Mediterranean, off the coast of West Africa and in the West Indies. By 1747 he had become surgeon of in the Channel Fleet, and conducted his experiment on scurvy while that ship was patrolling the Bay of Biscay. Just after that patrol he left the Navy, wrote his MD thesis on venereal diseases and earned his degree from the University of Edinburgh Medical School, and was granted a licence to practice in Edinburgh.
Scurvy is a disease now known to be caused by a vitamin C deficiency, but in Lind's day, the concept of vitamins was unknown. Vitamin C is necessary for the maintenance of healthy connective tissue. In 1740 the catastrophic result of Anson's circumnavigation attracted much attention in Europe; out of 1900 men, 1400 had died, most of them allegedly from having contracted scurvy. According to Lind, scurvy caused more deaths in the British fleets than French and Spanish arms.
Since antiquity in various parts of the world, and since the 17th century in England, it had been known that citrus fruit had an antiscorbutic effect, when John Woodall (1570–1643), an English military surgeon of the British East India Company recommended them but their use did not become widespread. Although Lind was not the first to suggest citrus fruit as a cure for scurvy, he was the first to study their effect by a systematic experiment in 1747. It ranks as one of the first reported, controlled, clinical experiments in the history of medicine, particularly for its use of control groups.
Lind thought that scurvy was due to putrefaction of the body which could be helped by acids, and thus included a dietary supplement of an acidic quality in the experiment. This began after two months at sea when the ship was afflicted with scurvy. He divided twelve scorbutic sailors into six groups of two. They all received the same diet but, in addition, group one was given a quart of cider daily, group two twenty-five drops of elixir of vitriol (sulfuric acid), group three six spoonfuls of vinegar, group four half a pint of seawater, group five received two oranges and one lemon, and the last group a spicy paste plus a drink of barley water. The treatment of group five stopped after six days when they ran out of fruit, but by that time one sailor was fit for duty while the other had almost recovered. Apart from that, only group one also showed some effect of its treatment.
Shortly after this experiment Lind retired from the Navy and at first practised privately as a doctor. In 1753, he published "A treatise of the scurvy", which was virtually ignored. In 1758 he was appointed chief physician of the Royal Naval Hospital Haslar at Gosport. When James Cook went on his first voyage he carried wort (0.1 mg vitamin C per 100 g), sauerkraut (10–15 mg per 100 g) and a syrup, or "rob", of oranges and lemons (the juice contains 40–60 mg of vitamin C per 100 g) as antiscorbutics, but only the results of the trials on wort were published. In 1762 Lind's "Essay on the most effectual means of preserving the health of seamen" appeared. In it he recommended growing salad—i.e. watercress (662 mg vitamin C per 100 g)—on wet blankets. This was actually put in practice, and in the winter of 1775 the British Army in North America was supplied with mustard and cress seeds. However Lind, like most of the medical profession, believed that scurvy was essentially a result of ill-digested and putrefying food within the body, bad water, excessive work and living in a damp atmosphere which prevented healthful perspiration. Thus, while he recognised the benefits of citrus fruit (although he weakened the effect by switching to a boiled concentrated or "rob", the production of which unfortunately destroyed the vitamin C), he never advocated citrus juice as a single solution. He believed that scurvy had multiple causes which therefore required multiple remedies.
The medical establishment ashore continued to be wedded to the idea that scurvy was a disease of putrefaction, curable by the administration of elixir of vitriol, infusions of wort and other remedies designed to 'ginger up' the system. It could not account for the benefits of citrus fruits and dismissed the evidence in their favour as unproven and anecdotal. In the Navy however, experience had convinced many officers and surgeons that citrus juices provided the answer to scurvy even if the reason was unknown. On the insistence of senior officers, led by Rear Admiral Alan Gardner, in 1794 lemon juice was issued on board the "Suffolk" on a twenty-three-week, non-stop voyage to India. The daily ration of two-thirds of an ounce mixed in grog contained just about the minimum daily intake of 10 mg vitamin C. There was no serious outbreak of scurvy. This astonishing event resulted in a widespread demand within the Navy for lemon juice, backed by the Sick and Hurt Board whose numbers had recently been augmented by two practical naval surgeons who were well aware of Lind's experiment with citrus. The following year the Admiralty accepted its recommendation that lemon juice should be issued routinely to the whole fleet. Another Scot, Archibald Menzies, picked up citrus plants and dropped them off at Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii on the Vancouver Expedition, to help the Navy re-supply in the Pacific.
This was not the immediate end of scurvy in the Navy, as lemon juice was at first in such short supply that it could only be used in home waters as a cure under the direction of the surgeons rather than issued routinely as a preventative. Only after 1800 did the supply increase sufficiently so that, on the insistence of Admiral Lord St Vincent, it began to be issued generally.
Lind noticed that typhus disappeared from the top floor of his hospital, where patients were bathed and given clean clothes and bedding. However, incidence was very high on the lower floors where such hygiene measures were not in place. Lind recommended that sailors be stripped, shaved, scrubbed, and issued clean clothes and bedding regularly. As a result, British seamen did not suffer from typhus, giving the British navy a significant competitive advantage over the French.
In the 18th century sailors took along water, cordial and milk in casks. According to the "Regulations and Instructions relating to His Majesty's Service at Sea", which had been published for the first time in 1733 by the Admiralty, sailors were entitled to a gallon of weak beer daily (5/6 of the usual British gallon, equivalent to the modern American gallon or slightly more than three and a half litres). As the beer had been boiled in the brewing process it was reasonably free from bacteria and lasted for months unlike water kept in a cask for the same time. In the Mediterranean, wine was also issued, often fortified with brandy.
A frigate with 240 men, equipped with stores for four months, carried more than one hundred tons of drinkable liquid. Water quality depended on the original source of the water, the condition of the casks and for how long it had been kept. During normal times sailors weren't allowed to take any water away. When water got scarce, it was rationed and rain water was collected with spread sails. Fresh water was also collected when an opportunity presented itself "en voyage", but watering places were often marshy, and in the tropics infested with malaria.
In 1759, Lind discovered that the steam of heated salt water was fresh. He also proposed to use solar energy for the distillation of water. But only when a new type of cooking stove was introduced in 1810 did the possibility arise of producing fresh water by distillation on a useful scale.
Lind's final work was published in 1768; the "Essay on Diseases Incidental to Europeans in Hot Climates, with the Method of Preventing their fatal Consequences." It was a descriptive work on the symptoms and treatments of tropical disease, and was not specifically related to naval medicine and served more as a general text for doctors and British emigrants. The "Essay" was routinely used as a medical text in Britain in the fifty years following publication. Seven editions were printed, including two which were produced after Lind's death.
Lind was married to Isabella Dickie and they had two sons – John and James. In 1773 he was living on Princes Street in what was then a brand new house facing onto Edinburgh Castle.
The elder son, John Lind (1751–1794), studied medicine at St Andrews University and graduated in 1777, then succeeded James Lind as Chief Physician at Haslar Hospital in 1783. The younger son, James (1765–1823), also embarked on a career with the British navy. His cousin was James Lind (1736-1812).
The younger son James served at sea for a number of years, rising to the rank of post-captain, and was notable for his role in the Battle of Vizagapatam in 1804, for which he was knighted.
He died at Gosport in Hampshire, a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath in 1794. He is buried in St Mary's Parish Churchyard in Portchester.
James Lind's is one of twenty-three names to feature on the Frieze of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine building in Keppel Street, London. Names were selected by a committee of unknown constitution who chose those who were deemed to be pioneers in public health and tropical medicine. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16279 |
James Clavell
James Clavell (born Charles Edmund Dumaresq Clavell, 10 October 1921 – 6 September 1994), was an Australian (and later naturalized American) novelist, screenwriter, director, and World War II veteran and prisoner of war. Clavell is best known as the author of his Asian Saga novels, a number of which have had television adaptations. Clavell also authored such screenplays as those for "The Fly" (1958) (based on the short story by George Langelaan) and "The Great Escape" (1963) (based on the personal account of Paul Brickhill).
Born in Australia, Clavell was the son of Commander Richard Charles Clavell, a Royal Navy officer who was stationed in Australia with the Royal Australian Navy from 1920 to 1922. Clavell was educated at Portsmouth Grammar School, after which he returned to Australia.
During 1940, Clavell joined the Royal Artillery. Though trained for desert warfare, after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 he was sent to Singapore to fight the Japanese. The ship taking his unit was sunk en route to Singapore, and the survivors were picked up by a Dutch boat fleeing to India. The commander, described by Clavell years later as a "total twit," insisted that they be dropped off at the nearest port to fight the war despite having no weapons.
Shot in the face, he was captured in Java in 1942 and sent to a Japanese prisoner of war camp on Java. Later he was transferred to Changi Prison in Singapore, where only 1 in 15 prisoners survived.
In 1981, Clavell recounted: "'Changi became my university instead of my prison. Among the inmates there were experts in all walks of life -the high and the low roads. I studied and absorbed everything I could from physics to counterfeiting, but most of all I learned the art of surviving, the most important course of all." Prisoners were fed a quarter-pound of rice per day, one egg per week and occasional vegetables. Clavell believed that if atomic bombs were not dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki he would not have survived the war."
Clavell did not talk about his wartime experiences with anyone, even his wife, for 15 years after the war. For a time he carried a can of sardines in his pocket at all times and fought an urge to forage for food in trash cans. He also experienced bad dreams and a nervous stomach kept him awake nights.
By 1946, Clavell had become a captain, but a motorcycle accident ended his military career. He enrolled with the University of Birmingham, where he met April Stride, an actress, whom he married in 1949 (date of marriage sometimes given as 1951). He would visit her on set while making films and began to be interested in becoming a film director.
Clavell entered the film industry via distribution and worked at that in England for a number of years. He tried to get into producing but had no luck so started writing screenplays. In 1954 he moved to New York, then to Hollywood. While trying to break into screenwriting he paid the bills working as a carpenter.
In 1956, he sold a script about pilots to RKO, "Far Alert". The same year Michael Pate bought a story of his, "Forbidden Territory," for filming.
Neither was filmed but "Far Alert" kept being sold and re-sold. "In 18 months it brought in $87,000," he later said. "We kept getting paid for writing it and rewriting it as it went from one studio to another. It was wonderful." It was later sold to Fox where it attracted the attention of Robert L. Lippert who hired Clavell to write the science-fiction horror movie "The Fly" (1958). This became a hit and launched Clavell as a screenwriter.
He wrote "Watusi" (1959) for director Kurt Neumann, who had also made "The Fly".
Clavell wrote "Five Gates to Hell" (1959) for Lippert, and when they could not find a suitable director, Clavell was given the job.
Paramount hired Clavell to write a film about the Bounty mutineers. It ended up not being made. Neither was a proposed movie about Francis Gary Powers made. Clavell did write, produce, and direct a Western at Paramount, "Walk Like a Dragon" (1960).
In 1959, Clavell wrote "Moon Landing" and "First Woman in the Moon", two episodes of "Men into Space", a "day after tomorrow"-style science fiction drama, which depicted, in realistic terms, the (at the time) near future of space exploration.
In 1960 he had written a Broadway show with John Sturges, "White Alice", a thriller set in the Arctic. It was never produced.
In 1960 the Writers Guild went on strike, meaning Clavell was unable to work. He decided to write a novel, "King Rat", based on his time at Changi. It took him three months and several more months after that to rework it. The book was published in 1962 and sold well. It was turned into a film in 1965.
In 1961, Clavell announced he had formed his own company, Cee Productions, who would make the films "King Rat", "White Alice" and "No Hands on the Clock".
In 1962 he signed a multi picture contract with a Canadian company to produce and direct two films there, "Circle of Greed" and "The Sweet and the Bitter". Only the second was made and it was not released until 1967.
He wrote scripts for the war films "The Great Escape" (1963) and "633 Squadron" (1964).
He wrote a short story, "The Children's Story" (1964) and the script for "The Satan Bug" (1965), directed by John Sturges who had made "The Great Escape". He also wrote "Richard Sahib" for Sturges which was never made.
Clavell wanted to write a second novel because "that separates the men from the boys". The money from "King Rat" enabled him to spend two years researching and then writing what became "Tai-Pan" (1966). It was a huge bestseller, and Clavell sold the film rights for a sizeable amount (although the movie would not be made until 1986).
Clavell returned to filmmaking. He wrote, produced and directed "To Sir, With Love" (1967), featuring Sidney Poitier and based on E. R. Braithwaite's semiautobiographical 1959 book. It was a huge critical and commercial success.
Clavell was now in much demand as a filmmaker. He produced and directed "Where's Jack?" (1969), a highwayman film which was a commercial failure. So too was an epic film about the Thirty Years' War, "The Last Valley" (1971).
Clavell returned to novel writing, which was the focus of the remainder of his career. He spent three years researching and writing "Shōgun" (1975), about an Englishman who becomes a samurai in feudal Japan. It was another massive best seller. Clavell was heavily involved in the 1980 mini-series which starred Richard Chamberlain and achieved huge ratings.
In the late 1970s he spent three years researching and writing his fourth novel, "Noble House" (1981), set in Hong Kong in 1963. It was another best seller and was turned into a miniseries in 1986.
Clavell briefly returned to filmmaking and directed a thirty-minute adaptation of his novelette "The Children's Story". He was meant to do a sequel to "Shogun" but instead found himself writing a novel about the 1979 revolution in Iran, "Whirlwind" (1986).
Clavell eventually returned to the "Shogun" sequel, writing "Gai-Jin" (1993). This was his last completed novel at the time of his death.
"The New York Times" said that "Clavell has a gift. It may be something that cannot be taught or earned. He breathes narrative ... He writes in the oldest and grandest tradition that fiction knows". His first novel, "King Rat" (1962), was a semi-fictional account of his prison experiences at Changi. When the book was published it became an immediate best-seller, and three years later it was adapted as a movie. His next novel, "Tai-Pan" (1966), was a fictional account of Jardine Matheson's successful career in Hong Kong, as told via the character who was to become Clavell's heroic archetype, Dirk Struan. Struan's descendants were characters in almost all of his following books. "Tai-Pan" was adapted as a movie in 1986.
Clavell's third novel, "Shōgun" (1975), is set in 17th century Japan, and it tells the story of a shipwrecked English navigator in Japan, based on that of William Adams. When the story was made into a TV miniseries in 1980, produced by Clavell, it became the second highest rated miniseries in history with an audience of more than 120 million, after "Roots".
Clavell's fourth novel, "Noble House" (1981), became a bestseller that year and was adapted into a TV miniseries in 1988.
Following the success of "Noble House", Clavell wrote "Thrump-o-moto" (1985), "Whirlwind" (1986), and "Gai-Jin" (1993).
Peter Marlowe is Clavell's author surrogate and a character of the novels "King Rat" and "Noble House" (1981); he is also mentioned once (as a friend of Andrew Gavallan's) in "Whirlwind" (1986). Featured most prominently in "King Rat", Marlowe is an English prisoner of war in Changi prison during World War II. In "Noble House", set two decades later, he is a novelist researching a book about Hong Kong. Marlowe's ancestors are also mentioned in other Clavell novels.
In "Noble House" Marlowe is mentioned as having written a novel about Changi which, although fictionalized, is based on real events (like those in "King Rat"). When asked which character was based on him, Marlowe answers, "Perhaps I'm not there at all", although in a later scene, he admits he was "the hero, of course".
The Asian Saga consists of seven novels:
In 1963 Clavell became a naturalized citizen of the United States. Politically, he was said to have been an ardent individualist and proponent of "laissez-faire" capitalism, as many of his books' heroes exemplify. Clavell admired Ayn Rand, founder of the Objectivist school of philosophy, and sent her a copy of "Noble House" during 1981 inscribed: "This is for Ayn Rand—one of the real, true talents on this earth for which many, many thanks. James C, New York, 2 September 81."
In 1994, Clavell died in Switzerland from a stroke while suffering from cancer. He died one month before his 73rd birthday. After sponsorship by his widow, the library and archive of the Royal Artillery Museum at the Royal Arsenal, Woolwich, in southeast London, was renamed the James Clavell Library in his honour. The library was later closed pending the opening of a new facility in Salisbury, Wiltshire; however, James Clavell Square on the Woolwich riverside remains. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16283 |
John Cade
John Frederick Joseph Cade AO
(18 January 1912 – 16 November 1980) was an Australian psychiatrist who in 1948 discovered the effects of lithium carbonate as a mood stabilizer in the treatment of bipolar disorder, then known as manic depression. At a time when the standard treatments for psychosis were electroconvulsive therapy and lobotomy, lithium had the distinction of being the first effective medication available to treat a mental illness.
John Cade was born in Murtoa, in the Wimmera region of Victoria, Australia. John's father David was Murtoa's general practitioner. Ellen, John's mother, and younger brothers David and Frank completed the family. When John was a small boy, his father left for World War I and served in Gallipoli and France. On return from the war, his father suffered from 'war-weariness' and had difficulty in continuing in general practice. Therefore, his father sold the practice and accepted a position with the Mental Hygiene Department. Over the next 25 years, Dr Cade Sr became medical superintendent at several Victorian mental hospitals, namely Sunbury, Beechworth and Mont Park. John and his brothers spent many of their younger years living within the grounds of these institutions, which had a great bearing on John's later deep understanding of the needs of the mentally ill. John was educated at Scotch College, Melbourne, matriculating in 1928. He then studied medicine at the University of Melbourne, graduating at the age of 21 years with honours in all subjects. He became a House Officer at St Vincent's Hospital and then Royal Children's Hospital before becoming severely ill with bilateral pneumococcal pneumonia. While he was convalescing, John fell in love with one of his nurses, Jean. They married in 1937.
Like his father before him, Cade left his young family to fight for Australia in the Armed Forces in World War II. Cade was appointed captain, Australian Army Medical Corps, A.I.F., on 1 July 1940 and posted to the 2nd/9th Field Ambulance. Although trained as a psychiatrist, Dr. Cade served as a surgeon and departed for Singapore in 1941 on RMS Queen Mary. He was promoted to major in September 1941. After the Fall of Singapore to Japan, he became a prisoner of war at Changi Prison from February 1942 to September 1945. During his imprisonment, he reportedly would observe some fellow inmates having strange, vacillating behaviour. He thought perhaps a toxin was affecting their brains and when it was eliminated through their urine, they lost their symptoms.
After the war, Cade recuperated very briefly in Heidelberg Hospital, then took up a position at Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital in Melbourne. It was at an unused kitchen in Bundoora where he conducted crude experiments which led to the discovery of lithium as a treatment of bipolar disorder. Since he had no sophisticated analytical equipment these experiments mostly consisted of injecting urine from mentally ill patients into the abdomen of guinea pigs. His early experiments suggested to him that the urine from manic patients was more toxic. There are 2 toxic substances in urine: urea and uric acid. He found urea was the same in both ill and healthy people. He started to work on uric acid. In order to do that, he made artificial solutions of uric acid. To make up different strengths of uric acid he needed to convert it unto a substance that he could more easily manipulate. On its own uric acid would not dissolve in water. Then, in an effort to increase the water solubility of uric acid, lithium was added to make a solution of lithium urate. Cade found that in the guinea pigs injected with lithium carbonate solution, as a control solution, the guinea pigs were more restful. His use of careful controls in his experiments revealed that the lithium ion had a calming effect by itself, but even this finding may have been caused by the toxic effects of an excessive dose of lithium. After ingesting lithium himself to ensure its safety in humans, Cade began a small-scale trial of lithium citrate and/or lithium carbonate on some of his patients diagnosed with mania, dementia præcox or melancholia, with outstanding results. The calming effect was so robust that Cade speculated that mania was caused by a deficiency in lithium.
While Cade's results appeared highly promising, side-effects of lithium in some cases led to non-compliance. Toxicity of lithium led to several deaths of patients undergoing lithium treatment. The problem of toxicity was greatly reduced when suitable tests were developed to measure the lithium level in the blood. Moreover, as a naturally occurring chemical, lithium salt could not be patented, meaning that its manufacturing and sales were not considered commercially viable. These factors prevented its widespread adoption in psychiatry for some years, particularly in the United States, where its use was banned until 1970.
In 1952 Cade was appointed Superintendent and Dean of the clinical school at Royal Park Hospital. Two years later, at the request of the Mental Hygiene Authority which was planning to remodel Royal Park, he visited Britain for six months to inspect psychiatric institutions. On his return, he introduced modern facilities and replaced the rather authoritarian approach to patient care with a lot more personal and informal style that included group therapy. Concerned at the number of alcohol-related cases, he supported voluntary admission to aid early detection and later proposed the use of large doses of thiamine in the treatment of alcoholism. Cade served as the Superintendent at Royal Park until his retirement in 1977.
He served as the federal president of the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists in 1969–70, and also as the president for its Victoria branch from 1963 until his death in 1980. In the end, Dr. Cade's discovery did receive widespread acknowledgements and praise. For his contribution to psychiatry, he was awarded a Kittay International Award in 1974 (with Mogens Schou from Denmark), and he was invited to be a Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists. In 1976, Cade was one of the first to be made an Officer of the Order of Australia. Dr. Cade remained humble about his chance discovery, describing himself as merely a gold prospector who happened to find a nugget. Finally, in July 2004, the Medical Journal of Australia reported that Cade's 1949 article, "Lithium salts in the treatment of psychotic excitement", was the number one most cited MJA article.
John Cade died of oesophageal cancer at Fitzroy on 16 November 1980, and is buried at Yan Yean Cemetery in Whittlesea. Recognition of Cade's pioneering work continued after his death. The Adult Acute unit at Royal Park Hospital was named the "John Cade Unit" in recognition of Cade's long service to the hospital. After Royal Park's closure, the newly opened Adult Acute Psychiatric Unit at Royal Melbourne Hospital was named "John Cade Adult Acute Inpatient Unit". In 1980 the first John Cade memorial lecture was delivered by Mogens Schou at the congress in Jerusalem of the Collegian International Psychopharmacologium. In 2013 the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) offered two $750 000 per annum fellowships for mental health research, entitled the "NHMRC John Cade Fellowship in Mental Health Research". The Fellowship recipients were Professor Helen Christensen of the University of New South Wales and Professor John McGrath of The University of Queensland. The RANZCP awards The John Cade Memorial Medal to a final year Victorian medical student following a special clinical examination at Monash University or the University of Melbourne each year. The Faculty of Medicine at University of Melbourne also awards the John Cade Memorial Prize.
In 2004, Film Australia and SBS screened the documentary "Troubled Minds – The Lithium Revolution", a 60-minute documentary portraying John Cade's discovery of the use of Lithium in mental illness. The documentary received international recognition, winning the main prize at the International Vega Awards for Excellence in Scientific Broadcasting.
"Troubled Minds" was also recognised locally with writer/director Dennis K. Smith winning the AWGIE Award for Best Documentary. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16285 |
Jürgen Habermas
Jürgen Habermas (, ; ; born 18 June 1929) is a German philosopher and sociologist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of epistemology and social theory, the analysis of advanced capitalism and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, albeit within the confines of the natural law tradition, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and poststructuralism.
Habermas was born in Gummersbach, Rhine Province, in 1929. He was born with a cleft palate and had corrective surgery twice during childhood. Habermas argues that his speech disability made him think differently about the importance of deep dependence and of communication.
As a young teenager, he was profoundly affected by World War II. Until his graduation from gymnasium, Habermas lived in Gummersbach, near Cologne. His father, Ernst Habermas, was Executive director of the Cologne Chamber of Industry and Commerce, and was described by Habermas as a Nazi sympathizer and, from 1933, a member of the NSDAP. Habermas himself was a "Jungvolkführer", a leader of the German Jungvolk, which was a section of the Hitler Youth. He was brought up in a staunchly Protestant milieu, his grandfather being the director of the seminary in Gummersbach. He studied at the universities of Göttingen (1949/50), Zurich (1950/51), and Bonn (1951–54) and earned a doctorate in philosophy from Bonn in 1954 with a dissertation written on the conflict between the absolute and history in Schelling's thought, entitled, "" ("The Absolute and History: On the Schism in Schelling's Thought"). His dissertation committee included Erich Rothacker and Oskar Becker.
From 1956 on, he studied philosophy and sociology under the critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno at the Goethe University Frankfurt's Institute for Social Research, but because of a rift between the two over his dissertation—Horkheimer had made unacceptable demands for revision—as well as his own belief that the Frankfurt School had become paralyzed with political skepticism and disdain for modern culture, he finished his habilitation in political science at the University of Marburg under the Marxist Wolfgang Abendroth. His habilitation work was entitled "" (published in English translation in 1989 as "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society"). It is a detailed social history of the development of the bourgeois public sphere from its origins in the 18th century salons up to its transformation through the influence of capital-driven mass media. In 1961 he became a "Privatdozent" in Marburg, and—in a move that was highly unusual for the German academic scene of that time—he was offered the position of "extraordinary professor" (professor without chair) of philosophy at the University of Heidelberg (at the instigation of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Karl Löwith) in 1962, which he accepted. In this same year he gained his first serious public attention, in Germany, with the publication of his habilitation. In 1964, strongly supported by Adorno, Habermas returned to Frankfurt to take over Horkheimer's chair in philosophy and sociology. The philosopher Albrecht Wellmer was his assistant in Frankfurt from 1966 to 1970.
He accepted the position of Director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of the Scientific-Technical World in Starnberg (near Munich) in 1971, and worked there until 1983, two years after the publication of his magnum opus, "The Theory of Communicative Action". He was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.
Habermas then returned to his chair at Frankfurt and the directorship of the Institute for Social Research. Since retiring from Frankfurt in 1993, Habermas has continued to publish extensively. In 1986, he received the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the , which is the highest honour awarded in German research. He also holds the position of "Permanent Visiting" Professor at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and "Theodor Heuss Professor" at The New School, New York.
Habermas was awarded The Prince of Asturias Award in Social Sciences of 2003. Habermas was also the 2004 Kyoto Laureate in the Arts and Philosophy section. He traveled to San Diego and on 5 March 2005, as part of the University of San Diego's Kyoto Symposium, gave a speech entitled "The Public Role of Religion in Secular Context", regarding the evolution of separation of church and state from neutrality to intense secularism. He received the 2005 Holberg International Memorial Prize (about €520,000). In 2007, Habermas was listed as the seventh most-cited author in the humanities (including the social sciences) by "The Times Higher Education Guide", ahead of Max Weber and behind Erving Goffman.
Jürgen Habermas is the father of Rebekka Habermas, historian of German social and cultural history and professor of modern history at the University of Göttingen.
Habermas is a famed teacher and mentor. Among his most prominent students were the pragmatic philosopher Herbert Schnädelbach (theorist of discourse distinction and rationality), the political sociologist Claus Offe (professor at the Hertie School of Governance in Berlin), the social philosopher Johann Arnason (professor at La Trobe University and chief editor of the journal "Thesis Eleven"), the social philosopher Hans-Herbert Kögler (Chair of Philosophy at the University of North Florida), the sociological theorist Hans Joas (professor at the University of Erfurt and at the University of Chicago), the theorist of societal evolution Klaus Eder, the social philosopher Axel Honneth (the current director of the Institute for Social Research), the political theorist David Rasmussen (professor at Boston College and chief editor of the journal "Philosophy & Social Criticism"), the environmental ethicist Konrad Ott, the anarcho-capitalist philosopher Hans-Hermann Hoppe (who came to reject much of Habermas's thought), the American philosopher Thomas McCarthy, the co-creator of mindful inquiry in social research Jeremy J. Shapiro, and the assassinated Serbian prime minister Zoran Đinđić.
Habermas has constructed a comprehensive framework of philosophy and social theory drawing on a number of intellectual traditions:
Jürgen Habermas considers his major contribution to be the development of the concept and theory of communicative reason or communicative rationality, which distinguishes itself from the rationalist tradition, by locating rationality in structures of interpersonal linguistic communication rather than in the structure of the cosmos. This social theory advances the goals of human emancipation, while maintaining an inclusive universalist moral framework. This framework rests on the argument called universal pragmatics—that all speech acts have an inherent telos (the Greek word for "purpose")—the goal of mutual understanding, and that human beings possess the communicative competence to bring about such understanding. Habermas built the framework out of the speech-act philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, J. L. Austin and John Searle, the sociological theory of the interactional constitution of mind and self of George Herbert Mead, the theories of moral development of Jean Piaget and Lawrence Kohlberg, and the discourse ethics of his Frankfurt colleague and fellow student Karl-Otto Apel.
Habermas's works resonate within the traditions of Kant and the Enlightenment and of democratic socialism through his emphasis on the potential for transforming the world and arriving at a more humane, just, and egalitarian society through the realization of the human potential for reason, in part through discourse ethics. While Habermas has stated that the Enlightenment is an "unfinished project," he argues it should be corrected and complemented, not discarded. In this he distances himself from the Frankfurt School, criticizing it, as well as much of postmodernist thought, for excessive pessimism, radicalism, and exaggerations.
Within sociology, Habermas's major contribution was the development of a comprehensive theory of societal evolution and modernization focusing on the difference between communicative rationality and rationalization on one hand and strategic / instrumental rationality and rationalization on the other. This includes a critique from a communicative standpoint of the differentiation-based theory of social systems developed by Niklas Luhmann, a student of Talcott Parsons.
His defence of modernity and civil society has been a source of inspiration to others, and is considered a major philosophical alternative to the varieties of poststructuralism. He has also offered an influential analysis of late capitalism.
Habermas perceives the rationalization, humanization and democratization of society in terms of the institutionalization of the potential for rationality that is inherent in the communicative competence that is unique to the human species. Habermas contends that communicative competence has developed through the course of evolution, but in contemporary society it is often suppressed or weakened by the way in which major domains of social life, such as the market, the state, and organizations, have been given over to or taken over by strategic/instrumental rationality, so that the logic of the system supplants that of the lifeworld.
Habermas introduces the concept of "reconstructive science" with a double purpose: to place the "general theory of society" between philosophy and social science and re-establish the rift between the "great theorization" and the "empirical research".
The model of "rational reconstructions" represents the main thread of the surveys about the "structures" of the world of life ("culture", "society" and "personality") and their respective "functions" (cultural reproductions, social integrations and socialization). For this purpose, the dialectics between "symbolic representation" of "the structures subordinated to all worlds of
life" ("internal relationships") and the "material reproduction" of the social systems in their complex ("external relationships" between social systems and environment) has to be considered.
This model finds an application, above all, in the "theory of the social evolution", starting from the reconstruction of the necessary conditions for a phylogeny of the socio-cultural life forms (the "hominization") until an analysis of the development of "social formations", which Habermas subdivides into primitive, traditional, modern and contemporary formations.
"This paper is an attempt, primarily, to formalize the model of "reconstruction of the logic of development" of "social formations" summed up by Habermas through the differentiation between vital world and social systems (and, within them, through the "rationalization of the world of life" and the "growth in complexity of the social systems"). Secondly, it tries to offer some methodological clarifications about the "explanation of the dynamics" of "historical processes" and, in particular, about the "theoretical meaning" of the evolutional theory's propositions. Even if the German sociologist considers that the "ex-post rational reconstructions" and "the models system/environment" cannot have a complete "historiographical application", these certainly act as a general premise in the argumentative structure of the "historical explanation"".
In "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere," Habermas argues that prior to the 18th century, European culture had been dominated by a "representational" culture, where one party sought to "represent" itself on its audience by overwhelming its subjects. As an example of "representational" culture, Habermas argued that Louis XIV's Palace of Versailles was meant to show the greatness of the French state and its King by overpowering the senses of visitors to the Palace. Habermas identifies "representational" culture as corresponding to the feudal stage of development according to Marxist theory, arguing that the coming of the capitalist stage of development marked the appearance of "Öffentlichkeit" (the public sphere). In the culture characterized by "Öffentlichkeit", there occurred a public space outside of the control by the state, where individuals exchanged views and knowledge.
In Habermas's view, the growth in newspapers, journals, reading clubs, Masonic lodges, and coffeehouses in 18th-century Europe, all in different ways, marked the gradual replacement of "representational" culture with "Öffentlichkeit" culture. Habermas argued that the essential characteristic of the "Öffentlichkeit" culture was its "critical" nature. Unlike "representational" culture where only one party was active and the other passive, the "Öffentlichkeit" culture was characterized by a dialogue as individuals either met in conversation, or exchanged views via the print media. Habermas maintains that as Britain was the most liberal country in Europe, the culture of the public sphere emerged there first around 1700, and the growth of "Öffentlichkeit" culture took place over most of the 18th century in Continental Europe. In his view, the French Revolution was in large part caused by the collapse of "representational" culture, and its replacement by "Öffentlichkeit" culture. Though Habermas's main concern in "The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" was to expose what he regarded as the deceptive nature of free institutions in the West, his book had a major effect on the historiography of the French Revolution.
According to Habermas, a variety of factors resulted in the eventual decay of the public sphere, including the growth of a commercial mass media, which turned the critical public into a passive consumer public; and the welfare state, which merged the state with society so thoroughly that the public sphere was squeezed out. It also turned the "public sphere" into a site of self-interested contestation for the resources of the state rather than a space for the development of a public-minded rational consensus.
His most known work to date, the "Theory of Communicative Action" (1981), is based on an adaptation of Talcott Parsons AGIL Paradigm. In this work, Habermas voiced criticism of the process of modernization, which he saw as inflexible direction forced through by economic and administrative rationalization. Habermas outlined how our everyday lives are penetrated by formal systems as parallel to development of the welfare state, corporate capitalism and mass consumption. These reinforcing trends rationalize public life. Disfranchisement of citizens occurs as political parties and interest groups become rationalized and representative democracy replaces participatory one. In consequence, boundaries between public and private, the individual and society, the system and the lifeworld are deteriorating. Democratic public life cannot develop where matters of public importance are not discussed by citizens. An "ideal speech situation" requires participants to have the same capacities of discourse, social equality and their words are not confused by ideology or other errors. In this version of the consensus theory of truth Habermas maintains that truth is what would be agreed upon in an ideal speech situation.
Habermas has expressed optimism about the possibility of the revival of the public sphere. He discerns a hope for the future where the representative democracy-reliant nation-state is replaced by a deliberative democracy-reliant political organism based on the equal rights and obligations of citizens. In such a direct democracy-driven system, the activist public sphere is needed for debates on matters of public importance and as well as the mechanism for that discussion to affect the decision-making process.
Several noted academics have provided various criticisms of Habermas's notions regarding the public sphere. John B. Thompson, a Professor of Sociology at the University of Cambridge and a fellow of Jesus College, Cambridge, has claimed that Habermas's notion of the public sphere is antiquated due to the proliferation of mass-media communications.
Michael Schudson from the University of California, San Diego argues more generally that a public sphere as a place of purely rational independent debate never existed.
Nancy Fraser, the Henry A. and Louise Loeb Professor of Political and Social Science and professor of philosophy at The New School in New York City, is a noted feminist critic of Habermas's work on the public sphere, arguing for the existence of multiple spheres and counterpublics.
Habermas offered some early criticisms in an essay, "Modernity versus Postmodernity" (1981), which has achieved wide recognition. In that essay, Habermas raises the issue of whether, in light of the failures of the twentieth century, we "should try to hold on to the "intentions of the Enlightenment", feeble as they may be, or should we declare the entire project of modernity a lost cause?" Habermas refuses to give up on the possibility of a rational, "scientific" understanding of the life-world.
Habermas has several main criticisms of postmodernism:
Habermas is famous as a public intellectual as well as a scholar; most notably, in the 1980s he used the popular press to attack the German historians Ernst Nolte, Michael Stürmer, Klaus Hildebrand and Andreas Hillgruber. Habermas first expressed his views on the above-mentioned historians in the "Die Zeit" on 11 July 1986 in a "feuilleton" (a type of culture and arts opinion essay in German newspapers) entitled "A Kind of Settlement of Damages". Habermas criticized Nolte, Hildebrand, Stürmer and Hillgruber for "apologistic" history writing in regard to the Nazi era, and for seeking to "close Germany's opening to the West" that in Habermas's view had existed since 1945.
Habermas argued that Nolte, Stürmer, Hildebrand and Hillgruber had tried to detach Nazi rule and the Holocaust from the mainstream of German history, explain away Nazism as a reaction to Bolshevism, and partially rehabilitate the reputation of the Wehrmacht (German Army) during World War II. Habermas wrote that Stürmer was trying to create a "vicarious religion" in German history which, together with the work of Hillgruber, glorifying the last days of the German Army on the Eastern Front, was intended to serve as a "kind of NATO philosophy colored with German nationalism". About Hillgruber's statement that Adolf Hitler wanted to exterminate the Jews "because only such a 'racial revolution' could lend permanence to the world-power status of his "Reich"", Habermas wrote: "Since Hillgruber does not use the verb in the subjunctive, one does not know whether the historian has adopted the perspective of the particulars this time too".
Habermas wrote: "The unconditional opening of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West is the greatest intellectual achievement of our postwar period; my generation should be especially proud of this. This event cannot and should not be stabilized by a kind of NATO philosophy colored with German nationalism. The opening of the Federal Republic has been achieved precisely by overcoming the ideology of Central Europe that our revisionists are trying to warm up for us with their geopolitical drumbeat about "the old geographically central position of the Germans in Europe" (Stürmer) and "the reconstruction of the destroyed European Center" (Hillgruber). The only patriotism that will not estrange us from the West is a constitutional patriotism."
The so-called "Historikerstreit" ("Historians' Quarrel") was not at all one-sided, because Habermas was himself attacked by scholars like Joachim Fest, Hagen Schulze, Horst Möller, Imanuel Geiss and Klaus Hildebrand. In turn, Habermas was supported by historians such as Martin Broszat, Eberhard Jäckel, Hans Mommsen, and Hans-Ulrich Wehler.
Habermas and Jacques Derrida engaged in a series of disputes beginning in the 1980s and culminating in a mutual understanding and friendship in the late 1990s that lasted until Derrida's death in 2004. They originally came in contact when Habermas invited Derrida to speak at The University of Frankfurt in 1984. The next year Habermas published "Beyond a Temporalized Philosophy of Origins: Derrida" in "The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity" in which he described Derrida's method as being unable to provide a foundation for social critique. Derrida, citing Habermas as an example, remarked that, "those who have accused me of reducing philosophy to literature or logic to rhetoric ... have visibly and carefully avoided reading me". After Derrida's final rebuttal in 1989 the two philosophers did not continue, but, as Derrida described it, groups in the academy "conducted a kind of 'war', in which we ourselves never took part, either personally or directly".
At the end of the 1990s, Habermas approached Derrida at a party held at an American university where both were lecturing. They then met at Paris over dinner, and participated afterwards in many joint projects. In 2000 they held a joint seminar on problems of philosophy, right, ethics, and politics at the University of Frankfurt. In December 2000, in Paris, Habermas gave a lecture entitled "How to answer the ethical question?" at the "Judeities. Questions for Jacques Derrida" conference organized by Joseph Cohen and Raphael Zagury-Orly. Following the lecture by Habermas, both thinkers engaged in a very heated debate on Heidegger and the possibility of Ethics. The conference volume was published at the Editions Galilée (Paris) in 2002, and subsequently in English at Fordham University Press (2007).
In the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, Derrida and Habermas laid out their individual opinions on 9/11 and the War on Terror in Giovanna Borradori's "Philosophy in a Time of Terror: Dialogues with Jürgen Habermas and Jacques Derrida". In early 2003, both Habermas and Derrida were very active in opposing the coming Iraq War; in a manifesto that later became the book "Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe", the two called for a tighter unification of the states of the European Union in order to create a power capable of opposing American foreign policy. Derrida wrote a foreword expressing his unqualified subscription to Habermas's declaration of February 2003 ("February 15, or, What Binds Europeans Together: Plea for a Common Foreign Policy, Beginning in Core Europe") in the book, which was a reaction to the Bush administration's demands upon European nations for support in the coming Iraq War. Habermas has offered further context for this declaration in an interview.
Habermas's attitudes toward religion have changed throughout the years. Analyst Phillippe Portier identifies three phases in Habermas's attitude towards this social sphere: the first, in the decade of 1980, when the younger Jürgen, in the spirit of Marx, argued against religion seeing it as an "alienating reality" and "control tool"; the second phase, from the mid-1980s to the beginning of the 21st Century, when he stopped discussing it and, as a secular commentator, relegated it to matters of private life; and the third, from then until now, when Habermas has recognized the positive social role of religion.
In an interview in 1999 Habermas had stated:
The original German (from the Habermas Forum website) of the disputed quotation is:
This statement has been misquoted in a number of articles and books, where Habermas instead is quoted for saying:
In his book "Zwischen Naturalismus und Religion" (Between Naturalism and Religion, 2005), Habermas stated that the forces of religious strength, as a result of multiculturalism and immigration, are stronger than in previous decades, and, therefore, there is a need of tolerance which must be understood as a two-way street: secular people need to tolerate the role of religious people in the public square and vice versa.
In early 2007, Ignatius Press published a dialogue between Habermas and the then Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith of the Holy Office Joseph Ratzinger (elected as Pope Benedict XVI in 2005), entitled "The Dialectics of Secularization". The dialogue took place on January 14, 2004 after an invitation to both thinkers by the Catholic Academy of Bavaria in Munich. It addressed contemporary questions such as:
In this debate a shift of Habermas became evident—in particular, his rethinking of the public role of religion. Habermas stated that he wrote as a "methodological atheist," which means that when doing philosophy or social science, he presumed nothing about particular religious beliefs. Yet while writing from this perspective his evolving position towards the role of religion in society led him to some challenging questions, and as a result conceding some ground in his dialogue with the future Pope, that would seem to have consequences which further complicated the positions he holds about a communicative rational solution to the problems of modernity. Habermas believes that even for self-identified liberal thinkers, "to exclude religious voices from the public square is highly illiberal."
Though, in the first period of his career, he began as a skeptic of any social usefulness of religion, he now believes there is a social role and utilitarian moral strength in religion, and notably, that there is a necessity of Judeochristian ethics in culture.
In addition, Habermas has popularized the concept of "post-secular" society, to refer to current times in which the idea of modernity is perceived as unsuccessful and at times, morally failed, so that, rather than a stratification or separation, a new peaceful dialogue and coexistence between faith and reason must be sought in order to learn mutually.
Habermas has sided with other 20th-century commentators on Marx such as Hannah Arendt who have indicated concerns with the limits of totalitarian perspectives often associated with Marx's apparent over-estimation of the emancipatory potential of the forces of production. Arendt had presented this in her book "The Origins of Totalitarianism" and Habermas extends this critique in his writings on functional reductionism in the life-world in his "Lifeworld and System: A Critique of Functionalist Reason". As Habermas states: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16288 |
James Watson
James Dewey Watson KBE (born April 6, 1928) is an American molecular biologist, geneticist and zoologist. In 1953, he co-authored with Francis Crick the academic paper proposing the double helix structure of the DNA molecule. Watson, Crick and Maurice Wilkins were awarded the 1962 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material".
Watson earned degrees at the University of Chicago (BS, 1947) and Indiana University (PhD, 1950). Following a post-doctoral year at the University of Copenhagen with Herman Kalckar and Ole Maaløe, Watson worked at the University of Cambridge's Cavendish Laboratory in England, where he first met his future collaborator Francis Crick. From 1956 to 1976, Watson was on the faculty of the Harvard University Biology Department, promoting research in molecular biology.
From 1968 Watson served as director of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL), greatly expanding its level of funding and research. At CSHL, he shifted his research emphasis to the study of cancer, along with making it a world-leading research center in molecular biology. In 1994, he started as president and served for 10 years. He was then appointed chancellor, serving until he resigned in 2007 after making comments claiming a genetic link between intelligence and race. In 2019, following the broadcast of a documentary in which Watson reiterated his views on race and genetics, CSHL revoked his honorary titles and severed all ties with him.
Watson has written many science books, including the textbook "Molecular Biology of the Gene" (1965) and his bestselling book "The Double Helix" (1968). Between 1988 and 1992, Watson was associated with the National Institutes of Health, helping to establish the Human Genome Project, which completed the task of mapping the human genome in 2003.
James D. Watson was born in Chicago on April 6, 1928, as the only son of Jean (Mitchell) and James D. Watson, a businessman descended mostly from colonial English immigrants to America. His mother's father, Lauchlin Mitchell, a tailor, was from Glasgow, Scotland, and her mother, Lizzie Gleason, was the child of parents from County Tipperary, Ireland. Raised Catholic, he later described himself as "an escapee from the Catholic religion." Watson said, "The luckiest thing that ever happened to me was that my father didn't believe in God."
Watson grew up on the south side of Chicago and attended public schools, including Horace Mann Grammar School and South Shore High School. He was fascinated with bird watching, a hobby shared with his father, so he considered majoring in ornithology. Watson appeared on "Quiz Kids," a popular radio show that challenged bright youngsters to answer questions. Thanks to the liberal policy of University president Robert Hutchins, he enrolled at the University of Chicago, where he was awarded a tuition scholarship, at the age of 15.
After reading Erwin Schrödinger's book, "What Is Life?" in 1946, Watson changed his professional ambitions from the study of ornithology to genetics. Watson earned his BS degree in Zoology from the University of Chicago in 1947. In his autobiography, "Avoid Boring People", Watson described the University of Chicago as an "idyllic academic institution where he was instilled with the capacity for critical thought and an ethical compulsion not to suffer fools who impeded his search for truth", in contrast to his description of later experiences. In 1947 Watson left the University of Chicago to become a graduate student at Indiana University, attracted by the presence at Bloomington of the 1946 Nobel Prize winner Hermann Joseph Muller, who in crucial papers published in 1922, 1929, and in the 1930s had laid out all the basic properties of the heredity molecule that Schrödinger presented in his 1944 book. He received his PhD degree from Indiana University in 1950; Salvador Luria was his doctoral advisor.
Originally, Watson was drawn into molecular biology by the work of Salvador Luria. Luria eventually shared the 1969 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for his work on the Luria–Delbrück experiment, which concerned the nature of genetic mutations. He was part of a distributed group of researchers who were making use of the viruses that infect bacteria, called bacteriophages. He and Max Delbrück were among the leaders of this new "Phage Group," an important movement of geneticists from experimental systems such as "Drosophila" towards microbial genetics. Early in 1948, Watson began his PhD research in Luria's laboratory at Indiana University. That spring, he met Delbrück first in Luria's apartment and again that summer during Watson's first trip to the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL).
The Phage Group was the intellectual medium where Watson became a working scientist. Importantly, the members of the Phage Group sensed that they were on the path to discovering the physical nature of the gene. In 1949, Watson took a course with Felix Haurowitz that included the conventional view of that time: that genes were proteins and able to replicate themselves. The other major molecular component of chromosomes, DNA, was widely considered to be a "stupid tetranucleotide," serving only a structural role to support the proteins. Even at this early time, Watson, under the influence of the Phage Group, was aware of the Avery–MacLeod–McCarty experiment, which suggested that DNA was the genetic molecule. Watson's research project involved using X-rays to inactivate bacterial viruses.
Watson then went to Copenhagen University in September 1950 for a year of postdoctoral research, first heading to the laboratory of biochemist Herman Kalckar. Kalckar was interested in the enzymatic synthesis of nucleic acids, and he wanted to use phages as an experimental system. Watson wanted to explore the structure of DNA, and his interests did not coincide with Kalckar's. After working part of the year with Kalckar, Watson spent the remainder of his time in Copenhagen conducting experiments with microbial physiologist Ole Maaløe, then a member of the Phage Group.
The experiments, which Watson had learned of during the previous summer's Cold Spring Harbor phage conference, included the use of radioactive phosphate as a tracer to determine which molecular components of phage particles actually infect the target bacteria during viral infection. The intention was to determine whether protein or DNA was the genetic material, but upon consultation with Max Delbrück, they determined that their results were inconclusive and could not specifically identify the newly labeled molecules as DNA. Watson never developed a constructive interaction with Kalckar, but he did accompany Kalckar to a meeting in Italy, where Watson saw Maurice Wilkins talk about his X-ray diffraction data for DNA. Watson was now certain that DNA had a definite molecular structure that could be elucidated.
In 1951, the chemist Linus Pauling in California published his model of the amino acid alpha helix, a result that grew out of Pauling's efforts in X-ray crystallography and molecular model building. After obtaining some results from his phage and other experimental research conducted at Indiana University, Statens Serum Institut (Denmark), CSHL, and the California Institute of Technology, Watson now had the desire to learn to perform X-ray diffraction experiments so he could work to determine the structure of DNA. That summer, Luria met John Kendrew, and he arranged for a new postdoctoral research project for Watson in England. In 1951 Watson visited the Stazione Zoologica 'Anton Dohrn' in Naples.
In mid-March 1953, Watson and Crick deduced the double helix structure of DNA. Crucial to their discovery were the experimental data collected at King's College London — mainly by Rosalind Franklin, under the supervision of Maurice Wilkins. Sir Lawrence Bragg, the director of the Cavendish Laboratory (where Watson and Crick worked), made the original announcement of the discovery at a Solvay conference on proteins in Belgium on April 8, 1953; it went unreported by the press. Watson and Crick submitted a paper entitled "" to the scientific journal "Nature", which was published on April 25, 1953. Bragg gave a talk at the Guy's Hospital Medical School in London on Thursday, May 14, 1953, which resulted in a May 15, 1953, article by Ritchie Calder in the London newspaper "News Chronicle", entitled "Why You Are You. Nearer Secret of Life."
Sydney Brenner, Jack Dunitz, Dorothy Hodgkin, Leslie Orgel, and Beryl M. Oughton were some of the first people in April 1953 to see the model of the structure of DNA, constructed by Crick and Watson; at the time, they were working at Oxford University's Chemistry Department. All were impressed by the new DNA model, especially Brenner, who subsequently worked with Crick at Cambridge in the Cavendish Laboratory and the new Laboratory of Molecular Biology. According to the late Beryl Oughton, later Rimmer, they all travelled together in two cars once Dorothy Hodgkin announced to them that they were off to Cambridge to see the model of the structure of DNA.
The Cambridge University student newspaper "Varsity" also ran its own short article on the discovery on Saturday, May 30, 1953. Watson subsequently presented a paper on the double-helical structure of DNA at the 18th Cold Spring Harbor Symposium on Viruses in early June 1953, six weeks after the publication of the Watson and Crick paper in "Nature". Many at the meeting had not yet heard of the discovery. The 1953 Cold Spring Harbor Symposium was the first opportunity for many to see the model of the DNA double helix.
Watson, Crick, and Wilkins were awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1962 for their research on the structure of nucleic acids. Rosalind Franklin had died in 1958 and was therefore ineligible for nomination.
The publication of the double helix structure of DNA has been described as a turning point in science; understanding of life was fundamentally changed and the modern era of biology began.
Watson and Crick's use of DNA X-ray diffraction data collected by Rosalind Franklin and Raymond Gosling was unauthorized. They used some of her unpublished data—without her consent—in their construction of the double helix model of DNA. Franklin's results provided estimates of the water content of DNA crystals and these results were consistent with the two sugar-phosphate backbones being on the outside of the molecule. Franklin told Crick and Watson that the backbones had to be on the outside; before then, Linus Pauling and Watson and Crick had erroneous models with the chains inside and the bases pointing outwards. Her identification of the space group for DNA crystals revealed to Crick that the two DNA strands were antiparallel.
The X-ray diffraction images collected by Gosling and Franklin provided the best evidence for the helical nature of DNA. Watson and Crick had three sources for Franklin's unpublished data:
According to one critic, Watson's portrayal of Franklin in "The Double Helix" was negative and gave the appearance that she was Wilkins' assistant and was unable to interpret her own DNA data. The accusation was indefensible since Franklin told Crick and Watson that the helix backbones had to be on the outside.
A review of the correspondence from Franklin to Watson, in the archives at CSHL, revealed that the two scientists later exchanged constructive scientific correspondence. Franklin consulted with Watson on her tobacco mosaic virus RNA research. Franklin's letters began on friendly terms with "Dear Jim", and concluded with equally benevolent and respectful sentiments such as "Best Wishes, Yours, Rosalind". Each of the scientists published their own unique contributions to the discovery of the structure of DNA in separate articles, and all of the contributors published their findings in the same volume of "Nature". These classic molecular biology papers are identified as: Watson J.D. and Crick F.H.C. "A Structure for Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid" "Nature" 171, 737–738 (1953); Wilkins M.H.F., Stokes A.R. & Wilson, H.R. "Molecular Structure of Deoxypentose Nucleic Acids" Nature 171, 738–740 (1953); Franklin R. and Gosling R.G. "Molecular Configuration in Sodium Thymonucleate" "Nature" 171, 740–741 (1953).
In 1956, Watson accepted a position in the Biology department at Harvard University. His work at Harvard focused on RNA and its role in the transfer of genetic information.
He championed a switch in focus for the school from classical biology to molecular biology, stating that disciplines such as ecology, developmental biology, taxonomy, physiology, etc. had stagnated and could progress only once the underlying disciplines of molecular biology and biochemistry had elucidated their underpinnings, going so far as to discourage their study by students.
Watson continued to be a member of the Harvard faculty until 1976, even though he took over the directorship of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in 1968.
Views on Watson's scientific contributions while at Harvard are somewhat mixed. His most notable achievements in his two decades at Harvard may be what he wrote about science, rather than anything he discovered during that time. Watson's first textbook, "The Molecular Biology of the Gene", set a new standard for textbooks, particularly through the use of concept heads—brief declarative subheadings. His next textbook was "Molecular Biology of the Cell", in which he coordinated the work of a group of scientist-writers. His third textbook was "Recombinant DNA", which described the ways in which genetic engineering has brought much new information about how organisms function. The textbooks are still in print.
In 1968, Watson wrote "The Double Helix", listed by the Board of the Modern Library as number seven in their list of "100 Best Nonfiction" books. The book details the story of the discovery of the structure of DNA, as well as the personalities, conflicts and controversy surrounding their work, and includes many of his private emotional impressions at the time. Watson's original title was to have been "Honest Jim". Some controversy surrounded the publication of the book. Watson's book was originally to be published by the Harvard University Press, but Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins objected, among others. Watson's home university dropped the project and the book was commercially published.
During his tenure at Harvard, Watson participated in a protest against the Vietnam War, leading a group of 12 biologists and biochemists calling for "the immediate withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam." In 1975, on the thirtieth anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima, Watson was one of over 2000 scientists and engineers who spoke out against nuclear proliferation to President Gerald Ford, arguing that there was no proven method for the safe disposal of radioactive waste, and that nuclear plants were a security threat due to the possibility of terrorist theft of plutonium.
In 1968, Watson became the Director of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). Between 1970 and 1972, the Watsons' two sons were born, and by 1974, the young family made Cold Spring Harbor their permanent residence. Watson served as the laboratory's director and president for about 35 years, and later he assumed the role of chancellor and then Chancellor Emeritus.
In his roles as director, president, and chancellor, Watson led CSHL to articulate its present-day mission, "dedication to exploring molecular biology and genetics in order to advance the understanding and ability to diagnose and treat cancers, neurological diseases, and other causes of human suffering." CSHL substantially expanded both its research and its science educational programs under Watson's direction. He is credited with "transforming a small facility into one of the world's great education and research institutions. Initiating a program to study the cause of human cancer, scientists under his direction have made major contributions to understanding the genetic basis of cancer." In a retrospective summary of Watson's accomplishments there, Bruce Stillman, the laboratory's president, said, "Jim Watson created a research environment that is unparalleled in the world of science."
In 2007, Watson said, "I turned against the left wing because they don't like genetics, because genetics implies that sometimes in life we fail because we have bad genes. They want all failure in life to be due to the evil system."
In 1990, Watson was appointed as the Head of the Human Genome Project at the National Institutes of Health, a position he held until April 10, 1992. Watson left the Genome Project after conflicts with the new NIH Director, Bernadine Healy. Watson was opposed to Healy's attempts to acquire patents on gene sequences, and any ownership of the "laws of nature." Two years before stepping down from the Genome Project, he had stated his own opinion on this long and ongoing controversy which he saw as an illogical barrier to research; he said, "The nations of the world must see that the human genome belongs to the world's people, as opposed to its nations." He left within weeks of the 1992 announcement that the NIH would be applying for patents on brain-specific cDNAs. (The issue of the patentability of genes has since been resolved in the US by the US Supreme Court; see Association for Molecular Pathology v. U.S. Patent and Trademark Office)
In 1994, Watson became President of CSHL. Francis Collins took over the role as Director of the Human Genome Project.
He was quoted in "The Sunday Telegraph" in 1997 as stating: "If you could find the gene which determines sexuality and a woman decides she doesn't want a homosexual child, well, let her." The biologist Richard Dawkins wrote a letter to "The Independent" claiming that Watson's position was misrepresented by "The Sunday Telegraph" article, and that Watson would equally consider the possibility of having a heterosexual child to be just as valid as any other reason for abortion, to emphasise that Watson is in favor of allowing choice.
On the issue of obesity, Watson was quoted in 2000, saying: "Whenever you interview fat people, you feel bad, because you know you're not going to hire them."
Watson has repeatedly supported genetic screening and genetic engineering in public lectures and interviews, arguing that stupidity is a disease and the "really stupid" bottom 10% of people should be cured. He has also suggested that beauty could be genetically engineered, saying in 2003, "People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great."
In 2007, James Watson became the second person to publish his fully sequenced genome online, after it was presented to him on May 31, 2007, by 454 Life Sciences Corporation in collaboration with scientists at the Human Genome Sequencing Center, Baylor College of Medicine. Watson was quoted as saying, "I am putting my genome sequence on line to encourage the development of an era of personalized medicine, in which information contained in our genomes can be used to identify and prevent disease and to create individualized medical therapies".
In 2014, Watson published a paper in "The Lancet" suggesting that biological oxidants may have a different role than is thought in diseases including diabetes, dementia, heart disease and cancer. For example, type 2 diabetes is usually thought to be caused by oxidation in the body that causes inflammation and kills off pancreatic cells. Watson thinks the root of that inflammation is different: "a lack of biological oxidants, not an excess", and discusses this in detail. One critical response was that the idea was neither new nor worthy of merit, and that "The Lancet" published Watson's paper only because of his name. Other scientists have expressed their support for his hypothesis and have proposed that it can also be expanded to why a lack of oxidants can result in cancer and its progression.
In 2014, Watson sold his Nobel prize medal to raise money; part of the funds raised by the sale went to support scientific research. The medal sold at auction at Christie's in December 2014 for . Watson intended to contribute the proceeds to conservation work in Long Island and to funding research at Trinity College, Dublin. He was the first living Nobel recipient to auction a medal. The medal was later returned to Watson by the purchaser, Alisher Usmanov.
Several of Watson's former doctoral students subsequently became notable in their own right including, Mario Capecchi, Bob Horvitz, Peter B. Moore and Joan Steitz. Besides numerous PhD students, Watson also supervised postdoctoral students and other interns including Ewan Birney, Ronald W. Davis, Phillip Allen Sharp (postdoc), John Tooze, (postdoc) and Richard J. Roberts (postdoc).
Watson is a former member of the Board of Directors of United Biomedical, Inc., founded by Chang Yi Wang. He held the position for six years and retired from the board in 1999.
In January 2007, Watson accepted the invitation of Leonor Beleza, president of the Champalimaud Foundation, to become the head of the foundation's scientific council, an advisory organ.
In March 2017, Watson was named head consultant of the Cheerland Investment Group, a Chinese investment company which sponsored his trip.
Watson has also been an institute adviser for the Allen Institute for Brain Science.
Watson has had disagreements with Craig Venter regarding his use of EST fragments while Venter worked at NIH. Venter went on to found Celera genomics and continued his feud with Watson. Watson was quoted as calling Venter "Hitler".
In his memoir, "Avoid Boring People: Lessons from a Life in Science", Watson describes his academic colleagues as "dinosaurs," "deadbeats," "fossils," "has-beens," "mediocre," and "vapid." Steve Shapin in "Harvard Magazine" noted that Watson had written an unlikely "Book of Manners," telling about the skills needed at different times in a scientist's career; he wrote Watson was known for aggressively pursuing his own goals at the university. E. O. Wilson once described Watson as "the most unpleasant human being I had ever met", but in a later TV interview said that he considered them friends and their rivalry at Harvard old history (when they had competed for funding in their respective fields).
In the epilogue to the memoir "Avoid Boring People", Watson alternately attacks and defends former Harvard University president Lawrence Summers, who stepped down in 2006 due in part to his remarks about women and science. Watson also states in the epilogue, "Anyone sincerely interested in understanding the imbalance in the representation of men and women in science must reasonably be prepared at least to consider the extent to which nature may figure, even with the clear evidence that nurture is strongly implicated."
At a conference in 2000, Watson suggested a link between skin color and sex drive, hypothesizing that dark-skinned people have stronger libidos. His lecture argued that extracts of melanin – which gives skin its color – had been found to boost subjects' sex drive. "That's why you have Latin lovers," he said, according to people who attended the lecture. "You've never heard of an English lover. Only an English Patient." He has also said that stereotypes associated with racial and ethnic groups have a genetic basis: Jews being intelligent, Chinese being intelligent but not creative because of selection for conformity.
Watson has repeatedly asserted that differences in average measured IQ between blacks and whites are due to genetics. In early October 2007, he was interviewed by Charlotte Hunt-Grubbe at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL). He discussed his view that Africans are less intelligent than Westerners. Watson said his intention was to promote science, not racism, but some UK venues canceled his appearances, and he canceled the rest of his tour. An editorial in "Nature" said that his remarks were "beyond the pale" but expressed a wish that the tour had not been canceled so that Watson would have had to face his critics in person, encouraging scientific discussion on the matter. Because of the controversy, the Board of Trustees at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory suspended Watson's administrative responsibilities. Watson issued an apology, then retired at the age of 79 from CSHL from what the lab called "nearly 40 years of distinguished service". Watson attributed his retirement to his age and to circumstances that he could never have anticipated or desired.
In 2008, Watson was appointed chancellor emeritus of CSHL. In a BBC documentary that year, Watson said he did not see himself as a racist. , he continued to advise and guide project work at the laboratory.
In January 2019, following the broadcast of a television documentary made the previous year in which he repeated his views about race and genetics, CSHL revoked honorary titles that it had awarded to Watson and cut all remaining ties with him. Watson did not respond to the developments, having been ill since a car accident in October 2018.
Watson is an atheist. In 2003, he was one of 22 Nobel Laureates who signed the Humanist Manifesto.
Watson married Elizabeth Lewis in 1968. They have two sons, Rufus Robert Watson (b. 1970) and Duncan James Watson (b. 1972). Watson sometimes talks about his son Rufus, who suffers from schizophrenia, seeking to encourage progress in the understanding and treatment of mental illness by determining how genetics contributes to it.
Watson has won numerous awards, including:
Accessed November 6, 2010 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16289 |
Jerk (physics)
In physics, jerk or jolt is the rate at which an object's acceleration changes with respect to time. It is a vector quantity (having both magnitude and direction). Jerk is commonly denoted by the symbol formula_1 and expressed in m/s3 (SI units) or standard gravities per second ("g"/s).
Jerk can be expressed as the first time derivative of acceleration, second time derivative of velocity, and third time derivative of position:
where
Third-order differential equations of the form
are sometimes called "jerk equations". When converted to an equivalent system of three ordinary first-order non-linear differential equations, jerk equations are the minimal setting for solutions showing chaotic behaviour. This condition generates mathematical interest in "jerk systems". Systems involving fourth-order derivatives or higher are accordingly called "hyperjerk systems".
Human body position is controlled by balancing the forces of antagonistic muscles. In balancing a given force, such as holding up a weight, the postcentral gyrus establishes a control loop to achieve the desired equilibrium. If the force changes too quickly, the muscles cannot relax or tense fast enough and overshoot in either direction, causing a temporary loss of control. The reaction time for responding to changes in force depends on physiological limitations and the attention level of the brain: an "expected" change will be stabilized faster than a "sudden" decrease or increase of load.
To avoid vehicle passengers' losing control over body motion and getting injured, it is necessary to limit the exposure to both the maximum force (acceleration) "and" maximum jerk, since time is needed to adjust muscle tension and adapt to even limited stress changes. Sudden changes in acceleration can cause injuries such as whiplash. Excessive jerk may also result in an uncomfortable ride, even at levels that do not cause injury. Engineers expend considerable design effort minimizing "jerky motion" on elevators, trams, and other conveyances.
For example, consider the effects of acceleration and jerk when riding in a car:
For a constant mass formula_8, acceleration formula_9 is directly proportional to force formula_10 according to Newton's second law of motion:
In classical mechanics of rigid bodies, there are no "forces" associated with the derivatives of acceleration; however, physical systems experience oscillations and deformations as a result of jerk. In designing the Hubble Telescope, NASA reportedly set limits on both jerk and jounce.
The Abraham–Lorentz force is the recoil force on an accelerating charged particle emitting radiation. This force is proportional to the particle's jerk and to the square of its charge. The Wheeler–Feynman absorber theory is a more advanced theory, applicable in a relativistic and quantum environment, and accounting for self-energy.
Discontinuities in acceleration do not occur in real-world environments because of deformation, quantum mechanics effects, and other causes. However, a jump-discontinuity in acceleration and, accordingly, unbounded jerk are feasible in an idealized setting, such as an idealized point mass moving along a piecewise smooth, whole continuous path. The jump-discontinuity occurs at points where the path is not smooth. Extrapolating from these idealized settings, one can qualitatively describe, explain and predict the effects of jerk in real situations.
Jump-discontinuity in acceleration can be modeled using a Dirac delta function in jerk, scaled to the height of the jump. Integrating jerk over time across the Dirac delta yields the jump-discontinuity.
For example, consider a path along an arc of radius formula_12, which tangentially connects to a straight line. The whole path is continuous, and its pieces are smooth. Now assume a point particle moves with constant speed along this path, so its tangential acceleration is zero. The centripetal acceleration given by formula_13 is normal to the arc and inward. When the particle passes the connection of pieces, it experiences a jump-discontinuity in acceleration given by formula_13, and it undergoes a jerk that can be modeled by a Dirac delta, scaled to the jump-discontinuity.
For a more tangible example of discontinuous acceleration, consider an ideal spring-mass system with the mass oscillating on an idealized surface with friction. The force on the mass is equal to the vector sum of the spring force and the kinetic frictional force. When the velocity changes sign (at the maximum and minimum displacements), the magnitude of the force on the mass changes by twice the magnitude of the frictional force, because the spring force is continuous and the frictional force reverses direction with velocity. The jump in acceleration equals the force on the mass divided by the mass. That is, each time the mass passes through a minimum or maximum displacement, the mass experiences a discontinuous acceleration, and the jerk contains a Dirac delta until the mass stops. The static friction force adapts to the residual spring force, establishing equilibrium with zero net force and zero velocity.
Consider the example of a braking and decelerating car. The brake pads generate kinetic frictional forces and constant braking torques on the disks (or drums) of the wheels. Rotational velocity decreases linearly to zero with constant angular deceleration. The frictional force, torque, and car deceleration suddenly reach zero, which indicates a Dirac delta in physical jerk. The Dirac delta is smoothed down by the real environment, the cumulative effects of which are analogous to damping of the physiologically perceived jerk. This example neglects the effects of tire sliding, suspension dipping, real deflection of all ideally rigid mechanisms, etc.
Another example of significant jerk, analogous to the first example, is the cutting of a rope with a particle on its end. Assume the particle is oscillating in a circular path with non-zero centripetal acceleration. When the rope is cut, the particle's path changes abruptly to a straight path, and the force in the inward direction changes suddenly to zero. Imagine a monomolecular fiber cut by a laser; the particle would experience very high rates of jerk because of the extremely short cutting time.
Consider a rigid body rotating about a fixed axis in an inertial reference frame. If its angular position is formula_15, the angular velocity, acceleration, and jerk can be expressed as follows:
Angular acceleration equals the torque acting on the body, divided by the body's moment of inertia with respect to the momentary axis of rotation. A change in torque results in angular jerk.
The general case of a rotating rigid body can be modeled using kinematic screw theory, which includes one axial vector, angular velocity formula_22, and one polar vector, linear velocity formula_23. From this, the angular acceleration is defined as
and the angular jerk is given by
For example, consider a Geneva drive, a device used for creating intermittent rotation of a driven wheel (blue wheel in the animation) by continuous rotation of a driving wheel (red wheel in the animation). During one cycle of the driving wheel, the driven wheel's angular position formula_15 changes by 90 degrees and then remains constant. Because of the finite thickness of the driving wheel's fork (i.e., slot for the driving pin), this device generates a discontinuity in the angular acceleration formula_27, and an unbounded angular jerk formula_28 in the driven wheel.
Jerk does not preclude the Geneva drive from being used in applications such as movie projectors and cams. In movie projectors, the film advances frame-by-frame, but the projector operation has low noise and is highly reliable because of the low film load (only a small section of film a few millimeters thick is driven), the moderate speed (2.4 m/s, 8.6 km/h), and the low friction.
With cam drive systems, use of a dual cam can avoid the jerk of a single cam; however, the dual cam is bulkier and more expensive. The dual-cam system has two cams on one axle that shifts a second axle by a fraction of a revolution. The graphic shows step drives of one-sixth and one-third rotation per one revolution of the driving axle. There is no radial clearance because two arms of the stepped wheel are always in contact with the double cam. Generally, combined contacts may be used to avoid the jerk (and wear and noise) associated with a single follower (e.g., a single follower gliding along a slot and changing its contact point from one side of the slot to the other can be avoided by using two followers sliding along the same slot, one side each).
An elastically deformable mass deforms under an applied force (or acceleration); the deformation is a function of its stiffness and the magnitude of force. If the change in force is slow, the jerk is small, and the propagation of deformation is considered instantaneous as compared to the change in acceleration. The distorted body acts as if it were in a quasi-static regime, and only a changing force (non-zero jerk) can cause propagation of mechanical waves (or electromagnetic waves for a charged particle); therefore, for nonzero-to-high jerk, a shock wave and its propagation through the body should be considered.
The propagation of deformation is shown in the graphic "Compression wave patterns" as a compressional plane wave through an elastically deformable material. Also shown, for angular jerk, are the deformation waves propagating in a circular pattern, which causes shear stress and possibly other modes of vibration. The reflection of waves along the boundaries cause constructive interference patterns (not pictured), producing stresses that may exceed the material's limits. The deformation waves may cause vibrations, which can lead to noise, wear, and failure, especially in cases of resonance.
The graphic captioned "Pole with massive top" shows a block connected to an elastic pole and a massive top. The pole bends when the block accelerates, and when the acceleration stops, the top will oscillate (damped) under the regime of pole stiffness. One could argue that a greater (periodic) jerk might excite a larger amplitude of oscillation because small oscillations are damped before reinforcement by a shock wave. One can also argue that a larger jerk might increase the probability of exciting a resonant mode because the larger wave components of the shock wave have higher frequencies and Fourier coefficients.
To reduce the amplitude of excited stress waves and vibrations, one can limit jerk by shaping motion and making the acceleration continuous with slopes as flat as possible. Due to limitations of abstract models, algorithms for reducing vibrations include higher derivatives, such as jounce, or suggest continuous regimes for both acceleration and jerk. One concept for limiting jerk is to shape acceleration and deceleration sinusoidally with zero acceleration in between (see graphic captioned "Sinusoidal acceleration profile"), making the speed appear sinusoidal with constant maximum speed. The jerk, however, will remain discontinuous at the points where acceleration enters and leaves the zero phases.
Roads and tracks are designed to limit the jerk caused by changes in their curvature. On railways, designers use 0.35 m/s3 as a design goal and 0.5 m/s3 as a maximum. Track transition curves limit the jerk when transitioning from a straight line to a curve, or vice versa. Recall that in constant-speed motion along an arc, jerk is zero in the tangential direction and nonzero in the inward normal direction. Transition curves gradually increase the curvature and, consequently, the centripetal acceleration.
An Euler spiral, the theoretically optimum transition curve, linearly increases centripetal acceleration and results in constant jerk (see graphic). In real-world applications, the plane of the track is inclined (cant) along the curved sections. The incline causes vertical acceleration, which is a design consideration for wear on the track and embankment. The Wiener Kurve (Viennese Curve) is a patented curve designed to minimize this wear.
Roller coasters are also designed with track transitions to limit jerk. When entering a loop, acceleration values can reach 4g, and riding in this high acceleration environment is only possible with track transitions. S-shaped curves, such as figure eights, also use track transitions for smooth rides.
In motion control, the design focus is on straight, linear motion, with the need to move a system from one steady position to another (point-to-point motion). The design concern from a jerk-perspective is vertical jerk; the jerk from tangential acceleration is effectively zero since linear motion is non-rotational.
Motion control applications include passenger elevators and machining tools. Limiting vertical jerk is considered essential for elevator riding convenience. ISO 18738 specifies measurement methods for elevator ride quality with respect to jerk, acceleration, vibration, and noise; however, the standard does specify levels for acceptable or unacceptable ride quality. It is reported that most passengers rate a vertical jerk of 2.0 m/s3 as acceptable and 6.0 m/s3 as intolerable. For hospitals, 0.7 m/s3 is the recommended limit.
A primary design goal for motion control is to minimize the transition time without exceeding speed, acceleration, or jerk limits. Consider a third-order motion-control profile with quadratic ramping and de-ramping phases in velocity (see figure).
This motion profile consists of the following seven segments:
Segment four's time period (constant velocity) varies with distance between the two positions. If this distance is so small that omitting segment four would not suffice, then segments two and six (constant acceleration) could be equally reduced, and the constant velocity limit would not be reached. If this modification does not sufficiently reduce the crossed distance, then segments one, three, five, and seven could be shortened by an equal amount, and the constant acceleration limits would not be reached.
Other motion profile strategies are used, such as minimizing the square of jerk for a given transition time and, as discussed above, sinusoidal-shaped acceleration profiles. Motion profiles are tailored for specific applications including machines, people movers, chain hoists, automobiles, and robotics.
Jerk is an important consideration in manufacturing processes. Rapid changes in acceleration of a cutting tool can lead to premature tool wear and result in uneven cuts; consequently, modern motion controllers include jerk limitation features. In mechanical engineering, jerk, in addition to velocity and acceleration, is considered in the development of cam profiles because of tribological implications and the ability of the actuated body to follow the cam profile without chatter.
Jerk is often considered when vibration is a concern. A device that measures jerk is called a "jerkmeter".
Further time derivatives have also been named, as snap or jounce (fourth derivative), crackle (fifth derivative), and pop (sixth derivative). However, time derivatives of position of higher order than four appear rarely.
The terms "snap", "crackle", and "pop"for the fourth, fifth, and sixth derivatives of positionwere inspired by the advertising mascots Snap, Crackle, and Pop. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16290 |
John Ambrose Fleming
Sir John Ambrose Fleming FRS (29 November 1849 – 18 April 1945) was an English electrical engineer and physicist who invented the first thermionic valve or vacuum tube, designed the radio transmitter with which the first transatlantic radio transmission was made, and also established the right-hand rule used in physics.
He was the eldest of seven children of James Fleming DD (died 1879), a Congregational minister, and his wife Mary Ann, at Lancaster, Lancashire, and baptised on 11 February 1850. A devout Christian, he once preached at St Martin-in-the-Fields in London on evidence for the resurrection.
In 1932, he and Douglas Dewar and Bernard Acworth helped establish the Evolution Protest Movement. Fleming bequeathed much of his estate to Christian charities, especially those for the poor. He was a noted photographer, painted watercolours, and enjoyed climbing the Alps.
Ambrose Fleming was born in Lancaster and educated at Lancaster Royal Grammar School, University College School, London, and then University College London. He entered St John's College, Cambridge in 1877, gaining his BA in 1881 and becoming a Fellow of St John's in 1883. He went on to lecture at several universities including the University of Cambridge, University College Nottingham, and University College London, where he was the first professor of electrical engineering. He was also a consultant to the Marconi Wireless Telegraph Company, Swan Company, Ferranti, Edison Telephone, and later the Edison Electric Light Company. In 1892, Fleming presented an important paper on electrical transformer theory to the Institution of Electrical Engineers in London.
Fleming started school at about the age of ten, attending a private school where he particularly enjoyed geometry. Prior to that his mother tutored him and he had learned, virtually by heart, a book called the "Child's Guide to Knowledge", a popular book of the day – even as an adult he would quote from it. His schooling continued at the University College School where, although accomplished at maths, he habitually came bottom of the class at Latin.
Even as a boy he wanted to become an engineer. At 11 he had his own workshop where he built model boats and engines. He even built his own camera, the start of a lifelong interest in photography. Training to become an engineer was beyond the family's financial resources, but he reached his goal via a path that alternated education with paid employment.
Fleming enrolled for a BSc degree at University College, London, graduated in 1870, and studied under the mathematician Augustus de Morgan and the physicist George Carey Foster. He became a student of chemistry at the Royal College of Science in South Kensington in London (now Imperial College). There he first studied Alessandro Volta's battery, which became the subject of his first scientific paper. This was the first paper to be read to the new Physical Society of London (now the Institute of Physics) and appears on page one of volume one of their Proceedings. Financial problems again forced him to work for a living and in the summer of 1874 he became science master at Cheltenham College, a public school, earning £400 per year. (He later also taught at Rossall School.) His own scientific research continued and he corresponded with James Clerk Maxwell at Cambridge University. After saving £400, and securing a grant of £50 a year, in October 1877 at the age of 27, he once again enrolled as a student, this time at Cambridge. He was among the "two or perhaps three University students who attended Maxwell's last Course". Maxwell's lectures, he admitted, were difficult to follow. Maxwell, he said, often appeared obscure and had "a paradoxical and allusive way of speaking". On occasions Fleming was the only student at those lectures. Fleming again graduated, this time with a First Class Honours degree in chemistry and physics. He then obtained a DSc from London and served one year at Cambridge University as a demonstrator of mechanical engineering before being appointed as the first Professor of Physics and Mathematics at University College Nottingham, but he left after less than a year.
On 11 June 1887 he married Clara Ripley (1856/7–1917), daughter of Walter Freake Pratt, a solicitor from Bath. On 27 July 1928 he married the popular young singer Olive May Franks (b. 1898/9), of Bristol, daughter of George Franks, a Cardiff businessman.
After leaving the University of Nottingham in 1882, Fleming took up the post of "electrician" to the Edison Electrical Light Company, advising on lighting systems and the new Ferranti alternating current systems. In 1884 Fleming joined University College London taking up the Chair of Electrical Technology, the first of its kind in England. Although this offered great opportunities, he recalls in his autobiography that the only equipment provided to him was a blackboard and piece of chalk. In 1897 the Pender Laboratory was founding at University College, London and Fleming took up the Pender Chair after the £5000 was endowed as a memorial to John Pender, the founder of Cable and Wireless.
In 1899 Guglielmo Marconi, the inventor of radiotelegraphy, decided to attempt transatlantic radio communication. This would require a scale-up in power from the small 200–400 watt transmitters Marconi had used up to then. He contracted Fleming, an expert in power engineering, to design the radio transmitter. Fleming designed the world's first large radio transmitter, a complicated spark transmitter powered by a 25 kW alternator driven by a combustion engine, built at Poldhu in Cornwall, UK, which transmitted the first radio transmission across the Atlantic on 12 December 1901. Although Fleming was responsible for the design, the director of the Marconi Co. had made Fleming agree that: "If we get across the Atlantic, the main credit will be and must forever be Mr. Marconi's". Accordingly, the worldwide acclaim that greeted this landmark accomplishment went to Marconi, who only credited Fleming along with several other Marconi employees, saying he did some work on the "power plant". Marconi also forgot a promise to give Fleming 500 shares of Marconi stock if the project was successful. Fleming was bitter about his treatment. He honoured his agreement and didn't speak about it throughout Marconi's life, but after his death in 1937 said Marconi had been "very ungenerous".
In 1904, working for the Marconi company to improve transatlantic radio reception, Fleming invented the first thermionic vacuum tube, the two-electrode diode, which he called the oscillation valve, for which he received a patent on 16 November. It became known as the Fleming valve. The Supreme Court of the United States later invalidated the patent because of an improper disclaimer and, additionally, maintained the technology in the patent was known art when filed. This invention is often considered to have been the beginning of electronics, for this was the first vacuum tube. Fleming's diode was used in radio receivers and radars for many decades afterwards, until it was superseded by solid state electronic technology more than 50 years later.
In 1906, Lee De Forest of the US added a control "grid" to the valve to create an amplifying vacuum tube RF detector called the "Audion", leading Fleming to accuse him of infringing his patents. De Forest's tube developed into the triode the first electronic amplifier. The triode was vital in the creation of long-distance telephone and radio communications, radars, and early electronic digital computers (mechanical and electro-mechanical digital computers already existed using different technology). The court battle over these patents lasted for many years with victories at different stages for both sides. Fleming also contributed in the fields of photometry, electronics, wireless telegraphy (radio), and electrical measurements. He coined the term Power Factor to describe the true power flowing in an AC power system.
Fleming retired from University College, London in 1927 at the age of 77. He remained active, becoming a committed advocate of the new technology of Television which included serving as the second president of the Television Society. He was knighted in 1929, and died at his home in Sidmouth, Devon in 1945. His contributions to electronic communications and radar were of vital importance in winning World War II. Fleming was awarded the IRE Medal of Honor in 1933 for "the conspicuous part he played in introducing physical and engineering principles into the radio art". A note from eulogy at the Centenary celebration of the invention of the thermionic valve:
In November 1905, he patented the "Fleming Valve" (). As a rectifying diode, and forerunner to the triode valve and many related structures, it can also be considered to be the device that gave birth to modern electronics.
In the ensuing years, valves quickly superseded "cat's whiskers" and were the main device used to create the electronics industry of today. They remained dominant until the transistor took dominance in the early 1970s.
Today, descendants of the original valve (or vacuum tube) still play an important role in a range of applications. They can be found in the power stages of radio and television transmitters, in musical instrument amplifiers (particularly electric guitar and bass amplifiers), in some high-end audio amplifiers, as detectors of optical and short wavelength radiation, and in sensitive equipment that must be "radiation-hard".
In 1941 the London Power Company commemorated Fleming by naming a new 1,555 GRT coastal collier SS "Ambrose Fleming".
On 27 November 2004 a Blue Plaque presented by the Institute of Physics was unveiled at the Norman Lockyer Observatory, Sidmouth, to mark 100 years since the invention of the Thermionic Radio Valve.
In 1894 and 1917 Ambrose Fleming was invited to deliver the Royal Institution Christmas Lecture on "The Work of an Electric Current" and "Our Useful Servants : Magnetism and Electricity" respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16291 |
Jahangir
Nur-ud-din Muhammad Salim (Persian: ), known by his imperial name Jahangir (Persian: ) (31 August 1569 – 28 October 1627), was the fourth Mughal Emperor, who ruled from 1605 until his death in 1627. His imperial name (in Persian), means 'conqueror of the world', 'world-conqueror' or 'world-seizer' ("Jahan": world; "gir": the root of the Persian verb "gereftan": to seize, to grab).
The fictional tale of his relationship with the Mughal courtesan, Anarkali, has been widely adapted into the literature, art and cinema of India.
Prince Salim, later Jahangir, was born on 31 August 1569, in Fatehpur Sikri, to Akbar and one of his wives Mariam-uz-Zamani, daughter of Raja Bharmal of Amber. Akbar's previous children had died in infancy and he had sought the help of holy men to produce a son. Salim was named for one such man, Shaikh Salim, though Akbar always called him Shekhu Baba.
Prince Salim succeeded to the throne on Thursday, 3 November 1605, eight days after his father's death. Salim ascended to the throne with the title of Nur-ud-din Muhammad Jahangir Badshah Ghazi and thus began his 22-year reign at the age of 36. Jahangir soon after had to fend off his own son, Prince Khusrau Mirza, when the latter attempted to claim the throne based on Akbar's will to become his next heirs. Khusrau Mirza was defeated in 1606 and confined in the fort of Agra. As punishment, Khusrau Mirza was handed over to his younger brother and was partially blinded and killed.
Jahangir considered his third son Prince Khurram (future Shah Jahan), his favourite. In 1622, Khurram murdered his blind older brother, Khusrau Mirza, in order to smooth his own path to the throne.
In 1622, Jahangir sent his son, Prince Khurram, to fight against the combined forces of Ahmednagar, Bijapur and Golconda. After his victory, Khurram turned against his father and made a bid for power. As with the insurrection of his eldest son, Khusrau Mirza, Jahangir was able to defeat the challenge from within his family and retain power.
In 1623, Emperor Jahangir sent his "Tahwildar", Khan Alam, to Safavid Persia, accompanied by 800 sepoys, scribes and scholars along with ten Howdahs well decorated in gold and silver, in order to negotiate peace with Abbas I of Persia after a brief conflict in the region around Kandahar. Khan Alam soon returned with valuable gifts and groups of "Mir Shikar" (Hunt Masters) from both Safavid Persia and the Khanates of Central Asia.
In 1626, Jahangir began to contemplate an alliance between the Ottomans, Mughals and Uzbeks against the Safavids, who had defeated the Mughals at Kandahar. He even wrote a letter to the Ottoman Sultan Murad IV. Jahangir's ambition did not materialise, however, due to his death in 1627.
Salim was made a Mansabdar of ten thousand (Das-Hazari), the highest military rank of the empire (after the emperor). He independently commanded a regiment in the Kabul campaign of 1581 when he was barely twelve. His Mansab was raised to Twelve Thousand, in 1585, at the time of his betrothal to his cousin Rajkumari Man Bai, daughter of Bhagwant Das of Amer. Bhagwant Das, was the son of Raja Bharmal and the brother of Akbar's Hindu wife and Salim's mother – Mariam-uz-Zamani.
The marriage with Man Bai took place on 13 February 1585. Jahangir named her Shah Begum and she gave birth to Khusrau Mirza. Thereafter, Salim married, in quick succession, a number of accomplished girls from the aristocratic Mughal and Rajput families. One of his early favourite wives was a Rajput Princess, Jagat Gosain Begum. Jahangir named her Taj Bibi Bilqis Makani and she gave birth to Prince Khurram, the future Shah Jahan, who was Jahangir's successor to the throne.
On 7 July 1586 he married a daughter of Raja Rai Singh, Maharaja of Bikaner. In July 1586, he married Malika Shikar Begum, daughter of Sultan Abu Said Khan Jagatai, Sultan of Kashghar. In 1586, he married Sahib-i-Jamal Begum, daughter of Khwaja Hassan of Herat, a cousin of Zain Khan Koka. In 1587, he married Malika Jahan Begum, daughter of Bhim Singh, Maharaja of Jaisalmer. He also married the daughter of Raja Darya Malbhas. In October 1590, he married Zohra Begum, daughter of Mirza Sanjar Hazara. In 1591, he married Karamnasi Begum, daughter of Raja Kesho Das Rathore of Mertia. On 11 January 1592, he married Kanwal Rani, daughter of Ali Sher Khan, by his wife, Gul Khatun. In October 1592, he married a daughter of Husain Chak of Kashmir. In January/March 1593, he married Nur un-nisa Begum, daughter of Ibrahim Husain Mirza, by his wife, Gulrukh Begum, daughter of Kamran Mirza. In September 1593, he married a daughter of Ali Khan Faruqi, Raja of Khandesh. He also married a daughter of Abdullah Khan Baluch. On 28 June 1596, he married Khas Mahal Begum, daughter of Zain Khan Koka, Subadar of Kabul and Lahore. In 1608, he married Saliha Banu Begum, daughter of Qasim Khan, a senior member of the Imperial Household. On 17 June 1608, he married Koka Kumari Begum, eldest daughter of Jagat Singh, Yuvraj of Amber.
Jahangir married the extremely beautiful and intelligent Mehr-un-Nisaa (better known by her subsequent title of Nur Jahan) on 25 May 1611. She was the widow of Sher Afgan. Mehr-un-Nisaa became his indisputable chief consort and favourite wife immediately after their marriage. She was witty, intelligent and beautiful, which was what attracted Jahangir to her. Before being awarded the title of Nur Jahan ('Light of the World'), she was called Nur Mahal ('Light of the Palace'). Her abilities are said to range from fashion designing to hunting. There is also a myth that she had once killed four tigers with six bullets.
Mehr-Un-Nisa, or Nur Jahan, occupies an important place in the history of Jahangir. She was the widow of a rebel officer, Sher Afgan, whose actual name was Ali Quli Beg Ist'ajlu. He had earned the title "Sher Afgan" (Tiger tosser) from Emperor Akbar after throwing off a tiger that had leaped to attack Akbar on the top of an elephant in a royal hunt at Bengal and then stabbing the fallen tiger to death. Akbar was greatly affected by the bravery of the young Turkish bodyguard accompanying him and awarded him the captaincy of the Imperial Guard at Burdwan, Bengal. Sher Afgan had killed in rebellion (after having learned of Jahangir's orders to have him slain to possess his beautiful wife Mehr Un Nisaa as Jahangir yearned for her much earlier than her wedding to Sher Afgan), the governor of Bengal Qutubuddin Koka who was instructed secretly by Jahangir in his quest and who also was the emperor's foster brother and Sheikh Salim Chishti's grandson and consequently had been slain by the guards of the Governor. The widowed Mehr-Un-Nisaa was brought to Agra along with her nine-year-old daughter and placed in—or refused to be placed in—the Royal harem in 1607. Jahangir married her in 1611 and gave her the title of Nur Jahan or "Light of the World". It was rumoured that Jahangir had a hand in the death of her first husband Sher Afghan, albeit there is no recorded evidence to prove that he was guilty of that crime; in fact most travellers' reports say that he met her after Sher Afgan's death. (See Ellison Banks Findly's scholarly biography for a full discussion.)
The loss of Kandahar was due to Prince Khurram's refusal to obey her orders. When the Persians besieged Kandahar, Nur Jahan was at the helm of affairs. She ordered Prince Khurram to march for Kandahar, but he refused to do so. There is no doubt that his refusal was due to her behaviour towards him, as she was favouring her son-in-law, Shahryar, at the expense of Khurram. Khurram suspected that in his absence, Shahryar might be given promotion and that he might die on the battlefield. This fear forced Khurram to rebel against his father rather than fight against the Persians, and thereby Kandahar was lost to the Persians. Nur Jahan struck coins in her own name during the last years of Jahangir's reign when he was taken ill.
Under Jahangir, the empire continued to be a war state attuned to conquest and expansion. Jahangir's most irksome foe was the Rana of Mewar, Amar Singh, who finally surrendered in 1613 to Khurram's forces. In the northeast, the Mughals clashed with the Ahoms of Assam, whose guerilla tactics gave the Mughals a hard time. In Northern India, Jahangir's forces under Khurram defeated their other principal adversary, the Raja of Kangra, in 1615; in the Deccan, his victories further consolidated the empire. But in 1620, Jahangir fell sick, and so ensued the familiar quest for power. Nur Jahan married her daughter to Shahryar, Jahangir's youngest son from his other queen, in the hope of having a living male heir to the throne when Jahangir died.
In the year 1594, Jahangir was dispatched by his father, the Emperor Akbar, alongside Abu'l-Hasan Asaf Khan, also known as Mirza Jafar Beg son of Mirza Ghiyas Beg Isfahani and brother of Nur Jahan, and Abu'l-Fazl ibn Mubarak, to defeat the renegade Vir Singh Deo of Bundela and capture the city of Orchha, which was considered the centre of the revolt. Jahangir arrived with a force of 12,000 after many ferocious encounters and finally subdued the Bundela and ordered Vir Singh Deo to surrender. After tremendous casualties and the start of negotiations between the two, Vir Singh Deo handed over 5000 Bundela infantry and 1000 cavalry, but he feared Mughal retaliation and remained a fugitive until his death. The victorious Jahangir, at 26 years of age, ordered the completion of the Jahangir Mahal a famous Mughal citadel in Orchha to commemorate and honour his victory.
Jahangir then gathered his forces under the command of Ali Kuli Khan and fought Lakshmi Narayan of Koch Bihar. Lakshmi Narayan then accepted the Mughals as his suzerains and was given the title "Nazir", later establishing a garrison at Atharokotha.
In 1613, the Portuguese seized the Mughal ship "Rahimi", which had set out from Surat on its way with a large cargo of 100,000 rupees and Pilgrims, who were on their way to Mecca and Medina in order to attend the annual Hajj. The "Rahimi" was owned by Mariam-uz-Zamani, mother of Jahangir and Akbar's Rajput wife. She was referred to as Queen mother of Hindustan during his reign. "Rahimi" was the largest Indian ship sailing in the Red Sea and was known to the Europeans as the "great pilgrimage ship". When the Portuguese officially refused to return the ship and the passengers, the outcry at the Mughal court was unusually severe. The outrage was compounded by the fact that the owner and the patron of the ship was none other than the revered mother of the current emperor. Jahangir himself was outraged and ordered the seizure of the Portuguese town Daman. He ordered the apprehension of all Portuguese within the Mughal Empire; he further confiscated churches that belonged to the Jesuits. This episode is considered to be an example of the struggle for wealth that would later ensue and lead to colonisation of the Indian sub-continent.
Jahangir was responsible for ending a century long struggle with the state of Mewar. The campaign against the Rajputs was pushed so extensively that they were made to submit with great loss of life and property.
Jahangir posted Islam Khan I to subdue Musa Khan, an Afghan rebel in Bengal, in 1608. Jahangir also thought of capturing Kangra Fort, which Akbar had failed to do in 1615. Consequently, a siege was laid and the fort was taken in 1620, which "resulted in the submission of the Raja of Chamba who was the greatest of all the rajas in the region." The district of Kistwar, in the state of Kashmir, was also conquered.
Jahangir was trying to restore his health by visiting Kashmir and Kabul. He went from Kabul to Kashmir but decided to return to Lahore because of a severe cold.
Jahangir died on the journey from Kashmir to Lahore, near Sarai Saadabad in Bhimber in 1627. To embalm and preserve his body, the entrails were removed; these were buried inside Baghsar Fort near Bhimber in Kashmir. The body was then conveyed by palanquin to Lahore and was buried in Shahdara Bagh, a suburb of that city. The elegant mausoleum is today a popular tourist attraction site.
Jahangir was succeeded by his third son, Prince Khurram, who took the regnal name Shah Jahan.
Sir Thomas Roe was England's first ambassador to the Mughal court. Relations with England turned tense in 1617 when Roe warned Jahangir that if the young and charismatic Prince Shah Jahan, newly instated as the Subedar of Gujarat, turned the English out of the province, ""then he must expect we would do our justice upon the seas"". Shah Jahan chose to seal an official Firman allowing the English to trade in Gujarat in the year 1618.
Many contemporary chroniclers were not sure how to describe Jahangir's personal belief structure. Roe labelled him an atheist, and although most others shied away from that term, they did not feel as though they could call him an orthodox Sunni. Roe believed Jahangir's religion to be of his own making, "for he envies [the Prophet] Mohammed, and wisely sees no reason why he should not bee as great a prophet as he and therefore professed himself so... he hath found many disciples that flatter or follow him." At this time, one of those disciples happened to be the current English ambassador, though his initiation into Jahangir's inner circle was devoid of religious significance for Roe, as he did not understand the full extent of what he was doing. Jahangir hung "a picture of him self set in gold hanging at a wire gold chain" round Roe's neck. Roe thought it "an especial favour, for that all the great men that wear the King's image (which none may do but to whom it is given) receive no other than a medal of gold as big as six pence."
Had Roe intentionally converted, it would have caused quite a scandal in London. But since there was no intent, there was no resultant problem. Such disciples were an elite group of imperial servants, with one of them being promoted to Chief Justice. However, it is not clear that any of those who became disciples renounced their previous religion, so it is probable to see this as a way in which the emperor strengthened the bond between himself and his nobles. Despite Roe's somewhat casual use of the term 'atheist', he could not quite put his finger on Jahangir's real beliefs. Roe lamented that the emperor was either "the most impossible man in the world to be converted, or the most easy; for he loves to hear, and hath so little religion yet, that he can well abide to have any derided."
This should not imply that the multi-confessional state appealed to all, or that all Muslims were happy with the situation in India. In a book written on statecraft for Jahangir, the author advised him to direct "all his energies to understanding the counsel of the sages and to comprehending the intimations of the 'ulama." At the start of his regime many staunch Sunnis were hopeful, because he seemed less tolerant of other faiths than his father had been. At the time of his accession and the elimination of Abu'l Fazl, his father's chief minister and the architect of his eclectic religious stance, a powerful group of orthodox noblemen had gained increased power in the Mughal court.
Most notorious was the execution of the Sikh Guru Arjan Dev, whom Jahangir had had killed in prison. His lands were confiscated and his sons imprisoned as Jahangir suspected him of helping Khusrau's rebellion. It is unclear whether Jahangir even understood what a Sikh was, referring to Guru Arjan as a Hindu, who had "captured many of the simple-hearted of the Hindus and even of the ignorant and foolish followers of Islam, by his ways and manners... for three or four generations (of spiritual successors) they had kept this shop warm." The trigger for Guru Arjan's execution was his support for Jahangir's rebel son Khusrau Mirza, yet it is clear from Jahangir's own memoirs that he disliked Guru Arjan before then: "many times it occurred to me to put a stop to this vain affair or bring him into the assembly of the people of Islam."
Jahangir also moved swiftly to persecute Jains. One of his court historians states, “One day at Ahmadabad it was reported that many of the infidel and superstitious sect of the Seoras [Jains] of Gujarat had made several very great and splendid temples, and having placed in them their false gods, had managed to secure a large degree of respect for themselves and that the women who went for worship in those temples were polluted by them and other people. The Emperor Jahangir ordered them banished from the country, and their temples to be demolished.”
In another story narrated by Jahangir himself in his memoir, Jahangir visited Pushkar and was shocked to find a temple of a boar like deity. He was quite taken-aback. "The worthless religion of the Hindus is this," he claimed and ordered his men to destroy the idol. He also heard about a jogi doing mysterious things and he ordered his men to evict him and have the place destroyed.
Muqarrab Khan sent to Jahangir "a European curtain (tapestry) the like of which in beauty no other work of the Frank [European] painters has ever been seen." One of his audience halls was "adorned with European screens." Christian themes attracted Jahangir, and even merited a mention in the Tuzuk. One of his slaves gave him a piece of ivory into which had been carved four scenes. In the last scene "there is a tree, below which the figure of the revered (hazrat) Jesus is shown. One person has placed his head at Jesus' feet, and an old man is conversing with Jesus and four others are standing by." Though Jahangir believed it to be the work of the slave who presented it to him, Sayyid Ahmad and Henry Beveridge suggest that it was of European origin and possibly showed the Transfiguration. Wherever it came from, and whatever it represented, it was clear that a European style had come to influence Mughal art, otherwise the slave would not have claimed it as his own design, nor would he have been believed by Jahangir.
Jahangir was fascinated with art and architecture. In his autobiography, the Jahangirnama, Jahangir recorded events that occurred during his reign, descriptions of flora and fauna that he encountered, and other aspects of daily life, and commissioned court painters such as Ustad Mansur to paint detailed pieces that would accompany his vivid prose. For example, in 1619, he put pen to paper in awe of a royal falcon delivered to his court from the ruler of Iran: “What can I write of the beauty of this bird’s color? It had black markings, and every feather on its wings, back, and sides was extremely beautiful,” and then recorded his command that Ustad Mansur paint a portrait of it after it perished. Jahangir bound and displayed much of the art that he commissioned in elaborate albums of hundreds of images, sometimes organized around a theme such as zoology.
Jahangir himself was far from modest in his autobiography when he stated his prowess at being able to determine the artist of any portrait by simply looking at a painting. As he said:
Jahangir took his connoisseurship of art very seriously. He also preserved paintings from Emperor Akbar's period. An excellent example of this is the painting done by Ustad Mansur of Musician Naubat Khan, son in law of legendary Tansen. In addition to their aesthetic qualities, paintings created under his reign were closely catalogued, dated and even signed, providing scholars with fairly accurate ideas as to when and in what context many of the pieces were created.
In the foreword to W. M. Thackston’s translation of the Jahangirnama, Milo Cleveland Beach explains that Jahangir ruled during a time of considerably stable political control, and had the opportunity to order artists to create art to accompany his memoirs that were “in response to the emperor’s current enthusiasms”. He used his wealth and his luxury of free time to chronicle, in detail, the lush natural world that the Mughal Empire encompassed. At times, he would have artists travel with him for this purpose; when Jahangir was in Rahimabad, he had his painters on hand to capture the appearance of a specific tiger that he shot and killed, because he found it to be particularly beautiful.
The Jesuits had brought with them various books, engravings, and paintings and, when they saw the delight Akbar held for them, sent for more and more of the same to be given to the Mughals. They felt the Mughals were on the "verge of conversion", a notion which proved to be very false. Instead, both Akbar and Jahangir studied this artwork very closely and replicated and adapted it, adopting much of the early iconographic features and later the pictorial realism for which Renaissance art was known. Jahangir was notable for his pride in the ability of his court painters. A classic example of this is described in Sir Thomas Roe's diaries, in which the Emperor had his painters copy a European miniature several times creating a total of five miniatures. Jahangir then challenged Roe to pick out the original from the copies, a feat Sir Thomas Roe could not do, to the delight of Jahangir.
Jahangir was also revolutionary in his adaptation of European styles. A collection at the British Museum in London contains seventy-four drawings of Indian portraits dating from the time of Jahangir, including a portrait of the emperor himself. These portraits are a unique example of art during Jahangir's reign because faces were not drawn in full, including the shoulders as well as the head as these drawings are.
Jahangir is widely considered to have been a weak and incapable ruler. Orientalist Henry Beveridge (editor of the "Tuzk-e-Jahangiri") compares Jahangir to the Roman emperor Claudius, for both were "weak men... in their wrong places as rulers... [and had] Jahangir been head of a Natural History Museum... [he] would have been [a] better and happier man." Sir William Hawkins, who visited Jahangir's court in 1609, said: "In such short that what this man's father, called Ecber Padasha [Padshah Akbar], got of the Deccans, this king, Selim Sha [Jahangir] beginneth to lose." Italian writer and traveller, Niccolao Manucci, who worked under Jahangir's grandson, Dara Shikoh, began his discussion of Jahangir by saying: "It is a truth tested by experience that sons dissipate what their fathers gained in the sweat of their brow."
According to John F. Richards, Jahangir's frequent withdrawal to a private sphere of life was partly reflective of his indolence, brought on by his addiction to a considerable daily dosage of wine and opium. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16294 |
Josiah Wedgwood
Josiah Wedgwood (12 July 1730 – 3 January 1795) was an English potter and entrepreneur. He founded the Wedgwood company. He developed improved pottery bodies by a long process of systematic experimentation, and was the leader in the industrialisation of the manufacture of European pottery (the Chinese having achieved this long before). "It was by intensifying the division of labour that Wedgwood brought about the reduction of cost which enabled his pottery to find markets in all parts of Britain, and also of Europe and America." The renewed classical enthusiasms of the late 1760s and early 1770s were of major importance to his sales promotion. His expensive goods were in much demand from the upper classes, while he used emulation effects to market cheaper sets to the rest of society. Every new invention that Wedgwood produced – green glaze, creamware, black basalt and jasperware – was quickly copied. Having once achieved efficiency in production, he obtained efficiencies in sales and distribution. His showrooms in London gave the public the chance to see his complete range of tableware.
Wedgwood's company never made porcelain during his lifetime, but specialized in fine earthenwares and stonewares that had many of the same qualities, but were considerably cheaper. He made great efforts to keep the designs of his wares in tune with current fashion. He was an early adopter of transfer printing which gave similar effects to hand-painting for a far lower cost. Meeting the demands of the consumer revolution and growth in wealth of the middle classes that helped drive the Industrial Revolution in Britain, Wedgwood is sometimes credited as the inventor of modern marketing. He pioneered direct mail, money back guarantees, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues.
A prominent abolitionist fighting slavery, Wedgwood is remembered too for his ""Am I Not a Man And a Brother?"" anti-slavery medallion. He was a member of the Darwin–Wedgwood family, and he was the grandfather of Charles and Emma Darwin.
Born in Burslem, Staffordshire, the eleventh and last child of potter Thomas Wedgwood (d. 1739) and Mary Wedgwood ("née" Stringer; d. 1766), Josiah was raised within a family of English Dissenters, he was the grandson of a Unitarian minister and was an active Unitarian. By the age of nine, he was proving himself to be a skilled potter. He survived a childhood bout of smallpox to serve as an apprentice potter under his eldest brother Thomas Wedgwood IV. Smallpox left Josiah with a permanently weakened knee, which made him unable to work the foot pedal of a potter's wheel. As a result, he concentrated from an early age on designing pottery and then making it with the input of other potters. The pottery created in his father's and brother's business was inexpensive and low quality, black and mottled in color.
In his early twenties, Wedgwood began working with the most renowned English pottery-maker of his day, Thomas Whieldon, who eventually became his business partner in 1754. Wedgwood also began to study the new science of chemistry, seeking to understand the materials science of fire, clay, and minerals and to develop better clays and glazes for potter-making. Following an accident in 1762, Wedgwood met Joseph Priestley, another Dissenter and a chemist who gave Wedgwood advice on chemistry.
Wedgwood's experimentation with a wide variety of techniques coincided with the burgeoning of the nearby industrial city of Manchester. Inspired, Wedgwood leased the Ivy Works in the town of Burslem. From 1768 to 1780 he partnered with Thomas Bentley, a businessman from a landowning family who was socially sophisticated and had astute taste. Over the course of the next decade, his experimentation (and a considerable injection of capital from his marriage to a richly endowed distant cousin) transformed the sleepy artisan works into the first true pottery factory.
In January 1764 Wedgwood married Sarah Wedgwood (1734–1815), his third cousin. They had eight children:
Wedgwood was keenly interested in the scientific advances of his day and it was this interest that underpinned his adoption of its approach and methods to revolutionize the quality of his pottery. His unique glazes began to distinguish his wares from anything else on the market.
By 1763, he was receiving orders from the highest levels of the British nobility, including Queen Charlotte. Wedgwood convinced her to let him name the line of pottery she had purchased "Queen's Ware", and trumpeted the royal association in his paperwork and stationery. Anything Wedgwood made for the Queen was automatically exhibited before it was delivered. In 1764, he received his first order from abroad. Wedgwood marketed his Queen's Ware at affordable prices, everywhere in the world British trading ships sailed. In 1767 he wrote, "The demand for this sd. Creamcolour, Alias, Queen Ware, Alias, Ivory, still increases – It is amazing how rapidly the use of it has spread all most [sic] over the whole Globe."
He first opened a warehouse at Charles Street, Mayfair in London as early as 1765 and it soon became an integral part of his sales organization. In two years, his trade had outgrown his rooms in Grosvenor Square. In 1767, Wedgwood and Bentley drew up an agreement to divide decorative wares between them, the domestic wares being sold on Wedgwood's behalf. A special display room was built to beguile the fashionable company. Wedgwood's in fact had become one of the most fashionable meeting places in London. His workers had to work day and night to satisfy the demand, and the crowds of visitors showed no sign of abating. The proliferating decoration, the exuberant colours, and the universal gilding of rococo were banished, the splendours of baroque became distasteful; the intricacies of "chinoiserie" lost their favour. The demand was for purity, simplicity and antiquity. To encourage this outward spread of fashion and to speed it on its way Wedgwood set up warehouses and showrooms at Bath, Liverpool and Dublin in addition to his showrooms at Etruria and in Westminster. Great care was taken in timing the openings, and new goods were held back to increase their effect.
The most important of Wedgwood's early achievements in vase production was the perfection of the black stoneware body, which he called "basalt". This body could imitate the colour and shapes of Etruscan or Greek vases which were being excavated in Italy. In 1769, "vases was all the cry" in London; he opened a new factory called Etruria, north of Stoke. Wedgwood became what he wished to be: "Vase Maker General to the Universe". Around 1771, he started to experiment with Jasperware, but he did not advertise this new product for a couple of years.
Sir George Strickland, 6th Baronet, was asked for advice on getting models from Rome. Gilding was to prove unpopular, and around 1772, Wedgwood reduced the amount of "offensive gilding" in response to suggestions from Sir William Hamilton. When English society found the uncompromisingly naked figure of the classics "too warm" for their taste, and the ardor of the Greek gods too readily apparent, Wedgwood was quick to cloak their pagan immodesty – gowns for the girls and fig leaves for the gods were usually sufficient. Just as he felt that his flowerpots would sell more if they were called "duches of Devonshire flowerpots", his creamware more if called Queensware, so he longed for Brown, James Wyatt, and the brothers Adam to lead the architect in the use of his chimney pieces and for George Stubbs to lead the way in the use of Wedgwood plaques.
Wedgwood hoped to monopolize the aristocratic market and thus win for his wares a special social "cachet" which would filter to all classes of society. Wedgwood fully realised the value of such a lead and made the most of it by giving his pottery the name of its patron: Queensware, Royal Pattern, Russian pattern, Bedford, Oxford and Chetwynd vases for instance. Whether they owned the original or merely possessed a Wedgwood copy mattered little to Wedgwood's customers. In 1773 they published the first "Ornamental Catalogue", an illustrated catalogue of shapes. A plaque, in Wedgwood's blue pottery style, marking the site of his London showrooms between 1774 and 1795 in Wedgwood Mews, is located at 12, Greek Street, London, W1.
In 1773, Empress Catherine the Great ordered the (Green) Frog Service from Wedgwood, consisting of 952 pieces and over a thousand original paintings, for the Kekerekeksinen Palace ("palace on a frog swamp" ), later known as Chesme Palace. Most of the painting was carried out in Wedgwood's decorating studio at Chelsea. Its display, Wedgwood thought, 'would bring an immence (sic) number of People of Fashion into our Rooms. For over a month the fashionable world thronged the rooms and blocked the streets with their carriages. (Catharine paid £2,700. It can still be seen in the Hermitage Museum.) Strictly uneconomical in themselves, the advertising value of these productions were huge.
As a leading industrialist, Wedgwood was a major backer of the Trent and Mersey Canal dug between the River Trent and River Mersey, during which time he became friends with Erasmus Darwin. Later that decade, his burgeoning business caused him to move from the smaller Ivy Works to the newly built Etruria Works, which would run for 180 years. The factory was named after the Etruria district of Italy, where black porcelain dating to Etruscan times was being excavated. Wedgwood found this porcelain inspiring, and his first major commercial success was its duplication with what he called "Black Basalt". He combined experiments in his art and in the technique of mass production with an interest in improved roads, canals, schools and living conditions. At Etruria, he even built a village for his workers.
Not long after the new works opened, continuing trouble with his smallpox-afflicted knee made necessary the amputation of his right leg. In 1780, his long-time business partner Thomas Bentley died, and Wedgwood turned to Darwin for help in running the business. As a result of the close association that grew up between the Wedgwood and Darwin families, Josiah's eldest daughter would later marry Erasmus' son.
To clinch his position as leader of the new fashion, he sought out the famous Barberini vase as the final test of his technical skill. Wedgwood's obsession was to duplicate the Portland Vase, a blue-and-white glass vase dating to the first century BC. He worked on the project for three years, eventually producing what he considered a satisfactory copy in 1789.
In 1784, Wedgwood was exporting nearly 80% of his total produce. By 1790, he had sold his wares in every city in Europe. To give his customers a greater feeling of the rarity of his goods, he strictly limited the number of jaspers on display in his rooms at any given time.
After passing on his company to his sons, Wedgwood died at home, probably of cancer of the jaw, in 1795. He was buried three days later in the parish church of Stoke-on-Trent. Seven years later a marble memorial tablet commissioned by his sons was installed there.
One of the wealthiest entrepreneurs of the 18th century, Wedgwood created goods to meet the demands of the consumer revolution and growth in wealth of the middle classes that helped drive the Industrial Revolution in Britain. He is credited as the inventor of modern marketing, specifically direct mail, money back guarantees, travelling salesmen, carrying pattern boxes for display, self-service, free delivery, buy one get one free, and illustrated catalogues. Wedgwood is also noted as an early adopter/founder of managerial accounting principles in Anthony Hopwood's "Archaeology of Accounting Systems."
He was a friend, and commercial rival, of the potter John Turner the elder; their works have sometimes been misattributed. For the further comfort of his foreign buyers he employed French-, German-, Italian- and Dutch-speaking clerks and answered their letters in their native tongue.
Wedgwood belonged to the fifth generation of a family of potters whose traditional occupation continued through another five generations. Wedgwood's company is still a famous name in pottery today (as part of Waterford Wedgwood; see Waterford Crystal), and "Wedgwood China" is sometimes used as a term for his Jasperware, the coloured stoneware with applied relief decoration (usually white), still common throughout the world.
Wedgwood was a prominent slavery abolitionist. His friendship with Thomas Clarkson – abolitionist campaigner and the first historian of the British abolition movement – aroused his interest in slavery. Wedgwood mass-produced cameos depicting the seal for the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and had them widely distributed, which thereby became a popular and celebrated image. The Wedgwood medallion was the most famous image of a black person in all of 18th-century art. The actual design of the cameo was probably done by either William Hackwood or Henry Webber who were modellers in his Stoke-on-Trent factory.
From 1787 until his death in 1795, Josiah Wedgwood actively participated in the abolition-of-slavery cause. His "Slave Medallion" brought public attention to abolition. Wedgwood reproduced the design in a cameo with the black figure against a white background and donated hundreds to the society for distribution. Thomas Clarkson wrote: "ladies wore them in bracelets, and others had them fitted up in an ornamental manner as pins for their hair. At length the taste for wearing them became general, and thus fashion, which usually confines itself to worthless things, was seen for once in the honorable office of promoting the cause of justice, humanity and freedom".
The design on the medallion became popular and was used elsewhere: large-scale copies were painted to hang on walls and it was used on clay tobacco pipes.
He was elected to the Royal Society in 1783 for the development of a pyrometer, a device to measure the extremely high temperatures that are found in kilns during the firing of pottery.
He was an active member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham often held at Erasmus Darwin House and is remembered on the Moonstones in Birmingham. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16295 |
Julian (emperor)
Julian (; 331 – 26 June 363) was Roman emperor from 361 to 363, as well as a notable philosopher and author in Greek. His rejection of Christianity, and his promotion of Neoplatonic Hellenism in its place, caused him to be remembered as Julian the Apostate by the Christian church.
A member of the Constantinian dynasty, Julian was orphaned as a child. He was raised by the Gothic slave Mardonius, who had a profound influence on him, providing Julian with an excellent education. Julian became "caesar" over the western provinces by order of Constantius II in 355, and in this role he campaigned successfully against the Alamanni and Franks. Most notable was his crushing victory over the Alamanni at the Battle of Argentoratum (Strasbourg) in 357, leading his 13,000 men against a Germanic army three times larger. In 360, Julian was proclaimed "Augustus" by his soldiers at Lutetia (Paris), sparking a civil war with Constantius. However, Constantius died before the two could face each other in battle, and named Julian as his successor.
In 363, Julian embarked on an ambitious campaign against the Sasanian Empire. The campaign was initially successful, securing a victory outside Ctesiphon. However, he did not attempt to besiege it and moved into Persia's heartland, but soon faced supply problems and was forced to retreat north while ceaselessly being harassed by Persian skirmishes. During the Battle of Samarra, Julian was mortally wounded under mysterious circumstances. He was succeeded by Jovian, a senior officer in the imperial guard, who was obliged to cede territory, including Nisibis, in order to save the trapped Roman forces.
Julian was a man of unusually complex character: he was "the military commander, the theosophist, the social reformer, and the man of letters". He was the last non-Christian ruler of the Roman Empire, and he believed that it was necessary to restore the Empire's ancient Roman values and traditions in order to save it from dissolution. He purged the top-heavy state bureaucracy, and attempted to revive traditional Roman religious practices at the expense of Christianity. His attempt to build a Third Temple in Jerusalem was probably intended to harm Christianity rather than please Jews. Julian also forbade the Christians from teaching and learning classical texts.
Flavius Claudius Julianus was born at Constantinople in 331, the son of Julius Constantius, consul in 335 and half-brother of the emperor Constantine, by his second wife, Basilina, a woman of Greek origin. Both of his parents were Christians. Julian's paternal grandparents were the emperor Constantius Chlorus and his second wife, Flavia Maximiana Theodora. His maternal grandfather was Julius Julianus, Praetorian Prefect of the East under the emperor Licinius from 315 to 324, and consul "suffectus" in 325. The name of Julian's maternal grandmother is unknown.
In the turmoil after the death of Constantine in 337, in order to establish himself and his brothers, Julian's zealous Arian cousin Constantius II appears to have led a massacre of most of Julian's close relatives. Constantius II allegedly ordered the murders of many descendants from the second marriage of Constantius Chlorus and Theodora, leaving only Constantius and his brothers Constantine II and Constans I, and their cousins, Julian and Gallus (Julian's half-brother), as the surviving males related to Emperor Constantine. Constantius II, Constans I, and Constantine II were proclaimed joint emperors, each ruling a portion of Roman territory. Julian and Gallus were excluded from public life, were strictly guarded in their youth, and given a Christian education. They were likely saved by their youth and at the urging of the Empress Eusebia. If Julian's later writings are to be believed, Constantius would later be tormented with guilt at the massacre of 337.
Initially growing up in Bithynia, raised by his maternal grandmother, at the age of seven Julian was under the guardianship of Eusebius, the semi-Arian Christian Bishop of Nicomedia, and taught by Mardonius, a Gothic eunuch, about whom he later wrote warmly. After Eusebius died in 342, both Julian and Gallus were exiled to the imperial estate of Macellum in Cappadocia. Here Julian met the Christian bishop George of Cappadocia, who lent him books from the classical tradition. At the age of 18, the exile was lifted and he dwelt briefly in Constantinople and Nicomedia. He became a lector, a minor office in the Christian church, and his later writings show a detailed knowledge of the Bible, likely acquired in his early life.
Julian's conversion from Christianity to paganism happened at around the age of 20. Looking back on his life in 362, Julian wrote that he had spent twenty years in the way of Christianity and twelve in the true way, i.e., the way of Helios. Julian began his study of Neoplatonism in Asia Minor in 351, at first under Aedesius, the philosopher, and then Aedesius' student Eusebius of Myndus. It was from Eusebius that Julian learned of the teachings of Maximus of Ephesus, whom Eusebius criticized for his more mystical form of Neoplatonic theurgy. Eusebius related his meeting with Maximus, in which the theurgist invited him into the temple of Hecate and, chanting a hymn, caused a statue of the goddess to smile and laugh, and her torches to ignite. Eusebius reportedly told Julian that he "must not marvel at any of these things, even as I marvel not, but rather believe that the thing of the highest importance is that purification of the soul which is attained by reason." In spite of Eusebius' warnings regarding the "impostures of witchcraft and magic that cheat the senses" and "the works of conjurers who are insane men led astray into the exercise of earthly and material powers", Julian was intrigued, and sought out Maximus as his new mentor. According to the historian Eunapius, when Julian left Eusebius, he told his former teacher "farewell, and devote yourself to your books. You have shown me the man I was in search of."
Constantine II died in 340 when he attacked his brother Constans. Constans in turn fell in 350 in the war against the usurper Magnentius. This left Constantius II as the sole remaining emperor. In need of support, in 351 he made Julian's half-brother, Gallus, caesar of the East, while Constantius II himself turned his attention westward to Magnentius, whom he defeated decisively that year. In 354 Gallus, who had imposed a rule of terror over the territories under his command, was executed. Julian was summoned to Constantius' court in Mediolanum (Milan) in 354, and held for a year, under suspicion of treasonable intrigue, first with his brother and then with Claudius Silvanus; he was cleared, in part because Empress Eusebia intervened on his behalf, and he was permitted to study in Athens (Julian expresses his gratitude to the empress in his third oration). While there, Julian became acquainted with two men who later became both bishops and saints: Gregory of Nazianzus and Basil the Great. In the same period, Julian was also initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries, which he would later try to restore.
After dealing with the rebellions of Magnentius and Silvanus, Constantius felt he needed a permanent representative in Gaul. In 355, Julian was summoned to appear before the emperor in Mediolanum and on 6 November was made caesar of the West, marrying Constantius' sister, Helena. Constantius, after his experience with Gallus, intended his representative to be more a figurehead than an active participant in events, so he packed Julian off to Gaul with a small retinue, assuming his prefects in Gaul would keep Julian in check. At first reluctant to trade his scholarly life for war and politics, Julian eventually took every opportunity to involve himself in the affairs of Gaul. In the following years he learned how to lead and then run an army, through a series of campaigns against the Germanic tribes that had settled on both sides of the Rhine.
In 356 during his first campaign he led an army to the Rhine, engaged the inhabitants there and won back several towns that had fallen into Frankish hands, including Colonia Agrippina (Cologne). With success under his belt he withdrew for the winter to Gaul, distributing his forces to protect various towns, and choosing the small town of Senon near Verdun to await the spring. This turned out to be a tactical error, for he was left with insufficient forces to defend himself when a large contingent of Franks besieged the town and Julian was virtually held captive there for several months, until his general Marcellus deigned to lift the siege. Relations between Julian and Marcellus seem to have been poor. Constantius accepted Julian's report of events and Marcellus was replaced as "magister equitum" by Severus.
The following year saw a combined operation planned by Constantius to regain control of the Rhine from the Germanic peoples who had spilt across the river onto the west bank. From the south his "magister peditum" Barbatio was to come from Milan and amass forces at Augst (near the Rhine bend), then set off north with 25,000 soldiers; Julian with 13,000 troops would move east from Durocortorum (Rheims). However, while Julian was in transit, a group of Laeti attacked Lugdunum (Lyon) and Julian was delayed in order to deal with them. This left Barbatio unsupported and deep in Alamanni territory, so he felt obliged to withdraw, retracing his steps. Thus ended the coordinated operation against the Germanic peoples.
With Barbatio safely out of the picture, King Chnodomarius led a confederation of Alamanni forces against Julian and Severus at the Battle of Argentoratum. The Romans were heavily outnumbered and during the heat of battle a group of 600 horsemen on the right wing deserted, yet, taking full advantage of the limitations of the terrain, the Romans were overwhelmingly victorious. The enemy was routed and driven into the river. King Chnodomarius was captured and later sent to Constantius in Milan. Ammianus, who was a participant in the battle, portrays Julian in charge of events on the battlefield and describes how the soldiers, because of this success, acclaimed Julian attempting to make him Augustus, an acclamation he rejected, rebuking them. He later rewarded them for their valor.
Rather than chase the routed enemy across the Rhine, Julian now proceeded to follow the Rhine north, the route he followed the previous year on his way back to Gaul. At Moguntiacum (Mainz), however, he crossed the Rhine in an expedition that penetrated deep into what is today Germany, and forced three local kingdoms to submit. This action showed the Alamanni that Rome was once again present and active in the area. On his way back to winter quarters in Paris he dealt with a band of Franks who had taken control of some abandoned forts along the Meuse River.
In 358, Julian gained victories over the Salian Franks on the Lower Rhine, settling them in Toxandria in the Roman Empire, north of today's city of Tongeren, and over the Chamavi, who were expelled back to Hamaland.
At the end of 357 Julian, with the prestige of his victory over the Alamanni to give him confidence, prevented a tax increase by the Gallic praetorian prefect Florentius and personally took charge of the province of "Belgica Secunda". This was Julian's first experience with civil administration, where his views were influenced by his liberal education in Greece. Properly it was a role that belonged to the praetorian prefect. However, Florentius and Julian often clashed over the administration of Gaul. Julian's first priority, as caesar and nominal ranking commander in Gaul, was to drive out the barbarians who had breached the Rhine frontier. However, he sought to win over the support of the civil population, which was necessary for his operations in Gaul and also to show his largely Germanic army the benefits of Imperial rule. He therefore felt it was necessary to rebuild stable and peaceful conditions in the devastated cities and countryside. For this reason, Julian clashed with Florentius over the latter's support of tax increases, as mentioned above, and Florentius's own corruption in the bureaucracy.
Constantius attempted to maintain some modicum of control over his caesar, which explains his removal of Julian's close adviser Saturninius Secundus Salutius from Gaul. His departure stimulated the writing of Julian's oration, "Consolation Upon the Departure of Salutius".
In the fourth year of Julian's stay in Gaul, the Sassanid Emperor, Shapur II, invaded Mesopotamia and took the city of Amida after a 73-day siege. In February 360, Constantius II ordered more than half of Julian's Gallic troops to join his eastern army, the order by-passing Julian and going directly to the military commanders. Although Julian at first attempted to expedite the order, it provoked an insurrection by troops of the "Petulantes", who had no desire to leave Gaul. According to the historian Zosimus, the army officers were those responsible for distributing an anonymous tract expressing complaints against Constantius as well as fearing for Julian's ultimate fate. Notably absent at the time was the prefect Florentius, who was seldom far from Julian's side, though now he was kept busy organizing supplies in Vienne and away from any strife that the order could cause. Julian would later blame him for the arrival of the order from Constantius. Ammianus Marcellinus even suggested that the fear of Julian gaining more popularity than himself caused Constantius to send the order on the urging of Florentius.
The troops proclaimed Julian "Augustus" in Paris, and this in turn led to a very swift military effort to secure or win the allegiance of others. Although the full details are unclear, there is evidence to suggest that Julian may have at least partially stimulated the insurrection. If so, he went back to business as usual in Gaul, for, from June to August of that year, Julian led a successful campaign against the Attuarian Franks. In November, Julian began openly using the title "Augustus," even issuing coins with the title, sometimes with Constantius, sometimes without. He celebrated his fifth year in Gaul with a big show of games.
In the spring of 361, Julian led his army into the territory of the Alamanni, where he captured their king, Vadomarius. Julian claimed that Vadomarius had been in league with Constantius, encouraging him to raid the borders of Raetia. Julian then divided his forces, sending one column to Raetia, one to northern Italy and the third he led down the Danube on boats. His forces claimed control of Illyricum and his general, Nevitta, secured the pass of Succi into Thrace. He was now well out of his comfort zone and on the road to civil war. (Julian would state in late November that he set off down this road "because, having been declared a public enemy, I meant to frighten him [Constantius] merely, and that our quarrel should result in intercourse on more friendly terms...")
However, in June, forces loyal to Constantius captured the city of Aquileia on the north Adriatic coast, an event that threatened to cut Julian off from the rest of his forces, while Constantius's troops marched towards him from the east. Aquileia was subsequently besieged by 23,000 men loyal to Julian. All Julian could do was sit it out in Naissus, the city of Constantine's birth, waiting for news and writing letters to various cities in Greece justifying his actions (of which only the letter to the Athenians has survived in its entirety). Civil war was avoided only by the death on November 3 of Constantius, who, in his last will, is alleged by some sources to have recognized Julian as his rightful successor.
On December 11, 361, Julian entered Constantinople as sole emperor and, despite his rejection of Christianity, his first political act was to preside over Constantius' Christian burial, escorting the body to the Church of the Apostles, where it was placed alongside that of Constantine. This act was a demonstration of his lawful right to the throne. He is also now thought to have been responsible for the building of Santa Costanza on a Christian site just outside Rome as a mausoleum for his wife Helena and sister-in-law Constantina.
The new Emperor rejected the style of administration of his immediate predecessors. He blamed Constantine for the state of the administration and for having abandoned the traditions of the past. He made no attempt to restore the tetrarchal system begun under Diocletian. Nor did he seek to rule as an absolute autocrat. His own philosophic notions led him to idealize the reigns of Hadrian and Marcus Aurelius. In his first panegyric to Constantius, Julian described the ideal ruler as being essentially "primus inter pares" ("first among equals"), operating under the same laws as his subjects. While in Constantinople therefore it was not strange to see Julian frequently active in the Senate, participating in debates and making speeches, placing himself at the level of the other members of the Senate.
He viewed the royal court of his predecessors as inefficient, corrupt, and expensive. Thousands of servants, eunuchs, and superfluous officials were therefore summarily dismissed. He set up the Chalcedon tribunal to deal with the corruption of the previous administration under the supervision of "Magister Militum" Arbitio. Several high-ranking officials under Constantius, including the chamberlain Eusebius, were found guilty and executed. (Julian was conspicuously absent from the proceedings, perhaps signaling his displeasure at their necessity.) He continually sought to reduce what he saw as a burdensome and corrupt bureaucracy within the Imperial administration whether it involved civic officials, the secret agents, or the imperial post service.
Another effect of Julian's political philosophy was that the authority of the cities was expanded at the expense of the imperial bureaucracy as Julian sought to reduce direct imperial involvement in urban affairs. For example, city land owned by the imperial government was returned to the cities, city council members were compelled to resume civic authority, often against their will, and the tribute in gold by the cities called the "aurum coronarium" was made voluntary rather than a compulsory tax. Additionally, arrears of land taxes were cancelled. This was a key reform reducing the power of corrupt imperial officials, as the unpaid taxes on land were often hard to calculate or higher than the value of the land itself. Forgiving back taxes both made Julian more popular and allowed him to increase collections of current taxes.
While he ceded much of the authority of the imperial government to the cities, Julian also took more direct control himself. For example, new taxes and corvées had to be approved by him directly rather than left to the judgment of the bureaucratic apparatus. Julian certainly had a clear idea of what he wanted Roman society to be, both in political as well as religious terms. The terrible and violent dislocation of the 3rd century meant that the Eastern Mediterranean had become the economic locus of the Empire. If the cities were treated as relatively autonomous local administrative areas, it would simplify the problems of imperial administration, which as far as Julian was concerned, should be focused on the administration of the law and defense of the empire's vast frontiers.
In replacing Constantius's political and civil appointees, Julian drew heavily from the intellectual and professional classes, or kept reliable holdovers, such as the rhetorician Themistius. His choice of consuls for the year 362 was more controversial. One was the very acceptable Claudius Mamertinus, previously the Praetorian prefect of Illyricum. The other, more surprising choice was Nevitta, Julian's trusted Frankish general. This latter appointment made overt the fact that an emperor's authority depended on the power of the army. Julian's choice of Nevitta appears to have been aimed at maintaining the support of the Western army which had acclaimed him.
After five months of dealings at the capital, Julian left Constantinople in May and moved to Antioch, arriving in mid-July and staying there for nine months before launching his fateful campaign against Persia in March 363. Antioch was a city favored by splendid temples along with a famous oracle of Apollo in nearby Daphne, which may have been one reason for his choosing to reside there. It had also been used in the past as a staging place for amassing troops, a purpose which Julian intended to follow.
His arrival on 18 July was well received by the Antiochenes, though it coincided with the celebration of the "Adonia", a festival which marked the death of Adonis, so there was wailing and moaning in the streets—not a good omen for an arrival.
Julian soon discovered that wealthy merchants were causing food problems, apparently by hoarding food and selling it at high prices. He hoped that the curia would deal with the issue for the situation was headed for a famine. When the curia did nothing, he spoke to the city's leading citizens, trying to persuade them to take action. Thinking that they would do the job, he turned his attention to religious matters.
He tried to resurrect the ancient oracular spring of Castalia at the temple of Apollo at Daphne. After being advised that the bones of 3rd-century bishop Babylas were suppressing the god, he made a public-relations mistake in ordering the removal of the bones from the vicinity of the temple. The result was a massive Christian procession. Shortly after that, when the temple was destroyed by fire, Julian suspected the Christians and ordered stricter investigations than usual. He also shut up the chief Christian church of the city, before the investigations proved that the fire was the result of an accident.
When the curia still took no substantial action in regards to the food shortage, Julian intervened, fixing the prices for grain and importing more from Egypt. Then landholders refused to sell theirs, claiming that the harvest was so bad that they had to be compensated with fair prices. Julian accused them of price gouging and forced them to sell. Various parts of Libanius' orations may suggest that both sides were justified to some extent while Ammianus blames Julian for "a mere thirst for popularity".
Julian's ascetic lifestyle was not popular either, since his subjects were accustomed to the idea of an all-powerful Emperor who placed himself well above them. Nor did he improve his dignity with his own participation in the ceremonial of bloody sacrifices.
David S. Potter, an assistant secretary of the US Navy, said after nearly two millennia:
He then tried to address public criticism and mocking of him by issuing a satire ostensibly on himself, called Misopogon or "Beard Hater". There he blames the people of Antioch for preferring that their ruler have his virtues in the face rather than in the soul.
Even Julian's intellectual friends and fellow pagans were of a divided mind about this habit of talking to his subjects on an equal footing: Ammianus Marcellinus saw in that only the foolish vanity of someone "excessively anxious for empty distinction", whose "desire for popularity often led him to converse with unworthy persons".
On leaving Antioch he appointed Alexander of Heliopolis as governor, a violent and cruel man whom the Antiochene Libanius, a friend of the emperor, admits on first thought was a "dishonourable" appointment. Julian himself described the man as "undeserving" of the position, but appropriate "for the avaricious and rebellious people of Antioch".
Julian's rise to Augustus was the result of military insurrection eased by Constantius's sudden death. This meant that, while he could count on the wholehearted support of the Western army which had aided his rise, the Eastern army was an unknown quantity originally loyal to the Emperor he had risen against, and he had tried to woo it through the Chalcedon tribunal. However, to solidify his position in the eyes of the eastern army, he needed to lead its soldiers to victory and a campaign against the Sassanid Persians offered such an opportunity.
An audacious plan was formulated whose goal was to lay siege on the Sassanid capital city of Ctesiphon and definitively secure the eastern border. Yet the full motivation for this ambitious operation is, at best, unclear. There was no direct necessity for an invasion, as the Sassanids sent envoys in the hope of settling matters peacefully. Julian rejected this offer. Ammianus states that Julian longed for revenge on the Persians and that a certain desire for combat and glory also played a role in his decision to go to war.
On 5 March 363, despite a series of omens against the campaign, Julian departed from Antioch with about 65,000–83,000, or 80,000–90,000 men (the traditional number accepted by Gibbon is 95,000 effectives total), and headed north toward the Euphrates. En route he was met by embassies from various small powers offering assistance, none of which he accepted. He did order the Armenian King Arsaces to muster an army and await instructions. He crossed the Euphrates near Hierapolis and moved eastward to Carrhae, giving the impression that his chosen route into Persian territory was down the Tigris. For this reason it seems he sent a force of 30,000 soldiers under Procopius and Sebastianus further eastward to devastate Media in conjunction with Armenian forces. This was where two earlier Roman campaigns had concentrated and where the main Persian forces were soon directed. Julian's strategy lay elsewhere, however. He had had a fleet built of over 1,000 ships at Samosata in order to supply his army for a march down the Euphrates and of 50 pontoon ships to facilitate river crossings. Procopius and the Armenians would march down the Tigris to meet Julian near Ctesiphon. Julian's ultimate aim seems to have been "regime change" by replacing king Shapur II with his brother Hormisdas.
After feigning a march further eastward, Julian's army turned south to Circesium at the confluence of the Abora (Khabur) and the Euphrates arriving at the beginning of April. Passing Dura on April 6, the army made good progress, bypassing towns after negotiations or besieging those which chose to oppose him. At the end of April the Romans captured the fortress of Pirisabora, which guarded the canal approach from the Euphrates to Ctesiphon on the Tigris. As the army marched toward the Persian capital, the Sassanids broke the dikes which crossed the land, turning it into marshland, slowing the progress of the Roman army.
By mid-May, the army had reached the vicinity of the heavily fortified Persian capital, Ctesiphon, where Julian partially unloaded some of the fleet and had his troops ferried across the Tigris by night. The Romans gained a tactical victory over the Persians before the gates of the city, driving them back into the city. However, the Persian capital was not taken, the main Persian army was still at large and approaching, while the Romans lacked a clear strategic objective. In the council of war which followed, Julian's generals persuaded him not to mount a siege against the city, given the impregnability of its defenses and the fact that Shapur would soon arrive with a large force. Julian not wanting to give up what he had gained and probably still hoping for the arrival of the column under Procopius and Sebastianus, set off east into the Persian interior, ordering the destruction of the fleet. This proved to be a hasty decision, for they were on the wrong side of the Tigris with no clear means of retreat and the Persians had begun to harass them from a distance, burning any food in the Romans' path. Julian had not brought adequate siege equipment, so there was nothing he could do when he found that the Persians had flooded the area behind him, forcing him to withdraw. A second council of war on 16 June 363 decided that the best course of action was to lead the army back to the safety of Roman borders, not through Mesopotamia, but northward to Corduene.
During the withdrawal, Julian's forces suffered several attacks from Sassanid forces. In one such engagement on 26 June 363, the indecisive Battle of Samarra near Maranga, Julian was wounded when the Sassanid army raided his column. In the haste of pursuing the retreating enemy, Julian chose speed rather than caution, taking only his sword and leaving his coat of mail. He received a wound from a spear that reportedly pierced the lower lobe of his liver, the peritoneum and intestines. The wound was not immediately deadly. Julian was treated by his personal physician, Oribasius of Pergamum, who seems to have made every attempt to treat the wound. This probably included the irrigation of the wound with a dark wine, and a procedure known as "gastrorrhaphy", the suturing of the damaged intestine. On the third day a major hemorrhage occurred and the emperor died during the night. As Julian wished, his body was buried outside Tarsus, though it was later removed to Constantinople.
In 364, Libanius stated that Julian was assassinated by a Christian who was one of his own soldiers; this charge is not corroborated by Ammianus Marcellinus or other contemporary historians. John Malalas reports that the supposed assassination was commanded by Basil of Caesarea. Fourteen years later, Libanius said that Julian was killed by a Saracen (Lakhmid) and this may have been confirmed by Julian's doctor Oribasius who, having examined the wound, said that it was from a spear used by a group of Lakhmid auxiliaries in Persian service. Later Christian historians propagated the tradition that Julian was killed by Saint Mercurius. Julian was succeeded by the short-lived Emperor Jovian who reestablished Christianity's privileged position throughout the Empire.
Libanius says in his epitaph of the deceased emperor (18.304) that "I have mentioned representations (of Julian); many cities have set him beside the images of the gods and honour him as they do the gods. Already a blessing has been besought of him in prayer, and it was not in vain. To such an extent has he literally ascended to the gods and received a share of their power from him themselves." However, no similar action was taken by the Roman central government, which would be more and more dominated by Christians in the ensuing decades.
Considered apocryphal is the report that his dying words were , or ("You have won, Galilean"), supposedly expressing his recognition that, with his death, Christianity would become the Empire's state religion. The phrase introduces the 1866 poem "Hymn to Proserpine", which was Algernon Charles Swinburne's elaboration of what a philosophic pagan might have felt at the triumph of Christianity. It also ends the Polish Romantic play "The Undivine comedy" written in 1833 by Zygmunt Krasiński.
As he had requested, Julian's body was buried in Tarsus. It lay in a tomb outside the city, across a road from that of Maximinus Daia.
However, chronicler Zonaras says that at some "later" date his body was exhumed and reburied in or near the Church of the Holy Apostles in Constantinople, where Constantine and the rest of his family lay. His sarcophagus is listed as standing in a "stoa" there by Constantine Porphyrogenitus. The church was demolished by the Ottoman Turks after the fall of Constantinople in 1453. Today a sarcophagus of porphyry, identified as Julian's, stands in the grounds of the Archaeological Museum in Istanbul.
Julian's personal religion was both pagan and philosophical; he viewed the traditional myths as allegories, in which the ancient gods were aspects of a philosophical divinity. The chief surviving sources are his works "To King Helios" and "To the Mother of the Gods", which were written as panegyrics, not theological treatises.
As the last pagan ruler of the Roman Empire, Julian's beliefs are of great interest for historians, but they are not in complete agreement. He learned theurgy from Maximus of Ephesus, a student of Iamblichus; his system bears some resemblance to the Neoplatonism of Plotinus; Polymnia Athanassiadi has brought new attention to his relations with Mithraism, although whether he was initiated into it remains debatable; and certain aspects of his thought (such as his reorganization of paganism under High Priests, and his fundamental monotheism) may show Christian influence. Some of these potential sources have not come down to us, and all of them influenced each other, which adds to the difficulties.
According to one theory (that of G.W. Bowersock in particular), Julian's paganism was highly eccentric and atypical because it was heavily influenced by an esoteric approach to Platonic philosophy sometimes identified as "theurgy" and also "Neoplatonism". Others (Rowland Smith, in particular) have argued that Julian's philosophical perspective was nothing unusual for a "cultured" pagan of his time, and, at any rate, that Julian's paganism was not limited to philosophy alone, and that he was deeply devoted to the same gods and goddesses as other pagans of his day.
Because of his Neoplatonist background Julian accepted the creation of humanity as described in Plato's "Timaeus". Julian writes, "when Zeus was setting all things in order there fell from him drops of sacred blood, and from them, as they say, arose the race of men." Further he writes, "they who had the power to create one man and one woman only, were able to create many men and women at once..." His view contrasts with the Christian belief that humanity is derived from the one pair, Adam and Eve. Elsewhere he argues against the single pair origin, indicating his disbelief, noting for example, "how very different in their bodies are the Germans and Scythians from the Libyans and Ethiopians."
The Christian historian Socrates Scholasticus was of the opinion that Julian believed himself to be Alexander the Great "in another body" via transmigration of souls, "in accordance with the teachings of Pythagoras and Plato".
The diet of Julian is said to have been predominantly vegetable-based.
After gaining the purple, Julian started a religious reformation of the empire, which was intended to restore the lost strength of the Roman state. He supported the restoration of Hellenistic polytheism as the state religion. His laws tended to target wealthy and educated Christians, and his aim was not to destroy Christianity but to drive the religion out of "the governing classes of the empire — much as Chinese Buddhism was driven back into the lower classes by a revived Confucian mandarinate in 13th century China."
He restored pagan temples which had been confiscated since Constantine's time, or simply appropriated by wealthy citizens; he repealed the stipends that Constantine had awarded to Christian bishops, and removed their other privileges, including a right to be consulted on appointments and to act as private courts. He also reversed some favors that had previously been given to Christians. For example, he reversed Constantine's declaration that Majuma, the port of Gaza, was a separate city. Majuma had a large Christian congregation while Gaza was still predominantly pagan.
On 4 February 362, Julian promulgated an edict to guarantee freedom of religion. This edict proclaimed that all the religions were equal before the law, and that the Roman Empire had to return to its original religious eclecticism, according to which the Roman state did not impose any religion on its provinces. The edict was seen as an act of favor toward the Jews, in order to upset the Christians.
Since the persecution of Christians by past Roman Emperors had seemingly only strengthened Christianity, many of Julian's actions were designed to harass Christians and undermine their ability to organize resistance to the re-establishment of paganism in the empire. Julian's preference for a non-Christian and non-philosophical view of Iamblichus' theurgy seems to have convinced him that it was right to outlaw the practice of the Christian view of theurgy and demand the suppression of the Christian set of Mysteries.
In his "School Edict" Julian required that all public teachers be approved by the Emperor; the state paid or supplemented much of their salaries. Ammianus Marcellinus explains this as intending to prevent Christian teachers from using pagan texts (such as the "Iliad", which was widely regarded as divinely inspired) that formed the core of classical education: "If they want to learn literature, they have Luke and Mark: Let them go back to their churches and expound on them", the edict says. This was an attempt to remove some of the influence of the Christian schools which at that time and later used ancient Greek literature in their teachings in their effort to present the Christian religion as being superior to paganism. The edict also dealt a severe financial blow to many Christian scholars, tutors and teachers, as it deprived them of students.
In his "Tolerance Edict" of 362, Julian decreed the reopening of pagan temples, the restitution of confiscated temple properties, and the return from exile of dissident Christian bishops. The latter was an instance of tolerance of different religious views, but it may also have been an attempt by Julian to foster schisms and divisions between different Christian sects, since conflict between rival Christian sects was quite fierce.
His care in the institution of a pagan hierarchy in opposition to that of the Christians was due to his wish to create a society in which every aspect of the life of the citizens was to be connected, through layers of intermediate levels, to the consolidated figure of the Emperor — the final provider for all the needs of his people. Within this project, there was no place for a parallel institution, such as the Christian hierarchy or Christian charity.
Julian's popularity among the people and the army during his brief reign suggest that he might have brought paganism back to the fore of Roman public and private life. In fact, during his lifetime, neither pagan nor Christian ideology reigned supreme, and the greatest thinkers of the day argued about the merits and rationality of each religion. Most importantly for the pagan cause, though, Rome was still a predominantly pagan empire that had not wholly accepted Christianity.
Even so, Julian's short reign did not stem the tide of Christianity. The emperor's ultimate failure can arguably be attributed to the manifold religious traditions and deities that paganism promulgated. Most pagans sought religious affiliations that were unique to their culture and people, and they had internal divisions that prevented them from creating any one ‘pagan religion.’ Indeed, the term pagan was simply a convenient appellation for Christians to lump together the believers of a system they opposed. In truth, there was no Roman religion, as modern observers would recognize it. Instead, paganism came from a system of observances that one historian has characterized as “no more than a spongy mass of tolerance and tradition.”
This system of tradition had already shifted dramatically by the time Julian came to power; gone were the days of massive sacrifices honoring the gods. The communal festivals that involved sacrifice and feasting, which once united communities, now tore them apart—Christian against pagan. Civic leaders did not even have the funds, much less the support, to hold religious festivals. Julian found the financial base that had supported these ventures (sacred temple funds) had been seized by his uncle Constantine to support the Christian Church. In all, Julian's short reign simply could not shift the feeling of inertia that had swept across the Empire. Christians had denounced sacrifice, stripped temples of their funds, and cut priests and magistrates off from the social prestige and financial benefits accompanying leading pagan positions in the past. Leading politicians and civic leaders had little motivation to rock the boat by reviving pagan festivals. Instead, they chose to adopt the middle ground by having ceremonies and mass entertainment that were religiously neutral.
After witnessing the reign of two emperors bent on supporting the Church and stamping out paganism, it is understandable that pagans simply did not embrace Julian's idea of proclaiming their devotion to polytheism and their rejection of Christianity. Many chose to adopt a practical approach and not support Julian's public reforms actively for fear of a Christian revival. However, this apathetic attitude forced the emperor to shift central aspects of pagan worship. Julian's attempts to reinvigorate the people shifted the focus of paganism from a system of tradition to a religion with some of the same characteristics that he opposed in Christianity. For example, Julian attempted to introduce a tighter organization for the priesthood, with greater qualifications of character and service. Classical paganism simply did not accept this idea of priests as model citizens. Priests were elites with social prestige and financial power who organized festivals and helped pay for them. Yet Julian's attempt to impose moral strictness on the civic position of priesthood only made paganism more in tune with Christian morality, drawing it further from paganism's system of tradition.
Indeed, this development of a pagan order created the foundations of a bridge of reconciliation over which paganism and Christianity could meet. Likewise, Julian's persecution of Christians, who by pagan standards were simply part of a different cult, was quite an un-pagan attitude that transformed paganism into a religion that accepted only one form of religious experience while excluding all others—such as Christianity. In trying to compete with Christianity in this manner, Julian fundamentally changed the nature of pagan worship. That is, he made paganism a religion, whereas it once had been only a system of tradition.
Despite this inadvertent reconciliation of paganism to Christianity, however, many of the Church fathers viewed the emperor with hostility, and told stories of his supposed wickedness after his death. A sermon by Saint John Chrysostom, entitled "On Saints Juventinus and Maximinus," tells the story of two of Julian's soldiers at Antioch, who were overheard at a drinking party, criticizing the emperor's religious policies, and taken into custody. According to John, the emperor had made a deliberate effort to avoid creating martyrs of those who disagreed with his reforms; but Juventinus and Maximinus admitted to being Christians, and refused to moderate their stance. John asserts that the emperor forbade anyone from having contact with the men, but that nobody obeyed his orders; so he had the two men executed in the middle of the night. John urges his audience to visit the tomb of these martyrs.
The fact that Christian charities were open to all, including pagans, put this aspect of Roman citizens' lives out of the control of Imperial authority and under that of the Church. Thus Julian envisioned the institution of a Roman philanthropic system, and cared for the behaviour and the morality of the pagan priests, in the hope that it would mitigate the reliance of pagans on Christian charity, saying: ""These impious Galileans not only feed their own poor, but ours also; welcoming them into their agapae, they attract them, as children are attracted, with cakes.""
In 363, not long before Julian left Antioch to launch his campaign against Persia, in keeping with his effort to foster religions other than Christianity, he ordered the Temple rebuilt. Fires breaking out stopped this. A personal friend of his, Ammianus Marcellinus, wrote this about the effort:
The failure to rebuild the Temple has been ascribed to the Galilee earthquake of 363. Although there is contemporary testimony for the miracle, in the Orations of St. Gregory Nazianzen, this may be taken to be unreliable. Sabotage by Christians is a possibility, as is an accidental fire. Divine intervention was the common view among Christian historians of the time. Julian's support of Jews caused Jews to call him "Julian the Hellene".
Julian wrote several works in Greek, some of which have come down to us.
The religious works contain involved philosophical speculations, and the panegyrics to Constantius are formulaic and elaborate in style.
The "Misopogon" (or "Beard Hater") is a light-hearted account of his clash with the inhabitants of Antioch after he was mocked for his beard and generally scruffy appearance for an Emperor. "The Caesars" is a humorous tale of a contest among some of the most notable Roman Emperors: Julius Caesar, Augustus, Trajan, Marcus Aurelius, Constantine, and also Alexander the Great. This was a satiric attack upon the recent Constantine, whose worth, both as a Christian and as the leader of the Roman Empire, Julian severely questions.
One of the most important of his lost works is his "Against the Galileans", intended to refute the Christian religion. The only parts of this work which survive are those excerpted by Cyril of Alexandria, who gives extracts from the three first books in his refutation of Julian, "Contra Julianum". These extracts do not give an adequate idea of the work: Cyril confesses that he had not ventured to copy several of the weightiest arguments.
Julian's works have been edited and translated several times since the Renaissance, most often separately; but many are translated in the Loeb Classical Library edition of 1913, edited by Wilmer Cave Wright. Wright mentions, however, that there are many problems surrounding Julian's vast collection of works, mainly the letters ascribed to Julian. The collections of letters we have today are the result of many smaller collections which contained varying numbers of Julian's works in various combinations. For example, in Laurentianus 58.16 the largest collection of letters ascribed to Julian was found, containing 43 manuscripts. it is unclear what the origins of many letters in these collections are.
The problems surrounding Julian's collection of works are exacerbated by the fact that Julian was a very motivated writer, which means it is possible that many more letters could have circulated, despite his short reign. Julian himself attests to the large amount of letters he had to write in one of the letters which is likely to be genuine. Julian's religious agenda gave him even more work than the average emperor as he sought to instruct his newly-styled pagan priests and he had to deal with discontent Christian leaders and communities. An example of him instructing his pagan priests is visible in a fragment in the Vossianus MS., inserted in the Letter to Themistius.
Additionally, Julian's hostility towards the Christian faith inspired vicious counteractions by Christian authors as can be seen in Gregory of Nazianzus' invectives against Julian. Christians no doubt suppressed some of Julian's works as well if they believed them to be harmful to their faith. This Christian influence is still visible in Wright's much smaller collection of Julian's letters. She comments on how some letters are suddenly cut off when the contents become hostile towards Christians, believing them to be the result of Christian censoring. Notable examples of this are in the "Fragment of a letter to a Priest" and the "letter to High-Priest Theodorus." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=16300 |
Francis Drake
Sir Francis Drake ( – 28 January 1596) was an English sea captain, privateer, naval officer, explorer, and slave trader of the Elizabethan era. Drake is most famously known for his circumnavigation of the world in a single expedition, from 1577 to 1580, and was the first to complete the voyage as captain while leading the expedition throughout the entire circumnavigation. With his incursion into the Pacific Ocean, he claimed what is now California for the English and inaugurated an era of conflict with the Spanish on the western coast of the Americas, an area that had previously been largely unexplored by western shipping.
Elizabeth I awarded Drake a knighthood in 1581 which he received on the "Golden Hind" in Deptford. In the same year he was appointed mayor of Plymouth. As a Vice Admiral, he was second-in-command of the English fleet in the victorious battle against the Spanish Armada in 1588. He died of dysentery in January 1596, after unsuccessfully attacking San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Drake's exploits made him a hero to the English, but his privateering led the Spanish to brand him a pirate, known to them as "El Draque". King Philip II allegedly offered a reward of 20,000 ducats for his capture or death, about £6 million (US$8 million) in modern currency.
Francis Drake was born in Tavistock, Devon, England. Although his birth date is not formally recorded, it is known that he was born while the Six Articles were in force. His birth date is estimated from contemporary sources such as: "Drake was two and twenty when he obtained the command of the "Judith"" (1566). This would date his birth to 1544. A date of is suggested from two portraits: one a miniature painted by Nicholas Hilliard in 1581 when he was allegedly 42, so born circa 1539, while the other, painted in 1594 when he was said to be 52, would give a birth year of around 1541. Lady Elliott-Drake, the collateral descendant, and final holder of the Drake Baronetcy, argued in her book on 'The Family and Heirs of Sir Francis Drake' that Drake's birth year was 1541.
He was the oldest of the twelve sons of Edmund Drake (1518–1585), a Protestant farmer, and his wife Mary Mylwaye. The first son was alleged to have been named after his godfather Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford.
Because of religious persecution during the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549, the Drake family fled from Devon to Kent. There Drake's father obtained an appointment to minister the men in the King's Navy. He was ordained deacon and was made vicar of Upnor Church on the Medway. Drake's father apprenticed him to his neighbour, the master of a barque used for coastal trade transporting merchandise to France. The ship's master was so satisfied with the young Drake's conduct that, being unmarried and childless at his death, he bequeathed the barque to Drake.
Francis Drake married Mary Newman at St. Budeaux church, Plymouth, in July 1569. She died 12 years later, in 1581. In 1585, Drake married Elizabeth Sydenham—born circa 1562, the only child of Sir George Sydenham, of Combe Sydenham, who was the High Sheriff of Somerset. After Drake's death, the widow Elizabeth eventually married Sir William Courtenay of Powderham.
In the 1550s, Drake’s father found the young man a position with the owner and master of a small bark. Drake likely engaged in commerce among England, the Low Countries and France. On the death of the bark’s owner, Drake was given the bark.
At the age of eighteen he was purser of a ship which sailed to the Bay of Biscay.
At twenty (ca. 1563-1564) he made a voyage to the coast of Guinea in a ship owned by William and John Hawkins, some of his relatives of Plymouth..
In 1566-1567, Drake, made his first voyage to the Americas, sailing under Captain John Lovell on one of a fleet of ships owned by the Hawkins family. They attacked Portuguese towns and ships on the coast of West Africa and then sailed to the Americas and sold the captured cargoes of slaves to Spanish plantations. The voyage was largely unsuccessful and more than 90 slaves were released without payment...
Drake's second voyage to the Americas and his second slaving voyage ended in the ill-fated 1568 incident at San Juan de Ulúa. Whilst negotiating to resupply and repair at a Spanish port in Mexico, the fleet was attacked by Spanish warships, with all but two of the English ships lost. He escaped along with John Hawkins, surviving the attack by swimming. Drake's hostility towards the Spanish is said to have started with this incident and Drake vowed revenge.
In 1570, his reputation enabled him to proceed to the West Indies with two vessels under his command. He renewed his visit the next year for the sole purpose of obtaining information.
In 1572, he embarked on his first major independent enterprise. He planned an attack on the Isthmus of Panama, known to the Spanish as Tierra Firme and the English as the Spanish Main. This was the point at which the silver and gold treasure of Peru had to be landed and sent overland to the Caribbean Sea, where galleons from Spain would pick it up at the town of Nombre de Dios. Drake left Plymouth on 24 May 1572, with a crew of 73 men in two small vessels, the "Pascha" (70 tons) and the "Swan" (25 tons), to capture Nombre de Dios.
His first raid was late in July 1572. Drake and his men captured the town and its treasure. When his men noticed that Drake was bleeding profusely from a wound, they insisted on withdrawing to save his life and left the treasure. Drake stayed in the area for almost a year, raiding Spanish shipping and attempting to capture a treasure shipment.
The most celebrated of Drake's adventures along the Spanish Main was his capture of the Spanish Silver Train at Nombre de Dios in March 1573. He raided the waters around Darien (in modern Panama) with a crew including many French privateers including Guillaume Le Testu, a French buccaneer, and African slaves (Maroons) who had escaped the Spanish. One of these men was Diego, who under Drake became a free man was also a capable ship builder. Drake tracked the Silver Train to the nearby port of Nombre de Dios. After their attack on the richly laden mule train, Drake and his party found that they had captured around 20 tons of silver and gold. They buried much of the treasure, as it was too much for their party to carry, and made off with a fortune in gold. (An account of this may have given rise to subsequent stories of pirates and buried treasure). Wounded, Le Testu was captured and later beheaded. The small band of adventurers dragged as much gold and silver as they could carry back across some 18 miles of jungle-covered mountains to where they had left the raiding boats. When they got to the coast, the boats were gone. Drake and his men, downhearted, exhausted and hungry, had nowhere to go and the Spanish were not far behind.
At this point, Drake rallied his men, buried the treasure on the beach, and built a raft to sail with two volunteers ten miles along the surf-lashed coast to where they had left the flagship. When Drake finally reached its deck, his men were alarmed at his bedraggled appearance. Fearing the worst, they asked him how the raid had gone. Drake could not resist a joke and teased them by looking downhearted. Then he laughed, pulled a necklace of Spanish gold from around his neck and said "Our voyage is made, lads!" By 9 August 1573, he had returned to Plymouth.
It was during this expedition that he climbed a high tree in the central mountains of the Isthmus of Panama and thus became the first Englishman to see the Pacific Ocean. He remarked as he saw it that he hoped one day an Englishman would be able to sail it—which he would do years later as part of his circumnavigation of the world.
When Drake returned to Plymouth after the raids, the government signed a temporary truce with King Philip II of Spain and so was unable to acknowledge Drake's accomplishment officially. Drake was considered a hero in England and a pirate in Spain for his raids.
Drake was present at the Rathlin Island massacre in 1575. Acting on the instructions of Sir Henry Sidney and the Earl of Essex, Sir John Norreys and Drake laid siege to Rathlin Castle. Despite their surrender, Norreys' troops killed all the 200 defenders and more than 400 civilian men, women and children of Clan MacDonnell. Meanwhile, Drake was given the task of preventing any Gaelic Irish or Scottish reinforcements reaching the island. Therefore, the remaining leader of the Gaelic defence against English power, Sorley Boy MacDonnell, was forced to stay on the mainland. Essex wrote in his letter to Queen Elizabeth's secretary, that following the attack Sorley Boy "was likely to have run mad for sorrow, tearing and tormenting himself and saying that he there lost all that he ever had."
With the success of the Panama isthmus raid in 1577, Elizabeth I of England sent Drake to start an expedition against the Spanish along the Pacific coast of the Americas. Drake used the plans that Sir Richard Grenville had received the patent for in 1574 from Elizabeth, which was rescinded a year later after protests from Philip of Spain. Diego was once again employed under Drake; his fluency in Spanish and English would make him a useful interpreter when Spaniards or Spanish-speaking Portuguese were captured. He was employed as Drake's servant and was paid wages, just like the rest of the crew. Drake and the fleet set out from Plymouth on 15 November 1577, but bad weather threatened him and his fleet. They were forced to take refuge in Falmouth, Cornwall, from where they returned to Plymouth for repair.
After this major setback, Drake set sail again on 13 December aboard "Pelican" with four other ships and 164 men. He soon added a sixth ship, "Mary" (formerly "Santa Maria"), a Portuguese merchant ship that had been captured off the coast of Africa near the Cape Verde Islands. He also added its captain, Nuno da Silva, a man with considerable experience navigating in South American waters.
Drake's fleet suffered great attrition; he scuttled both "Christopher" and the flyboat "Swan" due to loss of men on the Atlantic crossing. He made landfall at the gloomy bay of San Julian, in what is now Argentina. Ferdinand Magellan had called here half a century earlier, where he put to death some mutineers. Drake's men saw weathered and bleached skeletons on the grim Spanish gibbets. Following Magellan's example, Drake tried and executed his own "mutineer" Thomas Doughty. The crew discovered that "Mary" had rotting timbers, so they burned the ship. Drake decided to remain the winter in San Julian before attempting the Strait of Magellan.
On his voyage to interfere with Spanish treasure fleets, Drake had several quarrels with his co-commander Thomas Doughty and on 3 June 1578, accused him of witchcraft and charged him with mutiny and treason in a shipboard trial. Drake claimed to have a (never presented) commission from the Queen to carry out such acts and denied Doughty a trial in England. The main pieces of evidence against Doughty were the testimony of the ship's carpenter, Edward Bright, who after the trial was promoted to master of the ship "Marigold", and Doughty's admission of telling Lord Burghley, a vocal opponent of agitating the Spanish, of the intent of the voyage. Drake consented to his request of Communion and dined with him, of which Francis Fletcher had this strange account:
Drake had Thomas Doughty beheaded on 2 July 1578. When the ship's chaplain Francis Fletcher in a sermon suggested that the woes of the voyage in January 1580 were connected to the unjust demise of Doughty, Drake chained the clergyman to a hatch cover and pronounced him excommunicated.
The three remaining ships of his convoy departed for the Magellan Strait at the southern tip of South America. A few weeks later (September 1578) Drake made it to the Pacific, but violent storms destroyed one of the three ships, the "Marigold" (captained by John Thomas) in the strait and caused another, the "Elizabeth" captained by John Wynter, to return to England, leaving only the "Pelican". After this passage, the "Pelican" was pushed south and discovered an island that Drake called Elizabeth Island. Drake, like navigators before him, probably reached a latitude of 55°S (according to astronomical data quoted in Hakluyt's "The Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English Nation" of 1589) along the Chilean coast. In the Magellan Strait Francis and his men engaged in skirmish with local indigenous people, becoming the first Europeans to kill indigenous peoples in southern Patagonia. During the stay in the strait, crew members discovered that an infusion made of the bark of "Drimys winteri" could be used as remedy against scurvy. Captain Wynter ordered the collection of great amounts of bark – hence the scientific name.
Despite popular lore, it seems unlikely that Drake reached Cape Horn or the eponymous Drake Passage, because his descriptions do not fit the first and his shipmates denied having seen an open sea. Historian Mateo Martinic, who examined his travels, credits Drake with the discovery of the "southern end of the Americas and the oceanic space south of it". The first report of his discovery of an open channel south of Tierra del Fuego was written after the 1618 publication of the voyage of Willem Schouten and Jacob le Maire around Cape Horn in 1616.
Drake pushed onwards in his lone flagship, now renamed the "Golden Hind" in honour of Sir Christopher Hatton (after his coat of arms). The "Golden Hind" sailed north along the Pacific coast of South America, attacking Spanish ports and pillaging towns. Some Spanish ships were captured, and Drake used their more accurate charts. Before reaching the coast of Peru, Drake visited Mocha Island, where he was seriously injured by hostile Mapuche. Later he sacked the port of Valparaíso further north in Chile, where he also captured a ship full of Chilean wine.
Near Lima, Drake captured a Spanish ship laden with 25,000 pesos of Peruvian gold, amounting in value to 37,000 ducats of Spanish money (about £7m by modern standards). Drake also discovered news of another ship, "Nuestra Señora de la Concepción", which was sailing west towards Manila. It would come to be called the "Cacafuego". Drake gave chase and eventually captured the treasure ship, which proved his most profitable capture.
Aboard "Nuestra Señora de la Concepción", Drake found of gold, a golden crucifix, jewels, 13 chests full of royals of plate and of silver. Drake was naturally pleased at his good luck in capturing the galleon, and he showed it by dining with the captured ship's officers and gentleman passengers. He offloaded his captives a short time later, and gave each one gifts appropriate to their rank, as well as a letter of safe conduct.
Prior to Drake's voyage, the western coast of North America had only been partially explored in 1542 by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo who sailed for Spain. So, intending to avoid further conflict with Spain, Drake navigated northwest of Spanish presence and sought discreet site at which the crew could prepare for the journey back to England.
On 5 June 1579, the ship briefly made first landfall at South Cove, Cape Arago, just south of Coos Bay, Oregon, and then sailed south while searching for a suitable harbour to repair his ailing ship. On 17 June, Drake and his crew found a protected cove when they landed on the Pacific coast of what is now Northern California. While ashore, he claimed the area for Queen Elizabeth I as Nova Albion or New Albion. To document and assert his claim, Drake posted an engraved plate of brass to claim sovereignty for Elizabeth and every successive English monarch.
After erecting a fort and tents ashore, the crew labored for several weeks as they prepared for the circumnavigating voyage ahead by careening their ship, Golden Hind, so to effectively clean and repair the hull. Drake had friendly interactions with the Coast Miwok and explored the surrounding land by foot. When his ship was ready for the return voyage, Drake and the crew left New Albion on 23 July and paused his journey the next day when anchoring his ship at the Farallon Islands where the crew hunted seal meat.
Drake left the Pacific coast, heading southwest to catch the winds that would carry his ship across the Pacific, and a few months later reached the Moluccas, a group of islands in the western Pacific, in eastern modern-day Indonesia. At this time Diego died from wounds he had sustained earlier in the voyage, Drake was saddened at his death having become a good friend. "Golden Hind" later became caught on a reef and was almost lost. After the sailors waited three days for convenient tides and had dumped cargo. Befriending Sultan Babullah of Ternate in the Moluccas, Drake and his men became involved in some intrigues with the Portuguese there. He made multiple stops on his way toward the tip of Africa, eventually rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and reached Sierra Leone by 22 July 1580.
On 26 September, "Golden Hind" sailed into Plymouth with Drake and 59 remaining crew aboard, along with a rich cargo of spices and captured Spanish treasures. The Queen's half-share of the cargo surpassed the rest of the crown's income for that entire year. Drake was hailed as the first Englishman to circumnavigate the Earth (and the second such voyage arriving with at least one ship intact, after Elcano's in 1520).
The Queen declared that all written accounts of Drake's voyages were to become the Queen's secrets of the Realm, and Drake and the other participants of his voyages on the pain of death sworn to their secrecy; she intended to keep Drake's activities away from the eyes of rival Spain. Drake presented the Queen with a jewel token commemorating the circumnavigation. Taken as a prize off the Pacific coast of Mexico, it was made of enamelled gold and bore an African diamond and a ship with an ebony hull.
For her part, the Queen gave Drake a jewel with her portrait, an unusual gift to bestow upon a commoner, and one that Drake sported proudly in his 1591 portrait by Marcus Gheeraerts now at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich. On one side is a state portrait of Elizabeth by the miniaturist Nicholas Hilliard, on the other a sardonyx cameo of double portrait busts, a regal woman and an African male. The "Drake Jewel", as it is known today, is a rare documented survivor among sixteenth-century jewels; it is conserved at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Queen Elizabeth awarded Drake a knighthood aboard "Golden Hind" in Deptford on 4 April 1581; the dubbing being performed by a French diplomat, Monsieur de Marchaumont, who was negotiating for Elizabeth to marry the King of France's brother, Francis, Duke of Anjou. By getting the French diplomat involved in the knighting, Elizabeth was gaining the implicit political support of the French for Drake's actions. During the Victorian era, in a spirit of nationalism, the story was promoted that Elizabeth I had done the knighting.
After receiving his knighthood Drake unilaterally adopted the armorials of the ancient Devon family of Drake of Ash, near Musbury, to whom he claimed a distant but unspecified kinship. These arms were: "Argent, a wyvern wings displayed and tail nowed gules", and the crest, "a dexter arm Proper grasping a battle axe Sable, headed Argent". The head of that family, also a distinguished sailor, Sir Bernard Drake (d.1586), angrily refuted Sir Francis's claimed kinship and his right to bear his family's arms. That dispute led to "a box on the ear" being given to Sir Francis by Sir Bernard at court, as recorded by John Prince (1643–1723) in his "Worthies of Devon", first published in 1701. Queen Elizabeth, to assuage matters, awarded Sir Francis his own coat of arms, blazoned as follows:
The motto, "Sic Parvis Magna", translated literally, is: "Thus great things from small things (come)". The hand out of the clouds, labelled "Auxilio Divino", means "With Divine Help". The full achievement is depicted in the form of a large coloured plaster overmantel in the Lifetimes Gallery at Buckland Abbey
Nevertheless, Drake continued to quarter his new arms with the wyvern gules. The arms adopted by his nephew Sir Francis Drake, 1st Baronet (1588–1637) of Buckland were the arms of Drake of Ash, but the wyvern without a "nowed" (knotted) tail.
In 1580, Drake purchased Buckland Abbey, a large manor house near Yelverton in Devon, via intermediaries from Sir Richard Greynvile. He lived there for fifteen years, until his final voyage, and it remained in his family for several generations. Buckland Abbey is now in the care of the National Trust and a number of mementos of his life are displayed there.
Drake was politically astute, and although known for his private and military endeavours, he was an influential figure in politics during the time he spent in Britain. Often abroad, there is little evidence to suggest he was active in Westminster, despite being a member of parliament on three occasions.
After returning from his voyage of circumnavigation, Drake became the Mayor of Plymouth, in September 1581. He became a member of parliament during a session of the 4th Parliament of Elizabeth I, on 16 January 1581, for the constituency of Camelford. He did not actively participate at this point, and on 17 February 1581 he was granted leave of absence "for certain his necessary business in the service of her Majesty".
Drake became a member of parliament again in 1584 for Bossiney on the forming of the 5th Parliament of Elizabeth I. He served the duration of the parliament and was active in issues regarding the navy, fishing, early American colonisation, and issues related chiefly to Devon. He spent the time covered by the next two parliamentary terms engaged in other duties and an expedition to Portugal.
He became a member of parliament for Plymouth in 1593. He was active in issues of interest to Plymouth as a whole, but also to emphasise defence against the Spanish.
War had already been declared by Phillip II after the Treaty of Nonsuch, so the Queen through Francis Walsingham ordered Sir Francis Drake to lead an expedition to attack the Spanish colonies in a kind of preemptive strike. An expedition left Plymouth in September 1585 with Drake in command of twenty-one ships with 1,800 soldiers under Christopher Carleill. He first attacked Vigo in Spain and held the place for two weeks ransoming supplies. He then plundered Santiago in the Cape Verde islands after which the fleet then sailed across the Atlantic, sacked the port of Santo Domingo, and captured the city of Cartagena de Indias in present-day Colombia. At Cartagena, Drake released one hundred Turks held as slaves. On 6 June 1586, during the return leg of the voyage, he raided the Spanish fort of San Agustín in Spanish Florida.
After the raids he then went on to find Sir Walter Raleigh's settlement much further north at Roanoke which he replenished and also took back with him all of the original colonists before Sir Richard Greynvile arrived with supplies and more colonists. He finally reached England on 22 July, when he sailed into Portsmouth, England to a hero's welcome.
Angered by these acts, Philip II ordered a planned invasion of England.
On 15 March 1587, Drake accepted a new commission with several purposes: disrupt the shipping routes to slow supplies from Italy and Andalucia to Lisbon, to trouble enemy fleets that were in their own ports, and to capture Spanish ships laden with treasure. Drake was also to confront and attack the Armada had it already sailed for England. When arriving at Cadiz on 19 April, Drake found the harbour packed with ships and supplies as the Armada was readying and waiting for fair wind to launch the fleet to attack. In the early hours of the next day, Drake pressed his attack into the inner harbour and inflicted heavy damage. Claims of the Spanish ship losses vary. Drake claimed he had sunk 39 ships, but other contemporary sources are lower, specifically some Spanish sources which suggest losses as low as 25 ships. The attack became known as the “singeing of the King’s beard” and delayed the Spanish invasion by a year.
Over the next month, Drake patrolled the Iberian coasts between Lisbon and Cape St. Vincent, intercepting and destroying ships on the Spanish supply lines. Drake estimated that he captured around 1600–1700 tons of barrel staves, enough to make 25,000 to for containing provisions.
Drake was vice admiral in command of the English fleet (under Lord Howard of Effingham,) when it overcame the Spanish Armada that was attempting to invade England in 1588. As the English fleet pursued the Armada up the English Channel in closing darkness, Drake broke off and captured the Spanish galleon "Nuestra Señora del Rosario", along with Admiral Pedro de Valdés and all his crew. The Spanish ship was known to be carrying substantial funds to pay the Spanish Army in the Low Countries. Drake's ship had been leading the English pursuit of the Armada by means of a lantern. By extinguishing this for the capture, Drake put the fleet into disarray overnight.
On the night of 29 July, along with Howard, Drake organised fire-ships, causing the majority of the Spanish captains to break formation and sail out of Calais into the open sea. The next day, Drake was present at the Battle of Gravelines. He wrote as follows to Admiral Henry Seymour after coming upon part of the Spanish Armada, whilst aboard "Revenge" on 31 July 1588 (21 July 1588 OS):
Coming up to them, there has passed some common shot between some of our fleet and some of them; and as far as we perceive, they are determined to sell their lives with blows.
The most famous (but probably apocryphal) anecdote about Drake relates that, prior to the battle, he was playing a game of bowls on Plymouth Hoe. On being warned of the approach of the Spanish fleet, Drake is said to have remarked that there was plenty of time to finish the game and still beat the Spaniards. There is no known eyewitness account of this incident and the earliest retelling of it was printed 37 years later. Adverse winds and currents caused some delay in the launching of the English fleet as the Spanish drew nearer, perhaps prompting a popular myth of Drake's cavalier attitude to the Spanish threat. It might also have been later ascribed to the stoic attribute of British culture.
In 1589, the year after defeating the Armada the English sent their own to attack Spain, Drake and Sir John Norreys were given three tasks: seek out and destroy the remaining ships, support the rebels in Lisbon, Portugal against King Philip II (then king of Spain and Portugal), and take the Azores if possible. In the Siege of Coruña Drake and Norreys destroyed a few ships in the harbour of A Coruña in Spain but lost more than 12,000 lives and 20 ships. This defeat in all fronts delayed Drake, and he was forced to forgo hunting the rest of the surviving ships and head on to Lisbon.
Drake's seafaring career continued into his mid-fifties. In 1595, he failed to conquer the port of Las Palmas, and following a disastrous campaign against Spanish America, where he suffered a number of defeats, he unsuccessfully attacked San Juan de Puerto Rico, eventually losing the Battle of San Juan.
The Spanish gunners from El Morro Castle shot a cannonball through the cabin of Drake's flagship, but he survived. He attempted to attack over land in an effort to capture the rich port of Panamá but was defeated again. A few weeks later, in January 1596, he died (aged about 56) of dysentery, a common disease in the tropics at the time, while anchored off the coast of Portobelo where some Spanish treasure ships had sought shelter. Following his death, the English fleet withdrew.
Before dying, he asked to be dressed in his full armour. He was buried at sea in a sealed lead-lined coffin, near Portobelo, a few miles off the coastline. It is supposed that his final resting place is near the wrecks of two British ships, the "Elizabeth" and the "Delight", scuttled in Portobelo Bay. Divers continue to search for the coffin. Drake's body has never been recovered.
In Valparaíso, Chile, folklore associates a cave known as Cueva del Pirata (lit. "Cave of the Pirate") with Francis Drake. A legend says that when Drake sacked the port he became disappointed over the scant plunder. Drake proceeded to enter the churches in fury to sack them and urinate on the goblets. However he still found the plunder to be not worth enough to take it on board his galleon, hiding it in the cave. Another version the legend says a treasure was left in the cave because the plunder had been more than he could take on board. Together with the treasure Drake would have left a man chained or a sentry to wait for them to return, which they did not. The treasure is said to still be there, but those who approach it drown.
Further north in Chile a tale says that because Drake feared falling prisoner to the Spanish he buried his treasure near Arica, these being one of many Chilean stories about entierros ("burrowings").
In the UK there are various places named after him, especially in Plymouth, Devon. Places there carrying his name include the naval base HMS Drake, Drake's Island, and a shopping centre and roundabout named Drake Circus. Plymouth Hoe is also home to a statue of Drake.
In the United States Drakes Bay and Sir Francis Drake Boulevard of Marin County, California are both named after him, as well as the high school in San Anselmo, California. The boulevard runs between Drakes Bay at Point Reyes to Point San Quentin on San Francisco Bay. There is a significant movement to rename the boulevard because of his slave trader past. A large hotel in Union Square, San Francisco also bears his name. Additionally, the Sir Francis Drake Channel in the British Virgin Islands bears his name.
In British Columbia, Canada, where some theorise he may also have landed to the north of the usual site considered to be Nova Albion, various mountains were named in the 1930s for him, or in connection with Elizabeth I or other figures of that era, including Mount Sir Francis Drake, Mount Queen Bess, and the Golden Hinde, the highest mountain on Vancouver Island.
Drake's will was the focus of a vast confidence scheme which Oscar Hartzell perpetrated in the 1920s and 1930s. He convinced thousands of people, mostly in the American Midwest, that Drake's fortune was being held by the British government, and had compounded to a huge amount. If their last name was Drake they might be eligible for a share if they paid Hartzell to be their agent. The swindle continued until a copy of Drake's will was brought to Hartzell's mail fraud trial and he was convicted and imprisoned.
Drake's Drum has become an icon of English folklore with its variation of the classic King asleep in mountain story motif.
Drake was a major focus in the video game series "Uncharted", specifically its first and third instalments, "" and "", respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11508 |
Fast Fourier transform
A fast Fourier transform (FFT) is an algorithm that computes the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) of a sequence, or its inverse (IDFT). Fourier analysis converts a signal from its original domain (often time or space) to a representation in the frequency domain and vice versa. The DFT is obtained by decomposing a sequence of values into components of different frequencies. This operation is useful in many fields, but computing it directly from the definition is often too slow to be practical. An FFT rapidly computes such transformations by factorizing the DFT matrix into a product of sparse (mostly zero) factors. As a result, it manages to reduce the complexity of computing the DFT from formula_1, which arises if one simply applies the definition of DFT, to formula_2, where formula_3 is the data size. The difference in speed can be enormous, especially for long data sets where "N" may be in the thousands or millions. In the presence of round-off error, many FFT algorithms are much more accurate than evaluating the DFT definition directly or indirectly. There are many different FFT algorithms based on a wide range of published theories, from simple complex-number arithmetic to group theory and number theory.
Fast Fourier transforms are widely used for applications in engineering, music, science, and mathematics. The basic ideas were popularized in 1965, but some algorithms had been derived as early as 1805. In 1994, Gilbert Strang described the FFT as "the most important numerical algorithm of our lifetime", and it was included in Top 10 Algorithms of 20th Century by the IEEE magazine "Computing in Science & Engineering".
The best-known FFT algorithms depend upon the factorization of "N", but there are FFTs with O("N" log "N") complexity for all "N", even for prime "N". Many FFT algorithms only depend on the fact that formula_4 is an "N"-th primitive root of unity, and thus can be applied to analogous transforms over any finite field, such as number-theoretic transforms. Since the inverse DFT is the same as the DFT, but with the opposite sign in the exponent and a 1/"N" factor, any FFT algorithm can easily be adapted for it.
The development of fast algorithms for DFT can be traced to Carl Friedrich Gauss's unpublished work in 1805 when he needed it to interpolate the orbit of asteroids Pallas and Juno from sample observations. His method was very similar to the one published in 1965 by James Cooley and John Tukey, who are generally credited for the invention of the modern generic FFT algorithm. While Gauss's work predated even Joseph Fourier's results in 1822, he did not analyze the computation time and eventually used other methods to achieve his goal.
Between 1805 and 1965, some versions of FFT were published by other authors. Frank Yates in 1932 published his version called "interaction algorithm", which provided efficient computation of Hadamard and Walsh transforms. Yates' algorithm is still used in the field of statistical design and analysis of experiments. In 1942, G. C. Danielson and Cornelius Lanczos published their version to compute DFT for x-ray crystallography, a field where calculation of Fourier transforms presented a formidable bottleneck. While many methods in the past had focused on reducing the constant factor for formula_1 computation by taking advantage of "symmetries", Danielson and Lanczos realized that one could use the "periodicity" and apply a "doubling trick" to get formula_2 runtime.
James Cooley and John Tukey published a more general version of FFT in 1965 that is applicable when "N" is composite and not necessarily a power of 2. Tukey came up with the idea during a meeting of President Kennedy's Science Advisory Committee where a discussion topic involved detecting nuclear tests by the Soviet Union by setting up sensors to surround the country from outside. To analyze the output of these sensors, an FFT algorithm would be needed. In discussion with Tukey, Richard Garwin recognized the general applicability of the algorithm not just to national security problems, but also to a wide range of problems including one of immediate interest to him, determining the periodicities of the spin orientations in a 3-D crystal of Helium-3. Garwin gave Tukey's idea to Cooley (both worked at IBM's Watson labs) for implementation. Cooley and Tukey published the paper in a relatively short time of six months. As Tukey did not work at IBM, the patentability of the idea was doubted and the algorithm went into the public domain, which, through the computing revolution of the next decade, made FFT one of the indispensable algorithms in digital signal processing.
Let "x"0, …, "x""N"−1 be complex numbers. The DFT is defined by the formula
where formula_8 is a primitive th root of 1.
Evaluating this definition directly requires formula_1 operations: there are "N" outputs "X""k", and each output requires a sum of "N" terms. An FFT is any method to compute the same results in formula_2 operations. All known FFT algorithms require Θformula_11 operations, although there is no known proof that a lower complexity score is impossible.
To illustrate the savings of an FFT, consider the count of complex multiplications and additions for N=4096 data points. Evaluating the DFT's sums directly involves "N"2 complex multiplications and "N"("N" − 1) complex additions, of which formula_12 operations can be saved by eliminating trivial operations such as multiplications by 1, leaving about 30 million operations. On the other hand, the radix-2 Cooley–Tukey algorithm, for "N" a power of 2, can compute the same result with only ("N"/2)log2("N") complex multiplications (again, ignoring simplifications of multiplications by 1 and similar) and "N" log2("N") complex additions, in total about 30,000 operations - a thousand times less than with direct evaluation. In practice, actual performance on modern computers is usually dominated by factors other than the speed of arithmetic operations and the analysis is a complicated subject (for example, see Frigo & Johnson, 2005), but the overall improvement from formula_1 to formula_2 remains.
By far the most commonly used FFT is the Cooley–Tukey algorithm. This is a divide and conquer algorithm that recursively breaks down a DFT of any composite size "N" = "N"1"N"2 into many smaller DFTs of sizes "N"1 and "N"2, along with O("N") multiplications by complex roots of unity traditionally called twiddle factors (after Gentleman and Sande, 1966).
This method (and the general idea of an FFT) was popularized by a publication of Cooley and Tukey in 1965, but it was later discovered that those two authors had independently re-invented an algorithm known to Carl Friedrich Gauss around 1805 (and subsequently rediscovered several times in limited forms).
The best known use of the Cooley–Tukey algorithm is to divide the transform into two pieces of size "N"/2 at each step, and is therefore limited to power-of-two sizes, but any factorization can be used in general (as was known to both Gauss and Cooley/Tukey). These are called the "radix-2" and "mixed-radix" cases, respectively (and other variants such as the split-radix FFT have their own names as well). Although the basic idea is recursive, most traditional implementations rearrange the algorithm to avoid explicit recursion. Also, because the Cooley–Tukey algorithm breaks the DFT into smaller DFTs, it can be combined arbitrarily with any other algorithm for the DFT, such as those described below.
There are FFT algorithms other than Cooley–Tukey. Cornelius Lanczos did pioneering work on the FFT and FFS (fast Fourier sampling method) with G. C. Danielson (1940).
For "N" = "N"1"N"2 with coprime "N"1 and "N"2, one can use the prime-factor (Good–Thomas) algorithm (PFA), based on the Chinese remainder theorem, to factorize the DFT similarly to Cooley–Tukey but without the twiddle factors. The Rader–Brenner algorithm (1976) is a Cooley–Tukey-like factorization but with purely imaginary twiddle factors, reducing multiplications at the cost of increased additions and reduced numerical stability; it was later superseded by the split-radix variant of Cooley–Tukey (which achieves the same multiplication count but with fewer additions and without sacrificing accuracy). Algorithms that recursively factorize the DFT into smaller operations other than DFTs include the Bruun and QFT algorithms. (The Rader–Brenner and QFT algorithms were proposed for power-of-two sizes, but it is possible that they could be adapted to general composite "N". Bruun's algorithm applies to arbitrary even composite sizes.) Bruun's algorithm, in particular, is based on interpreting the FFT as a recursive factorization of the polynomial "z""N" − 1, here into real-coefficient polynomials of the form "z""M" − 1 and "z"2"M" + "az""M" + 1.
Another polynomial viewpoint is exploited by the Winograd FFT algorithm, which factorizes "z""N" − 1 into cyclotomic polynomials—these often have coefficients of 1, 0, or −1, and therefore require few (if any) multiplications, so Winograd can be used to obtain minimal-multiplication FFTs and is often used to find efficient algorithms for small factors. Indeed, Winograd showed that the DFT can be computed with only O("N") irrational multiplications, leading to a proven achievable lower bound on the number of multiplications for power-of-two sizes; unfortunately, this comes at the cost of many more additions, a tradeoff no longer favorable on modern processors with hardware multipliers. In particular, Winograd also makes use of the PFA as well as an algorithm by Rader for FFTs of "prime" sizes.
Rader's algorithm, exploiting the existence of a generator for the multiplicative group modulo prime "N", expresses a DFT of prime size "N" as a cyclic convolution of (composite) size "N" − 1, which can then be computed by a pair of ordinary FFTs via the convolution theorem (although Winograd uses other convolution methods). Another prime-size FFT is due to L. I. Bluestein, and is sometimes called the chirp-z algorithm; it also re-expresses a DFT as a convolution, but this time of the "same" size (which can be zero-padded to a power of two and evaluated by radix-2 Cooley–Tukey FFTs, for example), via the identity
Hexagonal fast Fourier transform aims at computing an efficient FFT for the hexagonally sampled data by using a new addressing scheme for hexagonal grids, called Array Set Addressing (ASA).
In many applications, the input data for the DFT are purely real, in which case the outputs satisfy the symmetry
and efficient FFT algorithms have been designed for this situation (see e.g. Sorensen, 1987). One approach consists of taking an ordinary algorithm (e.g. Cooley–Tukey) and removing the redundant parts of the computation, saving roughly a factor of two in time and memory. Alternatively, it is possible to express an "even"-length real-input DFT as a complex DFT of half the length (whose real and imaginary parts are the even/odd elements of the original real data), followed by O("N") post-processing operations.
It was once believed that real-input DFTs could be more efficiently computed by means of the discrete Hartley transform (DHT), but it was subsequently argued that a specialized real-input DFT algorithm (FFT) can typically be found that requires fewer operations than the corresponding DHT algorithm (FHT) for the same number of inputs. Bruun's algorithm (above) is another method that was initially proposed to take advantage of real inputs, but it has not proved popular.
There are further FFT specializations for the cases of real data that have even/odd symmetry, in which case one can gain another factor of roughly two in time and memory and the DFT becomes the discrete cosine/sine transform(s) (DCT/DST). Instead of directly modifying an FFT algorithm for these cases, DCTs/DSTs can also be computed via FFTs of real data combined with O("N") pre- and post-processing.
A fundamental question of longstanding theoretical interest is to prove lower bounds on the complexity and exact operation counts of fast Fourier transforms, and many open problems remain. It is not even rigorously proved whether DFTs truly require Ω("N" log "N") (i.e., order "N" log "N" or greater) operations, even for the simple case of power of two sizes, although no algorithms with lower complexity are known. In particular, the count of arithmetic operations is usually the focus of such questions, although actual performance on modern-day computers is determined by many other factors such as cache or CPU pipeline optimization.
Following work by Shmuel Winograd (1978), a tight Θ("N") lower bound is known for the number of real multiplications required by an FFT. It can be shown that only formula_17 irrational real multiplications are required to compute a DFT of power-of-two length formula_18. Moreover, explicit algorithms that achieve this count are known (Heideman & Burrus, 1986; Duhamel, 1990). However, these algorithms require too many additions to be practical, at least on modern computers with hardware multipliers (Duhamel, 1990; Frigo & Johnson, 2005).
A tight lower bound is not known on the number of required additions, although lower bounds have been proved under some restrictive assumptions on the algorithms. In 1973, Morgenstern proved an Ω("N" log "N") lower bound on the addition count for algorithms where the multiplicative constants have bounded magnitudes (which is true for most but not all FFT algorithms). This result, however, applies only to the unnormalized Fourier transform (which is a scaling of a unitary matrix by a factor of formula_19), and does not explain why the Fourier matrix is harder to compute than any other unitary matrix (including the identity matrix) under the same scaling. Pan (1986) proved an Ω("N" log "N") lower bound assuming a bound on a measure of the FFT algorithm's "asynchronicity", but the generality of this assumption is unclear. For the case of power-of-two "N", Papadimitriou (1979) argued that the number formula_20 of complex-number additions achieved by Cooley–Tukey algorithms is "optimal" under certain assumptions on the graph of the algorithm (his assumptions imply, among other things, that no additive identities in the roots of unity are exploited). (This argument would imply that at least formula_21 real additions are required, although this is not a tight bound because extra additions are required as part of complex-number multiplications.) Thus far, no published FFT algorithm has achieved fewer than formula_20 complex-number additions (or their equivalent) for power-of-two "N".
A third problem is to minimize the "total" number of real multiplications and additions, sometimes called the "arithmetic complexity" (although in this context it is the exact count and not the asymptotic complexity that is being considered). Again, no tight lower bound has been proven. Since 1968, however, the lowest published count for power-of-two "N" was long achieved by the split-radix FFT algorithm, which requires formula_23 real multiplications and additions for "N" > 1. This was recently reduced to formula_24 (Johnson and Frigo, 2007; Lundy and Van Buskirk, 2007). A slightly larger count (but still better than split radix for "N" ≥ 256) was shown to be provably optimal for "N" ≤ 512 under additional restrictions on the possible algorithms (split-radix-like flowgraphs with unit-modulus multiplicative factors), by reduction to a satisfiability modulo theories problem solvable by brute force (Haynal & Haynal, 2011).
Most of the attempts to lower or prove the complexity of FFT algorithms have focused on the ordinary complex-data case, because it is the simplest. However, complex-data FFTs are so closely related to algorithms for related problems such as real-data FFTs, discrete cosine transforms, discrete Hartley transforms, and so on, that any improvement in one of these would immediately lead to improvements in the others (Duhamel & Vetterli, 1990).
All of the FFT algorithms discussed above compute the DFT exactly (i.e. neglecting floating-point errors). A few "FFT" algorithms have been proposed, however, that compute the DFT "approximately", with an error that can be made arbitrarily small at the expense of increased computations. Such algorithms trade the approximation error for increased speed or other properties. For example, an approximate FFT algorithm by Edelman et al. (1999) achieves lower communication requirements for parallel computing with the help of a fast multipole method. A wavelet-based approximate FFT by Guo and Burrus (1996) takes sparse inputs/outputs (time/frequency localization) into account more efficiently than is possible with an exact FFT. Another algorithm for approximate computation of a subset of the DFT outputs is due to Shentov et al. (1995). The Edelman algorithm works equally well for sparse and non-sparse data, since it is based on the compressibility (rank deficiency) of the Fourier matrix itself rather than the compressibility (sparsity) of the data. Conversely, if the data are sparse—that is, if only "K" out of "N" Fourier coefficients are nonzero—then the complexity can be reduced to O("K"log("N")log("N"/"K")), and this has been demonstrated to lead to practical speedups compared to an ordinary FFT for "N"/"K" > 32 in a large-"N" example ("N" = 222) using a probabilistic approximate algorithm (which estimates the largest "K" coefficients to several decimal places).
Even the "exact" FFT algorithms have errors when finite-precision floating-point arithmetic is used, but these errors are typically quite small; most FFT algorithms, e.g. Cooley–Tukey, have excellent numerical properties as a consequence of the pairwise summation structure of the algorithms. The upper bound on the relative error for the Cooley–Tukey algorithm is O("ε" log "N"), compared to O("εN"3/2) for the naïve DFT formula, where ε is the machine floating-point relative precision. In fact, the root mean square (rms) errors are much better than these upper bounds, being only O("ε" ) for Cooley–Tukey and O("ε" ) for the naïve DFT (Schatzman, 1996). These results, however, are very sensitive to the accuracy of the twiddle factors used in the FFT (i.e. the trigonometric function values), and it is not unusual for incautious FFT implementations to have much worse accuracy, e.g. if they use inaccurate trigonometric recurrence formulas. Some FFTs other than Cooley–Tukey, such as the Rader–Brenner algorithm, are intrinsically less stable.
In fixed-point arithmetic, the finite-precision errors accumulated by FFT algorithms are worse, with rms errors growing as O() for the Cooley–Tukey algorithm (Welch, 1969). Moreover, even achieving this accuracy requires careful attention to scaling to minimize loss of precision, and fixed-point FFT algorithms involve rescaling at each intermediate stage of decompositions like Cooley–Tukey.
To verify the correctness of an FFT implementation, rigorous guarantees can be obtained in O("N" log "N") time by a simple procedure checking the linearity, impulse-response, and time-shift properties of the transform on random inputs (Ergün, 1995).
As defined in the multidimensional DFT article, the multidimensional DFT
transforms an array "x"n with a "d"-dimensional vector of indices formula_26 by a set of "d" nested summations (over formula_27 for each "j"), where the division n/N, defined as formula_28, is performed element-wise. Equivalently, it is the composition of a sequence of "d" sets of one-dimensional DFTs, performed along one dimension at a time (in any order).
This compositional viewpoint immediately provides the simplest and most common multidimensional DFT algorithm, known as the row-column algorithm (after the two-dimensional case, below). That is, one simply performs a sequence of "d" one-dimensional FFTs (by any of the above algorithms): first you transform along the "n"1 dimension, then along the "n"2 dimension, and so on (or actually, any ordering works). This method is easily shown to have the usual O("N" log "N") complexity, where formula_29 is the total number of data points transformed. In particular, there are "N"/"N"1 transforms of size "N"1, etcetera, so the complexity of the sequence of FFTs is:
In two dimensions, the "x"k can be viewed as an formula_31 matrix, and this algorithm corresponds to first performing the FFT of all the rows (resp. columns), grouping the resulting transformed rows (resp. columns) together as another formula_31 matrix, and then performing the FFT on each of the columns (resp. rows) of this second matrix, and similarly grouping the results into the final result matrix.
In more than two dimensions, it is often advantageous for cache locality to group the dimensions recursively. For example, a three-dimensional FFT might first perform two-dimensional FFTs of each planar "slice" for each fixed "n"1, and then perform the one-dimensional FFTs along the "n"1 direction. More generally, an asymptotically optimal cache-oblivious algorithm consists of recursively dividing the dimensions into two groups formula_33 and formula_34 that are transformed recursively (rounding if "d" is not even) (see Frigo and Johnson, 2005). Still, this remains a straightforward variation of the row-column algorithm that ultimately requires only a one-dimensional FFT algorithm as the base case, and still has O("N" log "N") complexity. Yet another variation is to perform matrix transpositions in between transforming subsequent dimensions, so that the transforms operate on contiguous data; this is especially important for out-of-core and distributed memory situations where accessing non-contiguous data is extremely time-consuming.
There are other multidimensional FFT algorithms that are distinct from the row-column algorithm, although all of them have O("N" log "N") complexity. Perhaps the simplest non-row-column FFT is the vector-radix FFT algorithm, which is a generalization of the ordinary Cooley–Tukey algorithm where one divides the transform dimensions by a vector formula_35 of radices at each step. (This may also have cache benefits.) The simplest case of vector-radix is where all of the radices are equal (e.g. vector-radix-2 divides "all" of the dimensions by two), but this is not necessary. Vector radix with only a single non-unit radix at a time, i.e. formula_36, is essentially a row-column algorithm. Other, more complicated, methods include polynomial transform algorithms due to Nussbaumer (1977), which view the transform in terms of convolutions and polynomial products. See Duhamel and Vetterli (1990) for more information and references.
An O("N"5/2log "N") generalization to spherical harmonics on the sphere "S"2 with "N"2 nodes was described by Mohlenkamp, along with an algorithm conjectured (but not proven) to have O("N"2 log2("N")) complexity; Mohlenkamp also provides an implementation in the libftsh library. A spherical-harmonic algorithm with O("N"2log "N") complexity is described by Rokhlin and Tygert.
The fast folding algorithm is analogous to the FFT, except that it operates on a series of binned waveforms rather than a series of real or complex scalar values. Rotation (which in the FFT is multiplication by a complex phasor) is a circular shift of the component waveform.
Various groups have also published "FFT" algorithms for non-equispaced data, as reviewed in Potts "et al." (2001). Such algorithms do not strictly compute the DFT (which is only defined for equispaced data), but rather some approximation thereof (a non-uniform discrete Fourier transform, or NDFT, which itself is often computed only approximately). More generally there are various other methods of spectral estimation.
The FFT is used in digital recording, sampling, additive synthesis and pitch correction software.
The FFT's importance derives from the fact that it has made working in the frequency domain equally computationally feasible as working in the temporal or spatial domain. Some of the important applications of the FFT include:
FFT-related algorithms:
FFT implementations:
Other links: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11512 |
Fort William, Highland
Fort William ( ; "The Garrison") is a town in Lochaber in the Scottish Highlands, located on the eastern shore of Loch Linnhe. As of the 2011 Census, Fort William had a population of 10,459, making it the second largest settlement in the Highland council area, and the second largest settlement in the whole of the Scottish Highlands — only the city of Inverness has a larger population.
Fort William is a major tourist centre, with Glen Coe just to the south, to the east and Glenfinnan to the west, on the Road to the Isles. It is a centre for hillwalking and climbing due to its proximity to Ben Nevis and many other Munro mountains. It is also known for its nearby downhill mountain bike track. It is the start/end of both the West Highland Way (Milngavie–Fort William) and the Great Glen Way (a walk/cycle way Fort William–Inverness).
Around 726 people (7.33% of the population) can speak Gaelic.
The earliest recorded settlement on the site is a Cromwellian wooden fort built in 1654 as a base for English troops to "pacify" Clan Cameron after the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. The post-Glorious Revolution fort was named Fort William after William of Orange, who ordered that it be built to control the Highland clans. The settlement that grew around it was called Maryburgh, after his wife Mary II of England. This settlement was later renamed Gordonsburgh, and then Duncansburgh before being renamed Fort William, this time after Prince William, Duke of Cumberland; known to some Scots as "Butcher Cumberland". Given these origins, there have been various suggestions over the years to rename the town (for example, to Invernevis).
The origin of the Gaelic name for Fort William, "", is not recorded but could be a loanword from the English "garrison", having entered common usage some time after the royal garrison was established, during the reign of William of Orange or perhaps after the earlier Cromwellian fort, or from the ultimately French-derived word "garrison", as at the earlier garrison at Inverlochy by the Scoto-Norman Clan Comyn.
Historically, this area of Lochaber was strongly Clan Cameron country, and there were a number of mainly Cameron settlements in the area (such as Blarmacfoldach). Before the building of the fort, Inverlochy was the main settlement in the area and was also where two battles took place—the first Battle of Inverlochy in 1431 and the second Battle of Inverlochy in 1645.
The town grew in size as a settlement when the fort was constructed to control the population after Oliver Cromwell's invasion during the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and then to suppress the Jacobite uprisings of the 18th century.
In the Jacobite rising of 1745 known as the Forty-Five, Fort William was besieged for two weeks by the Jacobites, from 20 March to 3 April 1746. However, although the Jacobites had captured both of the other forts in the chain of three Great Glen fortifications (Fort Augustus and the original Fort George), they failed to take Fort William.
During the Second World War, Fort William was the home of , which was a training base for Royal Navy Coastal Forces.
More on the history of the town and the region can be found in the West Highland Museum on the High Street.
Fort William is the northern end of the West Highland Way, a long distance route which runs through the Scottish Highlands to Milngavie, on the outskirts of Glasgow, and the start/end point of the Great Glen Way, which runs between Fort William and Inverness.
On 2 June 2006, a fire destroyed McTavish's Restaurant in Fort William High Street along with the two shops which were part of the building. The restaurant had been open since the 1970s and prior to that the building had been Fraser's Cafe since the 1920s. Development work began in 2012 on new hotel accommodation and street-level shops, and these opened in 2014.
A "Waterfront" development was proposed by the Council, but there was no overwhelming support for this in the town. The development would have included a hotel, some shops and some housing, but it was stated early in 2008 that it was unlikely to be completed before 2020. It was announced in April 2010 that the project had been abandoned.
Originally based on the still-extant village of Inverlochy, the town lies at the southern end of the Great Glen, Fort William lies near the head of Loch Linnhe, one of Scotland's longest sea lochs, beside the mouth of the rivers Nevis and Lochy. They join in the intertidal zone and briefly become one river before discharging to the sea. The town and its suburbs are surrounded by picturesque mountains. It is also on the shore of Loch Eil. It is close to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles, Glen Nevis and the town of Achnaphubuil, is on the opposite shore of the loch. When the railway opened to Fort William on 7 August 1894, the station was given prime position at the south end of the town. The consequence was that the town was separated from the lochside by railway tracks until the 1970s, when the present by-pass was built, and the station was re-located to the north end.
The town is centred on the High Street, which was pedestrianised in the 1990s. Off this, there are several squares: Monzie Square (named after the Cameron Campbells of Monzie, Perthshire, former landowners in the town); Station Square, where the long-since demolished railway station used to be; Gordon Square (named after the Gordons, who in the late 18th century owned land where the town now stands, when the town was named Gordonsburgh); and Cameron Square — formerly known as Town Hall Square. There is also Fraser Square, which is not so square-like, since it now opens out into Middle Street, but it still houses the Imperial Hotel.
The main residential areas of the town are unseen from the High Street and from the A82 main road. Upper Achintore and the Plantation spread steeply uphill from above the high street.
Inverlochy, Claggan, An-Aird, Lochyside, Caol, Banavie and Corpach outwith (i.e. outside) the town are the other main residential areas. These areas are built on much flatter land than the town.
Glenfinnan, away, is home of the Glenfinnan Monument (Jacobite era) and the famous Glenfinnan Viaduct (as seen on a Bank Of Scotland £10 note). The viaduct has become known to millions in recent years as the "Harry Potter Bridge" after it featured in the films of the books by J.K. Rowling, specifically "Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets". Glenfinnan has also been used in "Charlotte Gray" and "Highlander".
Just outside the town is a large aluminium plant operated by Alcan and powered by the Lochaber hydroelectric scheme, in its day the biggest tunnelling project in the world. This was formerly served by the Lochaber Narrow Gauge Railway better known locally as the Puggy Line.
Fort William has an oceanic climate ("Cfb") with moderate, but generally cool, temperatures and abundant precipitation. While the average temperatures are similar to that of most of the rest of the United Kingdom, it is much cooler in Fort William than that of the rest of the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world with oceanic and mild climates.
The West Highland Line passes through Fort William. Owing to the difficult terrain in the area, the line from Glasgow, to the south, enters from the northeast. Trains from Glasgow to Mallaig, the terminus of the line, have to reverse at Fort William railway station.
An overnight train, the Caledonian sleeper, has its terminus at Fort William. This service is known colloquially as 'The Deerstalker'.
The stands for local buses and express coaches are on MacFarlane Way adjacent to the railway station.
The Caledonian Canal connects the Scottish east coast at Inverness with the west coast at Corpach near Fort William.
The corran ferry crosses Loch Linnhe, connecting the A82 to A861.
Fort William and the surrounding area is a year-round destination for climbers from all over the world. The draw of nearby Ben Nevis is irresistible to anyone, from first time climbers to professional winter climbers. When the weather halts any attempt for outdoor climbing, Three Wise Monkeys Climbing, the climbing wall in the centre of town, offers sanctuary for anyone of any age or experience.
Just outside the town, parallel to the Nevis Range Gondola, there is a large downhill mountain bike track which attracts thousands of visitors every year, including international competitors and fans.
Each year since 2001, Fort William has hosted a round of UCI Mountain Bike World Cup, and in 2007 it hosted the UCI Mountain Bike & Trials World Championships ('The Worlds'). Also a trials competition is held, at the various courses at the bottom.
Fort William has also hosted the World Endurance Mountain Bike Organisation (WEMBO) solo 24 hour championship, in 2014 and again in 2018. The event consists of riders racing for a full 24 hours and is won by the rider completing the greater number of laps.
Fort William is the home of the Scottish Six Day Motorcycle Trial (SSDT), held annually in the first full week of May. It attracts many competitors from all across the globe and in 2011 the event celebrated its centenary year.
Fort William has two major shinty teams, Fort William Shinty Club and Kilmallie Shinty Club. It also has a football team, Fort William F.C., that competes at the bottom of the Scottish Highland Football League and plays home games at Claggan Park. There is also a cricket club at Fort William that participates in the North of Scotland Cricket Association league (NoSCA).
In addition, the town is home to Lochaber Rugby Club and to the Lochaber Yacht Club, a Community Amateur Sports Club that was founded in 1954. The town also has one golf club, called Fort William Golf Club, which has eighteen holes and is open year-round. It also hosts weekly competitions.
Movies filmed in or near Fort William include "Being Human", "Braveheart", "Highlander", "Restless Natives", "Harry Potter" and "Rob Roy". The TV series "Rockface" was filmed mainly around Fort William and some scenes of "Monarch of the Glen" were filmed around Lochaber, although mostly near Newtonmore. "Local Hero" shot the internal Houston scenes in Fort William. Fort William is also a setting in the "Outlander" series of novels by "Diana Gabaldon", also a 'Starz' TV series.
In a celebration of mountains and the culture that surrounds them, and in recognition of the importance of climbing and walking tourism to the town, the Fort William Mountain Festival is held there each year. For a number of years, this volunteer-led festival has concentrated mostly around film but, starting in the Year of Highland Culture – Highland 2007, its scope was widened, and it dropped the word 'film' from its title.
Highland Tribes music and cultural festival is held in Fort William in July of each year. The festival focuses on new and diverse Scottish music, including many local acoustic acts and mainstream bands from all over the country.
Lochaber High School is the local high school and serves a large catchment area which includes the surrounding villages.
West Highland College is part of the University of the Highlands & Islands. It hosts the School of Adventure Studies (SOAS) offering both FE courses & HE honours degrees. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11513 |
Glossary of French expressions in English
Many words in the English vocabulary are of French origin, most coming from the Anglo-Norman spoken by the upper classes in England for several hundred years after the Norman Conquest, before the language settled into what became Modern English. Thoroughly English words of French origin, such as "art", "competition", "force", "machine", "money", "police", "publicity", "role", "routine" and "table", are pronounced according to English rules of phonology, rather than French, and are commonly used by English speakers without any consciousness of their French origin.
This article, on the other hand, covers French words and phrases that have entered the English lexicon without ever losing their character as Gallicisms: they remain unmistakably "French" to an English speaker. They are most common in written English, where they retain French diacritics and are usually printed in italics. In spoken English, at least some attempt is generally made to pronounce them as they would sound in French; an entirely English pronunciation is regarded as a solecism.
Some of them were never "good French", in the sense of being grammatical, idiomatic French usage. Some others were once normal French but have become very old-fashioned, or have acquired different meanings and connotations in the original language, to the extent that they would not be understood (either at all, or in the intended sense) by a native French speaker.
c'est la guerre: "That's war!", or...
c'est la vie: "That's life!" or "Such is life!"
purée
lit. a smooth, creamy substance made of liquidized or crushed fruit or vegetables.
Through the evolution of the language, many words and phrases are no longer used in modern French. Also there are expressions that, even though grammatically correct, do not have the same meaning in French as the English words derived from them. Some older word usages still appear in Quebec French.
International authorities have adopted a number of words and phrases from French for use by speakers of all languages in voice communications during air-sea rescues. Note that the "phonetic" versions of spelling are presented as shown and not the .
It is a serious breach in most countries, and in international zones, to use any of these phrases without justification.
"See Mayday (distress signal) for a more detailed explanation." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11515 |
List of FIPS country codes
This is a list of FIPS 10-4 country codes for "Countries, Dependencies, Areas of Special Sovereignty, and Their Principal Administrative Divisions".
The two-letter country codes were used by the US government for geographical data processing in many publications, such as the CIA World Factbook. The standard is also known as DAFIF 0413 ed 7 Amdt. No. 3 (Nov 2003) and as DIA 65-18 (Defense Intelligence Agency, 1994, "Geopolitical Data Elements and Related Features").
The FIPS standard includes both the codes for independent countries (similar but sometimes incompatible with the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 standard) and the codes for top-level subdivision of the countries (similar to but usually incompatible with the ISO 3166-2 standard). The ISO 3166 codes are used by the United Nations and for Internet top-level country code domains.
Non-sovereign entities are in italics.
On September 2, 2008, FIPS 10-4 was one of ten standards withdrawn by NIST as a Federal Information Processing Standard. It was replaced in the U.S. Government by the Geopolitical Entities, Names, and Codes (GENC), which is based on ISO 3166.
The complete standard can be found at:
Updates to previous version of the standard (before FIPS-10 was withdrawn in September 2008) are at:
Updates to the standard since September 2008 are at:
Related websites | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11517 |
Fair Isle
Fair Isle (; ; ) is an island in Shetland, in northern Scotland. It lies about halfway between mainland Shetland and Orkney. It is known for its bird observatory and a traditional style of knitting.
the most remote inhabited island in the United Kingdom. It is administratively part of the parish of Dunrossness, Shetland, and is roughly equidistant from Sumburgh Head, some to the northeast on the Mainland of Shetland and North Ronaldsay, Orkney, some to the southwest. Fair Isle is long and wide. It has an area of , making it the tenth largest of the Shetland Islands. It gives its name to one of the British Sea Areas.
Most of the islanders live in the crofts on the southern half of the island, with the northern half consisting of rocky moorland. The western coast consists of cliffs of up to in height, with Ward Hill at being the highest point of the island and its only Marilyn. On the eastern coast the almost detached headland of Sheep Rock rises to .
Fair Isle has been occupied since Neolithic times, which is remarkable because of the lack of raw materials on the island, although it is surrounded by rich fishing waters. There are two known Iron Age sites: a promontory fort at Landberg and the foundations of a house underlying an early Christian settlement at Kirkigeo.
Most of the place names date from after the 9th century Norse settlement of the Northern Isles. By that time the croft lands had clearly been in use for centuries.
Between the 9th and 15th centuries, Fair Isle was a Norwegian possession. In 1469, Shetland, along with Orkney, was part of the dowry of the King of Denmark's daughter, Margaret, on her marriage to James III of Scotland.
On 20 August 1588 the flagship of the Spanish Armada, "El Gran Grifón", was shipwrecked in the cove of Stroms Hellier, forcing its 300 sailors to spend six weeks living with the islanders. The wreck was discovered in 1970. The large Canadian sailing ship "Black Watch" was wrecked on Fair Isle in 1877.
Fair Isle was bought by the National Trust for Scotland in 1954 from George Waterston, the founder of the bird observatory.
The population has decreased steadily from about 400 in 1900. There are currently around 55 permanent residents on the island, the majority of whom are crofters who work the land. The island has 14 scheduled monuments, ranging from the earliest signs of human activity to the remains of a Second World War radar station. The two automated lighthouses are protected as listed buildings.
The island houses a series of high-technology relay stations carrying vital TV, radio, telephone and military communication links between Shetland, Orkney and the Scottish mainland. In this respect it continues its historic role as a signal station, linking the mainland and the more remote island groups. In 1976, when television relay equipment was updated to permit colour broadcasts to Shetland, the new equipment was housed in former World War Two radar station buildings on Fair Isle. Many television signals are relayed from Orkney to Shetland (rather than from the Scottish mainland) via Orkney's Keelylang Hill transmitter station.
Over the centuries the island has changed hands many times. Trading links with Northern Europe are reflected in Fair Isle Haa, a traditional Hanseatic trading booth located not far from the South Harbour, traditionally used by residents of the southern part of the island. Rent was usually paid to absentee landlords (who rarely visited) in butter, cloth and fish oil.
Fishing has always been an important industry for the island. In 1702, the Dutch, who were interested in Shetland's herring fisheries, fought a naval battle against French warships just off the island.
Fair Isle is also noted for its woollen jumpers, with knitting forming an important source of income for the women of the islands. The principal activity for the male islanders is crofting.
In January 2004, Fair Isle was granted Fairtrade Island status.
Many rare species of bird have been found on the island, with at least 27 species found on the island that were the first British records, and is probably the best place in western Europe to see skulking Siberian passerines such as Pechora pipit, lanceolated warbler and Pallas's grasshopper warbler.
For example, in 2015, rare birds discovered on the island included pallid harrier, arctic warbler, Moltoni's warbler, booted warbler, paddyfield warbler, siberian thrush and thrush nightingale.
The island is also home to an endemic subspecies of Eurasian wren, the Fair Isle wren "Troglodytes troglodytes fridariensis".
A permanent bird observatory was founded on Fair Isle by George Waterston in 1948. Because of its importance as a bird migration watchpoint, it provided most of the accommodation on the island. The first director of the observatory was Kenneth Williamson. It was unusual amongst bird observatories in providing catered, rather than hostel-style, accommodation.
In 2010, a new observatory was built: a wooden lodge of two storeys, which cost £4 million and accommodated around 30 guests. The 2010 observatory building was destroyed by fire on 10 March 2019; the observatory's records had been digitised and were not affected.
Other than the restaurant of the Bird Observatory, and its little evening-only bar, there are no pubs or restaurants on the island. There is one shop, and one school (see below). There is a community hall available for meetings and social events.
Fair Isle is not connected to the National Grid and electricity is provided by the Fair Isle Electricity Company. From the 1980s, power was generated by two diesel generators and two wind turbines. Diesel generators were automatically switched off if wind turbines provided sufficient power. Excess capacity was distributed through a separate network for home heating, with remote frequency-sensitive programmable relays controlling water heaters and storage heaters in the buildings of the community. Since October 2018, the island has a 24-hour electricity supply; following the installation of three wind turbines, combined with solar panels and batteries, in a £3.5 million scheme.
Fair Isle is home to two GSM 900 MHz base stations operated by Vodafone and O2. On 16 April 2019, an EE 4G antenna was turned on by Openreach.
Fair Isle has a fire station equipped with a single fire appliance, and staffed by a retained fire crew of local volunteers. It was originally part of the Highlands and Islands Fire and Rescue Service, which was absorbed into the national Scottish Fire and Rescue Service on 1 April 2013. A locally organised volunteer fire brigade was formed in 1996 by island residents. This was later absorbed into the statutory fire service, with professional training provided, and the local service designated a retained fire crew. The first purpose-built fire engine was stationed to the island in 2002.
In October 2011 a contract for the construction of a £140,000 purpose-built fire station was awarded to Shetland company Ness Engineering, who completed the construction and equipping of the fire station, including its connection to the island power and water supplies, and the installation of a rainwater harvesting system within the building. The new fire station was officially opened on 14 March 2013.
There is a small Coastguard cliff-rescue team on the island. Like the fire service, the Coastguard is a retained (volunteer) emergency service. The Fair Isle Coastguard cliff rescue team were the first British Coastguard unit to be equipped with a quad ATV. The quad is painted in H M Coastguard livery, with reflective Battenburg markings and has an optional equipment trailer.
There are no emergency medical services on Fair Isle. Routine medical care is provided by a community nurse. In the event of accident and emergency the community nurse provides first aid until casualties can be removed to Shetland Mainland, usually by fixed-wing air ambulance. In severe weather conditions the Coastguard helicopter can sometimes undertake medical evacuations when the air ambulance is grounded.
Fair Isle Airport serves the island with flights to Tingwall Airport near Lerwick, and weekly to Sumburgh Airport, both on Shetland Mainland. Flights to Kirkwall on Orkney were scheduled to begin in September 2017, provided by Loganair. Private aircraft use the facility and scheduled flights arrive twice daily, three days a week. There is a small terminal building, but facilities are otherwise very limited. Fire cover is provided by the island fire service.
There is also a helipad at the South Fair Isle lighthouse, for official use by the Northern Lighthouse Board and Coastguard helicopters, and a second one at the North Fair Isle lighthouse.
There are two main harbours (north harbour and south harbour), both formed naturally, being sheltered by the headland of Bu Ness. They are separated by a narrow isthmus of gravel. The north harbour is the main route for goods, provisions, and Royal Mail postal services arriving at and departing from the island. The ferry "Good Shepherd IV" plies between Fair Isle north harbour and Grutness on Shetland Mainland.
A road connects the populated areas of the island, along its full length.
Fair Isle has one primary school, with two classrooms. There is a full-time head teacher, and a part-time assistant teacher. The number of pupils varies over time, but is generally between 5 and 10, with 5 pupils in 2014/2015. Islanders of secondary school age are generally educated off-island, on Shetland Mainland, where they board in halls of residence, returning to the island during holiday periods.
Christianity is the only formally organised religion on Fair Isle. There are two churches, one Methodist, and one Church of Scotland (Presbyterian). The Methodist Church has a resident non-stipendiary minister, who reports to a full-time minister on Shetland Mainland. The Methodist Church was constructed in 1886.
The Church of Scotland church was built in 1892. The Church of Scotland parish which contains Fair Isle is Dunrossness, which is linked with Sandwick, Cunningsburgh and Quarff parish. The congregation's minister is the Reverend Charles H Greig.
During the Second World War, the Royal Air Force built a radar station on top of Ward Hill () during the Battle of the Atlantic. The ruined buildings and nissen huts are still present. A cable-operated narrow gauge railway lies disused, though it was once used to send supplies up to the summit of Ward Hill.
On 17 January 1941, a German Heinkel He 111 bomber, modified as a meteorological aircraft, crashed on the island; wreckage remains on the crash-site to the present day. The aircraft had been flying on a routine weather reconnaissance flight from its base at Oldenburg in Germany. It was intercepted by RAF Hawker Hurricane fighters from 3 Squadron, based at RAF Sumburgh; both of the aircraft's engines were damaged and several of the five crew were wounded. The pilot managed to make a crash-landing on Fair Isle to avoid ditching his crippled aircraft in the sea. Two crew died and three survived. The dead crew were buried in the island's churchyard; the survivors were detained by the islanders and remained for several days until weather conditions allowed them to be taken off the island by means of the Shetland Lifeboat.
Fair Isle experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen "Cfb", bordering on a subpolar oceanic climate ("Cfc"), with cool summers and mild winters. This is especially pronounced due to its location far from any sizeable landmass; Fair Isle has the smallest overall temperature range (least continental) of any weather station in the British Isles: an absolute maximum of and an absolute minimum of since 1951. This 60+ year temperature span is actually smaller than many places in inland southern England will record within a given three-month period. To further illustrate how extreme the maritime moderation at Fair Isle is, a rural location near the coastline in Northern Stockholm County on a similar latitude in Sweden broke Fair Isle's all-time records in both directions within a 48-hour period between 26 and 28 April 2014.
The lowest temperature recorded in recent years was in February 2010. Rainfall, at under , is lower than one might expect for somewhere often in the main path of Atlantic depressions. This is explained by a lack of heavy convective rainfall during spring and summer months due to the absence of warm surface conditions.
Fair Isle's ocean moderation is so strong that areas on the same latitudes in the Scandinavian inland less than 1000 kilometres to the east have average summer highs higher than Fair Isle's all-time record temperature, for example the Norwegian capital of Oslo and the Swedish capital of Stockholm. The all-time low is uniquely mild for European locations on the 59th parallel north. The winter daily means are comparable to many areas as far south in the British Isles as south-central England, due to the extreme maritime moderation.
Most of the island has designated by Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH) as both a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) and a Special Area of Conservation (SCA). The island and its surrounding seas are also designated by SNH as a Special Protection Area (SPA) due to the important bird species present.
In 2016 the seas around Fair Isle were designated as a Marine Protected Area (MPA). As of 2019 it is the only MPA in Scotland to be designated specifically as a "Demonstration and Research" MPA. The aims of this MPA designation are defined as being: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11519 |
Four Feather Falls
Four Feather Falls was the third puppet TV show produced by Gerry Anderson for Granada Television. It was based on an idea by Barry Gray, who also wrote the show's music. The series was the first to use an early version of Anderson's Supermarionation puppetry. Thirty-nine 13-minute episodes were produced, broadcast by Granada from February until November 1960. The setting is the late 19th-century fictional Kansas town of Four Feather Falls, where the hero of the series, Tex Tucker, is a sheriff. The four feathers of the title refers to four magical feathers given to Tex by the Indian chief Kalamakooya as a reward for saving his grandson: two of the feathers allowed Tex's guns to swivel and fire without being touched whenever he was in danger, whilst the other two conferred the power of speech on Tex's horse and dog.
Tex's speaking voice was provided by Nicholas Parsons, and his singing voice by Michael Holliday. The series was sporadically repeated on British television until 1968, and was released on DVD in 2005.
American Western television shows such as "Wagon Train" and "Gunsmoke" were popular with British audiences, therefore Gerry Anderson and his business partner Arthur Provis decided to make a cowboy series, based on an idea offered to them by Barry Gray. Anderson considered the puppets with static heads, made by Christine Glanville for his earlier productions, to be unacceptable because the viewer could not tell which character was talking unless its puppet moved up or down. Anderson's aim was to make the puppets look as realistic as possible, the beginning of the Supermarionation puppetry process, although that term was not coined until his next series, "Supercar".
The puppets' papier-mâché heads were replaced by interchangeable hollow fibre glass heads with internal rods that could move the eyes from side to side. The heads also contained sound-activated solenoids, which allowed the puppets' lips to move automatically in synchronisation with the dialogue. The electronics of the day required more space than would be available in a human-scale head, therefore all the puppets in "Four Feather Falls" had oversized heads.
Except for the pilot episode, which was made in AP Films' studios at Islet Park, the series was produced in a converted warehouse in the Slough Trading Estate. The cast assembled to record each script without seeing the puppets, much like recording a radio series; synchronisation of each character's speech with the movement of its puppet's mouth was performed later. The show was filmed in black and white. Its tight budget precluded the use of sophisticated special effects, and less-costly alternatives were used. For example, to achieve the effect of muzzle flashes, small specks of black paint were carefully applied to the 35 mm negatives so they would appear as white flashes on the finished prints. The wires used to control the puppets were eight feet long and made of tungsten, an improvement on the curtain wire used in the two earlier series, and were only 1/200 of an inch thick. Being shiny, the wires had to be blackened. The puppets were made one-third life size with the puppeteers on a bridge eight feet above the set. The horses moved by being pulled along on a trolley, which meant the viewer never saw their feet when they were moving.
Continuity for the series was provided by Sylvia Thamm who married Gerry Anderson.
The series is set in the fictitious late 19th-century Western town of Four Feather Falls, Kansas, and features the adventures of its sheriff, Tex Tucker. In the first episode, Grandpa Twink relates the story of how it all began to his grandson, Little Jake. Tex is riding up from the valley and comes across a lost and hungry Indian boy, Makooya, and saves him. Tex is given four magic feathers by the boy's grandfather, Chief Kalamakooya, as a reward for saving his grandson. Two of the feathers allow his guns to swivel and fire automatically (often while Tex's hands are raised), and the other two allow his horse, Rocky, and his dog, Dusty, to speak. As Tex, his horse, and dog are very thirsty, Kalamakooya also makes a waterfall where there had been no water before, and so when the town was built it was named after Tex's feathers and the waterfall.
The characters of the town are Grandpa Twink, who does little but rest in a chair; his grandson Little Jake, the only child in town; Ma Jones, who runs the town store; Doc Haggerty; Slim Jim, the bartender of the Denison saloon; Marvin Jackson, the bank manager; and Dan Morse, the telegraphist. Other characters appeared from time to time for only one episode, often just visiting town. The villains included Pedro, who was introduced in the first show and Fernando, who first appeared in the second episode as a sidekick and someone Pedro could blame when things went wrong, as they always did. Big Ben was another villain who appeared from time to time, as did Red Scalp, a renegade Indian. Other villains only appeared in single episodes.
The series was repeated in some British TV regions on a sporadic basis up until 1968. In December 2004, it was announced that the rights had been acquired by Network, and it was released on three Region 2 DVDs in May 2005. It is the only Supermarionation series not yet released to DVD in North America as of January 2006. Sylvia Anderson wrote two British children's annuals based on the show, published by Collins in 1960 and 1961. The first book featured a short text story based on the pilot episode of the TV series.
The show's music and song lyrics were composed by Barry Gray. Michael Holliday provided Tex's singing voice, and Tommy Reilly performed the harmonica pieces. The best known song to come out of the series was "Four Feather Falls", sung in some episodes by Michael Holliday in the style of Bing Crosby and sometimes incorrectly described as the theme song to the series. The closing theme song was "Two Gun Tex of Texas." Holliday was paid £2000 for his singing work on the pilot episode, equivalent to about £38,000 as of 2010, a significant part of the show's £6000 budget. In all, Holliday recorded six songs for the series: "Four Feather Falls", "The Phantom Rider", "The Rick-Rick-A-Rackety Train", "Happy Hearts and Friendly Faces", "My Home Town", and "Two Gun Tex of Texas".
Denise Bryer had worked with Anderson on "The Adventures of Twizzle", and he wanted her to play some of the voices in "Four Feather Falls". Anderson visited Bryer at her home with some scripts and asked her husband, Nicholas Parsons, to help by reading some of the other parts, including the sheriff Tex Tucker. Anderson liked Parsons' interpretation and offered him the job of providing Tex's speaking voice.
Notes
Citations
Bibliography | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11520 |
Fly-by-wire
Fly-by-wire (FBW) is a system that replaces the conventional manual flight controls of an aircraft with an electronic interface. The movements of flight controls are converted to electronic signals transmitted by wires (hence the fly-by-wire term) and flight control computers determine how to move the actuators at each control surface to provide the ordered response. It can use mechanical flight control backup systems (like the Boeing 777) or use fully fly-by-wire controls.
Improved fully fly-by-wire systems interpret the pilot's control inputs as a desired outcome and calculate the control surface positions required to achieve that outcome; this results in various combinations of rudder, elevator, aileron, flaps and engine controls in different situations using a closed feedback loop. The pilot may not be fully aware of all the control outputs acting to effect the outcome, only that the aircraft is reacting as expected. The fly-by-wire computers act to stabilise the aircraft and adjust the flying characteristics without the pilot's involvement and to prevent the pilot operating outside of the aircraft's safe performance envelope.
Mechanical and hydro-mechanical flight control systems are relatively heavy and require careful routing of flight control cables through the aircraft by systems of pulleys, cranks, tension cables and hydraulic pipes. Both systems often require redundant backup to deal with failures, which increases weight. Both have limited ability to compensate for changing aerodynamic conditions. Dangerous characteristics such as stalling, spinning and pilot-induced oscillation (PIO), which depend mainly on the stability and structure of the aircraft concerned rather than the control system itself, are depending on pilot's action.
The term "fly-by-wire" implies a purely electrically signaled control system. It is used in the general sense of computer-configured controls, where a computer system is interposed between the operator and the final control actuators or surfaces. This modifies the manual inputs of the pilot in accordance with control parameters.
Side-sticks or conventional flight control yokes can be used to fly FBW aircraft.
A FBW aircraft can be lighter than a similar design with conventional controls. This is partly due to the lower overall weight of the system components and partly because the natural stability of the aircraft can be relaxed, slightly for a transport aircraft, and more for a maneuverable fighter, which means that the stability surfaces that are part of the aircraft structure can therefore be made smaller. These include the vertical and horizontal stabilizers (fin and tailplane) that are (normally) at the rear of the fuselage. If these structures can be reduced in size, airframe weight is reduced. The advantages of FBW controls were first exploited by the military and then in the commercial airline market. The Airbus series of airliners used full-authority FBW controls beginning with their A320 series, see A320 flight control (though some limited FBW functions existed on A310). Boeing followed with their 777 and later designs.
A pilot commands the flight control computer to make the aircraft perform a certain action, such as pitch the aircraft up, or roll to one side, by moving the control column or sidestick. The flight control computer then calculates what control surface movements will cause the plane to perform that action and issues those commands to the electronic controllers for each surface. The controllers at each surface receive these commands and then move actuators attached to the control surface until it has moved to where the flight control computer commanded it to. The controllers measure the position of the flight control surface with sensors such as LVDTs.
Fly-by-wire control systems allow aircraft computers to perform tasks without pilot input. Automatic stability systems operate in this way. Gyroscopes fitted with sensors are mounted in an aircraft to sense rotation on the pitch, roll and yaw axes. Any movement (from straight and level flight for example) results in signals to the computer, which can automatically move control actuators to stabilize the aircraft.
While traditional mechanical or hydraulic control systems usually fail gradually, the loss of all flight control computers immediately renders the aircraft uncontrollable. For this reason, most fly-by-wire systems incorporate either redundant computers (triplex, quadruplex etc.), some kind of mechanical or hydraulic backup or a combination of both. A "mixed" control system with mechanical backup feedbacks any rudder elevation directly to the pilot and therefore makes closed loop (feedback) systems senseless.
Aircraft systems may be quadruplexed (four independent channels) to prevent loss of signals in the case of failure of one or even two channels. High performance aircraft that have fly-by-wire controls (also called CCVs or Control-Configured Vehicles) may be deliberately designed to have low or even negative stability in some flight regimes rapid-reacting CCV controls can electronically stabilize the lack of natural stability.
Pre-flight safety checks of a fly-by-wire system are often performed using built-in test equipment (BITE). A number of control movement steps can be automatically performed, reducing workload of the pilot or groundcrew and speeding up flight-checks.
Some aircraft, the Panavia Tornado for example, retain a very basic hydro-mechanical backup system for limited flight control capability on losing electrical power; in the case of the Tornado this allows rudimentary control of the stabilators only for pitch and roll axis movements.
Servo-electrically operated control surfaces were first tested in the 1930s on the Soviet Tupolev ANT-20. Long runs of mechanical and hydraulic connections were replaced with wires and electric servos.
The first pure electronic fly-by-wire aircraft with no mechanical or hydraulic backup was the Apollo Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV), first flown in 1968.
The first non-experimental aircraft that was designed and flown (in 1958) with a fly-by-wire flight control system was the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, a feat not repeated with a production aircraft until Concorde in 1969. This system also included solid-state components and system redundancy, was designed to be integrated with a computerised navigation and automatic search and track radar, was flyable from ground control with data uplink and downlink, and provided artificial feel (feedback) to the pilot.
In the UK the two seater Avro 707B was flown with a Fairey system with mechanical backup in the early to mid-60s. The program was curtailed when the air-frame ran out of flight time.
In 1972, the first digital fly-by-wire fixed-wing aircraft without a mechanical backup to take to the air was an F-8 Crusader, which had been modified electronically by NASA of the United States as a test aircraft; the F-8 used the Apollo 11 guidance, navigation and control hardware.
This was preceded in 1964 by the LLRV which pioneered fly-by-wire flight with no mechanical backup. Control was through a digital computer with three analog redundant channels. In the USSR, the Sukhoi T-4 also flew. At about the same time in the United Kingdom a trainer variant of the British Hawker Hunter fighter was modified at the British Royal Aircraft Establishment with fly-by-wire flight controls for the right-seat pilot.
All "fly-by-wire" flight control systems eliminate the complexity, the fragility and the weight of the mechanical circuit of the hydromechanical or electromechanical flight control systems — each being replaced with electronic circuits. The control mechanisms in the cockpit now operate signal transducers, which in turn generate the appropriate electronic commands. These are next processed by an electronic controller—either an analog one, or (more modernly) a digital one. Aircraft and spacecraft autopilots are now part of the electronic controller.
The hydraulic circuits are similar except that mechanical servo valves are replaced with electrically controlled servo valves, operated by the electronic controller. This is the simplest and earliest configuration of an analog fly-by-wire flight control system. In this configuration, the flight control systems must simulate "feel". The electronic controller controls electrical feel devices that provide the appropriate "feel" forces on the manual controls. This was used in Concorde, the first production fly-by-wire airliner.
In more sophisticated versions, analog computers replaced the electronic controller. The canceled 1950s Canadian supersonic interceptor, the Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, employed this type of system. Analog computers also allowed some customization of flight control characteristics, including relaxed stability. This was exploited by the early versions of F-16, giving it impressive maneuverability.
A digital fly-by-wire flight control system can be extended from its analog counterpart. Digital signal processing can receive and interpret input from multiple sensors simultaneously (such as the altimeters and the pitot tubes) and adjust the controls in real time. The computers sense position and force inputs from pilot controls and aircraft sensors. They then solve differential equations related to the aircraft's equations of motion to determine the appropriate command signals for the flight controls to execute the intentions of the pilot.
The programming of the digital computers enable flight envelope protection. These protections are tailored to an aircraft's handling characteristics to stay within aerodynamic and structural limitations of the aircraft. For example, the computer in flight envelope protection mode can try to prevent the aircraft from being handled dangerously by preventing pilots from exceeding preset limits on the aircraft's flight-control envelope, such as those that prevent stalls and spins, and which limit airspeeds and g forces on the airplane. Software can also be included that stabilize the flight-control inputs to avoid pilot-induced oscillations.
Since the flight-control computers continuously feedback the environment, pilot's workloads can be reduced. Also, it is now possible to fly military aircraft that have relaxed stability. The primary benefit for such aircraft is more maneuverability during combat and training flights, and the so-called "carefree handling" because stalling, spinning and other undesirable performances are prevented automatically by the computers. Digital flight control systems enable inherently unstable combat aircraft, such as the Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk and the Northrop Grumman B-2 Spirit flying wing to fly in usable and safe manners.
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) of the United States has adopted the RTCA/DO-178C, titled "Software Considerations in Airborne Systems and Equipment Certification", as the certification standard for aviation software. Any safety-critical component in a digital fly-by-wire system including applications of the laws of aeronautics and computer operating systems will need to be certified to DO-178C Level A or B, depending on the class of aircraft, which is applicable for preventing potential catastrophic failures.
Nevertheless, the top concern for computerized, digital, fly-by-wire systems is reliability, even more so than for analog electronic control systems. This is because the digital computers that are running software are often the only control path between the pilot and aircraft's flight control surfaces. If the computer software crashes for any reason, the pilot may be unable to control an aircraft. Hence virtually all fly-by-wire flight control systems are either triply or quadruply redundant in their computers and electronics. These have three or four flight-control computers operating in parallel and three or four separate data buses connecting them with each control surface.
The multiple redundant flight control computers continuously monitor each other's output. If one computer begins to give aberrant results for any reason, potentially including software or hardware failures or flawed input data, then the combined system is designed to exclude the results from that computer in deciding the appropriate actions for the flight controls. Depending on specific system details there may be the potential to reboot an aberrant flight control computer, or to reincorporate its inputs if they return to agreement. Complex logic exists to deal with multiple failures, which may prompt the system to revert to simpler back-up modes.
In addition, most of the early digital fly-by-wire aircraft also had an analog electrical, mechanical, or hydraulic back-up flight control system. The Space Shuttle has, in addition to its redundant set of four digital computers running its primary flight-control software, a fifth back-up computer running a separately developed, reduced-function, software flight-control system – one that can be commanded to take over in the event that a fault ever affects all of the computers in the other four. This back-up system serves to reduce the risk of total flight-control-system failure ever happening because of a general-purpose flight software fault that has escaped notice in the other four computers.
For airliners, flight-control redundancy improves their safety, but fly-by-wire control systems, which are physically lighter and have lower maintenance demands than conventional controls also improve economy, both in terms of cost of ownership and for in-flight economy. In certain designs with limited relaxed stability in the pitch axis, for example the Boeing 777, the flight control system may allow the aircraft to fly at a more aerodynamically efficient angle of attack than a conventionally stable design. Modern airliners also commonly feature computerized Full-Authority Digital Engine Control systems (FADECs) that control their jet engines, air inlets, fuel storage and distribution system, in a similar fashion to the way that FBW controls the flight control surfaces. This allows the engine output to be continually varied for the most efficient usage possible.
The second generation Embraer E-Jet family gained a 1.5% efficiency improvement over the first generation from the fly-by-wire system, which enabled a reduction from 280 ft.² to 250 ft.² for the horizontal stabilizer on the E190/195 variants.
Airbus and Boeing differ in their approaches to implementing fly-by-wire systems in commercial aircraft. Since the Airbus A320, Airbus flight-envelope control systems always retain ultimate flight control when flying under normal law and will not permit the pilots to violate aircraft performance limits unless they choose to fly under alternate law. This strategy has been continued on subsequent Airbus airliners. However, in the event of multiple failures of redundant computers, the A320 does have a mechanical back-up system for its pitch trim and its rudder, the Airbus A340 has a purely electrical (not electronic) back-up rudder control system and beginning with the A380, all flight-control systems have back-up systems that are purely electrical through the use of a "three-axis Backup Control Module" (BCM).
Boeing airliners, such as the Boeing 777, allow the pilots to completely override the computerised flight-control system, permitting the aircraft to be flown outside of its usual flight-control envelope if they decide that it is necessary.
The advent of FADEC (Full Authority Digital Engine Control) engines permits operation of the flight control systems and autothrottles for the engines to be fully integrated. On modern military aircraft other systems such as autostabilization, navigation, radar and weapons system are all integrated with the flight control systems. FADEC allows maximum performance to be extracted from the aircraft without fear of engine misoperation, aircraft damage or high pilot workloads.
In the civil field, the integration increases flight safety and economy. The Airbus A320 and its fly-by-wire brethren are protected from dangerous situations such as low-speed stall or overstressing by flight envelope protection. As a result, in such conditions, the flight control systems commands the engines to increase thrust without pilot intervention. In economy cruise modes, the flight control systems adjust the throttles and fuel tank selections more precisely than all but the most skillful pilots. FADEC reduces rudder drag needed to compensate for sideways flight from unbalanced engine thrust. On the A330/A340 family, fuel is transferred between the main (wing and center fuselage) tanks and a fuel tank in the horizontal stabilizer, to optimize the aircraft's center of gravity during cruise flight. The fuel management controls keep the aircraft's center of gravity accurately trimmed with fuel weight, rather than drag-inducing aerodynamic trims in the elevators.
Fly-by-optics is sometimes used instead of fly-by-wire because it offers a higher data transfer rate, immunity to electromagnetic interference and lighter weight. In most cases, the cables are just changed from electrical to optical fiber cables. Sometimes it is referred to as "fly-by-light" due to its use of fiber optics. The data generated by the software and interpreted by the controller remain the same. Fly-by-light has the effect of decreasing electro-magnetic disturbances to sensors in comparison to more common fly-by-wire control systems. The Kawasaki P-1 is the first production aircraft in the world to be equipped with such a flight control system.
Having eliminated the mechanical transmission circuits in fly-by-wire flight control systems, the next step is to eliminate the bulky and heavy hydraulic circuits. The hydraulic circuit is replaced by an electrical power circuit. The power circuits power electrical or self-contained electrohydraulic actuators that are controlled by the digital flight control computers. All benefits of digital fly-by-wire are retained.
The biggest benefits are weight savings, the possibility of redundant power circuits and tighter integration between the aircraft flight control systems and its avionics systems. The absence of hydraulics greatly reduces maintenance costs. This system is used in the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II and in Airbus A380 backup flight controls. The Boeing 787 and Airbus A350 also incorporate electrically powered backup flight controls which remain operational even in the event of a total loss of hydraulic power.
Wiring adds a considerable amount of weight to an aircraft; therefore, researchers are exploring implementing fly-by-wireless solutions. Fly-by-wireless systems are very similar to fly-by-wire systems, however, instead of using a wired protocol for the physical layer a wireless protocol is employed.
In addition to reducing weight, implementing a wireless solution has the potential to reduce costs throughout an aircraft's life cycle. For example, many key failure points associated with wire and connectors will be eliminated thus hours spent troubleshooting wires and connectors will be reduced. Furthermore, engineering costs could potentially decrease because less time would be spent on designing wiring installations, late changes in an aircraft's design would be easier to manage, etc.
A newer flight control system, called intelligent flight control system (IFCS), is an extension of modern digital fly-by-wire flight control systems. The aim is to intelligently compensate for aircraft damage and failure during flight, such as automatically using engine thrust and other avionics to compensate for severe failures such as loss of hydraulics, loss of rudder, loss of ailerons, loss of an engine, etc. Several demonstrations were made on a flight simulator where a Cessna-trained small-aircraft pilot successfully landed a heavily damaged full-size concept jet, without prior experience with large-body jet aircraft. This development is being spearheaded by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center. It is reported that enhancements are mostly software upgrades to existing fully computerized digital fly-by-wire flight control systems. The Dassault Falcon 7X and Embraer Legacy 500 business jets have flight computers that can partially compensate for engine-out scenarios by adjusting thrust levels and control inputs, but still require pilots to respond appropriately. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11522 |
Falklands War
The Falklands War () was a 10-week undeclared war between Argentina and the United Kingdom in 1982 over two British dependent territories in the South Atlantic: the Falkland Islands and its territorial dependency, South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands.
The conflict began on 2 April, when Argentina invaded and occupied the Falkland Islands, followed by the invasion of South Georgia the next day. On 5 April, the British government dispatched a naval task force to engage the Argentine Navy and Air Force before making an amphibious assault on the islands. The conflict lasted 74 days and ended with an Argentine surrender on 14 June, returning the islands to British control. In total, 649 Argentine military personnel, 255 British military personnel, and three Falkland Islanders died during the hostilities.
The conflict was a major episode in the protracted dispute over the territories' sovereignty. Argentina asserted (and maintains) that the islands are Argentine territory, and the Argentine government thus characterised its military action as the reclamation of its own territory. The British government regarded the action as an invasion of a territory that had been a Crown colony since 1841. Falkland Islanders, who have inhabited the islands since the early 19th century, are predominantly descendants of British settlers, and strongly favour British sovereignty. Neither state officially declared war, although both governments declared the Islands a war zone.
The conflict has had a strong effect in both countries and has been the subject of various books, articles, films, and songs. Patriotic sentiment ran high in Argentina, but the outcome prompted large protests against the ruling military government, hastening its downfall and the democratisation of the country. In the United Kingdom, the Conservative government, bolstered by the successful outcome, was re-elected with an increased majority the following year. The cultural and political effect of the conflict has been less in the UK than in Argentina, where it remains a common topic for discussion.
Diplomatic relations between the United Kingdom and Argentina were restored in 1989 following a meeting in Madrid, at which the two governments issued a joint statement. No change in either country's position regarding the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands was made explicit. In 1994, Argentina's claim to the territories was added to its constitution.
In 1965, the United Nations called upon Argentina and the United Kingdom to reach a settlement of the sovereignty dispute. The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) regarded the islands as a nuisance and barrier to UK trade in South America, so, whilst confident of British sovereignty, was prepared to cede the islands to Argentina. When news of a proposed transfer broke in 1968, elements sympathetic with the plight of the islanders were able to organise an effective Parliamentary lobby to frustrate the FCO plans. Negotiations continued but in general failed to make meaningful progress; the islanders steadfastly refused to consider Argentine sovereignty on one side, whilst Argentina would not compromise over sovereignty on the other. The FCO then sought to make the islands dependent on Argentina, hoping this would make the islanders more amenable to Argentine sovereignty. A Communications Agreement signed in 1971 created an airlink and later YPF the Argentine oil company was given a monopoly in the islands. In 1980, a new Minister of State for Foreign Affairs, Nicholas Ridley, went to the Falklands trying to sell the islanders the benefits of a leaseback scheme, which met with strong opposition from the islanders. On returning to London in December 1980 he reported to parliament but was viciously attacked at what was seen as a sellout. (It was unlikely that leaseback could have succeeded since the British had sought a long term lease of 99 years, whilst Argentina was pressing for a much shorter period of only 10 years.) At a private committee meeting that evening, it was reported that Ridley cried out: "If we don't do something, they will invade. And there is nothing we could do."
In the period leading up to the war—and, in particular, following the transfer of power between the military dictators General Jorge Rafael Videla and General Roberto Eduardo Viola late in March 1981—Argentina had been in the midst of devastating economic stagnation and large-scale civil unrest against the military "junta" that had been governing the country since 1976. In December 1981 there was a further change in the Argentine military regime, bringing to office a new "junta" headed by General Leopoldo Galtieri (acting president), Air Brigadier Basilio Lami Dozo and Admiral Jorge Anaya. Anaya was the main architect and supporter of a military solution for the long-standing claim over the islands, calculating that the United Kingdom would never respond militarily.
By opting for military action, the Galtieri government hoped to mobilise the long-standing patriotic feelings of Argentines towards the islands, and thus divert public attention from the country's chronic economic problems and the regime's ongoing human rights violations of the Dirty War. Such action would also bolster its dwindling legitimacy. The newspaper "La Prensa" speculated in a step-by-step plan beginning with cutting off supplies to the islands, ending in direct actions late in 1982, if the UN talks were fruitless.
The ongoing tension between the two countries over the islands increased on 19 March, when a group of Argentine scrap metal merchants (actually infiltrated by Argentine Marines) raised the Argentine flag at South Georgia Island, an act that would later be seen as the first offensive action in the war. The Royal Navy ice patrol vessel was dispatched from Stanley to South Georgia on the 25th in response. The Argentine military junta, suspecting that the UK would reinforce its South Atlantic Forces, ordered the invasion of the Falkland Islands to be brought forward to 2 April.
The UK was initially taken by surprise by the Argentine attack on the South Atlantic islands, despite repeated warnings by Royal Navy captain Nicholas Barker (commander of the "Endurance") and others. Barker believed that Defence Secretary John Nott's 1981 review (in which Nott described plans to withdraw the "Endurance", the UK's only naval presence in the South Atlantic) had sent a signal to the Argentines that the UK was unwilling, and would soon be unable, to defend its territories and subjects in the Falklands.
On 2 April 1982 Argentine forces mounted amphibious landings, known as Operation Rosario, on the Falkland Islands. The invasion was met with a nominal defence organised by the Falkland Islands' Governor Sir Rex Hunt, giving command to Major Mike Norman of the Royal Marines. The events of the invasion included the landing of Lieutenant Commander Guillermo Sanchez-Sabarots' Amphibious Commandos Group, the attack on Moody Brook barracks, the engagement between the troops of Hugo Santillan and Bill Trollope at Stanley, and the final engagement and surrender at Government House.
The British had already taken action prior to the 2 April invasion. In response to events on South Georgia, on 29 March, Ministers decided to send the Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) "Fort Austin" south from the Mediterranean to support HMS "Endurance", and the submarine from Gibraltar, with ordered south from Scotland the following day. Lord Carrington had wished to send a third submarine, but the decision was deferred due to concerns about the impact on operational commitments. Coincidentally, on 26 March, the submarine left Gibraltar and it was assumed in the press it was heading south. There has since been speculation that the effect of those reports was to panic the Argentine junta into invading the Falklands before nuclear-powered submarines could be deployed.
The following day, during a crisis meeting headed by the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, the Chief of the Naval Staff, Admiral Sir Henry Leach, advised them that "Britain could and should send a task force if the islands are invaded". On 1 April, Leach sent orders to a Royal Navy force carrying out exercises in the Mediterranean to prepare to sail south. Following the invasion on 2 April, after an emergency meeting of the cabinet, approval was given to form a task force to retake the islands. This was backed in an emergency session of the House of Commons the next day.
Word of the invasion first reached the UK from Argentine sources. A Ministry of Defence operative in London had a short telex conversation with Governor Hunt's telex operator, who confirmed that Argentines were on the island and in control. Later that day, BBC journalist Laurie Margolis spoke with an islander at Goose Green via amateur radio, who confirmed the presence of a large Argentine fleet and that Argentine forces had taken control of the island. British military operations in the Falklands War were given the codename "Operation Corporate", and the commander of the task force was Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse. Operations lasted from 1 April 1982 to 20 June 1982.
On 6 April, the British Government set up a War Cabinet to provide day-to-day political oversight of the campaign. This was the critical instrument of crisis management for the British with its remit being to "keep under review political and military developments relating to the South Atlantic, and to report as necessary to the Defence and Overseas Policy Committee". The War Cabinet met at least daily until it was dissolved on 12 August. Although Margaret Thatcher is described as dominating the War Cabinet, Lawrence Freedman notes in the "Official History of the Falklands Campaign" that she did not ignore opposition or fail to consult others. However, once a decision was reached she "did not look back".
On 31 March 1982, the Argentine ambassador to the UN, Eduardo Roca, tried garnering support against a British military build-up designed to thwart earlier UN resolutions calling for both countries to resolve their Falklands dispute through discussion. He did this because Argentina, based on inadequate intelligence gathering, was convinced a British task force was already on its way to the South Atlantic, and because of Britain's threat to use HMS "Endurance" to remove the scrap-metal workers from South Georgia. Any Argentine military action could then be justified as trying to counter Britain's use of force to evade complying with an earlier UN resolution. This Argentine approach to portray Britain as the aggressor came to nothing. On 1 April, London told the UK ambassador to the UN, Sir Anthony Parsons, that an invasion was imminent and he should call an urgent meeting of the Security Council to get a favourable resolution against Argentina. Parsons had to get nine affirmative votes from the 15 Council members (not a simple majority) and to avoid a blocking vote from any of the other four permanent members. The meeting took place at 11.00am on 3 April, New York time (4.00pm in London). Resolution 502 was adopted by 10 to 1, with 4 abstentions. It said the UN was:
This was a significant win for the UK, giving it the upper hand diplomatically. The draft resolution Parsons submitted had avoided any reference to the sovereignty dispute, that might have worked against the UK: instead it focused on Argentina's breach of Chapter VII of the UN Charter which forbids the threat or use of force to settle disputes. The resolution called for the removal only of Argentine forces: this freed Britain to retake the islands militarily, if Argentina did not leave, by exercising its right to self-defence, that was allowed under the UN Charter.
The UK received further political support from member countries of the Commonwealth of Nations and the European Economic Community. Australia, Canada, and New Zealand withdrew their diplomats from Buenos Aires. The EEC also provided economic support by imposing economic sanctions on Argentina.
Argentina itself was politically backed by a majority of countries in Latin America (though, notably, not Chile). Some members of the Non-Aligned Movement also backed Argentina's position.
The New Zealand government expelled the Argentine ambassador following the invasion. The Prime Minister, Robert Muldoon, was in London when the war broke out and in an opinion piece published in "The Times" he said: "The military rulers of Argentina must not be appeased … New Zealand will back Britain all the way." Broadcasting on the BBC World Service, he told the Falkland Islanders: "This is Rob Muldoon. We are thinking of you and we are giving our full and total support to the British Government in its endeavours to rectify this situation and get rid of the people who have invaded your country.” On 20 May 1982, he announced that New Zealand would make , a , available for use where the British thought fit to release a Royal Navy vessel for the Falklands. In the House of Commons afterwards, Margaret Thatcher said: “…the New Zealand Government and people have been absolutely magnificent in their support for this country [and] the Falkland Islanders, for the rule of liberty and of law".
The French president, François Mitterrand, declared an embargo on French arms sales and assistance to Argentina. In addition, France allowed UK aircraft and warships use of its port and airfield facilities at Dakar in Senegal and France provided dissimilar aircraft training so that Harrier pilots could train against the French aircraft used by Argentina. French intelligence also cooperated with Britain to prevent Argentina from obtaining more Exocet missiles on the international market. In a 2002 interview, and in reference to this support, John Nott, the then British Defence Secretary, had described France as Britain's 'greatest ally'. In 2012, it came to light that while this support was taking place, a French technical team, employed by Dassault and already in Argentina, remained there throughout the war despite the presidential decree. The team had provided material support to the Argentines, identifying and fixing faults in Exocet missile launchers. John Nott said he had known the French team was there but said its work was thought not to be of any importance. An adviser to the then French government denied any knowledge at the time that the technical team was there. In contrast, a then French intelligence officer maintained he knew the team was there but it was in an intelligence-gathering capacity. John Nott, when asked if he regretted his earlier praise of the French, said he thought the French were "duplicitous", and "always have been".
The Sierra Leone government allowed British task force ships to refuel at Freetown. VC10 transport aircraft landed at Banjul in The Gambia while flying between the UK and Ascension Island.
Declassified cables show the U.S. felt that Thatcher had not considered diplomatic options, and also feared that a protracted conflict could draw the Soviet Union on Argentina's side, and initially tried to mediate an end to the conflict through "shuttle diplomacy". However, when Argentina refused the U.S. peace overtures, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Haig announced that the United States would prohibit arms sales to Argentina and provide material support for British operations. Both houses of the U.S. Congress passed resolutions supporting the U.S. action siding with the United Kingdom.
The U.S. provided the United Kingdom with Sidewinder missiles for use by the Harrier jets. President Ronald Reagan approved the Royal Navy's request to borrow the Sea Harrier-capable amphibious assault ship if the British lost an aircraft carrier. The United States Navy developed a plan to help the British man the ship with American military contractors, likely retired sailors with knowledge of "Iwo Jima"s systems.
Peru attempted to purchase 12 Exocet missiles from France to be delivered to Argentina, in a failed secret operation.
Chile gave support to the UK in the form of intelligence about the Argentine military and early warning intelligence on Argentine air movements. Throughout the war, Argentina was afraid of a Chilean military intervention in Patagonia and kept some of its best mountain regiments away from the Falklands near the Chilean border as a precaution. The Chilean government also allowed the United Kingdom to requisition the refueling vessel , which Chile had recently purchased and which had arrived at Arica in Chile on 4 April. The ship left port soon afterwards, bound for Ascension Island through the Panama Canal and stopping at Curaçao en route.
According to the book "Operation Israel", advisers from Israel Aerospace Industries were already in Argentina and continued their work during the conflict. The book also claims that Israel sold weapons and drop tanks in a secret operation in Peru. Peru also openly sent "Mirages, pilots and missiles" to Argentina during the war. Peru had earlier transferred ten Hercules transport planes to Argentina soon after the British Task Force had set sail in April 1982. Nick van der Bijl records that, after the Argentine defeat at Goose Green, Venezuela and Guatemala offered to send paratroopers to the Falklands. Through Libya, under Muammar Gaddafi, Argentina received 20 launchers and 60 SA-7 missiles, as well as machine guns, mortars and mines; all in all, the load of four trips of two Boeing 707s of the AAF, refuelled in Recife with the knowledge and consent of the Brazilian government. Some of these clandestine logistics operations were mounted by the Soviet Union.
The British government had no contingency plan for an invasion of the islands, and the task force was rapidly put together from whatever vessels were available. The nuclear-powered submarine set sail from France on 4 April, whilst the two aircraft carriers and , in the company of escort vessels, left Portsmouth only a day later. On its return to Southampton from a world cruise on 7 April, the ocean liner was requisitioned and set sail two days later with 3 Commando Brigade aboard. The ocean liner "Queen Elizabeth 2" was also requisitioned and left Southampton on 12 May with 5th Infantry Brigade on board. The whole task force eventually comprised 127 ships: 43 Royal Navy vessels, 22 Royal Fleet Auxiliary ships and 62 merchant ships.
The retaking of the Falkland Islands was considered extremely difficult. The chances of a British counter-invasion succeeding were assessed by the US Navy, according to historian Arthur L. Herman, as "a military impossibility". Firstly, the British were significantly constrained by the disparity in deployable air cover. The British had 42 aircraft (28 Sea Harriers and 14 Harrier GR.3s) available for air combat operations, against approximately 122 serviceable jet fighters, of which about 50 were used as air superiority fighters and the remainder as strike aircraft, in Argentina's air forces during the war. Crucially, the British lacked airborne early warning and control (AEW) aircraft. Planning also considered the Argentine surface fleet and the threat posed by Exocet-equipped vessels or the two Type 209 submarines.
By mid-April, the Royal Air Force had set up the airbase of RAF Ascension Island, co-located with Wideawake Airfield on the mid-Atlantic British overseas territory of Ascension Island, including a sizeable force of Avro Vulcan B Mk 2 bombers, Handley Page Victor K Mk 2 refuelling aircraft, and McDonnell Douglas Phantom FGR Mk 2 fighters to protect them. Meanwhile, the main British naval task force arrived at Ascension to prepare for active service. A small force had already been sent south to recapture South Georgia.
Encounters began in April; the British Task Force was shadowed by Boeing 707 aircraft of the Argentine Air Force during their travel to the south. Several of these flights were intercepted by Sea Harriers outside the British-imposed Total Exclusion Zone; the unarmed 707s were not attacked because diplomatic moves were still in progress and the UK had not yet decided to commit itself to armed force. On 23 April, a Brazilian commercial Douglas DC-10 from VARIG Airlines en route to South Africa was intercepted by British Harriers who visually identified the civilian plane.
The South Georgia force, Operation Paraquet, under the command of Major Guy Sheridan RM, consisted of Marines from 42 Commando, a troop of the Special Air Service (SAS) and Special Boat Service (SBS) troops who were intended to land as reconnaissance forces for an invasion by the Royal Marines. All were embarked on . First to arrive was the HMS "Conqueror" on 19 April, and the island was over-flown by a radar-mapping Handley Page Victor on 20 April.
The first landings of SAS troops took place on 21 April, but—with the southern hemisphere autumn setting in—the weather was so bad that their landings and others made the next day were all withdrawn after two helicopters crashed in fog on Fortuna Glacier. On 23 April, a submarine alert was sounded and operations were halted, with "Tidespring" being withdrawn to deeper water to avoid interception. On 24 April, the British forces regrouped and headed in to attack.
On 25 April, after resupplying the Argentine garrison in South Georgia, the submarine was spotted on the surface by a Westland Wessex HAS Mk 3 helicopter from , which attacked the Argentine submarine with depth charges. launched a Westland Wasp HAS.Mk.1 helicopter, and launched a Westland Lynx HAS Mk 2. The Lynx launched a torpedo, and strafed the submarine with its pintle-mounted general purpose machine gun; the Wessex also fired on "Santa Fe" with its GPMG. The Wasp from as well as two other Wasps launched from fired AS-12 ASM antiship missiles at the submarine, scoring hits. "Santa Fe" was damaged badly enough to prevent her from diving. The crew abandoned the submarine at the jetty at King Edward Point on South Georgia.
With "Tidespring" now far out to sea, and the Argentine forces augmented by the submarine's crew, Major Sheridan decided to gather the 76 men he had and make a direct assault that day. After a short forced march by the British troops and a naval bombardment demonstration by two Royal Navy vessels ("Antrim" and "Plymouth"), the Argentine forces surrendered without resistance. The message sent from the naval force at South Georgia to London was, "Be pleased to inform Her Majesty that the White Ensign flies alongside the Union Jack in South Georgia. God Save the Queen." The Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, broke the news to the media, telling them to "Just rejoice at that news, and congratulate our forces and the Marines!"
On 1 May British operations on the Falklands opened with the "Black Buck 1" attack (of a series of five) on the airfield at Stanley. A Vulcan bomber from Ascension flew on an round trip dropping conventional bombs across the runway at Stanley and back to Ascension. The mission required repeated refuelling, and required several Victor K2 tanker aircraft operating in concert, including tanker-to-tanker refuelling. The overall effect of the raids on the war is difficult to determine, and the raids consumed precious tanker resources from Ascension, but also prevented Argentina from stationing fast jets on the islands.
Historian Lawrence Freedman, who was given access to official sources, comments that the significance of the Vulcan raids remains controversial. Although taking pressure off the small Sea Harrier force, the raids were costly and used a great deal of resources. The single hit in the centre of the runway was probably the best that could have been expected but it did reduce the capability of the runway to operate fast jets and caused the Argentine air force to deploy Mirage III to defend the capital. Argentine sources confirm that the Vulcan raids influenced Argentina to withdraw some of its Mirage IIIs from Southern Argentina to the Buenos Aires Defence Zone. This dissuasive effect was watered down when British officials made clear that there would not be strikes on air bases in Argentina. The raids were later dismissed as propaganda by Falklands veteran Commander Nigel Ward.
Of the five Black Buck raids, three were against Stanley Airfield, with the other two anti-radar missions using Shrike anti-radiation missiles.
The Falklands had only three airfields. The longest and only paved runway was at the capital, Stanley, and even that was too short to support fast jets (although an arrestor gear was fitted in April to support Skyhawks). Therefore, the Argentines were forced to launch their major strikes from the mainland, severely hampering their efforts at forward staging, combat air patrols, and close air support over the islands. The effective loiter time of incoming Argentine aircraft was low, and they were later compelled to overfly British forces in any attempt to attack the islands.
The first major Argentine strike force comprised 36 aircraft (A-4 Skyhawks, IAI Daggers, English Electric Canberras, and Mirage III escorts), and was sent on 1 May, in the belief that the British invasion was imminent or landings had already taken place. Only a section of Grupo 6 (flying IAI Dagger aircraft) found ships, which were firing at Argentine defences near the islands. The Daggers managed to attack the ships and return safely. This greatly boosted morale of the Argentine pilots, who now knew they could survive an attack against modern warships, protected by radar ground clutter from the islands and by using a late pop up profile. Meanwhile, other Argentine aircraft were intercepted by BAE Sea Harriers operating from . A Dagger and a Canberra were shot down.
Combat broke out between Sea Harrier FRS Mk 1 fighters of No. 801 Naval Air Squadron and Mirage III fighters of Grupo 8. Both sides refused to fight at the other's best altitude, until two Mirages finally descended to engage. One was shot down by an AIM-9L Sidewinder air-to-air missile (AAM), while the other escaped but was damaged and without enough fuel to return to its mainland air base. The plane made for Stanley, where it fell victim to friendly fire from the Argentine defenders.
As a result of this experience, Argentine Air Force staff decided to employ A-4 Skyhawks and Daggers only as strike units, the Canberras only during the night, and Mirage IIIs (without air refuelling capability or any capable AAM) as decoys to lure away the British Sea Harriers. The decoying would be later extended with the formation of the Escuadrón Fénix, a squadron of civilian jets flying 24 hours a day, simulating strike aircraft preparing to attack the fleet. On one of these flights on 7 June, an Air Force Learjet 35A was shot down, killing the squadron commander, Vice Commodore Rodolfo De La Colina, the highest-ranking Argentine officer to die in the war.
Stanley was used as an Argentine strongpoint throughout the conflict. Despite the Black Buck and Harrier raids on Stanley airfield (no fast jets were stationed there for air defence) and overnight shelling by detached ships, it was never out of action entirely. Stanley was defended by a mixture of surface-to-air missile (SAM) systems (Franco-German Roland and British Tigercat) and Swiss-built Oerlikon 35 mm twin anti-aircraft cannons. Lockheed Hercules transport night flights brought supplies, weapons, vehicles, and fuel, and airlifted out the wounded up until the end of the conflict.
The only Argentine Hercules shot down by the British was lost on 1 June when TC-63 was intercepted by a Sea Harrier in daylight when it was searching for the British fleet north-east of the islands after the Argentine Navy retired its last SP-2H Neptune due to airframe attrition.
Various options to attack the home base of the five Argentine Étendards at Río Grande were examined and discounted (Operation Mikado), subsequently five Royal Navy submarines lined up, submerged, on the edge of Argentina's territorial limit to provide early warning of bombing raids on the British task force.
Two British naval task forces (one of surface vessels and one of submarines) and the Argentine fleet were operating in the neighbourhood of the Falklands and soon came into conflict. The first naval loss was the Second World War-vintage Argentine light cruiser . The nuclear-powered submarine sank "General Belgrano" on 2 May. Three hundred and twenty-three members of "General Belgrano"s crew died in the incident. More than 700 men were rescued from the open ocean despite cold seas and stormy weather. The losses from "General Belgrano" totalled nearly half of the Argentine deaths in the Falklands conflict, and the loss of the ship hardened the stance of the Argentine government.
Regardless of controversies over the sinking—including disagreement about the exact nature of the maritime exclusion zone and whether "General Belgrano" had been returning to port at the time of the sinking—it had a crucial strategic effect: the elimination of the Argentine naval threat. After her loss, the entire Argentine fleet, with the exception of the diesel-powered submarine , returned to port and did not leave again during the fighting. The two escorting destroyers and the battle group centred on the aircraft carrier both withdrew from the area, ending the direct threat to the British fleet that their pincer movement had represented.
However, settling the controversy in 2003, the ship's captain Hector Bonzo confirmed that "General Belgrano" had actually been manoeuvering, not "sailing away" from the exclusion zone, and had orders to sink "any British ship he could find". Further, Captain Bonzo stated that any suggestion that HMS "Conqueror" actions were a "betrayal" was utterly wrong; rather, the submarine carried out its duties according to the accepted rules of war.
In a separate incident later that night, British forces engaged an Argentine patrol gunboat, the , that was searching for the crew of the Argentine Air Force Canberra light bomber shot down on 1 May. Two Royal Navy Lynx helicopters fired four Sea Skua missiles at her. Badly damaged and with eight crew dead, "Alferez Sobral" managed to return to Puerto Deseado two days later. The Canberra's crew were never found.
On 4 May, two days after the sinking of "General Belgrano", the British lost the Type 42 destroyer to fire following an Exocet missile strike from the Argentine 2nd Naval Air Fighter/Attack Squadron.
"Sheffield" had been ordered forward with two other Type 42s to provide a long-range radar and medium-high altitude missile picket far from the British carriers. She was struck amidships, with devastating effect, ultimately killing 20 crew members and severely injuring 24 others. The ship was abandoned several hours later, gutted and deformed by the fires that continued to burn for six more days. She finally sank outside the Maritime Exclusion Zone on 10 May.
The incident is described in detail by Admiral Sandy Woodward in his book "One Hundred Days", in Chapter One. Woodward was a former commanding officer of "Sheffield". The destruction of "Sheffield" (the first Royal Navy ship sunk in action since the Second World War) had a profound impact on the British public, bringing home the fact that the "Falklands Crisis", as the BBC News put it, was now an actual "shooting war".
The tempo of operations increased throughout the first half of May as the United Nations' attempts to mediate a peace were rejected by the Argentines. The final British negotiating position was presented to Argentina by UN Secretary General Pérez de Cuéllar on 18 May 1982. In it, the British abandoned their previous "red-line" that British administration of the islands should be restored on the withdrawal of Argentine forces, as supported by United Nations Security Council Resolution 502.
Instead, it proposed a UN administrator should supervise the mutual withdrawal of both Argentine and British forces, then govern the islands in consultation with the representative institutions of the islands, including Argentines, although no Argentines lived there. Reference to "self-determination" of the islanders was dropped and the British proposed that future negotiations over the sovereignty of the islands should be conducted by the UN.
Given the threat to the British fleet posed by the Étendard-Exocet combination, plans were made to use C-130s to fly in some SAS troops to attack the home base of the five Étendards at Río Grande, Tierra del Fuego. The operation was codenamed "Mikado". The operation was later scrapped, after acknowledging that its chances of success were limited, and replaced with a plan to use the submarine to drop SAS operatives several miles offshore at night for them to make their way to the coast aboard rubber inflatables and proceed to destroy Argentina's remaining Exocet stockpile.
An SAS reconnaissance team was dispatched to carry out preparations for a seaborne infiltration. A Westland Sea King helicopter carrying the assigned team took off from HMS "Invincible" on the night of 17 May, but bad weather forced it to land from its target and the mission was aborted. The pilot flew to Chile, landed south of Punta Arenas, and dropped off the SAS team. The helicopter's crew of three then destroyed the aircraft, surrendered to Chilean police on 25 May, and were repatriated to the UK after interrogation. The discovery of the burnt-out helicopter attracted considerable international attention. Meanwhile, the SAS team crossed the border and penetrated into Argentina, but cancelled their mission after the Argentines suspected an SAS operation and deployed some troops to search for them. The SAS men were able to return to Chile, and took a civilian flight back to the UK.
On 14 May the SAS carried out a raid on Pebble Island on the Falklands, where the Argentine Navy had taken over a grass airstrip map for FMA IA 58 Pucará light ground-attack aircraft and Beechcraft T-34 Mentors, which resulted in the destruction of several aircraft.
At sea, the limitations of the British ships' anti-aircraft defences was demonstrated in the sinking of on 21 May, (on 24 May when attempts to defuse bombs failed), and the loss of the cargo of helicopters, runway-building equipment and tents on (struck by two AM39 Exocets) on 25 May. The loss of all but one of the Chinook helicopters being carried by the Atlantic Conveyor as well as their maintenance equipment and facilities was a severe blow from a logistical perspective.
Also lost on 21 May was , a sister to , whilst in company with after being ordered to act as a decoy to draw away Argentine aircraft from other ships at San Carlos Bay. and were moderately damaged. However, many British ships escaped being sunk because of limitations imposed by circumstances on Argentine pilots. To avoid the highest concentration of British air defences, Argentine pilots released bombs at very low altitude, and hence those bomb fuzes did not have sufficient time to arm before impact. The low release of the retarded bombs (some of which the British had sold to the Argentines years earlier) meant that many never exploded, as there was insufficient time in the air for them to arm themselves. The pilots would have been aware of this—but due to the high concentration required to avoid SAMs, Anti-Aircraft Artillery (AAA), and British Sea Harriers, many failed to climb to the necessary release point. The Argentine forces solved the problem by fitting improvised retarding devices, allowing the pilots to effectively employ low-level bombing attacks on 8 June.
In his autobiographical account of the Falklands War, Admiral Woodward blamed the BBC World Service for disclosing information that led the Argentines to change the retarding devices on the bombs. The World Service reported the lack of detonations after receiving a briefing on the matter from a Ministry of Defence official. He describes the BBC as being more concerned with being "fearless seekers after truth" than with the lives of British servicemen. Colonel 'H'. Jones levelled similar accusations against the BBC after they disclosed the impending British attack on Goose Green by 2 Para.
Thirteen bombs hit British ships without detonating. Lord Craig, the retired Marshal of the Royal Air Force, is said to have remarked: "Six better and we would have lost" although "Ardent" and "Antelope" were both lost despite the failure of bombs to explode, and "Argonaut" was out of action.
The fuzes were functioning correctly, and the bombs were simply released from too low an altitude. The Argentines lost 22 aircraft in the attacks.
The Argentine Navy used their last AM39 Exocet missile attempting to attack on 30 May. There are Argentine claims that the missile struck; however, the British have denied this, some citing that shot it down. When "Invincible" returned to the UK after the war, she showed no signs of missile damage.
During the night of 21 May, the British Amphibious Task Group under the command of Commodore Michael Clapp (Commodore, Amphibious Warfare – COMAW) mounted Operation Sutton, the amphibious landing on beaches around San Carlos Water, on the northwestern coast of East Falkland facing onto Falkland Sound. The bay, known as "Bomb Alley" by British forces, was the scene of repeated air attacks by low-flying Argentine jets.
The men of 3 Commando Brigade were put ashore as follows: 2nd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (2 Para) from the RORO ferry "Norland" and 40 Commando Royal Marines from the amphibious ship were landed at San Carlos (Blue Beach), 3rd Battalion, Parachute Regiment (3 Para) from the amphibious ship was landed at Port San Carlos (Green Beach) and 45 Commando from RFA "Stromness" was landed at Ajax Bay (Red Beach). Notably, the waves of eight LCUs and eight LCVPs were led by Major Ewen Southby-Tailyour, who had commanded the Falklands detachment NP8901 from March 1978 to 1979. 42 Commando on the ocean liner was a tactical reserve. Units from the Royal Artillery, Royal Engineers, etc. and armoured reconnaissance vehicles were also put ashore with the landing craft, the Round Table class LSL and mexeflote barges. Rapier missile launchers were carried as underslung loads of Sea Kings for rapid deployment.
By dawn the next day, they had established a secure beachhead from which to conduct offensive operations. From there, Brigadier Julian Thompson's plan was to capture Darwin and Goose Green before turning towards Port Stanley. Now, with the British troops on the ground, the South Air Force (Argentina) began the night bombing campaign against them using Canberra bomber planes until the last day of the war (14 June).
From early on 27 May until 28 May, 2 Para (approximately 500 men), with naval gunfire support from and artillery support from 8 Commando Battery, Royal Artillery, approached and attacked Darwin and Goose Green, which was held by the Argentine 12th Infantry Regiment. After a tough struggle that lasted all night and into the next day, the British won the battle; in all, 17 British and 47 Argentine soldiers were killed. A total of 961 Argentine troops (including 202 Argentine Air Force personnel of the "Condor" airfield) were taken prisoner.
The BBC announced the taking of Goose Green on the BBC World Service before it had actually happened. It was during this attack that Lieutenant Colonel H. Jones, the commanding officer of 2 Para, was killed at the head of his battalion while charging into the well-prepared Argentine positions. He was posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross.
With the sizeable Argentine force at Goose Green out of the way, British forces were now able to break out of the San Carlos beachhead. On 27 May, men of 45 Cdo and 3 Para started a loaded march across East Falkland towards the coastal settlement of Teal Inlet.
Meanwhile, 42 Commando prepared to move by helicopter to Mount Kent. Unknown to senior British officers, the Argentine generals were determined to tie down the British troops in the Mount Kent area, and on 27 and 28 May they sent transport aircraft loaded with Blowpipe surface-to-air missiles and commandos (602nd Commando Company and 601st National Gendarmerie Special Forces Squadron) to Stanley. This operation was known as "Autoimpuesta" ("Self-determination initiative").
For the next week, the SAS and the Mountain and Arctic Warfare Cadre (M&AWC) of 3 Commando Brigade waged intense patrol battles with patrols of the volunteers' 602nd Commando Company under Major Aldo Rico, normally second in Command of the 22nd Mountain Infantry Regiment. Throughout 30 May, Royal Air Force Harriers were active over Mount Kent. One of them, Harrier "XZ963", flown by Squadron Leader Jerry Pook—in responding to a call for help from D Squadron, attacked Mount Kent's eastern lower slopes, and that led to its loss through small-arms fire. Pook was subsequently awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross.
On 31 May, the M&AWC defeated Argentine Special Forces at the skirmish at Top Malo House. A 13-strong Argentine Army Commando detachment (Captain José Vercesi's 1st Assault Section, 602nd Commando Company) found itself trapped in a small shepherd's house at Top Malo. The Argentine commandos fired from windows and doorways and then took refuge in a stream bed from the burning house. Completely surrounded, they fought 19 M&AWC marines under Captain Rod Boswell for 45 minutes until, with their ammunition almost exhausted, they elected to surrender.
Three Cadre members were badly wounded. On the Argentine side, there were two dead, including Lieutenant Ernesto Espinoza and Sergeant Mateo Sbert (who were posthumously decorated for their bravery). Only five Argentines were left unscathed. As the British mopped up Top Malo House, Lieutenant Fraser Haddow's M&AWC patrol came down from Malo Hill, brandishing a large Union Flag. One wounded Argentine soldier, Lieutenant Horacio Losito, commented that their escape route would have taken them through Haddow's position.
601st Commando tried to move forward to rescue 602nd Commando Company on Estancia Mountain. Spotted by 42 Commando, they were engaged with L16 81mm mortars and forced to withdraw to Two Sisters mountain. The leader of 602nd Commando Company on Estancia Mountain realised his position had become untenable and after conferring with fellow officers ordered a withdrawal.
The Argentine operation also saw the extensive use of helicopter support to position and extract patrols; the 601st Combat Aviation Battalion also suffered casualties. At about 11:00 am on 30 May, an Aérospatiale SA 330 Puma helicopter was brought down by a shoulder-launched FIM-92 Stinger surface-to-air missile (SAM) fired by the SAS in the vicinity of Mount Kent. Six Argentine National Gendarmerie Special Forces were killed and eight more wounded in the crash.
As Brigadier Thompson commented, "It was fortunate that I had ignored the views expressed by Northwood HQ that reconnaissance of Mount Kent before insertion of 42 Commando was superfluous. Had D Squadron not been there, the Argentine Special Forces would have caught the Commando before de-planing and, in the darkness and confusion on a strange landing zone, inflicted heavy casualties on men and helicopters."
By 1 June, with the arrival of a further British troops of the 5th Infantry Brigade, the new British divisional commander, Major General Jeremy Moore RM, had sufficient force to start planning an offensive against Stanley. During this build-up, the Argentine air assaults on the British naval forces continued, killing 56. Of the dead, 32 were from the Welsh Guards on RFA "Sir Galahad" and RFA "Sir Tristram" on 8 June. According to Surgeon-Commander Rick Jolly of the Falklands Field Hospital, more than 150 men suffered burns and injuries of some kind in the attack, including, famously, Simon Weston.
The Guards were sent to support an advance along the southern approach to Stanley. On 2 June, a small advance party of 2 Para moved to Swan Inlet house in a number of Army Westland Scout helicopters. Telephoning ahead to Fitzroy, they discovered that the area was clear of Argentines and (exceeding their authority) commandeered the one remaining RAF Chinook helicopter to frantically ferry another contingent of 2 Para ahead to Fitzroy (a settlement on Port Pleasant) and Bluff Cove (a settlement on Port Fitzroy).
This uncoordinated advance caused great difficulties in planning for the commanders of the combined operation, as they now found themselves with of indefensible positions, strung along their southern flank. Support could not be sent by air as the single remaining Chinook was already heavily oversubscribed. The soldiers could march, but their equipment and heavy supplies would need to be ferried by sea.
Plans were drawn up for half the Welsh Guards to march light on the night of 2 June, whilst the Scots Guards and the second half of the Welsh Guards were to be ferried from San Carlos Water in the Landing Ship Logistics (LSL) "Sir Tristram" and the landing platform dock (LPD) "Intrepid" on the night of 5 June. "Intrepid" was planned to stay one day and unload itself and as much of "Sir Tristram" as possible, leaving the next evening for the relative safety of San Carlos. Escorts would be provided for this day, after which "Sir Tristram" would be left to unload using a Mexeflote (a powered raft) for as long as it took to finish.
Political pressure from above to not risk the LPD forced Commodore Michael Clapp to alter this plan. Two lower-value LSLs would be sent, but with no suitable beaches to land on, "Intrepid"s landing craft would need to accompany them to unload. A complicated operation across several nights with "Intrepid" and her sister ship sailing half-way to dispatch their craft was devised.
The attempted overland march by half the Welsh Guards failed, possibly as they refused to march light and attempted to carry their equipment. They returned to San Carlos and landed directly at Bluff Cove when "Fearless" dispatched her landing craft. "Sir Tristram" sailed on the night of 6 June and was joined by "Sir Galahad" at dawn on 7 June. Anchored apart in Port Pleasant, the landing ships were near Fitzroy, the designated landing point.
The landing craft should have been able to unload the ships to that point relatively quickly, but confusion over the ordered disembarkation point (the first half of the Guards going direct to Bluff Cove) resulted in the senior Welsh Guards infantry officer aboard insisting that his troops should be ferried the far longer distance directly to Port Fitzroy/Bluff Cove. The alternative was for the infantrymen to march via the recently repaired Bluff Cove bridge (destroyed by retreating Argentine combat engineers) to their destination, a journey of around .
On "Sir Galahad"s stern ramp there was an argument about what to do. The officers on board were told that they could not sail to Bluff Cove that day. They were told that they had to get their men off ship and onto the beach as soon as possible as the ships were vulnerable to enemy aircraft. It would take 20 minutes to transport the men to shore using the LCU and Mexeflote. They would then have the choice of walking the seven miles to Bluff Cove or wait until dark to sail there. The officers on board said that they would remain on board until dark and then sail. They refused to take their men off the ship. They possibly doubted that the bridge had been repaired due to the presence on board "Sir Galahad" of the Royal Engineer Troop whose job it was to repair the bridge. The Welsh Guards were keen to rejoin the rest of their Battalion, who were potentially facing the enemy without their support. They had also not seen any enemy aircraft since landing at San Carlos and may have been overconfident in the air defences. Ewen Southby-Tailyour gave a direct order for the men to leave the ship and go to the beach; the order was ignored.
The longer journey time of the landing craft taking the troops directly to Bluff Cove and the squabbling over how the landing was to be performed caused an enormous delay in unloading. This had disastrous consequences. Without escorts, having not yet established their air defence, and still almost fully laden, the two LSLs in Port Pleasant were sitting targets for two waves of Argentine A-4 Skyhawks.
The disaster at Port Pleasant (although often known as Bluff Cove) would provide the world with some of the most sobering images of the war as TV news video footage showed Navy helicopters hovering in thick smoke to winch survivors from the burning landing ships.
British casualties were 48 killed and 115 wounded. Three Argentine pilots were also killed. The air strike delayed the scheduled British ground attack on Stanley by two days. Argentine General Mario Menéndez, commander of Argentine forces in the Falklands, was told that 900 British soldiers had died. He expected that the losses would cause enemy morale to drop and the British assault to stall.
On the night of 11 June, after several days of painstaking reconnaissance and logistic build-up, British forces launched a brigade-sized night attack against the heavily defended ring of high ground surrounding Stanley. Units of 3 Commando Brigade, supported by naval gunfire from several Royal Navy ships, simultaneously attacked in the Battle of Mount Harriet, Battle of Two Sisters, and Battle of Mount Longdon. Mount Harriet was taken at a cost of 2 British and 18 Argentine soldiers. At Two Sisters, the British faced both enemy resistance and friendly fire, but managed to capture their objectives. The toughest battle was at Mount Longdon. British forces were bogged down by rifle, mortar, machine gun, artillery fire, sniper fire, and ambushes. Despite this, the British continued their advance.
During this battle, 13 were killed when , straying too close to shore while returning from the gun line, was struck by an improvised trailer-based Exocet MM38 launcher taken from the destroyer by Argentine Navy technicians. On the same day, Sergeant Ian McKay of 4 Platoon, B Company, 3 Para died in a grenade attack on an Argentine bunker, which earned him a posthumous Victoria Cross. After a night of fierce fighting, all objectives were secured. Both sides suffered heavy losses.
The second phase of attacks began on the night of 13 June, and the momentum of the initial assault was maintained. 2 Para, with light armour support from the Blues and Royals, captured Wireless Ridge, with the loss of 3 British and 25 Argentine lives, and the 2nd battalion, Scots Guards captured Mount Tumbledown at the Battle of Mount Tumbledown, which cost 10 British and 30 Argentine lives.
With the last natural defence line at Mount Tumbledown breached, the Argentine town defences of Stanley began to falter. In the morning gloom, one company commander got lost and his junior officers became despondent. Private Santiago Carrizo of the 3rd Regiment described how a platoon commander ordered them to take up positions in the houses and "if a Kelper resists, shoot him", but the entire company did nothing of the kind.
A ceasefire was declared on 14 June and the commander of the Argentine garrison in Stanley, Brigade General Mario Menéndez, surrendered to Major General Jeremy Moore the same day.
On 20 June, the British retook the South Sandwich Islands, which involved accepting the surrender of the Southern Thule Garrison at the Corbeta Uruguay base, and declared hostilities over. Argentina had established Corbeta Uruguay in 1976, but prior to 1982 the United Kingdom had contested the existence of the Argentine base only through diplomatic channels.
In total, 907 were killed during the 74 days of the conflict:
Of the 86 Royal Navy personnel, 22 were lost in , 19 + 1 lost in , 19 + 1 lost in and 13 lost in .
Fourteen naval cooks were among the dead, the largest number from any one branch in the Royal Navy.
Thirty-three of the British Army's dead came from the Welsh Guards (32 of which died on the RFA "Sir Galahad" in the Bluff Cove Air Attacks), 21 from the 3rd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, 18 from the 2nd Battalion, the Parachute Regiment, 19 from the Special Air Service, 3 from Royal Signals and 8 from each of the Scots Guards and Royal Engineers. The 1st battalion/7th Duke of Edinburgh's Own Gurkha Rifles lost one man.
Two more British deaths may be attributed to Operation Corporate, bringing the total to 260:
There were Argentine and 777 British non-fatal casualties.
Before British offensive operations began, the British and Argentine governments agreed to establish an area on the high seas where both sides could station hospital ships without fear of attack by the other side. This area, a circle 20 nautical miles in diameter, was referred to as the Red Cross Box (), about north of Falkland Sound. Ultimately, the British stationed four ships (, and and the primary hospital ship SS "Uganda") within the box, while the Argentines stationed three (, and ).
The hospital ships were non-warships converted to serve as hospital ships. The three British naval vessels were survey vessels and "Uganda" was a passenger liner. "Almirante Irizar" was an icebreaker, "Bahia Paraiso" was an Antarctic supply transport and "Puerto Deseado" was a survey ship. The British and Argentine vessels operating within the Box were in radio contact and there was some transfer of patients between the hospital ships. For example, the "Uganda" on four occasions transferred patients to an Argentine hospital ship. The British naval hospital ships operated as casualty ferries, carrying casualties from both sides from the Falklands to "Uganda" and operating a shuttle service between the Red Cross Box and Montevideo, Uruguay.
Throughout the conflict officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) conducted inspections to verify that all concerned were abiding by the rules of the Geneva Conventions. On 12 June, some personnel were transferred from the Argentine hospital ship to the British ships by helicopter. Argentine naval officers also inspected the British casualty ferries in the estuary of the River Plate.
"Hydra" worked with "Hecla" and "Herald" to take casualties from "Uganda" to Montevideo, Uruguay, where a fleet of Uruguayan ambulances met them. RAF VC10 aircraft then flew the casualties to the UK for transfer to the Princess Alexandra Hospital at RAF Wroughton, near Swindon.
This brief war brought many consequences for all the parties involved, besides the considerable casualty rate and large materiel loss, especially of shipping and aircraft, relative to the deployed military strengths of the opposing sides.
In the United Kingdom, Margaret Thatcher's popularity increased. The success of the Falklands campaign was widely regarded as a factor in the turnaround in fortunes for the Conservative government, who had been trailing behind the SDP-Liberal Alliance in the opinion polls for months before the conflict began, but after the success in the Falklands the Conservatives returned to the top of the opinion polls by a wide margin and went on to win the following year's general election by a landslide. Subsequently, Defence Secretary Nott's proposed cuts to the Royal Navy were abandoned.
The islanders subsequently had full British citizenship restored in 1983, their lifestyle was improved by investments the UK made after the war and by the liberalisation of economic measures that had been stalled through fear of angering Argentina. In 1985, a new constitution was enacted promoting self-government, which has continued to devolve power to the islanders.
In Argentina, defeat in the Falklands War meant that a possible war with Chile was avoided. Further, Argentina returned to a democratic government in the 1983 general election, the first free general election since 1973. It also had a major social impact, destroying the military's image as the "moral reserve of the nation" that they had maintained through most of the 20th century.
Various figures have been produced for the number of veterans who have committed suicide since the war. Some studies have estimated that 264 British veterans and 350–500 Argentine veterans have committed suicide since 1982. However, a detailed study of British veterans of the war commissioned by the UK Ministry of Defence found that only 95 had died from "intentional self-harm and events of undetermined intent (suicides and open verdict deaths)", a proportion lower than would be expected within the general population over the same period.
Militarily, the Falklands conflict remains one of the largest air-naval combat operations between modern forces since the end of the Second World War. As such, it has been the subject of intense study by military analysts and historians. The most significant "lessons learned" include: the vulnerability of surface ships to anti-ship missiles and submarines, the challenges of co-ordinating logistical support for a long-distance projection of power, and reconfirmation of the role of tactical air power, including the use of helicopters.
In 1986, the BBC broadcast the "Horizon" programme, "In the Wake of HMS Sheffield", which discussed lessons learned from the conflict, and measures since taken to implement them, such as stealth ships and close-in weapon systems.
There are several memorials on the Falkland Islands themselves, the most notable of which is the 1982 Liberation Memorial, unveiled in 1984 on the second anniversary of the end of the war. It lists the names of the 255 British military personnel who died during the war and is located in front of the Secretariat Building in Stanley, overlooking Stanley Harbour. The Memorial was funded entirely by the Islanders and is inscribed with the words "In Memory of Those Who Liberated Us".
In addition to memorials on the islands, there is a memorial in the crypt of St Paul's Cathedral, London to the British war dead. The Falkland Islands Memorial Chapel at Pangbourne College was opened in March 2000 as a commemoration of the lives and sacrifice of all those who served and died in the South Atlantic in 1982. In Argentina, there is a memorial at Plaza San Martín in Buenos Aires, in Rosario, and in Ushuaia.
During the war, British dead were put into plastic body bags and buried in mass graves. After the war, the bodies were recovered; 14 were reburied at Blue Beach Military Cemetery and 64 were returned to the UK.
Many of the Argentine dead are buried in the Argentine Military Cemetery west of the Darwin Settlement. The government of Argentina declined an offer by the UK to have the bodies repatriated to the mainland.
, there were 113 uncleared minefields on the Falkland Islands and unexploded ordnance (UXOs) covering an area of . Of this area, on the Murrell Peninsula were classified as being "suspected minefields"—the area had been heavily pastured for the previous 25 years without incident. It was estimated that these minefields had anti-personnel mines and anti-tank mines. No human casualties from mines or UXO have been reported in the Falkland Islands since 1984, and no civilian mine casualties have ever occurred on the islands. The UK reported six military personnel were injured in 1982 and a further two injured in 1983. Most military accidents took place while clearing the minefields in the immediate aftermath of the 1982 conflict or in the process of trying to establish the extent of the minefield perimeters, particularly where no detailed records existed.
On 9 May 2008, the Falkland Islands Government asserted that the minefields, which represent 0.1% of the available farmland on the islands "present no long term social or economic difficulties for the Falklands," and that the impact of clearing the mines would cause more problems than containing them. However, the British Government, in accordance with its commitments under the Mine Ban Treaty has a commitment to clear the mines by the end of 2019. In May 2012, it was announced that of Stanley Common (which lies between the Stanley – Mount Pleasant road and the shoreline) was made safe and had been opened to the public, opening up a stretch of coastline and a further two kilometres of shoreline along Mullet's Creek. The 2019 deadline has not been achieved but clearance is currently scheduled for completion by 2024.
Selected war correspondents were regularly flown to Port Stanley in military aircraft to report on the war. Back in Buenos Aires, newspapers and magazines faithfully reported on "the heroic actions of the largely conscript army and its successes".
Officers from the intelligence services were attached to the newspapers and 'leaked' information confirming the official communiqués from the government. The glossy magazines "Gente" and "Siete Días" swelled to 60 pages with colour photographs of British warships in flames—many of them faked—and bogus eyewitness reports of the Argentine commandos' guerrilla war on South Georgia (6 May) and an already dead Pucará pilot's attack on HMS "Hermes" (Lt. Daniel Antonio Jukic had been killed at Goose Green during a British air strike on 1 May). Most of the faked photos actually came from the tabloid press. One of the best remembered headlines was "Estamos ganando" ("We're winning") from the magazine "Gente", that would later use variations of it.
The Argentine troops on the Falkland Islands could read "Gaceta Argentina"—a newspaper intended to boost morale among the servicemen. Some of its untruths could easily be unveiled by the soldiers who recovered corpses.
The "Malvinas cause" united the Argentines in a patriotic atmosphere that protected the junta from critics, and even opponents of the military government supported Galtieri; Ernesto Sabato said: "Don't be mistaken, Europe; it is not a dictatorship who is fighting for the Malvinas, it is the whole Nation. Opponents of the military dictatorship, like me, are fighting to extirpate the last trace of colonialism." The "Madres de Plaza de Mayo" were even exposed to death threats from ordinary people.
HMS "Invincible" was repeatedly sunk in the Argentine press, and on 30 April 1982 the Argentine magazine "Tal Cual" showed Prime Minister Thatcher with an eyepatch and the text: "Pirate, witch and assassin. Guilty!" Three British reporters sent to Argentina to cover the war from the Argentine perspective were jailed until the end of the war.
Seventeen newspaper reporters, two photographers, two radio reporters and three television reporters with five technicians sailed with the Task Force to the war. The Newspaper Publishers' Association selected them from among 160 applicants, excluding foreign media.
The hasty selection resulted in the inclusion of two journalists among the war reporters who were interested only in Queen Elizabeth II's son Prince Andrew, who was serving in the conflict. The Prince flew a helicopter on multiple missions, including Anti-Surface Warfare, Exocet missile decoy and casualty evacuation.
Merchant vessels had the civilian Inmarsat uplink, which enabled written telex and voice report transmissions via satellite. had a facsimile machine that was used to upload 202 pictures from the South Atlantic over the course of the war. The Royal Navy leased bandwidth on the U.S. Defense Satellite Communications System for worldwide communications. Television demands a thousand times the data rate of telephone, but the Ministry of Defence was unsuccessful in convincing the U.S. to allocate more bandwidth.
TV producers suspected that the enquiry was half-hearted; since the Vietnam War television pictures of casualties and traumatised soldiers were recognised as having negative propaganda value. However, the technology only allowed uploading a single frame per 20 minutes—and only if the military satellites were allocated 100% to television transmissions. Videotapes were shipped to Ascension Island, where a broadband satellite uplink was available, resulting in TV coverage being delayed by three weeks.
The press was very dependent on the Royal Navy, and was censored on site. Many reporters in the UK knew more about the war than those with the Task Force. Ministry of Defence press briefings in London were characterised by the restrained dictation-speed delivery of its spokesman, Ian McDonald.
The Royal Navy expected Fleet Street to conduct a Second World War-style positive news campaign but the majority of the British media, especially the BBC, reported the war in a neutral fashion. These reporters referred to "the British troops" and "the Argentinian troops" instead of "our lads" and the "Argies". The two main tabloid papers presented opposing viewpoints: "The Daily Mirror" was decidedly anti-war, whilst "The Sun" became well known for headlines such as "Stick It Up Your Junta!," which, along with the reporting in other tabloids, led to accusations of xenophobia and jingoism.
"The Sun" was condemned for its "Gotcha" headline following the sinking of the .
There were wide-ranging influences on popular culture in both the UK and Argentina, from the immediate postwar period to the present. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges described the war as "a fight between two bald men over a comb". The words "yomp" and "Exocet" entered the British vernacular as a result of the war. The Falklands War also provided material for theatre, film and TV drama and influenced the output of musicians. In Argentina, the military government banned the broadcasting of music in the English language, giving way to the rise of local rock musicians. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11523 |
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is a city in central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,084 inhabitants in 2013, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.
Florence was a centre of medieval European trade and finance and one of the wealthiest cities of that era. It is considered by many academics to have been the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called "the Athens of the Middle Ages". Its turbulent political history includes periods of rule by the powerful Medici family and numerous religious and republican revolutions. From 1865 to 1871 the city served as the capital of the Kingdom of Italy (established in 1861). The Florentine dialect forms the base of Standard Italian and it became the language of culture throughout Italy due to the prestige of the masterpieces by Dante Alighieri, Petrarch, Giovanni Boccaccio, Niccolò Machiavelli and Francesco Guicciardini.
The city attracts millions of tourists each year, and UNESCO declared the Historic Centre of Florence a World Heritage Site in 1982. The city is noted for its culture, Renaissance art and architecture and monuments. The city also contains numerous museums and art galleries, such as the Uffizi Gallery and the Palazzo Pitti, and still exerts an influence in the fields of art, culture and politics. Due to Florence's artistic and architectural heritage, "Forbes" has ranked it as one of the most beautiful cities in the world.
Florence plays an important role in Italian fashion, and is ranked in the top 15 fashion capitals of the world by Global Language Monitor; furthermore, it is a major national economic centre, as well as a tourist and industrial hub. In 2008 the city had the 17th-highest average income in Italy.
Florence originated as a Roman city, and later, after a long period as a flourishing trading and banking medieval commune, it was the birthplace of the Italian Renaissance. According to the "Encyclopædia Britannica", it was politically, economically, and culturally one of the most important cities in Europe and the world from the 14th to 16th centuries.
The language spoken in the city during the 14th century came to be accepted as the model for what would become the Italian language. Thanks especially to the works of the Tuscans Dante, Petrarch and Boccaccio, Florentine dialect, above all the local dialects, was adopted as the basis for a national literary language.
Starting from the late Middle Ages, Florentine money—in the form of the gold florin—financed the development of industry all over Europe, from Britain to Bruges, to Lyon and Hungary. Florentine bankers financed the English kings during the Hundred Years War. They similarly financed the papacy, including the construction of their provisional capital of Avignon and, after their return to Rome, the reconstruction and Renaissance embellishment of Rome.
Florence was home to the Medici, one of European history's most important noble families. Lorenzo de' Medici was considered a political and cultural mastermind of Italy in the late 15th century. Two members of the family were popes in the early 16th century: Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici married King Henry II of France and, after his death in 1559, reigned as regent in France. Marie de' Medici married Henry IV of France and gave birth to the future King Louis XIII. The Medici reigned as Grand Dukes of Tuscany, starting with Cosimo I de' Medici in 1569 and ending with the death of Gian Gastone de' Medici in 1737.
The Etruscans initially formed in the 9th–8th century BC the small settlement of Fiesole (Faesulae in Latin), which was destroyed by Lucius Cornelius Sulla in 80 BC in reprisal for supporting the populares faction in Rome. The present city of Florence was established by Julius Caesar in 59 BC as a settlement for his veteran soldiers and was named originally "Fluentia", owing to the fact that it was built between two rivers, which was later changed to "Florentia" ("flowering"). It was built in the style of an army camp with the main streets, the "cardo" and the "decumanus", intersecting at the present "Piazza della Repubblica". Situated along the "Via Cassia", the main route between Rome and the north, and within the fertile valley of the Arno, the settlement quickly became an important commercial centre.
In centuries to come, the city experienced turbulent periods of Ostrogothic rule, during which the city was often troubled by warfare between the Ostrogoths and the Byzantines, which may have caused the population to fall to as few as 1,000 people. Peace returned under Lombard rule in the 6th century. Florence was conquered by Charlemagne in 774 and became part of the Duchy of Tuscany, with Lucca as capital. The population began to grow again and commerce prospered. In 854, Florence and Fiesole were united in one county.
Margrave Hugo chose Florence as his residency instead of Lucca at about 1000 AD. The Golden Age of Florentine art began around this time. In 1013, construction began on the Basilica di San Miniato al Monte. The exterior of the church was reworked in Romanesque style between 1059 and 1128. In 1100, Florence was a "Commune", meaning a city state. The city's primary resource was the Arno river, providing power and access for the industry (mainly textile industry), and access to the Mediterranean sea for international trade. Another great source of strength was its industrious merchant community. The Florentine merchant banking skills became recognised in Europe after they brought decisive financial innovation (e.g. bills of exchange, double-entry bookkeeping system) to medieval fairs. This period also saw the eclipse of Florence's formerly powerful rival Pisa (defeated by Genoa in 1284 and subjugated by Florence in 1406), and the exercise of power by the mercantile elite following an anti-aristocratic movement, led by Giano della Bella, that resulted in a set of laws called the Ordinances of Justice (1293).
At the height of demographic expansion around 1325, the urban population may have been as great as 120,000, and the rural population around the city was probably close to 300,000. The Black Death of 1348 reduced it by over half, about 25,000 are said to have been supported by the city's wool industry: in 1345 Florence was the scene of an attempted strike by wool combers ("ciompi"), who in 1378 rose up in a brief revolt against oligarchic rule in the Revolt of the Ciompi. After their suppression, Florence came under the sway (1382–1434) of the Albizzi family, who became bitter rivals of the Medici.
In the 15th century, Florence was among the largest cities in Europe with a population of 60,000 and was considered rich and economically successful. Cosimo de' Medici was the first Medici family member to essentially control the city from behind the scenes. Although the city was technically a democracy of sorts, his power came from a vast patronage network along with his alliance to the new immigrants, the "gente nuova" (new people). The fact that the Medici were bankers to the pope also contributed to their ascendancy. Cosimo was succeeded by his son Piero, who was, soon after, succeeded by Cosimo's grandson, Lorenzo in 1469. Lorenzo was a great patron of the arts, commissioning works by Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and Botticelli. Lorenzo was an accomplished poet and musician and brought composers and singers to Florence, including Alexander Agricola, Johannes Ghiselin, and Heinrich Isaac. By contemporary Florentines (and since), he was known as "Lorenzo the Magnificent" (Lorenzo il Magnifico).
Following Lorenzo de' Medici's death in 1492, he was succeeded by his son Piero II. When the French king Charles VIII invaded northern Italy, Piero II chose to resist his army. But when he realised the size of the French army at the gates of Pisa, he had to accept the humiliating conditions of the French king. These made the Florentines rebel, and they expelled Piero II. With his exile in 1494, the first period of Medici rule ended with the restoration of a republican government.
During this period, the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola had become prior of the San Marco monastery in 1490. He was famed for his penitential sermons, lambasting what he viewed as widespread immorality and attachment to material riches. He praised the exile of the Medici as the work of God, punishing them for their decadence. He seized the opportunity to carry through political reforms leading to a more democratic rule. But when Savonarola publicly accused Pope Alexander VI of corruption, he was banned from speaking in public. When he broke this ban, he was excommunicated. The Florentines, tired of his extreme teachings, turned against him and arrested him. He was convicted as a heretic and burned at the stake on the Piazza della Signoria on 23 May 1498.
A second individual of unusually acute insight was Niccolò Machiavelli, whose prescriptions for Florence's regeneration under strong leadership have often been seen as a legitimisation of political expediency and even malpractice. In other words, Machiavelli was a political thinker, perhaps most renowned for his political handbook, titled The Prince, which is about ruling and the exercise of power. Commissioned by the Medici, Machiavelli also wrote the Florentine Histories, the history of the city. Florentines drove out the Medici for a second time and re-established a republic on 16 May 1527. Restored twice with the support of both Emperor Charles V and Pope Clement VII (Giulio de Medici), the Medici in 1532 became hereditary dukes of Florence, and in 1569 Grand Dukes of Tuscany, ruling for two centuries. In all Tuscany, only the Republic of Lucca (later a Duchy) and the Principality of Piombino were independent from Florence.
The extinction of the Medici dynasty and the accession in 1737 of Francis Stephen, duke of Lorraine and husband of Maria Theresa of Austria, led to Tuscany's temporary inclusion in the territories of the Austrian crown. It became a secundogeniture of the Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty, who were deposed for the House of Bourbon-Parma in 1801. From 1801 to 1807 Florence was the capital of the Napoleonic client state Kingdom of Etruria. The Bourbon-Parma were deposed in December 1807 when Tuscany was annexed by France. Florence was the prefecture of the French département of Arno from 1808 to the fall of Napoleon in 1814. The Habsburg-Lorraine dynasty was restored on the throne of Tuscany at the Congress of Vienna but finally deposed in 1859. Tuscany became a region of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861.
Florence replaced Turin as Italy's capital in 1865 and, in an effort to modernise the city, the old market in the Piazza del Mercato Vecchio and many medieval houses were pulled down and replaced by a more formal street plan with newer houses. The Piazza (first renamed Piazza Vittorio Emanuele II, then Piazza della Repubblica, the present name) was significantly widened and a large triumphal arch was constructed at the west end. This development was unpopular and was prevented from continuing by the efforts of several British and American people living in the city. A museum recording the destruction stands nearby today.
The country's second capital city was superseded by Rome six years later, after the withdrawal of the French troops allowed the capture of Rome.
After doubling during the 19th century, Florence's population was to triple in the 20th, resulting from growth in tourism, trade, financial services and industry.
During World War II the city experienced a year-long German occupation (1943–1944) being part of the Italian Social Republic. Hitler declared it an open city on July 3, 1944 as troops of the British 8th Army closed in. In early August, the retreating Germans decided to demolish all the bridges along the Arno linking the district of Oltrarno to the rest of the city, making it difficult for troops of the 8th Army to cross. However, at the last moment Charles Steinhauslin, at the time consul of 26 countries in Florence, convinced the German general in Italy that the Ponte Vecchio was not to be destroyed due to its historical value. Instead, an equally historic area of streets directly to the south of the bridge, including part of the Corridoio Vasariano, was destroyed using mines. Since then the bridges have been restored to their original forms using as many of the remaining materials as possible, but the buildings surrounding the Ponte Vecchio have been rebuilt in a style combining the old with modern design. Shortly before leaving Florence, as they knew that they would soon have to retreat, the Germans executed many freedom fighters and political opponents publicly, in streets and squares including the Piazza Santo Spirito.
Florence was liberated by New Zealand, South African and British troops on 4 August 1944 alongside partisans from the Tuscan Committee of National Liberation (CTLN). The Allied soldiers who died driving the Germans from Tuscany are buried in cemeteries outside the city (Americans about south of the city, British and Commonwealth soldiers a few kilometres east of the centre on the right bank of the Arno).
At the end of World War II in May 1945, the US Army's Information and Educational Branch was ordered to establish an overseas university campus for demobilised American service men and women in Florence, Italy. The first American University for service personnel was established in June 1945 at the School of Aeronautics in Florence, Italy. Some 7,500 soldier-students were to pass through the University during its four one-month sessions (see G. I. American Universities).
In November 1966, the Arno flooded parts of the centre, damaging many art treasures. Around the city there are tiny placards on the walls noting where the flood waters reached at their highest point.
Florence lies in a basin formed by the hills of Careggi, Fiesole, Settignano, Arcetri, Poggio Imperiale and Bellosguardo (Florence). The Arno river, three other minor rivers (Mugnone, Ema and Greve) and some streams flow through it.
Florence has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa"), tending to Mediterranean ("Csa"). It has hot summers with moderate or light rainfall and cool, damp winters. As Florence lacks a prevailing wind, summer temperatures are higher than along the coast. Rainfall in summer is convectional, while relief rainfall dominates in the winter. Snow flurries happen almost every year, but often result in no accumulation. The highest officially recorded temperature was on 26 July 1983 and the lowest was on 12 January 1985.
The legislative body of the municipality is the City Council ("Consiglio Comunale"), which is composed of 36 councillors elected every five years with a proportional system, contextually to the mayoral elections. The executive body is the City Committee ("Giunta Comunale"), composed by 7 assessors, that is nominated and presieded over by a directly elected Mayor. The current mayor of Florence is Dario Nardella.
The municipality of Florence is subdivided into five administrative Boroughs ("Quartieri"). Each Borough is governed by a Council ("Consiglio") and a President, elected contextually to the city Mayor. The urban organisation is governed by the Italian Constitution (art. 114). The Boroughs have the power to advise the Mayor with nonbinding opinions on a large spectrum of topics (environment, construction, public health, local markets) and exercise the functions delegated to them by the City Council; in addition they are supplied with an autonomous founding in order to finance local activities. The Boroughs are:
All of the five boroughs are governed by the Democratic Party.
The former Italian Prime Minister (2014–2016), Matteo Renzi, served as mayor from 2009 to 2014.
Florence is known as the "cradle of the Renaissance" ("la culla del Rinascimento") for its monuments, churches, and buildings. The best-known site of Florence is the domed cathedral of the city, Santa Maria del Fiore, known as "The Duomo", whose dome was built by Filippo Brunelleschi. The nearby Campanile (partly designed by Giotto) and the Baptistery buildings are also highlights. The dome, 600 years after its completion, is still the largest dome built in brick and mortar in the world. In 1982, the historic centre of Florence (Italian: "centro storico di Firenze") was declared a World Heritage Site by the UNESCO. The centre of the city is contained in medieval walls that were built in the 14th century to defend the city. At the heart of the city, in Piazza della Signoria, is Bartolomeo Ammannati's Fountain of Neptune (1563–1565), which is a masterpiece of marble sculpture at the terminus of a still functioning Roman aqueduct.
The layout and structure of Florence in many ways harkens back to the Roman era, where it was designed as a garrison settlement. Nevertheless, the majority of the city was built during the Renaissance. Despite the strong presence of Renaissance architecture within the city, traces of medieval, Baroque, Neoclassical and modern architecture can be found. The Palazzo Vecchio as well as the Duomo, or the city's Cathedral, are the two buildings which dominate Florence's skyline.
The river Arno, which cuts through the old part of the city, is as much a character in Florentine history as many of the people who lived there. Historically, the locals have had a love-hate relationship with the Arno – which alternated between nourishing the city with commerce, and destroying it by flood.
One of the bridges in particular stands out — the Ponte Vecchio ("Old Bridge"), whose most striking feature is the multitude of shops built upon its edges, held up by stilts. The bridge also carries Vasari's elevated corridor linking the Uffizi to the Medici residence (Palazzo Pitti). Although the original bridge was constructed by the Etruscans, the current bridge was rebuilt in the 14th century. It is the only bridge in the city to have survived World War II intact. It is the first example in the western world of a bridge built using segmental arches, that is, arches less than a semicircle, to reduce both span-to-rise ratio and the numbers of pillars to allow lesser encumbrance in the riverbed (being in this much more successful than the Roman Alconétar Bridge).
The church of San Lorenzo contains the Medici Chapel, the mausoleum of the Medici family—the most powerful family in Florence from the 15th to the 18th century. Nearby is the Uffizi Gallery, one of the finest art museums in the world – founded on a large bequest from the last member of the Medici family.
The Uffizi is located at the corner of Piazza della Signoria, a site important for being the centre of Florence's civil life and government for centuries. The Palazzo della Signoria facing it is still home of the municipal government. Many significant episodes in the history of art and political changes were staged here, such as:
The Loggia dei Lanzi in Piazza della Signoria is the location of a number of statues by other sculptors such as Donatello, Giambologna, Ammannati and Cellini, although some have been replaced with copies to preserve the originals.
Florence contains several palaces and buildings from various eras. The Palazzo Vecchio is the town hall of Florence and also an art museum. This large Romanesque crenellated fortress-palace overlooks the Piazza della Signoria with its copy of Michelangelo's David statue as well as the gallery of statues in the adjacent Loggia dei Lanzi. Originally called the "Palazzo della Signoria", after the Signoria of Florence, the ruling body of the Republic of Florence, it was also given several other names: "Palazzo del Popolo", "Palazzo dei Priori", and "Palazzo Ducale", in accordance with the varying use of the palace during its long history. The building acquired its current name when the Medici duke's residence was moved across the Arno to the Palazzo Pitti. It is linked to the Uffizi and the Palazzo Pitti through the Corridoio Vasariano.
Palazzo Medici Riccardi, designed by Michelozzo di Bartolomeo for Cosimo il Vecchio, of the Medici family, is another major edifice, and was built between 1445 and 1460. It was well known for its stone masonry that includes rustication and ashlar. Today it is the head office of the Metropolitan City of Florence and hosts museums and the Riccardiana Library. The Palazzo Strozzi, an example of civil architecture with its rusticated stone, was inspired by the Palazzo Medici, but with more harmonious proportions. Today the palace is used for international expositions like the annual antique show (founded as the Biennale dell'Antiquariato in 1959), fashion shows and other cultural and artistic events. Here also is the seat of the Istituto Nazionale del Rinascimento and the noted Gabinetto Vieusseux, with the library and reading room.
There are several other notable places, including the Palazzo Rucellai, designed by Leon Battista Alberti between 1446 and 1451 and executed, at least in part, by Bernardo Rossellino; the Palazzo Davanzati, which houses the museum of the Old Florentine House; the Palazzo delle Assicurazioni Generali, designed in the Neo-Renaissance style in 1871; the Palazzo Spini Feroni, in Piazza Santa Trinita, a historic 13th-century private palace, owned since the 1920s by shoe-designer Salvatore Ferragamo; as well as various others, including the Palazzo Borghese, the Palazzo di Bianca Cappello, the Palazzo Antinori, and the Royal building of Santa Maria Novella.
Florence contains numerous museums and art galleries where some of the world's most important works of art are held. The city is one of the best preserved Renaissance centres of art and architecture in the world and has a high concentration of art, architecture and culture. In the ranking list of the 15 most visited Italian art museums, ⅔ are represented by Florentine museums. The Uffizi is one of these, having a very large collection of international and Florentine art. The gallery is articulated in many halls, catalogued by schools and chronological order. Engendered by the Medici family's artistic collections through the centuries, it houses works of art by various painters and artists. The Vasari Corridor is another gallery, built connecting the Palazzo Vecchio with the Pitti Palace passing by the Uffizi and over the Ponte Vecchio. The Galleria dell'Accademia houses a Michelangelo collection, including the David. It has a collection of Russian icons and works by various artists and painters. Other museums and galleries include the Bargello, which concentrates on sculpture works by artists including Donatello, Giambologna and Michelangelo; the Palazzo Pitti, containing part of the Medici family's former private collection. In addition to the Medici collection, the palace's galleries contain many Renaissance works, including several by Raphael and Titian, large collections of costumes, ceremonial carriages, silver, porcelain and a gallery of modern art dating from the 18th century. Adjoining the palace are the Boboli Gardens, elaborately landscaped and with numerous sculptures.
There are several different churches and religious buildings in Florence. The cathedral is Santa Maria del Fiore. The San Giovanni Baptistery located in front of the cathedral, is decorated by numerous artists, notably by Lorenzo Ghiberti with the "Gates of Paradise". Other churches in Florence include the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella, located in Santa Maria Novella square (near the Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station) which contains works by Masaccio, Paolo Uccello, Filippino Lippi and Domenico Ghirlandaio; the Basilica of Santa Croce, the principal Franciscan church in the city, which is situated on the Piazza di Santa Croce, about south east of the Duomo, and is the burial place of some of the most illustrious Italians, such as Michelangelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Rossini, thus it is known also as the Temple of the Italian Glories (Tempio dell'Itale Glorie); the Basilica of San Lorenzo, which is one of the largest churches in the city, situated at the centre of Florence's main market district, and the burial place of all the principal members of the Medici family from Cosimo il Vecchio to Cosimo III; Santo Spirito, in the Oltrarno quarter, facing the square with the same name; Orsanmichele, whose building was constructed on the site of the kitchen garden of the monastery of San Michele, now demolished; Santissima Annunziata, a Roman Catholic basilica and the mother church of the Servite order; Ognissanti, which was founded by the lay order of the Umiliati, and is among the first examples of Baroque architecture built in the city; the Santa Maria del Carmine, in the Oltrarno district of Florence, which is the location of the Brancacci Chapel, housing outstanding Renaissance frescoes by Masaccio and Masolino da Panicale, later finished by Filippino Lippi; the Medici Chapel with statues by Michelangelo, in the San Lorenzo; as well as several others, including Santa Trinita, San Marco, Santa Felicita, Badia Fiorentina, San Gaetano, San Miniato al Monte, Florence Charterhouse, and Santa Maria del Carmine. The city additionally contains the Orthodox Russian church of Nativity, and the Great Synagogue of Florence, built in the 19th century.
Florence contains various theatres and cinemas. The Odeon Cinema of the Palazzo dello Strozzino is one of the oldest cinemas in the city. Established from 1920 to 1922 in a wing of the Palazzo dello Strozzino, it used to be called the "Cinema Teatro Savoia" (Savoy Cinema-Theatre), yet was later called "Odeon". The Teatro della Pergola, located in the centre of the city on the eponymous street, is an opera house built in the 17th century. Another theatre is the Teatro Comunale (or "Teatro del Maggio Musicale Fiorentino"), originally built as the open-air amphitheatre, the "Politeama Fiorentino Vittorio Emanuele", which was inaugurated on 17 May 1862 with a production of Donizetti's "Lucia di Lammermoor" and which seated 6,000 people. There are several other theatres, such as the Saloncino Castinelli, the Teatro Puccini, the Teatro Verdi, the Teatro Goldoni and the Teatro Niccolini.
Florence Cathedral, formally the Cattedrale di Santa Maria del Fiore, is the cathedral of Florence, Italy. It was begun in 1296 in the Gothic style to a design of Arnolfo di Cambio and was structurally completed by 1436, with the dome designed by Filippo Brunelleschi.
Aside from such monuments, Florence contains numerous major squares ("piazze") and streets. The Piazza della Repubblica is a square in the city centre, location of the cultural cafés and bourgeois palaces. Among the square's cafés (like Caffè Gilli, Paszkowski or the Hard Rock Cafè), the Giubbe Rosse café has long been a meeting place for artists and writers, notably those of Futurism. The Piazza Santa Croce is another; dominated by the Basilica of Santa Croce, it is a rectangular square in the centre of the city where the Calcio Fiorentino is played every year. Furthermore, there is the Piazza Santa Trinita, a square near the Arno that mark the end of the Via de' Tornabuoni street.
Other squares include the Piazza San Marco, the Piazza Santa Maria Novella, the Piazza Beccaria and the Piazza della Libertà. The centre additionally contains several streets. Such include the Via Camillo Cavour, one of the main roads of the northern area of the historic centre; the Via Ghibellina, one of central Florence's longest streets; the Via dei Calzaiuoli, one of the most central streets of the historic centre which links "Piazza del Duomo" to Piazza della Signoria, winding parallel to via Roma and "Piazza della Repubblica"; the Via de' Tornabuoni, a luxurious street in the city centre that goes from Antinori square to ponte Santa Trinita, across Piazza Santa Trinita, characterised by the presence of fashion boutiques; the Viali di Circonvallazione, 6-lane boulevards surrounding the northern part of the historic centre; as well as others, such as Via Roma, Via degli Speziali, Via de' Cerretani, and the Viale dei Colli.
Florence also contains various parks and gardens. Such include the Boboli Gardens, the Parco delle Cascine, the Giardino Bardini and the Giardino dei Semplici, amongst others.
In 1200 the city was home to 50,000 people. By 1300 the population of the city proper was 120,000, with an additional 300,000 living in the Contado. Between 1500 and 1650 the population was around 70,000.
, the population of the city proper is 370,702, while Eurostat estimates that 696,767 people live in the urban area of Florence. The Metropolitan Area of Florence, Prato and Pistoia, constituted in 2000 over an area of roughly , is home to 1.5 million people. Within Florence proper, 46.8% of the population was male in 2007 and 53.2% were female. Minors (children aged 18 and less) totalled 14.10 percent of the population compared to pensioners, who numbered 25.95 percent. This compares with the Italian average of 18.06 percent (minors) and 19.94 percent (pensioners). The average age of Florence resident is 49 compared to the Italian average of 42. In the five years between 2002 and 2007, the population of Florence grew by 3.22 percent, while Italy as a whole grew by 3.56 percent. The birth rate of Florence is 7.66 births per 1,000 inhabitants compared to the Italian average of 9.45 births.
, 87.46% of the population was Italian. An estimated 6,000 Chinese live in the city. The largest immigrant group came from other European countries (mostly Romanians and Albanians): 3.52%, East Asia (mostly Chinese and Filipino): 2.17%, the Americas: 1.41%, and North Africa (mostly Moroccan): 0.9%.
Much like the rest of Italy most of the people in Florence are Roman Catholic, with more than 90% of the population belonging to the Archdiocese of Florence.
Tourism is, by far, the most important of all industries and most of the Florentine economy relies on the money generated by international arrivals and students studying in the city. The value tourism to the city totalled some €2.5 billion in 2015 and the number of visitors had increased by 5.5% from the previous year.
In 2013, Florence was listed as the second best world city by "Condé Nast Traveler".
Manufacturing and commerce, however, still remain highly important. Florence is also Italy's 17th richest city in terms of average workers' earnings, with the figure being €23,265 (the overall city's income is €6,531,204,473), coming after Mantua, yet surpassing Bolzano.
Florence is a major production and commercial centre in Italy, where the Florentine industrial complexes in the suburbs produce all sorts of goods, from furniture, rubber goods, chemicals, and food. However, traditional and local products, such as antiques, handicrafts, glassware, leatherwork, art reproductions, jewellery, souvenirs, elaborate metal and iron-work, shoes, accessories and high fashion clothes also dominate a fair sector of Florence's economy. The city's income relies partially on services and commercial and cultural interests, such as annual fairs, theatrical and lyrical productions, art exhibitions, festivals and fashion shows, such as the Calcio Fiorentino. Heavy industry and machinery also take their part in providing an income. In Nuovo Pignone, numerous factories are still present, and small-to medium industrial businesses are dominant. The Florence-Prato-Pistoia industrial districts and areas were known as the 'Third Italy' in the 1990s, due to the exports of high-quality goods and automobile (especially the Vespa) and the prosperity and productivity of the Florentine entrepreneurs. Some of these industries even rivalled the traditional industrial districts in Emilia-Romagna and Veneto due to high profits and productivity.
In the fourth quarter of 2015, manufacturing increased by 2.4% and exports increased by 7.2%. Leading sectors included mechanical engineering, fashion, pharmaceutics, food and wine. During 2015, permanent employment contracts increased by 48.8 percent, boosted by nationwide tax break.
Tourism is the most significant industry in central Florence. From April to October, tourists outnumber local population. Tickets to the Uffizi and Accademia museums are regularly sold out and large groups regularly fill the basilicas of Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella, both of which charge for entry. Tickets for The Uffizi and Accademia can be purchased online prior to visiting. In 2010, readers of "Travel + Leisure" magazine ranked the city as their third favourite tourist destination. In 2015, Condé Nast Travel readers voted Florence as the best city in Europe.
Studies by Euromonitor International have concluded that cultural and history-oriented tourism is generating significantly increased spending throughout Europe.
Florence is believed to have the greatest concentration of art (in proportion to its size) in the world. Thus, cultural tourism is particularly strong, with world-renowned museums such as the Uffizi selling over 1.93 million tickets in 2014. The city's convention centre facilities were restructured during the 1990s and host exhibitions, conferences, meetings, social forums, concerts and other events all year.
In 2016, Florence had 20,588 hotel rooms in 570 facilities. International visitors use 75% of the rooms; some 18% of those were from the U.S. In 2014, the city had 8.5 million overnight stays. A Euromonitor report indicates that in 2015 the city ranked as the world's 36th most visited in the world, with over 4.95 million arrivals for the year.
Tourism brings revenue to Florence, but it creates certain problems. The Ponte Vecchio, The San Lorenzo Market and Santa Maria Novella are plagued by pickpockets. The province of Florence receives roughly 13 million visitors per year and in peak seasons, that can lead to over crowding at popular locations. Mayor Dario Nardella is particularly concerned about visitors who arrive on buses, stay only a few hours, spend little money but contribute significantly to overcrowding. "No museum visit, just a photo from the square, the bus back and then on to Venice... We don’t want tourists like that," he said.
Some tourists are less than respectful of the city's cultural heritage, according to Nardella. In June 2017, he instituted a programme of spraying church steps with water to prevent tourists from using such areas as picnic spots. While he values the benefits of tourism, there has been "an increase among those who sit down on church steps, eat their food and leave rubbish strewn on them," he explained. To boost the sale of traditional foods, the mayor had introduced legislation (enacted in 2016) that requires restaurants to use typical Tuscan products and rejected McDonald's application to open a location in the Piazza del Duomo.
Food and wine have long been an important staple of the economy. The Chianti region is just south of the city, and its Sangiovese grapes figure prominently not only in its Chianti Classico wines but also in many of the more recently developed Supertuscan blends. Within to the west is the Carmignano area, also home to flavourful sangiovese-based reds. The celebrated Chianti Rufina district, geographically and historically separated from the main Chianti region, is also few kilometres east of Florence. More recently, the Bolgheri region (about southwest of Florence) has become celebrated for its "Super Tuscan" reds such as Sassicaia and Ornellaia.
Florence was the birthplace of High Renaissance art, which lasted from 1450–1527. While Medieval art focused on basic story telling of the Bible, Renaissance art focused on naturalism and human emotion. Medieval art was abstract, formulaic, and largely produced by monks whereas Renaissance art was rational, mathematical, individualistic, consisted of linear perspective and shading (Chiaroscuro) and produced by specialists (Leonardo da Vinci, Donatello, Michelangelo, and Raphael). Religion was important, but with this new age came the humanization of religious figures in art, such as Expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Ecce Homo (Bosch, 1470s), and Madonna Della Seggiola; People of this age began to understand themselves as human beings, which reflected in art. The Renaissance marked the rebirth of classical values in art and society as people studied the ancient masters of the Greco-Roman world; Art became focused on realism as opposed to idealism.
Cimabue and Giotto, the fathers of Italian painting, lived in Florence as well as Arnolfo and Andrea Pisano, renewers of architecture and sculpture; Brunelleschi, Donatello and Masaccio, forefathers of the Renaissance, Ghiberti and the Della Robbias, Filippo Lippi and Angelico; Botticelli, Paolo Uccello and the universal genius of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.
Their works, together with those of many other generations of artists, are gathered in the several museums of the town: the Uffizi Gallery, the Palatina gallery with the paintings of the "Golden Ages", the Bargello with the sculptures of the Renaissance, the museum of San Marco with Fra Angelico's works, the Academy, the chapels of the Medicis Buonarroti's house with the sculptures of Michelangelo, the following museums: Bardini, Horne, Stibbert, Romano, Corsini, The Gallery of Modern Art, the Museo dell'Opera del Duomo, the museum of Silverware and the museum of Precious Stones.
Several monuments are located in Florence: the Florence Baptistery with its mosaics; the Cathedral with its sculptures, the medieval churches with bands of frescoes; public as well as private palaces: Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo Pitti, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Palazzo Davanzati; monasteries, cloisters, refectories; the "Certosa". In the archaeological museum includes documents of Etruscan civilisation. In fact the city is so rich in art that some first time visitors experience the Stendhal syndrome as they encounter its art for the first time.
Florentine architects such as Filippo Brunelleschi (1377–1466) and Leon Battista Alberti (1404–1472) were among the fathers of both Renaissance and Neoclassical architecture.
The cathedral, topped by Brunelleschi's dome, dominates the Florentine skyline. The Florentines decided to start building it – late in the 13th century, without a design for the dome. The project proposed by Brunelleschi in the 14th century was the largest ever built at the time, and the first major dome built in Europe since the two great domes of Roman times – the Pantheon in Rome, and Hagia Sophia in Constantinople. The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore remains the largest brick construction of its kind in the world. In front of it is the medieval Baptistery. The two buildings incorporate in their decoration the transition from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. In recent years, most of the important works of art from the two buildings – and from the nearby Giotto's Campanile, have been removed and replaced by copies. The originals are now housed in the Museum dell'Opera del Duomo, just to the east of the Cathedral.
Florence has large numbers of art-filled churches, such as San Miniato al Monte, San Lorenzo, Santa Maria Novella, Santa Trinita, Santa Maria del Carmine, Santa Croce, Santo Spirito, the Annunziata, Ognissanti and numerous others.
Artists associated with Florence range from Arnolfo di Cambio and Cimabue to Giotto, Nanni di Banco, and Paolo Uccello; through Lorenzo Ghiberti, and Donatello and Massaccio and the della Robbia family; through Fra Angelico and Botticelli and Piero della Francesca, and on to Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. Others include Benvenuto Cellini, Andrea del Sarto, Benozzo Gozzoli, Domenico Ghirlandaio, Filippo Lippi, Bernardo Buontalenti, Orcagna, Pollaiuolo, Filippino Lippi, Verrocchio, Bronzino, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelozzo, the Rossellis, the Sangallos, and Pontormo. Artists from other regions who worked in Florence include Raphael, Andrea Pisano, Giambologna, Il Sodoma and Peter Paul Rubens.
Picture galleries in Florence include the Uffizi and the Pitti Palace. Two superb collections of sculpture are in the Bargello and the Museum of the Works of the Duomo. They are filled with the creations of Donatello, Verrochio, Desiderio da Settignano, Michelangelo and others. The Galleria dell'Accademia has Michelangelo's David – perhaps the best-known work of art anywhere, plus the unfinished statues of the slaves Michelangelo created for the tomb of Pope Julius II. Other sights include the medieval city hall, the Palazzo della Signoria (also known as the Palazzo Vecchio), the Archeological Museum, the Museum of the History of Science, the Garden of Archimedes, the Palazzo Davanzatti, the Stibbert Museum, St. Marks, the Medici Chapels, the Museum of the Works of Santa Croce, the Museum of the Cloister of Santa Maria Novella, the Zoological Museum ("La Specola"), the Bardini, and the Museo Horne. There is also a collection of works by the modern sculptor, Marino Marini, in a museum named after him. The Strozzi Palace is the site of special exhibits.
Florentine ("fiorentino"), spoken by inhabitants of Florence and its environs, is a Tuscan dialect and the immediate parent language to modern Italian.
Although its vocabulary and pronunciation are largely identical to standard Italian, differences do exist. The "Vocabolario del fiorentino contemporaneo" (Dictionary of Modern Florentine) reveals lexical distinctions from all walks of life. Florentines have a highly recognisable accent in phonetic terms due to the so-called gorgia toscana): "hard "c"" between two vowels is pronounced as a fricative similar to an English "h", so that "dico" 'I say' is phonetically , "i cani" 'the dogs' is . Similarly, "t" between vowels is pronounced as in English "thin", and "p" in the same position is the bilabial fricative . Other traits include using a form of the subjunctive mood last commonly used in medieval times, a frequent usage in everyday speech of the modern subjunctive, and a shortened pronunciation of the definite article, instead of "il", causing doubling of the consonant that follows, so that "il cane" 'the dog', for example, is pronounced .
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio pioneered the use of the vernacular instead of the Latin used for most literary works at the time.
Despite Latin being the main language of the courts and the Church in the Middle Ages, writers such as Dante Alighieri and many others used their own language, the Florentine vernacular descended from Latin, in composing their greatest works. The oldest literary pieces written in Florentine go as far back as the 13th century. Florence's literature fully blossomed in the 14th century, when not only Dante with his "Divine Comedy" (1306–1321) and Petrarch, but also poets such as Guido Cavalcanti and Lapo Gianni composed their most important works. Dante's masterpiece is the "Divine Comedy", which mainly deals with the poet himself taking an allegoric and moral tour of Hell, Purgatory and finally Heaven, during which he meets numerous mythological or real characters of his age or before. He is first guided by the Roman poet Virgil, whose non-Christian beliefs damned him to Hell. Later on he is joined by Beatrice, who guides him through Heaven.
In the 14th century, Petrarch and Giovanni Boccaccio led the literary scene in Florence after Dante's death in 1321. Petrarch was an all-rounder writer, author and poet, but was particularly known for his "Canzoniere", or the Book of Songs, where he conveyed his unremitting love for Laura. His style of writing has since become known as "Petrarchism". Boccaccio was better known for his "Decameron", a slightly grim story of Florence during the 1350s bubonic plague, known as the Black Death, when some people fled the ravaged city to an isolated country mansion, and spent their time there recounting stories and novellas taken from the medieval and contemporary tradition. All of this is written in a series of 100 distinct novellas.
In the 16th century, during the Renaissance, Florence was the home town of political writer and philosopher Niccolò Machiavelli, whose ideas on how rulers should govern the land, detailed in "The Prince", spread across European courts and enjoyed enduring popularity for centuries. These principles became known as "Machiavellianism".
Florence became a musical centre during the Middle Ages and music and the performing arts remain an important part of its culture. The growth of Northern Italian Cities in the 1500s likely contributed to its increased prominence. During the Renaissance, there were four kinds of musical patronage in the city with respect to both sacred and secular music: state, corporate, church, and private. It was here that the Florentine Camerata convened in the mid-16th century and experimented with setting tales of Greek mythology to music and staging the result—in other words, the first operas, setting the wheels in motion not just for the further development of the operatic form, but for later developments of separate "classical" forms such as the symphony and concerto. After the year 1600, Italian trends prevailed across Europe, by 1750 it was the primary musical language. The genre of the Madrigal, born in Italy, gained popularity in Britain and elsewhere. Several Italian cities were "larger on the musical map than their real-size for power suggested. Florence, was once such city which experienced a fantastic period in the early seventeenth Century of musico-theatrical innovation, including the beginning and flourishing of opera.
Opera was invented in Florence in the late 16th century when Jacobo Peri's "Dafne" an opera in the style of monody, was premiered. Opera spread from Florence throughout Italy and eventually Europe. Vocal Music in the choir setting was also taking new identity at this time. At the beginning of the 17th century, two practices for writing music were devised, one the first practice or "Stile Antico/Prima Prattica" the other the "Stile Moderno/Seconda Prattica". The Stile Antico was more prevalent in Northern Europe and Stile Moderno was practiced more by the Italian Composers of the time.
Composers and musicians who have lived in Florence include Piero Strozzi (1550 – after 1608), Giulio Caccini (1551–1618) and Mike Francis (1961–2009). Giulio Caccini's book "Le Nuove Musiche" was significant in performance practice technique instruction at the time. The book specified a new term, in use by the 1630s, called monody which indicated the combination of voice and basso continuo and connoted a practice of stating text in a free, lyrical, yet speech-like manner. This would occur while an instrument, usually a keyboard type such as harpsichord, played and held chords while the singer sang/spoke the monodic line.
Florence has been a setting for numerous works of fiction and movies, including the novels and associated films, such as "Light in the Piazza", "The Girl Who Couldn't Say No", "Calmi Cuori Appassionati", "Hannibal", "A Room with a View", "Tea with Mussolini", "Virgin Territory" and "Inferno". The city is home to renowned Italian actors and actresses, such as Roberto Benigni, Leonardo Pieraccioni and Vittoria Puccini.
Florence has appeared as a location in video games such as "Assassins Creed II." The Republic of Florence also appears as a playable nation in Paradox Interactive's grand strategy game "Europa Universalis IV."
16th century Florence is the setting of the Japanese manga and anime series "Arte".
Florentine food grows out of a tradition of peasant eating rather than rarefied high cooking. The majority of dishes are based on meat. The whole animal was traditionally eaten; tripe ("trippa") and stomach ("lampredotto") were once regularly on the menu and still are sold at the food carts stationed throughout the city. Antipasti include "crostini toscani", sliced bread rounds topped with a chicken liver-based pâté, and sliced meats (mainly prosciutto and salame, often served with melon when in season). The typically saltless Tuscan bread, obtained with natural levain frequently features in Florentine courses, especially in its soups, "ribollita" and "pappa al pomodoro", or in the salad of bread and fresh vegetables called "panzanella" that is served in summer. The "bistecca alla fiorentina" is a large (the customary size should weigh around ) – the "date" steak – T-bone steak of Chianina beef cooked over hot charcoal and served very rare with its more recently derived version, the "tagliata", sliced rare beef served on a bed of arugula, often with slices of Parmesan cheese on top. Most of these courses are generally served with local olive oil, also a prime product enjoying a worldwide reputation. Among the desserts, "schiacciata alla fiorentina", a white flatbread cake, is one of the most popular; it is a very soft cake, prepared with extremely simple ingredients, typical of Florentine cuisine, and is especially eaten at Carnival.
Research institutes and university departments are located within the Florence area and within two campuses at
Polo di Novoli and Polo Scientifico di Sesto Fiorentino as well as in the Research Area of Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche.
Florence has been an important scientific centre for centuries, notably during the Renaissance with scientists such as Leonardo da Vinci.
Florentines were one of the driving forces behind the Age of Discovery. Florentine bankers financed Henry the Navigator and the Portuguese explorers who pioneered the route around Africa to India and the Far East. It was a map drawn by the Florentine Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, a student of Brunelleschi, that Christopher Columbus used to sell his "enterprise" to the Spanish monarchs, and which he used on his first voyage. Mercator's "Projection" is a refined version of Toscanelli's – taking into account the Americas, of which the Florentine was, obviously, ignorant.
Galileo and other scientists pioneered the study of optics, ballistics, astronomy, anatomy, and so on. Pico della Mirandola, Leonardo Bruni, Machiavelli, and many others laid the groundwork for our understanding of science.
By the year 1300 Florence had become a centre of textile production in Europe. Many of the rich families in Renaissance Florence were major purchasers of locally produced fine clothing, and the specialists of fashion in the economy and culture of Florence during that period is often underestimated. Florence is regarded by some as the birthplace and earliest centre of the modern (post World War Two) fashion industry in Italy. The Florentine "soirées" of the early 1950s organised by Giovanni Battista Giorgini were events where several Italian designers participated in group shows and first garnered international attention. Florence has served as the home of the Italian fashion company Salvatore Ferragamo since 1928. Gucci, Roberto Cavalli, and Emilio Pucci are also headquartered in Florence. Other major players in the fashion industry such as Prada and Chanel have large offices and stores in Florence or its outskirts. Florence's main upscale shopping street is Via de' Tornabuoni, where major luxury fashion houses and jewellery labels, such as Armani and Bulgari, have their elegant boutiques. Via del Parione and Via Roma are other streets that are also well known for their high-end fashion stores.
The "Scoppio del Carro" ("Explosion of the Cart") is a celebration of the First Crusade. During the day of Easter, a cart, which the Florentines call the "Brindellone" and which is led by four white oxen, is taken to the Piazza del Duomo between the Baptistery of St. John the Baptist ("Battistero di San Giovanni") and the Florence Cathedral ("Santa Maria del Fiore"). The cart is connected by a rope to the interior of the church. Near the cart there is a model of a dove, which, according to legend, is a symbol of good luck for the city: at the end of the Easter mass, the dove emerges from the nave of the Duomo and ignites the fireworks on the cart.
"Calcio Storico Fiorentino" ("Historic Florentine Football"), sometimes called "Calcio in costume", is a traditional sport, regarded as a forerunner of soccer, though the actual gameplay most closely resembles rugby. The event originates from the Middle Ages, when the most important Florentine nobles amused themselves playing while wearing bright costumes. The most important match was played on 17 February 1530, during the siege of Florence. That day Papal troops besieged the city while the Florentines, with contempt of the enemies, decided to play the game notwithstanding the situation. The game is played in the Piazza di Santa Croce. A temporary arena is constructed, with bleachers and a sand-covered playing field. A series of matches are held between four teams representing each "quartiere "(quarter) of Florence during late June and early July. There are four teams: Azzurri (light blue), Bianchi (white), Rossi (red) and Verdi (green). The Azzurri are from the quarter of Santa Croce, Bianchi from the quarter of Santo Spirito, Verdi are from San Giovanni and Rossi from Santa Maria Novella.
In association football Florence is represented by ACF Fiorentina, which plays in Serie A, the top league of Italian league system.
ACF Fiorentina has won two Italian Championships, in 1956 and 1969, and 6 Italian cup, since their formation in 1926. They play their games at the Stadio Artemio Franchi, which holds 47,282.
The female squad of ACF Fiorentina have won the women's association football Italian Championship of the 2016–17 season.
The city is home of the Centro Tecnico Federale di Coverciano, in Coverciano, Florence, the main training ground of the Italian national team, and the technical department of the Italian Football Federation.
Florence was selected to host the 2013 UCI World Road Cycling Championships.
Since 2017 Florence is also represented in Eccellenza, the top tier of rugby union league system in Italy, by I Medicei, which is a club established in 2015 by the merging of the senior squads of I Cavalieri (of Prato) and Firenze Rugby 1931.
I Medicei won the Serie A Championship in 2016–17 and were promoted to Eccellenza for the 2017–18 season.
Rari Nantes Florentia is a successful water polo club based in Florence; both its male and female squads have won several Italian championships and the female squad has also European titles in their palmarès.
The University of Florence was first founded in 1321, and was recognized by Pope Clement VI in 1349. In 2019, over 50,000 students were enrolled at the university.
Several American universities host a campus in Florence. Including New York University, Marist College, Pepperdine, Stanford, Florida State and James Madison. Over 8,000 American students are enrolled for study in Florence.
The private school, Centro Machiavelli which teaches Italian language and culture to foreigners, is located in Piazza Santo Spirito in Florence.
The centre of Florence is closed to through-traffic, although buses, taxis and residents with appropriate permits are allowed in. This area is commonly referred to as the ZTL ("Zona Traffico Limitato"), which is divided into several subsections. Residents of one section, therefore, will only be able to drive in their district and perhaps some surrounding ones. Cars without permits are allowed to enter after 7.30 pm, or before 7.30 am. The rules shift during the tourist-filled summers, putting more restrictions on where one can get in and out.
The principal public transit network in the city is run by the ATAF and Li-nea bus company. Individual tickets, or a pass called Carta Agile with multiple rides, should be purchased in advance and are available at local tobacconists, bars and newspaper stalls and must be validated once on board. These tickets may be used on ATAF and Li-nea buses, Tramvia and second-class local trains only within city railway stations. Train tickets must be validated before boarding. The main bus station is next to Santa Maria Novella railway station. Trenitalia runs trains between the railway stations within the city, and to other destinations around Italy and Europe. The central railway station, Santa Maria Novella, is about northwest of the Piazza del Duomo. There are two other important stations: Campo di Marte and Rifredi. Most bundled routes are Firenze—Pisa, Firenze—Viareggio and Firenze-Arezzo (along the main line to Rome). Other local railways connect Florence with Borgo San Lorenzo in the Mugello area (Faentina railway) and Siena.
Long distance buses are run by the SITA, Copit, CAP companies. The transit companies also accommodate travellers from the Amerigo Vespucci Airport, which is west of the city centre, and which has scheduled services run by major European carriers.
In an effort to reduce air pollution and car traffic in the city, a multi-line tram network called "Tramvia" is under construction. The first line began operation on 14 February 2010 and connects Florence's primary intercity railway station (Santa Maria Novella) with the southwestern suburb of Scandicci. This line is long and has 14 stops. The construction of a second line began on 5 November 2011, construction was stopped due to contractors' difficulties and restarted in 2014 with the new line opening on February 11, 2019. This second line connects Florence's airport with the city centre. A third line (from Santa Maria Novella to the Careggi area, where the most important hospitals of Florence are located) is also under construction.
The average amount of time people spend commuting with public transit in Firenze, for example to and from work, on a weekday is 59 min. 13% 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 14 min, while 22% 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 4.1 km, while 3% travel for over 12 km in a single direction.
Firenze Santa Maria Novella railway station is the main national and international railway station in Florence and is used by 59 million people every year. The building, designed by Giovanni Michelucci, was built in the "Italian Rationalism" style and it is one of the major rationalist buildings in Italy. It is located in "Piazza della Stazione", near the Fortezza da Basso (a masterpiece of the military Renaissance architecture) and the Viali di Circonvallazione, and in front of the Basilica of Santa Maria Novella's apse from which it takes its name. As well as numerous high speed trains to major Italian cities Florence is served by international overnight sleeper services to Munich and Vienna operated by Austrian railways ÖBB.
A new high-speed rail station is under construction and is contracted to be operational by 2015. It is planned to be connected to Vespucci airport, Santa Maria Novella railway station, and to the city centre by the second line of Tramvia. The architectural firms Foster + Partners and Lancietti Passaleva Giordo and Associates designed this new rail station.
The Florence Airport, Peretola, is one of two main airports in the Tuscany region though it is not widely used by popular airlines. The other airport in the Tuscany region is the Galileo Galilei International Airport in Pisa.
Mobike, a Chinese dockless bike sharing company, has been operating in Florence since July 2017. As of 2019, the company operates 4,000 bikes in Florence. The users scan the QR code on the bike using the Mobike app, and end the ride by parking curbside. The bikes have a fixed rate of €1 every 20 minutes. Since Mobike is a dock-less bike-sharing system, it does not provide stations, therefore the bikes can be left almost anywhere.
Florence is twinned with: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11525 |
Quotient group
A quotient group or factor group is a mathematical group obtained by aggregating similar elements of a larger group using an equivalence relation that preserves some of the group structure (the rest of the structure is "factored" out). For example, the cyclic group of addition modulo "n" can be obtained from the group of integers under addition by identifying elements that differ by a multiple of "n" and defining a group structure that operates on each such class (known as a congruence class) as a single entity. It is part of the mathematical field known as group theory.
In a quotient of a group, the equivalence class of the identity element is always a normal subgroup of the original group, and the other equivalence classes are precisely the cosets of that normal subgroup. The resulting quotient is written , where "G" is the original group and "N" is the normal subgroup. (This is pronounced ""G" mod "N"", where "mod" is short for modulo.)
Much of the importance of quotient groups is derived from their relation to homomorphisms. The first isomorphism theorem states that the image of any group "G" under a homomorphism is always isomorphic to a quotient of "G". Specifically, the image of "G" under a homomorphism is isomorphic to where ker("φ") denotes the kernel of "φ".
The dual notion of a quotient group is a subgroup, these being the two primary ways of forming a smaller group from a larger one. Any normal subgroup has a corresponding quotient group, formed from the larger group by eliminating the distinction between elements of the subgroup. In category theory, quotient groups are examples of quotient objects, which are dual to subobjects. For other examples of quotient objects, see quotient ring, quotient space (linear algebra), quotient space (topology), and quotient set.
Given a group "G" and a subgroup "H", and an element "a" in "G", one can consider the corresponding left coset: "aH" := { "ah" : "h" in "H" }. Cosets are a natural class of subsets of a group; for example consider the abelian group "G" of integers, with operation defined by the usual addition, and the subgroup "H" of even integers. Then there are exactly two cosets: 0 + "H", which are the even integers, and 1 + "H", which are the odd integers (here we are using additive notation for the binary operation instead of multiplicative notation).
For a general subgroup "H", it is desirable to define a compatible group operation on the set of all possible cosets, { "aH" : "a" in "G" }. This is possible exactly when "H" is a normal subgroup, see below. A subgroup "N" of a group "G" is normal if and only if the coset equality "aN" = "Na" holds for all "a" in "G". A normal subgroup of "G" is denoted .
Let "N" be a normal subgroup of a group "G". Define the set "G"/"N" to be the set of all left cosets of "N" in "G". That is, . Since the identity element "e" ∈ "N", "a" ∈ "aN". Define a binary operation on the set of cosets, "G"/"N", as follows. For each "aN" and "bN" in "G"/"N", the product of "aN" and "bN", ("aN")("bN"), is ("ab")"N". This works only because ("ab")"N" does not depend on the choice of the representatives, "a" and "b", of each left coset, "aN" and "bN". To prove this, suppose "xN" = "aN" and "yN" = "bN" for some "x", "y", "a", "b" ∈ "G". Then
This depends on the fact that "N" is a normal subgroup. It still remains to be shown that this condition is not only sufficient but necessary to define the operation on "G"/"N".
To show that it is necessary, consider that for a subgroup "N" of "G", we have been given that the operation is well defined. That is, for all "xN" = "aN" and "yN" = "bN," for "x", "y", "a", "b" ∈ "G", ("ab")"N" = ("xy")"N."
Let "n" ∈ "N" and "g" ∈ "G". Since "eN" = "nN," we have, "gN" = ("eg")"N" = ("ng")"N."
Now, "gN" = ("ng")"N" ⇔ "N" = "g"-1("ng")"N" ⇔ "g"-1"ng" ∈ "N" ∀ "n" ∈ "N" and "g" ∈ "G".
Hence "N" is a normal subgroup of "G".
It can also be checked that this operation on "G"/"N" is always associative. "G"/"N" has identity element "N" and the inverse of element "aN" can always be represented by "a"−1"N". Therefore, the set "G"/"N" together with the operation defined by ("aN")("bN") = ("ab")"N" forms a group, the quotient group of "G" by "N".
Due to the normality of "N", the left cosets and right cosets of "N" in "G" are the same, and so, "G"/"N" could have been defined to be the set of right cosets of "N" in "G".
For example, consider the group with addition modulo 6: "G" = {0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5}. Consider the subgroup "N" = {0, 3}, which is normal because "G" is abelian. Then the set of (left) cosets is of size three:
The binary operation defined above makes this set into a group, known as the quotient group, which in this case is isomorphic to the cyclic group of order 3.
The reason "G"/"N" is called a quotient group comes from division of integers. When dividing 12 by 3 one obtains the answer 4 because one can regroup 12 objects into 4 subcollections of 3 objects. The quotient group is the same idea, although we end up with a group for a final answer instead of a number because groups have more structure than an arbitrary collection of objects.
To elaborate, when looking at "G"/"N" with "N" a normal subgroup of "G", the group structure is used to form a natural "regrouping". These are the cosets of "N" in "G". Because we started with a group and normal subgroup, the final quotient contains more information than just the number of cosets (which is what regular division yields), but instead has a group structure itself.
Consider the group of integers Z (under addition) and the subgroup 2Z consisting of all even integers. This is a normal subgroup, because Z is abelian. There are only two cosets: the set of even integers and the set of odd integers, and therefore the quotient group Z/2Z is the cyclic group with two elements. This quotient group is isomorphic with the set with addition modulo 2; informally, it is sometimes said that Z/2Z "equals" the set with addition modulo 2.
Example further explained...
Let formula_1 remainders of formula_2 when dividing by formula_3.
Then formula_4 when formula_5 is even and formula_6 when formula_5 is odd.
By definition of formula_8, the kernel of formula_8,
ker(formula_8) formula_11, is the set of all even integers.
Let formula_12 ker(formula_13).
Then formula_14 is a subgroup, because the identity in formula_15, which is formula_16, is in formula_14,
the sum of two even integers is even and hence if formula_5 and formula_19 are in formula_14, formula_21 is in formula_14 (closure)
and if formula_5 is even, formula_24 is also even and so formula_14 contains its inverses.
Define formula_26formula_27 as formula_28 for formula_29
and is the quotient group of left cosets; formula_30.
By the way we have defined formula_31, formula_32 is formula_33 if formula_34 is odd and formula_16 if formula_34 is even.
Thus, formula_31 is an isomorphism from to formula_38.
A slight generalization of the last example. Once again consider the group of integers Z under addition. Let "n" be any positive integer. We will consider the subgroup "nZ of Z consisting of all multiples of "n". Once again "nZ is normal in Z because Z is abelian. The cosets are the collection {"nZ, 1+"nZ, ..., ("n"−2)+"nZ, ("n"−1)+"nZ}. An integer "k" belongs to the coset "r"+"nZ, where "r" is the remainder when dividing "k" by "n". The quotient Z/"nZ can be thought of as the group of "remainders" modulo "n". This is a cyclic group of order "n".
The twelfth roots of unity, which are points on the complex unit circle, form a multiplicative abelian group "G", shown on the picture on the right as colored balls with the number at each point giving its complex argument. Consider its subgroup "N" made of the fourth roots of unity, shown as red balls. This normal subgroup splits the group into three cosets, shown in red, green and blue. One can check that the cosets form a group of three elements (the product of a red element with a blue element is blue, the inverse of a blue element is green, etc.). Thus, the quotient group "G"/"N" is the group of three colors, which turns out to be the cyclic group with three elements.
Consider the group of real numbers R under addition, and the subgroup Z of integers. Each coset of Z in R is a set of the form "a"+Z, where "a" is a real number. Since "a1"+Z and "a2"+Z are identical sets when the non-integer parts of "a1" and "a2" are equal, one may impose the restriction without change of meaning. Adding such cosets is done by adding the corresponding real numbers, and subtracting 1 if the result is greater than or equal to 1. The quotient group R/Z is isomorphic to the circle group, the group of complex numbers of absolute value 1 under multiplication, or correspondingly, the group of rotations in 2D about the origin, that is, the special orthogonal group SO(2). An isomorphism is given by (see Euler's identity).
If "G" is the group of invertible 3 × 3 real matrices, and "N" is the subgroup of 3 × 3 real matrices with determinant 1, then "N" is normal in "G" (since it is the kernel of the determinant homomorphism). The cosets of "N" are the sets of matrices with a given determinant, and hence "G"/"N" is isomorphic to the multiplicative group of non-zero real numbers. The group "N" is known as the special linear group SL(3).
Consider the abelian group (that is, the set with addition modulo 4), and its subgroup . The quotient group is . This is a group with identity element , and group operations such as . Both the subgroup and the quotient group are isomorphic with Z2.
Consider the multiplicative group formula_39. The set "N" of "n"th residues is a multiplicative subgroup isomorphic to formula_40. Then "N" is normal in "G" and the factor group "G"/"N" has the cosets "N", (1+"n")"N", (1+"n")2N, ..., (1+"n")"n"−1N. The Paillier cryptosystem is based on the conjecture that it is difficult to determine the coset of a random element of "G" without knowing the factorization of "n".
The quotient group is isomorphic to the trivial group (the group with one element), and is isomorphic to "G".
The order of , by definition the number of elements, is equal to , the index of "N" in "G". If "G" is finite, the index is also equal to the order of "G" divided by the order of "N". The set may be finite, although both "G" and "N" are infinite (for example, ).
There is a "natural" surjective group homomorphism , sending each element "g" of "G" to the coset of "N" to which "g" belongs, that is: . The mapping "π" is sometimes called the "canonical projection of G onto ". Its kernel is "N".
There is a bijective correspondence between the subgroups of "G" that contain "N" and the subgroups of ; if "H" is a subgroup of "G" containing "N", then the corresponding subgroup of is "π"("H"). This correspondence holds for normal subgroups of "G" and as well, and is formalized in the lattice theorem.
Several important properties of quotient groups are recorded in the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms and the isomorphism theorems.
If "G" is abelian, nilpotent, solvable, cyclic or finitely generated, then so is .
If "H" is a subgroup in a finite group "G", and the order of "H" is one half of the order of "G", then "H" is guaranteed to be a normal subgroup, so exists and is isomorphic to "C"2. This result can also be stated as "any subgroup of index 2 is normal", and in this form it applies also to infinite groups. Furthermore, if "p" is the smallest prime number dividing the order of a finite group, "G", then if has order "p", "H" must be a normal subgroup of "G".
Given "G" and a normal subgroup "N", then "G" is a group extension of by "N". One could ask whether this extension is trivial or split; in other words, one could ask whether "G" is a direct product or semidirect product of "N" and . This is a special case of the extension problem. An example where the extension is not split is as follows: Let "G" = Z4 = {0, 1, 2, 3}, and "N" = {0, 2}, which is isomorphic to Z2. Then is also isomorphic to Z2. But Z2 has only the trivial automorphism, so the only semi-direct product of "N" and is the direct product. Since Z4 is different from , we conclude that "G" is not a semi-direct product of "N" and .
If "formula_41" is a Lie group and "formula_42" is a normal Lie subgroup of "formula_41", the quotient is also a Lie group. In this case, the original group "formula_41" has the structure of a fiber bundle (specifically, a principal "formula_42"-bundle), with base space and fiber "formula_42".
For a non-normal Lie subgroup "formula_42", the space of left cosets is not a group, but simply a differentiable manifold on which "formula_41" acts. The result is known as a homogeneous space.
If the subgroup "formula_42" is closed (in the topological rather than the algebraic sense of the word), then the dimension of a Lie group or homogeneous space equals formula_50. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11526 |
Fundamental theorem on homomorphisms
In abstract algebra, the fundamental theorem on homomorphisms, also known as the fundamental homomorphism theorem, relates the structure of two objects between which a homomorphism is given, and of the kernel and image of the homomorphism.
The homomorphism theorem is used to prove the isomorphism theorems.
Given two groups "G" and "H" and a group homomorphism "f" : "G"→"H", let "K" be a normal subgroup in "G" and φ the natural surjective homomorphism "G"→"G"/"K" (where "G"/"K" is a quotient group). If "K" is a subset of ker("f") then there exists a unique homomorphism "h":"G"/"K"→"H" such that "f" = "h" φ.
In other words, the natural projection φ is universal among homomorphisms on "G" that map "K" to the identity element.
The situation is described by the following commutative diagram:
By setting "K" = ker("f") we immediately get the first isomorphism theorem.
Similar theorems are valid for monoids, vector spaces, modules, and rings. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11527 |
Fermion
In particle physics, a fermion is a particle that follows Fermi–Dirac statistics and generally has half odd integer spin 1/2, 3/2 etc. These particles obey the Pauli exclusion principle. Fermions include all quarks and leptons, as well as all composite particles made of an odd number of these, such as all baryons and many atoms and nuclei. Fermions differ from bosons, which obey Bose–Einstein statistics.
Some fermions are elementary particles, such as the electrons, and some are composite particles, such as the protons. According to the spin-statistics theorem in any reasonable relativistic quantum field theory, particles with integer spin are bosons, while particles with half-integer spin are fermions.
In addition to the spin characteristic, fermions have another specific property: they possess conserved baryon or lepton quantum numbers. Therefore, what is usually referred to as the spin statistics relation is in fact a spin statistics-quantum number relation.
As a consequence of the Pauli exclusion principle, only one fermion can occupy a particular quantum state at any given time. If multiple fermions have the same spatial probability distribution, then at least one property of each fermion, such as its spin, must be different. Fermions are usually associated with matter, whereas bosons are generally force carrier particles, although in the current state of particle physics the distinction between the two concepts is unclear. Weakly interacting fermions can also display bosonic behavior under extreme conditions. At low temperature fermions show superfluidity for uncharged particles and superconductivity for charged particles.
Composite fermions, such as protons and neutrons, are the key building blocks of everyday matter.
The name fermion was coined by English theoretical physicist Paul Dirac from the surname of Italian physicist Enrico Fermi.
The Standard Model recognizes two types of elementary fermions: quarks and leptons. In all, the model distinguishes 24 different fermions. There are six quarks (up, down, strange, charm, bottom and top quarks), and six leptons (electron, electron neutrino, muon, muon neutrino, tau particle and tau neutrino), along with the corresponding antiparticle of each of these.
Mathematically, fermions come in three types:
Most Standard Model fermions are believed to be Dirac fermions, although it is unknown at this time whether the neutrinos are Dirac or Majorana fermions (or both). Dirac fermions can be treated as a combination of two Weyl fermions. In July 2015, Weyl fermions have been experimentally realized in Weyl semimetals.
Composite particles (such as hadrons, nuclei, and atoms) can be bosons or fermions depending on their constituents. More precisely, because of the relation between spin and statistics, a particle containing an odd number of fermions is itself a fermion. It will have half-integer spin.
Examples include the following:
The number of bosons within a composite particle made up of simple particles bound with a potential has no effect on whether it is a boson or a fermion.
Fermionic or bosonic behavior of a composite particle (or system) is only seen at large (compared to size of the system) distances. At proximity, where spatial structure begins to be important, a composite particle (or system) behaves according to its constituent makeup.
Fermions can exhibit bosonic behavior when they become loosely bound in pairs. This is the origin of superconductivity and the superfluidity of helium-3: in superconducting materials, electrons interact through the exchange of phonons, forming Cooper pairs, while in helium-3, Cooper pairs are formed via spin fluctuations.
The quasiparticles of the fractional quantum Hall effect are also known as composite fermions, which are electrons with an even number of quantized vortices attached to them.
In a quantum field theory, there can be field configurations of bosons which are topologically twisted. These are coherent states (or solitons) which behave like a particle, and they can be fermionic even if all the constituent particles are bosons. This was discovered by Tony Skyrme in the early 1960s, so fermions made of bosons are named skyrmions after him.
Skyrme's original example involved fields which take values on a three-dimensional sphere, the original nonlinear sigma model which describes the large distance behavior of pions. In Skyrme's model, reproduced in the large N or string approximation to quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the proton and neutron are fermionic topological solitons of the pion field.
Whereas Skyrme's example involved pion physics, there is a much more familiar example in quantum electrodynamics with a magnetic monopole. A bosonic monopole with the smallest possible magnetic charge and a bosonic version of the electron will form a fermionic dyon.
The analogy between the Skyrme field and the Higgs field of the electroweak sector has been used to postulate that all fermions are skyrmions. This could explain why all known fermions have baryon or lepton quantum numbers and provide a physical mechanism for the Pauli exclusion principle. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11529 |
Fred Savage
Fred Aaron Savage (born July 9, 1976) is an American actor and television director, known for his role as Kevin Arnold in the American television series "The Wonder Years" (1988 to 1993). He has earned several awards and nominations, such as People's Choice Awards and Young Artist Awards. He is also known for playing the Grandson in "The Princess Bride".
Savage has worked as a director, and in 2005 later starred in the TV sitcom "Crumbs". More recently, Savage returned to acting in the TV series "The Grinder".
Savage was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Joanne and Lewis Savage (1946-2015), who was an industrial real estate broker and consultant. Savage grew up in Glencoe, Illinois, before moving to California. His younger brother is actor Ben Savage and his younger sister is actress/musician Kala Savage. His grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland, Ukraine, Germany and Latvia. He was raised in Reform Judaism.
Savage was educated at Brentwood School, a private co-educational day school in Brentwood, in the Westside area of Los Angeles County in California. He graduated from Stanford University in 1999, with a bachelor's degree in English and as a member of Sigma Alpha Epsilon.
Savage's first screen performance was in the television show "Morningstar/Eveningstar", at the age of 9. He then appeared onscreen in "The Boy Who Could Fly", "Dinosaurs! - A Fun-Filled Trip Back in Time!", and several television shows, including "The Twilight Zone" and "Crime Story" before gaining national attention as the grandson in the 1987 film "The Princess Bride" opposite Peter Falk.
In 1988, Savage appeared as Kevin Arnold on "The Wonder Years", the role for which he is best known, and for which he received two Golden Globe nominations and two Emmy nominations for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Comedy Series. At the age of thirteen, he was the youngest actor ever to receive these honors. He remained on the show until it ended in 1993. During this period, he appeared in several films, most notably "Vice Versa" (1988), and also starred in "Little Monsters". After "The Wonder Years" ended, Savage returned to high school at age 17, and later attended Stanford. His first TV role after high school was the NBC sitcom "Working", which Savage starred in for its two-season run. Savage also had a series of guest and supporting roles in the late 1990s and the 2000s such as on the show "Boy Meets World" (which starred his younger brother Ben Savage) and in the film "Austin Powers in Goldmember" as The Mole.
Savage has lent his voice to several animated projects, including "Family Guy", "Kim Possible", "Justice League Unlimited", "Oswald", and "". His two lead roles since "The Wonder Years" were on the short-lived sitcoms "Working" and "Crumbs". He appeared as a serial rapist on a 2003 episode of "" and as a womanizing professor on "Boy Meets World". He ranked at #27 on VH1's "100 Greatest Kid Stars".
In July 2008, Savage guest-starred in the web series "The Rascal" on Crackle.
In 2015, Savage returned to acting with the Fox series "The Grinder". Producer Nick Stoller approached Savage about playing the role of Stewart on "The Grinder". Savage was uninterested at first, but agreed to meet with the producers of the series because his children attended school with Stoller's children. Savage eventually agreed to take on the role. "The Grinder" was canceled by Fox on May 16, 2016.
In 2017, he joined the cast of the Netflix series "Friends from College" as Max Adler, a gay literary agent.
In 2018, he began to host "Child Support" (originally called "Five to Survive") with Ricky Gervais.
As of 2019, he hosts a show called "What Just Happened??! with Fred Savage".
In 1999, Savage began his directing career in which he helmed episodes of over a dozen television series. Savage's first directing credit was on the short-lived NBC sitcom "Working" which also starred Savage. Following "Working", Savage began observing production on the Disney Channel show "Even Stevens" to further learn the craft of directing. Savage also learned by shadowing Amy Sherman-Palladino, Todd Holland, and James Burrows.
His credits include "Boy Meets World", "Drake & Josh" and "Ned's Declassified" for Nickelodeon, as well as "That's So Raven", "Hannah Montana", and "Wizards of Waverly Place" for Disney Channel. Additionally, Savage has directed for prime-time network sitcoms including "Modern Family" and "2 Broke Girls".
Besides directing several episodes, Savage co-produced the Disney Channel Original Series "Phil of the Future". In 2007, he was nominated for a Directors Guild award for the "Phil" episode "Not-So-Great-Great Grandpa".
Savage has served as a producer for several episodes of "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia", "Friends with Benefits", "Party Down", "Phil of the Future", "The Crazy Ones", and "Happy Endings".
In 2007, he made his feature film directing debut with the film "Daddy Day Camp". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11530 |
Futurians
The Futurians were a group of science fiction (SF) fans, many of whom became editors and writers as well. The Futurians were based in New York City and were a major force in the development of science fiction writing and science fiction fandom in the years 1937–1945.
As described in Isaac Asimov's 1979 autobiography "In Memory Yet Green", the Futurians spun off from the Greater New York Science Fiction Club (headed by Sam Moskowitz, later an influential SF editor and historian) over ideological differences, with the Futurians wishing to take a more overtly Marxist political stance. Other sources indicate that Donald A. Wollheim was pushing for a more left-wing direction with a goal of leading fandom toward a political ideal, all of which Moskowitz resisted. As a result, Wollheim broke off from the Greater New York group and founded the Futurians in September, 1938. The fans following Moskowitz reorganized into the Queens Science Fiction Club.
Frederik Pohl, in his autobiography "The Way the Future Was", said that the origin of the Futurians lay with the Science Fiction League founded by Hugo Gernsback in 1934, the local New York City chapter of which was called the "Brooklyn Science Fiction League" or BSFL, headed by G. G. Clark.
Wollheim, John Michel, and Robert A. W. Lowndes were also members of the BSFL. Along with Pohl, the four started calling themselves the "Quadrumvirate". Pohl, commenting about that time, said "we four marched from Brooklyn to the sea, leaving a wide scar of burned out clubs behind us. We changed clubs the way Detroit changes tailfins, every year had a new one, and last year's was junk".
There were several club names during that period, before finally settling on the Futurians. In 1935 there was the "East New York Science Fiction League" (ENYSFL), later the "Independent League for Science Fiction" (ILSF). In 1936 came the International Cosmos Science Club (ICSC), which also involved Will Sykora. Pohl then says that "on reflection 'Cosmos' seemed to take in a bit more territory than was justified, so we changed it to the International Scientific Association (it wasn't International either, but then it also wasn't scientific)". The ISA then was renamed New York Branch-International Scientific Association (NYB-ISA).
In 1937, after a falling-out with Will Sykora and others, the "Quadrumvirate" went on to found the Futurians. Sykora then founded the Queens Science Fiction League with Sam Moskowitz and James V. Taurasi. Later, the QSFL changed into New Fandom. Pohl said the New Fandom and the Futurians were "Addicted to Feuds", that "No CIA nor KGB ever wrestled so valiantly for the soul of an emerging nation as New Fandom and the Futurians did for science fiction".
Most of the group's members also had professional ambitions within science fiction and related fields, and collectively were very effective at achieving this goal, as the roster of members suggests. At one point in the earliest 1940s, approximately half of all the pulp SF and fantasy magazines in the U.S. were being edited by Futurians: Frederik Pohl at the Popular Publications offshoot Fictioneers, Inc. ("Astonishing Stories" and "Super-Science Stories"); Robert Lowndes at Columbia Publications, most notably with "Science Fiction" and "Future Fiction" (though through the decade to come, Lowndes's responsibilities would expand to other types of fiction magazine in the chain), and Donald Wollheim at the very marginal Albing Publications with the short-lived, micro-budgeted "Cosmic Stories" and "Stirring Science Stories" (Wollheim soon moved on to Avon Books; Doë "Leslie Perri" Baumgardt also worked on a romance fiction title for Albing). Most of these projects had small editorial budgets, and relied in part, or occasionally entirely, on contributions from fellow Futurians for their contents.
At the time the Futurians were formed, Donald Wollheim was strongly attracted by communism and believed that followers of science fiction "should actively work for the realization of the scientific world-state as the only genuine justification for their activities and existence". It was to this end that Wollheim formed the Futurians, and many of its members were in some degree interested in the political applications of science fiction. Members of the Futurians, including Wollheim, Michel, Lowndes, and Cohen briefly became interested in Technocracy, a utopian movement led by Howard Scott, and attended a study course, although they later dismissed Scott as a "crackpot".
Hence the group included supporters of Trotskyism, like Judith Merril and others who would have been deemed far left for the era (Frederik Pohl became a member of the Communist Party in 1936, but later quit in 1939).
Pohl, in his autobiography, "The Way the Future Was", said Wollheim voted for Republican Presidential Candidate Alfred Landon in 1936. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11531 |
First Fandom
First Fandom is an informal association of early, active and well-known science fiction fans.
In 1958 a number of fans at Midwestcon realized amid table-talk that they all had been active in fandom for more than 20 years. This inspired the creation of an organization for longstanding fans under the initial chairmanship of Robert A. Madle. Originally only those fans who were known to have been active in fandom before the cutoff date, January 1, 1938, were eligible. Such fannish activity (or "fanac") including writing to letter columns in science fiction magazines, having been published in fanzines, or having participated in science fiction oriented clubs, or just generally doing fannish things.
The term itself is an oblique reference to Olaf Stapledon's classic science fiction epic "Last and First Men". In this book the stages of mankind are enumerated. Thus early 1950s historian of fandom Jack Speer began to label successive generations of fans as First Fandom, Second Fandom, Third Fandom, and so forth... all the way to Seventh Fandom and beyond.
Currently the organization allows several classes of membership. For example, a "Dinosaur" is a member who was active before the first Worldcon (World Science Fiction Convention) held on July 4, 1939, while "Associate Membership" requires provable activity in fandom for more than three decades.
First Fandom annually presents its First Fandom Hall of Fame award and Sam Moskowitz Archive Award for excellence in science fiction collecting. at the beginning of the Hugo Awards Ceremony at the World Science Fiction Convention.
There is an analogous informal society in Finnish fandom called the "Dinosaur Club"; the cutoff being the first major Finnish con Kingcon.
1. Bob Madle's American Letter Nebula Science Fiction 1959. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11532 |
Fianna Fáil
Fianna Fáil (, ; meaning 'Soldiers of Destiny' or 'Warriors of Fál'), officially Fianna Fáil – The Republican Party (), is a political party in Ireland. It is currently a partner in the Government of the 33rd Dáil, being formed on the 27 June 2020 after a Programme for Government was agreed among Fianna Fáil, Fine Gael and the Green Party. It is the first rainbow coalition since 1992, and is the first time Fianna Fáil has been in government since 2011.
The party was founded as an Irish republican party on 16 May 1926 by Éamon de Valera and his supporters after they split from the anti-treaty wing of Sinn Féin on the issue of abstentionism in the aftermath of the Irish Civil War. Since 1927, Fianna Fáil has been one of Ireland's two major parties, along with Fine Gael; both are seen as being centre-right parties, and as being to the right of the Labour Party and Sinn Féin. The party dominated Irish political life for most of the 20th century, and, since its foundation, either it or Fine Gael has led every government. Between 1932 and 2011, it was the largest party in Dáil Éireann. Between 1989 and 2011, it led coalition governments with parties of both the left and the right.
Party leader Micheál Martin entered a confidence and supply arrangement with a Fine Gael-led minority government at the beginning of the 32nd Dáil.
Fianna Fáil has been in government since the 27 June 2020, after coming second in the 2020 Irish general election, after Sinn Féin. After a number of months of political stalemate, Fianna Fáil agreed with Fine Gael and the Green Party to enter into a coalition deal. This is the first of its kind in the history of Irish politics as Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have never formally entered into coalition with each other, a sentiment that had stemmed from the Irish Civil War. Micheál Martin, the leader of Fianna Fail, was nominated to serve as Taoiseach for the first two years of the government, before the role rotates to the Leader of Fine Gael in 2022. His predecessor and leader of Fine Gael, Leo Varadkar, will take on the position of Tánaiste, the deputy prime minister of Ireland. This is the first time Fianna Fail has been in government since 1997 to 2011 under Bertie Ahern and Brian Cowen. After the political realignment that occurred at the 2011 general election, Fianna Fail suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government and only won 20 seats. It recovered at the 2016 general election, gaining 44 and became the largest opposition party in both houses (Dáil Éireann and Seanad Éireann) of the Oireachtas.
Fianna Fáil is a member of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and of Liberal International. Since 9 February 2019, Fianna Fáil has been in partnership with the Social Democratic and Labour Party in Northern Ireland.
Fianna Fáil was founded by Éamon de Valera, a former leader of Sinn Féin. He and a number of other members split from Sinn Féin when a motion he proposed—which called for elected members to be allowed to take their seats in Dáil Éireann if and when the controversial Oath of Allegiance was removed—failed to pass at the Sinn Féin Ard Fheis in 1926. His new party adopted its name on 2 April of the same year. While it was also opposed to the Treaty settlement, it rejected abstentionism, instead aiming to republicanise the Irish Free State from within. Fianna Fáil's platform of economic autarky had appeal among the farmers, working-class people and the poor, while alienating more affluent classes.
The party first entered government on 9 March 1932. It was in power for 61 of the 79 years between then and the election of 2011. Its longest continuous period in office has been 15 years and 11 months (March 1932 – February 1948). Its longest single period out of office in the 20th century was four years and four months (March 1973 – July 1977). All of the party's leaders have served as Taoiseach.
Fianna Fáil joined the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) party on 16 April 2009, and the party's Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) sat in the ALDE Group during the 7th European Parliament term from June 2009 to 1 July 2014. The party is a full member of the Liberal International. Prior to this, the party was part of the Eurosceptic Union for Europe of the Nations parliamentary group between 1999 and 2009.
It was the largest party in the Dáil after every general election from that of 1932 until that of 2007. During the post-2008 Irish economic downturn, for which Fianna Fáil as governing party was seen to be responsible, its popularity crashed: an opinion poll on 27 February 2009 indicated that only 10% of voters were satisfied with the Government's performance. In the 2011 general election, it suffered the worst defeat of a sitting government in the history of the Irish state. This loss was described as "historic" in its proportions and "unthinkable". The party sank from being the largest in the Dáil to the third-largest, losing 58 of its 78 seats.
Fianna Fáil uses a structure called a cumann system. The basic unit was the "cumann" (branch); these were grouped into "comhairle ceantair" (district branch) and a "comhairle dáil ceantair" (constituency branch) in every constituency. At the party's height it had 3,000 "cumainn", an average of 75 per constituency. The party claimed that in 2005 they had 50,000 registered names, but only an estimated 10,000-15,000 members were considered active.
However, from the early 1990s onward the "cumann" structure was weakened. Every "cumann" was entitled to three votes to selection conventions irrespective of its size; hence, a large number of "cumainn" had become in effect "paper "cumainn"", the only use of which was to ensure an aspiring or sitting candidate got enough votes. Another problem had arisen with the emergence of parallel organisations grouped around candidates or elected officials. Supporters and election workers for a particular candidate were loyal to a candidate and not to the party. If the candidate were to leave the party, through either resignation, retirement or defeat at an election, the candidate's supporters would often depart. Although this phenomenon was nothing new (the most famous example being Neil Blaney's "Donegal Mafia") it increased significantly from the early 1990s, particularly in the Dublin Region with former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern's "Drumcondra mafia" and the groups supporting Tom Kitt and Séamus Brennan in Dublin South that were largely separate from the official party structure.
Since the 2007 election, the party's structure has significantly weakened. This was in part exacerbated by significant infighting between candidates in the run-up to the 2011 general election. "The Irish Times" estimated that half of its 3,000 "cumainn" were effectively moribund. This fraction rose in Dublin with the exception of Dublin West, the former seat of both Brian Lenihan Snr and Brian Lenihan Jnr.
Fianna Fáil is seen as a typical catch-all party. R. Ken Carty wrote of Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael that they were 'heterogeneous in their bases of support, relatively undifferentiated in terms of policy or programme, and remarkably stable in their support levels'. Evidence from expert surveys, opinion polls and candidate surveys all fail to identify strong distinctions between the two parties. Many point to Ireland's Civil War politics, and feel that the basis for the division is the disagreement about the strategy to achieve a united Ireland. Kevin Byrne and political scientist Eoin O'Malley rejected this, and have argued that the differences between the two parties goes much further back in Irish history. They linked the parties to different nationalist traditions (Irish Enlightenment and Gaelic Nationalist) which in turn could be linked to migrations of Anglo-Norman and new English into Ireland and the native Gaelic population.
In the 1990s, Fianna Fáil was described as a conservative party, but also as a nationalist party. It has presented itself as a "broad church", and attracted support from across disparate social classes. Between 1989 and 2011, it led coalition governments with parties of both the left and the right. Fianna Fáil's platform contains a number of enduring commitments: to Irish unity; to the promotion and protection of the Irish language; and to maintaining Ireland's tradition of military neutrality. While the party is distinctly more populist, nationalist and, generally speaking, more economically interventionist than Fine Gael, the party nonetheless shares its rival's support of the European Union. Although part of the ALDE (liberal) group in the European Parliament, the party has not supported the group's positions on civil liberties. It did, however, legislate for same-sex civil partnerships in 2010.
The party's name and logo incorporates the words 'The Republican Party'. According to Fianna Fáil, "Republican here stands both for the unity of the island and a commitment to the historic principles of European republican philosophy, namely liberty, equality and fraternity". The party's main goal at its beginning was to reunite the North and the South.
The posts of leader and party president of Fianna Fáil are separate, with the former elected by the Parliamentary Party and the latter elected by the Ardfheis (thus allowing for the posts to be held by different people, in theory). However, in practice they have always been held by the one person. As the Ardfheis may have already been held in any given year by the time a new leader is elected, the selection of the new party president might not take place until the next year.
The following are the terms of office as party leader and as Taoiseach:
Fianna Fáil's youth wing is called Ógra Fianna Fáil. Formed in 1975, it plays an active role in recruiting new members and supporting election campaigns. Ógra also plays an important role in the party organisation, where it has five representatives on the Ard Chomhairle (National Executive).
Senator Thomas Byrne was the last nominated head or Cathaoirleach (Chairperson) of Ógra Fianna Fáil, before the youth wing introduced widespread organisational reform following the heavy electoral defeat suffered by the whole party in 2011.
On 17 September 2007, Fianna Fáil announced that the party would for the first time organise in Northern Ireland. The then Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern was asked to chair a committee on the matter: "In the period ahead Dermot Ahern will lead efforts to develop that strategy for carrying through this policy, examining timescales and structures. We will act gradually and strategically. We are under no illusions. It will not be easy. It will challenge us all. But I am confident we will succeed".
The party embarked on its first ever recruitment drive north of the border in September 2007 in northern universities, and established two 'Political Societies', the William Drennan Cumann in Queens University, Belfast, and the Watty Graham Cumann in UU Magee, Derry, which subsequently became official units of Fianna Fáil's youth wing, attaining full membership and voting rights, and attained official voting delegates at the 2012 Árd Fheis. On 23 February 2008, it was announced that a former Ulster Unionist Party (UUP) councillor, Colonel Harvey Bicker, had joined Fianna Fáil.
Bertie Ahern announced on 7 December 2007 that Fianna Fáil had been registered in Northern Ireland by the UK Electoral Commission.
The party's Ard Fheis in 2009 unanimously passed a motion to organise in Northern Ireland by establishing forums, rather than cumainn, in each of its six counties. In December 2009, Fianna Fáil secured its first Northern Ireland Assembly MLA when Gerry McHugh, an independent MLA, announced he had joined the party. Mr. McHugh confirmed that although he had joined the party, he would continue to sit as an independent MLA. In June 2010, Fianna Fáil opened its first official office in Northern Ireland, in Crossmaglen, County Armagh. The then Taoiseach Brian Cowen officially opened the office, accompanied by Ministers Éamon Ó Cuív and Dermot Ahern and Deputies Rory O’Hanlon and Margaret Conlon. Discussing the party's slow development towards all-Ireland politics, Mr. Cowen observed: "We have a very open and pragmatic approach. We are a constitutional republican party and we make no secret of the aspirations on which this party was founded. It has always been very clear in our mind what it is we are seeking to achieve, that is to reconcile this country and not being prisoners of our past history. To be part of a generation that will build a new Ireland, an Ireland of which we can all be proud".
As of 2007, Fianna Fáil has been a registered and recognised party in Northern Ireland. However, it has not contested any elections in the region. At the party's 2014 Ard Fheis, a motion was passed without debate to stand candidates for election north of the border for the first time in 2019.
In 2017, Omagh councillor Sorcha McAnespy said she wished to run in the 2019 Northern Ireland local government election in the constituency under a Fianna Fáil ticket. In October 2017 she was elected as northern representative on the party's national executive, the "committee of 15".
Since 24 January 2019, the party have been in partnership with the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) formerly the main Irish nationalist party in Northern Ireland, but now smaller than Sinn Féin. There had long been speculation about the eventual partnership for several years prior. This was initially met with a negative reaction from Seamus Mallon, former Deputy Leader of the SDLP, who stated he would be opposed to any such merger. Former leader of the SDLP Margaret Ritchie originally stated publicly that she opposed any merger, announcing to the Labour Party Conference that such a merger would not happen on her "watch". On 10 January 2019, Richie stated that she now supported a new partnership with Fianna Fáil.
Both Fianna Fáil and the SDLP currently have shared policies on key areas including addressing the current political situation in Northern Ireland, improving public services in both jurisdictions of Ireland, such as healthcare and education, and bringing about the further unity and cooperation of the people on the island and arrangements for a future poll on Irish reunification.
In the European Parliament from 1999 to 2009, Fianna Fáil was a leading member of Union for Europe of the Nations (UEN), a small national-conservative and Eurosceptic parliamentary group. European political commentators had often noted substantive ideological differences between the party and its colleagues, whose strongly conservative stances had at times prompted domestic criticism of Fianna Fáil. Fianna Fáil MEPs had been an attached to the European Progressive Democrats (1973–1984), European Democratic Alliance (1984–1995), and Union for Europe (1995–1999) groups before the creation of UEN.
Party headquarters, over the objections of some MEPs, had made several attempts to sever the party's links to the European right, including an aborted 2004 agreement to join the European Liberal Democrat and Reform (ELDR) Party, with whom it already sat in the Council of Europe under the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) banner. On 27 February 2009, Taoiseach Brian Cowen announced that Fianna Fáil proposed to join the ELDR Party and intended to sit with them in the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe (ALDE) Group in the European Parliament after the 2009 European elections. The change was made official on 17 April 2009, when FF joined the ELDR Party.
In October 2009, it was reported that Fianna Fáil had irritated its new Liberal colleagues by failing to vote for the motion on press freedom in Italy (resulting in its defeat by a majority of one in the Parliament) and by trying to scupper their party colleagues' initiative for gay rights. In January 2010, a report by academic experts writing for the votewatch.eu site found that FF "do not seem to toe the political line" of the ALDE Group "when it comes to budget and civil liberties" issues.
In the 2014 European elections, Fianna Fáil received 22.3% of first-preference votes but only returned a single MEP, a reduction in representation of two MEPs from the previous term. This was due to a combination of the party's vote further dropping in Dublin and a two candidate strategy in the Midlands North West constituency, which backfired, resulting in sitting MEP Pat "the Cope" Gallagher losing his seat. On 23 June 2014, returning MEP Brian Crowley announced that he intended to sit with the European Conservatives and Reformists (ECR) rather than the ALDE group during the upcoming 8th term of the European parliament. The following day on 24 June 2014 Crowley had the Fianna Fáil party whip withdrawn. He has since been re-added to Fianna Fáil's website. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11536 |
Fujiwara clan
, descending from the Nakatomi clan and through them Ame-no-Koyane-no-Mikoto, was a powerful family of regents in Japan. The 8th century clan history "Tōshi Kaden" (藤氏家伝) states the following at the biography of the clan's patriarch, Nakatomi no Kamatari (614–669): "Kamatari, the Inner Palace Minister who was also called ‘Chūrō","’ was a man of the Takechi district of Yamato Province. His forebears descended from Ame no Koyane no Mikoto; for generations they had administered the rites for Heaven and Earth, harmonizing the space between men and the gods. Therefore it was ordered their clan was to be called Ōnakatomi"
The clan originated when the founder, Nakatomi no Kamatari (614–669) of the Nakatomi clan, was rewarded by Emperor Tenji with the honorific "Fujiwara", which evolved as a surname for Kamatari and his descendants. In time, Fujiwara became known as a clan name.
The Fujiwara dominated the Japanese politics of Heian period (794–1185) through the monopoly of regent positions, "sesshō" and "kampaku". The family's primary strategy for central influence was through the marrying of Fujiwara daughters to emperors. Through this, the Fujiwara would gain influence over the next emperor who would, according to family tradition of that time, be raised in the household of his mother's side and owe loyalty to his grandfather.
As abdicated emperors took over power by exercising "insei" (, cloistered rule) at the end of the 11th century, then followed by the rise of the warrior class, the Fujiwara gradually lost its control over mainstream politics.
The Northern Fujiwara (Ōshū Fujiwara) ruled the Tōhoku region (northeast Honshū) of Japan during the 12th century.
Beyond the 12th century, they continued to monopolize the titles of "sesshō" and "kampaku" for much of the time until the system was abolished in the Meiji era. Though their influence declined, the clan remained close advisors to the succeeding Emperors.
The Fujiwara clan's political influence was initiated during the Asuka period. Nakatomi no Kamatari, a member of the lower-nobility Nakatomi family led a coup against the Soga in 645 and initiated a series of sweeping government reforms that would be known as the Taika Reform. In 668 Emperor Tenji (reigned 668–671), bestowed the "kabane" on Kamatari. The surname passed to the descendants of Fujiwara no Fuhito (659–720), the second son and heir of Kamatari, who was prominent at the court of several emperors and empresses during the early Nara period. He made his daughter Miyako a concubine of Emperor Monmu. Her son, Prince Obito became Emperor Shōmu. Fuhito succeeded in making another of his daughters, Kōmyōshi, the empress consort of Emperor Shōmu. She was the first empress (like Empress Wu in China) consort of Japan who was not a daughter of the imperial family itself. Fuhito had four sons; and each of them became the progenitor of a cadet branch of the clan:
Among them, the Hokke came to be considered as the leaders of the entire clan. All four brothers died in 737 during a major smallpox epidemic in Japan.
During the Heian period of Japanese history, the Hokke managed to establish a hereditary claim to the position of regent, either for an underage emperor ("sesshō") or for an adult one ("kampaku"). Some prominent Fujiwaras occupied these positions more than once, and for more than one emperor. Lesser members of the Fujiwara were court nobles, provincial governors and vice governors, members of the provincial aristocracy, and samurai. The Fujiwara was one of the four great families that dominated Japanese politics during the Heian Period (794–1185), and the most important of them at that time. The others were the Tachibana, the Taira and the Minamoto. The Fujiwara exercised tremendous power, especially during the period of regency governments in 10th and 11th centuries, having many emperors as practically puppet monarchs.
The Fujiwara dominated the government of Japan 794–1160. There is no clear starting point of their dominance. However, their domination of civil administration was lost by the establishment of the first shogunate (i.e., Kamakura shogunate) under Minamoto no Yoritomo in 1192.
Fujiwara princes initially served as highest ministers of the imperial Court ("kampaku") and regents ("sesshō") for underage monarchs. The Fujiwara were the proverbial "power behind the throne" for centuries. Apparently they never aspired to supplant the imperial dynasty. Instead, the clan's influence stemmed from its matrimonial alliances with the imperial family. Because consorts of crown princes, younger sons, and emperors were generally Fujiwara women, the male heads of the Fujiwara house were often the father-in-law, brother-in-law, uncle, or maternal grandfather of the emperor. The family reached the peak of its power under Fujiwara no Michinaga (966–1027). He was the grandfather of three emperors, the father of six empresses or imperial consorts, and the grandfather of seven additional imperial consorts; it is no exaggeration to say that it was Michinaga who ruled Japan during this period, not the titular Emperors. As a result of these unusually strong familial links, Michinaga never took the title of Kampaku - he held more than the power that the position would bring, and had no need of the title.
The Fujiwara clan is featured prominently in "The Pillow Book", by Sei Shōnagon, and the character of Genji is partially based off Michinaga in the eponymous the Tale of Genji.
The Fujiwara Regency was the main feature of government during most of the Heian era. Kyoto (Heian-kyō) was geopolitically a better seat of government; with good river access to the sea, it could be reached by land routes from the eastern provinces.
Just before the move to the Heian-kyō, the Emperor had abolished universal conscription in the eighth century and soon local, private militaries came into being. The Fujiwara and the clans of Taira and Minamoto created later during the ninth century were among the most prominent families supported by the new military class.
In the ninth and tenth centuries, much authority was lost to the great families, who disregarded the Chinese-style land and tax systems imposed by the government in Kyoto. Stability came to Heian Japan, but, even though succession was ensured for the Imperial family through heredity, power again concentrated in the hands of one noble family, the Fujiwara.
Family administrations now became public institutions. As the most powerful family, the Fujiwara governed Japan and determined the general affairs of state, such as succession to the throne. Family and state affairs were thoroughly intermixed, a pattern followed among other families, monasteries, and even the imperial family.
As the Soga had taken control of the throne in the sixth century, the Fujiwara by the ninth century had intermarried with the imperial family, and one of their members was the first head of the Emperor's Private Office. While the earlies part of the Heian period was marked by unusually strong emperors governing themselves (in particular from Emperor Kanmu to Emperor Saga (781-823)), the Fujiwara started to rebuild their influence first under Fujiwara no Fuyutsugu in the first half of the ninth century. Fuyutsugu's son Fujiwara no Yoshifusa was the first person not from the imperial family to become regent for a minor emperor when he gained that position when his grandson was enthroned as Emperor Seiwa in 858. His adopted son Fujiwara no Mototsune had himself further appointed "kampaku" (regent for an adult emperor, a newly invented position). After Mototsune's death Emperor Uda (who was not the son of a Fujiwara daughter) managed to regain control of much of government. However, after abdicating in favour of his son, Emperor Daigo (897–930), while apparently intending to control government from retirement, Mototsune's son Fujiwara no Tokihira managed to manoeuver himself back to very prominent position until his early death in 909. The remaining period of Daigo's reign was again relatively free from Fujiwara dominance, but from the beginning of the reign of his son Emperor Suzaku, the Fujiwara again re-established their dominance of the court with the leadership of Fujiwara no Tadahira.
Nevertheless, the Fujiwara were not demoted by Emperor Daigo but in many ways became stronger during his reign. Central control of Japan had continued to decline, and the Fujiwara, along with other great families and religious foundations, acquired ever larger "shōen" and greater wealth during the early tenth century. By the early Heian period, the "shōen" had obtained legal status, and the large religious establishments sought clear titles in perpetuity, waiver of taxes, and immunity from government inspection of the "shōen" they held. Those people who worked the land found it advantageous to transfer title to shōen holders in return for a share of the harvest. People and lands were increasingly beyond central control and taxation, a de facto return to conditions before the Taika Reform.
Within decades of Emperor Daigo's death, the Fujiwara had absolute control over the court. By the year 1000, Fujiwara no Michinaga was able to enthrone and dethrone emperors at will. Little authority was left for traditional officialdom, and government affairs were handled through the Fujiwara family's private administration. The Fujiwara had become what historian George B. Sansom has called "hereditary dictators".
The Fujiwara presided over a period of cultural and artistic flowering at the imperial court and among the aristocracy. There was great interest in graceful poetry and vernacular literature. Japanese writing had long depended on Chinese ideograms ("kanji"), but these were now supplemented by "kana", two types of phonetic Japanese script: "katakana", a mnemonic device using parts of Chinese ideograms; and "hiragana", a cursive form of "kanji" writing and an art form in itself. "Hiragana" gave written expression to the spoken word and, with it, to the rise in Japan's famous vernacular literature, much of it written by court women who had not been trained in Chinese as had their male counterparts. Three late tenth century and early eleventh century women presented their views of life and romance at the Heian court in "Kagerō Nikki" ("The Gossamer Years") by "the mother of Michitsuna", "Makura no Sōshi" ("The Pillow Book") by Sei Shōnagon, and "Genji Monogatari" ("Tale of Genji") by Murasaki Shikibu (herself a Fujiwara). Indigenous art also flourished under the Fujiwara after centuries of imitating Chinese forms. Vividly colored "yamato-e" (Japanese style) paintings of court life and stories about temples and shrines became common in the mid and late Heian periods, setting patterns for Japanese art to this day.
Decline in food production, growth of the population, and competition for resources among the great families all led to the gradual decline of Fujiwara power and gave rise to military disturbances in the mid-tenth and eleventh centuries. Members of the Fujiwara, Taira, and Minamoto families—all of whom had descended from the imperial family—attacked one another, claimed control over vast tracts of conquered land, set up rival regimes, and generally broke the peace of Japan.
The Fujiwara controlled the throne until the reign of Emperor Go-Sanjō (1068–73), the first emperor not born of a Fujiwara mother since the ninth century. Emperor Go-Sanjō, determined to restore imperial control through strong personal rule, implemented reforms to curb Fujiwara influence. He also established an office to compile and validate estate records with the aim of reasserting central control. Many "shōen" were not properly certified, and large landholders, like the Fujiwara, felt threatened with the loss of their lands. Emperor Go-Sanjō also established the "In no chō", or Office of the Cloistered Emperor, which was held by a succession of emperors who abdicated to devote themselves to behind-the-scenes governance, or "insei" (Cloistered rule).
The "In no chō" filled the void left by the decline of Fujiwara power. Rather than being banished, the Fujiwara were mostly retained in their old positions of civil dictator and minister of the center while being bypassed in decision making. In time, many of the Fujiwara were replaced, mostly by members of the rising Minamoto family. While the Fujiwara fell into disputes among themselves and formed northern and southern factions, the insei system allowed the paternal line of the imperial family to gain influence over the throne. The period from 1086 to 1156 was the age of supremacy of the "In no chō" and of the rise of the military class throughout the country. Military might rather than civil authority dominated the government.
A struggle for succession in the mid-twelfth century gave the Fujiwara an opportunity to regain their former power. Fujiwara no Yorinaga sided with the retired emperor in a violent battle in 1158 against the heir apparent, who was supported by the Taira and Minamoto. In the end, the Fujiwara were destroyed, the old system of government supplanted, and the "insei" system left powerless as bushi took control of court affairs, marking a turning point in Japanese history. Within a year, the Taira and Minamoto clashed, and a twenty-year period of Taira ascendancy began. The Taira were seduced by court life and ignored problems in the provinces. Finally, Minamoto no Yoritomo (1147–1199) rose from his headquarters at Kamakura (in the Kantō region, southwest of modern Tokyo) to defeat the Taira, and with them the child emperor Emperor Antoku they controlled, in the Genpei War (1180–1185).
After this downfall, the younger branches of the Fujiwara clan turned their focus from politics to the arts, producing literary luminaries such as Fujiwara no Shunzei or Fujiwara no Teika.
Only forty years after Michinaga's death, his Fujiwara heirs were not able to prevent the accession of Emperor Go-Sanjō (reigned 1068–1073), the first emperor since Emperor Uda whose mother was not a Fujiwara. The system of government by retired emperor ("daijō tennō") (cloistered rule) beginning from 1087 further weakened the Fujiwara's control over the Imperial Court.
The Fujiwara-dominated Heian period approached its end along disturbances of 12th century. The dynastic struggle known as the Hōgen Disturbance ("Hōgen no Ran") led to the Taira emerging as the most powerful clan in 1156. During the Heiji Disturbance ("Heiji no Ran") in 1160 the Taira defeated the coalition of Fujiwara and Minamoto forces. This defeat marked the end of the Fujiwara's dominance.
During the 13th century, the Hokke Fujiwara ("Hokke"), was split into five regent houses: Konoe, Takatsukasa, Kujō, Nijō and Ichijō.
They had a "monopoly" to the offices of "sesshō" and "kampaku", and served in turn. The political power had shifted away from the court nobility in Kyoto to the new warrior class in the countryside. However, Fujiwara remained close advisers, regents and ministers to the emperors for centuries, the family remained and political reputation and influence even until the 20th century (such as Fumimaro Konoe and Morihiro Hosokawa, who became the Prime Ministers). As such, they had a certain political power and much influence, as often the rival warriors and later bakufu sought their alliance. Oda Nobunaga and his sister Oichi claimed to have descent from the Taira and Fujiwara clans; regent Toyotomi Hideyoshi and shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu were related by marriage to various families from Fujiwara clan. Empress Shōken, wife of Emperor Meiji, was a descendant of the Fujiwara clan.
Until the marriage of the Crown Prince Hirohito (Emperor Shōwa) to Princess Nagako of Kuni (posthumously Empress Kōjun) in January 1924, the principal consorts of emperors and crown princes had often been recruited from one of the Sekke Fujiwara. Imperial princesses were often married to Fujiwara lords – throughout a millennium at least. As recently as Emperor Shōwa's third daughter, and Prince Mikasa's elder daughter, the former Princess Yasuko, married into Takatsukasa and Konoe families, respectively. Likewise a daughter of the last "shōgun" married a second cousin of Emperor Shōwa. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11539 |
Federalism
Federalism is the mixed or compound mode of government, combining a general government (the central or "federal" government) with regional governments (provincial, state, cantonal, territorial or other sub-unit governments) in a single political system. Its distinctive feature, exemplified in the founding example of modern federalism by the United States under the Constitution of 1787, is a relationship of "parity" between the two levels of government established. Federalism can thus be defined as a form of government in which there is a division of powers between two levels of government of equal status.
Federalism differs from confederalism, in which the general level of government is subordinate to the regional level, and from devolution within a unitary state, in which the regional level of government is subordinate to the general level. It represents the central form in the pathway of regional integration or separation, bounded on the less integrated side by confederalism and on the more integrated side by devolution within a unitary state.
Leading examples of the federation or federal state include the United States, India, Brazil, Mexico, Russia, Germany, Canada, Switzerland, Argentina, Nigeria, and Australia. Some also today characterize the European Union as the pioneering example of federalism in a multi-state setting, in a concept termed the federal union of states.
The terms 'federalism' and 'confederalism' both have a root in the Latin word "foedus", meaning "treaty, pact or covenant." Their common meaning until the late eighteenth century was a simple league or inter-governmental relationship among sovereign states based upon a treaty. They were therefore initially synonyms. It was in this sense that James Madison in "Federalist 39" had referred to the new US Constitution as 'neither a national nor a federal Constitution, but a composition of both' (i.e. neither constituting a single large unitary state nor a league/confederation among several small states, but a hybrid of the two). In the course of the nineteenth century the meaning of federalism would come to shift, strengthening to refer uniquely to the novel compound political form established, while the meaning of confederalism would remain at a league of states. Thus, this article relates to the modern usage of the word 'federalism'.
Modern federalism is a system based upon democratic rules and institutions in which the power to govern is shared between national and provincial/state governments. The term "federalist" describes several political beliefs around the world depending on context.
Federalism is sometimes viewed as in the context of international negotiation as "the best system for integrating diverse nations, ethnic groups, or combatant parties, all of whom may have cause to fear control by an overly powerful center." However, in some countries, those skeptical of federal prescriptions believe that increased regional autonomy is likely to lead to secession or dissolution of the nation. In Syria, federalization proposals have failed in part because "Syrians fear that these borders could turn out to be the same as the ones that the fighting parties have currently carved out."
Federations such as Yugoslavia or Czechoslovakia collapsed as soon as it was possible to put the model to the test.
An early historical example of federalism is the Achaean League in Hellenistic Greece. Unlike the Greek city states of Classical Greece, each of which insisted on keeping its complete independence, changing conditions in the Hellenistic period drove many city states to band together even at the cost of losing part of their sovereignty - similar to the process leading to the formation of later federations.
According to Daniel Ziblatt's "Structuring the State", there are four competing theoretical explanations in the academic literature for the adoption of federal systems:
Immanuel Kant was an advocate of federalism, noting that "the problem of setting up a state can be solved even by a nation of devils" so long as they possess an appropriate constitution which pits opposing factions against each other with a system of checks and balances. In particular individual states required a federation as a safeguard against the possibility of war.
On 1 January 1901, the dominion of Australia officially came into existence as a federation. The Australian continent was colonised by the United Kingdom in 1788, which subsequently established six, eventually self-governing, colonies there. In the 1890s the governments of these colonies all held referendums on becoming the unified, self-governing "Commonwealth of Australia" within the British Empire. When all the colonies voted in favour of federation, the Federation of Australia commenced, resulting in the establishment of the Commonwealth of Australia in 1901. The model of Australian federalism adheres closely to the original model of the United States of America, although it does so through a parliamentary Westminster system rather than a presidential system.
In Brazil, the fall of the monarchy in 1889 by a military "coup d'état" led to the rise of the presidential system, headed by Deodoro da Fonseca. Aided by well-known jurist Ruy Barbosa, Fonseca established federalism in Brazil by decree, but this system of government would be confirmed by every Brazilian constitution since 1891, although some of them would distort some of the federalist principles. The 1937 federal government had the authority to appoint State Governors (called intervenors) at will, thus centralizing power in the hands of President Getúlio Vargas. Brazil also uses the Fonseca system to regulate interstate trade. Brazil is one of the biggest federal governments.
The Brazilian Constitution of 1988 introduced a new component to the ideas of federalism, including municipalities as federal entities. Brazilian municipalities are now invested with some of the traditional powers usually granted to states in federalism, and they are allowed to adopt a constitution.
In Canada the system of federalism is described by the division of powers between the federal parliament and the country's provincial governments. Under the "Constitution Act" (previously known as the "British North America Act of 1867"), specific powers of legislation are allotted. Section 91 of the constitution gives rise to federal authority for legislation, whereas section 92 gives rise to provincial powers.
For matters not directly dealt with in the constitution, the federal government retains residual powers; however, conflicts between the two levels of government, relating to which level has legislative jurisdiction over various matters, have been a longstanding and evolving issue. Areas being contested include legislation with respect to regulation of the economy, taxation, and natural resources.
Several federal systems exist in Europe, such as in Switzerland, Austria, Germany, Belgium, Bosnia and Herzegovina and the European Union.
In Britain, an Imperial Federation was once seen as ("inter alia") a method of solving the Home Rule problem in Ireland; federalism has long been proposed as a solution to the "Irish Problem", and more lately, to the "West Lothian question".
During the French Revolution, especially in 1793, "federalism" had an entirely different meaning. It was a political movement to weaken the central government in Paris by devolving power to the provinces.
Following the end of World War II, several movements began advocating a European federation, such as the Union of European Federalists and the European Movement, founded in 1948. Those organizations exercised influence in the European unification process, but never in a decisive way.
Although the drafts of both the Maastricht Treaty and the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe mentioned federalism, the reference never made it to the text of the treaties adopted by consensus. The strongest advocates of European federalism have been Germany, Italy, Belgium and Luxembourg while those historically most strongly opposed have been the United Kingdom, Denmark and France (with conservative heads of state and governments). Since the presidency of François Mitterrand (1981-1995), the French authorities have adopted a much more pro-European Unification position, as they consider that a strong EU is presenting the best "insurance" against a unified Germany which might become too strong and thus a threat for its neighbours.
Germany and the European Union present the only examples of federalism in the world where members of the federal "upper houses" (the German Bundesrat, i.e. the Federal Council; and the European Council) are neither elected nor appointed but comprise members or delegates of the governments of their constituents. The United States had a similar system until 1913, where prior to the 17th Amendment, Senators were delegates of the state elected by the state legislatures rather than the citizens.
Already the Holy Roman Empire, the Confederation of the Rhine, the German Confederation, the North German Confederation, the German Empire and the Weimar Republic were federal complexes of territories of different political structures. Modern Germany abandoned federalism only during Nazism (1933–1945, only de facto but not de jure) and in the German Democratic Republic (1952–1990). Adolf Hitler viewed federalism as an obstacle to his goals. As he wrote in "Mein Kampf", "National Socialism must claim the right to impose its principles on the whole German nation, without regard to what were hitherto the confines of federal states."
Accordingly, the idea of a strong, centralized government has very negative connotations in German politics, although the progressive political movements in Germany (Liberals, Social Democrats) were advocating at the time of the Second German Empire (1871-1918) to abolish (or to reshape) the majority of German federated states of that era, as they were considered to be mostly monarchist remnances of the feudal structures of the Middle Ages.
The Government of India (referred to as the "Union Government") was established by the Constitution of India, and is the governing authority of a "federal union" of 28 states and 9 union territories.
The government of India is based on a 3 tiered system, in which the Constitution of India delineates the subjects on which each tier of government has executive powers. The Constitution originally provided for a two-tier system of government, the Union Government (also known as the Central Government), representing the Union of India, and the State governments. Later, a third tier was added in the form of Panchayats and Municipalities. In the current arrangement, The Seventh Schedule of the Indian Constitution delimits the subjects of each level of governmental jurisdiction, dividing them into three lists:
A distinguishing aspect of Indian federalism is that unlike many other forms of federalism, it is asymmetric and gives limited autonomy to only some Indian states. Article 370 of the Constitution of India made special provisions for the state of Jammu and Kashmir as per its Instrument of Accession but it was revoked in 2019. Article 371 makes special provisions for the states of Andhra Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Goa, Gujarat, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Manipur, Mizoram, Nagaland and Sikkim as per their accession or state-hood deals. Also one more aspect of Indian federalism is system of President's Rule in which the central government (through its appointed Governor) takes control of state's administration for certain months when no party can form a government in the state or there is violent disturbance in the state.
Although the constitution does not say so, India is now a multilingual federation. India has a multi-party system, with political allegiances frequently based on linguistic, regional and identities, necessitating coalition politics, especially at the Union level. India has generally two main groups known as the NDA and the UPA and the third group known as the Left Front.
Malaysia is a federal constitutional monarchy. Its monarchy is elective, with the nine rulers and four state leaders (representing states with their respective sultanates abolished) meet at the Conference of Rulers to elect the next monarch every five years, or if the position becomes vacant for any reason. There is also a custom of rotation of the monarchy between the nine rulers. A legacy of British colonial rule, the federation's system of government is modelled closely on the Westminster parliamentary system. There exists a lower and upper house. Governance of the states is divided between the federal and the state governments, with different powers reserved for each, and the federal government has direct administration of the federal territories. Legislative powers are divided between state and federal assemblies, with elections being held every five years.
Before British rule, Malaysia as it is today, was composed of separate sultanates and states. The Federated Malay States was the first instance of federalism being introduced in the Malay Peninsula. Penang was ruled as part of the Straits Settlements along with Malacca. In Borneo, British North Borneo joined the federation as the state of Sabah, along with a briefly independent Raj of Sarawak as the state of Sarawak. Singapore became independent after being ejected from the federation, due to differences between the central government and the People's Action Party, which still rules Singapore until today.
Ethiopia has over 80 ethno-linguistic groups and the new Constitution which was introduced in 1994, dividing Ethiopia on ethnic lines into nine regional states and two multiethnic "chartered administrations" (Addis Ababa and Diredawa).[10][14]:54-55 Ethnic groups received rights to self-government:[8] the states were given autonomy in legislative, executive and judicial functions,[15]:8 while there were provisions for ethnic groups to be represented in central institutions. Ethnic groups were granted the "unconditional right" to secession,[14]:55 although it is doubtful whether any group could in fact achieve this.[16][15]:22 The government was aiming not only to reduce inter-ethnic conflict but to equalise living standards in different areas and improve the working of public institutions locally.
The Federal Republic of Nigeria has various states which have evolved over time due to complex socioeconomic issues as well as the effect of their colonial era. However, in modern Nigeria there are thirty six states and one federal capital territory: Abia, Adamawa, Akwa Ibom, Anambra, Bauchi, Bayelsa, Benue, Borno, Cross River, Delta, Ebonyi, Enugu, Edo, Ekiti, Gombe, Imo, Jigawa, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Lagos, Nasarawa, Niger, Ogun, Ondo, Osun, Oyo, Plateau, Rivers, Sokoto, Taraba, Yobe, and Zamfara, and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Pakistan is a democratic parliamentary federal republic. Powers are shared between the federal government and the provinces. Relations between federation and provinces is defined in Part V(Articles 141-159) of the constitution.
Pakistan consists of four provinces and three territories, including the Islamabad Capital Territory.
There are several levels of government in Pakistan:
The District Coordination Officer is the administrative head of the District Administration. They have wide-ranging responsibility for overseeing, improving and directing the approved plans of the District Government.
The Zila Nazim used to be the executive head of the District Administration until 2010 when the government gave their powers to the District Coordination Officers also. Their role is similar to district governor or prefect, with responsibility for implementing government strategy and developing initiatives arising out of it.
In order to decentralize administrative and financial authority to be accountable to Local Governments, for good governance, effective delivery of services and transparent decision making through institutionalized participation of the people at grassroots level, elections to the local government institutions are held after every four years on none party basis by the Chief Election Commissioner of Pakistan.
Among the three tiers of local government, Tesil government is second tier of it. It is where the functions, responsibilities and authorities of districts government is divided into more smaller units, these units are known as "Tehsil". The Tehsils are used in all over the Pakistan except Sindh province where the word "Taluka" is used instead, although the functions and authorities are same. The head of the Tehsil government is "Tehsil Nazim" who is assisted by the tehsil Naib-Nazim. Every tehsil has a Tehsil Municipal Administration, consisting of a Tehsil council, Tehsil Nazim, tehsil/taluka municipal officer(TMO), Chief officer and other officials of local council.
Members of Union Council including Union Administrator and Vice Union Administrator are elected through direct elections based on adult franchise and on the basis of joint electorate. However, for the election to the reserved seats for Women in Zila Council proportionately divided among Tehsils or Towns shall be all members of the Union Councils in a Tehsil or Town. It is the responsibility of the Chief Election Commissioner to organize and conduct these elections.
Although South Africa bears some elements of a federal system, such as the allocation of certain powers to provinces, it is nevertheless constitutionally and functionally a devolved unitary state.
The post-Imperial nature of Russian subdivision of government changed towards a generally autonomous model which began with the establishment of the USSR (of which Russia was governed as part). It was liberalized in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, with the reforms under Boris Yeltsin preserving much of the Soviet structure while applying increasingly liberal reforms to the governance of the constituent republics and subjects (while also coming into conflict with Chechen secessionist rebels during the Chechen War). Some of the reforms under Yeltsin were scaled back by Vladimir Putin.
All of Russia's subdivisional entities are known as subjects, with some smaller entities, such as the republics enjoying more autonomy than other subjects on account of having an extant presence of a culturally non-Russian ethnic minority or, in some cases, majority.
Currently, there are 85 federal subjects of Russia.
The UAE is a federal absolute monarchy of the six ruling families of the United Arab Emirates with Emir of each Emirate being an absolute monarch and the Emir of Abu Dhabi being also the President of the UAE.
Federalism in the United States is the evolving relationship between state governments and the federal government of the United States. American government has evolved from a system of dual federalism to one of associative federalism. In "Federalist No. 46," James Madison asserted that the states and national government "are in fact but different agents and trustees of the people, constituted with different powers." Alexander Hamilton, writing in "Federalist No. 28," suggested that both levels of government would exercise authority to the citizens' benefit: "If their [the peoples'] rights are invaded by either, they can make use of the other as the instrument of redress."
Because the states were pre existing political entities (although almost none was ever an independent state, rather colonies, provinces or later created entities), the U.S. Constitution did not need to define or explain federalism in any one section but it often mentions the rights and responsibilities of state governments and state officials in relation to the federal government. The federal government has certain "express powers" (also called "enumerated powers") which are powers spelled out in the Constitution, including the right to levy taxes, declare war, and regulate interstate and foreign commerce. In addition, the "Necessary and Proper Clause" gives the federal government the "implied power" to pass any law "necessary and proper" for the execution of its express powers. Other powers—the "reserved powers"—are reserved to the people or the states. The power delegated to the federal government was significantly expanded by the Supreme Court decision in "McCulloch v. Maryland" (1819), amendments to the Constitution following the Civil War, and by some later amendments—as well as the overall claim of the Civil War, that the states were legally subject to the final dictates of the federal government.
The Federalist Party of the United States was opposed by the Democratic-Republicans, including powerful figures such as Thomas Jefferson. The Democratic-Republicans mainly believed that: the Legislature had too much power (mainly because of the Necessary and Proper Clause) and that they were unchecked; the Executive had too much power, and that there was no check on the executive; a dictator would arise; and that a bill of rights should be coupled with the constitution to prevent a potential dictator from exploiting or tyrannizing citizens. The federalists said that it was impossible to list all the rights, and those that were not listed could be easily overlooked because they were not in the official bill of rights. Rather, rights in specific cases were to be decided by the judicial system of courts.
After the American Civil War, the federal government increased greatly in influence on everyday life and in size relative to the state governments. Reasons included the need to regulate businesses and industries that span state borders, attempts to secure civil rights, and the provision of social services. The federal government acquired no substantial new powers until the acceptance by the Supreme Court of the Sherman Antitrust Act.
From 1938 until 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court did not invalidate any federal statute as exceeding Congress' power under the Commerce Clause. Most actions by the federal government can find some legal support among the express powers, such as the Commerce Clause, whose applicability has been narrowed by the Supreme Court in recent years. In 1995, the Supreme Court rejected the Gun-Free School Zones Act in the Lopez decision, and also rejected the civil remedy portion of the Violence Against Women Act of 1994 in the "United States v. Morrison" decision. Recently, the Commerce Clause was interpreted to include marijuana laws in the "Gonzales v. Raich" decision.
Dual federalism holds that the federal government and the state governments are co-equals, each sovereign.
However, since the Civil War Era, the national courts often interpret the federal government as the final judge of its own powers under dual federalism. The establishment of Native American governments (which are separate and distinct from state and federal government) exercising limited powers of sovereignty, has given rise to the concept of "bi-federalism."
The Federal War ended in 1863 with the signing of the Treaty of Coche by both the centralist government of the time and the Federal Forces. The United States of Venezuela were subsequently incorporated under a "Federation of Sovereign States" upon principles borrowed from the Articles of Confederation of the United States of America. In this Federation, each State had a "President" of its own that controlled almost every issue, even the creation of "State Armies," while the Federal Army was required to obtain presidential permission to enter any given state.
However, more than 140 years later, the original system has gradually evolved into a quasi-centralist form of government. While the 1999 Constitution still defines Venezuela as a Federal Republic, it abolished the Senate, transferred competences of the States to the Federal Government and granted the President of the Republic vast powers to intervene in the States and Municipalities.
Federalism in the Kingdom of Belgium is an evolving system.
Belgian federalism is a twin system which reflects both the
On one hand, this means that the Belgian political landscape, generally speaking, consists of only two components: the Dutch-speaking population represented by Dutch-language political parties, and the majority populations of Wallonia and Brussels, represented by their French-speaking parties. The Brussels region emerges as a third component. This specific dual form of federalism, with the special position of Brussels, consequently has a number of political issues—even minor ones—that are being fought out over the Dutch/French-language political division. With such issues, a final decision is possible only in the form of a compromise. This tendency gives this dual federalism model a number of traits that generally are ascribed to confederalism, and makes the future of Belgian federalism contentious.
Belgian federalism is federated with three components. An affirmative resolution concerning Brussels' place in the federal system passed in the parliaments of Wallonia and Brussels. These resolutions passed against the desires of Dutch-speaking parties, who are generally in favour of a federal system with two components (i.e. the Dutch and French Communities of Belgium). However, the Flemish representatives in the Parliament of the Brussels Capital-Region voted in favour of the Brussels resolution, with the exception of one party. The chairman of the Walloon Parliament stated on July 17, 2008 that, ""Brussels would take an attitude"". Brussels' parliament passed the resolution on July 18, 2008:
This aspect of Belgian federalism helps to explain the difficulties of partition; Brussels, with its importance, is linked to both Wallonia and Flanders and vice versa. This situation, however, does not erase the traits of a confederation in the Belgian system.
Current examples of two-sided federalism:
Historical examples of two-sided federalism include:
It has been proposed in several unitary states to establish a federal system, for various reasons.
China is the largest unitary state in the world by both population and land area. Although China has had long periods of central rule for centuries, it is often argued that the unitary structure of the Chinese government is far too unwieldy to effectively and equitably manage the country's affairs. Chinese nationalists are suspicious of decentralization as a form of secessionism and a backdoor for national disunity; still others argue that the degree of autonomy given to provincial-level officials in the People's Republic of China amounts to a "de facto" federalism.
Shortly after the 2011 civil war, some people in Cyrenaica (in the eastern region of the country) began to call for the new regime to be federal, with the traditional three regions of Libya (Cyrenaica, Tripolitania, and Fezzan) being the constituent units. A group calling itself the "Cyrenaican Transitional Council" issued a declaration of autonomy on 6 March 2012; this move was rejected by the National Transitional Council in Tripoli.
The changes in the state structure that composes the national government in Naypyitaw and the state/regional governments and the federal negotiations between the national government and ethnic minority armed forces said to be the first step of federalism in Myanmar. Former president of Myanmar, Thein Sein supported the federalization of Myanmar as he said federalization can promote national stability.
The Philippines is a unitary state with some powers devolved to Local Government Units (LGUs) under the terms of the Local Government Code. There is also one autonomous region, the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao. Over the years various modifications have been proposed to the Constitution of the Philippines, including possible transition to a federal system as part of a shift to a semi-presidential system. In 2004, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo established the Consultative Commission which suggested such a Charter Change but no action was taken by the Philippine Congress to amend the 1987 Constitution. The push for federalism was again revived under the administration of Rodrigo Duterte in 2016.
Spain is a unitary state with a high level of decentralisation, often regarded as a federal system in all but name or a "federation without federalism". The country has been quoted as being "an extraordinarily decentralized country", with the central government accounting for just 18% of public spending, 38% for the regional governments, 13% for the local councils, and the remaining 31% for the social security system. The current Spanish constitution has been implemented in such a way that, in many respects, Spain can be compared to countries which are undeniably federal.
However, in order to manage the tensions present in the Spanish transition to democracy, the drafters of the current Spanish constitution avoided giving labels such as 'federal' to the territorial arrangements. Besides, unlike in the federal system, the main taxes are taken centrally from Madrid (except for the Basque Country and Navarre, which were recognized in the Spanish democratic constitution as charter territories drawing from historical reasons) and then distributed to the Autonomous Communities.
An explicit and legal recognition of federalism as such has been promoted by parties such as Podemos, United Left and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. The Spanish Socialist party considered the idea of enshrining a federal Spain in 2012, as meeting point between separatist and recentralizing proposals.
Federalism has long been advocated as a means of resolving the ethnic issues and unbalanced development in Sri Lanka. As the unitary state has resulted in uneven development across Sri Lanka the Western Province dominates over the other 8 provinces. Despite declining regional disparity Western province continues to contribute most to the Gross Domestic Product(GDP) contributing 42% of the GDP while the second highest the Southern Province only represents 10.8% of the GDP while Uva and Northern provinces representing the least with 5% and 3.6% respectively. Other provinces also have trouble attracting capitals. This has resulted in calls for the abolishing of the unitary system and powers being devolved.
The federalization of Syria has been proposed as a way to end the Syrian Civil War. In the broadest sense, it means turning the centralized Syrian Arab Republic into a federal republic with autonomous subdivisions. Many powers and actors involved in the Syrian Civil War have entertained the idea of "federal division", not least among them Russia, United Nations representatives, and the United States. President Bashar al-Assad has not ruled out the possibility of a federal democratic state of Syria. In particular, Turkey is strongly hostile towards the idea of a federalization of Syria because it fears possible repercussions for its own highly centralized state.
Due to the fact that federalization would more or less follow ethnic and possibly also religious-sectarian lines, it has been dismissed as "division of the country" and "Balkanization" by its opponents. Mainstream institutions of the Syrian opposition based in Turkey or Qatar like the Syrian National Council and the National Coalition for Syrian Revolutionary and Opposition Forces have consistently rejected the idea of federalization, while in particular Kurds in Syria have promoted the idea. The Egypt-based opposition party Syria's Tomorrow Movement takes an intermediate position.
The United Kingdom has traditionally been governed as a unitary state by the Westminster Parliament in London. Instead of adopting a federal model, the UK has relied on gradual devolution to decentralise political power. Devolution in the UK began with the Government of Ireland Act 1914 which granted home rule to Ireland as a constituent country of the former United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Following the partition of Ireland in 1921 which saw the creation of the sovereign Irish Free State (which eventually evolved into the modern day Republic of Ireland), Northern Ireland retained its devolved government through the Parliament of Northern Ireland, the only part of the UK to have such a body at this time. This body was suspended in 1972 and Northern Ireland was governed by direct rule during the period of conflict known as The Troubles.
In modern times, a process of devolution in the United Kingdom has decentralised power once again. Since the 1997 referendums in Scotland and Wales and the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland, three of the four constituent countries of the UK now have some level of autonomy. Government has been devolved to the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly. England does not have its own parliament and English affairs continue to be decided by the Westminster Parliament. In 1998 a set of eight unelected Regional assemblies, or chambers, was created to support the English Regional Development Agencies, but these were abolished between 2008 and 2010. The Regions of England continue to be used in certain governmental administrative functions.
Critics of devolution often cite the West Lothian question, which refers to the voting power of non-English MPs on matters affecting only England in the UK Parliament. Scottish and Welsh nationalism have been increasing in popularity, and since the 2014 Scottish independence referendum there has been a wider debate about the UK adopting a federal system with each of the four home nations having its own, equal devolved legislatures and law-making powers.
UK federal government was proposed as early as 1912 by the Member of Parliament for Dundee, Winston Churchill, in the context of the legislation for Irish Home Rule. In a speech in Dundee on 12 September, he proposed that England should also be governed by regional parliaments, with power devolved to areas such as Lancashire, Yorkshire, the Midlands and London as part of a federal system of government.
In Europe, "Federalist" is sometimes used to describe those who favor a common federal government, with distributed power at regional, national and supranational levels. Most European federalists want this development to continue within the European Union. European federalism originated in post-war Europe; one of the more important initiatives was Winston Churchill's speech in Zürich in 1946.
In the United States, federalism originally referred to belief in a stronger central government. When the U.S. Constitution was being drafted, the Federalist Party supported a stronger central government, while "Anti-Federalists" wanted a weaker central government. This is very different from the modern usage of "federalism" in Europe and the United States. The distinction stems from the fact that "federalism" is situated in the middle of the political spectrum between a confederacy and a unitary state. The U.S. Constitution was written as a reaction to the Articles of Confederation, under which the United States was a loose confederation with a weak central government.
In contrast, Europe has a greater history of unitary states than North America, thus European "federalism" argues for a weaker central government, relative to a unitary state. The modern American usage of the word is much closer to the European sense. As the power of the Federal government has increased, some people have perceived a much more unitary state than they believe the Founding Fathers intended. Most people politically advocating "federalism" in the United States argue in favor of limiting the powers of the federal government, especially the judiciary (see Federalist Society, New Federalism).
In Canada, federalism typically implies opposition to sovereigntist movements (most commonly Quebec separatism).
The governments of Argentina, Australia, Brazil, India, and Mexico, among others, are also organized along federalist principles.
Federalism may encompass as few as two or three internal divisions, as is the case in Belgium or Bosnia and Herzegovina. In general, two extremes of federalism can be distinguished: at one extreme, the strong federal state is almost completely unitary, with few powers reserved for local governments; while at the other extreme, the national government may be a federal state in name only, being a confederation in actuality.
In 1999, the Government of Canada established the Forum of Federations as an international network for exchange of best practices among federal and federalizing countries. Headquartered in Ottawa, the Forum of Federations partner governments include Australia, Brazil, Ethiopia, Germany, India, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan and Switzerland.
Anarchists are against the state, but they are not against political organization or "governance", so long as it is self-governance utilizing direct democracy. The mode of political organization preferred by anarchists, in general, is federalism or confederalism. However, the anarchist definition of federalism tends to differ from the definition of federalism assumed by pro-state political scientists. The following is a brief description of federalism from section I.5 of "An Anarchist FAQ":
Federalism also finds expression in ecclesiology (the doctrine of the church). For example, presbyterian church governance resembles parliamentary republicanism (a form of "political federalism") to a large extent. In Presbyterian denominations, the local church is ruled by elected elders, some of which are ministerial. Each church then sends representatives or commissioners to presbyteries and further to a general assembly. Each greater level of assembly has ruling authority over its constituent members. In this governmental structure, each component has some level of sovereignty over itself. As in "political federalism", in presbyterian ecclesiology there is shared sovereignty.
Other ecclesiologies also have significant representational and federalistic components, including the more anarchic congregational ecclesiology, and even in more hierarchical episcopal ecclesiology.
Some Christians argue that the earliest source of political federalism (or federalism in human institutions; in contrast to theological federalism) is the ecclesiastical federalism found in the Bible. They point to the structure of the early Christian Church as described (and prescribed, as believed by many) in the New Testament. In their arguments, this is particularly demonstrated in the Council of Jerusalem, described in Acts chapter 15, where the Apostles and elders gathered together to govern the Church; the Apostles being representatives of the universal Church, and elders being such for the local church. To this day, elements of federalism can be found in almost every Christian denomination, some more than others.
In a federation, the division of power between federal and regional governments is usually outlined in the constitution. Almost every country allows some degree of regional self-government, in federations the right to self-government of the component states is constitutionally entrenched. Component states often also possess their own constitutions which they may amend as they see fit, although in the event of conflict the federal constitution usually takes precedence.
In almost all federations the central government enjoys the powers of foreign policy and national defense as exclusive federal powers. Were this not the case a federation would not be a single sovereign state, per the UN definition. Notably, the states of Germany retain the right to act on their own behalf at an international level, a condition originally granted in exchange for the Kingdom of Bavaria's agreement to join the German Empire in 1871. Beyond this the precise division of power varies from one nation to another. The constitutions of Germany and the United States provide that all powers not specifically granted to the federal government are retained by the states. The Constitution of some countries like Canada and India, state that powers not explicitly granted to the provincial governments are retained by the federal government. Much like the US system, the Australian Constitution allocates to the Federal government (the Commonwealth of Australia) the power to make laws about certain specified matters which were considered too difficult for the States to manage, so that the States retain all other areas of responsibility. Under the division of powers of the European Union in the Lisbon Treaty, powers which are not either exclusively of European competence or shared between EU and state as concurrent powers are retained by the constituent states.
Where every component state of a federation possesses the same powers, we are said to find 'symmetric federalism'. Asymmetric federalism exists where states are granted different powers, or some possess greater autonomy than others do. This is often done in recognition of the existence of a distinct culture in a particular region or regions. In Spain, the Basques and Catalans, as well as the Galicians, spearheaded a historic movement to have their national specificity recognized, crystallizing in the "historical communities" such as Navarre, Galicia, Catalonia, and the Basque Country. They have more powers than the later expanded arrangement for other Spanish regions, or the Spain of the autonomous communities (called also the "coffee for everyone" arrangement), partly to deal with their separate identity and to appease peripheral nationalist leanings, partly out of respect to specific rights they had held earlier in history. However, strictly speaking Spain is not a federation, but a decentralized administrative organization of states.
It is common that during the historical evolution of a federation there is a gradual movement of power from the component states to the centre, as the federal government acquires additional powers, sometimes to deal with unforeseen circumstances. The acquisition of new powers by a federal government may occur through formal constitutional amendment or simply through a broadening of the interpretation of a government's existing constitutional powers given by the courts.
Usually, a federation is formed at two levels: the central government and the regions (states, provinces, territories), and little to nothing is said about second or third level administrative political entities. Brazil is an exception, because the 1988 Constitution included the municipalities as autonomous political entities making the federation tripartite, encompassing the Union, the States, and the municipalities. Each state is divided into municipalities ("municípios") with their own legislative council ("câmara de vereadores") and a mayor ("prefeito"), which are partly autonomous from both Federal and State Government. Each municipality has a "little constitution", called "organic law" ("lei orgânica"). Mexico is an intermediate case, in that municipalities are granted full-autonomy by the federal constitution and their existence as autonomous entities ("municipio libre", "free municipality") is established by the federal government and cannot be revoked by the states' constitutions. Moreover, the federal constitution determines which powers and competencies belong exclusively to the municipalities and not to the constituent states. However, municipalities do not have an elected legislative assembly.
Federations often employ the paradox of being a union of states, while still being states (or having aspects of statehood) in themselves. For example, James Madison (author of the US Constitution) wrote in Federalist Paper No. 39 that the US Constitution "is in strictness neither a national nor a federal constitution; but a composition of both. In its foundation, it is federal, not national; in the sources from which the ordinary powers of the Government are drawn, it is partly federal, and partly national..." This stems from the fact that states in the US maintain all sovereignty that they do not yield to the federation by their own consent. This was reaffirmed by the Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which reserves all powers and rights that are not delegated to the Federal Government as left to the States and to the people.
The structures of most federal governments incorporate mechanisms to protect the rights of component states. One method, known as 'intrastate federalism', is to directly represent the governments of component states in federal political institutions. Where a federation has a bicameral legislature the upper house is often used to represent the component states while the lower house represents the people of the nation as a whole. A federal upper house may be based on a special scheme of apportionment, as is the case in the senates of the United States and Australia, where each state is represented by an equal number of senators irrespective of the size of its population.
Alternatively, or in addition to this practice, the members of an upper house may be indirectly elected by the government or legislature of the component states, as occurred in the United States prior to 1913, or be actual members or delegates of the state governments, as, for example, is the case in the German Bundesrat and in the Council of the European Union. The lower house of a federal legislature is usually directly elected, with apportionment in proportion to population, although states may sometimes still be guaranteed a certain minimum number of seats.
In Canada, the provincial governments represent regional interests and negotiate directly with the central government. A First Ministers conference of the prime minister and the provincial premiers is the "de facto" highest political forum in the land, although it is not mentioned in the constitution.
Federations often have special procedures for amendment of the federal constitution. As well as reflecting the federal structure of the state this may guarantee that the self-governing status of the component states cannot be abolished without their consent. An amendment to the constitution of the United States must be ratified by three-quarters of either the state legislatures, or of constitutional conventions specially elected in each of the states, before it can come into effect. In referendums to amend the constitutions of Australia and Switzerland it is required that a proposal be endorsed not just by an overall majority of the electorate in the nation as a whole, but also by separate majorities in each of a majority of the states or cantons. In Australia, this latter requirement is known as a "double majority".
Some federal constitutions also provide that certain constitutional amendments cannot occur without the unanimous consent of all states or of a particular state. The US constitution provides that no state may be deprived of equal representation in the senate without its consent. In Australia, if a proposed amendment will specifically impact one or more states, then it must be endorsed in the referendum held in each of those states. Any amendment to the Canadian constitution that would modify the role of the monarchy would require unanimous consent of the provinces. The German Basic Law provides that no amendment is admissible at all that would abolish the federal system.
The meaning of "federalism", as a political movement, and of what constitutes a 'federalist', varies with country and historical context. Movements associated with the establishment or development of federations can exhibit either centralising or decentralising trends. For example, at the time those nations were being established, factions known as "federalists" in the United States and Australia advocated the formation of strong central government. Similarly, in European Union politics, federalists mostly seek greater EU integration. In contrast, in Spain and in post-war Germany, federal movements have sought decentralisation: the transfer of power from central authorities to local units. In Canada, where Quebec separatism has been a political force for several decades, the "federalist" impulse aims to keep Quebec inside Canada.
Federalism, and other forms of territorial autonomy, is generally seen as a useful way to structure political systems in order to prevent violence among different groups within countries because it allows certain groups to legislate at the subnational level. Some scholars have suggested, however, that federalism can divide countries and result in state collapse because it creates proto-states. Still others have shown that federalism is only divisive when it lacks mechanisms that encourage political parties to compete across regional boundaries. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11542 |
Firmin Abauzit
Firmin Abauzit (November 11, 1679March 20, 1767) was a French scholar who worked on physics, theology and philosophy, and served as librarian in Geneva (Republic of Geneva) during his final 40 years. Abauzit is also notable for proofreading or correcting the writings of Isaac Newton and other scholars.
Firmin Abauzit was born of Huguenot parents November 11, 1679 at Uzès, in Languedoc. His paternal family traces its origin to an Arab physician who settled in Toulouse during the 9th century. Accordingly, the name “Abauzit” is liked derived from the Arabic “Abu Zaid” (father of Zaid).
His father died when he was but two years of age; and when, on the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the authorities took steps to have him educated in the Roman Catholic faith, his mother contrived his escape.
For two years his brother and he lived as fugitives in the mountains of the Cévennes, but they at last reached Geneva, where their mother afterwards joined them on escaping from the imprisonment in which she was held from the time of their flight. Abauzit at an early age acquired great proficiency in languages, physics, and theology.
In 1698, he traveled to Germany, then to Holland, where he became acquainted with Pierre Bayle, Pierre Jurieu and Jacques Basnage. Proceeding to England, he was introduced to Sir Isaac Newton, who found in him one of the earliest defenders, against Castel of his discoveries. Newton corrected in the second edition of his "Principia" an error pointed out by Abauzit, and, when sending him the "Commercium Epistolicum," said, "You are well worthy to judge between Gottfried Leibniz and me."
The reputation of Abauzit induced William III to request him to settle in England, but he did not accept the king's offer, preferring to return to Geneva.
There, from 1715 he rendered valuable assistance to a society that had been formed for translating the New Testament into French. He declined the offer of the chair of philosophy at the University of Geneva in 1723. He assisted in the French language New Testament in 1726. In 1727, he was granted citizenship in Geneva, and he accepted the office of honorary librarian to Geneva, the city of his adoption. It was while he was in Geneva in his later years that he authored many of his works. Here also was the city of his death past the age of 87, on March 20, 1767.
Abauzit was a man of great learning and of wonderful versatility. Whatever chanced to be discussed, it used to be said of Abauzit that he seemed to have made it a subject of particular study. Rousseau, who was jealously sparing of his praises, addressed to him, in his "Julie, ou la nouvelle Héloïse", a fine panegyric; and when a stranger flatteringly told Voltaire he had come to see a great man, the philosopher asked him if he had seen Abauzit. Among his acquaintances, Abauzit claimed Rousseau, Voltaire, Newton, and Bayle.
Little remains of the labours of this intellectual giant, his heirs having, it is said, destroyed the papers that came into their possession, because their own religious opinions were different. A few theological, archaeological, and astronomical articles from his pen appeared in the "Journal helvétique" and elsewhere, and he contributed several papers to Rousseau's "Dictionnaire de musique" (1767). He wrote a work throwing doubt on the canonical authority of the Apocalypse, which called forth a reply from Dr Leonard Twells, and was published in Denis Diderot's "Encyclopédie". He also edited and made valuable additions to Jacob Spon's "Histoire de la république de Genève". A collection of his writings was published at Geneva in 1770 ("Œuvres de feu M. Abauzit"), and another at London in 1773 ("Œuvres diverses de M. Abauzit"). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11543 |
French Foreign Legion
The French Foreign Legion (FFL; , , "L.É.") is a military service branch of the French Army established in 1831. Legionnaires are highly trained infantry soldiers and the Legion is unique in that it is open to foreign recruits willing to serve in the French Armed Forces. When it was founded, the French Foreign Legion was not unique; other foreign formations existed at the time in France. Commanded by French officers, it is open to French citizens, who amounted to 24% of the recruits in 2007. The Foreign Legion is today known as a unit whose training focuses on traditional military skills and on its strong "esprit de corps", as its men come from different countries with different cultures. This is a way to strengthen them enough to work as a team. Consequently, training is often described as not only physically challenging, but also very stressful psychologically. French citizenship may be applied for after three years' service. The Legion is the only part of the French military that does not swear allegiance to France, but to the Foreign Legion itself. Any soldier who gets wounded during a battle for France can immediately apply to be a French citizen under a provision known as ""Français par le sang versé"" ("French by spilled blood"). As of 2018, members came from 140 countries.
Since 1831, the Legion has suffered the loss of nearly 40,000 men on active service in France, Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Madagascar, West Africa, Mexico, Italy, the Crimea, Spain, Indo-China, Norway, Syria, Chad, Zaïre, Lebanon, Central Africa, Gabon, Kuwait, Rwanda, Djibouti, former Yugoslavia, Somalia, the Republic of Congo, Ivory Coast, Afghanistan, Mali, as well as others. The French Foreign Legion was primarily used to help protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century. The Foreign Legion was initially stationed only in Algeria, where it took part in the pacification and development of the colony. Subsequently, the Foreign Legion was deployed in a number of conflicts, including the First Carlist War in 1835, the Crimean War in 1854, the Second Italian War of Independence in 1859, the French intervention in Mexico in 1863, the Franco-Prussian War in 1870, the Tonkin Campaign and Sino-French War in 1883, supporting growth of the French colonial empire in Sub-Saharan Africa, the Second Franco-Dahomean War in 1892, the Second Madagascar expedition in 1895 and the Mandingo Wars in 1894. In World War I, the Foreign Legion fought in many critical battles on the Western Front. It played a smaller role in World War II than in World War I, though having a part in the Norwegian, Syrian and North African campaigns. During the First Indochina War (1946–1954), the Foreign Legion saw its numbers swell. The FFL lost a large number of men in the catastrophic Battle of Dien Bien Phu.
During the Algerian War of Independence (1954–1962), the Foreign Legion came close to being disbanded after some officers, men, and the highly decorated 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP) took part in the Generals' putsch. Operations during this period included the Suez Crisis, the Battle of Algiers and various offensives launched by General Maurice Challe including Operations Oranie and Jumelles. In the 1960s and 1970s, Legion regiments had additional roles in sending units as a rapid deployment force to preserve French interests – in its former African colonies and in other nations as well; it also returned to its roots of being a unit always ready to be sent to conflict zones around the world. Some notable operations include: the Chadian–Libyan conflict in 1969–1972 (the first time that the Legion was sent in operations after the Algerian War), 1978–1979, and 1983–1987; Kolwezi in what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo in May 1978. In 1981, the 1st Foreign Regiment and Foreign Legion regiments took part in the Multinational Force in Lebanon. In 1990, Foreign Legion regiments were sent to the Persian Gulf and participated in Opération Daguet, part of Division Daguet. Following the Gulf War in the 1990s, the Foreign Legion helped with the evacuation of French citizens and foreigners in Rwanda, Gabon and Zaire. The Foreign Legion was also deployed in Cambodia, Somalia, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In the mid- to late 1990s, the Foreign Legion was deployed in the Central African Republic, Congo-Brazzaville and in Kosovo. The Foreign Legion also took part in operations in Rwanda in 1990–1994; and the Ivory Coast in 2002 to the present. In the 2000s, the Foreign Legion was deployed in Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, Operation Licorne in Ivory Coast, the EUFOR Tchad/RCA in Chad, and Operation Serval in the Northern Mali conflict. Other countries have tried to emulate the French Foreign Legion model.
The French Foreign Legion was created by Louis Philippe, the King of France, on 10 March 1831
from the foreign regiments of the Kingdom of France. Recruits included soldiers from the recently disbanded Swiss and German foreign regiments of the Bourbon monarchy. The Royal Ordinance for the establishment of the new regiment specified that the foreigners recruited could only serve outside France. The French expeditionary force that had occupied Algiers in 1830 was in need of reinforcements and the Legion was accordingly transferred by sea in detachments from Toulon to Algeria.
The Foreign Legion was primarily used, as part of the "Armée d'Afrique", to protect and expand the French colonial empire during the 19th century, but it also fought in almost all French wars including the Franco-Prussian War, World War I and World War II. The Foreign Legion has remained an important part of the French Army and sea transport protected by the French Navy, surviving three Republics, the Second French Empire, two World Wars, the rise and fall of mass conscript armies, the dismantling of the French colonial empire, and the loss of the Foreign Legion's base, Algeria.
Created to fight "outside mainland France", the Foreign Legion was stationed in Algeria, where it took part in the pacification and development of the colony, notably by drying the marshes in the region of Algiers. The Foreign Legion was initially divided into six "national battalions" (Swiss, Poles, Germans, Italians, Spanish, and Dutch-Belgian). Smaller national groups, such as the ten Englishmen recorded in December 1832, appear to have been placed randomly.
In late 1831, the first legionnaires landed in Algeria, the country that would be the Foreign Legion's homeland for 130 years and shape its character. The early years in Algeria were hard on the legion because it was often sent to the worst postings and received the worst assignments, and its members were generally uninterested in the new colony of the French. The Legion served alongside the Battalions of Light Infantry of Africa, formed in 1832, which was a penal military unit made up of men with prison records who still had to do their military service or soldiers with serious disciplinary problems.
The Foreign Legion's first service in Algeria came to an end after only four years, as it was needed elsewhere.
To support Isabella's claim to the Spanish throne against her uncle, the French government decided to send the Foreign Legion to Spain. On 28 June 1835, the unit was handed over to the Spanish government. The Foreign Legion landed via sea at Tarragona on 17 August with around 1,400 who were quickly dubbed "Los Algerinos" (the Algerians) by locals because of their previous posting.
The Foreign Legion's commander immediately dissolved the national battalions to improve the "esprit de corps". Later, he also created three squadrons of lancers and an artillery battery from the existing force to increase independence and flexibility. The Foreign Legion was dissolved on 8 December 1838, when it had dropped to only 500 men. The survivors returned to France, many reenlisting in the new Foreign Legion along with many of their former Carlist enemies.
On 9 June 1854, the French ship "Jean Bart" embarked four battalions of the Foreign Legion for the Crimean Peninsula. A further battalion was stationed at Gallipoli as brigade depot. Eight companies drawn from both regiments of the Foreign Legion took part in the Battle of Alma (20 September 1854). Reinforcements by sea brought the Legion contingent up to brigade strength. As the "Foreign Brigade", it served in the Siege of Sevastopol, during the winter of 1854–1855.
The lack of equipment was particularly challenging and cholera hit the Allied expeditionary force. Nevertheless, the "leather bellies" (the nickname given to the legionnaires by the Russians because of the large cartridge pouches that they wore attached to their waist-belts), performed well. On 21 June 1855, the Third Battalion, left Corsica for Crimea.
On 8 September the final assault was launched on Sevastopol. Two days later, the Second Foreign Regiment with flags and band playing ahead, marched through the streets of Sevastopol. Although initial reservations had been expressed about whether the Legion should be used outside Africa, the Crimean experience established its suitability for service in European warfare, as well as making a cohesive single entity of what had previously been two separate foreign regiments. Total Legion casualties in the Crimea were 1,703 killed and wounded.
Like the rest of the "Army of Africa", the Foreign Legion provided detachments in the campaign of Italy. Two foreign regiments, grouped with the 2nd Regiment of Zouaves, were part of the Second Brigade of the Second Division of Mac Mahon's Corps. The Foreign Legion acquitted itself particularly well against the Austrians at the battle of Magenta (4 June 1859) and at the Battle of Solferino (24 June). Legion losses were significant and the 2nd Foreign Regiment lost Colonel Chabrière, its commanding officer. In gratitude, the city of Milan awarded, in 1909, the "commemorative medal of deliverance", which still adorns the regimental flags of the Second Regiment.
The 38,000 strong French expeditionary force dispatched to Mexico via sea between 1862 and 1863 included two battalions of the Foreign Legion, increased to six battalions by 1866. Small cavalry and artillery units were raised from legionnaires serving in Mexico. The original intention was that Foreign Legion units should remain in Mexico for up to six years to provide a core for the Imperial Mexican Army. However the Legion was withdrawn with the other French forces during February–March 1867.
It was in Mexico on 30 April 1863 that the Legion earned its legendary status. A company led by Captain Jean Danjou, numbering 62 Legionnaires and 3 Legion officers, was escorting a convoy to the besieged city of Puebla when it was attacked and besieged by three thousand Mexican loyalists, organised in two battalions of infantry and cavalry, numbering 2,200 and 800 respectively. The Legion detachment under Captain Jean Danjou, Sous-Lieutenant , Sous-Lieutenant made a stand in the "Hacienda de la Trinidad" – a farm near the village of "Camarón". When only six survivors remained, out of ammunition, a bayonet assault was launched in which three of the six were killed. The remaining three wounded men were brought before the Mexican commander Colonel Milan, who allowed them to return to the French lines as an honor guard for the body of Captain Danjou. The captain had a wooden hand, which was later returned to the Legion and is now kept in a case in the Legion Museum at Aubagne, and paraded annually on Camerone Day. It is the Foreign Legion's most precious relic.
During the Mexican Campaign, 6,654 French died. Of these, 1,918 were from a single regiment of the Legion.
According to French law, the Foreign Legion was not to be used within Metropolitan France except in the case of a national invasion, and was consequently not a part of Napoleon III's Imperial Army that capitulated at Sedan. With the defeat of the Imperial Army, the Second French Empire fell and the Third Republic was created.
The new Third Republic was desperately short of trained soldiers following Sedan, so the Foreign Legion was ordered to provide a contingent. On 11 October 1870 two provisional battalions disembarked via sea at Toulon, the first time the Foreign Legion had been deployed in France itself. It attempted to lift the Siege of Paris by breaking through the German lines. It succeeded in retaking Orléans, but failed to break the siege. In January 1871, France capitulated but civil war soon broke out, which led to revolution and the short-lived Paris Commune. The Foreign Legion participated in the suppression of the Commune, which was crushed with great bloodshed.
The Foreign Legion's First Battalion (Lieutenant-Colonel Donnier) sailed to Tonkin in late 1883, during the period of undeclared hostilities that preceded the Sino-French War (August 1884 to April 1885), and formed part of the attack column that stormed the western gate of Sơn Tây on 16 December. The Second and Third Infantry Battalions ("chef de bataillon" Diguet and Lieutenant-Colonel Schoeffer) were also deployed to Tonkin shortly afterwards, and were present in all the major campaigns of the Sino-French War. Two Foreign Legion companies led the defence at the celebrated Siege of Tuyên Quang (24 November 1884 to 3 March 1885). In January 1885 the Foreign Legion's 4th Battalion ("chef de bataillon" Vitalis) was deployed to the French bridgehead at Keelung (Jilong) in Formosa (Taiwan), where it took part in the later battles of the Keelung Campaign. The battalion played an important role in Colonel Jacques Duchesne's offensive in March 1885 that captured the key Chinese positions of La Table and Fort Bamboo and disengaged Keelung.
In December 1883, during a review of the Second Legion Battalion on the eve of its departure for Tonkin to take part in the Bắc Ninh Campaign, General François de Négrier pronounced a famous "mot": "Vous, légionnaires, vous êtes soldats pour mourir, et je vous envoie où l'on meurt!" ('You, Legionnaires, you are soldiers in order to die, and I'm sending you to where one dies!')
As part of the Army of Africa, the Foreign Legion contributed to the growth of the French colonial empire in Sub-Saharan Africa. Simultaneously, the Legion took part to the pacification of Algeria, suppressing various tribal rebellions and razzias.
In 1892, King Behanzin was threatening the French protectorate of Porto-Novo in modern-day Benin and France decided to intervene. A battalion, led by commandant Faurax Montier, was formed from two companies of the First Foreign Regiment and two others from the second regiment. From Cotonou, the legionnaires marched to seize Abomey, the capital of the Kingdom of Dahomey. Two and a half months were needed to reach the city, at the cost of repeated battles against the Dahomean warriors, especially the Amazons of the King. King Behanzin surrendered and was captured by the legionnaires in January 1894.
In 1895, a battalion, formed by the First and Second Foreign Regiments, was sent to the Kingdom of Madagascar, as part of an expeditionary force whose mission was to conquer the island. The foreign battalion formed the backbone of the column launched on Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. After a few skirmishes, the Queen Ranavalona III promptly surrendered. The Foreign Legion lost 226 men, of whom only a tenth died in actual fighting. Others, like much of the expeditionary force, died from tropical diseases. Despite the success of the expedition, the quelling of sporadic rebellions would take another eight years until 1905, when the island was completely pacified by the French under Joseph Gallieni. During that time, insurrections against the Malagasy Christians of the island, missionaries and foreigners were particularly terrible. Queen Ranavalona III was deposed in January 1897 and was exiled to Algiers in Algeria, where she died in 1917.
From 1882 until his capture, Samori Ture, ruler of the Wassoulou Empire, fought the French colonial army, defeating them on several occasions, including a notable victory at Woyowayanko (2 April 1882), in the face of French heavy artillery. Nonetheless, Samori was forced to sign several treaties ceding territory to the French between 1886 and 1889. Samori began a steady retreat, but the fall of other resistance armies, particularly Babemba Traoré at Sikasso, permitted the colonial army to launch a concentrated assault against his forces. A battalion of two companies from the 2nd Foreign Regiment was created in early 1894 to pacify the Niger. The Legionnaires' victory at the fortress of Ouilla and police patrols in the region accelerated the submission of the tribes. On 29 September 1898, Samori Ture was captured by the French Commandant Gouraud and exiled to Gabon, marking the end of the Wassoulou Empire.
The annexation of Alsace and Lorraine by Germany in 1871 led to numerous volunteers from the two regions enlisting in the Foreign Legion, which gave them the option of French citizenship at the end of their service
With the declaration of war on 29 July 1914, a call was made for foreigners residing in France to support their adopted country. While many would have preferred direct enlistment in the regular French Army, the only option immediately available was that of the Foreign Legion. On one day only (3 August 1914) a reported 8,000 volunteers applied to enlist in the Paris recruiting office of the Legion.
In World War I, the Foreign Legion fought in many critical battles on the Western Front, including Artois, Champagne, Somme, Aisne, and Verdun (in 1917), and also suffered heavy casualties during 1918. The Foreign Legion was also in the Dardanelles and Macedonian front, and was highly decorated for its efforts. Many young foreigners volunteered for the Foreign Legion when the war broke out in 1914. There were marked differences between the idealistic volunteers of 1914 and the hardened men of the old Legion, making assimilation difficult. Nevertheless, the old and the new men of the Foreign Legion fought and died in vicious battles on the Western front, including Belloy-en-Santerre during the Battle of the Somme, where the poet Alan Seeger, after being mortally wounded by machine-gun fire, cheered on the rest of his advancing battalion.
While suffering heavy casualties on the Western Front the Legion had emerged from World War I with an enhanced reputation and as one of the most highly decorated units in the French Army. In 1919, the government of Spain raised the Spanish Foreign Legion and modeled it after the French Foreign Legion. General Jean Mordacq intended to rebuild the Foreign Legion as a larger military formation, doing away with the legion's traditional role as a solely infantry formation. General Mordacq envisioned a Foreign Legion consisting not of regiments, but of divisions with cavalry, engineer, and artillery regiments in addition to the legion's infantry mainstay. In 1920, decrees ordained the establishment of regiments of cavalry and artillery. Immediately following the armistice the Foreign Legion experienced an increase of enlistments. The Foreign Legion began the process of reorganizing and redeploying to Algeria.
The Legion played a major part in the Rif War of 1920–25. In 1932, the Foreign Legion consisted of 30,000 men, serving in six multi-battalion regiments including the 1st Foreign Infantry Regiment 1er REI – Algeria, Syria and Lebanon; 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment 2ème REI, 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment 3ème REI, and 4th Foreign Infantry Regiment 4ème REI – Morocco, Lebanon; 5th Foreign Infantry 5ème REI – Indochina; and 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment 1er REC – Lebanon, Tunisia and Morocco.
In 1931, Général Paul-Frédéric Rollet assumed the role of 1st Inspector of the Foreign Legion, a post created at his initiative. While serving as Colonel of the 1st Foreign Infantry Regiment (1925–1931), Rollet was responsible for planning the centennial celebrations of the Legion's foundation; scheduling this event for Camarón Day 30 April 1931. He was subsequently credited with creating much of the modern mystique of the Legion by restoring or creating many of its traditions.
The Foreign Legion played a smaller role in World War II in mainland Europe than in World War I, though there was involvement in many exterior theatres of operations, notably sea transport protection through to the Norwegian, Syria-Lebanon, and North African campaigns. The 13th Demi-Brigade, formed for service in Norway, found itself in the UK at the time of the French Armistice (June 1940), was deployed to the British 8th Army in North Africa and distinguished itself in the Battle of Bir Hakeim (1942). Reflecting the divisions of the time, part of the Foreign Legion joined the Free French movement while another part served the Vichy government. German legionnaires were incorporated into the Wehrmacht's 90th Light Infantry Division in North Africa.
The Syria–Lebanon Campaign of June 1941 saw legionnaire fighting legionnaire as the 13e D.B.L.E clashed with the 6th Foreign Infantry Regiment 6e REI at Damascus. Nevertheless, many legionnaires of the 6th Foreign Infantry Regiment 6e (dissolved on 31 December 1941) integrated the Marching Regiment of the Foreign Legion R.M.L.E in 1942. Later, a thousand of the rank-and-file of the Vichy Legion unit joined the 13e D.B.L.E. of the Free French forces which were also part as of September 1944 of Jean de Lattre de Tassigny's successful Amalgam of the French Liberation Army (), the (400,000 men) amalgam consisted of the Armistice Army, the Free French Forces and the French Forces of the Interior which formed Army B and were later part of the French 1st Army with forces also issued from the French Resistance.
Following World War II, many French-speaking German former soldiers joined the Foreign Legion to pursue a military career, an option no longer possible in Germany including French German soldiers of Malgré-nous. It would have been considered problematic if the men from Alsace-Lorraine did not speak French. These French-speaking former German soldiers made up as much as 60 percent of the Legion during the war in Indochina. Contrary to popular belief however, French policy was to exclude former members of the Waffen-SS, and candidates for induction were refused if they exhibited the tell-tale blood type tattoo, or even a scar that might be masking it.
The high percentage of Germans was contrary to normal policy concerning a single dominant nationality, and in more recent times Germans have made up a much smaller percentage of the Foreign Legion's composition.
During the First Indochina War (1946–54) the Foreign Legion saw its numbers swell due to the incorporation of World War II veterans. Although the Foreign Legion distinguished itself in a territory where it had served since the 1880s, it also suffered a heavy toll during this war. Constantly being deployed in operations, units of the Legion suffered particularly heavy losses in the climactic Battle of Dien Bien Phu, before the fortified valley finally fell on 7 May 1954. No fewer than 72,833 served in Indochina during the eight-year war. The Legion suffered the loss of 10,283 of its own men in combat: 309 officers, 1082 sous-officiers and 9092 legionnaires .
While only one of several Legion units involved in Indochina, the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1er BEP) particularly distinguished itself, while being annihilated twice. It was renamed the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP) after its third reformation.
The 1er BEP sailed to Indochina on 12 November and was then engaged in combat operations in Tonkin. On 17 November 1950 the battalion parachuted into That Khé and suffered heavy losses at Coc Xa. Reconstituted on 1 March 1951, the battalion participated in combat operations at Cho Ben, on the Black River and in Annam. On 21 November 1953 the reconstituted 1er BEP was parachuted into Dien Bien Phu. In this battle, the unit lost 575 killed and missing. Reconstituted for the third time on 19 May 1954, the battalion left Indochina on 8 February 1955. The 1er BEP received five citations and the fourragère of the colors of the Médaille militaire for its service in Indochina. The 1er BEP became the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP) in Algeria on 1 September 1955.
Dien Bien Phu fell on 7 May 1954 at 17:30. The couple of hectares comprising the battlefield today are corn fields surrounding a stele which commemorates the sacrifices of those who died there. While the garrison of Dien Bien Phu included French regular, North African, and locally recruited (Indochinese) units, the battle has become associated particularly with the paratroops of the Foreign Legion.
During the Indochina War, the Legion operated several armoured trains which were an enduring "Rolling Symbol" during the chartered course duration of French Indochina. The Legion also operated various Passage Companies relative to the continental conflicts at hand.
The legion was heavily engaged in fighting against the National Liberation Front and the Armée de Libération Nationale (ALN). The main activity during the period 1954–1962 was as part of the operations of the 10th Parachute Division and 25th Parachute Division. The 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment, 1er REP, was under the command of the 10th Parachute Division (France), 10ème DP, and the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment, 2ème REP, was under the command of the 25th Parachute Division (France), 25ème DP. While both the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP), and the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2ème REP), were part of the operations of French parachute divisions (10ème DP and 25ème DP established in 1956), the Legion's 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP), and the Legion's 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2ème REP), are older than the French divisions. The 1er REP was the former thrice-reconstituted 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1er BEP) and the 2ème REP was the former 2nd Foreign Parachute Battalion (2ème BEP). Both battalions were renamed and their Legionnaires transferred from Indochina on 1 August 1954 to Algeria by 1 November 1954. Both traced their origins to the Parachute Company of the 3rd Foreign Infantry Regiment commanded by Legion Lieutenant Jacques Morin attached to the III/1er R.C.P.
With the start of the War in Algeria on 1 November 1954, the two foreign participating parachute battalions back from Indochina, the 1st Foreign Parachute Battalion (1er BEP, III Formation) and the 2nd Foreign Parachute Battalion (2ème BEP), were not part of any French parachute divisions yet and were not designated as regiments until September and 1 December 1955 respectively.
Main operations during the Algerian War included the Battle of Algiers and the Bataille of the Frontiers, fought by 60,000 soldiers including French and Foreign Legion paratroopers. For paratroopers of the Legion, the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment (1er REP) and 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment (2ème REP), were the only known foreign active parachute regiments, exclusively commanded by Pierre Paul Jeanpierre for the 1er REP and the paratrooper commanders of the 2ème REP. The remainder of French paratrooper units of the French Armed Forces were commanded by Jacques Massu, Buchond, Marcel Bigeard, Paul Aussaresses. Other Legion offensives in the mountains in 1959 included operations Jumelles, Cigales, and Ariège in the Aures and the last in Kabylie.
The image of the Legion as a professional and non-political force was tarnished when the elite 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment 1er REP, which was also part of the 10th Parachute Division played a leading role in the general's putsch of 1961 and was subsequently disbanded.
Coming out of a difficult Indochinese conflict, the French Foreign Legion, reinforced cohesion by extending the duration of basic training. Efforts exerted were successful during this transit; however, entering in December 1960 and the revolt the generals, a crisis hit the legion putting its faith at the corps of the Army.
For having rallied to the generals putsch of April 1961, the 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment 1er REP of the 10th Parachute Division was dissolved on 30 April 1961 at Zeralda.
In 1961, at the issue of the putsch, the 1st Mounted Saharan Squadron of the Foreign Legion() received the missions to assure surveillance and policing.
The independence of Algeria from the French in 1962 was traumatising since it ended with the enforced abandonment of the barracks command center at Sidi Bel Abbès established in 1842. Upon being notified that the elite regiment was to be disbanded and that they were to be reassigned, legionnaires of the 1er REP burned the Chinese pavilion acquired following the Siege of Tuyên Quang in 1884. The relics from the Legion's history museum, including the wooden hand of Captain Jean Danjou, subsequently accompanied the Legion to France. Also removed from Sidi Bel Abbès were the symbolic Legion remains of General Paul-Frédéric Rollet ( The Father of the Legion ), Legion officer Prince Count Aage of Rosenborg, and Legionnaire Heinz Zimmermann (last fatal casualty in Algeria).
The Legion acquired its parade song ""Non, je ne regrette rien"" ("No, I regret nothing"), a 1960 Édith Piaf song sung by Sous-Officiers and legionnaires as they left their barracks for re-deployment following the Algiers putsch of 1961. The song has remained a part of Legion heritage since.
The 1st Foreign Parachute Regiment 1er REP was disbanded on 30 April 1961. However, the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment 2ème REP prevailed in existence, while most of the personnel of the Saharan Companies were integrated into the 1st Foreign Infantry Regiment, 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment and 4th Foreign Infantry Regiment respectively.
By the mid-1960s the Legion had lost its traditional and spiritual home in French Algeria and elite units had been dissolved. President de Gaulle considered disbanding it altogether but, being reminded of the Marching Regiments, and that the 13th Demi-Brigade was one of the first units to declare for him in 1940 and taking also into consideration the effective service of various Saharan units and performances of other Legions units, he chose instead to downsize the Legion from 40,000 to 8,000 men and relocate it to metropolitan France. Legion units continued to be assigned to overseas service, although not in North Africa (see below).
In the early 1960s, and besides ongoing global rapid deployments, the Legion also stationed forces on various continents while operating different function units.
From 1965 to 1967, the Legion operated several companies, including the 5th Heavy Weight Transport Company (CTGP), mainly in charge of evacuating the Sahara. The area of responsibility of some of these units extended from the confines of the in-between of the Sahara to the Mediterranean. Ongoing interventions and rapid deployments two years later and the following years included in part:
In September 1990, the 1st Foreign Regiment 1er RE, the 1st Foreign Cavalry Regiment 1er REC, the 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment 2ème REP, the 2nd Foreign Infantry Regiment 2ème REI, and the 6th Foreign Engineer Regiment 6ème REG were sent to the Persian Gulf as a part of Opération Daguet along with the 1st Spahi Regiment, the 11th Marine Artillery Regiment, the 3rd Marine Infantry Regiment, the 21st Marine Infantry Regiment, the French Army Light Aviation, the Marine Infantry Tank Regiment, French paratroopers regiments including components of the 35th Parachute Artillery Regiment 35ème RAP, the 1st Parachute Hussard Regiment 1er RHP, the 17th Parachute Engineer Regiment 17ème RGP and other airborne contingents. Division Daguet was commanded by Général de brigade Bernard Janvier.
The Legion force, mainly comprising 27 different nationalities, was attached to the French 6th Light Armoured Division 6ème D.L.B, whose mission was to protect the Coalition's left flank while cover fired by the marine's artillery. During the Gulf War, DINOPS operated in support of the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division, and provided the EOD services to the division. After the cease fire took hold they conducted a joint mine clearing operation alongside a Royal Australian Navy Clearance Diver Team Unit.
After the four-week air campaign, coalition forces launched the ground offensive. They quickly penetrated deep into Iraq, with the Legion taking the As-Salman Airport, meeting little resistance. The war ended after a hundred hours of fighting on the ground, which resulted in very light casualties for the Legion.
Prior to the end of the Algerian War the legion had not been stationed in mainland France except in wartime. Until 1962, the Foreign Legion headquarters, garrison quartier Vienot of Sidi Bel Abbès was in French Algeria. Today, some units of the Légion are in Corsica or overseas possessions (mainly in French Guiana, guarding Guiana Space Centre), while the rest are in the south of mainland France. Current headquarters, garrison quartier Vienot of Aubagne is in France, just outside Marseille. As a result of a recruiting drive in the wake of the November 2015 Paris attacks, the Legion will be 8,900 men strong in 2018.
These are the following deployments:
Note: English names for countries or territories are in parentheses.
While all rank and file members of the Legion are required to serve under "Foreign Status" ("à titre étranger"), even if they are French nationals, non-commissioned and commissioned officers can serve under either French or Foreign Status. Foreign Status NCOs and officers are exclusively promoted from the ranks and in 2016 represented 10% of the Officer Corps of the Legion.. French Status officers are either members of other units of the French Army affected to the Legion or promoted Légionnaires who have chosen to become French nationals.
Basic training for the Foreign Legion is conducted in the 4th Foreign Regiment. This is an operational combat regiment which provides a training course of 15–17 weeks, before recruits are assigned to their operational units:
Education in the French language (reading, writing and pronunciation) is taught on a daily basis throughout all of basic training.
As the Foreign Legion is composed of soldiers of different nationalities and backgrounds, it needed to develop an intense "esprit de corps", which is achieved through the development of camaraderie, specific traditions, the loyalty of its legionnaires, the quality of their training, and the pride of being a soldier in an élite unit.
The "Legionnaire's Code of Honour" is the Legion's creed, recited in French only. The Code of Honour was adopted in the 1980s.
In contrast to all other French Army units, the motto embroidered on the Foreign Legion's regimental flags is not "Honneur et Patrie" (Honour and Fatherland) but "Honneur et Fidélité" (Honour and Fidelity).
"Legio Patria Nostra" (in French "La Légion est notre Patrie", in English "The Legion is our Fatherland") is the Latin motto of the Foreign Legion. The adoption of the Foreign Legion as a new "fatherland" does not imply the repudiation by the legionnaire of his original nationality. The Foreign Legion is required to obtain the agreement of any legionnaire before he is placed in any situation where he might have to serve against his country of birth.
""Le Boudin"" is the marching song of the Foreign Legion.
All volunteers in the French Foreign Legion begin their careers as basic legionnaires with one in four eventually becoming a "sous-officier" (non-commissioned officer). On joining, a new recruit receives a monthly salary of €1,200 in addition to food and lodgings. He is also given his own new rifle, which according to the lore of the "Legion" must never be left on a battlefield. Promotion is concurrent with the ranks in the French Army.
The insignia for a "Sous-officier" contains three components. In this case, three upward gold chevrons indicates a "Sergent-chef". The diamond-shaped regimental patch (or "Écusson") is created from three green borders indicating a Colonial unit; rather than one for "Regulars" or two for "Reserves". The grenade has seven flames rather than the usual five. Two downward chevrons of seniority attests to at least 10 years service. Some "Caporal-Chef"s have as much as 6 "chevrons of seniority" attesting to 30 years (plus) of service.
"Sous-officiers" (NCOs) including warrant officers account for 25% of the current Foreign Legion's total manpower.
Most officers are seconded from the French Army though roughly 10% are former non-commissioned officers promoted from the ranks.
The Foreign Legion still uses chevrons to indicate seniority ("chevrons d'ancienneté"). Each gold chevron, which are only worn by ordinary legionnaires and non-commissioned officers, denotes five years service in the Legion. They are worn beneath the rank insignia.
The French Army had awarded honorary ranks to individuals credited with exceptional acts of courage since 1796.
In the Foreign Legion, General Paul-Frédéric Rollet introduced the practice of awarding of honorary Legion ranks to distinguished individuals, both civilian and military; men and women in the early 20th century. Recipients of these honorary appointments had participated in an exemplary manner on active service with units of the Legion, or had rendered exceptional service to the Legion in non-combat situations.
More than 1,200 individuals have been granted honorary ranks in the Legion "pour services éminent". The majority of these awards have been made to military personnel in wartime, earning titles such as "Legionnaire d'Honneur" or "Sergent-Chef de Légion d'honneur". But other recipients have included nurses, journalists, painters, and ministers who have rendered meritorious service to the Foreign Legion.
The "Pionniers" (pioneers) are the combat engineers and a traditional unit of the Foreign Legion. The sapper traditionally sport large beards, wear leather aprons and gloves and hold axes. The sappers were very common in European armies during the Napoleonic Era but progressively disappeared during the 19th century. The French Army, including the Legion disbanded its regimental sapper platoons in 1870. However, in 1931 one of a number of traditions restored to mark the hundredth anniversary of the Legion's founding was the reestablishment of its bearded "Pionniers".
In the French Army, since the 18th century, every infantry regiment included a small detachment of pioneers. In addition to undertaking road building and entrenchment work, such units were tasked with using their axes and shovels to clear obstacles under enemy fire opening the way for the rest of the infantry. The danger of such missions was recognised by allowing certain privileges, such as being authorised to wear beards.
The current pioneer platoon of the Foreign Legion is provided by the Legion depot and headquarters regiment for public ceremonies. The unit has reintroduced the symbols of the Napoleonic sappers: the beard, the axe, the leather apron, the crossed-axes insignia and the leather gloves. When parades of the Foreign Legion are opened by this unit, it is to commemorate the traditional role of the sappers "opening the way" for the troops.
Also notable is the marching pace of the Foreign Legion. In comparison to the 116-step-per-minute pace of other French units, the Foreign Legion has an 88-step-per-minute marching speed. It is also referred to by Legionnaires as the "crawl". This can be seen at ceremonial parades and public displays attended by the Foreign Legion, particularly while parading in Paris on 14 July (Bastille Day Military Parade). Because of the impressively slow pace, the Foreign Legion is always the last unit marching in any parade. The Foreign Legion is normally accompanied by its own band, which traditionally plays the march of any one of the regiments comprising the Foreign Legion, except that of the unit actually on parade. The regimental song of each unit and "Le Boudin" is sung by legionnaires standing at attention. Also, because the Foreign Legion must always stay together, it does not break formation into two when approaching the presidential grandstand, as other French military units do, in order to preserve the unity of the legion.
Contrary to popular belief, the adoption of the Foreign Legion's slow marching speed was not due to a need to preserve energy and fluids during long marches under the hot Algerian sun. Its exact origins are somewhat unclear, but the official explanation is that although the pace regulation does not seem to have been instituted before 1945, it hails back to the slow marching pace of the Ancien Régime, and its reintroduction was a "return to traditional roots". This was in fact, the march step of the Foreign Legion's ancestor units – the "Régiments Étrangers" or Foreign Regiments of the "Ancien Régime" French Army, the "Grande Armée"s foreign units, and the pre-1831 foreign regiments.
From its foundation until World War I the Foreign Legion normally wore the uniform of the French line infantry for parade with a few special distinctions. Essentially this consisted of a dark blue coat (later tunic) worn with red trousers. The field uniform was often modified under the influence of the extremes of climate and terrain in which the Foreign Legion served. Shakos were soon replaced by the light cloth kepi, which was far more suitable for North African conditions. The practice of wearing heavy "capotes" (greatcoats) on the march and "vestes" (short hip-length jackets) as working dress in barracks was followed by the Foreign Legion from its establishment.
One short lived aberration was the wearing of green uniforms in 1856 by Foreign Legion units recruited in Switzerland for service in the Crimean War. In the Crimea itself (1854–59) a hooded coat and red or blue waist sashes were adopted for winter dress, while during the Mexican Intervention (1863–65) straw hats or sombreros were sometimes substituted for the kepi. When the latter was worn it was usually covered with a white "havelock" (linen cover) – the predecessor of the white kepi that was to become a symbol of the Foreign Legion. Foreign Legion units serving in France during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71 were distinguishable only by minor details of insignia from the bulk of the French infantry. However subsequent colonial campaigns saw an increasing use of special garments for hot weather wear such as collarless "keo" blouses in Tonkin 1884–85, khaki drill jackets in Dahomey (1892) and drab covered topees worn with all-white fatigue dress in Madagascar (1895).
In the early 20th century the legionnaire wore a red kepi with blue band and piping, dark blue tunic with red collar, red cuff patches, and red trousers. Distinctive features were the green epaulettes (replacing the red of the line) worn with red woollen fringes; plus the embroidered Legion badge of a red flaming grenade, worn on the kepi front instead of a regimental number. In the field a light khaki cover was worn over the kepi, sometimes with a protective neck curtain attached. The standard medium-blue double breasted greatcoat ("capote") of the French infantry was worn, usually buttoned back to free the legs for marching. From the 1830s the legionnaires had worn a broad blue woollen sash around the waist, like other European units of the French Army of Africa (such as the Zouaves or the Chasseurs d'Afrique), while indigenous units of the Army of Africa (spahis and tirailleurs) wore red sashes. White linen trousers tucked into short leather leggings were substituted for red serge in hot weather. This was the origin of the "Beau Geste" image.
In barracks a white bleached kepi cover was often worn together with a short dark blue jacket ("veste") or white blouse plus white trousers. The original kepi cover was khaki and due to constant washing turned white quickly. The white or khaki kepi cover was not unique to the Foreign Legion at this stage but was commonly seen amongst other French units in North Africa. It later became particularly identified with the Foreign Legion as the unit most likely to serve at remote frontier posts (other than locally recruited tirailleurs who wore fezzes or turbans). The variances of climate in North Africa led the French Army to the sensible expedient of letting local commanders decide on the appropriate "tenue de jour" (uniform of the day) according to circumstances. Thus a legionnaire might parade or walk out in blue tunic and white trousers in hot weather, blue tunic and red trousers in normal temperatures or wear the blue greatcoat with red trousers under colder conditions. The sash could be worn with greatcoat, blouse or veste but not with the tunic. Epaulettes were a detachable dress item worn only with tunic or greatcoat for parade or off duty wear.
Officers wore the same dark blue (almost black) tunics as those of their colleagues in the French line regiments, except that black replaced red as a facing colour on collar and cuffs. Gold fringed epaulettes were worn for full dress and rank was shown by the number of gold rings on both kepi and cuffs. Trousers were red with black stripes or white according to occasion or conditions. All-white or light khaki uniforms (from as early as the 1890s) were often worn in the field or for ordinary duties in barracks. Non-commissioned officers were distinguished by red or gold diagonal stripes on the lower sleeves of tunics, vestes and greatcoats. Small detachable stripes were buttoned on to the front of the white shirt-like blouse.
Prior to 1914 units in Indo-China wore white or khaki Colonial Infantry uniforms with Foreign Legion insignia, to overcome supply difficulties. This dress included a white sun helmet of a model that was also worn by Foreign Legion units serving in the outposts of Southern Algeria, though never popular with its wearers. During the initial months of World War I, Foreign Legion units serving in France wore the standard blue greatcoat and red trousers of the French line infantry, distinguished only by collar patches of the same blue as the capote, instead of red. After a short period in sky-blue the Foreign Legion adopted khaki with steel helmets, from early 1916. A mustard shade of khaki drill had been worn on active service in Morocco from 1909, replacing the classic blue and white. The latter continued to be worn in the relatively peaceful conditions of Algeria throughout World War I, although increasingly replaced by khaki drill. The pre-1914 blue and red uniforms could still be occasionally seen as garrison dress in Algeria until stocks were used up about 1919.
During the early 1920s plain khaki drill uniforms of a standard pattern became universal issue for the Foreign Legion with only the red and blue kepi (with or without a cover) and green collar braiding to distinguish the Legionnaire from other French soldiers serving in North African and Indo-China. The neck curtain ceased to be worn from about 1915, although it survived in the newly raised Foreign Legion Cavalry Regiment into the 1920s. The white blouse ("bourgeron") and trousers dating from 1882 were retained for fatigue wear until the 1930s.
At the time of the Foreign Legion's centennial in 1931, a number of traditional features were reintroduced at the initiative of the then commander Colonel Rollet. These included the blue sash and green/red epaulettes. In 1939 the white covered kepi won recognition as the official headdress of the Foreign Legion to be worn on most occasions, rather than simply as a means of reflecting heat and protecting the blue and red material underneath. The Third Foreign Infantry Regiment adopted white tunics and trousers for walking-out dress during the 1930s
and all Foreign Legion officers were required to obtain full dress uniforms in the pre-war colours of black and red from 1932 to 1939.
During World War II the Foreign Legion wore a wide range of uniform styles depending on supply sources. These ranged from the heavy capotes and Adrian helmets of 1940 through to British battledress and American field uniforms from 1943 to 1945. The white kepi was stubbornly retained whenever possible.
From 1940 until 1963 the Foreign Legion maintained four Saharan Companies ("Compagnies Sahariennes") as part of the French forces used to patrol and police the desert regions to the south of Morocco and Algeria. Special uniforms were developed for these units, modeled on those of the French officered Camel Corps ("Méharistes") having prime responsibility for the Sahara. In full dress these included black or white zouave style trousers, worn with white tunics and long flowing cloaks. The Legion companies maintained their separate identity by retaining their distinctive kepis, sashes and fringed epaulettes.
The white kepis, together with the sash and epaulettes survive in the Foreign Legion's modern parade dress. Since the 1990s the modern kepi has been made wholly of white material rather than simply worn with a white cover. Officers and senior noncommissioned officers still wear their kepis in the pre-1939 colours of dark blue and red. A green tie and (for officers) a green waistcoat recall the traditional branch colour of the Foreign Legion. From 1959 a green beret (previously worn only by the legion's paratroopers) became the universal ordinary duty headdress, with the kepi reserved for parade and off duty wear. Other items of currently worn dress are the standard issue of the French Army.
The Foreign Legion is basically equipped with the same equipment as similar units elsewhere in the French Army. These include:
The Foreign Legion is the only unit of the French Army open to people of any nationality. Most legionnaires still come from European countries but a growing percentage comes from Latin America. Most of the Foreign Legion's commissioned officers are French with approximately 10 percent being Legionnaires who have risen through the ranks.
Legionnaires were, in the past, forced to enlist under a pseudonym ("declared identity"). This policy existed in order to allow recruits who wanted to restart their lives to enlist. The Legion held the belief that it was fairer to make all new recruits use declared identities. French citizens can enlist under a declared, fictitious, foreign citizenship (generally, a francophone one, often that of Belgium, Canada, or Switzerland). As of 20 September 2010, new recruits may enlist under their real identities or under declared identities. Recruits who do enlist with declared identities may, after one year's service, regularise their situations under their true identities. After serving in the Foreign Legion for three years, a legionnaire may apply for French citizenship. He must be serving under his real name, must have no problems with the authorities, and must have served with "honour and fidelity". A soldier who becomes injured during a battle for France can immediately apply for French citizenship under a provision known as "Français par le sang versé" ("French by spilled blood").
While the Foreign Legion historically did not accept women in its ranks, there was one official female member, Susan Travers, an Englishwoman who joined Free French Forces during World War II and became a member of the Foreign Legion after the war, serving in Vietnam during the First Indochina War. Women were barred from service until 2000, when then-French Defence Minister Alain Richard had stated that he wanted to take the level of female recruitment in the Legion to 20 percent by 2020.
As of 2008, legionnaires came from 140 countries. The majority of enlisted men originate from outside France, while the majority of the officer corps consists of Frenchmen. Many recruits originate from Eastern Europe and Latin America. Neil Tweedie of "The Daily Telegraph" said that Germany traditionally provided many recruits, "somewhat ironically given the Legion's bloody role in two world wars." He added that "Brits, too, have played their part, but there was embarrassment recently when it emerged that many British applicants were failing selection due to endemic unfitness."
Original nationalities of the Foreign Legion reflect the events in history at the time they join. Many former Wehrmacht personnel joined in the wake of World War II as many soldiers returning to civilian life found it hard to find reliable employment. Jean-Denis Lepage reports that "The Foreign Legion discreetly recruited from German P.O.W. camps", but adds that the number of these recruits has been subsequently exaggerated. Bernard B. Fall, who was a supporter of the French government, writing in the context of the First Indochina War, questioned the notion that the Foreign Legion was mainly German at that time, calling it:
[a] canard…with the sub-variant that all those Germans were at least SS generals and other much wanted war criminals. As a rule, and in order to prevent any particular nation from making the Foreign Legion into a Praetorian Guard, any particular national component is kept at about 25 percent of the total. Even supposing (and this was the case, of course) that the French recruiters, in the eagerness for candidates would sign up Germans enlisting as Swiss, Austrian, Scandinavian and other nationalities of related ethnic background, it is unlikely that the number of Germans in the Foreign Legion ever exceeded 35 percent. Thus, without making an allowance for losses, rotation, discharges, etc., the maximum number of Germans fighting in Indochina at any one time reached perhaps 7,000 out of 278,000. As to the ex-Nazis, the early arrivals contained a number of them, none of whom were known to be war criminals. French intelligence saw to that.
Since, in view of the rugged Indochinese climate, older men without previous tropical experience constituted more a liability than an asset, the average age of the Foreign Legion enlistees was about 23. At the time of the battle of Dien Bien Phu, any legionnaire of that age group was at the worst, in his "Hitler Youth" shorts when the [Third] Reich collapsed.
The Foreign Legion accepts people enlisting under a nationality that is not their own. A proportion of the Swiss and Belgians are actually likely to be Frenchmen who wish to avoid detection. In addition many Alsatians are said to have joined the Foreign Legion when Alsace was part of the German Empire, and may have been recorded as German while considering themselves French.
Regarding recruitment conditions within the Foreign Legion, see the official page (in English) dedicated to the subject: With regard to age limits, recruits can be accepted from ages ranging from 17 ½ (with parental consent) to 39.5 years old.
In the Commonwealth Realms, its collective provisions provide for nationals to commute between armies in training or other purposes. Moreover, this 'blanket provision' between member-states cannot exclude others for it would seem inappropriate to single out individual countries, that is, France in relation to the Legion. For example, Australia and New Zealand may allow post-Legion enlistment providing the national has commonwealth citizenship. Britain allows post-Legion enlistment. Canada allows post-Legion enlistment in its ranks with a completed five-year contract.
In the European Union framework, post Legion enlistment is less clear. Denmark, Norway, Germany and Portugal allow post-Legion enlistment while The Netherlands has constitutional articles that forbid it. [Rijkswet op het Nederlanderschap, Artikel 15, lid 1e, (In Dutch:)] (that is: one can lose his Dutch nationality by accepting a foreign nationality or can lose his Dutch nationality by serving in the army of a foreign state that is engaged in a conflict against the Dutch Kingdom or one of its allies). The European Union twin threads seem to be recognized dual nationality status or restricting constitutional article.
The United States allows post-FFL enlistment in its National Guard of career soldiers (up to the rank of captain) who are Green Card holders.
Israel allows post-Legion enlistment.
One of the biggest national groups in the Legion are Poles. Polish law allows service in a foreign army, but only after written permission from the Ministry of National Defence.
The Ever Victorious Army was the name given to a Chinese imperial army in the late 19th century. Commanded by Frederick Townsend Ward, the new force originally comprised about 200 mostly European mercenaries, recruited in the Shanghai area from sailors, deserters and adventurers. Many were dismissed in the summer of 1861, but the remainder became the officers of the Chinese soldiers recruited mainly in and around Sungkiang (Songjiang). The Chinese troops were increased to 3,000 by May 1862, all equipped with Western firearms and equipment by the British authorities in Shanghai. Throughout its four-year existence the Ever Victorious Army was mainly to operate within a thirty-mile radius of Shanghai. It was disbanded in May 1864 with 104 foreign officers and 2,288 Chinese soldiers being paid off. The bulk of the artillery and some infantry transferred to the Chinese Imperial forces. It was the first Chinese army trained in European techniques, tactics, and strategy.
In Israel, Mahal (, an acronym for "Mitnadvei Ḥutz LaAretz", which means "Volunteers from outside the Land [of Israel]") is a term designating non-Israelis serving in the Israeli military. The term originates with the approximately 4,000 both Jewish and non-Jewish volunteers who went to Israel to fight in the 1948 Arab–Israeli War including Aliyah Bet. The original Mahalniks were mostly World War II veterans from American and British armed forces.
Today, there is a program, Garin Tzabar, within the Israeli Ministry of Defense that administers the enlistment of non-Israeli citizens in the country's armed forces. Programs enable foreigners to join the Israel Defense Forces if they are of Jewish descent (which is defined as at least one grandparent).
Though not named "Foreign Legion", the Dutch Koninklijk Nederlandsch-Indische Leger (KNIL), or Royal Netherlands-Indian Army (in reference to the Dutch East Indies, now Indonesia), was created in 1830, a year before the French Foreign Legion, and is therefore not an emulation but an entirely original idea and had a similar recruitment policy. It stopped being an army of foreigners around 1900 when recruitment was restricted to Dutch citizens and to the indigenous peoples of the Dutch East Indies. The KNIL was finally disbanded on 26 July 1950, seven months after the Netherlands formally recognised Indonesia as a sovereign state, and almost five years after Indonesia declared its independence.
During the Rhodesian Bush War of the 1960s and 1970s, the Rhodesian Security Forces enlisted volunteers from overseas on the same pay and conditions of service as locally based regulars. The vast majority of the Rhodesian Army's foreigners joined the Rhodesian Light Infantry (RLI), a heliborne commando regiment with a glamorous international reputation; this unit became colloquially known as the "Rhodesian foreign legion" as a result, even though foreigners never made up more than about a third of its men. According to Chris Cocks, an RLI veteran, "the RLI was a mirror of the French Foreign Legion, in that recruiters paid little heed as to a man's past and asked no questions. ... And like the Foreign Legion, once in the ranks, a man's past was irrelevant." Just as French Foreign Legionnaires must speak French, the Rhodesian Army required its foreigners to be anglophone. Many of them were professional soldiers, attracted by the regiment's reputation—mostly former British soldiers, or Vietnam veterans from the United States, Australian and New Zealand forces—and these became a key part of the unit. Others, with no military experience, were often motivated to join the Rhodesian Army by anti-communism, or a desire for adventure or to escape the past.
After the Rhodesians' overseas recruiting campaign for English-speakers, started in 1974, proved successful, they began recruiting French-speakers as well, in 1977. These francophone recruits were placed in their own unit, 7 Independent Company, Rhodesia Regiment, which was commanded by French-speaking officers and operated entirely in French. The experiment was not generally considered a success by the Rhodesian commanders, however, and the company was disbanded in early 1978.
In 2010 the service conditions of the Russian Military have been changed. The actual term "Russian Foreign Legion" is a colloquial expression without any official recognition. Under the plan, foreigners without dual citizenship are able to sign up for five-year contracts and will be eligible for Russian citizenship after serving three years. Experts say the change opens the way for Commonwealth of Independent States citizens to get fast-track Russian citizenship, and counter the effects of Russia's demographic crisis on its army recruitment.
The Spanish Foreign Legion was created in 1920, in emulation of the French one, and had a significant role in Spain's colonial wars in Morocco and in the Spanish Civil War on the Nationalist side. The Spanish Foreign Legion recruited foreigners until 1986 but unlike its French model, the number of non-Spanish recruits never exceeded 25%, most of these from Latin America. It is now called the "Spanish Legion" and only recruits Spanish nationals.
Beyond its reputation as an elite unit often engaged in serious fighting, the recruitment practices of the French Foreign Legion have also led to a somewhat romanticised view of it being a place for disgraced or "wronged" men looking to leave behind their old lives and start new ones. This view of the legion is common in literature, and has been used for dramatic effect in many films, not the least of which are the several versions of "Beau Geste". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11544 |
Feedback
Feedback occurs when outputs of a system are routed back as inputs as part of a chain of cause-and-effect that forms a circuit or loop. The system can then be said to "feed back" into itself. The notion of cause-and-effect has to be handled carefully when applied to feedback systems:
Self-regulating mechanisms have existed since antiquity, and the idea of feedback had started to enter economic theory in Britain by the 18th century, but it was not at that time recognized as a universal abstraction and so did not have a name.
The first ever known artificial feedback device was a float valve, for maintaining water at a constant level, invented in 270 BC in Alexandria, Egypt. This device illustrated the principle of feedback: a low water level opens the valve, the rising water then provides feedback into the system, closing the valve when the required level is reached. This then reoccurs in a circular fashion as the water level fluctuates.
Centrifugal governors were used to regulate the distance and pressure between millstones in windmills since the 17th century. In 1788, James Watt designed his first centrifugal governor following a suggestion from his business partner Matthew Boulton, for use in the steam engines of their production. Early steam engines employed a purely reciprocating motion, and were used for pumping water – an application that could tolerate variations in the working speed, but the use of steam engines for other applications called for more precise control of the speed.
In 1868, James Clerk Maxwell wrote a famous paper, "On governors", that is widely considered a classic in feedback control theory. This was a landmark paper on control theory and the mathematics of feedback.
The verb phrase "to feed back", in the sense of returning to an earlier position in a mechanical process, was in use in the US by the 1860s, and in 1909, Nobel laureate Karl Ferdinand Braun used the term "feed-back" as a noun to refer to (undesired) coupling between components of an electronic circuit.
By the end of 1912, researchers using early electronic amplifiers (audions) had discovered that deliberately coupling part of the output signal back to the input circuit would boost the amplification (through regeneration), but would also cause the audion to howl or sing. This action of feeding back of the signal from output to input gave rise to the use of the term "feedback" as a distinct word by 1920.
Over the years there has been some dispute as to the best definition of feedback. According to Ashby (1956), mathematicians and theorists interested in the principles of feedback mechanisms prefer the definition of "circularity of action", which keeps the theory simple and consistent. For those with more practical aims, feedback should be a deliberate effect via some more tangible connection.
Focusing on uses in management theory, Ramaprasad (1983) defines feedback generally as "...information about the gap between the actual level and the reference level of a system parameter" that is used to "alter the gap in some way". He emphasizes that the information by itself is not feedback unless translated into action.
Positive feedback: If the signal fed back from output is in phase with the input signal, the feedback is called positive feedback.
Negative feedback: If the signal fed back is of opposite polarity or out of phase by 180° with respect to input signal, the feedback is called as negative feedback.
As an example of negative feedback, the diagram might represent a cruise control system in a car, for example, that matches a target speed such as the speed limit. The controlled system is the car; its input includes the combined torque from the engine and from the changing slope of the road (the disturbance). The car's speed (status) is measured by a speedometer. The error signal is the departure of the speed as measured by the speedometer from the target speed (set point). This measured error is interpreted by the controller to adjust the accelerator, commanding the fuel flow to the engine (the effector). The resulting change in engine torque, the feedback, combines with the torque exerted by the changing road grade to reduce the error in speed, minimizing the road disturbance.
The terms "positive" and "negative" were first applied to feedback prior to WWII. The idea of positive feedback was already current in the 1920s with the introduction of the regenerative circuit. Friis and Jensen (1924) described regeneration in a set of electronic amplifiers as a case where "the "feed-back" action is positive" in contrast to negative feed-back action, which they mention only in passing. Harold Stephen Black's classic 1934 paper first details the use of negative feedback in electronic amplifiers. According to Black:
According to Mindell (2002) confusion in the terms arose shortly after this:
Even prior to the terms being applied, James Clerk Maxwell had described several kinds of "component motions" associated with the centrifugal governors used in steam engines, distinguishing between those that lead to a continual "increase" in a disturbance or the amplitude of an oscillation, and those that lead to a "decrease" of the same.
The terms positive and negative feedback are defined in different ways within different disciplines.
The two definitions may cause confusion, such as when an incentive (reward) is used to boost poor performance (narrow a gap). Referring to definition 1, some authors use alternative terms, replacing "positive/negative" with "self-reinforcing/self-correcting", "reinforcing/balancing", "discrepancy-enhancing/discrepancy-reducing" or "regenerative/degenerative" respectively. And for definition 2, some authors advocate describing the action or effect as positive/negative "reinforcement" or "punishment" rather than feedback.
Yet even within a single discipline an example of feedback can be called either positive or negative, depending on how values are measured or referenced.
This confusion may arise because feedback can be used for either "informational" or "motivational" purposes, and often has both a "qualitative" and a "quantitative" component. As Connellan and Zemke (1993) put it:
While simple systems can sometimes be described as one or the other type, many systems with feedback loops cannot be so easily designated as simply positive or negative, and this is especially true when multiple loops are present.
In general, feedback systems can have many signals fed back and the feedback loop frequently contain mixtures of positive and negative feedback where positive and negative feedback can dominate at different frequencies or different points in the state space of a system.
The term bipolar feedback has been coined to refer to biological systems where positive and negative feedback systems can interact, the output of one affecting the input of another, and vice versa.
Some systems with feedback can have very complex behaviors such as chaotic behaviors in non-linear systems, while others have much more predictable behaviors, such as those that are used to make and design digital systems.
Feedback is used extensively in digital systems. For example, binary counters and similar devices employ feedback where the current state and inputs are used to calculate a new state which is then fed back and clocked back into the device to update it.
By using feedback properties, the behavior of a system can be altered to meet the needs of an application; systems can be made stable, responsive or held constant. It is shown that dynamical systems with a feedback experience an adaptation to the edge of chaos.
In biological systems such as organisms, ecosystems, or the biosphere, most parameters must stay under control within a narrow range around a certain optimal level under certain environmental conditions. The deviation of the optimal value of the controlled parameter can result from the changes in internal and external environments. A change of some of the environmental conditions may also require change of that range to change for the system to function. The value of the parameter to maintain is recorded by a reception system and conveyed to a regulation module via an information channel. An example of this is insulin oscillations.
Biological systems contain many types of regulatory circuits, both positive and negative. As in other contexts, "positive" and "negative" do not imply that the feedback causes "good" or "bad" effects. A negative feedback loop is one that tends to slow down a process, whereas the positive feedback loop tends to accelerate it. The mirror neurons are part of a social feedback system, when an observed action is "mirrored" by the brain—like a self-performed action.
Normal tissue integrity is preserved by feedback interactions between diverse cell types mediated by adhesion molecules and secreted molecules that act as mediators; failure of key feedback mechanisms in cancer disrupts tissue function.
In an injured or infected tissue, inflammatory mediators elicit feedback responses in cells, which alter gene expression, and change the groups of molecules expressed and secreted, including molecules that induce diverse cells to cooperate and restore tissue structure and function. This type of feedback is important because it enables coordination of immune responses and recovery from infections and injuries. During cancer, key elements of this feedback fail. This disrupts tissue function and immunity.
Mechanisms of feedback were first elucidated in bacteria, where a nutrient elicits changes in some of their metabolic functions.
Feedback is also central to the operations of genes and gene regulatory networks. Repressor (see Lac repressor) and activator proteins are used to create genetic operons, which were identified by Francois Jacob and Jacques Monod in 1961 as "feedback loops". These feedback loops may be positive (as in the case of the coupling between a sugar molecule and the proteins that import sugar into a bacterial cell), or negative (as is often the case in metabolic consumption).
On a larger scale, feedback can have a stabilizing effect on animal populations even when profoundly affected by external changes, although time lags in feedback response can give rise to predator-prey cycles.
In zymology, feedback serves as regulation of activity of an enzyme by its direct or downstream in the metabolic pathway (see Allosteric regulation).
The hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis is largely controlled by positive and negative feedback, much of which is still unknown.
In psychology, the body receives a stimulus from the environment or internally that causes the release of hormones. Release of hormones then may cause more of those hormones to be released, causing a positive feedback loop. This cycle is also found in certain behaviour. For example, "shame loops" occur in people who blush easily. When they realize that they are blushing, they become even more embarrassed, which leads to further blushing, and so on.
The climate system is characterized by strong positive and negative feedback loops between processes that affect the state of the atmosphere, ocean, and land. A simple example is the ice-albedo positive feedback loop whereby melting snow exposes more dark ground (of lower albedo), which in turn absorbs heat and causes more snow to melt.
Feedback is extensively used in control theory, using a variety of methods including state space (controls), full state feedback, and so forth. Note that in the context of control theory, "feedback" is traditionally assumed to specify "negative feedback".
The most common general-purpose controller using a control-loop feedback mechanism is a proportional-integral-derivative (PID) controller. Heuristically, the terms of a PID controller can be interpreted as corresponding to time: the proportional term depends on the "present" error, the integral term on the accumulation of "past" errors, and the derivative term is a prediction of "future" error, based on current rate of change.
For feedback in the educational context, see corrective feedback.
In ancient times, the float valve was used to regulate the flow of water in Greek and Roman water clocks; similar float valves are used to regulate fuel in a carburettor and also used to regulate tank water level in the flush toilet.
The Dutch inventor Cornelius Drebbel (1572-1633) built thermostats (c1620) to control the temperature of chicken incubators and chemical furnaces. In 1745, the windmill was improved by blacksmith Edmund Lee, who added a fantail to keep the face of the windmill pointing into the wind. In 1787, Tom Mead regulated the rotation speed of a windmill by using a centrifugal pendulum to adjust the distance between the bedstone and the runner stone (i.e., to adjust the load).
The use of the centrifugal governor by James Watt in 1788 to regulate the speed of his steam engine was one factor leading to the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines also use float valves and pressure release valves as mechanical regulation devices. A mathematical analysis of Watt's governor was done by James Clerk Maxwell in 1868.
The "Great Eastern" was one of the largest steamships of its time and employed a steam powered rudder with feedback mechanism designed in 1866 by John McFarlane Gray. Joseph Farcot coined the word "servo" in 1873 to describe steam-powered steering systems. Hydraulic servos were later used to position guns. Elmer Ambrose Sperry of the Sperry Corporation designed the first autopilot in 1912. Nicolas Minorsky published a theoretical analysis of automatic ship steering in 1922 and described the PID controller.
Internal combustion engines of the late 20th century employed mechanical feedback mechanisms such as the vacuum timing advance but mechanical feedback was replaced by electronic engine management systems once small, robust and powerful single-chip microcontrollers became affordable.
The use of feedback is widespread in the design of electronic components such as amplifiers, oscillators, and stateful logic circuit elements such as flip-flops and counters. Electronic feedback systems are also very commonly used to control mechanical, thermal and other physical processes.
If the signal is inverted on its way round the control loop, the system is said to have "negative feedback"; otherwise, the feedback is said to be "positive". Negative feedback is often deliberately introduced to increase the stability and accuracy of a system by correcting or reducing the influence of unwanted changes. This scheme can fail if the input changes faster than the system can respond to it. When this happens, the lag in arrival of the correcting signal can result in over-correction, causing the output to oscillate or "hunt". While often an unwanted consequence of system behaviour, this effect is used deliberately in electronic oscillators.
Harry Nyquist at Bell Labs derived the Nyquist stability criterion for determining the stability of feedback systems. An easier method, but less general, is to use Bode plots developed by Hendrik Bode to determine the gain margin and phase margin. Design to ensure stability often involves frequency compensation to control the location of the poles of the amplifier.
Electronic feedback loops are used to control the output of electronic devices, such as amplifiers. A feedback loop is created when all or some portion of the output is fed back to the input. A device is said to be operating "open loop" if no output feedback is being employed and "closed loop" if feedback is being used.
When two or more amplifiers are cross-coupled using positive feedback, complex behaviors can be created. These "multivibrators" are widely used and include:
A Negative feedback occurs when the fed-back output signal has a relative phase of 180° with respect to the input signal (upside down). This situation is sometimes referred to as being "out of phase", but that term also is used to indicate other phase separations, as in "90° out of phase". Negative feedback can be used to correct output errors or to desensitize a system to unwanted fluctuations. In feedback amplifiers, this correction is generally for waveform distortion reduction or to establish a specified gain level. A general expression for the gain of a negative feedback amplifier is the asymptotic gain model.
Positive feedback occurs when the fed-back signal is in phase with the input signal. Under certain gain conditions, positive feedback reinforces the input signal to the point where the output of the device oscillates between its maximum and minimum possible states. Positive feedback may also introduce hysteresis into a circuit. This can cause the circuit to ignore small signals and respond only to large ones. It is sometimes used to eliminate noise from a digital signal. Under some circumstances, positive feedback may cause a device to latch, i.e., to reach a condition in which the output is locked to its maximum or minimum state. This fact is very widely used in digital electronics to make bistable circuits for volatile storage of information.
The loud squeals that sometimes occurs in audio systems, PA systems, and rock music are known as audio feedback. If a microphone is in front of a loudspeaker that it is connected to, sound that the microphone picks up comes out of the speaker, and is picked up by the microphone and re-amplified. If the loop gain is sufficient, howling or squealing at the maximum power of the amplifier is possible.
An electronic oscillator is an electronic circuit that produces a periodic, oscillating electronic signal, often a sine wave or a square wave. Oscillators convert direct current (DC) from a power supply to an alternating current signal. They are widely used in many electronic devices. Common examples of signals generated by oscillators include signals broadcast by radio and television transmitters, clock signals that regulate computers and quartz clocks, and the sounds produced by electronic beepers and video games.
Oscillators are often characterized by the frequency of their output signal:
Oscillators designed to produce a high-power AC output from a DC supply are usually called inverters.
There are two main types of electronic oscillator: the linear or harmonic oscillator and the nonlinear or relaxation oscillator.
A latch or a flip-flop is a circuit that has two stable states and can be used to store state information. They typically constructed using feedback that crosses over between two arms of the circuit, to provide the circuit with a state. The circuit can be made to change state by signals applied to one or more control inputs and will have one or two outputs. It is the basic storage element in sequential logic. Latches and flip-flops are fundamental building blocks of digital electronics systems used in computers, communications, and many other types of systems.
Latches and flip-flops are used as data storage elements. Such data storage can be used for storage of "state", and such a circuit is described as sequential logic. When used in a finite-state machine, the output and next state depend not only on its current input, but also on its current state (and hence, previous inputs). It can also be used for counting of pulses, and for synchronizing variably-timed input signals to some reference timing signal.
Flip-flops can be either simple (transparent or opaque) or clocked (synchronous or edge-triggered). Although the term flip-flop has historically referred generically to both simple and clocked circuits, in modern usage it is common to reserve the term "flip-flop" exclusively for discussing clocked circuits; the simple ones are commonly called "latches".
Using this terminology, a latch is level-sensitive, whereas a flip-flop is edge-sensitive. That is, when a latch is enabled it becomes transparent, while a flip flop's output only changes on a single type (positive going or negative going) of clock edge.
Feedback loops provide generic mechanisms for controlling the running, maintenance, and evolution of software and computing systems. Feedback-loops are important models in the engineering of adaptive software, as they define the behaviour of the interactions among the control elements over the adaptation process, to guarantee system properties at run-time. Feedback loops and foundations of control theory have been successfully applied to computing systems. In particular, they have been applied to the development of products such as IBM's Universal Database server and IBM Tivoli. From a software perspective, the autonomic (MAPE, monitor analyze plan execute) loop proposed by researchers of IBM is another valuable contribution to the application of feedback loops to the control of dynamic properties and the design and evolution of autonomic software systems.
Feedback is also a useful design principle for designing user interfaces.
Video feedback is the video equivalent of acoustic feedback. It involves a loop between a video camera input and a video output, e.g., a television screen or monitor. Aiming the camera at the display produces a complex video image based on the feedback.
For feedback in the Human Resource Management context, see performance appraisal.
The stock market is an example of a system prone to oscillatory "hunting", governed by positive and negative feedback resulting from cognitive and emotional factors among market participants. For example:
George Soros used the word "reflexivity," to describe feedback in the financial markets and developed an investment theory based on this principle.
The conventional economic equilibrium model of supply and demand supports only ideal linear negative feedback and was heavily criticized by Paul Ormerod in his book "The Death of Economics", which, in turn, was criticized by traditional economists. This book was part of a change of perspective as economists started to recognise that chaos theory applied to nonlinear feedback systems including financial markets. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11545 |
Furigana
Furigana is most often written in hiragana, though katakana, Roman alphabet letters or other kanji can also be used in certain special cases. In vertical text, "tategaki", the furigana is placed to the right of the line of text; in horizontal text, "yokogaki", it is placed above the line of text, as illustrated below.
or
These examples spell the word "kanji", which is made up of two kanji characters: ("kan", written in hiragana as ) and ("ji", written in hiragana as ).
Furigana may be added by character, in which case the furigana character(s) that correspond to a kanji are centered over that kanji; or by word or phrase, in which case the entire furigana text is centered over several kanji characters, even if the kanji do not represent equal shares of the kana needed to write them. The latter method is more common, especially since some words in Japanese have unique pronunciations ("jukujikun") that are not related to readings of any of the characters the word is written with.
Furigana fonts are generally sized so that two kana characters fit naturally over one kanji; when more kana are required, this is resolved either by adjusting the furigana by using a condensed font (narrowing the kana), or by adjusting the kanji by intercharacter spacing (adding spaces around the kanji). In case an isolated kanji character has a long reading—for example (where reads , "tazusa")—the furigana may instead spill over into the space next to the neighboring kana characters, without condensing or changing spacing. Three-kana readings are not uncommon, particularly due to "yōon" with a long vowel, such as ; five kana are required for and six for , the longest of any character in the Joyo kanji. Very long readings also occur for certain kanji or symbols which have a "gairaigo" reading; the word "centimeter" is generally written as "cm" (with two half-width characters, so occupying one space) and has the seven-kana reading ("senchimētoru") (it can also be written as the kanji , though this is very rare); another common example is "%" (the percent sign), which has the five kana reading ("pāsento"). These cause severe spacing problems due to length and these words being used as units (hence closely associated with the preceding figure).
When it is necessary to distinguish between native Japanese "kun'yomi" and Chinese-derived "on'yomi" pronunciations, for example in kanji dictionaries, the Japanese pronunciations are written in hiragana, and the Chinese pronunciations are written in katakana. However, this distinction is really only important in dictionaries and other reference works. In ordinary prose, the script chosen will usually be hiragana. The one general exception to this is "modern" Chinese place names, personal names, and (occasionally) food names—these will often be written with kanji, and katakana used for the furigana; in more casual writing these are simply written in katakana, as borrowed words. Occasionally this style is also used for loanwords from other languages (especially English). For example, the kanji (literally "one horn beast") might be glossed with katakana , "yunikōn", to show the pronunciation of the loanword "unicorn", which is unrelated to the normal reading of the kanji. Generally, though, such loanwords are just written in straight katakana.
The distinction between regular kana and the smaller character forms (yōon and sokuon), which are used in regular orthography to mark such things as gemination and palatalization, is often not made in furigana: for example, the usual hiragana spelling of the word ("kyakka") is , but in furigana it might be written . This was especially common in old-fashioned movable type printing when smaller fonts were not available. Nowadays, with computer-based printing systems, this occurs less frequently.
Various word processing or typesetting software programs, such as Microsoft Word, Adobe InDesign, Adobe InCopy, etc. have features for adding ruby text, especially Japanese furigana. Among formatting features are different rules for aligning the kana over or to the right of the base text, usually either when the base text string is longer than the furigana string or vice-versa. Extra spaces may be needed depending on the size of the shorter string (either the ruby string or the base string) relatively to the longer one.
Furigana are most commonly used in works for children, who may not have sufficiently advanced reading skills to recognize the kanji, but can understand the word when written phonetically in hiragana. Because children learn hiragana before katakana, in books for very young children, there are hiragana furigana next to the katakana characters. It is common to use furigana on all kanji characters in works for young children. This is called in Japanese.
Numeric characters used for counting (e.g. "ni-hon" "two long things"; "futatsume" "second"; "dai-ni kan" "book 2"; "ni-pēji" "page 2"; etc.) are usually not tagged with furigana. Exceptions include a few cases such as 一人/１人 "hitori" "one person" and 二人/２人 "futari" "two people", which may be tagged with separate kana for each character (/), or non-separated kana for the whole word (/), depending on the style of the publisher in question. Numeric words in established compounds (e.g. "ippo" "step"; "hitome" "sight; attention"), however, are generally tagged with furigana.
Many children's, shōnen and shōjo manga use furigana (however, rarely on numerals). Shōnen and shōjo manga tend to have furigana for all non-numeric characters, while children's manga, such as "Doraemon", may also ignore furigana on elementary-grade kanji. Seinen and josei manga ignores furigana most of the time, even on the names of the characters if they're common names. There are also books with a phonetic guide (mainly in hiragana but sometimes in rōmaji) for Japanese learners, which may be bilingual or Japanese only. These are popular with foreigners wishing to master Japanese faster and enjoy reading Japanese short stories, novels or articles.
Due to the small type used for furigana, for maximum readability, some manga publishers may use regular kana instead of small kana. For example, はっしん "hasshin" may be spelled はつしん *"hatsushin" instead.
Some websites and tools exist which provide a phonetic guide for Japanese web pages (in hiragana, rōmaji or kiriji); these are popular with both Japanese children and foreign Japanese learners.
In works aimed at adult Japanese speakers, furigana may be used on a word written in uncommon kanji; in the mass media, they are generally used on words containing non-Jōyō kanji.
Furigana commonly appear alongside kanji names and their romanizations on signs for railway stations, even if the pronunciation of the kanji is commonly known. Furigana also appear often on maps to show the pronunciation of unusual place names.
Before the war, youths might arguably have been almost illiterate if not for furigana.
Japanese names are usually written in kanji. Because there are many possible readings for kanji names, including special name-only readings called nanori, furigana are often used to give the readings of names. On Japanese official forms, where the name is to be written, there is always an adjacent column for the name to be written in furigana. Usually katakana is preferred.
Furigana may also be used for foreign names written in kanji. Chinese and Korean names are the most common examples: Chinese names are usually pronounced with Japanese readings and the pronunciation written in hiragana, while Korean names are usually pronounced with Korean readings and the pronunciation written in katakana. Furigana may also be necessary in the rare case where names are transliterated into kanji from other languages (e.g. soccer star Ruy Ramos and politician Marutei Tsurunen.)
Kanji and kanji compounds are often presented with furigana in Japanese-language textbooks for non-native speakers.
Furigana are also often used in foreign-language textbooks for Japanese learners to indicate pronunciation. The words are written in the original foreign script, such as hangul for Korean, and furigana is used to indicate the pronunciation. According to Ministry of Education guidelines, and the opinions of educators, the use of Japanese furigana should be avoided in English teaching due to the differences in pronunciation between English and Japanese. For instance, the word "birthdate" might be glossed in furigana as ("bāsudeito"), which corresponds to an imperfect pronunciation.
Some writers use furigana to represent slang pronunciations, particularly those that would be difficult to understand without the kanji to provide their meaning.
Another use is to write the kanji for something which had been previously referenced, but write furigana for () or (), meaning "that". This means that the actual word used was "that", but the kanji clarify for the reader what "that" refers to. Another way to use it is to tag () onto words or names for places, to convey something along the line of, for example, "here (at this hospital)" () or "here (in LA)" ().
Furigana unrelated to the kanji they are assigned to are quite often used to convey certain effects, rather than to denote a phonetic guide, especially in manga, anime and games (card games, board games and video games all included). This usage is known as "gikun" (see also Kanji#Special readings). The specific types of effects vary: furigana could be used to visually reinforce complex ideas without having to use long expressions; to annotate strange, foreign, rarely seen text; to use more artistic or more explanatory spellings for regular words (see Kanji#Gikun); or simply for shorthand for base text abbreviation, thanks to the small type of furigana. For example, the word "nightmare" may be assigned with "shinjitsu" "truth" rather than its true reading, "akumu", to convey the meaning of "nightmarish truth". Some authors may even use furigana that means the opposite of what the base text does to reinforce an effect, such as the complicated relationship between characters. For example, "shin'yū" "close friend" may be tagged with "raibaru" "rival", to mean "you're my rival, but also my friend"; or conversely, "kōtekishu" "eternal rival" may be tagged with "tomo" "friend". Some manga make use of the furigana renditions of foreign words (especially obscure ones) as the intended reading of a term, and the more familiar kanji for the meaning of such a term. For example, may be assigned with "burakku majikku", the rendition of the English "black magic", to convey a foreign, exotic feel; with "sutēshon" "station"; with "hanīmūn" "honeymoon". This is sometimes done conversely, for example, by using "kissu" "kiss", the more familiar term, as furigana to convey meaning, and "bēze" "", the exotic term, as base text. For shorthand purposes, abbreviations such as may be used to make the regular kana spelling that is too long smaller type.
In karaoke it is extremely common for furigana to be placed on the song lyrics. The song lyrics are often written in kanji pronounced quite differently from the furigana. The furigana version is used for pronunciation.
Also, because the kanji represent meaning while the furigana represent sound, one can combine the two to create puns or indicate meanings of foreign words. One might write the kanji for "blue", but use katakana to write the pronunciation of the English word "blue"; this may be done, for example, in Japanese subtitles on foreign films, where it can help associate the written Japanese with the sounds actually being spoken by the actors, or it may be used in a translation of a work of fiction to enable the translator to preserve the original sound of a proper name (such as "Firebolt" in the Harry Potter series) in furigana, while simultaneously indicating its meaning with kanji. A similar practice is used in native fiction to clarify extended meanings. For example, in a work of science fiction, some astronaut could use the word , "furusato", meaning "my hometown", when referring to planet Earth. To clarify that for the reader, the word "furusato" (hometown) might be written in hiragana over the kanji for "chikyuu" (Earth).
Okurigana are kana that appear inline at normal size following kanji stems, typically to complete and to inflect adjectives and verbs. In this use they may also help to disambiguate kanji with multiple readings; for example, (, "agaru") vs. (, "noboru"). Unlike furigana, the use of okurigana is a mandatory part of the written language.
In the written style known as "kanbun", which is the Japanese approximation of Classical Chinese, small marks called "kunten" are sometimes added as reading aids. Unlike furigana, which indicate pronunciation, "kunten" indicate Japanese grammatical structures absent from the "kanbun", and also show how words should be reordered to fit Japanese sentence structure.
Furigana are sometimes also used to indicate meaning, rather than pronunciation. Over the foreign text, smaller-sized Japanese words, in kana or kanji, corresponding to the "meaning" of the foreign words, effectively translate it in place. While rare now, some late 19th–early 20th century authors used kanji as furigana for loanwords written in katakana. This usage is called in Japanese, since "furigana" implies the use of "kana". For example, "ririkku" "lyric" may be tagged with "kashi" "lyrics" for clarification rather than for phonetic guidance. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11547 |
Francis II, Holy Roman Emperor
Francis II (; 12 February 1768 – 2 March 1835) was the last Holy Roman Emperor, ruling from 1792 until 6 August 1806, when he dissolved the Holy Roman Empire after the decisive defeat at the hands of the First French Empire led by Napoleon at the Battle of Austerlitz. In 1804, he had founded the Austrian Empire and became Francis I, the first Emperor of Austria, ruling from 1804 to 1835, so later he was named the first "Doppelkaiser" (double emperor) in history.
For the two years between 1804 and 1806, Francis used the title and style "by the Grace of God elected Roman Emperor, ever Augustus, hereditary Emperor of Austria" and he was called the "Emperor of both the Holy Roman Empire and Austria". He was also Apostolic King of Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia as Francis I. He also served as the first president of the German Confederation following its establishment in 1815.
Francis II continued his leading role as an opponent of Napoleonic France in the Napoleonic Wars, and suffered several more defeats after Austerlitz. The proxy marriage of the state of his daughter Marie Louise of Austria to Napoleon on 10 March 1810 was arguably his severest personal defeat. After the abdication of Napoleon following the War of the Sixth Coalition, Austria participated as a leading member of the Holy Alliance at the Congress of Vienna, which was largely dominated by Francis's chancellor Klemens Wenzel, Prince von Metternich culminating in a new European map and the restoration of Francis's ancient dominions (except the Holy Roman Empire which was dissolved). Due to the establishment of the Concert of Europe, which largely resisted popular nationalist and liberal tendencies, Francis became viewed as a reactionary later in his reign.
Francis II's grandchildren include Napoleon II (Napoleon's only legitimate son), Franz Joseph I of Austria, Maximillian I of Mexico, Maria II of Portugal and Pedro II of Brazil.
Francis was a son of Emperor Leopold II (1747–1792) and his wife Maria Luisa of Spain (1745–1792), daughter of Charles III of Spain. Francis was born in Florence, the capital of Tuscany, where his father reigned as Grand Duke from 1765 to 1790. Though he had a happy childhood surrounded by his many siblings, his family knew Francis was likely to be a future Emperor (his uncle Joseph had no surviving issue from either of his two marriages), and so in 1784 the young Archduke was sent to the Imperial Court in Vienna to educate and prepare him for his future role.
Emperor Joseph II himself took charge of Francis's development. His disciplinarian regime was a stark contrast to the indulgent Florentine Court of Leopold. The Emperor wrote that Francis was "stunted in growth", "backward in bodily dexterity and deportment", and "neither more nor less than a spoiled mother's child." Joseph concluded that "the manner in which he was treated for upwards of sixteen years could not but have confirmed him in the delusion that the preservation of his own person was the only thing of importance."
Joseph's martinet method of improving the young Francis was "fear and unpleasantness." The young Archduke was isolated, the reasoning being that this would make him more self-sufficient as it was felt by Joseph that Francis "failed to lead himself, to do his own thinking." Nonetheless, Francis greatly admired his uncle, if rather feared him. To complete his training, Francis was sent to join an army regiment in Hungary and he settled easily into the routine of military life.
After the death of Joseph II in 1790, Francis's father became Emperor. He had an early taste of power while acting as Leopold's deputy in Vienna while the incoming Emperor traversed the Empire attempting to win back those alienated by his brother's policies. The strain told on Leopold and by the winter of 1791, he became ill. He gradually worsened throughout early 1792; on the afternoon of 1 March Leopold died, at the relatively young age of 44. Francis, just past his 24th birthday, was now Emperor, much sooner than he had expected.
As the leader of the large multi-ethnic Habsburg Empire, Francis felt threatened by Napoleon's social and political reforms, which were being exported throughout Europe with the expansion of the first French Empire. Francis had a fraught relationship with France. His aunt Marie Antoinette, the wife of Louis XVI and Queen consort of France, was guillotined by the revolutionaries in 1793, at the beginning of his reign. Francis, on the whole, was indifferent to her fate (she was not close to his father, Leopold, and although Francis had met her, he had been too young at the time to have any memory of his aunt). Georges Danton attempted to negotiate with the Emperor for Marie Antoinette's release, but Francis was unwilling to make any concessions in return.
Later, he led Austria into the French Revolutionary Wars. He briefly commanded the Allied forces during the Flanders Campaign of 1794 before handing over command to his brother Archduke Charles. He was later defeated by Napoleon. By the Treaty of Campo Formio, he ceded the left bank of the Rhine to France in exchange for Venice and Dalmatia. He again fought against France during the Second and Third Coalition, when after meeting a crushing defeat at Austerlitz, he had to agree to the Treaty of Pressburg, weakening the Austrian Empire and reorganizing Holy Roman Empire (Germany) under a Napoleonic imprint that would be called the Confederation of the Rhine.
At this point, he believed his position as Holy Roman Emperor to be untenable, so on 6 August 1806, he abdicated the throne, declaring the empire to be already dissolved in the same declaration. This was a political move to impair the legitimacy of the Confederation of the Rhine. He had anticipated losing the Holy Roman crown, however. Two years earlier, as a reaction to Napoleon making himself an emperor, he had raised Austria to the status of an empire. Hence, after 1806, he reigned as Francis I, Emperor of Austria.
In 1809, Francis attacked France again, hoping to take advantage of the Peninsular War embroiling Napoleon in Spain. He was again defeated, and this time forced to ally himself with Napoleon, ceding territory to the Empire, joining the Continental System, and wedding his daughter Marie-Louise to the Emperor. The Napoleonic wars drastically weakened Austria, making it entirely landlocked and threatened its preeminence among the states of Germany, a position that it would eventually cede to the Kingdom of Prussia.
In 1813, for the fourth and final time, Austria turned against France and joined Great Britain, Russia, Prussia and Sweden in their war against Napoleon. Austria played a major role in the final defeat of France—in recognition of this, Francis, represented by Clemens von Metternich, presided over the Congress of Vienna, helping to form the Concert of Europe and the Holy Alliance, ushering in an era of conservatism in Europe. The German Confederation, a loose association of Central European states was created by the Congress of Vienna in 1815 to organize the surviving states of the Holy Roman Empire. The Congress was a personal triumph for Francis, who hosted the assorted dignitaries in comfort, though Francis undermined his allies Tsar Alexander and Frederick William III of Prussia by negotiating a secret treaty with the restored French king Louis XVIII.
The violent events of the French Revolution impressed themselves deeply into the mind of Francis (as well as all other European monarchs), and he came to distrust radicalism in any form. In 1794, a "Jacobin" conspiracy was discovered in the Austrian and Hungarian armies. The leaders were put on trial, but the verdicts only skirted the perimeter of the conspiracy. Francis's brother Alexander Leopold (at that time Palatine of Hungary) wrote to the Emperor admitting "Although we have caught a lot of the culprits, we have not really got to the bottom of this business yet." Nonetheless, two officers heavily implicated in the conspiracy were hanged and gibbeted, while numerous others were sentenced to imprisonment (many of whom died from the conditions).
Francis was from his experiences suspicious and set up an extensive network of police spies and censors to monitor dissent (in this he was following his father's lead, as the Grand Duchy of Tuscany had the most effective secret police in Europe). Even his family did not escape attention. His brothers, the Archdukes Charles and Johann had their meetings and activities spied upon. Censorship was also prevalent. The author Franz Grillparzer, a Habsburg patriot, had one play suppressed solely as a "precautionary" measure. When Grillparzer met the censor responsible, he asked him what was objectionable about the work. The censor replied, "Oh, nothing at all. But I thought to myself, 'One can never tell'."
In military affairs Francis had allowed his brother, the Archduke Charles, extensive control over the army during the Napoleonic wars. Yet, distrustful of allowing any individual too much power, he otherwise maintained the separation of command functions between the Hofkriegsrat and his field commanders. In the later years of his reign he limited military spending, requiring it not exceed forty million florins per year; because of inflation this resulted in inadequate funding, with the army's share of the budget shrinking from half in 1817 to only twenty-three percent in 1830.
Francis presented himself as an open and approachable monarch (he regularly set aside two mornings each week to meet his imperial subjects, regardless of status, by appointment in his office, even speaking to them in their own language), but his will was sovereign. In 1804, he had no compunction about announcing that through his authority as Holy Roman Emperor, he declared he was now Emperor of Austria (at the time a geographical term that had little resonance). Two years later, Francis personally wound up the moribund Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation. Both actions were of dubious constitutional legality.
To increase patriotic sentiment during the war with France, the anthem "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser" was composed in 1797 to be sung as the Kaiserhymne to music by Joseph Haydn. The lyrics were adapted for later Emperors and the music lives on as the Deutschlandlied.
On 2 March 1835, 43 years and a day after his father's death, Francis died in Vienna of a sudden fever aged 67, in the presence of many of his family and with all the religious comforts. His funeral was magnificent, with his Viennese subjects respectfully filing past his coffin in the chapel of Hofburg Palace for three days. Francis was interred in the traditional resting place of Habsburg monarchs, the Kapuziner Imperial Crypt in Vienna's Neue Markt Square. He is buried in tomb number 57, surrounded by his four wives.
Francis passed on a main point in the political testament he left for his son and heir Ferdinand to; "preserve unity in the family and regard it as one of the highest goods." In many portraits (particularly those painted by Peter Fendi) he was portrayed as the patriarch of a loving family, surrounded by his children and grandchildren.
Francis II married four times:
From his first wife Elisabeth of Württemberg, one daughter, and his second wife Maria Teresa of the Two Sicilies, eight daughters and four sons:
Children of Francis II
From 1806 he used the titles: "We, Francis the First, by the Grace of God Emperor of Austria; King of Jerusalem, Hungary, Bohemia, Dalmatia, Croatia, Slavonia, Galicia and Lodomeria; Archduke of Austria; Duke of Lorraine, Salzburg, Würzburg, Franconia, Styria, Carinthia and Carniola; Grand Duke of Cracow; Grand Prince of Transylvania; Margrave of Moravia; Duke of Sandomir, Masovia, Lublin, Upper and Lower Silesia, Auschwitz and Zator, Teschen and Friule; Prince of Berchtesgaden and Mergentheim; Princely Count of Habsburg, Gorizia and Gradisca and of the Tirol; and Margrave of Upper and Lower Lusatia and in Istria". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11551 |
Frederick Abel
Sir Frederick Augustus Abel, 1st Baronet (17 July 18276 September 1902) was an English chemist.
Born in London as son of Johann Leopold Abel, Abel studied chemistry at the Royal Polytechnic Institution and in 1845 became one of the original 26 students of A. W. von Hofmann at the Royal College of Chemistry. In 1852 he was appointed lecturer in chemistry at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, succeeding Michael Faraday, who had held that post since 1829.
From 1854 until 1888 Abel served as ordnance chemist at the Chemical Establishment of the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich, establishing himself as the leading British authority on explosives. Three years later was appointed chemist to the War Department and chemical referee to the government. During his tenure of this office, which lasted until 1888, he carried out a large amount of work in connection with the chemistry of explosives.
One of the most important of his investigations had to do with the manufacture of guncotton, and he developed a process, consisting essentially of reducing the nitrated cotton to fine pulp, which enabled it to be safely manufactured and at the same time yielded the product in a form that increased its usefulness. This work to an important extent prepared the way for the "smokeless powders" which came into general use towards the end of the 19th century; cordite, the type adopted by the British government in 1891, was invented jointly by him and Sir James Dewar. He and Dewar were unsuccessfully sued by Alfred Nobel over infringement of Nobel's patent for a similar explosive called ballistite, the case finally being resolved in the House of Lords in 1895. He also extensively researched the behaviour of black powder when ignited, with the Scottish physicist Sir Andrew Noble. At the request of the British government, he devised the Abel test, a means of determining the flash point of petroleum products. His first instrument, the open-test apparatus, was specified in an Act of Parliament in 1868 for officially specifying petroleum products. It was superseded in August 1879 by the much more reliable Abel close-test instrument. Under his leadership, first, guncotton was developed at Waltham Abbey Royal Gunpowder Mills, patented in 1865, then, the propellant cordite, patented in 1889. In electricity, Abel studied the construction of electrical fuses and other applications of electricity to warlike purposes, and his work on problems of steel manufacture won him in 1897 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute, of which from 1891 to 1893 he was president.
He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1860 and received their Royal Medal in 1887. He was president of the Chemical Society (1875–7), of the Institution of Electrical Engineers (then the Society of Telegraph Engineers) (1877), of the Institute of Chemistry (1881–2) and of the Society of Chemical Industry (1883). He was also president of the Iron and Steel Institute in 1891 and was awarded the Bessemer Gold Medal in 1897. He was awarded the Telford Medal by the Institution of Civil Engineers in 1879.
He was made a Commander of the Order of the Bath (CB) in 1877. and knighted on 20 April 1883
He took an important part in the work of the Inventions Exhibition (London) in 1885, and in 1887 became organizing secretary and first director of the Imperial Institute, a position he held till his death in 1902. He was Rede Lecturer and received an honorary doctorate from Cambridge University in 1888. He was upgraded Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) on 3 February 1891, created a baronet, of Cadogan Place in the Parish of Chelsea in the County of London, on 25 May 1893 and made a Knight Grand Cross of the Royal Victorian Order (GCVO) on 8 March 1901.
Abel died at his residence in Whitehall Court, London, on 6 September 1902, aged 75, and was buried in Nunhead Cemetery, London. The baronetcy became extinct on his death.
Abel married twice; first to Sarah Blanch, daughter of James Blanch, of Bristol; secondly after his first wife's death to Giulietta de La Feuillade. He left no children.
He also wrote several articles in the ninth edition of the "Encyclopædia Britannica". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11552 |
Fluorescence
Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore lower energy, than the absorbed radiation. The most striking example of fluorescence occurs when the absorbed radiation is in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum, and thus invisible to the human eye, while the emitted light is in the visible region, which gives the fluorescent substance a distinct color that can be seen only when exposed to UV light. Fluorescent materials cease to glow nearly immediately when the radiation source stops, unlike phosphorescent materials, which continue to emit light for some time after.
Fluorescence has many practical applications, including mineralogy, gemology, medicine, chemical sensors (fluorescence spectroscopy), fluorescent labelling, dyes, biological detectors, and cosmic-ray detection. Its most common everyday application is in energy-saving fluorescent lamps and LED lamps, where fluorescent coatings are used to convert short-wavelength UV light or blue light into longer-wavelength yellow light, thereby mimicking the warm light of energy-inefficient incandescent lamps. Fluorescence also occurs frequently in nature in some minerals and in various biological forms in many branches of the animal kingdom.
An early observation of fluorescence was described in 1560 by Bernardino de Sahagún and in 1565 by Nicolás Monardes in the infusion known as "lignum nephriticum" (Latin for "kidney wood"). It was derived from the wood of two tree species, "Pterocarpus indicus" and "Eysenhardtia polystachya". The chemical compound responsible for this fluorescence is matlaline, which is the oxidation product of one of the flavonoids found in this wood.
In 1819, Edward D. Clarke and in 1822 René Just Haüy described fluorescence in fluorites, Sir David Brewster described the phenomenon for chlorophyll in 1833 and Sir John Herschel did the same for quinine in 1845.
In his 1852 paper on the "Refrangibility" (wavelength change) of light, George Gabriel Stokes described the ability of fluorspar and uranium glass to change invisible light beyond the violet end of the visible spectrum into blue light. He named this phenomenon "fluorescence" : "I am almost inclined to coin a word, and call the appearance "fluorescence", from fluor-spar [i.e., fluorite], as the analogous term "opalescence" is derived from the name of a mineral." The name was derived from the mineral fluorite (calcium difluoride), some examples of which contain traces of divalent europium, which serves as the fluorescent activator to emit blue light. In a key experiment he used a prism to isolate ultraviolet radiation from sunlight and observed blue light emitted by an ethanol solution of quinine exposed by it.
Fluorescence occurs when an excited molecule, atom, or nanostructure, relaxes to a lower energy state (possibly the ground state) through emission of a photon. It may have been directly excited from the ground state S0 to a singlet state S2 from the ground state by absorption of a photon of energy formula_1 and subsequently emits a photon of a lower energy formula_2 as it relaxes to state S1:
In each case the photon energy E is proportional to its frequency formula_5 according to E =formula_6 where formula_7 Planck's constant. The ending state S1, if not the ground state, may then lose its remaining energy through further fluorescent emission and/or "non-radiative relaxation" in which the energy is dissipated as heat (phonons). When the excited state is a metastable (long-lived) state, then that fluorescent transition is rather termed phosphorescence.
Relaxation from an excited state can also occur through transferring some or all of its energy to a second molecule through an interaction known as fluorescence quenching. Molecular oxygen (O2) is an extremely efficient quencher of fluorescence just because of its unusual triplet ground state.
In all cases, the emitted light has a lower energy (lower frequency, longer wavelength) than the absorbed radiation; the difference in these energies is known as the Stokes shift. In some cases under intense illumination it is possible for one electron to absorb two photons allowing for the emission of radiation of a "higher" photon energy (shorter wavelength) than the absorbed radiation; such two-photon absorption is not referred to as fluorescence. The emitted radiation may also be of the same wavelength as the absorbed radiation, termed "resonance fluorescence".
A molecule that is excited through light absorption or other process (e.g. from a chemical reaction) can transfer its energy to a second 'sensitized' molecule, raising it to an excited state from which it will then fluoresce.
The fluorescence quantum yield gives the efficiency of the fluorescence process. It is defined as the ratio of the number of photons emitted to the number of photons absorbed.
The maximum possible fluorescence quantum yield is 1.0 (100%); each photon absorbed results in a photon emitted. Compounds with quantum yields of 0.10 are still considered quite fluorescent. Another way to define the quantum yield of fluorescence is by the rate of excited state decay:
where formula_10 is the rate constant of spontaneous emission of radiation and
is the sum of all rates of excited state decay. Other rates of excited state decay are caused by mechanisms other than photon emission and are, therefore, often called "non-radiative rates", which can include:
dynamic collisional quenching, near-field dipole-dipole interaction (or resonance energy transfer), internal conversion, and intersystem crossing. Thus, if the rate of any pathway changes, both the excited state lifetime and the fluorescence quantum yield will be affected.
Fluorescence quantum yields are measured by comparison to a standard. The quinine salt "quinine sulfate" in a sulfuric acid solution is a common fluorescence standard.
The fluorescence lifetime refers to the average time the molecule stays in its excited state before emitting a photon. Fluorescence typically follows first-order kinetics:
where formula_13 is the concentration of excited state molecules at time formula_14, formula_15 is the initial concentration and formula_16 is the decay rate or the inverse of the fluorescence lifetime. This is an instance of exponential decay. Various radiative and non-radiative processes can de-populate the excited state. In such case the total decay rate is the sum over all rates:
where formula_18 is the total decay rate, formula_19 the radiative decay rate and formula_20 the non-radiative decay rate. It is similar to a first-order chemical reaction in which the first-order rate constant is the sum of all of the rates (a parallel kinetic model). If the rate of spontaneous emission, or any of the other rates are fast, the lifetime is short. For commonly used fluorescent compounds, typical excited state decay times for photon emissions with energies from the UV to near infrared are within the range of 0.5 to 20 nanoseconds. The fluorescence lifetime is an important parameter for practical applications of fluorescence such as fluorescence resonance energy transfer and fluorescence-lifetime imaging microscopy.
The Jablonski diagram describes most of the relaxation mechanisms for excited state molecules. The diagram alongside shows how fluorescence occurs due to the relaxation of certain excited electrons of a molecule.
Fluorophores are more likely to be excited by photons if the transition moment of the fluorophore is parallel to the electric vector of the photon. The polarization of the emitted light will also depend on the transition moment. The transition moment is dependent on the physical orientation of the fluorophore molecule. For fluorophores in solution this means that the intensity and polarization of the emitted light is dependent on rotational diffusion. Therefore, anisotropy measurements can be used to investigate how freely a fluorescent molecule moves in a particular environment.
Fluorescence anisotropy can be defined quantitatively as
where formula_22 is the emitted intensity parallel to polarization of the excitation light and formula_23 is the emitted intensity perpendicular to the polarization of the excitation light.
Strongly fluorescent pigments often have an unusual appearance which is often described colloquially as a "neon color" (originally "day-glo" in the late 1960s, early 1970s). This phenomenon was termed "Farbenglut" by Hermann von Helmholtz and "fluorence" by Ralph M. Evans. It is generally thought to be related to the high brightness of the color relative to what it would be as a component of white. Fluorescence shifts energy in the incident illumination from shorter wavelengths to longer (such as blue to yellow) and thus can make the fluorescent color appear brighter (more saturated) than it could possibly be by reflection alone.
There are several general rules that deal with fluorescence. Each of the following rules has exceptions but they are useful guidelines for understanding fluorescence (these rules do not necessarily apply to two-photon absorption).
Kasha's rule dictates that the quantum yield of luminescence is independent of the wavelength of exciting radiation. This occurs because excited molecules usually decay to the lowest vibrational level of the excited state before fluorescence emission takes place. The Kasha–Vavilov rule does not always apply and is violated severely in many simple molecules. A somewhat more reliable statement, although still with exceptions, would be that the fluorescence spectrum shows very little dependence on the wavelength of exciting radiation.
For many fluorophores the absorption spectrum is a mirror image of the emission spectrum. This is known as the mirror image rule and is related to the Franck–Condon principle which states that electronic transitions are vertical, that is energy changes without distance changing as can be represented with a vertical line in Jablonski diagram. This means the nucleus does not move and the vibration levels of the excited state resemble the vibration levels of the ground state.
In general, emitted fluorescence light has a longer wavelength and lower energy than the absorbed light. This phenomenon, known as Stokes shift, is due to energy loss between the time a photon is absorbed and when a new one is emitted. The causes and magnitude of Stokes shift can be complex and are dependent on the fluorophore and its environment. However, there are some common causes. It is frequently due to non-radiative decay to the lowest vibrational energy level of the excited state. Another factor is that the emission of fluorescence frequently leaves a fluorophore in a higher vibrational level of the ground state.
There are many natural compounds that exhibit fluorescence, and they have a number of applications. Some deep-sea animals, such as the greeneye, have fluorescent structures.
Fluorescence is the temporary absorption of electromagnetic wavelengths from the visible light spectrum by fluorescent molecules, and the subsequent emission of light at a lower energy level. When it occurs in a living organism, it is sometimes called biofluorescence. This causes the light that is emitted to be a different color than the light that is absorbed. Stimulating light excites an electron, raising energy to an unstable level. This instability is unfavorable, so the energized electron is returned to a stable state almost as immediately as it becomes unstable. This return to stability corresponds with the release of excess energy in the form of fluorescence light. This emission of light is only observable when the stimulant light is still providing light to the organism/object and is typically yellow, pink, orange, red, green, or purple. Fluorescence is often confused with the following forms of biotic light, bioluminescence and biophosphorescence. Pumpkin toadlets that live in the Brazilian Atlantic forest are fluorescent.
In a study published in the journal, iScience, a new form of biofluorescence described in two species of sharks, wherein it was due to undescribed group of brominated tryptophan-kynurenine small molecule metabolites.
Bioluminescence differs from fluorescence in that it is the natural production of light by chemical reactions within an organism, whereas fluorescence is the absorption and reemission of light from the environment. A firefly and anglerfish are two example of bioluminescent organisms.
Biophosphorescence is similar to fluorescence in its requirement of light wavelengths as a provider of excitation energy. The difference here lies in the relative stability of the energized electron. Unlike with fluorescence, in phosphorescence the electron retains stability, emitting light that continues to “glow-in-the-dark” even after the stimulating light source has been removed. Glow-in-the-dark stickers are phosphorescent, but there are no truly phosphorescent animals known.
Pigment cells that exhibit fluorescence are called fluorescent chromatophores, and function somatically similar to regular chromatophores. These cells are dendritic, and contain pigments called fluorosomes. These pigments contain fluorescent proteins which are activated by K+ (potassium) ions, and it is their movement, aggregation, and dispersion within the fluorescent chromatophore that cause directed fluorescence patterning. Fluorescent cells are innervated the same as other chromatophores, like melanophores, pigment cells that contain melanin. Short term fluorescent patterning and signaling is controlled by the nervous system. Fluorescent chromatophores can be found in the skin (e.g. in fish) just below the epidermis, amongst other chromatophores.
Epidermal fluorescent cells in fish also respond to hormonal stimuli by the α–MSH and MCH hormones much the same as melanophores. This suggests that fluorescent cells may have color changes throughout the day that coincide with their circadian rhythm. Fish may also be sensitive to cortisol induced stress responses to environmental stimuli, such as interaction with a predator or engaging in a mating ritual.
It is suspected by some scientists that GFPs and GFP like proteins began as electron donors activated by light. These electrons were then used for reactions requiring light energy. Functions of fluorescent proteins, such as protection from the sun, conversion of light into different wavelengths, or for signaling are thought to have evolved secondarily.
The incidence of fluorescence across the tree of life is widespread, and has been studied most extensively in cnidarians and fish. The phenomenon appears to have evolved multiple times in multiple taxa such as in the anguilliformes (eels), gobioidei (gobies and cardinalfishes), and tetradontiformes (triggerfishes), along with the other taxa discussed later in the article. Fluorescence is highly genotypically and phenotypically variable even within ecosystems, in regards to the wavelengths emitted, the patterns displayed, and the intensity of the fluorescence. Generally, the species relying upon camouflage exhibit the greatest diversity in fluorescence, likely because camouflage may be one of the uses of fluorescence.
Currently, relatively little is known about the functional significance of fluorescence and fluorescent proteins. However, it is suspected that fluorescence may serve important functions in signaling and communication, mating, lures, camouflage, UV protection and antioxidation, photoacclimation, dinoflagellate regulation, and in coral health.
Water absorbs light of long wavelengths, so less light from these wavelengths reflects back to reach the eye. Therefore, warm colors from the visual light spectrum appear less vibrant at increasing depths. Water scatters light of shorter wavelengths above violet, meaning cooler colors dominate the visual field in the photic zone. Light intensity decreases 10 fold with every 75 m of depth, so at depths of 75 m, light is 10% as intense as it is on the surface, and is only 1% as intense at 150 m as it is on the surface. Because the water filters out the wavelengths and intensity of water reaching certain depths, different proteins, because of the wavelengths and intensities of light they are capable of absorbing, are better suited to different depths. Theoretically, some fish eyes can detect light as deep as 1000 m. At these depths of the aphotic zone, the only sources of light are organisms themselves, giving off light through chemical reactions in a process called bioluminescence.
Fluorescence is simply defined as the absorption of electromagnetic radiation at one wavelength and its reemission at another, lower energy wavelength. Thus any type of fluorescence depends on the presence of external sources of light. Biologically functional fluorescence is found in the photic zone, where there is not only enough light to cause fluorescence, but enough light for other organisms to detect it.
The visual field in the photic zone is naturally blue, so colors of fluorescence can be detected as bright reds, oranges, yellows, and greens. Green is the most commonly found color in the marine spectrum, yellow the second most, orange the third, and red is the rarest. Fluorescence can occur in organisms in the aphotic zone as a byproduct of that same organism's bioluminescence. Some fluorescence in the aphotic zone is merely a byproduct of the organism's tissue biochemistry and does not have a functional purpose. However, some cases of functional and adaptive significance of fluorescence in the aphotic zone of the deep ocean is an active area of research.
Bony fishes living in shallow water generally have good color vision due to their living in a colorful environment. Thus, in shallow-water fishes, red, orange, and green fluorescence most likely serves as a means of communication with conspecifics, especially given the great phenotypic variance of the phenomenon.
Many fish that exhibit fluorescence, such as sharks, lizardfish, scorpionfish, wrasses, and flatfishes, also possess yellow intraocular filters. Yellow intraocular filters in the lenses and cornea of certain fishes function as long-pass filters. These filters enable the species that to visualize and potentially exploit fluorescence, in order to enhance visual contrast and patterns that are unseen to other fishes and predators that lack this visual specialization. Fish that possess the necessary yellow intraocular filters for visualizing fluorescence potentially exploit a light signal from members of it. Fluorescent patterning was especially prominent in cryptically patterned fishes possessing complex camouflage. Many of these lineages also possess yellow long-pass intraocular filters that could enable visualization of such patterns.
Another adaptive use of fluorescence is to generate orange and red light from the ambient blue light of the photic zone to aid vision. Red light can only be seen across short distances due to attenuation of red light wavelengths by water. Many fish species that fluoresce are small, group-living, or benthic/aphotic, and have conspicuous patterning. This patterning is caused by fluorescent tissue and is visible to other members of the species, however the patterning is invisible at other visual spectra. These intraspecific fluorescent patterns also coincide with intra-species signaling. The patterns present in ocular rings to indicate directionality of an individual's gaze, and along fins to indicate directionality of an individual's movement. Current research suspects that this red fluorescence is used for private communication between members of the same species. Due to the prominence of blue light at ocean depths, red light and light of longer wavelengths are muddled, and many predatory reef fish have little to no sensitivity for light at these wavelengths. Fish such as the fairy wrasse that have developed visual sensitivity to longer wavelengths are able to display red fluorescent signals that give a high contrast to the blue environment and are conspicuous to conspecifics in short ranges, yet are relatively invisible to other common fish that have reduced sensitivities to long wavelengths. Thus, fluorescence can be used as adaptive signaling and intra-species communication in reef fish.
Additionally, it is suggested that fluorescent tissues that surround an organism's eyes are used to convert blue light from the photic zone or green bioluminescence in the aphotic zone into red light to aid vision.
Fluorescence serves a wide variety of functions in coral. Fluorescent proteins in corals may contribute to photosynthesis by converting otherwise unusable wavelengths of light into ones for which the coral's symbiotic algae are able to conduct photosynthesis. Also, the proteins may fluctuate in number as more or less light becomes available as a means of photoacclimation. Similarly, these fluorescent proteins may possess antioxidant capacities to eliminate oxygen radicals produced by photosynthesis. Finally, through modulating photosynthesis, the fluorescent proteins may also serve as a means of regulating the activity of the coral's photosynthetic algal symbionts.
"Alloteuthis subulata" and "Loligo vulgaris", two types of nearly transparent squid, have fluorescent spots above their eyes. These spots reflect incident light, which may serve as a means of camouflage, but also for signaling to other squids for schooling purposes.
Another, well-studied example of fluorescence in the ocean is the hydrozoan "Aequorea victoria". This jellyfish lives in the photic zone off the west coast of North America and was identified as a carrier of green fluorescent protein (GFP) by Osamu Shimomura. The gene for these green fluorescent proteins has been isolated and is scientifically significant because it is widely used in genetic studies to indicate the expression of other genes.
Several species of mantis shrimp, which are stomatopod crustaceans, including "Lysiosquillina glabriuscula", have yellow fluorescent markings along their antennal scales and carapace (shell) that males present during threat displays to predators and other males. The display involves raising the head and thorax, spreading the striking appendages and other maxillipeds, and extending the prominent, oval antennal scales laterally, which makes the animal appear larger and accentuates its yellow fluorescent markings. Furthermore, as depth increases, mantis shrimp fluorescence accounts for a greater part of the visible light available. During mating rituals, mantis shrimp actively fluoresce, and the wavelength of this fluorescence matches the wavelengths detected by their eye pigments.
"Siphonophorae" is an order of marine animals from the phylum Hydrozoa that consist of a specialized medusoid and polyp zooid. Some siphonophores, including the genus Erenna that live in the aphotic zone between depths of 1600 m and 2300 m, exhibit yellow to red fluorescence in the photophores of their tentacle-like tentilla. This fluorescence occurs as a by-product of bioluminescence from these same photophores. The siphonophores exhibit the fluorescence in a flicking pattern that is used as a lure to attract prey.
The predatory deep-sea dragonfish "Malacosteus niger", the closely related genus "Aristostomias" and the species "Pachystomias microdon" use fluorescent red accessory pigments to convert the blue light emitted from their own bioluminescence to red light from suborbital photophores. This red luminescence is invisible to other animals, which allows these dragonfish extra light at dark ocean depths without attracting or signaling predators.
Fluorescence is widespread among amphibians and has been documented in several families of frogs, salamanders and caecilians, but the extent of it varies greatly.
The polka-dot tree frog ("Hypsiboas punctatus"), widely found in South America, was unintentionally discovered to be the first fluorescent amphibian in 2017. The fluorescence was traced to a new compound found in the lymph and skin glands. The main fluorescent compound is Hyloin-L1 and it gives a blue-green glow when exposed to violet or ultraviolet light. The scientists behind the discovery suggested that the fluorescence can be used for communication. They speculated that fluorescence possibly is relatively widespread among frogs. Only a few months later, fluorescence was discovered in the closely related "Hypsiboas atlanticus". Because it is linked to secretions from skin glands, they can also leave fluorescent markings on surfaces where they have been.
In 2019, two other frogs, the tiny pumpkin toadlet ("Brachycephalus ephippium") and red pumpkin toadlet ("B. pitanga") of southeastern Brazil, were found to be have naturally fluorescent skeletons, which is visible through their skin when exposed to ultraviolet light. It was initially speculated that the fluorescence supplemented their already aposematic colours (they are toxic) or that it was related to mate choice (species recognition or determining fitness of a potential partner), but later studies indicate that the former explanation is unlikely, as predation attempts on the toadlets appear to be unaffected by the presence/absence of fluorescence.
In 2020 it was confirmed that green or yellow fluorescence is widespread not only in adult frogs that are exposed to blue or ultraviolet light, but also among tadpoles, salamanders and caecilians. The extent varies greatly depending on species; in some it is highly distinct and in others it is barely noticeable. It can be based on their skin pigmentation, their mucous or their bones.
Swallowtail ("Papilio") butterflies have complex systems for emitting fluorescent light. Their wings contain pigment-infused crystals that provide directed fluorescent light. These crystals function to produce fluorescent light best when they absorb radiance from sky-blue light (wavelength about 420 nm). The wavelengths of light that the butterflies see the best correspond to the absorbance of the crystals in the butterfly's wings. This likely functions to enhance the capacity for signaling.
Parrots have fluorescent plumage that may be used in mate signaling. A study using mate-choice experiments on budgerigars ("Melopsittacus undulates") found compelling support for fluorescent sexual signaling, with both males and females significantly preferring birds with the fluorescent experimental stimulus. This study suggests that the fluorescent plumage of parrots is not simply a by-product of pigmentation, but instead an adapted sexual signal. Considering the intricacies of the pathways that produce fluorescent pigments, there may be significant costs involved. Therefore, individuals exhibiting strong fluorescence may be honest indicators of high individual quality, since they can deal with the associated costs.
Spiders fluoresce under UV light and possess a huge diversity of fluorophores. Remarkably, spiders are the only known group in which fluorescence is “taxonomically widespread, variably expressed, evolutionarily labile, and probably under selection and potentially of ecological importance for intraspecific and interspecific signaling". A study by Andrews et al. (2007) reveals that fluorescence has evolved multiple times across spider taxa, with novel fluorophores evolving during spider diversification. In some spiders, ultraviolet cues are important for predator-prey interactions, intraspecific communication, and camouflaging with matching fluorescent flowers. Differing ecological contexts could favor inhibition or enhancement of fluorescence expression, depending upon whether fluorescence helps spiders be cryptic or makes them more conspicuous to predators. Therefore, natural selection could be acting on expression of fluorescence across spider species.
Scorpions also fluorescent due to the presence of beta carboline in their cuticles.
The "Mirabilis jalapa" flower contains violet, fluorescent betacyanins and yellow, fluorescent betaxanthins. Under white light, parts of the flower containing only betaxanthins appear yellow, but in areas where both betaxanthins and betacyanins are present, the visible fluorescence of the flower is faded due to internal light-filtering mechanisms. Fluorescence was previously suggested to play a role in pollinator attraction, however, it was later found that the visual signal by fluorescence is negligible compared to the visual signal of light reflected by the flower.
Chlorophyll is probably the most widely distributed fluorescent molecule, producing red emission under a range of excitation wavelengths. This attribute of chlorophyll is commonly used by ecologists to measure photosynthetic efficiency.
Gemstones, minerals, may have a distinctive fluorescence or may fluoresce differently under short-wave ultraviolet, long-wave ultraviolet, visible light, or X-rays.
Many types of calcite and amber will fluoresce under shortwave UV, longwave UV and visible light. Rubies, emeralds, and diamonds exhibit red fluorescence under long-wave UV, blue and sometimes green light; diamonds also emit light under X-ray radiation.
Fluorescence in minerals is caused by a wide range of activators. In some cases, the concentration of the activator must be restricted to below a certain level, to prevent quenching of the fluorescent emission. Furthermore, the mineral must be free of impurities such as iron or copper, to prevent quenching of possible fluorescence. Divalent manganese, in concentrations of up to several percent, is responsible for the red or orange fluorescence of calcite, the green fluorescence of willemite, the yellow fluorescence of esperite, and the orange fluorescence of wollastonite and clinohedrite. Hexavalent uranium, in the form of the uranyl cation, fluoresces at all concentrations in a yellow green, and is the cause of fluorescence of minerals such as autunite or andersonite, and, at low concentration, is the cause of the fluorescence of such materials as some samples of hyalite opal. Trivalent chromium at low concentration is the source of the red fluorescence of ruby. Divalent europium is the source of the blue fluorescence, when seen in the mineral fluorite. Trivalent lanthanides such as terbium and dysprosium are the principal activators of the creamy yellow fluorescence exhibited by the yttrofluorite variety of the mineral fluorite, and contribute to the orange fluorescence of zircon. Powellite (calcium molybdate) and scheelite (calcium tungstate) fluoresce intrinsically in yellow and blue, respectively. When present together in solid solution, energy is transferred from the higher-energy tungsten to the lower-energy molybdenum, such that fairly low levels of molybdenum are sufficient to cause a yellow emission for scheelite, instead of blue. Low-iron sphalerite (zinc sulfide), fluoresces and phosphoresces in a range of colors, influenced by the presence of various trace impurities.
Crude oil (petroleum) fluoresces in a range of colors, from dull-brown for heavy oils and tars through to bright-yellowish and bluish-white for very light oils and condensates. This phenomenon is used in oil exploration drilling to identify very small amounts of oil in drill cuttings and core samples.
Organic solutions such anthracene or stilbene, dissolved in benzene or toluene, fluoresce with ultraviolet or gamma ray irradiation. The decay times of this fluorescence are on the order of nanoseconds, since the duration of the light depends on the lifetime of the excited states of the fluorescent material, in this case anthracene or stilbene.
Scintillation is defined a flash of light produced in a transparent material by the passage of a particle (an electron, an alpha particle, an ion, or a high-energy photon). Stilbene and derivatives are used in scintillation counters to detect such particles. Stilbene is also one of the gain mediums used in dye lasers.
Fluorescence is observed in the atmosphere when the air is under energetic electron bombardment. In cases such as the natural aurora, high-altitude nuclear explosions, and rocket-borne electron gun experiments, the molecules and ions formed have a fluorescent response to light.
The common fluorescent lamp relies on fluorescence. Inside the glass tube is a partial vacuum and a small amount of mercury. An electric discharge in the tube causes the mercury atoms to emit mostly ultraviolet light. The tube is lined with a coating of a fluorescent material, called the "phosphor", which absorbs ultraviolet light and re-emits visible light. Fluorescent lighting is more energy-efficient than incandescent lighting elements. However, the uneven spectrum of traditional fluorescent lamps may cause certain colors to appear different than when illuminated by incandescent light or daylight. The mercury vapor emission spectrum is dominated by a short-wave UV line at 254 nm (which provides most of the energy to the phosphors), accompanied by visible light emission at 436 nm (blue), 546 nm (green) and 579 nm (yellow-orange). These three lines can be observed superimposed on the white continuum using a hand spectroscope, for light emitted by the usual white fluorescent tubes. These same visible lines, accompanied by the emission lines of trivalent europium and trivalent terbium, and further accompanied by the emission continuum of divalent europium in the blue region, comprise the more discontinuous light emission of the modern trichromatic phosphor systems used in many compact fluorescent lamp and traditional lamps where better color rendition is a goal.
Fluorescent lights were first available to the public at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Improvements since then have largely been better phosphors, longer life, and more consistent internal discharge, and easier-to-use shapes (such as compact fluorescent lamps). Some high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps couple their even-greater electrical efficiency with phosphor enhancement for better color rendition.
White light-emitting diodes (LEDs) became available in the mid-1990s as LED lamps, in which blue light emitted from the semiconductor strikes phosphors deposited on the tiny chip. The combination of the blue light that continues through the phosphor and the green to red fluorescence from the phosphors produces a net emission of white light.
Glow sticks sometimes utilize fluorescent materials to absorb light from the chemiluminescent reaction and emit light of a different color.
Many analytical procedures involve the use of a fluorometer, usually with a single exciting wavelength and single detection wavelength. Because of the sensitivity that the method affords, fluorescent molecule concentrations as low as 1 part per trillion can be measured.
Fluorescence in several wavelengths can be detected by an array detector, to detect compounds from HPLC flow. Also, TLC plates can be visualized if the compounds or a coloring reagent is fluorescent. Fluorescence is most effective when there is a larger ratio of atoms at lower energy levels in a Boltzmann distribution. There is, then, a higher probability of excitement and release of photons by lower-energy atoms, making analysis more efficient.
Usually the setup of a fluorescence assay involves a light source, which may emit many different wavelengths of light. In general, a single wavelength is required for proper analysis, so, in order to selectively filter the light, it is passed through an excitation monochromator, and then that chosen wavelength is passed through the sample cell. After absorption and re-emission of the energy, many wavelengths may emerge due to Stokes shift and various electron transitions. To separate and analyze them, the fluorescent radiation is passed through an emission monochromator, and observed selectively by a detector.
Fluorescence in the life sciences is used generally as a non-destructive way of tracking or analysis of biological molecules by means of the fluorescent emission at a specific frequency where there is no background from the excitation light, as relatively few cellular components are naturally fluorescent (called intrinsic or autofluorescence).
In fact, a protein or other component can be "labelled" with an extrinsic fluorophore, a fluorescent dye that can be a small molecule, protein, or quantum dot, finding a large use in many biological applications.
The quantification of a dye is done with a spectrofluorometer and finds additional applications in:
Fingerprints can be visualized with fluorescent compounds such as ninhydrin or DFO (1,8-Diazafluoren-9-one). Blood and other substances are sometimes detected by fluorescent reagents, like fluorescein. Fibers, and other materials that may be encountered in forensics or with a relationship to various collectibles, are sometimes fluorescent.
Fluorescent penetrant inspection is used to find cracks and other defects on the surface of a part. Dye tracing, using fluorescent dyes, is used to find leaks in liquid and gas plumbing systems.
Fluorescent colors are frequently used in signage, particularly road signs. Fluorescent colors are generally recognizable at longer ranges than their non-fluorescent counterparts, with fluorescent orange being particularly noticeable. This property has led to its frequent use in safety signs and labels.
Fluorescent compounds are often used to enhance the appearance of fabric and paper, causing a "whitening" effect. A white surface treated with an optical brightener can emit more visible light than that which shines on it, making it appear brighter. The blue light emitted by the brightener compensates for the diminishing blue of the treated material and changes the hue away from yellow or brown and toward white. Optical brighteners are used in laundry detergents, high brightness paper, cosmetics, high-visibility clothing and more. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11555 |
Fundamental theorem of arithmetic
In number theory, the fundamental theorem of arithmetic, also called the unique factorization theorem or the unique-prime-factorization theorem, states that every integer greater than 1 either is a prime number itself or can be represented as the product of prime numbers and that, moreover, this representation is unique, up to (except for) the order of the factors. For example,
The theorem says two things for this example: first, that 1200 be represented as a product of primes, and second, that no matter how this is done, there will always be exactly four 2s, one 3, two 5s, and no other primes in the product.
The requirement that the factors be prime is necessary: factorizations containing composite numbers may not be unique (e.g., 12 = 2 × 6 = 3 × 4).
This theorem is one of the main reasons why 1 is not considered a prime number: if 1 were prime, then factorization into primes would not be unique; for example,
Book VII, propositions 30, 31 and 32, and Book IX, proposition 14 of Euclid's "Elements" are essentially the statement and proof of the fundamental theorem.
(In modern terminology: if a prime "p" divides the product "ab", then "p" divides either "a" or "b" or both.) Proposition 30 is referred to as Euclid's lemma, and it is the key in the proof of the fundamental theorem of arithmetic.
(In modern terminology: every integer greater than one is divided evenly by some prime number.) Proposition 31 is proved directly by infinite descent.
Proposition 32 is derived from proposition 31, and proves that the decomposition is possible.
(In modern terminology: a least common multiple of several prime numbers is not a multiple of any other prime number.) Book IX, proposition 14 is derived from Book VII, proposition 30, and proves partially that the decomposition is unique – a point critically noted by André Weil. Indeed, in this proposition the exponents are all equal to one, so nothing is said for the general case.
Article 16 of Gauss' "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae" is an early modern statement and proof employing modular arithmetic.
Every positive integer "n" > 1 can be represented in exactly one way as a product of prime powers:
where "p"1 < "p"2 < ... < "p"k are primes and the "n""i" are positive integers. This representation is commonly extended to all positive integers, including 1, by the convention that the empty product is equal to 1 (the empty product corresponds to "k" = 0).
This representation is called the canonical representation of "n", or the standard form of "n". For example,
Factors "p"0 = 1 may be inserted without changing the value of "n" (e.g., 1000 = 23×30×53). In fact, any positive integer can be uniquely represented as an infinite product taken over all the positive prime numbers:
where a finite number of the "n""i" are positive integers, and the rest are zero. Allowing negative exponents provides a canonical form for positive rational numbers.
The canonical representations of the product, greatest common divisor (GCD), and least common multiple (LCM) of two numbers "a" and "b" can be expressed simply in terms of the canonical representations of "a" and "b" themselves:
However, integer factorization, especially of large numbers, is much more difficult than computing products, GCDs, or LCMs. So these formulas have limited use in practice.
Many arithmetic functions are defined using the canonical representation. In particular, the values of additive and multiplicative functions are determined by their values on the powers of prime numbers.
The proof uses Euclid's lemma ("Elements" VII, 30): If a prime divides the product of two integers and , then must divide at least one of those integers and .
It must be shown that every integer greater than 1 is either prime or a product of primes. First, 2 is prime. Then, by strong induction, assume this is true for all numbers greater than 1 and less than "n". If "n" is prime, there is nothing more to prove. Otherwise, there are integers "a" and "b", where "n" = "ab", and . By the induction hypothesis, and are products of primes. But then is a product of primes.
Suppose, to the contrary, there is an integer that has two distinct prime factorizations. Let "n" be the least such integer and write "n" = "p"1 "p"2 ... "p""j" = "q"1 "q"2 ... "q""k", where each "p""i" and "q""i" is prime. (Note "j" and "k" are both at least 2.) We see "p"1 divides "q"1 "q"2 ... "q""k", so "p"1 divides some "q""i" by Euclid's lemma. Without loss of generality, say "p"1 divides "q"1. Since "p"1 and "q"1 are both prime, it follows that "p"1 = "q"1. Returning to our factorizations of "n", we may cancel these two terms to conclude "p"2 ... "p""j" = "q"2 ... "q""k". We now have two distinct prime factorizations of some integer strictly smaller than "n", which contradicts the minimality of "n".
The fundamental theorem of arithmetic can also be proved without using Euclid's lemma, as follows:
Assume that "s" > 1 is the smallest positive integer which is the product of prime numbers in two different ways. If "s" were prime then it would factor uniquely as itself, so "s" is not prime and there must be at least two primes in each factorization of "s":
If any "p""i" = "q""j" then, by cancellation, "s"/"p""i" = "s"/"q""j" would be another positive integer, different from s, which is greater than 1 and also has two distinct factorizations. But "s"/"p""i" is smaller than "s", meaning "s" would not actually be the smallest such integer. Therefore every "p""i" must be distinct from every "q""j".
Without loss of generality, take "p"1 < "q"1 (if this is not already the case, switch the "p" and "q" designations.) Consider
and note that 1 < "q"2 ≤ "t" < "s". Therefore "t" must have a unique prime factorization. By rearrangement we see,
Here "u" = (("p"2 ... "p""m") - ("q"2 ... "q""n")) is positive, for if it were negative or zero then so would be its product with "p""1", but that product equals "t" which is positive. So "u" is either 1 or factors into primes. In either case, "t" = "p"1"u" yields a prime factorization of "t", which we know to be unique, so "p"1 appears in the prime factorization of "t".
If ("q"1 - "p"1) equaled 1 then the prime factorization of "t" would be all "q"'s, which would preclude "p"1 from appearing. Thus ("q"1 - "p"1) is not 1, but is positive, so it factors into primes: ("q"1 - "p"1) = ("r"1 ... "r""h"). This yields a prime factorization of
which we know is unique. Now, "p"1 appears in the prime factorization of "t", and it is not equal to any "q", so it must be one of the "r"'s. That means "p"1 is a factor of ("q"1 - "p"1), so there exists a positive integer "k" such that "p"1"k" = ("q"1 - "p"1), and therefore
But that means "q"1 has a proper factorization, so it is not a prime number. This contradiction shows that "s" does not actually have two different prime factorizations. As a result, there is no smallest positive integer with multiple prime factorizations, hence all positive integers greater than 1 factor uniquely into primes.
The first generalization of the theorem is found in Gauss's second monograph (1832) on biquadratic reciprocity. This paper introduced what is now called the ring of Gaussian integers, the set of all complex numbers "a" + "bi" where "a" and "b" are integers. It is now denoted by formula_9 He showed that this ring has the four units ±1 and ±"i", that the non-zero, non-unit numbers fall into two classes, primes and composites, and that (except for order), the composites have unique factorization as a product of primes.
Similarly, in 1844 while working on cubic reciprocity, Eisenstein introduced the ring formula_10, where formula_11 formula_12 is a cube root of unity. This is the ring of Eisenstein integers, and he proved it has the six units formula_13 and that it has unique factorization.
However, it was also discovered that unique factorization does not always hold. An example is given by formula_14. In this ring one has
Examples like this caused the notion of "prime" to be modified. In formula_14 it can be proven that if any of the factors above can be represented as a product, e.g., 2 = "ab", then one of "a" or "b" must be a unit. This is the traditional definition of "prime". It can also be proven that none of these factors obeys Euclid's lemma; e.g.,
2 divides neither (1 + ) nor (1 − ) even though it divides their product 6. In algebraic number theory 2 is called irreducible in formula_14 (only divisible by itself or a unit) but not prime in formula_14 (if it divides a product it must divide one of the factors). The mention of formula_14 is required because 2 is prime and irreducible in formula_20 Using these definitions it can be proven that in any integral domain a prime must be irreducible. Euclid's classical lemma can be rephrased as "in the ring of integers formula_21 every irreducible is prime". This is also true in formula_22 and formula_23 but not in formula_24
The rings in which factorization into irreducibles is essentially unique are called unique factorization domains. Important examples are polynomial rings over the integers or over a field, Euclidean domains and principal ideal domains.
In 1843 Kummer introduced the concept of ideal number, which was developed further by Dedekind (1876) into the modern theory of ideals, special subsets of rings. Multiplication is defined for ideals, and the rings in which they have unique factorization are called Dedekind domains.
There is a version of unique factorization for ordinals, though it requires some additional conditions to ensure uniqueness.
The "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae" has been translated from Latin into English and German. The German edition includes all of his papers on number theory: all the proofs of quadratic reciprocity, the determination of the sign of the Gauss sum, the investigations into biquadratic reciprocity, and unpublished notes.
The two monographs Gauss published on biquadratic reciprocity have consecutively numbered sections: the first contains §§ 1–23 and the second §§ 24–76. Footnotes referencing these are of the form "Gauss, BQ, § "n"". Footnotes referencing the "Disquisitiones Arithmeticae" are of the form "Gauss, DA, Art. "n"".
These are in Gauss's "Werke", Vol II, pp. 65–92 and 93–148; German translations are pp. 511–533 and 534–586 of the German edition of the "Disquisitiones". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11556 |
Flamenco
Flamenco (), in its strictest sense, is an art form based on the various folkloric music traditions of southern Spain in the autonomous community of Andalusia and Murcia. In a wider sense, the term is used to refer to a variety of Spanish musical styles. The oldest record of flamenco music dates to 1774 in the book "Las Cartas Marruecas" by José Cadalso . Flamenco has been influenced by and associated with the Romani people in Spain; however, its origin and style are uniquely Andalusian .
Manuel Ríos Ruiz notes that the development of flamenco is well documented: "the theatre movement of sainetes (one-act plays) and tonadillas, popular song books and song sheets, customs, studies of dances, and "toques", perfection, newspapers, graphic documents in paintings and engravings...in continuous evolution together with rhythm, the poetic stanzas, and the ambiance" .
Nevertheless, the exact origin of flamenco is unknown and the subject of many hypotheses. The most widespread is that flamenco was developed through the cross-cultural interchange between moriscos and gitanos (Romani people of Spain) during the sixteenth century specifically in East Andalusia ; the "Diccionario de la lengua española" (Dictionary of the Spanish Language) primarily attributes the creation of the style directly to the Spanish Romani .
Flamenco has become popular all over the world, especially the United States and Japan. In Japan, there are more flamenco academies than there are in Spain . "In El Salvador the group Alma Flamenca is considered the maximum representative and pioneer of this musical movement" .
On November 16, 2010, UNESCO declared flamenco one of the Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity .
There are many suggestions for the origin of the word "flamenco" as a musical term, but no solid evidence for any of them. The word is Spanish for "Flemish" (meaning "native of Flanders", a one-time Spanish possession) . The Spanish verb "flambear" means "to flambé". The word was not recorded as a musical and dance term until the late 18th century, in the book "Las Cartas Marruecas" by José Cadalso (1774) .
One theory, proposed by Andalusian historian Blas Infante, is that the word is derived from the Hispano-Arabic term "fellah mengu", meaning "expelled peasant", referring to the Andalusians of Islamic faith and the remaining Moriscos who fled with the Roma newcomers (; ).
Another theory is that the Spanish word "flamenco" is a derivative of the Spanish word, meaning "fire" or "flame". The word "flamenco" may have been used for fiery behaviour, which could have come to be applied to the Gitano players and performers .
"Palos" (formerly known as "cantes") are flamenco styles, classified by criteria such as rhythmic pattern, mode, chord progression, stanzaic form and geographic origin. There are over 50 different "palos", some are sung unaccompanied while others have guitar or other accompaniment. Some forms are danced while others are not. Some are reserved for men and others for women while some may be performed by either, though these traditional distinctions are breaking down: the "Farruca", for example, once a male dance, is now commonly performed by women too.
There are many ways to categorize "Palos" but they traditionally fall into three classes: the most serious is known as "cante jondo" (or "cante grande"), while lighter, frivolous forms are called "cante chico". Forms that do not fit either category are classed as "cante intermedio" . These are the best known "palos" (; ):
A typical flamenco recital with voice and guitar accompaniment comprises a series of pieces (not exactly "songs") in different palos. Each song is a set of verses (called "copla", "tercio", or "letras"), punctuated by guitar interludes ("falsetas"). The guitarist also provides a short introduction setting the tonality, "compás" (see below) and tempo of the cante . In some palos, these falsetas are played with a specific structure too; for example, the typical sevillanas is played in an AAB pattern, where A and B are the same falseta with only a slight difference in the ending .
Flamenco uses the Flamenco mode (which can also be described as the modern Phrygian mode ("modo frigio"), or a harmonic version of that scale with a major 3rd degree), in addition to the major and minor scales commonly used in modern Western music. The Phrygian mode occurs in "palos" such as soleá, most bulerías, siguiriyas, tangos and tientos.
A typical chord sequence, usually called the "Andalusian cadence" may be viewed as in a modified Phrygian: in E the sequence is Am–G–F–E . According to Manolo Sanlúcar E is here the tonic, F has the harmonic function of dominant while Am and G assume the functions of subdominant and mediant respectively .
Guitarists tend to use only two basic inversions or "chord shapes" for the tonic chord (music), the open 1st inversion E and the open 3rd inversion A, though they often transpose these by using a capo. Modern guitarists such as Ramón Montoya, have introduced other positions: Montoya himself started to use other chords for the tonic in the modern Dorian sections of several "palos"; F for "tarantas", B for "granaínas" and A for the "minera". Montoya also created a new "palo" as a solo for guitar, the "rondeña" in C with "scordatura". Later guitarists have further extended the repertoire of tonalities, chord positions and "scordatura".
There are also "palos" in major mode; most cantiñas and alegrías, guajiras, some "bulerías" and "tonás", and the "cabales" (a major type of "siguiriyas"). The minor mode is restricted to the "Farruca", the "milongas" (among "cantes de ida y vuelta"), and some styles of "tangos, bulerías", etc. In general traditional palos in major and minor mode are limited harmonically to two-chord (tonic–dominant) or three-chord (tonic–subdominant–dominant) progressions . However modern guitarists have introduced chord substitution, transition chords, and even modulation.
"Fandangos" and derivative "palos" such as "malagueñas", "tarantas" and "cartageneras are bimodal": guitar introductions are in Phrygian mode while the singing develops in major mode, modulating to Phrygian at the end of the stanza .
Dionisio Preciado, quoted by Sabas de , established the following characteristics for the melodies of flamenco singing:
Musicologist Hipólito Rossy adds the following characteristics :
Compás is the Spanish word for metre or time signature (in classical music theory). It also refers to the rhythmic cycle, or layout, of a "palo".
The compás is fundamental to flamenco. Compás is most often translated as rhythm but it demands far more precise interpretation than any other Western style of music. If there is no guitarist available, the compás is rendered through hand clapping ("palmas") or by hitting a table with the knuckles. The guitarist uses techniques like strumming ("rasgueado") or tapping the soundboard ("golpe"). Changes of chords emphasize the most important downbeats.
Flamenco uses three basic counts or measures: Binary, Ternary and a form of a twelve-beat cycle that is unique to flamenco. There are also free-form styles including, among others, the tonás, saetas, malagueñas, tarantos, and some types of fandangos.
There are three types of 12-beat rhythms, which vary in their layouts, or use of accentuations: soleá, seguiriya and bulería.
The Bulerías is the emblematic palo of flamenco: today its 12-beat cycle is most often played with accents on the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 10th and 12th beats. The accompanying "palmas" are played in groups of 6 beats, giving rise to a multitude of counter-rhythms and percussive voices within the 12 beat compás. In certain regions like, Xerez, Spain, the rhythm stays in a simpler six-count rhythm, only including the twelve count in a musical resolve.
The origins, history and importance of the flamenco guitar is covered in the main Wikipedia entry for the Flamenco guitar.
The origins, history and importance of the cante is covered in the main Wikipedia entry for the cante flamenco.
"El baile flamenco" is known for its emotional intensity, proud carriage, expressive use of the arms and rhythmic stamping of the feet, unlike tap dance or Irish dance which use different techniques. As with any dance form, many different styles of flamenco have developed.
In the twentieth century, flamenco danced informally at gitano (Roma) celebrations in Spain was considered the most "authentic" form of flamenco. There was less virtuoso technique in gitano flamenco, but the music and steps are fundamentally the same. The arms are noticeably different from classical flamenco, curving around the head and body rather than extending, often with a bent elbow.
"Flamenco puro" otherwise known as “flamenco por derecho” is considered the form of performance flamenco closest to its gitano influences. In this style, the dance is often performed solo, and is based on signals and calls of structural improvisation rather than choreographed. In the improvisational style, castanets are not often used.
"Classical flamenco" is the style most frequently performed by Spanish flamenco dance companies. It is danced largely in a proud and upright style. For women, the back is often held in a marked back bend. Unlike the more gitano influenced styles, there is little movement of the hips, the body is tightly held and the arms are long, like a ballet dancer. In fact many of the dancers in these companies are trained in Ballet Clásico Español more than in the improvisational language of flamenco. Flamenco has both influenced and been influenced by Ballet Clásico Español, as evidenced by the fusion of the two ballets created by 'La Argentinita' in the early part of the twentieth century and later, by Joaquín Cortés, eventually by the entire Ballet Nacional de España et al.
In the 1950s Jose Greco was one of the most famous male Flamenco dancers, performing on stage worldwide and on television including the Ed Sullivan Show, and reviving the art almost singlehandedly. Greco's company left a handful of prominent pioneers, most notably: Maria Benitez and Vicente Romero of New Mexico. Today, there are many centers of Flamenco art. Albuquerque, New Mexico is considered the “Center of the Nation” for Flamenco Art. Much of this is due to Maria Benitez's 37 years of sold-out summer seasons. Albuquerque boasts three distinct prominent centers: National Institute of Flamenco, Casa Flamenca and Flamenco Works. Each center dedicates time to daily training, cultural diffusion and world-class performance equaled only to world-class performances one would find in the heart of Southern Spain, Andalucía.
Modern flamenco is a highly technical dance style requiring years of study. The emphasis for both male and female performers is on lightning-fast footwork performed with absolute precision. In addition, the dancer may have to dance while using props such as castanets, canes, shawls and fans.
"Flamenco nuevo" is a recent marketing phenomenon in Flamenco. Marketed as a “newer version” of Flamenco, its roots came from world-music promoters trying to sell albums of artists who created music that “sounded like” or had Spanish-style influences. Though some of this music was played in similar pitches, scales and was well-received, it has little to nothing to do with the Art of Flamenco guitar, dance, cante Jondo or the improvisational language. “Nuevo Flamenco” consists largely of compositions and repertoire, while Traditional Flamenco music and dance is a language composed of stanzas, actuated by oral formulaic calls and signals.
The flamenco most foreigners are familiar with is a style that was developed as a spectacle for tourists. To add variety, group dances are included and even solos are more likely to be choreographed. The frilly, voluminous spotted dresses are derived from a style of dress worn for the Sevillanas at the annual Feria in Seville.
In traditional flamenco, only the very young or older dancers are considered to have the emotional innocence or maturity to adequately convey the "duende" (soul) of the genre . Therefore, unlike other dance forms, where dancers turn professional through techniques early on to take advantage of youth and strength, many flamenco dancers do not hit their peak until their thirties and will continue to perform into their fifties and beyond. One artist that is considered a young master is Juan Manuel Fernandez Montoya, otherwise known as “Farruquito.” At age 12, Farruquito was considered a pioneer and for “Flamenco Puro,” or “Flamenco por Derecho,” because of his emotional depth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11558 |
Father Christmas
Father Christmas is the traditional English name for the personification of Christmas. Although now known as a Christmas gift-bringer, and normally considered to be synonymous with American culture's Santa Claus which is now known worldwide, he was originally part of an unrelated and much older English folkloric tradition. The recognisably modern figure of the English Father Christmas developed in the late Victorian period, but Christmas had been personified for centuries before then.
English personifications of Christmas were first recorded in the 15th century, with Father Christmas himself first appearing in the mid 17th century in the aftermath of the English Civil War. The Puritan-controlled English government had legislated to abolish Christmas, considering it papist, and had outlawed its traditional customs. Royalist political pamphleteers, linking the old traditions with their cause, adopted Old Father Christmas as the symbol of 'the good old days' of feasting and good cheer. Following the Restoration in 1660, Father Christmas's profile declined. His character was maintained during the late 18th and into the 19th century by the Christmas folk plays later known as mummers plays.
Until Victorian times, Father Christmas was concerned with adult feasting and merry-making. He had no particular connection with children, nor with the giving of presents, nocturnal visits, stockings, chimneys or reindeer. But as later Victorian Christmases developed into child-centric family festivals, Father Christmas became a bringer of gifts. The popular American myth of Santa Claus arrived in England in the 1850s and Father Christmas started to take on Santa's attributes. By the 1880s the new customs had become established, with the nocturnal visitor sometimes being known as Santa Claus and sometimes as Father Christmas. He was often illustrated wearing a long red hooded gown trimmed with white fur.
Any residual distinctions between Father Christmas and Santa Claus largely faded away in the early years of the 20th century, and modern dictionaries consider the terms Father Christmas and Santa Claus to be synonymous.
The custom of merrymaking and feasting at Christmastide first appears in the historical record during the High Middle Ages (c 1100–1300). This almost certainly represented a continuation of pre-Christian midwinter celebrations in Britain of which—as the historian Ronald Hutton has pointed out—"we have no details at all." Personifications came later, and when they did they reflected the existing custom.
The first known English personification of Christmas was associated with merry-making, singing and drinking. A carol attributed to Richard Smart, Rector of Plymtree in Devon from 1435 to 1477, has 'Sir Christemas' announcing the news of Christ's birth and encouraging his listeners to drink: ""Buvez bien par toute la compagnie", / Make good cheer and be right merry, / And sing with us now joyfully: Nowell, nowell."
Many late medieval Christmas customs incorporated both sacred and secular themes. In Norwich in January 1443, at a traditional battle between the flesh and the spirit (represented by Christmas and Lent), John Gladman, crowned and disguised as 'King of Christmas', rode behind a pageant of the months "disguysed as the seson requird" on a horse decorated with tinfoil.
In most of England the archaic word 'Yule' had been replaced by 'Christmas' by the 11th century, but in some places 'Yule' survived as the normal dialect term. The City of York maintained an annual St Thomas's Day celebration of "The Riding of Yule and his Wife" which involved a figure representing Yule who carried bread and a leg of lamb. In 1572 the riding was suppressed on the orders of the Archbishop, who complained of the "undecent and uncomely disguising" which drew multitudes of people from divine service.
Such personifications, illustrating the medieval fondness for pageantry and symbolism, extended throughout the Tudor and Stuart periods with Lord of Misrule characters, sometimes called 'Captain Christmas', 'Prince Christmas' or 'The Christmas Lord', presiding over feasting and entertainment in grand houses, university colleges and Inns of Court."
In his allegorical play "Summer's Last Will and Testament", written in about 1592, Thomas Nashe introduces for comic effect a miserly Christmas character who refuses to keep the feast. He is reminded by Summer of the traditional role that he ought to be playing: "Christmas, how chance thou com’st not as the rest, / Accompanied with some music, or some song? / A merry carol would have graced thee well; / Thy ancestors have used it heretofore."
Early 17th century writers used the techniques of personification and allegory as a means of defending Christmas from attacks by radical Protestants.
Responding to a perceived decline in the levels of Christmas hospitality provided by the gentry, Ben Jonson in "Christmas, His Masque" (1616) dressed his Old Christmas in out-of-date fashions: "attir'd in round Hose, long Stockings, a close Doublet, a high crownd Hat with a Broach, a long thin beard, a Truncheon, little Ruffes, white shoes, his Scarffes, and Garters tyed crosse". Surrounded by guards, Christmas asserts his rightful place in the Protestant Church and protests against attempts to exclude him: "Why Gentlemen, doe you know what you doe? ha! would you ha'kept me out? Christmas, old Christmas? Christmas of London, and Captaine Christmas? ... they would not let me in: I must come another time! a good jeast, as if I could come more then once a yeare; why, I am no dangerous person, and so I told my friends, o'the Guard. I am old Gregorie Christmas still, and though I come out of Popes-head-alley as good a Protestant, as any i'my Parish."
The stage directions to "The Springs Glorie", a 1638 court masque by Thomas Nabbes, state, "Christmas is personated by an old reverend Gentleman in a furr'd gown and cappe &c." Shrovetide and Christmas dispute precedence, and Shrovetide issues a challenge: "I say Christmas you are past date, you are out of the Almanack. Resigne, resigne." To which Christmas responds: "Resigne to thee! I that am the King of good cheere and feasting, though I come but once a yeare to raigne over bak't, boyled, roast and plum-porridge, will have being in despight of thy lard-ship."
This sort of character was to feature repeatedly over the next 250 years in pictures, stage plays and folk dramas. Initially known as 'Sir Christmas' or 'Lord Christmas', he later became increasingly referred to as 'Father Christmas'.
The rise of puritanism led to accusations of popery in connection with pre-reformation Christmas traditions. When the Puritans took control of government in the mid-1640s they made concerted efforts to abolish Christmas and to outlaw its traditional customs. For 15 years from around 1644, before and during the Interregnum of 1649-1660, the celebration of Christmas in England was forbidden. The suppression was given greater legal weight from June 1647 when parliament passed an "Ordinance for Abolishing of Festivals" which formally abolished Christmas in its entirety, along with the other traditional church festivals of Easter and Whitsun.
It was in this context that Royalist pamphleteers linked the old traditions of Christmas with the cause of King and Church, while radical puritans argued for the suppression of Christmas both in its religious and its secular aspects. In the hands of Royalist pamphlet writers, Old Father Christmas served as the symbol and spokesman of 'the good old days' of feasting and good cheer, and it became popular for Christmastide's defenders to present him as lamenting past times.
"The Arraignment, Conviction and Imprisoning of Christmas" (January 1646) describes a discussion between a town crier and a Royalist gentlewoman enquiring after Old Father Christmas who 'is gone from hence'. Its anonymous author, a parliamentarian, presents Father Christmas in a negative light, concentrating on his allegedly popish attributes: "For age, this hoarie headed man was of great yeares, and as white as snow; he entred the Romish Kallender time out of mind; [he] is old ...; he was full and fat as any dumb Docter of them all. He looked under the consecrated Laune sleeves as big as Bul-beefe ... but, since the catholike liquor is taken from him, he is much wasted, so that he hath looked very thin and ill of late ... But yet some other markes that you may know him by, is that the wanton Women dote after him; he helped them to so many new Gownes, Hatts, and Hankerches, and other fine knacks, of which he hath a pack on his back, in which is good store of all sorts, besides the fine knacks that he got out of their husbands’ pockets for household provisions for him. He got Prentises, Servants, and Schollars many play dayes, and therefore was well beloved by them also, and made all merry with Bagpipes, Fiddles, and other musicks, Giggs, Dances, and Mummings."
The character of 'Christmas' (also called 'father Christmas') speaks in a pamphlet of 1652, immediately after the English Civil War, published anonymously by the satirical Royalist poet John Taylor: "The Vindication of Christmas or, His Twelve Yeares' Observations upon the Times". A frontispiece illustrates an old, bearded Christmas in a brimmed hat, a long open robe and undersleeves. Christmas laments the pitiful quandary he has fallen into since he came into "this headlesse countrey". "I was in good hope that so long a misery would have made them glad to bid a merry Christmas welcome. But welcome or not welcome, I am come..." He concludes with a verse: "Lets dance and sing, and make good chear, / For Christmas comes but once a year."
In 1658 Josiah King published "The Examination and Tryall of Old Father Christmas" (the earliest citation for the specific term 'Father Christmas' recognised by the Oxford English Dictionary). King portrays Father Christmas as a white-haired old man who is on trial for his life based on evidence laid against him by the Commonwealth. Father Christmas's counsel mounts the defence: "Me thinks my Lord, the very Clouds blush, to see this old Gentleman thus egregiously abused. if at any time any have abused themselves by immoderate eating, and drinking or otherwise spoil the creatures, it is none of this old mans fault; neither ought he to suffer for it; for example the Sun and the Moon are by the heathens worship’d are they therefore bad because idolized? so if any abuse this old man, they are bad for abusing him, not he bad, for being abused." The jury acquits.
Following the Restoration in 1660, most traditional Christmas celebrations were revived, although as these were no longer contentious the historic documentary sources become fewer.
In 1678 Josiah King reprinted his 1658 pamphlet with additional material. In this version, the restored Father Christmas is looking better: "[he] look't so smug and pleasant, his cherry cheeks appeared through his thin milk white locks, like [b]lushing Roses vail'd with snow white Tiffany ... the true Emblem of Joy and Innocence."
"Old Christmass Returnd", a ballad collected by Samuel Pepys, celebrated the revival of festivities in the latter part of the century: "Old Christmass is come for to keep open house / He scorns to be guilty of starving a mouse, / Then come boyes and welcome, for dyet the chief / Plumb pudding, Goose, Capon, minc't pies & Roast beef".
As interest in Christmas customs waned, Father Christmas's profile declined. He still continued to be regarded as Christmas's presiding spirit, although his occasional earlier associations with the Lord of Misrule died out with the disappearance of the Lord of Misrule himself. The historian Ronald Hutton notes, "after a taste of genuine misrule during the Interregnum nobody in the ruling elite seems to have had any stomach for simulating it." Hutton also found "patterns of entertainment at late Stuart Christmases are remarkably timeless [and] nothing very much seems to have altered during the next century either." The diaries of 18th and early 19th century clergy take little note of any Christmas traditions.
In "The Country Squire", a play of 1732, Old Christmas is depicted as someone who is rarely-found: a generous squire. The character Scabbard remarks, "Men are grown so ... stingy, now-a-days, that there is scarce One, in ten Parishes, makes any House-keeping. ... Squire Christmas ... keeps a good House, or else I do not know of One besides." When invited to spend Christmas with the squire, he comments "I will ... else I shall forget Christmas, for aught I see." Similar opinions were expressed in "Round About Our Coal Fire ... with some curious Memories of Old Father Christmas; Shewing what Hospitality was in former Times, and how little there remains of it at present" (1734, reprinted with Father Christmas subtitle 1796).
David Garrick's popular 1774 Drury Lane production of "A Christmas Tale" included a personified Christmas character who announced "Behold a personage well known to fame; / Once lov'd and honour'd — Christmas is my name! /.../ I, English hearts rejoic'd in days of yore; / for new strange modes, imported by the score, / You will not sure turn Christmas out of door!"
By the late 18th century Father Christmas had become a stock character in the Christmas folk plays later known as mummers plays. During the following century they became probably the most widespread of all calendar customs. Hundreds of villages had their own mummers who performed traditional plays around the neighbourhood, especially at the big houses. Father Christmas appears as a character in plays of the Southern England type, being mostly confined to plays from the south and west of England and Wales. His ritual opening speech is characterised by variants of a couplet closely reminiscent of John Taylor's "But welcome or not welcome, I am come..." from 1652.
The oldest extant speech is from Truro, Cornwall in the late 1780s:
During the Victorian period Christmas customs enjoyed a significant revival, including the figure of Father Christmas himself as the emblem of 'good cheer'. His physical appearance at this time became more variable, and he was by no means always portrayed as the old and bearded figure imagined by 17th century writers.
In his poem "Marmion" of 1808 Walter Scott wrote
Scott's phrase Merry England has been adopted by historians to describe the romantic notion that there was a golden age of the English past, allegedly since lost, that was characterised by universal hospitality and charity. The notion had a profound influence on the way that popular customs were seen, and most of the 19th century writers who bemoaned the state of contemporary Christmases were, at least to some extent, yearning for the mythical Merry England version.
Thomas Hervey's "The Book of Christmas" (1836), illustrated by Robert Seymour, exemplifies this view. In Hervey's personification of the lost charitable festival, "Old Father Christmas, at the head of his numerous and uproarious family, might ride his goat through the streets of the city and the lanes of the village, but he dismounted to sit for some few moments by each man's hearth; while some one or another of his merry sons would break away, to visit the remote farm-houses or show their laughing faces at many a poor man's door." Seymour's illustration shows Old Christmas dressed in a fur gown, crowned with a holly wreath, and riding a yule goat.
In an extended allegory, Hervey imagines his contemporary Old Father Christmas as a white-bearded magician dressed in a long robe and crowned with holly. His children are identified as Roast Beef (Sir Loin) and his faithful squire or bottle-holder Plum Pudding; the slender figure of Wassail with her fount of perpetual youth; a 'tricksy spirit' who bears the bowl and is on the best of terms with the Turkey; Mumming; Misrule, with a feather in his cap; the Lord of Twelfth Night under a state-canopy of cake and wearing his ancient crown; Saint Distaff looking like an old maid ("she used to be a sad romp; but her merriest days we fear are over"); Carol singing; the Waits; and the twin-faced Janus.
Hervey ends by lamenting the lost "uproarious merriment" of Christmas, and calls on his readers "who know anything of the 'old, old, very old, gray-bearded gentleman' or his family to aid us in our search after them; and with their good help we will endeavor to restore them to some portion of their ancient honors in England".
Father Christmas or Old Christmas, represented as a jolly-faced bearded man often surrounded by plentiful food and drink, started to appear regularly in illustrated magazines of the 1840s. He was dressed in a variety of costumes and usually had holly on his head, as in these illustrations from the "Illustrated London News":
Charles Dickens's 1843 novel "A Christmas Carol" was highly influential, and has been credited both with reviving interest in Christmas in England and with shaping the themes attached to it. A famous image from the novel is John Leech's illustration of the 'Ghost of Christmas Present'. Although not explicitly named Father Christmas, the character wears a holly wreath, is shown sitting among food, drink and wassail bowl, and is dressed in the traditional loose furred gown—but in green rather than the red that later become ubiquitous.
Old Father Christmas continued to make his annual appearance in Christmas folk plays throughout the 19th century, his appearance varying considerably according to local custom. Sometimes, as in Hervey's book of 1836, he was portrayed (below left) as a hunchback.
One unusual portrayal (below centre) was described several times by William Sandys between 1830 and 1852, all in essentially the same terms: "Father Christmas is represented as a grotesque old man, with a large mask and comic wig, and a huge club in his hand." This representation is considered by the folklore scholar Peter Millington to be the result of the southern Father Christmas replacing the northern Beelzebub character in a hybrid play. A spectator to a Worcestershire version of the "St George" play in 1856 noted, "Beelzebub was identical with Old Father Christmas."
A mummers play mentioned in "The Book of Days" (1864) opened with "Old Father Christmas, bearing, as emblematic devices, the holly bough, wassail-bowl, &c". A corresponding illustration (below right) shows the character wearing not only a holly wreath but also a gown with a hood.
In a Hampshire folk play of 1860 Father Christmas is portrayed as a disabled soldier: "[he] wore breeches and stockings, carried a begging-box, and conveyed himself upon two sticks; his arms were striped with chevrons like a noncommissioned officer."
In the latter part of the 19th century and the early years of the next the folk play tradition in England rapidly faded, and the plays almost died out after the First World War taking their ability to influence the character of Father Christmas with them.
In pre-Victorian personifications, Father Christmas had been concerned essentially with adult feasting and games. He had no particular connection with children, nor with the giving of presents. But as Victorian Christmases developed into family festivals centred mainly on children, Father Christmas started to be associated with the giving of gifts.
The Cornish Quaker diarist Barclay Fox relates a family party given on 26 December 1842 that featured "the venerable effigies of Father Christmas with scarlet coat & cocked hat, stuck all over with presents for the guests, by his side the old year, a most dismal & haggard old beldame in a night cap and spectacles, then 1843 [the new year], a promising baby asleep in a cradle".
In Britain, the first evidence of a child writing letters to Father Christmas requesting gift has been found in 1895.
The figure of Santa Claus had originated in the US, drawing at least partly upon Dutch St Nicolas traditions. A New York publication of 1821, "A New-Year’s Present", contained an illustrated poem "Old Santeclaus with Much Delight" in which a Santa figure on a reindeer sleigh brings presents for good children and a "long, black birchen rod" for use on the bad ones. In 1823 came the famous poem "A Visit from St. Nicholas", usually attributed to the New York writer Clement Clarke Moore, which developed the character further. Moore's poem became immensely popular and Santa Claus customs, initially localized in the Dutch American areas, were becoming general in the United States by the middle of the century.
The January 1848 edition of "Howitt's Journal of Literature and Popular Progress", published in London, carried an illustrated article entitled "New Year's Eve in Different Nations". This noted that one of the chief features of the American New Year's Eve was a custom carried over from the Dutch, namely the arrival of Santa Claus with gifts for the children. Santa Claus is "no other than the Pelz Nickel of Germany ... the good Saint Nicholas of Russia ... He arrives in Germany about a fortnight before Christmas, but as may be supposed from all the visits he has to pay there, and the length of his voyage, he does not arrive in America, until this eve."
From 1851 advertisements began appearing in UK newspapers for a new transatlantic passenger service to and from New York aboard the Eagle Line's ship "Santa Claus", and returning visitors and emigrants to the UK on this and other vessels will have been familiar with the American figure. There were some early adoptions in the UK. A Scottish reference has Santa Claus leaving presents on New Year's Eve 1852, with children "hanging their stockings up on each side of the fire-place, in their sleeping apartments, at night, and waiting patiently till morning, to see what Santa Claus puts into them during their slumbers". In Ireland in 1853, on the other hand, presents were being left on Christmas Eve according to a character in a newspaper short story who says "... tomorrow will be Christmas. What will Santa Claus bring us?" A poem published in Belfast in 1858 includes the lines "The children sleep; they dream of him, the fairy, / Kind Santa Claus, who with a right good will / Comes down the chimney with a footstep airy ..."
"A Visit from St. Nicholas" was published in England in December 1853 in "Notes and Queries". An explanatory note states that the St Nicholas figure is known as Santa Claus in New York State and as Krishkinkle in Pennsylvania.
1854 marked the first English publication of "Carl Krinkin; or, The Christmas Stocking" by the popular American author Susan Warner. The novel was published three times in London in 1854-5, and there were several later editions. Characters in the book include both Santa Claus (complete with sleigh, stocking and chimney), leaving presents on Christmas Eve and—separately—Old Father Christmas. The Stocking of the title tells of how in England, "a great many years ago", it saw Father Christmas enter with his traditional refrain "Oh! here come I, old father Christmas, welcome or not ..." He wore a crown of yew and ivy, and he carried a long staff topped with holly-berries. His dress "was a long brown robe which fell down about his feet, and on it were sewed little spots of white cloth to represent snow".
As the US-inspired customs became popular in England, Father Christmas started to take on Santa's attributes. His costume became more standardised, and although depictions often still showed him carrying holly, the holly crown became rarer and was often replaced with a hood. It still remained common, though, for Father Christmas and Santa Claus to be distinguished, and as late as the 1890s there were still examples of the old-style Father Christmas appearing without any of the new American features.
The blurring of public roles occurred quite rapidly. In an 1854 newspaper description of the public Boxing Day festivities in Luton, Bedfordshire, a gift-giving Father Christmas/Santa Claus figure was already being described as 'familiar': "On the right-hand side was Father Christmas's bower, formed of evergreens, and in front was the proverbial Yule log, glistening in the snow ... He wore a great furry white coat and cap, and a long white beard and hair spoke to his hoar antiquity. Behind his bower he had a large selection of fancy articles which formed the gifts he distributed to holders of prize tickets from time to time during the day ... Father Christmas bore in his hand a small Christmas tree laden with bright little gifts and bon-bons, and altogether he looked like the familiar Santa Claus or Father Christmas of the picture book." Discussing the shops of Regent Street in London, another writer noted in December of that year, "you may fancy yourself in the abode of Father Christmas or St. Nicholas himself."
During the 1860s and 70s Father Christmas became a popular subject on Christmas cards, where he was shown in many different costumes. Sometimes he gave presents and sometimes received them.
An illustrated article of 1866 explained the concept of "The Cave of Mystery". In an imagined children's party this took the form of a recess in the library which evoked "dim visions of the cave of Aladdin" and was "well filled ... with all that delights the eye, pleases the ear, or tickles the fancy of children". The young guests "tremblingly await the decision of the improvised Father Christmas, with his flowing grey beard, long robe, and slender staff".
From the 1870s onwards, Christmas shopping had begun to evolve as a separate seasonal activity, and by the late 19th century it had become an important part of the English Christmas. The purchasing of toys, especially from the new department stores, became strongly associated with the season. The first retail Christmas Grotto was set up in JR Robert's store in Stratford, London in December 1888, and shopping arenas for children—often called 'Christmas Bazaars'—spread rapidly during the 1890s and 1900s, helping to assimilate Father Christmas/Santa Claus into society.
Sometimes the two characters continued to be presented as separate, as in a procession at the Olympia Exhibition of 1888 in which both Father Christmas and Santa Claus took part, with Little Red Riding Hood and other children's characters in between. At other times the characters were conflated: in 1885 Mr Williamson's London Bazaar in Sunderland was reported to be a "Temple of juvenile delectation and delight. In the well-lighted window is a representation of Father Christmas, with the printed intimation that 'Santa Claus is arranging within.'"
Even after the appearance of the store grotto, it was still not firmly established who should hand out gifts at parties. A writer in the "Illustrated London News" of December 1888 suggested that a Sibyl should dispense gifts from a 'snow cave', but a little over a year later she had changed her recommendation to a gypsy in a 'magic cave'. Alternatively, the hostess could "have Father Christmas arrive, towards the end of the evening, with a sack of toys on his back. He must have a white head and a long white beard, of course. Wig and beard can be cheaply hired from a theatrical costumier, or may be improvised from tow in case of need. He should wear a greatcoat down to his heels, liberally sprinkled with flour as though he had just come from that land of ice where Father Christmas is supposed to reside."
The nocturnal visitor aspect of the American myth took much longer to become naturalised. From the 1840s it had been accepted readily enough that presents were left for children by unseen hands overnight on Christmas Eve, but the receptacle was a matter of debate, as was the nature of the visitor. Dutch tradition had St Nicholas leaving presents in shoes laid out on 6 December, while in France shoes were filled by Père Noël. The older shoe custom and the newer American stocking custom trickled only slowly into Britain, with writers and illustrators remaining uncertain for many years. Although the stocking eventually triumphed, the shoe custom had still not been forgotten by 1901 when an illustration entitled "Did you see Santa Claus, Mother?" was accompanied by the verse "Her Christmas dreams / Have all come true; / Stocking o'erflows / and likewise shoe."
Before Santa Claus and the stocking became ubiquitous, one English tradition had been for fairies to visit on Christmas Eve to leave gifts in shoes set out in front of the fireplace.
Aspects of the American Santa Claus myth were sometimes adopted in isolation and applied to Father Christmas. In a short fantasy piece, the editor of the "Cheltenham Chronicle" in 1867 dreamt of being seized by the collar by Father Christmas, "rising up like a Geni of the Arabian Nights ... and moving rapidly through the "aether"". Hovering over the roof of a house, Father Christmas cries 'Open Sesame' to have the roof roll back to disclose the scene within.
It was not until the 1870s that the tradition of a nocturnal Santa Claus began to be adopted by ordinary people. A poem "The Baby's Stocking" that was syndicated to local newspapers in 1871 took it for granted that readers would be familiar with the custom, and would understand the joke that the stocking might be missed as "Santa Claus wouldn't be looking for anything half so small." On the other hand, when "The Preston Guardian" published its poem "Santa Claus and the Children" in 1877 it felt the need to include a long preface explaining exactly who Santa Claus was.
Folklorists and antiquarians were not, it seems, familiar with the new local customs and Ronald Hutton notes that in 1879 the newly formed Folk-Lore Society, ignorant of American practices, was still "excitedly trying to discover the source of the new belief".
In January 1879 the antiquarian Edwin Lees wrote to "Notes and Queries" seeking information about an observance he had been told about by 'a country person': "On Christmas Eve, when the inmates of a house in the country retire to bed, all those desirous of a present place a stocking outside the door of their bedroom, with the expectation that some mythical being called Santiclaus will fill the stocking or place something within it before the morning. This is of course well known, and the master of the house does in reality place a Christmas gift secretly in each stocking; but the giggling girls in the morning, when bringing down their presents, affect to say that Santiclaus visited and filled the stockings in the night. From what region of the earth or air this benevolent Santiclaus takes flight I have not been able to ascertain ..." Lees received several responses, linking 'Santiclaus' with the continental traditions of St Nicholas and 'Petit Jesus' (Christkind), but no-one mentioned Father Christmas and no-one was correctly able to identify the American source.
By the 1880s the American myth had become firmly established in the popular English imagination, the nocturnal visitor sometimes being known as Santa Claus and sometimes as Father Christmas (often complete with a hooded robe). An 1881 poem imagined a child awaiting a visit from Santa Claus and asking "Will he come like Father Christmas, / Robed in green and beard all white? / Will he come amid the darkness? / Will he come at all tonight?" The French writer Max O'Rell, who evidently thought the custom was established in the England of 1883, explained that Father Christmas ""descend par la cheminée, pour remplir de bonbons et de joux les bas que les enfants ont suspendus au pied du lit."" [comes down the chimney, to fill with sweets and games the stockings that the children have hung from the foot of the bed]. And in her poem "Agnes: A Fairy Tale" (1891), Lilian M Bennett treats the two names as interchangeable: "Old Santa Claus is exceedingly kind, / but he won't come to Wide-awakes, you will find... / Father Christmas won't come if he can hear / You're awake. So to bed my bairnies dear." The commercial availability from 1895 of Tom Smith & Co's "Santa Claus Surprise Stockings" indicates how deeply the American myth had penetrated English society by the end of the century.
Representations of the developing character at this period were sometimes labelled 'Santa Claus' and sometimes 'Father Christmas', with a tendency for the latter still to allude to old-style associations with charity and with food and drink, as in several of these "Punch" illustrations:
Any residual distinctions between Father Christmas and Santa Claus largely faded away in the early years of the new century, and it was reported in 1915, "The majority of children to-day ... do not know of any difference between our old Father Christmas and the comparatively new Santa Claus, as, by both wearing the same garb, they have effected a happy compromise."
It took many years for authors and illustrators to agree that Father Christmas's costume should be portrayed as red—although that was always the most common colour—and he could sometimes be found in a gown of brown, green, blue or white. Mass media approval of the red costume came following a Coca-Cola advertising campaign that was launched in 1931.
Father Christmas's common form for much of the 20th century was described by his entry in the "Oxford English Dictionary". He is "the personification of Christmas as a benevolent old man with a flowing white beard, wearing a red sleeved gown and hood trimmed with white fur, and carrying a sack of Christmas presents". One of the OED's sources is a 1919 cartoon in "Punch", reproduced here. The caption reads:
In 1951 an editorial in "The Times" opined that while most adults may be under the impression that [the English] Father Christmas is home-bred, and is "a good insular John Bull old gentleman", many children, "led away ... by the false romanticism of sledges and reindeer", post letters to Norway addressed simply to Father Christmas or, "giving him a foreign veneer, Santa Claus".
Differences between the English and US representations were discussed in "The Illustrated London News" of 1985. The classic illustration by the US artist Thomas Nast was held to be "the authorised version of how Santa Claus should look—in America, that is." In Britain, people were said to stick to the older Father Christmas, with a long robe, large concealing beard, and boots similar to Wellingtons.
Father Christmas appeared in many 20th century English-language works of fiction, including J. R. R. Tolkien's "Father Christmas Letters", a series of private letters to his children written between 1920 and 1942 and first published in 1976. Other 20th century publications include C. S. Lewis's "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" (1950), Raymond Briggs's "Father Christmas" (1973) and its sequel "Father Christmas Goes on Holiday" (1975), Debbie Macomber's "There's Something About Christmas" (2005), Robin Jones Gunn's "Father Christmas Series" (2007), Catherine Spencer's "A Christmas to Remember" (2007), and Richard Paul Evans's "The Gift" (2007). The character was also celebrated in popular songs, including "I Believe in Father Christmas" by Greg Lake (1974) and "Father Christmas" by The Kinks (1977).
In 1991, Raymond Briggs's two books were adapted as an animated short film, Father Christmas, starring Mel Smith as the voice of the title character.
Modern dictionaries consider the terms Father Christmas and Santa Claus to be synonymous. The respective characters are now to all intents and purposes indistinguishable, although some people are still said to prefer the term 'Father Christmas' over 'Santa', nearly 150 years after Santa's arrival in England. According to "Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable" (19th edn, 2012), Father Christmas is considered to be "[a] British rather than a US name for Santa Claus, associating him specifically with Christmas. The name carries a somewhat socially superior cachet and is thus preferred by certain advertisers." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11561 |
Fossil Record
Fossil Record is a biannual peer-reviewed scientific journal covering palaeontology. It was established in 1998 as the Mitteilungen aus dem Museum für Naturkunde in Berlin, Geowissenschaftliche Reihe and originally published on behalf of the "Museum für Naturkunde" by Wiley-VCH; since 2014 it has been published by Copernicus Publications. The editors-in-chief are Martin Aberhan, Dieter Korn, and Florian Witzmann (Museum für Naturkunde).
The journal is abstracted and indexed in the Science Citation Index Expanded, BIOSIS Previews, The Zoological Record, and Scopus. According to the "Journal Citation Reports", the journal has a 2013 impact factor of 0.913. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11564 |
Frequency modulation synthesis
Frequency modulation synthesis (or FM synthesis) is a form of sound synthesis whereby the frequency of a waveform is changed by modulating its frequency with a modulator. The frequency of an oscillator is altered "in accordance with the amplitude of a modulating signal".
FM synthesis can create both harmonic and inharmonic sounds. To synthesize harmonic sounds, the modulating signal must have a harmonic relationship to the original carrier signal. As the amount of frequency modulation increases, the sound grows progressively complex. Through the use of modulators with frequencies that are non-integer multiples of the carrier signal (i.e. inharmonic), inharmonic bell-like and percussive spectra can be created.
FM synthesis using analog oscillators may result in pitch instability. However, FM synthesis can also be implemented digitally, which is more stable and became standard practice. Digital FM synthesis (implemented as phase modulation) was the basis of several musical instruments beginning as early as 1974. Yamaha built the first prototype digital synthesizer in 1974, based on FM synthesis, before commercially releasing the Yamaha GS-1 in 1980. The Synclavier I, manufactured by New England Digital Corporation beginning in 1978, included a digital FM synthesizer, using an FM synthesis algorithm licensed from Yamaha. Yamaha's groundbreaking DX7 synthesizer, released in 1983, brought FM to the forefront of synthesis in the mid-1980s.
FM synthesis had also become the usual setting for games and software until the mid-nineties. Through sound cards like the AdLib and Sound Blaster, IBM PCs popularized Yamaha chips like OPL2 and OPL3. OPNB was used as main basic sound generator board in SNK Neo Geo operated arcades (MVS) and home console (AES). Later variant in use for Taito Z System. The related OPN2 was used in the Fujitsu FM Towns Marty and Sega Genesis as one of its sound generator chips. Similarly, Sharp X68000 and MSX (Yamaha computer unit) also use FM-based soundchip, OPM.
By the mid-20th century, frequency modulation (FM), a means of carrying sound, had been understood for decades and was being used to broadcast radio transmissions. In the 1960s, at Stanford University, California, John Chowning developed FM synthesis, a means of using FM to generate sounds different from analog synthesis. The FM synthesis algorithm was licensed to Japanese company Yamaha in 1973.
The implementation commercialized by Yamaha (US Patent 4018121 Apr 1977 or U.S. Patent 4,018,121) is actually based on phase modulation, but the results end up being equivalent mathematically as both are essentially a special case of QAM.
Yamaha's engineers began adapting Chowning's algorithm for use in a commercial digital synthesizer, adding improvements such as the "key scaling" method to avoid the introduction of distortion that normally occurred in analog systems during frequency modulation, though it would take several years before Yamaha released their FM digital synthesizers. In the 1970s, Yamaha were granted a number of patents, under the company's former name "Nippon Gakki Seizo Kabushiki Kaisha", evolving Chowning's work. Yamaha built the first prototype FM digital synthesizer in 1974. Yamaha eventually commercialized FM synthesis technology with the Yamaha GS-1, the first FM digital synthesizer, released in 1980.
FM synthesis was the basis of some of the early generations of digital synthesizers, most notably those from Yamaha, as well as New England Digital Corporation under license from Yamaha. Yamaha's popular DX7 synthesizer, released in 1983, was ubiquitous throughout the 1980s. Several other models by Yamaha provided variations and evolutions of FM synthesis during that decade.
Yamaha had patented its hardware implementation of FM in the 1970s, allowing it to nearly monopolize the market for FM technology until the mid-1990s. Casio developed a related form of synthesis called phase distortion synthesis, used in its CZ range of synthesizers. It had a similar (but slightly differently derived) sound quality to the DX series. Don Buchla implemented FM on his instruments in the mid-1960s, prior to Yamaha's patent. His 158, 258 and 259 dual oscillator modules had a specific FM control voltage input, and the model 208 (Music Easel) had a modulation oscillator hard-wired to allow FM as well as AM of the primary oscillator. These early applications used analog oscillators, and this capability was also followed by other modular synthesizers and portable synthesizers including Minimoog and ARP Odyssey.
With the expiration of the Stanford University FM patent in 1995, digital FM synthesis can now be implemented freely by other manufacturers. The FM synthesis patent brought Stanford $20 million before it expired, making it (in 1994) "the second most lucrative licensing agreement in Stanford's history". FM today is mostly found in software-based synths such as FM8 by Native Instruments or Sytrus by Image-Line, but it has also been incorporated into the synthesis repertoire of some modern digital synthesizers, usually coexisting as an option alongside other methods of synthesis such as subtractive, sample-based synthesis, additive synthesis, and other techniques. The degree of complexity of the FM in such hardware synths may vary from simple 2-operator FM, to the highly flexible 6-operator engines of the Korg Kronos and Alesis Fusion, to creation of FM in extensively modular engines such as those in the latest synthesisers by Kurzweil Music Systems.
New hardware synths specifically marketed for their FM capabilities disappeared from the market after the release of the Yamaha SY99 and FS1R, and even those marketed their highly powerful FM abilities as counterparts to sample-based synthesis and formant synthesis respectively. However, well-developed FM synthesis options are a feature of Nord Lead synths manufactured by Clavia, the Alesis Fusion range, the Korg Oasys and Kronos and the Modor NF-1. Various other synthesizers offer limited FM abilities to supplement their main engines.
Most recently, in 2016, Korg released the Korg Volca FM, a, 3-voice, 6 operators FM iteration of the Korg Volca series of compact, affordable desktop modules, and Yamaha released the Montage, which combines a 128-voice sample-based engine with a 128-voice FM engine. This iteration of FM is called FM-X, and features 8 operators; each operator has a choice of several basic wave forms, but each wave form has several parameters to adjust its spectrum. The Yamaha Montage was followed by the more affordable Yamaha MODX in 2018, with 64-voice, 8 operators FM-X architecture in addition to a 128-voice sample-based engine. Elektron in 2018 launched the Digitone, an 8-voice, 4 operators FM synth featuring Elektron's renowned sequence engine.
FM-X synthesis was introduced with the Yamaha Montage synthesizers in 2016. FM-X uses 8 operators. Each FM-X operator has a set of multi-spectral wave forms to choose from, which means each FM-X operator can be equivalent to a stack of 3 or 4 DX7 FM operators. The list of selectable wave forms includes sine waves, the All1 and All2 wave forms, the Odd1 and Odd2 wave forms, and the Res1 and Res2 wave forms. The sine wave selection works the same as the DX7 wave forms. The All1 and All2 wave forms are a saw-tooth wave form. The Odd1 and Odd2 wave forms are pulse or square waves. These two types of wave forms can be used to model the basic harmonic peaks in the bottom of the harmonic spectrum of most instruments. The Res1 and Res2 wave forms move the spectral peak to a specific harmonic and can be used to model either triangular or rounded groups of harmonics further up in the spectrum of an instrument. Combining an All1 or Odd1 wave form with multiple Res1 (or Res2) wave forms (and adjusting their amplitudes) can model the harmonic spectrum of an instrument or sound.
Combining sets of 8 FM operators with multi-spectral wave forms began in 1999 by Yamaha in the FS1R. The FS1R had 16 operators, 8 standard FM operators and 8 additional operators that used a noise source rather than an oscillator as its sound source. By adding in tuneable noise sources the FS1R could model the sounds produced in the human voice and in a wind instrument, along with making percussion instrument sounds. The FS1R also contained an additional wave form called the Formant wave form. Formants can be used to model resonating body instrument sounds like the cello, violin, acoustic guitar, bassoon, English horn, or human voice. Formants can even be found in the harmonic spectrum of several brass instruments.
The spectrum generated by FM synthesis with one modulator is expressed as follows:
For modulation signal formula_1, the carrier signal is
If we were to ignore the constant phase terms on the carrier formula_3 and the modulator formula_4, finally we would get the following expression, as seen on and :
where formula_6 are angular frequencies (formula_7) of carrier and modulator, formula_8 is frequency modulation index, and amplitudes formula_9 is formula_10-th , respectively. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11569 |
Friedrich Bessel
Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel (; 22 July 1784 – 17 March 1846) was a German astronomer, mathematician, physicist and geodesist. He was the first astronomer who determined reliable values for the distance from the sun to another star by the method of parallax. A special type of mathematical functions were named Bessel functions after Bessel's death, though they had originally been discovered by Daniel Bernoulli and then generalised by Bessel.
Bessel was born in Minden, Westphalia, then capital of the Prussian administrative region Minden-Ravensberg, as second son of a civil servant. He was born into a large family in Germany. At the age of 14 Bessel was apprenticed to the import-export concern Kulenkamp at Bremen. The business's reliance on cargo ships led him to turn his mathematical skills to problems in navigation. This in turn led to an interest in astronomy as a way of determining longitude.
Bessel came to the attention of a major figure of German astronomy at the time, Heinrich Wilhelm Olbers, by producing a refinement on the orbital calculations for Halley's Comet in 1804, using old observation data taken from Thomas Harriot and Nathaniel Torporley in 1607.
Two years later Bessel left Kulenkamp and became Johann Hieronymus Schröter's assistant at Lilienthal Observatory near Bremen. There he worked on James Bradley's stellar observations to produce precise positions for some 3,222 stars.
Despite lacking any higher education, especially at university, Bessel was appointed director of the newly founded Königsberg Observatory by King Frederick William III of Prussia in January 1810, at the age of 25. On the recommendation of fellow mathematician and physicist Carl Friedrich Gauss (with whom he regularly corresponded) he was awarded an honorary doctor degree from the University of Göttingen in March 1811.
Around that time, the two men engaged in an epistolary correspondence. However, when they met in person in 1825, they quarrelled; the details are not known.
In 1842 Bessel took part in the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Manchester, accompanied by the geophysicist Georg Adolf Erman and the mathematician Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi.
Bessel married Johanna, the daughter of the chemist and pharmacist Karl Gottfried Hagen who was the uncle of the physician and biologist Hermann August Hagen and the hydraulic engineer Gotthilf Hagen, the latter also Bessel's student and assistant from 1816 to 1818. The physicist Franz Ernst Neumann, Bessel's close companion and colleague, was married to Johanna Hagen's sister Florentine. Neumann introduced Bessel's exacting methods of measurement and data reduction into his mathematico-physical seminar, which he co-directed with Carl Gustav Jacob Jacobi at Königsberg. These exacting methods had a lasting impact upon the work of Neumann's students and upon the Prussian conception of precision in measurement.
Bessel had two sons and three daughters. His eldest daughter, Marie, married Georg Adolf Erman, member of the scholar family Erman. One of their sons was the renowned Egyptologist Adolf Erman.
After several months of illness Bessel died in March 1846 at his observatory from retroperitoneal fibrosis.
While the observatory was still in construction Bessel elaborated the "Fundamenta Astronomiae" based on Bradley's observations. As a preliminary result he produced tables of atmospheric refraction that won him the Lalande Prize from the French Academy of Sciences in 1811. The Königsberg Observatory began operation in 1813.
Starting in 1819, Bessel determined the position of over 50,000 stars using a meridian circle from Reichenbach, assisted by some of his qualified students. The most prominent of them was Friedrich Wilhelm Argelander.
With this work done, Bessel was able to achieve the feat for which he is best remembered today: he is credited with being the first to use the stellar parallax in calculating the distance to a star. Astronomers had believed for some time that parallax would provide the first accurate measurement of interstellar distances. In 1838 Bessel announced that 61 Cygni had a parallax of 0.314 arcseconds; which, given the diameter of the Earth's orbit, indicated that the star is 10.3 ly away. Given the current measurement of 11.4 ly, Bessel's figure had an error of 9.6%. Nearly at the same time Friedrich Georg Wilhelm Struve and Thomas Henderson measured the parallaxes of Vega and Alpha Centauri.
As well as helping determine the parallax of 61 Cygni, Bessel's precise measurements using a new meridian circle from "Adolf Repsold" allowed him to notice deviations in the motions of Sirius and Procyon, which he deduced must be caused by the gravitational attraction of unseen companions.
His announcement of Sirius's "dark companion" in 1844 was the first correct claim of a previously unobserved companion by positional measurement, and eventually led to the discovery of Sirius B.
Bessel was the first scientist who realized the effect later called "personal equation", that several simultaneously observing persons determine slightly different values, especially recording the transition time of stars.
In 1824, Bessel developed a new method for calculating the circumstances of eclipses using the so-called Besselian elements. His method simplified the calculation to such an extent, without sacrificing accuracy, that it is still in use today.
Bessel's work in 1840 contributed to the discovery of Neptune in 1846 at Berlin Observatory, several months after Bessel's death. On Bessel's proposal (1825) the Prussian Academy of Sciences started the edition of the "Berliner Akademische Sternkarten" ("Berlin Academic Star Charts") as an international project. One unpublished new chart enabled Johann Gottfried Galle to find Neptune near the position calculated by LeVerrier in 1846.
In the second decade of the 19th century while studying the dynamics of 'many-body' gravitational systems, Bessel developed what are now known as Bessel functions. Critical for the solution of certain differential equations, these functions are used throughout both classical and quantum physics.
Bessel is responsible for the correction to the formula for the sample variance estimator named in his honour. This is the use of the factor "n" − 1 in the denominator of the formula, rather than just "n". This occurs when the "sample mean" rather than the "population mean" is used to centre the data and since the sample mean is a linear combination of the data the residual to the sample mean overcounts the number of degrees of freedom by the number of constraint equations — in this case one. "(Also see Bessel's correction)".
An additional field of work was geodesy.
Bessel published a method for solving the main
geodesic problem.
He was responsible for the survey of East Prussia which joined the Prussian and Russian triangulation networks
and he obtained an estimate of increased accuracy for the figure of the Earth,
nowadays referred to as the Bessel ellipsoid.
Bessel was elected as member of the Prussian Academy of Sciences in 1812, the French Academy of Sciences in 1816, foreign member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in 1823, and fellow of the Royal Society in 1825. In 1832, he was elected a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1827 Bessel became member of the Royal Institute of the Netherlands, predecessor of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Bessel won the Gold Medal of the Royal Astronomical Society twice in 1829 and 1841.
The largest crater in the Moon's Mare Serenitatis and the main-belt asteroid 1552 Bessel, as well as two fjords in Greenland, Bessel Fjord, NE Greenland and Bessel Fjord, NW Greenland, were named in his honour. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11574 |
Fermi paradox
The Fermi paradox, named after Italian-American physicist Enrico Fermi, is the apparent contradiction between the lack of evidence for extraterrestrial civilizations and various high estimates for their probability (such as some optimistic estimates for the Drake equation).
The following are some of the facts that together serve to highlight the apparent contradiction:
There have been many attempts to explain the Fermi paradox, primarily suggesting that intelligent extraterrestrial beings are extremely rare, that the lifetime of such civilizations is short, or that they exist but (for various reasons) we see no evidence.
Although he was not the first to consider this question, Fermi's name is associated with the paradox because of a casual conversation in the summer of 1950 with fellow physicists Edward Teller, Herbert York and Emil Konopinski. While walking to lunch, the men discussed recent UFO reports and the possibility of faster-than-light travel. The conversation moved on to other topics, until during lunch Fermi allegedly said suddenly, "But where is everybody?" (although the exact quote is uncertain).
Fermi was not the first to ask the question. An earlier implicit mention was by Konstantin Tsiolkovsky in an unpublished manuscript from 1933. He noted "people deny the presence of intelligent beings on the planets of the universe" because "(i) if such beings exist they would have visited Earth, and (ii) if such civilizations existed then they would have given us some sign of their existence." This was not a paradox for others, who took this to imply the absence of ETs. But it was one for him, since he believed in extraterrestrial life and the possibility of space travel. Therefore, he proposed what is now known as the zoo hypothesis and speculated that mankind is not yet ready for higher beings to contact us. That Tsiolkovsky himself may not have been the first to discover the paradox is suggested by his above-mentioned reference to other people's reasons for denying the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations.
In 1975, Michael H. Hart published a detailed examination of the paradox, one of the first to do so. He argued that if intelligent extraterrestrials exist, and are capable of space travel, then the galaxy could have been colonized in a time much less than that of the age of the Earth. However, we see no evidence they have been here, which Hart called "Fact A".
Other names closely related to Fermi's question ("Where are they?") include the Great Silence, and "silentium universi" (Latin for "silence of the universe"), though these only refer to one portion of the Fermi Paradox, that we see no evidence of other civilizations.
At Los Alamos National Laboratory in the summer of 1950, Fermi and co-workers Emil Konopinski, Edward Teller, and Herbert York had one or several casual lunchtime conversation(s).
Herb York does not remember a previous conversation, although he says it makes sense given how all three later reacted to Fermi's outburst. Teller remembers seven or eight of them at the table, so he may well be remembering a different previous conversation.
In one version, the three men discussed a spate of recent UFO reports while walking to lunch. Konopinski remembered mentioning a magazine cartoon which showed aliens stealing New York City trash cans, and as he wrote years later, "More amusing was Fermi's comment, that it was a very reasonable theory since it accounted for two separate phenomena."
Teller remembered Fermi asking him, "Edward, what do you think. How probable is it that within the next ten years we shall have clear evidence of a material object moving faster than light?" Teller said, "10^-6" (one in a million). Fermi said, "This is much too low. The probability is more like ten percent" (which Teller wrote in 1984 was "the well known figure for a Fermi miracle").
At lunch, Fermi suddenly exclaimed, "Where are they?" (Teller's remembrance), or "Don't you ever wonder where everybody is?" (York's remembrance), or "But where is everybody?" (Konopinski's remembrance).
Teller wrote, "The result of his question was general laughter because of the strange fact that in spite of Fermi's question coming from the clear blue, everybody around the table seemed to understand at once that he was talking about extraterrestrial life." York wrote, "Somehow . . . we all knew he meant extra-terrestrials." However, Emil Konopinski was not emphatic that he immediately knew Fermi was referring to possible aliens, merely writing "It was his way of putting it that drew laughs from us."
Regarding the continuation of the conversation, York wrote in 1984 that Fermi "followed up with a series of calculations on the probability of earthlike planets, the probability of life given an earth, the probability of humans given life, the likely rise and duration of high technology, and so on. He concluded on the basis of such calculations that we ought to have been visited long ago and many times over."
Teller remembers that not much came of this conversation "except perhaps a statement that the distances to the next location of living beings may be very great and that, indeed, as far as our galaxy is concerned, we are living somewhere in the sticks, far removed from the metropolitan area of the galactic center."
Fermi died of cancer in 1954. However, in letters to the three surviving men decades later in 1984, Dr. Eric Jones of Los Alamos was able to partially put the original conversation back together. He informed each of the men that he wished to include a reasonably accurate version or composite in the written proceedings he was putting together for a previously-held conference entitled "Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience."
Jones first sent a letter to Edward Teller which included a secondhand account from Hans Mark. Teller responded, and then Jones sent Teller's letter to Herbert York. York responded, and finally, Jones sent both Teller's and York's letters to Emil Konopinski who also responded. Furthermore, Konopinski was able to later identify a cartoon which Jones found as the one involved in the conversation and thereby help to settle the time period as being the summer of 1950.
The Fermi paradox is a conflict between the argument that scale and probability seem to favor intelligent life being common in the universe, and the total lack of evidence of intelligent life having ever arisen anywhere other than on the Earth.
The first aspect of the Fermi paradox is a function of the scale or the large numbers involved: there are an estimated 200–400 billion stars in the Milky Way (2–4 × 1011) and 70 sextillion (7×1022) in the observable universe. Even if intelligent life occurs on only a minuscule percentage of planets around these stars, there might still be a great number of extant civilizations, and if the percentage were high enough it would produce a significant number of extant civilizations in the Milky Way. This assumes the mediocrity principle, by which the Earth is a typical planet.
The second aspect of the Fermi paradox is the argument of probability: given intelligent life's ability to overcome scarcity, and its tendency to colonize new habitats, it seems possible that at least some civilizations would be technologically advanced, seek out new resources in space, and colonize their own star system and, subsequently, surrounding star systems. Since there is no significant evidence on Earth, or elsewhere in the known universe, of other intelligent life after 13.8 billion years of the universe's history, there is a conflict requiring a resolution. Some examples of possible resolutions are that intelligent life is rarer than we think, that our assumptions about the general development or behavior of intelligent species are flawed, or, more radically, that our current scientific understanding of the nature of the universe itself is quite incomplete.
The Fermi paradox can be asked in two ways. The first is, "Why are no aliens or their artifacts found here on Earth, or in the Solar System?" If interstellar travel is possible, even the "slow" kind nearly within the reach of Earth technology, then it would only take from 5 million to 50 million years to colonize the galaxy. This is relatively brief on a geological scale, let alone a cosmological one. Since there are many stars older than the Sun, and since intelligent life might have evolved earlier elsewhere, the question then becomes why the galaxy has not been colonized already. Even if colonization is impractical or undesirable to all alien civilizations, large-scale "exploration" of the galaxy could be possible by probes. These might leave detectable artifacts in the Solar System, such as old probes or evidence of mining activity, but none of these have been observed.
The second form of the question is "Why do we see no signs of intelligence elsewhere in the universe?" This version does not assume interstellar travel, but includes other galaxies as well. For distant galaxies, travel times may well explain the lack of alien visits to Earth, but a sufficiently advanced civilization could potentially be observable over a significant fraction of the size of the observable universe. Even if such civilizations are rare, the scale argument indicates they should exist somewhere at some point during the history of the universe, and since they could be detected from far away over a considerable period of time, many more potential sites for their origin are within range of our observation. It is unknown whether the paradox is stronger for our galaxy or for the universe as a whole.
The theories and principles in the Drake equation are closely related to the Fermi paradox. The equation was formulated by Frank Drake in 1961 in an attempt to find a systematic means to evaluate the numerous probabilities involved in the existence of alien life. The speculative equation considers the rate of star formation in the galaxy; the fraction of stars with planets and the number per star that are habitable; the fraction of those planets that develop life; the fraction that develop "intelligent" life; the fraction that have detectable, technological intelligent life; and finally the length of time such communicable civilizations are detectable. The fundamental problem is that the last four terms are completely unknown, rendering statistical estimates impossible.
The Drake equation has been used by both optimists and pessimists, with wildly differing results. The first scientific meeting on the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which had 10 attendees including Frank Drake and Carl Sagan, speculated that the number of civilizations was roughly between 1,000 and 100,000,000 civilizations in the Milky Way galaxy. Conversely, Frank Tipler and John D. Barrow used pessimistic numbers and speculated that the average number of civilizations in a galaxy is much less than one. Almost all arguments involving the Drake equation suffer from the overconfidence effect, a common error of probabilistic reasoning about low-probability events, by guessing specific numbers for likelihoods of events whose mechanism is not yet understood, such as the likelihood of abiogenesis on an Earth-like planet, with current likelihood estimates varying over many hundreds of orders of magnitude. An analysis that takes into account some of the uncertainty associated with this lack of understanding has been carried out by Anders Sandberg, Eric Drexler and Toby Ord, and suggests that, with very high probability, either intelligent civilizations are plentiful in our galaxy or humanity is alone in the observable universe, with the lack of observation of intelligent civilizations pointing towards the latter option.
The Great Filter, in the context of the Fermi paradox, is whatever prevents "dead matter" from giving rise, in time, to expanding, lasting life according to the Kardashev scale. The most commonly agreed-upon low probability event is abiogenesis: a gradual process of increasing complexity of the first self-replicating molecules by a randomly occurring chemical process. Other proposed great filters are the emergence of eukaryotic cells or of meiosis or some of the steps involved in the evolution of a brain capable of complex logical deductions.
Astrobiologists Dirk Schulze-Makuch and William Bains, reviewing the history of life on Earth, including convergent evolution, concluded that transitions such as oxygenic photosynthesis, the eukaryotic cell, multicellularity, and tool-using intelligence are likely to occur on any Earth-like planet given enough time. They argue that the Great Filter may be abiogenesis, the rise of technological human-level intelligence, or an inability to settle other worlds because of self-destruction or a lack of resources.
There are two parts of the Fermi paradox that rely on empirical evidence—that there are many potential habitable planets, and that we see no evidence of life. The first point, that many suitable planets exist, was an assumption in Fermi's time but is now supported by the discovery that exoplanets are common. Current models predict billions of habitable worlds in our galaxy.
The second part of the paradox, that we see no evidence of extraterrestrial life, is also an active field of scientific research. This includes both efforts to find any indication of life, and efforts specifically directed to finding intelligent life. These searches have been made since 1960, and several are ongoing.
Although astronomers do not usually search for extraterrestrials, they have observed phenomena that they could not immediately explain without positing an intelligent civilization as the source. For example, pulsars, when first discovered in 1967, were called little green men (LGM) because of the precise repetition of their pulses. In all cases, explanations with no need for intelligent life have been found for such observations, but the possibility of discovery remains. Proposed examples include asteroid mining that would change the appearance of debris disks around stars, or spectral lines from nuclear waste disposal in stars.
Radio technology and the ability to construct a radio telescope are presumed to be a natural advance for technological species, theoretically creating effects that might be detected over interstellar distances. The careful searching for non-natural radio emissions from space may lead to the detection of alien civilizations. Sensitive alien observers of the Solar System, for example, would note unusually intense radio waves for a G2 star due to Earth's television and telecommunication broadcasts. In the absence of an apparent natural cause, alien observers might infer the existence of a terrestrial civilization. Such signals could be either "accidental" by-products of a civilization, or deliberate attempts to communicate, such as the Arecibo message. It is unclear whether "leakage", as opposed to a deliberate beacon, could be detected by an extraterrestrial civilization. The most sensitive radio telescopes on Earth, , would not be able to detect non-directional radio signals even at a fraction of a light-year, but other civilizations could theoretically have much better equipment.
A number of astronomers and observatories have attempted and are attempting to detect such evidence, mostly through the SETI organization. Several decades of SETI analysis have not revealed any unusually bright or meaningfully repetitive radio emissions.
Exoplanet detection and classification is a very active sub-discipline in astronomy, and the first possibly terrestrial planet discovered within a star's habitable zone was found in 2007. New refinements in exoplanet detection methods, and use of existing methods from space (such as the Kepler and TESS missions) are starting to detect and characterize Earth-size planets, and determine if they are within the habitable zones of their stars. Such observational refinements may allow us to better gauge how common potentially habitable worlds are.
Self-replicating probes could exhaustively explore a galaxy the size of the Milky Way in as little as a million years. If even a single civilization in the Milky Way attempted this, such probes could spread throughout the entire galaxy. Another speculation for contact with an alien probe—one that would be trying to find human beings—is an alien Bracewell probe. Such a hypothetical device would be an autonomous space probe whose purpose is to seek out and communicate with alien civilizations (as opposed to von Neumann probes, which are usually described as purely exploratory). These were proposed as an alternative to carrying a slow speed-of-light dialogue between vastly distant neighbors. Rather than contending with the long delays a radio dialogue would suffer, a probe housing an artificial intelligence would seek out an alien civilization to carry on a close-range communication with the discovered civilization. The findings of such a probe would still have to be transmitted to the home civilization at light speed, but an information-gathering dialogue could be conducted in real time.
Direct exploration of the Solar System has yielded no evidence indicating a visit by aliens or their probes. Detailed exploration of areas of the Solar System where resources would be plentiful may yet produce evidence of alien exploration, though the entirety of the Solar System is vast and difficult to investigate. Attempts to signal, attract, or activate hypothetical Bracewell probes in Earth's vicinity have not succeeded.
In 1959, Freeman Dyson observed that every developing human civilization constantly increases its energy consumption, and, he conjectured, a civilization might try to harness a large part of the energy produced by a star. He proposed that a Dyson sphere could be a possible means: a shell or cloud of objects enclosing a star to absorb and utilize as much radiant energy as possible. Such a feat of astroengineering would drastically alter the observed spectrum of the star involved, changing it at least partly from the normal emission lines of a natural stellar atmosphere to those of black-body radiation, probably with a peak in the infrared. Dyson speculated that advanced alien civilizations might be detected by examining the spectra of stars and searching for such an altered spectrum.
There have been some attempts to find evidence of the existence of Dyson spheres that would alter the spectra of their core stars. Direct observation of thousands of galaxies has shown no explicit evidence of artificial construction or modifications. In October 2015, there was some speculation that a dimming of light from star KIC 8462852, observed by the Kepler Space Telescope, could have been a result of Dyson sphere construction. However, in 2018, observations determined that the amount of dimming varied by the frequency of the light, pointing to dust, rather than an opaque object such as a Dyson sphere, as the culprit for causing the dimming.
Those who think that intelligent extraterrestrial life is (nearly) impossible argue that the conditions needed for the evolution of life—or at least the evolution of biological complexity—are rare or even unique to Earth. Under this assumption, called the rare Earth hypothesis, a rejection of the mediocrity principle, complex multicellular life is regarded as exceedingly unusual.
The Rare Earth hypothesis argues that the evolution of biological complexity requires a host of fortuitous circumstances, such as a galactic habitable zone, a star and planet(s) having the requisite conditions, such as enough of a continuous habitable zone, the advantage of a giant guardian like Jupiter and a large moon, conditions needed to ensure the planet has a magnetosphere and plate tectonics, the chemistry of the lithosphere, atmosphere, and oceans, the role of "evolutionary pumps" such as massive glaciation and rare bolide impacts. And perhaps most importantly, advanced life needs whatever it was that led to the transition of (some) prokaryotic cells to eukaryotic cells, sexual reproduction and the Cambrian explosion.
In his book "Wonderful Life" (1989), Stephen Jay Gould suggested that if the "tape of life" were rewound to the time of the Cambrian explosion, and one or two tweaks made, human beings most probably never would have evolved. On the other hand, other thinkers such as Fontana, Buss, and Kauffman have written about the self-organizing properties of life.
It is possible that even if complex life is common, intelligence (and consequently civilizations) is not. While there are remote sensing techniques that could perhaps detect life-bearing planets without relying on the signs of technology, none of them has any ability to tell if any detected life is intelligent. This is sometimes referred to as the "algae vs. alumnae" problem.
Charles Lineweaver states that when considering any extreme trait in an animal, intermediate stages do not necessarily produce "inevitable" outcomes. For example, large brains are no more "inevitable," or convergent, than are the long noses of animals such as aardvarks and elephants. Humans, apes, whales, dolphins, octopuses, and squids are among the small group of definite or probable intelligence here on Earth. And as he points out, "dolphins have had ~20 million years to build a radio telescope and have not done so."
It may be that while alien species with intelligence exist, they are primitive or have not reached the level of technological advancement necessary to communicate. Along with non-intelligent life, such civilizations would also be very difficult for us to detect, short of a visit by a probe, a trip that would take hundreds of thousands of years with current technology.
To skeptics, the fact that in the history of life on the Earth only one species has developed a civilization to the point of being capable of spaceflight and radio technology lends more credence to the idea that technologically advanced civilizations are rare in the universe.
This hypothesis is that other water-bearing planets have much less landmass than does Earth. David Brin states, "It turns out that our Earth skates the very inner edge of our sun’s continuously habitable—or 'Goldilocks'—zone. And the Earth may be anomalous. It may be that because we are so close to our sun, we have an anomalously oxygen-rich atmosphere, and we have anomalously little ocean for a water world. In other words, 32 percent continental mass may be high among water worlds."
Brin continues, "In which case, the evolution of creatures like us, with hands and fire and all that sort of thing, may be rare in the galaxy. In which case, when we do build starships and head out there, perhaps we’ll find lots and lots of life worlds, but they’re all like Polynesia. We’ll find lots and lots of intelligent lifeforms out there, but they’re all dolphins, whales, squids, who could never build their own starships. What a perfect universe for us to be in, because nobody would be able to boss us around, and we’d get to be the voyagers, the "Star Trek" people, the starship builders, the policemen, and so on."
Planetary scientist Alan Stern put forward the idea that there could be a number of worlds with subsurface oceans (such as Jupiter's Europa or Saturn's Enceladus). The surface would provide a large degree of protection from such things as cometary impacts and nearby supernovae, as well as creating a situation in which a much broader range of orbits are acceptable. Life, and potentially intelligence and civilization, could evolve. Stern states, "If they have technology, and let's say they're broadcasting, or they have city lights or whatever — we can't see it in any part of the spectrum, except maybe very-low-frequency [radio]."
This is the argument that technological civilizations may usually or invariably destroy themselves before or shortly after developing radio or spaceflight technology. Possible means of annihilation via major global issues, where global interconnectedness actually makes humanity more vulnerable than resilient, are many, including war, accidental environmental contamination or damage, the development of biotechnology, synthetic life like mirror life, resource depletion, climate change, or poorly designed artificial intelligence. This general theme is explored both in fiction and in scientific hypothesizing. In 1966, Sagan and Shklovskii speculated that technological civilizations will either tend to destroy themselves within a century of developing interstellar communicative capability or master their self-destructive tendencies and survive for billion-year timescales. Self-annihilation may also be viewed in terms of thermodynamics: insofar as life is an ordered system that can sustain itself against the tendency to disorder, Hawking's "external transmission" or interstellar communicative phase, where knowledge production and knowledge management is more important than transmission of information via evolution, may be the point at which the system becomes unstable and self-destructs. Here, Hawking emphasizes self-design of the human genome (transhumanism) or enhancement via machines (e.g., brain-computer interface) to enhance human intelligence and reduce aggression, without which he implies human civilization may be too stupid collectively to survive an increasingly unstable system. For instance, the development of technologies during the "external transmission" phase, such as weaponization of artificial general intelligence or antimatter, may not be met by concomitant increases in human ability to manage its own inventions. Consequently, disorder increases in the system: global governance may become increasingly destabilized, so worsening humanity's ability to manage the possible means of annihilation listed above, resulting in global societal collapse.
Using extinct civilizations such as Easter Island (Rapa Nui) as models, a study conducted in 2018 posited that climate change induced by "energy intensive" civilizations may prevent sustainability within such civilizations, thus explaining the paradoxical lack of evidence for intelligent extraterrestrial life.
A less theoretical example might be the resource-depletion issue on Polynesian islands, of which Easter Island (Rapa Nui) is only the most well-known. David Brin points out that during the expansion phase from 1500 BC to 800 AD there were cycles of overpopulation followed by what might be called periodic cullings of adult males through war and/or ritual. He writes, "There are many stories of islands whose men were almost wiped out—sometimes by internal strife, and sometimes by invading males from other islands."
Another hypothesis is that an intelligent species beyond a certain point of technological capability will destroy other intelligent species as they appear, perhaps by using self-replicating probes. Science fiction writer Fred Saberhagen has explored this idea in his "Berserker" series, as has physicist Gregory Benford.
A species might undertake such extermination out of expansionist motives, greed, paranoia, or aggression. In 1981, cosmologist Edward Harrison argued that such behavior would be an act of prudence: an intelligent species that has overcome its own self-destructive tendencies might view any other species bent on galactic expansion as a threat. It has also been suggested that a successful alien species would be a superpredator, as are humans. Another possibility invokes the "tragedy of the commons" and the anthropic principle: the first lifeform to achieve interstellar travel will necessarily (even if unintentionally) prevent competitors from arising, and humans simply happen to be first.
New life might commonly die out due to runaway heating or cooling on their fledgling planets. On Earth, there have been numerous major extinction events that destroyed the majority of complex species alive at the time; the extinction of the dinosaurs is the best known example. These are thought to have been caused by events such as impact from a large meteorite, massive volcanic eruptions, or astronomical events such as gamma-ray bursts. It may be the case that such extinction events are common throughout the universe and periodically destroy intelligent life, or at least its civilizations, before the species is able to develop the technology to communicate with other intelligent species.
It may be that non-colonizing technologically capable alien civilizations exist, but that they are simply too far apart for meaningful two-way communication. If two civilizations are separated by several thousand light-years, it is possible that one or both cultures may become extinct before meaningful dialogue can be established. Human searches may be able to detect their existence, but communication will remain impossible because of distance. It has been suggested that this problem might be ameliorated somewhat if contact/communication is made through a Bracewell probe. In this case at least one partner in the exchange may obtain meaningful information. Alternatively, a civilization may simply broadcast its knowledge, and leave it to the receiver to make what they may of it. This is similar to the transmission of information from ancient civilizations to the present, and humanity has undertaken similar activities like the Arecibo message, which could transfer information about Earth's intelligent species, even if it never yields a response or does not yield a response in time for humanity to receive it. It is possible that observational signatures of self-destroyed civilizations could be detected, depending on the destruction scenario and the timing of our observation relative to it.
A related speculation by Sagan and Newman suggests that if other civilizations exist, and are transmitting and exploring, their signals and probes simply have not arrived yet. However, critics have noted that this is unlikely, since it requires that humanity's advancement has occurred at a very special point in time, while the Milky Way is in transition from empty to full. This is a tiny fraction of the lifespan of a galaxy under ordinary assumptions, so the likelihood that we are in the midst of this transition is considered low in the paradox.
Some SETI skeptics may also believe that we are at a very special point of time. Specifically, that we are in a transitional period from no space-faring societies to one space-faring society, namely that of human beings.
Many speculations about the ability of an alien culture to colonize other star systems are based on the idea that interstellar travel is technologically feasible. While the current understanding of physics rules out the possibility of faster-than-light travel, it appears that there are no major theoretical barriers to the construction of "slow" interstellar ships, even though the engineering required is considerably beyond our present capabilities. This idea underlies the concept of the Von Neumann probe and the Bracewell probe as a potential evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence.
It is possible, however, that present scientific knowledge cannot properly gauge the feasibility and costs of such interstellar colonization. Theoretical barriers may not yet be understood, and the resources needed may be so great as to make it unlikely that any civilization could afford to attempt it. Even if interstellar travel and colonization are possible, they may be difficult, leading to a colonization model based on percolation theory.
Colonization efforts may not occur as an unstoppable rush, but rather as an uneven tendency to "percolate" outwards, within an eventual slowing and termination of the effort given the enormous costs involved and the expectation that colonies will inevitably develop a culture and civilization of their own. Colonization may thus occur in "clusters", with large areas remaining uncolonized at any one time.
Some colonization scenarios predict spherical expansion across star systems, with continued expansion coming from the systems just previously settled. It has been suggested that this would cause a strong selection process among the colonization front favoring cultural or biological adaptations to living in starships or space habitats. As a result, they may forgo living on planets.
This may result in the destruction of terrestrial planets in these systems for use as building materials, thus preventing the development of life on those worlds. Or, they may have an ethic of protection for "nursery worlds", and protect them in a similar fashion to the zoo hypothesis.
If a human-capability machine construct, such as via mind uploading, are possible, and if it is possible to transfer such constructs over vast distances and rebuild them on a remote machine, then it might not make strong economic sense to travel the galaxy by spaceflight. After the first civilization has physically explored or colonized the galaxy, as well as sent such machines for easy exploration, then any subsequent civilizations, after having contacted the first, may find it cheaper, faster, and easier to explore the galaxy through intelligent mind transfers to the machines built by the first civilization, which is cheaper than spaceflight by a factor of 108-1017. However, since a star system needs only one such remote machine, and the communication is most likely highly directed, transmitted at high-frequencies, and at a minimal power to be economical, such signals would be hard to detect from Earth.
Humanity's ability to detect intelligent extraterrestrial life has existed for only a very brief period—from 1937 onwards, if the invention of the radio telescope is taken as the dividing line—and "Homo sapiens" is a geologically recent species. The whole period of modern human existence to date is a very brief period on a cosmological scale, and radio transmissions have only been propagated since 1895. Thus, it remains possible that human beings have neither existed long enough nor made themselves sufficiently detectable to be found by extraterrestrial intelligence.
There are some assumptions that underlie the SETI programs that may cause searchers to miss signals that are present. Extraterrestrials might, for example, transmit signals that have a very high or low data rate, or employ unconventional (in our terms) frequencies, which would make them hard to distinguish from background noise. Signals might be sent from non-main sequence star systems that we search with lower priority; current programs assume that most alien life will be orbiting Sun-like stars.
The greatest challenge is the sheer size of the radio search needed to look for signals (effectively spanning the entire observable universe), the limited amount of resources committed to SETI, and the sensitivity of modern instruments. SETI estimates, for instance, that with a radio telescope as sensitive as the Arecibo Observatory, Earth's television and radio broadcasts would only be detectable at distances up to 0.3 light-years, less than 1/10 the distance to the nearest star. A signal is much easier to detect if it consists of a deliberate, powerful transmission directed at us. Such signals could be detected at ranges of hundreds to tens of thousands of light-years distance. However, this means that detectors must be listening to an appropriate range of frequencies, and be in that region of space to which the beam is being sent. Many SETI searches assume that extraterrestrial civilizations will be broadcasting a deliberate signal, like the Arecibo message, in order to be found.
Thus to detect alien civilizations through their radio emissions, Earth observers either need more sensitive instruments or must hope for fortunate circumstances: that the broadband radio emissions of alien radio technology are much stronger than our own; that one of SETI's programs is listening to the correct frequencies from the right regions of space; or that aliens are deliberately sending focused transmissions in our general direction.
It may be that alien civilizations are detectable through their radio emissions for only a short time, reducing the likelihood of spotting them. The usual assumption is that civilizations outgrow radio through technological advancement. However, there could be other leakage such as that from microwaves used to transmit power from solar satellites to ground receivers.
Regarding the first point, in a 2006 "Sky & Telescope" article, Seth Shostak wrote, "Moreover, radio leakage from a planet is only likely to get weaker as a civilization advances and its communications technology gets better. Earth itself is increasingly switching from broadcasts to leakage-free cables and fiber optics, and from primitive but obvious carrier-wave broadcasts to subtler, hard-to-recognize spread-spectrum transmissions."
More hypothetically, advanced alien civilizations may evolve beyond broadcasting at all in the electromagnetic spectrum and communicate by technologies not developed or used by mankind. Some scientists have hypothesized that advanced civilizations may send neutrino signals. If such signals exist, they could be detectable by neutrino detectors that are now under construction for other goals.
It has been suggested that some advanced beings may divest themselves of physical form, create massive artificial virtual environments, transfer themselves into these environments through mind uploading, and exist totally within virtual worlds, ignoring the external physical universe.
It may also be that intelligent alien life develops an "increasing disinterest" in their outside world. Possibly any sufficiently advanced society will develop highly engaging media and entertainment well before the capacity for advanced space travel, with the rate of appeal of these social contrivances being destined, because of their inherent reduced complexity, to overtake any desire for complex, expensive endeavors such as space exploration and communication. Once any sufficiently advanced civilization becomes able to master its environment, and most of its physical needs are met through technology, various "social and entertainment technologies", including virtual reality, are postulated to become the primary drivers and motivations of that civilization.
In response to Tipler's idea of self-replicating probes, Stephen Jay Gould wrote, "I must confess that I simply don’t know how to react to such arguments. I have enough trouble predicting the plans and reactions of the people closest to me. I am usually baffled by the thoughts and accomplishments of humans in different cultures. I’ll be damned if I can state with certainty what some extraterrestrial source of intelligence might do."
A February 2019 article in "Popular Science" states, "Sweeping across the Milky Way and establishing a unified galactic empire might be inevitable for a monolithic super-civilization, but most cultures are neither monolithic nor super—at least if our experience is any guide."
Astrophysicist Adam Frank, along with co-authors such as astronomer Jason Wright, ran a variety of simulations in which they varied such factors as settlement lifespans, fractions of suitable planets, and recharge times between launches. They found many of their simulations seemingly resulted in a "third category" in which the Milky Way remains partially settled indefinitely.
The abstract to their pending paper states, "These results break the link between Hart's famous 'Fact A' (no interstellar visitors on Earth now) and the conclusion that humans must, therefore, be the only technological civilization in the galaxy."
Another possibility is that human theoreticians have underestimated how much alien life might differ from that on Earth. Aliens may be psychologically unwilling to attempt to communicate with human beings. Perhaps human mathematics is parochial to Earth and not shared by other life, though others argue this can only apply to abstract math since the math associated with physics must be similar (in results, if not in methods).
Physiology might also cause a communication barrier. Carl Sagan speculated that an alien species might have a thought process orders of magnitude slower (or faster) than ours. A message broadcast by that species might well seem like random background noise to us, and therefore go undetected.
Another thought is that technological civilizations invariably experience a technological singularity and attain a post-biological character. Hypothetical civilizations of this sort may have advanced drastically enough to render communication impossible.
In his 2009 book, SETI scientist Seth Shostak wrote, "Our experiments [such as plans to use drilling rigs on Mars] are still looking for the type of extraterrestrial that would have appealed to Percival Lowell [astronomer who believed he had observed canals on Mars]."
Paul Davies states that 500 years ago the very idea of a computer doing work merely by manipulating internal data may not have been viewed as a technology at all. He writes, "Might there be a still "higher" level . . . If so, this 'third level' would never be manifest through observations made at the informational level, still less the matter level. There is no vocabulary to describe the third level, but that doesn't mean it is non-existent, and we need to be open to the possibility that alien technology may operate at the third level, or maybe the fourth, fifth . . . levels."
Alien civilizations might be technically capable of contacting Earth, but are only listening instead of transmitting. If all, or even most, civilizations act the same way, the galaxy could be full of civilizations eager for contact, but everyone is listening and no one is transmitting. This is the so-called "SETI Paradox".
The only civilization we know, our own, does not explicitly transmit, except for a few small efforts. Even these efforts, and certainly any attempt to expand them, are controversial. It is not even clear we would respond to a detected signal—the official policy within the SETI community is that "[no] response to a signal or other evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence should be sent until appropriate international consultations have taken place." However, given the possible impact of any reply it may be very difficult to obtain any consensus on "Who speaks for Earth?" and "What should we say?"
The zoo hypothesis states that intelligent extraterrestrial life exists and does not contact life on Earth to allow for its natural evolution and development. A variation on the zoo hypothesis is the laboratory hypothesis, where humanity has been or is being subject to experiments, with the Earth or solar system effectively serving as a laboratory. The zoo hypothesis may break down under the uniformity of motive flaw: all it takes is a single culture or civilization to decide to act contrary to the imperative within our range of detection for it to be abrogated, and the probability of such a violation of hegemony increases with the number of civilizations, tending not towards a 'Galactic Club' with a unified foreign policy with regard to life on Earth but multiple 'Galactic Cliques'.
Analysis of the inter-arrival times between civilizations in the galaxy based on common astrobiological assumptions suggests that the initial civilization would have a commanding lead over the later arrivals. As such, it may have established what we call the "zoo hypothesis" through force or as a galactic/universal norm and the resultant "paradox" by a cultural founder effect with or without the continued activity of the founder.
It is possible that a civilization advanced enough to travel between solar systems could be actively visiting or observing Earth while remaining undetected or unrecognized.
A related idea to the zoo hypothesis is that, beyond a certain distance, the perceived universe is a simulated reality. The planetarium hypothesis speculates that beings may have created this simulation so that the universe appears to be empty of other life.
An alien civilization might feel it is too dangerous to communicate, either for us or for them. It is argued that when very different civilizations have met on Earth, the results have often been disastrous for one side or the other, and the same may well apply to interstellar contact. Even contact at a safe distance could lead to infection by computer code or even ideas themselves. Perhaps prudent civilizations actively hide not only from Earth but from everyone, out of fear of other civilizations.
Perhaps the Fermi paradox itself—or the alien equivalent of it—is the reason for any civilization to avoid contact with other civilizations, even if no other obstacles existed. From any one civilization's point of view, it would be unlikely for them to be the first ones to make first contact. Therefore, according to this reasoning, it is likely that previous civilizations faced fatal problems with first contact and doing so should be avoided. So perhaps every civilization keeps quiet because of the possibility that there is a real reason for others to do so.
Liu Cixin's novel "The Dark Forest" is based upon such a situation.
A significant fraction of the population believes that at least some UFOs (Unidentified Flying Objects) are spacecraft piloted by aliens. While most of these are unrecognized or mistaken interpretations of mundane phenomena, there are those that remain puzzling even after investigation. The consensus scientific view is that although they may be unexplained, they do not rise to the level of convincing evidence.
Similarly, it is theoretically possible that SETI groups are not reporting positive detections, or governments have been blocking signals or suppressing publication. This response might be attributed to security or economic interests from the potential use of advanced extraterrestrial technology. It has been suggested that the detection of an extraterrestrial radio signal or technology could well be the most highly secret information that exists. Claims that this has already happened are common in the popular press, but the scientists involved report the opposite experience—the press becomes informed and interested in a potential detection even before a signal can be confirmed.
Regarding the idea that aliens are in secret contact with governments, David Brin writes, "Aversion to an idea, simply because of its long association with crackpots, gives crackpots altogether too much influence." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11579 |
Fundamentalism
Fundamentalism usually has a religious connotation that indicates unwavering attachment to a set of irreducible beliefs. However, fundamentalism has come to be applied to a tendency among certain groups – mainly, although not exclusively, in religion – that is characterized by a markedly strict literalism as it is applied to certain specific scriptures, dogmas, or ideologies, and a strong sense of the importance of maintaining ingroup and outgroup distinctions, leading to an emphasis on purity and the desire to return to a previous ideal from which advocates believe members have strayed. Rejection of diversity of opinion as applied to these established "fundamentals" and their accepted interpretation within the group often results from this tendency.
Depending upon the context, the label "fundamentalism" can be a pejorative rather than a neutral characterization, similar to the ways that calling political perspectives "right-wing" or "left-wing" can have negative connotations.
Buddhist fundamentalism has targeted other religious and ethnic groups, as in Myanmar. A Buddhist-dominated country, Myanmar has seen tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2013 Burma anti-Muslim riots (alleged to have been instigated by hardline groups such as the 969 Movement.) and in actions associated with the Rohingya genocide (2016 onwards).
Buddhist fundamentalism also features in Sri Lanka. Buddhist-dominated Sri Lanka has seen recent tensions between Muslim minorities and the Buddhist majority, especially during the 2014 2014 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka and in the course of the 2018 anti-Muslim riots in Sri Lanka,
allegedly instigated by hardline groups such as the Bodu Bala Sena.
Historic and contemporary examples of Buddhist fundamentalism occur in each of the three main branches of Buddhism: Theravada, Mahayana, and Vajrayana. In Japan, a prominent example has been the practice among some members of the Mahayana Nichiren sect of shakubuku — a method of proselytizing involving strident condemnation of other sects as deficient or evil.
Christian fundamentalism has been defined by George Marsden as the demand for a strict adherence to certain theological doctrines, in reaction against Modernist theology. The term was originally coined by its supporters to describe what they claimed were five specific classic theological beliefs of Christianity, and that developed into a Christian fundamentalist movement within the Protestant community of the United States in the early part of the 20th century. Fundamentalism as a movement arose in the United States, starting among conservative Presbyterian theologians at Princeton Theological Seminary in the late 19th century. It soon spread to conservatives among the Baptists and other denominations around 1910 to 1920. The movement's purpose was to reaffirm key theological tenets and defend them against the challenges of liberal theology and higher criticism.
The term "fundamentalism" has roots in the Niagara Bible Conference (1878–1897), which defined those tenets it considered "fundamental" to Christian belief. The term was prefigured by "The Fundamentals", a collection of twelve books on five subjects published in 1910 and funded by the brothers Milton and Lyman Stewart, but coined by Curtis Lee Lawes, editor of "The Watchman-Examiner", who proposed in the wake of the 1920 pre-convention meeting of the Northern Baptist Convention (now the American Baptist Churches USA) that those fighting for the fundamentals of the faith be called "fundamentalists." "The Fundamentals" came to represent a "Fundamentalist–Modernist Controversy" that appeared late in the 19th century within some Protestant denominations in the United States, and continued in earnest through the 1920s. The first formulation of American fundamentalist beliefs traces to the Niagara Bible Conference and, in 1910, to the General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church, which distilled these into what became known as the "five fundamentals":
By the late 1910s, theological conservatives rallying around the five fundamentals came to be known as "fundamentalists". They reject the existence of commonalities with theologically related religious traditions, such as the grouping of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism into one Abrahamic family of religions. In contrast, Evangelical groups (such as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association), while they typically agree on the theology "fundamentals" as expressed in "The Fundamentals", are often willing to participate in events with religious groups who do not hold to the essential doctrines.
Scholars identify several politically active Hindu movements as part of the "Hindu fundamentalist family."
Extremism within Islam goes back to the 7th century to the time of the Kharijites. From their essentially political position, they developed extreme doctrines that set them apart from both mainstream Sunni and Shia Muslims. The Kharijites were particularly noted for adopting a radical approach to Takfir, whereby they declared other Muslims to be unbelievers and therefore deemed them worthy of death.
The Shia and Sunni religious conflicts since the 7th century created an opening for radical ideologues, such as Ali Shariati (1933–77), to merge social revolution with Islamic fundamentalism, as exemplified by the Iranian Revolution in 1979. Islamic fundamentalism has appeared in many countries; the Wahhabi version is promoted worldwide and financed by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Pakistan.
The Iran hostage crisis of 1979–80 marked a major turning point in the use of the term "fundamentalism". The media, in an attempt to explain the ideology of Ayatollah Khomeini and the Iranian Revolution to a Western audience described it as a "fundamentalist version of Islam" by way of analogy to the Christian fundamentalist movement in the U.S. Thus was born the term "Islamic fundamentalist", which became a common use of the term in following years.
Jewish fundamentalism has been used to characterize militant religious Zionism, and both Ashkenazi and Sephardic versions of Haredi Judaism. Ian S Lustik has characterized Jewish fundamentalism as "an ultranationalist, eschatologically based, irredentist ideology."
Political usage of the term "fundamentalism" has been criticized. "Fundamentalism" has been used by political groups to attack their opponents, using the term flexibly depending on their political interests. According to Judith Nagata, a professor of Asia Research Institute in the National University of Singapore, "The Afghan "mujahiddin", locked in combat with the Soviet enemy in the 1980s, could be praised as 'freedom fighters' by their American backers at the time, while the present Taliban, viewed, among other things, as protectors of American enemy Osama bin Laden, are unequivocally 'fundamentalist'."
"Fundamentalist" has been used pejoratively to refer to philosophies perceived as literal-minded or carrying a pretense of being the sole source of objective truth, regardless of whether it is usually called a religion. For instance, the Archbishop of Wales has criticized "atheistic fundamentalism" broadly and said "Any kind of fundamentalism, be it Biblical, atheistic or Islamic, is dangerous". He also said, "the new fundamentalism of our age ... leads to the language of expulsion and exclusivity, of extremism and polarisation, and the claim that, because God is on our side, he is not on yours." He claimed it led to situations such as councils calling Christmas "Winterval", schools refusing to put on nativity plays and crosses being removed from chapels. Others have countered that some of these attacks on Christmas are urban legends, not all schools do nativity plays because they choose to perform other traditional plays like A Christmas Carol or The Snow Queen and, because of rising tensions between various religions, opening up public spaces to alternate displays rather than the Nativity scene is an attempt to keep government religion-neutral.
In "The New Inquisition", Robert Anton Wilson lampoons the members of skeptical organizations such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal as fundamentalist materialists, alleging that they dogmatically dismiss any evidence that conflicts with materialism as hallucination or fraud.
In France, during a protestation march against the imposition of restrictions on the wearing of headscarves in state-run schools, a banner labeled the ban as "secular fundamentalism". In the United States, private or cultural intolerance of women wearing the hijab (Islamic headcovering) and political activism by Muslims also has been labeled "secular fundamentalism".
The term "fundamentalism" is sometimes applied to signify a counter-cultural fidelity to a principle or set of principles, as in the pejorative term "market fundamentalism", used to imply exaggerated religious-like faith in the ability of unfettered "laissez-faire" or free-market capitalist economic views or policies to solve economic and social problems. According to economist John Quiggin, the standard features of "economic fundamentalist rhetoric" are "dogmatic" assertions and the claim that anyone who holds contrary views is not a real economist. Retired professor in religious studies Roderick Hindery lists positive qualities attributed to political, economic, or other forms of cultural fundamentalism, including "vitality, enthusiasm, willingness to back up words with actions, and the avoidance of facile compromise" as well as negative aspects such as psychological attitudes, occasionally elitist and pessimistic perspectives, and in some cases literalism.
A criticism by Elliot N. Dorff:
In order to carry out the fundamentalist program in practice, one would need a perfect understanding of the ancient language of the original text, if indeed the true text can be discerned from among variants. Furthermore, human beings are the ones who transmit this understanding between generations. Even if one wanted to follow the literal word of God, the need for people first to understand that word necessitates human interpretation. Through that process human fallibility is inextricably mixed into the very meaning of the divine word. As a result, it is impossible to follow the indisputable word of God; one can only achieve a human understanding of God's will.
Howard Thurman was interviewed in the late 1970s for a BBC feature on religion. He told the interviewer:
Influential criticisms of fundamentalism include James Barr's books on Christian fundamentalism and Bassam Tibi's analysis of Islamic fundamentalism.
A study at the University of Edinburgh found that of its six measured dimensions of religiosity, "lower intelligence is most associated with higher levels of fundamentalism."
The Associated Press' "AP Stylebook" recommends that the term fundamentalist not be used for any group that does not apply the term to itself. Many scholars have adopted a similar position. Other scholars, however, use the term in the broader descriptive sense to refer to various groups in various religious traditions including those groups that would object to being classified as fundamentalists, such as in "The Fundamentalism Project".
Tex Sample asserts that it is a mistake to refer to a Muslim, Jewish, or Christian fundamentalist. Rather, a fundamentalist's fundamentalism is their primary concern, over and above other denominational or faith considerations. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11582 |
Show Me Love (film)
Show Me Love (, ) is a 1998 Swedish romantic comedy-drama film written and directed by Lukas Moodysson in his feature-length directorial debut. It stars Rebecka Liljeberg and Alexandra Dahlström as two seemingly disparate teenage girls who begin a tentative romantic relationship. The film was released theatrically in Sweden on 23 October 1998, and first premiered internationally at the 1998 Cannes Film Festival.
The film received an overwhelmingly positive reception and won four Guldbagge Awards (Sweden's official film awards) at the 1999 ceremony. Its international awards include the Teddy Award at the 1999 Berlin International Film Festival, and the Special Jury Prize at the 34th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival.
The Swedish title refers to the small town of Åmål in Västra Götaland County, western Sweden. However, only a few scenes were filmed in Åmål, and they were not included in the final version. The main shooting took place in the nearby town of Trollhättan, the location of producing company Film i Väst's studios.
Two girls, Agnes and Elin, attend school in the small town of Åmål, Sweden. Elin is outgoing and popular but finds her life unsatisfying and dull. Agnes, by contrast, has no real friends and is constantly depressed. Agnes is in love with Elin but cannot find any way to express it.
Agnes's parents worry about their daughter's reclusive life and try to be reassuring. Her mother decides, against Agnes's will, to throw a 16th birthday party for her. Agnes is afraid no one will come. Viktoria, a girl in a wheelchair, shows up and Agnes shouts at her in front of her parents, telling her they are friends only because no one else will talk to them. Agnes, overcome with anger and depression, goes to her room and cries into her pillow shouting that she wishes she were dead, while her father tries to soothe her. Viktoria leaves and Agnes's family eats the food made for the party.
Elin arrives at Agnes's house, mainly as an excuse to avoid going to another party, where there will be a boy (Johan, played by Mathias Rust) she wants to avoid. Elin's older sister, Jessica, who comes with her, dares her to kiss Agnes, who is rumoured to be a lesbian. Elin fulfills the dare and then runs out with Jessica, only to soon feel guilty for having humiliated Agnes.
After becoming drunk at the other party, Elin gets sick and throws up. Johan tries to help her and ends up professing his love to her. Elin leaves Johan and the party, only to return to Agnes's house to apologize for how she acted earlier. In doing so, Elin stops Agnes from cutting herself. She even manages to persuade Agnes to return with her to the other party. On the way, Elin shares her real feelings about being trapped in Åmål. She asks Agnes about being a lesbian and believes that their problems could be solved by leaving Åmål and going to Stockholm. On impulse, Elin persuades Agnes to hitchhike to Stockholm, which is a five-hour journey by car. They find a driver who agrees to take them, believing them to be sisters who are visiting their grandmother. While sitting in the back seat, they have their first real kiss. The driver sees them and, shocked at the behaviour of the two 'sisters', orders them to leave the car.
Elin discovers that she is attracted to Agnes but is afraid to admit it. She proceeds to ignore Agnes and refuses to talk to her. Elin's sister Jessica sees that she is in love and pushes her to figure out who it is. To cover the fact that she is in love with Agnes, Elin lies, pretending to be in love with Johan, and loses her virginity during a short-lived relationship with him. Elin eventually admits her feelings, when, after a climactic scene in a school bathroom, they are forced to 'out' their relationship to the school.
The film ends with Elin and Agnes sitting in Elin's bedroom drinking chocolate milk. Elin explains that she often adds too much chocolate until her milk is nearly black. She must fill another glass with milk and mix it and that her sister Jessica often gets mad that she finishes the chocolate. Elin has the last word saying "It makes a lot of chocolate milk. But that doesn't matter."
The original title of the film, "Fucking Åmål", refers to the girls' feelings about their small town: In a key scene Elin shouts in desperation ""varför måste vi bo i fucking jävla kuk-Åmål?"" (which roughly translates to "why do we have to live in fucking bloody cock-Åmål?").
According to Moodysson, the problem with the original title started when the film was Sweden's candidate for the Academy Awards, though eventually it was not chosen as a nominee. The Hollywood industry magazine "Variety" refused to run an advertisement for "Fucking Åmål". Thus, American distributor Strand Releasing asked for a new title. Moodysson took the new title from the song at the end of the film, by Robyn. Distributors in other native English-speaking countries then followed suit.
Even before the film was completed, it created controversy in the town of Åmål. Local politicians campaigned to get the title changed because they argued that it would show the town in an unfair way and even undermine it as an economic centre. Further pressure was brought on the makers of the film, the Film i Väst studio, who are partly financed by Swedish local authorities, including Åmål.
However, the local complaints had no effect on the content or release of the film. Since the release, the town of Åmål has tried to embrace the publicity generated, despite the fact that the town's name is missing from the English title. In the early 2000s the town founded the pop music "Fucking Åmål Festival."
"Fucking Åmål" received the highest audience figures for a Swedish film in 1998–9, with a total audience of 867,576 and a total audience for the whole of Europe of 2,100,000.
However, some reports outside Sweden incorrectly stated that in Sweden the film had even outgrossed the Hollywood film "Titanic". In fact, "Titanic" had over twice as many viewers as "Show Me Love" in Sweden in 1998. Based on 39 reviews collected by the film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 90% of critics gave "Show Me Love" a positive review. It is among the top ten of the British Film Institute list of the 50 films you should see by the age of 14.
The film received consistently good reviews, including the realism and credibility of its portrayal of what it is like to be a teenager in a small town in the 1990s. In addition, the efforts of the young actors were praised. Jan-Olov Andersson at Aftonbladet felt that Dahlström's and Liljeberg's imaginative appearance and interaction was "sensationally credible", and Bo Ludvigsson at Svenska Dagbladet wrote that it was "a warm, strong and confident film about the courage to be human". Ludvigsson also believed that "Fucking Åmål", with its storytelling drive, leave and authenticity, was well above most of the Swedish films of recent years. Anders Hansson at Göteborgs-Posten thought that director Moodysson with fairly ordinary elements created "a film with unusual rise".
Autostraddle placed it at number one on its "Top 10 Best Lesbian Movies" list.
According to Russian singer Lena Katina, producer Ivan Shapovalov was inspired to create her famous and controversial pop duo t.A.T.u. after the release of this film. The track "Show Me Love" is featured in their album "200 km/h in the Wrong Lane".
The film's soundtrack was released through Metronome Records and consists of songs in English and Swedish language. Swedish band Broder Daniel, who contributed three English language songs to "Fucking Åmål", saw a spike in popularity after the film's release. The band also released an EP titled "Fucking Åmål".
! rowspan="24" | 1999
! rowspan="3" | 2000 | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11585 |
Full disclosure (computer security)
In the field of computer security, independent researchers often discover flaws in software that can be abused to cause unintended behaviour; these flaws are called vulnerabilities. The process by which the analysis of these vulnerabilities is shared with third parties is the subject of much debate, and is referred to as the researcher's "disclosure policy". Full disclosure is the practice of publishing analysis of software vulnerabilities as early as possible, making the data accessible to everyone without restriction. The primary purpose of widely disseminating information about vulnerabilities is so that potential victims are as knowledgeable as those who attack them.
In his 2007 essay on the topic, Bruce Schneier stated "Full disclosure – the practice of making the details of security vulnerabilities public – is a damned good idea. Public scrutiny is the only reliable way to improve security, while secrecy only makes us less secure". Leonard Rose, co-creator of an electronic mailing list that has superseded bugtraq to become the de facto forum for disseminating advisories, explains "We don't believe in security by obscurity, and as far as we know, full disclosure is the only way to ensure that everyone, not just the insiders, have access to the information we need."
The controversy around the public disclosure of sensitive information is not new. The issue of full disclosure was first raised in the context of locksmithing, in a 19th-century controversy regarding whether weaknesses in lock systems should be kept secret in the locksmithing community, or revealed to the public. Today, there are three major disclosure policies under which most others can be categorized: Non Disclosure, Coordinated Disclosure, and Full Disclosure.
The major stakeholders in vulnerability research have their disclosure policies shaped by various motivations, it is not uncommon to observe campaigning, marketing or lobbying for their preferred policy to be adopted and chastising those who dissent. Many prominent security researchers favor full disclosure, whereas most vendors prefer coordinated disclosure. Non disclosure is generally favoured by commercial exploit vendors and blackhat hackers.
Coordinated vulnerability disclosure is a policy under which researchers agree to report vulnerabilities to a coordinating authority, which then reports it to the vendor, tracks fixes and mitigations, and coordinates the disclosure of information with stakeholders including the public. In some cases the coordinating authority is the vendor. The premise of coordinated disclosure is typically that nobody should be informed about a vulnerability until the software vendor says it is time. While there are often exceptions or variations of this policy, distribution must initially be limited and vendors are given privileged access to nonpublic research.
The original name for this approach was “responsible disclosure”, based on the essay by Microsoft Security Manager Scott Culp “It's Time to End Information Anarchy” (referring to full disclosure). Microsoft later called for the term to be phased out in favour of “Coordinated Vulnerability Disclosure” (CVD).
Although the reasoning varies, many practitioners argue that end-users cannot benefit from access to vulnerability information without guidance or patches from the vendor, so the risks of sharing research with malicious actors is too great for too little benefit. As Microsoft explain, "[Coordinated disclosure] serves everyone's best interests by ensuring that customers receive comprehensive, high-quality updates for security vulnerabilities but are not exposed to malicious attacks while the update is being developed."
Full disclosure is the policy of publishing information on vulnerabilities without restriction as early as possible, making the information accessible to the general public without restriction. In general, proponents of full disclosure believe that the benefits of freely available vulnerability research outweigh the risks, whereas opponents prefer to limit the distribution.
The free availability of vulnerability information allows users and administrators to understand and react to vulnerabilities in their systems, and allows customers to pressure vendors to fix vulnerabilities that vendors may otherwise feel no incentive to solve. There are some fundamental problems with coordinated disclosure that full disclosure can resolve.
Discovery of a specific flaw or vulnerability is not a mutually exclusive event, multiple researchers with differing motivations can and do discover the same flaws independently.
There is no standard way to make vulnerability information available to the public, researchers often use mailing lists dedicated to the topic, academic papers or industry conferences.
Non disclosure is the policy that vulnerability information should not be shared, or should only be shared under non-disclosure agreement (either contractually or informally).
Common proponents of non-disclosure include commercial exploit vendors, researchers who intend to exploit the flaws they find, and proponents of security through obscurity.
Researchers in favour of coordinated disclosure believe that users cannot make use of advanced knowledge of vulnerabilities without guidance from the vendor, and that the majority is best served by limiting distribution of vulnerability information. Advocates argue that low-skilled attackers can use this information to perform sophisticated attacks that would otherwise be beyond their ability, and the potential benefit does not outweigh the potential harm caused by malevolent actors. Only when the vendor has prepared guidance that even the most unsophisticated users can digest should the information be made public.
This argument presupposes that vulnerability discovery is a mutually exclusive event, that only one person can discover a vulnerability. There are many examples of vulnerabilities being discovered simultaneously, often being exploited in secrecy before discovery by other researchers. While there may exist users who cannot benefit from vulnerability information, full disclosure advocates believe this demonstrates a contempt for the intelligence of end users. While it's true that some users cannot benefit from vulnerability information, if they're concerned with the security of their networks they are in a position to hire an expert to assist them as you would hire a mechanic to help with a car.
Non disclosure is typically used when a researcher intends to use knowledge of a vulnerability to attack computer systems operated by their enemies, or to trade knowledge of a vulnerability to a third party for profit, who will typically use it to attack their enemies.
Researchers practicing non disclosure are generally not concerned with improving security or protecting networks. However, some proponents argue that they simply do not want to assist vendors, and claim no intent to harm others.
While full and coordinated disclosure advocates declare similar goals and motivations, simply disagreeing on how best to achieve them, non disclosure is entirely incompatible. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11586 |
Feminist theology
Feminist theology is a movement found in several religions, including Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and New Thought, to reconsider the traditions, practices, scriptures, and theologies of those religions from a feminist perspective. Some of the goals of feminist theology include increasing the role of women among the clergy and religious authorities, reinterpreting male-dominated imagery and language about God, determining women's place in relation to career and motherhood, and studying images of women in the religion's sacred texts and matriarchal religion.
While there is no specific date to pinpoint the beginning of this movement, its origins can be traced back to the 1960s article, “The Human Situation: A Feminine View,” written by Valerie Saiving (Goldstein). Her piece of work questioned theologies written by men for men in a modern perspective to then dismantle what it had created over the years, patriarchal systems that oppress women. After Saiving's work was published, many scholars took up her ideas and elaborated upon them, building the feminist theology movement further. According to Grenz and Olson, they view the steps of feminist theology to be in threes, one being a critique of the treatment of women in the past, then determine alternative biblical /religious texts that support feminist ideology, and to then claim the theology that adheres to such standards, through reclamation, abolishment, and or rivision. ” Grenz and Olson also mention, while all feminists agree there is a flaw in the system, there is disagreement over how far outside of the Bible and the Christian tradition women are willing to go to seek support for their ideals. This concept is also important when feminist theology is relating to other religions or spirutal connections outside of Chrisitanity.
The primacy of a monotheistic or near-monotheistic "Great Goddess" is advocated by some modern matriarchists as a female version of, preceding, or analogue to, the Abrahamic God associated with the historical rise of monotheism in the Mediterranean Axis Age.
Mother Nature (sometimes known as "Mother Earth") is a common representation of nature that focuses on the life-giving and nurturing features of nature by embodying it in the form of the mother. Images of women representing mother earth, and mother nature, are timeless. In prehistoric times, goddesses were worshipped for their association with fertility, fecundity, and agricultural bounty. Priestesses held dominion over aspects of Incan, Assyrian, Babylonian, Slavonic, Roman, Greek, Indian, and Iroquoian religions in the millennia prior to the inception of Patriarchal religion.
Others who practice feminist spirituality may instead adhere to a feminist re-interpretation of Western monotheistic traditions. In those cases, the notion of God as having a male gender is rejected, and God is not referred to using male pronouns. Feminist spirituality may also object to images of God that they perceive as authoritarian, parental, or disciplinarian, instead emphasizing "maternal" attributes such as nurturing, acceptance, and creativity.
Carol P. Christ is the author of the widely reprinted essay "Why Women Need the Goddess", which argues in favor of the concept of there having been an ancient religion of a supreme goddess. This essay was presented as the keynote address to an audience of over 500 at the "Great Goddess Re-emerging" conference at the University of Santa Cruz in the spring of 1978, and was first published in "Heresies: The Great Goddess Issue" (1978), pgs. 8-13. Carol P. Christ also co-edited the classic feminist religion anthologies "Weaving the Visions: New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality" (1989) and "Womanspirit Rising" (1979/1989); the latter included her essay "Why Women Need the Goddess".
New Thought as a movement had no single origin, but was rather propelled along by a number of spiritual thinkers and philosophers and emerged through a variety of religious denominations and churches, particularly the Unity Church, Religious Science, and Church of Divine Science. It was a feminist movement in that most of its teachers and students were women; notable among the founders of the movement were Emma Curtis Hopkins, known as the "teacher of teachers" Myrtle Fillmore, Malinda Cramer, and Nona L. Brooks; with its churches and community centers mostly led by women, from the 1880s to today.
Jewish feminism is a movement that seeks to make the religious, political, and social status of Jewish women equal to that of Jewish men. Feminist movements, with varying approaches and successes, have opened up within all major denominations of Judaism.
There are different approaches and versions of feminist theology that exist within the Jewish community.
Some of these theologies promote the idea that it is important to have a feminine characterization of God within the siddur (Jewish prayerbook) and service. They challenge the male rabbi teachings that only emphasize God as a man with masculine traits only.
In 1976, Rita Gross published the article "Female God Language in a Jewish Context" (Davka Magazine 17), which Jewish scholar and feminist Judith Plaskow considers "probably the first article to deal theoretically with the issue of female God-language in a Jewish context". Gross was Jewish herself at this time.
Reconstructionist Rabbi Rebecca Alpert ("Reform Judaism", Winter 1991) comments:
In 1990 Rabbi Margaret Wenig wrote the sermon, "God Is a Woman and She Is Growing Older", which as of 2011 has been published ten times (three times in German) and preached by rabbis from Australia to California.
Rabbi Paula Reimers ("Feminism, Judaism, and God the Mother", "Conservative Judaism" 46 (1993)) comments:
Ahuva Zache affirms that using both masculine and feminine language for God can be a positive thing, but reminds her Reform Jewish readership that God is beyond gender ("Is God male, female, both or neither? How should we phrase our prayers in response to God’s gender?", in the Union for Reform Judaism's iTorah, ):
These views are highly controversial even within liberal Jewish movements. Orthodox Jews and many Conservative Jews
hold that it is wrong to use English female pronouns for God, viewing such usage as an intrusion of modern, western feminist ideology into Jewish tradition. Liberal prayer books tend increasingly to also avoid male-specific words and pronouns, seeking that all references to God in translations be made in gender-neutral language. For example, the UK Liberal movement's "Siddur Lev Chadash" (1995) does so, as does the UK Reform Movement's "Forms of Prayer" (2008). In Mishkan T'filah, the American Reform Jewish prayer book released in 2007, references to God as “He” have been removed, and whenever Jewish patriarchs are named (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob), so also are the matriarchs (Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah.) In 2015 the Reform Jewish High Holy Days prayer book Mishkan HaNefesh was released; it is intended as a companion to Mishkan T'filah. It includes a version of the High Holy Days prayer Avinu Malkeinu that refers to God as both "Loving Father" and "Compassionate Mother." Other notable changes are replacing a line from the Reform movement's earlier prayerbook, "Gates of Repentance," that mentioned the joy of a bride and groom specifically, with the line "rejoicing with couples under the chuppah [wedding canopy]", and adding a third, non-gendered option to the way worshippers are called to the Torah, offering “mibeit,” Hebrew for “from the house of,” in addition to the traditional “son of” or “daughter of.”
In 2003 "The Female Face of God in Auschwitz: A Jewish Feminist Theology of the Holocaust", the first full-length feminist theology of the Holocaust, written by Melissa Raphael, was published. Judith Plaskow’s "Standing Again at Sinai: Judaism from a Feminist Perspective" (1991), and Rachel Adler’s "Engendering Judaism: An Inclusive Theology and Ethics" (1999) are the only two full-length Jewish feminist works to focus entirely on theology in general (rather than specific aspects such as Holocaust theology.) This work of feminist theology in regards to Judaism, also contextualizes the other goals of this movement, to re frame historical texts and how they are being taught. It is in addition to how God is being viewed but also the role of women historically and how they are being treated today in a new feminist light.
While there is some opposition faced, Jewish communities believing feminism is too Western and does not validate Judaism, there is also the approval of an insider feminist perspective that takes into consideration traditions and modern thought.
Christian feminism is an aspect of feminist theology which seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Christian perspective.This is through reformation to be along the lines of feminist thought in regards to their religion. Christian feminists argue that contributions by women in that direction are necessary for a complete understanding of Christianity.
These theologians believe that God does not discriminate on the basis of biologically determined characteristics, such as sex and race. Their major issues include the ordination of women, male dominance in Christian marriage, recognition of equal spiritual and moral abilities, reproductive rights, and the search for a feminine or gender-transcendent divine. Christian feminists often draw on the teachings of more historical texts that reinforce that feminism does not go against Christianity but has always been in its texts.
Mary Daly grew up an Irish Catholic and all of her education was received through Catholic schools. She has three doctorate degrees, one from St. Mary's College in sacred theology then two from University of Fribourg, Switzerland in theology and philosophy. While in her early works Daly expressed a desire to reform Christianity from the inside, she would later come to the conclusion that Christianity is not able to enact the necessary changes as it is. According to Ford's The Modern Theologians, “Mary Daly has done more than anyone to clarify the problems women have concerning the central core symbolism of Christianity, and its effects on their self-understanding and their relationship to God.” Daly is a prime example of how some feminist theologians come to the conclusion that reclamation and reform are no longer a viable option, that condemnation is the only way out.
Rosemary Radford Ruether writes about crucial additional interpretations of how Christian feminist theology is impacted by the world. Ruether grew up Roman Catholic and attended Catholic schools through her sophomore year of high school. She was a classics major at Scripps College, worked for the Delta Ministry in 1965 and taught at Howard University School of Religion from 1966 to 1976. “Rosemary Ruether has written on the question of Christian credibility, with particular attention to ecclesiology and its engagement with church-world conflicts; Jewish-Christian relations…; politics and religion in America; and Feminism".
In the 1970s Phyllis Trible pioneered a Christian feminist approach to biblical scholarship, using the approach of rhetorical criticism developed by her dissertation advisor, James Muilenburg.
Christian feminist theology has consistently been critiqued as being focused on primarily white women. This has resulted in the development of movements such as womanist theology, focusing on African American women coined by the works of Alice Walker Asian feminist theology, and mujerista theology, introduced by Ada Maria Isasi-Dia concerning Latinas.
The term Christian egalitarianism is sometimes preferred by those advocating gender equality and equity among Christians who do not wish to associate themselves with the feminist movement.
Women apologists have become more visible in Christian academia. Their defense of the faith is differentiated by a more personal, cultural and listening approach "driven by love".
See also: Unity Church, Christian Science, Christian theological praxis and Postmodern Christianity.
Islamic feminism is a form of feminism concerned with the role of women in Islam. It aims for the full equality of all Muslims, regardless of gender, in public and private life. Islamic feminists advocate women's rights, gender equality, and social justice grounded in an Islamic framework. Although rooted in Islam, the movement's pioneers have also utilized secular and European or non-Muslim feminist discourses and recognize the role of Islamic feminism as part of an integrated global feminist movement. Advocates of the movement seek to highlight the deeply rooted teachings of equality in the Quran and encourage a questioning of the patriarchal interpretation of Islamic teaching through the Qur'an (holy book), "hadith" (sayings of Muhammad) and "sharia" (law) towards the creation of a more equal and just society. This is done through the advocation of the female autonomy in line with the guideline of the Qur’an. Feminist theologians like Azizah al-Hibri, professor of Law at University of Richmond, founded KARAMAH: Muslim Women Lawyers for Human Rights. Another form of claiming rights in power is that a few Muslim majority countries have produced more than seven female heads of state, including Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan, Mame Madior Boye of Senegal, Tansu Çiller of Turkey, and Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia. Bangladesh was the first country in the world to have consecutive, elected, female heads of state: Khaleda Zia and Sheikh Hasina.
Feminist theology and Islam is also used to strengthen the spiritual connection to the women of Islam when they undergo severe trauma, to promote human rights especially those of women. Fatima Mernissi’s book, "The Forgotten Queens of Islam", is a crucial piece in feminist theology for Islam and how it relates to a non western state.
Other theologists include Riffat Hassan, Amina Wadud, and Asma Barlas.
This theology has been used to educate, re-frame religion, pose as a building block for peace, and the advancement of women’s rights, in legislation and in society.
In Sikhism women are equal to men. The verse from the Sikh scripture the Guru Granth Sahib states that:
According to scholars such as Nikky-Guninder Kaur Singh, feminist theology in Sikhism is also the feminization of rituals such as the ceremonial rite of who lights a funeral pyre. Singh further states that this is the reclamation of religion to inspire “personal and social renewal of change" and that these theologians are seen as gurus rather than simply women or scholars. The teachings of Guru Nanak focus on the singularity between men and women, with anything that differs denounced. He cites the example that origins and traditions stem from women as supervisors and in control, as well as engaged in history, such as Mai Bhago, who rallied men to fight against imperial forces alongside her in the battle at Muktsar in 1705.
Within Ancient Hinduism, women have been held in equal honour as men. The Manusmriti for example states: "The society that provides respect and dignity to women flourishes with nobility and prosperity. And a society that does not put women on such a high pedestal has to face miseries and failures regardless of how so much noble deeds they perform otherwise." Manusmrithi Chapter 3 Verse 56.
Within the Vedas the Hindu holy texts, women were given the highest possible respect and equality. The Vedic period was glorified by this tradition. Many rishis were women, indeed so that several of them authored many of the slokas, a poem, proverb or hymn, in the Vedas. For instance, in the Rigveda there is a list of women rishis. Some of them are: Ghosha, Godha, Gargi, Vishwawra, Apala, Upanishad, Brahmjaya, Aditi, Indrani, Sarma, Romsha, Maitreyi, Kathyayini, Urvashi, Lopamudra, Yami, Shashwati, Sri, Laksha and many others. In the Vedic period women were free to enter into brahmacharya just like men, and attain salvation.
During Hindu marriage ceremonies, the following slokas are uttered by the grooms, yet in recent years their importance is understood less frequently with no actie desire to analyze them in depth to come to the conclusions that was being portrayed:
"O bride! I accept your hand to enhance our joint good fortune. I pray to you to accept me as your husband and live with me until our old age. ..." "Rigveda Samhita" Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9702
"O bride! May you be like the empress of your mother-in-law, father-in-law, sisters-in-law and brothers-in-law (sisters and brothers of the groom). May your writ run in your house." "Rigveda Samhita" Part -4, sukta 85, sloka 9712
This sloka from the Atharvaveda clearly states that the woman leads and the man follows: "The Sun God follows the first illuminated and enlightened goddess Usha (dawn) in the same manner as men emulate and follow women." "Athravaveda Samhita", Part 2, Kanda 27, sukta 107, sloka 5705.
Women were considered to be the embodiment of great virtue and wisdom. Thus we have: "O bride! May the knowledge of the Vedas be in front of you and behind you, in your center and in your ends. May you conduct your life after attaining the knowledge of the Vedas. May you be benevolent, the harbinger of good fortune and health and live in great dignity and indeed illuminate your husband's home." "Atharva Veda" 14-1-64. Women were allowed full freedom of worship. "The wife should do agnihotra (yagna), sandhya (puja) and all other daily religious rituals. If, for some reason, her husband is not present, the woman alone has full rights to do yagna". "Rigveda Samhita", part 1, sukta 79, sloka 872.
Moving on towards the Monotheistic era of Hinduism when such ideals such as Shaivism and Vaishnavism, a specific deity for feministic worship was brought about under the Shaktism branch. From a Hinduism point of view women are equal in all measures to men in comparison, historical texts have stated this and is the basis of Hinduism, recognizing women as valuable and interconnected between men and women. Shakti, the name meaning power and referring to the female counterpart of Shiva, possesses connected powers that do not belong to just male or female but rather works together, equally dependent upon the other. Hindu feminist scholars also go beyond the reconstruction of texts but also the reestablishment of society and Hinduism in practice.
Some currents of Neopaganism, in particular Wicca, have a ditheistic concept of a single goddess and a single god, who in hieros gamos represent a united whole. Polytheistic reconstructionists focus on reconstructing polytheistic religions, including the various goddesses and figures associated with indigenous cultures.
The term "thealogy" is sometimes used in the context of the Neopagan Goddess movement, a pun on theology and "thea" θεά "goddess" intended to suggest a feminist approach to theism.
The Goddess movement is a loose grouping of social and religious phenomena that grew out of second-wave feminism, predominantly in North America, Western Europe, Australia, and New Zealand in the 1970s, and the metaphysical community as well. Spurred by the perception that women were not treated equitably in many religions, some women turned to a Female Deity as more in tune with their spiritual needs. Education in the Arts became a vehicle for the study of humanitarian philosophers like David Hume at that time. A unifying theme of this diverse movement is the femaleness of Deity (as opposed and contrasted to a patriarchal God).
Goddess beliefs take many forms: some people in the Goddess movement recognize multiple goddesses, some also include gods, while others honour what they refer to as "the Goddess," which is not necessarily seen as monotheistic, but is often understood to be an inclusive, encompassing term incorporating many goddesses in many different cultures. The term "the Goddess" may also be understood to include a multiplicity of ways to view deity personified as female, or as a metaphor, or as a process. (Christ 1997, 2003) The term "The Goddess" may also refer to the concept of The One Divine Power, or the traditionally worshiped "Great Goddess" of ancient times.
In the latter part of the 20th century, feminism was influential in the rise of Neopaganism in the United States, and particularly the Dianic tradition. Some feminists find the worship of a goddess, rather than a god, to be consonant with their views. Others are polytheists, and worship a number of goddesses. The collective set of beliefs associated with this is sometimes known as thealogy and sometimes referred to as the Goddess movement. See also Dianic Wicca.
Buddhist feminism seeks to advance and understand the equality of men and women morally, socially, spiritually, and in leadership from a Buddhist perspective and within Buddhism. While some core beliefs in Buddhism may cause friction with Western feminism, Buddhist feminist theology strives to find the common ground and balance between tradition and the goals of this movement.
In carrying the teachings of Buddhism, feminist theologians critique the common feminist ideology as “other-ing” males. This idea is in conflict with Buddhist beliefs of interconnections between all. The enemy is not the “other” but the idea that there is not a singular connection and being the same.
Buddhist feminist theologies take into consideration religious ideologies, challenge Western feminist views, and reclaim what Buddhism is at its core, interconnected and accepting. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11587 |
Freeware
Freeware is software, most often proprietary, that is distributed at no monetary cost to the end user. There is no agreed-upon set of rights, license, or EULA that defines "freeware" unambiguously; every publisher defines its own rules for the freeware it offers. For instance, modification, redistribution by third parties, and reverse engineering without the author's permission are permitted by some publishers but prohibited by others. Unlike with free and open-source software, which are also often distributed free of charge, the source code for freeware is typically not made available. Freeware may be intended to benefit its producer by, for example, encouraging sales of a more capable version, as in the freemium and shareware business models.
The term "freeware" was coined in 1982 by Andrew Fluegelman, who wanted to sell PC-Talk, the communications application he had created, outside of commercial distribution channels. Fluegelman distributed the program via a process now termed "shareware".
In the 1980s and 1990s, the term "freeware" was often applied to software released without source code.
Software classified as freeware may be used without payment and is typically either fully functional for an unlimited time or has limited functionality, with a more capable version available commercially or as shareware.
In contrast to what the Free Software Foundation calls free software, the author of freeware usually restricts the rights of the user to use, copy, distribute, modify, make derivative works, or reverse engineer the software. The software license may impose additional usage restrictions; for instance, the license may be "free for private, non-commercial use" only, or usage over a network, on a server, or in combination with certain other software packages may be prohibited. Restrictions may be required by license or enforced by the software itself; e.g., the package may fail to function over a network.
The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) defines "open source software" (i.e., free software or free and open-source software), as distinct from "freeware" or "shareware"; it is software where "the Government does not have access to the original source code". The "free" in "freeware" refers to the price of the software, which is typically proprietary and distributed without source code. By contrast, the "free" in "free software" refers to freedoms granted users under the software license (for example, to run the program for any purpose, modify and redistribute the program to others), and such software may be sold at a price.
According to the Free Software Foundation (FSF), "freeware" is a loosely defined category and it has no clear accepted definition, although FSF asks that free software (libre; unrestricted and with source code available) should not be called freeware.
In contrast the Oxford English Dictionary simply characterizes freeware as being "available free of charge (sometimes with the suggestion that users should make a donation to the provider)".
Some freeware products are released alongside paid versions that either have more features or less restrictive licensing terms. This approach is known as freemium ("free" + "premium"), since the free version is intended as a promotion for the premium version. The two often share a code base, using a compiler flag to determine which is produced. For example, BBEdit has a BBEdit Lite edition which has fewer features. XnView is available free of charge for personal use but must be licensed for commercial use. The free version may be advertising supported, as was the case with the DivX.
Ad-supported software and free registerware also bear resemblances to freeware. Ad-supported software does not ask for payment for a license, but displays advertising to either compensate for development costs or as a means of income. Registerware forces the user to subscribe with the publisher before being able to use the product. While commercial products may require registration to ensure licensed use, free registerware do not.
The Creative Commons offer licenses, applicable to all by copyright governed works including software, which allow a developer to define "freeware" in a legal safe and internationally law domains respecting way. The typical freeware use case "share" can be further refined with Creative Commons restriction clauses like non-commerciality (CC BY-NC) or no-derivatives (CC BY-ND), see description of licenses. There are , for instance The White Chamber, Mari0 or Assault Cube, all freeware by being CC BY-NC-SA licensed: free sharing allowed, selling not.
Freeware cannot economically rely on commercial promotion. In May 2015 advertising freeware on Google AdWords was restricted to "authoritative source"[s]. Thus web sites and blogs are the primary resource for information on which freeware is available, useful, and is not malware. However, there are also many computer magazines or newspapers that provide ratings for freeware and include compact discs or other storage media containing freeware. Freeware is also often bundled with other products such as digital cameras or scanners.
Freeware has been criticized as "unsustainable" because it requires a single entity to be responsible for updating and enhancing the product, which is then given away without charge. Other freeware projects are simply released as one-off programs with no promise or expectation of further development. These may include source code, as does free software, so that users can make any required or desired changes themselves, but this code remains subject to the license of the compiled executable and does not constitute free software. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11592 |
Flat Earth
The flat Earth model is an archaic conception of Earth's shape as a plane or disk. Many ancient cultures subscribed to a flat Earth cosmography, including Greece until the classical period, the Bronze Age and Iron Age civilizations of the Near East until the Hellenistic period, India until the Gupta period (early centuries AD), and China until the 17th century.
The idea of a spherical Earth appeared in ancient Greek philosophy with Pythagoras (6th century BC), although most pre-Socratics (6th–5th century BC) retained the flat Earth model. In the early 4th century BC Plato wrote about a spherical Earth, and by about 330 BC his former student Aristotle provided evidence for the spherical shape of the Earth on empirical grounds. Knowledge of the spherical Earth gradually began to spread beyond the Hellenistic world from then on.
Despite the scientific fact of Earth's sphericity, pseudoscientific flat Earth conspiracy theories are espoused by modern flat Earth societies and, increasingly, by unaffiliated individuals using social media.
In early Egyptian and Mesopotamian thought, the world was portrayed as a disk floating in the ocean. A similar model is found in the Homeric account from the 8th century BC in which "Okeanos, the personified body of water surrounding the circular surface of the Earth, is the begetter of all life and possibly of all gods."
The Pyramid Texts and Coffin Texts of ancient Egypt show a similar cosmography; Nun (the Ocean) encircled "nbwt" ("dry lands" or "Islands").
The Israelites also imagined the Earth to be a disc floating on water with an arched firmament above it that separated the Earth from the heavens. The sky was a solid dome with the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars embedded in it.
Both Homer and Hesiod described a disc cosmography on the Shield of Achilles.
This poetic tradition of an Earth-encircling ("gaiaokhos") sea (Oceanus) and a disc also appears in Stasinus of Cyprus, Mimnermus, Aeschylus, and Apollonius Rhodius.
Homer's description of the disc cosmography on the shield of Achilles with the encircling ocean is repeated far later in Quintus Smyrnaeus' "Posthomerica" (4th century AD), which continues the narration of the Trojan War.
Several pre-Socratic philosophers believed that the world was flat: Thales (c. 550 BC) according to several sources, and Leucippus (c. 440 BC) and Democritus (c. 460–370 BC) according to Aristotle.
Thales thought that the Earth floated in water like a log. It has been argued, however, that Thales actually believed in a round Earth. Anaximander (c. 550 BC) believed that the Earth was a short cylinder with a flat, circular top that remained stable because it was the same distance from all things. Anaximenes of Miletus believed that "the Earth is flat and rides on air; in the same way the Sun and the Moon and the other heavenly bodies, which are all fiery, ride the air because of their flatness". Xenophanes of Colophon (c. 500 BC) thought that the Earth was flat, with its upper side touching the air, and the lower side extending without limit.
Belief in a flat Earth continued into the 5th century BC. Anaxagoras (c. 450 BC) agreed that the Earth was flat, and his pupil Archelaus believed that the flat Earth was depressed in the middle like a saucer, to allow for the fact that the Sun does not rise and set at the same time for everyone.
Hecataeus of Miletus believed that the Earth was flat and surrounded by water. Herodotus in his "Histories" ridiculed the belief that water encircled the world, yet most classicists agree that he still believed Earth was flat because of his descriptions of literal "ends" or "edges" of the Earth.
The ancient Norse and Germanic peoples believed in a flat Earth cosmography with the Earth surrounded by an ocean, with the axis mundi, a world tree (Yggdrasil), or pillar (Irminsul) in the centre. In the world-encircling ocean sat a snake called Jormungandr. The Norse creation account preserved in Gylfaginning (VIII) states that during the creation of the Earth, an impassable sea was placed around it:
The late Norse Konungs skuggsjá, on the other hand, explains Earth's shape as a sphere:
In ancient China, the prevailing belief was that the Earth was flat and square, while the heavens were round, an assumption virtually unquestioned until the introduction of European astronomy in the 17th century. The English sinologist Cullen emphasizes the point that there was no concept of a round Earth in ancient Chinese astronomy:
The model of an egg was often used by Chinese astronomers such as Zhang Heng (78–139 AD) to describe the heavens as spherical:
This analogy with a curved egg led some modern historians, notably Joseph Needham, to conjecture that Chinese astronomers were, after all, aware of the Earth's sphericity. The egg reference, however, was rather meant to clarify the relative position of the flat Earth to the heavens:
Further examples cited by Needham supposed to demonstrate dissenting voices from the ancient Chinese consensus actually refer without exception to the Earth being square, not to it being flat. Accordingly, the 13th-century scholar Li Ye, who argued that the movements of the round heaven would be hindered by a square Earth, did not advocate a spherical Earth, but rather that its edge should be rounded off so as to be circular. However, Needham disagrees, affirming that Li Ye believed the Earth to be spherical, similar in shape to the heavens but much smaller. This was preconceived by the 4th-century scholar Yu Xi, who argued for the infinity of outer space surrounding the Earth and that the latter could be either square or round, in accordance to the shape of the heavens. When Chinese geographers of the 17th century, influenced by European cartography and astronomy, showed the Earth as a sphere that could be circumnavigated by sailing around the globe, they did so with formulaic terminology previously used by Zhang Heng to describe the spherical shape of the Sun and Moon (i.e. that they were as round as a crossbow bullet).
As noted in the book "Huainanzi", in the 2nd century BC, Chinese astronomers effectively inverted Eratosthenes' calculation of the curvature of the Earth to calculate the height of the Sun above the Earth. By assuming the Earth was flat, they arrived at a distance of (approximately ). The "Zhoubi Suanjing" also discusses how to determine the distance of the Sun by measuring the length of noontime shadows at different latitudes, a method similar to Eratosthenes' measurement of the circumference of the Earth, but the "Zhoubi Suanjing" assumes that the Earth is flat.
Pythagoras in the 6th century BC and Parmenides in the 5th century stated that the Earth is spherical, and this view spread rapidly in the Greek world. Around 330 BC, Aristotle maintained on the basis of physical theory and observational evidence that the Earth was spherical, and reported an estimate of its circumference. The Earth's circumference was first determined around 240 BC by Eratosthenes. By the 2nd century AD, Ptolemy had derived his maps from a globe and developed the system of latitude, longitude, and climes. His "Almagest" was written in Greek and only translated into Latin in the 11th century from Arabic translations.
Lucretius (1st century BC) opposed the concept of a spherical Earth, because he considered that an infinite universe had no center towards which heavy bodies would tend. Thus, he thought the idea of animals walking around topsy-turvy under the Earth was absurd. By the 1st century AD, Pliny the Elder was in a position to claim that everyone agreed on the spherical shape of Earth, though disputes continued regarding the nature of the antipodes, and how it is possible to keep the ocean in a curved shape.
The Vedic texts depict the cosmos in many ways. One of the earliest Indian cosmological texts picture the Earth as one of a stack of flat disks.
In the Vedic texts, Dyaus (heaven) and Prithvi (Earth) are compared to wheels on an axle, yielding a flat model. They are also described as bowls or leather bags, yielding a concave model. According to Macdonell: "the conception of the Earth being a disc surrounded by an ocean does not appear in the Samhitas. But it was naturally regarded as circular, being compared with a wheel (10.89) and expressly called circular (parimandala) in the "Shatapatha Brahmana"."
By about the 5th century CE, the "siddhanta" astronomy texts of South Asia, particularly of Aryabhata, assume a spherical Earth as they develop mathematical methods for quantitative astronomy for calendar and time keeping.
The medieval Indian texts called the Puranas describe the Earth as a flat-bottomed, circular disk with concentric oceans and continents. This general scheme is present not only in the Hindu cosmologies, but also in Buddhist and Jain cosmologies of South Asia. However, some Puranas include other models. For example, the fifth canto of the "Bhagavata Purana", includes sections that describe the Earth both as flat and spherical.
During the early period of the Christian Church, the spherical view continued to be widely held, with some notable exceptions.
Athenagoras, an eastern Christian writing around the year 175 CE, said that the Earth was spherical. Methodius (c. 290 AD), an eastern Christian writing against "the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians" said: "Let us first lay bare ... the theory of the Chaldeans and the Egyptians. They say that the circumference of the universe is likened to the turnings of a well-rounded globe, the Earth being a central point. They say that since its outline is spherical, ... the Earth should be the center of the universe, around which the heaven is whirling." Lactantius, a western Christian writer and advisor to the first Christian Roman Emperor, Constantine, writing sometime between 304–313 CE, ridiculed the notion of "antipodes" and the philosophers who fancied that "the universe is round like a ball. They also thought that heaven revolves in accordance with the motion of the heavenly bodies. ... For that reason, they constructed brass globes, as though after the figure of the universe." Arnobius, another eastern Christian writing sometime around 305 CE, described the round Earth: "In the first place, indeed, the world itself is neither right nor left. It has neither upper nor lower regions, nor front nor back. For whatever is round and bounded on every side by the circumference of a solid sphere, has no beginning or end ..."
The influential theologian and philosopher Saint Augustine, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Western Church, similarly objected to the "fable" of antipodes:
Some historians do not view Augustine's scriptural commentaries as endorsing any particular cosmological model, but the view that Augustine shared the common view of his contemporaries that the Earth is spherical, in line with his endorsement of science in "De Genesi ad litteram", has been challenged:
Diodorus of Tarsus, a leading figure in the School of Antioch and mentor of John Chrysostom, may have argued for a flat Earth; however, Diodorus' opinion on the matter is known only from a later criticism. Chrysostom, one of the four Great Church Fathers of the Eastern Church and Archbishop of Constantinople, explicitly espoused the idea, based on scripture, that the Earth floats miraculously on the water beneath the firmament. Athanasius the Great, Church Father and Patriarch of Alexandria, expressed a similar view in "Against the Heathen".
"Christian Topography" (547) by the Alexandrian monk Cosmas Indicopleustes, who had traveled as far as Sri Lanka and the source of the Blue Nile, is now widely considered the most valuable geographical document of the early medieval age, although it received relatively little attention from contemporaries. In it, the author repeatedly expounds the doctrine that the universe consists of only two places, the Earth below the firmament and heaven above it. Carefully drawing on arguments from scripture, he describes the Earth as a rectangle, 400 days' journey long by 200 wide, surrounded by four oceans and enclosed by four massive walls which support the firmament. The spherical Earth theory is contemptuously dismissed as "pagan".
Severian, Bishop of Gabala (d. 408), wrote that the Earth is flat and the Sun does not pass under it in the night, but "travels through the northern parts as if hidden by a wall". Basil of Caesarea (329–379) argued that the matter was theologically irrelevant.
Early medieval Christian writers in the early Middle Ages felt little urge to assume flatness of the Earth, though they had fuzzy impressions of the writings of Ptolemy and Aristotle, relying more on Pliny.
With the end of the Western Roman Empire, Western Europe entered the Middle Ages with great difficulties that affected the continent's intellectual production. Most scientific treatises of classical antiquity (in Greek) were unavailable, leaving only simplified summaries and compilations. In contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire did not fall, and it preserved the learning. Still, many textbooks of the Early Middle Ages supported the sphericity of the Earth in the western part of Europe.
Europe's view of the shape of the Earth in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages may be best expressed by the writings of early Christian scholars:
Bishop Isidore of Seville (560–636) taught in his widely read encyclopedia, the "Etymologies", diverse views such as that the Earth "resembles a wheel" resembling Anaximander in language and the map that he provided. This was widely interpreted as referring to a disc-shaped Earth. An illustration from Isidore's "De Natura Rerum" shows the five zones of the Earth as adjacent circles. Some have concluded that he thought the Arctic and Antarctic zones were adjacent to each other. He did not admit the possibility of antipodes, which he took to mean people dwelling on the opposite side of the Earth, considering them legendary and noting that there was no evidence for their existence. Isidore's T and O map, which was seen as representing a small part of a spherical Earth, continued to be used by authors through the Middle Ages, e.g. the 9th-century bishop Rabanus Maurus, who compared the habitable part of the northern hemisphere (Aristotle's northern temperate clime) with a wheel. At the same time, Isidore's works also gave the views of sphericity, for example, in chapter 28 of "De Natura Rerum", Isidore claims that the Sun orbits the Earth and illuminates the other side when it is night on this side. See French translation of "De Natura Rerum". In his other work "Etymologies", there are also affirmations that the sphere of the sky has Earth in its center and the sky being equally distant on all sides. Other researchers have argued these points as well. "The work remained unsurpassed until the thirteenth century and was regarded as the summit of all knowledge. It became an essential part of European medieval culture. Soon after the invention of typography it appeared many times in print." However, "The Scholastics – later medieval philosophers, theologians, and scientists – were helped by the Arabic translators and commentaries, but they hardly needed to struggle against a flat-Earth legacy from the early middle ages (500–1050). Early medieval writers often had fuzzy and imprecise impressions of both Ptolemy and Aristotle and relied more on Pliny, but they felt (with one exception), little urge to assume flatness."
St Vergilius of Salzburg (c. 700–784), in the middle of the 8th century, discussed or taught some geographical or cosmographical ideas that St Boniface found sufficiently objectionable that he complained about them to Pope Zachary. The only surviving record of the incident is contained in Zachary's reply, dated 748, where he wrote:
Some authorities have suggested that the sphericity of the Earth was among the aspects of Vergilius's teachings that Boniface and Zachary considered objectionable. Others have considered this unlikely, and take the wording of Zachary's response to indicate at most an objection to belief in the existence of humans living in the antipodes. In any case, there is no record of any further action having been taken against Vergilius. He was later appointed bishop of Salzburg and was canonised in the 13th century.
A possible non-literary but graphic indication that people in the Middle Ages believed that the Earth (or perhaps the world) was a sphere is the use of the "orb" (globus cruciger) in the regalia of many kingdoms and of the Holy Roman Empire. It is attested from the time of the Christian late-Roman emperor Theodosius II (423) throughout the Middle Ages; the "Reichsapfel" was used in 1191 at the coronation of emperor Henry VI. However the word means "circle", and there is no record of a globe as a representation of the Earth since ancient times in the west until that of Martin Behaim in 1492. Additionally it could well be a representation of the entire "world" or cosmos.
A recent study of medieval concepts of the sphericity of the Earth noted that "since the eighth century, no cosmographer worthy of note has called into question the sphericity of the Earth". However, the work of these intellectuals may not have had significant influence on public opinion, and it is difficult to tell what the wider population may have thought of the shape of the Earth, if they considered the question at all.
Hermannus Contractus (1013–1054) was among the earliest Christian scholars to estimate the circumference of Earth with Eratosthenes' method. St. Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), the most widely taught theologian of the Middle Ages, believed in a spherical Earth; and he even took for granted his readers also knew the Earth is round. Lectures in the medieval universities commonly advanced evidence in favor of the idea that the Earth was a sphere.
Tattersall shows that in many vernacular works in 12th- and 13th-century French texts the Earth was considered "round like a table" rather than "round like an apple". "In virtually all the examples quoted ... from epics and from non-'historical' romances (that is, works of a less learned character) the actual form of words used suggests strongly a circle rather than a sphere", though he notes that even in these works the language is ambiguous.
Portuguese navigation down and around the coast of Africa in the latter half of the 1400s gave wide-scale observational evidence for Earth's sphericity. In these explorations, the Sun position moved more northward the further south the explorers travelled. Its position directly overhead at noon gave evidence for crossing the equator. These apparent solar motions in detail were more consistent with north–south curvature and a distant Sun, than with any flat-Earth explanation. The ultimate demonstration came when Ferdinand Magellan's expedition completed the first global circumnavigation in 1521. Antonio Pigafetta, one of the few survivors of the voyage, recorded the loss of a day in the course of the voyage, giving evidence for east–west curvature.
The Abbasid Caliphate saw a great flowering of astronomy and mathematics in the 9th century AD. Muslim scholars of the past believed in a spherical Earth.
The Quran mentions that the Earth ("al-arḍ") was "spread out". To this 12th-century commentary, the Tafsir al-Kabir (al-Razi) by Fakhr al-Din al-Razi states: "If it is said: Do the words 'And the Earth We spread out' indicate that it is flat? We would respond: Yes, because the Earth, even though it is round, is an enormous sphere, and each little part of this enormous sphere, when it is looked at, appears to be flat. As that is the case, this will dispel what they mentioned of confusion. The evidence for that is the verse in which Allah says (interpretation of the meaning): 'And the mountains as pegs' [an-Naba' 78:7]. He called them "awtaad" (pegs) even though these mountains may have large flat surfaces. And the same is true in this case."
The 11th-century scholar Ibn Hazm stated: "Evidence shows that the Earth is a sphere but public people say the opposite." He added: "None of those who deserve being Imams for Muslims has denied that Earth is round. And we have not received anything indicates a denial, not even a single word."
The 13th-century scholar Ibn Taymiyyah stated that the Earth is spherical and not flat. He stated that the Arabic word "falak" () refers to that which is round. Ibn Abbas said that it is like that of a spinning wheel. The word is used in and . Unlike the previous scholars, scholar Al-Suyuti stated that the Earth is flat.
A spherical terrestrial globe was introduced to Yuan-era Khanbaliq (i.e. Beijing) in 1267 by the Persian astronomer Jamal ad-Din, but it is not known to have made an impact on the traditional Chinese conception of the shape of the Earth. As late as 1595, an early Jesuit missionary to China, Matteo Ricci, recorded that the Ming-dynasty Chinese say: "The Earth is flat and square, and the sky is a round canopy; they did not succeed in conceiving the possibility of the antipodes." The universal belief in a flat Earth is confirmed by a contemporary Chinese encyclopedia from 1609 illustrating a flat Earth extending over the horizontal diametral plane of a spherical heaven.
In the 17th century, the idea of a spherical Earth spread in China due to the influence of the Jesuits, who held high positions as astronomers at the imperial court. Matteo Ricci, in collaboration with Chinese cartographers and translator Li Zhizao, published the "Kunyu Wanguo Quantu" in 1602, the first Chinese world map based on European discoveries. The astronomical and geographical treatise "Gezhicao" () written in 1648 by Xiong Mingyu () explained that the Earth was spherical, not flat or square, and could be circumnavigated.
Beginning in the 19th century, a historical myth arose which held that the predominant cosmological doctrine during the Middle Ages was that the Earth was flat. An early proponent of this myth was the American writer Washington Irving, who maintained that Christopher Columbus had to overcome the opposition of churchmen to gain sponsorship for his voyage of exploration. Later significant advocates of this view were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who used it as a major element in their advocacy of the thesis that there was a long-lasting and essential conflict between science and religion. Some studies of the historical connections between science and religion have demonstrated that theories of their mutual antagonism ignore examples of their mutual support.
Subsequent studies of medieval science have shown that most scholars in the Middle Ages, including those read by Christopher Columbus, maintained that the Earth was spherical.
In the modern era, the pseudoscientific belief in a flat Earth has been expressed by a variety of individuals and groups:
The "International Flat Earth Research Society" (IFERS), better known as the Flat Earth Society, was set up by Samuel Shenton in 1956, in Dover, UK, as a direct descendant of the Universal Zetetic Society. This was just before the Soviet Union launched the first artificial satellite, Sputnik; he responded: "Would sailing round the Isle of Wight prove that it were spherical? It is just the same for those satellites."
His primary aim was to reach children before they were convinced about a spherical Earth. Despite plenty of publicity, the space race eroded Shenton's support in Britain until 1967, when he started to become famous due to the Apollo program.
In 1972, Shenton's role was taken over by Charles K. Johnson, a correspondent from California, US. He incorporated the IFERS and steadily built it up to about 3000 members. He spent years examining the studies of flat- and round-Earth theories and proposed evidence of a conspiracy against flat Earth: "The idea of a spinning globe is only a conspiracy of error that Moses, Columbus, and FDR all fought..." His article was published in the magazine "Science Digest" in 1980. It goes on to state: "If it is a sphere, the surface of a large body of water must be curved. The Johnsons have checked the surfaces of Lake Tahoe and the Salton Sea without detecting any curvature."
The Society declined in the 1990s, following a fire at its headquarters in California and the death of Johnson in 2001. It was revived as a website in 2004 by Daniel Shenton (no relation to Samuel Shenton). He believes that no one has provided proof that the world is not flat.
In the Internet era, the proliferation of communications technology and social-media platforms such as YouTube, Facebook and Twitter have given individuals, famous or otherwise, a platform to spread pseudo-scientific ideas and build stronger followings. The flat-Earth conjecture has flourished in this environment. Social media and the internet, furthermore, have made it easier for like-minded theorists to connect with one another and mutually reinforce their beliefs. In other words, social media has had a "levelling effect", in that experts have less sway in the public mind than they used to.
YouTube had faced criticism for allowing the spread of misinformation and conspiracy theories through its platform. In 2019, YouTube stated that it was making changes in its software to reduce the distribution of videos based on conspiracy theories including flat Earth.
Organizations skeptical of fringe beliefs have occasionally performed tests to demonstrate the local curvature of the Earth. One of these, conducted by members of the Independent Investigations Group at the Salton Sea on June 10, 2018, was attended also by supporters of a flat Earth, and the encounter between the two groups was recorded by the National Geographic Explorer. This experiment successfully demonstrated the curvature of the Earth by the disappearance over distance of boat-based and shore-based targets.
Members of the Flat Earth Society and other flat-Earthers claim that NASA and other government agencies conspire to delude the public into believing the Earth is spherical. According to the most widely spread version of current flat-Earth theory, NASA is guarding the Antarctic ice wall that surrounds Earth. Flat-Earthers argue that NASA photoshops its satellite images, based on observations that the color of the oceans changes from image to image and that continents seem to be in different places. The publicly perpetuated image is kept up through a large-scale practice of "compartmentalization", according to which only a select number of individuals have knowledge about the truth.
The term "flat-earth-man", used in a derogatory sense to mean anyone who holds ridiculously antiquated or impossible views, predates the more compact "flat-earther". It was recorded in 1908: "Fewer votes than one would have thought possible for any human candidate, were he even a flat-earth-man." According to the "Oxford English Dictionary" "flat-Earther's" first use is in 1934 in "Punch" magazine: "Without being a bigoted flat-earther, [Mercator] perceived the nuisance ... of fiddling about with globes ... in order to discover the South Seas." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11593 |
Persian language
Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, "", ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. It is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and used officially within Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan in three mutually intelligible standard varieties, namely Iranian Persian, Dari Persian (officially named "Dari" since 1958) and Tajiki Persian (officially named "Tajik" since the Soviet era). It is also spoken natively in the Tajik variety by a significant population within Uzbekistan, as well as within other regions with a Persianate history in the cultural sphere of Greater Iran. It is written officially within Iran and Afghanistan in the Persian alphabet, a derivation of the Arabic script, and within Tajikistan in the Tajik alphabet, a derivation of Cyrillic.
The Persian language is a continuation of Middle Persian, the official religious and literary language of the Sasanian Empire (224–651 CE), itself a continuation of Old Persian, which was used in the Achaemenid Empire (550–330 BC). It originated in the region of Fars (Persia) in southwestern Iran. Its grammar is similar to that of many European languages.
Throughout history, Persian has been a prestigious cultural language used by various empires in Western Asia, Central Asia, and South Asia. Old Persian written works are attested in Old Persian cuneiform on several inscriptions from between the 6th and the 4th centuries BC, and Middle Persian literature is attested in Aramaic-derived scripts (Pahlavi and Manichaean) on inscriptions from the time of the Parthian Empire and in books centered in Zoroastrian and Manichaean scriptures from between the 3rd to the 10th century AD. New Persian literature began to flourish after the Arab invasion of Iran with its earliest records from the 9th century, since then adopting the Arabic script. Persian was the first language to break through the monopoly of Arabic on writing in the Muslim world, with the writing of Persian poetry developed as a court tradition in many eastern courts. Some of the famous works of medieval Persian literature are the "Shahnameh" of Ferdowsi, the works of Rumi, the "Rubaiyat" of Omar Khayyam, the "Panj Ganj" of Nizami Ganjavi, the "Divān" of Hafez, "The Conference of the Birds" by Attar of Nishapur, and the miscellanea of "Gulistan" and "Bustan" by Saadi Shirazi.
Persian has left a considerable influence on its neighboring languages, including other Iranian languages, the Turkic languages, Armenian, Georgian and the Indo-Aryan languages (especially Urdu). It also exerted some influence on Arabic, while borrowing vocabulary from it under medieval Arab rule. The Persian language was the chosen official language for bureaucracy even among those who were not native speakers, for example the Turks in the Ottoman Empire, or the Pashtuns in Afghanistan who preferred it over their native tongue Pashto before the 20th century.
There are approximately 110 million Persian speakers worldwide, including Persians, Tajiks, Hazaras, Caucasian Tats and Aimaqs. The term "Persophone" might also be used to refer to a speaker of Persian.
Persian is a member of the Western Iranian group of the Iranian languages, which make up a branch of the Indo-European languages in their Indo-Iranian subdivision. The Western Iranian languages themselves are divided into two subgroups: Southwestern Iranian languages, of which Persian is the most widely spoken, and Northwestern Iranian languages, of which Kurdish is the most widely spoken.
The term "Persian" is an English derivation of Latin , the adjectival form of , itself deriving from Greek (), a Hellenized form of Old Persian (), which means "Persia" (a region in southwestern Iran, corresponding to modern-day Fars). According to the "Oxford English Dictionary", the term "Persian" as a language name is first attested in English in the mid-16th century.
"Farsi", which is the Persian word for the Persian language, has also been used widely in English in recent decades, more commonly to refer to the standard Persian of Iran. However, the name "Persian" is still more widely used. The Academy of Persian Language and Literature has called for avoiding the use of the endonym "Farsi" in foreign languages and has maintained that "Persian" is the appropriate designation of the language in English, as it has the longer tradition in western languages and better expresses the role of the language as a mark of cultural and national continuity. Eminent Iranian historian and linguist Ehsan Yarshater, founder of "Encyclopædia Iranica" and the Center for Iranian Studies at Columbia University, mentions the same concern in an academic journal on Iranology, rejecting the use of "Farsi" in foreign languages.
Etymologically, the Persian term derives from its earlier form ( in Middle Persian), which in turn comes from the same root as the English term "Persian". In the same process, the Middle Persian toponym ("Persia") evolved into the modern name Fars. The phonemic shift from to is a result of the medieval Arabic influences that followed the Arab conquest of Iran, and is due to the lack of the phoneme in Standard Arabic.
Iran's standard Persian has been called, apart from "Persian" and "Farsi", by names such as "Iranian Persian" and "Western Persian", exclusively. Officially, the official language of Iran is designated simply as "Persian" (, ).
Dari Persian (, ), that is the standard Persian of Afghanistan, has been officially named "Dari" (, ) since 1958. Also referred to as "Afghan Persian" in English, it is one of Afghanistan's two official languages together with Pashto. The term "Dari", meaning "of the court", originally referred to the variety of Persian used in the court of the Sasanian Empire in capital Ctesiphon, which was spread to the northeast of the empire and gradually replaced the former Iranian dialects of Parthia (Parthian).
Tajik Persian (, ), that is the standard Persian of Tajikistan, has been officially designated as "Tajik" (, ) since the time of the Soviet Union. It is the name given to the varieties of Persian spoken in Central Asia, in general.
The international language-encoding standard ISO 639-1 uses the code codice_1, as its coding system is mostly based on the native-language designations. The more detailed standard ISO 639-3 uses the name "Persian" (code codice_2) for the dialect continuum spoken across Iran and Afghanistan. This consists of the individual languages Dari (Afghan Persian) and Iranian Persian.
In general, the Iranian languages are known from three periods, namely Old, Middle, and New (Modern). These correspond to three historical eras of Iranian history; Old era being sometime around the Achaemenid Empire (i.e., 400–300 BC), Middle era being the next period most officially around the Sasanian Empire, and New era being the period afterwards down to present day.
According to available documents, the Persian language is "the only Iranian language" for which close philological relationships between all of its three stages are established and so that Old, Middle, and New Persian represent one and the same language of Persian; that is, New Persian is a direct descendant of Middle and Old Persian.
The known history of the Persian language can be divided into the following three distinct periods:
As a written language, Old Persian is attested in royal Achaemenid inscriptions. The oldest known text written in Old Persian is from the Behistun Inscription, dating to the time of king Darius I (reigned 522–486 BC). Examples of Old Persian have been found in what is now Iran, Romania (Gherla), Armenia, Bahrain, Iraq, Turkey and Egypt. Old Persian is one of the oldest Indo-European languages which is attested in original texts.
Related to Old Persian, but from a different branch of the Iranian language family, was Avestan, the language of the Zoroastrian liturgical texts.
The complex grammatical conjugation and declension of Old Persian yielded to the structure of Middle Persian in which the dual number disappeared, leaving only singular and plural, as did gender. Middle Persian developed the ezāfe construction, expressed through "ī" (modern "ye"), to indicate some of the relations between words that have been lost with the simplification of the earlier grammatical system.
Although the "middle period" of the Iranian languages formally begins with the fall of the Achaemenid Empire, the transition from Old to Middle Persian had probably already begun before the 4th century BC. However, Middle Persian is not actually attested until 600 years later when it appears in the Sassanid era (224–651 AD) inscriptions, so any form of the language before this date cannot be described with any degree of certainty. Moreover, as a literary language, Middle Persian is not attested until much later, in the 6th or 7th century. From the 8th century onward, Middle Persian gradually began yielding to New Persian, with the middle-period form only continuing in the texts of Zoroastrianism.
Middle Persian is considered to be a later form of the same dialect as Old Persian. The native name of Middle Persian was "Parsig" or "Parsik", after the name of the ethnic group of the southwest, that is, "of "Pars"", Old Persian "Parsa", New Persian "Fars". This is the origin of the name "Farsi" as it is today used to signify New Persian. Following the collapse of the Sassanid state, "Parsik" came to be applied exclusively to (either Middle or New) Persian that was written in the Arabic script. From about the 9th century onward, as Middle Persian was on the threshold of becoming New Persian, the older form of the language came to be erroneously called "Pahlavi", which was actually but one of the "writing systems" used to render both Middle Persian as well as various other Middle Iranian languages. That writing system had previously been adopted by the Sassanids (who were Persians, i.e. from the southwest) from the preceding Arsacids (who were Parthians, i.e. from the northeast). While Ibn al-Muqaffa' (eighth century) still distinguished between "Pahlavi" (i.e. Parthian) and "Persian" (in Arabic text: al-Farisiyah) (i.e. Middle Persian), this distinction is not evident in Arab commentaries written after that date.
Gernot Windfuhr considers new Persian as an evolution of the Old Persian language and the Middle Persian language but also states that none of the known Middle Persian dialects is the direct predecessor of Modern Persian. Ludwig Paul states: "The language of the Shahnameh should be seen as one instance of continuous historical development from Middle to New Persian."
"New Persian" (Modern) is conventionally divided into three stages:
Early New Persian remains largely intelligible to speakers of Contemporary Persian, as the morphology and, to a lesser extent, the lexicon of the language have remained relatively stable.
"New Persian" is taken to replace Middle Persian in the course of the 8th to 9th centuries, under Abbasid rule.
With the decline of the Abbasids began the re-establishment of Persian national life and Persians laid the foundations for a renaissance in the realm of letters. New Persian as an independent literary language first emerges in Bactria through the adaptation of the spoken form of Sassanian Middle Persian court language called "Pārsi-ye Dari". The cradle of the Persian literary renaissance lay in the east of Greater Iran in Greater Khorasan and Transoxiana close to the Amu Darya (modern day Afghanistan, Tajikstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan). The vocabulary of the New Persian language was thus heavily influenced by other Eastern Iranian languages, particularly Sogdian.
The mastery of the newer speech having now been transformed from Middle into New Persian was already complete by the era of the three princely dynasties of Iranian origin, the Tahirid dynasty (820–872), Saffarid dynasty (860–903) and Samanid Empire (874–999), and could develop only in range and power of expression.
Abbas of Merv is mentioned as being the earliest minstrel to chant verse in the newer Persian tongue and after him the poems of Hanzala Badghisi were among the most famous between the Persian-speakers of the time.
The first poems of the Persian language, a language historically called Dari, emerged in Afghanistan. The first significant Persian poet was Rudaki. He flourished in the 10th century, when the Samanids were at the height of their power. His reputation as a court poet and as an accomplished musician and singer has survived, although little of his poetry has been preserved. Among his lost works is versified fables collected in the "Kalila wa Dimna".
The language spread geographically from the 11th century on and was the medium through which among others, Central Asian Turks became familiar with Islam and urban culture. New Persian was widely used as a trans-regional lingua franca, a task for which it was particularly suitable due to its relatively simple morphological structure and this situation persisted until at least the 19th century. In the late Middle Ages, new Islamic literary languages were created on the Persian model: Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Dobhashi and Urdu, which are regarded as "structural daughter languages" of Persian.
"Classical Persian" loosely refers to the standardized language of medieval Persia used in literature and poetry.
This is the language of the 10th to 12th centuries, which continued to be used as literary language and lingua franca under the "Persianized" Turko-Mongol dynasties during the 12th to 15th centuries, and under restored Persian rule during the 16th to 19th centuries.
Persian during this time served as lingua franca of Greater Persia and of much of the Indian subcontinent.
It was also the official and cultural language of many Islamic dynasties, including the Samanids, Buyids, Tahirids, Ziyarids, the Mughal Empire, Timurids, Ghaznavids, Karakhanids, Seljuqs, Khwarazmians, the Sultanate of Rum, Delhi Sultanate, the Shirvanshahs, Safavids, Afsharids, Zands, Qajars, Khanate of Bukhara, Khanate of Kokand, Emirate of Bukhara, Khanate of Khiva, Ottomans and also many Mughal successors such as the Nizam of Hyderabad.
Persian was the only non-European language known and used by Marco Polo at the Court of Kublai Khan and in his journeys through China.
Despite Anatolia having been ruled at various times prior to the Middle Ages by various Persian-speaking dynasties originating in Iran, the language lost its traditional foothold there with the demise of the Sasanian Empire. Centuries later, however, the practise and usage of Persian in the region would be strongly revived. A branch of the Seljuks, the Sultanate of Rum, took Persian language, art and letters to Anatolia. They adopted Persian language as the official language of the empire. The Ottomans, which can roughly be seen as their eventual successors, took this tradition over. Persian was the official court language of the empire, and for some time, the official language of the empire. The educated and noble class of the Ottoman Empire all spoke Persian, such as Sultan Selim I, despite being Safavid Iran's archrival and a staunch opposer of Shia Islam. It was a major literary language in the empire. Some of the noted earlier Persian works during the Ottoman rule are Idris Bidlisi's "Hasht Bihisht", which began in 1502 and covered the reign of the first eight Ottoman rulers, and the "Salim-Namah", a glorification of Selim I. After a period of several centuries, Ottoman Turkish (which was highly Persianised itself) had developed towards a fully accepted language of literature, which was even able to satisfy the demands of a scientific presentation. However, the number of Persian and Arabic loanwords contained in those works increased at times up to 88%.
The Persian language influenced the formation of many modern languages in West Asia, Europe, Central Asia, and South Asia. Following the Turko-Persian Ghaznavid conquest of South Asia, Persian was firstly introduced in the region by Turkic Central Asians. The basis in general for the introduction of Persian language into the subcontinent was set, from its earliest days, by various Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan dynasties. For five centuries prior to the British colonization, Persian was widely used as a second language in the Indian subcontinent, due to the admiration the Mughals (who were of Turco-Mongol origin) had for the foreign language. It took prominence as the language of culture and education in several Muslim courts on the subcontinent and became the sole "official language" under the Mughal emperors. The Bengal Sultanate witnessed an influx of Persian scholars, lawyers, teachers and clerics. Thousands of Persian books and manuscripts were published in Bengal. The period of the reign of Sultan Ghiyathuddin Azam Shah, is described as the "golden age of Persian literature in Bengal". Its stature was illustrated by the Sultan's own correspondence and collaboration with the Persian poet Hafez; a poem which can be found in the "Divan of Hafez" today. A Bengali dialect emerged amongst the common Bengali Muslim folk, based on a Persian model and known as Dobhashi; meaning "mixed language". Dobhashi Bengali was patronised and given official status under the Sultans of Bengal; whose first language was Persian, and was the most popular literary form used by Bengalis during the pre-colonial period, irrespective of their religion.
Beginning in 1843, though, English and Hindustani gradually replaced Persian and in importance on the subcontinent. Evidence of Persian's historical influence there can be seen in the extent of its influence on certain languages of the Indian subcontinent. Words borrowed from Persian are still quite commonly used in certain Indo-Aryan languages, especially Urdu, also historically known as Hindustani. There is also a small population of Zoroastrian Iranis in India, who migrated in the 19th century to escape religious execution in Qajar Iran and speak a Dari dialect.
In the 19th century, under the Qajar dynasty, the dialect that is spoken in Tehran rose to prominence. There was still substantial Arabic vocabulary, but many of these words have been integrated into Persian phonology and grammar. In addition, under the Qajar rule numerous Russian, French, and English terms entered the Persian language, especially vocabulary related to technology.
The first official attentions to the necessity of protecting the Persian language against foreign words, and to the standardization of Persian orthography, were under the reign of Naser ed Din Shah of the Qajar dynasty in 1871. After Naser ed Din Shah, Mozaffar ed Din Shah ordered the establishment of the first Persian association in 1903. This association officially declared that it used Persian and Arabic as acceptable sources for coining words. The ultimate goal was to prevent books from being printed with wrong use of words. According to the executive guarantee of this association, the government was responsible for wrongfully printed books. Words coined by this association, such as "rāh-āhan" () for "railway", were printed in "Soltani Newspaper"; but the association was eventually closed due to inattention.
A scientific association was founded in 1911, resulting in a dictionary called "Words of Scientific Association" (), which was completed in the future and renamed "Katouzian Dictionary" ().
The first academy for the Persian language was founded on 20 May 1935, under the name "Academy of Iran". It was established by the initiative of Reza Shah Pahlavi, and mainly by Hekmat e Shirazi and Mohammad Ali Foroughi, all prominent names in the nationalist movement of the time.
The academy was a key institution in the struggle to re-build Iran as a nation-state after the collapse of the Qajar dynasty. During the 1930s and 1940s, the academy led massive campaigns to replace the many Arabic, Russian, French, and Greek loanwords whose widespread use in Persian during the centuries preceding the foundation of the Pahlavi dynasty had created a literary language considerably different from the spoken Persian of the time. This became the basis of what is now known as "Contemporary Standard Persian".
There are three standard varieties of modern Persian:
All these three varieties are based on the classic Persian literature and its literary tradition. There are also several local dialects from Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan which slightly differ from the standard Persian. The Hazaragi dialect (in Central Afghanistan and Pakistan), Herati (in Western Afghanistan), Darwazi (in Afghanistan and Tajikistan), and the Tehrani accent (in Iran, the basis of standard Iranian Persian) are examples of these dialects. Persian-speaking peoples of Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan can understand one another with a relatively high degree of mutual intelligibility.
The following are some languages closely related to Persian, or in some cases are considered dialects:
More distantly related branches of the Iranian language family include Kurdish and Balochi.
Iranian Persian has six vowels and twenty-three consonants.
Historically, Persian distinguished length. Early New Persian had a series of five long vowels (, , , and ) along with three short vowels , and . At some point prior to the 16th century in the general area now modern Iran, and merged into , and and merged into . Thus, older contrasts such as "shēr" "lion" vs. "shīr" "milk", and "zūd" "quick" vs "zōr" "strong" were lost. However, there are exceptions to this rule, and in some words, "ē" and "ō" are merged into the diphthongs and (which are descendants of the diphthongs and in Early New Persian), instead of merging into and . Examples of the exception can be found in words such as (bright). Numerous other instances exist.
However, in Dari, the archaic distinction of and (respectively known as "Yā-ye majhūl" and "Yā-ye ma'rūf") is still preserved as well as the distinction of and (known as "Wāw-e majhūl" and "Wāw-e ma'rūf"). On the other hand, in standard Tajik, the length distinction has disappeared, and merged with and with . Therefore, contemporary Afghan Dari dialects are the closest to the vowel inventory of Early New Persian.
According to most studies on the subject (e.g. Samareh 1977, Pisowicz 1985, Najafi 2001), the three vowels traditionally considered long (, , ) are currently distinguished from their short counterparts (, , ) by position of articulation rather than by length. However, there are studies (e.g. Hayes 1979, Windfuhr 1979) that consider vowel length to be the active feature of the system, with , , and phonologically long or bimoraic and , , and phonologically short or monomoraic.
There are also some studies that consider quality and quantity to be both active in the Iranian system (such as Toosarvandani 2004). That offers a synthetic analysis including both quality and quantity, which often suggests that Modern Persian vowels are in a transition state between the quantitative system of Classical Persian and a hypothetical future Iranian language, which will eliminate all traces of quantity and retain quality as the only active feature.
The length distinction is still strictly observed by careful reciters of classic-style poetry for all varieties (including Tajik).
Notes:
Suffixes predominate Persian morphology, though there are a small number of prefixes. Verbs can express tense and aspect, and they agree with the subject in person and number. There is no grammatical gender in modern Persian, and pronouns are not marked for natural gender. In other words, in Persian, pronouns are gender neutral. When referring to a masculine or a feminine subject the same pronoun او is used (pronounced "oo", ū).
Normal declarative sentences are structured as "(S) (PP) (O) V": sentences have optional subjects, prepositional phrases, and objects followed by a compulsory verb. If the object is specific, the object is followed by the word "rā" and precedes prepositional phrases: "(S) (O + "rā") (PP) V".
Persian makes extensive use of word building and combining affixes, stems, nouns and adjectives. Persian frequently uses derivational agglutination to form new words from nouns, adjectives, and verbal stems. New words are extensively formed by compounding – two existing words combining into a new one.
While having a lesser influence on Arabic and other languages of Mesopotamia and its core vocabulary being of Middle Persian origin, New Persian contains a considerable amount of Arabic lexical items, which were Persianized and often took a different meaning and usage than the Arabic original. Persian loanwords of Arabic origin especially include Islamic terms. The Arabic vocabulary in other Iranian, Turkic and Indic languages is generally understood to have been copied from New Persian, not from Arabic itself.
John R. Perry, in his article "Lexical Areas and Semantic Fields of Arabic", estimates that about 24 percent of an everyday vocabulary of 20,000 words in current Persian, and more than 25 percent of the vocabulary of classical and modern Persian literature, are of Arabic origin. The text frequency of these loan words is generally lower and varies by style and topic area. It may approach 25 percent of a text in literature. According to another source, about 40% of everyday Persian literary vocabulary is of Arabic origin. Among the Arabic loan words, relatively few (14 percent) are from the semantic domain of material culture, while a larger number are from domains of intellectual and spiritual life. Most of the Arabic words used in Persian are either synonyms of native terms or could be glossed in Persian.
The inclusion of Mongolic and Turkic elements in the Persian language should also be mentioned, not only because of the political role a succession of Turkic dynasties played in Iranian history, but also because of the immense prestige Persian language and literature enjoyed in the wider (non-Arab) Islamic world, which was often ruled by sultans and emirs with a Turkic background. The Turkish and Mongolian vocabulary in Persian is minor in comparison to that of Arabic and these words were mainly confined to military, pastoral terms and political sector (titles, administration, etc.). New military and political titles were coined based partially on Middle Persian (e.g. "arteš" for "army", instead of the Uzbek "qoʻshin"; "sarlaškar"; "daryābān"; etc.) in the 20th century.
Persian has likewise influenced the vocabularies of other languages, especially other Indo-European languages such as Armenian, Urdu, Bengali and (to a lesser extent) Hindi; the latter three through conquests of Persianized Central Asian Turkic and Afghan invaders; Turkic languages such as Ottoman Turkish, Chagatai, Tatar, Turkish, Turkmen, Azeri, Uzbek, and Karachay-Balkar; Caucasian languages such as Georgian, and to a lesser extent, Avar and Lezgin; Afro-Asiatic languages like Assyrian (List of loanwords in Assyrian Neo-Aramaic) and Arabic, particularly Bahrani Arabic; and even Dravidian languages indirectly especially Telugu and Brahui; as well as Austronesian languages such as Indonesian and Malay. Persian has also had a significant lexical influence, via Turkish, on Albanian, Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian, and Serbo-Croatian, particularly as spoken in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
Use of occasional foreign synonyms instead of Persian words can be a common practice in everyday communications as an alternative expression. In some instances in addition to the Persian vocabulary, the equivalent synonyms from multiple foreign languages can be used. For example, in Iranian colloquial Persian (not in Afghanistan or Tajikistan), the phrase "thank you" may be expressed using the French word "merci" (stressed, however, on the first syllable), the hybrid Persian-Arabic phrase "motešakker am" ( "motešakker" being "thankful" in Arabic, commonly pronounced "motčakker" in Persian, and the verb "am" meaning "I am" in Persian), or by the pure Persian phrase "sepās-gozār am".
The vast majority of modern Iranian Persian and Dari text is written with the Arabic script. Tajiki, which is considered by some linguists to be a Persian dialect influenced by Russian and the Turkic languages of Central Asia, is written with the Cyrillic script in Tajikistan (see Tajik alphabet). There also exist several romanization systems for Persian.
Modern Iranian Persian and Afghan Persian are written using the Persian alphabet which is a modified variant of the Arabic alphabet, which uses different pronunciation and additional letters not found in Arabic language. After the Arab conquest of Persia, it took approximately 200 years which is referred to as Two Centuries of Silence in Iran, before Persians adopted the Arabic script in place of the older alphabet. Previously, two different scripts were used, Pahlavi, used for Middle Persian, and the Avestan alphabet (in Persian, Dīndapirak or Din Dabire—literally: religion script), used for religious purposes, primarily for the Avestan but sometimes for Middle Persian.
In the modern Persian script, historically short vowels are usually not written, only the historically long ones are represented in the text, so words distinguished from each other only by short vowels are ambiguous in writing: Iranian Persian ' "worm", ' "generosity", ' "cream", and ' "chrome" are all spelled "" () in Persian. The reader must determine the word from context. The Arabic system of vocalization marks known as "harakat" is also used in Persian, although some of the symbols have different pronunciations. For example, a "ḍammah" is pronounced , while in Iranian Persian it is pronounced . This system is not used in mainstream Persian literature; it is primarily used for teaching and in some (but not all) dictionaries.
There are several letters generally only used in Arabic loanwords. These letters are pronounced the same as similar Persian letters. For example, there are four functionally identical letters for (), three letters for (), two letters for (), two letters for ().
On the other hand, there are four letters that don't exist in Arabic .
The Persian alphabet adds four letters to the Arabic alphabet:
Historically, there was also a special letter for the sound . This letter is no longer used, as the /β/-sound changed to /b/, e.g. archaic /zaβān/ > /zæbɒn/ 'language'
The Persian alphabet also modifies some letters of the Arabic alphabet. For example, "alef with hamza below" ( ) changes to "alef" ( ); words using various hamzas get spelled with yet another kind of hamza (so that becomes ) even though the latter is also correct in Arabic; and "teh marbuta" ( ) changes to "heh" ( ) or "teh" ( ).
The letters different in shape are:
The International Organization for Standardization has published a standard for simplified transliteration of Persian into Latin, ISO 233-3, titled "Information and documentation – Transliteration of Arabic characters into Latin characters – Part 3: Persian language – Simplified transliteration" but the transliteration scheme is not in widespread use.
Another Latin alphabet, based on the Common Turkic Alphabet, was used in Tajikistan in the 1920s and 1930s. The alphabet was phased out in favor of Cyrillic in the late 1930s.
Fingilish is Persian using ISO basic Latin alphabet. It is most commonly used in chat, emails and SMS applications. The orthography is not standardized, and varies among writers and even media (for example, typing 'aa' for the phoneme is easier on computer keyboards than on cellphone keyboards, resulting in smaller usage of the combination on cellphones).
The Cyrillic script was introduced for writing the Tajik language under the Tajik Soviet Socialist Republic in the late 1930s, replacing the Latin alphabet that had been used since the October Revolution and the Persian script that had been used earlier. After 1939, materials published in Persian in the Persian script were banned from the country.
The following text is from Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11600 |
Finite field
In mathematics, a finite field or Galois field (so-named in honor of Évariste Galois) is a field that contains a finite number of elements. As with any field, a finite field is a set on which the operations of multiplication, addition, subtraction and division are defined and satisfy certain basic rules. The most common examples of finite fields are given by the integers mod when is a prime number.
Finite fields are fundamental in a number of areas of mathematics and computer science, including number theory, algebraic geometry, Galois theory, finite geometry, cryptography and coding theory.
A finite field is a finite set which is a field; this means that multiplication, addition, subtraction and division (excluding division by zero) are defined and satisfy the rules of arithmetic known as the field axioms.
The number of elements of a finite field is called its "order" or, sometimes, its "size". A finite field of order exists if and only if the order is a prime power (where is a prime number and is a positive integer). In a field of order , adding copies of any element always results in zero; that is, the characteristic of the field is .
If formula_1 all fields of order are isomorphic (see below). Moreover, a field cannot contain two different finite subfields with the same order. One may therefore identify all finite fields with the same order, and they are unambiguously denoted formula_2, or , where the letters GF stand for "Galois field".
In a finite field of order , the polynomial has all elements of the finite field as roots. The non-zero elements of a finite field form a multiplicative group. This group is cyclic, so all non-zero elements can be expressed as powers of a single element called a primitive element of the field. (In general there will be several primitive elements for a given field.)
The simplest examples of finite fields are the fields of prime order: for each prime number , the prime field of order , denoted , , formula_3, or , may be constructed as the integers modulo.
The elements of the prime field of order may be represented by integers in the range . The sum, the difference and the product are the remainder of the division by of the result of the corresponding integer operation. The multiplicative inverse of an element may be computed by using the extended Euclidean algorithm (see ).
Let be a finite field. For any element in and any integer , denote by the sum of copies of . The least positive such that is the characteristic of the field. This allows defining a multiplication formula_4 of an element of by an element of by choosing an integer representative for . This multiplication makes into a -vector space. It follows that the number of elements of is for some integer .
The identity
(sometimes called the freshman's dream) is true in a field of characteristic . This follows from the binomial theorem, as each binomial coefficient of the expansion of , except the first and the last, is a multiple of .
By Fermat's little theorem, if is a prime number and is in the field then . This implies the equality
for polynomials over . More generally, every element in satisfies the polynomial equation .
Any finite field extension of a finite field is separable and simple. That is, if is a finite field and is a subfield of , then is obtained from by adjoining a single element whose minimal polynomial is separable. To use a jargon, finite fields are perfect.
A more general algebraic structure that satisfies all the other axioms of a field, but whose multiplication is not required to be commutative, is called a division ring (or sometimes "skew field"). By Wedderburn's little theorem, any finite division ring is commutative, and hence is a finite field.
Let be a prime power, and be the splitting field of the polynomial
over the prime field . This means that is a finite field of lowest order, in which has distinct roots (the formal derivative of is , implying that , which in general implies that the splitting field is a separable extension of the original). The above identity shows that the sum and the product of two roots of are roots of , as well as the multiplicative inverse of a root of . In other words, the roots of form a field of order , which is equal to by the minimality of the splitting field.
The uniqueness up to isomorphism of splitting fields implies thus that all fields of order are isomorphic. Also, if a field has a field of order as a subfield, its elements are the roots of , and cannot contain another subfield of order .
In summary, we have the following classification theorem first proved in 1893 by E. H. Moore:
It follows that contains a subfield isomorphic to if and only if is a divisor of ; in that case, this subfield is unique. In fact, the polynomial divides if and only if is a divisor of .
Given a prime power with prime and , the field may be explicitly constructed in the following way. One first chooses an irreducible polynomial in of degree (such an irreducible polynomial always exists). Then the quotient ring
of the polynomial ring by the ideal generated by is a field of order .
More explicitly, the elements of are the polynomials over whose degree is strictly less than . The addition and the subtraction are those of polynomials over . The product of two elements is the remainder of the Euclidean division by of the product in .
The multiplicative inverse of a non-zero element may be computed with the extended Euclidean algorithm; see Extended Euclidean algorithm § Simple algebraic field extensions.
Except in the construction of , there are several possible choices for , which produce isomorphic results. To simplify the Euclidean division, for one commonly chooses polynomials of the form
which make the needed Euclidean divisions very efficient. However, for some fields, typically in characteristic , irreducible polynomials of the form may not exist. In characteristic , if the polynomial is reducible, it is recommended to choose with the lowest possible that makes the polynomial irreducible. If all these trinomials are reducible, one chooses "pentanomials" , as polynomials of degree greater than , with an even number of terms, are never irreducible in characteristic , having as a root.
A possible choice for such a polynomial is given by Conway polynomials. They ensure a certain compatibility between the representation of a field and the representations of its subfields.
In the next sections, we will show how the general construction method outlined above works for small finite fields.
Over , there is only one irreducible polynomial of degree :
Therefore, for the construction of the preceding section must involve this polynomial, and
If one denotes a root of this polynomial in , the tables of the operations in are the following. There is no table for subtraction, because subtraction is identical to addition, as is the case for every field of characteristic 2. In the third table, for the division of by , must be read on the left, and on the top.
For applying the above general construction of finite fields in the case of , one has to find an irreducible polynomial of degree 2. For , this has been done in the preceding section. If is an odd prime, there are always irreducible polynomials of the form , with in .
More precisely, the polynomial is irreducible over if and only if is a quadratic non-residue modulo (this is almost the definition of a quadratic non-residue). There are formula_14 quadratic non-residues modulo . For example, is a quadratic non-residue for , and is a quadratic non-residue for . If , that is , one may choose as a quadratic non-residue, which allows us to have a very simple irreducible polynomial .
Having chosen a quadratic non-residue , let be a symbolic square root of , that is a symbol which has the property , in the same way as the complex number is a symbolic square root of . Then, the elements of are all the linear expressions
with and in . The operations on are defined as follows (the operations between elements of represented by Latin letters are the operations in ):
The polynomial
is irreducible over and , that is, it is irreducible modulo and (to show this it suffices to show that it has no root in nor in ). It follows that the elements of and may be represented by expressions
where are elements of or (respectively), and formula_19 is a symbol such that
The addition, additive inverse and multiplication on and may thus be defined as follows; in following formulas, the operations between elements of or , represented by Latin letters, are the operations in or , respectively:
The polynomial
is irreducible over , that is, it is irreducible modulo . It follows that the elements of may be represented by expressions
where are either or (elements of ), and is a symbol such that
As the characteristic of is , each element is its additive inverse in .
The addition and multiplication on may be defined as follows; in following formulas, the operations between elements of , represented by Latin letters are the operations in .
The set of non-zero elements in is an abelian group under the multiplication, of order . By Lagrange's theorem, there exists a divisor of such that for every non-zero in . As the equation has at most solutions in any field, is the lowest possible value for .
The structure theorem of finite abelian groups implies that this multiplicative group is cyclic, that is, all non-zero elements are powers of a single element. In summary:
Such an element is called a primitive element. Unless , the primitive element is not unique. The number of primitive elements is where is Euler's totient function.
The result above implies that for every in . The particular case where is prime is Fermat's little theorem.
If is a primitive element in , then for any non-zero element in , there is a unique integer with such that
This integer is called the discrete logarithm of to the base .
While can be computed very quickly, for example using exponentiation by squaring, there is no known efficient algorithm for computing the inverse operation, the discrete logarithm. This has been used in various cryptographic protocols, see Discrete logarithm for details.
When the nonzero elements of are represented by their discrete logarithms, multiplication and division are easy, as they reduce to addition and subtraction modulo . However, addition amounts to computing the discrete logarithm of . The identity
allows one to solve this problem by constructing the table of the discrete logarithms of , called Zech's logarithms, for (it is convenient to define the discrete logarithm of zero as being ).
Zech's logarithms are useful for large computations, such as linear algebra over medium-sized fields, that is, fields that are sufficiently large for making natural algorithms inefficient, but not too large, as one has to pre-compute a table of the same size as the order of the field.
Every nonzero element of a finite field is a root of unity, as for every nonzero element of .
If is a positive integer, an th primitive root of unity is a solution of the equation that is not a solution of the equation for any positive integer . If is a th primitive root of unity in a field , then contains all the roots of unity, which are .
The field contains a th primitive root of unity if and only if is a divisor of ; if is a divisor of , then the number of primitive th roots of unity in is (Euler's totient function). The number of th roots of unity in is .
In a field of characteristic , every th root of unity is also a th root of unity. It follows that primitive th roots of unity never exist in a field of characteristic .
On the other hand, if is coprime to , the roots of the th cyclotomic polynomial are distinct in every field of characteristic , as this polynomial is a divisor of , whose discriminant is nonzero modulo . It follows that the th cyclotomic polynomial factors over into distinct irreducible polynomials that have all the same degree, say , and that is the smallest field of characteristic that contains the th primitive roots of unity.
The field has several interesting properties that smaller fields do not share: it has two subfields such that neither is contained in the other; not all generators (elements with minimal polynomial of degree over ) are primitive elements; and the primitive elements are not all conjugate under the Galois group.
The order of this field being , and the divisors of being , the subfields of are , , , and itself. As and are coprime, the intersection of and in is the prime field .
The union of and has thus elements. The remaining elements of generate in the sense that no other subfield contains any of them. It follows that they are roots of irreducible polynomials of degree over . This implies that, over , there are exactly irreducible monic polynomials of degree . This may be verified by factoring over .
The elements of are primitive th roots of unity for some dividing . As the 3rd and the 7th roots of unity belong to and , respectively, the generators are primitive th roots of unity for some in . Euler's totient function shows that there are primitive th roots of unity, primitive st roots of unity, and primitive rd roots of unity. Summing these numbers, one finds again elements.
By factoring the cyclotomic polynomials over , one finds that:
This shows that the best choice to construct is to define it as . In fact, this generator is a primitive element, and this polynomial is the irreducible polynomial that produces the easiest Euclidean division.
In this section, is a prime number, and is a power of .
In , the identity implies that the map
is a -linear endomorphism and a field automorphism of , which fixes every element of the subfield . It is called the Frobenius automorphism, after Ferdinand Georg Frobenius.
Denoting by the composition of with itself times, we have
It has been shown in the preceding section that is the identity. For , the automorphism is not the identity, as, otherwise, the polynomial
would have more than roots.
There are no other -automorphisms of . In other words, has exactly -automorphisms, which are
In terms of Galois theory, this means that is a Galois extension of , which has a cyclic Galois group.
The fact that the Frobenius map is surjective implies that every finite field is perfect.
If is a finite field, a non-constant monic polynomial with coefficients in is irreducible over , if it is not the product of two non-constant monic polynomials, with coefficients in .
As every polynomial ring over a field is a unique factorization domain, every monic polynomial over a finite field may be factored in a unique way (up to the order of the factors) into a product of irreducible monic polynomials.
There are efficient algorithms for testing polynomial irreducibility and factoring polynomials over finite field. They are a key step for factoring polynomials over the integers or the rational numbers. At least for this reason, every computer algebra system has functions for factoring polynomials over finite fields, or, at least, over finite prime fields.
The polynomial
factors into linear factors over a field of order . More precisely, this polynomial is the product of all monic polynomials of degree one over a field of order .
This implies that, if then is the product of all monic irreducible polynomials over , whose degree divides . In fact, if is an irreducible factor over of , its degree divides , as its splitting field is contained in . Conversely, if is an irreducible monic polynomial over of degree dividing , it defines a field extension of degree , which is contained in , and all roots of belong to , and are roots of ; thus divides . As does not have any multiple factor, it is thus the product of all the irreducible monic polynomials that divide it.
This property is used to compute the product of the irreducible factors of each degree of polynomials over ; see Distinct degree factorization.
The number of monic irreducible polynomials of degree over
where is the Möbius function. This formula is almost a direct consequence of above property of .
By the above formula, the number of irreducible (not necessarily monic) polynomials of degree over is .
A (slightly simpler) lower bound for is
One may easily deduce that, for every and every , there is at least one irreducible polynomial of degree over . This lower bound is sharp for .
In cryptography, the difficulty of the discrete logarithm problem in finite fields or in elliptic curves is the basis of several widely used protocols, such as the Diffie–Hellman protocol. For example, in 2014 a secure internet connection to Wikipedia involved the elliptic curve Diffie–Hellman protocol (ECDHE) over a large finite field. In coding theory, many codes are constructed as subspaces of vector spaces over finite fields.
Finite fields are widely used in number theory, as many problems over the integers may be solved by reducing them modulo one or several prime numbers. For example, the fastest known algorithms for polynomial factorization and linear algebra over the field of rational numbers proceed by reduction modulo one or several primes, and then reconstruction of the solution by using Chinese remainder theorem, Hensel lifting or the LLL algorithm.
Similarly many theoretical problems in number theory can be solved by considering their reductions modulo some or all prime numbers. See, for example, Hasse principle. Many recent developments of algebraic geometry were motivated by the need to enlarge the power of these modular methods. Wiles' proof of Fermat's Last Theorem is an example of a deep result involving many mathematical tools, including finite fields.
The Weil conjectures concern the number of points on algebraic varieties over finite fields and the theory has many applications including exponential and character sum estimates.
Finite fields have widespread application in combinatorics, two well known examples being the definition of Paley Graphs and the related construction for Hadamard Matrices. In arithmetic combinatorics finite fields and finite field models are used extensively, such as in Szemerédi's theorem on arithmetic progressions.
A finite field is not algebraically closed. To demonstrate this, consider the polynomial
which has no roots in , since for all in .
The direct limit of the system:
with inclusion, is an infinite field. It is the algebraic closure of all the fields in the system, and is denoted by: formula_37.
The inclusions commute with the Frobenius map, as it is defined the same way on each field (), so the Frobenius map defines an automorphism of formula_37, which carries all subfields back to themselves. In fact can be recovered as the fixed points of the th iterate of the Frobenius map.
However unlike the case of finite fields, the Frobenius automorphism on formula_37 has infinite order, and it does not generate the full group of automorphisms of this field. That is, there are automorphisms of formula_37 which are not a power of the Frobenius map. However, the group generated by the Frobenius map is a dense subgroup of the automorphism group in the Krull topology. Algebraically, this corresponds to the additive group being dense in the profinite integers (direct product of the -adic integers over all primes , with the product topology).
If we actually construct our finite fields in such a fashion that is contained in whenever divides , then this direct limit can be constructed as the union of all these fields. Even if we do not construct our fields this way, we can still speak of the algebraic closure, but some more delicacy is required in its construction.
Although finite fields are not algebraically closed, they are quasi-algebraically closed, which means that every homogeneous polynomial over a finite field has a non-trivial zero whose components are in the field if the number of its variables is more than its degree. This was a conjecture of Artin and Dickson proved by Chevalley (see Chevalley–Warning theorem).
A division ring is a generalization of field. Division rings are not assumed to be commutative. There are no non-commutative finite division rings: Wedderburn's little theorem states that all finite division rings are commutative, hence finite fields. The result holds even if we relax associativity and consider alternative rings, by the Artin–Zorn theorem.
Finite fields appear in the following chain of inclusions: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11615 |
Franchising
Franchising is based on a marketing concept which can be adopted by an organization as a strategy for business expansion. Where implemented, a franchisor licenses its know-how, procedures, intellectual property, use of its business model, brand, and rights to sell its branded products and services to a franchisee. In return the franchisee pays certain fees and agrees to comply with certain obligations, typically set out in a Franchise Agreement.
The word "franchise" is of Anglo-French derivation—from "franc", meaning free—and is used both as a noun and as a (transitive) verb.
For the franchisor, use of a franchise system is an alternative business growth strategy, compared to expansion through corporate owned outlets or "chain stores". Adopting a franchise system business growth strategy for the sale and distribution of goods and services minimizes the franchisor's capital investment and liability risk.
Franchising is not an equal partnership, especially due to the legal advantages the franchisor has over the franchisee. But under specific circumstances like transparency, favourable legal conditions, financial means and proper market research, franchising can be a vehicle of success for both franchisor and franchisee.
Thirty-six countries have laws that explicitly regulate franchising, with the majority of all other countries having laws which have a direct or indirect effect on franchising.
Franchising is also used as a foreign market entry mode.
The boom in franchising did not take place until after World War II. Nevertheless, the rudiments of modern franchising date back to the Middle Ages when landowners made franchise-like agreements with tax collectors, who retained a percentage of the money they collected and turned the rest over. The practice ended around 1562 but spread to other endeavors. For example, in 17th century England franchisees were granted the right to sponsor markets and fairs or operate ferries. There was little growth in franchising, though, until the mid-19th century, when it appeared in the United States for the first time.
One of the first successful American franchising operations was started by an enterprising druggist named John S. Pemberton. In 1886, he concocted a beverage comprising sugar, molasses, spices, and cocaine. Pemberton licensed selected people to bottle and sell the drink, which was an early version of what is now known as Coca-Cola. His was one of the earliest—and most successful—franchising operations in the United States.
The Singer Company implemented a franchising plan in the 1850s to distribute its sewing machines. The operation failed, though, because the company did not earn much money even though the machines sold well. The dealers, who had exclusive rights to their territories, absorbed most of the profits because of deep discounts. Some failed to push Singer products, so competitors were able to outsell the company. Under the existing contract, Singer could neither withdraw rights granted to franchisees nor send in its own salaried representatives. So, the company started repurchasing the rights it had sold. The experiment proved to be a failure. That may have been one of the first times a franchisor failed, but it was by no means the last. (Even Colonel Sanders did not initially succeed in his Kentucky Fried Chicken franchising efforts.) Still, the Singer venture did not put an end to franchising.
Other companies tried franchising in one form or another after the Singer experience. For example, several decades later, General Motors Corporation established a somewhat successful franchising operation in order to raise capital. Perhaps the father of modern franchising, though, is Louis K. Liggett. In 1902, Liggett invited a group of druggists to join a "drug cooperative." As he explained to them, they could increase profits by paying less for their purchases, especially if they set up their own manufacturing company. His idea was to market private label products. About 40 druggists pooled $4,000 of their own money and adopted the name "Rexall". Sales soared, and Rexall became a franchisor. The chain's success set a pattern for other franchisors to follow.
Although many business owners did affiliate with cooperative ventures of one type or another, there was little growth in franchising until the early 20th century, and in whatever form franchising existed, it looked nothing like what it is today. As the United States shifted from an agricultural to an industrial economy, manufacturers licensed individuals to sell automobiles, trucks, gasoline, beverages, and a variety of other products. The franchisees did little more than selling the products, though. The sharing of responsibility associated with contemporary franchising arrangement did not exist to a great extent. Consequently, franchising was not a growth industry in the United States.
It was not until the 1960s and 1970s that people began to take a close look at the attractiveness of franchising. The concept intrigued people with entrepreneurial spirit. However, there were serious pitfalls for investors, which almost ended the practice before it became truly popular.
The following U.S. listing tabulates the early 2010 ranking of major franchises along with the number of sub-franchisees (or partners) from data available for 2004. The United States is a leader in franchising, a position it has held since the 1930s when it used the approach for fast-food restaurants, food inns and, slightly later, motels at the time of the Great Depression. As of 2005, there were 909,253 established franchised businesses, generating $880.9 billion of output and accounting for 8.1 percent of all private, non-farm jobs. This amounts to 11 million jobs, and 4.4 percent of all private sector output.
Mid-sized franchises like restaurants, gasoline stations and trucking stations involve substantial investment and require all the attention of a businessperson.
There are also large franchises like hotels, spas and hospitals, which are discussed further under technological alliances.
Three important payments are made to a franchisor: (a) a royalty for the trademark, (b) reimbursement for the training and advisory services given to the franchisee, and (c) a percentage of the individual business unit's sales. These three fees may be combined in a single 'management' fee. A fee for "disclosure" is separate and is always a "front-end fee".
A franchise usually lasts for a fixed time period (broken down into shorter periods, which each require renewal), and serves a specific territory or geographical area surrounding its location. One franchisee may manage several such locations. Agreements typically last from five to thirty years, with premature cancellations or terminations of most contracts bearing serious consequences for franchisees. A franchise is merely a temporary business investment involving renting or leasing an opportunity, not the purchase of a business for the purpose of ownership. It is classified as a wasting asset due to the finite term of the license.
Franchise fees are on average 6.7% with an additional average marketing fee of 2%. However, not all franchise opportunities are the same and many franchise organizations are pioneering new models that challenge antiquated structures and redefine success for the organization as well as the franchisee.
A franchise can be exclusive, non-exclusive or "sole and exclusive".
Although franchisor revenues and profit may be listed in a franchise disclosure document (FDD), no laws require an estimate of franchisee profitability, which depends on how intensively the franchisee "works" the franchise. Therefore, franchisor fees are typically based on "gross revenue from sales" and not on profits realized. See remuneration.
Various tangibles and intangibles such as national or international advertising, training and other support services are commonly made available by the franchisor.
Franchise brokers help franchisors find appropriate franchisees. There are also main 'master franchisors' who obtain the rights to sub-franchise in a territory.
According to the International Franchise Association approximately 44% of all businesses in the United States are franchisee-worked.
Franchising is one of the few means available to access venture capital without the need to give up control of the operation of the chain and build a distribution system for servicing it. After the brand and formula are carefully designed and properly executed, franchisors are able to sell franchises and expand rapidly across countries and continents using the capital and resources of their franchisees while reducing their own risk.
There is also risk for the people buying the franchises. However, failure rates are much lower for franchise businesses than independent business startups.
Franchisor rules imposed by the franchising authority are becoming increasingly strict. Some franchisors are using minor rule violations to terminate contracts and seize the franchise without any reimbursement.
Franchising brings with it several advantages and disadvantages for firms looking to expand into new areas and foreign markets. The primary advantage is that the firm does not have to bear the development cost and risks of opening a foreign market on its own, as the Franchisee is typically responsible for those costs and risks, putting the onus on the Franchisee to build a profitable operation as quickly as possible. Through franchising, a firm has the potential of building a global presence quickly and also at a low cost and risk.
A primary disadvantage to franchising is quality control, as the franchisor wants the firm's brand name to convey a message to consumers about the quality and consistency of the firm's product. They want the consumer to experience the same quality regardless of location or franchise status. This can prove to be an issue with franchising, as a customer who had a bad experience at one franchise may assume that they will have the same experience at other locations with other services. Distance can make it difficult for firms to detect whether or not the franchises are of poor quality. One way around this disadvantage is to set up extra subsidiaries in each country or state in which the firm expands. This creates a smaller number of franchisees to oversee, which will reduce the quality control challenges.
Each party to a franchise has several interests to protect. The franchisor is involved in securing protection for the trademark, controlling the business concept and securing know-how. The franchisee is obligated to carry out the services for which the trademark has been made prominent or famous. There is a great deal of standardization required. The place of service has to bear the franchisor's signs, logos and trademark in a prominent place. The uniforms worn by the staff of the franchisee have to be of a particular design and color. The service has to be in accordance with the pattern followed by the franchisor in the successful franchise operations. Thus, franchisees are not in full control of the business, as they would be in retailing.
A service can be successful if equipment and supplies are purchased at a fair price from the franchisor or sources recommended by the franchisor. A coffee brew, for example, can be readily identified by the trademark if its raw materials come from a particular supplier. If the franchisor requires purchase from her stores, it may come under anti-trust legislation or equivalent laws of other countries. So too the purchase things like uniforms of personnel and signs, as well as the franchise sites, if they are owned or controlled by the franchisor.
The franchisee must carefully negotiate the license and must develop a marketing or business plan with the franchisor. The fees must be fully disclosed and there should not be any hidden fees. The start-up costs and working capital must be known before the license is granted. There must be assurance that additional licensees will not crowd the "territory" if the franchise is worked according to plan. The franchisee must be seen as an independent merchant. It must be protected by the franchisor from any trademark infringement by third parties. A franchise attorney is required to assist the franchisee during negotiations.
Often the training period – the costs of which are in great part covered by the initial fee – is too short in cases where it is necessary to operate complicated equipment, and the franchisee has to learn on their own from instruction manuals. The training period must be adequate, but in low-cost franchises it may be considered expensive. Many franchisors have set up corporate universities to train staff online. This is in addition to providing literature, sales documents and email access.
Also, franchise agreements carry no guarantees or warranties and the franchisee has little or no recourse to legal intervention in the event of a dispute. Franchise contracts tend to be unilateral and favor of the franchisor, who is generally protected from lawsuits from their franchisees because of the non-negotiable contracts that franchisees are required to acknowledge, in effect, that they are buying the franchise knowing that there is risk, and that they have not been promised success or profits by the franchisor. Contracts are renewable at the sole option of the franchisor. Most franchisors require franchisees to sign agreements that mandate where and under what law any dispute would be litigated.
Franchise contracts also influence the development of trust between partners. Scholars in economics and management have noted how differences in the framing of contractual obligations (promotion-framed vs. prevention-framed) can foster distinct perceptions and levels of trust.
In 2016 there were an estimated 1,120 franchise brands operating in Australia and an estimated 79,000 units operating in business format franchises, with a total brand turnover of approximately $146 billion and a sales revenue of approximately $66.5 billion. In 2016 the majority of franchise brands were retailers with the largest segment being non-food retailing, accounting for 26 percent of brands, a further 19 percent of brands were involved in food retailing, 15 percent of franchisors operated in administration and support services, 10 percent in other services, 7 percent in education and training and 7 percent in rental, hire and real estate services.
Franchising in Australia commenced in a significant way in the early 1970s under the influence of the franchised US fast food systems such as KFC, Pizza Hut, and McDonald's. It was however underway prior to this and a decade earlier in 1960 Leslie Joseph Hooker, considered a pioneer of franchising, created Australia's first national real estate agency network of Hooker real estate agencies.
In Australia, franchising is regulated by the Franchising Code of Conduct, a mandatory code of conduct concluded under the Trade Practices Act 1974.
The ACCC regulates the Franchising Code of Conduct, which is a mandatory industry code that applies to the parties to a franchise agreement.
This code requires franchisors to produce a disclosure document which must be given to a prospective franchisee at least 14 days before the franchise agreement is entered into.
The code also regulates the content of franchise agreements, for example in relation to marketing funds, a cooling-off period, termination, and the resolution of disputes by mediation.
On 1 January 2015, the old Franchising Code was repealed and replaced with a new Franchising Code of Conduct. The new Code applies to conduct on or after 1 January 2015.
The new Code:
These are significant changes and it is important that franchisors, franchisees and potential franchises understand their rights and responsibilities under the Code.
For further information about the changes to the Code, please see the updated Franchisor Compliance Manual and the Franchisee Manual.
The Code explanatory materials are available from the ComLaw website (link is external).
New Zealand is served by around 423 franchise systems operating 450 brands, giving it the highest proportion of franchises per capita in the world. Despite (or because of) the 2008-09 recession, the total number of franchised units increased by 5.3% from 2009 to 2010. There is no separate law covering franchises, so they are covered by normal commercial law. This functions very well in New Zealand and includes law as it applies to contracts, restrictive trade practices, intellectual property, and the law of misleading or deceptive conduct.
The Franchise Association of New Zealand introduced a self-regulatory code of practice for its members in 1996. This contains many provisions similar to those of the Australian Franchising Code of Practice legislation, although only around a third of all franchises are members of the association and therefore bound by the code.
A case of fraud in 2007 perpetrated by a former master franchisee of the country's largest franchise system led to a review of the need for franchise law by the Ministry of Economic Development. The New Zealand Government decided there was no case for franchise-specific legislation at that time. This decision was criticised by the opposition, which had initiated the review when in power, and the review process was questioned by a leading academic. The Franchise Association originally supported the positive regulation of the franchise sector but its eventual submission to the review was in favour of the status quo of self-regulation.
By the end of 2012, about 2,031 franchise brands were operating in Brazil, with approximately 93,000 locations, making it one of the largest countries in the world in terms of number of units. Around 11 percent of this total were foreign-based franchisors.
The Brazilian Franchise Law (Law No. 8955 of December 15, 1994) defines the franchise as a system in which the franchisor licenses the franchisee, for a payment, the right to use a trademark or patent along with the right to distribute products or services on an exclusive or semi-exclusive basis.
The provision of a "Franchise Offer Circular", or disclosure document, is mandatory before execution of agreement and is valid for all of the Brazilian territory. Failure to disclose voids the agreement, which leads to refunds and serious payments for damages. The Franchise Law does not distinguish between Brazilian and foreign franchisors. The National Institute of Industrial Property (INPI) is the registering authority. Indispensable documents are a Statement of Delivery (of disclosure documentation) and a Certification of Recording (INPI). The latter is necessary for payments. All sums may not be convertible into foreign currency. Certification may also mean compliance with Brazil's antitrust legislation.
Parties to international franchising may decide to adopt the English language for the document, as long as the Brazilian party knows English fluently and expressly acknowledges that fact, to avoid translation. The registration accomplishes three things:
In Canada, recent legislation has mandated better disclosure and fair treatment of franchisees. The regulations also ensure their right to form associations and launch collective action, even if they signed contracts prohibiting such moves. Franchising in Canada involves 1,300 brands, 80,000 franchise units accounting for about 20% of all consumer spending.
China has the most franchises in the world but the scale of their operations is relatively small. Each system in China has an average of 43 outlets, compared to more than 540 in the United States. Together, there are 2600 brands in some 200,000 retail markets. KFC was the most significant foreign entry in 1987 and is widespread Many franchises are in fact joint-ventures, as at their forming the franchise law was not explicit. For example, McDonald's is a joint venture. Pizza Hut, TGIF, Wal-mart, Starbucks followed a little later. But total franchising is only 3% of retail trade, which seeks foreign franchise growth.
The year 2005 saw the birth of an updated franchise law, "Measures for the Administration of Commercial Franchise". Previous legislation (1997) made no specific inclusion of foreign investors. Today the franchise law is much clearer by virtue of the 2007 law, a revision of the 2005 law.
The laws are applicable if there are transactions involving a trademark combined with payments with many obligations on the franchisor. The law comprises 42 articles and eight chapters.
Among the franchisor obligations are:
The franchisor must meet a list of requirements for registration, among which are:
Among other provisions:
The disclosure must take place 20 days in advance. It has to contain:
Other elements of this legislation are:
The franchising of foreign goods and services to India is in its infancy. The first International Exhibition was only held in 2009. India is, however, one of the biggest franchising markets because of its large middle-class of 300 million who are not reticent about spending and because the population is entrepreneurial in character. In a highly diversified society, (see Demographics of India) McDonald's is a success story despite its menu differing from that of the rest of the world.
So far, franchise agreements are covered under two standard commercial laws: the Contract Act 1872 and the Specific Relief Act 1963, which provide for both specific enforcement of covenants in a contract and remedies in the form of damages for breach of contract.
In Kazakhstan franchise turnover for 2013 is 2.5 billion US$ dollars per year. Kazakhstan is the leader in Central Asia in the franchising market. A special law on franchising came into effect in 2002. There are more than 300 franchise systems and the number of franchised outlets approaches 2000. Kazakhstan franchising began with the emergence of a "Coca-Cola" factory, opened to sublicense a Turkish licensor of the same brand. The plant was built in 1994. Other brands that are also present in Kazakhstan through the franchise system include Pepsi, Hilton, Marriott, Intercontinental, and Pizza Hut.
Franchising has grown rapidly in Europe in recent years, but the industry is largely unregulated. The European Union has not adopted a uniform franchise law. Only six of the 28 member states have a pre-contract disclosure law. They are France (1989), Spain (1996), Romania (1997), Italy (2004) Sweden ( 2004) and Belgium (2005). Estonia and Lithuania have franchise laws that impose mandatory terms on franchise agreements. In Spain there is also mandatory registration on a public registry. Although they have no franchise specific laws, Germany and those countries with a legal system based upon that of Germany, such as Austria, Greece and Portugal, probably impose the greatest regulatory burden on franchisors due to their tendency to treat franchisees as quasi consumers in certain circumstances and the willingness of the judiciary to use the concept of good faith to make pro-franchisee decisions. In the UK, the recent Papa John case shows that there is also a need for pre-contractual disclosure and the Yam Seng case shows that there is a duty of good faith in franchise relationships.
The European Franchising Federation's Code of Ethics has been adopted by seventeen national franchise associations. However this has no legal force and enforcement by the national associations is neither uniform of rigorous. Commentators like Dr Mark Abell, in his book "The Law and Regulation of Franchising in the EU" ( Published in 2013 by Edward Elgar ) consider this lack of uniformity to be one of the greatest barriers to the franchising realising its potential in the EU.
When adopting a European strategy it is important that a franchisor takes expert legal advice. Most often one of the principal tasks in Europe is to find retail space, which is not so significant a factor in the USA. This is where the franchise broker, or the master franchisor, plays an important role. Cultural factors are also relevant, as local populations tend to be heterogeneous.
France is one of Europe's largest markets. Similar to the United States, it has a long history of franchising, dating back to the 1930s. Growth came in the 1970s. The market is considered difficult for outside franchisors because of cultural characteristics, yet McDonald's and Century 21 are found everywhere. There are some 30 U.S. firms involved in franchising in France.
There are no government agencies regulating franchises. The Loi Doubin Law of 1989 was the first European franchise disclosure law. Combined with Decree No. 91-337, it regulates disclosure, although the decree also applies to any person who provides to another person a corporate name, trademark or trade name or other business arrangements. The law applies to "exclusive or quasi-exclusive territory". The disclosure document must be delivered at least 20 days before the execution of the agreement or any payments are made.
The specific and important disclosures to be made are:
Initially, there was some uncertainty whether any
breach of the provisions of the Doubin Law would
enable the franchisee to walk away from the contract.
However, the French supreme court (Cour de cassation)
eventually ruled that agreements should only be
annulled where missing or incorrect information
affected the decision of the franchisee to enter into the
agreement. The burden of proof is on the franchisee.
Dispute settlement features are only incorporated in some European countries. By not being rigorous, franchising is encouraged.
Under Italian law franchise is defined as an arrangement between two financially independent parties where a franchisee is granted, in exchange for a consideration, the right to market goods and services under particular trademarks. In addition, articles dictate the form and content of the franchise agreement and define the documents that must be made available 30 days prior to execution. The franchisor must disclose:
There are no specific laws regulating franchising in Norway. However, the Norwegian Competition Act section 10 prohibits cooperation which may prevent, limit or diminish the competition. This may also apply to vertical cooperation such as franchising..
In Russia, under chapter 54 of the Civil Code (passed 1996), franchise agreements are invalid unless written and registered, and franchisors cannot set standards or limits on the prices of the franchisee's goods. Enforcement of laws and resolution of contractual disputes is a problem: Dunkin' Donuts chose to terminate its contract with Russian franchisees who were selling vodka and meat patties contrary to their contracts, rather than pursue legal remedies.
The legal definition of franchising in Spain is an activity in which an undertaking, the franchisor, grants to another party, the franchisee, for a specific market and in exchange for financial compensation (either direct, indirect or both), the right to exploit an owned system to commercialize products or services already exploited by the franchisor with enough success and experience.
The Spanish Retail Trading Act regulates franchising. The contents of the franchise must include, at least:
In Spain, the franchisor submits the disclosure information 20 days prior to signing the agreement or prior to any payment made by the franchisee to the franchisor. Franchisors are to disclose to the potential franchisee specific information in writing. This information has to be true and not misleading and include:
Franchisors (with some exceptions) should be registered in the Franchisors' Register and provide the requested information. According to the regulation in force in 2010 this obligation has to be met within three months after the start of its activities in Spain.
Franchising is a sui generis contract which bears the characteristics of several explicitly regulated contracts such as; agency, sales contract and so forth. The regulations concerning these kinds of contracts in Turkish Commercial Code and in Turkish Code of Obligations are applied to franchising. Franchising is described in doctrine and has several essential components such as; the independence of the franchisee from the franchisor, the use of know-how and the uniformity of product and services, standard use of the brand and logo, payment of a royalty fee, increasement of sales by the franchisee and continuity.
Franchising may be for a determined or undetermined period of time. The undetermined one can only be annulled either by a notice before a reasonable amount of time or by a just cause. The franchising agreement with a determined time period ends within the end of the time period if not specified otherwise in the agreement. However, termination based on just cause is also foreseen for franchising agreement with a determined time period.
In the United Kingdom there are no franchise-specific laws; franchises are subject to the same laws that govern other businesses. There is some self-regulation through the British Franchise Association (BFA), Quality Franchise Association (QFA) and the Approved Franchise Association (AFA).
There are a number of franchise businesses which are not members of the BFA and many which do not meet the BFA membership criteria. Part of the BFA's role in self-regulation is to work with franchisors through the application process and recommend changes which will lead to the franchise business meeting BFA standards. A number of businesses that refer to themselves as franchises do not conform to the BFA Code of Ethics are therefore excluded from membership.
On 22 May 2007, hearings were held in the UK Parliament concerning citizen-initiated petitions for special regulation of franchising by the government of the UK due to losses incurred by citizens who had invested in franchises. The Minister of Industry, Margaret Hodge, conducted hearings but saw no need for any government regulation of franchising with the advice that government regulation of franchising might lull the public into a false sense of security. Mr Mark Prisk MP suggested that the costs of such regulation to the franchisee and franchisor could be prohibitive and would in any case provide a system which mirrored the work already being completed by the BFA. The Minister of Industry indicated that if due diligence were performed by the investors and the banks, the current laws governing business contracts in the UK offered sufficient protection for the public and the banks. The debate also made reference to the self-regulatory function performed by the BFA recognizing that the association "punched above its weight".
Isaac Singer, who made improvements to an existing model of a sewing machine in the 1850s, began one of the first franchising efforts in the United States, followed later by Coca-Cola, Western Union, and by agreements between automobile manufacturers and dealers.
Modern franchising came to prominence with the rise of franchise-based food service establishments. In 1932, Howard Deering Johnson established the first modern restaurant franchise based on his successful Quincy, Massachusetts Howard Johnson's restaurant founded in the late 1920s. The idea was to let independent operators use the same name, food, supplies, logo and even building design in exchange for a fee. The growth in franchising accelerated in the 1930s when such chains as Howard Johnson's started to franchise motels. The 1950s saw a boom in franchise chains in conjunction with the development of the U.S. Interstate Highway System and the growing popularity of fast food.
The Federal Trade Commission has oversight of franchising via the FTC Franchise Rule.
The FTC requires that the franchisee be furnished with a Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) by the franchisor at least fourteen days before money changes hands or a franchise agreement is signed. The final agreement is always a negotiated document setting forth fees and other terms. Whereas elements of the disclosure may be available from third parties, only that provided by the franchisor can be depended upon. The U.S. Franchise Disclosure Document (FDD) is lengthy (300–700 pp +) and detailed (see Uniform Franchise Offering Circular (UFOC) for elements of disclosure), and generally requires audited financial statements from the franchisor in a particular format, except in some circumstances, such as where a franchisor is new. It must include such data as the names, addresses and telephone numbers of the franchisees in the licensed territory (who may be contacted and consulted before negotiations), estimate of total franchise revenues and franchisor profitability.
Individual states may require the FDD to contain their own specific requirements, but the requirements in state disclosure documents must be in compliance with the federal rule that governs federal regulatory policy. There is no private right of action of action under the FTC rule for franchisor violation of the rule, but fifteen or more of the states have passed statutes that provide this right of action to franchisees when fraud can be proven under these special statutes. The majority of franchisors have inserted mandatory arbitration clauses into their agreements with their franchisees, some of which the U.S. Supreme Court has dealt with.
In response to the implementation of California Assembly Bill 5 (2019) which limits the use of classifying workers as independent contractors rather than employees in California, the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit reinstated its decision in Vazquez v. Jan-Pro which impacts California franchise law and California independent contractor law by making it unclear that if a franchisor licenses its trademark to a franchisee, whether the franchisor incurs the liabilities of an employer for a franchisee's employees.
There is no federal registry of franchises or any federal filing requirements for information. States are the primary collectors of data on franchising companies and enforce laws and regulations regarding their presence and their spread in their jurisdictions.
Where the franchisor has many partners, the agreement may take the shape of a business format franchise – an agreement that is identical for all franchisees.
In recent years, the idea of franchising has been picked up by the social enterprise sector, which hopes to simplify and expedite the process of setting up new businesses. A number of business ideas, such as soap making, wholefood retailing, aquarium maintenance, and hotel operation have been identified as suitable for adoption by social firms employing disabled and disadvantaged people.
The most successful examples are probably the "Kringwinkel" second-hand shops employing 5,000 people in Flanders, franchised by KOMOSIE, the CAP Markets, a steadily growing chain of 100 neighbourhood supermarkets in Germany. and the Hotel Tritone in Trieste, which inspired the Le Mat social franchise, now active in Italy and Sweden.
Social franchising also refers to a technique used by governments and aid donors to provide essential clinical health services in the developing world.
Social Franchise Enterprises objective is to achieve development goals by creating self sustainable activities by providing services and goods in un-served areas. They use the Franchise Model characteristics to deliver Capacity Building, Access to Market and Access to Credit/Finance.
Third-party logistics has become an increasingly more popular franchise opportunity due the quickly growing transportation industry and low cost franchising. In 2012, "Inc. Magazine" ranked three logistics and transportation companies in the top 100 fastest growing companies in the annual Inc. 5000 rankings.
Event franchising is the duplication of public events in other geographical areas, retaining the original brand (logo), mission, concept and format of the event. As in classic franchising, event franchising is built on precisely copying successful events. An example of event franchising is the World Economic Forum, also known as the Davos forum, which has regional event franchisees in China, Latin America, etc. Likewise, the alter-globalist World Social Forum has launched many national events. When The Music Stops is an example of an events franchise in the UK, in this case, running speed dating and singles events.
The franchising or duplication of another firm's successful home-based business model is referred to as a home-based franchise. Home-based franchises are becoming popular as they are considered to be an easy way to start a business as they may provide a low barrier for entry into entrepreneurship. It may cost little to start a home-based franchise, but experts say that "the work is no less hard." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11616 |
Feynman diagram
In theoretical physics, a Feynman diagram is a pictorial representation of the mathematical expressions describing the behavior and interaction of subatomic particles. The scheme is named after American physicist Richard Feynman, who introduced the diagrams in 1948. The interaction of subatomic particles can be complex and difficult to understand; Feynman diagrams give a simple visualization of what would otherwise be an arcane and abstract formula. According to David Kaiser, "Since the middle of the 20th century, theoretical physicists have increasingly turned to this tool to help them undertake critical calculations. Feynman diagrams have revolutionized nearly every aspect of theoretical physics." While the diagrams are applied primarily to quantum field theory, they can also be used in other fields, such as solid-state theory. Frank Wilczek wrote that the calculations which won him the 2004 Nobel Prize in Physics "would have been literally unthinkable without Feynman diagrams, as would [Wilczek's] calculations that established a route to production and observation of the Higgs particle."
Feynman used Ernst Stueckelberg's interpretation of the positron as if it were an electron moving backward in time. Thus, antiparticles are represented as moving backward along the time axis in Feynman diagrams.
The calculation of probability amplitudes in theoretical particle physics requires the use of rather large and complicated integrals over a large number of variables. Feynman diagrams can represent these integrals graphically.
A Feynman diagram is a graphical representation of a perturbative contribution to the transition amplitude or correlation function of a quantum mechanical or statistical field theory. Within the canonical formulation of quantum field theory, a Feynman diagram represents a term in the Wick's expansion of the perturbative -matrix. Alternatively, the path integral formulation of quantum field theory represents the transition amplitude as a weighted sum of all possible histories of the system from the initial to the final state, in terms of either particles or fields. The transition amplitude is then given as the matrix element of the -matrix between the initial and the final states of the quantum system.
When calculating scattering cross-sections in particle physics, the interaction between particles can be described by starting from a free field that describes the incoming and outgoing particles, and including an interaction Hamiltonian to describe how the particles deflect one another. The amplitude for scattering is the sum of each possible interaction history over all possible intermediate particle states. The number of times the interaction Hamiltonian acts is the order of the perturbation expansion, and the time-dependent perturbation theory for fields is known as the Dyson series. When the intermediate states at intermediate times are energy eigenstates (collections of particles with a definite momentum) the series is called old-fashioned perturbation theory.
The Dyson series can be alternatively rewritten as a sum over Feynman diagrams, where at each vertex both the energy and momentum are conserved, but where the length of the energy-momentum four-vector is not necessarily equal to the mass. The Feynman diagrams are much easier to keep track of than "old-fashioned" terms, because the old-fashioned way treats the particle and antiparticle contributions as separate. Each Feynman diagram is the sum of exponentially many old-fashioned terms, because each internal line can separately represent either a particle or an antiparticle. In a non-relativistic theory, there are no antiparticles and there is no doubling, so each Feynman diagram includes only one term.
Feynman gave a prescription for calculating the amplitude (the Feynman rules, below) for any given diagram from a field theory Lagrangian. Each internal line corresponds to a factor of the virtual particle's propagator; each vertex where lines meet gives a factor derived from an interaction term in the Lagrangian, and incoming and outgoing lines carry an energy, momentum, and spin.
In addition to their value as a mathematical tool, Feynman diagrams provide deep physical insight into the nature of particle interactions. Particles interact in every way available; in fact, intermediate virtual particles are allowed to propagate faster than light. The probability of each final state is then obtained by summing over all such possibilities. This is closely tied to the functional integral formulation of quantum mechanics, also invented by Feynman—see path integral formulation.
The naïve application of such calculations often produces diagrams whose amplitudes are infinite, because the short-distance particle interactions require a careful limiting procedure, to include particle self-interactions. The technique of renormalization, suggested by Ernst Stueckelberg and Hans Bethe and implemented by Dyson, Feynman, Schwinger, and Tomonaga compensates for this effect and eliminates the troublesome infinities. After renormalization, calculations using Feynman diagrams match experimental results with very high accuracy.
Feynman diagram and path integral methods are also used in statistical mechanics and can even be applied to classical mechanics.
Murray Gell-Mann always referred to Feynman diagrams as Stueckelberg diagrams, after a Swiss physicist, Ernst Stueckelberg, who devised a similar notation many years earlier. Stueckelberg was motivated by the need for a manifestly covariant formalism for quantum field theory, but did not provide as automated a way to handle symmetry factors and loops, although he was first to find the correct physical interpretation in terms of forward and backward in time particle paths, all without the path-integral.
Historically, as a book-keeping device of covariant perturbation theory, the graphs were called Feynman–Dyson diagrams or Dyson graphs, because the path integral was unfamiliar when they were introduced, and Freeman Dyson's derivation from old-fashioned perturbation theory was easier to follow for physicists trained in earlier methods. Feynman had to lobby hard for the diagrams, which confused the establishment physicists trained in equations and graphs.
In their presentations of fundamental interactions, written from the particle physics perspective, Gerard 't Hooft and Martinus Veltman gave good arguments for taking the original, non-regularized Feynman diagrams as the most succinct representation of our present knowledge about the physics of quantum scattering of fundamental particles. Their motivations are consistent with the convictions of James Daniel Bjorken and Sidney Drell:
The Feynman graphs and rules of calculation summarize quantum field theory in a form in close contact with the experimental numbers one wants to understand. Although the statement of the theory in terms of graphs may imply perturbation theory, use of graphical methods in the many-body problem shows that this formalism is flexible enough to deal with phenomena of nonperturbative characters … Some modification of the Feynman rules of calculation may well outlive the elaborate mathematical structure of local canonical quantum field theory …
So far there are no opposing opinions. In quantum field theories the Feynman diagrams are obtained from a Lagrangian by Feynman rules.
Dimensional regularization is a method for regularizing integrals in the evaluation of Feynman diagrams; it assigns values to them that are meromorphic functions of an auxiliary complex parameter , called the dimension. Dimensional regularization writes a Feynman integral as an integral depending on the spacetime dimension and spacetime points.
A Feynman diagram is a representation of quantum field theory processes in terms of particle interactions. The particles are represented by the lines of the diagram, which can be squiggly or straight, with an arrow or without, depending on the type of particle. A point where lines connect to other lines is a "vertex", and this is where the particles meet and interact: by emitting or absorbing new particles, deflecting one another, or changing type.
There are three different types of lines: "internal lines" connect two vertices, "incoming lines" extend from "the past" to a vertex and represent an initial state, and "outgoing lines" extend from a vertex to "the future" and represent the final state (the latter two are also known as "external lines"). Traditionally, the bottom of the diagram is the past and the top the future; other times, the past is to the left and the future to the right. When calculating correlation functions instead of scattering amplitudes, there is no past and future and all the lines are internal. The particles then begin and end on little x's, which represent the positions of the operators whose correlation is being calculated.
Feynman diagrams are a pictorial representation of a contribution to the total amplitude for a process that can happen in several different ways. When a group of incoming particles are to scatter off each other, the process can be thought of as one where the particles travel over all possible paths, including paths that go backward in time.
Feynman diagrams are often confused with spacetime diagrams and bubble chamber images because they all describe particle scattering. Feynman diagrams are graphs that represent the interaction of particles rather than the physical position of the particle during a scattering process. Unlike a bubble chamber picture, only the sum of all the Feynman diagrams represent any given particle interaction; particles do not choose a particular diagram each time they interact. The law of summation is in accord with the principle of superposition—every diagram contributes to the total amplitude for the process.
A Feynman diagram represents a perturbative contribution to the amplitude of a quantum transition from some initial quantum state to some final quantum state.
For example, in the process of electron-positron annihilation the initial state is one electron and one positron, the final state: two photons.
The initial state is often assumed to be at the left of the diagram and the final state at the right (although other conventions are also used quite often).
A Feynman diagram consists of points, called vertices, and lines attached to the vertices.
The particles in the initial state are depicted by lines sticking out in the direction of the initial state (e.g., to the left), the particles in the final state are represented by lines sticking out in the direction of the final state (e.g., to the right).
In QED there are two types of particles: matter particles such as electrons or positrons (called fermions) and exchange particles (called gauge bosons). They are represented in Feynman diagrams as follows:
In QED a vertex always has three lines attached to it: one bosonic line, one fermionic line with arrow toward the vertex, and one fermionic line with arrow away from the vertex.
The vertices might be connected by a bosonic or fermionic propagator. A bosonic propagator is represented by a wavy line connecting two vertices (•~•). A fermionic propagator is represented by a solid line (with an arrow in one or another direction) connecting two vertices, (•←•).
The number of vertices gives the order of the term in the perturbation series expansion of the transition amplitude.
The electron–positron annihilation interaction:
has a contribution from the second order Feynman diagram shown adjacent:
In the initial state (at the bottom; early time) there is one electron (e−) and one positron (e+) and in the final state (at the top; late time) there are two photons (γ).
The probability amplitude for a transition of a quantum system (between asymptotically free states) from the initial state to the final state is given by the matrix element
where is the -matrix. In terms of the time-evolution operator , it is simply
In the interaction picture, this expands to
where is the interaction Hamiltonian and signifies the time-ordered product of operators. Dyson's formula expands the time-ordered matrix exponential into a perturbation series in the powers of the interaction Hamiltonian density,
Equivalently, with the interaction Lagrangian , it is
A Feynman diagram is a graphical representation of a single summand in the Wick's expansion of the time-ordered product in the th-order term of the Dyson series of the -matrix,
where signifies the normal-ordered product of the operators and (±) takes care of the possible sign change when commuting the fermionic operators to bring them together for a contraction (a propagator).
The diagrams are drawn according to the Feynman rules, which depend upon the interaction Lagrangian. For the QED interaction Lagrangian
describing the interaction of a fermionic field with a bosonic gauge field , the Feynman rules can be formulated in coordinate space as follows:
The second order perturbation term in the -matrix is
The Wick's expansion of the integrand gives (among others) the following term
where
is the electromagnetic contraction (propagator) in the Feynman gauge. This term is represented by the Feynman diagram at the right. This diagram gives contributions to the following processes:
Another interesting term in the expansion is
where
is the fermionic contraction (propagator).
In a path integral, the field Lagrangian, integrated over all possible field histories, defines the probability amplitude to go from one field configuration to another. In order to make sense, the field theory should have a well-defined ground state, and the integral should be performed a little bit rotated into imaginary time, i.e. a Wick rotation. The path integral formalism is completely equivalent to the canonical operator formalism above.
A simple example is the free relativistic scalar field in dimensions, whose action integral is:
The probability amplitude for a process is:
where and are space-like hypersurfaces that define the boundary conditions. The collection of all the on the starting hypersurface give the initial value of the field, analogous to the starting position for a point particle, and the field values at each point of the final hypersurface defines the final field value, which is allowed to vary, giving a different amplitude to end up at different values. This is the field-to-field transition amplitude.
The path integral gives the expectation value of operators between the initial and final state:
and in the limit that A and B recede to the infinite past and the infinite future, the only contribution that matters is from the ground state (this is only rigorously true if the path-integral is defined slightly rotated into imaginary time). The path integral can be thought of as analogous to a probability distribution, and it is convenient to define it so that multiplying by a constant doesn't change anything:
The normalization factor on the bottom is called the "partition function" for the field, and it coincides with the statistical mechanical partition function at zero temperature when rotated into imaginary time.
The initial-to-final amplitudes are ill-defined if one thinks of the continuum limit right from the beginning, because the fluctuations in the field can become unbounded. So the path-integral can be thought of as on a discrete square lattice, with lattice spacing and the limit should be taken carefully. If the final results do not depend on the shape of the lattice or the value of , then the continuum limit exists.
On a lattice, (i), the field can be expanded in Fourier modes:
Here the integration domain is over restricted to a cube of side length , so that large values of are not allowed. It is important to note that the -measure contains the factors of 2 from Fourier transforms, this is the best standard convention for -integrals in QFT. The lattice means that fluctuations at large are not allowed to contribute right away, they only start to contribute in the limit . Sometimes, instead of a lattice, the field modes are just cut off at high values of instead.
It is also convenient from time to time to consider the space-time volume to be finite, so that the modes are also a lattice. This is not strictly as necessary as the space-lattice limit, because interactions in are not localized, but it is convenient for keeping track of the factors in front of the -integrals and the momentum-conserving delta functions that will arise.
On a lattice, (ii), the action needs to be discretized:
where is a pair of nearest lattice neighbors and . The discretization should be thought of as defining what the derivative means.
In terms of the lattice Fourier modes, the action can be written:
For near zero this is:
Now we have the continuum Fourier transform of the original action. In finite volume, the quantity is not infinitesimal, but becomes the volume of a box made by neighboring Fourier modes, or .
The field is real-valued, so the Fourier transform obeys:
In terms of real and imaginary parts, the real part of is an even function of , while the imaginary part is odd. The Fourier transform avoids double-counting, so that it can be written:
over an integration domain that integrates over each pair exactly once.
For a complex scalar field with action
the Fourier transform is unconstrained:
and the integral is over all .
Integrating over all different values of is equivalent to integrating over all Fourier modes, because taking a Fourier transform is a unitary linear transformation of field coordinates. When you change coordinates in a multidimensional integral by a linear transformation, the value of the new integral is given by the determinant of the transformation matrix. If
then
If is a rotation, then
so that , and the sign depends on whether the rotation includes a reflection or not.
The matrix that changes coordinates from to can be read off from the definition of a Fourier transform.
and the Fourier inversion theorem tells you the inverse:
which is the complex conjugate-transpose, up to factors of 2. On a finite volume lattice, the determinant is nonzero and independent of the field values.
and the path integral is a separate factor at each value of .
The factor is the infinitesimal volume of a discrete cell in -space, in a square lattice box
where is the side-length of the box. Each separate factor is an oscillatory Gaussian, and the width of the Gaussian diverges as the volume goes to infinity.
In imaginary time, the "Euclidean action" becomes positive definite, and can be interpreted as a probability distribution. The probability of a field having values is
The expectation value of the field is the statistical expectation value of the field when chosen according to the probability distribution:
Since the probability of is a product, the value of at each separate value of is independently Gaussian distributed. The variance of the Gaussian is , which is formally infinite, but that just means that the fluctuations are unbounded in infinite volume. In any finite volume, the integral is replaced by a discrete sum, and the variance of the integral is .
The path integral defines a probabilistic algorithm to generate a Euclidean scalar field configuration. Randomly pick the real and imaginary parts of each Fourier mode at wavenumber to be a Gaussian random variable with variance . This generates a configuration at random, and the Fourier transform gives . For real scalar fields, the algorithm must generate only one of each pair , and make the second the complex conjugate of the first.
To find any correlation function, generate a field again and again by this procedure, and find the statistical average:
where is the number of configurations, and the sum is of the product of the field values on each configuration. The Euclidean correlation function is just the same as the correlation function in statistics or statistical mechanics. The quantum mechanical correlation functions are an analytic continuation of the Euclidean correlation functions.
For free fields with a quadratic action, the probability distribution is a high-dimensional Gaussian, and the statistical average is given by an explicit formula. But the Monte Carlo method also works well for bosonic interacting field theories where there is no closed form for the correlation functions.
Each mode is independently Gaussian distributed. The expectation of field modes is easy to calculate:
for , since then the two Gaussian random variables are independent and both have zero mean.
in finite volume , when the two -values coincide, since this is the variance of the Gaussian. In the infinite volume limit,
Strictly speaking, this is an approximation: the lattice propagator is:
But near , for field fluctuations long compared to the lattice spacing, the two forms coincide.
It is important to emphasize that the delta functions contain factors of 2, so that they cancel out the 2 factors in the measure for integrals.
where is the ordinary one-dimensional Dirac delta function. This convention for delta-functions is not universal—some authors keep the factors of 2 in the delta functions (and in the -integration) explicit.
The form of the propagator can be more easily found by using the equation of motion for the field. From the Lagrangian, the equation of motion is:
and in an expectation value, this says:
Where the derivatives act on , and the identity is true everywhere except when and coincide, and the operator order matters. The form of the singularity can be understood from the canonical commutation relations to be a delta-function. Defining the (Euclidean) "Feynman propagator" as the Fourier transform of the time-ordered two-point function (the one that comes from the path-integral):
So that:
If the equations of motion are linear, the propagator will always be the reciprocal of the quadratic-form matrix that defines the free Lagrangian, since this gives the equations of motion. This is also easy to see directly from the path integral. The factor of disappears in the Euclidean theory.
Because each field mode is an independent Gaussian, the expectation values for the product of many field modes obeys "Wick's theorem":
is zero unless the field modes coincide in pairs. This means that it is zero for an odd number of , and for an even number of , it is equal to a contribution from each pair separately, with a delta function.
where the sum is over each partition of the field modes into pairs, and the product is over the pairs. For example,
An interpretation of Wick's theorem is that each field insertion can be thought of as a dangling line, and the expectation value is calculated by linking up the lines in pairs, putting a delta function factor that ensures that the momentum of each partner in the pair is equal, and dividing by the propagator.
There is a subtle point left before Wick's theorem is proved—what if more than two of the phis have the same momentum? If it's an odd number, the integral is zero; negative values cancel with the positive values. But if the number is even, the integral is positive. The previous demonstration assumed that the phis would only match up in pairs.
But the theorem is correct even when arbitrarily many of the are equal, and this is a notable property of Gaussian integration:
Dividing by ,
If Wick's theorem were correct, the higher moments would be given by all possible pairings of a list of different :
where the are all the same variable, the index is just to keep track of the number of ways to pair them. The first can be paired with others, leaving . The next unpaired can be paired with different leaving , and so on. This means that Wick's theorem, uncorrected, says that the expectation value of should be:
and this is in fact the correct answer. So Wick's theorem holds no matter how many of the momenta of the internal variables coincide.
Interactions are represented by higher order contributions, since quadratic contributions are always Gaussian. The simplest interaction is the quartic self-interaction, with an action:
The reason for the combinatorial factor 4! will be clear soon. Writing the action in terms of the lattice (or continuum) Fourier modes:
Where is the free action, whose correlation functions are given by Wick's theorem. The exponential of in the path integral can be expanded in powers of , giving a series of corrections to the free action.
The path integral for the interacting action is then a power series of corrections to the free action. The term represented by should be thought of as four half-lines, one for each factor of . The half-lines meet at a vertex, which contributes a delta-function that ensures that the sum of the momenta are all equal.
To compute a correlation function in the interacting theory, there is a contribution from the terms now. For example, the path-integral for the four-field correlator:
which in the free field was only nonzero when the momenta were equal in pairs, is now nonzero for all values of . The momenta of the insertions can now match up with the momenta of the s in the expansion. The insertions should also be thought of as half-lines, four in this case, which carry a momentum , but one that is not integrated.
The lowest-order contribution comes from the first nontrivial term in the Taylor expansion of the action. Wick's theorem requires that the momenta in the half-lines, the factors in , should match up with the momenta of the external half-lines in pairs. The new contribution is equal to:
The 4! inside is canceled because there are exactly 4! ways to match the half-lines in to the external half-lines. Each of these different ways of matching the half-lines together in pairs contributes exactly once, regardless of the values of , by Wick's theorem.
The expansion of the action in powers of gives a series of terms with progressively higher number of s. The contribution from the term with exactly s is called th order.
The th order terms has:
By Wick's theorem, each pair of half-lines must be paired together to make a "line", and this line gives a factor of
which multiplies the contribution. This means that the two half-lines that make a line are forced to have equal and opposite momentum. The line itself should be labelled by an arrow, drawn parallel to the line, and labeled by the momentum in the line . The half-line at the tail end of the arrow carries momentum , while the half-line at the head-end carries momentum . If one of the two half-lines is external, this kills the integral over the internal , since it forces the internal to be equal to the external . If both are internal, the integral over remains.
The diagrams that are formed by linking the half-lines in the s with the external half-lines, representing insertions, are the Feynman diagrams of this theory. Each line carries a factor of , the propagator, and either goes from vertex to vertex, or ends at an insertion. If it is internal, it is integrated over. At each vertex, the total incoming is equal to the total outgoing .
The number of ways of making a diagram by joining half-lines into lines almost completely cancels the factorial factors coming from the Taylor series of the exponential and the 4! at each vertex.
A forest diagram is one where all the internal lines have momentum that is completely determined by the external lines and the condition that the incoming and outgoing momentum are equal at each vertex. The contribution of these diagrams is a product of propagators, without any integration. A tree diagram is a connected forest diagram.
An example of a tree diagram is the one where each of four external lines end on an . Another is when three external lines end on an , and the remaining half-line joins up with another , and the remaining half-lines of this run off to external lines. These are all also forest diagrams (as every tree is a forest); an example of a forest that is not a tree is when eight external lines end on two s.
It is easy to verify that in all these cases, the momenta on all the internal lines is determined by the external momenta and the condition of momentum conservation in each vertex.
A diagram that is not a forest diagram is called a "loop" diagram, and an example is one where two lines of an are joined to external lines, while the remaining two lines are joined to each other. The two lines joined to each other can have any momentum at all, since they both enter and leave the same vertex. A more complicated example is one where two s are joined to each other by matching the legs one to the other. This diagram has no external lines at all.
The reason loop diagrams are called loop diagrams is because the number of -integrals that are left undetermined by momentum conservation is equal to the number of independent closed loops in the diagram, where independent loops are counted as in homology theory. The homology is real-valued (actually valued), the value associated with each line is the momentum. The boundary operator takes each line to the sum of the end-vertices with a positive sign at the head and a negative sign at the tail. The condition that the momentum is conserved is exactly the condition that the boundary of the -valued weighted graph is zero.
A set of valid -values can be arbitrarily redefined whenever there is a closed loop. A closed loop is a cyclical path of adjacent vertices that never revisits the same vertex. Such a cycle can be thought of as the boundary of a hypothetical 2-cell. The -labellings of a graph that conserve momentum (i.e. which has zero boundary) up to redefinitions of (i.e. up to boundaries of 2-cells) define the first homology of a graph. The number of independent momenta that are not determined is then equal to the number of independent homology loops. For many graphs, this is equal to the number of loops as counted in the most intuitive way.
The number of ways to form a given Feynman diagram by joining together half-lines is large, and by Wick's theorem, each way of pairing up the half-lines contributes equally. Often, this completely cancels the factorials in the denominator of each term, but the cancellation is sometimes incomplete.
The uncancelled denominator is called the "symmetry factor" of the diagram. The contribution of each diagram to the correlation function must be divided by its symmetry factor.
For example, consider the Feynman diagram formed from two external lines joined to one , and the remaining two half-lines in the joined to each other. There are 4 × 3 ways to join the external half-lines to the , and then there is only one way to join the two remaining lines to each other. The comes divided by , but the number of ways to link up the half lines to make the diagram is only 4 × 3, so the contribution of this diagram is divided by two.
For another example, consider the diagram formed by joining all the half-lines of one to all the half-lines of another . This diagram is called a "vacuum bubble", because it does not link up to any external lines. There are 4! ways to form this diagram, but the denominator includes a 2! (from the expansion of the exponential, there are two s) and two factors of 4!. The contribution is multiplied by = .
Another example is the Feynman diagram formed from two s where each links up to two external lines, and the remaining two half-lines of each are joined to each other. The number of ways to link an to two external lines is 4 × 3, and either could link up to either pair, giving an additional factor of 2. The remaining two half-lines in the two s can be linked to each other in two ways, so that the total number of ways to form the diagram is , while the denominator is . The total symmetry factor is 2, and the contribution of this diagram is divided by 2.
The symmetry factor theorem gives the symmetry factor for a general diagram: the contribution of each Feynman diagram must be divided by the order of its group of automorphisms, the number of symmetries that it has.
An automorphism of a Feynman graph is a permutation of the lines and a permutation of the vertices with the following properties:
This theorem has an interpretation in terms of particle-paths: when identical particles are present, the integral over all intermediate particles must not double-count states that differ only by interchanging identical particles.
Proof: To prove this theorem, label all the internal and external lines of a diagram with a unique name. Then form the diagram by linking a half-line to a name and then to the other half line.
Now count the number of ways to form the named diagram. Each permutation of the s gives a different pattern of linking names to half-lines, and this is a factor of . Each permutation of the half-lines in a single gives a factor of 4!. So a named diagram can be formed in exactly as many ways as the denominator of the Feynman expansion.
But the number of unnamed diagrams is smaller than the number of named diagram by the order of the automorphism group of the graph.
Roughly speaking, a Feynman diagram is called "connected" if all vertices and propagator lines are linked by a sequence of vertices and propagators of the diagram itself. If one views it as an undirected graph it is connected. The remarkable relevance of such diagrams in QFTs is due to the fact that they are sufficient to determine the quantum partition function . More precisely, connected Feynman diagrams determine
To see this, one should recall that
with constructed from some (arbitrary) Feynman diagram that can be thought to consist of several connected components . If one encounters (identical) copies of a component within the Feynman diagram one has to include a "symmetry factor" . However, in the end each contribution of a Feynman diagram to the partition function has the generic form
where labels the (infinitely) many connected Feynman diagrams possible.
A scheme to successively create such contributions from the to is obtained by
and therefore yields
To establish the "normalization" one simply calculates all connected "vacuum diagrams", i.e., the diagrams without any "sources" (sometimes referred to as "external legs" of a Feynman diagram).
An immediate consequence of the linked-cluster theorem is that all vacuum bubbles, diagrams without external lines, cancel when calculating correlation functions. A correlation function is given by a ratio of path-integrals:
The top is the sum over all Feynman diagrams, including disconnected diagrams that do not link up to external lines at all. In terms of the connected diagrams, the numerator includes the same contributions of vacuum bubbles as the denominator:
Where the sum over diagrams includes only those diagrams each of whose connected components end on at least one external line. The vacuum bubbles are the same whatever the external lines, and give an overall multiplicative factor. The denominator is the sum over all vacuum bubbles, and dividing gets rid of the second factor.
The vacuum bubbles then are only useful for determining itself, which from the definition of the path integral is equal to:
where is the energy density in the vacuum. Each vacuum bubble contains a factor of zeroing the total at each vertex, and when there are no external lines, this contains a factor of , because the momentum conservation is over-enforced. In finite volume, this factor can be identified as the total volume of space time. Dividing by the volume, the remaining integral for the vacuum bubble has an interpretation: it is a contribution to the energy density of the vacuum.
Correlation functions are the sum of the connected Feynman diagrams, but the formalism treats the connected and disconnected diagrams differently. Internal lines end on vertices, while external lines go off to insertions. Introducing "sources" unifies the formalism, by making new vertices where one line can end.
Sources are external fields, fields that contribute to the action, but are not dynamical variables. A scalar field source is another scalar field that contributes a term to the (Lorentz) Lagrangian:
In the Feynman expansion, this contributes H terms with one half-line ending on a vertex. Lines in a Feynman diagram can now end either on an vertex, or on an vertex, and only one line enters an vertex. The Feynman rule for an vertex is that a line from an with momentum gets a factor of .
The sum of the connected diagrams in the presence of sources includes a term for each connected diagram in the absence of sources, except now the diagrams can end on the source. Traditionally, a source is represented by a little "×" with one line extending out, exactly as an insertion.
where is the connected diagram with external lines carrying momentum as indicated. The sum is over all connected diagrams, as before.
The field is not dynamical, which means that there is no path integral over : is just a parameter in the Lagrangian, which varies from point to point. The path integral for the field is:
and it is a function of the values of at every point. One way to interpret this expression is that it is taking the Fourier transform in field space. If there is a probability density on , the Fourier transform of the probability density is:
The Fourier transform is the expectation of an oscillatory exponential. The path integral in the presence of a source is:
which, on a lattice, is the product of an oscillatory exponential for each field value:
The Fourier transform of a delta-function is a constant, which gives a formal expression for a delta function:
This tells you what a field delta function looks like in a path-integral. For two scalar fields and ,
which integrates over the Fourier transform coordinate, over . This expression is useful for formally changing field coordinates in the path integral, much as a delta function is used to change coordinates in an ordinary multi-dimensional integral.
The partition function is now a function of the field , and the physical partition function is the value when is the zero function:
The correlation functions are derivatives of the path integral with respect to the source:
In Euclidean space, source contributions to the action can still appear with a factor of , so that they still do a Fourier transform.
The field path integral can be extended to the Fermi case, but only if the notion of integration is expanded. A Grassmann integral of a free Fermi field is a high-dimensional determinant or Pfaffian, which defines the new type of Gaussian integration appropriate for Fermi fields.
The two fundamental formulas of Grassmann integration are:
where is an arbitrary matrix and are independent Grassmann variables for each index , and
where is an antisymmetric matrix, is a collection of Grassmann variables, and the is to prevent double-counting (since ).
In matrix notation, where and are Grassmann-valued row vectors, and are Grassmann-valued column vectors, and is a real-valued matrix:
where the last equality is a consequence of the translation invariance of the Grassmann integral. The Grassmann variables are external sources for , and differentiating with respect to pulls down factors of .
again, in a schematic matrix notation. The meaning of the formula above is that the derivative with respect to the appropriate component of and gives the matrix element of . This is exactly analogous to the bosonic path integration formula for a Gaussian integral of a complex bosonic field:
So that the propagator is the inverse of the matrix in the quadratic part of the action in both the Bose and Fermi case.
For real Grassmann fields, for Majorana fermions, the path integral a Pfaffian times a source quadratic form, and the formulas give the square root of the determinant, just as they do for real Bosonic fields. The propagator is still the inverse of the quadratic part.
The free Dirac Lagrangian:
formally gives the equations of motion and the anticommutation relations of the Dirac field, just as the Klein Gordon Lagrangian in an ordinary path integral gives the equations of motion and commutation relations of the scalar field. By using the spatial Fourier transform of the Dirac field as a new basis for the Grassmann algebra, the quadratic part of the Dirac action becomes simple to invert:
The propagator is the inverse of the matrix linking and , since different values of do not mix together.
The analog of Wick's theorem matches and in pairs:
where S is the sign of the permutation that reorders the sequence of and to put the ones that are paired up to make the delta-functions next to each other, with the coming right before the . Since a pair is a commuting element of the Grassmann algebra, it doesn't matter what order the pairs are in. If more than one pair have the same , the integral is zero, and it is easy to check that the sum over pairings gives zero in this case (there are always an even number of them). This is the Grassmann analog of the higher Gaussian moments that completed the Bosonic Wick's theorem earlier.
The rules for spin- Dirac particles are as follows: The propagator is the inverse of the Dirac operator, the lines have arrows just as for a complex scalar field, and the diagram acquires an overall factor of −1 for each closed Fermi loop. If there are an odd number of Fermi loops, the diagram changes sign. Historically, the −1 rule was very difficult for Feynman to discover. He discovered it after a long process of trial and error, since he lacked a proper theory of Grassmann integration.
The rule follows from the observation that the number of Fermi lines at a vertex is always even. Each term in the Lagrangian must always be Bosonic. A Fermi loop is counted by following Fermionic lines until one comes back to the starting point, then removing those lines from the diagram. Repeating this process eventually erases all the Fermionic lines: this is the Euler algorithm to 2-color a graph, which works whenever each vertex has even degree. The number of steps in the Euler algorithm is only equal to the number of independent Fermionic homology cycles in the common special case that all terms in the Lagrangian are exactly quadratic in the Fermi fields, so that each vertex has exactly two Fermionic lines. When there are four-Fermi interactions (like in the Fermi effective theory of the weak nuclear interactions) there are more -integrals than Fermi loops. In this case, the counting rule should apply the Euler algorithm by pairing up the Fermi lines at each vertex into pairs that together form a bosonic factor of the term in the Lagrangian, and when entering a vertex by one line, the algorithm should always leave with the partner line.
To clarify and prove the rule, consider a Feynman diagram formed from vertices, terms in the Lagrangian, with Fermion fields. The full term is Bosonic, it is a commuting element of the Grassmann algebra, so the order in which the vertices appear is not important. The Fermi lines are linked into loops, and when traversing the loop, one can reorder the vertex terms one after the other as one goes around without any sign cost. The exception is when you return to the starting point, and the final half-line must be joined with the unlinked first half-line. This requires one permutation to move the last to go in front of the first , and this gives the sign.
This rule is the only visible effect of the exclusion principle in internal lines. When there are external lines, the amplitudes are antisymmetric when two Fermi insertions for identical particles are interchanged. This is automatic in the source formalism, because the sources for Fermi fields are themselves Grassmann valued.
The naive propagator for photons is infinite, since the Lagrangian for the A-field is:
The quadratic form defining the propagator is non-invertible. The reason is the gauge invariance of the field; adding a gradient to does not change the physics.
To fix this problem, one needs to fix a gauge. The most convenient way is to demand that the divergence of is some function , whose value is random from point to point. It does no harm to integrate over the values of , since it only determines the choice of gauge. This procedure inserts the following factor into the path integral for :
The first factor, the delta function, fixes the gauge. The second factor sums over different values of that are inequivalent gauge fixings. This is simply
The additional contribution from gauge-fixing cancels the second half of the free Lagrangian, giving the Feynman Lagrangian:
which is just like four independent free scalar fields, one for each component of . The Feynman propagator is:
The one difference is that the sign of one propagator is wrong in the Lorentz case: the timelike component has an opposite sign propagator. This means that these particle states have negative norm—they are not physical states. In the case of photons, it is easy to show by diagram methods that these states are not physical—their contribution cancels with longitudinal photons to only leave two physical photon polarization contributions for any value of .
If the averaging over is done with a coefficient different from , the two terms don't cancel completely. This gives a covariant Lagrangian with a coefficient formula_93, which does not affect anything:
and the covariant propagator for QED is:
To find the Feynman rules for non-Abelian gauge fields, the procedure that performs the gauge fixing must be carefully corrected to account for a change of variables in the path-integral.
The gauge fixing factor has an extra determinant from popping the delta function:
To find the form of the determinant, consider first a simple two-dimensional integral of a function that depends only on , not on the angle . Inserting an integral over :
The derivative-factor ensures that popping the delta function in removes the integral. Exchanging the order of integration,
but now the delta-function can be popped in ,
The integral over just gives an overall factor of 2, while the rate of change of with a change in is just , so this exercise reproduces the standard formula for polar integration of a radial function:
In the path-integral for a nonabelian gauge field, the analogous manipulation is:
The factor in front is the volume of the gauge group, and it contributes a constant, which can be discarded. The remaining integral is over the gauge fixed action.
To get a covariant gauge, the gauge fixing condition is the same as in the Abelian case:
Whose variation under an infinitesimal gauge transformation is given by:
where is the adjoint valued element of the Lie algebra at every point that performs the infinitesimal gauge transformation. This adds the Faddeev Popov determinant to the action:
which can be rewritten as a Grassmann integral by introducing ghost fields:
The determinant is independent of , so the path-integral over can give the Feynman propagator (or a covariant propagator) by choosing the measure for as in the abelian case. The full gauge fixed action is then the Yang Mills action in Feynman gauge with an additional ghost action:
The diagrams are derived from this action. The propagator for the spin-1 fields has the usual Feynman form. There are vertices of degree 3 with momentum factors whose couplings are the structure constants, and vertices of degree 4 whose couplings are products of structure constants. There are additional ghost loops, which cancel out timelike and longitudinal states in loops.
In the Abelian case, the determinant for covariant gauges does not depend on , so the ghosts do not contribute to the connected diagrams.
Feynman diagrams were originally discovered by Feynman, by trial and error, as a way to represent the contribution to the S-matrix from different classes of particle trajectories.
The Euclidean scalar propagator has a suggestive representation:
The meaning of this identity (which is an elementary integration) is made clearer by Fourier transforming to real space.
The contribution at any one value of to the propagator is a Gaussian of width . The total propagation function from 0 to is a weighted sum over all proper times of a normalized Gaussian, the probability of ending up at after a random walk of time .
The path-integral representation for the propagator is then:
which is a path-integral rewrite of the Schwinger representation.
The Schwinger representation is both useful for making manifest the particle aspect of the propagator, and for symmetrizing denominators of loop diagrams.
The Schwinger representation has an immediate practical application to loop diagrams. For example, for the diagram in the theory formed by joining two s together in two half-lines, and making the remaining lines external, the integral over the internal propagators in the loop is:
Here one line carries momentum and the other . The asymmetry can be fixed by putting everything in the Schwinger representation.
Now the exponent mostly depends on ,
except for the asymmetrical little bit. Defining the variable and , the variable goes from 0 to , while goes from 0 to 1. The variable is the total proper time for the loop, while parametrizes the fraction of the proper time on the top of the loop versus the bottom.
The Jacobian for this transformation of variables is easy to work out from the identities:
and "wedging" gives
This allows the integral to be evaluated explicitly:
leaving only the -integral. This method, invented by Schwinger but usually attributed to Feynman, is called "combining denominator". Abstractly, it is the elementary identity:
But this form does not provide the physical motivation for introducing ; is the proportion of proper time on one of the legs of the loop.
Once the denominators are combined, a shift in to symmetrizes everything:
This form shows that the moment that is more negative than four times the mass of the particle in the loop, which happens in a physical region of Lorentz space, the integral has a cut. This is exactly when the external momentum can create physical particles.
When the loop has more vertices, there are more denominators to combine:
The general rule follows from the Schwinger prescription for denominators:
The integral over the Schwinger parameters can be split up as before into an integral over the total proper time and an integral over the fraction of the proper time in all but the first segment of the loop for . The are positive and add up to less than 1, so that the integral is over an -dimensional simplex.
The Jacobian for the coordinate transformation can be worked out as before:
Wedging all these equations together, one obtains
This gives the integral:
where the simplex is the region defined by the conditions
as well as
Performing the integral gives the general prescription for combining denominators:
Since the numerator of the integrand is not involved, the same prescription works for any loop, no matter what the spins are carried by the legs. The interpretation of the parameters is that they are the fraction of the total proper time spent on each leg.
The correlation functions of a quantum field theory describe the scattering of particles. The definition of "particle" in relativistic field theory is not self-evident, because if you try to determine the position so that the uncertainty is less than the compton wavelength, the uncertainty in energy is large enough to produce more particles and antiparticles of the same type from the vacuum. This means that the notion of a single-particle state is to some extent incompatible with the notion of an object localized in space.
In the 1930s, Wigner gave a mathematical definition for single-particle states: they are a collection of states that form an irreducible representation of the Poincaré group. Single particle states describe an object with a finite mass, a well defined momentum, and a spin. This definition is fine for protons and neutrons, electrons and photons, but it excludes quarks, which are permanently confined, so the modern point of view is more accommodating: a particle is anything whose interaction can be described in terms of Feynman diagrams, which have an interpretation as a sum over particle trajectories.
A field operator can act to produce a one-particle state from the vacuum, which means that the field operator produces a superposition of Wigner particle states. In the free field theory, the field produces one particle states only. But when there are interactions, the field operator can also produce 3-particle, 5-particle (if there is no +/− symmetry also 2, 4, 6 particle) states too. To compute the scattering amplitude for single particle states only requires a careful limit, sending the fields to infinity and integrating over space to get rid of the higher-order corrections.
The relation between scattering and correlation functions is the LSZ-theorem: The scattering amplitude for particles to go to particles in a scattering event is the given by the sum of the Feynman diagrams that go into the correlation function for field insertions, leaving out the propagators for the external legs.
For example, for the interaction of the previous section, the order contribution to the (Lorentz) correlation function is:
Stripping off the external propagators, that is, removing the factors of , gives the invariant scattering amplitude :
which is a constant, independent of the incoming and outgoing momentum. The interpretation of the scattering amplitude is that the sum of over all possible final states is the probability for the scattering event. The normalization of the single-particle states must be chosen carefully, however, to ensure that is a relativistic invariant.
Non-relativistic single particle states are labeled by the momentum , and they are chosen to have the same norm at every value of . This is because the nonrelativistic unit operator on single particle states is:
In relativity, the integral over the -states for a particle of mass m integrates over a hyperbola in space defined by the energy–momentum relation:
If the integral weighs each point equally, the measure is not Lorentz-invariant. The invariant measure integrates over all values of and , restricting to the hyperbola with a Lorentz-invariant delta function:
So the normalized -states are different from the relativistically normalized -states by a factor of
The invariant amplitude is then the probability amplitude for relativistically normalized incoming states to become relativistically normalized outgoing states.
For nonrelativistic values of , the relativistic normalization is the same as the nonrelativistic normalization (up to a constant factor ). In this limit, the invariant scattering amplitude is still constant. The particles created by the field scatter in all directions with equal amplitude.
The nonrelativistic potential, which scatters in all directions with an equal amplitude (in the Born approximation), is one whose Fourier transform is constant—a delta-function potential. The lowest order scattering of the theory reveals the non-relativistic interpretation of this theory—it describes a collection of particles with a delta-function repulsion. Two such particles have an aversion to occupying the same point at the same time.
Thinking of Feynman diagrams as a perturbation series, nonperturbative effects like tunneling do not show up, because any effect that goes to zero faster than any polynomial does not affect the Taylor series. Even bound states are absent, since at any finite order particles are only exchanged a finite number of times, and to make a bound state, the binding force must last forever.
But this point of view is misleading, because the diagrams not only describe scattering, but they also are a representation of the short-distance field theory correlations. They encode not only asymptotic processes like particle scattering, they also describe the multiplication rules for fields, the operator product expansion. Nonperturbative tunneling processes involve field configurations that on average get big when the coupling constant gets small, but each configuration is a coherent superposition of particles whose local interactions are described by Feynman diagrams. When the coupling is small, these become collective processes that involve large numbers of particles, but where the interactions between each of the particles is simple. (The perturbation series of any interacting quantum field theory has zero radius of convergence, complicating the limit of the infinite series of diagrams needed (in the limit of vanishing coupling) to describe such field configurations.)
This means that nonperturbative effects show up asymptotically in resummations of infinite classes of diagrams, and these diagrams can be locally simple. The graphs determine the local equations of motion, while the allowed large-scale configurations describe non-perturbative physics. But because Feynman propagators are nonlocal in time, translating a field process to a coherent particle language is not completely intuitive, and has only been explicitly worked out in certain special cases. In the case of nonrelativistic bound states, the Bethe–Salpeter equation describes the class of diagrams to include to describe a relativistic atom. For quantum chromodynamics, the Shifman-Vainshtein-Zakharov sum rules describe non-perturbatively excited long-wavelength field modes in particle language, but only in a phenomenological way.
The number of Feynman diagrams at high orders of perturbation theory is very large, because there are as many diagrams as there are graphs with a given number of nodes. Nonperturbative effects leave a signature on the way in which the number of diagrams and resummations diverge at high order. It is only because non-perturbative effects appear in hidden form in diagrams that it was possible to analyze nonperturbative effects in string theory, where in many cases a Feynman description is the only one available. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11617 |
Food writing
Food writing is a type of writing that focuses on food and includes works by food critics and food historians.
Food writers regard food as a substance and a cultural phenomenon. John T. Edge, an American food writer, explains how writers in the genre view its topic: "Food is essential to life. It’s arguably our nation’s biggest industry. Food, not sex, is our most frequently indulged pleasure. Food—too much, not enough, the wrong kind, the wrong frequency—is one of our society’s greatest causes of disease and death." Another American food writer, Mark Kurlansky, links this vision of food directly to food writing, giving the genre's scope and range when he observes: “Food is about agriculture, about ecology, about man’s relationship with nature, about the climate, about nation-building, cultural struggles, friends and enemies, alliances, wars, religion. It is about memory and tradition and, at times, even about sex.”Because food writing is topic centered, it is not a genre in itself, but a writing that uses a wide range of traditional genres, including recipes, journalism, memoir, and travelogues. Food writing can refer to poetry and fiction, such as Marcel Proust’s "À la recherche du temps perdu" ("In Search of Lost Time"), with its famous passage where the narrator recollects his childhood memories as a result of sipping tea and eating a madeleine; or Robert Burns' poem "Address to a Haggis", 1787. Charles Dickens, a notable novelist wrote memorably about food, e.g., in his "A Christmas Carol" (1843).
Often, food writing is used to specify writing that takes a more literary approach to food, such as that of the famous American food writer M. F. K. Fisher, who describes her writing about food as follows:
It seems to me our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it ... and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied ... and it is all one.
In this literary sense, food writing aspires toward more than merely communicating information about food; it also aims to provide readers with an aesthetic experience. Another American food writer, Adam Gopnik, divides food writing into two categories, "the mock epic and the mystical microcosmic," and provides examples of their most noted practitioners:
The mock epic (A. J. Liebling, Calvin Trillin, the French writer Robert Courtine, and any good restaurant critic) is essentially comic and treats the small ambitions of the greedy eater as though they were big and noble, spoofing the idea of the heroic while raising the minor subject to at least temporary greatness. The mystical microcosmic, of which Elizabeth David and M. F. K. Fisher are the masters, is essentially poetic, and turns every remembered recipe into a meditation on hunger and the transience of its fulfillment. Contemporary food writers working in this mode include Ruth Reichl, Betty MacDonald, and Jim Harrison.
As a term, "food writing" is a relatively new descriptor. It came into wide use in the 1990s and, unlike "sports writing", or "nature writing", it has yet to be included in the "Oxford English Dictionary". Consequently, definitions of food writing when applied to historical works are retrospective. Classics of food writing, such as the 18th century French gastronome Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's "La physiologie du goût" ("The Physiology of Taste"), pre-date the term and have helped to shape its meaning.
Food writer Michael Pollan holds the Knight Professorship of Science and Environmental Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley and since 2013 has directed the 11th Hour Food and Farming Journalism Fellowship Program.
In 2013, the University of South Florida St. Petersburg began a graduate certificate program in Food Writing and Photography, created by longtime "Tampa Bay Times" food and travel editor Janet K. Keeler.
This is a list of some prominent writers on food, cooking, dining, and cultural history related to food. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11619 |
Futurama (New York World's Fair)
Futurama was an exhibit and ride at the 1939 New York World's Fair designed by Norman Bel Geddes, which presented a possible model of the world 20 years into the future (1959–1960). The installation was sponsored by the General Motors Corporation and was characterized by automated highways and vast suburbs.
Geddes had built a model city for a Shell Oil advertising campaign in 1937 that was described as the Shell Oil City of Tomorrow and was effectively a prototype for the much larger and more ambitious Futurama.
Geddes' "vision of the future" was rather achievable; the most advanced technology posited was the automated highway system of which General Motors built a working prototype by 1960. Futurama is widely held to have first introduced the general American public to the concept of a network of expressways connecting the nation. It provided a direct connection between the streamlined style which was popular in America between 1928 and 1938, and the concept of steady-flow which appeared in street and highway design in the same period.
Geddes expounds upon his design in his book "Magic Motorways":
The modeled highway construction emphasized hope for the future as it served as a proposed solution to traffic congestion of the day, and demonstrated the probable development of traffic in proportion to the automotive growth of the next 20 years. Bel Geddes assumed that the automobile would be the same type of carrier and still the most common means of transportation in 1960, albeit with increased vehicle use and traffic lanes also capable of much higher speeds.
Four general ideas for improvement were incorporated into the exhibition showcase to meet these assumptions. First, each section of road was designed to receive greater capacity of traffic. Second, traffic moving in one direction could be isolated from traffic moving in any other. Third, segregating traffic by subdividing towns and cities into certain units restricted traffic and allowed pedestrians to predominate. And fourth, traffic control included maximum and minimum speeds. Through this, the exhibition was designed to inspire greater public enthusiasm and support for the constructive work and planning of streets and highways.
The popularity of the Futurama exhibit fit closely with the fair's overall theme of "The World of Tomorrow" in its emphasis on the future and its redesign of the American landscape. The highway system was supported within a animated model of a projected America containing more than 500,000 individually designed buildings, a million trees of 13 different species, and approximately 50,000 cars, 10,000 of which traveled along a 14-lane multi-speed interstate highway. It prophesied an American utopia regulated by an assortment of cutting-edge technologies: multi-lane highways with remote-controlled semi-automated vehicles, power plants, farms for artificially produced crops, rooftop platforms for individual flying machines, and various gadgets, all intended to create an ideal built environment and ultimately to reform society.
Geddes' "future" was synonymous with technological progress in its simulated low-flying airplane journey through the exhibit. The aerial journey was simulated by an 18-minute ride on a conveyor system, carrying 552 seated spectators at a time, covering a ⅓-mile winding path through the model, along with light, sound, and color effects. The ride moved at a rate of approximately per minute or , allowing spectators to look down through a continuous curved pane of glass towards the model. The virtue of this elevated position allowed spectators to see multiple scales simultaneously, viewing city blocks in proportion to a highway system, as well as artificially controlled trees in glass domes. This scale was modeled off 408 topographical sections based on aerial photographs of different regions of the U.S. provided by Fairchild Aircraft Ltd..
Before General Motors invited Bel Geddes to submit a proposal for the exhibit, they had planned to put in another production line as was featured at their exhibit in the Century of Progress Exposition of 1933 in Chicago. However, after they heard Bel Geddes outline his project all other plans were scrapped as they favored his design for its appeal to a broader audience. The Futurama exhibition was subsequently presented as one of the 1939 New York World Fair's main attractions, as it was the "number-one hit show". It captured the fancy of the public and critics alike, with journalists competing to find adequate words to convey Bel Geddes' "ingenuity", "daring", "showmanship" and "genius". One neutral survey of 1000 departing fairgoers awarded the General Motors exhibit 39.4 points to only 8.5 points for second place Ford as the most interesting exhibit. "Business Week" described the scene:
His ideas of the future had a remarkable degree of realism and immediacy, striking a chord with an American audience slowly recovering from the Great Depression and that was longing for prosperity. Futurama's imaginary landscape of 1960 was, at the time, seen not just as a novel physical space, but as a glimpse of the future.
The General Motors pavilion at the 1964 New York World's Fair included a ride that was also known as "Futurama", or "The New Futurama". | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11621 |
Francesco I Sforza
Francesco I Sforza (; 23 July 1401 – 8 March 1466) was an Italian condottiero who founded the Sforza dynasty in the duchy of Milan, ruling as its (fourth) duke from 1450 until his death. He was the brother of Alessandro, whom he often fought alongside.
Francesco Sforza was born in San Miniato, Tuscany, one of the seven illegitimate sons of the condottiero Muzio Sforza and Lucia da Torsano. He spent his childhood in Tricarico (in the modern Basilicata), the marquisate of which he was granted in 1412 by King Ladislaus of Naples. In 1418, he married Polissena Ruffo, a Calabrese noblewoman.
From 1419, he fought alongside his father, soon gaining fame for being able to bend metal bars with his bare hands. He later proved himself to be an expert tactician and very skilled field commander. After the death of his father during the War of L'Aquila, he participated in the Braccio da Montone's final defeat in that campaign; he fought subsequently for the Neapolitan army and then for Pope Martin V and the Duke of Milan, Filippo Maria Visconti. After some successes, he fell in disgrace and was sent to the castle of Mortara as a prisoner "de facto". He regained his status after leading an expedition against Lucca.
In 1431, after a period during which he fought again for the Papal States, he led the Milanese army against Venice; the following year the duke's daughter, Bianca Maria, was betrothed to him. Despite these moves, the wary Filippo Maria never ceased to be distrustful of Sforza. The allegiance of mercenary leaders was dependent, of course, on pay; in 1433-1435, Sforza led the Milanese attack on the Papal States, but when he conquered Ancona, in the Marche, he changed sides, obtaining the title of vicar of the city directly from Pope Eugene IV. In 1436-39, he served variously both Florence and Venice.
In 1440, his fiefs in the Kingdom of Naples were occupied by King Alfonso I, and, to recover the situation, Sforza reconciled himself with Filippo Visconti. On 25 October 1441, in Cremona, he could finally marry Bianca Maria as part of the agreements that ended the war between Milan and Venice. The following year, he allied with René of Anjou, pretender to the throne of Naples, and marched against southern Italy. After some initial setbacks, he defeated the Neapolitan commander Niccolò Piccinino, who had invaded his possessions in Romagna and Marche, through the help of Sigismondo Pandolfo Malatesta (who had married his daughter Polissena) and the Venetians, and could return to Milan.
Sforza later found himself warring against Francesco Piccinino (whom he defeated at the Battle of Montolmo in 1444) and, later, the alliance of Visconti, Eugene IV, and Malatesta, who had allegedly murdered Polissena. With the help of Venice, Sforza was again victorious and, in exchange for abandoning the Venetians, received the title of "capitano generale" (commander-in-chief) of the Duchy of Milan's armies.
After the Filippo Maria Visconti, duke of Milan, died without a male heir in 1447, fighting broke out to restore the so-called Ambrosian Republic. The name Ambrosian Republic takes its name from St. Ambrose, the patron saint of Milan. Agnese del Maino, his wife's mother, convinced the condottiero who held Pavia to restore it to him.
He also received the seigniory of other cities of the duchy, including Lodi, and started to carefully plan the conquest of the ephemeral republic, allying with William VIII of Montferrat and (again) Venice. In 1450, after years of famine, riots raged in the streets of Milan and the city's senate decided to entrust to him the duchy. Sforza entered the city as Duke on 26 February. It was the first time that such a title was handed over by a lay institution. While the other Italian states gradually recognized Sforza as the legitimate Duke of Milan, he was never able to obtain official investiture from the Holy Roman Emperor. That did not come to the Sforza Dukes until 1494, when Emperor Maximilian formally invested Francesco's son, Ludovico, as Duke of Milan.
Under his rule (which was moderate and skillful), Sforza modernised the city and duchy. He created an efficient system of taxation that generated enormous revenues for the government, his court became a center of Renaissance learning and culture, and the people of Milan grew to love him. In Milan, he founded the Ospedale Maggiore, restored the Palazzo dell'Arengo, and had the Naviglio d'Adda, a channel connecting with the Adda River, built.
During Sforza's reign, Florence was under the command of Cosimo de' Medici and the two rulers became close friends. This friendship eventually manifested in first the Peace of Lodi and then the Italian League, a multi-polar defensive alliance of Italian states that succeeded in stabilising almost all of Italy for its duration. After the peace, Sforza renounced part of the conquests in eastern Lombardy obtained by his condottieri Bartolomeo Colleoni, Ludovico Gonzaga, and Roberto Sanseverino after 1451. As King Alfonso of Naples was among the signatories of the treaty, Sforza also abandoned his long support of the Angevin pretenders to Naples. He also aimed to conquer Genoa, then an Angevin possession; when a revolt broke out there in 1461, he had Spinetta Campofregoso elected as Doge, as his puppet. Sforza occupied Genoa and Savona in 1464.
Sforza was the first European ruler to follow a foreign policy based on the concept of the balance of power, and the first native Italian ruler to conduct extensive diplomacy outside the peninsula to counter the power of threatening states such as France. Sforza's policies succeeded in keeping foreign powers from dominating Italian politics for the rest of the century.
Sforza suffered from hydropsy and gout. In 1462, rumours spread that he was dead and a riot exploded in Milan. He however survived for four more years, finally dying in March 1466. He was succeeded as duke by his son, Galeazzo Maria Sforza.
Francesco's successor Ludovico commissioned Leonardo da Vinci to design an equestrian statue as part of a monument to Francesco I Sforza. A clay model of a horse which was to be used as part of the design was completed by Leonardo in 1492 — but the statue was never built. In 1999 the horse alone was cast from Leonardo's original designs in bronze and placed in Milan outside the racetrack of Ippodromo del Galoppo.
Francesco Sforza with his second wife Bianca Maria Visconti had:
Francesco Sforza is mentioned several times in Niccolò Machiavelli's book "The Prince"; he is generally praised in that work for his ability to hold his country and as a warning to a prince not to use mercenary troops.
As a patron of the arts the main humanist of his court was the writer Francesco Filelfo.
His best works were mentioned in chapters 7, 12, and 14.
The video game "" contains a five-chapter campaign depicting Francesco Sforza. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11623 |
Folk dance
A folk dance is a dance developed by people that reflect the life of the people of a certain country or region. Not all ethnic dances are folk dances. For example, ritual dances or dances of ritual origin are not considered to be folk dances. Ritual dances are usually called "Religious dances" because of their purpose.
The terms "ethnic" and "traditional" are used when it is required to emphasize the cultural roots of the dance. In this sense, nearly all folk dances are ethnic ones. If some dances, such as polka, cross ethnic boundaries and even cross the boundary between "folk" and "ballroom dance", ethnic differences are often considerable enough to mention.
Folk dances share some or all of the following attributes:
More controversially, some people define folk dancing as dancing for which there is no governing body or dancing for which there are no competitive or professional institutions. The term "folk dance" is sometimes applied to dances of historical importance in European culture and history; typically originating before the 20th century. For other cultures the terms "ethnic dance" or "traditional dance" are sometimes used, although the latter terms may encompass ceremonial dances.
There are a number of modern dances, such as hip hop dance, that evolve spontaneously, but the term "folk dance" is generally not applied to them, and the terms "street dance" or "vernacular dance" are used instead. The term "folk dance" is reserved for dances which are to a significant degree bound by tradition and originated in the times when the distinction existed between the dances of "common folk" and the dances of the modern ballroom dances originated from folk ones.
Varieties of European folk dances include:
Sword dances include long sword dances and rapper dancing. Some choreographed dances such as contra dance, Scottish country dance, and modern Western square dance, are called folk dances, though this is not true in the strictest sense. Country dance overlaps with contemporary folk dance and ballroom dance. Most country dances and ballroom dances originated from folk dances, with gradual refinement over the years.
People familiar with folk dancing can often determine what country a dance is from even if they have not seen that particular dance before. Some countries' dances have features that are unique to that country, although neighboring countries sometimes have similar features. For example, the German and Austrian schuhplattling dance consists of slapping the body and shoes in a fixed pattern, a feature that few other countries' dances have.
Folk dances sometimes evolved long before current political boundaries, so that certain dances are shared by several countries. For example, some Serbian, Bulgarian, and Croatian dances share the same or similar dances, and sometimes even use the same name and music for those dances.
International folk dance groups exist in cities and college campuses in many countries, in which dancers learn folk dances from many cultures for recreation.
Balfolk events are social dance events with live music in Western and Central Europe, originating in the folk revival of the 1970s and becoming more popular since about 2000, where popular European partner dances from the end of the 19th century such as the schottische, polka, mazurka and waltz are danced, with additionally other European folk dances, mainly from France, but also from Sweden, Spain and other countries.
various dances such as tamang selo and uucountable others | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=11624 |
Lee Harvey Oswald
Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was an American Marxist and former U.S. Marine who assassinated United States President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. Oswald was honorably released from active duty in the Marine Corps into the reserve and defected to the Soviet Union in October 1959. He lived in Minsk until June 1962, when he returned to the United States with his Russian wife, Marina, and eventually settled in Dallas. Five government investigations concluded that Oswald shot and killed Kennedy from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository as the President traveled by motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas.
About 45 minutes after assassinating Kennedy, Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer J. D. Tippit on a local street. He then slipped into a movie theater, where he was arrested for Tippit's murder. Oswald was eventually charged with the assassination of Kennedy. He denied the accusations, stating that he was a "patsy." Two days later, Oswald was fatally shot by local nightclub owner Jack Ruby on live television in the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters.
In September 1964, the Warren Commission concluded that Oswald acted alone when he assassinated Kennedy by firing three shots from the Texas School Book Depository. This conclusion, though controversial, was supported by previous investigations from the FBI, the Secret Service, and the Dallas Police Department. Despite forensic, ballistic, and eyewitness evidence supporting the official findings, public opinion polls have shown that most Americans do not believe the official version of the events. The assassination has spawned numerous conspiracy theories.
Oswald was born at the old French Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana, on October 18, 1939, to Robert Edward Lee Oswald, Sr. (1896–1939) and Marguerite Frances Claverie (1907–1981). Robert Oswald was a distant cousin of Confederate general Robert E. Lee and served in the Marines during World War I. Robert died of a heart attack two months before Lee was born. Lee's elder brother Robert, Jr. (1934–2017) was also a former Marine. Through Marguerite's first marriage to Edward John Pic, Jr., Lee and Robert Jr. were the half-brothers of Air Force veteran John Edward Pic (1932–2000).
In 1944, Marguerite moved the family from New Orleans to Dallas, Texas. Oswald entered the first grade in 1945 and over the next half-dozen years attended several different schools in the Dallas and Fort Worth areas through the sixth grade. Oswald took an IQ test in the fourth grade and scored 103; "on achievement tests in [grades 4 to 6], he twice did best in reading and twice did worst in spelling."
As a child, Oswald was described as withdrawn and temperamental by several people who knew him. When Oswald was 12 in August 1952, his mother took him to New York City where they lived for a short time with Oswald's half-brother, John. Oswald and his mother were later asked to leave after an argument in which Oswald allegedly struck his mother and threatened John's wife with a pocket knife.
Oswald attended seventh grade in the Bronx, New York, but was often truant, which led to a psychiatric assessment at a juvenile reformatory. The reformatory psychiatrist, Dr. Renatus Hartogs, described Oswald as immersed in a "vivid fantasy life, turning around the topics of omnipotence and power, through which [Oswald] tries to compensate for his present shortcomings and frustrations". Dr. Hartogs detected a "personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies" and recommended continued treatment.
In January 1954, Marguerite returned to New Orleans and took Lee with her. At the time, there was a question pending before a New York judge as to whether Oswald should be removed from the care of his mother to finish his schooling,
although Oswald's behavior appeared to improve during his last months in New York.
Oswald completed the eighth and ninth grades in New Orleans. He entered the 10th grade in 1955 but quit school after one month. After leaving school, Oswald worked for several months as an office clerk and messenger in New Orleans. In July 1956, Oswald's mother moved the family to Fort Worth, Texas, and Oswald re-enrolled in the 10th grade for the September session at Arlington Heights High School in Fort Worth. A few weeks later in October, Oswald quit school at age 17 to join the Marines; he never earned a high school diploma. By this point, he had resided at 22 locations and attended 12 schools.
Though Oswald had trouble spelling in his youth and may have had a "reading-spelling disability", he read voraciously. By age 15, he considered himself a Marxist according to his diary: "I was looking for a key to my environment, and then I discovered socialist literature. I had to dig for my books in the back dusty shelves of libraries." At 16 he wrote to the Socialist Party of America for information on their Young People's Socialist League, saying he had been studying socialist principles for "well over fifteen months".
However, Edward Voebel, "whom the Warren Commission had established was Oswald's closest friend during his teenage years in New Orleans ... said that reports that Oswald was already 'studying Communism' were a 'lot of baloney.' " Voebel said that "Oswald commonly read 'paperback trash.'"
As a teenager in 1955, Oswald attended Civil Air Patrol meetings in New Orleans. Fellow cadets recalled him attending C.A.P. meetings "three or four" times, or "10 or 12 times" over a one- or two-month period.
Oswald enlisted in the United States Marine Corps on October 24, 1956, just a week after his seventeenth birthday; because of his age his brother Robert, Jr. was required to sign as his legal guardian. Oswald also named his mother and his half-brother John as beneficiaries. Oswald idolized his older brother, Robert Jr., and wore his Marine Corps ring. John Pic (Oswald's half-brother) testified to the Warren Commission that Oswald's enlistment was motivated by wanting "to get from out and under ... the yoke of oppression from my mother".
Oswald's enlistment papers recite that he was tall and weighed , with hazel eyes and brown hair. His primary training was in radar operation, which required a security clearance. A May 1957 document stated that he was "granted final clearance to handle classified matter up to and including confidential after careful check of local records had disclosed no derogatory data."
At Keesler Air Force Base in Mississippi, Oswald finished seventh in a class of thirty in the Aircraft Control and Warning Operator Course, which "included instruction in aircraft surveillance and the use of radar". He was given the military occupational specialty of Aviation Electronics Operator. On July 9, he reported to the Marine Corps Air Station El Toro in California then departed for Japan the following month, where he was assigned to Marine Air Control Squadron 1 at Naval Air Facility Atsugi near Tokyo.
Like all marines, Oswald was trained and tested in shooting. In December 1956, he scored 212, which was slightly above the requirements for the designation of "sharpshooter". In May 1959 he scored 191, which reduced his rating to "marksman".
Oswald was court-martialed after he accidentally shot himself in the elbow with an unauthorized .22 caliber handgun. He was court-martialed a second time for fighting with a sergeant who he thought was responsible for his punishment in the shooting matter. He was demoted from private first class to private and briefly imprisoned in the brig. Oswald was later punished for a third incident: while he was on a night-time sentry duty in the Philippines, he inexplicably fired his rifle into the jungle.
Slightly built, Oswald was nicknamed "Ozzie Rabbit" after the cartoon character; he was also called "Oswaldskovich" because he espoused pro-Soviet sentiments. In November 1958, Oswald transferred back to El Toro where his unit's function "was to serveil for aircraft, but basically to train both enlisted men and officers for later assignment overseas". An officer there said that Oswald was a "very competent" crew chief and was "brighter than most people."
While Oswald was in the Marines, he made an effort to teach himself rudimentary Russian. Although this was an unusual endeavor, on February 25, 1959, he was invited to take a Marine proficiency exam in written and spoken Russian. His level at the time was rated "poor" in understanding spoken Russian, though he fared rather reasonably for a Marine private at the time in reading and writing. On September 11, 1959, he received a hardship discharge from active service, claiming his mother needed care. He was placed on the United States Marine Corps Reserve.
Oswald traveled to the Soviet Union just before he turned 20 in October 1959; he had planned the trip well in advance by teaching himself Russian and saving $1,500 of his Marine Corps salary ().
Oswald spent two days with his mother in Fort Worth, then embarked by ship on September 20 from New Orleans to Le Havre, France, and immediately traveled to the United Kingdom. Arriving in Southampton on October 9, he told officials he had $700 and planned to stay for one week before proceeding to a school in Switzerland. However, on the same day, he flew to Helsinki, where he was issued a Soviet visa on October 14. Oswald left Helsinki by train on the following day, crossed the Soviet border at Vainikkala, and arrived in Moscow on October 16. His visa, valid only for a week, was due to expire on October 21.
Almost immediately after arriving, Oswald informed his Intourist guide of his desire to become a Soviet citizen. When asked why by the various Soviet officials he encountered — all of whom, by Oswald's account, found his wish incomprehensible — he said that he was a communist, and gave what he described in his diary as "vauge ["sic"] answers about 'Great Soviet Union'". On October 21, the day his visa was due to expire, he was told that his citizenship application had been refused, and that he had to leave the Soviet Union that evening. Distraught, Oswald inflicted a minor but bloody wound to his left wrist in his hotel room bathtub soon before his Intourist guide was due to arrive to escort him from the country, according to his diary because he wished to kill himself in a way that would shock her. Delaying Oswald's departure because of his self-inflicted injury, the Soviets kept him in a Moscow hospital under psychiatric observation until October 28, 1959.
According to Oswald, he met with four more Soviet officials that same day, who asked if he wanted to return to the United States. Oswald replied by insisting that he wanted to live in the Soviet Union as a Soviet national. When pressed for identification papers, he provided his Marine Corps discharge papers.
On October 31, Oswald appeared at the United States embassy in Moscow and declared a desire to renounce his U.S. citizenship. "I have made up my mind," he said; "I'm through." He told the U.S. embassy interviewing officer, Richard Edward Snyder, that "he had been a radar operator in the Marine Corps and that he had voluntarily stated to unnamed Soviet officials that as a Soviet citizen he would make known to them such information concerning the Marine Corps and his specialty as he possessed. He intimated that he might know something of special interest."
(Such statements led to Oswald's "hardship/honorable" military reserve discharge being changed to "undesirable".)
The Associated Press story of the defection of a former U.S. Marine to the Soviet Union was reported on the front pages of some newspapers in 1959.
Though Oswald had wanted to attend Moscow State University, he was sent to Minsk to work as a lathe operator at the Gorizont Electronics Factory, which produced radios, televisions, and military and space electronics. Stanislau Shushkevich, who later became independent Belarus's first head of state, was also engaged by Gorizont at the time, and was assigned to teach Oswald Russian. Oswald received a government-subsidized, fully furnished studio apartment in a prestigious building and an additional supplement to his factory pay, which allowed him to have a comfortable standard of living by working-class Soviet standards, though he was kept under constant surveillance.
From approximately June 1960 to February 1961, Oswald was in a personal relationship with Ella German, a co-worker at the factory. He proposed marriage to her at the beginning of 1961, but she refused with the explanation that she did not love him and was afraid to marry an American. Some researchers believe that German's rejection of Oswald's marriage proposal may have had much to do with his disillusionment with life in the Soviet Union and his decision to return to the United States.
Oswald wrote in his diary in January 1961: "I am starting to reconsider my desire about staying. The work is drab, the money I get has nowhere to be spent. No nightclubs or bowling alleys, no places of recreation except the trade union dances. I have had enough." Shortly afterwards, Oswald (who had never formally renounced his U.S. citizenship) wrote to the Embassy of the United States, Moscow requesting return of his American passport, and proposing to return to the U.S. if any charges against him would be dropped.
In March 1961, Oswald met Marina Prusakova (b. 1941), a 19-year-old pharmacology student; they married less than six weeks later in April.
The Oswalds' first child, June, was born on February 15, 1962. On May 24, 1962, Oswald and Marina applied at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow for documents that enabled her to immigrate to the U.S. On June 1, the U.S. Embassy gave Oswald a repatriation loan of $435.71.
Oswald, Marina, and their infant daughter left for the United States, where they received less attention from the press than Oswald expected.
The Oswalds soon settled in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, where Lee's mother and brother lived. Lee began a manuscript on Soviet life, though he eventually gave up the project. The Oswalds also became acquainted with a number of anti-Communist Russian and East European émigrés in the area. In testimony to the Warren Commission, Alexander Kleinlerer said that the Russian émigrés sympathized with Marina, while merely tolerating Oswald, whom they regarded as rude and arrogant.
Although the Russian émigrés eventually abandoned Marina when she made no sign of leaving her husband, Oswald found an unlikely friend in 51-year-old Russian émigré George de Mohrenschildt, a well-educated petroleum geologist with international business connections. A native of Russia, Mohrenschildt later was to tell the Warren Commission that Oswald had a "remarkable fluency in Russian." Marina, meanwhile, befriended Ruth Paine, a Quaker who was trying to learn Russian, and her husband Michael Paine, who worked for Bell Helicopter.
In July 1962, Oswald was hired by the Leslie Welding Company in Dallas; he disliked the work and quit after three months. On October 12, he started working for the graphic-arts firm of Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall as a photoprint trainee. A fellow employee at Jaggars-Chiles-Stovall testified that Oswald's rudeness at his new job was such that fights threatened to break out, and that he once saw Oswald reading a Russian-language publication. Oswald was fired almost six months later, in the first week of April 1963.
In March 1963, Oswald used the alias "A. Hidell" to make a mail-order purchase of a secondhand 6.5 mm caliber Carcano rifle for $29.95. He also purchased a .38 Smith & Wesson Model 10 revolver by the same method. The Warren Commission concluded that Oswald attempted to kill retired U.S. Major General Edwin Walker on April 10, 1963, and that Oswald fired the Carcano rifle at Walker through a window from less than away as Walker sat at a desk in his Dallas home. The bullet struck the window-frame and Walker's only injuries were bullet fragments to the forearm. The United States House Select Committee on Assassinations stated that the "evidence strongly suggested" that Oswald carried out the shooting.
General Walker was an outspoken anti-communist, segregationist, and member of the John Birch Society. In 1961, Walker had been relieved of his command of the 24th Division of the U.S. Army in West Germany for distributing right-wing literature to his troops. Walker's later actions in opposition to racial integration at the University of Mississippi led to his arrest on insurrection, seditious conspiracy, and other charges. He was temporarily held in a mental institution on orders from President Kennedy's brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, but a grand jury declined to indict him.
Marina Oswald testified that her husband told her that he traveled by bus to General Walker's house and shot at Walker with his rifle. She said that Oswald considered Walker to be the leader of a "fascist organization." A note Oswald left for Marina on the night of the attempt, telling her what to do if he did not return, was not found until ten days after the Kennedy assassination.
Before the Kennedy assassination, Dallas police had no suspects in the Walker shooting, but Oswald's involvement was suspected within hours of his arrest following the assassination. The Walker bullet was too damaged to run conclusive ballistics studies on it, but neutron activation analysis later showed that it was "extremely likely" that it was made by the same manufacturer and for the same rifle make as the two bullets which later struck Kennedy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17652 |
Lincoln, Nebraska
Lincoln is the capital city of the U.S. state of Nebraska and the county seat of Lancaster County. The city covers with a population of 289,102 in 2019. It is the second-most populous city in Nebraska, after Omaha, and the 70th-largest in the United States. The city is the economic and cultural anchor of a substantially larger metropolitan area in the southeastern part of the state called the Lincoln Metropolitan and Lincoln-Beatrice Combined Statistical Areas. The statistical area is home to 356,083 people, making it the 105th-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
The city was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster on the wild salt marshes of what was to become Lancaster County. Renamed after President Abraham Lincoln, it became Nebraska's state capital in 1869. The Bertram G. Goodhue–designed state capitol building was completed in 1932, and is the second tallest capitol in the United States. As the city is the seat of government for the state of Nebraska, the state and the United States government are major employers. The University of Nebraska was founded in Lincoln in 1869. The university is the largest in Nebraska with 26,079 students enrolled, and is the city's third-largest employer. Other primary employers fall into the service and manufacturing industries, including a growing high-tech sector. The region makes up a part of what is known as the greater Midwest Silicon Prairie.
Designated as a "refugee-friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s, the city was the twelfth-largest resettlement site per capita in the United States by 2000. Refugee Vietnamese, Karen (Burmese ethnic minority), Sudanese and Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) people, as well as other refugees from Iraq and the Middle East, have been resettled in the city. During the 2018–2019 school year, Lincoln Public Schools provided support for approximately 3,000 students from 150 countries, who spoke 125 different languages.
Prior to the expansion westward of settlers, the prairie was covered with buffalo grass. Plains Indians, descendants of indigenous peoples who occupied the area for thousands of years, lived in and hunted along Salt Creek. The Pawnee, which included four tribes, lived in villages along the Platte River. The Great Sioux Nation, including the "Ihanktowan-Ihanktowana" and the Lakota, located to the north and west, used Nebraska as a hunting and skirmish ground, although they did not have any long-term settlements in the state. An occasional buffalo could still be seen in the plat of Lincoln in the 1860s.
Lincoln was founded in 1856 as the village of Lancaster and became the county seat of the newly created Lancaster County in 1859. The village was sited on the east bank of Salt Creek. The first settlers were attracted to the area due to the abundance of salt. Once J. Sterling Morton developed his salt mines in Kansas, salt in the village was no longer a viable commodity. Captain W. T. Donovan, a former steamer captain, and his family settled on Salt Creek in 1856. In the fall of 1859, the village settlers met to form a county. A caucus was formed and the committee, which included Captain Donovan, selected the village of Lancaster to be the county seat. The county was named Lancaster. After the passage of the 1862 Homestead Act, homesteaders began to inhabit the area. The first plat was dated August 6, 1864.
By the close of 1868, Lancaster had a population of approximately 500 people. The township of Lancaster was renamed Lincoln with the incorporation of the city of Lincoln on April 1, 1869. In 1869, the University of Nebraska was established in Lincoln by the state with a land grant of about 130,000 acres. Construction of University Hall, the first building, began the same year.
Nebraska was granted statehood on March 1, 1867. The capital of the Nebraska Territory had been Omaha since the creation of the territory in 1854; however, most of the territory's population lived south of the Platte River. After much of the territory south of the Platte River considered annexation to Kansas, the territorial legislature voted to locate the capital city south of the river and as far west as possible. Prior to the vote to remove the capital city from Omaha, a last ditch effort by Omaha Senator J. N. H. Patrick attempted to derail the move by having the future capital city named after recently assassinated President Abraham Lincoln. Many of the people south of the Platte River had been sympathetic to the Confederate cause in the recently concluded Civil War. It was assumed that senators south of the river would not vote to pass the measure if the future capital was named after the former president. In the end, the motion to name the future capital city Lincoln was ineffective in blocking the measure and the vote to change the capital's location south of the Platte River was successful with the passage of the Removal Act in 1867.
The Removal Act called for the formation of a Capital Commission to locate a site for the capital on state-owned land. The Commission, composed of Governor David Butler, Secretary of State Thomas Kennard and State Auditor John Gillespie, began to tour sites on July 18, 1867, for the new capital city. The village of Lancaster was chosen, in part due to the salt flats and marshes. Lancaster had approximately 30 residents. Disregarding the original plat of the village of Lancaster, Thomas Kennard platted Lincoln on a broader scale. The plat of the village of Lancaster was not dissolved nor abandoned; it became Lincoln when the Lincoln plat files were finished September 6, 1867. To raise money for the construction of a capital city, a successful auction of lots was held.
Newcomers began to arrive and Lincoln's population grew. The Nebraska State Capitol was completed on December 1, 1868; a two-story building constructed with native limestone with a central cupola. The Kennard house, built in 1869, is the oldest remaining building in the original plat of Lincoln.
In 1888, a new capitol building was constructed on the site of the first capitol. The new building replaced the structurally unsound former capitol. The second capitol building was a classical design by architect William H. Willcox. Construction began on a third capitol building in 1922. Bertram G. Goodhue was selected in a national competition as its architect. By 1924, the first phase of construction was completed and state offices moved into the new building. In 1925, the Willcox-designed capitol building was razed. The Goodhue-designed capitol was constructed in four phases, with the completion of the fourth phase in 1932. The capitol is the second tallest capitol building in the United States. The completion of the original Goodhue design will be finally realized with the completion of the capitol fountains within the four interior courtyards of the capitol building in 2017.
The worldwide economic depression of 1890 saw Lincoln's population fall from 55,000 to 37,000 by 1900. Volga-German immigrants from Russia settled in the North Bottoms neighborhood and as Lincoln expanded with the growth in population, the city began to annex nearby towns. Normal was the first town annexed in 1919. Bethany Heights, incorporated in 1890, was annexed in 1922. In 1926, the town of University Place was annexed. College View, incorporated in 1892, was annexed in 1929. Union College, a Seventh Day Adventist institution, was founded in College View in 1891. In 1930, Lincoln annexed the town of Havelock. Havelock actively opposed annexation to Lincoln and only relented due to a strike by the Burlington railroad shop workers which halted progress and growth for the city.
The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad's first train arrived in Lincoln on June 26, 1870, and the Midland Pacific (1871) and the Atchison and Nebraska (1872) soon followed. The Union Pacific began service in 1877. The Chicago and North Western and Missouri Pacific began service in 1886. The Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific extended service to Lincoln in 1892. Lincoln became a rail hub.
As automobile travel became more common, so did the need for better roads in Nebraska and throughout the U.S. In 1911, the Omaha-Denver Trans-Continental Route Association, with support from the Good Roads Movement, established the Omaha-Lincoln-Denver Highway (O-L-D) through Lincoln. The goal was to have the most efficient highway for travel throughout Nebraska, from Omaha to Denver.
In 1920, the Omaha-Denver Association merged with the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway Association. As a result, the O-L-D was renamed the Detroit-Lincoln-Denver Highway (D-L-D) with the goal of having a continuous highway from Detroit to Denver. The goal was eventually realized by the mid-1920s; of constantly improved highway through six states. The auto route's success in attracting tourists led entrepreneurs to build businesses and facilities in towns along the route to keep up with the demand. In 1924, the D-L-D was designated as Nebraska State Highway 6. In 1926, the highway became part of the Federal Highway System and was renumbered U.S. Route 38. In 1931, U.S. 38 was renumbered as a U.S. 6/U.S. 38 overlap and in 1933, the U.S. 38 route designation was dropped.
In the early years of air travel, Lincoln had three airports and one airfield. Union Airport, was established northeast of Lincoln in 1920. The Lincoln Flying School was founded by E.J. Sias in a building he built at 2145 O Street. Charles Lindbergh was a student at the flying school in 1922. The flying school closed in 1947. Some remnants of the Union Airport are still visible between N. 56th and N. 70th Streets, north of Fletcher Avenue; mangled within a slowly developing industrial zone. Arrow Airport was established around 1925 as a manufacturing and test facility for Arrow Aircraft and Motors Corporation, primarily the Arrow Sport. The airfield was near Havelock; or to the west of where the North 48th Street Small Vehicle Transfer Station is today. Arrow Aircraft and Motors declared bankruptcy in 1939 and Arrow Airport closed roughly several decades later. An Arrow Sport is on permanent display, hanging in the Lincoln Airport's main passenger terminal.
As train, automobile, and air travel increased, business flourished and the city prospered. Lincoln's population increased 38.2% from 1920 to a population of 75,933 in 1930. In 1930, the city's small municipal airfield was dedicated to Charles Lindbergh and named Lindbergh Field for a short period as another airfield was named Lindbergh in California. It was north of Salt Lake, in an area known over the years as Huskerville, Arnold Heights and Air Park; and was approximately within the western half of the West Lincoln Township. The air field was a stop for United Airlines in 1927 and a mail stop in 1928.
In 1942, the Lincoln Army Airfield was established at the site. During World War II, the U.S. Army used the facility to train over 25,000 aviation mechanics and process over 40,000 troopers for combat. The Army closed the base in 1945, but the Air Force reactivated it in 1952 during the Korean War. In 1966, after the Air Force closed the base, Lincoln annexed the airfield and the base's housing units. The base became the Lincoln Municipal Airport, and later the Lincoln Airport, under the Lincoln Airport Authority's ownership. The two main airlines that served the airport were United Airlines and Frontier Airlines. The Authority shared facilities with the Nebraska National Guard, who continued to own parts of the old Air Force base.
In 1966, Lincoln annexed the township of West Lincoln, incorporated in 1887. West Lincoln voters rejected Lincoln's annexation until the state legislature passed a bill in 1965 that allowed cities to annex surrounding areas without a vote.
The downtown core retail district from 1959 to 1984 saw profound changes as retail shopping moved from downtown to the suburban Gateway Shopping Mall. In 1956, Bankers Life Insurance Company of Nebraska announced plans to build a $6 million shopping center next to their new campus on Lincoln's eastern outskirts. Gateway Shopping Center, now called Gateway Mall, opened at 60th and O streets in 1960. By 1984, 75% of Lincoln's revenue from retail sales tax came from within a one-mile radius of the Mall. However, the exodus of retail and service businesses led the downtown core to decline and deteriorate.
In 1969, the Nebraska legislature legislated laws for urban renewal. Soon afterward, Lincoln began a program of revitalization and beautification. Most of the urban renewal projects focused on downtown and the near South areas. Many ideas were considered and not implemented. Successes included Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, designed by Philip Johnson; new branch libraries, new street lighting, the First National Bank Building and the National Bank of Commerce Building designed by I.M. Pei.
In 1971, an expansion of Gateway Mall was completed. Lincoln's first woman mayor, Helen Boosalis, was elected in 1975. Mayor Boosalis was a strong supporter of the revitalization of Lincoln with the downtown beautification project being completed in 1978. In 1979, the square-block downtown Centrum was opened and connected to buildings with a skywalk. The Centrum was a two-level shopping mall with a garage for 1,038 cars. With the beautification and urban renewal projects, many historic buildings were razed in the city. In 2007 and 2009, the city of Lincoln received beautification grants for improvements on O and West O Streets, west of the Harris Overpass, commemorating the history of the D-L-D.
After the fall of Saigon in 1975, Vietnamese refugees created a large residential and business community along the 27th Street corridor alongside Mexican eateries and African markets. Lincoln was designated as a "Refugee Friendly" city by the U.S. Department of State in the 1970s. In 2000, Lincoln was the twelfth-largest resettlement site per capita in the country. As of 2011, Lincoln had the largest Karen (Burmese ethnic minority) population in the United States (behind Omaha), with an estimated 1,500 in 2019. As of the same year, Nebraska was one of the largest resettlement sites for the people of Sudan, mostly in Lincoln and Omaha. In 2014, some social service organizations estimated that up to 10,000 Iraqi refugees had resettled in Lincoln. In recent years, Lincoln had the largest Yazidi (Iraqi ethnic minority) population in the U.S., with over 2,000–3,000 having settled within the city (as of late 2017). In a three-year period, the immigrant and refugee student population at Lincoln Public Schools increased 52% - from 1,606 students in 2014, to 2,445 in 2017.
The decade from 1990 to 2000 saw a significant rise in population from 191,972 to 225,581. North 27th Street and Cornhusker Highway were redeveloped with new housing and businesses built. The boom housing market in south Lincoln created new housing developments including high end housing in areas like Cripple Creek, Willamsburg and The Ridge. The shopping center Southpointe Pavilions was completed in competition of Gateway Mall.
In 2001, Westfield America Trust purchased the Gateway Mall and named it Westfield Shoppingtown Gateway. In 2005, the company renamed it the Westfield Gateway. Westfield made a $45 million makeover of the mall in 2005 including an expanded food court, a new west-side entrance and installation of an Italian carousel. In 2012, Westfield America Trust sold Westfield Gateway to Starwood Capital Group. Starwood reverted the mall's name from Westfield Gateway to Gateway Mall and has made incremental expansions and renovations.
In 2015, ALLO Communications announced it would bring ultra-high speed fiber internet to the city. Speeds up to 1 Gigabit per second were available for business and households by building off of the city's existing fiber network. Construction on the citywide network began in March 2016 and was estimated to be complete by 2019, making it one of the largest infrastructure projects in the United States. Telephone and cable TV service were also included, making it the third company to compete for such services within the same Lincoln footprint. In April 2016, Windstream Communications announced that 2,300 customers in Lincoln had 1 Gigabit per second fiber internet with an expected expansion of services to 25,000 customers by 2017. On November 29, 2017, Lincoln was named a Smart Gigabit Community by U.S. Ignite Inc. and in early 2018, Spectrum joined the ranks of internet service providers providing 1 gigabit internet within the city.
Lincoln has an area of , of which of it is land and is water, according to the United States Census Bureau in 2018.
Lincoln is one of the few large cities of Nebraska not along either the Platte River or the Missouri River. The city was originally laid out near Salt Creek and among the nearly flat saline wetlands of northern Lancaster County. The city's growth has led to development of the surrounding land, much of which is composed of gently rolling hills. In recent years, Lincoln's northward growth has encroached on the habitat of the endangered Salt Creek tiger beetle.
The Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area consists of Lancaster County and Seward County. Seward County was added to the metropolitan area in 2003. Lincoln is also in the Lincoln-Beatrice Combined Statistical Area which consists of the Lincoln metropolitan area and the micropolitan area of Beatrice. The city of Beatrice is the county seat of Gage County. The Lincoln-Beatrice combined statistical area is home to 356,083 people (2018 estimated) making it the 105th-largest combined statistical area in the United States.
Lincoln's neighborhoods include both old and new development. Some neighborhoods in Lincoln were formerly small towns that Lincoln later annexed, including University Place in 1926, Belmont, Bethany (Bethany Heights) in 1922, College View in 1929, Havelock in 1930, and West Lincoln in 1966. A number of Historic Districts are near downtown Lincoln, while newer neighborhoods have appeared primarily in the south and east. As of December 2013, Lincoln had 45 registered neighborhood associations within the city limits.
One core neighborhood that has seen rapid residential growth in recent years is the downtown Lincoln area. In 2010, there were 1,200 downtown Lincoln residents; in 2016, there were 3,000 (an increase of 140%). Around the middle of the same decade, demand for housing and rent units began outpacing supply. With Lincoln's population expected to grow to more than 311,000 people by 2020, prices for homes and rent costs have risen. Home prices rose 10% from the first quarter of 2015 to the first quarter of 2016; rent prices rose 30% from 2007 to 2017 with a 5–8% increase in 2016 alone.
Located in the Great Plains far from the moderating influence of mountains or large bodies of water, Lincoln has a highly variable four season humid continental climate (Köppen "Dfa"): winters are cold and summers are warm. With little precipitation during winter, precipitation is concentrated in the warmer months, when thunderstorms frequently roll in, often producing tornadoes. Snow averages per season but seasonal accumulation has ranged from in 1967–1968 to in 2018-2019. Snow tends to fall in light amounts, though blizzards are possible. There is an average of 39 days with a snow depth of or more. The average window for freezing temperatures is October 5 thru April 25, allowing a growing season of 162 days.
The monthly daily average temperature ranges from in January to in July. However, the city is subject both to episodes of bitter cold in winter and heat waves during summer, with 11.4 nights of sub- lows, 41 days of + highs, and 4.6 days of + highs. The city straddles the boundary of USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 5b and 6a. Temperature extremes have ranged from on January 12, 1974 up to on July 25, 1936. Readings as high as or as low as occur somewhat rarely; the last occurrence of each was July 22, 2012 and February 3, 1996.
Based on 30-year averages obtained from NOAA's National Climatic Data Center for the months of December, January and February, Weather Channel ranked Lincoln the seventh-coldest major U.S. city as of 2014 In 2014, the Lincoln-Beatrice area was among the "Cleanest U.S. Cities for Ozone Air Pollution" in the American Lung Association's "State of the Air 2014" report.
Lincoln is the second-most-populous city in Nebraska. The U.S. government designated Lincoln in the 1970s as a refugee-friendly city due to its stable economy, educational institutions, and size. Since then, refugees from Vietnam settled in Lincoln, and further more refugees came from other countries . In 2013, Lincoln was named one of the "Top Ten most Welcoming Cities in America" by Welcoming America.
As of the census of 2010, the city had 258,379 people, 103,546 households, and 60,300 families. The population density was . There were 110,546 housing units at an average density of . The city's racial makeup was 86.0% White, 3.8% African American, 0.8% Native American, 3.8% Asian, 0.1% Pacific Islander, 2.5% from other races, and 3.0% from two or more races. Hispanic or Latino of any race were 6.3% of the population.
There were 103,546 households, of which 27.7% had children under the age of 18 living with them, 44.0% were married couples living together, 10.2% had a female householder with no husband present, 4.1% had a male householder with no wife present, and 41.8% were non-families. 31.3% of all households were made up of individuals and 8.8% had someone living alone who was 65 years of age or older. The average household size was 2.36 and the average family size was 3.01.
The median age in the city was 31.8 years. 22.7% of the city's population was under age 18; 15.7% was from age 18 to 24; 27.9% was from age 25 to 44; 22.9% was from age 45 to 64; and 10.7% was age 65 or older. The city's gender makeup was 50.0% male and 50.0% female.
Lincoln's economy is fairly typical of a mid-sized American city; most economic activity is derived from the service and manufacturing industries. Government and the University of Nebraska are both large contributors to the local economy. Other prominent industries in Lincoln include finance, insurance, publishing, manufacturing, pharmaceutical, telecommunications, railroads, high technology, information technology, medical, education and truck transport.
For October 2019, the Lincoln Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) preliminary unemployment rate was 2.7% (not seasonally adjusted). With a tight labor market, Lincoln has seen rapid wage growth. From the summer of 2014 to the summer of 2015, the average hourly pay for both public and private employees have increased by 11%. From October 2014 to October 2015, wages were also up by 8.4%.
One of the largest employers is Bryan Health, which consists of two major hospitals and several large outpatient facilities across the city. Healthcare and medical jobs account for a large portion of Lincoln's employment: as of 2009, full-time healthcare employees in the city included 9,010 healthcare practitioners in technical occupations, 4,610 workers in healthcare support positions, 780 licensed and vocational nurses, and 150 medical and clinical laboratory technicians.
Several national business were originally established in Lincoln; these include student lender Nelnet, Ameritas, Assurity, Fort Western Stores, CliffsNotes and HobbyTown USA. Several regional restaurant chains began in Lincoln, including Amigos/Kings Classic, Runza Restaurants, and Valentino's.
The Lincoln area makes up a part of what is known as the greater Midwest Silicon Prairie. The city is also a part of a rapidly growing craft brewing industry. In 2013, Lincoln ranked No. 4 on "Forbes"' list of the Best Places for Business and Careers, No. 1 on "NerdWallet's Best Cities for Job Seekers in 2015 and No. 2 on SmartAsset's Cities with the Best Work-life Balance in 2019.
According to the City's 2018 Comprehensive Annual Financial Report, the principal employers of the city are:
The Nebraska Air and Army National Guard's Joint Force Headquarters are in Lincoln along with other major units of the Nebraska National Guard. During the early years of the Cold War, the Lincoln Airport was the Lincoln Air Force Base; currently, the Nebraska Air National Guard, along with the Nebraska Army National Guard, have joint-use facilities with the Lincoln Airport.
Since Pinnacle Bank Arena opened in 2013, Lincoln's music scene has grown to the point where it is sometimes referred to as a "Music City." Primary venues for live music include Pinnacle Bank Arena, Bourbon Theatre, Duffy's Tavern, and the Zoo Bar. The Pla-Mor Ballroom is a classic Lincoln music and dance scene with its in-house Sandy Creek Band. Pinewood Bowl hosts a range of performances – from national music performances to local plays – during the warm summer months.
The Lied Center is a venue for national tours of Broadway productions, concert music, guest lectures, and regularly features its resident orchestra Lincoln's Symphony Orchestra. Lincoln has several performing arts venues. Plays are staged by UNL students in the Temple Building; community theater productions are held at the Lincoln Community Playhouse, the Loft at The Mill, and the Haymarket Theater.
Lincoln has a growing number of arts galleries, some including the Sheldon Museum of Art, Burkholder Project and Noyes Art Gallery.
For movie viewing, Marcus Theatres owns 32 screens at four locations, and the University of Nebraska's Mary Riepma Ross Media Arts Center shows independent and foreign films. Standalone cinemas in Lincoln include the Joyo Theater and Rococo Theater. The Rococo Theater also hosts benefits and other engagements. The downtown section of O Street is Lincoln's largest bar and nightclub district.
Lincoln is the hometown of Zager and Evans, known for their international No. 1 hit record, "In the Year 2525" (1969). It is also the home town of several notable musical groups, such as Remedy Drive, VOTA, For Against, Lullaby for the Working Class, Matthew Sweet, Dirtfedd, The Show is the Rainbow and Straight. Lincoln is home to Maroon 5 guitarist James Valentine.
In 2012, the city was listed among the 10 best places to retire in the United States by "U.S. News & World Report".
Annual events in Lincoln have come and gone throughout time, such as Band Day at the University of Nebraska's Lincoln campus and the Star City Holiday Parade. However, some events have never changed while new traditions have been created. Current annual cultural events in Lincoln include the Lincoln National Guard Marathon and Half-Marathon in May, Celebrate Lincoln in early June, the Uncle Sam Jam around July 3, and Boo at the Zoo in October. A locally popular event is the Haymarket Farmers' Market, running from May to October in the Historic Haymarket, one of several farmers markets throughout the city.
Tourist attractions and activities include the Sunken Gardens, basketball games at Pinnacle Bank Arena, the Lincoln Children's Zoo, the dairy store at UNL's East Campus, and Mueller Planetarium on the city campus. The Nebraska State Capitol, which is also the tallest building in Lincoln, offers tours. The Speedway Motors Museum of American Speed preserves, interprets, and displays physical items significant in racing and automotive history. In late 2016, Lincoln was ranked #3 on Lonely Planet's "Best in the U.S.," destinations to see in 2017 list.
Lincoln is home to the University of Nebraska's football team, the Nebraska Cornhuskers. In total, the university fields 22 men's and women's teams in 14 NCAA Division I sports. Nebraska football began play in 1890. Among the 128 Division I-A teams, Nebraska is one of ten football programs to win 800 or more games. Notable coaches were Tom Osborne, and Bob Devaney. Osborne coached from 1973–1997. Devaney coached from 1962–1972 and the university's indoor arena, the Bob Devaney Sports Center, was named for him.
Other sports teams are the Nebraska Wesleyan Prairie Wolves, a NCAA Division III University; the Lincoln Saltdogs, an American Association independent minor league baseball team; the Lincoln Stars, a USHL junior ice hockey team; and the No Coast Derby Girls, a member of the Women's Flat Track Derby Association.
Lincoln has an extensive park system, with over 131 individual parks connected by a system of recreational trails, a system of bike lanes and a system of cycle tracks. The MoPac Trail is a bicycling, equestrian and walking trail built on an abandoned Missouri Pacific Railroad corridor which runs for from the University of Nebraska's Lincoln campus eastward to Wabash, Nebraska.
Regional parks include Antelope Park from S. 23rd and "N" Streets to S. 33rd Street and Sheridan Boulevard, Bicentennial Cascade Fountain, Hamann Rose Garden, Lincoln Children's Zoo, Veterans Memorial Garden, and Holmes Park at S. 70th Street and Normal Boulevard. Pioneers Park includes the Pioneers Park Nature Center at S. Coddington Avenue and W. Calvert Streets.
Community parks include Ballard Park, Bethany Park, Bowling Lake Park, Densmore Park, Erwin Peterson Park, Fleming Fields, Irvingdale Park, Mahoney Park, Max E. Roper Park, Oak Lake Park, Peter Pan Park, Pine Lake Park, Sawyer Snell Park, Seacrest Park, Tierra Briarhurst, University Place Park and Woods Park.
Other notable parks include Iron Horse Park, Lincoln Community Foundation Tower Square, Nine Mile Prairie owned by the University of Nebraska Foundation, Sunken Gardens, Union Plaza, and Wilderness Park. Smaller neighborhood parks are scattered throughout the city. Additionally, there are five public recreation centers, nine outdoor public pools and five public golf courses not including private facilities in Lincoln.
Lincoln has a mayor–council government. The mayor and a seven-member city council are selected in nonpartisan elections. Four members are elected from city council districts; the remaining three members are elected at-large. Lincoln's health, personnel, and planning departments are joint city/county agencies; most city and Lancaster County offices are in the County/City Building.
Since Lincoln is the state capital, many Nebraska state and United States Government offices are in Lincoln. The city lies within the Lincoln Public Schools school district; the primary law enforcement agency for the city is the Lincoln Police Department. The Lincoln Fire and Rescue Department shoulders the city's fire fighting and emergency ambulatory services while private companies provide non-emergency medical transport and volunteer fire fighting units support the city's outlying areas.
The city's public library system is Lincoln City Libraries, which has eight branches. Lincoln City Libraries circulates more than three million items per year to the residents of Lincoln and Lancaster County. Lincoln City Libraries is also home to Polley Music Library and the Jane Pope Geske Heritage Room of Nebraska authors.
Lincoln Public Schools (LPS) is the city's sole public school district. It includes six traditional high schools: Lincoln High, East, Northeast, North Star, Southeast, and Southwest. LPS is also home to special interest high school programs, including the Arts and Humanities Focus Program, the Bryan Community School, The Career Academy and the Science Focus Program (Zoo School). Other programs include the Pathfinder Education Program, the Yankee Hill Program and the Lincoln Air Force JROTC.
There are several private parochial elementary and middle schools throughout the community. Like Lincoln Public Schools, these schools are broken into districts, but most will allow attendance outside of boundary lines. Lincoln's private high schools are College View Academy, Lincoln Christian, Lincoln Lutheran, Parkview Christian School and Pius X High School.
At Lincoln Public Schools, during the 2018–19 school year, the English Language Learners (ELL) program had 2,962 students from approximately 150 countries, who spoke approximately 125 different languages. Some of the most common first-languages spoken within the program are Arabic, Chinese, French, Karen, Kurdish, Nuer, Russian, Spanish, Ukrainian and Vietnamese. The top two first-language groups, as of 2018–19 school year, are Arabic and Kurdish speakers (38.4%), and Spanish speakers (25.2%). From the 2010–11 to the 2018–19 school years, LPS saw Arabic and Kurdish ELL students increase by over 196%, from 321 Arabic and 63 Kurdish speaking students to 605 Arabic and 532 Kurdish speaking students. The continually increasing influx of refugees and immigrants to Lincoln over recent years, which has included refugees/immigrants from Iraq, Mexico, Burma and refugee camps in Thailand, has caused LPS to hire additional ELL teachers at an increasingly rapid pace. However, due to recent immigration restrictions on the national level, ELL numbers have been declining somewhat since 2018.
Music literacy in Lincoln begins early with Lincoln Public School music programs that provide children with the opportunity to begin strings in 4th grade and band in the 5th grade. Collaboration between the University of Nebraska at Lincoln and LPS provides children in the 3rd grade with weekly instruction in classical strings. These programs and others are supported by music retail stores within the city.
Lincoln has nine colleges and universities. The University of Nebraska–Lincoln, the main campus of the University of Nebraska system, is Nebraska's largest university in Nebraska, with 20,830 undergraduate, 4,426 postgraduate students and 564 professionals enrolled in 2018. Out of the 25,820 enrolled, 2,187 undergraduate and 1,040 postgraduate students/professionals were international. With 135 countries outside of the U.S. represented, five countries with the highest international enrollment were China, Rwanda, Malaysia, Oman and Vietnam.
Nebraska Wesleyan University, as of 2013, has 1,927 undergraduate and 222 postgraduate students. The school teaches in the tradition of a liberal arts college education. Nebraska Wesleyan was ranked the #1 liberal arts college in Nebraska by "U.S. News and World Report" in 2002. In 2009, Forbes ranked it 84th of America's Best Colleges. It remains affiliated with the United Methodist Church. Union College is a private Seventh-day Adventist four-year coeducational college with 911 students enrolled 2013–14.
Bryan College of Health Sciences offers undergraduate degrees in nursing and other health professions; a Masters in Nursing; a Doctoral degree in nurse anesthesia practice, as well as certificate programs for ancillary health professions. Universities with satellite locations in Lincoln are Bellevue University, Concordia University (Nebraska), Doane University and Purdue University Global. Lincoln also hosts the College of Hair Design and Joseph's College of Cosmetology.
Southeast Community College is a community college system in southeastern Nebraska, with three campuses in Lincoln and an enrollment of 9,751 students as of fall 2013. The two-year Academic Transfer program is popular among students who want to complete their general education requirements before they enroll in a four-year institution. The University of Nebraska-Lincoln is the most popular transfer location.
Lincoln has four licensed broadcast full power television stations:
The headquarters of Nebraska Educational Telecommunications (NET), which is affiliated with the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, are in Lincoln. Lincoln is one of the few cities without its own NBC affiliate; Omaha's WOWT historically served as the city's default NBC affiliate until 2014 when Hastings' affiliate KHAS-TV moved to KSNB-TV, making both available on cable (KSNB primarily serves central Nebraska). The city has two low power digital TV
stations in Lincoln area included the translator KFDY-LD (simulcast of (KOHA-LD)) owned by Flood Communications of Nebraska LLC, including for main Spanish-language network affiliate Telemundo on 27.1, NCN (Ind.) on 27.2, and religious network affiliate 3ABN on 27.3 in Lincoln area only, on virtual channel 27, digital channel 27; and another low power digital KCWH-LD on CW+ affiliate, owned by Gray on channel 18.1 included subchannels like Ion on 18.2, and CBS (Simulcast of KOLN) on 18.3.
There are 18 radio stations licensed in Lincoln, not including radio stations licensed outside of the city that serve the Lincoln area. Most areas of Lincoln also receive radio signals from Omaha and other surrounding communities.
FM stations include:
AM stations include:
The "Lincoln Journal Star" is the city's major daily newspaper. The "Daily Nebraskan "is the official monthly magazine of the University of Nebraska's Lincoln campus and "The DailyER" is the university's biweekly satirical paper. Other university newspapers include the "Reveille", the official periodical campus paper of Nebraska Wesleyan University and the "Clocktower", the official weekly campus paper of Union College.
Lincoln is served by Interstate 80 via 7 interchanges, connecting the city to San Francisco and Teaneck, New Jersey in the New York City Metropolitan Area. Other Highways that serve the Lincoln area are Interstate 180, U.S. Highway 6, U.S. Highway 34, U.S. Highway 77 and nearby Nebraska Highway 79. The eastern segment of Nebraska Highway 2 is a primary trucking route that connects Kansas City (Interstate 29) to the I-80 corridor in Lincoln. A few additional minor State Highway segments reside within the city as well.
A public bus transit system, StarTran, operates in Lincoln. StarTran's fleet consists of 67 full-sized buses and 13 Handi-Vans. The transit system has 18 bus routes, with a circular bus route downtown. Annual ridership for the fiscal year 2017–18 was 2,463,799.
The Lincoln Airport (KLNK/LNK) provides passengers with daily non-stop service to United Airlines hub Chicago O'Hare International Airport. General aviation support is provided through several private aviation companies. The Lincoln Airport was among the emergency landing sites for the NASA Space Shuttle. The site was chosen chiefly because of a runway; the longest of three at the airport.
Lincoln is served by both Express Arrow and Burling Trailways for regional bus service between Omaha, Denver and points beyond. Megabus, in partnership with Windstar Lines, provides bus service between Lincoln and Chicago with stops in Omaha, Des Moines, Iowa City and Moline.
Amtrak provides service to Lincoln, operating its California Zephyr daily in each direction between Chicago and Emeryville, California, using BNSF's Lincoln – Denver route through Nebraska. The city is an Amtrak crew-change point.
Rail freight travels coast-to-coast, to and through Lincoln via BNSF Railway, the Union Pacific Railroad, Lincoln's own Omaha, Lincoln and Beatrice Railway Company and an Omaha Public Power District rail spur. Lincoln was once served by the Chicago, Rock Island and Pacific Railroad (Rock Island), the Missouri Pacific Railroad (MoPac) and the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company (C&NW). The abandoned right-of-way of these former railroads have since been turned into bicycle trails.
Lincoln has a third-generation dock-based bike share program that began in mid-April 2018, called BikeLNK. The first phase of the program included 19 docks and 100 bicycles, scattered throughout downtown and around the UNL City, UNL East & Nebraska Innovation campuses. A second phase in 2019 increased the number of docks to 21, total bicycles to 105 and expanded to a location outside of downtown. Lincoln also has a fleet of commercial pedicabs that operates in the downtown area.
In 2016, 80.5 percent of working Lincoln residents commuted by driving alone, 9.6 percent carpooled, 1.1 percent used public transportation, and 3.1 percent walked. About 2.4 percent used all other forms of transportation, including taxis, bicycles, and motorcycles as well as ride-sharing services such as Lyft and Uber which entered the Lincoln market in the summer of 2014. About 3.3 percent worked at home.
In 2015, 6.3 percent of city of Lincoln households were without a car, which decreased slightly to 5.8 percent in 2016. The national average was 8.7 percent in 2016. Lincoln averaged 1.78 cars per household in 2016, compared to a national average of 1.8 per household.
Power in Lincoln is provided by the Lincoln Electric System (LES). The LES service area covers , serving Lincoln and several other communities outside of the city. A public utility, LES's electric rates are the 8th lowest in the nation, according to a nationwide survey conducted by LES in 2018. Current LES power supply resources are 35% oil and gas, 34% renewable and 31% coal. Renewable resources have increased with partial help from the addition of an LES-owned five Megawatt solar energy farm put into service June, 2016. The solar farm produces enough energy to power 900 homes. LES also owns two wind turbines in the northeast part of the city.
Water in Lincoln is provided through the Lincoln Water System. In the 1920s, the city of Lincoln undertook the task of building the Lincoln Municipal Lighting and Warterworks Plant (designed by Fiske & Meginnis). The building worked as the main hub for water from nearby wells and power in Lincoln for decades until it was replaced and turned into an apartment building. Most of Lincoln's water originates from wells along the Platte River near Ashland, Nebraska. Wastewater is in turn collected by the Lincoln Wastewater System. The city of Lincoln owns both systems.
Natural gas is provided by Black Hills Energy.
Landline telephone service has had a storied history within the Lincoln area. The Lincoln Telephone & Telegraph Company, founded in 1880, merged with Aliant Communications and shortly thereafter merged in 1998 with Alltel. In 2006, Windstream Communications was formed with the spinoff of Alltel and a merge with VALOR Communications Group. Windstream Communications provides telephone service both over VoIP and conventional telephone circuits to the Lincoln area. Spectrum offers telephone service over VoIP on their cable network. In addition, expected to be completed by 2019, ALLO Communications will provide telephone, television and internet service over their future fiber network to all parts of the city.
Lincoln has three major hospitals within two health care systems serving the city: Bryan Health and CHI Health St. Elizabeth. Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital is a geriatric facility and a physical medicine & rehabilitation center. Lincoln has two specialty hospitals: Lincoln Surgical Hospital and the Nebraska Heart Institute. A U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Community-Based Outpatient Clinic (CBOC) is in Lincoln (Lincoln VA Clinic, part of the Nebraska-Western Iowa Health Care System). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17653 |
Letterboxing (hobby)
Letterboxing is an outdoor hobby that combines elements of orienteering, art, and puzzle solving. Letterboxers hide small, weatherproof boxes in publicly accessible places (like parks) and distribute clues to finding the box in printed catalogs, on one of several web sites, or by word of mouth. Individual letterboxes contain a notebook and a rubber stamp, preferably hand carved or custom made. Finders make an imprint of the letterbox's stamp in their personal notebook, and leave an impression of their personal signature stamp on the letterbox's "visitors' book" or "logbook" — as proof of having found the box and letting other letterboxers know who has visited. Many letterboxers keep careful track of their "find count".
The origin of letterboxing can be traced to Dartmoor, Devon, England in 1854. William Crossing in his "Guide to Dartmoor" states that a well known Dartmoor guide (James Perrott) placed a bottle for visiting cards at Cranmere Pool on the northern moor in 1854. From this hikers on the moors began to leave a letter or postcard inside a box along the trail (sometimes addressed to themselves, sometimes a friend or relative)—hence the name "letterboxing". The next person to discover the site would collect the postcards and post them. In 1938 a plaque and letterbox in Crossing's memory were placed at Duck's Pool on southern Dartmoor.
The first Dartmoor letterboxes were so remote and well-hidden that only the most determined walkers would find them, allowing weeks to pass before the letter made its way home. Until the 1970s there were no more than a dozen such sites around the moor, usually in the most inaccessible locations. Increasingly, however, letterboxes have been located in relatively accessible sites and today there are thousands of letterboxes, many within easy walking distance of the road. As a result, the tradition of leaving a letter or postcard in the box has been forgotten.
Membership of the "100 Club" is open to anyone who has found at least 100 letterboxes on Dartmoor. Clues to the locations of letterboxes are published by the "100 Club" in an annual catalogue. Some letterboxes however remain "word of mouth" and the clues to their location can only be obtained from the person who placed the box. Some clues may also be found in other letterboxes or on the Internet, but this is more commonly for letterboxes in places other than Dartmoor, where no "100 Club" or catalogue exist.
Letterboxing has become a popular sport, with thousands of walkers gathering for 'box-hunts' and while in some areas of Dartmoor it is particularly popular amongst children, some of the more difficult to find boxes and tougher terrain are better suited to more experienced adults.
Letterboxes can be found in other areas of the United Kingdom including the North York Moors and have spread all over the world. The Scottish artist Alec Finlay has placed letterboxes with rubber stamp circle poems at locations around the world, including Yorkshire Sculpture Park.
Interest in letterboxing in the U.S. is generally considered to have started with a feature article in the Smithsonian Magazine in April 1998. Much of the terminology below is associated with letterboxing in the US and would be unfamiliar to UK letterboxers. The growing popularity of the somewhat similar activity of geocaching during the 2000s has increased interest in letterboxing as well.
Clues to American letterboxes are commonly published on several different websites.
Letterboxers organize events, usually called "meets" or "gatherings". The first letterbox meet was held on Dartmoor, and they are now held twice yearly on "clock change days" (in March and October). Gatherings in the US are usually at parks or places with enough space for a large group of letterboxers to meet up and do exchanges (exchanging of personal stamps and/or personal travelers), as well as talk and discuss box ideas. Gatherings in the US usually have a special, one-day "Event stamp." At some gatherings, boxes are created or donated to be planted nearby specifically for the gathering attendees to find.
The first gathering in North America was held in November, 1999, at The Inn at Long Trail in Killington, Vermont.
There are now many different kinds of letterboxes, each with some specific distinction. While purists recognize only those letterboxes planted in the wild, many new variations exist. The kinds include:
In the US, letterboxes have developed new forms:
A letterboxer's "find count" or "PFX count" is organized as follows:
Some boxers list individual types of boxes in their PFX counts (e.g.: codice_1 would mean 12 plants, 76 finds, 45 exchanges, four events or event stamps, 21 hitchhikers, and four virtuals). Some include virtuals, hitchhikers, and other non-traditional boxes in a single find count, while some exclude them. Many letterboxers do not bother to keep count at all.
The "PFX count" is not a term associated with Dartmoor Letterboxing.
Questing is a game played across a community or geographic place. Originally coined in the USA, it is similar to the concept of letterboxing where clues lead to sealed boxes to be found in a type of treasure hunt.
Questing originated with the placing of a treasure box at Cranmere Pool in Dartmoor, England, by James Perrott in 1854. Over time, the hobby spread, and there are now more than 5,000 treasures to be found in and around Dartmoor.
Vital Communities, a non-profit organization in White River Junction, Vermont established the Valley Quest program as a sense-of-place education program in 1995. Valley quests map and share the Upper Valley region's special places. Created by school groups, scout groups, historical societies and others, there are now over 200 quests across Vermont and New Hampshire. Questing has spread to other communities, too. There is a South Shore Quests program in Hingham, Massachusetts along with programs in Keene, New Hampshire and on Martha's Vineyard. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17654 |
Lionhead Studios
Lionhead Studios Limited was a British video game developer founded in July 1997 by Peter Molyneux, Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson. The company is best known for the "Black & White" and "Fable" series. Lionhead started as a breakaway from developer Bullfrog Productions, which was also founded by Molyneux. Lionhead's first game was "Black & White", a god game with elements of artificial life and strategy games. "Black & White" was published by Electronic Arts in 2001. Lionhead Studios is named after Webley's hamster, which died not long after the naming of the studio, as a result of which the studio was very briefly renamed to Redeye Studios.
"Black & White" was followed up with the release of an expansion pack named "". Lionhead released "Fable", from satellite developer Big Blue Box. In 2005, Lionhead released "The Movies" and "Black & White 2". Lionhead was acquired by Microsoft Studios in April 2006 due to encountering financial difficulties. Many Lionhead developers left around this time, including co-founder Jackson and several developers who left to found Media Molecule. Molyneux left Lionhead in early 2012 (shortly after the resignation of another group of developers who were dissatisfied with the company) to found 22Cans because he wanted to be more creative. After Molyneux's departure, Microsoft had Lionhead switch to developing games as a service games. As a result, there were many changes within the studio.
In March 2016, Microsoft announced that it had proposed closing Lionhead Studios and that the planned game "Fable Legends" would be cancelled. On 29 April 2016, Lionhead Studios closed down. A few months after Lionhead's closure, two key people (Webley and Gary Carr, who was Lionhead's creative director), founded Two Point Studios.
Peter Molyneux founded Bullfrog Productions in 1987, which was later acquired by Electronic Arts (EA) in 1995. Around 1996, Molyneux had contemplated leaving Bullfrog, as he felt limited in his creative freedom under Electronic Arts. He along with Lionhead's eventual co-founders, Mark Webley, Tim Rance and Steve Jackson, started developing plans for a new studio. In 1997, due to a series of events and from issues arising between Molyneux and Electronic Arts, he ultimately left the company in July 1997, co-founding Lionhead shortly after that, along with Mark Webley, Tim Rance, and Steve Jackson (who co-founded Games Workshop and co-authored the "Fighting Fantasy" series). On his recruitment, Jackson said "It was an offer I couldn't refuse", as he wanted to get back to making games instead of writing about them (Jackson had interviewed Molyneux about Bullfrog and "Dungeon Keeper", but for much of it, they discussed German board games instead. This led to them meeting frequently for an event called "Games Night"). Molyneux assured him that his lack of programming knowledge was an asset rather than a problem. Lionhead is the second Bullfrog break-off group, after Mucky Foot Productions (founded in February 1997). According to Glenn Corpes (who co-founded another: Lost Toys), Lionhead was Molyneux's "take on what Bullfrog used was".
The idea of the company was to develop quality games without growing too large. On the differences between Lionhead and Bullfrog, Molyneux said: "This time round we're a professionally run company. Gone are the days of shooting work experience people with guns". He also said that Lionhead would develop only one game at a time. Early Lionhead employees included Demis Hassabis, Mark Healey (Lionhead's first artist), and Alex Evans.
The name Lionhead came from Webley's pet hamster, who had died the week prior to the foundation. The hamster's death was taken as a bad sign, so other names, including Black Box, Red Rocket, Midnight, and Hurricane were considered but none had unanimous support. The name Red Eye was then suggested, and everyone liked it (the decision needed to be quick as Molyneux was to be interviewed by "Edge"). However, for reasons including the name being in use by many other companies, the domains redeye.com and redeye.co.uk being taken and lionhead.co.uk had already been registered by Rance, the company already having Lionhead business cards, and the possibility of the name Red Eye having drinking connotations, the name was reverted to Lionhead. By the time the name was reverted, it was too late for "Edge" to amend their interview, so it was published with the company being referred to as Redeye Studios. In the interview, Molyneux stated that his ambition for the company was to "make it a world-renowned software development house – known in Europe, Japan and America for top-quality games".
Word about Lionhead began spreading quickly. Within the first month, companies including Sega, Nintendo, Eidos, GTI, and Lego had arranged meetings. One day, "a major Japanese console manufacturer" had come to present plans for a "next generation console", but by then, Lionhead's first game had already been committed.
By the end of July, Lionhead had signed a one-game contract with Electronic Arts. The studio was initially run out of Molyneux's mansion in Elstead, before relocating to the University of Surrey Research Park in 1998. According to Jackson, it was "a mere stone's throw from Bullfrog's old lily pad on the very same estate". For the staff who had come from Bullfrog, it was "a little like coming home". Six companies were competing for a space, and Lionhead won due to Molyneux and Bullfrog's reputation.
Lionhead had originally intended to make their first public appearance at the E3 trade show in May 1997. This was cancelled at the last minute because there was not yet any deal with Electronic Arts, and there was the possibility of not being able to discuss Lionhead. The debut was made in September at the European Computer Trade Show instead. According to Jackson, "Everyone" was interested in Lionhead: journalists from many major European magazines frequently turned up at Lionhead's suite.
By August 1998, after a placing a job advertisement in "Edge" which received over 100 applications, Russell Shaw had been hired as Head of Music. Lionhead's first title was "Black & White", which was published by Electronic Arts under terms of Molyneux's severance package from departing Bullfrog. It was released in 2001 to widespread critical acclaim. It won BAFTA awards for Interactivity and Moving Images in 2001, and AIAS awards for Computer Innovation and Computer Game of the Year the following year. An expansion pack "", was released the following year. In Lionhead's early years, Jackson wrote columns about the company and the development of "Black & White" for magazines such as "PC Zone" and "". The articles were also published on Lionhead's website.
According to Eurogamer, Lionhead "was a continuation of the culture and development ethic of Bullfrog", which included the playing of pranks. One such prank was one "that would go down in Lionhead history". It involved a visit from the Mayor of Guildford during the development of "Black & White": Healey had inserted a couple of wires into a woollen glove with the other ends put into a floppy drive. Molyneux was forced to explain to the Mayor how the game's on-screen hand was controlled by the glove (which Healey was wearing), when it was actually being controlled by a mouse with Healey's other hand, which were hidden. The Mayor fell for the trick.
By June 2002, Lionhead had established satellite companies, including Big Blue Box Studios, Intrepid Computer Entertainment (also called Intrepid Developments), and Black & White Studios. Lionhead and its satellite studios had 107 employees and were developing six games: "Fable", "The Movies", a project called "Creation" (also called "Dimitri"), "Black & White NG" ("Black & White Next Generation"), "Black & White 2", and "BC", despite Molyneux's earlier statement that Lionhead would only work on one at a time. The idea to form these satellite studios came from Jackson during the development of "Black & White". Big Blue Box Studios was founded in July 1998 by Ian Lovett and Simon and Dene Carter, because of a desire to leave Electronic Arts and "the sadly ravaged corpse of Bullfrog it had left behind". Intrepid Computer Entertainment was founded by Joe Rider and Matt Chilton, and Black & White Studios was headed by Jonty Barnes, who was a programmer on "Dungeon Keeper" and "Black & White". According to Molyneux, "The Movies" came about because Lionhead listened to some financial advisers after the release of "Black & White", who said that the company would die if it did not float on the stock market. The company then went for initial public offering, which Molyneux said was "The most stupid thing that ever happened" because it meant having to expand quickly and develop more games. In the early 2000s, Lionhead was "growing very fast". The company was nominated for the 2002 Golden Joystick Awards British Developer of the Year award.
Before "Fable" shipped, Lionhead purchased Big Blue Box and Intrepid. The decision to merge Big Blue Box with Lionhead was made to accelerate the completion of the game. "Fable" was released in 2004 for the Xbox, and won AIAS awards for Outstanding Achievement in Character or Story Development and Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition in 2005. "Dimitri" was cancelled. In 2003, Gary Carr joined Lionhead. Due to the stock market crash in the aftermath of 9/11, Lionhead sought investments from venture capitalists. Deals with various firms were signed in July 2004. This came at a time when the company needed money for the development of five games to be released by different publishers.
In 2005, Lionhead released two titles: "Black & White 2" and "The Movies". Around this time, Lionhead had roughly 220 employees. These titles did not achieve a massive impact in sales (Molyneux described "The Movies" as "a disaster" due to lack of playtesting. However, it won a BAFTA award for Simulation in 2006.), and Lionhead soon afterwards encountered financial difficulty. Due to this, on 6 April 2006, Lionhead Studios was acquired by Microsoft. Ubisoft was another contender for the acquisition of Lionhead, but Molyneux believed Microsoft to be "perfect", and said people wanted "the safety and security of being part of something bigger". Microsoft wanted the "Fable" series to be an Xbox exclusive, and knew that if Ubisoft had acquired Lionhead, it would have gone to the PlayStation 3 instead, a conclusion that Webley concurred with. Lionhead were concerned with securing the company's future and protecting jobs and spent "months" preparing for the acquisition. Some, such as Andy Robson (Head of Testing), were dissatisfied with the deal. He claimed Lionhead were trying to cheat him out of money he was owed. Molyneux believed that Microsoft were pleased with the deal, and said that they made their money back due to the release of the "fantastically successful" "Fable II" (it won a BAFTA award for Action and Adventure in 2009) for the Xbox 360 in 2008. In late 2005, Healey left Lionhead with Evans and a couple of other developers to found Media Molecule. Jackson also left in 2006 when Microsoft took over.
The general consensus amongst Lionhead was that the buyout "benefited Lionhead greatly". Microsoft purchased a lease that enabled Lionhead to expand to multiple floors, a canteen, and an office revamp. According to "Fable" franchise director Ted Timmins, the improvements felt like Lionhead was "a real developer". The pranks were also reduced. During the development of "Fable II", Lionhead received death threats because the game featured a gay character and some of the leading characters were black. Microsoft, for the most part, left Lionhead alone during the development of "Fable II", but did ask them to change the icon of a condom (the game featured a dog who was able to dig them up) to a modern one, despite the game being set in an earlier era. Lionhead and Microsoft conflicted over the game's marketing: Microsoft believed that role-playing games were about dragons and wanted to market the game as such, despite Lionhead's insistence that the game was "a Monty Python-esque comedy". According to "Fable" art director John McCormack, the marketing was "shit" and that dragons were "Dungeons & Dragons" fare and had nothing to do with "Fable". Despite the row, most of the "Fable II" team thought highly of the relationship between Lionhead and Microsoft, and after the game's release, Lionhead won a BAFTA award for the best action adventure game. There was also a dispute over "Fable III"s box art. The game was developed and released in 18 months, but fell short of the expectations set by the previous instalment. Six months before its release, Lionhead attempted to integrate Kinect into the game, but failed. In June 2009, Molyneux became creative director of Microsoft Studios' European division, a position he held concurrently with the head of Lionhead.
Another Kinect-based project, "Milo & Kate" was in development but was cancelled. Molyneux blamed the cancellation on Kinect's technology and Microsoft's attitude towards their target market. Its development team moved to "", another Kinect game that was released in 2012 and was "disastrous".
By early 2012, Lionhead were suffering what had been described as "Black Monday". Several Lionhead veterans, dissatisfied with the way the company was heading, resigned on the same day. According to McCormack, Molyneux "lost it" and ordered them to leave the premises immediately. Molyneux apologised for this outburst, and soon afterwards, in March, he too left Lionhead and founded 22Cans, along with Rance, who had ceased being Lionhead's chief technology officer sometime prior. He was also joined by Paul McLaughlin, who was Lionhead's head of art. Webley then temporarily took over as head of the studio, before being replaced by Scott Henson early the following year. Molyneux said he left Lionhead because he wanted to increase his creativity. He also said that after 12 years (the series began in 2000 by Big Blue Box Studios), everyone was "tired" of the "Fable" series. Craig Oman, producer of "Fable Anniversary", said that Molyneux's departure gave Lionhead an opportunity to reidentify itself.
Molyneux's departure had a much greater impact than those of other veterans who had already left the company. Lionhead became more professional and organised according to some staff. One said that Molyneux had the power to keep Microsoft at bay, and his departure left the remaining staff vulnerable. Around this time, Microsoft insisted that Lionhead make a games as a service "Fable" game or face closure. Microsoft also said that nobody was to continue making boxed single-player games, and wanted to make more money from the "Fable" series. Due to the switch to service games, the idea of "Fable IV" was rejected, and experts in monetisation and competitive game design were hired to assist the transition. At some point, John Needham became head of Lionhead. Creative director Carr (who had played major roles in "Milo & Kate", "The Movies", and "Fable: The Journey") left in September 2015, and a new one, David Eckelberry, was brought in. Lionhead encountered difficulty in this project, "Fable Legends", because they had not done anything like it before.
On 7 March 2016, Microsoft announced the cancellation of "Fable Legends" and a proposed closure of Lionhead Studios. The closure came as a shock to some staff, who had suspected Microsoft were concerned but did not think Lionhead would be shut down: it was thought that the worst-case scenario would be that "Fable Legends"s assets would be used for "Fable IV". Some staff put the closure down to "a string of bad decisions and mismanagement". The game was supposed to be released in summer 2015, after the release of Windows 10, and some said Lionhead had failed to meet their own targets. To comply with UK employment law, there was a consultation period and the "Fable Legends" servers were not shut down until mid-April so that customers could get refunds. There was a small "live operations" team that conducted this process, but for others, work was optional. An attempt to save the project was made, under the name of "Project Phoenix". This would have involved developing it with a new studio under licence from Microsoft, who supported the idea but it failed due to lack of time, and the fact that many Lionhead employees had found new jobs. On 29 April 2016, Lionhead closed down. One Lionhead developer, Charlton Edwards (the only one remaining who had worked on "Black & White"), said there was a giveaway and he received some of the "trophies". Both current and former Lionhead developers gave the studio a send-off at a pub. On 26 July, Webley and Carr founded Two Point Studios, a studio that some Lionhead developers are working at. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17659 |
Lithuania
Lithuania ( ; ), officially the Republic of Lithuania (), is a country in the Baltic region of Europe. Lithuania is one of the Baltic states. The country is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, to the east of Sweden and Denmark. It is bordered by Latvia to the north, Belarus to the east and south, Poland to the south, and Kaliningrad Oblast (a Russian exclave) to the southwest. Lithuania has an estimated population of 2.8 million people , and its capital and largest city is Vilnius. Other major cities are Kaunas and Klaipėda. Lithuanians are Baltic people. The official language, Lithuanian, is one of only two living languages in the Baltic branch of the Indo-European language family, the other being Latvian.
For centuries, the southeastern shores of the Baltic Sea were inhabited by various Baltic tribes. In the 1230s, the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas and the Kingdom of Lithuania was created on 6 July 1253. During the 14th century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was the largest country in Europe; present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia were the territories of the Grand Duchy. With the Lublin Union of 1569, Lithuania and Poland formed a voluntary two-state personal union, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. The Commonwealth lasted more than two centuries, until neighbouring countries systematically dismantled it from 1772 to 1795, with the Russian Empire annexing most of Lithuania's territory.
As World War I neared its end, Lithuania's Act of Independence was signed on 16 February 1918, declaring the founding of the modern Republic of Lithuania. In the midst of the Second World War, Lithuania was first occupied by the Soviet Union and then by Nazi Germany. As World War II neared its end and the Germans retreated, the Soviet Union reoccupied Lithuania. On 11 March 1990, a year before the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union, Lithuania became the first Baltic state to declare itself independent, resulting in the restoration of an independent State of Lithuania.
Lithuania is a high-income advanced economy with a very high Human Development Index, a very high standard of living and performs favourably in measurements of civil liberties, press freedom, internet freedom, democratic governance and peacefulness. Lithuania is a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, eurozone, Schengen Agreement, NATO and OECD. It is also a member of the Nordic Investment Bank, and part of Nordic-Baltic cooperation of Northern European countries.
The first known record of the name of Lithuania () is in a 9 March 1009 story of Saint Bruno in the Quedlinburg Chronicle. The Chronicle recorded a Latinized form of the name Lietuva: "Litua" (pronounced ). Due to the lack of reliable evidence, the true meaning of the name is unknown. Nowadays, scholars still debate the meaning of the word and there are a few plausible versions.
Since "Lietuva" has a suffix (-"uva"), the original word should have no suffix. A likely candidate is "Lietā". Because many Baltic ethnonyms originated from hydronyms, linguists have searched for its origin among local hydronyms. Usually, such names evolved through the following process: hydronym → toponym → ethnonym. Lietava, a small river not far from Kernavė, the core area of the early Lithuanian state and a possible first capital of the eventual Grand Duchy of Lithuania, is usually credited as the source of the name. However, the river is very small and some find it improbable that such a small and local object could have lent its name to an entire nation. On the other hand, such naming is not unprecedented in world history.
Artūras Dubonis proposed another hypothesis, that Lietuva relates to the word "leičiai" (plural of "leitis"). From the middle of the 13th century, "leičiai" were a distinct warrior social group of the Lithuanian society subordinate to the Lithuanian ruler or the state itself. The word "leičiai" is used in the 14–16th century historical sources as an ethnonym for Lithuanians (but not Samogitians) and is still used, usually poetically or in historical contexts, in the Latvian language, which is closely related to Lithuanian.
The first people settled in the territory of Lithuania after the last glacial period in the 10th millennium BC: Kunda, Neman and Narva cultures. They were traveling hunters and did not form stable settlements. In the 8th millennium BC, the climate became much warmer, and forests developed. The inhabitants of what is now Lithuania then travelled less and engaged in local hunting, gathering and fresh-water fishing. Agriculture did not emerge until the 3rd millennium BC due to a harsh climate and terrain and a lack of suitable tools to cultivate the land. Crafts and trade also started to form at this time. Over a millennium, the Indo-Europeans, who arrived in the 3rd – 2nd millennium BC, mixed with the local population and formed various Baltic tribes.
The Baltic tribes did not maintain close cultural or political contacts with the Roman Empire, but they did maintain trade contacts (see Amber Road). Tacitus, in his study "Germania", described the Aesti people, inhabitants of the south-eastern Baltic Sea shores who were probably Balts, around the year 97 AD. The Western Balts differentiated and became known to outside chroniclers first. Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD knew of the Galindians and Yotvingians, and early medieval chroniclers mentioned Old Prussians, Curonians and Semigallians.
The Lithuanian language is considered to be very conservative for its close connection to Indo-European roots. It is believed to have differentiated from the Latvian language, the most closely related existing language, around the 7th century. Traditional Lithuanian pagan customs and mythology, with many archaic elements, were long preserved. Rulers' bodies were cremated up until the conversion to Christianity: the descriptions of the cremation ceremonies of the grand dukes Algirdas and Kęstutis have survived.
From the 9th to the 11th centuries, coastal Balts were subjected to raids by the Vikings, and the kings of Denmark collected tribute at times. During the 10–11th centuries, Lithuanian territories were among the lands paying tribute to Kievan Rus', and Yaroslav the Wise was among the Ruthenian rulers who invaded Lithuania (from 1040). From the mid-12th century, it was the Lithuanians who were invading Ruthenian territories. In 1183, Polotsk and Pskov were ravaged, and even the distant and powerful Novgorod Republic was repeatedly threatened by the excursions from the emerging Lithuanian war machine toward the end of the 12th century.
From the late 12th century, an organized Lithuanian military force existed; it was used for external raids, plundering and the gathering of slaves. Such military and pecuniary activities fostered social differentiation and triggered a struggle for power in Lithuania. This initiated the formation of early statehood, from which the Grand Duchy of Lithuania developed.
Initially inhabited by fragmented Baltic tribes, in the 1230s the Lithuanian lands were united by Mindaugas, who was crowned as King of Lithuania on 6 July 1253. After his assassination in 1263, pagan Lithuania was a target of the Christian crusades of the Teutonic Knights and the Livonian Order. Siege of Pilėnai is noted for the Lithuanians' defense against the intruders. Despite the devastating century-long struggle with the Orders, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania expanded rapidly, overtaking former Ruthenian principalities of Kievan Rus'.
On 22 September 1236, the Battle of Saulė between Samogitians and the Livonian Brothers of the Sword took place close to Šiauliai. The Livonian Brothers were defeated during it and their further conquest of the Balts lands were stopped. The battle inspired rebellions among the Curonians, Semigallians, Selonians, Oeselians, tribes previously conquered by the Sword-Brothers. Some thirty years' worth of conquests on the left bank of Daugava were lost. In 2000, the Lithuanian and Latvian parliaments declared 22 September to be the Day of Baltic Unity.
According to the legend, Grand Duke Gediminas was once hunting near the Vilnia River; tired after the successful hunt, he settled in for the night and dreamed of a huge Iron Wolf standing on top a hill and howling as strong and loud as a hundred wolves. "Krivis" (pagan priest) Lizdeika interpreted the dream that the Iron Wolf represents Vilnius Castles. Gediminas, obeying the will of gods, built the city and gave it the name Vilnius – from the stream of the Vilnia River.
In 1362 or 1363, Grand Duke Algirdas achieved a decisive victory in the Battle of Blue Waters against Golden Horde and stopped its further expansion in the present-day Ukraine. The victory brought the city of Kiev and a large part of present-day Ukraine, including sparsely populated Podolia and Dykra, under the control of the expanding Grand Duchy of Lithuania. After taking Kiev, Lithuania became a direct neighbor and rival of the Grand Duchy of Moscow.
By the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia. The geopolitical situation between the west and the east determined the multicultural and multi-confessional character of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. The ruling elite practised religious tolerance and Chancery Slavonic language was used as an auxiliary language to the Latin for official documents.
In 1385, the Grand Duke Jogaila accepted Poland's offer to become its king. Jogaila embarked on gradual Christianization of Lithuania and established a personal union between Poland and Lithuania. Lithuania was one of the last pagan areas of Europe to adopt Christianity.
After two civil wars, Vytautas the Great became the Grand Duke of Lithuania in 1392. During his reign, Lithuania reached the peak of its territorial expansion, centralization of the state began, and the Lithuanian nobility became increasingly prominent in state politics. In the great Battle of the Vorskla River in 1399, the combined forces of Tokhtamysh and Vytautas were defeated by the Mongols. Thanks to close cooperation, the armies of Lithuania and Poland achieved a victory over the Teutonic Knights in 1410 at the Battle of Grunwald, one of the largest battles of medieval Europe.
In January 1429, at the Congress of Lutsk Vytautas received the title of King of Lithuania with the backing of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor, but the envoys who were transporting the crown were stopped by Polish magnates in autumn of 1430. Another crown was sent, but Vytautas died in the Trakai Island Castle several days before it reached Lithuania. He was buried in the Cathedral of Vilnius.
After the deaths of Jogaila and Vytautas, the Lithuanian nobility attempted to break the union between Poland and Lithuania, independently selecting Grand Dukes from the Jagiellon dynasty. But, at the end of the 15th century, Lithuania was forced to seek a closer alliance with Poland when the growing power of the Grand Duchy of Moscow threatened Lithuania's Russian principalities and sparked the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars and the Livonian War.
On 8 September 1514, Battle of Orsha between Lithuanians, commanded by the Grand Hetman Konstanty Ostrogski, and Muscovites was fought. According to "Rerum Moscoviticarum Commentarii" by Sigismund von Herberstein, the primary source for information on the battle, the much smaller army of Poland–Lithuania (under 30,000 men) defeated a force of 80,000 Muscovite soldiers, capturing their camp and commander. The battle destroyed a military alliance against Lithuania and Poland. Thousands of Muscovites were captured as prisoners and used as labourers in the Lithuanian manors, while Konstanty Ostrogski delivered the captured Muscovite flags to the Cathedral of Vilnius.
The Livonian War was ceased for ten years with a Truce of Yam-Zapolsky signed on 15 January 1582 according to which the already Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth recovered Livonia, Polotsk and Velizh, but transferred Velikiye Luki to the Tsardom of Russia. The truce was extended for twenty years in 1600, when a diplomatic mission to Moscow led by Lew Sapieha concluded negotiations with Tsar Boris Godunov. The truce was broken when the Poles invaded Muscovy in 1605.
The Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth was created in 1569 by the Union of Lublin. As a member of the Commonwealth, Lithuania retained its institutions, including a separate army, currency, and statutory laws – the Statute of Lithuania. Eventually Polonization affected all aspects of Lithuanian life: politics, language, culture, and national identity. From the mid-16th to the mid-17th centuries, culture, arts, and education flourished, fueled by the Renaissance and the Protestant Reformation. From 1573, the Kings of Poland and Grand Dukes of Lithuania were elected by the nobility, who were granted ever increasing Golden Liberties. These liberties, especially the "liberum veto", led to anarchy and the eventual dissolution of the state.
The Commonwealth reached its Golden Age in the early 17th century. Its powerful parliament was dominated by nobles who were reluctant to get involved in the Thirty Years' War; this neutrality spared the country from the ravages of a political-religious conflict that devastated most of contemporary Europe. The Commonwealth held its own against Sweden, the Tsardom of Russia, and vassals of the Ottoman Empire, and even launched successful expansionist offensives against its neighbours. In several invasions during the Time of Troubles, Commonwealth troops entered Russia and managed to take Moscow and hold it from 27 September 1610 to 4 November 1612, when they were driven out after a siege.
In 1655, after the extinguishing battle, for the first time in history the Lithuanian capital Vilnius was taken by a foreign army. The Russian army looted the city, splendid churches, and manors. Between 8,000 and 10,000 citizens were killed; the city burned for 17 days. Those who returned after the catastrophe could not recognise the city. The Russian occupation of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania lasted up to 1661. Many artefacts and cultural heritage were either lost or looted, significant parts of the state archive – Lithuanian Metrica, collected since the 13th century, were lost and the rest was moved out of the country. During the Northern Wars (1655–1661), the Lithuanian territory and economy were devastated by the Swedish army. Almost all territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was occupied by Swedish and Russian armies. This period is known as "Tvanas" (The Deluge).
Before it could fully recover, Lithuania was ravaged during the Great Northern War (1700–1721). The war, a plague, and a famine caused the deaths of approximately 40% of the country's population. Foreign powers, especially Russia, became dominant in the domestic politics of the Commonwealth. Numerous fractions among the nobility used the Golden Liberties to prevent any reforms.
The Constitution of 3 May 1791 was adopted by the Great Sejm (parliament) of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth trying to save the state. The legislation was designed to redress the Commonwealth's political defects due to the system of Golden Liberties, also known as the "Nobles' Democracy," had conferred disproportionate rights on the nobility (szlachta) and over time had corrupted politics. The constitution sought to supplant the prevailing anarchy fostered by some of the country's magnates with a more democratic constitutional monarchy. It introduced elements of political equality between townspeople and nobility, and placed the peasants under the protection of the government, thus mitigating the worst abuses of serfdom. It banned parliamentary institutions such as the "liberum veto", which had put the Sejm at the mercy of any deputy who could revoke all the legislation that had been passed by that Sejm. It was drafted in relation to a copy of the United States Constitution. Others have called it the world's second-oldest codified national governmental constitution after the 1787 U.S. Constitution.
Eventually, the Commonwealth was partitioned in 1772, 1792, and 1795 by the Russian Empire, Prussia, and the Habsburg Monarchy.
The largest area of Lithuanian territory became part of the Russian Empire. After the unsuccessful uprisings in 1831 and 1863, the Tsarist authorities implemented a number of Russification policies. In 1840 the Third Statute of Lithuania was abolished. They banned the Lithuanian press, closed cultural and educational institutions and made Lithuania part of a new administrative region called Northwestern Krai. The Russification failed owing to an extensive network of Lithuanian book smugglers and secret Lithuanian home schooling.
After the Russo-Turkish War (1877–1878), when German diplomats assigned what were seen as Russian spoils of war to Turkey, the relationship between Russia and the German Empire became complicated. The Russian Empire resumed the construction of fortresses at its western borders for defence against a potential invasion from Germany in the West. On 7 July 1879 the Russian Emperor Alexander II approved a proposal from the Russian military leadership to build the largest "first-class" defensive structure in the entire state – the Kaunas Fortress. Large numbers of Lithuanians went to the United States in 1867–1868 after a famine.
Simonas Daukantas promoted a return to Lithuania's pre-Commonwealth traditions, which he depicted as a Golden Age of Lithuania and a renewal of the native culture, based on the Lithuanian language and customs. With those ideas in mind, he wrote already in 1822 a history of Lithuania in Lithuanian – "Darbai senųjų lietuvių ir žemaičių" ("The Deeds of Ancient Lithuanians and Samogitians"), though it was not published at that time. A colleague of S. Daukantas, Teodor Narbutt wrote in Polish a voluminous "Ancient History of the Lithuanian Nation" (1835–1841), where he likewise expounded and expanded further on the concept of historic Lithuania, whose days of glory had ended with the Union of Lublin in 1569. Narbutt, invoking German scholarship, pointed out the relationship between the Lithuanian and Sanskrit languages. A Lithuanian National Revival, inspired by the ancient Lithuanian history, language and culture, laid the foundations of the modern Lithuanian nation and independent Lithuania.
As a result of the Great Retreat during World War I, Germany occupied the entire territory of Lithuania and Courland by the end of 1915. A new administrative entity, Ober Ost, was established. Lithuanians lost all political rights they had gained: personal freedom was restricted, and at the beginning, the Lithuanian press was banned. However, the Lithuanian intelligentsia tried to take advantage of the existing geopolitical situation and began to look for opportunities to restore Lithuania's independence. On 18–22 September 1917, the Vilnius Conference elected the 20-member Council of Lithuania. The council adopted the Act of Independence of Lithuania on 16 February 1918 which proclaimed the restoration of the independent state of Lithuania governed by democratic principles, with Vilnius as its capital. The state of Lithuania which had been built within the framework of the Act lasted from 1918 until 1940.
Following the capitulation of Germany in November 1918, the first Provisional Constitution of Lithuania was adopted and the first government of Prime Minister Augustinas Voldemaras was organized. At the same time, the army and other state institutions began to be organized. Lithuania fought three wars of independence: against the Bolsheviks who proclaimed the Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic, against the Bermontians, and against Poland. As a result of the staged Żeligowski's Mutiny in October 1920, Poland took control of Vilnius Region and annexed it as Wilno Voivodeship in 1922. Lithuania continued to claim Vilnius as its "de jure" capital and relations with Poland remained particularly tense and hostile for the entire interwar period. In January 1923, Lithuania staged the Klaipėda Revolt and captured Klaipėda Region (Memel territory) which was detached from East Prussia by the Treaty of Versailles. The region became an autonomous region of Lithuania.
On 15 May 1920, the first meeting of the democratically elected constituent assembly took place. The documents it adopted, i. e. the temporary (1920) and permanent (1922) constitutions of Lithuania, strove to regulate the life of the new state. Land, finance, and educational reforms started to be implemented. The currency of Lithuania, the Lithuanian litas, was introduced. The University of Lithuania was opened. All major public institutions had been established. As Lithuania began to gain stability, foreign countries started to recognize it. In 1921 Lithuania was admitted to the League of Nations.
On 17 December 1926, a military coup d'état took place, resulting in the replacement of the democratically elected government with a conservative authoritarian government led by Antanas Smetona. Augustinas Voldemaras was appointed to form a government. The so-called authoritarian phase had begun strengthening the influence of one party, the Lithuanian Nationalist Union, in the country. In 1927, the Seimas was dissolved. A new constitution was adopted in 1928, which consolidated presidential powers. Gradually, opposition parties were banned, censorship was tightened, and the rights of national minorities were narrowed.
On 15 July 1933, Steponas Darius and Stasys Girėnas, Lithuanian pilots, emigrants to the United States, made a significant flight in the history of world aviation. They flew across the Atlantic Ocean, covering a distance of without landing, in 37 hours and 11 minutes (). In terms of comparison, as far as the distance of non-stop flights was concerned, their result ranked second only to that of Russell Boardman and John Polando.
The provisional capital Kaunas, which was nicknamed "Little Paris", and the country itself had a Western standard of living with sufficiently high salaries and low prices. At the time, qualified workers there were earning very similar real wages as workers in Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France, the country also had a surprisingly high natural increase in population of 9.7 and the industrial production of Lithuania increased by 160% from 1913 to 1940.
The situation was aggravated by the global economic crisis. The purchase price of agricultural products had declined significantly. In 1935, farmers began strikes in Suvalkija and Dzūkija. In addition to economic ones, political demands were made. The government cruelly suppressed the unrest. In the spring of 1936, four peasants were sentenced to death for starting the riots.
On 20 March 1939, after years of rising tensions, Lithuania was handed an ultimatum by Nazi Germany demanding it relinquish the Klaipėda Region. Two days later, the Lithuanian government accepted the ultimatum. When Nazi Germany and Soviet Union concluded the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Lithuania was initially assigned to the German sphere of influence but was later transferred to the Soviet sphere. At the outbreak of World War II, Lithuania declared neutrality.
In October 1939, Lithuania was forced to sign the Soviet–Lithuanian Mutual Assistance Treaty: five Soviet military bases with 20,000 troops were established in Lithuania in exchange for Vilnius, which the Soviets had captured from Poland. Delayed by the Winter War with Finland, the Soviets issued an ultimatum to Lithuania on 14 June 1940. They demanded the replacement of the Lithuanian government and that the Red Army be allowed into the country. The government decided that, with Soviet bases already in Lithuania, armed resistance was impossible and accepted the ultimatum. President Smetona left the country, hoping to form a government in exile, while more than 200,000 Soviet Red Army soldiers crossed the Belarus–Lithuania border. The next day, identical ultimatums were presented to Latvia and Estonia. The Baltic states were occupied. The Soviets followed semi-constitutional procedures for transforming the independent countries into soviet republics and incorporating them into the Soviet Union.
Vladimir Dekanozov was sent to supervise the formation of the puppet People's Government and the rigged election to the People's Seimas. The Lithuanian Soviet Socialist Republic was proclaimed on 21 July and accepted into the Soviet Union on 3 August. Lithuania was rapidly sovietizied: political parties and various organizations (except the Communist Party of Lithuania) were outlawed, some 12,000 people, including many prominent figures, were arrested and imprisoned in Gulag as "enemies of the people", larger private property was nationalized, the Lithuanian litas was replaced by the Soviet ruble, farm taxes were increased by 50–200%, the Lithuanian Army was transformed into the 29th Rifle Corps of the Red Army. On 14–18 June 1941, less than a week before the Nazi invasion, some 17,000 Lithuanians were deported to Siberia, where many perished due to inhumane living conditions (see the June deportation). The occupation was not recognized by Western powers and the Lithuanian Diplomatic Service, based on pre-war consulates and legations, continued to represent independent Lithuania until 1990.
When Nazi Germany attacked the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, Lithuanians began the anti-Soviet June Uprising, organized by the Lithuanian Activist Front. Lithuanians proclaimed independence and organized the Provisional Government of Lithuania. This government quickly self-disbanded. Lithuania became part of the Reichskommissariat Ostland, German civil administration.
By 1 December 1941, over 120,000 Lithuanian Jews, or 91–95% of Lithuania's pre-war Jewish community, had been killed. Nearly 100,000 Jews, Poles, Russians and Lithuanians were murdered at Paneriai.
Approximately 13,000 men served in the Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions. 10 of the 26 Lithuanian Auxiliary Police Battalions working with the Nazi Einsatzkommando, were involved in the mass killings. Rogue units organised by Algirdas Klimaitis and supervised by SS "Brigadeführer" Walter Stahlecker started the Kaunas pogrom in and around Kaunas on 25 June 1941. In 1941, the Lithuanian Security Police ("Lietuvos saugumo policija"), subordinate to Nazi Germany's Security Police and Nazi Germany's Criminal Police, was created. The "Lietuvos saugumo policija" targeted the communist underground.
However, thousands of Lithuanian families risking their lives also protected Jews from the Holocaust. Israel has recognized 893 Lithuanians (as of 1 January 2018) as Righteous Among the Nations for risking their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust.
A new occupation had begun. Nationalized assets were not returned to the residents. Some of them were forced to fight for Nazi Germany or were taken to German territories as forced labourers. Jewish people were herded into ghettos and gradually killed by shooting or sending them out to concentration camps.
After the retreat of the German armed forces, the Soviets reestablished their control of Lithuania in July–October 1944. The massive deportations to Siberia were resumed and lasted until the death of Stalin in 1953. Antanas Sniečkus, the leader of the Communist Party of Lithuania from 1940 to 1974, supervised the arrests and deportations. All Lithuanian national symbols were banned. Under the pretext of Lithuania's economic recovery, the Moscow authorities encouraged the migration of workers and other specialists to Lithuania with the intention to further integrate Lithuania into the Soviet Union and to develop the country's industry. At the same time, Lithuanians were lured to work in the USSR by promising them all the privileges of settling in a new place.
The second Soviet occupation was accompanied by the guerrilla warfare of the Lithuanian population, which took place in 1944–1953. It sought to restore an independent state of Lithuania, to consolidate democracy by destroying communism in the country, returning national values and the freedom of religion. About 50,000 Lithuanians took to the forests and fought Soviet occupants with a gun in their hands. In the later stages of the partisan war, Lithuanians formed the Union of Lithuanian Freedom Fighters and its leader Jonas Žemaitis (codename Vytautas) was posthumously recognized as the president of Lithuania. Despite the fact that the guerrilla warfare did not achieve its goal of liberating Lithuania and that it resulted in more than 20,000 deaths, the armed resistance "de facto" demonstrated that Lithuania did not voluntarily join the USSR and it also legitimized the will of the people of Lithuania to be independent. Lithuanian courts and the ECHR both treat the Soviets' annihilation of the Lithuanian partisans as a genocide.
Even with the suppression of partisan resistance, the Soviet government failed to stop the movement for the independence of Lithuania. The underground dissident groups were active publishing the underground press and Catholic literature. The most active participants of the movement included Vincentas Sladkevičius, Sigitas Tamkevičius and Nijolė Sadūnaitė. In 1972, after Romas Kalanta's public self-immolation, the unrest in Kaunas lasted for several days.
The Helsinki Group, which was founded in Lithuania after the international conference in Helsinki (Finland), where the post-WWII borders were acknowledged, announced a declaration for Lithuania's independence on foreign radio station. The Helsinki Group informed the Western world about the situation in the Soviet Lithuania and violations of human rights. With the beginning of the increased openness and transparency in government institutions and activities ("glasnost") in the Soviet Union, on 3 June 1988, the Sąjūdis was established in Lithuania. Very soon it began to seek country's independence. Vytautas Landsbergis became movement's leader. The supporters of Sąjūdis joined movement's groups all over Lithuania. On 23 August 1988 a big rally took place at the Vingis Park in Vilnius. It was attended by approx. 250,000 people. A year later, on 23 August 1989 commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and aiming to draw the attention of the whole world to the occupation of the Baltic states, a political demonstration, the Baltic Way, was organized. The event, led by Sąjūdis, was a human chain spanning about across the three Baltic capitals—Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn. The peaceful demonstration showed the desire of the people of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia to break away from the USSR.
On 11 March 1990, the Supreme Council announced the restoration of Lithuania's independence. Lithuania became the first Soviet occupied state to announce restitution of independence. On 20 April 1990, the Soviets imposed an economic blockade by ceasing to deliver supplies of raw materials (primarily oil) to Lithuania. Not only the domestic industry, but also the population started feeling the lack of fuel, essential goods, and even hot water. Although the blockade lasted for 74 days, Lithuania did not renounce the declaration of independence.
Gradually, economic relations had been restored. However, tensions had peaked again in January 1991. At that time, attempts were made to carry out a coup using the Soviet Armed Forces, the Internal Army of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the USSR Committee for State Security (KGB). Because of the poor economic situation in Lithuania, the forces in Moscow thought the coup d'état would receive strong public support.
People from all over Lithuania flooded to Vilnius to defend their legitimately elected Supreme Council of the Republic of Lithuania and independence. The coup ended with a few casualties of peaceful civilians and caused huge material loss. Not a single person who defended Lithuanian Parliament or other state institutions used a weapon, but the Soviet Army did. Soviet soldiers killed 14 people and injured hundreds. A large part of the Lithuanian population participated in the January Events. Shortly after, on 11 February 1991, the Icelandic parliament voted to confirm that Iceland's 1922 recognition of Lithuanian independence was still in full effect, as it never formally recognized the Soviet Union's control over Lithuania, and that full diplomatic relations should be established as soon as possible.
On 31 July 1991, Soviet paramilitaries killed seven Lithuanian border guards on the Belarusian border in what became known as the Medininkai Massacre. On 17 September 1991, Lithuania was admitted to the United Nations.
On 25 October 1992 the citizens of Lithuania voted in a referendum to adopt the current constitution. On 14 February 1993, during the direct general elections, Algirdas Brazauskas became the first president after the restoration of independence of Lithuania. On 31 August 1993 the last units of the Soviet Army left the territory of Lithuania. Since 29 March 2004, Lithuania has been part of the NATO. On 1 May 2004, it became a fully-fledged member of the European Union, and a member of the Schengen Agreement on 21 December 2007.
Lithuania is located in the Baltic region of Europe and covers an area of . It lies between latitudes 53° and 57° N, and mostly between longitudes 21° and 27° E (part of the Curonian Spit lies west of 21°). It has around of sandy coastline, only about of which face the open Baltic Sea, less than the other two Baltic Sea countries. The rest of the coast is sheltered by the Curonian sand peninsula. Lithuania's major warm-water port, Klaipėda, lies at the narrow mouth of the Curonian Lagoon (Lithuanian: "Kuršių marios"), a shallow lagoon extending south to Kaliningrad. The country's main and largest river, the Nemunas River, and some of its tributaries carry international shipping.
Lithuania lies at the edge of the North European Plain. Its landscape was smoothed by the glaciers of the last ice age, and is a combination of moderate lowlands and highlands. Its highest point is Aukštojas Hill at in the eastern part of the country. The terrain features numerous lakes (Lake Vištytis, for example) and wetlands, and a mixed forest zone covers over 33% of the country. Drūkšiai is the largest, Tauragnas is the deepest and Asveja is the longest lake in Lithuania.
After a re-estimation of the boundaries of the continent of Europe in 1989, Jean-George Affholder, a scientist at the Institut Géographique National (French National Geographic Institute), determined that the geographic centre of Europe was in Lithuania, at , north of Lithuania's capital city of Vilnius. Affholder accomplished this by calculating the centre of gravity of the geometrical figure of Europe.
Lithuania has a temperate climate with both maritime and continental influences. It is defined as humid continental (Dfb) under the Köppen climate classification (but is close to oceanic in a narrow coastal zone).
Average temperatures on the coast are in January and in July. In Vilnius the average temperatures are in January and in July. During the summer, is common during the day while is common at night; in the past, temperatures have reached as high as . Some winters can be very cold. occurs almost every winter. Winter extremes are in coastal areas and in the east of Lithuania.
The average annual precipitation is on the coast, in the Samogitia highlands and in the eastern part of the country. Snow occurs every year, it can snow from October to April. In some years sleet can fall in September or May. The growing season lasts 202 days in the western part of the country and 169 days in the eastern part. Severe storms are rare in the eastern part of Lithuania but common in the coastal areas.
The longest records of measured temperature in the Baltic area cover about 250 years. The data show warm periods during the latter half of the 18th century, and that the 19th century was a relatively cool period. An early 20th century warming culminated in the 1930s, followed by a smaller cooling that lasted until the 1960s. A warming trend has persisted since then.
Lithuania experienced a drought in 2002, causing forest and peat bog fires. The country suffered along with the rest of Northwestern Europe during a heat wave in the summer of 2006.
After the restoration of Lithuania's independence in 1990, the "Aplinkos apsaugos įstatymas" (Environmental Protection Act) was adopted already in 1992. The law provided the foundations for regulating social relations in the field of environmental protection, established the basic rights and obligations of legal and natural persons in preserving the biodiversity inherent in Lithuania, ecological systems and the landscape. Lithuania agreed to cut carbon emissions by at least 20% of 1990 levels by the year 2020 and by at least 40% by the year 2030, together with all European Union members. Also, by 2020 at least 20% (27% by 2030) of country's total energy consumption should be from the renewable energy sources. In 2016, Lithuania introduced especially effective container deposit legislation, which resulted in collecting 92% of all packagings in 2017.
Lithuania does not have high mountains and its landscape is dominated by blooming meadows, dense forests and fertile fields of cereals. However it stands out by the abundance of hillforts, which previously had castles where the ancient Lithuanians burned altars for pagan gods. Lithuania is a particularly watered region with more than 3,000 lakes, mostly in the northeast. The country is also drained by numerous rivers, most notably the longest Nemunas.
Forest has long been one of the most important natural resources in Lithuania. Forests occupy one third of the country's territory and timber-related industrial production accounts for almost 11% industrial production in the country. Lithuania has five national parks, 30 regional parks, 402 nature reserves, 668 state-protected natural heritage objects.
Lithuania is ranked fifth, second to Sweden (first 3 places are not granted) in Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI).
Lithuanian ecosystems include natural and semi-natural (forests, bogs, wetlands and meadows), and anthropogenic (agrarian and urban) ecosystems. Among natural ecosystems, forests are particularly important to Lithuania, covering 33% of the country's territory. Wetlands (raised bogs, fens, transitional mires, etc.) cover 7.9% of the country, with 70% of wetlands having been lost due to drainage and peat extraction between 1960 and 1980. Changes in wetland plant communities resulted in the replacement of moss and grass communities by trees and shrubs, and fens not directly affected by land reclamation have become drier as a result of a drop in the water table. There are 29,000 rivers with a total length of 64,000 km in Lithuania, the Nemunas River basin occupying 74% of the territory of the country. Due to the construction of dams, approximately 70% of spawning sites of potential catadromous fish species have disappeared. In some cases, river and lake ecosystems continue to be impacted by anthropogenic eutrophication.
Agricultural land comprises 54% of Lithuania's territory (roughly 70% of that is arable land and 30% meadows and pastures), approximately 400,000 ha of agricultural land is not farmed, and acts as an ecological niche for weeds and invasive plant species. Habitat deterioration is occurring in regions with very productive and expensive lands as crop areas are expanded. Currently, 18.9% of all plant species, including 1.87% of all known fungi species and 31% of all known species of lichens, are listed in the Lithuanian Red Data Book. The list also contains 8% of all fish species.
The wildlife populations have rebounded as the hunting became more restricted and urbanization allowed replanting forests (forests already tripled in size since their lows). Currently, Lithuania has approximately 250,000 larger wild animals or 5 per each square kilometer. The most prolific large wild animal in every part of Lithuania is the roe deer, with 120,000 of them. They are followed by boars (55,000). Other ungulates are the deer (~22,000), fallow-deer (~21,000) and the largest one: moose (~7,000). Among the Lithuanian predators, foxes are the most common (~27,000). Wolves are, however, more ingrained into the mythology as there are just 800 in Lithuania. Even rarer are the lynxes (~200). The large animals mentioned above exclude the rabbit, ~200,000 of which may live in the Lithuanian forests.
Since Lithuania declared the restoration of its independence on 11 March 1990, it has maintained strong democratic traditions. It held its first independent general elections on 25 October 1992, in which 56.75% of voters supported the new constitution. There were intense debates concerning the constitution, particularly the role of the president. A separate referendum was held on 23 May 1992 to gauge public opinion on the matter, and 41% of voters supported the restoration of the President of Lithuania. Through compromise, a semi-presidential system was agreed on.
The Lithuanian head of state is the president, directly elected for a five-year term and serving a maximum of two terms. The president oversees foreign affairs and national security, and is the commander-in-chief of the military. The president also appoints the prime minister and, on the latter's nomination, the rest of the cabinet, as well as a number of other top civil servants and the judges for all courts. The current Lithuanian head of state, Gitanas Nausėda was elected on 26 May 2019 by unanimously winning in all municipalities of Lithuania.
The judges of the Constitutional Court ("Konstitucinis Teismas") serve nine-year terms. They are appointed by the President, the Chairman of the Seimas, and the Chairman of the Supreme Court, each of whom appoint three judges. The unicameral Lithuanian parliament, the Seimas, has 141 members who are elected to four-year terms. 71 of the members of its members are elected in single-member constituencies, and the others in a nationwide vote by proportional representation. A party must receive at least 5% of the national vote to be eligible for any of the 70 national seats in the Seimas.
Lithuania was one of the first countries in the world to grant women a right to vote in the elections. Lithuanian women were allowed to vote by the 1918 Constitution of Lithuania and used their newly granted right for the first time in 1919. By doing so, Lithuania allowed it earlier than such democratic countries as the United States (1920), France (1945), Greece (1952), Switzerland (1971).
Lithuania exhibits a fragmented multi-party system, with a number of small parties in which coalition governments are common. Ordinary elections to the Seimas take place on the second Sunday of October every four years. To be eligible for election, candidates must be at least 25 years old on the election day, not under allegiance to a foreign state and permanently reside in Lithuania. Persons serving or due to serve a sentence imposed by the court 65 days before the election are not eligible. Also, judges, citizens performing military service, and servicemen of professional military service and officials of statutory institutions and establishments may not stand for election. Lithuanian Peasant and Greens Union won the 2016 Lithuanian parliamentary elections and gained 54 of 141 seats in the parliament.
The President of Lithuania is the head of state of the country, elected to a five-year term in a majority vote. Elections take place on the last Sunday no more than two months before the end of current presidential term. To be eligible for election, candidates must be at least 40 years old on the election day and reside in Lithuania for at least three years, in addition to satisfying the eligibility criteria for a member of the parliament. Same President may serve for not more than two terms. Gitanas Nausėda has won the most recent election as an independent candidate in 2019.
Each municipality in Lithuania is governed by a municipal council and a mayor, who is a member of the municipal council. The number of members, elected on a four-year term, in each municipal council depends on the size of the municipality and varies from 15 (in municipalities with fewer than 5,000 residents) to 51 (in municipalities with more than 500,000 residents). 1,524 municipal council members were elected in 2015. Members of the council, with the exception of the mayor, are elected using proportional representation. Starting with 2015, the mayor is elected directly by the majority of residents of the municipality. Social Democratic Party of Lithuania won most of the positions in the 2015 elections (372 municipal councils seats and 16 mayors).
As of 2019, the number of seats in the European Parliament allocated to Lithuania was 11. Ordinary elections take place on a Sunday on the same day as in other EU countries. The vote is open to all citizens of Lithuania, as well as citizens of other EU countries that permanently reside in Lithuania, who are at least 18 years old on the election day. To be eligible for election, candidates must be at least 21 years old on the election day, citizen of Lithuania or citizen of another EU country permanently residing in Lithuania. Candidates are not allowed to stand for election in more than one country. Persons serving or due to serve a sentence imposed by the court 65 days before the election are not eligible. Also, judges, citizens performing military service, and servicemen of professional military service and officials of statutory institutions and establishments may not stand for election. Six political parties and one committee representatives gained seats in the 2019 elections.
After regaining of independence in 1990, the largely modified Soviet legal codes were in force for about a decade. The current Constitution of Lithuania was adopted on 25 October 1992. In 2001, the Civil Code of Lithuania was passed in Seimas. It was succeeded by the Criminal Code and Criminal Procedure Code in 2003. The approach to the criminal law is inquisitorial, as opposed to adversarial; it is generally characterised by an insistence on formality and rationalisation, as opposed to practicality and informality. Normative legal act enters into force on the next day after its publication in the "Teisės aktų registras", unless it has a later entry into force date.
The European Union law is an integral part of the Lithuanian legal system since 1 May 2004.
Lithuania, after breaking away from the Soviet Union had a difficult crime situation, however the Lithuanian law enforcement agencies eliminated many criminals over the years, making Lithuania a reasonably safe country. Crime in Lithuania has been declining rapidly. Law enforcement in Lithuania is primarily the responsibility of local "Lietuvos policija" (Lithuanian Police) commissariats. They are supplemented by the "Lietuvos policijos antiteroristinių operacijų rinktinė Aras" (Anti-Terrorist Operations Team of the Lithuanian Police "Aras"), "Lietuvos kriminalinės policijos biuras" (Lithuanian Criminal Police Bureau), "Lietuvos policijos kriminalistinių tyrimų centras" (Lithuanian Police Forensic Research Center) and "Lietuvos kelių policijos tarnyba" (Lithuanian Road Police Service).
In 2017, there were 63,846 crimes registered in Lithuania. Of these, thefts comprised a large part with 19,630 cases (13.2% less than in 2016). While 2,835 crimes were very hard and hard (crimes that may result in more than six years imprisonment), which is 14.5% less than in 2016. Totally, 129 homicides or attempted homicide occurred (19.9% less than in 2016), while serious bodily harm was registered 178 times (17.6% less than in 2016). Another problematic crime contraband cases also decreased by 27.2% from 2016 numbers. Meanwhile, crimes in electronic data and information technology security fields noticeably increased by 26.6%. In the 2013 Special Eurobarometer, 29% of Lithuanians said that corruption affects their daily lives (EU average 26%). Moreover, 95% of Lithuanians regarded corruption as widespread in their country (EU average 76%), and 88% agreed that bribery and the use of connections is often the easiest way of obtaining certain public services (EU average 73%). Though, according to local branch of Transparency International, corruption levels have been decreasing over the past decade.
Capital punishment in Lithuania was suspended in 1996 and fully eliminated in 1998. Lithuania has the highest number of prison inmates in the EU. According to scientist Gintautas Sakalauskas, this is not because of a high criminality rate in the country, but due to Lithuania's high repression level and the lack of trust of the convicted, who are frequently sentenced to a jail imprisonment.
The current system of administrative division was established in 1994 and modified in 2000 to meet the requirements of the European Union. The country's 10 counties (Lithuanian: singular – "apskritis", plural – "apskritys") are subdivided into 60 municipalities (Lithuanian: singular – "savivaldybė", plural – "savivaldybės"), and further divided into 500 elderships (Lithuanian: singular – "seniūnija", plural – "seniūnijos").
Municipalities have been the most important unit of administration in Lithuania since the system of county governorship ("apskrities viršininkas") was dissolved in 2010. Some municipalities are historically called "district municipalities" (often shortened to "district"), while others are called "city municipalities" (sometimes shortened to "city"). Each has its own elected government. The election of municipality councils originally occurred every three years, but now takes place every four years. The council appoints elders to govern the elderships. Mayors have been directly elected since 2015; prior to that, they were appointed by the council.
Elderships, numbering over 500, are the smallest administrative units and do not play a role in national politics. They provide necessary local public services—for example, registering births and deaths in rural areas. They are most active in the social sector, identifying needy individuals or families and organizing and distributing welfare and other forms of relief. Some citizens feel that elderships have no real power and receive too little attention, and that they could otherwise become a source of local initiative for addressing rural problems.
Lithuania became a member of the United Nations on 18 September 1991, and is a signatory to a number of its organizations and other international agreements. It is also a member of the European Union, the Council of Europe, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, as well as NATO and its adjunct North Atlantic Coordinating Council. Lithuania gained membership in the World Trade Organization on 31 May 2001, and joined the OECD on 5 July 2018, while also seeking membership in other Western organizations.
Lithuania has established diplomatic relations with 149 countries.
In 2011, Lithuania hosted the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Ministerial Council Meeting. During the second half of 2013, Lithuania assumed the role of the presidency of the European Union.
Lithuania is also active in developing cooperation among northern European countries. It has been a member of the Baltic Council since its establishment in 1993. The Baltic Council, located in Tallinn, is a permanent organisation of international cooperation that operates through the Baltic Assembly and the Baltic Council of Ministers.
Lithuania also cooperates with Nordic and the two other Baltic countries through the NB8 format. A similar format, NB6, unites Nordic and Baltic members of EU. NB6's focus is to discuss and agree on positions before presenting them to the Council of the European Union and at the meetings of EU foreign affairs ministers.
The Council of the Baltic Sea States (CBSS) was established in Copenhagen in 1992 as an informal regional political forum. Its main aim is to promote integration and to close contacts between the region's countries. The members of CBSS are Iceland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Germany, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Russia, and the European Commission. Its observer states are Belarus, France, Italy, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, Spain, the United States, the United Kingdom, and Ukraine.
The Nordic Council of Ministers and Lithuania engage in political cooperation to attain mutual goals and to determine new trends and possibilities for joint cooperation. The Council's information office aims to disseminate Nordic concepts and to demonstrate and promote Nordic cooperation.
Lithuania, together with the five Nordic countries and the two other Baltic countries, is a member of the Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) and cooperates in its NORDPLUS programme, which is committed to education.
The Baltic Development Forum (BDF) is an independent nonprofit organization that unites large companies, cities, business associations and institutions in the Baltic Sea region. In 2010 the BDF's 12th summit was held in Vilnius.
Poland was highly supportive of Lithuanian independence, despite Lithuania's discriminatory treatment of its Polish minority. The former Solidarity leader and Polish President Lech Wałęsa criticised the government of Lithuania over discrimination against the Polish minority and rejected Lithuania's Order of Vytautas the Great. Lithuania maintains greatly warm mutual relations with Georgia and strongly supports its European Union and NATO aspirations. During the Russo-Georgian War in 2008, when the Russian troops were occupying the territory of Georgia and approaching towards the Georgian capital Tbilisi, President Valdas Adamkus, together with the Polish and Ukrainian presidents, went to Tbilisi by answering to the Georgians request of the international assistance. Shortly, Lithuanians and the Lithuanian Catholic Church also began collecting financial support for the war victims.
In 2004–2009, Dalia Grybauskaitė served as European Commissioner for Financial Programming and the Budget within the José Manuel Barroso-led Commission.
In 2013, Lithuania was elected to the United Nations Security Council for a two-year term, becoming the first Baltic country elected to this post. During its membership, Lithuania actively supported Ukraine and often condemned Russia for the military intervention in Ukraine, immediately earning vast Ukrainians esteem. As the War in Donbass progressed, President Dalia Grybauskaitė has compared the Russian President Vladimir Putin to Josef Stalin and to Adolf Hitler, she has also called Russia a "terrorist state".
In 2018 Lithuania, along with Latvia and Estonia were awarded the – for their exceptional model of democratic development and contribution to peace in the continent. In 2019 Lithuania condemned the Turkish offensive into north-eastern Syria.
The Lithuanian Armed Forces is the name for the unified armed forces of Lithuanian Land Force, Lithuanian Air Force, Lithuanian Naval Force, Lithuanian Special Operations Force and other units: Logistics Command, Training and Doctrine Command, Headquarters Battalion, Military Police. Directly subordinated to the Chief of Defence are the Special Operations Forces and Military Police. The Reserve Forces are under command of the Lithuanian National Defence Volunteer Forces.
The Lithuanian Armed Forces consist of some 17,000 active personnel, which may be supported by reserve forces. Compulsory conscription ended in 2008 but was reintroduced in 2015. The Lithuanian Armed Forces currently have deployed personnel on international missions in Afghanistan, Kosovo, Mali and Somalia.
In March 2004, Lithuania became a full member of the NATO. Since then, fighter jets of NATO members are deployed in Zokniai airport and provide safety for the Baltic airspace.
Since the summer of 2005 Lithuania has been part of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (ISAF), leading a Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT) in the town of Chaghcharan in the province of Ghor. The PRT includes personnel from Denmark, Iceland and USA. There are also special operation forces units in Afghanistan, placed in Kandahar Province. Since joining international operations in 1994, Lithuania has lost two soldiers: Lt. Normundas Valteris fell in Bosnia, as his patrol vehicle drove over a mine. Sgt. Arūnas Jarmalavičius was fatally wounded during an attack on the camp of his Provincial Reconstruction Team in Afghanistan.
The Lithuanian National Defence Policy aims to guarantee the preservation of the independence and sovereignty of the state, the integrity of its land, territorial waters and airspace, and its constitutional order. Its main strategic goals are to defend the country's interests, and to maintain and expand the capabilities of its armed forces so they may contribute to and participate in the missions of NATO and European Union member states.
The defense ministry is responsible for combat forces, search and rescue, and intelligence operations. The 5,000 border guards fall under the Interior Ministry's supervision and are responsible for border protection, passport and customs duties, and share responsibility with the navy for smuggling and drug trafficking interdiction. A special security department handles VIP protection and communications security. In 2015 National Cyber Security Centre of Lithuania was created. Paramilitary organisation Lithuanian Riflemen's Union acts as civilian self-defence institution.
According to NATO, in 2017 Lithuania allocated 1.77% of its GDP to the national defense. For a long time Lithuania lagged behind NATO allies in terms of defense spending, but in recent years it has begun to rapidly increase the funding. In 2018 Lithuania intends to allocate 2.06% of its GDP to the defense sector and reach the required funding standard for NATO.
Lithuania has open and mixed economy that is classified as high-income economy by the World Bank.
According to data from 2016, the three largest sectors in Lithuanian economy are – services (68.3% of GDP), industry (28.5%) and agriculture (3.3%). World Economic Forum's Global Competitiveness Report ranks Lithuania 41st (of 137 ranked countries).
Lithuania joined NATO in 2004, EU in 2004, Schengen in 2007 and OECD in 2018.
On 1 January 2015, euro became the national currency replacing litas at the rate of EUR 1.00 = LTL 3.45280.
Agricultural products and food made 18.3%, chemical products and plastics – 17.8%, machinery and appliances – 15.8%, mineral products – 14.7%, wood and furniture – 12.5% of exports. According to data from 2016, more than half of all Lithuanian exports go to 7 countries including Russia (14%), Latvia (9,9%), Poland (9,1%), Germany (7,7%), Estonia (5,3%), Sweden (4,8%) and United Kingdom (4,3%). Exports equaled 81.31 percent of Lithuania's GDP in 2017.
Lithuanian GDP experienced very high real growth rates for decade up to 2009, peaking at 11.1% in 2007. As a result, the country was often termed as a Baltic Tiger. However, in 2009 due to a global financial crisis marked experienced a drastic decline – GDP contracted by 14.9% and unemployment rate reached 17.8% in 2010. After the decline of 2009, Lithuanian annual economic growth has been much slower compared to pre-2009 years. According to IMF, financial conditions are conducive to growth and financial soundness indicators remain strong. The public debt ratio in 2016 fell to 40 percent of GDP, to compare with 42.7 in 2015 (before global finance crisis – 15 percent of GDP in 2008).
On average, more than 95% of all foreign direct investment in Lithuania comes from European Union countries. Sweden is historically the largest investor with 20% – 30% of all FDI in Lithuania. FDI into Lithuania spiked in 2017, reaching its highest ever recorded number of greenfield investment projects. In 2017, Lithuania was third country, after Ireland and Singapore by the average job value of investment projects.
The US was the leading source country in 2017, 24.59% of total FDI. Next up are Germany and the UK, each representing 11.48% of total project numbers. Based on the Eurostat's data, in 2017, the value of Lithuanian exports recorded the most rapid growth not only in the Baltic countries, but also across Europe, which was 16.9 per cent.
In the period between 2004 and 2016, one out of five Lithuanians left the country, mostly because of insufficient income situation or seeking the new experience and studies abroad. Long term emigration and economy growth has resulted in noticeable shortages on the labour market and growth in salaries being larger than growth in labour efficiency. Unemployment rate in 2017 was 8.1%.
As of 2019, Lithuanian mean wealth per adult is $50,254, while total national wealth is $115 billion. As of 2020, the average gross (pre-tax) monthly salary in Lithuania is 1,381 euros translating to 880 euros net (after tax), while average pension is around 400 euros per month. Average wage adjusted for purchasing power parity, is $2,202 per month, one of the lowest in EU. Although, cost of living in the country also is sufficiently less with the price level for household final consumption expenditure (HFCE) – 63, being 39% lower than EU average – 102 in 2016.
Lithuania has a flat tax rate rather than a progressive scheme. According to Eurostat, the personal income tax (15%) and corporate tax (15%) rates in Lithuania are among the lowest in the EU. The country has the lowest implicit rate of tax on capital (9.8%) in the EU. Corporate tax rate in Lithuania is 15% and 5% for small businesses. 7 Free Economic Zones are operating in Lithuania.
Information technology production is growing in the country, reaching 1.9 billion euros in 2016. In 2017 only, 35
FinTech companies came to Lithuania – a result of Lithuanian government and Bank of Lithuania simplified procedures for obtaining licences for the activities of e-money and payment institutions. Europe's first international Blockchain Centre launched in Vilnius in 2018. Lithuania has granted a total of 39 e-money licenses, second in the EU only to the U.K. with 128 licenses. In 2018 Google set up a payment company in Lithuania.
Biggest companies in Lithuania in 2018, by revenue:
Agriculture in Lithuania dates to the Neolithic period, about 3,000 to 1,000 BC. It has been one of Lithuania's most important occupations for many centuries. Lithuania's accession to the European Union in 2004 ushered in a new agricultural era. The EU pursues a very high standard of food safety and purity. In 1999, the Seimas (parliament) of Lithuania adopted a Law on Product Safety, and in 2000 it adopted a Law on Food. The reform of the agricultural market has been carried out on the basis of these two laws.
In 2016, agricultural production was made for 2.29 billion euros in Lithuania. Cereal crops occupied the largest part of it (5709,7 tons), other significant types were sugar beets (933,9 tons), rapeseed (392,5 tons) and potatoes (340,2 tons). Products for 4385,2 million euros were exported from Lithuania to the foreign markets, of which products for 3165,2 million euros were Lithuanian origin. Export of agricultural and food products accounted for 19.4% of all exports of goods from the country.
Organic farming is constantly becoming more popular in Lithuania. The status of organic growers and producers in the country is granted by the public body "Ekoagros". In 2016, there were 2539 such farms that occupied 225541,78 hectares. Of these, 43,13% were cereals, 31,22% were perennial grasses, 13,9% were leguminous crops and 11,75% were others.
Foundation of the University of Vilnius in 1579 was a major factor of establishing local scientist community in Lithuania and making connections with other universities and scientists of Europe. Georg Forster, Jean-Emmanuel Gilibert, Johann Peter Frank and many other visiting scientists have worked at University of Vilnius.
Lithuanian "bajoras" and Grand Duchy of Lithuania artillery expert Kazimieras Simonavičius is a pioneer of rocketry, who has published "Artis Magnae Artilleriae" in 1650 that for over two centuries was used in Europe as a basic artillery manual and contains a large chapter on caliber, construction, production and properties of rockets (for military and civil purposes), including multistage rockets, batteries of rockets, and rockets with delta wing stabilizers. A botanist Jurgis Pabrėža (1771-1849), created first systematic guide of Lithuanian flora "Taislius auguminis" ("Botany"), written in Samogitian dialect, the Latin-Lithuanian dictionary of plant names, first Lithuanian textbook of geography.
During the Interwar period humanitarian and social scientists emerged such as Vosylius Sezemanas, Levas Karsavinas, Mykolas Römeris.
Due to the World Wars, Lithuanian science and scientists suffered heavily from the occupants, however some of them reached a world-class achievements in their lifetime. Most notably, Antanas Gustaitis, Vytautas Graičiūnas, Marija Gimbutas, Birutė Galdikas, A. J. Kliorė, Algirdas Julius Greimas, medievalist Jurgis Baltrušaitis, Algirdas Antanas Avižienis.
Jonas Kubilius, long-term rector of the University of Vilnius is known for works in Probabilistic number theory, Kubilius model, Theorem of Kubilius and Turán–Kubilius inequality bear his name. Jonas Kubilius successfully resisted attempts to Russify the University of Vilnius.
Nowadays, the country is among moderate innovators group in the International Innovation Index.
and in the European Innovation Scoreboard ranked 15th among EU countries. Lasers and biotechnology are flagship fields of the Lithuanian science and high tech industry. Lithuanian "Šviesos konversija" (Light Conversion) has developed a femtosecond laser system that has 80% marketshare worldwide, and is used in DNA research, ophthalmological surgeries, nanotech industry and science. Vilnius University Laser Research Center has developed one of the most powerful femtosecond lasers in the world dedicated primarily to oncological diseases. In 1963, Vytautas Straižys and his coworkers created Vilnius photometric system that is used in astronomy. Noninvasive intracranial pressure and blood flow measuring devices were developed by KTU scientist A. Ragauskas. K.Pyragas contributed to Control of chaos with his way of delayed feedback control – Pyragas method. Kavli Prize laureate Virginijus Šikšnys is known for his discoveries in CRISPR field – invention of CRISPR-Cas9.
Lithuania has launched three satellites to space: LitSat-1, Lituanica SAT-1 and LituanicaSAT-2. Lithuanian Museum of Ethnocosmology and Molėtai Astronomical Observatory is located in Kulionys. 15 R&D institutions are members of Lithuanian Space Association; Lithuania is a cooperating state with European Space Agency. Rimantas Stankevičius is the only ethnically Lithuanian astronaut.
Lithuania in 2018 became Associated Member State of CERN. Two CERN incubators in Vilnius and Kaunas will be hosted.
Most advanced scientific research in Lithuania is being conducted at the Life Sciences Center, Center For Physical Sciences and Technology.
As of 2016 calculations, yearly growth of Lithuania's biotech and life science sector was 22% over the past 5 years. 16 academic institutions, 15 R&D centres (science parks and innovation valleys) and more than 370 manufacturers operate in the Lithuanian life science and biotech industry.
In 2008 the Valley development programme was started aiming to upgrade Lithuanian scientific research infrastructure and encourage business and science cooperation. Five R&D Valleys were launched – Jūrinis (maritime technologies), Nemunas (agro, bioenergy, forestry), Saulėtekis (laser and light, semiconductor), Santara (biotechnology, medicine), Santaka (sustainable chemistry and pharmacy). Lithuanian Innovation Center is created to provide support for innovations and research institutions.
Statistics of 2016 showed that 1.49 million tourists from foreign countries visited Lithuania and spent at least one night in the country. The largest number of tourists came from Germany (174,8 thousand), Belarus (171,9 thousand), Russia (150,6 thousand), Poland (148,4 thousand), Latvia (134,4 thousand), Ukraine (84,0 thousand), and the UK (58,2 thousand).
The total contribution of Travel & Tourism to country GDP was EUR 2,005.5mn, 5.3% of GDP in 2016, and is forecast to rise by 7.3% in 2017, and to rise by 4.2% pa to EUR 3,243.5mn, 6.7% of GDP in 2027. Hot air ballooning is very popular in Lithuania, especially in Vilnius and Trakai. Bicycle tourism is growing, especially in Lithuanian Seaside Cycle Route. EuroVelo routes EV10, EV11, EV13 go through Lithuania. Total length of bicycle tracks amounts to
3769 km (of which 1988 km is asphalt pavement).
Nemunas Delta Regional Park and Žuvintas biosphere reserve are known for birdwatching.
Domestic tourism has been on the rise as well. Currently there are up to 1000 places of attraction in Lithuania. Most tourists visit the big cities—Vilnius, Klaipėda, and Kaunas, seaside resorts, such as Neringa, Palanga, and Spa towns – Druskininkai, Birštonas.
Lithuania has a well developed communications infrastructure. The country has 2,8 million citizens and 5 million SIM cards. The largest LTE (4G) mobile network covers 97% of Lithuania's territory. Usage of fixed phone lines has been rapidly decreasing due to rapid expansion of mobile-cellular services.
In 2017, Lithuania was top 30 in the world by average mobile broadband speeds and top 20 by average fixed broadband speeds.
Lithuania was also top 7 in 2017 in the List of countries by 4G LTE penetration. In 2016, Lithuania was ranked 17th in United Nations' e-participation index.
There are four TIER III datacenters in Lithuania.
Lithuania is 44th globally ranked country on data center density according to Cloudscene.
Long-term project (2005–2013) – Development of Rural Areas Broadband Network (RAIN) was started with the objective to provide residents, state and municipal authorities and businesses with fibre-optic broadband access in rural areas. RAIN infrastructure allows 51 communications operators to provide network services to their clients. The project was funded by the European Union and the Lithuanian government. 72% of Lithuanian households have access to internet, a number which in 2017 was among EU's lowest and in 2016 ranked 97th by CIA World Factbook. Number of households with internet access is expected to increase and reach 77% by 2021. Almost 50% of Lithuanians had smartphones in 2016, a number that is expected to increase to 65% by 2022.
Lithuania has the highest FTTH (Fiber to the home) penetration rate in Europe (36.8% in September 2016) according to FTTH Council Europe.
Lithuania received its first railway connection in the middle of the 19th century, when the Warsaw – Saint Petersburg Railway was constructed. It included a stretch from Daugavpils via Vilnius and Kaunas to Virbalis. The first and only still operating tunnel was completed in 1860.
Lithuanian Railways' main network consists of of Russian gauge railway of which are electrified. This railway network is incompatible with European standard gauge and requires train switching. However, Lithuanian railway network also has of standard gauge lines. More than half of all inland freight transported in Lithuania is carried by rail. The Trans-European standard gauge Rail Baltica railway, linking Helsinki–Tallinn–Riga–Kaunas–Warsaw and continuing on to Berlin is under construction. In 2017, Lietuvos Geležinkeliai, a company that operates most railway lines in Lithuania, received EU penalty for breaching EU's antitrust laws and restricting competition.
Transportation is the third largest sector in Lithuanian economy. Lithuanian transport companies drew attention in 2016 and 2017 with huge and record-breaking orders of trucks. Almost 90% of commercial truck traffic in Lithuania is international transports, the highest of any EU country.
Lithuania has an extensive network of motorways. WEF grades Lithuanian roads at 4,7 / 7,0 and Lithuanian road authority (LAKD) at 6,5 / 10,0.
The Port of Klaipėda is the only commercial cargo port in Lithuania. In 2011 45.5 million tons of cargo were handled (including Būtingė oil terminal figures) Port of Klaipėda is outside of EU's 20 largest ports, but it is the eighth largest port in the Baltic Sea region
with ongoing expansion plans.
Vilnius International Airport is the largest airport in Lithuania, 91st busiest airport in Europe (EU's 100 largest airports). It served 3.8 million passengers in 2016. Other international airports include Kaunas International Airport, Palanga International Airport and Šiauliai International Airport. Kaunas International Airport is also a small commercial cargo airport which started regular commercial cargo traffic in 2011. The inland river cargo port in Marvelė, linking Kaunas and Klaipėda, received first cargo in 2019.
Lithuania has one of the largest fresh water supplies, compared with other countries in Europe. Lithuania and Denmark are the only countries in Europe, which are fully equipped with fresh groundwater. Lithuanians consume about 0.5 million cubic meters of water per day, which is only 12–14 percent of all explored fresh groundwater resources. Water quality in the country is very high and is determined by the fact that drinking water comes from deep layers that are protected from pollution on the surface of the earth. Drilling depth usually reaches 30–50 meters, but in Klaipėda Region it even reaches 250 meters. Consequently, Lithuania is one of very few European countries where groundwater is used for centralized water supply. With a large underground fresh water reserves, Lithuania exports mineral-rich water to other countries. Approved mineral water quantity is about 2.7 million cubic meters per year, while production is only 4–5 percent of all mineral water resources.
Vilnius is the only Baltic capital that uses centralized water supplying from deep water springs, which are protected from pollution and has no nitrates or nitrites that are harmful to the human body. Water is cleaned without chemicals in Lithuania. About 20% of the consumed water in the state is a non-filtered very high quality water.
Systematic diversification of energy imports and resources is Lithuania's key energy strategy. Long-term aims were defined in National Energy Independence strategy in 2012 by Lietuvos Seimas. It was estimated that strategic energy independence initiatives will cost 6.3–7.8 billion Eur in total and provide annual savings of 0.9–1.1 billion EUR.
After the decommissioning of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, Lithuania turned from electricity exporter to electricity importer. Unit No. 1 was closed in December 2004, as a condition of Lithuania's entry into the European Union; Unit No. 2 was closed down on 31 December 2009. Proposals have been made to construct a new – Visaginas Nuclear Power Plant in Lithuania. However, a non-binding referendum held in October 2012 clouded the prospects for the Visaginas project, as 63% of voters said no to a new nuclear power plant.
The country's main primary source of electrical power is Elektrėnai Power Plant. Other primary sources of Lithuania's electrical power are Kruonis Pumped Storage Plant and Kaunas Hydroelectric Power Plant. Kruonis Pumped Storage Plant is the only in the Baltic states power plant to be used for regulation of the power system's operation with generating capacity of 900 MW for at least 12 hours. , 66% of electrical power was imported. First geothermal heating plant (Klaipėda Geothermal Demonstration Plant) in the Baltic Sea region was built in 2004.
Lithuania–Sweden submarine electricity interconnection NordBalt and Lithuania–Poland electricity interconnection LitPol Link were launched at the end of 2015.
In order to break down Gazprom's monopoly in natural gas market of Lithuania, first large scale LNG import terminal (Klaipėda LNG FSRU) in the Baltic region was built in port of Klaipėda in 2014. The Klaipėda LNG terminal was called Independence, thus emphasising the aim to diversify energy market of Lithuania. Norvegian company Equinor supplies of natural gas annually from 2015 until 2020. The terminal is able to meet the Lithuania's demand 100 percent, and Latvia's and Estonia's national demand 90 percent in the future.
Gas Interconnection Poland–Lithuania (GIPL), also known as Lithuania–Poland pipeline, is a proposed natural gas pipeline interconnection between Lithuania and Poland that is expected to be finished by 2019. In 2018 synchronising the Baltic States' electricity grid with the Synchronous grid of Continental Europe has started.
In 2016, 20,8% of electricity consumed in Lithuania came from renewable sources.
Since the Neolithic period the native inhabitants of the Lithuanian territory have not been replaced by any other ethnic group, so there is a high probability that the inhabitants of present-day Lithuania have preserved the genetic composition of their forebears relatively undisturbed by the major demographic movements, although without being actually isolated from them. The Lithuanian population appears to be relatively homogeneous, without apparent genetic differences among ethnic subgroups.
A 2004 analysis of MtDNA in the Lithuanian population revealed that Lithuanians are close to the Slavic and Finno-Ugric speaking populations of Northern and Eastern Europe. Y-chromosome SNP haplogroup analysis showed Lithuanians to be closest to Latvians and Estonians.
According to 2014 estimates, the age structure of the population was as follows: 0–14 years, 13.5% (male 243,001/female 230,674); 15–64 years: 69.5% (male 1,200,196/female 1,235,300); 65 years and over: 16.8% (male 207,222/female 389,345). The median age was 41.2 years (male: 38.5, female: 43.7).
Lithuania has a sub-replacement fertility rate: the total fertility rate (TFR) in Lithuania is 1.59 children born/woman (2015 estimates).
, 29% of births were to unmarried women. The age at first marriage in 2013 was 27 years for women and 29.3 years for men.
Ethnic Lithuanians make up about five-sixths of the country's population and Lithuania has the most homogeneous population in the Baltic States. In 2015, the population of Lithuania stands at 2,921,262, 84.2% of whom are ethnic Lithuanians who speak Lithuanian, which is the official language of the country. Several sizeable minorities exist, such as Poles (6.6%), Russians (5.8%), Belarusians (1.2%) and Ukrainians (0.5%).
Poles in Lithuania are the largest minority, concentrated in southeast Lithuania (the Vilnius region). Russians in Lithuania are the second largest minority, concentrated mostly in two cities. They constitute sizeable minorities in Vilnius (12%) and Klaipėda (19.6%), and a majority in the town of Visaginas (52%). About 3,000 Roma live in Lithuania, mostly in Vilnius, Kaunas and Panevėžys; their organizations are supported by the National Minority and Emigration Department. For centuries a small Tatar community has flourished in Lithuania.
The official language is Lithuanian, other languages, such as Polish, Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian, are spoken in the larger cities, and several municipalities such as Šalčininkai District Municipality, Vilnius District Municipality and Visaginas Municipality. Yiddish is spoken by members of the tiny remaining Jewish community in Lithuania. According to the Lithuanian population census of 2011, about 85% of the country's population speak Lithuanian as their native language, 7.2% are native speakers of Russian and 5.3% of Polish. About 39% of Lithuanian citizens speak Russian as a foreign language, 20% – English, 9% – German, 6% – Polish, 3% – French. Most Lithuanian schools teach English as the first foreign language, but students may also study German, or, in some schools, French or Russian. Schools where Russian or Polish are the primary languages of education exist in the areas populated by these minorities. Minority schools are public, where the education is free (taxpayer-funded).
Lithuania has accepted quota refugees under the migrant plan agreed upon by EU member states in 2015.
There has been a steady movement of population to the cities since the 1990s, encouraged by the planning of regional centres, such as Alytus, Marijampolė, Utena, Plungė, and Mažeikiai. By the early 21st century, about two-thirds of the total population lived in urban areas. , 66.5% of the total population lives in urban areas. Lithuania's functional urban areas include Vilnius (population 696,000 in 2016) and Kaunas (population 387,000 in 2016). The fDI of the Financial Times in their research "Cities and Regions of the Future 2018/19" ranked Vilnius fourth in the mid-sized European cities category and Vilnius county was ranked 10th in the small European regions category.
Lithuania provides free state-funded healthcare to all citizens and registered long-term residents. Private healthcare is also available in the country. In 2003–2012, the network of hospitals was restructured, as part of wider healthcare service reforms. It started in 2003–2005 with the expansion of ambulatory services and primary care.
In 2016, Lithuania ranked 27th in Europe in the Euro health consumer index, a ranking of European healthcare systems based on waiting time, results and other indicators.
By 2000 the vast majority of Lithuanian health care institutions were non-profit-making enterprises and a private sector developed, providing mostly outpatient services which are paid for out-of-pocket. The Ministry of Health also runs a few health care facilities and is involved in the running of the two major Lithuanian teaching hospitals. It is responsible for the State Public Health Centre which manages the public health network including ten county public health centres with their local branches. The ten counties run county hospitals and specialised health care facilities.
There is now Compulsory Health Insurance for Lithuanian residents. There are 5 Territorial Health Insurance Funds, covering Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda, Šiauliai and Panevėžys. Contributions for people who are economically active are 9% of income.
Emergency medical services are provided free of charge to all residents. Access to hospital treatment is normally by referral by a General Practitioner. Lithuania also has one of the lowest health care prices in Europe.
According to the 2011 census, 77.2% of residents of Lithuania were Catholics. Catholicism has been the main religion since the official Christianisation of Lithuania in 1387. The Catholic Church was persecuted by the Russian Empire as part of the Russification policies and by the Soviet Union as part of the overall anti-religious campaigns. During the Soviet era, some priests actively led the resistance against the Communist regime, as symbolised by the Hill of Crosses and exemplified by "The Chronicle of the Catholic Church in Lithuania".
4.1% of the population are Eastern Orthodox, mainly among the Russian minority. The community of Old Believers (0.8% of population) dates back to the 1660s.
Protestants are 0.8%, of which 0.6% are Lutheran and 0.2% are Reformed. The Reformation did not impact Lithuania to a great extent as seen in East Prussia, Estonia, or Latvia. Before World War II, according to Losch (1932), the Lutherans were 3.3% of the total population. They were mainly Germans and Prussian Lithuanians in the Klaipėda Region (Memel territory). This population fled or was expelled after the war, and today Protestantism is mainly represented by ethnic Lithuanians throughout the northern and western parts of the country, as well as in large urban areas. Newly arriving evangelical churches have established missions in Lithuania since 1990.
Hinduism is a minority religion and a fairly recent development in Lithuania. Hinduism is spread in Lithuania by Hindu organizations: ISKCON, Sathya Sai Baba, Brahma Kumaris and Osho Rajneesh. ISKCON (Lithuanian: Krišnos sąmonės judėjimas) is the largest and the oldest movement as the first Krishna followers date to 1979. It has three centres in Lithuania: in Vilnius, Klaipėda and Kaunas. Brahma Kumaris maintains the Centre Brahma Kumaris in Antakalnis, Vilnius.
The historical communities of Lipka Tatars maintain Islam as their religion. Lithuania was historically home to a significant Jewish community and was an important centre of Jewish scholarship and culture from the 18th century until the eve of World War II. Of the approximately 220,000 Jews who lived in Lithuania in June 1941, almost all were killed during the Holocaust. The Lithuanian Jewish community numbered about 4,000 at the end of 2009.
Romuva, the neopagan revival of the ancient religious practices, has gained popularity over the years. Romuva claims to continue living pagan traditions, which survived in folklore and customs. Romuva is a polytheistic pagan faith, which asserts the sanctity of nature and has elements of ancestor worship. According to the 2001 census, there were 1,270 people of Baltic faith in Lithuania. That number jumped to 5,118 in the 2011 census.
The Constitution of Lithuania mandates ten-year education ending at age 16 and guarantees a free public higher education for students deemed 'good'. The Ministry of Education and Science of the Republic of Lithuania proposes national educational policies and goals that are then voted for in the Seimas. Laws govern long-term educational strategy along with general laws on standards for higher education, vocational training, law and science, adult education, and special education. 5.4% of GDP or 15.4% of total public expenditure was spent for education in 2016.
According to the World Bank, the literacy rate among Lithuanians aged 15 years and older is 100%. School attendance rates are above the EU average and school leave is less common than in the EU. According to Eurostat Lithuania leads among other countries of the European Union in people with secondary education (93.3%). Based on OECD data, Lithuania is among the top 5 countries in the world in postsecondary (tertiary) education attainment. , 54.9% of the population aged 25 to 34, and 30.7% of the population aged 55 to 64 had completed tertiary education. The share of tertiary-educated 25–64-year-olds in STEM (Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) fields in Lithuania were above the OECD average (29% and 26% respectively), similarly to business, administration and law (25% and 23% respectively).
Modern Lithuanian education system has multiple structural problems. Insufficient funding, quality issues, and decreasing student population are the most prevalent. Lithuanian teacher salaries are the lowest in the entire EU. Low teacher salaries was the primary reason behind national teacher strikes in 2014, 2015, and 2016. Salaries in the higher education sector are also low. Many Lithuanian professors have a second job to supplement their income. PISA report from 2010 found that Lithuanian results in math, science and reading were below OECD average. PISA report from 2015 reconfirmed these findings. The population ages 6 to 19 has decreased by 36% between 2005 and 2015. As a result, the student-teacher ratio is decreasing and expenditure per student is increasing, but schools, particularly in rural areas, are forced into reorganizations and consolidations. As with other Baltic nations, in particular Latvia, the large volume of higher education graduates within the country, coupled with the high rate of spoken second languages is contributing to an education brain drain.
, there were 15 public and 6 private universities as well as 16 public and 11 private colleges in Lithuania (see: List of universities in Lithuania). Vilnius University is one of the oldest universities in Northern Europe and the largest university in Lithuania. Kaunas University of Technology is the largest technical university in the Baltic States and the second largest university in Lithuania. In an attempt to reduce costs and adapt to sharply decreasing number of high-school students, Lithuanian parliament decided to reduce the number of universities in Lithuania. In early 2018, Lithuanian Sports University was merged into Lithuanian University of Health Sciences and Lithuanian University of Educational Sciences and Aleksandras Stulginskis University were merged into Vytautas Magnus University.
The Lithuanian language ("lietuvių kalba") is the official state language of Lithuania and is recognized as one of the official languages of the European Union. There are about 2.96 million native Lithuanian speakers in Lithuania and about 0.2 million abroad.
Lithuanian is a Baltic language, closely related to Latvian, although they are not mutually intelligible. It is written in an adapted version of the Roman script. Lithuanian is believed to be the linguistically most conservative living Indo-European tongue, retaining many features of Proto Indo-European. Lithuanian language studies are important for comparative linguistics and for reconstruction of Proto-Indo-European language. Lithuanian was studied by linguists such as Franz Bopp, August Schleicher, Adalbert Bezzenberger, Louis Hjelmslev, Ferdinand de Saussure, Winfred P. Lehmann, Vladimir Toporov and others.
There are two main dialects of the Lithuanian language: Aukštaitian dialect and Samogitian dialect. Aukštaitian dialect is mainly used in the central, southern and eastern parts of Lithuania while Samogitian dialect is used in the western part of the country. The Samogitian dialect also has many completely different words and is even considered a separate language by some linguists. Nowadays, the distinguishing feature between the two main Lithuanian dialects is the unequal pronunciation of accented and unaccented two-vowels uo and ie.
The groundwork for written Lithuanian was laid in 16th and 17th centuries by Lithuanian noblemen and scholars, who promoted Lithuanian language, created dictionaries and published books – Mikalojus Daukša, Stanislovas Rapolionis, Abraomas Kulvietis, Jonas Bretkūnas, Martynas Mažvydas, Konstantinas Sirvydas, Simonas Vaišnoras-Varniškis.
The first grammar book of the Lithuanian language "Grammatica Litvanica" was published in Latin in 1653 by Danielius Kleinas.
Jonas Jablonskis' works and activities are especially important for the Lithuanian literature moving from the use of dialects to a standard Lithuanian language. The linguistic material which he collected was published in the 20 volumes of Academic Dictionary of Lithuanian and is still being used in research and in editing of texts and books. He also introduced the letter "ū" into Lithuanian writing.
There is a great deal of Lithuanian literature written in Latin, the main scholarly language of the Middle Ages. The edicts of the Lithuanian King Mindaugas is the prime example of the literature of this kind. The Letters of Gediminas are another crucial heritage of the Lithuanian Latin writings.
One of the first Lithuanian authors who wrote in Latin was Nicolaus Hussovianus (around 1480 – after 1533). His poem "Carmen de statura, feritate ac venatione bisontis" ("A Song about the Appearance, Savagery and Hunting of the Bison"), published in 1523, describes the Lithuanian landscape, way of life and customs, touches on some actual political problems, and reflects the clash of paganism and Christianity. A person under the pseudonym (around 1490 – 1560) wrote a treatise "De moribus tartarorum, lituanorum et moscorum" ("On the Customs of Tatars, Lithuanians and Muscovites") in the middle of the 16th century, but it was not published until 1615. An extraordinary figure in the cultural life of Lithuania in the 16th century was the lawyer and poet of Spanish origin Petrus Roysius Maurus Alcagnicensis (around 1505 – 1571). The publicist, lawyer, and mayor of Vilnius, Augustinus Rotundus (around 1520 -1582) wrote a no longer existent history of Lithuania in Latin around the year 1560. loannes Radvanus, a humanist poet of the second half of the 16th century, wrote an epic poem imitating the Aeneid of Vergil. His "Radivilias", intended to become the Lithuanian national epic, was published in Vilnius in 1588.
17th century Lithuanian scholars also wrote in Latin – Kazimieras Kojelavičius-Vijūkas, Žygimantas Liauksminas are known for their Latin writings in theology, rhetorics and music. Albertas Kojalavičius-Vijūkas wrote first printed Lithuanian history "Historia Lithuania".
Lithuanian literary works in the Lithuanian language started being first published in the 16th century. In 1547 Martynas Mažvydas compiled and published the first printed Lithuanian book "Katekizmo prasti žodžiai" ("The Simple Words of Catechism"), which marks the beginning of literature, printed in Lithuanian. He was followed by Mikalojus Daukša with "Katechizmas". In the 16th and 17th centuries, as in the whole Christian Europe, Lithuanian literature was primarily religious.
The evolution of the old (14th–18th century) Lithuanian literature ends with Kristijonas Donelaitis, one of the most prominent authors of the Age of Enlightenment. Donelaitis' poem "Metai" ("The Seasons") is a landmark of the Lithuanian fiction literature, written in hexameter.
With a mix of Classicism, Sentimentalism and Romanticism, the Lithuanian literature of the first half of the 19th century is represented by Maironis, Antanas Baranauskas, Simonas Daukantas and Simonas Stanevičius. During the Tsarist annexation of Lithuania in the 19th century, the Lithuanian press ban was implemented, which led to the formation of the Knygnešiai (Book smugglers) movement. This movement is thought to be the very reason the Lithuanian language and literature survived until today.
20th-century Lithuanian literature is represented by Juozas Tumas-Vaižgantas, Antanas Vienuolis, Bernardas Brazdžionis, Antanas Škėma, Balys Sruoga, Vytautas Mačernis and Justinas Marcinkevičius.
In 21st century debuted Kristina Sabaliauskaitė, Renata Šerelytė, Valdas Papievis, Laura Sintija Černiauskaitė, Rūta Šepetys.
Several famous Lithuania-related architects are notable for their achievements in the field of architecture. Johann Christoph Glaubitz, Marcin Knackfus, Laurynas Gucevičius and Karol Podczaszyński were instrumental in introducing Baroque and neoclassical architectural movements to the Lithuanian architecture during the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Vilnius is considered as a capital of the Eastern Europe Baroque. Vilnius Old Town that is full of astonishing Baroque churches and other buildings is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Lithuania is also known for numerous castles. About twenty castles exist in Lithuania. Some castles had to be rebuilt or survive partially. Many Lithuanian nobles' historic palaces and manor houses have remained till the nowadays and were reconstructed. Lithuanian village life has existed since the days of Vytautas the Great. Zervynos and Kapiniškės are two of many ethnographic villages in Lithuania. Rumšiškės is an open space museum where old ethnographic architecture is preserved.
During the interwar period, Art Deco, Lithuanian National Romanticism architectural style buildings were constructed in the Lithuania's temporary capital Kaunas. Its architecture is regarded as one of the finest examples of the European Art Deco and has received the European Heritage Label.
Pranciškus Smuglevičius, Jan Rustem, Juozapas Oleškevičius and Kanutas Ruseckas are the most prominent Lithuanian painters of the 18th and 19th centuries.
The Lithuanian Art Museum was founded in 1933 and is the largest museum of art conservation and display in Lithuania. Among other important museums are the Palanga Amber Museum, where amber pieces comprise a major part of the collection, National Gallery of Art, presenting collection of Lithuanian art of the 20th and 21st century, National Museum of Lithuania presenting Lithuanian archaeology, history and ethnic culture. In 2018 two private museums were opened – MO Museum devoted to modern and contemporary Lithuanian art and "Tartle", exhibiting a collection of Lithuanian art heritage and artefacts.
Perhaps the most renowned figure in Lithuania's art community was the composer Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911), an internationally renowned musician. The 2420 Čiurlionis asteroid, identified in 1975, honors his achievements. The M. K. Čiurlionis National Art Museum, as well as the only military museum in Lithuania, Vytautas the Great War Museum, are located in Kaunas.
Other notable artists includes Jonas Mekas, Jurgis Mačiūnas, Petras Kalpokas, Antanas Žmuidzinavičius, Jonas Šileika, , , Adomas Varnas, Petras Rimša, Juozas Zikaras, Vytautas Kairiūkštis, Vincas Grybas, Stasys Ušinskas, , , Robertas Antinis, Antanas Gudaitis, , , Antanas Žukauskas, Viktoras Vizgirda, Rimantas Dichavičius, Elvyra Katalina Kriaučiūnaitė, Šarūnas Sauka,
At the 2019 Venice Biennale, Lithuania won its first Golden Lion for Best National Pavilion with modern opera "Sun & Sea (Marina)” — presented by the artists Lina Lapelyte, Vaiva Grainyte and Rugile Barzdziukaite, beating out 89 other pavilions for the honor. At an official collateral event to the Biennale, Lithuanian artist and filmmaker Emilija Škarnulytė took home the Future Generation Art Prize awarding $100,000 to a global artist under the age of 35, presented by the PinchukArtCentre.
Lithuania has some very famous theatre directors well known in the country and abroad. One of them is Oskaras Koršunovas. He was awarded more than forty times with special prizes. Possibly most prestigious award is Swedish Commander Grand Cross: Order of the Polar Star. Today's the most famous theatres in Lithuania are in Vilnius, Kaunas, Klaipėda and Panevėžys. It is Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, "Keistuolių teatras" (Theatre of Freaks) in Vilnius, Kaunas National Drama Theatre, Theatre of Oskaras Koršunovas, Klaipėda Drama Theatre, Theatre of Gytis Ivanauskas, Miltinis Drama Theatre in Panevėžys, The Doll's Theatre, Russian Drama Theatre and others. There are some very popular theatre festivals like "Sirenos" (Sirens), "TheATRIUM", "Nerk į teatrą" (Dive into the Theatre) and others. The figures dominating in Lithuanian theatre world are directors like Eimuntas Nekrošius, Jonas Vaitkus, Cezaris Graužinis, Gintaras Varnas, Dalia Ibelhauptaitė, Artūras Areima; number of talented actors like Dainius Gavenonis, Rolandas Kazlas, Saulius Balandis, Gabija Jaraminaitė and many others.
On 28 July 1896, Thomas Edison live photography session was held in the Concerts Hall of the Botanical Garden of Vilnius University. After a year, similar American movies were available with the addition of special phonograph records that also provided sound. In 1909, Lithuanian cinema pioneers and Ladislas Starevich released their first movies. Soon the Račiūnas' recordings of Lithuania's views became very popular among the Lithuanian Americans abroad. In 1925, Pranas Valuskis filmed movie "Naktis Lietuvoje" (Night in Lithuania) about Lithuanian book smugglers that left the first bright Lithuanian footprint in Hollywood. The most significant and mature Lithuanian American movie of the time "Aukso žąsis" (Golden goose) was created in 1965 by that featured motifs from the Brothers Grimm fairy tales. In 1940, Romuva Cinema was opened in Kaunas and currently is the oldest still operational cinema in Lithuania. After the occupation of the state, movies mostly were used for the Soviet propaganda purposes, nevertheless Almantas Grikevičius, Gytis Lukšas, Henrikas Šablevičius, Arūnas Žebriūnas, Raimondas Vabalas were able to overcome the obstacles and create valuable films. After the restoration of the independence, Šarūnas Bartas, Audrius Stonys, Arūnas Matelis, Audrius Juzėnas, Algimantas Puipa, , Dijana and her husband Kornelijus Matuzevičius received success in international movie festivals.
In 2018, 4 265 414 cinema tickets were sold in Lithuania with the average price of 5,26 euros.
Lithuanian folk music belongs to Baltic music branch which is connected with neolithic corded ware culture. Two instrument cultures meet in the areas inhabited by Lithuanians: stringed (kanklių) and wind instrument cultures. Lithuanian folk music is archaic, mostly used for ritual purposes, containing elements of paganism faith. There are three ancient styles of singing in Lithuania connected with ethnographical regions: monophony, heterophony and polyphony. Folk song genres: Sutartinės (Multipart Songs), Wedding Songs, War-Historical Time Songs, Calendar Cycle and Ritual Songs and Work Songs.
Italian artists organized the first opera in Lithuania on 4 September 1636 at the Palace of the Grand Dukes by the order of Władysław IV Vasa. Currently, operas are staged at the Lithuanian National Opera and Ballet Theatre and also by independent troupe Vilnius City Opera.
Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis is the most renowned Lithuanian painter and composer. During his short life he created about 200 pieces of music. His works have had profound influence on modern Lithuanian culture. His symphonic poems "In the Forest" ("Miške") and "The Sea" ("Jūra") were performed only posthumously. Čiurlionis contributed to symbolism and art nouveau and was representative of the fin de siècle epoch. He has been considered one of the pioneers of abstract art in Europe.
In Lithuania, choral music is very important. Vilnius is the only city with three choirs laureates (Brevis, Jauna Muzika and Chamber Choir of the Conservatoire) at the European Grand Prix for Choral Singing. There is a long-standing tradition of the "Dainų šventė" (Lithuanian Song and Dance Festival). The first one took place in Kaunas in 1924. Since 1990, the festival has been organised every four years and summons roughly 30,000 singers and folk dancers of various professional levels and age groups from across the country. In 2008, Lithuanian Song and Dance Festival together with its Latvian and Estonian versions was inscribed as UNESCO Masterpiece of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity. "Gatvės muzikos diena" (Street Music Day) gathers musicians of various genres annually.
Conductor Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla performing on the scenes of Rome, New York and Birmingham.
Modern classical composers emerged in seventies – Bronius Kutavičius, Feliksas Bajoras, Osvaldas Balakauskas, Onutė Narbutaitė, Vidmantas Bartulis and others. Most of those composers explored archaic Lithuanian music and its harmonic combination with modern minimalism and neoromanticism.
Jazz scene was active even during the years of Soviet occupation. The real breakthrough would occur in 1970–71 with the coming together of the Ganelin/Tarasov/Chekasin trio, the alleged instigators of the Vilnius Jazz School. Most known annual events are Vilnius Jazz Festival, Kaunas Jazz, Birštonas Jazz.
Music Information Centre Lithuania (MICL) collects, promotes and shares information on Lithuanian musical culture.
After the Soviet reoccupation of Lithuania in 1944, the Soviet's censorship continued firmly controlling all artistic expressions in Lithuania, and any violations by criticizing the regime would immediately result in punishments. The first local rock bands started to emerge around 1965 and included "Kertukai", "Aitvarai" and "Nuogi ant slenksčio" in Kaunas, and Kęstutis Antanėlis, "Vienuoliai", and "Gėlių Vaikai" in Vilnius, among others. Unable to express their opinions directly, the Lithuanian artists began organizing patriotic Roko Maršai and were using metaphors in their songs' lyrics, which were easily identified for their true meanings by the locals. Postmodernist rock band Antis and its vocalist Algirdas Kaušpėdas were one of the most active performers who mocked the Soviet regime by using metaphors. For example, in the song "Zombiai" (Zombies), the band indirectly sang about the Red Army soldiers who occupied the state and its military base in Ukmergė. Vytautas Kernagis' song "Kolorado vabalai" (Colorado beetles) was also a favourite due to its lyrics in which true meaning of the Colorado beetles was intended to be the Soviets decorated with the Ribbons of Saint George.
In the early independence years, rock band Foje was particularly popular and gathered tens of thousands of spectators to the concerts. After disbanding in 1997, Foje vocalist Andrius Mamontovas remained one of the most prominent Lithuanian performers and an active participant in various charity events. Marijonas Mikutavičius is famous for creating unofficial Lithuania sport anthem "Trys milijonai" (Three million) and official anthem of the EuroBasket 2011 "Nebetyli sirgaliai" (English version was named "Celebrate Basketball").
Lithuanian cuisine features the products suited to the cool and moist northern climate of Lithuania: barley, potatoes, rye, beets, greens, berries, and mushrooms are locally grown, and dairy products are one of its specialties. Fish dishes are very popular in the coastal region. Since it shares its climate and agricultural practices with Northern Europe, Lithuanian cuisine has some similarities to Scandinavian cuisine. Nevertheless, it has its own distinguishing features, which were formed by a variety of influences during the country's long and difficult history.
Dairy products are an important part of traditional Lithuanian cuisine. These include white cottage cheese ("varškės sūris"), curd ("varškė"), soured milk ("rūgpienis"), sour cream ("grietinė"), butter ("sviestas"), and sour cream butter "kastinis". Traditional meat products are usually seasoned, matured and smoked – smoked sausages ("dešros"), lard ("lašiniai"), "skilandis", smoked ham ("kumpis"). Soups ("sriubos") – boletus soup, cabbage soup, beer soup, milk soup, cold-beet soup ("šaltibarščiai") and various kinds of porages ("košės") are part of tradition and daily diet. Freshwater fish, herring, wild berries and mushrooms, honey are highly popular diet to this day.
One of the oldest and most fundamental Lithuanian food products was and is rye bread. Rye bread is eaten every day for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Bread played an important role in family rituals and agrarian ceremonies.
Lithuanians and other nations that once formed part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania share many dishes and beverages. German traditions also influenced Lithuanian cuisine, introducing pork and potato dishes, such as potato pudding ("kugelis" or kugel) and potato sausages ("vėdarai"), as well as the baroque tree cake known as "Šakotis". The most exotic of all the influences is Eastern (Karaite) cuisine – the "kibinai" are popular in Lithuania. Lithuanian noblemen usually hired French chefs, so French cuisine influence came to Lithuania in this way.
Balts were using mead ("midus") for thousands of years. Beer ("alus") is the most common alcoholic beverage. Lithuania has a long farmhouse beer tradition, first mentioned in 11th century chronicles. Beer was brewed for ancient Baltic festivities and rituals. Farmhouse brewing survived to a greater extent in Lithuania than anywhere else, and through accidents of history the Lithuanians then developed a commercial brewing culture from their unique farmhouse traditions. Lithuania is top 5 by consumption of beer per capita in Europe in 2015, counting 75 active breweries, 32 of them are microbreweries. The microbrewery scene in Lithuania has been growing in later years, with a number of bars focusing on these beers popping up in Vilnius and also in other parts of the country.
8 Lithuanian restaurants are listed in White Guide Baltic Top 30.
The Constitution of Lithuania provides for freedom of speech and press, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to promote these freedoms. However, the constitutional definition of freedom of expression does not protect certain acts, such as incitement to national, racial, religious, or social hatred, violence and discrimination, or slander, and disinformation. It is a crime to deny or "grossly trivialize" Soviet or Nazi German crimes against Lithuania or its citizens, or to deny genocide, crimes against humanity, or war crimes.
Best-selling daily national newspapers in Lithuania are "Lietuvos rytas" (about 18,8% of all daily readers), ' (12,5%), "Kauno diena" (3,7%), ' (3,2%) and "Vakarų ekspresas" (2,7%). Best-selling weekly newspapers are "Savaitė" (about 34% of all weekly readers), "Žmonės" (17%), "Prie kavos" (11,9%), "Ji" (8,7%) and "Ekspress nedelia" (5,4%).
In July 2018, the most popular national television channels in Lithuania were TV3 (about 35,9% of the auditorium), LNK (32,8%), Lithuanian National Radio and Television (30,6%), BTV (19,9%), Lietuvos rytas TV (19,1%).
The most popular radio stations in Lithuania are M-1 (about 15,8% of all listeners), "Lietus" (12,2%), "LRT Radijas" (10,5%) and "Radiocentras" (10,5%).
As a result of a thousand-years history, Lithuania has two National days. First one is the Statehood Day on 6 July, marking the establishment of the medieval Kingdom of Lithuania by Mindaugas in 1253. Creation of modern Lithuanian state is commemorated on 16 February as a Lithuanian State Reestablishment Day on which declaration of independence from Russia and Germany was declared in 1918. Joninės (previously known as "Rasos") is a public holiday with paganic roots that celebrates a solstice. As of 2018, there are 13 public holidays (which come with a day off).
Kaziuko mugė is an annual fair held since the beginning of the 17th century that commemorates the anniversary of Saint Casimir's death and gathers thousands of visitors and many craftsmen. Other notable festivals are Vilnius International Film Festival, Kauno Miesto Diena, Klaipėda Sea Festival, Mados infekcija, Vilnius Book Fair, Vilnius Marathon, Devilstone Open Air, , Great Žemaičių Kalvarija Festival.
Basketball is the most popular and national sport of Lithuania. The Lithuania national basketball team has had significant success in international basketball events, having won the EuroBasket on three occasions (1937, 1939 and 2003), as well a total of 8 other medals in the Eurobasket, the World Championships and the Olympic Games. The men's national team also has extremely high TV ratings as about 76% of the country's population watched their games live in 2014. Lithuania hosted the Eurobasket in 1939 and 2011. The historic Lithuanian basketball team BC Žalgiris, from Kaunas, won the European basketball league Euroleague in 1999. Lithuania has produced a number of NBA players, including Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame inductees Arvydas Sabonis and Šarūnas Marčiulionis, and current NBA players Jonas Valančiūnas and Domantas Sabonis.
Lithuania has won a total of 25 medals at the Olympic Games, including 6 gold medals in athletics, modern pentathlon, shooting, and swimming. Numerous other Lithuanians won Olympic medals representing Soviet Union. Discus thrower Virgilijus Alekna is the most successful Olympic athlete of independent Lithuania, having won gold medals in the 2000 Sydney and 2004 Athens games, as well as a bronze in 2008 Beijing Olympics and numerous World Championship medals. More recently, the gold medal won by a then 15-year-old swimmer Rūta Meilutytė at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London sparked a rise in popularity for the sport in Lithuania.
Lithuania has produced prominent athletes in athletics, modern pentathlon, road and track cycling, chess, rowing, aerobatics, strongman, wrestling, boxing, mixed martial arts, Kyokushin Karate and other sports.
Lithuania will host the 2020 FIFA Futsal World Cup. It will be the first time Lithuania has hosted and participated in any FIFA tournament.
Few Lithuanian athletes have found success in winter sports, although facilities are provided by several ice rinks and skiing slopes, including Snow Arena, the first indoor ski slope in the Baltics. In 2018 Lithuania national ice hockey team won gold medals at the 2018 IIHF World Championship Division I.
A Lithuanian ethnic sport, known since the 17th century is ritinis.
Lithuanians annually participate in the Dakar Rally. Antanas Juknevičius, Vaidotas Žala and Benediktas Vanagas are well known internationally.
The following are links to international rankings of Lithuania from selected research institutes and foundations including economic output and various composite indexes.
Various sources classify Lithuania differently for statistical and other purposes. For example, United Nations and Eurovoc, among others, classify it as northern Europe, the CIA World Factbook classifies it as eastern Europe, and Encyclopedia Britannica locates it in northeastern Europe. Usage varies greatly, and controversially, in press sources. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17675 |
Relativist fallacy
The relativist fallacy, also known as the subjectivist fallacy, is claiming that something is true for one person but not true for someone else. The fallacy is supposed to rest on the law of noncontradiction. The fallacy applies only to objective facts, or what are alleged to be objective facts, rather than to facts about personal tastes or subjective experiences, and only to facts regarded in the same sense and at the same time.
There are at least two ways to interpret "the relativist fallacy": either as identical to relativism (generally), or as the ad hoc adoption of a relativist stance purely to defend a controversial position.
On the one hand, discussions of the relativist fallacy that portray it as "identical to" relativism (e.g., linguistic relativism or cultural relativism) are themselves committing a commonly identified fallacy of informal logic—namely, begging the question against an earnest, intelligent, logically competent relativist. It is itself a fallacy to describe a controversial view as a "fallacy"—not, at least, without arguing that it is a fallacy. In any event, it does not do to argue as follows:
This is an example of circular reasoning. The second step includes an argument from fallacy.
On the other hand, if someone adopts a simple relativist stance as an ad hoc defense of a controversial or otherwise compromised position—saying, in effect, that "what is true for you is not necessarily true for me," and thereby attempting to avoid having to mount any further defense of the position—one might be said to have committed a fallacy. The accusation of having committed a fallacy might rest on either of two grounds: (1) the relativism on which the bogus defense rests is so simple and meritless that it straightforwardly contradicts the Law of Non-Contradiction; or (2) the defense (and thus the fallacy itself) is an example of ad hoc reasoning. It puts one in the position of asserting or implying that truth or standards of logical consistency are relative to a particular thinker or group and that under some other standard, the position is correct despite its failure to stand up to logic.
Determining whether someone has committed a relativist fallacy—by any interpretation—requires distinguishing between things that are true "for" a particular person, and things that are true "about" that person. Take, for example, the statement proffered by Jim, "More Americans than ever are overweight." One may introduce arguments for and against this proposition, based upon such things as standards of statistical analysis, the definition of "overweight," etc. The position answers to objective logical debate. If Joe answers Jim, saying "That may be true for you, but it is not true for me," he has given an answer that is fallacious as well as somewhat meaningless in the context of Jim's original statement.
Conversely, take the new statement by Jim, who is tall, " is grossly overweight." Joe, who is , and weighs an exact, well-conditioned , replies, "That may be true for you, but it is not true for me." In this context, Joe's reply is both meaningful and arguably accurate. As he is discussing something that is true "about" himself, he is not barred from making an argument that considers subjective facts, and so he does not commit the fallacy. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17676 |
False dilemma
A false dilemma (or sometimes called false dichotomy) is a type of informal fallacy, more specifically one of the correlative-based fallacies, in which a statement falsely claims an "either/or" situation, when in fact there is at least one additional logically valid option.
The false dilemma fallacy can also arise simply by accidental omission of additional options rather than by deliberate deception. For example, "Stacey spoke out against socialism, therefore she must be a fascist" (she may be neither socialist nor fascist or a socialist who disagrees with portions of socialism). "Roger opposed an atheistic argument against Christianity, so he must be a Christian" (When it's assumed the opposition by itself means he's a Christian). Roger might be an atheist who disagrees with the logic of some particular argument against Christianity. Additionally, it can be the result of habitual tendency, whatever the cause, to view the world with limited sets of options.
Some philosophers and scholars believe that "unless a distinction can be made rigorous and precise it isn't really a distinction". An exception is analytic philosopher John Searle, who called it an incorrect assumption that produces false dichotomies. Searle insists that "it is a condition of the adequacy of a precise theory of an indeterminate phenomenon that it should precisely characterize that phenomenon as indeterminate; and a distinction is no less a distinction for allowing for a family of related, marginal, diverging cases." Similarly, when two options are presented, they often are, although not always, two extreme points on some spectrum of possibilities; this may lend credence to the larger argument by giving the impression that the options are mutually exclusive, even though they need not be. Furthermore, the options in false dichotomies typically are presented as being collectively exhaustive, in which case the fallacy may be overcome, or at least weakened, by considering other possibilities, or perhaps by considering a whole spectrum of possibilities, as in fuzzy logic.
This issue arises from real dichotomies in nature, the most prevalent example is the occurrence of an event. It either happened or it did not happen. This ontology sets a logical construct that cannot be reasonably applied to epistemology.
False dilemma refers to misuse of the "xor" or "nand" operators. For misuse of the "and" operator, see False conjunction.
Common phrases expressing similar or synonymous concepts include:
The presentation of a false choice often reflects a deliberate attempt to eliminate several options that may occupy the middle ground on an issue. A common argument against noise pollution laws involves a false choice. It might be argued that in New York City noise should not be regulated, because if it were, a number of businesses would be required to close. This argument assumes that, for example, a bar must be shut down to prevent disturbing levels of noise emanating from it after midnight. This ignores the fact that a law could require the bar to lower its noise levels, or install soundproofing structural elements to keep the noise from excessively transmitting onto others' properties.
In psychology, a phenomenon related to the false dilemma is "black-and-white thinking" or "thinking in black and white". There are people who routinely engage in black-and-white thinking, an example of which is someone who categorizes other people as all good or all bad. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17687 |
Equivocation
In logic, equivocation ('calling two different things by the same name') is an informal fallacy resulting from the use of a particular word/expression in multiple senses within an argument.
It is a type of ambiguity that stems from a phrase having two distinct meanings, not from the grammar or structure of the sentence.
Below is an example of equivocation in a syllogism (a logical chain of reasoning).
The first instance of "man" implies the entire human species, while the second implies just those who are male. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17690 |
Sampling bias
In statistics, sampling bias is a bias in which a sample is collected in such a way that some members of the intended population have a lower or higher sampling probability than others. It results in a biased sample, a non-random sample of a population (or non-human factors) in which all individuals, or instances, were not equally likely to have been selected. If this is not accounted for, results can be erroneously attributed to the phenomenon under study rather than to the method of sampling.
Medical sources sometimes refer to sampling bias as ascertainment bias. Ascertainment bias has basically the same definition, but is still sometimes classified as a separate type of bias.
Sampling bias is usually classified as a subtype of selection bias, sometimes specifically termed sample selection bias, but some classify it as a separate type of bias.
A distinction, albeit not universally accepted, of sampling bias is that it undermines the external validity of a test (the ability of its results to be generalized to the entire population), while selection bias mainly addresses internal validity for differences or similarities found in the sample at hand. In this sense, errors occurring in the process of gathering the sample or cohort cause sampling bias, while errors in any process thereafter cause selection bias.
However, selection bias and sampling bias are often used synonymously.
The study of medical conditions begins with anecdotal reports. By their nature, such reports only include those referred for diagnosis and treatment. A child who can't function in school is more likely to be diagnosed with dyslexia than a child who struggles but passes. A child examined for one condition is more likely to be tested for and diagnosed with other conditions, skewing comorbidity statistics. As certain diagnoses become associated with behavior problems or intellectual disability, parents try to prevent their children from being stigmatized with those diagnoses, introducing further bias. Studies carefully selected from whole populations are showing that many conditions are much more common and usually much milder than formerly believed.
Geneticists are limited in how they can obtain data from human populations. As an example, consider a human characteristic. We are interested in deciding if the characteristic is inherited as a simple Mendelian trait. Following the laws of Mendelian inheritance, if the parents in a family do not have the characteristic, but carry the allele for it, they are carriers (e.g. a non-expressive heterozygote). In this case their children will each have a 25% chance of showing the characteristic. The problem arises because we can't tell which families have both parents as carriers (heterozygous) unless they have a child who exhibits the characteristic. The description follows the textbook by Sutton.
The figure shows the pedigrees of all the possible families with two children when the parents are carriers (Aa).
The probabilities of each of the families being selected is given in the figure, with the sample frequency of affected children also given. In this simple case, the researcher will look for a frequency of or for the characteristic, depending on the type of truncate selection used.
An example of selection bias is called the "caveman effect". Much of our understanding of prehistoric peoples comes from caves, such as cave paintings made nearly 40,000 years ago. If there had been contemporary paintings on trees, animal skins or hillsides, they would have been washed away long ago. Similarly, evidence of fire pits, middens, burial sites, etc. are most likely to remain intact to the modern era in caves. Prehistoric people are associated with caves because that is where the data still exists, not necessarily because most of them lived in caves for most of their lives.
Sampling bias is problematic because it is possible that a statistic computed of the sample is systematically erroneous. Sampling bias can lead to a systematic over- or under-estimation of the corresponding parameter in the population. Sampling bias occurs in practice as it is practically impossible to ensure perfect randomness in sampling. If the degree of misrepresentation is small, then the sample can be treated as a reasonable approximation to a random sample. Also, if the sample does not differ markedly in the quantity being measured, then a biased sample can still be a reasonable estimate.
The word bias has a strong negative connotation. Indeed, biases sometimes come from deliberate intent to mislead or other scientific fraud. In statistical usage, bias merely represents a mathematical property, no matter if it is deliberate or unconscious or due to imperfections in the instruments used for observation. While some individuals might deliberately use a biased sample to produce misleading results, more often, a biased sample is just a reflection of the difficulty in obtaining a truly representative sample, or ignorance of the bias in their process of measurement or analysis. An example of how ignorance of a bias can exist is in the widespread use of a ratio (a.k.a. fold change) as a measure of difference in biology. Because it is easier to achieve a large ratio with two small numbers with a given difference, and relatively more difficult to achieve a large ratio with two large numbers with a larger difference, large significant differences may be missed when comparing relatively large numeric measurements. Some have called this a 'demarcation bias' because the use of a ratio (division) instead of a difference (subtraction) removes the results of the analysis from science into pseudoscience (See Demarcation Problem).
Some samples use a biased statistical design which nevertheless allows the estimation of parameters. The U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, for example, deliberately oversamples from minority populations in many of its nationwide surveys in order to gain sufficient precision for estimates within these groups. These surveys require the use of sample weights (see later on) to produce proper estimates across all ethnic groups. Provided that certain conditions are met (chiefly that the weights are calculated and used correctly) these samples permit accurate estimation of population parameters.
A classic example of a biased sample and the misleading results it produced occurred in 1936. In the early days of opinion polling, the American "Literary Digest" magazine collected over two million postal surveys and predicted that the Republican candidate in the U.S. presidential election, Alf Landon, would beat the incumbent president, Franklin Roosevelt, by a large margin. The result was the exact opposite. The Literary Digest survey represented a sample collected from readers of the magazine, supplemented by records of registered automobile owners and telephone users. This sample included an over-representation of individuals who were rich, who, as a group, were more likely to vote for the Republican candidate. In contrast, a poll of only 50 thousand citizens selected by George Gallup's organization successfully predicted the result, leading to the popularity of the Gallup poll.
Another classic example occurred in the 1948 presidential election. On election night, the Chicago Tribune printed the headline "DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN", which turned out to be mistaken. In the morning the grinning president-elect, Harry S. Truman, was photographed holding a newspaper bearing this headline. The reason the Tribune was mistaken is that their editor trusted the results of a phone survey. Survey research was then in its infancy, and few academics realized that a sample of telephone users was not representative of the general population. Telephones were not yet widespread, and those who had them tended to be prosperous and have stable addresses. (In many cities, the Bell System telephone directory contained the same names as the Social Register). In addition, the Gallup poll that the Tribune based its headline on was over two weeks old at the time of the printing.
A more recent example is the COVID-19 pandemic, where variations in sampling bias in COVID-19 testing have been shown to account for wide variations in both case fatality rates and the age distribution of cases across countries.
If entire segments of the population are excluded from a sample, then there are no adjustments that can produce estimates that are representative of the entire population. But if some groups are underrepresented and the degree of underrepresentation can be quantified, then sample weights can correct the bias. However, the success of the correction is limited to the selection model chosen. If certain variables are missing the methods used to correct the bias could be inaccurate.
For example, a hypothetical population might include 10 million men and 10 million women. Suppose that a biased sample of 100 patients included 20 men and 80 women. A researcher could correct for this imbalance by attaching a weight of 2.5 for each male and 0.625 for each female. This would adjust any estimates to achieve the same expected value as a sample that included exactly 50 men and 50 women, unless men and women differed in their likelihood of taking part in the survey. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17692 |
Slippery slope
A slippery slope argument (SSA), in logic, critical thinking, political rhetoric, and caselaw, is often viewed as a logical fallacy in which a party asserts that a relatively small first step leads to a chain of related events culminating in some significant (usually negative) effect. The core of the slippery slope argument is that a specific decision under debate is likely to result in unintended consequences. The strength of such an argument depends on the warrant, i.e. whether or not one can demonstrate a process that leads to the significant effect. This type of argument is sometimes used as a form of fearmongering, in which the probable consequences of a given action are exaggerated in an attempt to scare the audience.
The fallacious sense of "slippery slope" is often used synonymously with continuum fallacy, in that it ignores the possibility of middle ground and assumes a discrete transition from category A to category B. In a non-fallacious sense, including use as a legal principle, a middle-ground possibility is acknowledged, and reasoning is provided for the likelihood of the predicted outcome.
Other idioms for the slippery slope argument are the "thin end/edge of the wedge", the "camel's nose in the tent", or "If You Give a Mouse a Cookie".
Some writers distinguish between a slippery slope "event" and a slippery slope "argument". A slippery slope event can be represented by a series of conditional statements, namely:
The idea being that through a series of intermediate steps p will imply z. Some writers point out that strict necessity isn't required and it can still be characterized as a slippery slope if at each stage the next step is plausible. This is important for with strict implication p will imply z but if at each step the probability is say 90% then the more steps there are the less likely it becomes that p will cause z.
A slippery slope "argument" is typically a negative argument where there is an attempt to discourage someone from taking a course of action because if they do it will lead to some unacceptable conclusion. Some writers point out that an argument with the same structure might be used in a positive way in which someone is encouraged to take the first step because it leads to a desirable conclusion.
If someone is "accused" of using a slippery slope argument then it is being suggested they are guilty of fallacious reasoning, and while they are claiming that p implies z, for whatever reason, this is not the case. In logic and critical thinking textbooks, slippery slopes and slippery slope arguments are normally discussed as a form of fallacy, although there may be an acknowledgement that non-fallacious forms of the argument can also exist.
Different writers have classified slippery slope arguments in different and often contradictory ways, but there are two basic types of argument that have been described as slippery slope arguments. One type has been called "the causal slippery slope", and the distinguishing feature of this type is that the various steps leading from p to z are events with each event being the cause of the next in the sequence. The second type might be called "the judgmental slippery slope" with the idea being that the 'slope' does not consist of a series of events but is such that, for whatever reason, if a person makes one particular judgment they will rationally have to make another and so on. The judgmental type may be further sub-divided into conceptual slippery slopes and decisional slippery slopes.
Conceptual slippery slopes, which Trudy Govier calls "the fallacy of slippery assimilation", are closely related to the sorites paradox so, for example, in the context of talking about slippery slopes Merilee Salmon can say, "The slippery slope is an ancient form of reasoning. According to van Fraassen ("The Scientific Image"), the argument is found in Sextus Empiricus that incest is not immoral, on the grounds that 'touching your mother's big toe with your little finger is not immoral, and all the rest differs only by degree.'"
Decisional slippery slopes are similar to conceptual slippery slopes in that they rely on there being a continuum with no clear dividing lines such that if you decide to accept one position or course of action then there will, either now or in the future, be no rational grounds for not accepting the next position or course of action in the sequence.
The difficulty in classifying slippery slope arguments is that there is no clear consensus in the literature as to how terminology should be used. It has been said that whilst these two fallacies "have a relationship which may justify treating them together", they are also distinct, and "the fact that they share a name is unfortunate". Some writers treat them side by side but emphasize how they differ. Some writers use the term "slippery slope" to refer to one kind of argument but not the other, but don't agree on which one, whilst others use the term to refer to both. So, for example,
The metaphor of the "slippery slope" dates back at least to Cicero's essay "Laelius de Amicitia" (XII.41). The title character Gaius Laelius Sapiens uses the metaphor to describe the decline of the Republic upon the impending election of Gaius Gracchus: "Affairs soon move on, for they glide readily down the path of ruin when once they have taken a start."
Walton suggests Alfred Sidgwick should be credited as the first writer on informal logic to describe what would today be called a slippery slope argument.
Sidgwick says this is "popularly known as the objection to a thin end of a wedge" but might be classified now as a decisional slippery slope. However, the wedge metaphor also captures the idea that unpleasant end result is a wider application of a principle associated with the initial decision which is often a feature of decisional slippery slopes due to their incremental nature but may be absent from causal slippery slopes.
T. Edward Damer, in his book "Attacking Faulty Reasoning", describes what others might call a causal slippery slope but says,
Instead Damer prefers to call it the "domino fallacy". Howard Kahane suggests that the domino variation of the fallacy has gone out of fashion because it was tied the domino theory for the United States becoming involved in the war in Vietnam and although the U.S. lost that war "it is primarily communist dominoes that have fallen".
Frank Saliger notes that "in the German-speaking world the dramatic image of "the dam burst" seems to predominate, in English speaking circles talk is more of the slippery slope argument" and that "in German writing dam burst and slippery slope arguments are treated as broadly synonymous. In particular the structural analyses of slippery slope arguments derived from English writing are largely transferred directly to the dam burst argument."
In exploring the differences between the two metaphors he comments that in the dam burst the initial action is clearly in the foreground and there is a rapid movement towards the resulting events whereas in the slippery slope metaphor the downward slide has at least equal prominence to the initial action and it "conveys the impression of a slower 'step-by-step' process where the decision maker as participant slides inexorably downwards under the weight of its own successive (erroneous) decisions." Despite these differences Saliger continues to treat the two metaphors as being synonymous. Walton argues that although the two are comparable "the metaphor of the dam bursting carries with it no essential element of a sequence of steps from an initial action through a gray zone with its accompanying loss of control eventuated in the ultimate outcome of the ruinous disaster. For these reasons, it seems best to propose drawing a distinction between dam burst arguments and slippery slope arguments."
Eric Lode notes that "commentators have used numerous different metaphors to refer to arguments that have this rough form. For example, people have called such arguments "wedge" or "thin edge of the wedge", "camel's nose" or "camel's nose in the tent", "parade of horrors" or "parade of horribles", "domino", Boiling Frog and "this could snowball" arguments. All of these metaphors suggest that allowing one practice or policy could lead us to allow a series of other practices or policies." Bruce Waller says it is lawyers who often call it the "parade of horribles" argument while politicians seem to favor "the camel's nose is in the tent".
Given the disagreement over what constitutes a genuine slippery slope argument, it is to be expected that there are differences in the way they are defined. Lode says that "although all SSAs share certain features, they are a family of related arguments rather than a class of arguments whose members all share the same form."
Various writers have attempted to produce a general taxonomy of these different kinds of slippery slope. Other writers have given a general definition that will encompass the diversity of slippery slope arguments. Eugene Volokh says, "I think the most useful definition of a slippery slope is one that covers all situations where decision A, which you might find appealing, ends up materially increasing the probability that others will bring about decision B, which you oppose."
Those who hold that slippery slopes are causal generally give a simple definition, provide some appropriate examples and perhaps add some discussion as to the difficulty of determining whether the argument is reasonable or fallacious. Most of the more detailed analysis of slippery slopes has been done by those who hold that genuine slippery slopes are of the decisional kind.
Lode, having claimed that SSAs are not a single class of arguments whose members all share the same form, nevertheless goes on to suggest the following common features.
Rizzo and Whitman identify slightly different features. They say, "Although there is no paradigm case of the slippery slope argument, there are characteristic features of all such arguments. The key components of slippery slope arguments are three:
Walton notes that these three features will be common to all slippery slopes but objects that there needs to be more clarity on the nature of the 'mechanism' and a way of distinguishing between slippery slope arguments and arguments from negative consequences.
Corner et al. say that a slippery slope has "four distinct components:
The alleged danger lurking on the slippery slope is the fear that a presently unacceptable proposal (C) will (by any number of psychological processes—see, e.g., ) in the future be re-evaluated as acceptable."
Walton adds the requirement that there must be a loss of control. He says, there are four basic components, "One is a first step, an action or policy being considered. A second is a sequence in which this action leads to other actions. A third is a so-called gray zone or area of indeterminacy along the sequence where the agent loses control. The fourth is the catastrophic outcome at the very end of the sequence. The idea is that as soon as the agent in question takes the first step he will be impelled forward through the sequence, losing control so that in the end he will reach the catastrophic outcome. Not all of these components are typically made explicit..."
Logic and critical thinking textbooks typically discuss slippery slope arguments as a form of fallacy but usually acknowledge that "slippery slope arguments can be good ones if the slope is real—that is, if there is good evidence that the consequences of the initial action are highly likely to occur. The strength of the argument depends on two factors. The first is the strength of each link in the causal chain; the argument cannot be stronger than its weakest link. The second is the number of links; the more links there are, the more likely it is that other factors could alter the consequences."
If the conditional "if p then…z" is understood strictly then slippery slope arguments about the real world are likely to fall short of the standards required for sound deductive reasoning and might be dismissed as a fallacy but, as Walton points out, slippery slope arguments are not formal proofs, they are practical arguments about likely consequences. Rizzo says, "first and foremost, slippery slopes are slopes of arguments: One practical argument tends to lead to another, which means that one justified action, often a decision, tends to lead to another. When we say that one argument (and its supported action) tends to lead to another, we mean that it makes the occurrence of the subsequent argument more likely, not that it necessarily makes it highly likely or, still less, inevitable. Hence the transition between arguments is not based on strict logical entailment." Essentially, if accepting p raises the probability of z sufficiently that the risk of it happening passes a tolerable threshold the argument will be considered reasonable. There is, of course, considerable room for disagreement as to the likelihood of z occurring and what would be a tolerable level of risk.
Kahane says, "The slippery slope fallacy is committed only when we accept without further justification or argument that once the first step is taken, the others are going to follow, or that whatever would justify the first step would in fact justify the rest." The problem then arises as to how to evaluate the likelihood that certain steps would follow.
Volokh's article "The Mechanisms of the Slippery Slope" sets out to examine the various ways in which making one decision might render another decision more likely. He considers such things as implementing A making B more cost effective and implementing A changing attitudes such that acceptance of B will become more likely. He says, "If you are faced with the pragmatic question "Does it make sense for me to support A, given that it might lead others to support B?," you should consider all the mechanisms through which A might lead to B, whether they are logical or psychological, judicial or legislative, gradual or sudden ... You should think about the entire range of possible ways that A can change the conditions—whether those conditions are public attitudes, political alignments, costs and benefits, or what have you—under which others will consider B."
Volokh concludes by claiming that the analysis in his article "implicitly rebuts the argument that slippery slope arguments are inherently logically fallacious: the claim that A's will inevitably lead to B's as a matter of logical compulsion might be mistaken, but the more modest claim that A's may make B's more likely seems plausible." A similar conclusion was reached by Corner et al., who after investigating the psychological mechanism of the slippery slope argument say, "Despite their philosophical notoriety, SSAs are used (and seem to be accepted) in a wide variety of practical contexts. The experimental evidence reported in this paper suggests that in some circumstances, their practical acceptability can be justified, not just because the decision-theoretic framework renders them subjectively rational, but also because it is demonstrated how, objectively, the slippery slopes they claim do in fact exist. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17696 |
Argument from ignorance
Argument from ignorance (from ), also known as appeal to ignorance (in which "ignorance" represents "a lack of contrary evidence"), is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false or a proposition is false because it has not yet been proven true. This represents a type of false dichotomy in that it excludes the possibility that there may have been an insufficient investigation to prove that the proposition is either true or false. It also does not allow for the possibility that the answer is unknowable, only knowable in the future, or neither completely true nor completely false. In debates, appeals to ignorance are sometimes used in an attempt to shift the burden of proof. In research, low-power experiments are subject to false negatives (there would have been an observable effect if there had been a larger sample size or better experimental design) and false positives (there was an observable effect; however, this was a coincidence due purely to random chance, or the events correlate, but there is no cause-effect relationship). The term was likely coined by philosopher John Locke in the late 17th century.
These examples contain or represent missing information.
These examples have the potential for "false negative" results.
These examples contain definite evidence that can be used to show, indicate, suggest, infer or deduce the non-existence or non-presence of something.
Contraposition is a logically valid rule of inference that allows the creation of a new proposition from the negation and reordering of an existing one. The method applies to any proposition of the type "If A then B" and says that negating all the variables and switching them back to front leads to a new proposition i.e. "If Not-B then Not-A" that is just as true as the original one and that the first implies the second and the second implies the first.
Transposition is exactly the same thing as Contraposition, described in a different language.
"Null result" is a term often used in science to indicate "evidence of absence". A search for water on the ground may yield a null result (the ground is dry); therefore, it probably did not rain.
Arguments from self-knowing take the form:
In practice these arguments are often unsound and rely on the truth of the supporting premise. For example, the claim that "If I had just sat on a wild porcupine then I would know it" is probably not fallacious and depends entirely on the truth of the first premise (the ability to know it). | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17699 |
Leo (constellation)
Leo is one of the constellations of the zodiac, lying between Cancer the crab to the west and Virgo the maiden to the east. It is located in the Northern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for lion, and to the ancient Greeks represented the Nemean Lion killed by the mythical Greek hero Heracles meaning 'Glory of Hera' (known to the ancient Romans as Hercules) as one of his twelve labors. Its symbol is (Unicode ♌). One of the 48 constellations described by the 2nd-century astronomer Ptolemy, Leo remains one of the 88 modern constellations today, and one of the most easily recognizable due to its many bright stars and a distinctive shape that is reminiscent of the crouching lion it depicts. The lion's mane and shoulders also form an asterism known as "The Sickle," which to modern observers may resemble a backwards "question mark."
Leo contains many bright stars, many of which were individually identified by the ancients. There are four stars of first or second magnitude, which render this constellation especially prominent:
Other named stars in Leo include Mu Leonis, Rasalas (an abbreviation of "Al Ras al Asad al Shamaliyy", meaning "The Lion's Head Toward the South"); and Theta Leonis, Chertan or Coxa ("hip").
Leo is also home to one bright variable star, the red giant R Leonis. It is a Mira variable with a minimum magnitude of 10 and normal maximum magnitude of 6; it periodically brightens to magnitude 4.4. R Leonis, 330 light-years from Earth, has a period of 310 days and a diameter of 450 solar diameters.
The star Wolf 359 (CN Leonis), one of the nearest stars to Earth at 7.8 light-years away, is in Leo. Wolf 359 is a red dwarf of magnitude 13.5; it periodically brightens by one magnitude or less because it is a flare star. Gliese 436, a faint star in Leo about 33 light-years away from the Sun, is orbited by a transiting Neptune-mass extrasolar planet.
The carbon star CW Leo (IRC +10216) is the brightest star in the night sky at the infrared N-band (10 μm wavelength).
The star SDSS J102915+172927 (Caffau's star) is a population II star in the galactic halo seen in Leo. It is about 13 billion years old, making it one of the oldest stars in the Galaxy. It has the lowest metallicity of any known star.
Modern astronomers, including Tycho Brahe in 1602, excised a group of stars that once made up the "tuft" of the lion's tail and used them to form the new constellation Coma Berenices (Berenice's hair), although there was precedent for that designation among the ancient Greeks and Romans.
Leo contains many bright galaxies; Messier 65, Messier 66, Messier 95, Messier 96, Messier 105, and NGC 3628 are the most famous, the first two being part of the Leo Triplet.
The Leo Ring, a cloud of hydrogen, helium gas, is found in orbit of two galaxies found within this constellation.M66 is a spiral galaxy that is part of the Leo Triplet, whose other two members are M65 and NGC 3628. It is at a distance of 37 million light-years and has a somewhat distorted shape due to gravitational interactions with the other members of the Triplet, which are pulling stars away from M66. Eventually, the outermost stars may form a dwarf galaxy orbiting M66. Both M65 and M66 are visible in large binoculars or small telescopes, but their concentrated nuclei and elongation are only visible in large amateur instruments.
M95 and M96 are both spiral galaxies 20 million light-years from Earth. Though they are visible as fuzzy objects in small telescopes, their structure is only visible in larger instruments. M95 is a barred spiral galaxy. M105 is about a degree away from the M95/M96 pair; it is an elliptical galaxy of the 9th magnitude, also about 20 million light-years from Earth.
NGC 2903 is a barred spiral galaxy discovered by William Herschel in 1784. It is very similar in size and shape to the Milky Way and is located 25 million light-years from Earth. In its core, NGC 2903 has many "hotspots", which have been found to be near regions of star formation. The star formation in this region is thought to be due to the presence of the dusty bar, which sends shock waves through its rotation to an area with a diameter of 2,000 light-years. The outskirts of the galaxy have many young open clusters.
Leo is also home to some of the largest structures in the observable universe. Some of the structures found in the constellation are the Clowes–Campusano LQG, U1.11, U1.54, and the Huge-LQG, which are all large quasar groups; the latter being the second largest structure known (see also NQ2-NQ4 GRB overdensity).
The Leonids occur in November, peaking on November 14–15, and have a radiant close to Gamma Leonis. Its parent body is Comet Tempel-Tuttle, which causes significant outbursts every 35 years. The normal peak rate is approximately 10 meteors per hour.
The January Leonids are a minor shower that peaks between January 1 and 7.
Leo was one of the earliest recognized constellations, with archaeological evidence that the Mesopotamians had a similar constellation as early as 4000 BCE. The Persians called Leo "Ser" or "Shir"; the Turks, "Artan"; the Syrians, "Aryo"; the Jews, "Arye"; the Indians, "Simha", all meaning "lion".
Some mythologists believe that in Sumeria, Leo represented the monster Humbaba, who was killed by Gilgamesh.
In Babylonian astronomy, the constellation was called UR.GU.LA, the "Great Lion"; the bright star Regulus was known as "the star that stands at the Lion's breast." Regulus also had distinctly regal associations, as it was known as the King Star.
In Greek mythology, Leo was identified as the Nemean Lion which was killed by Heracles (Hercules to the Romans) during the first of his twelve labours. The Nemean Lion would take women as hostages to its lair in a cave, luring warriors from nearby towns to save the damsel in distress, to their misfortune. The Lion was impervious to any weaponry; thus, the warriors' clubs, swords, and spears were rendered useless against it. Realizing that he must defeat the Lion with his bare hands, Hercules slipped into the Lion's cave and engaged it at close quarters. When the Lion pounced, Hercules caught it in midair, one hand grasping the Lion's forelegs and the other its hind legs, and bent it backwards, breaking its back and freeing the trapped maidens. Zeus commemorated this labor by placing the Lion in the sky.
The Roman poet Ovid called it "Herculeus Leo" and "Violentus Leo". "Bacchi Sidus" (star of Bacchus) was another of its titles, the god Bacchus always being identified with this animal. However, Manilius called it "Jovis et Junonis Sidus" (Star of Jupiter and Juno).
, the Sun appears in the constellation Leo from August 10 to September 15. In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Leo from July 23 to August 22, and in sidereal astrology, from August 16 to September 17.
Leo is commonly represented as if the sickle-shaped asterism of stars is the back of the Lion's head. The sickle is marked by six stars: Epsilon Leonis, Mu Leonis, Zeta Leonis, Gamma Leonis, Eta Leonis, and Alpha Leonis. The lion's tail is marked by Beta Leonis (Denebola) and the rest of his body is delineated by Delta Leonis and Theta Leonis.
H.A. Rey has suggested an alternative way to connect the stars, which graphically shows a lion walking. The stars Delta Leonis, Gamma Leonis, Eta Leonis, and Theta Leonis form the body of the lion, with Gamma Leonis being of the second magnitude and Delta Leonis and Theta Leonis being of the third magnitude. The stars Gamma Leonis, Zeta Leonis, Mu Leonis, Epsilon Leonis, and Eta Leonis form the lion's neck, with Epsilon Leonis being of the third magnitude. The stars Mu Leonis, Kappa Leonis, Lambda Leonis, and Epsilon Leonis form the head of the lion. Delta Leonis and Beta Leonis form the lion's tail: Beta Leonis, also known as Denebola, is the bright tip of the tail with a magnitude of two. The stars Theta Leonis, Iota Leonis, and Sigma Leonis form the left hind leg of the lion, with Sigma Leonis being the foot. The stars Theta Leonis and Rho Leonis form the right hind leg, with Rho Leonis being the foot. The stars Eta Leonis and Alpha Leonis mark the lion's heart, with Alpha Leonis, also known as Regulus, being the bright star of magnitude one. The stars Eta Leonis and Omicron Leonis form the right front foot of the Lion.
USS Leonis (AK-128) was a United States Navy Crater class cargo ship named after the Latin version of this constellation name." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17703 |
Libra (constellation)
Libra is a constellation of the zodiac and is located in the Southern celestial hemisphere. Its name is Latin for weighing scales, and its symbol is (Unicode ♎). It is fairly faint, with no first magnitude stars, and lies between Virgo to the west and Scorpius to the east. Beta Librae, also known as Zubeneschamali, is the brightest star in the constellation. Three star systems are known to have planets.
Overall, there are 83 stars within the constellation's borders brighter than or equal to apparent magnitude 6.5.
The brightest stars in Libra form a quadrangle that distinguishes it for the unaided observer. Traditionally, Alpha and Beta Librae are considered to represent the scales' balance beam, while Gamma and Sigma are the weighing pans.
Alpha Librae, called Zubenelgenubi, is a multiple star system divisible into two stars when seen through binoculars, The primary (Alpha2 Librae) is a blue-white star of magnitude 2.7 and the secondary (Alpha1 Librae) is a white star of magnitude 5.2 and spectral type F3V that is 74.9 ± 0.7 light-years from Earth. Its traditional name means "the southern claw". Zubeneschamali (Beta Librae) is the corresponding "northern claw" to Zubenelgenubi. The brightest star in Libra, it is a green-tinged star of magnitude 2.6, 160 light-years from Earth. Gamma Librae is called Zubenelakrab, which means "the scorpion's claw", completing the suite of names referring to Libra's archaic status. It is an orange giant of magnitude 3.9, 152 light-years from Earth.
Iota Librae is a complex multiple star, 377 light-years from Earth, with both optical and true binary components. The primary appears as a blue-white star of magnitude 4.5; it is a binary star indivisible in even the largest amateur instruments with a period of 23 years. The secondary, visible in small telescopes as a star of magnitude 9.4, is a binary with two components, magnitudes 10 and 11. There is an optical companion to Iota Librae; 25 Librae is a star of magnitude 6.1, 219 light-years from Earth and visible in binoculars. Mu Librae is a binary star divisible in medium-aperture amateur telescopes, 235 light-years from Earth. The primary is of magnitude 5.7 and the secondary is of magnitude 6.8.
Delta Librae is an Algol-type eclipsing variable star, 304 lightyears from Earth. It has a period of 2 days, 8 hours; its minimum magnitude of 5.9 and its maximum magnitude is 4.9. FX Librae, designated 48 Librae, is a shell star of magnitude 4.9. Shell stars, like Pleione and Gamma Cassiopeiae, are blue supergiants with irregular variations caused by their abnormally high speed of rotation. This ejects gas from the star's equator.
Sigma Librae (the proper name is Brachium) was formerly known as Gamma Scorpii despite being well inside the boundaries of Libra. It was not redesignated as Sigma Librae until 1851 by Benjamin A. Gould.
Libra was known in Babylonian astronomy as "MUL Zibanu" (the "scales" or "balance"), or alternatively as the Claws of the Scorpion. The scales were held sacred to the sun god Shamash, who was also the patron of truth and justice.
It was also seen as the Scorpion's Claws in ancient Greece. Since these times, Libra has been associated with law, fairness and civility. In Arabic "zubānā" means "scorpion's claws", and likely similarly in other Semitic languages: this resemblance of words may be why the Scorpion's claws became the Scales. It has also been suggested that the scales are an allusion to the fact that when the sun entered this part of the ecliptic at the autumnal equinox, the days and nights are equal. Libra's status as the location of the equinox earned the equinox the name "First Point of Libra", though this location ceased to coincide with the constellation in 730 because of the precession of the equinoxes.
In ancient Egypt the three brightest stars of Libra (α, β, and σ Librae) formed a constellation that was viewed as a boat. Libra is a constellation not mentioned by Eudoxus or Aratus. Libra is mentioned by Manetho (3rd century B.C.) and Geminus (1st century B.C.), and included by Ptolemy in his 48 asterisms. Ptolemy catalogued 17 stars, Tycho Brahe 10, and Johannes Hevelius 20. It only became a constellation in ancient Rome, when it began to represent the scales held by Astraea, the goddess of justice, associated with Virgo in the Greek mythology.
Libra is bordered by the head of Serpens to the north, Virgo to the northwest, Hydra to the southwest, the corner of Centaurus to the southwest, Lupus to the south, Scorpius to the east and Ophiuchus to the northeast. Covering 538.1 square degrees and 1.304% of the night sky, it ranks 29th of the 88 constellations in size. The three-letter abbreviation for the constellation, as adopted by the International Astronomical Union in 1922, is "Lib". The official constellation boundaries, as set by Eugène Delporte in 1930, are defined by a polygon of 12 segments ("illustrated in infobox"). In the equatorial coordinate system, the right ascension coordinates of these borders lie between and , while the declination coordinates are between −0.47° and −30.00°. The whole constellation is visible to observers south of latitude 60°N.
Libra is home to the Gliese 581 planetary system, which consists of the star Gliese 581, three confirmed planets, and two unconfirmed planets. Both Gliese 581d, and Gliese 581g are debatably the most promising candidates for life, although Gliese 581g's existences has been disputed and has not been entirely confirmed or agreed on in the scientific community. Gliese 581c is considered to be the first Earth-like extrasolar planet to be found within its parent star's habitable zone. Gliese 581e is possibly the smallest mass exoplanet orbiting a normal star found to date All of these exoplanets are of significance for establishing the likelihood of life outside of the Solar System.
The family of candidate habitable planets was extended in late September 2010 to include exoplanets around red dwarf stars because of Gliese 581g, which is a tidally locked planet in the middle of the habitable zone. Weather studies show that tidally locked planets may still have the ability to support life.
Libra is home to one bright globular cluster, NGC 5897. It is a loose cluster, 50,000 light-years from Earth; it is fairly large and has an integrated magnitude of 9. IC 1059 is a galaxy in the constellation Libra.
, the Sun appears in the constellation Libra from October 31 to November 22. In tropical astrology, the Sun is considered to be in the sign Libra from the northern autumnal equinox (c. September 23) to on or about October 23, and in sidereal astrology, from October 16 to November 15. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17704 |
Locomotive
A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, motor coach, railcar or power car; the use of these self-propelled vehicles is increasingly common for passenger trains, but rare for freight (see CargoSprinter and Iron Highway).
Traditionally, locomotives pulled trains from the front. However, push-pull operation has become common, where the train may have a locomotive (or locomotives) at the front, at the rear, or at each end. Most recently railroads have begun adopting DPU or distributed power. The front may have one or two locomotives followed by a mid train locomotive that is controlled remotely from the lead unit.
The word locomotive originates from the Latin "loco" – "from a place", ablative of "locus" "place", and the Medieval Latin "motivus", "causing motion", and is a shortened form of the term "locomotive engine", which was first used in 1814 to distinguish between self-propelled and stationary steam engines.
Prior to locomotives, the motive force for railways had been generated by various lower-technology methods such as human power, horse power, gravity or stationary engines that drove cable systems. Few such systems are still in existence today. Locomotives may generate their power from fuel (wood, coal, petroleum or natural gas), or they may take power from an outside source of electricity. It is common to classify locomotives by their source of energy. The common ones include:
A steam locomotive is a locomotive whose primary power source is a steam engine. The most common form of steam locomotive also contains a boiler to generate the steam used by the engine. The water in the boiler is heated by burning combustible material – usually coal, wood, or oil – to produce steam. The steam moves reciprocating pistons which are connected to the locomotive's main wheels, known as the "drivers". Both fuel and water supplies are carried with the locomotive, either on the locomotive itself or in wagons called "tenders" pulled behind.
The first full-scale working railway steam locomotive was built by Richard Trevithick in 1802. It was constructed for the Coalbrookdale ironworks in Shropshire in the United Kingdom though no record of it working there has survived. On 21 February 1804, the first recorded steam-hauled railway journey took place as another of Trevithick's locomotives hauled a train from the Pen-y-darren ironworks, in Merthyr Tydfil, to Abercynon in South Wales. Accompanied by Andrew Vivian, it ran with mixed success. The design incorporated a number of important innovations including the use of high-pressure steam which reduced the weight of the engine and increased its efficiency.
In 1812, Matthew Murray's twin-cylinder rack locomotive "Salamanca" first ran on the edge-railed rack-and-pinion Middleton Railway; this is generally regarded as the first commercially successful locomotive. Another well-known early locomotive was "Puffing Billy", built 1813–14 by engineer William Hedley for the Wylam Colliery near Newcastle upon Tyne. This locomotive is the oldest preserved, and is on static display in the Science Museum, London. George Stephenson built "Locomotion No. 1" for the Stockton and Darlington Railway in the north-east of England, which was the first public steam railway in the world. In 1829, his son Robert built "The Rocket" in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Rocket was entered into, and won, the Rainhill Trials. This success led to the company emerging as the pre-eminent early builder of steam locomotives used on railways in the UK, US and much of Europe. The Liverpool and Manchester Railway, built by Stephenson, opened a year later making exclusive use of steam power for passenger and goods trains.
The steam locomotive remained by far the most common type of locomotive until after World War II.
Steam locomotives are less efficient than modern diesel and electric locomotives, and a significantly larger workforce is required to operate and service them. British Rail figures showed that the cost of crewing and fuelling a steam locomotive was about two and a half times larger than the cost of supporting an equivalent diesel locomotive, and the daily mileage they could run was lower. Between about 1950 and 1970, the majority of steam locomotives were retired from commercial service and replaced with electric and diesel-electric locomotives. While North America transitioned from steam during the 1950s, and continental Europe by the 1970s, in other parts of the world, the transition happened later. Steam was a familiar technology that used widely-available fuels and in low-wage economies did not suffer as wide a cost disparity. It continued to be used in many countries until the end of the 20th century. By the end of the 20th century, almost the only steam power remaining in regular use around the world was on heritage railways.
Internal combustion locomotives use an internal combustion engine, connected to the driving wheels by a transmission. Typically they keep the engine running at a near-constant speed whether the locomotive is stationary or moving.
Kerosene locomotives use kerosene as the fuel. They were the world's first oil locomotives, preceding diesel and other oil locomotives by some years.
The first known kerosene rail vehicle was a draisine built by Gottlieb Daimler in 1887, but this was not technically a locomotive as it carried a payload.
A kerosene locomotive was built in 1894 by the Priestman Brothers of Kingston upon Hull for use on Hull docks. This locomotive was built using a 12 hp double-acting marine type engine, running at 300 rpm, mounted on a 4-wheel wagon chassis. It was only able to haul one loaded wagon at a time, due to its low power output, and was not a great success. The first successful kerosene locomotive was "Lachesis" built by Richard Hornsby & Sons Ltd. and delivered to Woolwich Arsenal railway in 1896. The company built a series of kerosene locomotives between 1896 and 1903, for use by the British military.
Petrol locomotives use petrol as their fuel.
The first commercially successful petrol locomotive was a petrol-mechanical locomotive built by the Maudslay Motor Company in 1902, for the Deptford Cattle Market in London. It was an 80 hp locomotive using a 3-cylinder vertical petrol engine, with a two speed mechanical gearbox.
The second locomotive was built by F.C. Blake of Kew in January 1903 for the Richmond Main Sewerage Board.
In 1916, "Simplex" petrol locomotives built by Motor Rail, with 20-40 hp motors and 4-wheel mechanical transmission began to be used on gauge trench railways on the Western Front. The War Department also ordered 100 larger petrol-electric locomotives from Dick, Kerr & Co. and British Westinghouse, which used a 45 hp Dorman 4JO four-cylinder petrol engine driving a 30 kW DC generator at 1000rpm. Many of the petrol locomotives supplied to the armed forces were sold off as surplus after the end of hostilities, and found work on small industrial railways. Motor Rail continued to develop and manufacture and develop the design, for several decades.
The most common type of petrol locomotive are petrol-mechanical locomotives, which use mechanical transmission in the form of gearboxes (sometimes in conjunction with chain drives) to deliver the power output of the engine to the driving wheels, in the same way as a car.
Petrol-electric locomotives are petrol locomotives which use electric transmission to deliver the power output of the engine to the driving wheels. This avoids the need for gearboxes by converting the rotary mechanical force of the engine into electrical energy by a dynamo, and then powering the wheels by multi-speed electric traction motors. This allows for smoother acceleration, as it avoids the need for gear changes, however is more expensive, heavier, and sometimes bulkier than mechanical transmission.
Diesel locomotives are powered by diesel engines. In the early days of Diesel propulsion development, various transmission systems were employed with varying degrees of success, with electric transmission proving to be the most popular.
A diesel–mechanical locomotive uses a mechanical transmission to transfer power to the wheels. This type of transmission is generally limited to low-powered, low speed shunting (switching) locomotives, lightweight multiple units and self-propelled railcars. The earliest diesel locomotives were diesel-mechanical.
The mechanical transmissions used for railroad propulsion are generally more complex and much more robust than standard-road versions. There is usually a fluid coupling interposed between the engine and gearbox, and the gearbox is often of the epicyclic (planetary) type to permit shifting while under load. Various systems have been devised to minimise the break in transmission during gear changing; e.g., the S.S.S. (synchro-self-shifting) gearbox used by Hudswell Clarke. Diesel–mechanical propulsion is limited by the difficulty of building a reasonably sized transmission capable of coping with the power and torque required to move a heavy train.
In 1906, Rudolf Diesel, Adolf Klose and the steam and diesel engine manufacturer Gebrüder Sulzer founded Diesel-Sulzer-Klose GmbH to manufacture diesel-powered locomotives. The Prussian State Railways ordered a diesel locomotive from the company in 1909. The world's first diesel-powered locomotive (a diesel-mechanical locomotive) was operated in the summer of 1912 on the Winterthur–Romanshorn railway in Switzerland, but was not a commercial success. The locomotive weight was 95 tonnes and the power was 883 kW with a maximum speed of 100 km/h. Small numbers of prototype diesel locomotives were produced in a number of countries through the mid-1920s.
In a diesel–electric locomotive, the diesel engine drives either an electrical DC generator (generally, less than net for traction), or an electrical AC alternator-rectifier (generally net or more for traction), the output of which provides power to the traction motors that drive the locomotive. There is no mechanical connection between the diesel engine and the wheels. The vast majority of diesel locomotives today are diesel-electric.
The important components of diesel–electric propulsion are the diesel engine (also known as the prime mover), the main generator/alternator-rectifier, traction motors (usually with four or six axles), and a control system consisting of the engine governor and electrical or electronic components, including switchgear, rectifiers and other components, which control or modify the electrical supply to the traction motors. In the most elementary case, the generator may be directly connected to the motors with only very simple switchgear.
Originally, the traction motors and generator were DC machines. Following the development of high-capacity silicon rectifiers in the 1960s, the DC generator was replaced by an alternator using a diode bridge to convert its output to DC. This advance greatly improved locomotive reliability and decreased generator maintenance costs by elimination of the commutator and brushes in the generator. Elimination of the brushes and commutator, in turn, disposed of the possibility of a particularly destructive type of event referred to as a flashover, which could result in immediate generator failure and, in some cases, start an engine room fire.
In the late 1980s, the development of high-power variable-frequency/variable-voltage (VVVF) drives, or "traction inverters," has allowed the use of polyphase AC traction motors, thus also eliminating the motor commutator and brushes. The result is a more efficient and reliable drive that requires relatively little maintenance and is better able to cope with overload conditions that often destroyed the older types of motors.
In 1914, Hermann Lemp, a General Electric electrical engineer, developed and patented a reliable direct current electrical control system (subsequent improvements were also patented by Lemp). Lemp's design used a single lever to control both engine and generator in a coordinated fashion, and was the prototype for all diesel–electric locomotive control. In 1917–18, GE produced three experimental diesel–electric locomotives using Lemp's control design. In 1924, a diesel-electric locomotive (Eel2 original number Юэ 001/Yu-e 001) started operations. It had been designed by a team led by Yuri Lomonosov and built 1923–1924 by Maschinenfabrik Esslingen in Germany. It had 5 driving axles (1'E1'). After several test rides, it hauled trains for almost three decades from 1925 to 1954. It was the world's first functional diesel locomotive.
Diesel–hydraulic locomotives use one or more torque converters, in combination with gears, with a mechanical final drive to convey the power from the diesel engine to the wheels.
Hydrokinetic transmission (also called hydrodynamic transmission) uses a torque converter. A torque converter consists of three main parts, two of which rotate, and one (the stator) that has a lock preventing backwards rotation and adding output torque by redirecting the oil flow at low output RPM. All three main parts are sealed in an oil-filled housing. To match engine speed to load speed over the entire speed range of a locomotive some additional method is required to give sufficient range. One method is to follow the torque converter with a mechanical gearbox which switches ratios automatically, similar to an automatic transmission on a car. Another method is to provide several torque converters each with a range of variability covering part of the total required; all the torque converters are mechanically connected all the time, and the appropriate one for the speed range required is selected by filling it with oil and draining the others. The filling and draining is carried out with the transmission under load, and results in very smooth range changes with no break in the transmitted power.
The main worldwide user of main-line hydraulic transmissions was the Federal Republic of Germany, with designs including the 1950s DB class V 200, and the 1960 and 1970s DB Class V 160 family. British Rail introduced a number of diesel hydraulic designs during it 1955 Modernisation Plan, initially license built versions of German designs. In Spain RENFE used high power to weight ratio twin engined German designs to haul high speed trains from the 1960s to 1990s. (see RENFE Classes 340, 350, 352, 353, 354).
Hydrostatic drive systems have also been applied to rail use, for example shunting locomotives by CMI Group (Belgium), and 4 to 12 tonne industrial locomotives by Atlas Copco subsidiary GIA. Hydrostatic drives are also used in railway maintenance machines such as tampers and rail grinders.
A gas turbine locomotive is an internal combustion engine locomotive consisting of a gas turbine. ICE engines require a transmission to power the wheels. The engine must be allowed to continue to run when the locomotive is stopped.
Gas turbine-mechanical locomotives, use a mechanical transmission to deliver the power output of gas turbines to the wheels. A gas turbine locomotive was patented in 1861 by Marc Antoine Francois Mennons (British patent no. 1633). There is no evidence that the locomotive was actually built but the design includes the essential features of gas turbine locomotives built in the 20th century, including compressor, combustion chamber, turbine and air pre-heater. In 1952, Renault delivered a prototype four-axle 1150 hp gas-turbine-mechanical locomotive fitted with the Pescara "free turbine" gas- and compressed-air producing system, rather than a co-axial multi-stage compressor integral to the turbine. This model was succeeded by a pair of six-axle 2400 hp locomotives with two turbines and Pescara feeds in 1959. Several similar locomotives were built in USSR by Kharkov Locomotive Works.
Gas turbine-electric locomotives, use a gas turbine to drive an electrical generator or alternator which produced electric current powers the traction motor which drive the wheels. In 1939 the Swiss Federal Railways ordered Am 4/6, a GTEL with a of maximum engine power from Brown Boveri. It was completed in 1941, and then underwent testing before entering regular service. The Am 4/6 was the first gas turbine – electric locomotive. British Rail 18000 was built by Brown Boveri and delivered in 1949. British Rail 18100 was built by Metropolitan-Vickers and delivered in 1951. A third locomotive, the British Rail GT3, was constructed in 1961. Union Pacific ran a large fleet of turbine-powered freight locomotives starting in the 1950s. These were widely used on long-haul routes, and were cost-effective despite their poor fuel economy due to their use of "leftover" fuels from the petroleum industry. At their height the railroad estimated that they powered about 10% of Union Pacific's freight trains, a much wider use than any other example of this class.
A gas turbine offers some advantages over a piston engine. There are few moving parts, decreasing the need for lubrication and potentially reducing maintenance costs, and the power-to-weight ratio is much higher. A turbine of a given power output is also physically smaller than an equally powerful piston engine, allowing a locomotive to be very powerful without being inordinately large. However, a turbine's power output and efficiency both drop dramatically with rotational speed, unlike a piston engine, which has a comparatively flat power curve. This makes GTEL systems useful primarily for long-distance high-speed runs. Additional problems with gas turbine-electric locomotives included that they were very noisy.
An electric locomotive is a locomotive powered only by electricity. Electricity is supplied to moving trains with a (nearly) continuous conductor running along the track that usually takes one of three forms: an overhead line, suspended from poles or towers along the track or from structure or tunnel ceilings; a third rail mounted at track level; or an onboard battery. Both overhead wire and third-rail systems usually use the running rails as the return conductor but some systems use a separate fourth rail for this purpose. The type of electrical power used is either direct current (DC) or alternating current (AC).
Various collection methods exist: a trolley pole, which is a long flexible pole that engages the line with a wheel or shoe; a bow collector, which is a frame that holds a long collecting rod against the wire; a pantograph, which is a hinged frame that holds the collecting shoes against the wire in a fixed geometry; or a contact shoe, which is a shoe in contact with the third rail. Of the three, the pantograph method is best suited for high-speed operation.
Electric locomotives almost universally use axle-hung traction motors, with one motor for each powered axle. In this arrangement, one side of the motor housing is supported by plain bearings riding on a ground and polished journal that is integral to the axle. The other side of the housing has a tongue-shaped protuberance that engages a matching slot in the truck (bogie) bolster, its purpose being to act as a torque reaction device, as well as a support. Power transfer from motor to axle is effected by spur gearing, in which a pinion on the motor shaft engages a bull gear on the axle. Both gears are enclosed in a liquid-tight housing containing lubricating oil. The type of service in which the locomotive is used dictates the gear ratio employed. Numerically high ratios are commonly found on freight units, whereas numerically low ratios are typical of passenger engines.
Electricity is typically generated in large and relatively efficient generating stations, transmitted to the railway network and distributed to the trains. Some electric railways have their own dedicated generating stations and transmission lines but most purchase power from an electric utility. The railway usually provides its own distribution lines, switches and transformers.
Electric locomotives usually cost 20% less than diesel locomotives, their maintenance costs are 25-35% lower, and cost up to 50% less to run.
The earliest systems were DC systems. The first electric passenger train was presented by Werner von Siemens at Berlin in 1879. The locomotive was driven by a 2.2 kW, series-wound motor, and the train, consisting of the locomotive and three cars, reached a speed of 13 km/h. During four months, the train carried 90,000 passengers on a 300-metre-long (984 feet) circular track. The electricity (150 V DC) was supplied through a third insulated rail between the tracks. A contact roller was used to collect the electricity. The world's first electric tram line opened in Lichterfelde near Berlin, Germany, in 1881. It was built by Werner von Siemens (see Gross-Lichterfelde Tramway and Berlin Straßenbahn). The Volk's Electric Railway opened in 1883 in Brighton, and is the oldest surviving electric railway. Also in 1883, Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram opened near Vienna in Austria. It was the first in the world in regular service powered from an overhead line. Five years later, in the U.S. electric trolleys were pioneered in 1888 on the Richmond Union Passenger Railway, using equipment designed by Frank J. Sprague.
The first electrically-worked underground line was the City and South London Railway, prompted by a clause in its enabling act prohibiting use of steam power. It opened in 1890, using electric locomotives built by Mather and Platt. Electricity quickly became the power supply of choice for subways, abetted by the Sprague's invention of multiple-unit train control in 1897.
The first use of electrification on a main line was on a four-mile stretch of the Baltimore Belt Line of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad (B&O) in 1895 connecting the main portion of the B&O to the new line to New York through a series of tunnels around the edges of Baltimore's downtown. Three Bo+Bo units were initially used, at the south end of the electrified section; they coupled onto the locomotive and train and pulled it through the tunnels.
DC was used on earlier systems. These systems were gradually replaced by AC. Today, almost all main-line railways use AC systems. DC systems are confined mostly to urban transit such as metro systems, light rail and trams, where power requirement is less.
The first practical AC electric locomotive was designed by Charles Brown, then working for Oerlikon, Zürich. In 1891, Brown had demonstrated long-distance power transmission, using three-phase AC, between a hydro-electric plant at Lauffen am Neckar and Frankfurt am Main West, a distance of 280 km. Using experience he had gained while working for Jean Heilmann on steam-electric locomotive designs, Brown observed that three-phase motors had a higher power-to-weight ratio than DC motors and, because of the absence of a commutator, were simpler to manufacture and maintain. However, they were much larger than the DC motors of the time and could not be mounted in underfloor bogies: they could only be carried within locomotive bodies.
In 1894, Hungarian engineer Kálmán Kandó developed a new type 3-phase asynchronous electric drive motors and generators for electric locomotives.
Kandó's early 1894 designs were first applied in a short three-phase AC tramway in Evian-les-Bains (France), which was constructed between 1896 and 1898. In 1918, Kandó invented and developed the rotary phase converter, enabling electric locomotives to use three-phase motors whilst supplied via a single overhead wire, carrying the simple industrial frequency (50 Hz) single phase AC of the high voltage national networks.
In 1896, Oerlikon installed the first commercial example of the system on the Lugano Tramway. Each 30-tonne locomotive had two motors run by three-phase 750 V 40 Hz fed from double overhead lines. Three-phase motors run at constant speed and provide regenerative braking, and are well suited to steeply graded routes, and the first main-line three-phase locomotives were supplied by Brown (by then in partnership with Walter Boveri) in 1899 on the 40 km Burgdorf—Thun line, Switzerland. The first implementation of industrial frequency single-phase AC supply for locomotives came from Oerlikon in 1901, using the designs of Hans Behn-Eschenburg and Emil Huber-Stockar; installation on the Seebach-Wettingen line of the Swiss Federal Railways was completed in 1904. The 15 kV, 50 Hz , 48 tonne locomotives used transformers and rotary converters to power DC traction motors.
Italian railways were the first in the world to introduce electric traction for the entire length of a main line rather than just a short stretch. The 106 km Valtellina line was opened on 4 September 1902, designed by Kandó and a team from the Ganz works. The electrical system was three-phase at 3 kV 15 Hz. The voltage was significantly higher than used earlier and it required new designs for electric motors and switching devices. The three-phase two-wire system was used on several railways in Northern Italy and became known as "the Italian system". Kandó was invited in 1905 to undertake the management of Società Italiana Westinghouse and led the development of several Italian electric locomotives.
A battery-electric locomotive (or battery locomotive) is an electric locomotive powered by on-board batteries; a kind of battery electric vehicle.
Such locomotives are used where a conventional diesel or electric locomotive would be unsuitable. An example is maintenance trains on electrified lines when the electricity supply is turned off. Another use is in industrial facilities where a combustion-powered locomotive (i.e., steam- or diesel-powered) could cause a safety issue due to the risks of fire, explosion or fumes in a confined space. Battery locomotives are preferred for mines where gas could be ignited by trolley-powered units arcing at the collection shoes, or where electrical resistance could develop in the supply or return circuits, especially at rail joints, and allow dangerous current leakage into the ground.
The first known electric locomotive was built in 1837 by chemist Robert Davidson of Aberdeen, and it was powered by galvanic cells (batteries). Davidson later built a larger locomotive named "Galvani", exhibited at the Royal Scottish Society of Arts Exhibition in 1841. The seven-ton vehicle had two direct-drive reluctance motors, with fixed electromagnets acting on iron bars attached to a wooden cylinder on each axle, and simple commutators. It hauled a load of six tons at four miles per hour (6 kilometers per hour) for a distance of . It was tested on the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway in September of the following year, but the limited power from batteries prevented its general use.
Another example was at the Kennecott Copper Mine, Latouche, Alaska, where in 1917 the underground haulage ways were widened to enable working by two battery locomotives of tons. In 1928, Kennecott Copper ordered four 700-series electric locomotives with on-board batteries. These locomotives weighed 85 tons and operated on 750-volt overhead trolley wire with considerable further range whilst running on batteries. The locomotives provided several decades of service using Nickel-iron battery (Edison) technology. The batteries were replaced with lead-acid batteries, and the locomotives were retired shortly afterward. All four locomotives were donated to museums, but one was scrapped. The others can be seen at the Boone and Scenic Valley Railroad, Iowa, and at the Western Railway Museum in Rio Vista, California. The Toronto Transit Commission previously operated a battery electric locomotive built by Nippon-Sharyo in 1968 and retired in 2009.
London Underground regularly operates battery-electric locomotives for general maintenance work.
In the 1960s, development of very high-speed service brought further electrification. The Japanese Shinkansen and the French TGV were the first systems for which devoted high-speed lines were built from scratch. Similar programs were undertaken in Italy, Germany and Spain; and many countries around the world. Railway electrification has constantly increased in the past decades, and as of 2012, electrified tracks account for nearly one third of total tracks globally.
In comparison to the principal alternative, the diesel engine, electric railways offer substantially better energy efficiency, lower emissions and lower operating costs. Electric locomotives are also usually quieter, more powerful, and more responsive and reliable than diesels.
They have no local emissions, an important advantage in tunnels and urban areas. Some electric traction systems provide regenerative braking that turns the train's kinetic energy back into electricity and returns it to the supply system to be used by other trains or the general utility grid. While diesel locomotives burn petroleum, electricity can be generated from diverse sources including renewable energy.
Steam-diesel hybrid locomotives can use steam generated from a boiler or diesel to power a piston engine. The "Cristiani Compressed Steam System" used a diesel engine to power a compressor to drive and recirculate steam produced by a boiler; effectively using steam as the power transmission medium, with the diesel engine being the prime mover
In the 1940s, diesel locomotives began to displace steam power on American railroads. Following the end of World War II, diesel power began to appear on railroads in many countries. The significantly better economics of diesel operation triggered a dash to diesel power, a process known as Dieselization. By the late 1990s, only heritage railways continued to operate steam locomotives in most countries.
Diesel locomotives require considerably less maintenance than steam, with a corresponding reduction in the number of personnel needed to keep the fleet in service. The best steam locomotives spent an average of three to five days per month in the shop for routine maintenance and running repairs. Heavy overhauls were frequent, often involving removal of the boiler from the frame for major repairs. In contrast, a typical diesel locomotive requires no more than eight to ten hours of maintenance per month (maintenance intervals are 92 days or 184 days, depending upon a locomotive's age), and may run for decades between major overhauls. Diesel units do not pollute as much as steam trains; modern units produce low levels of exhaust emissions.
In the early 1950s, Dr. Lyle Borst of the University of Utah was given funding by various US railroad line and manufacturers to study the feasibility of an electric-drive locomotive, in which an onboard atomic reactor produced the steam to generate the electricity. At that time, atomic power was not fully understood; Borst believed the major stumbling block was the price of uranium. With the Borst atomic locomotive, the center section would have a 200-ton reactor chamber and steel walls 5 feet thick to prevent releases of radioactivity in case of accidents. He estimated a cost to manufacture atomic locomotives with 7000 h.p. engines at approximately $1,200,000 each. Consequently, trains with onboard nuclear generators were generally deemed unfeasible due to prohibitive costs.
In 2002, the first 3.6 tonne, 17 kW hydrogen (fuel cell) -powered mining locomotive was demonstrated in Val-d'Or, Quebec. In 2007 the educational mini-hydrail in Kaohsiung, Taiwan went into service. The Railpower GG20B finally is another example of a fuel cell-electric locomotive.
There are many different types of hybrid or dual-mode locomotives using two or more types of motive power. The most common hybrids are electro-diesel locomotives powered either from an electricity supply or else by an onboard diesel engine. These are used to provide continuous journeys along routes that are only partly electrified. Examples include the EMD FL9 and Bombardier ALP-45DP
There are three main uses of locomotives in rail transport operations: for hauling passenger trains, freight trains, and for switching (UK English: shunting).
Freight locomotives are normally designed to deliver high starting tractive effort and high sustained power. This allows them to start and move heavy trains, but usually comes at the cost of relatively low maximum speeds. Passenger locomotives usually develop lower starting tractive effort but are able to operate at the high speeds required to maintain passenger schedules. Mixed traffic locomotives (US English: general purpose or road switcher locomotives) do not develop as much starting tractive effort as a freight locomotive but are able to haul heavier trains than a passenger engine.
Most steam locomotives have reciprocating engines, with pistons coupled to the driving wheels by means of connecting rods, with no intervening gearbox. This means the combination of starting tractive effort and maximum speed is greatly influenced by the diameter of the driving wheels. Steam locomotives intended for freight service generally have smaller diameter driving wheels than passenger locomotives.
In diesel-electric and electric locomotives the control system between the traction motors and axles adapts the power output to the rails for freight or passenger service. Passenger locomotives may include other features, such as head-end power (also referred to as hotel power or electric train supply) or a steam generator.
Some locomotives are designed specifically to work steep grade railways, and feature extensive additional braking mechanisms and sometimes rack and pinion. Steam locomotives built for steep rack and pinion railways frequently have the boiler tilted relative to the locomotive frame, so that the boiler remains roughly level on steep grades.
Locomotives are also used on some High-speed trains: All TGV, many AVE, some KTX and the now-retired ICE 2 and ICE 1 trains all use locomotives, which may also be known as power cars. Using power cars easily allows for a high ride quality and less electrical equipment, but when compared with electric multiple units, they also offer lower acceleration and higher axle weights (for the power cars) The KTX-II and ICE 1 use a mixture of electric multiple units and power cars.
Locomotives occasionally work in a specific role, such as:
The wheel arrangement of a locomotive describes how many wheels it has; common methods include the AAR wheel arrangement, UIC classification, and Whyte notation systems.
In the second half of the twentieth century remote control locomotives started to enter service in switching operations, being remotely controlled by an operator outside of the locomotive cab.
The main benefit is one operator can control the loading of grain, coal, gravel, etc. into the cars. In addition, the same operator can move the train as needed. Thus, the locomotive is loaded or unloaded in about a third of the time.
There are a few basic reasons to isolate locomotive train power, as compared to self-propelled trains.
There are several advantages of multiple unit (MU) trains compared to locomotives.
Locomotives have been a subject for collectors' coins and medals. One of the most famous and recent ones is the 25 Euro 150 Years Semmering Alpine Railway commemorative coin. The obverse shows two locomotives: a historical and a modern one. This represents the technical development in locomotive construction between the years 1854 and 2004. The upper half depicts the “Taurus”, a high performance locomotive. The lower half depicts the first functional Alpine locomotive, the Engerth; constructed by Wilhelm Freiherr von Engerth. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17717 |
Lars Magnus Ericsson
Lars Magnus Ericsson (; 5 May 1846 – 17 December 1926) was a Swedish inventor, entrepreneur and founder of telephone equipment manufacturer Ericsson (incorporated as "Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson").
Lars Magnus was born in Värmskog, Värmland, and grew up in the small village of Vegerbol located between Karlstad and Arvika. At the age of 12, Ericsson's father died forcing him to seek work as a miner. He worked until he had money enough to leave the village and move to Stockholm in 1867. He then worked for six years for an instrument maker named "Öllers & Co." who mainly created telegraph equipment. Because of his skills, he was given two state scholarships to study instrument making abroad between 1872 and 1875. One of the companies he worked at was Siemens & Halske.
Upon his return to Sweden in 1876, he founded a small mechanical workshop together with his friend Carl Johan Andersson who had also worked at "Öllers & Co.". This workshop was actually a former kitchen of some 13 m2 situated at Drottninggatan 15 in the most central part of Stockholm. Here, he started a telephone company by analyzing Bell company and Siemens telephones and creating his own copies in their image. It was not until they started cooperating with Henrik Tore Cedergren in 1883 that the company would start to grow into the Ericsson corporation.
In the year 1900 Lars Magnus retired from Ericsson at the age of 54. He kept his shares in the company until 1905 and then sold them all.
He is said to have been a demanding person, and disliked any direct publicity about his personality and did not wish to be idolized. He was, however, deeply respected by his employees. He was always a skeptic and cautious in business. He was also somewhat opposed to patents, as many of the products he made would not have been possible to do if the patent legislation had been overly effective. When his phones were copied by Norwegian companies he did not care, as his phones had in turn been largely copied from Siemens. He initially did not believe in a mass market for telephones, and saw it as a toy for the leisure class.
After his death in 1926, he was buried at Hågelby gård in Botkyrka. At his explicit request, there is no headstone marking his grave. | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17719 |
Lysator
Lysator is an academic computer club at Linköping University, Sweden with almost 600 members. It is an independent non-profit society, separate from the students' union and the faculties of the university.
Lysator was founded on 29 March 1973. The first computer used at Lysator was a Datasaab D21, delivered to Lysator on 25 May 1973. Later in the decade, members of Lysator developed and initially built a microcomputer, the Lys-16, which was advanced for its time due to its 16-bit word size.
In February 1993, Lysator put up the first web server in Sweden, among the first 10–15 in the world.
On 30 July 2010, Lysator began migrating to a new 3U home rack, increasing their available storage space from 700GB to 13TB.
Lysator has been a starting ground for many notable projects, some of which have since become independent from the club: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki?curid=17721 |
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